Laying on a two-and-half inches mattress in this four-by-four feet cockpit my life whizzes away. The event that brought me here faints in the background of that coming ahead of me.
I am among the one hundred and twenty eight prisoners awaiting death at the Agodi prisons, Ibadan. I am detailing my steady, frightful and sure journey to death on these pages.
The life of a condemned criminal is quite different from that of rehabilitatable criminals. Our outfit are different as sure as our chores. We await but one ultimate visitor, they expect as many cheerful news harbingers. They count their days to life, we strike ours to a sure death.
On the fourth of July, 1997 when the supreme court finally upheld the decision of a lower court and passed death sentence on me I had taken it with stoic forbearance hoping it was a cut and dry issue. I did not look forward to the next day. I almost count myself privileged to know the day of my death other than to die a sudden death.
The executor is the one visitor I have awaited for the last fifteen years of my life. The man, if he is one, is as elusive and mysterious as are many myths about him.
Dying in the hands of a hangman beats all imaginations of heroic death. It empties your courage, and you get to die a hundred times before your final execution.
******************
Postscript: This story shall be completed on Friday after the Friday Fictioneers’ Cafe
Fingerprints 
‘Cowards die many times before thier death’ Julius Caeser. But I think your man is brave, having awaited the coming of the hangman for the past 15 years of his life.
I await more of this, Charles.
Thanks really grateful! should be through with it sooner but the day job is demanding more…
This is awesome! It would make a great book…