Eternal Damnation
I didn’t even fight the charges. I admitted to the murders, and even made sure I committed them in a state with the death penalty in effect. Why run the risk of a painful death in prison when you can have the state put you down quick on their dime?
I was guilty, I was sentenced to death, and I was happy.
They took me into the execution chamber. I didn’t know if they still called it that, but I’d been thinking and hoping for a while then that would be my final sight. It was clean and sterile, white tile walls and floors to enhance that notion. As they strapped me onto the slab, I looked at the window across from me and saw only myself, the doctor, and the executioner. One way mirror, I guessed. I was hoping to see the families all together one more time since the trial, but I guess I could settle for them seeing me.
Straps tightened and they stuck the needle in. They asked me if I had any last words.
“It’s been fun.” I scanned across the window. “I’ll see your kids soon.”
Canister one emptied its contents into my bloodstream. Supposed to be sodium thiopental, to drop me unconscious. They must’ve messed up the dosage though, because I only got to drowsy before the next injection: pancuronium bromide, to cause the paralysis. Now that one they got right. I froze in place, taking in only the shallowest of breaths. Then was supposed to come the potassium chloride to stop the heart, but I don’t know what they injected me with instead.
A burning pain flooded through my body, from my arm to my heart to everywhere else in an instant. I felt fire behind my eyes and in my gut. I would have screamed in agony if not for the paralytic. A minute of this goes by, that felt like a hundred, then I heard my heart rate monitor flatline. I was legally dead. But it sure as hell didn’t feel like it.
They unstrapped me, threw me on a gurney, and rolled me to the morgue, burning from the inside out. There they slapped me carelessly on a slab and locked me in refrigeration cell. Now, with my skin freezing and insides boiling, I’m wishing I fought for life imprisonment. Or that one of the families had shot me dead in the courthouse. Please, God, just let me take back what I’ve done!
Because I’ve been in here for weeks now, and I’m just praying they do an autopsy before I’m buried in this hell.
