Last Day

John Lomas woke early on the day he was scheduled to die. The morning sunlight illuminates his small cell, streaming in through its only window. This had been home for the past thirteen years.

He lies on the thin, uncomfortable mattress and recaptures what memories of his dream that remain. Dreams of soaring high and far are the ones he cherishes most, allowing him the only escape from this existence.

Outside the cell he hears the prison officers begin the daily ritual. The breakfast tray would soon be shoved through the latch on his door, as it had been every morning of his incarceration here.

John rises and looks out his window at the fences and bars that keep him within. The sun already beginning its ascent through a blue, cloudless sky.

Right on cue the latch is pulled down and Officer Thompson stares in.

“Good morning Lomas,” he says as the tray comes through the gap.

“Good morning Sir,” John replies and takes his breakfast.

The latch is then pulled back up before Thompson continues down the row.

Resting the tray on his lap, John picks at the food on the Styrofoam plate, his thoughts consumed with the events that are about to unfold.

He returns the tray to the shelf by the latch, the food barely touched. On a normal day he would return to sleep and the escape of dreams, but this is not a normal day. Instead he occupies his mind with the legal documents on the desk of his cell. His lawyer is still hopeful of clemency before the day is out.

A sudden drop in temperature causes the hair on the back of his neck to stand.

“Do you remember me John,” asks a quiet voice behind where he is seated.

Looking over his shoulder Lomas sees a young girl stood in the corner of the cell. Her skin is pale, her features slightly covered with thick dark hair and she is dressed in a torn, grubby nightdress.

He blinks but the girl remains where she was. Fear grips him tightly and cements him to the chair. The girl repeats the question, never taking her gaze from him.

This is not real he repeats to himself over and over and covers his face in his hands. When he looks up again, the girl is gone.

Keys opening the cell door break his frightened thoughts before Officer Thompson and the warden enter.

“Lomas, your lawyer is here to see you. So on your knees with your hands on your head,” the warden informs him.

Thompson places the handcuffs roughly around his wrists and the leg shackles around his ankles when he stands. Shuffling down the hallway to the visiting wing, the image of the girl stays emblazed in his mind.

Bill Clarkson his lawyer of two years sits on the other side of the glass as Lomas picks up the phone.

“Good morning John, I’m not going to pull any punches. I am afraid I have some bad news,” Clarkson begins. “The Governor has turned down the appeal, we have nothing left. I’m so sorry.”

The phone falls from his grasp as Lomas processes his fate, a feeling of nausea now whirling in the pit of his stomach. Anger soon takes its place and John begins to strike the glass with the phone, raining a tirade of abuse down on the lawyer that failed him. Looking up though his wrath he sees the girl stood behind Clarkson, her gaze firmly fixed on him, a tiny smile flickering on her blue lips.

Prison guards quickly restrain him and he is carried screaming back to his cell.

Lomas spends the next hour pacing the sixty square feet of what has been his home for the past thirteen years. Fear is all he knows, like nothing he has ever felt before, a sickening, helpless fear that is eating him from the inside.

He tries desperately to remember a happy time in his life, like the counsellor told him he would need to do, but this all-encompassing fear will not allow for anything else.

He sits on the bunk with his head firm in his hands, sweat pouring through his fingers. Thoughts of why and how flit into his mind and burrow slowly down through his psyche. Death is now his immediate reality.

Before long keys turn in the lock opening the cell door.

“Lomas, it is time to go. The van is waiting outside,” Thompson tells him, “you know the drill.”

The midday sun is warm on his skin as he is led in shackles to the pristine white van parked in the entrance to the prison.

“We got a forty minute drive to Huntsville, so we don’t want any trouble from you,” one of the other guards says as he is placed into the back of the vehicle, with another officer taking his place on the seat across from Lomas .

John looks out the window on what he now knows will be his final journey, the countryside slipping by as the van picks up its pace.

“Do you remember me John,” a quiet voice asks.

Averting his gaze from the window Lomas sees the girl sitting beside the officer across from him in the van.

“What do you want from me,” he replies in his thoughts.

“I want you to remember me, to remember what you did to me. It will make all this easier,” is her answer.

Flashbacks from fifteen years previously flood his memory, him stood outside the house late at night, watching them inside. The woman reading a story to the girl surrounded in bed by her teddies and dolls. He made his way to the back of the house, opening the unlocked patio door.

A bump in the road jolts him from his recollections. Across from him the girl is gone and the corrections officer is staring at him.

“You alright Lomas,” he asks gruffly.

Just after 2pm the van pulls into the Huntsville unit. Lomas is placed in shackles again and brought down to a small cell within the facility’s death house.

The guards try to talk with him about sports as they attempt to settle him in his new surroundings.

“That priest you asked for will be here soon Lomas, so maybe he might get more talk outta ya,” one of them says as they leave him.

John lays on the bed, the nausea in his stomach unwavering. More memories come back to him, this time of his trail. He remembers the judge handing down the death sentence and how he added that he thought John Lomas was a despicable human being who committed despicable crimes.

Tears now well up in his eyes before running softly down his cheeks.

Father Ivan comes to his cell a short time later and spends an hour praying with him and offering assurances that if John repents his sins he would be forgiven by God. This comforts Lomas in a way but that comfort leaves when the tall, grey haired priest does.

Not long after Father Ivan had left, the officer who guards Lomas goes over his last meal request.

“So you ordered two pieces of fried chicken, some French fries, macaroni and cheese, a peach cobbler and a strawberry milkshake. Is that right Lomas?”

John nods sombrely in agreement before the officer goes to the kitchen to get the meal.

He returns with the trolley of food and brings it into the cell without saying anything more. John sits up, looking at the food. He tries to eat bits of everything but his stomach cannot take much.

“You need to remember more John,” the quiet voice suddenly tells him.

The girl is standing by the cell door, her gaze fixed on him.

“Please, please leave me,” Lomas begs, avoiding her stare.

He is there again, walking through the patio door. The light was on in the bedroom, when he came into the hallway. Voices from the room now became audible, the story was ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. He moved toward the door, the gun in his hand. The woman screamed when she saw him in the doorway. Two shots were fired, both hitting her chest. She fell to the floor, blood poured onto the carpet. The little girl screeched, “No Daddy, no.” He aimed and fired, sending a bullet through her tiny skull.

Lomas picks up the food trolley and throws it at the bars of his cell. An angry, wild growl bellows from his very core. The young girl is gone as he drops to his knees.

At exactly six o’clock John is taken from his cell in the Death House at the Huntsville Unit and led the short distance down to the gurney.

The correctional officers methodical tie the straps around his body before asking for his final statement.

“Forgive me Jane and Ashley, please forgive me,” is all he says.

As he lies there waiting for the first dose of drugs to be injected into his body, he tilts his head to the side. The young girl is stood at the door smiling at him. He can now feel the Sodium Thiopental invade his system and begin to numb him. His eyes stay on the girl but now a darkness flows menacingly over her, disfiguring her shape except for two bright intense red spheres where her eyes had been. It is then that John Lomas realises what is coming next.