To whoever finds this after I’m gone,

The day I’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. Sitting in this cold, damp cell for fifteen years, I should be glad that I could at least get some fresh air. Yet, I’m not. I’m frightened.

Anxiety has been eating me up all night. Every guard that walked past my cell could have been the person taking me to my final resting place. All I wanted to do was cry. Instead, I sat, paralysed with fear with only the rats for company.

I want to scream. “Enemy of the state” I was deemed as. Enemy of the state? For believing in something that seemed just a bit bigger than the lives we knew. Our world seemed to have a limit, but I believed, and still do, that there is so much more out there yet to be discovered.

They deemed me a villain at my trial. Deemed me a spawn of Satan when they locked me up. Deemed me as someone to be forgotten about when they left me to rot for over a decade.

And yet, here it was. My execution day. The reminder to everyone that I’m still here, and still believing in the same thing I always had. That the stars weren’t just God’s light and that there was more to life than what the Bible had been teaching us.

Anyway, I guess this could be classed as my final words. I’m scared, but curious to know what lies on the other side.

Yours truly,

Amelia Reins