Redemption

Chapter XX

In the night prior to his execution, Renato was taken from his cell on death row, to the building on the east side of the prison where the executions were carried out. He had witnessed the last sunset of his life, and he did it with a feeling of fear and melancholy. Nameless colors appeared before him, and each of them reminded him of different emotions. From happiness, love and passion, to sadness, pain and death. In some rare combination, each composed life in every sense. The guard dressed in black knocked on the metallic door drily three times, and called Renato by his prison identification number instead of his name. Renato looked over his shoulder and proceeded to do as he was instructed. He stood in the middle of the cell with his arms in the air, turning around so the guard could look at his whole body before stepping in. The door squeaked as it was pushed open, and as if the guard had cloned, a second one walked in with him. Not even the touch of ice would have been as cold as the hands of the guard that held Renato's wrists so the other could restrain him.

The two guards didn't have to pull Renato out of the cell as they were used to doing with every other inmate before, rather they only held his arms, helping him keep balance as his legs became rigid making it difficult for him to walk. The knocking of the inmates against the walls and doors covered the clicking sound of the chains that restrained Renato's ankles. As a reflex, Renato tried to clean the sweat on his forehead, but he ended up hurting his wrists, since his handcuffs were attached to a belt on his belly. In the bottom floor of the building, Renato was thrown inside a cage smaller than his cell, and was told to take off his uniform. He was perplexed for a few seconds, but he obeyed in silence right after the chains were taken off. The guard made him walk back and forward, and he was told to do three squats and jump. Once the final revision was over, and the guards were sure that Renato wasn't hiding anything, they returned his uniform to him, and placed the leg iron and belly chain back.

He walked over the rocky ground, aware of the sound his steps made against it. The guards stopped at the entrance of the east building, and offered Renato a few minutes to grab some fresh air, and contemplate the night before he had to be taken in. An act of courtesy the prison had implemented to give a sense of humanity to the process. But it was a cold autumn night and his body couldn't resist more than one minute. Once inside the building, Renato had realized late, that the coldness he was trying to escape from was within him. He was located in a cell three times bigger from the one he was kept across the four years he had been in prison. He walked towards the bed on the far right, and found a folded blanket, a pillow, and a Bible on top of everything. He took the Bible and felt how heavy it really was before placing it on the metal table on the other side of the cell. He moved the pencil and the small vintage radio, and placed the Bible on top of a few sheets of papers.

He laid in bed under the blanket, and even under the circumstances, he was capable of falling asleep. His soul needed one last trip to the land of no boundaries where he could meet Safiye as she dreamt as well. Not even on his last day of life he was allowed to finish his dream. He was woken up at four in the morning by the guard in turn, who asked what he wished to have as his last meal. Renato tiredly said how he didn't wish a thing, and the guard looked him up and down before returning to the corner from where he watched him. Renato sat on bed and stared at the staff member that sat on a table right across his cell. The man sat with a neutral expression, constantly looking from the computer screen to Renato, documenting every movement and any expression he made to keep record of his last hours of life. Renato grabbed the blanket, wearing it like a cape to hide his back and upper leg from the view of those who watched him, so he could have some privacy as he went to the toilet on the corner to urinate. He kept the blanket on his shoulder as he sat on the metal chair next to the table, and grabbed the pen and paper to write a letter that was meant to be given to Safiye after he was executed. He wrote the greatest declaration of love ever written, since he created new words with meanings that expressed the emotions no writer ever imagined possible to write. But he gave the letter to a guard that would throw it away.