Balls Capone

I was walking along the main street looking in the windows of the shops, everyone inside was dressed and had items from the 19th Century, very old west like until I found a shop with a bunch of 50's TV sets in the window, they were all playing a news program. They were elaborating on a new law that had just been passed. The law demanded that anyone who was a descendant of a murderer, rapist, pervert, Nazi, etc. was immediately condemned to die. It did not matter if they had done anything or not, everyone in these categories were to report to a local gallows station for immediate hanging. They were building them on every other corner, these large round tables with as many as 10 nooses hanging from them, and shockingly enough, the people began to come, lining up for their turn at the gallows.

I remember a propaganda commercial playing on one of the TV's about how it’s “very sad”, but necessary for the good of all humanity. Then it showed a man in a doctor’s outfit walking slowly with his head down toward a line of equally disheveled looking people and a stern 1950’s nuclear bomb documentary type voice narrated the following:

“This is Tom. Tom is a good man, or at least he thinks he is, he has been a doctor for nearly 20 years now. He has saved countless lives, but not even that can save him from the gallows today", “Tom knows his duty to mankind, do you?”

They then stamped Tom’s arm with a circular blue stamp that marked him as doomed for the gallows. I then turned onto an adjacent street and walked into a shop that was filled with clocks, obviously a clock shop. There were all sorts of types of clocks on all the walls, really packed in there, even on the ceilings. Big clocks, small clocks, that funny animated cat clock with the moving eyes and tail, all of those old silly clocks. There was an old man behind the counter who just stood there staring out the font window, totally emotionless, just staring blankly. Above him was a big colorful sign that read:

"ClockLocker® - "A great place to keep your time!""

Apparently people could rent a locker here to keep all their clocks in. What a useful service! But it seemed it was a rather popular thing here in this strange world, as many men and women came and went from the ClockLocker room to take or replace one of their precious time pieces. I followed a large group of people out the back door of the clock shop where I encounter a beautiful garden! The colors were magnificent and everything was so beautiful and green, little red brick paths wound here and there between the large circular gardens where women with Victorian era dresses on and little pink parasols stood admiring the sights.

The gentlemen, in the finest of Tuxedo, would approach with an ice cold glass of pink lemon-aid, and ask their woman of choice to join them for the evenings dance located in the large dance hall at the end of the street. This was something that happened every day here, it was just normal life.

In this world everyone was speaking a language I did not know or understand at all, I would ask people if they spoke English and all I would get back is a blank look and they would say “The English?” Then came the pale folk, they seemed to disturb the fancy dressed folks. They had blank pale faces and wore overalls, these strange people sure liked their overalls. It was unnerving and very creepy. They then directed the crowd out into the middle of the gardens where there was a circular table with 8 chairs around it. The table was that 50’s “space age” design and the top was unusually thick, the chairs looked more modern, like you would see in some hipster coffee shop. There, about ten feet over the table was this saucer type thing with poles that supported it coming down on 8 sides around the table, a very unusual thing to see in such beautiful gardens. I stood and watched as 8 people took a seat in the chairs, they were served a light snack (peanuts I believe), a glass of that pink lemon-aid, and then a noose for every single chair descended from the saucer thing above the table which each person willingly put around their necks like it was no big deal and waited, talking amongst themselves like nothing was happening at all.

Horrified, I watched as they were all raised by the neck 10 feet up to the top of the saucer where they would hang by the neck until dead dead dead. I stood there astonished, listened to the gurgling choking death sounds, one woman even managed to gurgle out a few words out about how dying was unpleasant. I couldn’t watch anymore, I turned around and headed for the back door of the clock shop, now loudly vocalizing my displeasure for this event. I started screaming for them to stop this madness “Tourist”, someone shouted at me out the window of an adjacent building.

Now everyone on the street had guns and they would point them at everyone who looked at them or came close, but would not fire. I ducked into a local pub where there were many children drinking and pointing guns at each other. I asked for a beer, but no one understood, “The English” as it was called in this strange world. A beautiful women then walked into the bar weeping uncontrollably and she informed me between fits of tears that her husband was one of the 8 that had been hung in the garden. What a slow and gruesome way to die. Hell, at least they got a light snack first, though it would really suck to have your last meal be a pack of airline peanuts. I left the bar and headed back to the clock shop, I had some morbid curiosity about what they did with the bodies of those poor souls who had stretched. To my horror, they piled all the bodies in the middle of the floor of the clock shop and then they just burned it down. The shop owner, still standing at his register with that blank look as the fire engulfs him and everything around. Soon he was not but a sizzling pile of bones in a giant pile of smoldering rubble and skeletons. That's when those poorly dressed folks appeared and it was their job to scrape up the charred ruins and bones. Then the pale faced folks in overalls would show up to rebuild the clock shop and the process would repeat.

I watched as the black greasy smoke rose into the sky, which was grey, overcast and depressing. This is how they did things, this was their way. I don’t know where this world was, but I never want to go back.