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.”
The end
