I wove through the tangle of guests and students almost in a dance, seizing Maverick's hand when I reached him and giving him a warm kiss. I was glad to see the hanging cage was still empty. I'd been told they would wait until all of the students were in the hall to watch, but I'd been worried nevertheless.
I looked at Maverick closely. "You look tired, hon. Everything okay?"
Maverick sighed and gave me a smile. "Oh, no problems. I just haven't done three in the same night before. Why the hell aren't you tired?"
I giggled. "It'll catch up with me later. I'm just too pumped right now. I'll tell you all about it later." I beamed at Shaw, who was standing nearby. "How'd it go monitoring Lucas?"
Shaw grinned and sighed. "I am so horny right now, watching him for three hours." He was about to go into greater detail, but turned as he saw everyone's attention had been drawn to the entrance to the hall. I turned to look, and saw Gil standing in the doorway, his bright red graduate's uniform understood by the guests as a sign that the evening's culminating event was about to begin.
Gil looked over at the entrance to the privacy pavilion, where Karl was standing. He looked at him questioningly. "Everybody out?" He returned Karl's affirmative nod, and looked out among the guests and students. "Does any host not see his monitor here?"
Several of the students looked around to confirm that their monitors had indeed arrived. Guido raised his hand. "Mine was Garrett. He's not here yet."
Gil nodded. "He's standing beside me with Sequoia. Anybody else?"
I raised my hand. "I'm not seeing Zuchter... Oh, okay." Zuchter had squeezed apologetically past Gil and into the room.
"Is that everybody?" From the silence I knew I'd been the last one out of the pavilion. I could have got done sooner if I hadn't come in my pants with Benjamin. I spotted Grace at that moment, getting another drink from the bar. Grace noticed me at that same time and gave me a friendly wave, but made no move to come over. I smiled and waved back. Farther to the right, I saw Benjamin. I beamed at him, held up Maverick's hand with my own and pointed to him with the other, rubbing Maverick's shoulder with my cheek. Benjamin grinned back and gave me a thumbs-up signal. Andrew seemed to have left. Too bad. Maybe my little playacting at the end hadn't quite worked. That was a problem to worry about later.
Maverick looked at me curiously. "What was that about?"
I chuckled, "Later. Everything later."
Gil smiled at the assembled crowd. "I know you're all eager to meet our group entertainment for tonight. Academy students and honored guests, please welcome Sequoia Turner, who will be hanged by his roommate, Garrett du Clerq."
From the outer hallway, Sequoia stepped into the doorway, wearing a long, form-fitting robe — an ordinary one, in white, not one of the prop robes for the Prince scenario like Marshall had used. Sequoia was a cute, rather smallish gemsbok with an angelic, freckled face and red headfur combed mostly back behind his ears. He grinned and started to wave to the crowd, then started giggling and put his hands over his face, suddenly self-conscious, as the room burst into applause. Garrett, dressed as the executioner in a black cloak, stepped in from the side to stand beside Sequoia, his hand on Sequoia's hip.
In a moment, Garrett waved his hands and put one finger to his lips in a shushing gesture. Everyone quieted down.
Sequoia lowered his hands from his face, took a deep breath and grinned. "I just had a couple of things I wanted to say. I'll really glad all of you could come and watch me hang." He suddenly giggled again. "I'm sorry, this is almost like I always dreamed it. Now please, you've got to promise to remember, I've only been in training for two months, so this won't be anything like a show that a graduate would put on..." He paused as several people offered quiet sounds of encouragement, one of them close enough to Sequoia that he grinned and thanked the femme who'd said it.
He continued, "In fact, I'm not going to do any sort of fictional scene to lead into it. They tell me a lot of the boys you've seen here do something like that, to make it more like what a graduate would do, but since I learned just a few days ago I'd be doing this, I've been working on making my technique as good as I could, and there wasn't really time to plan a show or anything like that. Okay?" Sequoia bit his lip and looked hopefully, as if fearing to see disappointment on the faces turned toward him. He beamed when he detected none.
"Anyway, to make up for it, I promise to make the hanging really good. I really, really want to thank Maverick and Shaw for helping me with that." I looked at Maverick, who blinked in surprise. I knew Maverick had stopped by Sequoia's room a few times in the last few days, though not as many times as Shaw had. Maverick clearly hadn't expected any public recognition for it.
Shaw whispered to me, "I told Sequoia he could be the first one to show off some of those new techniques we've all been working on, kind of hint to everybody on the outside what was coming up in the future from Academy boys. He got really excited."
I whispered back, "I see that." Sequoia seemed almost ready to dance, and I hadn't understood why he was so pumped. All the students were aware that they might be hanged before graduating, and nearly all wanted to do it at a party rather than a class demo. The reason was obvious: the atmosphere of a party came much closer to what a graduate would experience. Still, being hanged at a party was flunking out. I'd expected to see disappointment in Sequoia's body language, but there wasn't any.
Sequoia went on, "And we have worked out a couple of things to make this a little different. Garrett has something special planned for the end. And for me..." Sequoia giggled once more. "I guess you can figure out I'm not one of the best at hanging, which is why I ended up here tonight. But I've been getting better. I've never gone six minutes before, but I'm going to go for it tonight. Garrett is going to count off the minutes for you while I'm hanging. When he gets to six, I want all of you to clap your hands simultaneously, so I can hear it. I'll be just so happy if that's the last thing I hear. Okay?"
As another round of applause started, and Sequoia burst out laughing, waving his arms for quiet. "No, no, not now! Do it then!" The applause quickly turned into laughter.
I knew that six minutes would be a challenge for a number of the boys. I had been improving rapidly recently, and usually went past nine minutes in practice. I didn't know what Maverick's upper limit might be. Maverick could go twelve minutes without apparent effort, and was satisfied to end a session once he had worked on everything he wanted to.
Sequoia turned to Garrett, his eyes bright, and took a deep breath. "I'm ready."
Garrett gave him a quick kiss, then bent down to pick up something from the floor that had been hidden behind the doorway. As Sequoia walked into the room, toward the cage, Garrett following him, I saw that Garrett was, as one would expect, holding a piece of rope in one hand and, a long, thin box with the other. I was puzzled for a moment, and then realized what must be inside the box, and what 'Quoia and Garrett had planned for the end of the event. I gasped and said, "Oh, cool!" Around me, I could hear similar reactions from other students. None of the guests knew what the small commotion among the students was about, and several asked the nearest students about it, but got only smiles and headshakes in reply.
The back side of the cage was a door, which at present stood open. Sequoia walked proudly, his eyes glowing, to the cage, Garrett trailing behind, working hard to keep up with him while holding the awkward box upright to avoid banging it against anyone. Sequoia entered the cage, leaped up onto the platform in one smooth motion, and brushed aside the noose with his shoulder. Garrett set his box down at the side of the cage and waited.
Sequoia simply stood on the platform for a minute, slowly sweeping his eyes from side to side, his mouth half-open in a grin of wonder, wanting to drink in every sensation as the center of attention in his life's greatest moment. All eyes were on him; the room was dead silent.
At last he reached down to loosen the belt on his robe. He shrugged it off his shoulders in a way he had no doubt practiced, and it fell onto the platform around his feet. He was already erect, his cock standing up next to his belly.
I couldn't help gasping along with everyone else, even though I'd known what to expect. The spotlights focused on the cage gave Sequoia's now-naked body, coated with metallic powder, the glow that I had first seen on Marshall — no matter how many times you see that, the first sight of it is always breathtaking.
Garrett entered the cage at last, stepping onto the platform behind Sequoia. I was always excited to watch a real hanging, and felt my heart beating faster as Sequoia crossed his wrists behind his back, and Garrett bound them tightly together.
Everyone in the hall seemed to stop breathing as Garrett performed his most crucial task: taking hold of the noose, he lifted it and dropped it over Sequoia's head, tightened it to fit snugly around Sequoia's neck, and positioned it properly. Sequoia's control of his life was now, completely and forever, out of his hands.
Once it became clear which direction Sequoia would be facing, the audience redistributed themselves around the cage, each person taking the position he or she favored for watching a hanging. As if to prove that people had a wide variety of tastes, the crowd seemed to arrange itself so that nearly equal numbers stood on all sides of the cage.
Garrett squeezed around to stand in front of Sequoia now, and some in the crowd looked away from this very private moment, while others watched closely, entranced. They weren't acting out a fictional scenario and had no characters to maintain, so they could spend this moment as exactly what they were: two young malefurs, who had shared their lives and bed for two intense months, now saying goodbye. Garrett gently rested his hands on either side of Sequoia's head, careful not to disturb the noose, and put his lips on Sequoia's for a long, intimate kiss. When they broke it off at last, they said a few words to each other that I couldn't hear — until the very end, when each said, audible to those standing close enough, "I love you."
Garrett hopped down from the platform. Sequoia closed his eyes and began breathing slowly and deeply, concentrating on his preparation. I saw what most likely only another Hanging Boy would notice: the slight tensing of various groups of muscles, in Sequoia's legs, shoulders, hips, in sequence, as he mentally rehearsed the moves he wanted to make.
In any case, most of the guests' attention had probably been drawn to Garrett at this point. Sequoia's roommate smoothed out the fallen robe on the surface of the platform. Sequoia lifted one foot and then the other to allow the robe to go underneath. They had probably got the idea from watching me do the same with Sumner's robe during his hanging.
Garrett stepped out of the cage and closed the door. For extra dramatic effect, he took a padlock and thrust it through the latch, clicking it closed to lock Sequoia in. I was pretty sure Garrett didn't have the key.
At last, Garrett reached in between the bars and pushed the lever. The absolute silence of the room was broken only by the faint whirr of the mechanism lowering the surface of the platform. There were several sighs around the room, and a couple of slight choking sounds in sympathy, as the platform descended below the level Sequoia's toes could reach and he swung free by the neck, beginning immediately to kick. A few drops of pre-cum formed on the tip of his erection.
After a few seconds, I frowned. Sequoia was kicking more or less randomly with his legs, not using any of the things Shaw must have been showing him. Shaw had both hands clenched into fists, raised to waist level, and seemed to be mouthing instructions he hoped Sequoia would hear on a psychic wavelength, looking progressively more frustrated. There was no prohibition against talking to Sequoia, assuming he could be heard over the growing murmurs that probably accompanied any party hanging, but I was sure Shaw wanted Sequoia to seem to succeed without help.
Sequoia did, of course, look sensationally sexy even so, with the spotlights picking out the quivering and tensing muscles in his legs, arms, stomach, buttocks, all glowing with the effect of the metallic powder. But the guests must be seeing it as standard fare, the usual semi-panic of any First Year boy being hanged.
Suddenly Sequoia seemed to relax for an instant, his body swinging to and fro — and then his body bucked in a long ripple from head to toe that included a sensuous forward thrust with his hips. Then he swung his legs out wide and toward the front in that hugging-his-lover move that had so stunned me the first time I had seen Maverick do it. Around the room, the breath whooshed out of several of the guests, as if they'd each been kicked in the stomach. There were jaws dropping all around me. In the awed silence, everybody could clearly hear Garrett, down on one knee at the side of the cage, careful not to obstruct anyone's view, say, "One minute."
As Sequoia continued his performance, hands moved to crotches all around, both males and females becoming absorbed and aroused. For the guests, it was like nothing they had ever seen. With all my experience watching Maverick hang, I could see that Sequoia was not up to Maverick's level, but still I felt my cock starting to get hard, and wanted to be alone with Maverick. I gripped his hand more tightly.
Shortly after the three-minute mark, Sequoia began mixing his sexual thrusts with desperate-seeming attempts to reach a solid surface, holding his body perfectly straight and straining downward, every muscle in his legs taut with effort, his feet pointed straight downward and moving with tiny kicks, his toes wriggling — relaxing for a moment as if giving up, then resuming the effort even more desperately. This was, of course, Shaw's own contribution to the new hanging choreography. As suddenly as the downward stretches had begun, they segued into a wriggling and thrusting that commenced a renewed simulation of vertical intercourse.
The undercurrent of conversation was entirely different from its original character. It appeared as if many of the guests were whispering only to themselves, lost in the fascination inspired by Sequoia's performance.
Just before Garrett called out "Five minutes," Sequoia came, spurting his seed nearly to the bars of the cage. After that, his movements became more random, as they had been for a time in the first minute, and more jerky. He had spent little time, up to this point, trying to free his hands, but he did try now, his forearm muscles straining, his body instinctively fighting for life. Streams of sweat were rolling down his body.
I felt a residual thrill from my session with Andrew, a sense of the feeling that was running through the watching guests. I saw a reflection of Maverick in Sequoia's movements, and felt pride that Maverick had imparted this much of his ability to another student. Finally, I was aware of the euphoria Sequoia must be feeling, ending his life this way... All of that contributed to a level of excitement I couldn't remember reaching during any other hanging. I was pounding my hip with my fist, my lips silently moving in a repetition of "Come on, come on..." Six minutes, Sequoia wanted. He was getting so close! I was so hard that it hurt, and in my skin-tight shorts everybody could have seen it — if anybody had been looking at me.
The room seemed suddenly to grow silent, and it looked to me that most people were holding their breaths, their attention divided between Sequoia, now kicking weakly and spastically, and Garrett beside the cage, his eyes on his stopwatch.
Garrett raised his fist above his head, then shouted, "SIX!" as he brought the fist down sharply. The audience all clapped their hands at about the same time. It was a little ragged, but it was a loud, unmistakable sound that shattered the silence. The watchers then erupted into thunderous applause, punctuated by exclamations of "Great!" and "Good boy, Sequoia."
Sequoia's eyes, which had been looking glazed and barely functioning, lit up suddenly, his lips twisting into a happy grin. He made several quick short kicks with his right leg, easily understood as an expression of the joy he was feeling.
That was his last burst of energy, and he fainted at last and hung limp. His body swayed and twisted as the rope swung him lightly back and forth, but no longer moved on its own. Sequoia's bladder emptied, the shower of urine falling between his legs to soak into the folds of the robe bunched up on the platform below him.
Garrett stood and looked toward the side of the room, and I saw Gil there, intently watching the heart monitor he was holding. The applause was beginning to die down, and I knew Sequoia was still alive and might at some level still be conscious. I waved my fist in a circle over my head and shouted, "He can still hear you!" I wasn't really sure whether Sequoia actually was aware, but if there was any chance that he was, I wanted him to hear that applause for the rest of his life. The sound from the crowd burst forth with renewed energy.
At last, Gil nodded his head and pointed at Garrett. Garrett reached in between the bars of the cage and steadied Sequoia, arresting the residual swinging motion of his roommate's body. Sequoia now hung as motionless as a sculpture of a hanged gemsbok. Garrett then bent down to open the long, thin box he had brought in with him and withdrew its contents.
The guests saw, and an appreciative gasp spread across the room. As Garrett walked away from the front of the cage, the onlookers standing in front of the cage backed to either side to clear an aisle leading straight out from the cage. Garrett, looking serious and dignified, walked down the impromptu aisle and turned to face the cage.
Many years before, in the early days of erotic hanging, the art had been plagued with fakery — hangings that gave the appearance of being authentic, but in which the boy survived to perpetrate further fraudulent performances. The Academy had been instrumental in restoring integrity to the art form, and no hanging of an Academy Boy left any doubt in the end that he was dead. Nevertheless, at every public hanging staged by the Academy, a tradition remained of offering "proof" of the obvious. I had first seen it at Marshall's hanging, at the end of which his father had been given the honor of cutting his head off with a sword.
Still more romantic, though, was the instrument Sequoia and Garrett had chosen.
Every boy in the First Year class knew that Garrett had been on his high school archery team. His bow was one of the few personal possessions he had brought with him to the Academy, and he often relaxed from the tensions of study by practicing with it in the courtyard, using targets and arrows he ordered through the student store. Tonight the students had all instantly recognized what must be in the box Garrett was carrying, and why he had brought it.
Garrett faced the cage from about twenty feet away, and there was a stir of motion behind the cage: it belatedly occurred to the guests to clear that area, in case Garrett's aim was off.
Everyone watched as Garrett took his stance, left hand steadying the bow, the fingers of his right hand holding the arrow firmly, and in a silence even deeper than before, I could easily hear the faint sound as the bow bent. Garrett seemed to hold the bow cocked forever, aiming for just the right spot.
Garrett released the arrow at last, and we heard the twang of the bowstring, the faint, brief hiss of the arrow flying through the air, and a solid "Thhhckkk," like a fist pounding a wet sandbag, as the arrow passed between the bars of the cage and struck Sequoia's stomach just below his ribs and slightly to the right of center,. The impact knocked his body back and set it swinging back and forth like a pendulum at the end of the rope, slowly twisting now because of the off-center hit. The twisting motion brought Sequoia's back into my view, before he began twisting the other direction, showing me his front again. The head of the arrow had emerged from Sequoia's back, while the feathered tail still protruded from his stomach.
A rivulet of blood flowed down from both of Sequoia's wounds, running down his stomach, back, and legs, splattering onto the robe below — as always, not as much of it as one might expect, draining under the force of gravity without the pressure from a pumping heart.
The crowd let out a delighted "Ahhh," and began applauding again, this time for Garrett, who blushed, smiled, and bit his lip, sighing in what appeared to be utter relief that the arrow had found its mark. As the applause wound down, excited conversations began in all parts of the room.
I reached out to tap Shaw on the shoulder, and exclaimed, "Sequoia was fantastic! You did such a great job with him!"
Shaw's face almost couldn't contain his open-mouthed grin. "I got so worried at the start! But it wasn't me, 'Quoia just worked so hard."
"Garrett was really wonderful too! That was a great shot, only a few inches off target."
Shaw shook his head. "Not even. He hit exactly where he was aiming. That was Sequioa's idea. As soon as Garrett told him the head of the arrow would probably go completely through him, 'Quoia told him to try to hit a little off-center. He even showed Garrett where on his stomach he wanted the arrow to hit, so it wouldn't be stopped by his ribs or spine or anything. Hitting him there would make his body spin like it did. He thought it'd be really cool if everybody could see the arrowhead sticking out of his back, so he wanted to twist to give everybody a view. It really worked great!"
I laughed. "I've been telling people those physics classes would pay off! That twisting really added a lot." I looked at Shaw. "Are you going to move in with Garrett?" Shaw was the natural person to room with Garrett, so that Jack and Eric could recover the privacy they'd sacrificed to make room for Shaw.
"We talked about it. I know I'm staying with him tonight, and we're going to try it for a few days at least, and see how it goes."
I nodded, understanding fully Shaw's hesitation to commit to a new rooming arrangement until he was sure of being able to get along with his new partner. I looked over toward Garrett, now surrounded by guests who seemed to be new admirers of both the late Sequoia and him. I added, "I was going to try to get to him, but it's a little busy over there. Tell him later he did a wonderful job, and give him a kiss for me, okay?"
"Sure."
There was someone standing to my right. I turned and saw Benjamin. I smiled in delight. "Hi!" I put my arm around Maverick's waist. "I guess you already could tell, this is Maverick. Maverick, this is Benjamin, one of my privates tonight."
Maverick smiled and shook hands with him. "Nice to meet you, Benjamin. Wynn hasn't had time to tell me anything, but I can tell he likes you."
Benjamin beamed at him. "By coincidence, I was going to tell you that Wynn obviously loves you very much, in case you weren't aware. I can see now you feel the same about him."
We laughed, and Maverick said, "Well, now we know," and kissed me.
I turned to Benjamin to speak, but he spoke first. "Wynn, I just have to ask someone who might know..." He shook his head slightly in a wondering way. "The boy tonight, Sequoia..." For the first time, I saw him struggle for words. "WHY would they hang him now, so early in his training? I don't mean to criticize the Academy, as they must have a reason, but think of the show he could have put on after three more years of practice! I've never seen anything like what he was doing tonight! Surely the administration must have recognized his unique talents."
I rubbed Maverick's hip and grinned. All around the room, guests could be seen in intense conversations with students, and from their gestures toward the cage and its still gently swinging, arrow-pierced occupant, it was obvious they were talking about Sequoia. The word was officially out now. "Benjamin, I'm so glad you felt that way, and Sequoia would be so proud to hear you say that. But the truth is, he wasn't the only one doing that kind of thing now. We all are. Or we're learning, that is. From Maverick." I gave Maverick's waist another squeeze.
Benjamin's eyes widened. "The boy did thank Maverick, didn't he? I remember that now." He turned to Maverick. "Do you mean to say this is something you're passing on to all of the other students?"
Maverick nodded. "Yes, sir, I'm working on it."
"Benjamin."
Maverick smiled. "Benjamin."
Benjamin looked around, as if he were considering the number of students visible in the room and what sort of performances would be coming out of the Academy when they graduated. "Well, well, well..." he breathed softly on a descending scale.
He turned back to Maverick. "Well, one reason I came over was to thank Wynn once more for the part he played in an enchanting evening. It appears I need to thank you too, Maverick." He smiled and offered his hand again. "Thank you very much."
"You're welcome, s... Benjamin."
"And thank you, Wynn." He shook my hand as well. "And now I'm afraid I must go. It's getting a little late for me. Maverick, I trust you and I will get to know each other better at a later date."
Maverick looked at me, and laughed when I nodded my head forcefully and enthusiastically. "I'm sure I'd enjoy that, Benjamin. Wynn says so."
With a final wave, which we returned, he turned and headed for the door.
I sighed, and said quietly to Maverick, "Wish we could leave." We'd be free to go once all of the guests we'd shared a private party with had left. Andrew, of course, was long gone, and a number of other guests had departed by this time, but Grace was nearby, one of several guests around the cage admiring Sequoia's body, now swinging just barely perceptibly, like a mobile in a very gentle breeze. At least one of the guests who Maverick had given a chit to was talking to Garrett. "How's your energy?"
"Getting a second wind."
"No classes tomorrow. Want to make love all night?" I gave him a hungry grin.
Maverick returned the grin. "Thinking about that is what's keeping me going."