Blacksheep Speaks

Short Story (original fiction)

I sit huddled on my cot, hearing the bars of the cell doors slam and knowing I am in more trouble than I have ever been in before. What waited here at the prison couldn't be worse, I had told myself, than the constant running of the last few months. The hiding, sneaking, and continuous fear had taken it's toll on me. Once I was young, strong, and beautiful. Now, prematurely gray at age 33, I sit awaiting my punishment at the hand of the government. Pulling my knees up and trying to calm myself, I let my thoughts roam to the not so distant past, before I got myself into this mess.

Once, I had been the hope of my family, the first to finish college, only the second to graduate high school. I was the smart one, the pretty one, the one who was going to go places. I had it all. As I grew older and married, I lived the ideal life...perfect husband, perfect children, perfect happiness. All of that was gone now. I haven't seen my husband and children in months. I don't even know for sure where they have gone. Social services took the kids, that much I know. I can only pray that they will survive and overcome. My mother's letters came often at first, then less, and now, for weeks, there has been nothing. I never heard from my husband at all.

Maybe I was wrong to get involved in the first place, but the actions that led me where I now sit were, to me, moral obligations. Even now, I am unsure whether I would change it if I could. Perhaps I would have played with my children more. Told my husband I loved him more often. But the crime, yes, I would have done it. In spite of it all, I would have done it.

I pray often for my husband. I remember his face at my trial, stony cold as he heard me pronounced guilty and sentenced to die. They wouldn't let him see me afterward. And I am not allowed visitors now. Maybe if this had happened earlier, I wouldn't be here. The newly elected government has enacted a zero-tolerance policy for all hate crimes, especially resistance workers, and I am what they call a hate criminal, even though I acted out of love. Love.....I still love them all, loved them even as I watched them die, watched bullets tear through their bodies.

Perhaps if my job wasn't a government job, my sentence would not be so strict. But I and those here on death row with me are to be examples. Zero-tollerance, even for the government's own. Down the hall, they take a prisoner from a cell. Idly, I wonder which one it is. I know most of the people here. Many were my friends, before.

My turn comes soon. I look up as the guards slam back the door of my cell and order me out. Even though I am not resisting, they take my arms and push me down the cold, dark hall. In those moments, the faces of those who died the day I was arrested flash through my memory. I loved them all. And in spite of everything I am glad they are dead. For, even as I tried to save them, I knew I was sealing my own fate, a fate I would not have them share.

The guards push me against the wall and ask if I wish to renounce my crime, my reason for being here. Steeling myself, I look up into the barrel of the pistol leveled at my head, and refuse. In my heart, I am guilty. I am an enemy of the state, for I am a Christian, and it's my turn to die.