The cold steel of the chair was an extension of the icy grip that had held Ethan Blackwood captive for two decades.
Twenty years.
A sentence forged not in truth, but in the venomous lies of a woman he'd once dared to trust and loved , twisted by a justice system eager for a quick, clean conviction.
Rape.
The accusation itself was a brand, seared onto his soul with a ferocity that dwarfed the physical agony of his confinement.
Each day, the grey walls of his cell had whispered tales of despair, of a life stolen, of opportunities turned to dust. Of betrayal. His existence had become a slow, agonizing burn of death , fueled by a simmering rage that had long ago consumed any glimmer of hope, leaving only the raw, unyielding rage of a man denied.
His inner monologue, a constant, relentless tide, was a testament to the years of torment and indifferent justice. It replayed conversations, faces, the crushing weight of evidence manufactured with chilling precision. The injustice was a phantom limb, throbbing with phantom pain, a constant, gnawing presence that had become as integral to his being as the blood coursing through his veins.
He remembered the courtroom, the sterile air thick with the scent of fear , despair , and manufactured uncertainty.
He remembered every news article that damned him guilty , the prosecutor's slick persuasive words, his attorney confused uncertainty and seemingly incompetence , the judge's impassive bored uncaring face, the jury's averted eyes and indifference.
And he remembered her. Her manufactured tears, her rehearsed sorrow act, the chillingly effective performance of a lifetime , that had sealed his fate and destroyed his life with finality. The cruelty hidden in her eyes ,and glee as she wielded power to destroy a life.
Each dawn was not a promise of a new day, but a grim confirmation of his continued existence in this hellish purgatory of a nightmare. A reality check that his nightmare continues , and wasn't all a dream. A testament to his endurance, yes, but an endurance born of something far darker than resilience. It was the sheer, unadulterated refusal to be erased, a rage to not be forgotten as anything other than a sicko depraved monster.
His silence in the yard, his measured responses to the guards, his solitary meals – these were not signs of acceptance, but of a deep, internal excavation. He was chipping away at the bedrock of his despair, not to find solace, but to unearth the bedrock of a purpose. A purpose forged in the fires of wrongful imprisonment. Of justice undenied. Vengeance. It was the only currency left in his depleted soul, the only promise that held any meaning in the sterile landscape of his condemned unlife.
He had learned to compartmentalize, to build walls within his own mind. Separate his sanity from reality. The memories of his life before, fractured and distant dream , were kept separate from the immediate reality of death row and death.
He recalled the warmth of the sun on his skin, the laughter of friends, the simple joy of a meal shared without the clatter of guards' keys. The constant noise of multiple other damned souls. These were ghosts that haunted him, reminders of what had been stolen. But even those memories were tainted, contaminated, and overshadowed by the overwhelming, suffocating reality of his present.
The system had failed him, not just in its judgment, but in its very essence and existence. Justice was a myth. It was a machine designed to break men, and it had tried its best to break Ethan Blackwood. But it had only succeeded in forging him into something harder, something sharper. Harder. Like fine steel.
He traced the faint scar on his knuckle, a memento from a youthful brawl, now a relic from a life that felt impossibly distant. Every inch of his body held memories, not just of his past, but of his current reality of imprisonment. The weariness etched into his bones, the calluses on his hands from countless hours spent in his cell, the way his eyes instinctively scanned for threats, even in the imagined freedom of his thoughts. The restless pacing for hours. The constant boredom. These were the marks of a man who had been stripped bare of humanity, reduced to his most primal essence. And in that reduction, a terrible clarity had emerged. The clarity of absolute conviction.
He was innocent. And the world, in its blind, indifferent march, had condemned him without a care.
The simmering rage was a constant, low hum raged beneath the surface of his controlled demeanor. It was the engine that propelled him through the endless hours of his thoughts , the fuel that kept the embers of his spirit from extinguishing completely. He wasn't just enduring; he was waiting. Waiting for the inevitable end , yes, but also waiting for… something else. A flicker of defiance. A final act. A chance, however slim, to scream his truth into the void.
Vengeance was not a desire; it was a necessity. It was the only coherent narrative that remained in the shattered story of Ethan Blackwood. His life sentence was a prelude, the grim, drawn-out opening to a story that had yet to reach its climax. And as the day of his execution loomed, that story felt poised reminder.
Memories of after he was released from prison played through his head . How he had planned , and executed his revenge. The power he felt he deserved when he shot her in the face. No glee in her eyes,oh no. The fear of justice served was a powerful drug. He knew fate would lead him to his current reality.
The air in the execution chamber was thick with the sterile, metallic tang of cheap disinfectant, a scent that did little to mask the underlying odor of dread and smell of prison . The execution chamber was thick with a sterile, metallic tang, a scent that always clung to the cold, unyielding embrace of the facility. It was a smell Ethan Blackwood had come to associate with finality, with the crushing weight of a justice system that had already pronounced him guilty, regardless of the truth. Today, that scent was more potent, more suffocating, a prelude to the oblivion that awaited him. The polished wood and gleaming metal of the electric chair sat before him, a monstrous altar bathed in the stark, unforgiving glare of overhead lights. Its latent hum, a low, resonant vibration, was the sound of impending doom, a song of destruction that echoed the ceaseless rhythm of his despair.
Restraints, cold and impersonal, bit into his wrists and ankles, anchoring him to this purpose that felt both terrifyingly absolute and, in a twisted way, strangely exhilarating. Twenty years. Two decades of a life stolen, of a truth buried, of a rage simmering just beneath the surface of a forced calm. The physical discomfort was secondary to the mental tempest raging within him. His thoughts were a frantic
disorienting kaleidoscope, a desperate, agonizing replay of his life. He saw the pivotal moments, the whispers that turned into accusations, the casual dismissal of evidence that pointed to his innocence.
It was a scent Ethan had come to recognize from hushed conversations, from the fear in the eyes of guards who averted their gazes.
Cold, unyielding metal restraints bit into his wrists and ankles, anchoring him to a purpose that felt both terrifyingly final and strangely exhilarating. The electric chair sat before him, a monstrous throne of polished wood and gleaming metal, humming with a latent, malevolent energy. It was the culmination of twenty years of injustice, the ultimate expression of the system's final judgment. A final ending to the story.
His thoughts were a frantic, disorienting jumble, a desperate replay of his life, the pivotal moments leading to his conviction, and the singular, venomous face of the woman who had orchestrated his downfall. He saw Eleanor Vance's eyes, the practiced innocence, the calculated cruelty that lay beneath the veneer of
victimhood. He replayed the testimonies, the falsified evidence, every news article, and the whispered campaign that had preceded his trial. Guilty without a doubt , before he'd even had his day in court. No one cared for the monster defense , or inconsistencies of the evidence. They just want a quick guilty verdict. The DA not caring that each case was a person's life. Each memory was a sharp shard of glass,cutting deeper with every agonizing rotation. He braced himself, not for oblivion, but for a final, defiant act. An end to the suffering. A confrontation with fate itself.
He closed his eyes, not in surrender, but in preparation. He focused on the rage, the burning injustice, letting it coalesce into a singular point of focus. He wasn't going to be extinguished. Not like this. Not without a fight, even if that fight was to be fought within the confines of his own conscious mind , a desperate attempt to hold onto his sense of self awareness as the world dissolved around him. He pictured Eleanor's smug face, her victory. He would deny her that small, cruel triumph. He would face the current, not as a victim, but as a man who refused to be silenced. Let the energy surge, let it tear through him. He would meet it head-on, with the full force of his unresolved fury. He was the true victim, but the world was cruel. Reality check, it was indifferent!
The world dissolved into a blinding, incandescent storm of light and sound. It was a searing, agonizing sensation, as if his very atoms , his very being, were being ripped apart, consumed by a raw, untamed power coursing through his physical body. The hum of the chair escalated into a deafening roar, a symphony of destruction that vibrated through his bones, through his very being.He closed his eyes, not in surrender, but in preparation. He focused on the burning ember of his rage, the unyielding core of his injustice. He would let it coalesce, concentrate into a single, blinding point of focus. Let the energy surge, let it tear through him. He would meet it head-on, with the full force of his unresolved fury, his silent scream echoing against the indifference of the universe.
Yet, instead of the cessation of consciousness, the promised oblivion, there was a violent, disorienting wrenching. It was a tearing, not of flesh and bone, but of the very fabric of reality itself.
The familiar, stark white walls of the execution chamber warped and dissolved, replaced by a chaotic maelstrom of pure energy, a storm that defied comprehension, defied physics, defied everything he had ever known.
This was not death. It was something far more brutal, far more confounding.
A rebirth, perhaps, but a rebirth delivered by a cosmic force that seemed intent on annihilation. The agonizing pain was not a prelude to nothingness, but a violent expulsion from one existence into another, an existence that was utterly alien, utterly incomprehensible. The profound disorientation and confusion that washed over him was a stark contrast to the dread of death he had anticipated. It was as if his soul, his very essence, had been forcibly rebooted into a new, unknown operating system, the transition so violent it threatened to shatter him completely into unconsciousness.