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All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 J.P. Kurzitza
Cover design by J.P. Kurzitza
‘When is he getting discharged?’ the chubby nurse asked.
‘Sometime this afternoon, I think,’ the other nurse said, slurping from her juice box. ‘They’re trying to get him to the chair before dinner. It’s going to be all over the news.’
‘I know I shouldn’t say it, but I’m glad he’s finally going to fry for what he did to that poor priest.’
‘Same here. How’s our guy doing, anyway?’
‘All I can say is that’s one lucky man. How he survived the attack is beyond medical science. More like a miracle.’
* * *
My mind slowly turned back on, like an old beater starting up in the middle of winter. How long had I been out? It felt like a Sunday for some reason, yet it could’ve been any day. I knew I was brought to the hospital sometime ago. Maybe I was finally dead.
Maybe I finally got what was coming to me.
I tried to open my eyes, but my eyelids felt weighed down. Even the dim light from my hospital room was blinding me. I blinked in vain. My eyes were drier than toast and everything was blurry, like looking through wax paper. I sighed in relief at having postponed death one more time, but how much longer could I keep dodging it? Fr. Michael had managed to stay my execution once before, but surely my luck would run out.
The last thing I remembered was Fr. Michael—my “spiritual advisor”—blabbing about redemption, or repentance. We were alone in our meeting room, I think. No, there was one guard standing by the door, but he left after a short while. Then I saw a gun, and then I blacked out.
What the hell had he done? What kind of a priest was he? Had I actually driven him crazy? And where were the other guards?
I blinked again and caught a glimpse of a large, white figure cross my foggy line of sight.
‘Hey! Excuse me… nurse?’ I croaked, trying to sit up. I lay back down in utter agony, clutching my gut. My stomach felt as if it was going to explode.
‘Now look here, hun, I’ve told you several times to keep your pretty little self flat on this bed,’ she said, leaning in close. Her breath smelt of tuna and iced tea. She adjusted some tubes that were coming out of both my arms, and fiddled with some machine that was above my head.
The soothing caress of morphine engulfed me, and my body gave in. Barely able to speak now, I mumbled back to her.
‘Vhen zoo zey wan me out of here?’
‘Now don’t worry,’ she answered, ‘they said that they’d wait until you were strong enough, but they still sounded very eager.’
I’ll bet. Seeing me dead was probably Warden Crosby’s dream.
‘You’re sore because the doctors had to go back in again and stitch you up. Apparently there was more damage caused by the second bullet than originally anticipated,’ the nurse continued.
‘Wha…?’ I said, slowly fading.
The nurse muttered something about checking up on me in a little while, so I closed my eyes and let the morphine take me. In my stupor, I couldn’t help but recall the events of this past year.
I’ve been on death row for the last five years. I haven’t waited this long for something I’ve dreaded this much in my life. Tough five years. My original death date was three months ago, but had to be postponed due to some unforeseen issues. The second attempt at my execution was scheduled for October 20th, 9:00AM—any day now. But after what happened in the cell with Fr. Michael, it looks as though I’ll be waiting some more.
I guess the state wants me fully recovered before they go ahead and try to kill me again. Doesn’t make much sense now. Why nurse me back to health and then kill me? Why not just let me die and get it over with? Prolonging the wait is just making it worse.
I don’t believe in that mystic mumbo-jumbo stuff, but maybe this new stay of execution is some kind of sign. Maybe I’m not supposed to die yet. Bad luck has been my best friend lately, but I have to believe that maybe my escaping death again means something.
I won’t lie to you, I don’t want to die, but if that’s what they want then what can I do? I’ve done the crime, so I guess I’ll accept the time, but if I could choose to do things differently, I surely would. I know I’ve made mistakes, mistakes that cost people their lives, but I know I could do good if given a chance.
I know it.
What I wish for now more than anything is a free spin at life. A mulligan for the stupid choices I’ve made. Lord knows I had many opportunities to start fresh and didn’t; maybe this is my last chance. But there’s a limit to how far I’m willing to go.
Fr. Michael’s methods weren’t very discreet; I knew he was trying to convert me. We would always meet in the south conference room, right across from the prison cafeteria, with one guard posted inside. Fr. Michael was assigned to me during the last year before my original execution date. I knew our little sessions wouldn’t have an effect on me, because people telling me what to do, and especially what to believe, were like oil in water.
‘Are you sorry for what you have done, Mr. Nelson?’ he once asked me.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I already told you, I wasn’t looking to get anybody killed. I didn’t know there were cops in the building...’
‘Do you believe in God?’
‘No, should I?’
‘Do you want forgiveness?’
‘What the hell does that even mean? Who’s going to forgive me, the families? The warden? The courts? Doubt it.’
This was the first of many similar conversations I had had with Fr. Michael at the beginning of our relationship. I pegged him straight away for what he was the second he first stepped into my cell: a naïve, convert-the-world-one-sinner-at-a-time optimist. Everything about that twerp drove me nuts. He was small, maybe 5’5”, with a soft looking build. He had these perfectly round, wire rimmed glasses that made his eyes pop out. The acne on his forehead made him look like he was still in high school, and his little black outfit, with his white collar and perfectly parted hair, made me want to slug him every time I saw him.
He always carried around that scruffy, dog-eared Bible, too. It looked more like a scrapbook than the supposed Word of God. There were ribbons shooting out of everywhere, there were book marks, it seemed, for every page, and there were yellow Post-it Notes cutting through the pages, all wrinkled and torn. After a few meetings, he gave me my very own Bible to follow along with him.
‘What’s this?’ I asked.
‘The greatest story ever told, Stanley. It can also be your salvation, if you let it,’ he answered.
‘No thanks. I’m not a big reader.’
At the time, I never wanted any of what Fr. Michael was selling, so I always went in to our sessions with an attack plan; the counter-punch to Fr. Michael’s carefully scripted, verse by verse, repentance speeches. I was going to die anyway, so why not have a little fun. I wanted to dirty that clean, white collar of his. I wanted him to doubt. I wanted to make him second guess everything he was ever told to believe; to make him feel how I felt at my trial. It’s amazing how a simple word like doubt could change a man’s life forever. Doubt was my weapon now; doubt would be his poison.
Straight up, Father hit me with one of his “Coles Notes” sermons.
‘In God’s eyes, you’re a good person, Stanley. Don’t listen to what
others say,’ he preached. ‘He, and only He, can set you free from your sins. You needn’t suffer eternally.’
‘Okay, then I’m sorry,’ I’d always quip.
‘It doesn’t work that way, Stanley. It must be sincere in order to receive absolution.’
‘Abso-what? Okay, then I’m really, really sorry.’
‘God sees into every man’s heart for what it truly is, so you must have a repentant heart, Stanley.’
If I told you that I didn’t like Fr. Michael, that’d be a lie. Did I respect him? I guess. He kept coming, day after day, so I couldn’t deny his commitment. Did I believe him? Hell no. It would take a lot more than words to change me. No matter how much he wanted me to plead for mercy, it wasn’t going to change the fact that I was still going to die, so why bother?
I believed with my eyes, not my ears, and I could see his frustration in that. Anybody can say what they want if they’ve got no physical proof to back it up. And they always overused that handy get-out-of-jail-free card—that word that was supposed to make sense out of everything: faith. But I stayed patient, and soon, like a trickle of water, my stubbornness started to erode his will.
‘Stanley, I can’t help you if you don’t want it.’
‘I never said anything about help. You want to save me so badly, Father, then save me. I just want to get the hell out of here. I’m tired of this! Of course I don’t want to die.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you, it doesn’t