Chapter Fifteen
The Executioner had seen all of Rapid City, and his motel room wasn’t a very exciting place. Still waiting on his car to be fixed, he decided to take a recommendation from the one very bored tourism info center employee. The suggested excursion was a drive through Badlands National Park, a short trip from town. He was told that it was perfectly safe, as barely anybody goes there: no travelers; no bandits to be attracted to the travelers. The few tourists were usually heavily armed evangelicals from the nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base, taking a break from their contract bombing work. They did not make good targets for robbery. They were also known for trying to forgive the robbers that they didn’t kill. The counter-attack and capture of bandits was a brief prelude to a discussion about Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. It was very annoying if one only had the desire for killing and robbery.
This time The Executioner drove slower and watched carefully for potholes. He hoped to be spared another one-way conversation with the same tow truck driver. But soon his attention switched to the scenery of the badlands. It was like a bleak and strange alien planet. He loved it immediately. After driving the length of the main road he turned back and re-drove the same route. He looked at the strange rock and earth formations and wondered how he could put it in words, as he never took photographs. He decided that he couldn’t describe it.
The Executioner was told earlier that day that he could probably have a sunset all to himself if he stayed away from the popular viewpoints. So, leaving his car with a backpack full of food and drinks, he headed off on foot into the badlands until he found a spot that seemed isolated enough. Propping his bag between himself and a rock, he began to drink. He wasn’t sure why he brought so much to drink. But back in town at the liquor store it seemed like a good idea.
After finishing his beer, he switched to the whiskey, inappropriately branded with the side profile of a stoic Indian chief of uncertain tribal membership. The food he snacked on had done little to slow down the process of getting drunk, and as the sun went down The Executioner suddenly started to think intently about the soil and the sand and the rock, the geological layers separating millennia and the unwelcome erosion exposing them to view and judgment. Or that’s what he thought was going through his head. It was starting to get nonsensical and symbolic.
But soon the indescribable symbolic thought faded away and his more shallow thoughts started to dominate. The feelings that he believed were gone were now back in full force. It was the type of rapid deterioration in mood that only alcohol could bring about. In under a minute the unwanted monologue in his head laid out his life for a full and critical examination. The driving force behind these thoughts was his acknowledgement that nothing had gone right in his life recently. The accumulated failures and missed opportunities were just getting higher and deeper.
The Executioner summarized his situation: he was in his late thirties, single, childless, nomadic, without true friends, and holding no prospects for the future.
The Executioner struck back at the self-pity, mocking his own feelings as belonging only to a weaker sort of person. The repression of emotions, a trait so common to the rural white working class that he was a member of, was a more effective tactic than most people would admit. He pushed, bullied and knocked his feelings of doubt and despair away. He hid them. Hopefully he would forget where he had placed them.
As the sun started to fall behind the horizon, he felt that he was winning another fight with the self-doubt. But as these thoughts receded, they were replaced by something else – something equally unwelcome. For reasons unknown, banished memories reappeared in quick succession. The images of his dead victims lying on the ground, blood trickling out of their heads and onto dirty floors, came into focus slowly and then melted away, only to be replaced by a new body – bloody and destroyed.
The Executioner had taken the medical precautions after every execution. The cocktail of anti-PTSD medications had worked well. At an emotional level the killings were fuzzy and not entirely real. They were like a violent movie that he had watched long ago, the memory of which was continually deteriorating. But on the rational intellectual level there was truth that he could not escape: he was a murderer. He had killed dozens of people who did nothing to deserve such an end. This was a feeling that he could not push aside. There was no emotional trauma, but there was a steady corrosion of his soul. He felt it. He knew it.
For reasons unknown to him, The Executioner decided that he needed to look at what he had done. And he had to do it now. Taking out his phone, he quickly searched online for a video of his work. He immediately found the fan video with the highest view count. Stretching out his screen, he pressed play on a remix of all of his executions, created by somebody who thought that it would make an entertaining and profitable video.
The video began in silence. A man in a dirty t-shirt with a small potbelly and skinny arms sat tied to a chair and cried through the bag over his head. It sounded like he was asking over and over again to call his mother. He was begging. Then, suddenly, The Executioner stepped into the video frame and swung a short section of iron reinforcement bar into his head. The sound of the iron bar hitting the man’s head struck The Executioner as alien. It was as if he had never heard that sound before.
As the man’s body fell onto the floor and started to convulse violently, the music started. The rest of the video was accompanied by a classic heavy metal track, in some parts edited to match the blows inflicted on the debtors’ heads. At the end of the video the music stopped and each victim was shown – blood silently flowing out of bags or uncovered heads.
The Executioner had never seen himself on video before. Not like this.
Almost immediately, as the light continued to fade, he began to feel a slow dread come over him. The Executioner could not recognize this feeling. It matched no previous trauma. He could not tell where it was coming from, and he had no defense. It was the worst feeling that he could recall having, even worse than the moment of his arrest over a decade-and-a-half ago. It was worse than any experience he had in prison. The Executioner started to panic. He asked himself if this is the exact moment at which he goes mad.
He fought back against it. He negotiated with it. He swore that he would atone for what he had done, and then just as soon took back his words. The alcohol was not helping. He slowly started to speak out loud the words in his head. Finally, he looked straight down into the dirt and spoke in a faltering voice.
“I can’t live like this anymore…”
These words did nothing. They changed nothing.
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” he said as his voice cracked. He spoke the words to no one, not even to himself.
Then a solution came to him. To escape his immediate predicament, he needed to start walking. He needed to start walking and to not stop until the feeling subsided.
The Executioner headed out farther into the Badlands. He had no intention of stopping until he collapsed of exhaustion.
Department of Student Loans, Kidnap & Ransom Page 34