Unfortunately, Britain has disbanded the death penalty for all crimes except regicide, and even then it’s a boring old hanging. Killing the Queen is obviously not worth the effort. However, they did suggest that if I traveled to the land of the free, some kind soul might let me throw the switch on a few convicts. That is when I bought my plane ticket to America.
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Try decapitating someone with this |
Being an executioner is really cool. You get to ask people if they have any last words, and if you’re lucky, they’ll say something really poignant. One guy said “If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine”, which I believe was a quote from Babe: Pig in the City. He didn’t come back. He just sort of melted slightly.
Nobody can prepare you for how easy the job is. You just have to throw a switch and your whole job is over. If you’re lucky, someone won’t fit into the helmet correctly and you’ll have to throw the switch again, for added excitement.
Just as I was starting to get into my stride, we had to execute someone called Big Bob. He was on death row for devouring a child after they got a meatball stuck in their hair. He’d been in prison for the last seven years waiting for his execution, mainly because they had to slim him down enough to fit in the chair. His appetite for food exceeds Axl Rose’s appetite for destruction. Now, Big Bob was given the opportunity of a last meal, as is granted to every prisoner facing the electric chair. Bob, either through shrewd reasoning or through being a slave to his gut, chose an all you can eat Pizza Hut buffet as his last meal.
Three weeks later and we were still trying to honour Bob’s final request. The prison governor came down to find out why we hadn’t shipped our corpse quota, only to find a prisoner the size of a cell block shovelling pizza into himself with gay abandon. Technically, there was nothing we could do within the law. His last meal just kept going and going.
Eventually, the prison began to shut down as normal operations could not resume. The government shifted funds and services to other prisons, and we all lost our jobs. Still, at least we had a severance package which consisted of nothing but stacks of pizza. The papers called it The Pepperoni Payoff.
But what happened to Bob? Rumour has it that he’s wandering free through rural America, sniffing out buffets and discount food outlets. If you venture out in the pale moonlight, you may see him rifling through a trash can. As much as I resent getting laid off, I have to respect Bob and his fierce appetite/survival instinct. I raise my bottomless refill to you Bob, you glorious bastard.