Prologue

It had all started when Juliet had discovered the cruelty of capital punishment. It can take several shocks from the electric chair before the person died - and it could even melt their brain first. The gas chamber made the person feel incredible pain and so did lethal injection. Even death by firing squad meant that the person could spend their last moments in agony.

For some people, this was perfectly acceptable. After all, the criminal's victims had been in excruciating pain when they had died - so why shouldn't the criminal feel the same torment? For Juliet Irving, this was horrific - surely this should be censored as it came under 'cruel and unusual punishment'? Maybe it was because she was English and they didn't have the death penalty in the United Kingdom or maybe she just hated to see anyone in any pain at all, even if they were criminals … but Juliet resolved to find a completely painless way of killing somebody.
She had been fourteen when she decided this.

Juliet had stayed on to sixth year of high school and graduated at eighteen. Her higher subjects had been Chemistry, Physics, Biology and English. She went to university and majored in Biological Sciences, minoring in English. No matter how dedicated she was to her goal, she always nurtured a strong love for plays and literature - Shakespeare in particular. But then she had, after all, been named after the tragic heroine.

Juliet moved to America after completing her degree, reasoning that research would be easier in a country that actually practiced capital punishment She didn't really mind whether the state she was in had a death penalty - it did then information would probably be more accessible, if it didn't then they might be more open to a humane way of eliminating criminals. She chose Gotham City as house prices there were reasonably low and her mother had grown up in a city only about a hundred miles away. In hindsight, maybe she should have thought a little more on the reasons for such economical rates.

Juliet opted for studying drowning as she experienced the sensation when she was around five and it hadn't seemed overly painful. She would later discover that what she had experienced was passive drowning - which is when one has sunk, or is sinking, without movement. This was most common in those who fell in the water by accident, as Juliet had, or who are unconscious or have experienced a sudden medical condition. She would also realised that the reason is hadn't been painful was either because her memory had blanked out the pain or because she hadn't been fully conscious.
But until she discovered this, Juliet believed that drowning was a potentially painless way to die.

For the next two years, she researched and experimented and made enquiries and then researched some more. She discovered a way of drowning her 'test subjects' - mice to begin with, rabbits as her experiments became more successful - without any being involved water, using just a pill which that was the fruit of her toil.

But she just couldn't get the formula right. Sure enough, the animals would die - but they always seemed to thrash around, as if in a considerable amount of pain, before they died. Juliet had established that drowning was agonizing - but she had put so much research into the project that she became determined to find a way to make it painless.

During that time she met, dated and fell in love with a man named Alexander Kersey. Alexander was a sailor and was often away for months at time, bringing exotic gifts back every time he returned. Juliet loved him dearly and spent every moment she could with him, crying each time he left on a new voyage and welcoming home with devotion in her heart upon his homecoming. He comforted her upon her parents' divorce - which she blamed herself for as she hadn't been there to help hold the family together - and reassured her that even although Mr. Irving, her father, hadn't made any contact with her since he definitely still loved her. Alexander let Juliet sob into his chest when she received news that her mother had died in a car crash and gently reminded her that he was still here for her and that he would never leave.

The couple were going to pool their money and buy a house together as soon as Juliet found the right formula and Alexander completed enough voyages. It was late spring, a few months after Juliet's twenty-fourth birthday, and Alexander was out on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea. Juliet was trying a new formula when she received the call. The call that told her Alexander was gone ... drowned … dead. His ship had been sunk in a storm and his body had been found washed up on a beach in Malta. And Juliet was completely alone.

When she put the phone down, she just stood and stared at it awhile. He was gone. Her Alexander, her lover, her life, was gone. He had promised he'd never leave her. He had promised he'd be there for her! But he wasn't. He was gone. And she had nothing. No-one would hold her now, no-one would tell her that they were there and would never go ... because no-one was there for her. What did she do ... what could she possibly have done ... to deserve this. Nothing. Nothing at all.

Juliet looked around the room, calmly, carefully, before her eyes fell on a tiny white tablet. Why not? What was there left to live for? Alexander had drowned … why shouldn't she?

Serenely, she glided over the worktop. Placidly, she picked up the pill and put in her mouth. And then she swallowed.