Chapter 17: Conclusion

I rubbed my eyes again, and swallowed the last of my buttered microwave biscuit. Grant had allowed me an extra half-hour again, a favor I would repay him as soon as possible, but I still felt like a zombie. I sighed. “Last day, anyway. Tonight we’ll go home and sleep for eighteen hours.” I waved my arms, trying to get some blood circulating. “I don’t want to be semi-conscious for Larry’s hanging!”

Grant grinned. “You won’t be. You know that. If that doesn’t give you a rush, what have you been doing at the Academy all this time?”

I laughed and hugged him. “I know. I’m just talking to get my brain working.” I saw movement in the monitor out of the corner of my eye, and quickly released Grant, pointing to the screen. “Okay! They’re moving.”

Actually, the movement was Steffi’s—Larry wasn’t in a position to do much stirring. Steffi wriggled against the soft body underneath her, and then raised herself onto his elbows and knees. She slapped Larry’s buttock softly. “Time to get up for your big day, Zeke.”

Larry mumbled sleepily, “Yes, Mistress.”

Steffi laughed. “You can drop that now. We’re done with that.” She began unlocking Larry’s restraints. Moments later, Larry sat on the side of the bed, flexing his arms and legs to work out the stiffness. Steffi patted him on the back. “We’re going to be civilized for awhile this morning. Go take a shower and do whatever else you need to do in the bathroom, and I’ll get us some breakfast. Then I’ll explain your last role.”

Larry came out of the bathroom, still vigorously drying his hair with a towel. “No brush or a comb. This is the best I can do.”

Steffi watched him from the dining table, holding a mug of coffee. She laughed. “Just run your fingers through it, Zeke. You look cute when you’re a little disheveled. Sit down and have some breakfast.”

Larry tossed the towel away, sat with a frown and picked at his food. Larry was—predictably—too excited to have much appetite, even though this would be his last meal. Luckily, his behavior fit with the sulky mood of his character.

After a few token bites he pushed his chair back, sighing. “So what’s the new humiliation for the day?”

Steffi raised an eyebrow. “You’ve forgotten?” She turned to look up at the noose, then looked back at Larry with a smile.

Larry stiffened. “Stephanie, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ever did that to you, back then. Haven’t the last two days been enough to make up for it?”

Steffi smiled and shook her head immediately. “The last two days have just been an appetizer. I still want the main course.”

Larry’s eyes went wide. “You’re going to eat me? I thought...”

“Relax, Zeke! It’s just a metaphor. I’m still going to send your body back to your friends. As long as you’re good. Right to the end.”

Larry said in a forlorn voice, “Isn’t there any other way? I’m not ready to be converted. Not even to benefit my friends. Maybe it’s wrong to feel that way. Antisocial or whatever. But I’ve still got so many things I want to do! No, it’s not wrong!” He scowled at Steffi defiantly. “I still have lots of time to do things, and I want to do them! As long as people still get my thanerone in the end, there’s nothing wrong with that!”

“What kind of things?” Steffi snapped. “Make-Zeke-happy kinds of things? Like what you did to me?”

“No! I said I’m sorry! I’ll never do anything like that again.”

“But it’s still all about Zeke, isn’t it? No, Zeke, it’s time to do something for somebody else. It’s time to do what I want, because you owe me!”

“Isn’t there some way out of this?”

Steffi sat back, relaxing suddenly, looking at Larry thoughtfully. I doubted that anything during the entire show was spontaneous, but Steffi acted as if a thought had just occurred to her. “That would be fair, wouldn’t it? Oh, and I guess we can kill two birds here. Come with me.” She gestured brusquely for Larry to follow her to the back wall, the restraint wall. As they arrived, Steffi picked up the discarded chains.

Larry took in a sharp breath. “No! You know I don’t...”

Steffi laughed. “Don’t like the chains? Thanks for proving my point again. It always is all about Zeke to you. Lift your arms up.” She began replacing the chain around Larry’s waist.

Steffi clicked the last padlock in place and stood up, returning Larry’s glare with a smile. “There. That should hold you. But who knows?”

Larry tried to jerk his wrists free and grimaced. “What does that mean?” He was chained up just like when he had “awakened”. He was sitting on the floor, his wrists manacled together, and attached to the wall and to his waist chain. His collar was chained to the wall, and chains ran from the wall to his ankles. They were too short to allow him to straighten his legs; he tried a violent kick aimed toward Steffi that fell far short.

“You wanted a way out of your fate. Here you go. I need to go back up to my house for a few hours. I’ll leave the door...” she turned and pointed to it, “ ... unlocked, and the one out there up at ground level too.” She waved her arm vaguely toward the anteroom. “If you can get yourself loose, you can get to safety. Of course, you’ve got about a mile to go through the woods to get to the boundaries of my estate, and you’ll have to flag down a passing motorist naked.” She giggled. “That’d be the thrill of their lifetime, for sure. But if you’re still here when I get back, we’ll get right to Zeke Hillcrest’s final role.”

Larry’s eyes widened. “Stephanie, let’s keep talking. There has to be something that would satisfy you besides hanging me. I could ... I could keep being your lover! For as long as you want! We’d go out in public together, you’d come with me to all my shoots. I’d tell the mags how much I’m in love with you! The paps would get all the pics of us holding hands and smooching in limos and night clubs. And we’d get married! Think about it, the biggest wedding in history! Wouldn’t you love that? You can have all that!”

Steffi’s grin widened. “You’ve given me some nice mental images. Really! But let’s see...” She held up the fingers of one hand and began ticking them off. “A, I’d have no hold over you to make you keep up the pretense, B, I’d never trust you for a second, because you’re Zeke, and C, even if, for whatever unimaginable reasons, you did keep it up and everything went exactly the way you’re saying, as soon as people started seeing us together, it wouldn’t be a week before somebody managed to dig up the story about what happened between us in high school, and start coming up with some fairly accurate blackmail theories, and it’d all fall apart.” She shook her head. “Anyway, you were very sweet for a whole day, and it gave me enough memories for a lifetime. I’ve got all I need along those lines.”

“Wh-what about ... the other...” Larry stopped, and bit his lip.

Steffi laughed. “Yeah, I can see how much you’d love that. Being the helpless slave? You already know how I’d want to run that fantasy if we kept it up, right?” She cupped her right hand under her breast as if holding it up for Larry to suck. “You know, Zeke...” She looked at Larry thoughtfully. “I was talking with a psychologist friend of mine, about that fantasy. Just hypothetically, you understand. ‘What if somebody could make an unwilling slave play that role in the long term?’ He said he thought that within three months, tops, the slave’s independent mind would be gone, and the role-playing would become his reality. You want that, Zeke? No more Zeke, just a mindless slave who exists only to lick and suck on command?”

Larry gave a tiny headshake, and in an equally tiny voice said, “No.”

Steffi clapped her hands together. “Well, then. Hanging it is.” She turned and walked to the door. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Zeke. Unless you can make good your daring escape.” With a last friendly wave, she was out the door.

I watched Larry struggling violently against the chains, his grunts of effort alternating with moans of frustration, and choking gasps as the collar pulled against his throat. I was really happy that Larry had been left alone. I looked at Grant, who was more directly in front of the camera controls. “Honey, turn it off a minute, I need to go out and talk to him. No! Wait!” I reached out and stopped Grant’s hand a few inches from the switch, and pounded my forehead with the heel of my hand, trying to knock some sense back into myself. “I’m being an idiot! This is exactly what Steffi will want to see later, Larry trying to get free. Steffi left him alone just so he could do what he’s doing now. Steffi’d notice any cuts later if we turned off the camera. We need to wait until Larry stops moving.” Grant nodded, and we both watched the screen, laughing occasionally at Larry’s histrionics in chains.

Just as I was starting to wonder if Larry would ever run down, he finally gave out an exhausted sigh and slumped back against the wall, the patch of floor under him puddled with the sweat that was streaming down his body. I opened my mouth to say, “Okay, now,” but Grant’s fingers were already flipping the switch. “Thanks. Back in a minute.” I jumped up and ran to the door.

Larry looked to one side in astonishment as he heard the nearly invisible door open, then started laughing. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot you guys were there!” He looked down at himself, and asked hopefully, “She didn’t give you a key, by any chance?” He twisted uncomfortably. He was resting on his left buttock, and winced as he shifted to the right.

I laughed. “Sorry, babe. You’re stuck there till she comes back.”

Before I could say any more, Grant came out through the door. “Larry, you’ve put on...” he seemed to struggle for words. “ ... the greatest pre-show any Noosemeister ever did. I just ... I could never do anything like that. Being somebody else, like you’re doing.”

I blinked. That elusive idea about Grant’s hanging ... it seemed to dance near again, and out of reach once more. I shrugged. It’ll come. Don’t force it.

Larry smiled at him warmly. “Thank you! I didn’t know if I’d get to hear any reviews. But Grant, listen.” He held Grant’s eyes with his own. “At your hanging, whatever performance you put on before your hanging, nobody’s going to remember that part afterwards. What they’ll see when you hang—when you hang—is going to drive everything else out of their minds.” He shrugged, still smiling. “I’m glad I don’t need to come up to your standard on that. For Stephanie, just watching me hang is its own reward, and it hardly even matters how I do it. Oh, of course, I’m going to put everything into it. But nobody else can blow people away with the hanging alone, the way you can.”

Grant smiled. He dropped to his knees and hugged Larry tightly, giving him a long kiss on the cheek. “Good-bye, hon.”

I stood to the side, almost dancing with impatience to talk to Larry, but respectful of Grant’s unusual emotional display. When Grant at last backed away and wiped away the tears, Larry looked up at me and laughed. “So tell me.” He could easily read my behavior to know that I was aching to say something.

I wondered briefly how this idea for Larry had come so easily, while the one for Grant hung coyly out of reach. “Larry, how would you like this...?”

As I explained, Larry’s eyes grew wider, and he started bouncing on his buttock. Finally he burst out, “Yes!! Yes!! Oh, Amy, that would be so cool. Talk her into it, please, please?”

I laughed. “I don’t think it’ll take much convincing. I just don’t think she knew about it. But I promise, before we take your body back, I’ll tell her.”

“I am so pumped! Amy, I’ll even hang better because of this. I feel like I’ve got so much energy!”

“Oh, yeah, right, Larry, that’s been your problem, not enough energy.” I grinned.

“Well, it’s always good to have more. At just the right time.”

I knelt and hugged Larry, kissing him on the mouth. “Bye, hon.” I looked up at Grant. “Can we get up the last image we had on the monitor? So he can get in exactly that same position? I want it to look like there’s no break in the video.”

Larry interrupted. “Let me wriggle around a few minutes. I think some of the sweat dried.”

Grant returned to the side room. A few minutes later, he called out, “Okay, I got the last still from where we left off. I can toggle back and forth between that, and what’s on camera now. Larry, you ready?”

His skin glowing again, Larry stopped moving. “Yup.”

I retreated to the room, and left the door just slightly ajar, so Larry could still hear Grant. Grant called out, “Larry, lean just a little farther left—no, go back about halfway. Now tilt your head back to the right. And look with your eyes just a little farther up, and left.”

Larry followed instructions, and said without moving his jaw, “Okay?”

“Perfect. I’m going to start recording in ten seconds.”

Larry, frozen in position, stared straight ahead. I gave a thumbs up, even though I knew Larry couldn’t see me. “Love you, hon,” I whispered, and closed the door.

Larry, after a second round of struggling with the chains, accompanied by squeals of frustration through gritted teeth, had subsided once more. He now sat still, staring vacantly across the room. I suspected he was sleeping with his eyes open, a trick he’d mentioned learning in school.

I sat bolt upright at the sound of the bell that meant Steffi was back in the dungeon. I pounded Grant’s shoulder excitedly. “This is it!” After three years of training, after two months of detailed preparation, this, for Larry, was what it had all been for.

Moments later, Larry jerked himself out of his stupor as the door from the anteroom opened. He turned a grin of excitement instantly into a teeth-baring grimace of tension.

Steffi had no need to hide her gleeful anticipation. She shed the bathrobe that she’d covered herself with for her walk, tossed it back into the anteroom, then closed the door. She stood, naked again, hands on her hips, regarding the boy in chains in front of her. “Well, Zeke, I guess you didn’t manage to get loose.”

Larry snarled, “You knew I wouldn’t.”

She shrugged. “I assumed you wouldn’t, but the best-laid plans, you know. It was fun taking a chance on everything coming apart. But now it’s time for you to play one last role for me.”

Larry gave her a resigned look, silently.

Steffi stopped looking at Larry and started pacing left and right, her hands clasped behind her, looking very much like a film director at an initial cast meeting. “You’re going to be Ezekiel Hill. The real you, not the plastic movie star. Just a boy who’s a little full of himself, who suddenly finds that the guilt from something he did years ago has been haunting him all along. His guilt has surfaced now, and he feels sorry, very sorry.”

“I already said I’m sorry. I really am, Stephanie.”

Steffi continued as if uninterrupted. “But you find that being sorry is not enough. You are obsessed with fixing it. And the only way you can do that, you realize, is to give your life up to the person you wronged so badly. The person whose own life you risked so thoughtlessly, just so you could have a laugh.”

Steffi was breathing hard now, her jaw clenched. She was trembling as adrenaline rushed through her system. I knew that she had spent a considerable part of the last two days lost in the fantasy, only marginally aware that the boy in front of her wasn’t the real Zeke. But never so deeply immersed as now.

Larry’s own adrenaline gave his voice a useful tremor. “Stef-Stephanie? I’ll ... I know I have to do this. I won’t give you any trouble, if you can just tell me one thing.”

Steffi stopped pacing and looked back at Larry. “And that is...?”

“How do I know ... how do I know you’ll give my body to my friends afterward? You’ve said if I do what you want, then you’ll do that. But I could do everything you want me to do, and there’s nothing to stop you from throwing my body in the river anyway, after it’s done. I’m a subling. I was born to become thanerone, and no matter what I’ve done with my life ... I can’t lose my birthright! Please, Stephanie, how do I know?”

Steffi sighed in exasperation. “We’ve been through all that.”

Larry thrust out his lower lip stubbornly. “Tell me again.”

I smiled. Larry was offering Steffi one more opportunity to say, to Zeke’s face, what she thought of him.

Steffi faced Larry fully, her fists clenched. “Why won’t I just break every promise I’ve made and toss you to the fish after you’ve done everything I asked? Because that’s something you would do, Zeke. No wonder you’re worried about it. You think everybody is like you!” Steffi pounded her own chest, hard. “Well I’m not! I’ve built my entire adult life around not being like you! If I could see anything like you within me, do you think I’d still be this mad after all these years? You left me to live with this anger burning inside, all this time. You owe me this one last thing, Zeke! And you can rely on me keeping my promise afterward, because,” he pounded his chest again with each word, “I’m NOT ... EZEKIEL ... HILL!!”

Larry stared at him, real tears streaming down his cheeks. I understood where they came from. I was crying myself.

At last Larry looked at the floor and sighed. In a barely audible whisper, he said, “Okay. I’m ready.” He jingled the chains holding him. “Unlock me now.”

It seemed the hardest part of Larry’s entire Zeke act was taking place now, as he tried to appear subdued and resigned, standing naked in front of Steffi, ready to hang himself. I knew how Larry’s heart must be singing.

Larry sighed as he stood with his hands clasped behind him, a pose symbolically offering control of his body, and his life, to Steffi. “What do you want me to do?”

Steffi pointed to the platform. “Go get that and push it underneath the noose.” Suddenly as excited as a child opening birthday presents, Steffi’s movement toward the door was almost a dance. “I’ll be right back.” On her way out she threw a switch, turning on two spotlights focused on the center of the room where the noose waited.

I stopped Grant’s hand, as it reached toward the console to turn off the camera. “We’re okay until the platform starts going down.

I picked up the cell phone and punched the number of Bill’s phone, not ten yards away. “Bill? We’re all set to turn off the cameras. Take action if somehow Larry gets into the air with the cameras still on, but I promise that won’t happen. Okay?”

We hadn’t really planned exactly when we were going to turn off the cameras. It wasn’t really necessary to do so until Larry was nooseborne and performing the movements of a Noosemeister, but we had simply thought of ending the recording “sometime before that.” But, of all the moments Steffi would want to relive later, this pre-hanging time would probably be foremost. The actual hanging, of course, would burn itself vividly into her memory; reliving that wouldn’t require any mechanical assistance.

Steffi returned carrying a metal ring and a bowl of oil with a sponge in it. She set them on the floor beside where Larry was still pushing the platform, and ran to the overstuffed chair. Turning it slightly to face the noose more directly, she threw herself into the chair, in time to see Larry give the platform a last nudge and center it below the noose.

Larry stood upright and looked questioningly at Steffi, who waved toward the bowl. “Cooking oil. Spread it over your body up to your neck.”

Larry bent to pick up the sponge, squeezed the excess oil out of it, and began with his legs, running it lightly over his skin. He kept his face blank, his eyes constantly on Steffi as he oiled himself. There was nothing playful nor overtly sexual about his performance. He brushed the sponge over his skin very prosaically. But I could see that Larry was making the act more personal for Steffi, to show that what he was doing was for her alone. Somehow, it was all the more erotic.

When he finished, his skin gleaming in the spotlights, he dropped the sponge back into the bowl, his eyes still on Steffi.

Steffi smiled and nodded. “Pick up the ring. You can use it to secure your hands behind you when you’re ready. For now, just hook it to your waist. Then step up onto the platform.”

The ring was composed of two metal semicircles, connected by a hinge. Larry did as ordered. He stood on the hanging platform, looking at Steffi once more, the noose brushing his upper arm, the ring hanging from his waist chain.

Steffi gave him an impatient gesture. “You know what’s expected of you now. I shouldn’t have to say anymore.”

Larry turned to stare at the noose beside him. He shivered and whimpered softly. “Is this going to hurt?”

Steffi glared at him. “Trust me, Zeke, you’ll never know as much as I do about what hurt feels like.”

Taking a deep breath, Larry reached out for the noose. He tried to put it over his head, and found the loop was too small. Fumbling, as if the assemblage of rope—the noose that he’d centered his life around for years—were something unfamiliar to him, he widened the loop and tried again.

We’d spent days discussing how to set the noose around Larry’s neck. Steffi, of course, had no training in placing the rope for hanging so as to make the show last as long as possible,. I’d suggested teaching Steffi to do it, but we decided that could break Steffi’s fantasy. It seemed unavoidable that at some point Grant or I would have to emerge to help, even though it would spoil the illusion that Steffi and “Zeke” were alone. At last, Larry had proposed that he adjust the noose himself. The only reason it was never done that way during a show was that, in any of the standard scenarios, the Noosemeister was led out with their hands already tied. But we realized that Steffi would be happiest of all with the idea that Zeke could be made to hang himself. She had enthusiastically agreed. Exactly how to force Zeke to hang himself—was left for her to figure out.

Larry was pretending that he had no idea what he was doing, his careful adjustment of the rope seeming to be a stall for time. He at last tightened the loop of rope around his neck, and whimpered again, giving Steffi a pleading look. She just smiled, gestured toward Larry’s waist and said, “Hands.”

Larry had practiced with the metal ring. Steffi had sent it to the Academy along with the cuffs, to practice with. About four inches in diameter, it was meant to be threaded through the rings in the cuffs and then snapped closed.