From the journal of Correctional Officer Steven Williams, July 22

July 22, 2017

     Last night was a nightmare. At dusk, we started out plan by lobbing smoke bombs through a bunch of windows and let the house fill with smoke. We let them think we were just using the smoke to move our positions and repeated the smoke bombs about every hour until midnight. Then we stopped and seemed to settle down for the night. Around 2 am, we put the rest of our plan in action. We lobbed smoke bombs, tear gas and then, once visibility was obscured, we used percussion grenades to confuse their senses.

     Right after the percussion grenades, we went in as a coordinated team, wearing our gas masks, moving in pairs and sweeping each room as we went. Gary and I went after Charlies last known position and found him retching on the kitchen floor. We quickly subdued and secured him. Once the others were also cuffed and subdued, we dragged them all out to the yard where lights had been set up and the air was fresher.

     Charlie started yelling curses and vulgar phrases as soon as he stopped throwing up. He refused to stop and just yelled louder when he was told to shut up. Finally, Gary grabbed the duct tape and I helped to secure his mouth closed. Finally, quiet.

     The others of his group, Irene, Carla, Mason and Faith, just stared ahead and stayed silent. They wouldn't even acknowledge that we were there or that they were there and in the position they were in. We tried to talk to them, reason with them. Nothing. We tried separating Charlie from the rest of them, but they still refused to respond to any of us. Finally, we stopped trying to talk to them and moved them into the living room under guard while we stayed in the yard to decide what to do with them. There really was no option other than killing them. Now we had to decide how.

     We secured them for the night in the pantry, which only had the one door and no windows, with a large number of guards and decided to call a meeting of any of our community that was interested in what had happened. This was too big a decision to make without input from other people in our group. When the meeting came, there were more people present then I'd expected and I was glad to see people were interested in the well being of our community.

     Linda and Aaron called the meeting to order and explained everything that'd happened. Then Gary stood up and explained why we couldn't let them go and I explained why we couldn't keep them secured for any significant period of time. Both of those options had too many things that could go wrong and we explored as many of them as we could think of. Then we came to the main point. If we were going to have to kill them and any others who we rejected through the interview process, how were we going to do it. Do we shoot them, hang them, cut their heads off? Who was going to do the killing?

     The discussion went on for hours. People came and said their piece, some stayed and some left. Others of our group heard what was being decided and joined the meeting. It became heated at times, with Carol S even saying we needed to vote on whether we would use the death penalty before we could say they had to die. Luckily, everyone else saw that we couldn't do anything but take them out and she was quickly overruled. Finally, hours after the meeting started, it was decided to have a vote after dinner and all the adults, including Jenna, Sean and their age group, could vote on the method and suggest how we decide who would carry out the sentence. Tomorrow, we will know who is chosen and whatever penalty is decided will be carried out. When they executed prisoners in the jail system I worked in before the pandemic, they used to say “May God have mercy on your souls”. But, if there is a God, I don't know if I want him to have mercy on these people. They came to our home and stayed under our roof and tried to kill us. May they burn in Hell forever is more how I feel about it. God forgive me.

As a writer and artist, I appreciate any readers and their comments. Thank you for taking the time to read this blog. Please, come read the other blog I write for our artisan collective, Raven's Castle Creations, on our website at www.ravencastlecreations.com. It includes posts on art, the mythology of symbols we use in our art, history and more! Also, come see the art we produce in our Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/RavenCastleCreations. Follow us on Twitter at @ravencastleart and on Facebook at @ravencastlecreations.