Horror - Flash

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Condemned Man Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE CONDEMNED MAN

From that height, seeing the smoke from his burned shack teased his soul—those lingering grey tendrils that climbed into the blue beyond. This hurt like nothing had hurt before. More than the spikes and more than the lashes.

Closer. Trodden paths ran a trail over the golden grass under the heavy white sun, between the yellowed trees circling round the glade. Closer yet. 43 shadows stretched long fingers onto the overgrown grass and overturned dirt.

Beneath that blaring sun, flesh dripped until the bone sacks fell, men picked over by committee—hideous vultures, crows, and second-class doves. The stench was unbearable to most and onlookers did not linger unless tethered by familial aches, and even then, the smell eventually outweighed the pain. That stink was music to the birds, to the whining dogs that came at night to gawk up at those pinned by wrists and ankles, and the endless buzzing of flies.

Men survived for a time, staked to the crossed planks, eyeing down the hungry ugliness in the light of day. They’d listened to the squawks and rustling talons and fighting mongrels when the night cast darkness over the world, knowing.

They lived until they died, mostly.

Aching, retching, terrified beyond the notion of terrified, the last man felt himself slipping. Delayed executions stretched agony of the declared befitting punishment. That last man cooked, set on high for a crime hard to define. Wrong thoughts, notions that carried the burden of unflinching faith, bullheadedness in spite of the throne and the decrees passed down onto the public. The old gods were out and so were those refusing to praise the new gods, the better gods.

The buzzards hopped and bopped, there was always enough to go around at a religious execution. And yet, they acted with impatience and longing. Ravenous beasts.

The last man had faith. He peeled his lids after closing them on the image of the husk of his former home. A cool breeze touched his pre-rotting flesh. He’d dreamed of drinking and eating, but mostly of letting his arms rest.

Time was slow and he looked around for signs of change while his sanity flickered. As if out of nowhere, a boy sat before him, no older than ten, staring up.

“Help me, boy,” the condemned man said, his voice like sand against stone.

“You are lucky. There is bad to come for the sons of Zeus and the daughters of Hera. There is more bad to come than you could ever dream in a thousand nightmares. I tell you, in the days to come, more will burn under the sun, pecked by beaks, scorned by lips.” The boy spoke with a man’s tenor and wore the shadow of a looming corpse to keep from baking himself. His little digits picked at pebbles where he sat amidst the rot and avian life.

“Please, help me.”

The boy brushed his hands. Three vultures stood over the shoulders of the last man, perched on the board-work behind and above him. In a diamond shape was that stand, to ensure the man hanged and hanged and hanged; even when nails tore flesh, a man would hang. While alive, at least.

The birds tested, now and then, the constitution of the pre-rotten flesh. The living and the dead are different and birds know patience.

“Don’t speak, there’s no need. I am here to help you, but I will not touch you. You must do that part on your own.”

“I’m nailed, can’t you see?” The man’s voice croaked as he shouted.

The boy frowned and rose to his bare feet. He wore short leather pants and a long cotton shirt, both clean and fresh. Almost impossibly so.

“It is you who cannot see. Come down from there and I will show you away.”

The condemned man shook his head. “Can’t you see? I am pinned and—” The man paused as an ugly, redheaded vulture drove its beak at his chest. Rustling. Digging. “Help me, boy!”

The vulture knew the choicest meat and burrowed, pushing aside the dripping crimson muscles and the bony cell.

“Shh, it is the way. Now, come down.”

The man roared, “See me, blind boy! There are stakes driven into my hands and feet! Can’t you see? This bird is—help me!”

“I see, but you do not. Come down, son of Zeus. You are dead. There is no need to stay on that torture stand. This is no place for you now. See? Your home is burned. Your people are dead. Your gods are silent. Come down before the new rulers begin stringing more of your people. It is not a good show and will ache fearsome.”

“Not dead yet!” The man was angry, so angry that his arms shot outward. The world rushed at him as he dropped.

The boy smiled and laughed as the man passed through him. These men never understood, not right away, and sometimes not ever.

“You sneaky boy! You will not smile…” the man trailed and then looked up to the vultures dining on his corpse, fighting over his organs.

“Forget this and I will show you away. You are one of the last for a long time. Many more will die, but there will be darkness. There will be horrors in the forever stone of hardened hearts.”

The last man’s expression sank and tears spilled. For so long he’d fought and prayed to the gods for salvation, prayed to the deities and monsters, to those who grew scales and fur and horns and hooves, but in the end, he’d died a criminal on a bone stand.

“It is better now, for you,” the boy said. “The sons of Zeus and daughters of Hera are better off without their skins, better now for one million moons.”

The man opened his mouth. His words were a whistled breeze. Those spilling tears rolled against gravity like reverse raindrops.

The boy took the man’s hand, facing up to him in the way a son does a father. The boy then inhaled deeply and blew a tremendous breath that smelled of water and fresh grass. The air filled the final man’s lungs and he floated, past his corpse and beyond sight of his burned-out home. The boy inhaled even deeper and blew a gale, sending the man to where he would be one of many, among stars and moons, with his brothers and sisters.

XX