Revenge

“You know what? I quit.” The words tumbled out of her mouth quicker than she had realized. Enough was enough. She took a sharp breath in and felt the weight falling off her shoulders as she breathed out. The relief set in. It was done.

She focused in on her bosses’ face again and saw that there was no real reaction to her words. He was sitting behind his large, heavy wooden oak desk and leaning back in his chair, he said something about the need to sign a form before leaving and while she heard him talking in the background and gathering paperwork from various drawers, she didn’t really hear the words coming from his mouth. It was just a background noise. She was done here. Some paperwork and a pen were pushed in her direction across the desk. She grabbed the pen and signed where he asked her to without reading what she was signing. She grabbed her personal belongings from her locker, handed over her keys and was accompanied downstairs by her boss. They had to pass several heavy metal gates that were making her jump as they were clanging shut loudly behind them again.

They finally made it back to the main entrance. Visitors still filing in through the metal detector as was always the case on a Saturday morning. Children laughing and a mother clutching her plastic bag of quarters tightly, giving instructions to her kids who were excited to meet their dad, before passing into the state prison through the same heavy, clanging metal gates she had just left behind her.

She mumbled a “Goodbye” to her boss without looking him in the face and pushed open the heavy metal door at the entrance with her bodyweight. The heavy Georgia humidity hit her immediately. It was a hot August morning with no relief from the heat. She felt almost weightless as she walked across the burning asphalt towards her rusty Chevy Impala that was parked outside the prison. She did not look back. She threw her belongings in the passenger seat, turned the key in the ignition and turned the AC on high. She let out another deep breath. Would she ever be able to really leave this place behind her?

She pulled out onto the busy highway and felt a little bit more alive, the razor wire covered prison walls disappearing from her rear-view mirror view. She turned on her radio and listened to a Metallica song. The bass pounding and making her feel more alive.

She pulled onto Interstate 75 South for her long drive home to Macon. There wasn’t much to see on her drive until she got close to Macon. Just an endless, monotonous line of pine trees along the road. Time to think.

Her thoughts shifted back to last night. The night that had changed everything for her. She saw his face again, his eyes searching around the room like a caged wild animal, looking for a safe spot to hide in.

She had started this job several years ago after getting her certification from the Forsyth Public Safety Training Center and she had had an idealistic view of justice. Working as a prison guard, she would be able to keep the public safe and ensure that dangerous criminals would never be able to reenter society. But after a couple of years and an exemplary career in this field, she had been assigned duty on death row. Back then she had felt honored with her new assignment. These were the most dangerous offenders, and she had been entrusted with guarding them. But then came a new assignment last week. She was ordered to assist with the execution on Friday night.

She remembered how stuffy the execution room had felt. She thought she was going to choke from the thick air when she walked in. The old, yellowed and scratched up vinyl flooring reflecting the bright light from the fluorescent ceiling lights. Lighting up the whole room, although she felt like hiding in a dark corner by herself. Her stomach felt queasy. Her burger from the truck stop across the street heavy and greasy in her belly. She didn’t know if she would be able to keep her food down. She was looking around the room and the other guards and the doctor and nurses were busy preparing the gurney and their supplies. The grey curtains in front of the window were still pulled shut. Closing out the spectators in the room next to them. The victim’s mother who was waiting to watch, to get retribution, payback, an eye for an eye. The journalists, ready to describe the horror they were about to watch in concise, descriptive and objective words that made light of a moment so much more horrific than their unemotional articles would make it seem. Describing what only few people would witness in their lifetime.

She recalled touching the rough cotton prison suit and putting the cold metal handcuffs on his wrists, clicking them shut one last time. Feeling the cold sweat that had built as a thin layer on his hands and arms. She felt his muscles twitching as if they were trying to escape, fully knowing there was no escape. There were few words spoken in this moment. Only simple commands: “Turn this way!” “Put your hands behind your back!” “Walk down the hallway!” Emotionless, simple commands to keep everybody from losing their minds over what they were about to do, about what was about to happen to him.

They had tied him to the gurney. As if there was any sense in trying to escape. She had looked into his eyes then. The wild eyes. Searching for an escape from this madness and it was at this point that it really struck her what they were about to do. That they were about to do what he had done to the young girl. The cruelty of taking someone else’s life. The sterile cleanliness of how they were to do it. Making it seem so normal, too normal to comprehend. This wasn’t supposed to happen. She looked over at the phone on the wall. There was no last-minute stay of execution. The phone remained as silent as she was, although she felt like screaming, screaming out loud in horror at what they were about to do. Making it stop. But she didn’t. She did what was expected of her. She ran with the program. She looked at his eyes when the curtains opened and he was searching, searching for a familiar face in the crowd of onlookers. Onlookers staring at what was playing out in front of them. Some calm, others nervous, looking around at the horror only a glass window separated them from. So close and yet so far away from what was about to happen. His breathing had quickened and then slowed when he discovered his lawyer’s face in the crowd. He had no last words. After 25 years behind bars, waiting for death to finally come get you, you run out of words. Once the button was pushed from the hidden chamber in the back, she saw his expression changing. His eyes slowly glazing over as the deadly cocktail entered his veins through the IV. The life escaping from his body that had been so full of life just moments earlier. His breath now struggling until there was no more breathing, his chest no longer lifting. Her gaze went over to the glass window. Looking at the crowd, she searched for the victim’s mother. She was still staring hard at the now deceased killer of her child. It was as if she didn’t trust it to be over, as if she expected him to rise from the gurney again and for her nightmare to continue. The doctor stepped up and confirmed death after listening through his stethoscope. Cold and sterile. A man supposed to save lives, not take them. What made us better than the killer, now lying lifelessly on the gurney? The curtains closed again after the announcement was made over the speakers. Closing out the hateful and confused faces. The guards’ job here was not done. They still had to remove the body. She was just going through automatic movements. Doing what she was told to do. Trying not to think.

When she left the prison behind her that night, walking to her car in the parking lot lit up by the floodlights lighting up the darkness around her, she felt an enormous emptiness inside her. What had she done?

When she got home, she jumped under the hot shower and scrubbed her skin almost raw. She was trying to wash her guilt away, but it didn’t work. She felt dirty. She was burning and her skin was red when she looked at herself in the foggy bathroom mirror. She was tired, exhausted and yet she didn’t feel like she was going to be able to fall asleep anytime soon. Her thoughts running back to what she had witnessed this evening, no – what she had assisted with… That night, that long sleepless night, tossing and turning restlessly from side to side under the covers, she had made the decision to resign the next morning. This had given her some peace, and she was able to sleep for a few hours. Finally, some rest.

Here eyes focused back in on the road. I-75 was still stretching out in the bright sunlight in front of her. The exit sign for 181 appeared in front of her. About 20 minutes left and she’d be home. She would come up with a plan this weekend. Something, anything would be better than returning to the prison. She would find another job. Her lack of sleep caught up with her now. She was exhausted. She yawned and closed her eyes just for a second, and then a loud crash, metal and plastic parts flying everywhere, her car overturning, tires moving aimlessly in the air, no longer gripping on to asphalt. With another loud crash, her car landed back on the asphalt, the music still playing. Playing loudly in the sunshine on this beautiful Saturday morning. The cars behind her pulled over and ran up to her car to assist. A young man in baggy pants, a white T-shirt and a baseball cap forced the damaged driver door open and checked for her pulse, yelling at her to wake up and get out, shaking her. An older, overweight man with a white beard was running up and yelled out of breath: “What happened?” “There was a wrong way driver and he hit her at full speed! I don’t know why she didn’t see him. She’s not waking up!”

The sunlight was still beaming, the sun now high up in the sky.