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The men stood around the table as the chilly wind blew over their shoulders. Proctor sat as still as a stone at the dirty, broken bench, the pure white paper tormenting him as it beckoned his name.
Judge Danforth waited impatiently for Proctor to make a move.
Reverend Hale stood with his face burning a terrible red. If Proctor died, it would’ve been one more gallon of blood spilled on his hands, running down his fingers and staining his clothes. It would’ve been one more person to pass away for nothing, where maggots and worms would eat through his skin, emotionless like those who hanged him.
It would’ve been one more love lost; one too many.
But he had no power over Danforth. He was, after all, the one who would not postpone anything any longer. He refused to hear out the pleas and cries of those who did not one someone to die. So, alas, Hale could only stand there in a choking silence, his eyes welling up with stinging tears as he dreaded Proctor’s signature on the paper.
Regretting everything, yet nothing at all, Proctor signed his name on the forsaken sheet, much to the pleasure of Judge Danforth. But then…
The two started arguing. Screaming. Shrieking. Danforth could hold his composure, but Proctor could not. “Because it is my name!” He screamed, begging for Danforth to not hang up the death sentence of a paper for the town- the world- to see. He yelled and cried and begged, sobbing in front of his poor wife, giving up any hope left he may have had.
His rough, calloused hands found their way to the paper, and it was torn in half in an instant. Hale, still in his silence, widened his eyes in shock. Tearing that paper was as good as accepting the rope, for that is what he had just subjected himself too. Proctor would die like all the others, innocent and alone, dust gathering on the shoulders of their cold, dead bodies.
No. No, he wouldn't allow it. Not…never again.
……………………………………
Tears streamed down Proctor’s eyes as he put one foot on the carriage, then another.
“Get on with it.” The carriage master barked at the innocent people, packed together like sardines on their train to death.
Proctor tried not to, but in a moment of weakness, he burst out a single word. “Hale!”
The name echoed across the dim road they traveled. Hale stood emotionless up to that moment but then, he burst into a flurry of emotions. Wailing uncontrollably, he watched as the carriage rolled away. Minutes later, when everyone had gone home, Hale’s hand was still extended, waiting for Proctor’s touch to no avail.
1 HOUR LATER, Proctor stands at the gallows -
Proctor looked around frantically, there wouldn't be much time before he had a bag over his time and couldn’t see Hale ever again. Then, suddenly, he heard a shout from behind him.
“Proctor! Proctor!”
“Hale! I was so worried you couldn’t bear to watch me die!”
“I needed this, John, I needed to see… you. If only one last time.”
“Do you have any last words, Proctor?” The man who was about to destroy true love spoke in a thunderous voice.
“I-I need to confess something. To you… John. But if I do, I'm not sure I could play the saint people think I am.”
Everybody went silent, pondering what he could possibly say. And then, in the same emotion Hale had expressed before, Hale shouted out
“I LOVE YOU, JOHN PROCTOR!. I love you… and I need you.”
“You can’t admit that reverend! You’ll go to hell!”
“How can I bear to live eternally in heaven without you…? Eternal paradise wouldn’t be paradise, even if I must burn forever!”
“Then, I love you too Hale!”
Reverend Hale steps up onto the gallows, shoving the executioner out of the way. They kissed passionately, the realest kiss both Proctor and Hale had ever had, not their wives, not Abigail, true love. In their last moments they could feel the head of the gun pointed at them and they did not stop despite the crowd's pleas to.
The gun fired, and the true lovers were finally united. An eternal paradise, no matter how hot, was their fate.