large crowd has gathered to watch me hang, gathered around the tall gallows. The guards lead me out of the prison into the yard, my arms bound at the elbows with a strap that runs along my back, but my hands are free for the moment. I grasp the wooden rail as I descend the few steps, hoping that no one notices my trembling. I stare at the gallows, at the noose. Below the scaffold is where my body will hang, dark yet exposed to the eyes of the witnesses.
Ropes have cordoned off a pathway through the crowd to the base of the gallows' steps, and the guards slowly lead me through it. I feel the eyes of the witnesses on me, and I glance at a few of the stern faces for a moment before returning my gaze to the noose that hangs from the thick crossbeam. I feel sick to my stomach and swallow hard.
Is the day cold? Gray clouds cover the sky, obscuring the sun. I shiver in my thin prison clothing. This will not do. Tearing my eyes away from the noose, I glance at the black-clad executioner, then I look at the warden. I tighten my jaw, remembering the grim satisfaction he had tried to hide from his face only a few minutes ago as he had told me that my final appeals had failed. I focus on him, my anger steadying my nerves for a moment as I walk towards my death.
Death. The word had rang in my ears as the judge pronounced it as my sentence. You are sentenced to death. The words had seemed so loud. Death by hanging. Echoing through the courtroom, followed by the murmuring of the crowd. Satisfied by the sentence. My sentence. My death sentence.
I drop my eyes from the warden and look again at the faces of those who have come to watch me die. The dour countenances of men and women stare back at me, smug and unforgiving. They try to hide their enjoyment, but I can see it in their eyes. And triumph. Their triumph over me. Completely legal and just. State sanctioned revenge.
We arrive at the foot of the steps. They rise up before me, high into the sky. They seem endless. One of the guards places his hand under my elbow and steers me onto the steps. I lift my right foot and step up, then my left. I actually walk up the steps. My hand on the rail keeps me steady. I look at the noose again, the rope that will soon be around my neck, breaking it, choking the life from me. As sick as the thought makes me, I feel a stirring in my loins. I am excited by all this: the scaffold, the noose, the eyes of so many on me. The terror is still there, unmistakable, but so is the arousal. This is my moment. More so than the trial. All eyes are on me and no one else.
I feel a smile twitch at the corners of my lips as I ascend the steps. From the corner of my eye I see the reporters scribbling in their notebooks. Do they see my excitement? Can they sense my arousal? Will they report that I died unrepentant? Let them. I have nothing to repent.
At the top of the steps, the guards grab my arms and lead me quickly to the center, where an x is marked on the center of a trap door. The noose hangs before my face. My hands are grasped by the guards and brought behind my back. I feel rope being looped around my wrists and tightened until it cuts into my skin. I clench my hands into fists. My legs are drawn together as a leather strap is drawn taut around my ankles. Another strap secures my legs just above the knees. I watch as my legs are bound, my breath fast, my heart pounding. They are preparing me for execution, I realize. It's strange to think about that.
Execution. My execution. Sentenced to death. Death by hanging. Hanged by the neck until dead. Isn't that how it goes in all the old westerns? Hanged by the neck until dead. Dead. Executed. An evil removed from society. A rabid d0g put down. An unsafe building demolished. A defective product recalled. A dangerous person unfit to live. Me. My execution. Now.
With a start, I hear the warden announce my death sentence once again, proclaiming that it will now be carried out and asking if I have any final words. I have spent days thinking about this moment, about what I would say, but I can think of none of the speeches that I have prepared. I open my mouth, close it again and swallow hard. I look at the noose before me, and once more feel the ache in my loins. My execution, my hanging, my death.
As cameras snap, I focus my mind and stare out at the crowd, at the reporters and photographers who have come to leave a chronicle of my execution. I feel the smile at the corners of my mouth again, realizing that I will be front page news. In my death I will become immortal, an image forever captured as I stand on the scaffold, a story that will be read by thousands. I lift my chin.
"To those of you," I say, my voice steady and clear, "who have worked to save my life, I thank you for your efforts. For those of you, and there are many, who have come to watch as justice is done, I hope that my death gives you satisfaction. For those who are here just because they like to watch people die, I hope that I don't disappoint you." I look at the warden, then the executioner, a gloomy man who had weighed and measured me the previous night. "Let's get this over with."
The executioner steps forward and grasps hold of the rope, spreading the noose wide to place it over my head. He rests it on my shoulders, and I'm surprised by the weight of it. I look down at my trussed body, then at the crowd, the faces now indistinct. The executioner steps in front of me, a black cloth in his hands, and he looks me in the eye for a long moment before he lifts the cloth over my head. As he draws the hood down over my face, I take a deep breath. The cloth is thick, and little light filters through. I blink several times.
The noose is lifted from my shoulders and tightened around my neck, and I can feel the knot being situated under my left ear. I lick my lips and try not to scream, but my body shivers and my lungs have a hard time finding air. All sounds are muffled, but I sense the executioner stepping away from me. I pull at the ropes binding my wrists. This is not how I want to die.
I stand on the trap door for an eternity, hooded and noosed, my body bound and useless, waiting. The cloth of the hood presses against my face and sucks into my mouth as I inhale. The fear has aroused me to a point where I can no longer think, but I feel every inch of my body. The straps binding me chafe, the rope rubs my wrists raw as I struggle to free my hands. The hood confines me into a dark loneliness, isolated from the world before I am removed from it. My flesh crawls with fear, my loins ache with longing, though whether for life, death, or the simple release of orgasm I don't know.
Are the eyes of the crowd still on me? Are the photographers still taking their pictures? Do the pencils of the journalists hover above their notebooks, waiting to scribble down their impressions of my final moments? In my darkness, I imagine the hand of the executioner on the lever, ready to release the trap beneath my feet. The fingers curl carefully around the shaft of the lever, and he feels the smooth, warm wood against his palm. He watches me carefully, waiting for the moment when I can stand the tension no longer. Will he release me then, or make me wait even longer?
I feel the scream rise in my body, from my loins to my throat. I swallow it down with the bile. I will not let them win, not now. This is my death, my execution, and I will not let them beat me now. I pull myself away from my fear, concentrating on the desire growing in my body, the heat rising to my skin. I feel the sun break through the clouds and warm me. And suddenly I am falling.
I thought that I would hear the trap opening beneath me, feel the doors swing away from beneath my feet, but I don't. One moment I am standing on the scaffold; the next, I am plummeting towards the earth. My bound body shoots down straight, and my stomach lurches up to my throat. It's like the dream, the one where you fall and fall until you suddenly wake with a gasp, just before your body would have splattered on the ground.
But I don't wake, and my body doesn't splatter on the ground. I am suddenly pulled up short, the noose constricting around my throat, stopping my drop. I feel my head jerk to the side, and I expect to hear my neck snap just before I lose consciousness. But I can feel my body suspended as the rope cuts into my neck. I am awake and aware, and after a moment I feel my body twitch and buck.
I open my mouth, but there is no air. The hood clings to my face, and the rope around my wrists cuts into my skin as I try desperately to raise my hands and remove the noose from my neck. I'm strangling, my quick death now turned into a slow, painful struggle. Because there is pain. Lots of it. My neck aches as the rope squeezes it tight and the entire weight of my body suspends from it. The blackness of the hood is total now, as there's no light beneath the gallows. A dark, lonely, painful death.
Slowly the darkness seeps into my mind, and my body gives up its struggles. The orgasm that had been building up since I set foot on the steps to the scaffold rises again in me, overwhelming me. I feel it now, a total release of my body, a final moment of intense pleasure before my body dies. I try to cry out, but the ecstasy dies in my throat, silenced forever. And then there is just the darkness, and I allow myself the release of death.
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