Universal Monsters V
We hid. We fought. We stood tall and we ran and we froze and we burned and we played games and we played dead. Eventually most of us didn’t have to play. Some of us cried. Some of us slept. Some of us cooked because the kitchen was open and the last meal is a convention convicts take seriously. Even if you’re not on death row you’ve talked about it a hundred thousand times. This is the same as how everyone who’s ever been to a liberal arts college has imagined every Birkenstock cushioned step of their backpacking trip through Europe or how anyone who’s ever been in a community theatre play has held their hairbrush or their razor to their mouths, stared at their reflection and thanked the academy for honoring them with this grooming tool.
Bulls call it the “special meal.” We guess that’s supposed to make it all seem less horrible and draconian and…lasty. To us it just makes it seem like your food was retarded. Made from the cow in the helmet. The chicken that seems confused even for a chicken and when mothers in the south see them in their cages they say, “Bless his heart.”
We call it, “The Big Feed.”
Filet mignon and lobster tail and caviar turn up, of course, but most people on the outs are struck by the modesty of the average feed. Pizza. Shrimp cocktails. Chicken-fried everything. The McDonald’s value menu makes a surprisingly strong showing. Back when the electric chair was the thing every third person tried to eat nothing but unpopped popcorn just before being zapped.
You have to admit that a human jiffy pop would be pretty fucking funny. And you’ve got to respect anyone willing to dedicate their last moment on earth to comedy.
Also to scaring the shit out of chaplains and the family and whatnot.
In Florida the feed must be purchased locally and cost no more than forty dollars. Which sucks but you’d be amazed the kinds of discounts you can get for your last meal on earth. Execution is a get-out-of-jail-expensive card, but it comes with one hell of a coupon.
Most of us really just want a cold beer and a scotch old enough to complain about kids playing on its lawn but alcohol, inexplicably, is about the only thing that is completely verboten at the feed. Wikipedia says that alcohol isn’t allowed at “special meals” because it, “dulls the senses.” Whatever the fuck that means. It doesn’t really matter. Even convicts trust wikipedia about as far as we can throw it. Which we can’t even figure out how to do. So…yeah.
John Wayne Gacy had a bucket of KFC and a pound of strawberries. Timothy McVeigh had two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dobie Gillis Williams, who surely had many loves, simply ate twelve candy bars.
Salads are almost unheard of. When a lifetime on the hips extends about three hours, a moment on the lips seems epic.
The most popular choice in every prison across the board is a cheeseburger or two or twelve and fries. Modest. Regular. Because, in the end, the last end you’ll ever see, most guys don’t want to feel superior or fancy or ooh la blah. In the end most men just want to feel like a man. Probably we’d build something in our last hours if they’d let us. If they’d let us we’d mow the lawn and hunt our own food and kill it with our hands and barbecue the sombitch.
I seem to have wandered away from the point. The monsters and all that.
We ran and we screamed and we fought and we died.
And Fraction smiled.
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