Just… one more
© PiedadDescalza and JBerchtes

You are sitting in your cell, sentenced to death and awaiting execution. Others, like Claire,
or like Josephine, are sitting in the cells nearby. One morning, the guards step in and take
you out of your cells. You are all lined up, hands tied behind your backs. After this a
warden informs you that it is time now... You are all taken aback: there was no date set,
no previous announcement!

You are grabbed by your arms and taken forward, following the others through a door,
outside to the yard. It is poorly lit and empty, only the guillotine is waiting for you at this
early time of morning. All three of you are lined up at the scaffold’s steps. Your legs are
shaking, you feel dizzy and your heart is pounding. Then you watch, mesmerized, as the
first name is called, and the prisoner is taken to the guillotine. It goes very quickly, the
guards push her forward, letting her no chance of resisting. Her sentence is read to her
one last time, while she is strapped to the bascule, lowered and instantly the blade comes
down. You gasp, with nearly no time to realize that one of your former cell mates just
died. Her body is thrown into a coffin, the head following.

The second name is called. By then the prisoner that precedes you has already taken in
the concept of her impending death. She is not calm when they take her up to the
guillotine, she cries and struggles as they drag her to it. One man is needed to push her
hard against the bascule and hold her in place while she is strapped to it. Completely
oblivious to the formality of her sentence being red to her one last time, she goes on
whimpering and begging for mercy as the bascule is lowered and only the falling blade
made her silent. Her body is pushed inside a second coffin, and her head in thrown inside
it before they close the lid. Dead, as the first one.

Then they call your name: Piedad. You are grabbed by the collar of your blouse and
pushed forward up the steps. The warden monotonously reads out your sentence but you
fail to coherently listen to the words in it, astounded by the shock. You are strapped to
the bascule, the straps so tight they almost leave you out of breath. Taking no time for
such details, they slip your collar inside the shirt, leaving your neck bare. Then the bascule
goes downwards, they grab your hair to guide your head through the lunette as you are
pushed forward and then the hard wood is closed tightly around your neck. Within a
second you realize how helpless you are and then you hear the blade falling down, the
machine shaking under your body. There is a loud thud and your head tumbles forward,
into the already bloody basket... and when they push your body into the third coffin, blood
is spurting out of your neck stump. Your head is picked from the basket and thrown into
the coffin, landing randomly inside it, and your limbs are still shaking when the lid is
closed, putting an end to the swift and efficient proceedings.

The team works fast, carrying the cheap coffins to a corner of the yard where a large hole
had already been dug up. The coffins are placed inside with no particular ceremony or
sequence, and after a few shovels of quicklime, quickly covered with earth. Nothing more.
The grave will soon be forgotten and eventually someone else will be buried there.
There were no witnesses. No one watched it. People are only informed the next day in the
daily news. It will be only a small notice in the last pages of tomorrow’s newspaper...
nothing special, as unimportant cases never get much attention. Not even the names are
given out fully. “P. Descalza, a criminal, was guillotined, among others”. Just... one more
criminal

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