Portrait of an Electric Chair

PORTRAIT OF AN ELECTRIC CHAIR

I was a shy prince. I wore my cap backwards. I inhaled and exhaled profusely. In fact, I inhaled and exhaled to such an intolerable level of frequency that, one day, on December 3rd, at ten o’clock in the morning, I fainted. Of course, when I came to, I was pleased to see that I was totally OK. No broken limbs, no bruises, no scratches; only, though, I was a shade darker in my complexion, thenceforth and forever more. So, here I am, roughly three years later (and, might I add, I use the revolutions of mars to make my systematic temporal approximations), I am still that same one shade darker. Though, excuse me, I took up some studies here and there, so that my brow was crushed just a tad, and my face bore the expression of one who is perpetually in mild tremors of fleeting paralysis. My spectacles? Well, they are round. My name? Well, give me a moment. I will tell you shortly. I walk with a straight shot, up and down, as it were, with no real goal or destination. But I always arrive somewheres. How is that? I say to myself, ‘the cafe!’ and, my God, here I am! At the cafe! I say to myself. ‘home!’ and, would you believe it? You get the point.

The man always comes in at two o’clock. That’s his motto, ‘Mr. Two o’clock’. He doesn’t like it when I call him that, says ‘it’s not his name’. Well, what is your name then, mister? He tells me his name is Dr. Huntsmann. I don’t believe him. I say, “Mister, you come in at two o’clock every day, right through that door. How is your name other than Mr. Two o’clock? It doesn’t make any sense.” Of course, when I protest like this, he’s silent as a Jackdaw and doesn’t utter a peep. He has the face of a squirrel. Peering, curious, tense, too cerebral. Did you know that squirrels are cerebral? By Jove they are engaged in nothing but arithmetic contemplations! Day and night they are calculating, fitting things together, measuring probabilities, applying approximations. Anyways, the man is usually silent. Today I greeted him, I said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Two o’clock.” He did not respond, which is common, and proceeded to drip cold water on my unevenly shaven head. This is also common. I shriek in pain and fear but Mr. Two o’clock tells me it’s good for my nerves. Don’t believe him. Mr. Two o’clock has always got a trick up his sleeves.

I had a terrible headache. I told him, “Hey, mister, let’s go for a walk. My head is pounding and I feel that I were about to fall over.” He only looked at me. Strange, it seemed like he anticipated what I was about to say. I saw that his face was one of total disinterestedness. He appeared almost unconscious, like the state a man comes to when he has reached the apex of mechanical monotony. He simply left the room. By the way, they have me in a strange dress, one totally strange. Very, very strange. The kind of dress you could not buy in stores because it was not sold in stores. They call me mad. So what! Some days they call me Edman. Some days I am King Fritz. They call me mad. So what! Some days they call me Edman, though, on Thursdays and Sundays I am called Emperor Valentine. Mister two o’clock says that Emperor Valentine is the son of Galileo. What? The raving fools! And who is Galileo? Damn them! They mock me day and night. I am wearing a strange dress, the kind you couldn’t buy in the store. The dress is strange, it keeps me in a position utterly absurd. They say I wear it because it is the dress of kings and kings cannot wear anything but this strange dress. They told me, “No one wears this dress because it is a crime, a federal crime, for common people to don the dress of kings.”

They call me mad. So why do they force me into this foolish dress? It keeps one in a position utterly absurd. My physiology is rendered intolerable and supremely queer. My form is transformed into one where I am perpetually hugging myself. How? There are straps which buckle into place, fastening my arms into an immobile posture behind my back. Surely they are fools. They say, and I repeat, “Edman, you must hold still. There is no reason for you to struggle so violently against us. After all, this is your dress, and not a soul can wear it except you. It is best you sit still and let us fasten these buckles into place. Didn’t you know? Only kings wear this dress.”

The liars! Day and night they are sniggering behind my back. They mock me shamelessly. Gentleman, am I to be mocked?

That wretched chair! The man in the green spectacles and waxed hair told me, his words ringing with deceit and contempt, “Our dear king, won’t you sit in this chai- throne for us? Surely, it befits only a king to sit in his throne!” I am a king, meanwhile they feed me scarcely once a day, meals full of dust and mold. Once I was given a chicken leg for my noon meal. No sooner was I filled with appetite than I bit into it to find it utterly rotting and inedible. The inhuman wretches! So, I took my place in this frightening seat. By God, it was a perfect geometrical monstrosity, the bane of any architect with a farthing of sense in his head! Oh! What man, except one totally sapped of his reasoning powers and thoroughly dull-witted could fashion such a complex abnormality? No sooner had I taken a seat before the man with the green spectacles and another man, whom I had scarcely seen two or three times, whose face I positively abhorred, as it reminded me of a crow with a crudely attached human face, came running in unison towards me, obviously with great haste and pleasure, as I quickly observed a momentary smirk on both faces. I am mad! Surely, but, why all the deceit and unkindliness? And the lies! Oh, what mockery! I am wearing a strange dress, one you would not find in a store, because they are not sold in stores. It reaches around the bac- have I said this already? Nonsense! I am mad, surely, but the repetition at least- nevermind.

At last, the two fools running in unison grab hold of an unbelievably unorthodox sponge-like object. It is a sponge of some sorts. The man with the crow’s physiology, who was enjoying himself only a bit much, and was, as it were, about to drool out of his mouth, dunked the unorthodox sponge into a basin filled with ice water (why did they cool the water?) and squeezed at least a pint of liquid on my still freshly shaven head. I was no sooner about to shriek before a third man, who had, evidently, been behind me all the whiles, clasped a crude object over my head and mouth so that I was stunned and silenced at once. I looked a complete specimen. Had they wanted, they could have exhibited me at a zoo as being a recently captured subterranean specimen, whose mode of defense and attack (omnivorous, so that it was both prey and predator) was total and destitute helplessness. I saw what I looked like. Evidently there was a looking glass, vertically mounted and large, at a diagonal from my seat.

They are quickly approaching a very large, treacherous, and grave looking switch-like mechanism. It seemed to be possessed of a soul, and this soul was staring with immediate continuity and distinctness of presence into my own soul, so that, while gazing at it, I was filled through and through with panic and only the sourest forebodings. A multitude of premonitions, one after the other, each toppling against each other in frenzied disorder and imprecision, seized my soul with a blackness that was both violent and inevitable in its mortality.

[THOSE TWO OR THREE MOMENTS BEFORE THE ‘FLIPPING OF THE SWITCH’]

Passing thoughts

A life flashes before an eye, or two

Here, there I am. Yes, that floating apparition, that is I, and I is they, and they is nay, and- what? This is the madhouse, surely. Though they’ve simply got the wrong guy sitting here. Ye, this is a madhouse. And what is a madhouse? A madhouse is where they slap chickens around. Day and night they are slapping chickens around by the thousands. The crying and blunted groans of gurgling chicken necks has proven a positive drop of the guillotine to any worthy thought that may happen to chance upon my throbbing head. This place had made the activity of intelligent thought a perfect impossibility, that-

I wish to write a short work, perhaps a long essay, called, ‘The Prophet’. A work detailing the necessity of the prophet. He alone is strong enough to endure what the common people cannot. He is the one who leaps head first into the primordial vacuum of being. He absorbs the cosmic nihilism into himself. He bears the burden of pitch-black eternity. He emerges from his cave, shining. He suffers infinitely. He suffers infinity. He suffers the sufferings of everyone on Earth, for their sake. He is perfectly selfless, loving, eternally trembling, bleeding, radiant, ecstatic. His suffering is divine because it is willed. It is impressed freely. He destroys one and saves all. He destroys himself. The prophet comes out of his cave mourning his own death. The prophet comes out with bright life, bright purpose, bright reality. He swallows the jagged absurd into his own gut, so that childish humanity does not come across it by accident and die a pathetic, comical, choking death. And it-

Where was I? I am confusing myself. Are not my thoughts private? Then why do I intrude upon myself? It seems I were a fissure of many personalities, each one the perfect egoist and scoundrel, battling his confounded way into a spotlight. And what is this spotlight? It is not a spotlight but only the concentrated spotlessness of a shadow without a body. And- that man about to flip that switch has certainly got a broken gait. He does not know how to walk. Two, three, four steps he simply couldn’t get it right. Did you know, I can divine a man’s personality, two thousand years of fate and moral character, simply by means of a calculated observation of his gait? This man is a sensualist. He is fumbling clumsily and with conceited depravity in every step. Though, I -

Yes, the look is very important. I caught a close friend of mine yesterday trying to steal an evil look.Yes, it was decidedly evil, I’m sure of that. He wanted to have his look in secret, but I caught him. He looked terribly embarrassed. I think all evil looks are characteristically similar in that they share in a remarkable darkening that comes over one’s face. I have since began to distrust my friend, but due to weakness and slavery to social convention he shall never come to know of my distrust. May God save me from my solipsism. On second thought -

[*CLICK*]

THE FLIP IS SWITCHED, OR THE SWITCH IS FLIPPED

“GZZZAHHHH!”

The poignant stench of fried scalp (as his head was shaven) and brain tissue lingers for some minutes longer. There is smoke and a presiding aura of horror and roughly concealed, demoniac thrill fills the room.

Edman Willace III is dead at the age of 33. He died by the electric chair. Friends and family were present. His mother, Katherine Maurice Willace, immediately fell into a fit of hysterics and scenes of spontaneous seizures.