Christa Pike has one major fear about execution as she's set to die in 48 hours

After 30 years on death row, Christa Pike says she has 'the most horrible nightmares' as she faces death by lethal injection on Wednesday (30 September).

Pike, 50, is staring execution in the face for the murder of her Job Corps Centre classmate Colleen Slemmer in 1995.

At the age of 18, she killed Slemmer alongside her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and their friend Shadolla Peterson lured Slemmer to a remote area of the University of Tennessee’s agricultural campus, according to the Associated Press.

There, she was beaten, tortured, and killed, before Pike allegedly kept a portion of her skull as a keepsake.

After being caught and arrested, Pike was sentenced to death at 20 years old in 1996 for her crimes.

Colleen Slemmer was killed by Christa Pike (Family Handout)

On Wednesday, if the execution proceeds, Pike will be the first woman put to death in Tennessee since 1820, and how she feels about that has been detailed in the new YouTube documentary Dead Woman Walking: Pike Vs Tennessee.

“I have the most horrible nightmares,” she says in the documentary. “But I think what has been worse is that they told me a year ahead of time. And so every day, I have woken up and lived that thought all day, every day, every waking moment.”

A big fear is that the team won’t be able to establish an IV line to inject the lethal concoction into her body.

Women on death row in each state (LADbible)

“The only place they can draw my blood is in my hands with a very tiny needle, and I know from reading our protocol that they aren’t allowed to put the IV in my hands,” Pike says. “So I don’t know what they’re going to do, and I’m so scared that what just happened to Tony Carruthers will happen to me.”

Tennessee ended the attempt at Carruthers’ execution in May after it took over an hour to find the intravenous lines, which failed.

So, he was ultimately given a one-year reprieve from his death date.

Pike is imprisoned in Nashville (Tennessee Department of Corrections)

Pike’s crime against Slemmer has been well documented, with many shocking details being released over the years.

Tennessee Supreme Court docs obtained by news.com.au say Pike allegedly ‘told her friend Kim Iloilo, who was also a student at the facility, that she intended to kill another student, Colleen Slemmer, because she "had just felt mean that day"’.

“Pike went to Iloilo’s room and told Iloilo that she had just killed Slemmer and that she had brought back a piece of the victim’s skull as a souvenir,” the documents reveals.

“Pike said that a pentagram had been carved onto the victim’s forehead and chest. Iloilo said that Pike was dancing in a circle, smiling, and singing ‘la, la, la’ while she related these details about the murder.

“When Iloilo saw Pike at breakfast the next morning she asked Pike what she had done with the piece of the victim’s skull. Pike replied that it was in her pocket and then said, ‘And, yes, I’m eating breakfast with it’.”