It hurts him, but he doesn’t care. The sudden darkness is a relief, after all the buzzing around him, the buckling and strapping and fastening and clipping, after the sickening way the folks there watching seemed to be in a big swing, swinging away from him and then right up close so that he could almost hear them breathing. He sits in the darkness, feeling his pulse slow, his breathing even out. He is sweating, but at the same time he feels cold. A spot on his leg begins to itch, but he cannot move his arm to scratch it. This is what he thinks about in the darkness: the itch on his leg. The itch on his leg; in the darkness, there is nothing else.
And then: a million needles and pins start to puncture his skin, everywhere on his body—a sensation he doesn’t immediately understand. He imagines the deputies with pins attached to every finger, poking at him, or maybe battering him with paddles studded with needles. He tries to call out, but he cannot get his tongue to work; it is like a lead ball in his mouth, immovable and cold. And then in the darkness there appear flecks of light, blue and green and pink speckles, and he thinks they must be poking the hood now, too, and it reminds him of the night sky, the stars like little holes, specks of light like these that flood his vision now, bursting and sputtering as the needles batter the hood, batter his skin, driving harder and deeper until he hears his own cry echo in his head and he understands at last that this is it, that finally he is dying.