“Well, we are just glorified trigger pullers,” Lilia added. “I don’t know why they just don’t replace us
with a machine and a button to push.”
“Or a trained monkey,” Micah said. “Then they wouldn’t even have to push the
button.”
Lilia suddenly had an urge to smoke. She knew it was just the desire to take repetitive
deep breaths that drove the urge, and something to distract her mind. She wasn’t a smoker.
“Hey Isaac,” she said.
“Mind if I take a drag?” Isaac
slowly shook his head while exhaling the smoke, encircling his head in a white
cloud.
“Sorry Lily, can’t,” he said. “Not unless you want prescription-grade
clonazapam instead of nicotine.” He
looked at his garet and shrugged. “Believe
it or not, this stuff is prescribed.”
Oriana rolled her eyes.
“Well, can you at least breathe it on us so we can get the second-hand
effects?” she asked. Isaac obliged, but Lilia
knew that on exhale, the smoke had already been ninety-seven percent absorbed
by Isaac’s body. The smoke was cool and scentless,
as usual.
The rest of the day was strange. Lilia went through the rest of her classes in
a blur. Calculus, Biology, English. What an odd way to start a day, by killing
someone. Why is Humanities in the morning? Would every day be like this? Lilia realized it couldn’t. Her class alone was assigned only thirty-five
inmates to kill. Today, they killed
four. They couldn’t keep up this rate
for the rest of the school year.
Lilia did calculations in her head. If today was an “initiation” day for all
fourth year students, and each class killed five convicted criminals, then already
just today, they had killed nearly 180 criminals. The
morgues would be busy tonight. Some
families would finally find peace.
Others would find injustice. But
either way, it was too late. The damage
was done.
Walking back to her car at the end of the day, Lilia never
felt so relieved to leave school grounds.
Micah was leaning against her car.
He waved to her.
“Hey Lilia,” he said.
“Do you think I could catch a ride home?” His hair was messier than usual, and the rims
of his eyes were red.
“Of course,” she said, “Sorry my car’s such a mess. Just kinda throw everything in the back.”
They were silent for the beginning of the ride. Lilia turned on music, but everything was too
loud and too happy. She turned it
off. She glanced over at Micah, who
seemed deep in his thoughts.
“You doing okay?” she asked.
He slouched further in the passenger’s seat.
“You mean considering we just took part in a state-sponsored
killing?” he answered sarcastically. “Other
than that, yeah, I’m doing great after just killing a guy. Or girl.
Or whatever.” He let out a sigh
and continued to look out the window.
“Y’know you don’t have to participate,” Lilia answered, slightly annoyed. “They have a program for students who opt
out. They don’t even punish you if you
don’t pull the trigger. Besides, these
are not innocent people we’re killing.
They’re all bad people. They’re
killers. Rapists. Mass-murderers.”
Micah looked at her. “Murderers? Then what does that make us?” He straightened up in his chair. “I mean, doesn’t it bother you that we never
see the face of the person we execute? We
have all the power, they have none. What
makes us better than them?” he asked.
“These people have already been tried. We don’t decide if we’re better than
them. It’s irrelevant. We’re supposed to be blind, we indiscriminately
hand out the punishments.”
“But what if they’re innocent?”
Lilia could feel Micah looking at her. He voiced the question that was always lurking
at the back of her mind, trying to worm its way into her thoughts. He gave voice to her worse fear.
She shook her head and pushed the fear back down. “Doesn’t matter. They’ve been justly tried, justly convicted,
they had their chance to appeal, and for most of them, this is their second conviction.” She looked at him. “I really don’t believe innocent people will
be found wrongfully convicted twice. Or
three times. Our system is flawed, but
it’s not that flawed.” She wanted to
believe what she was saying, but she could hear the hollow ring in her words.
Micah scoffed. “Yeah,
that’s probably why they make us learn about the crimes these criminals
committed only after we kill them. Maybe
if we knew beforehand, we all would pause before pulling the trigger.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. Micah lived a couple of streets down from
Lilia. She pulled up to the front of his
house, but they both just sat quietly for a few minutes.
“I think,” Micah started, “...I think I’m going to ask Mr.
Livingston to switch me to the Suicide Room.”
He looked at Lilia and shook his head.
“I’ll still be participating in Humanities, just not the killings. I just can’t justify it, not knowing the
facts before the execution.”
Lilia nodded. “Let me
know if you need a ride tomorrow morning, okay?” Micah shrugged. “I’ll probably be fine. Don’t worry about me.” He got out of the car, gave a sheepish smile
and turned around and walked to his house.
Lilia sat in her car for a moment after Micah’s door
closed. She knew Micah was right, in a
way. She did just participate in taking
someone’s life, even if that someone was a horrible person. Why didn’t if affect her the same way? Why didn’t she feel bad about killing
someone? While Micah was angry and
saddened, she only felt numbness.
Sighing, she put her car into drive and drove off. Too tired to think about it, she turned up
her radio and tried to focus on something else, anything else. They still had months ahead to dwell on those
thoughts.
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