[ WP ] For the first time in history , a mortal stands trial for the crime of Deicide - the killing of a god .

The light of the late afternoon flowed into the wooden courtroom. It poured thick and sweet, like honey. Motes danced through the beams cast by each of the three windows on the western wall. Millions of specks simultaneously whirling through the vastness of the visible world, reaching to the fringes of their paths, and disappearing into the dim must of the courtroom ’ s upper reaches. There was no fan hanging from the peaked roof to circulate the air, and the sultry breeze only carried more heat into the ranks of southerners who filled the gallery and the jury box. Their Sunday best clung to their sweaty bodies, filling the air with an unmistakable note of disgust. Dark stains festered on the clinging shirts beneath the men ’ s jackets as the damp patches on their seats grew. The ladies had kept their fans, along with their red lipstick, in their matching pocketbooks because they could find empty spaces to swing them. 
 
 The two-room courthouse sat atop a grassy, green hillock beside a knotted, old shade tree. The exterior was whitewashed, and it was blinding under the strength of the southern sun. It was honey drizzled atop a biscuit, fresh from the oven, too hot to touch. 
 
 Three men sat separated from the pack. The judge, in his oven of black robes, looked down over the assembly. His face was old and pockmarked. Some gray tufts of hair crowned his moist head. His chestnut eyes matched the interior of the courtroom, and they gazed out through the burden of too long a practice. His eyelids drooped, quarter covering the whites. He blinked through long, languorous moments of obfuscation and reopened to the same half-mast level of knowledgeable disinterest earned over his cases from years before. The corners of his open mouth hung down with his jowls. A slight draft of the sultry air pulled in and out as he unconsciously tried to fill his body with oxygen. His hands were old and thin, though not yet shaky. Asymmetric blue veins coiled below the translucent skin, and his arthritic fingers ached when he grasped his black pen to take notes. Often, he rested his ample chin on the sweaty palm of his right hand. 
 
 To the judges left stood a tall, middle-aged man in a new, blue suit. His starched white shirt gleamed pristine through the swelter. His long, handsome face started below short black hair and ended in a cleft chin. The suit showed the natural heft of his chest, and the broadness of his shoulders was complemented by the straightness of his spine. A rational southern drawl poured excitedly from his mouth, “ But this man must be guilty, ” and stirred the onlookers. His clean hands cut through the hanging air to emphasize his points. The exertion did not seem to bother him as he managed to keep his face and suit in a dignified, dry state. His sure blue eyes looked out to the jury of his peers as he talked, allowing each one to make a connection with this distinguished member of their rural community. 
 
 The third sat alone at a table, his head cradled in his hands. He slowly rocked back and forth, dryly sobbing to himself. He could not fill his heaving lungs with the sultry air. His mustard yellow shirt, he wore no jacket, was tattered and his costly slacks were grass stained and bloody. Full lips guarded a mouth of white, perfectly straight, broken teeth. It seemed he would never smile again. There had deep bags beneath his swollen, brown eyes. His hair was tightly curled in a short, black mass, and its front locks scraped against the gold wedding band on his left, brown hand. His back shook violently under a spasm of nerves, and then the judge spoke in his gravelly tone of dulled thunder. 
 
 Less than a minute later the jury reappeared and delivered the verdict. “ We fin ’ Marcus Browne, the foreign... man who cum driving through our peaceful community the night before las ’, guilty of one count of deicide. No nigger coud own a car half as fine as that Chevrolet withou ’ black, voodoo witchcraft poweful nuff ’ to hang Jesus up on the cross a second time. ” A brief thrill washed through the crowd, and the heat no longer seemed quite as stifling. The judge pounded his wooden gavel and two men stood up in the crowd. One held a long, thick rope. 
 
 Marcus was roughly grabbed and escorted out of the courthouse. A crowd gathered around the trunk of the old elm. The sun beat down in the exhaustion of the waning day as the noose was tied around his neck. The juror who had delivered the verdict walked out from the crowd and tossed the long end of chord over a high-up branch to a burly man in waiting. He pulled and Marcus lifted up off his feet ascending through the air toward the upper reaches of his path. He stopped and hung for a moment or two and then collapsed back to Earth. Before he had hit the ground, Marcus, the God-killer, was dead. After the excitement of the day, the crowd happily dawdled home for a later than usual supper. 

