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October 02, 2019 - Image 12

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Wednesday, October 2, 2019 // The Statement
4B
5B
Wednesday, October 2, 2019 // The Statement

S

eymour’s last meal had been overcooked,
which, at least to him, ruined what
should’ve been a perfectly civilized
execution. There was no reason for it not to be
civilized, after all. He had confessed right out to
those “despicable acts of human indecency” of
which he was accused. No sense in lying about it,
anyway. He was unsure whether it was delusion,
hellish rage, or straight up boredom that drove
someone to murder, but whatever it was he had
quickly figured out that people can smell it on
you. And so, he offered little protest to anything
brought up in court, with the exception, of
course, of when his lawyer — his own lawyer! —
had claimed that Seymour himself was insane.
Honestly, how rude must a person be to insult a
man on his way to death row like that? Even the
decision to put him to death had elicited no such
objection from Seymour. He knew he deserved to
die; at least, in an objective sense. As he lay down
in his small, rectangular cell, he thought about
this and about how there was no reason for this
transaction to be anything less than pleasant.
However, after enduring the blatant disrespect
with which the prison chefs had handled his
meatloaf, all courteousness on his end was out
the window. Now he was determined to raise as
much hell as possible on his way down there.
He stared into the small TV buzzing in the
corner of the death watch cell. It was one of three
luxuries that Seymour was offered to indulge in
for his remaining hours on earth. The other two
were listening to a radio or reading, both of which
he would’ve traded in for an earlier sentence
without hesitation. The TV was alright — the
reception was bad, but he was watching a weather
report about the massive snowstorm set to hit
early tomorrow morning, and how it was likely
that many people would lose power. He would’ve
laughed at the poor bastards, but he caught
himself when he remembered the three guards
who were watching him through the two-way
mirror at his back. He loathed that he was being
observed, and had actually protested to it when
the idea was first brought up. It seemed to him
a form of cruel and unusual punishment to take
a man whose utter hatred of people had driven

him to murder quite a few of them and then force
that man to spend his final hours surrounded by
a bunch of strangers. He could almost hear the
guards on the other side of the glass — one of
them had made a snide comment over his sub-
par meatloaf, expressing relief that he “hadn’t
asked for people-meat instead.” That was just
childish, honestly, and very disrespectful. As if
just because he was a murderer, all his standards
went right in the shitter. He had half a mind to
inform the guard that he probably had a more
refined taste in meat than she did, but he kept his
mouth shut. After his meal, he wished he hadn’t.
The worst of all, however, must’ve been the
priest; a thin, nasally man who came into the
chamber around nineish to ask Seymour all sorts
of questions about Jesus and hell and people-
meat and the Bible. God, Seymour thought he’d
never shut up. It took a threat to “personally waltz
up to heaven and castrate St. Peter” to convince
the priest that Seymour wasn’t interested. He
was far more concerned with the few hours of
rest that he were permitted from 6 p.m. to 11:30
p.m., when they would start going about the
myriad of “preparations” that apparently had to
be done. He looked to the bottom corner of the
TV screen for the time. He couldn’t make out the
last number, but it was 11:20-something. With a
sigh, he repositioned himself and wondered, for
his last few minutes of pseudo-solitude, whether
that time the priest had stolen from him really
made that much of a difference. He concluded,
just before one of the guards came in, that it really
didn’t, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be upset
about it. It was a matter of principle, y’know?
The guard laid out a new pair of denim jeans
and a blue collared shirt on the bed before
giving him a few minutes to change. He stripped
himself of his jumpsuit and dressed himself for
execution. The jeans, he reluctantly admitted,
were comfortable, though he wished he didn’t
have to wear so much blue all at once. Talk about
tacky. It was ironic, he thought, how many times
he had expressed distaste in an outfit by saying
he “wouldn’t be caught dead in that.” He made
a mental note to mention to one of the guards
that they should probably stop using that phrase

as well, on the off chance they end up in his
situation.
At about midnight, the three guards entered
the cell and escorted Seymour to the execution
chamber. It was even smaller, with a big gurney
— to which he was probably supposed to be
strapped — taking up most of the cell, and the
entire room was a gaudy lime green color that
didn’t much compliment all his blue at all. He
peered into the two-way mirror on one of the
walls, beyond which he guessed about 50 people
were seated to watch him die. He laughed at the
irony. After all, wanting to watch people die was
most likely what got him in this situation. Had
he known there were free showings down here,
maybe things would’ve turned out differently.
The guards laid him down in his chair and
spent about five minutes strapping his arms
and legs down, which Seymour thought was
perfectly purposeless. Coming from someone
who knew very well how to murder a person,
they weren’t doing too great. He’d never heard
complaints from his victims, and they’d certainly
never been bored about it. It had always been a
quick, clean, easy ordeal. After securing him,
the guards left and the medic came in to insert
the needles into his forearms. There were two of
them, complete with long transparent tubes that
coiled their way back behind him and into the
wall, from where, Seymour assumed, the death
would be coming. The first needle, inserted with
an entirely pointless swab of rubbing alcohol, was
quick and easy, but the medic had a little trouble
locating the vein on Seymour’s right arm. After
about eight minutes of searching accompanied by
Seymour’s demands to “see your medical license
to make sure you don’t accidentally kill me,”
the needle was inserted and the medic went to
work wiring him up to a heart monitor. After he
finished, he scuttled out of the room. Seymour
counted to a hundred before the warden came in,
wearing a black suit and tie instead of his usual
pompous uniform. He then stood a few feet away
from Seymour, his arms crossed behind his back
to make sure everyone knew just how highly he
thought of himself, and looked him over.
“Do you have any last words?” the warden

asked.
Seymour thought for a few seconds before
replying.
“You should really let me live so I can teach
you how to properly kill someone,” he said. “The
system you have in place here isn’t very efficient
at all. If I were in charge, I could’ve had this
whole bitch finished before lunch.”
The warden grimaced and shook his head.
“May God have mercy on your soul,” he said.
The warden then turned and exited the room,
shutting the door behind him and leaving
Seymour, apart from his invisible spectators,
alone at last. He laid back in his chair and let the
fluorescent lights wash over his closed eyelids,
indulging in the silence. For the first time in
many years, he felt comfortable — completely
separated from all these people whom he had
grown to hate so sincerely, freed from all worries
of the future and ready to embrace whatever
isolation death had in store for him. With a smile
on his face, Seymour fell asleep.
Seymour’s sleeping was, of course, not of his
own volition. It was the result of the five grams
of sodium pentothal, a barbiturate that had, at
the touch of a small plunger, run from the back
room through the intravenous lines connected
to Seymour’s forearms and, finally, into his
bloodstream, to make him lose consciousness in
less than 30 seconds. This alone would almost
always kill a person, just as any overdose of
opioids would. However, over the following
five minutes or so, the lines were flushed with a
saline solution, and a second plunger was pushed.
This one injected 50cc of pancuronium bromide,
a neuromuscular blocking agent that relaxes
the skeletal striated muscles during tracheal
intubation and surgery. In this case, it was
being used to paralyze Seymour’s respiratory
system. Then, in an act of security which would
have elicited from Seymour an endless tirade of
ridicule, the lines were flushed again and, with
the press of a third plunger, filled with 50cc of
potassium chloride, which would stimulate
cardiac arrhythmia and, eventually, stop his
heart.

BY ALEXANDER WAGNER, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

Sleeping in the cell,
after “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff

See SLEEPING, Page 6B
PHOTO S BY DANYEL THARAKAN

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