My name is James Talbot, and I’m about to die.

  They call it a walk, like there’s somewhere to go. Like it’s a hallway in an office building and I’m late to a meeting. Like the man in front of me is a guide and not a guard with a hand riding his belt, thumb resting on the snap of his holster.

  The truth is, I’ve already gone where I’m going. They’re just moving the meat.

  The corridor is painted a color someone once decided was calming, a dirty institutional cream that has been scrubbed and re-scrubbed until the wall texture looks like sandpaper. Fluorescent lights hum overhead, one of them flickering in a slow, tired rhythm, as if it’s already practicing its final act. The air is cold and thin, smelling like bleach, old sweat, and that permanent damp that seeps into concrete when a place has been alive with caged men for too long.

  I’ve been in worse. I’ve slept in mud that had teeth. I’ve stood in heat so intense it felt like the sky was pressing down with a hand. I’ve watched men make decisions in half a second that saved the lives of a dozen other people, and then die for their trouble.

  This, though. This is clean. This is polite. This is just America doing paperwork.

  My wrists are cuffed in front, not behind. Courtesy, I guess. Or maybe they don’t want me to feel restrained. Maybe they want me to feel like I’m participating.

  The guard to my left is young enough that he probably thinks he'll live forever. His eyes keep sliding toward me and away again. I don’t blame him. He’s probably been told a dozen times that I’m dangerous, and then he’s met my gaze and realized I’m not twitching, not spitting, not begging.

  The guard behind me is older. He’s the one who doesn’t look away. He’s watched enough men walk this route to know the pattern.

  Me, I don’t have a pattern. I have a history.

  My boots make a soft, controlled thud on the concrete. The shackles around my ankles are loose enough that I can walk without stumbling, but every step has a faint metallic whisper, a reminder that there’s a chain there, even if I don’t need it.

  I was born in a small town that people pass through on their way to somewhere else. I left it the first chance I got. At eighteen, I signed the papers, raised my right hand, and stepped into the Army because I wanted something to belong to and something to do. I got both.

  I spent twenty years in the 101st Airborne Division. Screaming Eagles. A name that looks good on a patch and sounds even better when the rotors are chewing the air above you.

  I did Iraq. I did Afghanistan. I did the years in between that nobody puts in movies, the months of training and drills and waiting that grind your soul down to a steady, functional edge.

  I made Master Sergeant. I retired honorably. Twenty years and a handshake and a plaque and the kind of smile people reserve for funerals and promotions.

  They say hero, too.

  I got a Silver Star for valor. It’s a clean phrase that fits in a citation. I can still see the alley where it happened. Narrow. Dusty. The sun so bright that it washed the world into harsh contrasts. I can still hear the gunfire cracking like boards being snapped over a knee. I can still feel the weight of a man’s body in my arms as I dragged him, and the way his blood made my gloves slick.

  I remember the moment I decided I wasn’t dying that day. Not because I was brave. Because I was stubborn.

  They pinned the medal on me later. I stood there in my dress uniform and let the words roll over me. There were cameras. People clapped. My commander looked proud.

  All of them thought they understood what that medal meant.

  None of them asked if I enjoyed it.

  Because here’s the part you don’t put in a citation. I did.

  It wasn’t the killing. It was the clarity. The clean, sharp line between me and the world. The feeling that everything unnecessary fell away and all that was left was intent.

  In the Army, that kind of thing is useful. They call it focus. They call it discipline. They call it a combat mindset. They pat you on the back and tell you you’re a natural.

  I was also a professional fighter.

  Not the kind that gets sponsorships and interviews and kids wearing your shirt. The kind that fights in back rooms and small arenas, in smoky places where the crowd is close enough you can smell their beer and their sweat.

  I moonlighted when duty allowed. Two-time All-Army Combatives heavyweight champion. I liked the rules because the rules were simple and the pain was honest.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  If you hit a man hard enough, he either breaks or he doesn’t.

  And I liked watching which one happened.

  Some people hear that and think I’m trying to sound tough. Like it’s a story I tell to feel bigger.

  I don’t need to feel bigger.

  I’m already big.

  Six foot four. Two forty-five when I was in my prime. Now, a little less because prison food is designed for survival, not strength. Still, the weight hangs on me the way a weapon hangs on a wall. It doesn’t need to move to be understood.

  Murderer.

  That’s the label that matters now.

  If you ask most people why I’m here, they’ll tell you I beat a man to death just to watch him die.

  I say it sometimes, too, in that old Johnny Cash cadence, because it makes people uncomfortable, and discomfort is a kind of control.

  Then I clarify.

  I’m not joking.

  I did beat a man to death.

  And I did watch him die.

  And I did think it was funny.

  The laughter wasn’t a cackle. It was quiet. Internal. A little warm spark of satisfaction in my chest.

  He deserved it, in my opinion. The court had its own opinion, too. Their opinion came with a sentence and an appeal, and another appeal and a date set on a calendar.

  I always knew I was a psychopath.

  People act like it’s a sudden thing. Like one day you wake up and realize your wiring is different.

  For me, it was always there. I remember being seven years old and looking at a stray dog that had been hit by a car, its back legs twisted wrong, and feeling nothing. My mother cried. I watched her cry and tried to understand why her face did that. I mimicked her later in the mirror just to see if I could.

  I learned early that the world expects certain reactions. I learned to give them.

  I learned to smile at the right time.

  I learned to lower my eyes when someone talked about tragedy.

  I learned to say I’m sorry and make my voice sound soft.

  I learned to be the kind of man people wanted to have on their team.

  The Army loved me.

  Prison doesn’t.

  The hallway turns. Another set of doors. Another checkpoint. Keys jangle. A buzz sounds. A door unlocks with the mechanical reluctance of a vault.

  On the other side, the air is colder. Cleaner. Like they’ve tried to bleach the fear out of it.

  We pass a window that looks into nothing. Just a blank wall. No daylight. No sense of where you are in the building.

  That’s intentional.

  You can’t orient yourself. You can’t imagine escape routes. You can’t pretend there’s a world outside.

  Not that it matters.

  There’s a room ahead, lit too bright, and even before I see it, I can feel it. The weight of it. The anticipation.

  Execution chamber.

  Electric chair.

  Some states do injections now. Quiet. Clinical. A man falls asleep, and the paperwork gets filed.

  Here, they want theater.

  They want straps, leather, and a switch. Weird stuff they’re into.

  They want lightning.

  I step into the room.

  It’s smaller than people imagine. The chair sits on a low platform, wooden arms polished by years of hands that never wanted to be there. Thick straps hang loose, waiting. The headpiece is there too, the metal cap with the sponge, the wires, the parts that turn a human body into a circuit.

  There’s a preacher in the corner. There’s always a preacher. He looks at me like he’s trying to find a crack in me, something to let him, or God, know I'm sorry. And not just for getting caught.

  There’s a clerk with a clipboard, eyes flicking between forms like this is a dentist appointment and he’s making sure the insurance codes are right.

  There are officials, a doctor, the warden. A few faces I’ve seen before.

  Behind the glass, blurred by reflection, there are silhouettes. Witnesses.

  Family of the victim, maybe. Reporters. People who need closure. People who need proof.

  I don’t care.

  They guide me to the chair.

  I sit.

  The wood is cold through the thin fabric of the prison jumpsuit. The chair creaks in a way that feels almost intimate, like it’s welcoming me into its embrace.

  Hands move over me. Efficient. Not cruel, not gentle. Just practiced.

  The straps go across my chest. My thighs. My ankles. My wrists.

  A leather band goes across my forehead to keep my head from whipping when my muscles seize.

  Someone wets the sponge. I can smell it. A damp, mineral smell, like a dirty rag.

  They fit the metal cap onto my skull and tighten it down. It presses into my scalp.

  I feel the wires run away from me like veins.

  A guard steps back.

  The warden looks at me.

  “Any last words?”

  That’s the moment they expect pleading. Regret. A speech about God.

  I give them what they deserve.

  “I’ll see you all in hell.”

  A flicker runs through the room. Not the lights. The people. That little involuntary tightening when someone says something they don’t want to hear.

  The preacher mutters a prayer under his breath.

  They blindfold me.

  The cloth is rough. It smells like detergent and old cotton. It blocks the lights, but not the sense of being watched. I can still feel the eyes behind the glass like heat.

  Someone’s hand touches my shoulder, checking a strap.

  Then the world goes quiet.

  Not silent. The fluorescent hum is still there. The soft scrape of shoes. A cough from behind the glass. The faint click of a pen.

  But quiet in the way it gets right before a fight starts.

  My heart beats slowly.

  I breathe.

  Somewhere, someone flips a switch.

  Pain explodes.

  It isn’t like getting shot. It isn’t like breaking a bone. It isn’t like anything a body is designed to understand.

  It’s white.

  It’s a sun inside my skull.

  My teeth clamp so hard I feel them grind.

  Every muscle in my body seizes at once, an animal panic reaction forced into motion by something stronger than will.

  My spine arches against the straps.

  The cap on my head becomes a crown of fire.

  The world narrows to one concept.

  Current.

  It pours through me.

  Not around me. Through me. Every nerve lit, every pathway screaming.

  The blindfold might as well not exist. I see light anyway, brighter than the room, brighter than memory.

  I try to laugh.

  The sound dies in my throat, choked off by clenched lungs and locked muscles.

  A second surge hits.

  Then a third.

  Somewhere far away, a voice says a number, counting seconds.

  My thoughts scatter.

  I can feel something in my head tearing. Not metaphorically. Like wires snapping. Like glass fracturing.

  I realize, in a flicker of clarity, that I’m dying.

  Not in the dramatic way people talk about. Not in slow motion.

  In a cold, clinical way.

  Heart stops.

  Brain disrupts.

  Electrical storm.

  A last memory tries to surface, something from a briefing, some instructor yelling about grounding rods and feedback loops.

  The current spikes.

  Then the world drops out from under me.

  And in that falling darkness, something else arrives.

  And somewhere in the dark, something that is not supposed to exist opens its eyes and looks right at me.