The death of Cheryl
I’ve been tried and sentenced to be shot, the
sentence to be carried out immediately. They give me my own bright
blue
down jacket to put over my dull orange prison dress. It’s a cold
winters
day and I’m glad that they allow me to wear my cosy warm jacket.
They’ve
just told me, that they won’t pinion me. They say if I try to run away,
they will shoot me into my legs, prior to giving me the coup de grace.
So I’ll have to be strong now. When I manage to stand still when the
rifles point at me, my death hopefully will be almost painless.
With several guards I’m taken to one of several cars and driven the short distance to the back wall of the prison. The concrete wall is several football fields in length, about 20 feet high and about 8 feet thick. The whole length of the wall from the ground up to about 6 feet high is covered by literally millions of little pockmarks from the impact of bullets hitting it.
I’m taken out and stood in front of that wall, and left standing there alone in my prison dress which comes down to my knees, and the down jacket covering it down to below my hips. Although I’m wearing simple prison slippers my legs are freezing from the cold air. Looking around, it’s quite hopeless to try and escape. Everywhere are guards with rifles and there’s no place to run. Now the warden is reading my death warrant. He asks me if I have any last words and I can hear me saying "No Sir".
Now eight guards are getting their rifles ready and are forming a line in front of me, and taking aim. Oh god, they’re really going to do it! I can’t remember that I was so terrified before in my life. I feel a warm liquid running down my leg and realize that I’m just pissing myself. Then someone shouts: “Fire!” I see small bright flashes of light from the rifles. The down jacket ripples from the impacts of the bullets. It feels like a number of punches hitting me in the belly and chest, following by searing pain so intense that before I know it I pass out. The air behind me is momentarily filled with blood and guts and feathers as my bullet riddled corpse plops to the ground.
The guards rush to put away
their guns and get back into
the cars to get warm again. My lifeless body is picked up and dropped
into a box before it freezes into some awkward position and leaks too
much blood all over the place. Soon all that’s left is a few more
pockmarks in the wall and a little spot of blood in the snow, which is
being covered by more gently falling snow.
Cheryl, Inmate No 2004-0127