Ray Bradbury. The Electrocution

                Ray Bradbury
                http://blogs.myspace.com/mysteryal

                The Electrocution
                1946

     She  let  him tie the black silk over her eyes and he knotted it and jerked
it  so  tight that she gasped and said, "Loosen it, damn you, Johnny, loosen it,
or I won't go on!'?
     "Sure," he said easily, and she smelled his sharp breath; while beyond; the
crowd  rustled  against  the  rope  barrier and the carnival tent flapped in the
night  wind,  and  off,  there was a drift of calliope music and the rattle of a
trap drum.
     Dimly,  through  the  black  silk, she could see the men, the boys, the few
women,  a  good  crowd,  paying  out  dimes to see her strapped in this electric
chair,  the electrodes on her wrists and neck, waiting.
     "There." Johnny's voice whispered through the blindfold. "That better?"
     She  said  nothing, but her hands gripped the ends of the wooden chair. She
felt  her  pulse  beating  in  her  arms  and neck. Outside the pitchman yelled
through  his  small  cardboard  megaphone and slapped his cane across the banner
where  Electra's  portrait  shivered  in  the wind: yellow hair, hard blue eyes,
sharp chin, seated in her death-chair like Someone come for tea.
     With the black silk blinding her, it was easier to let her mind run back to
wherever it wanted to go...
     The  carnival  was either setting up in a new town or letting go; its brown
tents  inhaling  by  day,  exhaling  its stale air by night as the canvases slid
rustling down along the dark poles. And then?
     Last Monday night this young man with the long arms and the eager pink face
bought  three  tickets to the sideshow and stood watching Electra three times as
the  electricity burned through her like blue fire while this young man strained
at  the  rope  barrier, and memorized her every move as she sat high up there on
the platform, all fire and pale flesh.
     He came four nights in a row.
     "You got an audience, Ellie," said Johnny on the third night.
     "So I see," she said.
     "Don't pay no attention," said Johnny.
     "I won't," she said. "Why should I? Don't worry."
     After  all,  she'd done the act for years. Johnny slammed on the power, and
it filled her from ankle to elbows to ears as he handed her the bright sword and
she thrust it out blindly over the audience, smiling under her half mask, to let
them tap shoulders and brows as the blue sparks crackled and spat. On the fourth
night  she  shoved the sword far out toward the young man with the sweating pink
face,  first among the crowd. The young man raised his hand swiftly, eagerly, as
if to seize the blade. Blue sparks leaped the gap, but his hand didn't flinch or
stop  as  he  grabbed  on and took the fire in his fingers and then his fist and
then his wrist and his arm into his body.
     His  eyes,  in the light, flared with blue alcohol flame, fed by the sword,
whose fire in passing lit her arm and face and body. He stretched his hand still
farther  out,  his  waist jammed against the rope, silent and tense. Then Johnny
cried,  "Everybody touch it! Every one!" And Electra lifted the blade out on the
air  for  others  to feel and stroke, while Johnny cursed. Through the blindfold
she saw the terrible illumination which would not leave the young man's face.
     The  fifth  night,  instead of touching the young man's fingers, she tapped
the  blazing tip of the sword against the palm of his hand, brushing and burning
until he shut his eyes.
     That  night she walked out on the lake pier after the show and did not look
back  as  she moved, but listened and began to smile. The lake shook against the
rotting  piles.  The  carnival  lights made wandering, uneasy roads on the black
water. The Ferris wheel whirled high and around, with its faint screams, and far
away  the  calliope steamed and sobbed "Beautiful Ohio." She slowed her walking.
She  put  out her right foot, slowly, then her left, then she stopped and turned
her head. And as she turned she saw the shadow, and his arms moved around her. A
long  time  later  she  leaned  back in his arms and stared up into his healthy,
excited pink face, and said, "My God, you're more dangerous than my chair!"
     "Is your name really Electra?" he said.
     The  next  night as the power leaped through her, she stiffened, shuddered,
and  clamped  her lips in her teeth, moaning. Her legs stirred; her hands groped
and scratched the chair arms.
     "What's wrong!" Beyond the blindfold, Johnny cried out, "What?"
     And cut the power.
     "I'm all right," she gasped. The crowd murmured. "It's nothing Go on! Now!"
     And he hit the switch.
     The fire crawled through her and again she clenched her teeth and threw her
head  back against the chair. A face rushed out of the dark, and a body with it,
to  press  against  her.  The  power  exploded. The electric chair stopped, then
melted.
     Johnny,  a  million  miles off in the dark, handed her the sword. Her limp,
twitching hand dropped it. He handed it back and instinctively she shoved it far
out into the night.
     Someone,  out  there  in the roaring darkness, touched the blade. She could
imagine  his eyes burning there, his lips parted as the power jolted him. He was
pressed  against the rope, hard, hard against the rope, and could not breathe or
cry out or pull back!
     The power died. The smell of lightning stayed.
     "That's it!" someone cried.
     Johnny  left  her  to  squirm out of the leather straps, jumped off the low
platform,  and  walked  out  toward  the  midway. Convulsively, she tore off the
bonds,  trembling.  She  ran from the tent, not looking back to see if the young
man was still there against the rope.
     She  fell  upon  the  cot  of  the  trailer behind the tent, perspiring and
shaking, and was still crying when Johnny stepped in to look down at her.
     "What's the matter?" he said.
     "Nothing, nothing, Johnny."
     "What was that you pulled out there just now?"
     "Nothing, nothing."
     "Nothing,  nothing,"  he  said.  "Like hell it is." His face twisted. "Like
hell! You haven't done anything like that for years!"
     "I was nervous!"
     "Years  it's  been," he said. "When we were first married you did that. You
think I forgot how when I switched the power on this same happened like tonight?
You  been  sitting  in  that  chair  for three years like someone listening to a
radio.  And  tonight, and _tonight!" _ he cried, choking, standing over her, his
fists tightened. "Damn it, _tonight."_
     "Please, please, Johnny. I was nervous."
     "What  were  you  thinking  there  in the chair?" he demanded, leaning down
wildly. "What did you think about?"
     "Nothing, Johnny, nothing. " He grabbed her hair. "Please!"
     He  threw  her  head down, turned, walked out, and stopped outside. "I know
what  you  were  thinking,"  he said. "I know." And she heard his footsteps fade
away.
     And the night passed and the day and another night with another crowd.
     But  nowhere  in  the  crowd did she see _his_ face. Now, in the blackness,
with  the  blindfold tight to her face, she sat in the electric chair and waited
while  Johnny  described  the  wonders  of  the  Skeleton  Man  over on the next
platform,  and  still  she  waited  and stared at everyone who entered the tent.
Johnny  walked  around  the  Skeleton  Man, all stiffness, describing the living
skull  and  the  terrible  bones,  and at last the crowd rustled, turned, led by
Johnny,  his  voice like a battered brass horn as he jumped up onto the platform
with her so violently that she jerked aside and licked her red lips.
     And  now  the  knot of the blindfold was tied tighter and yet tighter as he
bent to whisper:
     _"Miss_ him?"
     She  said  nothing,  but  held  her  head up. The crowd stirred below, like
animals in a straw stable.
     "He's  not  here,"  he whispered and locked the electrodes on her arms. She
was  silent.  He  whispered  again, "He'll never come back." He fitted the black
skullcap  over her hair. She trembled. "Afraid?" he wondered quietly. "What of?"
He  snapped  the  straps  around  her  ankles.  "Don't  be  afraid.  Good  clean
electricity." A gasp escaped her lips. He stood up. "I hit him," he said softly,
touching her blindfold. "Hit him so hard I broke his front teeth. Then I knocked
him against a wall and hit him again and again-" He Stopped and shouted. "Ladies
and gentlemen, witness the most astounding act in carnival history! Here you see
a  penitentiary  electric  chair exactly like those used in our biggest prisons.
Perfect  for  the  destruction  of  _criminals!"_  With  this last word she fell
forward,  fingers  scratching the wood as he cried, "Before your very eyes, this
dear lady will be electrocuted!"
     The  crowd  murmured,  and  she  thought of the tesla transformer under the
platform  and  how  Johnny might have fixed it so she got amperage, not voltage.
Accident, bad accident Shame. Amperage, not voltage.
     She  wrenched  her right hand free of its leather strap and heard the power
switch slam shut as the blue fire seized and shook her, screaming!
     The  audience  applauded  and  whistled and stomped. Oh she thought wildly,
this is good, my death? Great! More applause! More screams!
     Out of the black spaces a body fell. "Hit him so hard broke his teeth!" The
body  jerked.  "Then I hit him and hit him again!" The body fell, was picked up,
fell  again. She screamed high and long as a million unseen mouths stung and bit
her.  Blue  flames seized her heart. The young man' body writhed and exploded in
bone shrapnel, flame, and ash
     Calmly, Johnny handed her the sword.
     "Now," he said.
     Being safe was like a blow to the stomach.
     She  sobbed,  fumbling  at the sword, quivering and jerking unable to move.
The  power  hummed  and the crowd stuck out their hands, some like spiders, some
like birds leaping away wherever the sword sizzled and spat.
     The  power  still  lived  in her bones as all over the carnival grounds the
lights dimmed.
     _Click_. The switch lay in its Off bed.
     She sank in upon herself, the sweat running around her nose and her sagging
mouth. Gasping, she fought free to pull the blindfold away.
     The  crowd had gone off to another platform, another miracle, where the Fat
Lady called and they obeyed.
     Johnny's  hand lay on the switch. He dropped his hand, stood there watching
her, his dark eyes cold, not flickering.
     The  tent lights looked dirty, old, yellow, and unclean. She stared blindly
at  the  retreating  crowd, Johnny, the tent, the lights. She looked shrunken in
the chair. Half of her had poured out through the wires, flushed into the copper
cable  that  fled  over the town, leaping from high pole to pole. She lifted her
head  as if it weighed ninety pounds. The clean light had come, entered into and
slid  through her, and blasted out again; but it was not the same light anymore.
She  had  changed  it; she saw how she had made it. And she shivered because the
light was discolored.
     Johnny's  mouth opened. She didn't hear him at first. He had to repeat what
had to be said.
     "You're dead," he said firmly. And again: "You're dead."
     And  sitting  there  in  the electric chair, trapped by the leather straps,
with  a wind from the tent flaps playing over her face, evaporating the wetness,
staring  at him and seeing the dark in his eyes, she gave the only answer it was
possible to give.
     "Yes," she said, eyes shut. "Oh, yes. I _am."