They came for me just before dawn, not that I could tell at the time: there was no natural light to be seen from my cell. I woke from a dream at the call of my name, rolled over and saw five guards standing at the door to my cell, with one of them shining a flashlight into my face.
“Inmate!” he barked. “Put your hands through the slot.”
I got out of bed and complied, and was swiftly cuffed behind my back.
“Stand away from the door.” I stepped away, and heard it buzz and swing open, and one of the guards stepped through, took me by the shoulders, and turned me to face the door.
“OK, let's go,” said the guard with the flashlight, whom I recognized as their chief, and two guards, one gripping each elbow, steered me through the cell door, with other two following.
It was seemingly a routine trip out of the cell, though usually it was just one or two guards. But I sensed a certain tension, and thought, is this it? Then we arrived at the cell block gate, and it buzzed and slid open at the word of the chief guard, and we went through and down the hall to the room where we changed uniforms. Another buzz, and the chief guard pulled the door open, and through we went.
“Stand on the footprints.” But I was already there, because that's what you did, and then the chief guard uncuffed me while two of the guards went through the door to the restraints closet.
“Now strip.” Again, normal procedure here, and I slipped off my slides, pulled the socks off one at a time, undid my jumpsuit and climbed out, pulled my T shirt over my head, and pulled down my boxers.
One of the guards handed me something. I looked at it, and a chill ran through me: it was an adult diaper. It was time, then.
“Put those on, leave your boxers, and put the rest back on.” So I stepped into the diaper and pulled it up, and then reversed the process of undressing, until I was standing back on the footprints in my uniform and slides.
“Hands on your head.” I did so, and one of the guards reached around my waist and wrapped a leather cuff belt around it, the cuffs already threaded through its D-ring; then he buckled it tight behind me. Another guard stood before me, took one wrist and pulled it down and cuffed it; then he did the same with the other. Meanwhile another guard had put leg cuffs on my ankles over the jumpsuit, having threaded them through a connector chain which he then locked on to the belt. Everything double-locked, the guards nodded to the one with the flashlight, and they took up positions, one gripping me by each elbow. I couldn't see the others so I figured they were behind me.
“Time to go, then, inmate,” said the chief guard, and he opened a door I'd never seen open before and went through; the two guards holding me steered me through the door, and the others followed. This door led into a wide corridor, so there was room for us to walk three abreast, and at the end of the corridor I could see a double door, with windows, showing the dawn light. We passed several other doors along the way, but I could not read any labels on them, and the guards didn't let me pause to look. When we reached the doors, the two guards who had followed us slipped past and pushed the doors open for us, and the others walked me through to a small yard with a very tall fence around it, or rather, not a fence, but a cinder block wall with a rats nest of razor wire atop it. But I hardly saw it, because my attention was immediately seized by the structure which stood in the center of the yard:
It was exactly as I had seen them depicted in a dozen books and stories: a wooden platform standing some eight feet off the ground, with a railing around it and a staircase leading up one side. Two posts towered above it on either end, and between them a heavy wooden beam was stretched, with braces at each end. The beam had a metal eye in the center, and a thick rope was threaded through it, and one end of the rope ran to another eye at one end and then down to a cleat, and the other had a hangman's noose already tied in it, dangling about head height. And another chill ran through me, because here, I knew, was where it was all going to end. The chief guard went straight to the steps and climbed them, and the guards pulled me over there too; then they released my elbows, and the one pushed me from behind: time to climb to my execution. So I did, with one of them following me up, holding the back of the belt to keep me from falling. But I made it up without incident. The chief guard took me by the cuffs and pulled me over to the trap, right in the center, outlined in white and bigger than I expected; but then, I supposed they didn't want me to bang anything on the edges on the way down. The two guards resumed their positions holding me by the elbows, not that I was going to escape that noose, which brushed against the side of my head while the chief guard came to face me.
“Inmate, you have been convicted by a jury of your peers and sentenced to be hanged by the neck until dead, in accordance with the laws of this state. Do you have anything to say before sentence is carried out?”
I shook my head. My heart was pounding, and it was taking all my concentration and resolve to not just collapse. My mouth didn't want to work right anyway.
“Right then.” He pulled out a black bag and pulled it down over my head; I felt someone cinch a strap around my legs just below the knee and another around my ankles just above the cuffs. Then the noose was pulled over my head, and tightened around my neck, just enough so that I felt it all around through the fabric. Someone was adjusting the length of the rope, because I could feel the knot moving with it; I figured that it draped down around to waist length or so, but I couldn't tell. Then apparently everything was ready, because it seemed like everyone had stepped away, and I tried not to hyperventilate but I couldn't help it, and then with a loud clunk and then a bang, the trap was sprung, and I fell through—
—but instead of a neck-snapping jerk from me hitting the end of the rope, I felt a short but sharp tug from the rope against my throat, and then something snapped, and I kept falling another foot or so, and I felt arms grabbing me by the hips and arresting my fall before they dropped me the few inches left to the ground. Then I felt the noose being loosened enough so that another hand reached up and tugged the bag off my head. And there I stood, facing the chief guard.
“You all right?” he asked, grinning.
“I think so,” I said, a little shakily. One of the other guards was removing the straps around my legs. “That was pretty intense.”
“Yeah, we don't do this very often. How's your undies?”
I looked down. “Um, not sure. I don't think I pissed myself.”
“Some guys get into it enough that they do.”
“We don't actually cleat off the end of the rope. We just tie a very weak thread to it so it snaps as soon as you put any weight on it. That way you get a tiny taste of it stopping your fall without risking your neck. Well, not too much, anyway.”
“Well, it worked, and my heart went through the floor when the rope grabbed. OK, maybe it was already on the way there when the trap opened.”
“Hell yeah, at least, as close as I could come. Though part of me still wants to swing in a noose.”
“Well, we don't do that here. This is more than risky enough. You'll have to find someone else for that, which I don't recommend.”
I sighed. “I suppose not.”
“Let's get you back to your cell, then.” And they led me back indoors, down the corridor, through the changing room, and back to my cage, where they systematically removed the cuffs and chain and belt before locking me away.
The fellow in the next cell was awake; the lights had been turned on for the morning. “What was that all about?” he called out to me.
“Really? What did they do?”
“Took me up on a gallows, put a noose around my neck, and dropped me through the trap door.”
“No shit. Sounds, I dunno, cool? wild?”
“It was intense. Almost scared the shit out of me.”
“And they really hanged you? Swinging from a rope?”
“Well, not really. But as close as they dared come to it.”
“Damn.” He paused for a moment, then said, “I wonder if they can put me in the electric chair and fry me.”
“I have no idea. But it wouldn't surprise me. If they have room for a gallows they probably have a chair too. Maybe you should ask.”
“Yeah, maybe I should.” And then the guards came, and took us down to breakfast. And I saw him there at the table, gesturing to one of the guards, and he whispered something, and the chief guard came over and took him aside for a bit. And then when he came back to the table, he gave me a thumbs up. When we returned to our cells, he said, “maybe tonight, or tomorrow night. They didn't say when. But the chair is ready, he told me.”
And then we went about our prison day. I went home the next afternoon, but he stayed over another day, and when he got out, I got a message on my phone: “It was AWESOME!”
I smiled. And then I searched through my contacts for a hangman.
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