Recall the Executioner , EXCERPT ONLY
by C.M. Daniels
USA

Cruel and unusual punishment of those condemned to death for their crimes was a whisper in the past.

Injections, gassings, hangings and an assortment of other methods of death were surpassed by the Professional Executioner. PE’s were specially trained telepaths who could kill with a thought. Death row inmates exited life quickly and painlessly as their bodies and minds were halted and shorted out at the same time instantly. Yet the debate raged on about the ethics of capital punishment. PE’s found themselves publicly ridiculed and honored in the same breath. Some were hunted down and murdered for performing a legal public service. The average length of time any given PE spent actively working the Row varied between six months and five years. Only three made it past the decade mark. It was stressful work.

Damon Reyes was looking down the close of his seventh year on the circuit. He was still a young man, at least on paper. His driver’s license said he was thirty-six. He felt like he was pushing two-hundred.

He checked into his room at the lovely hotel the Lunar Federal Penitentiary booked for him and began his night before ritual. The woman behind the counter treated him like any other person until she looked at his PE credentials—which he was required to show as part of his identification process. She read his job description on her computer screen and mentally shut down. Rote actions replaced her warm personality. She slid the key-stick across to him, making certain to draw her hand back before he could touch her.

Rumors abounded about retired and rogue PE’s who developed a true affection for killing. Damon didn’t have any intentions of grabbing her limb and sucking the life out of her. There was touch involved in the executions, but only as a ploy for the public to believe that PE’s had to physically connect with the people they were killing to complete their jobs. While he would never look at this woman and cause her to drop to the floor a corpse, he understood how urban legends and his very gruesome occupation had an effect on people.

His room was like so many others he stayed in over the course of the last seven years. He thought momentarily about another night alone in a generic space, and wanted to do something to satisfy his desire—to spend some time possibly creating life for once instead of destroying it. There was a bar and lounge on the concourse level. But he wouldn’t go. There was always so much paperwork to sort out the night before an execution, he rarely got much sleep before the usually white prison van showed up in the morning to take him to his gig.

The desk quickly disappeared under stacks of papers. He notarized some and signed others, all the while proofreading the documents in a throwback to his law school-intern days. One detail the public often forgot was that PE’s were, as part of the job requirements, required to have law degrees and bar association memberships. Before receiving a recruitment letter from the Official Body of Executioners, Damon worked as a tax lawyer for a company that made aftermarket spare parts for space shuttles.

Tonight, luckily for him, there were no typos or errors of any sort. When he found them, he typically spent his evenings redrafting documents and hoping the hardcopies made it to his location by the scheduled time or executions faced delays. Wronged families and prisons hated delays. Now, he had some spare time to possibly find a companion for the rest of the evening. Damon hung up his official suit, leaving it in the garment bag. Maybe he had enough left in him to act like a young lawyer working hard at making partner. As it stood, that wasn’t far off from the truth. With his span as a PE winding down, he was doing some work for firm where he hoped he could eventually get back into the courtroom.

Downstairs, he ordered a drink and listened to a lousy cover band. He was tired from the trip up from Los Angeles, so when he failed to find any prospects by the end of his slowly sipped Bloody Mary, he left and went back to the front desk to request a wake up call.

"Is it true you’re a Reaper?” The shift had changed and the older man behind the counter appeared nonplused by Damon’s reasons for being on the moon. “You gonna take Phil O’Brien on the ride to the Other Side?”

“I don’t have time for a debate my friend. I’m quite busy,” Damon said quietly.

"Is it true that they pay you folks handsomely for the work you do? That the bonus you get for staying on each year is enough to buy your dream house and a fleet of cars?”

“I’m not at liberty to comment on my salary. If you are interested in PE’s, I suggest you contact the governing board via their site.”

“A friend of mine whose family was a bunch of mind readers had a cousin who was a Reaper and it drove her loony. You seem sane. What’s it like?”

Damon asked once more for his wake up call. “I don’t like to rely on just a clock alone.”

“Oh, I hear that one. If you’re anything like my son, you could sleep through a truck plowing through your wall.” He started to punch numbers into the computer. “And if you ask me, it’s people like you who keep the universe livable. One less scum bag breathing our air is a good thing.”

Damon started to leave toward the elevators. “Can you look up my account and see if Lunar Pen has granted me any room service per diem? I’ve misplaced my itinerary.”

No problem, Mr. Reyes.” Keys clicked again. “Looks like you’ve got fifty for tonight, twenty for tomorrow morning, fifty tomorrow night—not that you’ll be here to use it—and twenty for the following morning. I take it some of the prisons aren’t terribly good to you Reapers?”

"I get reimbursed by the government for my expenses should the prison not provide a tab. I simply needed to know if I had to remember to collect my receipts.”

“Goodnight, Mr. Reyes.”

It was a good night as far as Damon was concerned. No stress over the ritualistic papers that Feds insisted on playing around with, alcohol in his bloodstream, and a comped skin flick made him feel slightly satisfied.

To read more of this story, be sure to check out Abaculus II.

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