Deadlocked

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Ryan Kowalczyk knew something few people ever knew: the exact time he would die. He had spent the last fifteen years watching each month melt away until only one month, July, remained. He lingered through those July days, indifferent to the merciless heat that claimed a dozen lives across Missouri, waking early on Sunday July 16th, his last day. His gut twisted. The hard floor cool to his bare feet, he sat on the side of his bed, head in his hands, wondering for the millionth time how it would feel when the drugs hit his veins at midnight.

Two kinds of people knew what he knew. Suicides and death row inmates. He couldn't kill himself. Not because he clung to the fantasy that some court more supreme than the one that had condemned him would grant him a new trial, though his mother promised him that each time she visited. Not because the governor might commute his sentence, the last chance his lawyer was still pursuing in the final hours of his life. And not because he lacked the courage. He had thought of plenty of ways to kill himself, beating the guards who were sworn to keep him alive until the prison's execution team could poison him.

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