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again why
was he bellyaching? He brought it all on himself.
    "Taylor, you
look like shit today. Here you have some mail," Carl said sliding
an envelope between the bars.
    "I look like
shit every day."
    Carl was the
only screw with any sense of humour, the others weren't worth piss.
Taylor even almost smiled watching Carl and his big butt make his
way down the hall.
    Walking down
that hall was something Taylor would do only one more time on that
happy day when they took him to the gas chamber.
    In the
meantime, nothing-- hours, weeks, months, years of nothing wait
ahead like some deranged purgatory.
    He threw the
envelope onto his cot. Having exhausted all his appeals whatever
sat between that wrapping could wait. It wasn't a million bucks.
That was certain as the next turn of a key, not that a million, let
alone a billion bucks, could do his sorry ass any good.
    Fate sucked;
if he could only live that day over. What if he’d gotten up two
minutes later or two minutes earlier? What if he didn’t down that
extra glass of whiskey? What if it was snowing? What if his car
broke down? What if the universe wasn’t made of what ifs.
    Taylor stood
above the cot staring at the envelope noting there wasn’t a return
address on it when he heard Carl making his way back up the
corridor. The shuffling of shoes breaking through the silence was
always more pronounced there. It wasn’t just a matter of acoustics.
Quite appropriately, there were so few sounds of life on death row
that any sound made stood out more, from a whistle to the drip of
the faucet.
    Carl hardly
ever whistled but he was whistling that day. When he reached
Taylor’s cell he poked his head in.
    “Well, are you
going to open that thing up, or are you just gonna stare it all
day?”
    “I think I’ll
stare at it all day.”
    “Suit
yourself; you know why I like you Taylor? Because you are the
unluckiest son of a bitch in the world.”
    Taylor grinned
with sarcasm, “Thanks, Carl. Have a nice day.”
    “Only you
could make that sound like a curse. You have a nice day too,
Taylor.”
    As he watched
Carl walk towards the doors at the end of the corridor his grin
fell and his mouth took on all the signs of a sadness that would
never die. Then a tear formed in Taylor’s eye and he cried. He
cried every single day. His words echoed across the empty hall,
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
    Sadness was
the only thing death row didn’t kill. He had bankrolls full of
limitless sorrow to spend.
    Taylor stared
at the envelope again. He picked it up and ran it across his
nostrils like he was trying out a fine wine, and he tossed it down
on his mattress.
    The mattress
looked worse every day. If he was destined to die there couldn’t
they at least provide a decent mattress? He kicked the side of the
bed, and then he stepped over to the toilet and spat in it with a
look of disgust on his face that would have turned the queen of
England’s head. He didn’t come from the streets. He wasn’t some
common thug. He had a Master’s degree. He had a life before all
this happened, before he fucked it up, like he always knew he
would, before he killed that poor child.
    He sat down on
the cot, promising himself he wasn’t going to cry again. He grabbed
the envelope and ripped it open. Inside, a single page of unlined
white paper with the words written in black ink, One day pass to
live that day over stared at him like a ghost.
    His hands
began to shake. The paper fell to the crumbling mattress as Taylor
lurched from the cot feeling the kind of fear one feels when they
think someone has just seen them at their most vulnerable. A memory
of his bedroom door swinging open when he was fourteen and Billy’s
face laughing at the sight of Taylor pleasing himself sped through
his mind.
    Then anger
suddenly crossed his face; someone's idea of fun? Maybe it was Carl
teasing him? But would Carl do that? They both joked around a lot,
but not in a cruel way. Whoever sent this was either crazy,