The Chopping Block

The first time I saw a severed human head I was standing directly behind the guillotine with the rope in my hands. There was more blood than the turkeys we tested the machine with, but less than the cattle, and the sound of the decapitation was softer yet less hollow than the watermelons we used to test the sharpness of the blade.

The crowd gasped on contact and held their breaths, falling silent for a few seconds before erupting into an orgy of ovation so loud it drowned out the sound of the purple Andean condors who circled above. They hovered lower; each orbit a little closer to the horizon--waiting for the taste of blood in such numbers their shadows blocked the sun from shining upon half the spectators surrounding the execution platform.

The head dropped into the basket and landed upright. Icy Artic blue eyes winked at the sky, as if the brightness was unexpected. They squinted for a good ten seconds--but when I mentioned this later nobody paid me any attention. Since then I’ve become certain that most heads are alive for upwards of fifteen seconds after decapitation. (It’s for this reason that the corregidor has charged me with treason and sentenced me to death.)

“But it’s true,” I said. “It’s more than a reflex, it’s a visceral reaction. Unfortunately only those watching close enough to the action of decapitation can decipher it.”

“This…” the corregidor said, searching for the words. (Though the alcalde mayor was usually a fair leader, he was never a beautiful speaker.)

“….is an abomination against nature and everything sacred.”

The entire town council of cabildos agreed. Obviously they were all afraid of the same thing: if the head was alive it could probably curse those around it with witchery and cast spells upon innocent bystanders.

“I assure you that the heads cannot speak,” I said. “Without a neck and a body it is not possible even to whisper.”

This I told them as if I was a doctor, not the only son of the village’s only executioner--a son of a dead father who broke every bone in his body to create the guillotine that I was forced to inaugurate. I was only twenty-seven when my father died of the heart attack just as he realized his invention. I had never even performed the sword decapitation him and his fathers before him had been executing for generations. I only stood on the platform and observed.

“For three years I’ve done this machine,” I said. “Thirteen men and four women have given their lives to this atrocity. Six of them saw me. Four bit the basket so hard with their teeth it tore an enormous whole. Seven of them bit the basket hard enough to rip it. Mind you this is the strongest basket we could have ever made. One of the condemned men bit his enemy’s ear off in the basket and spit it in his face. Another woman--sentenced to death for being an adulterer and using witchcraft to cover it up--bit her ex-husband’s entire nose off and tried to swallow it after her head landed next to his in the basket…three of them bit the basket hard enough to rip it and stick their teeth out the other side--mind you this is the strongest basket we could have made--and if you won’t let anybody else on the platform, how am I supposed to prove what I see?”

The cabildos were getting tired of listening. The corregidor was the chief judicial official and since all the cabildos agreed with his opinion they didn’t even need to listen. The men walked away. The women could not take their eyes off me; for I was an anomaly and a monster. The only concern was who would be the one to work the guillotine.

“Go get her pregnant,” the corregidor said.

He was pointing at my wife, licking his lips. “We need a baby. If she’s not pregnant in three months she’ll be imprisoned.”

If I had my own flesh and blood on the platform, it would be tolerable to allow someone else to perform the execution, until the child grew old enough to learn the art. My wife was pregnant within a couple weeks and the execution was set for nine months.

“How can you kill me when I have done nothing but tell the truth?” I asked.

They didn’t care what my excuses were. I was running out of options and debating whether I should just take myself out before they got their hands on me. The only thing which kept me alive was my desire to see my baby. I knew that I would eventually get to heaven, but not if suicide took me there.

One morning my wife looked into my eyes and began to cry.

“I’m not a liar. I don’t believe in witchcraft.” I said. “I have no powers. My word is all I have--and by God when my head hits that basket I’m gonna tear through the goddamn leather like a wolf.”

Her eyes dug into mine as I professed my final intentions.

“Watch me spit like a dying dog and blink till my eyelids fail to listen to my conscious mind--which will die nearly a half minute after its innocent body is finished.”

“I will watch,” she said.

“You will do better than watch,” I said. “You will be on the platform with our baby…”

“…after I tear my way from the basket and smash my face onto the bloody wooden floorboard you will hold my severed head by the hairs and aim my face at their stares.”

“I will,” she said. “I promise you--my eternal word--if you do what you say you are capable of, I will toss your head to the birds.”

My days were consumed with the final morbid preparations for my own death. There were people on my side who supported me: Incas, Indians, and Spanish alike. My main concern was to tell my story to as many people as possible so that the truth what be recognized after my assassination. A few men made it into words and wrote my opinions down with the promise of translating my message into different languages. Many said they will do so in first person to illustrate that the brain does not die after decapitation.

Nobody could publicly stand up for me, in fear of losing their own heads for the words of their tongues. I told them I would bite through the basket. I told them “to stand as close as possible and call my name. To look into my eyes--to focus on whether these are the eyes of a dead person--see the living eyes are different and unmistakable--notice the eyes of a man who has just witnessed his own demise.”

Within minutes of the corregidor’s death sentence all the preparations for my assassination were finished, yet seven months later nobody had stepped forward to use the guillotine.

My wife agreed to cut my head off.

“I step forward for science,” she said. “I will kill one man to save a million.”

Everybody agreed and the stage was set. All the stress and crying must have made our son not want to grow inside of such a sad womb, so he popped out much earlier than expected, crudely shaped and smaller than my neck.

He sat on the corner of the stage and cried his eyes out. To make sure my wife didn’t try anything funny, he was wrapped in the corregidor’s arms, bundled up but still more diminutive than the watermelons we used to test the blade.

“Wooooooooosh,” cut the knife through the fruit.

The corregidor nodded his head and the neck of an enormous pig was sliced in half just to make sure.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,” squealed the swine.

“Coooooooochhhhh,” cut the blade through the flesh.


The cabildos took their seats beside the stage and my friends and supporters silently crowded the front of the platform.

Nothing could be heard but the ineffable words of the wind and the sound of an infant crying; while his father was dying right in front of his face.

“I didn’t want to make it worse for him so I’ve decided not to fight it.”

I get down on my knees without the assistance of the armed guards. I lean forward and stretch my neck out like a turkey, placing it nervously on the cold stone stirrup. It’s putrid, covered with blood, and strange fluids I’ve never noticed before shimmer from the top of shallow puddles on the wood-splintered floorboards. In the basket to my left I can see the pig’s face staring up at me, eyes wide open.

“For the love of God please have the decency to remove the swine snout from the basket,” I say.

The corregidor nods and one of the guards picks up the pig’s head and tosses it into the crowd. Blood spurts on some of my friends in the front and they curse at the guard and swear revenge. The guards laugh and kick the pig’s body off the stage, leaving a trail I hope to soon follow. The entire scene is madness and undignified. I was always a professional. My father before me was the consummate professional for nearly thirty years. This would never happen if we were performing the decapitation. This act is supposed to be dignified and clean. Nobody but a man with his head on the chopping block can see the madness and visceral degradation of the circumstances.

“Claaack…claack…clack…clack--clack--clack,”

The blade rises to its highest point, six feet above my head.

“Go on,” the corregidor says. “Now is the time--no speeches for the masses--the storms are coming soon.”

I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance; the sky opening up over the ocean. My wife had instructions to give me a few seconds to speak. I didn’t like the feel of the blood on the metal beneath my chin. The scent was even worse. This is not the way it’s supposed to be done.

“Watch my eyes and I will not die after one blow,” I said. “Thank you for killing an innocent honest man in front of his newborn baby by the hand of his wife…”

“...let this knife cut through my flesh!”

“Now--finally--let the lightning of God and Satan strike vengeance upon your guilty heads when I’m dead!”

And with that I break my purple wrists free from their dirty leather fastening and spread them like the feathers of the Andean condors circling overhead.