The Electric Chair

Flash Fiction

She was innocent, and she knew it, thought Pearl. But everyone else thought she was guilty, and sometimes she didn’t know if she was innocent. She couldn’t remember. But the state thought she was guilty and was going to put her in the electric chair tomorrow. The media had condemned her a long time ago. Everyone claimed that she had shot dead her three children and husband and then set the house on fire to cover up the crime, hoping the flames would burn the evidence away. But that did not happen. Her family’s charred bodies were found within with bullet wounds. Her husband and three little girls.

It was hot in the prison. It was midsummer. Her thoughts were so confused. She could barely remember what happened that night, much less explain to anyone else. She had tried so hard to forget. She of course had tried to prove her innocence. But the state said she had a motive. What had that motive supposedly been again? Pearl thought. More than anything else, she’d been confused through the whole thing. Her lawyer had tried to get her off by saying she was too mentally incompetent to be punished for it, that she needed help, not prison, that she had certainly not planned it, and that there was some doubt she had even done it.

But somehow, no one had listened, and years later, she was sentenced to die. She knew what death was. She had seen it staring at her that night.Her husband was going to shoot her. Yes, it’s true she was involved with another man. But, she still did not believe then or now, she deserved death.The death she had avoided that night or the death she could not avoid tomorrow morning. She had shot him instead. But, she knew he was going to shoot himself dead after her. So she was just saving herself, that was her justification.

As for what had happened to her daughters..she knew she was innocent of that, no matter what anyone said.She had been in her bedroom and walked into the kitchen and there were her three daughters, dead. There was her husband with a gun.But why was she thinking about this? Tomorrow, she was going to the electric chair. She hoped to find peace and understanding after death.