Ray Bradbury



                    The Electrocution

    

        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."