I apologize many times for the long wait for this chapter! I just couldn't get it right and had to rewrite is several times.
Definitely the most depressing chapter I have ever written…

Btw, do you guys have problem with Chrome writing every Verdana text in pure Italic font, especially here on this website? It's getting on my nerves -.-


Chapter 27 – We are all scared

During the late hours of the afternoon when they guards were busy preparing the execution room, black gloomy-looking clouds came rolling up from south, carrying heavy rain and a nasty thunderstorm. It was going to be a tough night; even when it was still just appearing in the horizon Brutus could sense the concrete floor vibrate with every distant rumble.

"This is just what we need," Dean sighed and put the broom aside. "A lightning strike in the middle of the execution."

"Mmm…" Brutus grabbed the last of the folding chairs. "Maybe we should go check the generator, when we are done here."

He unfolded the chair and squeezed it into line, before counting them all.

"We need at least five more, Dean. We still have those spare in the restrain room, you figure?"

"I doubt it, but let me go check."

The execution room would be crowded to the bursting point. Delacroix' crime had affected several families and they would all be there to witness the death of the tiny Frenchman tonight. Brutus let out a deep breath of resignation and leaned against the chair with his hand on the backrest. He hated the big ones – admitted, he wasn't overly happy about the small ones, either – but many people, and especially emotionally affected people that was, crammed into a very small shed were rarely a positive influence on one another. Brutus had had his turn of wrestling back huddles of angry men and sometimes even women, who thought the condemned got off too cheap. Geez, Louise, if tonight was gonna be one of those nights…

Brutus shrugged the thought away and squeezed himself out of the maze of chairs. In the far corner of the shed Ellie was standing on a step ladder with her back against him, giving the windows a much needed clean from the inside. Brutus studied her. She had hardly said a word all day – not since her and Paul had returned from the administration building. Brutus still wasn't sure why the warden had wanted to talk to her, but you didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out, that it probably hadn't been good news.

"You're quiet today," he noticed, when Ellie stopped for a second to inspect her progress. She turned around, looking mildly surprise, like she had complete forgot that there was other people in the shed. She seemed at little bit paler than usual, Brutus noticed, but then again, it was a hundred degrees up under the tin roof and the airflow was stagnant as a swamp.

"I am?" she said, brushing hair away from her forehead with the back of her rolled-up sleeve. "Sorry, I didn't even realise that…"

"So, he did rail you, huh," Brutus said light heartedly, when she paused. "I knew it."

She gave him a brief smile. "No, no railing – not even a reprimand. He was kind as always."

"Then what's the matter?"

Ellie wringed her cloth and wiped up the spilled water from the windowsill, before answering.

"It's just the thought about tonight," she said and dropped the cloth back in water bucket. "About Del. These hours are taking their toll on him."

"We'll take good care of him," Brutus said. "All the way."

Ellie's face softened into a smile and she took two steps down the ladder, so they were eye level. She kissed him on the cheek.

"I know," she said in a candid tone, that made him reach out for her – but his fingers had barely touched her hand before Dean returned, the wooden folding chairs clacking and rattling as he eased them through the door, and Brutus had to retreat back to a safe distance.

"Brute, these are all there were," he said and dropped them up against the wall, "but Paul says we can borrow someone from D-block. Could you give me a hand?"

"Sure."

Brutus gazed back at Ellie, as he left. Her features had turned grave and thoughtful again and it made him wary. He refused to believe she would lie to him, but he had a strong feeling that she was only giving him half the truth and he couldn't help but wonder why.

oOo

Alice kept her word and at six o'clock that night she let Harry and Brutus accompany her to the infirmary without uttering a single murmur. The moving of the infirmary had finally come to an end; the inventory was in place, half the beds were occupied and guards from other parts of the prison patrolled amongst the sick prisoners. The thunderstorm had moved closer and faint lightning lightened the pale or battered faces of inmates from the other blocks. A young medic showed them to a fairly quiet corner behind white curtains, before scooting off to go find doctor Briscoe.

The head doctor came, signed the transfer papers and had a chat with Alice like Paul had promised. When he was done with his examination, he nodded significantly to Ellie and hurried on to the next waiting patient.

"We'll come get you, when the execution is over," Brutus muttered to Ellie, while Harry secured Alice to the bed with a foot chain. "Sometime around half past ten."

"Thanks," she whispered back. "Good luck."

He left with Harry and it was as much an ache in her guts as it was a relief, to watch him return to E-block. On this particular night his tall, steadfast frame was a great comfort for her tormented thoughts, but it also made her feel incredible bad every time she caught him looking at her with this unspoken concern of his.

She cursed her transparent feelings and the way it made him worry, but she also knew it couldn't be different for now. She had to keep another secret from him just a little bit more, because Alice deserved to know the truth about her own life, before anyone else.

"You see?" Alice gestured towards the clip board on the bedframe. "Besides a tired, old heart, I'm healthy as a horse. You're worrying to much, my dear."

Ellie smiled and sat down next to the foot of her bed. This wasn't E-block and even with guards lurking on them, the infirmary had a very strict safe distant.

"A nurse can't worry too much."

Alice sighed dramatically. "No, maybe not. But do I have to suffer on that account?" She glanced at the guard closest to her bed; he was scrutinizing the room like a heartless judge and continued in a soft mumble: "I like it so much better at E-block: Mr. Edgecomb's men are sweethearts and they don't stare at me, like I'm about to set my bed on fire. I can't wait to get back."

Her words took an unintentional, but quite precise punch at Ellie's already brushed conscience. She wished she could tell the old woman that she didn't have to worry about leaving E-block anymore. That she would take a seat in the chair when her time came amongst people, who if not cared about her, then had a sincere interest in carrying out the Governor's order as humane as possible. She wished she could tell her anything but the truth.

Alice didn't seem to notice Ellie sudden thoughtfulness. The medics had starting handing out dinner on metal plates. They ate in partly silence with thunderclaps as background music and when the interns walked around to collect the used service, Alice was somehow able to persuade one of them to lend her today's newspaper.

She shook it open on the covers. The front page showed the mighty Hoover Dam, towering in front of a bright sky. Only few days away from the dedication, the paper paid tribute to the hundreds of lives that were lost during the construction. Alice squinted at the text.

"My, the light sure is poor in here. Would you mind reading to me, Eleanor?"

She handed Ellie the newspaper. Ellie smoothed the paper over her lap, then looked up.

"Not at all," she said quietly. "But before I start, there is something I must tell you first."

oOo

The thunder roared over the roof top of E-block, but the Mile itself was quiet – waiting in silence. Delacroix had feared this day, this inevitable wait, since he came to the block, but now when it was finally here, he couldn't figure out how he truly felt.

He just wanted to get it over with. He just wanted to be done. No more fear, no more pain. No more nightmares and guilt. No more waiting. And no more Percy Wetmore.

Delacroix ran a finger down Mr. Jingles velvet-soft back. The mouse had been eating cracker crumbs on the convicted man's chest and was know cleaning his whisker, pedantically like a little, old lady.

"Ain't dat right, Mr. Jingles?" Delacroix muttered to him softly. "No more boss Wetmore. I guess that don' make death all dat bad, huh?"

The mouse looked at him with shiny, black eyes. Delacroix had never seen a mouse with eyes like Mr. Jingles'. They weren't just those of a simple rodent; they were hiding something a lot more complicated. It was almost like they were able to see right through him – through the darkness in him and into the part, that flinched and cried by the thought of what he had become: A rapist. A murderer.

Eyes like that was a gift he did not deserve.

Did you tell her 'bout your crime? Bout that poor girl you raped and killed and those people, you burned to death?

The man has to die, Percy! I think that's enough punishment, without me treating him like a monster!

He closed his eyes. There was in fact so much in this prison that he didn't deserve.

"Mr. Delacroix?"

She whispered his name through the bars of his cell. Delacroix sat up in surprise and turned around on his bunk.

"Mad'mouselle Br…?"

She hushed him to silence and pointed to the front desk, where Harry Terwilliger was on the phone with his back against them. Delacroix dragged his eyes from the guard to gape at the young nurse who returned his gaze, pending. She looked so misplaced with her spotless white clothes and her female pureness, like a butterfly among moths. And she was the last person he had been expecting to see standing outside his cell – especially now Percy had revealed his heinous crime to her last night.

"Brutus told me everything," she said soberly. "About you. About the things you have done."

Delacroix swallowed.

"I didn't meant to…" he began, but she shook her head.

"I don't want to know," she said in a quiet, but firmly tone. "I'm not here to judge or forgive or to hate you. I'm just doing my job, because someone needs me here, that's all. There is just one thing I need to know…"

The way she studied him with her dark eyes, would later remind him of the way Mr. Jingles looked at him. No, looked through him.

"… Do you regret what you did?"

The lump in his throat almost scared him. He hadn't felt like this since the day in court, when the mother to the girl he had raped and killed, had screamed all her sorrow out after him. That was the first time he truly understood, how much pain he had caused.

"If it could bring them people back," he whispered. "I woul' sit in dat chair and roast from now 'til le jour de jugement. And even longer if I have to."

She nodded almost unnoticeably, but he couldn't read her face. Whatever feelings he had stirred in her – disgust, terror or just plain hate – she hid it pretty well behind a thoughtful expression.

"I have something for you," she then said and pulled something out from her uniform pocket. It looked like a folded newspaper. She held it out to him and Delacroix was waiting for her to place it between the bars, but she didn't and he had to take it from her hand.

"It's just the news," she told him and her voice had softened. "But I know Toot doesn't have anything in French and I thought you might like to read something familiar after all this time here."

He unfolded the crisp, newly printed paper – page up and page down was written in his beautiful language and the words flew though his mind like poetry, not at all stuttering and broken like his English.

"Merci," he whispered and then be blurted the truth out, whether she wanted to hear it or not: "I never mean' it to happen the way it did. Never."

"No, I hope not," she said with the slightest suggestion of a smile, before she went back to the front desk.

oOo

Ellie told her all about her meeting with the warden that morning. Alice listened in dead silence; every time the lightning lit up their corner, her face had gone paler, but she didn't utter a word until Ellie was done.

"Well…" She cleared her throat and leaned back against her pillows, "we knew that was an option."

"Paul told me a little bit about it," Ellie said heartening. "It doesn't sound too bad. It's a small prison, smaller than Cold Mountain, and I have been told the guards are quite sympathetic."

"What if I say no?" Alice said staidly.

"No?"

"What if I don't want to leave E-block."

Ellie didn't quite follow. "I'm afraid we can't protest against the sentence. They will put you on suicide watch in a mental hospital. You're going to spend the rest of your life in a strain jacket, drugged to unconsciousness." She leaned forward in her chair. "Alice, I don't understand – do you want the death penalty?"

Alice looked at her with her piercing grey eyes.

"Yes, I do," she said. "I don't want my life no more. It has giving me nothing but pain and distress. I'm done. I just want it to end."

"But…"

"You think I was scared," Alice interrupted softly. "And you're right: I was – but not the way you think. I felt with Mr. Bitterbuck that night; my heart ached when they took him on his final walk down the Mile, because I knew he didn't want to die. But the one I was truly scared for was not Mr. Bitterbuck. It's was myself. That's what I realised that evening."

Ellie didn't know how to respond to that, but Alice didn't seem to wait for a reply either.

"You know why I didn't just shot myself after I killed my husband and his brother?" Alice asked her. "I was afraid, God wouldn't let me. I have asked him to kill me so many times it would no longer be a punishment. So I figured, I couldn't decide my own penalty. I had to let Him judge me."

"But why where you scared, if death was what you wanted?" Ellie asked confused. "You were sentenced to die right from the beginning."

"Yes, I was," Alice said silently. "By ordinary people just like myself. What if that wasn't good enough for Him? What if He had something horrible in store for me? A long, painful death, before it was finally over, because that would be the only true punishment for me." She took in a deep breath and said: "That's what suddenly dawned on me that night: That death was too easy. And I realised I couldn't bear that. I couldn't bear anymore suffering and that's what really terrified me."

Thunder crashed above the infirmary. In the bed next to them, the inmate moaned softly and twisted in his bed. Alice watch him settled back into his sleep and turned to Ellie with the tiniest of smile.

"It sounds crazy, doesn't it? That a woman wants death so bad, but yet dying is the thing that scares her most in this world."

Ellie was quiet for a moment, lost in her own thoughts, but then she shook her head.

"No," she said. "Not to me. If there's anything my job has taught me, it is that death and dying is two completely different concepts. Dying can be painful and unbearable, but death is just… death. In death, you are beyond all that."

"I tend to imagine," Alice said in a quiet tone. "That death is like the moment between sleep and awakening, when it feels like you're floating. You can't see, you can't hear and you can't feel anything. It's like you're stuck in nothing. You are nothing. I wouldn't mind spending the eternity like that, just –" she gestured with her hand in mid air, "– floating around."

She let her hand drop and Ellie tried to smile.

"I'm sorry you have to be transferred," she said. "I'm sorry this is dragging out."

"Yes, me too," Alice sighed. "But I guess I was right: Death was too easy. But He can't hold on to me forever. Some day I will have my death, when I have served and waited long enough."

oOo

Keys clashed against metal and the cell door was pushed open with a smooth rumble. Delacroix looked up. Brutus couldn't quite tell if he was crying or whether it was the flashes from the lightning that made his eyes look misty. But he suddenly realised how small Delacroix looked; like a little boy in his prison cell with his pet mouse perched in his hands.

"Hey, boys," Delacroix greeted them softly. "Now say hi, Mr. Jingles."

He stroked the mouse between the ears, but Mr. Jingles didn't move a muscle. His brightly black eyes were fixed on Delacroix' face, as if the mouse wondered why his friend had stopped smiling all of a sudden.

"Eduard Delacroix," Paul called through the open door. "Will you step forward?"

Delacroix cupped the mouse in his palms and slowly rose to his feet. When he came to a halt before Paul and raised his head, there was no doubt he was crying. Brutus didn't even have to see the tears, he could hear it in Delacroix' husky, fragile voice:

"Boss Edgecomb?"

"Yes, Del?" Paul responded gently.

"Don'… don' let nothin' happen to Mr. Jingles, okay?"

Paul nodded. Okay. Delacroix blinked through his tears and raised his hands to kiss Mr. Jingles' tiny, furry head.

"Here," he whispered and placed the mouse on Paul's left shoulder. "You take him."

None of the guards knew how to react to this unforeseen act of trust, least of all Paul. He shot Delacroix a funny look.

"Del," he muttered, "I can't have a mouse on my shoulder while… you know."

Delacroix didn't seem to hear him. Instead there was movement in the cell behind them; a bunk creaking and then naked feet brushing over linoleum.

"I'll take him, boss," Coffey's voice rumbled from within the dimness of his cell. "Just for know, if Del don't mind."

Delacroix looked from Coffey to Paul, his wet eyes glinting in the light from the bulbs and nodded.

"Yeah," he said and his voice broke. "Yeah, you take 'im, John. You take 'im to dis foolishment be done."

Paul walked over to Coffey's cell and the giant man's outstretched hand. Mr. Jingles skittered off Paul's shoulder onto Coffey's palm without hesitation. Delacroix inhaled shakily.

"You gonna take 'him to Florida, to dat Mouseville?" he asked and looked up at Brutus.

"We'll do it together most likely," Brutus found himself lying and nodded to Paul. "Make a little vacation out of it."

"People pay a dime apiece to see 'im," Delacroix said softly. "Two cents for the kiddies. Ain't dat right, boss Howell."

"That's right, Del."

"Will you take Mad'moiselle Brent wid you?" Delacroix asked and cringed his neck to look at the tall guard.

"I, uh… I could ask her," Brutus muttered and felt his neck turned red under his co-workers' hidden smirks.

Delacroix nodded thoughtfully. "You treat 'er good, entendu, you treat 'er like the beautiful women she is."

"Of course, Del."

Delacroix managed a smile.

"You're a good man, boss Howell," he said quietly, but emphatically, and his eyes filled with tears. "You too, boss Edgecomb. Wish I could'a met you bot' someplace else."

Then he gave Mr. Jingles one last look, whispering in French: "Au revoir, mon ami. Je t'aime, mon petit."

Paul touched his shoulder. "Are you ready, Del?"

Delacroix nodded, tears now rolling down his unshaved cheeks. "Yes, boss Edgecomb. I think I am."