I await the sound of the bell to toll daily. Each day another inmate on death row is sent to their ultimate judgment – guilty or wrongly accused – it doesn’t matter. In the end, after the switch is pulled – the ultimate judge in the ultimate world will reveal the ultimate verdict.
We all say we are innocent here – we are the ultimate salesmen. We plead to our lawyers, to our friends and family our innocence. We keep a straight face, find the tears to cry and our voices go raspy as an added effect. We lose weight because we truly cannot keep down the food we force feed ourselves. We look gaunt, we are unshaven and our hair is gone. Our eyes have no more life in them because there is no life when you have a death sentence thrust at you.
The bell tolls…that’s old Jackie Robinson; that’s what they call him here. In actuality he was white and for a while was the only white man on the row. So some murderer called him that, saying that he has broken the barrier for the white man to finally get whats coming to them.
He was a piece of shit murderer Jackie was. He admitted it to me, said he would kill those kids again if he had the chance. No contrition, no fear of what awaited him – he blamed the mother of those kids for everything – that’s why he watches as the blood rushed out of her and left her like a busted balloon in the bed where just an hour earlier she was fucking around with his brother. His brother was on the floor, head busted from the baseball bat they once played baseball with; in a pool of blood.
The kids came home from school and he fed them the cyanide that killed them each one at a time; then he slit their throats for good measure.
His wife he kept tied up and forced to watch as one by one their lives were taken away. He sliced her jugular and then watched and watched.
He laughed as he told the story to me…I acted calm and collected.
Tonight, the sound of the bell is justified and I hope his victims watch as he burns in a forever swirl of fire.
Tomorrow, the bell will toll for me. I took the blame for my woman when she drowned our baby in the bathtub. She was upset about something and when she sliced her wrists as our Allissa floated away I had no other choice but to take the blame.
I confessed to the crime – I failed them somehow.
I thought I could make her happy and create a life for us…but I failed; so I take the blame for her.
I am to blame; I await the bell to toll in my name, I have discarded with any clergy or final meals; I want to be sent to the ultimate judge, the ultimate world and to be free from the sentence of an eternal pain.