Muling

``With future fading far away
I turn my soul against the light
And tread deeper into unknown waters.''

I read the poem that I had scribbled down on the scrap of paper that the warden had kindly given to me. It sucked: it didn't rhyme, the cadence was terrible, the vocabulary simplistic and the imagery boring.

But what can I do? I'm just someone on death row.

It was a mistake, a stupid one. But I couldn't help it---the money was too good. Beatrice had warned me, she told me not to do it. But the market was super clamped down it was, and even a small amount of only fifty grams of pure powder could fetch a high price of nearly one hundred thousand dollars.

One hundred thousand dollars. That's a fortune, right there. I could totally pay off my student loans like that and have some spare change to buy a house outright.

But Beatrice pleaded with me not to go. ``It's just not worth it!'' she had said. ``It's not like the US. That place is well known for hanging people who bring drugs in.''

``How many times have I told you,'' I remembered saying, ``never to call them drugs out loud! They are goods, or powder at worst. Never drugs! Who knows who is listening?''

``I'll call drugs `drugs' if I so choose! Besides,'' she countered that day, ``who's the moron trying to bring the drugs into a country who literally HANGS people who possess so much as a gram of the drugs?''

I remembered slapping her at that point and stomping out in a huff, spending the last evening in Chicago at a motel before I met up with some guys who brought me the powder to bring into the country.

A mule, that's what they called me and people like me.

I remembered going through the O'Hare okay. No one stopped me. I got on the direct flight and thought I was home free.

But when I disembarked at my final destination, I suddenly found myself in hand-cuffs by the customs officers, my luggage opened before me, its contents strewn all over.

The guys had mixed the powder with the stuffing of several soft toys that I was bringing to my `niece' as a cover. They said they had bound the powder with something inert that would make detection hard.

Yet here I was, arrested under drug charges.

The courts had been swift. Beatrice refused to fly over, sending word that she had no business with a fool who hadn't listened to her.

My lawyer fought for me pro bono, but privately told me that my case was hopeless.

The death sentence was passed, and now, I sat on death row, awaiting my ultimate fate.

(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 13-Feb-2014 20:43:42)