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Originally Aired: March 3, 1957
In Suspense #688, "Present Tense," a condemned man finds himself trapped in a nightmarish loop of murder and reality. The protagonist, handcuffed to a detective on a train bound for prison, faces execution for killing his wife with an axe. When the train crashes and the detective dies, he seizes the opportunity to escape, switching identification with the corpse and fleeing to his home. There, he discovers his supposedly dead wife alive with her lover, revealing an elaborate frame-up. In a rage, he murders them both with a cleaver, only to find himself once again shackled on a train headed for execution. The story spirals through his desperate attempts at escape and flight to Mexico, blurring the lines between memory, fantasy, and present reality.
As the condemned man awaits his final hours in San Quentin's death row, he reflects on the grey, rain-soaked sky beyond his barred window. Vincent Price portrays a character caught in an psychological maze where past and present intertwine, and the question of what truly happened becomes increasingly unclear. His repeated experiences of the same journey suggest either elaborate fantasy or something far more disturbing about guilt, punishment, and the inescapable nature of consequence.
