FRIDAY FICTION with RONOVAN WRITES

 

You’ve just been handed a message that makes you drop to the floor, trembling uncontrollably.

• No more than a Word Count of 600. (SUGGESTED)
• Using the above scenario, create a scene of what the note is about, and why it makes you react the way you do. (REQUIRED)
• No external dialogue for this scene. (SUGGESTED)

The floor was cold. That was my first recollection. Concrete cold. Concrete hard. Trembling with cold and something else, something I didn’t understand. When he handed me the note, I’d felt bolts of lightening stabbing up my arm and to my heart. The next thing I knew was cold floor, body still jerking and trembling.

McBrown still stood over me, manic grin plastered across his face.  I’d learned quickly to fear McBrown. His work was to make life as hard as possible for those of us here.

Beyond my cell, other inmates howled and growled, typical reactions to his presence. He knew not to come too close to the bars, knowing any one of us would gladly claw him to shreds.

He’s pressed against my bars though, knowing I am helpless to reach him. He prods me, laughing as each jerk of electricity rattles inside me; laughing as if the piece of paper clutched helpless in my hand is somehow his private joke on my world.

Maybe it is. Why else would a lawyer come to see me unless my sentence is set? I know they would not come to pardon me.  I’ve done horrible things, things for which no pardon could ever come.

I don’t want to die, but I will. The lawyer will come. He will inform me of the date I will die in his cold, clinical voice, no emotions on his face. No emotions in him at all, the hollow shell of a man who once knew the meaning of sunshine. Like me.

Holy Mother of God, I don’t want to die.

Please, Lord, let me go to my end without breaking.

Outside the empty cell, the other inmates remain silent in memory.