• The condemned’s final statement was an odd one but then again, so was his chosen method of execution. He had begged for the gas chamber, which had gone unused for years. It was illegal in almost all the other states, after all, and only used as a secondary form of execution. The warden, though he had never performed the gas chamber execution before, knew what to do. He had placed cyanide and the acid in their respective places in the tank and led the man- though he was barely old enough to be called that- into the chamber. He then strapped the prisoner to the chair and sealed the chamber.

    “Would you like to make a final statement?”

    The warden’s voice crackled slightly through the barely used intercom. The young man smiled, actually smiled, and looked directly at the warden through the glass. That was impossible, though; it was a two-way mirror through which he shouldn’t have been able to see.

    “I killed your baby, Mary Worth.”

    He spoke the words softly and without a hint of fear. It was rather unsettling because the warden didn’t have a clue who Mary Worth was; the girls that the condemned had killed had not had anybody by the name of Worth in their families.

    Then he closed his eyes and smiled again.

    He was going to die.

    He was not afraid.

    He was the bravest person the warden had ever seen.

    “I’m ready.”

    The lever was pulled and the cyanide pellets dropped into the acid, dissolving instantly and becoming the hydrogen cyanide gas that would shortly fill the room and end his life.

    He was not afraid.