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

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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