Capital Punishment - Lifetime Imprisonment

“Heather Awling, age 24, of Ashwaubenon, WI. Murdered by Tyson Velling, August 28th, 2039. Sentenced, by a jury of his peers, to lifetime punishment. Sentence to be completed November 1st, 2042.”

Tyson had been sealed into the tank for several minutes. A warm, gel-like substance had been pumped into the tank until his body was suspended inside of it. 

A test pulse of electricity showed that his nerves responded appropriately. His body experienced physical sensations when the right instructions were given by a scientist-looking fellow in the corner.

The guard who had read the sentence stood next to the tank. It was propped up to face a window which people could see in. Tyson could not see out.

“Tyson Velling, do you have any last words?”

“Fuck you, and fuck the legal system! I loved every second of it!” Tyson Velling yelled furiously. “I loved killin’ that whore, and I’d do it all again!”

The guard looked down at the man in disgust. The guard knew this man had confessed. The guard's disdain made him shake his head.

Tyson was proud of his killings. He gloated as the white helmet closed over his face. There was complete darkness for a minute, or so.

“Is this all there is? HA! This is a joke!”

There was a jolt of electricity, which ran down Tyson’s spine and into his mind. 

Then the world went bright. He was standing in a field. It looked strangely familiar. He could hear the river water bubbling over the rocks nearby.

“The hell is this?” Tyson said.

He looked around, and suddenly, he remembered.

“This is where…” He looked around stunned. He realized he was standing right where he had killed Heather Awling.

“Is this supposed to scare me to death? So what? You know where I killed her? What’s the point of that?”

“Heather, come on, it’s time to come home!” An unfamiliar voice called nearby.

“Ha! You’ll never find her, dumbass! I killed that whore myself!”

“Heather, come on, what are you seeing that’s so fascinating by the river?”

For a moment, Tyson felt a great deal of confusion. He looked around but didn’t recognize where he was, or why someone was talking to him..

“Where is she? Do I get to kill her again?” A new excitement coursed through his veins. He wondered if he could relive the high, literally, of killing her again.

“Heather!” a tall man Tyson had only seen in the courtroom stood fifteen feet away. “It’s time to go home, Sweetie.”

Alarms were going off in Tyson’s head.

“Who are you callin’, Sweetie?”

“You, of course, I’ve called you that since you were a wee little one,” the man laughed jovially. “Come on, it’s time to come home.”

Tyson looked at his hands. They weren’t his hands. He looked around in alarm.

“Am I going to kill me?” His mind panicked as he thought it. 

“I’m not Heather!”

“Of course you are.”

“I killed Heather! I am not Heather!”

“Oh yes, you are Heather,” the man said in a voice cracking with genuine concern. "Are you sure you are okay, Sweetie?"

Tyson growled like a feral animal.

Tyson felt his world shifting. His mind struggled against the information being poured into his senses. He could smell the grass, the water, and the flowers. He could hear the nearby road. He could see the man in front of him.

His slender hands were not his own. His body was not his own, but he could feel it. Every inch of it. For half a moment, his mind spiked to something perverted, but a sudden jolt shocked through his body. That thought stopped.

“Come along,” the man encouraged. “It’s time to go home. Your mother is waiting.”

Hesitantly, Tyson slowly followed after the man. His dazed confusion only led to more anxious thoughts..

“What the hell is going on?” Tyson demanded.

“I have no idea what you mean,” the man laughed. He started the car, and they began driving down roads that Tyson barely knew.

Tyson sat tentatively in the car. “He was Heather.”

”I am.” The thought came unbidden, but every part of his senses told him that was true. It was unnerving, unsettling, and terrifying to the man. His heart raced uncontrollably. Sweat beaded down his face, but not his face.

He felt the impulse to kill himself. He tried to open the car door, but nothing happened. His body did not respond.

“No, not my body, her body,” Tyson tried to rationalize.

He fought against the wave of sensation coming at him. He swore violently at the polite family that fed him that night. They left him to fall asleep in her bed that night.

Their kindness had been unnerving. Tyson tried every way he knew how to upset them, but they waved off his verbal attacks.

“They aren’t real,” Tyson swore in exhaustion. “This is some stupid, fuckin’ trick!”

Somewhere, deep inside of Tyson’s mind, he was beginning to have doubts.

That night, he dreamt of a childhood he didn’t recognize. Years and years of memories poured into his unconscious mind.

Every time he tried to do something wrong, a jolt ran through him and the thought stopped.

The next day, his voice changed. 

“Hi! Good morning…” He couldn’t believe the words were coming out of his mouth. He sounded different. His thoughts were not his own.

He swore in his own mind. "No, dammit! They won't get away with this!"

He grumbled through a cereal breakfast with his family. His head pounded more than he thought it could. His memories and feelings were becoming jumbled and confused.

Every time his eyes closed, a new memory played he didn't recognize… until he did.

His body, even his voice, were not fully under his control, but he wasn't fighting anymore. Now, the fight was all inside of his mind.

The strangest moment for Tyson came a month in, when he said, "I love you, Dad, I don't know what came over me. I just felt really odd lately."

The thought startled Tyson because he had never loved his father. His rage was burned deep into his soul because he was abandoned by his father as a young child.

It was one of the last few moments that Tyson's mind remembered Tyson.

By the first year, she was Heather Awling. She had always been Heather. She and her parents laughed about that episode of confusion.

By the tenth year, even those memories were forgotten.

By the fiftieth year, Heather had lived a long and fruitful life.

As she laid on her deathbed, having lived a good life surrounded by loved ones and family members, the world faded to black.

For a brief moment, there was stillness.

Then, for what felt like an eternity, Tyson took a deep breath.

"Do you know who you are?" asked a vaguely unfamiliar voice.

Disorientated by the brightness of the room and the feeling of confinement, Tyson answered in an elderly woman's croaking voice, "I am Heather Awling. Who are you?"