Death has never enticed me like it has now.

I could see it in front of me, dancing, singing. Making a show of itself; mocking me and all I could do was reach out a pitiful hand, hoping that it would reach one out too. Hoping that it would finally claim me.

The noose around my neck burnt my skin as if the punishment I had received before it hadn’t been enough. As if the hundreds of people standing before me, watching my humiliation isn’t enough. One more discomfort before we kill her, I can almost hear them say. Their voices light and full of humour as if the next few seconds, I wouldn’t just cease to exist.

How did I get here? I asked myself, too tired to cry anymore. What had I done except yearn for more? Wish for more? This was what I was being punished for? It was a sin now. It was a sin to strive for freedom. It was a sin to think against the regime.

If they could, they would read all our minds and punish us for the things that we think, but we do not say. In this place, it is a sin to have thoughts of your own.

“Last words?” a rough voice spoke, sending a kick to my ribs and filling my body with enough energy to scream out in pain. The hall was silent, every greedy ear straining itself to hear every little whimper that left my mouth; straining to find meaning in all of them. After all, I was the only one that had the courage to go against it.

For a measly second, I had got too full of myself. Lied to myself too much. Convinced myself that I could do what others couldn’t. And now I was here. Maybe they want to learn something from me. Learn to stay meek and bend over the regimes desk so it could fuck them in the ass whensoever it wished to. Or learn to not make the mistakes I made, and achieve true freedom.

I wished for the latter. I wished my death wouldn’t be in vain. Even if I didn’t make it, I still succeeded if I was the catalyst to the ultimate demise of the power they had over us. My death cannot be in vain.

“I guess not,” the same person, a guard, I assumed, chuckled before tightening the rough rope around my neck. “After that punishment, I’d be surprised if you could even speak at all.”

“You can…” The hall became quiet at the sound of my hoarse voice, the same greedy ears listening and eyes filled with disgust as I spat out the blood that pooled in my mouth. “You can kill me… but not the resistance. I’m one in thousands. Go fuck yourself.”

“Kill her,” a higher, more authoritative voice called out. The fury in his voice was evident. What leader wouldn’t be, when I had so brazenly mentioned the possibility of an even bigger threat to their governance. The underground resistance they had been planning for decades to remove.

Solis.

I looked up at the sound of him, my eyes meeting his cold, blue ones as he glared at me with hatred. So much hatred. Good.

The bag had been placed over my head, protecting the people – both adult and children – from watching my face as the life drained from me. As if the sight of my limp body hanging from a thin rope connected to the ceiling, swinging with the movement of the wind wasn’t traumatising enough. I guess there was something particularly more eerie about staring into wide open eyes and watching them dull as the time ticked by.

The guard’s rough hand was on my body, positioning me well so my execution would be pleasing to the eye and then there was a moment of silence. Where everybody waited, anticipated for the moment the lever would be pulled and my life would be gone.

The silence remained and then was broken suddenly by a gunshot. Which was weird. Because I was sentenced to death by hanging.