Hyper

[Location: Decontamination Depot t3rm1nu5 - Cafeteria]

Charlie tossed his balled up napkin onto his tray. He had heard enough. “Working in the prison has provided me with some experience in this area. I’ve seen my share of vile and evil people and as Mr. McCormick has stated, they all seemed to be a little off kilter.” He pushed his tray forward slightly, rested his elbows on the table, and used his thumb and fore finger to pick the leftover food from the corners of his mouth. While he had many fond thoughts of his life in Cottondale and his job at the penitentiary, he also had some memories that churned inside of his stomach like a whirlpool.

“Prisoners that were convicted of seriously heinous crimes were regularly executed at Tuscaloosa. It might have been the devil that influenced them or like Mr. McCormick said, their Blender was screwed up. Either way, they paid the price. They paid the price with their lives.” He twisted his mouth in an attempt to try and loosen a piece of meat stuck between two teeth as his stomach started to spin from the memories.

Charlie had worked as a guard in cell block 314 for about a year after he was hired. His supervisor saw that he had a perfect work record and was an honest and trusted employee and decided to promote him to a position with a little more responsibility.

He was promoted to a crew named The Deadly Three. The Deadly Three was made up of three guards that controlled a prisoner on his last day alive before his execution. They would transport the prisoner from his normal cell to a separate secured area where he was able to speak with the Chaplin and was provided with his last meal. He was somewhat happy with the promotion since it gave him more responsibility and an increase in pay, but with the positives also came the negative thought of working with people that would soon be executed in front of him.

Charlie’s job was to assist with the preparation of the prisoner by shaving the prisoner’s head and then coating his scalp with a layer of dielectric grease. Then he would place a metal apparatus that had been nicknamed The Crown onto the prisoner’s head. The Crown had disk shaped pads that made contact directly with the skin and a leather strap that ran under the prisoner’s chin to hold it securely in place. It also had two threaded studs—one above each ear. Each stud accepted a nine sixteenth nut to connect lugged wires that would be used to apply the lethal current. Because of the task he was assigned, the gangs inside of the prison had given Charlie a title he was not exactly fond of: Corona de Chispa or Crown of Sparks. But many of the inmates just called him Chispa for short.

The crew would then bring the prisoner to the execution chamber and strap him into an H.F.C. (High Frequency Current) recliner—a modern version of an electric chair. It was a thickly padded reclining chair that when standing erect, went from the prisoner’s feet to above his head.

The prisoner was positioned in front of the erect recliner and his wrists and ankles were firmly attached to the lounge with shackles made of leather. Then a hard plastic ball gag was inserted into his mouth and held in place by a thick leather strap that went around the back of his neck. Next, two-inch-wide pieces of white surgical tape were placed across the prisoner’s eyes to keep them closed during the procedure. Once he was prepared and securely shackled, small servo motors inside of the recliner adjusted the angle of the chair to forty-five degrees with the prisoner’s feet toward the floor and his head raised. If it wasn’t for the crown and the restraints, one might think the prisoner was about to get a fluoride treatment or a tooth filled.

Charlie would then connect a red cable to the stud above the prisoner’s right ear. He would use a cordless driver to securely tighten the nut that held the cable in place. Then he would take a black cable and repeat the process on the opposite side of the prisoner’s head.

Of the three guards that made up The Deadly Three, Charlie had been chosen to close the circuit which would send ten thousand volts of high frequency electric current through the prisoner’s body. Closing the circuit was accomplished by physically pressing a red button labeled Start on a control panel mounted on the wall. Charlie hated this part of the job the most. He had lobbied the prison to install a three button system that would not put the blame on any single man for electrocuting the prisoner. But his requests were denied and he had to muster up the courage each time he had to press the button.

The jolt would instantaneously render the criminal unconscious and then interrupt the neural signals sent to the heart that normally kept it beating. The man would be dead within fifteen seconds but a timer kept the circuit closed for a full minute to ensure the procedure was complete.

Once the circuit was opened, the crew had to let the body rest for about five minutes before touching it. The energy that had been directed through the body caused the skin temperature to rise to more than one hundred and fifty-seven degrees and caused certain areas to begin to breakdown and smolder. The skin around The Crown and the skin around the fingernails and toenails was affected the most. It turned black in color and gave off a heavy pungent smell similar to burning meat. The internal organs were also burned by the high frequency energy and off-gassed moist vapors through the nose. After the waiting period, the crew removed the corpse from the recliner, laid it onto a wheeled, stainless steel transporter, and took it to the morgue.

During the time Charlie was a member of The Deadly Three, he had executed twenty-seven prisoners this way. He had told Linda about his promotion but he never gave her any details because he knew it would weigh heavy on her mind. Charlie knew, if Linda was one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of anything, it was execution.

Jack swallowed some of his pie and gave Charlie a dire look. “Did you ever see a prisoner get executed?”

Linda walked up to the table and hearing Jack’s question, replied, “It’s best not to go there, Mr. Ford. My husband has seen a lot of terrible things during his time in the Army as well as at Tuscaloosa. Horrific things that shouldn’t be discussed over dinner with friends.” She glanced down at Charlie and lovingly placed her arm around his shoulder and then gave Jack a slight smile.

Charlie looked up at his wife as feelings of love for her took the place of the painful memories of The Deadly Three. He pulled her hand from his shoulder, kissed the top of it and smiled. My angel, he thought.

The table was silent as the diners continued to eat and pondered the words that Linda had spoken. After a few seconds, Roy spoke up. “I guess I’ll take a walk down to bay three and help that Russian guy move the bad repulsor to the high power lab.”