First, an apology: after the first story I posted, I was asked to post more of my stuff here.  I was deeply flattered and promised I would but, for various reasons, didn't get around to reposting very much.  So, in an attempt to correct that, over the next few weeks I'm going to try to post a selection of my most popular stories.  This one seemed like a good place to start for a few reasons: partly because it's one of the first things I wrote, but also because it's based on some work by the awesome DA member Cydo510.  It's a fantasy based on his “Annie's Pole Hanging” picture series - which he doesn't seem to have posted here - or at least not under that name.  Obviously, I acknowledge my deep thanks to Cydo510 for his inspiration, and for his permission to associate my fantasy with his excellent series, but I should stress that this is MY fantasy inspired by HIS series. I don't claim any more legitimacy for my interpretation of his pictures that any other person who looks at them might for theirs: if you have another fantasy about who the characters are, then yours is equally valid.

I was sitting at the breakfast table relaxing after mowing the lawn when I got the call to carry out the most satisfying task of my entire professional life. It was the Chief Department of Corrections Officer, telling me that my services were required to conduct the execution of Victoria Hollingbrooke. There are three official executioners, responsible for carrying out all hangings in the state – two men and I, Annie. Normally, we use a quick, comparatively painless long drop, but for particularly heinous crimes, the law retains the power to impose a rarely-used, considerably more mediaeval alternative. The condemned is stripped naked before being hoisted slowly into the air on a pulley, ensuring that their neck is not broken and they are left to strangle slowly for five to ten minutes. After the condemned's death, it is the prerogative of the executioner to do with the body whatever he or she wishes before placing it in the coffin. In the ten years I have been an official executioner, I have known this sentence imposed only three times, and I have never carried it out myself. Furthermore, this is the first time in living memory that such a sentence has been imposed on a woman. But this is no ordinary woman.

Hollingbrooke had been a destructive, unmanageable child, eventually turned out by her exasperated parents. She had been taken in off the street by our beloved local reverend, but had proved equally malicious in his home for runaway children and orphans. In a final act of generosity, he had met with her personally in his study when she was 21 to discuss her future. She had repaid his concern by grabbing a paperweight from his desk and battering him about the head till his face was an unrecognisable, bloody pulp. Finally subdued by police almost ten minutes later, she was still in a frenzy, laughing hysterically at the mangled body of the man who had done so much to try and help her. At her trial, she had not offered any defence or even explanation. There had been much campaign for a pole hanging in the press, and the sentence was no surprise.

It was, however, a delight, for Victoria was an extraordinary woman in more ways than one. Only a few years out of puberty, she had beautiful, golden hair, a glowing complexion, and deep blue eyes you could drown in as well as full, firm breasts continuing down into a perfect hourglass figure. Partly out of a desire to be the instrument of society's retribution against such an abominable criminal, and mainly out of delight at the thought of having official licence to do “whatever we wished” with that body, all three of us were on tenterhooks, desperately praying that our name would come up on the rota when this execution had to be performed. Sadly, fate had smiled on Jeff rather than on me, and I had believed her to have slipped my grasp.

Then, however, came a twist no one had anticipated. One of the few privileges not divested from Hollingbrooke had been the prospect of having her last request granted – this is left to all condemned prisoners to induce them to behave in the condemned cell, making them easier for prison staff to manage. When they had asked her for her last request, the Chief told me, she had surprised everyone by requesting specifically that I conduct the execution. As I slip on my sexiest dress, I am as puzzled as everyone else, but my curiosity is suppressed by delight. I have dispatched dozens of individuals during my decade on the job, and, though I frequently tell myself of the moral correctness of capital punishment, I have met very few who seemed like inhumane criminals, and very many who had lost control of themselves and done a stupid thing in a stupid situation, and on several occasions I had thought to myself, “There but for the grace of God...”. But this one, this one, I'm going to enjoy.

I arrive at the prison to be met by the governor. “We've been looking forward to today for a while,” he grins sadistically, “and I bet you have too.” I smile back as demurely as I can manage and, after a coffee in the staff room, I pass out into the small execution courtyard, surrounded by high walls topped with razor wire, to complete a last check of the equipment. The usual gallows has been removed, and instead there stands a tall, metal pole with a pulley on top and a manual hoist mechanism at the back, threaded through which is a thick, hemp rope tied into a noose at the front. The pole is set into a sloping concrete floor with a drain at the lowest point. Set squarely in front of the pole is the open coffin, just waiting for Victoria's carcass. I admire the fearsome structure, run the hoist mechanism up and down a couple of times to check nothing is amiss, and greedily anticipate the look of that noose hoisting Hollingbrooke's stretching neck and writhing body.

I enter the death cell to prepare the prisoner. As soon as I lay eyes on her, I suspect I have misjudged her. I have expected a wild tigress prowling her cage malevolently, only to be greeted by a lost, bewildered kitten. She stares wistfully at the floor with glassy, tearful eyes that make her look more beautiful still. My first task – one of many that I have been anticipating eagerly, is to strip her of her clothes. I have been anticipating, and not entirely dreading, having to wrestle them off her, but instead she stands up meekly and says nothing, her only reaction being a slight, stifled sob as I unwrap her fine, voluptuous body like a joint of prime meat.

I lead her, completely naked, down the corridor and out into the yard, careful to keep a tight hold on her in case she tries to bolt on seeing the instruments of her demise. In fact, as she enters the high-walled quad and sees the pole, noose and open coffin, she flinches slightly and her sobs become more audible, but otherwise she shows no reaction, seeming almost dazed. The chill of the morning air makes her nipples stand erect. Before preparing her, I cannot resist asking the question that has mystified us all. “Tell me, Miss Hollingbrooke: why did you ask for me?” She shrugs resignedly: “Men have had their way with my body all my life – my dad, the reverend, the bishop when he came visiting. I figured if someone was going to have their way with my dead body, it might as well be a woman.”

The ground seems to move beneath my feet as, for the first time, she becomes animated. “I'm sorry – I never told anyone that before. Please, promise you won't say anything,” she pleads breathlessly. A wave of nausea builds, partly at the shock revelation that a preacher previously held in my estimation as a secular saint was anything but, and partly at the thought that this poor girl would rather have the entire town cheer her painful execution for the motiveless murder of an innocent old man than have her victimhood known. I place my hand on her beautiful shoulder, intending to say, “You have nothing to be ashamed of,” but the words catch in my throat as I realise I am charged with, effectively, torturing her to death, so I simply say “I promise” and then, to break the awkward silence “turn around please”. Relaxed in the knowledge that her “guilty” secret will follow her to the grave, she obeys placidly.

I tie her hands firmly behind her back with a piece of rough hemp rope and ask her to stand with her back to the pole. As she moves to obey, she steps on the cold metal of the drain. “What's...?” she asks, cutting off her own question as she realizes the answer for herself. I breathe a sigh of relief as I did not feel like explaining the common physical effects of hanging. When she is in position, I slip the noose over her head, pulling out her rich, golden hair and positioning the knot under her left ear. Throughout all this, she remains docile, as though the trauma of her life has fried her emotional circuitry. As I begin to turn the hoist, however, and she feels the pressure of the rope against her Adam's apple, she panics and begins to scream uncontrollably. Despite my efforts, the oblique drag of the pulley on the rope makes the knot slip to the back of her neck , ensuring her gorgeous body will struggle for longer. I try to feel sorry.

As I continue to raise the noose, the pressure on her throat grows, soon cutting off her hysterical scream into a fierce, guttural growl as she is pulled first on to her tiptoes, then off the floor completely. As she feels the merciless bite of the noose all around her neck and begins to gasp desperately for air, her face turns bright red and she thrashes frantically in all directions. Her breasts jiggle furiously as she thrusts her head and back repeatedly against the steel pole. She lifts and spreads her legs desperately, at first trying vainly to grip on to the pole, then kicking away from it, then finally kicking aimlessly in all directions as her brain succumbs to asphyxia and rational ideas lose their hold.

After two or three long minutes, during which I am torn between the conflicting impulses of empathetic desperation and orgasmic arousal, her face begins to turn from red to blue and her inhuman, guttural growl dies to a gurgle and then an intermittent croak as the life is quite literally squeezed out of her. Simultaneously, her kicking becomes more listless, reduced to a hopeless waving of her feet and then, finally, to an aimless twitch. Eventually she is silent. Her head flops forward on to her chest, with her tongue hanging straight out and a stream of drool dripping from it on to her full, firm breasts. All her muscles relax, including the sphincter muscle of her bladder, allowing a steady stream of urine to dribble down her inside legs, off her bare toes on to the sloping floor and into the drain that had so alarmed her barely ten minutes ago. The angle of her lolling head causes her open, unblinking eyes to be directed straight at this metal grating, giving the eerie impression that she is transfixed by the gurgling drain. But it is an illusion: these bulging eyes, flecked with broken blood vessels, will never see anything again.

I raise my hand above my head and place it on one of her warm, firm, round breasts. On feeling the touch of my cold fingers, her body immediately begins to twitch and jerk once more, showing that she still has some residual function in her central nervous system, I leave her for a minute or so while the spasms die out before touching her again. This time, there is no reaction. The heart's pacemaker can sustain the heart beat for several minutes after brain death, so to ensure there is no possibility of survival, we have to check for complete cessation of cardiac function before taking the body down. I lower her dangling body about 12 inches and place my ear to her warm chest. At first, the adrenaline still coursing through her veins keeps her heart beat surprisingly fast and hard, so I wait patiently, my ear to her chest and her drool dripping into my hair, as it slows down, becomes fainter and more irregular, and finally dies out altogether.

I lower her to the ground and remove the noose, which has left a vicious red welt, from her stretched neck. As I do so, her dead body collapses limply into my arms in a grotesque parody of a lover's embrace – her still-firm breasts and erect nipples pressing against the exposed decolletage above my low-cut dress and leaving a sweat stain on my shoulder, and her urine staining my miniskirt. As her head flops over my shoulder I see the beads of sweat on her back, whose sweet smell combines with the acrid smell of her urine into an intoxicating cocktail. The thought enters my head uninvited: “You know, whatever you do to her now won't make any difference to her,” but I dismiss it almost immediately and carry the body gently to the coffin. I lift the limp body, the head dangling backwards, into place, before lifting the back of her head and kissing the centre of her forehead maternally. “It's over now,” I whisper, without being entirely sure what I am referring to. Instinctively, I fold her arms across her chest to cover her breasts before wheeling the coffin inside for the undertakers.

As I step outside the prison, I am startled to be met by a cheering crowd of well-wishers – something I have never before experienced. “What's going on,” I say in a daze. “You're a hero,” smiles the prison governor, “for you have rid this town of the most evil woman it has known in decades. Desperately trying to find words to convey my feelings, but mindful of my promise to Victoria, my tongue can only alight on stale cliché. “Just doing my job,” I murmur, and head away rapidly.

As I lie in bed that night, I console myself with the thought that I performed poor Victoria a service, for either of my male colleagues would almost certainly have molested her. But I do not sleep.