There was nothing he could do anymore. And, nothing he really wanted to do anyway. He assumed it was going to be easier if he just let things happen the way they were going to instead of fighting them. Maybe the shock therapy would stop at the very least. That was his biggest hope, though he knew somewhere inside himself that it was all in vain.

They were never going to stop, not now that they knew his secret. He was still angry at himself for that. He had hid it so well for so many years. Then, some nosey neighbor had to call the police and they took him in. They deprived him of sleep and conned answers out of him. Those details may have been the truth, but they were supposed to be his secret. They were his business and he vowed that, if he ever got out of this prison, he would get the officers that put him here.

He would get that judge, too. The judge that sent him here and, he decided, the one that denied his appeal. They were no good and they deserved to be punished. Punished just like the others.

What had he ever done to them? He never went after their secrets or pried into their personal lives the way they had done to him. He believed every man deserved the right to keep his own secrets to himself. That no one had the right to take away a man's joy, even if they believed it was "immoral" and "inhuman." It just wasn't, and that's what he had told those judges when they gave him the sentence. They didn't listen.

As he heard the gurney coming down the hall, Johnny Alistor decided to make his body count 48. His body would not be where he had left the others. No, it would be in a cemetery where decent people like him belonged.

He didn't deserve this punishment like the others had. He didn't deserve to die by the hand of someone who was less than he was. So, he used his own.

They found him in his cell moments later, bleeding out. They tried to save him but he only laughed. He had done this before and there was no stopping it now. He had saved himself and there was nothing they could do about it.