Chapter One: The Submarine Door

I committed the deed and now I'm paying for it.
If I had to do it over again I would.
I leave my written words for you all to read.

-last words of Creed Turner, convicted of murder
executed by hanging, December 4, 1851

“Dead man walkin’.”

Audwin Bausch kept his eyes down on the plush white slippers that had been pressed onto his bony feet. The skid proof soul of the shoes squeaked as he shuffled his way down the long hall, flanked by two burly officers in uniforms of dark blue and a white clad female trailing behind them. There was an elderly priest clad in black raiment standing before the pill shaped door that reminded Audwin of the doors he had seen in a submarine once.

“May God have mercy on your soul.” The priest gave a cough that sounded like a dry heave and drew a cross in the open air in front of Audwin’s face with the tips of his forefingers. Audwin kept his eyes on him as the man stepped back, his robes whispering about his papery white legs. Beneath the robes, he was wearing blue socks. The sight was so unexpected that Audwin had to bite down onto his lower lip to keep from laughing aloud. One of the guards grasped his skin and bones upper arm and guided him through the submarine door into the chamber.

In keeping with the vague nautical feel of the room, the walls were painted a cheerful aquamarine, like the sea; the ceiling was doused with a clinical white, reminding Audwin of a doctor’s office. A table with two long, rectangular protrusions like the horizontal beams of a cross sat in the middle of the room. Various machines lined the blue-green walls such as the khaki heart monitor which sat in one corner by the head of the bed. A glistening metal box with nine colored bulbs in rows of three-three red above three yellow above three green- and two silvery switches was pressed against the wall to the left of the heart monitor, giving the room a laboratory feel.

The strange device with the six syringe like cylinders added to the effect, but instead of amusing him, the machine sobered the man in the pale slippers. The clear fluids held within the cylinders caught his attention and held it until one of the officers stepped around him to the cross bed, reaching beneath it and pulling out a portable set of two stairs. He positioned it by the foot of the bed. “Step up, Mr. Bausch.”

Audwin looked away from the fluid filled cylinders and crossed the floor in his slippers. He padded up the steps and looked down onto the table, noting the khaki leather restraints and the strange cushion running down the length of the table that was split near the end, forming leg like sections that had their own restraints. A white sheet had been pulled over the cushion; there was a hole in the sheet between the cushion’s ‘legs.’
“What’s that for?”

The officer did not answer him, but pressed a small key into the lock of the handcuffs and gestured for Audwin to lay back. With a sigh, the young man complied, resting his head on a thin white pillow. His arms were stretched out over the beams; his legs were straight and still, each resting on its private cushion. The officer took up the little stairs and set them back down beneath the table while the other moved to begin fastening the restraints. The two policemen buckled the bindings just under his elbow, across his shoulders and chest and hips, and finally around his thighs; they were tightened to the point of discomfort.

As he laid there, he noticed a mirror positioned to his left against the wall. “Are there people back there?” He rolled his eyes back toward his skull, looking at the woman in white standing by the upper portion of the bed. She pursed her red glossed lips together and wrung her gloved hands in front of her ample breasts. “Can they see me?”

The woman stepped toward his arm and tied something above his elbow. She took a square of cotton and began to rub alcohol over the place where she would be pressing the needle into his skin. Audwin looked away; he had never been fond of needles. Parting his lips, he drew in a deep breath as he felt the tip of the needle pierced the surface of his skin. The prick should not have bothered him. He had had so many chemicals dumped into the tunnel work of his veins it was a wonder that he had not developed super powers. The thought brought a little smile to his thin, cracked lips.

The woman moved away and the officers stepped back toward the machine with the red, yellow and green lights. The beeping on the heart monitor began to grow more rapid as the fist sized organ began to pound against his rib cage like knuckles against a punching bag. Audwin swallowed and released his breath in an unsteady sigh. He felt his hands began to tremble, and found it strange that he should be afraid after so long of knowing that death was at his doorstep. The sound of a clock ticking pervaded his thoughts, and he found his eyes searching the room for the infernal device. He finally found it perched on the wall above the mirror. He stared at it as the thin arm that counted the seconds began to draw closer toward the twelve.

“Any last words, Bausch?”

He swallowed again, sweat beading on his forehead as he tried to remain composed. “If you’d just bear with me… I’d like the chance to explain… to explain everything.”