The Disposal
by William Inge

THE STORY: THE DISPOSAL opens with a chaplain on his knees in prayer for the soul of a man on death row, condemned to die tonight for killing his pregnant wife.

Jess is spending his last day in his cell struggling to understand his own actions and trying to find some peace of mind.

He has two companions on death row, Archei, a flamboyant homosexual who killed his mother and grandmother, and Luke, an older man who seems to have come to terms with his fate.

As the day goes by, Jess alternates between calm acceptance and wild, violent hysteria.

When his father arrives for a final visit, Jess hopes to relieve himself of some of the burden of guilt, but his father refuses to believe that Jess committed the crime, even as Jess is confessing it to him.

So Jess goes off to the electric chair unable to find any forgiveness from without or within.