When the fire licked Steven Mccauls' fingertips, he knows he is in hell. Of course, he deserves to be in hell for what he did. He knows it and so did every single person in that glistening courtroom. His father knew it. His mother knew it. His wife and even his son, who was not in the courtroom the day his father was sentenced, knew where Steven was going to go after he got the needle.
The fire was slowly moving farther up (or was he falling down into it? Steven could not tell), almost fully enveloping his fingertips. Steven wants to squirm, to writhe away from the heat, but he cannot. He is stuck.
Despite all intelligible thought, Steven was relieved. He was still scared, horrified even, but still, he was relieved. Relieved to have it all done and over with. Relieved he never had to see that disappointed, horrified, look on his wife's face again (that was the only face that she wore throughout the entire half-year long process). Happy he no longer had to look at his son through a glass window, telling him things will be alright, he will be alright without his father,and he would, in fact, be better without having to see his father's face or hear his voice ever again. His mom slumping over in the courtroom bench, dead from a sudden heart attack, when she heard his sentence. The shrug and head-shake his father gave him the last time he saw him, not surprised or saddened in what had become the fate of his only child.
The fire is at the beginnings of his wrist now. He tries to clench them, but again he cannot move his hand or his body. It feels like his fingernails have melted off of his hand and his skin is blistering and scabbing and peeling. Inside his hands, it feels like his bones and muscles have become liquids and have merged into a sludge that pools into his fingertips.
His father was the only one in his family to not show up for his sentencing. Well, his father and the dead. Everybody else in Steven's bloodline, his wife's family never considered him part of their family, was either dead or sitting on their deathbed. His father was another only child and his mother lost two siblings to a train accident when they were kids. All of his grandparents were dead, and any others that he considered family beforehand distanced themselves as far as possible from him the moment they heard the news.
It has reached his elbow now. He wants to look, but he just cannot bear to see the blistered and peeled off skin that used to cover and blanket him.
"I always knew there was something off with him," his former best friend would say. "I didn't know him much, but he did seem off his rocker now that I really think about it," former professors or teachers all proclaimed to each other. "Who? I don't know who you're talking about," his next door neighbor, the one he had fucked over a hundred times behind his wife's back, sputtered out when questioned by her family and other loved ones about the crazy man who lived next door.
It has started in his toes now. Slowly making its way up and around his feet faster than his hands. The same sensation of all bones and muscles in his feet and legs melting into a combined mush and splashing into his toes is ever more evident than before.
Steven did not care that everybody he had ever known had either condemned him or shut him out completely. He would have done the same.
Just as the mixture of bone and muscle reach and fill his toes, the fire has reached up and around his shoulders. Steven wants to scream. To cry out. Anything. But he is still stuck. His mouth cannot move. The burned flesh and melted bone cannot move. And then he realizes that his eyes are closed.
The judge had thrown up on more than one occasion over the given trial. From the pictures handed to him to the cold, careless smile directed his way the old man just could not do it. Many had called him weak, but Steven, knowing well and full about the grisly nature of the case, thought it had been a realistic reaction. The judge was still human of course, and humans tend to react in certain ways when presented with troubling images or ideas. It was only, Steven had thought the first time the color drained from the old man's face and he yelled for a bucket to puke in, human nature at its worst and, in a way, its finest.
