Chapter 2

The audience quieted suddenly as the overhead lights grew dimmer, and spotlights brightened the stage. A series of unintelligible but angry-sounding shouts came from behind the curtain. Two boys came on stage, holding Alanna between them. The two boys wore desert-sand-colored uniforms that looked military—epaulets, berets, shiny black boots, and insignia of some sort—although their “uniform” tops left their midriffs bare and the trousers ended just above the knee. Alanna was now dressed in a robe, with her ankles shackled together so she couldn’t walk. The “guards” held Alanna with hands under her armpits as her bare feet dragged along the floor. Her hair was mussed, her right cheek smudged with dirt. Several students, dressed in more civilian fashion with worn, faded jeans and t-shirts, trailed along behind. One of them, Darlene, shouted “Who is she? What’s she done?”

The “soldier” on Alanna’s right, Riley, snarled, “She killed the king, that’s what.” The civilians gasped in horror. The soldier on the other side, Wilson, said, “Let’s get her strung up now and then start looking for accomplices.”

One of the civilians, Halley, was wearing more formal clothes. He said, “You can’t hang her without a trial.” He sounded like a lawyer.

Wilson snapped back, “Don’t need a trial. We seen her do it!”

Halley responded, “Well, you need to say so at a proper trial.”

Both soldiers heaved heavy sighs, and dragged Alanna across the stage, in front of the bemused graduates, toward the desk where Ms. Bennett had awarded the red collars. Monty sat behind it, wearing a judge’s robes. The soldiers brought Alanna forward. Monty intoned, “Prisoner, you are accused of the foul murder of our beloved king. How do you plead?”

Alanna said in a ringing voice, “I am guilty, your honor.”

Riley threw his free hand in the air. “Then what’d we need a trial for?”

Monty held out his hand, palm up. “My fee will be five gold coins.”

Wilson groaned. “That’s why,” reached into the pocket of his shorts, and dropped several coins to clink into Monty’s hand. The audience, graduates included, chuckled. This was an abbreviated, fast-paced version of the Assassin scenario, with some extra amusing touches thrown in. In a normal show, older people—generally the Noosemeister’s owner and guests—would have played most of the roles, but this was entirely a student production.

Christie, dressed in the traditional black of the executioner, came out from behind the curtain to stand beside the hanging platform, and now stood at parade-rest, awaiting her turn in the play. Riley and Wilson now pulled Alanna across the stage in front of the graduates. As the attention of the audience shifted to that side, Shawna’s roommate Garrett quietly left his seat among the graduates. He went around the far end of the row of seats and crouched down behind them, disappearing from the audience’s view.

The soldiers hauled Alanna onto the platform, which was down, its surface only a few inches above the floor of the stage. Christie pushed the lever to raise the platform, and then hopped onto it beside the Alanna. When the platform stopped in the “up” position, Christie grasped the noose, slipped it over Alanna’s head and tightened it around her neck. I was close enough to see Alanna and Christie, their lips barely moving, exchange some whispered words one last time. Christie then took a fistful of Alanna’s robe and leapt down from the platform, ripping off the loosely-secured robe and taking it with her.

At that moment, two brighter spotlights from different angles suddenly shone directly on Alanna. The audience, nearly all new to an Academy hanging, gasped in astonished appreciation at the sight of Alanna standing alone and naked. Her perfect body was coated with oil, and seemed to glow of its own internal light. Her hands were cuffed behind her to a metal belt circling her waist.

Wilson intoned formally, “Executioner! Perform your duty!”

Alanna shouted, “Wait! I’m allowed to speak!”

The civilians all nodded, and the soldiers groaned and shrugged in resignation. Riley said grudgingly, “Make it fast.”

Alanna, her posture already perfect, somehow stood even straighter, her jaw thrust defiantly forward. “You don’t have to do this! Don’t you understand? I’ve killed the tyrant! You don’t need to follow his laws anymore. You’re free, all of you! You should be dancing, not killing!”

Wilson said irritably, “In times of trouble, the traditions must be followed.”

Alanna, pleadingly, said, “We can make new traditions! We can be a new people, live our own lives, free from oppression!”

One of the civilians said impatiently, “Okay, she’s had her say. Get on with it.” Heads all around nodded to indicate consensus.

Alanna sighed. “Okay. It’s too soon for you to understand. You don’t yet know how your lives will change. Someday you’ll know. Just ... remember me.”

With only the most subtle change in her posture, it was clear that Alanna’s next words were addressed to the audience rather than the cast. “That’s all I want. Just remember me.”

Heads, with mouths slightly open in fascination, were nodding all around the room. I knew, we all knew, that Alanna’s sentiment expressed every Noosemeister’s wish. And I knew that Alanna was going to get her wish.

At a hand signal from Riley, Christie reached over and pulled the lever. She had done this for her roommate over a thousand times, but this time Alanna would hang until she was dead.

The audience seemed breathless as the platform slowly sank. At last it went below the reach of Alanna’s feet, leaving her to dangle by the neck, as she had so many times before.

Whatever nerves Alanna may have been feeling during the play, I was sure she was now comfortable for the first time today. I knew well the combination of focus, self-confidence, and peace that only reached their peak at the end of a rope.

Alanna wriggled with no particular pattern at first, her movements somewhat hindered by her tied feet, but she could still do what she needed to. After a little less than a minute, she made her first hip thrust.

It was a variation on Grant’s original motion, but different in character. Alanna bent her knees, then thrust her bound feet downward. Her lower body straightened and her hips thrust forward, like a woman riding astride her lover.

Alanna’s whole body, from neck down to feet, rippled back and forth like a flag waving in the wind. I’d seen it in practice, but it still hit me like a hammer blow. I felt the panic Alanna was projecting, the need to get her feet back on something solid, to loosen the rope around her neck. My pussy told me how very sexy that desperate rippling movement was.

Alanna’s body went rigid, her feet stretching out toward the platform a foot below her. I could feel it myself: the awful pressure of the noose around her neck, reaching desperately for something, anything, to stand on. Something to relieve that strangling pressure.

Alannaa resumed the hip thrusts, fucking herself on an invisible cock. But her self-control lasted only a few seconds before she reverted to the desperate stretching, feet reaching for support forever out of reach. She went back and forth, gaining and losing control, for several minutes.

With feet together it was more difficult to turn and show her back to the audience, but Alanna succeeded and gave the audience a chance to watch her arm and back muscles straining to free her hands, then turned to face them again.

I was barely able to tear my eyes away and look at the audience. I’d been nearly unaware of their presence for some minutes. They were, as always, enthralled, many of them near orgasm. Next to me, Grant was whispering instructions that Alanna couldn’t possibly hear, willing her to remember everything she’d been working on.

Some ten minutes in, Alanna started getting tired. She started working on her own pleasure, pulling at the chain running through her pussy; her movements became more jerky as her arousal mounted. This raised the sexual tension to nearly unbearable level, and there were gasps of orgasm, from audience members of both sexes and even some of the students. We were more accustomed to what we were seeing but never, ever immune to its effects. (Grant and I had laughed over the invitation he had sent to his father, suggesting that all guests wear some sort of absorbent undergarments.)

The end was near. The graduates began clapping their hands, joined immediately by the students behind the guests, and then the guests themselves. The recognition, the approval, the excitement of the assembled witnesses gave Alanna an extra burst of energy that I could feel.

At last Alanna stiffened, her entire body wriggling in something like a completely disorganized rippling-flag move. I knew she had cum. Alanna swung back and forth, her legs kicking randomly, then slowing to a few random, jerky twitches, until at last only the pendulum swinging remained, slowly dying down until she hung altogether motionless.

She had kicked for thirteen minutes. Joining the feet usually cost a Noosemeister three or four minutes, in addition to the two or three minutes for the energy-intensive choreography, so I was sure that Alanna would almost certainly have passed the Fifteen a few weeks from now. I smiled, sure that she had been aware of that.

Christie was holding the heart monitor. After another minute, she nodded to Garrett, who now rose slowly from behind the seats of the graduates and lifted his bow into position. Sighting along the arrow, waiting a little longer than he probably needed to, he let the arrow fly at last across the stage. The head went into Alanna’s right side below her ribs and emerged from her left side, releasing a spray of blood in an arc across the stage, and a brief flow of it down Alanna’s hip and leg afterward. Alanna’s body twisted and swung in renewed motion from the force of the arrow, and gradually subsided again.