"When This Is Over" is the twelfth track from Hayden Desser's debut full-length album, Everything I Long For, released in 1995 on Hardwood Records. It features Hayden on vocals and guitar and, as one of the few tracks on the album with guest musicians, Joao Carvalho on drums.

October 25, 1994. Union, South Carolina, a small town of about 10 000, fifty-five miles northwest of Columbia. Susan Smith, mother of two young boys, three-year-old Michael and fourteen-month-old Alex, distraught over a failing relationship, commits what is considered by many to be one of the most horrific crimes imaginable: with the two boys strapped into the back seat of her Mazda, she pushes it off a boat ramp and into John D. Long Lake, leaving them to drown.

The song begins quietly, with palm-muted acoustic and whispered vocals; so quietly, in fact, that you are tempted to turn up the stereo, thinking that maybe this is one of those tracks that are inexplicably recorded at an inordinately low volume.

I wake up beside you in mom's car I try to get out you're strapped to The back seat, I am too

The murders took place late at night. Smith had been engaged in a heated love affair with a man named Tom Findlay, who was considering breaking off the relationship; one of the reasons he cited was that he and her children were incompatible.

During Smith's 1995 trial, during which a plea of not guilty was entered on her behalf, the defence focused on her troubled past; her parents had divorced when she was six years old, her father had committed suicide shortly after, and after the subsequent remarriage of her mother she had been sexually molested by her stepfather. This in no way justifies her actions. Perhaps instead it serves to place them in context.

The car is rolling down to water, why are we Strapped to our seats, strapped, what did we do I cleaned my room just as she asked me to

Here, the song changes dynamic quickly and brutally; percussion kicks in and the subtlety of palm-muting disappears to be replaced by vicious strumming of the sort that snaps strings in quantity, and the soft whispers are replaced by Hayden's characteristic ferocious-sounding half-shouted and half-growled snarl.

The prosecution painted a far different portrait of Smith; rather than the disturbed young woman haunted by ghosts of a past which left permanent emotional scars, she was depicted as a level-headed woman who knew precisely what she was doing when she murdered her two children in cold blood to win the affections of her lover.

Filling up, dirty water My chin's up, going under You're still asleep, baby brother I'll wake you up when this is over

The vocals and their accompaniment become quiet again. You can almost believe that the screaming of moments before didn't actually happen; Hayden's hypnotic whisper lulls you into self-doubt and disbelief.

A particularly emotional segment of the trial revolved around a re-enactment of the tragedy, with a video camera mounted in the back window of a car pushed off the same boat ramp to show the jurors what the two boys would have seen as the car slowly filled with water and sank. It was estimated that they survived for six minutes before dying of asphyxiation.

The car is rolling down to water, why are we Strapped to our seats, strapped, what did we do I brushed my teeth just as she asked me to

Another swift dynamic change. This time you're half expecting it, but it still grates.

The jury, composed of nine men and three women, took less than three hours to reach a decision: guilty, on two counts of murder.

This is it, baby brother One more breath together We're almost underwater Where is mom, I miss her

Quiet again, only here the vocals sound almost desperate, like a plea for an explanation, or failing that for comfort in the face of something terrifying.

Smith was sentenced to life in prison, rather than the death penalty as pressed for by the prosecution and Smith's estranged husband and father of the children, David Smith. Under South Carolina law she will be eligible for parole thirty years from the date of her sentencing, in 2025.

The car has rolled into the water, why are we Dying in this way, what did we do I was nice to him, her boyfriend, this is true

David Smith maintains that the death penalty would have been more appropriate than a prison term, in light of the shocking severity of the crime. He has not remarried since the murders of his only two children and the imprisonment of his ex-wife.

When people come to search the lake we'll be Found in our pyjamas, they will see A big mistake was all that this must be

When the car was pulled from the lake, three-year-old Michael was found half-out of his car seat with his hands pressed to the glass of the back window, perhaps in a desperate attempt to escape as he suffocated, or perhaps screaming for help from his mother.

The song concludes with a kick from percussion and a wordless howl. Now it seems as though it has always been like this, and it was the quiet sections that were imagined. I can't listen to it anymore without shivering.

Sources: http://www.augustachronicle.com/headlines/090296/drownings.html http://www.wiretapmag.org/story.html?StoryID=9098 http://www.cnn.com/EVENTS/year_in_review/us/smith.html Lyrics to "When This Is Over" taken from Everything I Long For and copyright Hayden Desser, 1995.