Paul Willson Fantasy

As the priest read the last rites the prisoner thought what was the point. If there is a heaven he wasn’t going there. How long had it been since he arrived? How long has it been since he had been put in this small cell? He imagined it had been more than 20 years. This hadn’t been the first time he had been read his last rites by a priest and confessed his sins. It must be the third or fourth time. He was vaguely aware of a campaign to get him out of there or at least have his sentence commuted to life. He wasn’t sure his life was worth campaigning for. Was he guilty?

The truth was he had no idea. He was in a bad place back then. Heroin, Crack, Meth. He would take them all. Back then he couldn’t remember what he did in a morning or an afternoon. In fact, he could barely remember his trial or even his first year in prison. He was a mess, not even human.

The victim was a young white woman. Her mutilated body was found well hidden in undergrowth two weeks after she had gone missing. She had been raped and stabbed multiple times. Cause of death was blood loss. She died alone. Any cries for help, if there were any, went unheard. The police had struggled to find the perpetrator. Despite it being a popular park, they couldn’t find any witnesses who saw the victim that day in the park. She used to jog in the park regularly and she was still wearing her running clothes when she was found.

In the end the police resorted to pulling in random convicted rapists and drug addicts. They took their DNA and hoped for a match. It was three months from when the body was found until he was charged. When he was shown her photo, he vaguely recognised her. He used to like taking drugs in the park. He found a nice quiet place where few people went. He didn’t know why he took drugs in the park. Maybe he liked the sun on his face when he did it. Sometimes when he came to, he was soaking wet as it had rained after he had passed out.

What had done for him was that his favourite place for taking drugs was on her jogging route and near where her body was found. It turned out that part of the park was quiet was because he took drugs there. He was a well-known drug addict. Many knew he took drugs there.

The police were under pressure to find the culprit. A young, pretty, white woman raped and stabbed in the park was big news. The press was heavily criticising the police for not investigating the crime well enough. There were TV experts giving their opinion on the type of person police should be investigating. Under this intense scrutiny the chief of police told the detective in charge to find the culprit or lose his job. The chief of police was up for re-election that year and didn’t want anything to get in the way of that.

The prisoner was a different man now. Once the pangs and pain of withdrawal had gone away, his situation came crashing down on him. By this time, it was too late. At first, he fell into a deep despair. Frequently crying as fear took hold, unable to comprehend why this was happening to him. Once he had spent his tears, a melancholy swept over him. He ate little. He lost weight, so much so that he was forced fed.

What snapped him out of it was an act of kindness from a surprising place. One of the guards. This guard was a devout Christian and was big on forgiveness. It was why he was given the job of guarding those on death row. Most of the guards just saw their job as keeping an eye on the prisoners until they were put to death. For them was all temporary. But not this one. This guard befriended him began to read the bible to him and suggested that he started to read.

He found listening to the bible comforting. He didn’t become a born-again Christian like the guard wanted but he did take his advice and started to read. That was a big challenge. He didn’t go to school much. He hated it. The teachers hated him and he hated them. It was best for everyone that he stayed away.

It took a while to find books at his reading level. Luckily the guard’s church donated books to the prison. Most of the prisoners had a low level of education. So, he began to read books for 8-year-olds. The guard helped him with any words he didn’t understand. He felt humiliated but with guard’s help he stuck at it. Slowly, over the years he improved until he was able to read and understand classic literature. His vocabulary improved the more he read so he no longer sounded like a child.

Learning took hold of him. It was his new addiction. English, Maths, Foreign Languages. He learnt them all. He then took an interest in his case. Why was he there?

He started learning the law. He began reading legal books. Understanding criminal law. He read his trial notes, studied the evidence against him.

His trial was a farce. The case against him was weak. A motivated and competent defence attorney would have easily got the case against dismissed. Unfortunately, he had an overworked, underpaid, state assigned defence attorney who was convinced of his guilt. This attorney made no effort to challenge the evidence against him.

That he vaguely remembered the victim was twisted by the prosecution to that he knew the victim well and used the statistic that the majority of rape victims know their attacker to reinforce their weak argument. On top of that was that he took drugs on the victims jogging route which was also near where her body was found. Why an intelligent young woman would know a drug addict well was never challenged. That he couldn’t remember anything was demonstrated as a lack of remorse. The press had found him guilty before his trial, the detective was hailed as a hero. He stood no chance of getting a fair trial. It was convenient facts with a convenient perpetrator. When the jury gave their verdict, it was unanimous, guilty on all counts. Rape, murder one and, peculiarly he thought, illegally deposing a dead body.

The case could have been easily appealed against but there was a lack of desire from anybody to do so. It was a clean result. The judge branded him a monster and nobody argued against that. He was given a death sentence and quietly locked up and forgotten about.

The priest finished reading him his last rites and asked,

“Would you like to confess your sins before God?”

He shook his head. There were too many to count and he couldn’t remember most of them anyway.

“Ok, are you ready?” asked the Christian guard. It was a strange thing to ask but he was glad that this guard was with him at the end because the guard was the nearest thing he had to a friend. The prisoner nodded. The guard put on him handcuffs and chains ready to be led to the place of execution. Once the chains were on, the prisoner turned to the guard,

“Before I go, thank you for everything. I may have been nothin’ when I got here but thanks to you, I will die a better man.”

The guard smiled in gratitude,

“God bless you” he replied. “How was your meal?”

“Good”. It was surprisingly very good.

The prison warden arrived at this point and simply said,

“Let’s go”

The strange procession of the prison warden, priest, condemned prisoner and prison guards made its way to the execution chamber. As they walked through death row the other prisoners watched in silence, sadness in their eyes. It was the first time the prisoner saw their faces. Prison guards on route watched him with satisfaction in their eyes that justice was about to be served.

The walk to the execution chamber was a long way. The chains around his wrists and legs made it hard to walk but he walked at a fast pace. Why am I walking so fast he thought to himself? It didn’t matter anyway. Now nothing mattered.

The procession reached the execution chamber. The prisoner was astounded how big it was something he commented this to one of the guards who gave him a look of incredulity.

The prisoner was strapped to a gurney and a needle put in a vein in his arm. The scars of addiction on display for everybody to see.

A curtain opened. He could see various people. Some looked at him with cold, hard hatred. He assumed that they were the victim’s relatives. Others showed no emotion. He hadn’t expected his death to be so popular. There was no one there he knew though. No one to cry over his death.

His thoughts took him back to his childhood. In the beginning he was happy but they were poor. They didn’t have much. Damn, they had nothing but his mother loved him and he was happy. He didn’t know who his father was but his mother was all he needed. When he was seven his mother found a boyfriend. This was when his happiness fell apart and he didn’t know happiness again. This boyfriend didn’t like him and was more than happy to tell him so. Home wasn’t the happy place it used to be anymore. He began wondering the streets. Going anywhere to escape home.

The boyfriend left after a few months. Then a bad life got worse. A new boyfriend moved in. This boyfriend was violent. He beat the prisoner’s mother. More than once unconscious. The young boy, who was to become the prisoner, screamed for his mother, tears streaming down his face, absolutely terrified. The boyfriend simply turned his wrath on the boy.

The boy learnt to run when the boyfriend got violent. This was when the truancy started. When the bad behaviour started. Any friends he had, he lost. He was all but abandoned. He spent most of his time in the park. His safe space. He found a remote place in the park to play where nobody could find him.

The drug taking began when he was a teenager. He met some older kids when he was out and they introduced him to crack cocaine. He enjoyed the high. It was an escape from the world. Escape from the violence.

When he was 15 his mother died. Her latest boyfriend beat her to death because she wouldn’t give him ten bucks to buy some cheap booze. He was placed in foster care. His foster parents had little interest in him. They just cared about the check that came every month. They didn’t care that he didn’t go to school or that he went missing for two or three days at a time.

The drug taking led to addiction. The addiction led to stealing. The Police regularly pulled him in for shop lifting or a mugging. They knew he was an addict. He got put into juvenile detention once or twice for a short sentence. Juvenile detention did nothing for his addiction. He found it easier to get drugs there than on the streets. When he got out, he kept stealing and mugging. It got to the point that because of the short sentences it wasn’t worth the hassle of charging him.

All for want of a little love and a safe place to live his life might have turned out different but his life wasn’t destined to turn out that way.

How old was he when he got arrested? He was young. Probably would have been a year or two out of high school if he had ever bothered to attend.

Now strapped to this gurney his life was about to end. A relief of sorts. Would he go to heaven? He didn’t care. If there was a god, he had never looked out for him.

Finally, the prison warden began to read from a piece of paper,

“You have been found guilty of the rape and murder of Megan O’Reilly on the 15^th June 1998 and sentenced to death. Do you have anything to say before we carry out your sentence”

Silence hung in the air as the prisoner thought of anything to say. Finally, he announced,

“They say I have been guilty of rape and murder. If the victim’s family are looking for me admit it or give meaning to her death, I can’t give them any because I don’t know if I am guilty. Because of my addiction I couldn’t tell you if I did those things, they said I did. They say I knew the victim. I can’t tell you if I did or not. It doesn’t matter really. My whole life has been an unhappy one so death comes as a relief. If my death brings happiness for anyone then I am happy.” Then looking at the prison warden he says simply, “I am ready.”

A prison doctor put the needle into the prisoner’s arms. The prison warden gives the signal to carried out the execution, then a phone rings,

“HALT THE EXECUTION!” someone shouts.