The Justice of William Christopher

“Has the jury reached a decision?”

The forewoman stood. “Yes, your honor, we have.”

“Will the Defendant please rise?”

Shackled in wrist and ankle restraints, wearing an orange jump suit because he just didn’t want to put a suit on for his trial, William Christopher stood, defiantly, gazing at the forewoman. He knew what the verdict was going to be, and he didn’t care. He stood solid as granite, grey as concrete as the judge spoke.

“And what is the verdict?”

Marjorie, the forewoman, was not happy to be in this position. She had been shocked at the nature of William Christopher’s crimes, and she didn’t think it was possible for a human to show such a lack of remorse.

She couldn’t help but feel his gaze on her, and although she didn’t want to, she involuntarily looked in his direction.

Marjorie was met by a gaze so cold, so heartless, that she didn’t think she could read the verdict. She felt William would hunt her down and do to her what he’d done to his victims simply because she was doing her civic duty.

The judge audibly cleared his throat, trying to get Marjorie to read the verdict.

She came out of her trance and said, “We find the Defendant guilty on all seventeen counts of murder in the first degree.”

There was no gasp in the courtroom because nobody was surprised.

“Thank you Miss Foreman and thank you members of the jury. You may be dismissed.”

Marjorie glanced back once more at William Christopher. His countenance hadn’t changed a bit, and Marjorie had not doubt that, if given the chance, he’d tie her up and cut off her left leg, taunting her with it, hitting her in the face with it, until she finally passed out from a loss of blood, eventually dying. After all, that’s exactly what he’d done to his previous victims, all of which he’d video taped.

After that last glance, she briskly walked out of the courtroom, followed by the other jurors. She was the only one who had the courage to look at William Christopher. The others either kept their heads down or purposely didn’t look in his direction.

The judge looked at the Defendant, with a hint of a smile on his face that he didn’t try to hide. He was proud of the jury and the job they’d done, and was grateful they hadn’t bought into the defense’s bogus insanity plea. He knew damn well that William Christopher knew what he was doing. He’d admitted so in the courtroom! Of course, the D.A. tried to use that as further proof of his client’s insanity, but the jury had seen right through that.

“Mr. Christopher, you have been judged by a jury of your peers and been found guilty of seventeen counts of murder in the first degree.”

It was all formalities now, but the judge had to go through due process. While he had never enjoyed condemning a man to death before, this time it felt right. This time, in fact, it really didn’t feel like it was enough of a punishment.

“The State of California sentences you to death by lethal injection for the heinous crimes you have committed. I for one wish there was something more drastic we could do to you, but that is the ultimate price and you are going to pay it. Court dismissed,” he said, slamming the gavel down.

William Christopher was staring at the judge now, indifferent of the verdict but full of hate. If anything, he was upset that all of this hate was going to go to waste once they locked him up.

The judge held his stare, not backing down an inch. He did indeed feel good about this one, real good. Justice was going to be served.

Six Months Later

After the trial, William Christopher dismissed his State appointed attorney. He didn’t want an appeal and he didn’t want to wait. If he couldn’t maim and kill other humans, his life had no purpose.

The six months neither flew nor crawled by, they just were. His hate remained, but with no outlet, with nothing and nobody but himself to use it on, it didn’t have anywhere to go. It didn’t grow or diminished, but stayed a part of him.

When they came to get him, he was more than ready. He could deal just fine with being executed, but he couldn’t deal without maiming and killing. If the judge had let him go and serve this purpose with the promise of returning at his specified execution time, he would have done just that.

Of course, that wouldn’t happen under any scenario, but now that was neither here nor there. This was time wasted, and now it was time for him to go. Plain and simple. He was nothing more than a flame waiting to be extinguished by the liquid of a needle.

William Christopher didn’t believe in the afterlife. He didn’t believe in reincarnation either. You lived, you died, period.

He wasn’t afraid of the lethal injection itself, either. The government had deemed it a humane way to kill the guilty and the evildoers, so he doubted there would be any pain. If there was, he’d deal with it. Either way, it was just over.

He’d lost a lot of weight since being confined to his cell, but he was still a very powerful and solid man. He debated taking as many swings as he could at the guards and priest, one last chance to cause pain, but decided against it. It wouldn’t be enough, and the sooner this was done, the better. Six months had been too long.

They came in and shackled his wrists and ankles, and he heard the priest babbling some words that he assumed were supposed to be encouraging. He wasn’t really listening and didn’t really care because there was no God, just life and death.

When he got to the death room, they didn’t unshackle his legs restraints until his legs were strapped tightly to the gurney. Likewise, they kept the shackles on his wrists until his arms and chest were tied down.

After the deputies had him secured, they left, leaving five men in the room: William Christopher, the Judge to be an official witness, the priest, the doctor who was to fill his body full of poison, and the coroner to confirm the time of death.

William looked around the room, his attention first focused on the surgical table that held three syringes.

“We’ve got a little cocktail all set up for you, William, just like at a bar. But the hangover is a real ass kicker,” the Judge said.

The priest, a compassionate man by nature, didn’t interrupt the Judge’s speech. Normally the priest, he’d been to more than his share of executions, sincerely wanted to offer the condemned some sense of peace and comfort, but not tonight.

The savage that was on the table was the farthest thing from a man he’d ever seen. The brutality of his crimes and the lack of remorse were overwhelming. He didn’t think William Christopher was the devil incarnate, but he though he was close.

William looked the judge square in the face, locking him into eye contact. It was a stare down. “Make it a double.”

The judge wasn’t intimidated. William was strapped down too tightly, and part of him wished he would at least attempt to break free, giving him an excuse to pummel the bastard. He didn’t want to kill him, but he did want to hurt him very, very badly. “Tough guy, huh?”

“I am what I am. So if you’re going to give me a shot, you’d better make it a double to make sure I’m really gone. I’ve seen your wife, judge. If I don’t die, I’m coming back. I’m coming back and cutting her leg off. Then I’m fucking her with her own foot."

The judge knew he was being baited, and refused to bite; he refused to give William any sense of satisfaction whatsoever.

“All that stuff they tell you about lethal injection and how humane it is William, well, for starters, it’s not." He waited for a reaction from William, but got none. “You know who came up with lethal injection William? The Nazis.”

“They definitely had some good ideas.”

“Why am I not surprised to hear you say that? We’re taking it a step further, William. We’ve got a special little cocktail brewed for you.”

“Tell me about it,” William said.

“Well, we don’t want to come across as ‘inhumane’, because we all know that would just be wrong. So we’re going to give you a little something to stop your motor reactions. For all intents and purposes, William, you will appear to be asleep, not feeling a thing, just drifting off to hell, but you‘ll feel, William. You’ll feel.”

“So this is where you tell me I’m going to be in a world of hurt, isn’t that right, Judge?”

“Hmmh,” he said in response. “Let’s get this thing going.”

The one who was to administer the lethal injection pushed a button, and the curtains surrounding the death chamber slowly and noiselessly opened.

William Christopher looked out at the crowd that was assembled. No cameras were allowed, but the obligatory parasites of the press were there, holding their legal pads and pens, getting ready to use their writing skills to describe his death. He was honored they’d taken time out of their busy schedules to watch him die.

Then there were the others, people William Christopher could only assume were families of the victims. Again, he was touched they were there to bid him farewell. He smiled at the congregation.

This made some of them glare at him with what they thought was hate, but he knew they had no idea what hate really was.

And then there were those who just broke down and cried. William saw one woman in particular who was more devastated than the rest. He recognized her daughter in the woman’s face. He stared, waiting for her to make eye contact with him, and when she did, he laughed at her.

The microphones were on now, so they could all hear his laughing. Some people were screaming at him, apparently unaware that it was a one-way mike. They could hear him but he couldn’t hear them through the thick glass.

The judge had enough of William, so he said, sternly, “Mr. William Christopher, you have been judged and found guilty by a jury of your peers, and tonight you will die by means of lethal injection. Do you have any final words?”

The judge didn’t want to hear him speak, but the law was the law, and it was his duty to uphold it.

“Why as a matter of fact, yes I do,” he said, without ever taking his eyes off the crowd. “I see a lot of people out there with a lot of different emotions. Some of you are crying, some of you are angry, and the media, as usual, looks to be completely indifferent to the whole situation. Puppets. I just want all of you in this room to know one thing. And the press, you’d better quote me on this. If I could do it all over again, I would. The only thing I would change is the savoring of the suffering. I’d listen more carefully to the screams and I’d listen to the begging a little bit longer. I’d appreciate the whole thing a bit more. Live and learn, I suppose. Live and learn. That’s all.”

The judge nodded at the death man, and he put the needle in William Christopher’s arm. He then opened one of the I.V. valves to start the flow that would stop William’s motor reflexes and make him appear asleep. He had three other syringes ready to inject, and with each one, William was indeed in a whole world of hurt.

The hurting stopped, but the memory remained.

He remembered the gurney, the crowd gathered to watch him die, and involuntarily closing his eyes and being paralyzed.

And then it hit him.

It felt like they had put acid in his veins, and he felt it snaking its way through his body. He couldn’t scream, and he couldn’t move.

Then it stopped and all went black. He remained conscious although he couldn’t move, and his hearing capabilities were lessened.

He felt himself being rolled somewhere, still flat on his back. He could hear snippets of conversations, but not entire sentences. The one thing he did know was there was more than one voice and they all at one point or another said the word ‘Hell’.

It was then that he became scared for the first time.

He had vivid flashbacks of his younger years, of a time when angry nuns and crazy teachers told him tales of fire, brimstone and endless suffering. He didn’t think he believed any of it.

Now he wasn’t so sure.

There was no way he could be alive; that just wasn’t possible. First, the State wouldn’t allow it and second, people didn’t exactly recover from lethal injection.

But he was somewhere, and if he was somewhere he still existed, and the repeating of the word ‘Hell’ was starting to make him re-think is views of death.

William Christopher, for the first time in his life, panicked.

Since he was moving, maybe he actually was on his way to Hell, and if he was, then case, maybe he had a chance of escaping before he got there.

He squeezed his hands and felt the muscles contract in his forearms. He did the same with his legs and eyelids, and found he could move both of them as well. But he was restrained, and even with all of his strength he couldn’t break free.

He couldn’t see, either. Not because he was blind or some demon had poked his eyes out, but because he was blindfolded. He could feel his eyelashes brushing against some sort of strap as he struggled to open them.

William Christopher tried to lift his head, but that was impossible due to the restraint on his forehead. It was clear he wasn’t going to get off this table without help, and he knew nobody was going to help him.

He tried to concentrate on things that made him happy: the screams, the sounds of tearing flesh, the feel of metal against bone, but the voices around him were becoming clearer. He was starting to hear parts of sentences, not just words. “Almost here” one voice said. “Glad I got to take this one to the gates personally”. The voice that scared him the most was the one that said, “Eternity is a long time for what this guy’s going to go through. I almost feel sorry for the sick bastard.”

William Christopher could feel that they were on a decline that was getting steeper with every foot that was passed. They were definitely picking up speed, and the ground beneath was getting bumpier.

“There’s the gates,” a female voice said.

“Let him go here. We’re going back to God.”

With that, he no longer heard their feet paddling next to him, and whatever sort of contraption he was on, it started to pick up more speed.

There was a crash, and then William Christopher was standing upright. All of his restraints were off, and he immediately recognized he was in an elevator.

He saw his reflection in the dull elevator doors, and noticed that he was in a dark blue business suit. “What the fuck?” he said to the empty elevator.

If he had been wrong, and this wasn’t some sort of drug-induced dream, then there really was an afterlife. And, if there was, he knew he wouldn’t be in Heaven, which left only one option: Hell.

But what kind of Hell was an elevator? Where was the fire and brimstone? On the other side of the elevator doors?

Until that moment, the elevator hadn’t moved, but the silence was broken by the sound of a bell, motors and the sensation of moving not up or down, but sideways.

William looked for the elevator button panel, but didn’t see one. He also looked to the sides for the requisite handrails, but those weren’t there either. He wasn’t in an elevator so much as he was in a box. The walls, ground, ceiling and sliding doors were all the same dead metal color, barely showing his reflection.

A million questions raced through his mind, but the two at the forefront were am I really dead and is this Hell?

The first one was easy enough. He’d seen the hatred in the eyes of the witnesses and death man, yes, but mainly in the eyes of the judge. He saw them stick the needle in his arm and he felt the acid or poison or whatever it was running through his veins. There was no way he survived that, and even if he had somehow not died after the first shot, the judge wouldn’t have just let him go. Especially after the threat, the promise, he’d made to the Judge’s wife.

He supposed he could be dreaming, but he’d never had a dream this vivid in his life. No, he was definitely present, definitely conscious.

So that could only mean he was in Hell.

Then, as suddenly as the metal car had started moving, it stopped. With a sound no different than any other elevator doors William Christopher had ever heard, they opened.

He expected the worst, and he was scared. He was sure when the doors opened, he’d see nothing but a world of fire and people burning in a flame that would never be extinguished.

But it wasn’t like that at all.

The doors opened, and what they opened to wasn’t fire and brimstone, but the lobby of a building.

William stood for what felt like an eternity trying to absorb and comprehend the scene, but in reality it was only about twenty seconds before the box doors started to close. He had no idea where he was, but knew it was better than being strapped down to a metal table and hearing the word ‘Hell’ over and over, so without trying to make a spectacle of himself, he rushed through the steel doors.

Nobody in the lobby, which was full of people just like any lobby on a business day, paid any special attention to him. Apparently, to these people who were also dressed in business attire, a person coming out of this box was a usual event.

He kept hearing the words of those around him when he was blindfolded, “Hell, Hell, Hell." He remembered them not wanting to get to close to the gates.

So was this Hell?

He looked around the lobby, and it was about as cliché as any lobby of a big office building could be. There were elevators and the security guard sitting behind his desk looking for suspicious office people. There were the glass doors opposite the elevators, which William could only assume led to whatever was outside. But, most importantly to William, there were people, people with legs, people walking around on two good legs for his taking. Imagine the opportunities outside!

William Christopher accepted the fact that he was killed in the death chamber. He even accepted the fact that he was wrong and that there was an afterlife.

But he also had to accept the fact that there was no Hell, because this was just a normal office building. The nuns and crazy teachers had gotten it partially right; when you die you do move on, but that was it. You moved on to neither Heaven nor Hell, but just a place of a different existence.

So why had the people who were wheeling his table speaking of Hell? Why had they been so afraid of the gates?

He didn’t know and he no longer cared. He was ashamed of himself for ever being scared in the first place. He was, always had been, and apparently always would be the predator. They could catch him and kill him, but when all was said and done, they couldn’t stop him. He had just moved on to somewhere else where he could start maiming and killing all over again.

And with that, William Christopher headed for the doors. No need to stay in an office building when he could be out indulging in his favorite hobbies.

He walked towards the sliding glass doors, and while nobody acknowledged him outright, he could have sworn that he got a few smirks.

Had he known exactly where he was, he would have followed these people, one by one, tracking them until they were alone and could be properly maimed and killed. But, as it was, he’d never died before and wasn’t sure what to expect.

As William got closer to the doors that he could only assume were electronic, he saw whoever happened to be passing by them subtly moved towards the center of the lobby. By the time he got there, in fact, there was nobody within twenty feet of him.

Whatever. He wasn’t about to spend eternity in an office building with so much potential outside those doors.

William looked down and saw the ankle level sensors, didn’t hesitate, and triggered them by moving forward.

Much like the elevator doors, these swished open rapidly and smoothly, but what lay beyond was anything but.

It looked like the darkest night he had ever seen, yet the air wasn’t just air. It was more like a black jello, and it was moving in a circular motion, as if it was a cyclone. But the most astonishing thing was the noise. It sounded somewhere between a gale force wind and tortured screams, but screams such as William Christopher had never heard, and he’d heard a lot of screams in his lifetime.

There were screams of fear, screams of shock, screams of desperation and begging, and William Christopher’s favorite scream of all, the scream of pain.

But this was on a whole different level. These screams were everything he’d heard before times infinity. And the screams he’d inflicted died out. There was always a point, with no exception, when his victim realized they were going to die and the screaming stopped. They surrendered to him. They surrendered to their inevitable death.

These screams had no resolution, and William knew, just knew, that they’d been going on for a long, long time, and their intensity indicated not only great pain, but also hopelessness. Endless hopelessness.

The screams haunted William Christopher. He’d always been the one inflicting what resulted in the screams; he’d never had to endure the suffering. He knew if he walked out that door, into that maelstrom, he’d become part of those screams, and there would be no turning back. In life, there was always an escape route if you were smart and lucky enough to find it.

He knew there would be no escaping the swirling blackness.

William stepped away from the door, his ankles again triggering the door to swoosh shut. His palms were sweaty and his breathing was rapid.

He backed away from the door as though he didn’t trust it; as if once he turned his back, the doors would open and he’d either be sucked out or the blackness would come in.

After about ten steps, he decided the doors weren’t going to open and he turned around. The people that had been scurrying around the busy lobby were all still there, but they were pressed up against the walls as far away from the door William had opened as they could possibly be.

All of them looked frightened, and he knew if he had a mirror in front of him, we wouldn’t look any different. He was just a scared little sheep like the rest of the people.

Slowly, the sheep began to move away from the walls and resumed their frantic walk around the lobby, all looking like they had somewhere extremely important to be.

Not knowing what else to do, William Christopher walked toward the elevator. No matter how bad ass and full of hate and evil he thought he was, he’d never been able to illicit the kind of screams he’d heard outside.

Part of him was terrified of the possible cause of those wails, and part of him was in awe. He was dead now, but surely he could corner someone and take them into a room or closet and try to get those screams out of them. He’d maimed in public places before, so why not here? Granted, he didn’t have his usual blade, but he could always improvise. He had his hands and teeth, after all. The screams in the black mass had frightened him, but they also made him hungry. The more he thought about it, the more he wanted to make people scream like they did outside. It was a challenge. It was a challenge to be worse than the evil outside, and he was game. But he had a feeling that if he lost the game he’d be thrown out into the maelstrom, which could prove to be a very difficult situation to get out of.

“You catch on quick,” a voice to his right said. “Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. You’re not the first person to think he can beat the devil at his own game. But the consequences are high, boy. The consequences are very high.”

William Christopher always confronted challenge. He reached deep inside of himself and found that part of him that hated everyone and everything. This wasn’t a difficult thing to do. “I’m dead anyways, so what’s the difference?” he asked with a smirk.

“The difference is how you want to spend eternity,” the man said.

William looked him over. He was black, of large build, and wore the uniform of a security guard. William was sure he could take him if it came down to it, with the exception of one small matter. He laughed and pointed at the man’s hip. “What’s with the gun? You can’t kill what’s already dead, man.”

He didn’t answer William Christopher verbally. Instead, he took the gun out of its holster, pointed it at the person closest to him, and shot her in the thigh.

Immediately, she screamed, and the people that were in the vicinity scattered.

She hit the floor, crying, and almost immediately, two things came and took her away. William wasn’t sure exactly what they were, but they couldn’t have been completely human. They were too quick. They were, in fact, so quick that he barely got a glimpse of them.

All he saw were two forms in red robes who took the woman by the arms and dragged her away so quickly that William had no way of determining where they went. All that was left where the woman had once been was a trail of blood going down one of the lobby’s hallways.

“They’ll have her fixed up in no time. Granted, she’ll still have a scar or another scar depending on how long she’s been here. She probably won’t walk quite the same either, but she won’t die, Mr. Christopher. You are right about that. You can’t kill what’s already dead, but you can still maim them; you can still cause them great pain and fear.”

“Sounds like my kind of place.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.”

“I’m glad you feel that way. You know, well, actually you probably don’t know because I doubt you’ve ever read a book in your life, but Dante wasn’t that far off.”

William Christopher, who was never the scholar, looked at him blankly.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. See, this man Dante believed there were different levels of hell depending on how grave one’s sins were in life. That’s actually the case, but you’ll figure that out with, well, I’d say time, but there actually is no time here. At any rate, you’ll get the hang of things.”

William wanted to rip the security guard’s head off. He may not ever have read Dante, much less heard of him, but he knew when he was being made fun of. The guard had the gun, though, and he obviously wasn’t hesitant to use it.

“When I shot that woman, you didn’t even flinch. You didn’t do anything.”

“What’s your point,” William said coldly.

“You’re a bad, bad man William Christopher. That woman I shot–well, she just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’s far from innocent. I mean, this is Hell after all, but remember what I told you about levels. And remember you’re a bad, bad man. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

William folded his arms and shook his head in the negative.

“I should have figured. You’re one of those who only learns by example. That lady, she’ll be back soon. You, I’m not so sure about.”

“Where am I going?”

The security guard shot twice, taking out both of William Christopher’s kneecaps. “You’re about to find out.” The shots were fired so quickly that they sounded like one gunshot. Immediately, William fell forward, screaming in anger and pain. Just as quickly, he felt something grab both of his hands and pull him forward. He was being dragged out of the main lobby, but to where, he didn’t know.

William tried to lift his head, but couldn’t. His body was going into shock, and it took all of his concentration just to keep his eyes open.

All he could see were flowing red gowns in his peripheral vision and square tiles passing by too quickly.

The holes in his legs where his kneecaps used to be were rubbing on the ground, and the pain was almost enough to make him black out. Almost.

Whoever or whatever was dragging him turned quickly to the right, and he felt his feet bang into the opposite wall as he took the corner. He wasn’t dragged much further before all motion stopped. He heard a door open and then felt his body being lifted onto something flat. His head flopped down hard and fast, so he had no chance to look up and see who or what had delivered him to this room.

William heard a man’s voice say, “Get a line in him,” before he saw the man with the surgical mask leaning over his wounded body. “Fucking George. If I’ve asked him once, I’ve asked him a million times. No more knee injuries. They’re a bitch to fix, and hurt like hell, don’t they buddy?”

William couldn’t talk. The pain was too intense, and he was close, so close, to blacking out. He couldn’t wait for that moment.

The room started to get fuzzy, but he heard the doctor say, “He’s lost a lot of blood. Get a line in him before he fades.”

He felt a pressure on his right arm and the needle going in. It wasn’t like at the Doctors, though. Whoever did this didn’t care if it hurt. They just jammed the needle in and then started searching for a vein.

“Find it, already. He can’t pass out. He needs that blood.”

“You take all the fun out of my job,” a female voice said.

“Hell isn’t supposed to be fun.”

After about thirty seconds of searching, the needle found its mark. “It’s in,” the female voice said.

Immediately, William felt the blood flowing through his veins and he felt himself becoming more aware of his surroundings. He could now see the Doctor to his left and a Nurse to his right, although he couldn’t ascertain much about their appearances with their surgical masks on.

“How about a little morphine?” the Doctor asked.

“Sounds good to me.”

Thank God, William thought to himself.

He lifted his head enough to see the nurse walking to a cabinet across the room, where she took out two bottles of what William could only assume was the drug and two syringes. One for each arm, perhaps? He hoped so. His pain was excruciating. “

In certain sections of Hell, you get your occasional break,” the Doctor said.

With the new blood being coursed through his body, his mind began to clear and he knew he wasn’t going to get the relief that unconsciousness would bring, which at the moment he found odd. The afterlife was one thing, but who ever would think of passing out in the afterlife? “Hurry, please. This pain is killing me,” he managed to slur.

“Did you hear that?” the Doctor asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. She leaned over William Christopher and giggled as she said, “You can’t die from the pain, silly. You’re already dead. I read your chart and figured you’d like that. Think about it, William: you can go around inflicting all the pain you want and you’ll never die! You get to make people scream for eternity, if that’s what you want. Judging from your history, I’d say that’s exactly what you want. But George, that’s the security guard who shot you, got you first, and around here, you have to pay your dues before you can dish out that kind of stuff.”

He looked at her, the confusion on his face saying what he couldn’t articulate.

“Don’t worry. George was right. You’ll get the hang of it soon enough. The worse you were in life, the lower you are in the system here. In fact, right now I’d say you’re the lowest soul on the totem pole. It’s going to take a while, but you have all of eternity, so don’t worry. Eventually, the guy in charge will let you get back to your maiming.”

“Who?” he muttered.

“Everything you heard in Sunday School was right, William,” the Doctor chimed in. “Who is simply Lucifer.”

Panic seized him now with the pain, and for the moment it outweighed it. He’d have to endure this for how long? He’d inflicted pain before but never received it. It was worse than he could imagine, and not knowing how long it would last terrified him. At least his victims were put out of their misery relatively quickly. Well, most of the time anyways. But this was eternity, so what did that mean?

Again, the nurse read him like a book. “Don’t think about it too much, silly. It’s only hell, and no matter how bad it seems in here, you don’t want to be a part of what is outside those doors in the lobby, so suck it up.”

She was still holding the morphine. “Please, inject it,” he said. His knees felt like they were on fire.

“You heard the man,” the Doctor said.

William Christopher watched as she gave one of the syringes to the Doctor. Why were they taking so long?

“Ready nurse?”

“Ready, Doctor.”

William closed his eyes, eagerly awaiting the pin-pricks and relief that would follow, the sweet relief, the sweet bliss of morphine.

He kept his eyes closed and waited. Waited. What the hell was going on?

He opened his eyes, and to his surprise the Doctor and Nurse were standing at the front of his table. He was injecting her and she was injecting him. Both of their faces took on the calm, happy countenance that comes only with morphine.

“What the fuck!” William tried to scream. It came out as only a harshly sounding whisper.

“What?” the Doctor asked, looking stoned.

“You were supposed to inject me!”

“Look whose in charge now,” the Nurse said.

“Look who thinks he’s in charge,” the Doctor responded. “You said inject it. You didn’t say who to inject it into, so just calm the hell down. May I have this dance, nurse?”

“Let me just replace the blood bag. I wouldn’t want our patient going unconscious on us.”

William Christopher’s world, his after world, started to spin around him. He watched in a daze as the nurse put up another bag of blood and fed the line into his I.V. The blood circulated through his body, but there was no attempt to stop the bleeding. “How much blood are you going to put into me?” William asked.

“I don’t know, exactly,” the Nurse said. “It’s all up to the boss. He decides when you’ve suffered enough and can move onto a different level. Now quit your whining and give us a few moments peace.”

He was speechless as he watched the Nurse walk across the room towards the Doctor who was pulling a radio out of one of the steel cabinets. He switched it on, and it sounded mostly like static. “We don’t get the best reception down here,” he said slowly, slurring from the effects of the morphine.

William Christopher heard a familiar song. Some woman singing, “You take my breath away.”

The situation was too surreal for William to comprehend. He looked at his blown out knees that were spewing blood. He looked at the blood bag that was freely flowing but now never draining. He looked across the room at the Doctor and Nurse slow dancing in their surgical masks. Then he closed his eyes, feeling only hatred and pain. How long did they say eternity was in Sunday School?

“There is no end.”

William Christopher opened his eyes and saw the security guard who had shot him. Christopher looked down at his knees, perfectly intact. He was back in the lobby in his business suit. Instinct took over and he cocked his arm back to punch the security guard in the face, intending to break it wide open.

George was too quick. He pulled his gun, “Uh uh uh. I’m the armed one remember? Last time I shot you in the knees. Imagine how it would feel if I shot you in the nuts. Think of that pain, William. Mr. Bad Ass Maimer.

These words were enough to send him running and he knew there was nowhere else to go. It was a gamble, but he had to take it. There was no way he was going to be dragged down that hall again, this time bleeding out from his privates. No way. He had no reason to believe what the Doctor and Nurse told him about outside. Why would anyone in Hell tell the truth?

He bolted straight for the sliding glass doors, and as he did so, he heard George’s trailing footsteps stop. Instinctually, William knew he wasn’t going to be shot. He knew George would let him take his chances in the blackness beyond the lobby.

Maybe he’s just scared. Maybe they’re all scared. Maybe it’s all a front and this is the way out.

He didn’t believe his own bullshit, but he needed it to propel him forward. As the doors swooshed open, he dove into the maelstrom.

Immediately, he knew he’d made a mistake. He felt pressure on every inch of his body, squeezing him so tightly that he thought he would implode. Pushed almost to the point of breaking, but not quite there. He screamed. He screamed the scream of the damned, joining the choir of suffering that was the blackness.

The Judge looked at the monitors on the hospital bed.

The government had decided years ago that execution wasn’t enough; that it was too easy on the person convicted. But they didn’t let the general public know for two reasons. First, they thought the concept of Capital Punishment might still be a deterrent in some cases. Second, and more importantly, the general public couldn’t stomach what the government was doing. They’d consider it torture or cruel and unusual punishment.

The judge knew differently. He knew when the punishment fit the crime, and the government had established certain parameters regarding how to monitor this.

William Christopher was one bad apple, and he deserved the level of hell the government had given him. Eventually, like the rest of the inmates in this facility that technically didn’t even exist, William Christopher would actually die of old age. But would he get the punishment he deserved in the afterlife? Was there even an afterlife?

Nobody knew, but the Judge knew evil when he saw it. He looked at the monitors and saw that in his unconscious state, William Christopher was in the most physical and emotional trauma that he could withstand. He was in a Hell of the government’s own design, a Hell that fit the crime.

The Judge adjusted some dials on one of the bedside monitors, leveling out the drugs and electricity being sent into William’s body. Any more suffering and his heart would give out, and that would be unacceptable.

The government had it down to a science, an art, the judge thought.

The great Maimer looked so peaceful on the bed, but the Judge knew exactly what was going on behind those closed eyes. He knew Justice was being served.

He turned and walked to an elevator that didn’t exist except to a few high-ranking officials and judges. As the doors opened and he stepped inside for the ride that would take him up thirty floors to civilization, he smiled. He liked his job, maybe just a little too much.