“What?!” He must be insane, surely. The stress, the building terrible pressure of death crushing his brain underfoot. Simultaneously it crushes my heart with shame and guilt for my crimes. I ignore him, choosing to stare into the expectant crowd when I double take and look at him again. Absorbing every detail of his face with shock, fear and confusion increasing tenfold, filling my up and paralysis my lungs trapped within this flood of emotions. Fuck, I’ve seen him before too.

I’ve seen him standing there, with a noose around his neck and dirt on his collar. Different clothes but from the same perspective, same angle, everything. I’m even having deja vu with feeling transferred from the last time we met. “Who are you?!” I demand, and he answers simply.

“Henry,” even his name is familiar, fitting and expected, like I could have guessed it at a push. “And you’re Smiddy, aren’t you?”

Yes, I admit. My name was always kept hidden from the prying minds of others but now it doesn’t matter. I’m about to die and through some power, possibly psychic, morbid visions of my own doomed future on these gallows. Besides, he clearly already knows it, and I guess the dying lose their sense of self-preservation when they’ve accepted their fate.

The hangman pulls the lever, and everything goes black.

*

Two weeks later, the executioner sees two men shuffling together in the line for the gallows, shackled in heavy chains and looking around oddly, like confusion and not dread is the forefront of their minds. He furrows his brow, knowing it’s impossible he recognises them but he does.

“Try to remember me this time, won’t you Smiddy?” Henry grins over my shoulder, nudging me a little.

“Eight time’s the charm,” I joke and we cordially begin our fortnightly ritual of discussing the circumstances leading to our deaths, which is bizarre and hilariously different every time.