Warning: this writing contains satire
The Show Me State Horror Show last night was sold out. The only way you could’ve gotten into Missouri’s most horrific Halloween stunt is if you were part of the act.
You had to either be part of the show as the convicted murderer or the victim’s blood relatives or be a reporter or elected official to get a ticket to this horror show.
On the eve of Halloween-Eve the state of Missouri prepared to execute its ninth citizen this year, making it one of the deadliest killing sprees in the Show-me State’s right to kill history.
Mark Christeson was slated to go on stage for his lethal injection debut in the dead of night at 12:01am.
I doubt much has changed since I watched my cousin Paul’s Show Me State Horror Show in 2002 when he was executed by the state of Missouri.
Sure, there’s a different deadly cocktail now since the European source of the drugs have banned the use of them for the government’s killing of citizens. But that only adds to the drama of this horror show.
We know the experimental drugs we replaced the original drugs with sometimes go oh-so-gruesomely wrong, extending the time torture for several minutes, even an hour. An experience which delights some while it horrifies and offends others.
We must admit that the horror show of the death penalty entertains members of the American audience. No longer about justice, capital punishment in America is about acting out our bloodthirsty desire for revenge. We are vampire nation and we want blood. It is the best horror show going.
To add to the drama of justice in America, late Tuesday the Supreme Court haunted, I mean, halted the show. The reason given that the killer didn’t have due process in the court.
What suspense! What will happen next? Who will be the next star of the Missouri Show-Me Horror Show?
Why stop now Missouri? You are on a roll. Show us a horror show we can be proud of. It can’t hurt sales at the voting booth, I mean, box office.
This Halloween, who needs costumes or parties? The real horror show happens every time the state kills its own citizens to show that killing is wrong.
Rev. Dr. Sarah Griffith Lund 
I learned about it too……In Maryville, MO, where I grew up in the 50’s-6’0’s…..I’m not a person of color….but I learned! In the 1930’s there was a lynching in town that involved the public murder of an African-American by a mob who chained him to the roof of one of the rural schoolhouses, and burned the schoolhouse under him…..he’d been suspected of the rape and murder of a young white school teacher….but there was no trial, nor was there EVER any prosecution of the leaders of the mob…..my naiveté was stripped away when my father told me the story. Then in 1964 the secret pictures that had been taken that day were put on pubic display because all the identifiable persons were dead……
When I began to ask questions…..I was told most rudely to shut my mouth and keep it shut. I left town after college graduation……my first roommate in Seminary was African-American…..Evanston, Ill., 1967…….. Yes I learned…..!
I’m also a survivor of clinical depression……and I know what it’s like to be a pastor and have to hide……..But I don’t hide anymore….Healing is continuing…I’m officially retired as a pastor, but I’m still an active church musician and teacher…..and the stories get told and questions are answered honestly. That’s made ‘some people’ very uncomfortable; but my middle school and highschool students listen and know they can talk to me, and they know I won’t turn them away. Thanks be to God.