Prisoners (Laura Opishinski)

Everyday we hear news of more prisoners being mutilated, raped, and butchered by the mobs of disloyal citizens thirsty for our blood. We rot in our cells, day after day, night after night. When we first head of the attacks, the first being the murder of twenty four priests began transferred to a prison on the 2nd of September, 1792 . Tales of the dead bodies of nobles and priests piled high, disembodied limbs lying in the streets. Myself and the other priests in our prison began devising ways of escape, ways to persuade the angry peasants from murdering us in cold blood. But as the time passed, and news of each murder reached us, each more gruesome and grotesque than the previous, we began to pray to be killed in the least painful way possible. We waited in our prison, like pigs for slaughter in the butcher house. It stank of sweat and blood, a sharp, sour odor. The smell of fear. We heard of the mob courts that took place before the killings, terrifying trials in which the assassins played the judges, donned in bloodied butcher aprons and weapons strapped to their sides. I was desperate for hope, not wanting to believe that I would face such a terrible fate as that of the Princess Mme de Lamballe, a young woman who was raped, mutilated, head cut of and placed on a pike to be paraded around like a trophy stag. The news of what was later known as the "September Massacres," was disgusting and disturbing, but above all, it was petrifying. News of the Convent of Carmelites' priests being murdered reaches us as well. The assassins were known to work in deep, grim silence. Silent as death. I paced my cell for hours every day, to restless to sit still. The day we have been fearing, yet expecting arrives when we hear the shouts of men echoing through the halls, driven by blood lust. I press myself into the corner, desperate not to be seen, to be passed by. A man who reeks of blood an wine opens the door, screaming like a banshee. I watch as he advances towards me,  raises his sword, and swings.