Watcher

He waited years for this. He dreamt of the moment that was around that dark corner and mostly questions sprung to mind. How would he feel when it's all over? Would it change anything? Would he still feel that void?

He sits with the other witnesses being checked in at the state prison. No tighter security than that of a prison. Bags are checked. You're being pat down in places your wife never even touches  not even with the best coaxing. While others looked sad and gloomy, he had a calm demeanor. He needed to see this.

He loved fast cars. More so, he loved to drive cars fast.  He was the asshole who cut you off making that all too unsafe lane change then speeds off much faster than is needed for any ordinary citizen with a mundane destination. You often wonder why? Why drive like a maniac? Doesn't he know he could kill someone? He got the answer to the latter.

Rain didn't slow him down. No, not that night. Neither did the yellow light which he was too far away to ever catch. Ignoring the lights purpose he threw some weight on the accelerator. God, he loved this. The thrill of doing what he thought we were all scared to do and step up to take life by the balls. He was too fixed on the high that he never saw her coming. A loud crunching of metal like a soda can being fired into a wall by a grenade launcher.

The voices of the rescue workers is what he heard first, being loaded into a ambulance. Before the doors shut he caught a glimpse of the lifeless body in the mangled remains of her car.

He got off with a plea from the District Attorney but that didn't help. He never got behind the wheel of a car again but that didn't help. He begged for forgiveness from her husband but that did't help. He drank and swallowed every drug the therapist gave him but nothing could help.

He gets his visitor pass and is herded with the rest down a corridor into a room full of cheap plastic chairs. They sat row by row facing a large glass window. On the other side was a table resembling something of a cross with two supports for arms with straps. All kinds of medical equipment made for the opposite of what usual equipment of it's kind is intended for lay next to it.

The deputies lead in a skinny sickly looking man covered with tattoos and the look of false confidence. The man wanted to play the tough guy image to the end.  As they strap the man in, suddenly the toughness starts to disappear. The man looks at glass through the window, afraid of what's to come. The man locks eyes with him.

He took a life but he couldn't face it. Maybe seeing one taken from this earth will give him some sort of clarity. The tubes start to fill with a death cocktail heading into the prisoner's veins.  The prisoner tries to fight it but like a fly caught in a web, slowly succumbs to the death that awaits him. He looks on hoping, searching but long after the prisoner is gone, the void is there. The deputies usher them out.

He walks down the dark hallway in tears. Not from seeing a life being extinguish but because he knows no matter what he does he can't fill that void. He can't bring the life, he wrongfully took, back.

And nothing will help.