Anna Maria

Anna Maria knew it was the day that she would day. 

It was strange, she had to admit, waking up and knowing that today was the day that her heart would stop beating. In just a few hours time, she would walk her last steps. Say her last words, then breathe her last breath and that would be it. No longer would she exist upon the earth. She would be dead and buried once and for all. 

When she had dressed herself and prepared, she thought to pray. But as she knelt beside the bed, she found that she did not have the words. 

She didn't regret what she did. She would never do that. But she had to admit that she was scared. 

Outside her room, she could hear the flurry of voices. This man barked at that man while someone else scurried off in a desperate hurry. It was absolute chaos, out there in the world beyond, the one that was about to swallow her up once and for all. But, beside the little plainly dressed bed, it was stillness personified. 

Realizing that her prayers would not come, Anna Maria climbed back onto the bed. 

Try as she might, she could not escape memories of that night. She struggled desperately to picture anything else, the face of her mother, her laughing little son playing in the sunlight, but she could not see them. Instead, all she could see was the bullet piercing his heart over and over again. 

"So even now you win, Johnathan. Even now. Can your ghost give me no peace at all?" 

The only sound that answered her was the continuing scuffle of the men in the rooms beyond. 

"Very well, John," she said to the stillness. "Very well. We have both had our laughs." 

At some time, the woman with the gentle smile came in and brought her some broth. 

"I tried to get you something nicer. Considering..." she trailed off. "But I couldn't get it. They don't care. Say it won't be long now." 

Once the woman left, Anna Maria did not touch the food. Instead, she stared at it and tried to remember the last meal that she had eaten. Before the world had changed once and for all. She could not. Instead, she could only see him smiling, hear him laughing. Hear him screaming as the blood came pouring out of him. Anna Maria began to cry. 

Finally, the man in the wide-brimmed hat came for her. His face was cracked and dry and his eyes were blank. Her's wasn't the first neck he had broken and it wouldn't be the last. 

"You ready?" he asked her gruffly. They both knew the only answer there could be, so Anna Maria just stared at him blankly before making her way through the door and into the bright light of the corridor beyond. There were men everywhere, the men making all the scuffling. But they were quiet now, they were still as she moved. She cut through them like hot butter. They fell away from every side, afraid to cross her but unable to take their eyes off of her. A woman in a tight spot, that's what she was to them. That's what she had been to herself once, but freedom loomed at hand. 

When she stood on the scaffold, looking down at all the tired and weather faces of the townspeople, she smiled. Though the rope rubbed roughly against her neck and death loomed just beneath her feet, she smiled. 

You have gotten your revenge, Johnathan, she thought to herself as the executioner made his way to the lever, I may have killed you in cold blood and you may have taken your revenge on me for it, but I am the one redeemed.

As the floorboards gave way underneath her, her smile held. 

I am the one freed at long last.