Disclaimer: The Green Mile does not belong to me. It's Stephen King's creation. This story is for my entertainment only. Well, it's for others' entertainment as well if they choose to read it.

Author's Note: My characters are based off the film because I've seen it more than I've read the book. Eleanor Pierce is my creation, along with the made up parts of the plot that follows the original one the best way I can.

One.

Some summer nights were sweltering. Sometimes it was too hot to sleep, just like tonight. The window of my bedroom was wide open and the sounds of nature filled my room. No air came through my window, only sounds. I watched the walls of my bedroom as the moonlight casted the shadows of trees upon them. The crickets sang in a chorus, in tune. A sporadic hoot from a lonely owl could also be heard. Though it broke the crickets' song, it did not mar the nightly symphony.

On average, it did not take much to lull me to sleep, and had this been any other night, I would have been out like a light. But tonight was the night before I started my first ever job as a secretary at the same place my favorite uncle worked: E Block on Cold Mountain Penitentiary. I was nervous. I wanted to do well on my first day and I was making myself sick with worry. The fact that I would be working on Death Row, typing up the stories of executions did nothing to settle the uneasiness and second thoughts that had crept into my mind. Would it be too much to handle? Would my co-workers really just see me as a silly little girl when that wasn't who I am anymore?

A small part inside of me wanted to chicken out and turn the job down. But my father's farming business wasn't doing so well because of the drought and my family desperately needed income. Uncle Paul, my mother's older brother, pulled some strings with the prison warden to help hire me. E Block never had a secretary before, despite the fact that every other block had one. Paul pled my case and helped me out. He really just wanted to help me to support myself that way I could move out of my parents' house so they would have one less child to worry about. There were millions of people without jobs because of the Great Depression we were in, and now my job would be my life whether I wanted it or not.

Tomorrow I would know for sure if I did.

I turned over in bed and watched the wind make the trees dance. Little air blew into the room. I closed my eyes as it gently whipped my face and gave me the comforting hope that tomorrow would be all right. It couldn't be too bad. Uncle Paul would protect me as he always did. I was sure of that. He would pick me up shortly after six in the morning. Sometimes, he would stop by anyway because he passed our house on his way to work. And now he would be stopping by to pick me up.

I tossed in my bed some more. I was nineteen years old. I was still living at my parents' house. I was unwed—worse, I was single—and I would be doing a woman's job in a man's world. My life never went the way I wanted it to. But I couldn't help it. I just had to take everything in stride and with good humor. And I did because I was thankful for the things I had and did not covet the things I did not have. I never sat and whined about my, "Oh, woe is me," story because there were more serious things to worry about in the world and I had faith that everything would turn out all right in the end. Because God wouldn't let it end badly.

He would end everyone's suffering soon.

"Tomorrow is another day, Eleanor," I told myself quietly and shut my eyes. Sleep would come. I would just have to be patient.

And patience was something I never ran out of.