Schadenfreude

You watch with a surge of vindictive satisfaction as the sick bastard who killed your son convulses in the electric chair, and your only regret is that you won't see the fear and pain and desperation carved into his face right before the light fades from his eyes.

Deep brown eyes so much like your son's that it hurts.

Twenty seconds. There's less than twenty seconds until the current cuts, until his heart stops and his brain starves itself of oxygen and stutters to a halt. Such a tiny and insignificant stretch of time, really, but it feels like one of the longest and most agonizing moments of your life.

The metal folding chair digs into your back painfully; "just skin and bones", John would say with a fond smile - but you don't dare shift into a more comfortable position, lest you draw attention to yourself. You can still feel the piercing stares of the vultures whose sight was set on you the moment you entered the room, whispers filtering through the air - 'It's them, the parents' and 'those poor dears' and 'can't imagine what they went through'. And suddenly you hate them all, just a little bit more, because you want this to be real. Not this farce of a play with the stuffy, nicely dressed actors, spewing niceties and vacant promises. Not the politics and regulations that drip like poison from the tongues of the nearby officials. And it is much too muggy this July day, even surrounded by windowless concrete on all sides as you are, but you don't care. Because you want him to suffer, to have all the pain he has caused inflicted back on him ten-fold. Shove the barrel of John's shotgun right between his eyes and make him beg for his pitiful excuse for a life. You want him to understand just what your son felt right before that knife was plunged deep into his ribcage and he was left bleeding out in a snow bank.

Because there is something about the waiting. Knowing that death is coming - a silent shadow breathing down your neck like a barely leashed monster. The inevitability of it all that makes it that much more terrifying.

And finally the thrashing has stopped. The leather clamps are removed and a short man in a white coat announces the time of death.

The second hand of the clock ricochets like a gun shot in the following silence. You stare at the dirty utilitarian walls surrounding you on all sides, the steady murmur of the spectator's voices dying like smothered embers. You don't move, don't dare to breathe. Because if you do, you are sure it will shatter this fragile and surreal dream you are in, and you will wake again to an empty heart and mind full of bitter rage.

As you walk through the prison on John's arm you see stained floors and harsh, flickering fluorescents that cast sinister shadows that follow you through the hallway and out the door. And as you climb into the passenger seat, you feel equal parts nervous excitement and dread; sadistic glee and nausea.

Your husband sighs. His shoulders slump as the tension seeps out of his frame and he leans on the steering wheel, burying head in his hands. It appears as if a monumental weight has been lifted from his mind, leaving him breathless and disoriented, and yet something heavy and constricting has settled like a vice in his heart. And then huge, heaving sobs tear through his body in a silent torment, and you can't understand. Why is he crying? Why now? You've both shed countless tears for Matthew the past three years. You've looked forward to this day for so long, grasped for it like a lifeline. Where the most painful memories could be put to rest and you could finally look at your son's picture without becoming hysterical.

"Mama, Mama!" A child giggled as you placed your gardening gloves into the grass and swept him up into your arms. He wiggled and escaped, laughing as you chased him into the fields behind the house.

You don't reach out, keeping your hands clasped tightly in your lap. A lump has nestled itself into your throat. Nothing is said because you can't think of anything to say.

You think back to the past, when days like this had been sport. Coliseum battles, where the walls had been painted red. Shootouts in the Old West, when a loaded gun stood between today and tomorrow. Public lynching's in a town square.

Are you truly no better than the Romans, watching as strangers are torn limb from limb and their blood pools on the stone floor? Laughing at the fate of the misfortunate slave who stands shaking in front of a heavily- armored, hulking gladiator with nothing more than a flimsy spear?

You think of how many casualties there have been, how you hadn't realized how involved this would become - how many lives this would infect - and you hate that part of yourself that isn't the least bit sorry, because he's dead. Matthew's dead. And all for some petty cash and valuables. It wasn't anything personal, oh no, just a wrong place wrong time sort of situation, but somehow that makes it worse. So much worse, because he died for nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"My family was starving. It was the middle of December, and we were about to be thrown out on the street. Then Tom came to me with a job... it was just supposed to be the one, easy in and out. Just enough to getby. What was I supposed do?" The man slumped further in his chair and clasped his hands before him. His eyes, which had been darting across the courtroom, finally settled on the questioner's face. "But then it just... that kid wasn't s'posed to be there. It went wrong."

After, the guard grabbed his arm and hauled him roughly to his feet. Right before he was escorted out of the courtroom, he raised his head, and you can swear that your eyes met. His gaze was solemn, clear, and begging for something that you couldn't define, yet knew instinctively that you weren't willing to give. That you couldn't give. Not with that gapping, bleeding chasm that had taken residence in your chest.

You turned your head away.

Just like the Romans, you think. It is only when John looks over, startled, that you realize you had spoken aloud.

"What?" John asks.

"The Romans," you hear yourself say. Your voice sounds weak and unused. "We're like them, John, just like them."

He stares at you, eyes puffy and bewildered. "Are... are you feeling alright, hon? Hotter than hell in here, I can turn on the air..." He fumbles with some dials.

Can't he understand?

"No, I'm fine," you insist. "But John, you're not listening, you -"

But you stop, because you look at John, truly look. John, whose hair is greying around the edges and hands are creased with lines you don't remember being there this morning, and you can see that he already knows. Poor, sweet John, who with your sister's help threw his heart and soul into the case, and at the time the only feeling you could dredge up was a vague sense of relief that he had found a purpose and was no longer sitting semi-catatonic in his armchair, like those first few horrible weeks after.

He knows what humans are like. And he is a much better one than you will ever be.

You remain silent for too long. He takes your hand in his strong calloused one, staring at the intertwined fingers like they hold every secret the two of you have come to possess over the years. He sighs once more, and twists the car keys with his other hand, breaking the temporary silence. "Okay," he says. "Okay. Let's just get home, hon."

The car trip home is worse than the trip there. It feels like specters have followed you from the prison and have settled into the back seat, whispering to each other of times of then and now and never-will-be.

"The defendant James Clarke has been found guilty..."

Voices erupted from the courtroom in a wave of shouts and cheers.

Music drifts from the radio. You can't think of the name of the song, but it's familiar, and you hear John hum along to the chorus.

"Where do you think you're going?" John yelled. John never yelled.

"Away from this fucking family!" Matthew slammed the door, the force knocking a family picture from the wall. You picked it up, staring at the cracked glass, and wondered if all teenagers were like this, or if you were just lucky.

You watch from the window as the landscape flies by in a blur of green and gold. The sky doesn't move, though. It never does. An ocean of constant blue, with turbulent white clouds that glide and twist across their canvas and transform into marvelous creatures and untold ideas that you can only ever see out of the corner of your eye, for when you turn your head to stare at them straight on you see only shapeless blobs.

A mop of unruly chestnut hair peaked through the tall grass. You pretended not to see and continue to call his name, craning your neck and poking your head behind a tree-

-flashes by, and you feel the road shift to gravel beneath the tires. The house comes into view, the chipped white exterior painted shades of orange and pink-purple in the dying light.

The car stills. A hand touches your arm.

"Amelia." You felt John take the plate from your hands, and you realized you were about to set the table for three again. Arms encircled your waist-

-and lead you up the steps of the front porch, past blooming azaleas and daffodils-

-where you stopped and watched as he trudged through the snow in John's too-large work boots and made his way to the stables. He saw you and waved, and you waved back. It was the last time you saw him smile.

And afterwards when you lie in bed, you attempt to summon some emotion; sympathy, guilt, any shred of compassion that would prove you're still human. But then you remember your child's battered body, abandoned like a broken toy in a ditch a few miles north - pale as snow with lifeless, glassy eyes. The family of your son's killer, a now grieving widow and a six year old daughter with bright blond curls and the sweetest smile you've ever seen, a smile that would never see the light again when her innocence was torn from her as she screamed in her mother's arms the moment her Daddy was hauled out of the court room. And now you can only smell charred flesh and urine, can only see the guard pull the black hood over his face and pull the switch, again and again.

You feel your husband's salty tears as he holds you close and whispers words of forgiveness on that poor man's soul, and all you feel is hollow inside.