I see the world before my eyes as the current pulses through my body like a dream. The heat embraces me, and I can sense my body burning, glowing in warmth. The black hood they draped over my face shields my bursting eyeballs from my father in the crowd.

I feel the chill as the juice is turned up and my mind wanders. Which way to go…I’ve jumped out of the windowsill.

I see the words on a rocking horse of time, my body aching with the force of the electric shock.

I see the birds in the rain, weighted down, and falling toward earth.

I sense that out there my father is watching me die, just as I watched my mother die. Can he see me now…I am myself, but like you somehow.

I’ll ride the wave where it takes me. The deluge of electricity floods my body, making my heart beat in a rapid machine-gun stutter. My brain melts inside my head, and my tongue cleaves to my mouth. My fingernails are on fire.

Hold the pain…don’t let them see you falter…

Just release me.

Dad…dad, I wish I hadn’t done this. I’ll wait for you someday, please, we’ll meet again. I’ll wait in the dark of death for you to speak to me, one day, after you die. Please, dad, I’ll open up, I’ll tell you what I did.

Just release me from this death.

The shock is unbearable. My organs are putrefying and collapsing inside my body, and my testicles shrivel and burst. My entire body is disintegrating, everything I am is being destroyed. My legs and arms lose all feeling.

I can’t believe what I have done…it was her fault this whole time, she took me, and abused me. I was used. What settled biological disputes? What court of the afterlife would convict me?

My organs have congealed into liquid inside me, leaking out the gaping wounds in my stomach. They hiss in steaming agony as they escape me. My lungs have stopped breathing long ago, but my heart still beats like a madman.

It was me, I admit it! I could have controlled myself and said no. Release me! Just let me die! Stop prolonging the pain, the torture! I’ll admit it, I’ll admit it, I’ve done wrong! I shot my mother in the head with an Ithaca 16-gauge shotgun, and resisted arrest and killed two policemen! I did everything you said, and lied about it! Release me!

My heart bursts from excitement and falls through the empty cavity of my body. My teeth break, my jaw rends, and my brain gushes out my empty eye sockets. Release…

The pain is dying…

I am dead.

I sink into the electric chair, oozing my fluid, perhaps only in my mind. I am cool now, as though a large fan was on me. My body disintegrates, becoming nothing. My mind will follow. It’s over now. After all this, it’s simply over. My mind fades away into the atmosphere, as my soul, everything that made me who I am, goes out like a candle.

Release me…

Release me…

Reles me…

Rle m…

R m…