What's the time? I wake, bleary eyed, to the sound of footsteps in the cell corridor. A glance through the window of my cell reveals the Sun isn't yet up. It's oppressively hot in here as the window is bulletproof plexiglas that doesn't let through a morsel of air: bars aren't allowed on row windows, in case we smuggle in a belt or a shoelace and try to anticipate the law. We're the prison's prey and it's determined not to let us escape. There are no clocks in our cells, but you develop some special skills in here without knowing it, one of which is the ability to tell the time with considerable accuracy by the look of the sky: I reckon it's about 5.45. Breakfast isn't for another couple of hours, so they must be doing some random pre-dawn cell searches. The guards search our cells quite intensively, because we've got more reason than other prisoners to turn to drugs – and less to lose if we're caught. And God forbid we should find something to make the time pass more easily. Either that or they're bringing a new prisoner onto the row...or removing some old ones. I guess we'll find out at breakfast if there's a new face in the canteen. If it's the alternative, we'll know from the faint clatter in about half an hour that I guess must be the trap springing. They soundproof the walls of the chamber, so no one in the prison supposedly hears it; but all that accomplishes is to filter out the high frequency sounds, leaving a faint rumble like distant thunder – eerily appropriate for what is, effectively, the sound of death.

The footsteps keep coming, getting louder and louder, until they stop outside my cell and the door slides open. The warden enters – a portly, grey-haired man – and I instinctively spring to my feet.

"Turn around please, Miss Smith. Hands behind your back," he says in his deep baritone.

"All right, I know the drill. You do this often enough," I say, trying to sound disparaging, but failing to hide the nervous inflexion in my voice. I look the warden directly in the eye: he looks away. I turn around to face the wall, and almost immediately feel the cold metal of the handcuffs clapped onto my wrists. To my surprise, a moment later leg irons are clapped around my ankles: this seems a bit excessive.

The arms of two guards grab my shoulders. "Come with us, please," the warden says, sternly, still avoiding my gaze.

"Oh, shit! You're not going to give me a cavity search are you?" I say, speaking in the same sharply disparaging tone, as though to imply that this is the worst possibility imaginable. The warden remains silent; and, as the guards manhandle me barefoot out of my cell and down the corridor, my leg irons jingling with every slow step, I start to think it may be the best. But no, I can't think about that. A sweat breaks out all over my body. Surely I'd have known – or would I? How would I have known? They give us a fortnightly medical here, noting down our heights and weights along with our other vital signs. They tell us it's for our own good – a compassionate thing to make sure that vulnerable prisoners like us stay healthy. They don't mention that it's a convenient way to avoid having to tell us when they're measuring us for the drop.

I cast my mind back to my last medical: was the nurse, I wonder, unusually careful when she was measuring my weight. Perhaps she knew something. Did she avoid eye contact when she took my blood pressure? But no – don't be silly Sara – you didn't notice anything awry then: you're probably imagining things now. I feel the undersides of my arms being grabbed firmly and realize that the floor is starting to swim beneath me as I become lightheaded and sink under my own weight. The leg irons continue to jingle, jingle, jingle.

We've reached the end of the corridor and a door labelled 'medical room 2'. This isn't the usual infirmary. I wonder absent-mindedly where medical room 1 is. The door slides open and I'm virtually carried inside by the guards. They take me to a curtained section, like a hospital bed, containing a toilet. "We need you to empty your bladder and bowel, please, Miss Smith," he says, gesturing to the toilet, before pulling the curtained around. I look at the toilet, and then, puzzled, at the warden.

"Don't you need me to piss in the pot, so you can check I haven't been up to anything naughty?" I say.

"No, that's not necessary this time," he says softly. He offers a slight smile, that I'm sure is supposed to look benevolent, but instead seems merely alarming, and steps outside. A female nurse stays inside and approaches me, pulling down my orange pyjamas to my knees, where they sit on my leg irons, followed by my knickers. "Will someone tell me what's going on, please?" I say, rapidly and nervously. She looks away. I sit down, uncomfortably, with my wrists still cuffed behind my back. I try to force myself to go – I kind of feel like I need to – but I'm so nervous I can't relax my muscles properly; so, while I manage to squeeze a few meagre drops of piss, I can't squeeze any shit.

"I'm sorry, I can't," I say, embarrassed.

"It doesn't matter," the nurse says, with that same faux-reassuring smile.

The nurse reaches over and pulls out a box of disposable latex gloves from a set of drawers on her left, putting them on. So it is just going to be a cavity search after all!

"Holy shit! You scared me," I say, "All right: let's get it over with. I turn my back, still bare, to her, expecting to feel the touch of latex on my buttocks. She avoids eye contact, instead looking straight down at the drawer underneath, which she opens, pulling out a set of medical shears.

"What the...?" I say, bemused once again. She places her fingers in the legholes of my knickers, which are still around my ankles, and pulls them away from my legs before cutting straight through them and throwing them in the bin by her feet.

"Hey! Fuck you! Those were a Christmas present from my mother– they weren't prison issue shit. You'll pay for those! What the hell's going on here?" She remains silent and continues to avoid my gaze, opening the bottom drawer and pulling out a white object. It takes me a moment to process what it is, realizing only when she starts slipping a thick, padded diaper around by buttocks and between my legs, fastening it tightly around the sides with press studs. Holy shit! It's really happening! I look down at her, and, as she pulls up my now tight-fitting orange pyjamas, teasing the elastic waistband over the bulky diaper, she meets my gaze for the first time.

"I'm sorry," she says, then looks away again.

Almost immediately, the warden pulls back the curtain. The guards step inside and grab me once again under the arms. "Oh God! You're not really going to do this here, now, this morning, are you?" Maybe this is all some kind of sick joke – you read those stories in the newspapers about mock executions. Maybe they're just trying to fuck with me to get back at me for that joke I made in the canteen about the warden's wife. No: they wouldn't do that. This is really happening. Although I'm barely walking, my feet are still touching the ground. Come on, Sara: these are probably some of the last steps you'll ever take: you don't want to be carried like a cripple. Put your damned feet on the ground and walk properly. That's it, straighten your legs – push up away from their arms and walk. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot: that's all you can control now so do it well! With every step I hear the crinkling of the plastic cover on the diaper concealed beneath my pyjamas: so I guess it's true – you do piss and shit yourself! I'm sweating all over from the heat and terror and I can feel the moisture building up in my crotch. I'm starting to itch, but I can't scratch.

We've started to climb a set of steps. I'm half way up without realizing it. There's a door at the top. Irrationally, I just want to go as slowly as possible as I can't bear to see what's behind it – I guess I know already. Come on: left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. The door opens...Oh fuck, there are three nooses, hanging from one long crossbeam above one huge double-leaved trap that dominates the back of the room. I wonder who's going with me. Almost simultaneously, another door opens in the opposite wall and Tamara is marched in through it. I look into her eyes but I don't speak: I don't think either of us trusts herself not to burst into tears. The linoleum-lined trap echoes ominously beneath our feet as our feet - mine bare, Tamara's in prison-issue slippers - step on to it. I'm hauled towards the nearest noose and she's positioned in front of her nearest. A few seconds afterwards, screaming like a banshee and making pathetic attempts to fight, comes Emily, hauled in from a door in the back of the room. I look through the noose – my noose – at the front of the room, where there is a single row of five seats, with five spectators already in position to see us suffer. Some I recognize: the one on the end is Dr Schneider – nice girl, always helpful and compassionate when you've got a health problem – guess this is the other part of her job. She's probably got the end seat so she can hop out quickly in a few minutes to check we're dead without pushing past the others. I wonder where her stethoscope is. I shudder and look away – but there isn't much to look at in this stark, functional room that doesn't remind me of death. They've finally managed to manoeuvre Emily into position behind the middle noose, so the prison governor steps to the front of the platform and takes out a book: "Tamara Hamilton," he begins. Oh God! Don't fucking read the charges: we all know why we're here.

I don't want to look him in the eye...I can't look anyone in the eye, so while he talks I focus on the rope: almost an inch think and smelling of hemp. I remember that smell from when Dad and I used to go boating when I was a kid. I wonder whether he knows about this. I wonder how he'll react when he finds out. Mum will cry, Dad...I think he believes he lost his daughter a long time ago. Above my head there's a length wound into a coil, probably meticulously measured out to ensure that the drop snaps my neck like a twig without wrenching my head off. I guess I should hope that the... that he's done his job well, but, right now, I can't conceptualize being dead, but I can imagine being paralysed, having no control, just dangling...I wonder what it will feel like. Will I hear the snap? I shiver.

"Sara Smith..." he's on to me. A few words jump out from the speech: "murder"..."death"...and, above all, "hanged by the neck until you are dead". I imagine everyone standing around my limp body, impatiently tapping their feet and looking at their watches as they wait for me to die. Emily continues to scream.

At last, the moment I've hoped for and feared: he's finished. The word "proceed". Almost immediately, a thick leather belt is slipped around my upper body and arms and pulled tight, pinioning my arms to my torso. I feel another passed around my knees as everything goes black. What happened? I realize that a hood has been slipped over my head. God, that was the last thing I'd ever see: it wasn't exactly a pretty sight but I'd have at least tried to appreciate it if I'd realized that I'd never see anything again. The finality makes me shudder again. My eyes are effectively useless now...they might as well not be there at all. Almost immediately, I hear the rope brush against the hood and the heavy knot drop on to my left shoulder. The noose is pulled tight around my throat, until it almost squeezes, like a snake poised to strike. I can hear Emily continue to scream and wail, but the sound is dulled now. I'm sealed from the outside world with all these belts and cuffs and this musty-smelling bag, like a package. The only difference is that I'm going to be deliberately dropped and broken. Dropped and broken. I can't stop imagining my head being forced to an impossible angle and my body hanging limp and useless. Shielded from the gaze of the onlookers, I start to sniffle and sob.

The hangman has presumably finished hooding and noosing all three of us now, for the room has gone silent except for the screaming of Emily on my right and the loud, echoing footsteps of the executioner and his assistants on the trap. Inside the hood, I can feel the sweaty, damp touch of the exhaled air from each one of my laboured breaths. I've never been so conscious of my breathing as I am now, when every single breath could be my last. Oh God! Am I pissing myself already. How humiliating is that to spend my last moments on Earth pissing myself? Actually, fuck it, who cares about dignity now? They're about to kill you: in a few minutes you won't even be a human being to worry about dignity – let it flow. In a kind of final, private act of defiance, I even push slightly: the wet sensation spreading around my abdomen is pleasantly warm and comforting – and at least I know I can still feel something. I'm becoming dizzy and I can't see anything inside this hood. Will I know when I'm falling? Am I falling already? Every breath could me my last: inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. How long have I been like this?

I hear a clatter and suddenly I know I'm falling somehow. A clatter, like a volley of gunfire. I realize that was our necks snapping in quick succession. Aaah! The pain hits me, like a hot poker plunged into the back of my head. I can't feel anything...I can't move anything...I can't breathe. What's that loud roaring, crashing noise in my head, like ocean waves? Is this what death sounds like? Which one of those cracks was my neck? I can't breathe...I can't breathe...I can't...

Official execution report:

Clio Osborne

Triple execution of Emily Columbo, Tamara Hamilton and Sara Smith

Time/Date: 06.00 3^rd December 2015

Execution was according to textbook procedure. Mrs Hamilton and Miss Smith were compliant, although Miss Columbo was resistant. Nevertheless, chief executioner Jack Robinson and assistant Gareth Gapes conducted themselves with exemplary professionalism and skill and were able to induce all three prisoners into position with no use of special measures and minimal delay. The trap was released at approximately 6.03am. Audible sounds indicated clear spinal fracture in all three cases and all prisoners appeared to exhibit near-instantaneous unconsciousness. Miss Columbo exhibited pronounced convulsions but these appeared to be the result of unconscious reflex. Mrs Hamilton and Miss Smith exhibited minimal convulsions. Chief prison medical officer Dr Lisa Schneider checked all three prisoners' chests at 6.10am, finding no audible heartbeat. In accordance with procedure, prisoners were left hanging until 7.03am, whereupon the bodies were removed for autopsy before being returned to families. Post-mortem examinations of all three prisoners (attached in Appendix 1) confirmed spinal fracture in all three bodies – specifically c1/c2 in the case of Mrs Hamilton, c2/c3 in the case of Miss Columbo and a crush injury to the third vertebra in the case of Miss Smith. Post-mortem examination also established that urination had occurred in the cases of Miss Smith and Miss Columbo and defecation in the case of Miss Columbo. All staff performed in strict adherence to protocol in challenging circumstances and my recommendation is that a formal commendation be added to the personnel files of Jack Robinson, Gareth Gapes and Dr Lisa Schneider, as well as Harold Bergen, David Jacobsen, William Lukey, Robert Blair, Eric Taylor and Diane Blanchett, who acted as guards.

Signed

Clio Osborne (Miss)

Execution supervisor

Countersigned and endorsed

Robert Weiss (Mr)

Prison governor.