"I know why! I am Sula! I am Alexandre! I am William!" said Alexandre. "But I was Andrew, by my own mouth condemning me again and again to that which I would not allow our Lord! A fair and gentle death. A courteous and mild demise!"
A strap was quickly buckled at his waist and a leather harness with electrodes was shoved down on to his head. "Enough babbling!" said the warden. "Shut your mouth, criminal!"
Danielle pressed her forehead to the tiny slit of window and screamed, "Alexandre, then do you remember me?"
All faces spun towards the window. Alexandre stared, his mouth open.
"Alexandre! Let me in!"
Behind Danielle, Marie and Clarice gasped, "No, Danielle, let it be!"
Danielle banged on the steel bars. "Alexandre, please, let me in!"
"Are you an angel, sent by Christ to stop this cycle?" said Alexandre. The guards fumbled with the chin strap, and drew the leather through the buckle. Before they could seal his jaws shut with the strap, he managed, "Angel, come in!"
Marie grabbed Danielle's wrist from behind, and snarled at her, "Do not dare! They will see you for who you are. The priest has a crucifix. We will be done in, Sister!"
Danielle twisted violently, but Clarice took her other wrist and held it firmly. "We will not be destroyed by your carelessness!"
Danielle bit her Sisters, and clawed. She kicked and spun, and the bones of her wrists shattered, but they would not let go.
Inside the cellar, she saw the priest raise his hand for the sign of the cross. He stepped back. A guard nodded to a man at the back of the room. " No !" Danielle screamed, and the witnesses ran their hands through their hair and shifted in their seats, uneasy with the spectacle this had become.
"Now," said the guard.
"No!" cried Danielle. She kicked the bars and the pane of the window. The glass shattered and sprayed the cellar floor with shards.
There was the sound of a rushing trolley, a high-pitched and whining burr that caused the entire room to vibrate. Alexan-dre's body convulsed and strained at the leather straps. Smoke rose from his hair, and then the hair caught fire, crackling and popping in a tongue of orange and blue.
"Jesus," said one witness.
"I pray he's dead already," said another.
The body danced within the confines of the chair, a puppet on electric strings, until the warden nodded and the current was shut off.
Danielle could not move. She lay in the grass, her fingernails dug into her forehead, her eyes staring, staring, taking it in and rejecting it at the same time. Alexandre, dead again.
And then Alexandre moaned. The witnesses gasped and put their hands to their mouths. The warden pointed urgently towards the man at the wall switch, who threw it again, and again Alexandre danced.
It was all done in six minutes. At last Alexandre was dead. Guards gingerly unstrapped him, complaining that he was boiling to the touch, and with coats over their hands for protection, they rolled the body on to a gurney that had waited at the side of the room. They covered it with a sheet. But when a doctor attempted to examine the body, he could not remove the clothing for the heat. The warden escorted the ashen-faced men from the death chamber until the body cooled.
"Half-hour," the warden said. "Let it cool and let the air clear a bit. And get a guard to arrest those women in the yard!"
"I hate you," Danielle said to Marie and Clarice.
"No, you don't," said Marie.
"Oh, but I do," said Danielle. The hands loosened on her wrists, and she was at last able to transform herself to mist to move through the window and into the cellar. Her friends followed.
They stood amid the stench and the death. Danielle was silent for a moment and then said, "I'm cursed as much as he is."
"We are not cursed, Danielle," said Clarice, "we are blessed."
"What is a curse, then? That which you do not want, which you never asked for, yet which will not let you be!"
"It isn't Alexandre," Marie said again. "Come with us. Come with us."
"You don't know anything," said Danielle. And she did not go with them.
She stepped to the gurney and lifted away the sheet. Her love lay there, his sweet face charred half away, his hair blackened and crisp. His beautiful hands cooked into claws. She held one hand and kissed it and cried her tears on to it.
"I would remove your curse if I could," she whispered. She bent to the scorched neck and bit there. The blood had the flavour of charcoal, and it made her vomit.
She heard the men's voices coming towards the chamber. Footsteps pounding the cement of the hall floor. She would go. But she would find him again. She would be keen and sharp, she would have her wits always awake, and be ready. She would follow him and perhaps, save him. Save him for what, she wasn't certain. Save him into what, she couldn't know. But she would find him.
She touched her skirt's pocket. The Bible was gone. It had gone ahead, to find her love once more.