The stuff of nightmares

If you're not an Australian it's quite possible you haven't had the opportunity to know of this[^] case.

I'm not going to canvass the rights or wrongs of the case as such. But I've had nightmares about it, all of them about how the poor bastard sitting on death row must feel. There's an overlay of the mechanics probably brought about by too much reading about the process of executing someone by hanging. Not even the process so much as the grinding of time. We all of us live with the knowledge of mortality but very few of us know the exact moment and method of our exit from this world.

I've been setting off for my nightly walk, unable to not count how many hours Nguyen has left in this world. Unable to stop thinking about what I was doing on December 2 of year 19xx. Some of the reports in the Herald Sun or the Melbourne Age have reduced me to tears.

I don't count down the hours as desperately as he must do and I think I have a reasonable chance of being alive on December 3 this year but I'm sure I'll never be able to pass through Changi Airport Singapore again without thinking of Nguyen.