The Mercy of Birds

CHAPTER 53: FLY

CHAPTER 53
FLY

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Death row cell was a place of its own. Separate. Sequestered. Tucked away in the most bare-bone definition. It was located in a different building, detached from the main penitentiary where prisoners were curtailed with a stricter management routine, imposed with austere safety protocols more than any other, confined in a solitary cell for each, and limited to a lesser time for recreation.

The effect of these stringent conditions weren't that it made the awareness of being subjected to the death penalty more profound, but it made the tremendously increasing sense of loneliness so visceral and terrible, beating the State to the end, expediently killing the inmates from the inside out.

Sometimes she believed that she might not even be living in the same plane as the others anymore. Sometimes she thought she was already dead. She wouldn't even be surprised if she was actually breathing a dissimilar air than what it was outside of the jail or if she was looking at a different kind of sky than when she still had her freedom, now that the one she could perceive was always obstructed by the barred window carved on the cement of her cell.

She could only know for certain that, yes, she was still alive when the guards performed their rounds to check up on her, or when people of authorities came to notify her of her case and how the prospect of the umpteenth appeal and habeas corpus to challenge the capital punishment didn't seem too bright, or when her attorney told her that the last attempt to overturn the sentence was denied and the execution date was set, and then Victor had to be the one to face her a couple days after the unequivocal news. The last one especially, she never felt more alive.

It led her to this moment. After eight years of being hidden away and only allowed specifically no contact visit with only one person, it was as though she was stepping out of Penrose State Hospital all over again when she could finally see them all without the hindrance of a plexiglass. All of them, her brothers, were here with her.

Well, she had three hearts that sustained her, remember? One, she had been granted happily by Cameron. Two, she had stolen from Nicholas in his most vulnerable state. Three, she still hadn't acquired; the thought of Victor giving it willingly to her was unimaginable, and he was also too vigilant and guarded for her to be able to sneak into his barrier, until this moment...

Victor was holding my hand, she thought in utter disbelief as she stared at those big hands that enveloped hers, so laden with tattoos, it was an abstract masterpiece. My baby brother was holding my hand.

She didn't know how she could feel so energetic in the days leading to her destined death that was ordained to be just by the end of this week. How childish it made her feel as she gazed at the three men present in the room, sitting at the table with her, that she wished she had two more pairs of hands just so she could hold them all. She was giddy and frenzied and in a rush, on a peak of a roller coaster that would bring her down to crash, and it all showed, observed by three men who saw her as though she was the last sunshine to ever rise before an apocalypse; as bright as stars colliding before they burned out and simmered down into nothingness.

She spoke too much but so incoherent, disjointed to the point that no one could be certain that her mind was really here with her. She smiled so wide, it stung her mouth from ear to ear. She conveyed so thorough an attention and spotlight to the people that she was talking with, it was smothering. Sometimes, when the disarray aligned like a broken clock that was correct at least once a day, a tear would trickle down her cheek denoting the presence of a shattered memory that was returning to her in a flash and was erased again, replaced with something else as quick as it came, unable to be retained.