My final nights are spent in the wine cellar of the general's chateau. That idea probably sounds delightful, but unfortunately it does not presently hold wine – it has been converted to contain human chattel, and that presently means me. At night, I sometimes hear laughter and indecipherable joyous conversation from the general's entertainments above, and I wonder whether my capture is the cause of his guests' merriment. Although I say they are my final nights, in fact I have not been informed of my fate. It barely seems necessary – the government has had people shot for speaking up against it, so one can easily infer that my punishment will be terminal. I have passed information to the partisans, arranged raids to free their prisoners and even carried out a few assassinations – once on a priest. I am perversely glad that, if I am to share the fate of so many under this brutal regime, I have done something to earn it.

Every few hours, a meal of crude vegetable stew is silently thrust under my nose, and I am left to eat it with my bare hands. I suppose they do not want their catch to starve before the show. Inevitably my mind falls into pondering what it will be. The bullet? – no, too quick. The rope? - yes, that's it, probably the rope. Three other women, including our commander Ana, were arrested alongside me when our safe house was discovered, and the fascists will want to hang us all from the high gallows in the central square to send a message to the local populace. I shudder at the thought of the noose slipping over my head, the rough hemp fibres scratching the smooth skin of my neck as the rope is tightened, the fall....How long have I got? How long?

I am pacing the cellar one morning, passing time by imagining which wines were held on each shelf and what has become of them, when suddenly I hear a key in the lock. Oh God, they are coming for me! I have hoped this moment would be soon for the past three nights; now I just wish they would give me five more minutes. A shiver runs down my spine and a cold sweat breaks out all over my body, soaking further the sweaty, smelly, but still elegant white blouse and short blue skirt I have been wearing since my arrest.

The guards grab me roughly under the arms and begin to carry me out of my cell. “I can walk!” I say as defiantly as I can manage, but my voice fails me, emitting only a croak. They remove their hands for a moment. I try to stride forward defiantly, only for my legs to fail me as well, causing me to fall on my hands against the cold, rough tiles. “You walk about as well as you fight, bitch!” sneers one of the guards, grabbing my arms and lifting me once more. I am dragged out of the wine cellar, up the stairs and into the street. After becoming accustomed to the dismal cellar, my eyes are assaulted by the clear morning light.

As I am dragged through the streets, my trailing feet kicking up a cloud of dust from the street, a thought enters my head: nobody has told me I am going to die. Maybe they will just imprison me, torture me, or God knows what else. Horrible, admittedly, but at least I might live to have children, who will tell their own children how they must respect their funny old granny because of what she endured to make the revolution the glorious success that it ultimately was. Maybe if I just embrace this uncertainty it will make whatever awaits me more bearable. But then another thought drives this away. They are going to kill us and we must be prepared. We must stand on the gallows, give the revolutionary salute and scream one of our mottoes as loud as possible. That's why they have kept us apart and uninformed: to ensure we cannot plan something like that; that, panicking at our sudden realisation of our fates, we scream, beg and struggle, sending the message to the crowd that we regret our decisions to oppose their regime. We must resist: we must show that we regret nothing. Ana will not panic, and we must follow her example. That is our final mission, and we must not fail.

We have reached the town square, which is thronged with a huge, cheering crowd. Although the spectators obscure my vision of the scaffold itself, I know immediately from their position that my supposition was correct: our lives are to end on the gallows. But why are they cheering now, and what are they fixated on? As I am dragged closer, the answer becomes apparent. The hanging is already well under way – for Ana, it is over: her body dangles limply from the far left of the crossbeam, still covered by the plain floral dress she wore when she looked into my eyes maternally and said “Be brave, comrade: tomorrow is ours” as we were marched away side by side. As she twists on the rope, her face comes directly into my line of sight, and I realize there will be no maternal glances or reassuring words for me this time or ever again. Her face is swollen and blue; her eyes sit wide open and blank, flecked with broken blood vessels; her purple tongue hangs from the corner of her half-closed mouth, leaving a trail of saliva dripping down her cheek. As my eyes sweep down her lifeless body, I see a yellow-tinged wet patch at the crotch of her white cotton dress from where her bladder has released. The patch continues down the centre of her dress and spreads at the hem, with urine dripping from both her petite, bare feet onto the oil drum lying sideways beneath her that must have previously supported her under the crossbeam.

The horror of the site distracts my attention from Stella, who writhes, kicks and squirms next to her, emitting a choking, gurgling sound as she rapidly loses her fight against the noose. Just to my left, Maria, standing on her oil drum, trembles silently as a noose is slipped over her head and her hands are tied behind her back. She stares into my eyes with an indescribable look of desperate terror: there is little I can do to reassure her, but I return her glance with sympathy. Almost as soon as I do so, a soldier's foot kicks the empty barrel from beneath her feet with an echoing metallic boom, causing her to fall barely six inches and emit a sickening strangled squawk as the noose cinches tight. I look along the gallows: Ana's flaccid, urine-stained figure hanging dead on the left; Stella's body quivering silently in the last agonies of death next to her; Maria thrashing and wriggling furiously in a futile struggle for life barely two feet from me – the next, and final, few minutes of my life staged as a grim tableau of my comrades; an assembly line of death. I was told when I joined the uprising only to do so so if I was willing to sacrifice my life for my beliefs, and I have subsequently told this to many new recruits. But I am now confronted as never before with the stark reality that, even if the partisans do succeed in building the better society I have fought so hard for, I will never know it. I briefly allow myself to wonder whether I might have been wrong about religion: maybe I will be welcomed into heaven for my sacrifice and watch the glorious triumph of the people over fascist dictatorship from on high. Then again, maybe I will be going somewhere else entirely for my campaign against religion and for that priest. I banish both thoughts. No, I tell myself: religion is the opium of the people, and I must not yield to it now. But who is the fifth noose for?

The soldiers have run out of barrels to support me and this unidentified fifth person. “Get that one,” the executioner says to his subordinate. The junior soldier reaches under Ana's dangling, dead feet to retrieve the barrel that had supported her only a few minutes ago. As he does so, Ana's body twitches, and a final burst of urine dribbles from her bladder onto the back of the soldier's head. In the depths of my despair, I still chuckle at the notion that, in death, Ana's body is capable of one last, symbolic act of resistance. “Bitch!” says the soldier angrily, kicking Ana's limp legs and causing her body to sway pendulously. He then passes the barrel to his superior, who orders me sharply “Up!” It would be undignified, and inevitably futile, to resist, so I step onto the barrel under my own failing strength. Only after doing so do I feel the wetness under the soles of my feet and, looking down, realise that I am standing in a puddle of Ana's urine. “Watch your step,” grins the executioner sadistically. Maria now seems to have lost consciousness, leaving her body twitching and jerking spasmodically.

I look out over the sea of cheering, laughing faces and wonder whether those people's liberation was really worth my life. But it is impossible to know how many of those cheers are sincere: I myself have always instructed our comrades to ensure that, to preserve their own cover, they must occupy the front row, cheering loudest when their fellow partisans are publicly tortured or executed. I have suppressed my nausea and cheered in such situations myself. One will achieve little for the revolution by making a salute or being seen crying for one's fallen comrades: one may achieve everything by convincing the military that one is a trustworthy fascist. There are even rumours that the military stages these gruesome spectacles partly to monitor the reactions of individual members of the crowd. I can pick out several comrades from among the cheering crowd, but I try not to focus on them.

As the noose brushes against my hair and ears and my arms are pinioned behind me, the partisan destined for the fifth noose is led forth. I had thought my despair had reached its nadir, but it suddenly descends over an unseen cliff as I gaze upon the face of Sophia. Please, anyone but Sophia! While Ana had been my mentor, Sophia had been my protégé: when I had contemplated my own death or capture, I had always thought Sophia would carry on and complete my work. The knot slides into position under my left ear. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, intelligent and beautiful beyond measure, Sophia had had no experience of guerilla warfare, but she would quickly have become better than any of us. A crack shot, a fearless warrior and a superb tactician, she had physically embodied everything the fascists idealized, but she had been willing to risk everything to fight with us for what she believed in. Almost a decade younger than me, she had turned to me for both instruction and emotional support. I remember her warm, soft cheek lying across my stomach as I stroked her silken, golden hair after her first kill; clutching her tearful face to my chest when her school friend had been rounded up and shot. Now I can do nothing for her: she will learn from me what it is like to hang and, seconds later, will be at the end of a rope herself. The only further lesson I can teach her is how to die. With that thought echoing in my mind, I hear the executioner step back, ready to run forward and kick my barrel away. Mustering all my remaining courage, I inhale one last time and scream at the top of my voice: “Comrades: tomorrow is ours!”

As I finish the last syllable, I feel the barrel slide from beneath my feet. Almost immediately, the noose breaks my fall, jerking my head sideways and biting hard into my neck. The involuntary scream from my lungs is cut off into the same squawk I heard moments ago from Maria and I find myself thrashing, gurgling, writhing and squirming on the rope like a fish on the end of a line. My vision becomes unfocused; the cheering of the crowd seems to acquire an echo, becoming an indecipherable blur of sound; my lungs burn as they desperately strain for air. My head aches unbearably and feels like it is swelling up, about to explode. The blur of cheers becomes fainter and is joined by a high-pitched ringing in my ears. Gradually, my arms and legs feel heavier and heavier, until I can no longer lift them at all. My head drops limply onto my chest and my vision begins to fade to black. The ringing becomes deafening. As I feel warm urine splashing down the insides of my legs, I hear two final sounds underneath the ringing – the faint, echoing cry of Sophia's sonorous voice proclaiming, “Comrades: tomorrow is ours!” and, moments later, a thud. I can no longer control a single muscle of my body, but as I pass into the void of unconsciousness, I smile inside.

That night, five limp figures dangle peacefully from the gallows in the centre of the town square, their silhouettes barely visible in the moonlight. As the figures sway gently in the breeze, the silence is punctuated by an occasional creak from one of the ropes. The gentle footsteps of a sixth figure, unseen beneath the shadow of the buildings, are almost inaudible in one corner of the square. Suddenly the footsteps break into a run, and the sixth figure scuttles from its corner, its silhouette scurrying across to the gallows and stopping underneath the hanging figure second from the right. “Auntie, please, wake up!” says a pleading, tearful female voice. “I'll do anything, just please, wake up.” The mysterious figure grabs hold of the body's ice-cold, urine-stained foot and kisses it, whispering, “Auntie, I want you to know something. I swear: I will do what you have done. I don't care what it takes. I will get the people who have done this to you out of power. I will make your dream come true!” And with that, the mysterious figure scurries back into the shadows and is not seen again.

The fascists have sent a message.