Timebomb

" 'You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101.
I told you that you knew the answer already.  Everyone knows it.
The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.' "

They executed "Timebomb" at ten o'clock on the Saturday night before Mother's Day. They handcuffed and moved me at eight that night so I was able to talk with him until the last two hours. I'd known him ten years and, as he'd been in the cell next to me the last few weeks, we had talked a lot. He'd told me how glad he was I was down there with him. He really did need that.

He just about drove me nuts. Every sound made him jump and get excited or cry. It would take me a while to calm him down. He was taking this hard. But what worried him most about it was what it was doing to his family, especially to his mother. She was old and not in the best of health. What a Mother's Day for her.

The state Supreme Court on Monday turned down his appeal. That, after two trips to Vietnam, he suffered from post-traumatic stress and had a metal plate in his head didn't help him. That he was one of the nicest people in the prison didn't help him. On Wednesday, he received a stay from a Federal Judge, who recommended re-sentencing. Everyone told him he was O.K. But on Friday he learned that a higher court had lifted that stay. They gave him about 24 hours to appeal, which is just about impossible. So what he got was 24 hours to prepare to die. What was so bad for him was to go from an incredible high when he thought he was O.K. to a low that was as low as it can go. Just as he got to breathe, his air ran out.

They locked me behind the control room until it was over. I was so tired from staying up with him I thought I could sleep all night, but, when they brought me back to my cell, I could hardly sleep at all. I was again down here by myself. There were no guards, no more neighbors, just me, me and the spirits of all those who have been killed here before.

It's a strange and eerie place. Many of the prison employees won't come down here at night. They tell stories of strange noises, lights going on and off, toilets flushing, and voices when there is no one down here. I admit I've heard and even seen a few strange things, but I don't feel threatened in the same way they do. The feelings I get are totally different like the time they came with the handcuffs to move me the morning of "Curly's" execution a month earlier. Even though I knew it wasn't going to happen to me, it felt like it was. I hope they don't make any mistakes.

Unlike "Timebomb", I wasn't put here to be killed. I was put here to keep me from being killed. I am a state's witness or "snitch" as we in prison call it. In population, other prisoners might try to kill me, so I'm here, in as deep a hole as there is in this place, a cell within a cell. Actually, there are six cells down here. And there's one room where they kill people. I'm the only one that lives on this floor.

I'm not sure I have ever been this physically and mentally exhausted in my life. And I'm not sure if ever in history a state's witness has been subjected to conditions like these. Most people have never even been close to an execution. Fewer have become as personally involved with the condemned and the process as I have. That is the whole of my existence here. And my testimony could give a man five death sentences. If they did this to all the witnesses whose testimony could send someone to Death Row, I doubt many would go through with it.

Eighteen years ago I was sentenced to the same fate as "Timebomb" and "Curly". Eighteen years ago I could never have imagined that I would come to be in this place, not as its victim, but as a sort of "Angel of Death", ushering others across that thin line that separates this life from eternity. And never in my wildest imagination could I have foretold that I would have to endure all this because I sought to do the right thing, for the right reason, and in the right way.