[ WP ] Every year the gods pick one person that has created something they deem true art and gives them immortality for as long as they wish . You are going to be executed in one week , and must create something great to save yourself .

It was n't the first time prisoners had asked for unusual items. The rope, the hammer and spikes, we had those. Useful things around a prison. The hardest part was the canvas. He wanted a big sheet, he said. The old discarded prison linens just would n't do. When a new prisoner on one of our newest linens -- we did n't get new ones often -- died of a mysterious infection, we knew we could n't use the sheets again. So we gave them to the guy at the end of the hall. What did it matter if he caught it, too? He was up for hanging the next week anyway. Would it be better to be hanged, or burned up with that fever? Who could say? 
 
 That's we thought at first, anyway. It would n't be the first time prisoners had offed themselves before a death sentence. Or, more often, after receiving a life sentence. He pounded a stake into the top of the wall and hitched the rope to it, and we knew what he was doing. We turned a blind eye; he was always one of the nicest ones, but we could n't get attached. But he did n't hang himself. THe other four stakes had the sheets stretched all across the wall of his cell, and then he started asking for more things: flowers and rotten fruits. Why the hell not? We found him what we could. 
 
 All day, any hour of the night, you could hear him: that rusty hammer, pounding and scraping on rock or in his meal tin. He pulped the fruit, powdered the flowers, mixed them with his already-insufficient water, or gruel for thickness. He was making paints. 
 
 We could peek through the slot where the food tray went in, the tiny door where the waste buckets were changed. We never went all the way in. We had n't in months, and would n't again until four of us, armed, took him to the gallows. Otherwise, we'd never have given him the tools. As many prisoners have found ways to off themselves, there have been others who've tried to kill the guards. None have ever escaped that way, but more than one has taken one down with him. It's the best way to guarantee a hanging, and that's all some of them want in here. 
 
 So you ca n't see what he's painting, really, on the sheet strung up against the wall, but you can talk. How's it going, Picasso, we'll say, delivering the morning or evening bread and gruel. How's our artist? `` God helps them,'' he says. Who, artists? `` Yeah,'' he says. `` God helps them.'' 
 
 That's what happens, but we've stopped talking to him. We know he's going on Saturday. We do n't talk about it. The scraping and pounding still happens. Barely stops, really. We have n't brought him many fruits or flower petals in a while, but he must have some dried things from weeks ago, because he's still working. 
 
 He must have given up, or just slept: it was quiet last night. Really, his last night. I did n't want execution detail this time, but I'm on it. The keymaster opens the door, I walk in, three other guards around me. 
 
 There's no one here. It's quiet. The bed is made, the food tin clean, the air suspiciously not foul. And all I want to do is look at the sheet: in crudely rendered shapes, I see a tree on a hill, by a river. A sun shines warmly down. It's something a five-year-old could do. It's beautiful. 
 
 The sheet's lower right corner is unsecured. The sheet billows in an incoming breeze. I grab at the sheet and tear it back. The hole is just big enough to crawl through. The stake is barely secure, holding the rope that dangles on the outside of the wall. I would n't trust it to keep me from falling, but the starved man weighed half what I do, and had nothing to lose. 
 
 `` What do you make of this?'' asks another guard. I do n't know him, and he did n't know the prisoner, since he works the yard, usually, where the maximum security prisoners never go. He's pointing at the prisoner's bed. `` God helps them,'' I read easily, but the rest is harder, scrawled in the dust of the wall. `` Who help themselves.''
