Parade of Horrible People

Amid hateful trumpets and blistering heat, the Parade of horrible people was set to commence. The crowd cackled with people from all walks of life. In the front directly beside the parade road, the nobles found their place, with their polished hands, satin robes, and careless demeanor.The gentry nestled themselves just behind them with their trophy wives and fat, rosy-cheeked children. The hardened, sun-burned faces of the proletariat of simple minded farm-hands and laborers were also there watching alongside their bleary-eyed, serious faced kin and gratuitous offspring. These surplus undesirables were kept at a comfortable distance away from their so-called betters, with the livestock at the back of the crowd. Flanked on either side of them were the usual lot of social outcasts, pariahs, and criminals. Specifically to the far left there were the jokers, gypsies, as well as colorful circus people, freaks, prostitutes, beggars, and rubberneckers. On the right extremity on the worst rocky soil of the array were found the criminals, thieves, rapists, coiners, crooked lawyers, and all kinds of low lives and scum of the earth. All assembled in their bedazzled glory, the throng waited patiently for about three hours past the appointed start time, setting off murmurs of discontent throughout the crowd.

Shouting began, and the dissatisfaction of the mob could be kept in check no longer. Where was the parade of horrible people? They wanted to shout and jeer at their inferiors. On the cusp of an outright riot, at last some modicum of decency asserted itself on this unbearably hot day. Look there to the distant road! With perspired brows, distorted visions, and wasps buzzing in their ears to stir their demons, all eyes were agog at a singular phantom-like presence trotting down the dusty road. Imagine their surprise to find not a parade, but a single man. And what a fellow! Here walked a silly looking ill-shaven little man with a sourly indifferent countenance, decked out in a one piece pajama suit and striped socked cap, dressed not unlike a shabby fool. In his little arms he carried a large mirror almost bigger than himself that projected harsh reflections of the sun and the hateful reflections of the baffled audience.

Greeted with this estranged display and expecting much more, silence swallowed everything for a half mile. In another mere instant a dreadful cacophony of indignation ignited the audience, as though from one voice. Multifarious hated enemies from all classes of society united in their spite against this mock parade. As though from one thrust of a titan’s arm they grabbed the poor little man with his wretched mirror and tore him away from the dirty road. Many boisterous cries and oaths were thrown around like daggers. It was not unlike a Bacchanalian Festival in its wildest throes of passion, where the wine had been tainted with malice.

After much debate it was decided that the little man was to be crucified upside down; only this would satisfy their blood-lust! So the angry mob harshly carried him like a sacrificial animal back down the road from whence he came and up a grassy hill where three crosses faced the West. But as they put him into position and prepared the cruel hammer and nails, one brigand, a paltry thief with an ugly scar on his cheek, asserted himself to the front of the action and spoke up with a bellowing voice of thunder that called for a harsher punishment. He petitioned with much waving of his spindly limbs and calloused hands that the little man should be boiled alive in a large cauldron. In the fervor and arguing that came afterwards, somehow the condemned mirror bearer slipped out of the grasp of the mob and crept down the hillside as stealthily as a stray cat with an old gutter biscuit. In another instant he was gone, as though vanished into thin air.

When it was discovered that the little man had escaped, the mob had a field day in exploring new exorbitant forms of ferocity. Their war prize gone, they lost it completely. The captious thief with his cauldron fancies was caught unawares. Somehow it was unanimously decided that it was his fault, and so he should be the new scapegoat. The large mirror that the little sock man carried with such stolid pride was hastily bashed against a jagged rock nearby. Then with mechanical zeal several monstrous peasants uprooted a cross and flipped it over. Amid the scurrilous jubilation of the crowd these same peasants crucified the thief upside down--using the glass shards from the broken mirror as nails.

And so as the sun disappeared behind the distant hills to the West, shrouding itself from this insanity, there was a parade of horrible people after all, as well as a miracle. The miracle of course was that the varied masses from all walks of life were able to agree on a method of execution and carry it out at last.  

 

Reviews

[Abhishek Sengupta]

An exquisite piece. Although the build-up hinted towards the parade by the audience itself from the very beginning, the execution to it was quite nicely done. I also liked the imagery of the mirror and later, its glass shards to crucify the thief. Nice job!!

[Zorrin86]

Thanks! I appreciate the review, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.