Once upon a time . . .

In a kingdom of cages, where no one could plead,

Where the screams of the silent were swallowed by greed,

There lived a young girl with a name quite absurd:

Habeas Corpus—yes, that was her word.

She wandered through courtrooms with curious feet,

Where the judges wore frowns and the gavel beat beat.

She asked simple questions, like,

“What is this place?

Why is that child behind bars with no face?”

But deep in the crypt of the Capitol’s spine,

There stirred a foul creature who lived to malign.

He was rotten and ruthless, he groaned like a horse—

He was known in the dark as the Heinous Corpse.

He whispered to walls, he schemed in the air,

He stapled new laws to the back of a chair.

“No trials! No justice! Just lock every door!

If they can’t find their voices, they’ll ask me no more!”

He hated young Habeas, hated her spark—

Her lantern of light in his halls cold and dark.

She stood with the vanished, the voiceless, the tossed,

She counted the names of the people he lost.

PART TWO: THE LOCKS AND THE LIES

Now Heinous, the Corpse, with his eyelids all crusted,

Declared with a rattle: “This system’s too trusted!”

“They shout ‘due process’ and ‘rights’ when they squeal—

But I know the truth: it’s just bad for the deal!”

He shuffled through halls with a parchment so old,

It was signed in red ink and sealed in black mold.

“This clause here,” he growled, “says I have the might

To suspend all their nonsense if I say there’s a fright!”

“A fright?” asked a Bailiff. “A dragon? A war?”

“No,” hissed the Corpse. “Just some kids at the door.

They walk and they knock and they say they belong,

So I’ll call them invaders. I’ll prove them all wrong.”

So he scribbled and scrawled and rewrote the command—

With a bone for a pen and a fat, ghastly hand.

He turned law to sludge, turned truth into muck,

Then snorted, “If justice comes, well… tough luck.”

PART THREE: THE MARCH OF THE CORPSE

Soon cities grew quiet. The courtrooms turned gray.

The judges were vanished. The trials went away.

Men vanished in vans without charges or proof.

Women sobbed prayers from a barbed metal roof.

The Corpse crooned a lullaby, ghastly and grim:

“If no one can see them, they won’t bother him.”

He fed off their silence. He smiled at the dread.

He danced with the wails of the shackled and dead.

PART FOUR: HABEAS RISES

But out on the edge of the forests of Vex,

Where the trees grow like questions and thorns form a hex,

Habeas stirred. She was tired, yes—battered and worn—

But her fire still crackled. Her oath was reborn.

She gathered the lost ones, the broken, the bruised.

The jailed and the ghosted, the gagged and accused.

And with her old lantern, she whispered once more:

“I’ll knock on each cage till I find every door.”

She rhymed like a rebel. She marched without pause.

She stitched back the torn bits of ancient, good laws.

The Corpse heard her coming. He shrieked in a rage:

“STOP HER! HER WORDS SET THE PRISONERS FREE FROM THEIR CAGE!”

PART FIVE: THE FINAL VERDICT

So Habeas marched, with a crowd close behind,

Of the voiceless, the vanished, the wrongfully fined.

They gathered in front of the Hall of Decree,

Where the Heinous Corpse ruled from his perch like a flea.

She knocked with her knuckles—three times, loud and clear.

The doors creaked like nightmares, the air thick with fear.

And there sat old Heinous, on a bench made of bones,

Gnawing on loopholes and ancient unknowns.

“You dare interrupt me?” he sputtered and spat.

“I’ve canceled the courts. That’s the end of that!”

But Habeas stood, with her spine straight and tall.

“You forgot,” she declared, “I’m the soul of it all.

I’m the spark in the cell, I’m the writ in the flame.

I’m the right to be heard. I’ve returned with a name.”

The room shook with silence. The prisoners stared.

Even guards in the rafters looked shaken and scared.

Then one by one, voices began to arise—

In accents and tongues, in sobs and in cries:

“I was stolen at midnight!”

“I begged to explain!”

“They sent me away with no charge, just a chain!”

The Corpse tried to flee. “I WAS JUST FOLLOWING RULES!”

But the scrolls in his lap turned to snakes and old ghouls.

His chair burst to splinters. His bones creaked and cracked.

His face peeled away with the weight of the facts.

And Habeas said, with her lantern aglow,

“It’s time for the world to remember what’s so:

That no one—no tyrant, no corpse with a pen—

Can silence the people again and again.”

PART SIX: THE DOORS OPEN

So the doors were unlocked. The cells disappeared.

The sun came back out, and the air became cleared.

And Habeas wandered, from city to city,

Telling stories of loss and demanding their pity.

She carried no sword. She carried no crown.

But where she walked, corruption knelt down.

And the Heinous Corpse? Just a name in a book,

A lesson in law that too many forsook.

But if you forget, and you silence the plea…

She’ll knock once again.

Just wait. You’ll see.

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This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.