The Trial

The Trial

The church clock strikes eight, so those villagers who are awake know without checking that it is six. A cock crows. A body lies across the doorstep of the church, a line of crumb-carrying ants marches across the fedora covering its face. There is a serene, momentary quiet after the chimes cease.  A figure glides past the church wall, before the silence is cracked by a baby crying.

A man lets out a shudder. His curtain's closed, but before the truth was open. It is six. A wife calls him back to bed. He ignores the truth and returns to his loving ignorance, only to hide from what he saw performed before the church outside.  A child cries as a kindly mother moves over to nurse.  It rains outside causing a rising crescendo of natures grief upon the slated roofs; the young boys imitation continuing into the night.

A woman stands before a court. To her right a dummy judge, then elevated even further above her the true judge patiently oversees it all. Before the woman, sits a family minus a father. A crying babe,  bobbed hair upon a doting mere and a young girl, fedora in hand. The woman's body tightens upon the visage of the hat, tense she finds herself sickened, caught in the viral caress of her past. Amongst those present, a man sits. Him and his ignorance hand in hand. His throat begins to knot, light headed his body grows weak. Choking he gasps for truth.

The wind whistles through the streets, a woman finds herself beside a door. She does not enter, afraid to stain the knob with what hangs upon her hands. She sits in silence, no wish to enter. Suddenly the door creaks ajar. A husband peaks out before opening the door fully,
“Come in, you'll catch a death of cold.” The man's voice is familiar but distant also, somewhere she'd been taken from. The husband sees a woman guarding her core, he tries to persuade her in but she refuses. She can't allow it into his house, what broke into hers, tainting and corroding. His household must stay pure. An officer approaches a suspect and a husband in the wind, beside an open door.

A husband waits outside a court. A women inside stands, laid out upon a trial of murder. She does not deny the allegations. She stands cross armed, bruises upon them. A man overlooking now writhes for air, he can't hold it in, he quickly lets go of his ignorance whilst a dummy judge speaks to the congregation,
“Then, upon the eighth hour...” A man interrupts a dummy, letting a judge declare its verdict.
“Six, the hour was six...” A man on trial continues.

Shaun Beale