The Prisoner's Last Story

Chapter 1

Two hours before the execution, I entered the cell block to provide the condemned prisoner with his pre-execution psychological counseling.

“I’m about to be shot,” the prisoner said. “Once it’s over, everything will be settled. What a boring ending. But I still want to struggle a little longer. How can I turn such a dull ending around?”

“Why don’t I tell you a story instead, Dr. Morgan?”

The ambiguous smile on his face sent a chill through me. With only two hours left, was he still planning to overturn his conviction?

After graduating from college in 2005, I was assigned to the Prison Education and Rehabilitation Department at a men’s prison in the southwestern mountains. I became a psychological counselor. My daily work involved providing inmates with psychological education and helping them correct unhealthy thought patterns so they could better participate in rehabilitation.

There was an inmate named Daniel Carter who had never been one of my primary concerns. He had been sentenced to a death sentence with a two-year reprieve for intentional homicide and had already served more than a year. His conduct was ordinary—not especially cooperative, but never openly defiant. He followed orders, never got into conflicts with anyone, and rarely spoke. Among a prison population filled with complicated cases, he barely stood out.

As long as he kept his head down for a few more months, Daniel would complete the reprieve period and have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment.

But then everything changed.

Some time ago, Daniel suddenly attacked his cellmate. It was a one-sided assault, every punch aimed at a vital spot. In a matter of seconds, he had beaten the other man so severely that he died. Even the officers on duty had been too slow to react.

Daniel’s well-behaved conduct over the past year had nearly made everyone forget that he was a murderer who had dismembered his victim—a monster who had received the leniency of a two-year reprieve only because his defense attorney had found a clever way to argue the case.

Now Daniel had reached the ending he was meant to face. He had committed an intentional crime during his reprieve, and the circumstances were especially severe. There was no reason to delay the sentence any longer. His execution was certain.

After the Criminal Judgment was issued, we notified the inmates one day in advance. Daniel learned that every moment of the final twenty-four hours of his life had already been arranged.

The next day, he would be allowed to meet with his relatives, take a long shower, eat a proper meal, receive pre-execution psychological counseling, undergo pre-execution identity verification, and then be handed over for sentence enforcement.

Daniel made a strange expression but said nothing.

“Do you have any questions?” I asked.

“No.”

Chapter 2

The next day, Daniel Carter was transferred to the death-row facility. As the psychologist assigned to counsel him, I was required to accompany him.

Condemned prisoners were permitted a final visit with their families, but Daniel was an orphan. No one had ever come to see him, and now there was no one to say goodbye.

The only person Daniel had kept in contact with was a male friend named Adrian Bennett. They exchanged letters every two months.

All prison correspondence had to be reviewed before it could be delivered. Daniel’s letters contained little more than polite questions about Adrian and his family, and Adrian would reply in detail. There was nothing improper in the actual content, but something between the lines felt subtly strange.

After considerable deliberation, my colleagues in the prison mailroom decided the letters carried an intimacy that did not seem entirely platonic. From that, they reached a rather startling conclusion.

Yet Adrian, supposedly Daniel’s closest friend, had never once appeared in the visitors’ room.

The most recent reply had been unusual. It had come from Adrian’s wife, Rachel. She had discovered the letters and written to demand to know who Daniel was.

That was how we learned Adrian had recently married. We suspected the news was what had driven Daniel to his sudden act of madness.

Now, weighed down by handcuffs and leg irons, Daniel dictated one final letter to Adrian. It contained the same ordinary questions as always, with only one sentence added at the end:

“There’s no need to reply.”

Two hours remained before the execution when I went to conduct his pre-execution counseling session.

Daniel had the refined features and quiet bearing of a scholar, but the knife scar and burn marks across his face lent him a certain menace.

He sat upright in the center of his cell, unnaturally calm.

Even the toughest prisoners tended to break down at this stage, weeping and begging as regret finally overwhelmed them. Daniel, however, gave me the strange impression that he did not believe he was going to die at all.

“Daniel, you have two hours left,” I said. “You need to prepare yourself. Is there anything you’d like to say?”

“I’m about to die, and you’re still worried about my mental health?” he asked. “Seems a little pointless.”

“It’s a necessary act of humane care.”

Though, in his case, I had to admit it did seem unnecessary.

“I’ve heard you were a brilliant criminal psychology student, Dr. Morgan,” Daniel said. “And now this is what you do. Don’t you think your talents are being wasted?”

For a moment, I had no answer.

Chapter 3

“I studied psychology too,” he continued. “Real psychology isn’t useless like this.”

I seized on the opening. “Then what use did you find for the psychology you studied?”

“Would you like to know?” He paused, his expression suddenly suggestive. “I’m about to face a firing squad. Once that happens, everything will be settled. What a boring ending.”

He leaned forward slightly.

“But I’d still like to struggle one last time. So tell me, how could I change an ending this dull?”

“You think you can overturn your conviction?”

“Why don’t I tell you a story, Dr. Morgan?”

I nodded. “That’s your right. I’m listening. But you don’t have much time.”

The West Ridge Execution Ground was right outside. I knew the place well. My family had once lived nearby, so coming back felt almost like returning home. In a way, I suppose it was another form of facing death without flinching.

In 1995, I was fifteen, a sophomore in middle school. My mother moved us into the workers’ dormitory belonging to the West Ridge No. 2 Machinery Works. The entire complex has been abandoned now.

Our building stood at the very back, right beside the execution ground. A chain-link fence separated the two, with a row of cedars planted along it.

Even so, if you looked out through the dormitory windows, you could still glimpse the execution ground between the branches.

Every morning at six, as soon as I woke up, I would take out my binoculars and watch the executions.

The sun had barely cleared the far side of the hills. The entire execution ground still lay beneath a dim blue dawn when the condemned prisoners were brought in. They were all living, breathing people, but the moment they stepped onto that patch of earth, every one of them walked with slumped shoulders and a gray, lifeless expression, as if their souls had already left their bodies.

Only when the rifles were loaded did they suddenly come back to themselves.

Some begged desperately for their lives. Some sobbed uncontrollably. Others struggled to run. It was common for prisoners to lose control of their bladders and bowels from terror. In the end, though, every one of them was subdued.

Then they knelt on the ground. At the officer’s signal, they opened their mouths wide and waited for the judgment coming from behind them.

When the gunshots rang out, hardly any birds were startled into flight. The hills fell silent again.

Waiting for an execution was agony. Once the appointed moment arrived, it was over in an instant.