They walked him in, and he was laughing jovially with a certain glee in his eyes before they started strapping him to the execution gurney. He had a broad toothy smile and crow's feet by the corner of his eyes, draped in that gown. I'd been taken by him honestly, everything about him was a living oxymoron. I hadn't known what he done or why he was here, but something about him made him feel known.
"Caviar," He says to the guard, meeting my eyes as he walks past towards the gurney.
"Caviar?" I whisper to myself.
"I should've had caviar. I mean forty dollars hardly covers the main essentials before you go, ya know," This time his eyes were on mine now, "You understand, Father?"
"Well I mean, it stops people from ordering elephant meat and beaver tails." I say back, adjusting my dog collar and then finally my posture. He looks at me cock-eyed but still intrigued as they start strapping him to the gurney.
"All that? Could you imagine how full you would be before you drop? After they administer the potassium bromide I'd shit my fucking brains out--" I started ferociously trying to disguise my laugh as a cough. As they start putting on the monitors for his heart, he looks up to the doctor, "Hey doc, is it still beating?"
"Not for long shithead." He says with disgust. This caught me by surprise actually, I wasn't quite expecting a doctor to ever talk to their patient like that, even if he's dying.
"Hey watch it, or I'll sue you for misconduct." He says before hysterically cackling; the doctor rolls his eyes in disgust and continues on with his job. He lifts his head as close in the direction of me was possible.
"Don't mind him, I got a feeling he's been following this whole bullshit trial since it resurfaced for my execution." I was confused, hadn't followed his trial I guess. But he could see it in my eyes, he knew I didn't see his crimes in him.
"Do you think the ol' boiler will be warm when I get there? The AC in here is freezing my fuckin ass off." He says soberly, finishing with a bitter chuckle. I look back at him and feel an uncertainty of where I fell in all of this.
"Why do you think you're going to hell, my son?" I ask. He rolls his eyes and head in one motion, and I see the medic fit him with his second heart monitor.
"You don't know why I'm here, do you Father?" He asks me calmly, somehow keeping his smile on his face. I shake my head no, and he begins to laugh even harder than he had before.
"Does anyone here actually know why they're here?!" He shouts while laughing. "Oh father, you crack me up. No, no, no I'm here because I brutally beat both Bixby boys on Brown st. 16 years ago..." He says calmly. With that the medic started in with his cart.
"Or---" He says before making quotes with his restrained hands, "supposedly." I stifled back a little, the disgust was beginning to work up my stomach as the reality became more and more gripping.
"See what happens when you drunkenly pass out behind a dumpster in an alleyway?" He starts, "You get slapped with 16 years on death row, and a room full of lovely people watching as you get murdered with impunity."
"That's the primary line." The medic says aloud. I knew behind that glass window the assistant warden would be calling up every necessary person who needs to know the play-by-play. A god of sorts, playing with their lives with such removed casualness.
"So why son, if you really are innocent, do you think you're going to hell?"
"Oh fuck me, who doesn't deserve to go to hell? These people need someone to pay, and I've been paying for the last 16 years. I pissed away so much time drinking, and working, and wasting my life away when I could've done any of the things I dreamed of. I didn't even really like bars, but that night I had already ran out before the liquor store closed."
"But how are you comfortable with paying for something you didn't do?" I ask with a sense of urgency, not knowing where exactly that sense had come from.
"People do it all the time. Punishments aren't about punishing the guilty, it's about comforting the victim and their family. They don't care if you're innocent or guilty, they just need to move on. How could I hate them if they just want the same things I'd want?" He finished as they wiped down his left arm with antiseptic.
"That's the secondary line." The medic says as he puts in the second IV. Here was a man so hopeless, hapless, and without reason he was joyful at death's door. I felt a great distance between me and everything that was real the longer he talked, but I felt an infatuated with the words he seemed to effortlessly spout.
"Are you scared?" I ask, I figured it was fair. I guess no one had asked him that in the last 16 years, no one who was actually there with him and willing to listen. He looked at me with a toothy and incomplete grin, like he had just a little longer to go before he could truly smile again.
"Scared? Fuck I got a first class trip to hell, all I'm hoping for is they include marshmallows." He said. I laughed, I could see he just wanted to laugh. He wanted us all to, it was too sullen, too sad; Too quiet to die. I wished I could rest my hand on his shoulder, I wished I could comfort him, but I knew what would be happening soon. The witness room window started opening, but his broad smile stayed strictly on his face for the entirety of this. Eyeing each individual person with his soft brown eyes, piercing into their souls.
Behind the window seemed to sit only scum surrounding the victim's family: Heartless heretics, faithless charlatans, journalists. Indifferent faces waiting to feast on his last moments like starving leeches, hiding the giddy excitement to watch the life drain from his eyes. I felt an even greater distance growing between me and the people in this room. Was he guilty? I didn't know, I couldn't tell you. He seemed so genuinely happy, but that could be from anything. Imagine how grateful you'd be to put an end to an indefinite sentence of being locked up alone and treated slightly better than a wild animal? If he was guilty, then why didn't the only ones who looked like they were enjoying his death, seem as satisfied as him?
"Andrew Borden, you have been sentenced to death for the murder of Raymond and Elijah Bixby on October 27th, 1992," The Warden reads out. You could see the anxious audience 'oohing' and 'awing' mentally, awaiting to see the show, "I would like to give you the opportunity to make a statement before we proceed with your sentence."
He licked his lips for a moment, then in one motion he abruptly sucked them in to show only his big toothy smile without a lip to distract you, both eyes as wide as can be, and the ears wriggling in that psychotic way. And then just as abruptly, his face relaxed.
"A man walks into a rehab, stumbling around like a junkie would, and he says to the poor clerk, 'I, uh---What services do you offer, I think I---I think I really, really need some h-h… Help?'," The rest of the audience looked a little confused on whether these were his last words, or the start of some kind of bad stand-up act, "The clerk just says plainly, 'Massage' while pointing to the 'Physiotherapy & Rehab' sign."
I started laughing violently as he finished his joke, and he himself chuckled, but we were the only ones. Misguided judgment was cast my way with each laugh I fought off, but the silence of the room was too hard to match. I looked back at his face, and his eyes were gleaming, meeting mine.
"Thank you, father," He says with a soft expression, as he turns to the glass his expression becomes more grim before he stops to chuckle to himself, "That's it, Warden!"