Free End of Manners by Francesca Marciano Page B

I could no longer hear their voices, or feel their presence. Could it be that we had all sunk in this horrid silence, lost to each other, without the courage to even send a signal?
    Was that all it took? We had been a group only moments before and now we were isolated, blind, each of us caving in to this frozen solitude.
    I don’t know how much time had passed. I could hear the light rain pattering on the leaves of the trees, the footsteps, more sounds I couldn’t identify, like metallic clinking against something here and there. I had gradually begun to breathe more normally; at any rate, it didn’t feel like I had cotton wool up my nose anymore.
    Footsteps approached me. The violent, brutal grip again. I felt the hands rifle through the pockets of my jacket, my pants, flipping me left and right like a deadweight, as they kept pushing something sharp into my back. The hands removed my wallet, my cell phone, my glasses and my room key. They touched me with an impatient, dangerous feel. They wrenched off my watch and my bracelet, clamped my wrist trying to snatch my silver ring, which was too tight and wouldn’t come off.
    Somehow, although I knew the man was only playing a part (it could have been Tim, Alan, Obelix—someone I knew), I just couldn’t make myself speak to him and explain that I hadn’t been able to get the ring off for years, that he probably needed soap if he really intended to take it. He was determined to take everything off me, and wouldn’t let go of my finger till he succeeded by twisting it this way and that. Then the hands lifted my hair and fumbled around my neck, looking for earrings. The fingers were coarse, smelly. Their touch disgusted me. They yanked off my mother’s gold chain.
    I had worn that chain since the day she died without ever taking it off. It had been ten years I’d had it around my neck. I wanted to cry.
    “I hate you,” I mouthed. “I fucking hate you. You didn’t have to fucking do this to us.”
             
    A leaden silence had descended. More than silence, it was an absence of life, as if someone had turned off the background hum of the insects, birds and plants and silenced nature’s breath.
    In that eerie emptiness a shot suddenly rang out. A distant, isolated shot, like a lonely instrument. Then rustling sounds, scuffling all around me. I heard feet dragging on the ground as if they were being pulled against their will; I sensed fear in those footsteps.
    They’re taking them away now. One by one. Maybe they’re dead, I thought.
    There was another shot. No shout, no struggle. Why didn’t any of us react, or at least try to find out what was happening to the others? Why didn’t anyone call out anyone else’s name?
    Jonathan, Mike, Nkosi, Liz? I didn’t want them to die, I didn’t want anything to happen to them. They were my buddies.
    Yet we were passively complying. Each one closed up in his own black hood, all spatial references, all sense of orientation gone; now merely victims awaiting execution. Another sharp report in the distance. Was there someone pointing a gun at my head as well, ready to shoot me if I moved or if I even called out someone’s name?
    I heard footsteps coming quickly in my direction. Somehow I knew it right away. My turn had come.
    They pulled me up like a heap of rags and shoved me forward. I stumbled into bushes, on the uneven ground, the hands prodding my back. I could hear the heavy breathing of the man shoving me. Then the hands pressed on my shoulders, forcing me down again. I fell to my knees on the wet grass. The hands grabbed my arms and made me cross them behind my head.
    So this is it.
    On my knees, hands crossed behind my head, waiting for a bullet that I can’t even see coming. Like an animal in a slaughterhouse.
    This is how one dies, in the cold and the dark of a night like any other. Without a voice calling you by name, without even the sight of another human being. Your head stuffed inside a bag, alone. And