Boats Against The Current

This week’s new flash fiction is Electric Chair Noir.

Boats Against The Current

Ennis felt every heavy minute counting down. Tick tick tick. Very few men ever experienced this scenario. This dynamic. These stakes. Thankfully. Also thankfully, it all would be over soon, he thought. There wasn’t going to be no call from the governor. That only happened in the movies. Somebody was gonna fry tonight.

There was very little to compare this to. Hospice? This was more hands on. More active. War? That was too haphazard. This was predetermined. Guaranteed, even.

Ennis was a bit surprised how well he’d held up so far, but the last half hour would be the true test. The clock trudged towards midnight. His appointment with death. He guessed he ought to start praying about now. Ask for forgiveness for taking a life and all that.

Ennis thought over the life choices that had brought him to this place. To this moment. His father had been an Air Force man. Correctly predicted that Ennis would spend the better part of his adult life inside prisons, though perhaps the old man’s clairvoyance should be discounted due to his primary causal role in the result.

Ennis was entitled to a meal, courtesy of the state, but didn’t think he’d be able to choke it down.

The practical preparations were made. The testing of connections. The arrangements for medical backup in case of SNAFU. Nothing cruel and unusual, thank you. Beyond the obvious.

Ennis had made his peace and really there was nothing left for him to do but resign himself to his fate. Take it like a man.

To pull the damn lever and be done with it. Cook the sonofabitch sitting in the chair Ennis stood beside.

The murderer sitting there adjacent, strapped into the death machine, apparently had made his peace too, and then some. He was regaling the rest of the guards with stories of his last meal of Salisbury steak, pearl onions and mustard greens and having a big time cutting up in general. No need for a Prevacid tonight, he’d be fricasseed before the reflux hit. He alone seemed immune to the pressure. The weight. An equanimity that only could be called, well, cold blooded. He was well past the point he thought he’d ever live to. Hell, he’d figured he wouldn’t survive the botched stickup that landed him in the damned chair where he sat. Those years on death row had been a bonus for him. Gravy on a Salisbury steak. He was ready for the next course.

Ennis was considerably less sanguine. Like the condemned man, this spark-up would be his first, and last. He’d decided that. The extra pay wasn’t worth it. He wouldn’t change places with the convict, but that conclusion hadn’t been reached by a landslide. Finally, Ennis did his job, breaking the tension, flickering the lights, and sending a crackling jolt of peace and relief to the killer. Both of them.