9:00 P.M. 9/24/2018
I sit on my bed, staring at my shadowy ceiling. Tomorrow is the day. I will be executed by the electric chair. I am on death row. I allegedly killed five people. I should be tense and upset, but I feel nothing, as though weeks of worrying and rage had chiseled away my ability to feel emotion. I eventually fall asleep. I do not remember what my dream was.
7:00 A.M. 9/25/2018
The first thing I see is sunlight. For a few blissful seconds, I remember nothing about where I was or what was going to transpire today. All I know is that my bed is warm, the air is clear, and warm slits of mellow sunshine fill the room with a warm glow.
10:00 A.M. 9/25/2018
I sit on my bunk, feeling alive. I marvel at the miracle of oxygen coming into and leaving my lungs. My stomach is tense in anticipation of what I know will happen in the next few hours. I saw my own face in the mirror on my wall. I examined myself. I had never thought of myself as beautiful, but in a few shining minutes, I saw myself as god must see me. I saw my soul shining through my eyes.
12:00 P.M. 9/25/2018
I sit at a table, writing letters. One to my deceased mother. One to the sibling I dearly loved. One to my cousin. One to my very closest friend. One to the man I had loved since college. One to the man I had divorced. One to a girl that had hated me for many years. I wonder how they will feel when they read my letters. I know that this is the last they will ever hear from me, the final impression I will leave.
3:00 P.M. 9/25/2018
I wonder how they will react. Will they cry and say that they missed me, or will they spit at the ground and say I deserved what I got? After all, they believed everything they had been told. Will they remember me after I am gone? I know that I will slowly fade from memory after several years. Then, I will only exist in the people who knew me- I would live in the space inside their head that houses all forgotten memories. When they die, when their brains are rotted away, then I will truly cease to exist.
5:00 P.M. 9/25/2018
How many people have died over the course of human history and never had a thought directed towards them for hundreds of years? I think of them. I think of all those who have been forgotten, and I pay them my respects; my thoughts. My tribute to the dead. Soon, I will be forgotten. In a matter of days I will be nothing but bone and decay.
7:00 P.M. 9/25/2018
Everyone I had ever met or talked to had impacted my life in ways I could not comprehend. Every decision I had ever made during my lifetime had led up to this moment. This second. The next second is now this second. How many seconds have I been given? How many seconds have I used? I wonder what it will be like when my seconds run out. I sit on my bed, my legs crossed. I swear I can feel time trickling down over my skin like sand. My hands clench into fists.
9:00 P.M. 9/25/2018
I wonder if this was destined to happen from the beginning of the universe. If every whisper, every action was predetermined. I knew that I was innocent. I was not deranged or psychotic. I had never killed anyone. I do not deserve the death penalty. The only reason that I was here was because I had dug up sensitive information about extremely powerful people. The information I had discovered, if leaked, would have destroyed their lives. People desperate to save their reputations had discredited me and put me where I was today. I had paid the price of knowledge. I should have known something like this would happen.
11:00 P.M. 9/25/2018
They send a priest to visit me. I turn my face away from him. I have already tried to tell others the truth many times. No one ever believed me. Either that or they were paid to not listen to me. He asks me if there is anything I wanted to confess. Religion cannot save me. I ignore him. The priest leaves. A tear slides down my face.
11:52 P.M.
Guards come and take me from my cell. Two women lock me in handcuffs. They march me down a colorless hallway. I lose track of the turns. I see a metal door. I know that this is the door behind which my life will end. My heart beats like a tribal drum. They take me through the door, and I begin trembling. Noiseless tears stream down my face. I see the electric chair. I whisper that I am innocent. No one hears. Everything becomes a blur, and I cannot take anything in. I am placed in the chair. They clamp down the restraints. I wanted to wail and scream, tell them that I was innocent and make them hear, but I knew it would have been futile. I close my eyes. My quiet sobs dwindle to an occasional shudder. I curse the people that put me here. They put a helmet over my head. They haven't flipped the switch, not yet. Eleven fifty- nine, a monotone voice says. I hold my breath. I cannot move. I open my eyes. I know that this place, these people will be the last things I ever see. I drink it all in, desperate to be alive.
12:00 P.M. 9/25/2018
Twelve. The monotone voice says. Someone finally pulled the switch.
