I woke up early that day because I knew it was my day to die.

I wander across a campus which could be any college or university. I pass what feel like hundreds of nameless brick buildings, wandering until finally - lost - I ask for help. I say I have to get to an execution. The woman laughs as she shows me the say, saying “Boy, I hope this is the last one of those you have to attend!” I try to smile as I say “Yeah, me too.”

As I walk into the room I know I am supposed to find, my parents sit talking with two other people. The man says that the woman has just rescued a baby sewer rat but no longer wants to take care of it. Do we know anyone who might? I smile and say “Under completely different circumstances, I would take him off your hands right now.” I wonder if the man and the woman will understand what I am hinting at. They do not.

I glance over at my parents, but they act like today is any other day. I am wearing the specially designed clothes they will kill me in. I notice my mother staring at me, and when I ask about it, she wipes away a happy tear and says she’s waited my whole life to see me all dressed in white like this. The other woman - my friend and coworker - asks what I’m doing later. “Sorry,” I say. “Today’s no good. Raincheck?”

Occasionally, I flash back to what I imagine to be the life of the other me - the one who actually committed the crimes I will soon die for. The one the government is protecting. I am swimming in a giant outdoor pool, eating strawberries from a silver tray, looking at the exotic, older woman and her current “love” at the other end of the pool. Ignoring the war planes overhead.

When I flash back to my world, they are thanking me for taking the fall, they are strapping me in, they are promising to try to bring me back once the riots over my death have stopped. I feel my extremeties twitching. I discover that I am sobbing, without knowing that I’ve started to cry. I resign myself. I close my eyes. I wake up.