The Devil's Necktie

“The Devil’s Necktie Party”

Felipe C. Barreda

    A beast locked in a cage watching the minutes tick away faster and faster on the clock on the wall; waiting to be put down. He thinks of himself as a savage frothing at the mouth dog unworthy of life. He feels the fear of the inevitable. In a minute or two he will be taken from his cage and sent to a room where they will dress him in leather suspenders and chains in readiness for the necktie party. He is sitting with the priest praying for the fortitude to accept the inevitable and to walk without fear. Minutes seem like seconds as he takes a drag on the succession of cigarettes that he has been chain smoking since last night. He’s had no sleep in in forty eight hours and then suddenly the door springs open. It is time.

    A guard from the prison the day before is thinking to himself that he really doesn’t want to do this but it seems “I have no choice in the matter.” The gallows is packed in separate boxes and while a team of guards is assembling the wooden scaffold; thirteen steps that will lead to eternity; there is another guard in another room that is preparing the necktie for the party and boiling it down into a stew so when the trap door springs there is no bounce once and for all.

    “I hate these days where I have to sit and wait without doing anything but making sure everything goes smoothly tonight,” warden thinks to himself. There is a series of things that have to happen in this last week. The prisoner is weighed and his height is measured; the table is consulted and then the doc has to give him a once over before he goes back on death watch. It has to be perfect all the time. “I’ve seen necktie parties go south,” thinks the warden, “to short and we have to stand there and watch the poor bastard flay his legs as he swings in pain from strangling to death. To long and the poor bastard’s head gets ripped off which is not bad for him but for us that are left behind; what mess. It has to be perfect all the time.”

    There was the last meal that had to be prepared. Whatever he wants he gets the day before during the Monster’s Ball when the prisoner gorges himself on plenty of food and the execution team goes out and gets drunk. Who wants to take a guy and string him up by the neck. To many have wasted away at the bottom of a whisky bottle. Its not natural to take a life.

    Its time for the devil’s necktie party, I don’t want to die; I don’t want to kill but we have no choice in the matter as we both circle around each other in a harmonious discordant dance without rhythm. I want to struggle and fight and cling to the bars of my cell. They’ll have to peel me off these bars. I want to have the guy drink a whole jug of moonshine just to knock him out and tie him to the board so he knows nothing of what’s happening. Its better that way. I wonder if the guys who do this with needles have an easier time than we do with the rope. In the end the result is the same, death is the inevitability whether it is seemingly painless and clinical or if it is brutal and silent.

    The condemned decides to go quietly. “Its no use if I put up a fight.” He finally sees the scaffold before him as the guards take off the ankle chains and drag him up thirteen flights of stairs. To the guards it all happens to slow; the death march; the reading of the warrant; waiting for the poor bastard to make his last statement; adjusting the noose around his neck; the pinioning, the hooding and then finally the drop. Every second of every minute is an hour of slow methodical motion.

    The prisoner sees the minutes flying past at the speed of light. He’s dragged up the stairs in a matter of seconds; one guy puts the hood on, the other guy puts the noose around his neck and adjusts the knot under the left jaw while the guy and the bottom of his legs straps them together and wham; the trap doors springs open. For a fraction of a second, he feels weightless suspended between heaven, the earth and hell wondering which one will take him and then complete darkness.

    The guards watch in horror as usual as the feet and his whole body twitches in the death struggle. They can smell the foul odor of his feces as he craps and pisses in his pants and then the struggle stops; the rope gently swings from one side to another until there is nothing but stillness.

    In a dark corner of the death chamber there is a shadow and a ghost waiting to receive him. “I’ve seen this all before. They spring the trap, pull the switch, drop the cyanide in the acid, they inject the poison in his veins hoping he’ll go to sleep before the heart stops or they’ll pin a target on his chest and all but one riffle, no one knows which will rip through their chest. They’ll all be in the dark for one second and then wake up thinking they’ve survived until they look back and see themselves and the end of a rope dead and then reality sinks in and I come to pick them up.”

    There’s a little girl in a padded room holding a teddy bear. She doesn’t know that she is dead. All she can remember is the pain of being violated before her murderer took the knife and slit her open like a hog for a barbecue with her guts spilling out onto the ground. All she can remember is the pain but likely there is an angel by her side that she can’t see but feel that is there telling her that everything is going to be alright and that the pain will be over soon.

    I don’t know what I am doing here in this padded room, one moment I remember that I am walking home from school when out of no where comes this man and he shoves me in the car. Its night and he rips my clothes off me. I’ve never felt a pain like that before; I’ve never felt a fear like that before; I’ve never saw a night so black that it imbues you with paralysis. I am here but I don’t know what I am supposed to do.

    First there was the darkness and then the feeling that of hitting the ground. He feels a pain in his neck but not that painful. The rope must have broken he thought and when he saw the witnesses he started to laugh. He made it; he’s not dead he thinks until he hears the creaking of rope and wood and smells the smell of shit and piss as he feels it dripping on his head. He looks behind him and sees his hooded self, dangling at the end of a rope completely still as a doctor on a ladder check for a heartbeat. The doctor signals that its done and that he is dead and then the guards proceed to cut him down. He sees all this unfolding before his eyes thinking that this must be hell.

The ghost comes up to him and picks him up by the arms. Come on its time to go.

    “Where are we going?” the executed condemned asks.

    “You’ll see.”

    Suddenly, the world becomes dark and he wakes up walking down a street in a small neighborhood with picket fences, flowers and bright green trees. Children are playing in the street and riding there bikes. Others are playing hopscotch or skipping rope. A little girl grabs his arm and tells him, “Let’s play.” Is this heaven? Has he been forgive? Hardly.

    All of the sudden he sees himself in his old beat up truck coming up to him and rolling down his window. “Hey,” he yells our, “you want to grab some ice cream with me? I want to be your friend.” He gets in the truck and can’t believe he is watching himself as he sees himself smiling back at him. They drive out of town towards the mountains and the woods. He falls asleep and when he wakes up its night-time. He was brought out to a broke down cabin in the woods. Suddenly he feels that someone has grabbed him, ripping off his clothes. He struggles but whoever is pinning him down is stronger and finally to his horror he feels himself getting raped. It feels like an eternity as he feels the pain of penetration and violation. It’s the worst possible violence he has ever felt; even worse than his father beating him raw with a bamboo cane as think as his arm. Worse than the flesh that his dad tore off him with every beating he took. He never felt any pain like it before and then when everything seemed as if it were done, he was on the floor paralyzed and thinking to himself how dirty he felt and how guilty he felt for allowing whoever it was that violated him like this. But the worst was not over, he saw himself hunched over him with a fillet knife and he felt the burn of a knife plunged into his belly and being dragged up slowly as he saw his blood and guts spill all over the door and before all turned to darkness he saw himself splayed naked on the floor like an animal.

    The world grew dark again and he felt the horror of watching himself be raped and murdered so brutally like that that he held his hands to his face and began to sob until a little child’s hand tugged at his shirt and asked what was wrong. He found himself in the padded room and standing before him was the little girl that he raped and brutally murdered. He sobbed unconsolably like he had never sobbed unconsolably before and now realized the pain and suffering he had inflicted not just on this little girl but her whole family and the thought that ran through his mind is that he could never be forgiven for such a monstrous crime and that he was beyond redemption. But suddenly he heard the tiny voice of the little girl say, “I forgive you,” for she also saw his pain and the suffering that he endured before their paths crossed and then suddenly the door to the room opened and there was a beautiful light that did not hurt to look at and there was a man at the door with his arms outstretched ready to hug them both. He took their hands into his and lead them through the door and into the light and everyone and everything was healed and the world was restored to balance.

THE END