Black Widow Read Online Free PDF

about to take his last breath. She had loved him strong and hard for five years. But another part of her was angry at Dave.
If Dave wouldn’t have been so damn hotheaded about a chain, then he would still be with me. He would still be right here with me.
Just then Isis realized it was Tuesday. Date night. She began to cry but then heard a knock on the door.
    “You okay in there?” one of the detectives asked.
    Startled, she responded that she was fine. She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes with a cool paper towel.
    After coming out of the restroom, Isis entered another van, which took the witnesses over to Greensville Correctional Center, where the death-row inmates were brought a week before the actual execution and placed into solitary confinement so that a corrections officer could watch them around the clock to make sure they didn’t check out before the state-mandated checkout time.
    The viewing room was set up theater style. All of the witnesses sat on one side of a glass wall and the condemned prisoner on the other. There were about thirty chairs set up in six rows, five chairs on each row. The officers started play-jostling with one another, trying to be one of the first five to sit on the front. One would think that because they were all seasoned vets, the customary thing to do would be to let the virgin, or the lady, get a front-row seat. This didn’t seem to cross their minds.
    Maybe it was because Isis hadn’t filled herself up on doughnuts and orange juice, or maybe it was because she was just naturally quicker on her feet than the middle-aged men. Whatever it was, before anyone knew what had happened, Isis had swiftly slid around to the other side of the room and was seated on the left corner of the front row.
    Isis faced the table onto which they would strap Dave and administer the lethal injection.
    The walls were a depressing pale yellow. There was a stainless-steel gurney with a one-inch-thick white pad laying on it. A blue curtain hung around the gurney, hiding the medical technician and doctor who would be administering the injections. The prison guards wore blank expressions on their faces. There were three other prison officials in the death chamber who were dressed in blue dress suits. A corrections officer informed her that they were the “execution team.”
    The director of corrections, deputy of corrections, the warden, and two assistant wardens stood while the execution team did all the work. One of the members of the team was holding the phone that was supposed to be a direct line to the governor’s office in case he changed his mind at the last minute, but someone must’ve forgotten to pay the phone bill, because 8:50 PM came and left and that phone never rang.

    The seconds seemed like hours; the minutes seemed like days. Isis watched the clock over the door, the same clock that the doctor would use to record Dave’s death. She watched it as if she were the time keeper.
    Then finally, with the help of twenty guards, Dave was brought into the execution chamber. There were so many guards at first that everyone in the viewing room could barely see the prisoner, but she did. His skin was pale from a lack of sunlight, and he had lost a few pounds. Isis’s heart skipped and she felt short of breath. Just when she thought she going to pass out, she took a deep breath, filling her lungs with much-needed oxygen. She watched the guards move with the well-rehearsed choreography of a Janet Jackson video. In no time at all, they had David up on the gurney, strapped in. Once he was bound, another checked the straps to make sure they were all tight.
    “It doesn’t matter what you muthafuckas do,” Dave screamed. “Y’all can’t kill me!”
    Isis’s heart was pounding. She could feel a big lump in her throat. She thought she was going to lose all control when tears began to form in her eyes. But with all her might, she kept her cool. She kept silent. She kept still. No way could she get