1 Pre Death Scentance Day

Well. This is it. Tomorrow, i die.

I guess it's just as well. The guards here tell me that I'm always 'such a bother'. I don't think they mean that I've been troublesome during my my time in prison, but rather that I have been 'such a bother' to the government as a whole. I've never been able to keep a low profile or helped myself when it came to all the foster homes, schools or therapy sessions.

And yes, I said prison. I have been in prisoner death-row for almost, to the day, two years. I do not even remember what I did to get sentanced, nor was there any real proof. There was simply circumstantial evidence and one teacher eye witness that deemed me guilty of the deaths of 23 teeagers in my class.

My name is Nora Blood. I am an orphan kid. I've never met my parents, nor have I ever fit in anywhere, besides maybe this very prison cell. I have been jumping from school to school, foster home to foster home. Most of the reasons were bullying, but also that I apparently instigate chaos in people around me, causing the government to have to move me to another school, another life.

I was sitting in my cell, my back against the stone wall, opposite my bed. My legs pressed to my chest. In the corner, above the toilet, sat a simple calandre. Next to it, a simple rectangular mirror. Ared circle around tomorrows date, the 25th of January. The fluorescent lighting seemed to blink harshly at my existence.

"Hey, Nora?" I stir. I turn my attention towards the shank hole to the right side of my head. I grunt in response to my friend on the other side.

My friend's name is Jack. He's been here since he was about fifteen, so about the same length of time as me.

We both were the, undoubtedly, youngest in this wing of the prison, both being around seventeen.

The wing itself was not that big, since deathscentance was supposed to have been abandoned in america, but there were some exceptions to it. Me, Jack, and - i figured - eight others were on deathrow here in Metropolitan Correctional Center, Chicago.

Jack had made the shank hole a few months back, and the guards seemed to not have noticed it yet.

"Are you nervous" Jack said, after a hesitant pause.

"About what?" I ask, shifting my weight so as to look at the hole and hear better. I knew what he was talking about, but it was a sour topic, as always.

"Well, about tomorrow? You're going to be gone, and I'll be alone again ... I'll miss you" He was using his nervous voice. He did this thing where he would talk deep and stoically whenever he was anxious, sad or nervous. His other voice - what i pegged to be his real voice - was more shrill. More girly. It took a bit to get used to, as it was really confusing in the beginning, because I thought there were two people in his cell when we first spoke.

I had learned to pick up on his anxiety even when he wast using his nervous voice, and I could hear it dripping in his words now. I couldn't blame him. We were both our first - and only - real friends to each other, and now I was going to leave him behind.

"I'm going to miss you, too, bud. Wherever i end up." I chuckled half heartedly. We were both atheists, so the afterlife was always a bitter, running joke between us.

"Yeah ..." Jack slumped.

"At least I might be having wine for all eternity, right?" I joked. trying to lighten the mood. We usually talked about our time in death sentance. Mostly because there was not much else to talk about. Sometimes we would overhear something the guards would say, and we would talk and joke about it for hours at a time. This was usually how our days were, as minute rolled into hours, and then days, then months.