It seemed like an easy twelve grand. Each. The heroin would never be detected in the lead-lined bottom of the travel bag. It was supposed to be bye bye Bangkok and in a few hours, Holly and Sam would be back home in Melbourne where they belonged. But that didn't happen.
The hotel room robbery was the start of it all. With all their money gone, the couple were forced to fall into the drugs trade in order to pay their way home. They weren't professionals- just out of university in fact, and backpacking in Asia. They'd been doing errands for local pushers and people like that, but when the opportunity arose to smuggle a quantity of heroin out of Thailand and back to Australia, they jumped at it. Not only were they finally going home, but they were making big bucks on the side too. The bucks were big for a reason- the risk. The punishment for drug trafficking was death.
The customs official knew there was something amiss with the tan leather bag. Holly and Sam could hear their hearts beating as he inspected it far more carefully than any other piece of luggage. Maybe their nervous perspiration had given them away.
Arrested, it was only a few months before they were tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The appeals failed. Pleading to the president didn't work either. The sentence would be carried out as an example to all foreigners that Thailand would not tolerate drug traffickers.
Prison was unbearable. The sweat, the smells, the rancid food. That was just the start of it. Sleep was unattainable in the horribly balmy summer nights- six to a cell, each fighting for a place to rest, afraid to turn at night, fixed in the one cramped position until morning, hot, unwashed bodies thrown together, the threat of buggery imminent. It was much the same for both Holly and Sam. Their situations were made all the worse by the fact that, as death row prisoners, their ankles were shackled day and night from the time they arrived at the jail until they would leave. In coffins.
Nobody could ever explain the need for the shackles. They just served to remind the condemned of their impending death and make what remained of their lives, intolerable. Prisoners were not informed of the date of their execution until just two days before, which made the suspense all the more painful.
But that was nothing. Neither was the hot squalor, nor the cruel shackles. For Holly and Sam, the most agonising torture was being separated. Though in the same building, they were never allowed to see each other. The men's and women's section were much the same worlds yet one was invariably shut off from the other. Together, Sam and Holly could have endured anything, knowing that whatever life threw at them, they could always hold each other close and everything would be all right. But apart they were crippled. Everything was pointless now. Death would be the only release from the prison of each other's absence. Forgotten by the outside world, they both longed for the peal of the guns.
It was August 6th when they were told when they were going to die. In two days, they would cease to be. Asked by their guards if they had any last requests, both Holly and Sam unthinkingly said the same thing. They each wished to spend the night before their executions with each other. The request was authorised.
They threw Holly into a ten by six solitary cell the day before she died. The steel door did little to mask the clanking of chains as Sam shuffled down the corridor flanked by two guards, his ankles and wrists bound together. Sitting expectantly on the edge of the hard bed, Holly perked up at the sound. Finally, she and her love could be together after being torn apart for so long.
Throwing the bolt, the guard led Sam in. Leaping excitedly to her feet, Holly tripped, her legs still shackled. Crawling to her feet again, the guard took her ankle and roughly unlocked the manacles. With Sam unbound, the guards left. Alone at last.
Not a word. Slowly moving towards each other, they pressed their grey, jump-suited bodies together. Their lips locked tighter than any shackles. Relief. Back together, each the world to the other. Tumbling back onto the bed, their lips never parted. Tongues dancing, 'oh I missed you''s never said, only felt. Holly clawed Sam's sandy hair. Deeply breathing her long lost sweet scent, he parted her long brown hair kissing her neck, biting ever so slightly, a quiver in her exhale.
