Metallic Grin

The man sat in the chair, strapped and ready to receive his gift from Zeus. He smiled at the executioners, who wore long faces. Genuine long faces or the kind of faces that come with the nature of their profession? Who cares? He smiled back with a mouthful of metal teeth. Would they conduct the electricity from the electric chair, he wondered?

"Any last words?" asked the guard.

"For you, or for someone else?"

The guard looked at the man with an open face. Open for anything to move this along. "Any last words?" he repeated.

The man looked at him with hollow eyes. He'd died long ago when he'd taken his own life through dreaming the American dream. His wife was somewhere with another man. He'd killed a man in a barfight, without meaning to. A stupid mistake. He'd lost it, his grip on society. A grip so easily moved yet so difficult to retain. One slip and you got life in prison, or worse, the death penalty.

"No, I think I'm good." Right as the guard turned around the man called back out to him. "Wait. Actually, I do have a question, Bob. Can I call you Bob? Seeing as how I'll be dead soon, getting to know each other now seems like a pretty big waste of time, wouldn't you say?"

The guard didn't disagree with this. "It's more of a question for you rather than traditional last words. Do you think there are ghosts in outer space? Ghosts...you know...they always float through objects. They aren't bound by the physical rules that govern our world. If they can fall through matter, which is what objects basically are, can they fall through planets? Are black holes the remnant ghosts of expired universes?"

The guard looked at him wide-eyed and confused, like he'd been put in front of his eight-grade class again with the stutter that he used to have, talking with bone shivering strain through the all-nighter book report he'd pulled out of his ass. Sometimes, when things got really bad, his stutter would come back. "Uh-Uhm I-I dunno."

"You don't? Damn. Well, let me find out and get back to you on that one. I'll find a way to communicate with you here. Something more meaningful than banging on the walls or playing with the lights, or the arsenal of mumbo-jumbo things that ghosts do in Hollywood movies. You'll know it's me."

The man smiled a kind smile at the guard who looked terrified and black-eyed due to the dilations of his pupils; dilated more than a soon to be mother on a hospital bed with her legs spread and resting on padded footrests. Two other guards placed the damp sponge and attached the helmet to the shaved top of the man's head. They then pulled the bag all the way down to his neck. "Let 'er rip, Bob. I'm ready."

The guard nodded and the switch was pulled, delivering a sharp current that felt and smelled as if Zeus was skewering the poor man with a lightning bolt. In moments of flexed contractions and melting blue teeth, the man received his sentence, fulfilling the last of his given "work items" in this life. For in a way, the judge who'd sentenced him and the prison guards who'd been responsible for him, were his last managers on a lengthy résumé. Always looking to someone for guidance, always ready to heed another's instructions, as if they know any better what this life is actually about. We must remain good little sheep, and form ranks. The man didn't need to remain anything anymore, or anywhere. The cosmos was his to explore, at least that was the final thought that went through his head before it got overcooked to well-done.

He found himself somewhere on silicon shores, watching toothpick figures using foreign limbs whose purpose and functionality were utterly alien to him. The gaseous waters were green and yellow and corrosive. Though these creatures didn't mind. They were the natives, upgraded through evolution to have adequate hardware for this world. The man wondered what their thoughts were on ghosts. He decided to ask one of them. He chose to call the nearest toothpick creature, whom he'd decided to name Bob as well. What did it matter? It was an original name here. How many Bobs do you think live on alien planets? Though, the real Bob back on Earth, whose name wasn't actually Bob at all, was never the same again.

From that day on, he always looked over his shoulder, scared that the man with the metal teeth would be there to haunt him. The guard quit his job a week later and decided to turn his attention to God. In his mind, he needed to cleanse his hands of the evil the state had employed him to do. When God didn't work, he turned to alcohol, and this attributed to his near-death experience of driving home shitfaced from the doings of this ghost. Everything wrong that followed was the smiling man's curse. Until one evening, at around 6:09 PM, the guard faded away from an overdose of pills and became a ghost himself. He found himself on silicon shores with toothpick figures who seemed to be infatuated with a familiar sight. It was the man. The electrocuted man. The man smiled at the guard with a mouthful of perfectly shaped white teeth and greeted him like an old friend. He introduced him to the alien creatures who somehow understood them, though not through words; but rather, through the energy of thoughts. "I told you I'd find a way to tell you," said the man. The guard simply smiled back.