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Helpless. Like a deer in headlights or a dog trying to make its way home in the pitch black darkness of night. Nothing to be seen, little to be heard. They have spoken their last words and sighed their last breath. Now they are lined up like cattle one by one about to be sent off for slaughter. Is it the action that makes the man or the man that makes the action? We all do bad things, what makes them stand out? Surrounded on all sides with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run everything they’ve ever done is displayed in the hood they wear, the ultimate mark of shame, betrayal, sadness, and desperation. I wonder if any of these people are innocent, if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, a bad trick of fate that now has them spiraling helplessly to a point of no return. Heinous actions should never go unpunished but do we live in a society so focused on punishment that it does not want to help those who desperately need it? But then again, how can you determine who really can be helped and who is too far gone. I guess for all of these people they are too far gone from the man or woman they once knew. Now, unable to lift their eyes to meet their own gaze in a mirror, they are unrecognizable even to themselves. Sometimes people can stray down a bad path but luckily for most of us there are exits, paths to take us back to where belong or where we can find ourselves again. I wonder if these people on this stage missed their exit or simply passed it by. If they chose to go too far down the rabbit hole or it happened to them out of necessity. We never see faces when people are hanged, I’m glad no one can see this. It seems to me that no matter what someone did or what brought them to a creaking wooden platform with a burlap sack on their head, they deserve to die with whatever remaining dignity they have left.