Dead Men Walking

Were a recent series of lurid articles in the Weekly World Shopper, claiming that US judicial executions weren’t just failing to kill their subjects, but actually turning them into rampaging zombies Hell-bent on revenge, behind the White House’s cancellation of the live streaming of a forthcoming execution? “I saw it with my own eyes – they had that guy strapped into the electric chair, everything was going fine, then they flipped the switch and he started convulsing. But he didn’t fry! Oh no! He just sort of started to glow all over, then sparks started arcing all over his body!” claimed Leonard Caplock in an interview with the notorious tabloid. “Next thing, he’d wrenched himself free from the chair and was roaring with rage! I mean, quite literally roaring! He was clearly really pissed off!” According to the thirty five year old warehouse worker from Milwaukee, who was an official observer at the execution of multiple murderer Chet ‘The Chopper’ Dyswell at Fuckle County Penitentiary in Tennessee, the now electrically supercharged killer broke out of the execution chamber, spitting sparks and bolts of lightning from his hands and eyes.

“He started rampaging around the execution chamber, crackling and shooting bolts of electricity out of his hands, electrocuting the guards who tried to restrain him!” he alleged. “Next thing, he was advancing on the viewing window – he looked straight at us, glowered as his glow intensified and the glass exploded inwards! Lots of people were hit by shards of flying glass! People were screaming and running for the door! I was lucky, I managed to get out – but lots of people died horribly in that room!” Caplock went on to describe how Dyswell smashed through doors and walls, chasing down guards and frying the governor, before smashing out of the prison altogether. “The bastard went on a revenge spree, electrocuting everyone he held responsible for his death sentence: cops, witnesses, the judge and jury!” he told the tabloid. “He only stopped when he accidentally earthed himself on a wire fence and exploded! I mean, Jesus! What were the authorities thinking – charging up a guy convicted of eighteen chainsaw murders with fifty thousand volts? It was bound to end in tears!”

Dyswell’s reign of terror reportedly came to an abrupt end when he tried to tear through a chain link fence and shorted himself out, exploding in a shower of sparks. Caplock also claims to have attended the execution of another convicted killer, Fred ‘The Axeman’ Prippett at Kripple Penitentiary, Wisconsin a few weeks later and witnessed similar events unfolding. “They strapped the guy into the gas chamber, when the gas started to flow, he just sucked it up into his lungs!” he recalls. “He just seemed to expand, like a balloon, in front of us! The guards ran into the chamber and he felled them by blowing a cloud of poison gas out of his mouth into their faces! Then he broke free of the chair, crashed out of the gas chamber, grabbed hold of the prison governor who was trying to run away and kissed him on the mouth, blowing poison gas into his lungs! As with the other guy, he then broke out of the prison.” Like Dysart, the gas-spewing resurrected killer went on a rampage of revenge. “Well, obviously – wouldn’t you if you’d miraculously survived an execution and found yourself transformed into some kind of supervillain?” muses Caplock. “Luckily, it didn’t last long, as he – quite literally – ran out of gas.”

While Caplock doesn’t claim to have seen any other similar incidents at other executions he has witnessed, he claims to have heard of plenty of other occurrences from other people. “Look, this sort of thing is happening all the time – dead men really are walking! Walking right out of their executions and continuing their murder sprees!” he asserted to the tabloid. “The authorities are trying to cover it up to stop public panic and maintain support for the death penalty! It’s only a matter of time before one of these guys cheats death and turns into a real super-powered villain, destroying whole cities! I mean, they got lucky when that woman survived those two attempts to execute her by lethal injection – the authorities are just facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit instead of a poison powered demon whose kiss is, quite literally, death! It isn’t as if the government hasn’t known about this stuff for years – why else do you think that executions aren’t televised?”

Whilst it has been suggested that these articles, by exposing the public risks of capital punishment, might have informed the decision to halt the plan to livestream the execution by firing squad of wheelchair-bound former soldier and convicted killer Nidal Hassan, others are more doubtful. “On the face of it, this seems an unfathomable decision,” declares Artie Penner, columnist for the Portland Free Press and Used Car Mart. “After all, this is the most bloodthirsty administration we’ve ever had – revelling in the deaths of foreigners it bombs in spurious wars, allowing its agents to shoot and kill innocent US citizens and carrying out executions with glee. So, it just seemed par for the course when Defence Secretary Hegseth announced that the execution by firing squad of a guy in a wheelchair was going to be broadcast live on the web! But who knows, maybe they were worried that they just didn’t have any soldiers who could shoot straight enough any more and didn’t want any more military embarrassment, or that recent debacle where that woman survived two attempts to execute her by lethal injection might have spooked them!” Many have questioned the veracity of Capstock’s claims, pointing to the lack of media coverage of the events he described and questioning just why he attends so many executions. “Obviously, there has been a massive official cover-up to avoid mass panic! That’s why the president cancelled the livestream! Can you imagine the panic if millions of viewers saw that wheelchair guy transform into some kind of metallic monster, spitting bullets?” he retorts. “And I’m a passionate campaigner against the death penalty, so I feel that I have a duty to observe first hand just how barbaric executions actually are so as to report on them accurately. Besides, a guy’s got to have a hobby.”