It's become a weekly tradition, the corpse parade.

Since the necromancers came through their doors and took power, they've used it to try and destroy any resistance. It's been effective in its own way.

To rebel means almost certain death–and that's one thing. But that's not the end. Of course not, for that would be too easy.

Their bodies are stripped naked–whether they make the dead do this themselves or not, I admit I don't know and I don't want to know. But they arrive, every Sunday morning, led into town by our rulers. And everyone has to stand and watch the slow, shambling parade go by.

Strangely enough, you get used to that part. Seeing friends, fellow townspeople walk by as naked, hollow husks of themselves…after a few months you just become numb to it.

It's the sounds they make. The horrible, agonized sounds, as though each step they took was like being butchered all over again. Their legs, their muscles…they're dead, they shouldn't be made to walk miles for the intimidation and humiliation of their neighbors…but they are. And we've talked amongst ourselves: is it really them? Are they still in those bodies somewhere, trapped and in excruciating pain in those walking prisons?

But in the end, we know: it doesn't matter. You can't bear to see your loved ones in pain. And especially this pain.

Once through the town, they go to where the last week's dead have been, waiting and acting as though they were freezing. Only then do the previous week's parade participants gain rest: when the newcomers are made to bury them in a mass grave. Then they, in turn, wait for the next week. What must it be like, trapped in your own corpse?

They take our family and friends who dared defy them and kill them. Then they torture and humiliate them even after their deaths. And we go through this every Sunday morning, when we used to go to church. But those have been outlawed, of course.

It takes hours. And it's happening all over America, every week, just like it's happening here, right now. I can't imagine what the parades must be like in the larger cities.

My husband has just come around the corner. I still have the pistol he left me. I can't set him free. Others have tried and it never works. But I can go join him. This will be the first and last time I break a promise I made him.