The Execution Chamber defined Richard Clement’s life in many ways. He ran a bar and BBQ joint by the name a few blocks from Bourbon Street in New Orleans, filled with macabre decorations of serial killers and their untimely fates that made it a small, obscure tourist destination. If it was not the décor that brought one in, it was his fall-off-the-bone smoked ribs. Richard ran something of a one-man show, working the kitchen and the bar in the small, hot, and dark building, while the jukebox and a waitress or two attended to patrons on the busiest nights. He made a mean (and strong) Sazerac but could often be found on his down time sipping on ice tea or a can of Schaefer beer.

When the regulars got Richard talking, he would spin a yarn revealing a bit of the bar’s history. Richard’s father, Gilbert Clement, gave the bar its name when he was executed on Gruesome Gertie, the state’s electric chair, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary when Richard was 15. Gilbert was accused of rape and sentenced to die, despite maintaining his innocence. Richard was the sole family member in attendance as Gilbert was executed, his mom having left Gilbert shortly after Richard was born. He sat there with the required state witness and a prison chaplain as the switch was thrown once, twice, and a third time to finish the job. The final words of the condemned were “close yer eyes, boy.” Richard did not heed his father’s advice.

Richard and Gilbert were opposites in many ways. Gilbert was quiet and reserved, even awkward. He was a churchgoing man but did not have much else going for him that others would deem respectable. He was unemployed most of his life, becoming a father at age 16 and picking up odd construction jobs here and there to provide for Richard as he could. When he was sentenced to die the court officially declared him a “moron” based on his mental state. Despite his many flaws, Richard saw him as a decent man and believed him to be innocent of the crime he was supposed to have committed.

Richard, on the other hand, was quite sharp, despite making it through only two years of high school before heading out into the working world. His outgoing nature and business acumen led him to accumulate enough money bartending to start his own bar. Not much for religion, he preferred the nightlife of the French Quarter. “Ain’t got time for a woman though,” he’d say when people asked about his family. He lived alone in the small loft above the bar where he would hear the sounds of the close-down crowd with his windows open after a hard night’s work.

The Execution Chamber served all types, depending on the occasion. Sometimes groups of teenagers would wander over, other times tourists looking for an authentic hole-in-the-wall bar, or other out-of-towners who mistook it for a voodoo shop. The regulars, though, were working-class locals who would stop by for a lunch break or to unwind after a day’s work. Some would even bring their families by for a weekend lunch or a bite to eat when a kid skipped class for the day. These were the ones Richard got to know best.

Having not had much time with his own father, Richard looked longingly at sons with their fathers, hovering quietly as his guests talked about coming home from the army, going off to college, or even mundane life events over a cold beer. He would think back to the few beers he shared with his dad, though never fancy enough even for a bar like The Execution Chamber. “This one’s on the house” he would occasionally throw in for the guys he had seen growing up. Each time, it triggered something new in him: a sense that he needed to harness those emotions and keep building The Execution Chamber that got him this far.

And indeed, that is what he did. For The Execution Chamber defined Richard Clement’s life in many ways.

“So, where you two visiting from?” Richard made small talk with two guys in late on a Tuesday night.

“Just up there in Greensburg,” the dad replied.

“Well what brings you ‘round these parts?” Richard inquired.

“We was thinkin’ there’d be some work right over on the new buildings on Poydras Street.”

Richard grew more interested as they talked about the two of them working construction projects together after the boy’s momma died. After a few more drinks on the house, he learned they came down to New Orleans looking for better pay, and they also were not shy that they “didn’t mind the peep shows ‘n’ dancers you got down here neither.”

The few other patrons shuffled out of the bar as the hours dragged on, but Richard kept serving the duo.

“Speakin-a shows,” said the dad, slurring his words, “I’m just gonna pop on over to the house back where we were ‘n’ see if my pretty kitty is off yet.” He slinked toward the door, with a “you finish up here, boy, and I might see you at the Sun” – a run-down boarding house Richard knew of down the road. Richard looked to the son’s expressionless face, unsure of whether he heard or not. He could not tell if it was the face of a son who was used to being left by his old man or a kid that had too much absinthe in him. Nonetheless, Richard whipped up two drinks and shared a commiserating sup with him. He brought out a plate of some smoked meat to take the bite off the booze.

As the kid got up to leave, Richard walked out with him for a smoke and a nightcap in the cool night air. It was a quiet evening, and the boy quickly stumped off to find the room they were staying in.

Just as Richard breathed in to start heading in for the evening, he heard a snort, the sound of a drunken fellow sleeping outside. Following the sound, he found the father he had spoken to earlier lying in the alley with a black eye and teeth marks on his neck, as well as a few colored feathers clinging to his clothes. He was nowhere near lucid, but amenable enough when Richard told him to come back to The Chamber with him to at least clean up the vomit down the front of his shirt.

As they walked back into the bar, Richard sat the man down on a stool. He stepped behind the bar and slowly moved aside the chest cooler that sat beneath the counter. Underneath was a crack in the floor, a door to the basement that was a remnant of the Prohibition days. He pulled open the door and casually walked back to the man. He invited him down and helped him down the rickety stairs.

In the basement, Richard helped clean the man up. James, his name was, as his billfold revealed. Richard grabbed some ice for the man’s eye and some cool water to drink. “What would you like to eat, James?” he asked, “anything you like.” At the man’s request, he brought down some BBQ and a plate of fries, and another drink to cap things off. James would have to sleep things off right there at The Execution Chamber.

The next morning, Richard woke up and casually walked downstairs, moved the cooler once more, and stepped into the basement as he did most mornings. James was also awake, trembling and screaming from the chain link and barbed wire cell he was shackled in. Around him, James could see what looked like a torture chamber with different stations, a chair and a gurney, a crude and bloodied guillotine, two gallows, and a pile of sandbags with blood splatters on them. There was also a large meat smoker with a long skinny pipe to the outside that could just as easily have been part of the hellish setup. The remnants of his meal were on the floor in front of him next to a small drain. The cold concrete and brick echoed his shaky voice back to him.

Ignoring the man’s screaming and demands for answers, Richard pulled out a paper and read, “James Landry: for your actions of last night and your failure as a father, you are sentenced to death by lethal injection at 10:00am today. You may specify an alternative method one quarter hour prior to the execution.” James continued cursing loudly at Richard, screaming and begging for answers, but Richard coldly walked up the stairs without turning back and closed the door once more, placing the cooler over it for the time being.

Richard made some eggs and sausages and slowly ate a breakfast at the bar while some jazz music played on a record. The air was hot and stuffy upstairs. He swept the floor and did his dishes, glancing out the window at the quiet city streets and then shifting the cooler to one side yet again.

Richard opened the hatch and descended the stairs again, as James perked up and began cursing at him again and asking, begging, for a chance to talk things out. Indifferent, Richard approached with a leather notebook and asked to record any final words he had.

“What kind of tataille hurt you, man? Wha’d your daddy do to you, you sick bastard?”

“I watched my daddy die in that there chair,” said Richard resolutely, but still a bit taken aback by the question. He finished writing the words and closed the journal, placing it back on the stack of bricks it had been sitting on before. As James started cursing out Richard’s dad, Richard started opening the straps on the table that James now understood to be the place that lethal chemicals would take his life.

“Give me the chair too, you dirty cochon; I dare you!” yelled James.

Richard reached down, took an old watch out of his pocket, and checked the time. 9:43am.

“Heh,” he said with a cagey smile, not looking at James directly, “my first time using the chair.”

James stopped yelling and started watching Richard, looking for a last-minute way out. Richard grabbed a razor and a large carving knife, as James grew afraid he was just going to chop him up then and there. As Richard approached the cage, he set the instruments down and grabbed a thick leather strap. James pressed against the shackles that bound him to the floor, his veins bulging out of his head. Richard opened the cage and placed the strap over James’s neck, clipping it to a bracket on the floor. James spit in his face and almost immediately Richard knocked James on the forehead with his palm, hitting the back of his head hard against the concrete floor. James faded in and out of consciousness as Richard shaved James’s head and leg, coming to it once as Richard looked him straight in the eyes and said, “try that again and I will carve you slowly before I cook you.” He put a rag over James’s face and James temporarily slipped back out of consciousness.

When he came to it again, James realized he was strapped into a wooden chair with a wet strap on his head, a sponge duct taped on his leg, and a cloth wire coming from an old fuse box on the wall. Richard had crafted a thicker fuse that would take longer to break, with two backup wires to administer subsequent doses of electric shock. Richard finished up the preparations and sat himself near a switch several feet away from James. James could not speak, knowing his time was likely through, but he burbled out any defense noises he could. A quick and sudden trial from a man he had met only the night before…

Richard administered the first shock. James involuntarily clenched the chair as electric volts shot through his body for several seconds. The first fuse broke. James groaned and his head sank down as Richard got up and hooked up the second wire. The spit in his mouth foamed. After a few minutes of fumbling with the wiring, Richard sat down again. He calmly pulled the switch and a second course of electricity flowed through James’s body. This time James was silent. Richard hooked up the third wire to finish the job. The third round of electrical work went quicker, as less electricity is used in the final rounds of the death sentence, Richard learned. He sat down and flipped the switch until the third fuse broke.

James was not moving, and there was a slight stench in the air of urine and burnt hair. A puddle had formed around James. Richard looked at him pathetically, then threw a few lumps of charcoal and wood in the smoker. He was going to let James’s body cool first, just as they had done with his father.

Richard stayed clear of the chair as he walked back up the stairs, placed the cooler over the trap door, and took a cold shower to get ready for work.

Wednesdays were slow days, especially at the end of the month when local folks were waiting for their paychecks to come through. Richard put on a record and drank some ice tea while snacking on some jerky. The front door was open, waiting for a possible lunchtime drop-in, but Richard did not expect anyone to join him.

In walked James’s son.

Richard raised his eyebrows, took another sip of his drink, and said “where’s your pappy today, son?” The kid flopped down at the bar.

“He nain’t come back last night. Probably still sleepin’ somewheres.”

“Getcha somethin’ to eat?” Richard asked. James’s son took out a wallet, but Richard told him not to worry about it.

The two ate small sandwiches and chips, making small talk about the weather, the lady who ran the boarding house, and how built up the city was getting. After a half hour or so had passed, with no other customers gracing the doorstep of The Execution Chamber, Richard walked up to the door, closed it, and switched his sign to “closed.”

“Boy, I’m gonna show you something,” said Richard calmly. There was a small glint in his eye like a kid excited to show his dad his what he had built. He motioned for the kid to come back behind the bar. He scooted the cooler and told him he had an old Prohibition-era room downstairs where he could wait for his dad. “They don’t use these places much anymore, but maybe they oughta.”

He opened the door, and the dry, woody, delicious smell of the smoker eased any anxiety James’s son had about going down. Richard went first, stepping carefully onto the stairs. He reached out a hand to help the son in. “Close yer eyes, boy,” Richard said. The kid did as he was told, expecting a surprise of sorts.

As Richard and the kid took the first few steps down the stairs, James moaned in a dull crescendo. His son, recognizing his dad’s phantasmal voice, opened his eyes and saw the chamber that lay before him. “Ah shit,” said Richard.

Within seconds, James’s son instinctively shoved Richard down the stairwell onto the concrete floor. Richard murmured as he hit his head on the railing, the wall, and floor, but he did not appear to be completely unconscious. James’s son just looked on at the scene, unsure of whether he should help his dad, finish off Richard, or run. As his dad rolled his head around, the boy jumped off the side of the stairwell and grabbed the carving knife that was still sitting near the cage. James strained and groaned the word “chain.” The son grabbed one of the chains used for the shackles that hours earlier held his father. He angrily whipped the chain at Richard, striking him across the arms and chest and nicking his face. Having immobilized him slightly further, then he took the carving knife and stabbed him in the right leg. By now, Richard was in shock and nearly out of it. Strong from his days working construction, the boy dragged his ragged and bloodied body over to the cage and locked him in, not taking the time to leash him up further.

The son ran to his father and unhooked the leather straps that bound his arms and legs, standing next to three wires and a pool of sweat and urine that gathered at his dad’s feet. His father’s skin was blistered and hot to the touch, and he was obviously in pain, but James nonetheless pulled him up the stairs and laid him on the floor next to the opening of the stairs, as the father winced with each bump. He left the trap door open and desperately ran out to the streets for help.

Two blocks down, James’s son found a group of men on their lunch break. He told them a crazy man who ran the bar had just tried to electrocute his dad, and he goaded them to reluctantly follow him. They entered The Execution Chamber, a familiar haunt, and followed him around the bar. They looked down and were horrified by James’s crispy body, as he strained out a “help.” They peered into the basement and saw Richard beaten and caged in the torture room of his own creation. One of the men took to the phone and clicked out the number to the city’s emergency services.

The police investigation turned up the recorded death warrants and last words of seven men, including James Landry. Three men belonged to a single family, a father and two sons who moved to New Orleans from Mississippi in search of work. All three were shot in the heart or the head in Richard Clement’s basement. A fourth man faced death at the guillotine while his son went off to serve in the war. Another father and son duo were executed in the chamber, the father by hanging, while the son opting for a lethal injection after witnessing the father give a second round of final words. None of the bodies or personal effects were recovered; all but the first three had previously been reported missing. Richard Clement freely admitted to the crimes, and said there were more, but declined to speak further to the investigators. At trial, the jury did not have to deliberate more than 20 minutes before sentencing him to die.

Richard Clement spent the next seven years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. He refused to participate in any appeals of his case, instead saying “let’s get this over with” and “get me in the chair where I belong.” Richard had scheduled no family or religious counsel to be present at his execution in the same chair as his father. After being told that James and his son, Ricky, would watch his execution, Richard was reported as saying only that “the boy oughta keep his eyes closed this time.” Meanwhile, his bar was demolished and replaced by a chain restaurant, a fitting close for the impending end of the Clement family line.

Richard was executed using a sequence of four electric shocks, which the state had devised years after his father’s death to ensure that the vital organs would fail. He was buried in the common state penitentiary cemetery after no one claimed his body. Witnesses said they believed his soul went straight to hell where he would be reunited with his criminal father, and that he was finally put where he belonged. For, as the papers reported just hours after notice of his death by electrocution, the execution chamber defined Richard Clement’s life in many ways.

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Andre P. Audette is a political scientist by day but twists politics and social issues into poetry and short horror stories by night. 

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