Monday Night
I stroked Larry's headfur, as we lay naked facing each other, our bodies pressed together, our faces so close that I suddenly became conscious of Larry looking as if he had a single, enormous eye. I giggled at the image, and pressed my lips against Larry's once more, feeling his lips move to return the soft kiss.
I could just glimpse Maverick and Leo sixty-nining on the rollaway bed, making soft moaning sounds as they licked and sucked, looking like a mysterious new animal that was all legs. The thought made me giggle again.
Larry rubbed his hand against my back idly, and whispered, "You know it's going to go okay, right? All the boys today got through it. If they can, you know you can."
Maverick's and my turn at the Fifteen was coming up Wednesday, the day after tomorrow. We had agreed to spend tonight with Larry and Leo. Tomorrow night would be ours to spend alone together.
My lips curled upward against Larry's. "I know. In my head I know that. But nothing's ever for sure. If, if, if, the big if... If anything bad does happen, I'd be so mad at myself if I hadn't said goodbye to you."
"You think you'd be mad? I'd throw a shoe through the TV. Well, one of Leo's. I might need mine for my show."
My eyes shot open. "Did you get an offer?"
Larry shook his head, making his lips rub mine. "I'm just thinking ahead. Oh! Tarrant did, though! He's so pumped about it. First one in our class! He'll be hanged a week from Saturday."
"That's so neat! I'd better stop by his room tomorrow."
"Oh, I wasn't supposed to tell. I just kind of overheard him saying something to Farley." Farley, a handsome tapir, was Tarrant's roommate. "He made me swear I wouldn't pass it on to anybody. You just dragged it out of me."
I laughed. "So why's he want it to be a big secret?"
"He's going to have a party in the caf this Saturday, and make everybody try to guess who's hosting it and then spring it on them. So could you wait before you see him?"
"But..."
I could see Larry roll his single eye. "Wynn, would you quit thinking tomorrow is your last chance to do anything? Nothing's going to happen!"
I heard Maverick's moans rising in pitch, and knew he was getting close to orgasm. He was good at clamping down on it and letting Leo get caught up, though.
I laughed. "Okay, let's make plans for Wednesday night then."
Larry grinned. "Hey, tonight's not over yet." He rolled over on top of me and kissed me hard, his tongue licking at my teeth.
Tuesday Morning
I looked around the demo room, pointing and counting under my breath, "Twenty-six, twenty-seven..." My attention was caught by the entrance of two more students at the door. "Twenty-eight, twenty-nine." I turned to Maverick. "Okay, that's everybody."
Maverick shrugged and and smiled, and gave me a go-ahead gesture. I looked up at the Third Year boys seated in one of the semi-circular stands of seats. I was standing where a dozen of my classmates had died in the last two years so that their peers could learn more about the art and science of hanging — beginning with my own first roommate. I remembered how nearly all of the seats had been filled at their first demonstration. Now the whole class fit on one side of the stands, facing me. The special Fifteen platform and noose were right behind me. I cleared my throat, and the murmurs died out.
"I'm sorry, I know this was a day nearly all of you wanted to sleep in, with no classes this week and all that. But we're all going through the Fifteen this week, and Maverick saw something yesterday that we thought was really important to pass along."
Before going down to Larry's and Leo's room the previous evening, Maverick and I had secured permission to use the demo room, then tacked notes to the doors of all of the occupied rooms in the Third Year dorm, asking the students to assemble there at 8 am. I was glad everyone had come, though some of them looked a little bleary, some grumpy.
"Before he does that, I see Don, Rene, Paul, Brock, Litton, Shaw, and Garrett are all here. They're here, and not at the furrier, which means they got through the Fifteen yesterday!" I grinned and clapped my hands, and everyone else started applauding the seven boys who had passed the previous day, those nearest them patting them or otherwise congratulating them while they beamed happily at their classmates. I caught Shaw's eye and gave him a thumbs up, returned by Shaw with a grin.
As the applause died down, I stepped back as Maverick came forward.
"I'm sorry about the early hour too," Maverick began, "But it's hard to get everybody gathered together in the evening, and I wanted us somehow all to come together before any more of us went through the Fifteen. And that's starting up again in less than an hour." All of the background murmuring ceased now, as the issue that completely occupied all of the boys' attention this week came to the fore.
Maverick continued, "Yesterday at one point, Paul started having a little trouble. Paul, do you remember what I'm talking about?"
Paul grinned shyly, reddened a little and put his hand up to his face, finding himself the sudden center of attention as all heads turned to him. "Sort of. I know you and I talked about it last night, so I know what you're going to talk about, but honestly it's all still kind of a blur."
"Your heart started racing, right?"
"Yeah, and I do remember everything kind of felt... weird, like... like I suddenly forgot how to ride a bicycle, or something. Everything was just... off."
Maverick nodded. He looked around the room. "The Fifteen is not like any situation we've ever been in before. When we practice, it's not life or death, but you get in here for the Fifteen, and no matter what else you've done in the last two years, you can suddenly fail out of the program, and not even see it coming." The murmurs started up again. "You know I'm not saying anything you haven't all thought about, right?"
There were several nods. Maverick went on, "Now obviously, what I'm talking about here won't happen to everybody. But it could happen to any one of us. A panic attack. Your heart starts pounding a mile a minute, and it doesn't feel like any practice session you've ever had. You haven't run into this problem before. You try to adjust to it, but you can't find the timing, and that makes it worse, and everything falls apart. Paul, do you remember how you ended up handling it?"
Paul shook his head, biting his lip. "I wish I could help. I really don't know. I just don't remember it all that well."
Paul was probably expecting criticism, but Maverick smiled. "No, that's okay. That's good. And the fact you can't remember might be what saved your life. That's going to be the point I want to make."
Maverick looked from side to side, trying to make eye contact with every boy. He said slowly, emphasizing each word, "If you get in a panic attack, you can't think your way out of it."
Lucas, frowning, spoke up, probably echoing the thoughts of many of the boys. "So what do you do?"
Maverick smiled again. "This is hard, but just remember to tell yourself to do it — trust your body. Trust your training. Trust your instincts. And stop thinking! You've been working on this for two years. Your own body knows when it's doing it right. And it knows when it's doing it wrong. When you're off, it's like static on the radio, and your body fiddles with the tuning knob and pretty soon a radio station comes in. And a Hanging Boy doesn't have to think to do that tuning.
"Look, how the hell do we know how to get our breath rhythm, our heartbeat, and our head movements all in synch? Are we able to do that because we read it in a book? Are we up there calculating how to make all those different things come together when we're hanging? We can't. Nobody has a conscious mind that can do that. But we do it. We don't even know we're doing it, let alone know how we're doing it. That part of the process is something our bodies do for us. Not without all the training, but the training fine-tunes something inside us that's beyond any conscious thought.
"If you're up there today, or later this week, and you find your heart has suddenly started going nuts, tell yourself this, and make yourself believe it: I'm a Hanging Boy! I can hang when my heart is going a mile a minute, because my body knows how to find a way. And then just... stop... thinking!
"Paul did something like that yesterday, and that's why he can't remember it — there's nothing to remember! Somehow he let his Hanging Boy instincts take over, and they did it all for him. So he's here today." Maverick smiled and looked around the room again. "I hope everybody here is around Friday night for the post-Fifteen party."
Maverick sat down and I stood up to speak. "I just want to remind everybody here of something you already know, deep inside you. Maybe this will help prevent that panic attack from ever getting started. Let me ask you something: what's the worst that can happen in the Fifteen?"
"You die," Tighe answered.
"Right. You hang until you're dead. So? What is the dream of every boy here? You knew when you signed the enrollment form that someday, not much more than 3 years in the future, you would hang by your neck until dead. Granted, if you die in the Fifteen, you don't get the big party with the show and applause and everything. But you know, because all of you have been doing it, that every single classmate is watching you do the Fifteen. And so is every Second Year who doesn't have class that hour, and some of the First Years as well. You'll have an audience, even if we can't be there to applaud you in person.
"And the consolation prize for failing isn't all that bad: it's the same as if you were chosen for a demo: your head goes in the Hall of Honor, and the people who knew you leave notes praising you. Not that awful, is it?
"So, at the end you get the same thing whether you pass the Fifteen or not. The thing you wanted so much that you did whatever was necessary to be accepted here at the Academy. To hang. And every single one of us is most comfortable when hanging by his neck. Right?"
"Right," a chorus of voices answered.
I saw Noah, the jackalope who would supervise this morning's Fifteens, wave to me from the doorway, and said, "Okay, they want us to get out of here so they can start getting ready for the morning sessions. So what are you going to do in the Fifteen if your heart starts racing?"
At least a dozen boys shouted "Stop thinking!" and they and the rest started laughing as they began filing out of the rows of seats. Paul stepped down from the stand of seats and approached Maverick, looking a little stunned. He looked at Maverick and shook his head wonderingly. "Yesterday I felt like I'd just kind of stumbled through it, and almost made a total mess of it. I... kind of feel better about it now."
Maverick smiled at him. "You should. You did exactly the right thing. Some of the other boys might not have. I'm hoping they will now. You saved your own life, and maybe you saved some others too."
Paul's jaw dropped, and he rushed forward to throw his arms around Maverick.
I was stunned as well. For all the changes in Maverick's behavior in the last two years, and after all the time we'd spent together, Maverick still had the capacity to take me by surprise. I doubted that I could have done for Paul anything like what Maverick had just done.
Noah waved at me again, and pointed to the clock on the wall. I tapped at Maverick's elbow. "We all better get out of here, hon."
Paul let go of Maverick, grinning. "See you at the party." He dashed out of the room. I took Maverick's hand and kissed his cheek. To Noah, I said, "Okay, we're out of here." Maverick and I trotted out of the room back to our own, to switch on the TV for the nine o'clock session.
Tuesday Night
I led Maverick through empty corridors, carrying an impromptu sleeping bag made of some sheets and the mattress from our rollaway bed. I hadn't told Maverick where we were going, but it looked as if he knew.
As we reached the door, I pulled a note, lettered as neatly as I could manage, that read "CLEANING - PLEASE STAY OUT" and taped it to the door, then pulled the door open and led Maverick into the Hall of Honor.
Maverick smiled. "Lots of memories in here."
"No kidding." I continued back to the stacks where the most recent heads were kept, and spread the mattress on the floor of the narrow walkway between the stacks.
As Maverick knelt to arrange the sheets over the mattress, I went to visit Sumner's head, a few steps away. I kissed my late roommate on the lips, then opened Sumner's drawer to see if there were any new notes left for him since the last time I had been here.
Maverick stood as I fished one of the notes out of the drawer. "What's it say?"
I read aloud, " 'Dear Sumner: I am going to join you here tomorrow, but I'm not sad. Thank you, so much, for showing us how to make the demos fun.' " It was signed "Carey."
Carey, an elk, had been hanged at a demo in the middle of our second year. That first demo by Sumner had inspired him, like most of the boys, to stage a small playlet before his hanging. It was a humorous skit he and his roommate had written — it involved being executed for shoplifting a jock strap. The strap was size small, and would obviously not fit Carey's rather large organ, so the charge was obviously bogus. We had laughed and applauded before settling down to watch as the teachers hanged Carey with his feet tied together. On very rare occasions, the purchaser of a Hanging Boy wished to stage his hanging in that way, and the types of kicking used were different when the feet couldn't be separated. Of course, we had been studying the techniques in the our textbooks, and we sometimes practiced them in hanging classes, though not, of course, to the death. One purpose of the demonstration was to show us that, with proper technique, a boy could last surprisingly long with his feet tied. Not as long as we could in the normal way, but much longer than an untrained person. Purchasers were always warned about this fact. Carey squirmed at the end of the noose, while the teachers reminded him and the rest of us of the techniques. He died nine minutes into the demonstration. His personal best practice time in the normal format had been eleven minutes — not as long as most of the boys were going by that time, but that was part of the reason he was a demo boy.
Carey's head, of course, was farther along on the shelf. I walked to him and stroked his face, silently thanking him for remembering Sumner.
I moved another step to the left, to the first open space, the place where the next head would go, and stared into it for a long time.
I turned and looked down, and saw that Maverick was already stretched out on the mattress, his uniform discarded on the floor beyond his head. I cleared my throat. "Sweetie?"
"Hmmm?"
I looked away. "I want you to do something if anything happens to me tomorrow."
Maverick reached up with his hand extended, wordlessly.
I sat on the floor next to him and took his hand. Maverick finally said, "Wynn, you know you're going to make it, right?"
I sighed. "I know. Just let me say this and I'll feel better."
Maverick nodded, and I went on, "I want Marcus to have Marshall."
Maverick smiled. "You know I would have known that."
I drew my knees up and hugged them with one arm, my other hand still holding tight to Maverick's. "There's probably not much you don't know about me."
Maverick shrugged, still smiling. "I know you want to sleep with him."
I blinked. "Who?"
Maverick giggled. "The only live boy we've been talking about in the last few minutes. Anyway, you know it's okay."
I sighed. "Okay with you, maybe."
"Zuchter might not like it? We could invite both of them over some night. Movie and sex."
I shook my head, and gave Maverick a small smile. "At least there's one insight into me you missed. The person it's not okay with is me."
Maverick gave me a puzzled look. "Why?"
I was silent a moment. "Whenever I make love with you, I'm totally focussed on you. Or when I'm with Larry, to me it's totally about Larry. With Leo, with Jack, with anybody..." I sighed. "I can't be with Marcus just to pretend I'm making love with Marshall."
Maverick looked at me a little longer, and finally nodded. His smile came back, and he tightened his grip and pulled me toward him. "So let's do something totally about us for awhile."
I laughed as I settled on top of Maverick, kissed him, and started pulling off my clothes. "All night, I hope."