Part One

Cruelty.

   It had been twenty years and today was the day. Horace had requested a nice steak for his final meal and it didn't disappoint. He watched the clock anxiously until the lock on the door to his cell opened. Two guards entered and told him to get up. He complied without a sound.
    They lead him down the long corridor to the execution chamber. He could feel the eyes of the other Death Row inmates upon him.
    "Dead man walking!" one hooted from above. Horace paid it no mind.
    The execution room was a small one. A doctor stood off to the side, leaning over a metal table. Horace knew the needles and poison was there. A third guard stood by the bent chair, laden with straps and holdings. They put him into the chair and fastened him in. Before him was a glass window. Beyond that, people were sitting. Sad looking people who wiped their eyes or angry looking people who spoke noiseless words. He saw his brother in the back, face blank with searing apathy. The family of his victim, a little girl in the neighborhood, was situated more to the front. Directly before him was the little girl's mother, twenty years older, who held his gaze with icy, if teary, eyes.
    "Do they really need to be here?" Horace asked, turning to look at one of his captors.
    "Why? You only good at killing in secret?"
    "I don't need to see this s**t," Horace nodded to the glass window. "I request you to cover it up or get them out or something."
    "Your last request," one of the guards angrily said. "Was for a steak. Now shut up."
    Horace grunted and turned back to the window. He smiled at the girl's mother, who remained still as a statue. He swept his eyes over every single person in that little room..... and paused at the newcomer. Horace hadn't seen the man enter, but he was sitting next to the girl's mother. The room was dark, but Horace could make out a nice suit and tie. Then the man leaned forward and Horace paled; the man had no face or skin - a skull leered out at him from the dark.
   "Hey, you guys see this?" he asked the guards, panicking a little.
   "I said shut up."
   "Look! Look!" Horace struggled now in his restraints. There were no eyes in those empty sockets, but Horace could feel malice scorching him from those black pits. No one in the room, on his side or on the other, seemed to notice the skullheaded man. "Look!"
    The guards and the doctor looked up. "Yeah," said the same guard. "Look at the people you've wronged, Horace. Look at them nice and good."
    Horace looked up again, eyes pleading with the guard's. But the guard was gone. Instead, the skeleton was looking down at him now. "Hello, Horace," it whispered.
    Horace could smell putrid breath on him and he struggled even more against his restraints. The skeleton straightened its tie. The empty sockets never left Horace's face.
    "Sorry it took me twenty years but after I found out what you did, well, I wanted you to languish in a cell a bit," said the skeleton in the nice suit. "I'm not a fan of child killers, you know - "
    "Look, what do you want from me?" Horace cried.
    "I said shut up!" shouted one of the guards.
    The skeleton laughed, a chilly, grating sound. "So you've rotted here for twenty years, Horace Dansworth, and now, before you, go, you'll know nothing but terror."
    The skeletons claw hovered over Horace's head and it sent him into a panicked frenzy. He screamed and rattled and struggled violently. The guards seized him in an attempt to hold him still but to no avail.
    "Doctor, come on! Hurry up!" the guards called.
   The doctor came over, holding the needle that dripped death tightly. He put a latexed hand to Horace's arm and clenched the vein there. Then the needle came down and ripped into the skin and Horace screamed louder than ever, not because of the poison or the needle, but how close the skullheaded man had come now, inches away from his face. He could feel and smell the decaying breath on his face. It made him retch and gag. Then he grew still and it became hard to struggle. His eyes grew heavy, but the skeleton pried them open.
    "Where do you think you're going? You're coming with me, Horace Dansworth. We're going to have much fun together."