The Chair

We lost him to the chair on a morning not so very different from this; the pavements were frosted, the sky was grayish, and everything in between told a familiar story. On the given date, all six feet of him marched to the arms of Old Sparky where a verdict or two had been fulfilled a few years before. The instrument was varnished, although spots on its surface indicated its age the way simple digits never did. As the ones before him soon realized, Sparky was built for the only purpose that brought them there. It was far more efficient at this sort of job than they hoped, but that thought too often descended a little too late. Presently, time alone stood between this man and becoming a marked chapter in history. And there was little of it left.

Crudely shaven, he bent himself down to be strapped from head to foot in peeled-off leather pieces. They crisscrossed around him, at several points uniformly maintaining their distance from one another as though careful not to outdo each other. But they kept him captive nonetheless, there in their joint effort to still him in his seat. At that instant he came to recognize the signs of imprisonment a dank cell and a flea-ridden mattress ever failed to effect. Somehow this one had its own brand of finality, and it tightened and tightened around him soon as the sound of his own cries came reaching his ears. He couldn’t believe the thoughts that now cascaded through his dead, if thoughts they were. One by one they flashed and went, leaving faint traces that seemed to keep his fluids gushing out of him. If there was an end to it, he knew he wouldn’t see it.

In that small margin of time, in two minutes if you will, two thousand volts of electricity streamed through Theodore Bundy’s shackled body. A new, stifling ghost of a scent filled the air to replace the cold steam of concrete. The room was silent, unless in the heads of those present the gurgling attempts at a shriek remained. The pronunciation of his death was swift, swifter and more meaningful than all the years he spent bludgeoning women to their eternal sleep.

Outside, the ripples of his death parted the world into two. Others quoted scriptures, others jumped for joy, while some fantasized of taking justice into their hands. Both sides showed equal fervor, only siding with their own definition of righteousness. But the morning surged on to change its colors.

When the day was over writers would be scrambling at their desks, soon to collect details on his life if only to get the best out of it. We never knew then how many books would be written about him. And we would never know how many of them got the closest.