"Now, don't be alarmed. It's just a rubber band." The clippers stopped. "Is he done? Good. All right, Mohammed, stand up. Don't be afraid. The guard is just going to wrap the band around your penis. It's just to prevent any accidents while you're undergoing the process."
Remo shuddered at the word "process." It sounded so clinical.
"Now, bend over. Guard, insert this suppository into Mohammed's rectum. There. That wasn't so bad, was it? I'm sorry about the indignity, but it saves the undertaker a lot of unnecessary work, not having to clean the body."
Popcorn tried to speak, but all Remo could make out was a pitiful muff muff of a sound.
"What's that?" the warden was saying in a solicitous tone. "What? Oh, yes. Customarily there is a last meal, but the doctor left specific instructions that you not eat while your tongue is stitched up like that. I'm sorry, but the doctor knows best."
"For Christ's sake," Remo exploded. "You're about to drag him off to the chair. Who gives a rat's ass if his stitches pop!"
"The person who would have to clean up the blood," the warden called back. "Guard, if that prisoner speaks out again, take him to solitary."
Remo started to tell them where they could shove solitary, but subsided, bitter that they had that to hold over him. But as they had told him the first time he walked through the Trenton State gates, he had forfeited his civil rights.
"All right, you may dress now," the warden went on quietly. The rustle of clothes came next. Then the cell door buzzed open and Remo could hear the soft padding of Popcorn's sandaled feet on the corridor floor. For some reason it sounded louder than the shoes of the others.
"So long, Popcorn," a man shouted several cells away.
"Give 'em hell, my man."
"You goin' to a better place, my man."
"Let me reassure you that the procedure is completely painless," Warden McSorley was saying as a guard unlocked the door to the electric chair. Popcorn whimpered miserably. He was attempting to speak, but only an inarticulate blubbering came out.
"Catch him!" the warden shouted suddenly. "He's collapsing."
"Don't worry, I got him. Here, let's just haul him along."
After the commotion subsided, the hush was palpable. It was a hush Remo had heard before. He was not surprised, then, when a man walked down the line. He wore a black hood over a simple brown workman's uniform. He looked like a common repairman.
The executioner.
After he passed Remo's cell, the wheel on the thick door squealed shut. Then absolute silence blanketed the row.
The next several minutes were interminable. Remo wondered if Popcorn was conscious when they strapped him down. He hoped not. It seemed to take a long time. How long could it take to strap a man in? Remo fretted.
Then, after what seemed like forever, the lights flickered and Remo went cold. When the flicker came, it seemed too sudden. They flickered again. And a third time. Remo held his breath after that. Then the lights flickered a fourth and final time. "Christ!" Remo said, sickened.
The warden reemerged, trailed by the guards and the hooded executioner.
One of the guards was saying, "Imagine that. Four jolts. And such a little squirt, too."
"Before I do this again," the executioner said testily, "I want to look that thing over again. I don't want to ever go through another one like that. I'm not up for this kind of thing. I'm semiretired, dammit!"
"I hope you feel that way when my time comes," Remo muttered sotto voce.
The executioner glanced in his direction, his eyes going wide within his leather-ringed eye holes.
He stopped, came up to Remo's cell. "Do I know you?" he asked vaguely.
"That's a popular question lately," Remo shot back sourly.
"I do know you," the executioner said. "But I can't place the face."
"Yours is a blank to me," Remo said, flashing a wicked grin.
"You're a cold-blooded son of a bitch, aren't you? What's your name?"
"Look it up," Remo fired back.
"Don't worry, I will," the executioner said, and walked on.
"Guard," the warden said, "show Williams to his new cell."
"Damn! Now I've done it," Remo said bitterly, thinking he had just earned a stint in solitary.
"Williams!" the executioner said explosively. "Did you say his name was Williams?" The buzz of the control door closing cut off the warden's reply.
The guard buzzed Remo's cell open, and to Remo's surprise, he was taken to Popcorn's old cell.
"Take good care of it," the guard told him as the cell door clanged in his unhappy face. "On the row, this is the Presidential Suite."
As the guard started away, Remo called after him, "Did he die hard?"
The guard stopped. His expression was stiff. "Know what his last words were?" he asked solemnly. "What?"
"Mumph! Mumph. Unquote." And the guard broke into howling laughter.
"He was just a kid, you bastard," Remo hissed, his knuckles whitening on the cell bars.
"Sure. A kid who blew away his own sister, left her for dead in a swamp with maggots crawling all over her."
Remo started. "What?"
"Sure. What'd he tell you?"
"That he killed his girlfriend on his birthday."
"I don't know about the birthday part, but he made a duck out of you. It was his sister, and he killed her, all right. After he raped her. But he should have read up on maggots before he poured them into her wounds. He thought they'd consume the body so it wouldn't be recognized. Instead, they ate away all the bad tissue. She was barely alive when they found her, and lingered just long enough to finger her brother. Whatever you thought of that little prick, he deserved what he got. Just as you will." The guard strode away.
Remo's eyes looked into dead space. "Son of a bitch," he muttered. "He lied to me."
Remo stumbled back to his cot and looked around. The new cell was as pink as his old one, but it smelled different. It smelled of sweat and something else, something indefinable. It smelled of fear. And cold realization hit Remo Williams.
"Damn," he muttered emptily, "I am next." Remo felt very cold inside and lay back on the cot to get a grip on himself. His hand, exploring under the pillow, encountered something soft and crushable. He pulled it out.