Monologue Before an Execution

Many, many people have been waiting for this day. I die at exactly midnight today. Or is it tomorrow? I’m dying for a crime I didn’t commit. The poetic justice of our *great* nation: innocence dying for a cold-blooded crime. The bureaucrats say this is the way for murder to be put to an end, but I don’t see how my death will change the world. Out there, somewhere, the real criminal is watching, waiting. How will my death deter that person from committing another crime? They are getting away with it, it make murder perfectly legal again.

I wonder how my mother is right now. I hope she isn’t being inflicted with too much pain. Can you imagine it? She has to live the rest of her life believing her only child is a murder. She’ll never know, unless I can get one hell of a lawyer in ten minutes. But what will it prove? Nothing. Maybe I’ll be free, if I’m lucky, or maybe it will just prolong the anguish. But it won’t change this system. Our president was the governor of the state most at fault. The state that will execute me in seven minutes.

Waiting. All our lives we wait. Birthdays...Christmas...Death, eventually. No-one expected me to be waiting for my death on the eve of my twenty-ninth birthday. Everyone has forgotten my birthday, but I suppose that comes with the gig. When they lock you up here, you lose everything. Your birthday, your loved ones, your life. All people remember is your name. A name that probably strikes fear in the heart of all. Like Dracula, Frakenstein, mythical monsters. You become a monster too. People see your face, and their hearts turn to stone. You are no longer a person. A person wouldn’t kill.

Waiting...five minutes now. My heart flutters like when I got my ACT scores back, or when I graduated from college. I’m nervous. Death is so final. No-one realizes how final it is until you are about to experience it. And the fear...the fear that envelopes my body, it waits too.

Waiting...all alone. My family has forgotten me. Scorned, hated, and I am forgotten. Only those who hate me remember. But they remember a crime. And they think they are finishing off the crime with my death. Wrong. All wrong.

They’re here. Here to finish a deed five years in the making. Like a climactic end to a Shakespearean tragedy. The faces of those who hate me follow me and glare at me, longing for justice. I want justice too. Ironic: neither party is getting justice. Both will be empty.

I wonder what it would be like to be watching the execution. Would one person’s death make up for the loss of their spouse...sibling...child? So they think my death will bring their relative back? Or will it just ease the pain? Like when a child kicks or hits their sibling because they were hit first?

Waiting...

The second hand sweeps across the clock.

Five...

Four...

Three...

Two...

One...

The time has come.

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Please support the innocent: Say NO to the death penalty.

By: Sarah Bigelow