Last Class

A little impatiently, associate professor Dr. Michael Roberts watched his students, waiting for the bell to ring and for his class to settle down. Most of the nineteen girls and three boys were already in the room, talking to friends and milling about aimlessly; there was a certain tension in the air, and Roberts was as aware of it as any of the students, this was a special day, one he looked forward to every semester.

While he waited, he idly looked around his classroom. For the most part it looked much like any college biology lab. The long laboratory table at the front of the classroom, used for the professor's demonstrations, was a bit unusual, though. It had a slightly raised rim around its edge and shallow troughs behind the rim, and there was a drain at each of the four corners. On the ceiling above it there were a number of high-intensity lights aimed at the counter, dark at the moment, and a chain hoist that slid on an overhead rail and was operated with a remote control.

The bell sounded. Roberts stood up at the front and waited for the class to quiet down. "As I'm sure you're all aware," he began, "we've come to that point in the semester when we will actually have a chance to see and study the anatomy of a human body, and to observe some of the physiological processes we've been studying for the past few months. This demonstration is, of course, scheduled for tomorrow." He put his hands behind his back and paced back and forth in front of the class for a moment. "And, as you all also know quite well, this demonstration involves the vivisection of a student volunteer. Because of the severe imbalance between the genders following the last war, this volunteer will naturally be one of the girls. The men here may not know it, but being a volunteer was, for the women, a prerequisite to taking this course." He paused; naturally, none of the boys looked at all surprised--students do talk. "We need only one volunteer, though, and it has become traditional to announce the choice on the day before the demonstration. Although some of the women here may not have been placed in the pool of candidates--the instructor has some discretion about that--I can assure you that most have been. And a choice has been made." He paused for dramatic effect and the class waited, absolutely silent. The boys looked eager; the girls, most of them, looked anxious, knowing that he was about to pronounce a death sentence on one them. A few, he noticed with a certain satisfaction, actually looked as eager as the boys, as if they hoped they might be the choice. He focused on one girl in particular, and was a little disappointed to see that she was not among those. With fondness he recalled last semester's choice, who had seemed quite enthusiastic about being selected.

It didn't matter, he told himself. Most if not all of these girls were well-trained, their training had begun in kindergarten. They had been born into a world where close to ninety-five percent of all children conceived were female, a world where it was stated government policy to eliminate--by whatever means available--eighty percent of the female population before age thirty, and a world in which even such Draconian measures left women outnumbering men by close to four to one. Boys were taught that their lives were precious; girls were shown that they were not just expendable but that large numbers of them had to be eliminated. Socially, the most honorable thing any young girl could do was to commit suicide or to offer herself up voluntarily for public execution or for the burgeoning market in human flesh for consumption. The chosen one, he reminded himself, could be counted on not to fight or argue, she would cooperate fully.

Talking his time, he looked over the class, careful not to let his gaze linger on any one face. "The student who has been chosen is..." he said. He paused again.

"Audrey Collier."

In the back of the room, a nineteen-year old girl with shoulder-length black hair and very large dark eyes clasped her hands to her mouth and looked wide-eyed at her friend Kelly, the auburn-haired girl sitting at the next desk. For several seconds she seemed unable to speak. "I can't believe it," she said at last, her voice tremulous. "Me! I'm going to be up there in front of the class tomorrow... naked... and Dr. Roberts... is going to... cut me open..."

"Yes," Kelly whispered. She smiled broadly, unable to hide her relief and not yet affected by the fate that had befallen her friend. "You're a great choice, Audrey."

Roberts overheard her. "I think I speak for the whole class when I say you'll be a fine subject, Audrey. There are some preliminaries that you need to take care of with the school nurse, though. Please go there now. Afterwards you can go home, as there isn't any point in your attending any of your other classes. We'll see you tomorrow, here in class."

Audrey stood up, gathered up her books, and walked down past the row of student desks and out of the classroom door, aware that every pair of eyes in the room was following her. She dropped her books off at her locker and walked on down the hallway to the nurse's office. As she went, her thoughts whirled; for the most part she kept coming back to Roberts' statement that she did not need to attend any of her other classes. Of course not, she told herself as she walked along. You've taken your last exam, grades don't matter now and neither does attendance. You won't be coming home from school tomorrow. Long before the dismissal bell rings, you'll be dead.

The nurses' station was small and efficiently laid-out. The nurse, Alfred Jones, sat behind his desk in the outer office, which also contained three beds--all currently empty. He looked up from his computer and smiled as Audrey walked in. Well-known to all the students, Alfred was around forty, always rather military in bearing--he had been an Army medic before taking the job at the school--and was always dressed in classic starch white jacket and pants.

"Hi, Audrey," he said cheerfully. He glanced up at the large clock on the wall. "Let me guess: you're the girl who's been chosen for vivisection in anatomy and physiology 207?"

Audrey was still stunned. "Yes, I am," she replied. "Dr. Roberts sent me down here..."

Alfred nodded. "And I've been expecting you." He rose from behind the desk. "Come on in, have a seat." As Audrey sat down, he picked up a small device like a little cellphone from his desk. "Give me a finger," he said.

She offered him her index finger. Holding the device close to her skin, he pressed a button. There was the momentary bright red flash of a laser beam, and then a large bead of blood welled up on her finger. "Pregnancy test?" Audrey asked.

"Yes," Alfred answered as he drew some of her blood into a capillary tube, slipped it back into the machine and stared at the display. "If you are pregnant, we have to test for gender. If by some chance you're carrying a boy, Dr. Roberts has to find someone else." Still looking at the display, he then nodded. "You aren't pregnant."

Audrey sighed. "I could have told you that," she said. "I haven't had intercourse with a boy since my last period."

Alfred smiled. "Well, I can't take your word for it, now can I? We'll proceed now; take your clothes off and lie down on one of these beds. This won't take very long." He indicated the beds with a wave of his hand as he dug some forms out of a file cabinet.

Audrey walked over to the far bed and took off her clothes, draping them over the back of a nearby chair. She then stretched herself out on the bed, which was really more like a sofa with no back or foot, just a long narrow cot upholstered with vinyl, a fixed headrest at one end. Lying on her back, her flat stomach dished slightly inward between the arch of her ribcage and the noticeable bulges of her pelvic bones and pubic mound. Her groin was lightly crowned with dark pubic hair. Her B-cup breasts flattened out on her chest, and her pert pink nipples were slightly hard and erect, showing a touch of nervousness.

Alfred came back with a tray of instruments and a clipboard. "First of all," he began, "I'm going to give you a general physical exam." He smiled. "You certainly look healthy enough, but we do want to make sure you don't have any unrecognized problems. The Tritester would've shown us some, but not all."

Audrey gazed steadily back at him. "What difference does that make now?" she asked. "I'm not going to be alive after tomorrow."

Alfred shook his head. "Well, you're right. To you, it makes very little difference." He put a stethoscope on Audrey's chest and listened for a moment. "But you're going to be the subject in tomorrow's demonstration in the gross anatomy class." He moved the stethoscope around, listened in several places, then laid it aside and began pressing on Audrey's abdomen. "I'm sure," he continued, "that Dr. Roberts would want to know about it if you had, let's say, undiagnosed colon cancer." He moved his hands up and kneaded Audrey's high firm breasts; she could not tell if the man was finding it erotic or not, if he was he gave no sign of it. "We also," he said as he fitted a blood-pressure cuff around Audrey's arm, "want to be sure you're in good enough condition to withstand the procedure. That makes sense, doesn't it?"

"I suppose..."

"Of course it does." He reached under the bed, pulled out a pair of stirrups, and slid them into mounts on the sides of the bed. "Please put your feet up in these," she asked. Audrey scooted down and put her feet into the stirrups, spreading her legs and exposing her groin. Alfred did a quick examination of her external genitals, then slipped a speculum up inside her. He nodded, as if to himself, and wrote something on his pad.

"How do I look?" Audrey asked. She was wondering what the procedure would be if she were found to have some major problem. Certainly Alfred's example--colon cancer--would be a death sentence for her even if she hadn't been selected for the vivisection. In her world, females with complex or potentially terminal diseases were not treated, they were simply killed.

"Oh, you're fine," Alfred said breezily. "You're going to be able to show them exactly what a young woman's insides should look like, and you shouldn't have any problem at all lasting throughout the demonstration." He smiled again. "Roll over, please? Good, now up on your hands and knees..."

Audrey obeyed, and Alfred gently stuck a gloved index finger up Audrey's anus. As it went in to the hilt, Alfred felt around in all directions. "Good girl. No problems here." He stepped back and stripped off the glove. "Could you follow me, please?"

She followed Alfred into a large bathroom. There was a lavatory sink, a couple of open-stall showers, and a row of five standard institutional toilets. On a shelf near the showers were a number of barber's tools, including a cordless electric shaver.

"Please stand inside the shower, face me, and spread your legs so we can get you nice and clean-shaven," the nurse instructed. Audrey did as she was told; Alfred pulled up a stool and began shaving her groin with an electric razor. The hairs fell to the shower floor, and Alfred used a hand-held sprayer to wash them away. Without comment, he pushed two gloved fingers up inside her vagina, stretching her lips tight while he was shaving her. Though a little uncomfortable with this, she didn't move or protest. The nurse worked on; when he was done with the front, he asked her to turn around and bend over facing away. He shaved around her anus and the back side of her vulva. He turned off the shaver, looked closely at his work, and had her turn around. Her groin, showing only a clean cleft down the center, looked as smooth as the rest of her. He ran his hands over her underarms and down her long shapely legs. "That's it," he said. "You're nice and smooth all over now. We'll check you again in the morning and catch any stubble that might appear overnight." He handed her a towel.

"Can I eat between now and tomorrow?" she asked as she dried her legs.

The nurse smiled. "Oh, by all means, young lady, please eat normally. I'll give you an enema tomorrow, and your stomach contents will be interesting for the class to study."

"So we're finished?"

"For today, yes."

"I'll see you tomorrow first thing, then," she said slowly. She walked back to the bed and got dressed. She took the forms and instruction sheet and left, while Alfred went back to his computer, completed the report on Audrey, and e-mailed it to Roberts.

"I have some... news," Audrey said.

Her mother looked up from the plate she was filling at the dinner table. "Well, I thought so," she said. "You came home early and then went straight to your room without a word."

"Something wrong, honey?" her father put in.

Tears welled up in her eyes and there was a lump in her throat. She hesitated for a moment, trying to established her self-control. "I--I have some papers for you to sign," she temporized. "For school..."

"What sort of papers?" her father asked.

She swallowed hard. There was no way, she told herself, to avoid this or make it any easier. "You know the anatomy and physiology course I've been taking?" Her parents nodded. "And you know that they do a vivisection every semester? Remember, I told you about that? All us girls had to sign a sheet volunteering to be the subject, and only one would be chosen?"

Her mother laid her fork down. "You?" she asked bluntly.

Audrey stared at her almost-empty plate. "Me."

Her parents looked at each other. "Well," her father said, "we always knew this might happen."

Her mother looked unhappy. "Yes. It's just the way the world is today... I wish our family could be exempt, but that's not possible..."

"No," her father said. "It isn't." He looked back at Audrey. "When is this vivisection supposed to take place?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? And you're just hearing about it today?"

"Yes, daddy. That's what they always do. They announce the choice the day before."

He drummed his fingertips on the tabletop. "Well, I suppose it doesn't matter too much. It'd be nice to have a little more notice when your daughter's been chosen to be killed, though."

Audrey blinked back tears. "They can't do it," she said in a choked voice, "if you don't sign the papers. The papers are a legal request for my execution. The school doesn't execute students without their parents' permission, even if they are over eighteen. Without your signature the school doesn't have the right to kill me."

Her father gave her a stern look. "Audrey, we've talked about this before," he reminded her. "Every family loses daughters these days. There's no reason why we should be an exception."

"But we aren't!" Audrey interrupted. "Lynne volunteered herself and was executed two years ago!"

"And what makes you," her mother said sharply, "better than your older sister?"

"Nothing," her father said, giving her no chance to speak. "Nothing at all." He shook a finger at her. "Now you tell me, young lady," he went on, "what I should do."

Audrey said nothing for a few seconds, she just stared at her almost-empty plate. She knew perfectly well what was expected of her.

And, in the end, she delivered her lines: "You should sign the papers," she answered, struggling to maintain a steady voice. "Let them cut me open tomorrow, let them kill me. I'm not special. Lots of women have to die to make things work. There's no reason I shouldn't be one of them. Besides, if they execute me they'll refund all the tuition we've paid so far to you."

"That's my girl," her father said, his tone much softer. "And that's what we'll do. But we should talk about this a little, too. Let's finish our dinner, then we'll talk."

The dinner was, in fact, about over; after the discussion that had already taken place, no one in the Collier family really wanted to eat much. Afterwards, Audrey obeyed her father's instructions and followed him into his study. He instructed her to sit in a chair across from him; she sat. On coming home she had changed into her usual at-home attire: brief midriff-exposing T-shirt, short-shorts, and sandals. She sprawled in the chair, spreading her long bare legs wide. At the moment she was not even looking at her father; she was looking at the deadly papers, which were now lying atop the small table beside his chair, a pen holding them down. Her death warrant--but it had not yet been signed. Although she had not the slightest reason to believe it would not be--she remembered well what pride her parents had taken in Lynne when, as a college junior, she volunteered herself for execution and was hanged--it seemed to help if she imagined that her father might reconsider.

But her father's first words seemed to take away any hope. "So," he said, his tone matter-of-fact. "This is the last night of your life."

Staring at the carpet, she shrugged her shoulders. "I suppose so."

"Tell me about this vivisection procedure."

She shrugged again. "I've never seen one," she replied. "But I know what happens, more or less. The subject lays on a table and the teacher cuts her belly open. Then the students examine her insides. The teacher then takes her organs out--her intestines, her stomach, and so on."

"Sounds painful."

She glanced at him. "I can't see," she told him, "any way that they could cut you open and pull out your insides without it being painful!"

"Are you expected to just endure it? Or are they going to give you some drugs?"

She shook her head. "I don't know." She stared at the floor again. "Daddy, I don't want to die tomorrow." Her voice was very small, very soft.

"Young lady, I don't want to hear any of that, now. You've been chosen. The way the world is right now, we cannot afford to allow women who are chosen to decide that they won't cooperate. I know how painful it is when it's personal--remember, this is the second time your mother and I have been through this."

It doesn't seem as if you're having all that hard a time accepting it, Audrey thought. "I know, Daddy," she said aloud.

"What you need to focus on," her father went on, "is your performance."

"My performance?"

He nodded firmly. "Yes. You are to be vivisected for your anatomy class. The students are expected to learn from this. That's the first thing. The second thing is that you are putting on a show--just as Lynne did when she was executed." He fixed her with a level gaze. "She did very well, Audrey. She made us very proud."

"Daddy, I -"

"You have to remember," he plowed on, "that for most if not all of your classmates, watching you as you're being cut open will be an intensely emotional experience. You don't want to allow your own personal pain and fear to interfere with that. That isn't fair to your classmates. You have to control it."

"Daddy, I don't know if I can!"

"But honey, if you don't, if you scream and beg and fight, you won't be an effective demonstration for the class and you'll spoil the show."

"Why should I care about the show, daddy?" she said bitterly. "I'm going to be dead at the end of it."

"Because," her father answered, "if you don't, then your life will have been at least partially wasted. If you ruin the demonstration as well, then your death is meaningless--other than the fact that one more female has been eliminated from society." He shook a finger at her. "Going in there with your head high, accepting whatever they decide to do to you, no matter how much pain and discomfort it causes you--that's your mission in life now. Your only mission." He leaned back in his chair. "And you know quite well you can take the pain. Remember your pain training? Remember your last session?"

Audrey nodded slowly. Three years earlier, her father had decided that she should have pain training. Pain training, a six-week course at a summer camp, was designed specifically for attractive girls who might one day be asked to surrender their lives in a movie, or on stage, or on TV. Audrey had taken pride in the compliment, and Lynne had been distinctly jealous--which had secretly pleased Audrey and made her determined to do well in the course. She clearly remembered that course, and the last session was still vivid in her mind. While their parents and invited guests watched, she and eleven other pretty teenage girls had stood naked on a stage and allowed the trainers to run one hundred long steel needles into their bodies, then cover them with hot wax. With the needles and wax in place, they were then asked to run a sort of an obstacle course, which involved several climbs and crawls--a course designed to move and catch the needles and cause them even more pain. It had taken several days for Audrey to recuperate from that experience, but she'd been absolutely stoic throughout. Almost all of the girls had cried out, many had wept, and several hadn't been able to finish--but not Audrey. She'd gone though the whole course without making a sound louder than a grunt or a gasp and at the end she'd stood proudly, her body streaked with blood and on fire with pain, and accepted the applause of the audience.

"I wanted you to be proud of me..." she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

"I know," her father answered, his voice now soft. "And you did, you did make us proud. But you've forgotten the purpose of that. It was to train you to take the pain involved if you were asked to suffer a death that wasn't quick and merciful." He leaned forward, reached out, and touched her hand. "And now you have been asked to suffer a death like that. I was proud of you then, Audrey. I'll be ten times as proud of you tomorrow if you do what you're expected to do."

Those words broke down Audrey's resistance. She started to cry, and she reached for her father; he took her in his arms and held her. "Sign the papers, Daddy," she whimpered into his shoulder. "Sign the papers. I'll let them cut me open and kill me, I won't scream or beg or struggle. I'll make you proud."

"That's my girl," he said. He held her for quite a while. When she finally got off his lap, he quickly signed the papers and handed them back to her.

She kissed him, took the papers, and left his study. As she went, she found herself wondering how he would have reacted if she'd offered to have sex with him.

Certainly she had not missed the fact that he'd had a furious erection throughout the discussion.

The next morning, having slept poorly if at all, Audrey arrived at the nurse's office at 8:00 sharp. Alfred met her in his outer office, and ushered her back to a bed. "Please take off all your clothes," he instructed. "Keep your shoes and socks on, and go back into the bathroom. Do you have your forms signed?"

Audrey nodded. "Yes... my family agreed to it, they signed the papers. They would like to have my head back after the lab's done with it, so they can have a funeral for me. They said that you can just put everything else in the lab specimen collection. Oh, and my Dad also wants a copy of the videotapes of the procedure." She handed the paperwork to Alfred, then peeled off her T-shirt and shorts and laid them on the bed. She hadn't worn underwear; she had considered coming to school nude. She was naked now except for her white sneakers and white ankle socks. She knew she wouldn't need a touchup shave; not wanting to have the nurse shave her again, she herself had shaved her pubes, armpits, and legs with a safety razor and shaving cream, so all were completely smooth.

Audrey walked into the back bathroom. There were two other girls in the room. One was a thin but very sexy-looking brunette with a strong athletic body much like Audrey's, a pixy haircut, slight breasts and small pink nipples; the other was a short pretty girl Audrey recognized, a girl named Chloe Edwards. Chloe looked much softer than the other two girls; her hair was light brown and curly, and her C-cup breasts were tipped with dark brown nipples and large aureoles. Both of these girls were shaved bare like Audrey, and both, like her, wore only sneakers and socks.

It was killing day at the college. Audrey didn't know the details, but she did know that these two girls were, like herself, destined to die today. Like many colleges, Valleybrook University prided itself on doing its part to help balance the genders, and at least a dozen or so female students--or, sometimes, members of the faculty or staff--were eliminated every semester. Audrey--a pre-med major who planned a career as a physician--hadn't really wanted to enroll at Valleybrook, but it was close enough to her home to allow her to commute to class, thus eliminating dorm costs, which her family could not really afford. Various activities and some of the classes at the school required female participants to volunteer for a lottery which would select one of them to be killed, as was the case with the anatomy and physiology class. Audrey had been avoiding such classes and simply did not participate in extracurricular activities that asked for volunteers, but the anatomy and physiology class had been important to her major.

"Okay, girls," Alfred said, walking in behind Audrey. "You are all going to be putting on performances today, and there's nothing that'll spoil your show like making a mess in the middle of it. To avoid that, you're all going to have enemas." He pointed to a series of five toilets standing in a row. "Please move to one of the toilets, and we'll get started. I'm sorry we can't offer you any privacy, but we have to make do with what we have." All three walked to a toilet and sat down. Shaking his head and smiling, Alfred told them to stand up again; when they did he instructed them to lean over, hands on their knees. He then walked along in front them and pulled three large bags of liquid along an overhead slide until one was hanging in front of each of the girls. A tube with a long soft rubberized tip dangled from each one. Starting with the slim brunette, Alfred passed the tube between her legs, then slipped the rubberized tip into her anus. He then told them to sit down, making sure the tubes were arranged so they came up between their legs and that they weren't sitting on them. Once they all were in place, he opened the stopcocks and the warm water started to flow. "When you're full," he told them, "pull it out and let me know. We'll wash you out at least three times."

Sitting next to Audrey, the flat-chested brunette turned to her and introduced herself as Allison Kirk. "What's going to happen to you today?" she asked after Audrey had told her her name.

"I'm going to be vivisected. I'm in the anatomy class, and I was the one selected to be the subject for our final lab," Audrey explained. "I'm going to be cut open and dissected."

"While you're still alive."

"While I'm still alive, yes."

"I heard anatomy was hard to get into. Didn't you have to qualify for honors biology to take it?"

"Yes, you do." She sighed. "Not that that matters much for me now." She shook her head. "There's only twenty-two of us in the class, and we did a lot of tough class work all semester leading up to the final lab. I got chosen randomly out of the nineteen girls to be the class specimen, but going into the class no one knows which girl will be chosen to be vivisected at the end of the semester." She shrugged. "How about you?"

The thin girl gave a wan smile. "Same kind of deal. I'm in ROTC. Today we have a live-fire exercise. They've set up the football field with some makeshift bushes and cover and stuff, and I'm supposed to run around out there while my classmates try to shoot me."

"Maybe you'll get lucky... maybe you'll survive it."

"No," the other girl answered. "At the end--if I'm still alive at the end, and the girls who get chosen as running targets usually are--I'll be 'finished off' with a shot to the head. That is, as they say, the traditional way to end the exercise."

Audrey couldn't resist asking. "How do you feel about that?"

The brunette shrugged. "A lot of girls have to die to make things work, there's no reason I should be an exception," she answered, reciting the "party line." "I don't mind."

Audrey turned to the other girl. "Looks like you got chosen for something too, Chloe."

Chloe nodded. "We're all in the same place, really. You in biology, Allison in ROTC. For me it's American History. This afternoon, we get to study the fine old tradition of hanging. I got chosen to be the hangee." She smiled. "They're particularly interested in the fact that people who are hanged react sexually; Dr. Garriga has been keeping data for several years, he'll write a paper on it soon. He makes detailed comparisons between the way a woman acts when she's being fucked and when she's being hanged."

"It sounds like you're looking forward to it..." Audrey observed.

Chloe nodded. "I am, actually. Most of us have to die, Audrey. At least I get to have some fun with it. I'll get fucked several times before I die, fucked as many times as there are men in the class to fuck me, which unfortunately is just two, besides Dr. Garriga. Then, a short-drop hanging in the nude, the men examining me while I'm strangling."

Audrey frowned. "Aren't you afraid?"

"Well, yes. But I think I'll be okay with it--I've been thinking about volunteering myself for public execution anyway..." She looked distant. "My best friend, Mitzi, volunteered two months ago, I guess you knew about that?"

Audrey nodded. Over the past year, quite a few girls from her school had volunteered themselves for execution, several others had been sold into slavery and had gone to the meat-markets, and a few had been privately executed by for-hire executioners.

She remembered Mitzi, too. A tall blond, large-breasted and long-legged with sky-blue eyes; a classic cheerleader. "Yes, I heard about Mitzi. But I don't know how she died..."

"Yes, well, I went to the execution." Chloe's eyes took on a faraway cast. "Mitzi was really brave. You know that volunteers get to choose the way they die, and her boyfriend asked her to have them do a live-gutting. She agreed, she said she'd give him that as a going-away present. When it was her turn to be killed, the executioner tied her hands, then held her from behind, with his arm around her tits. Then he took this little hooked knife and stabbed the point in just above her cunt. Before she could even think, he ripped upward with it, slicing her belly wide open, all the way up to her breastbone. Then he bent her over forward, and her guts just fell right out of her, right there on the floor." Chloe shook her head. "It took a long time for her to die. I was surprised, there was so much blood. But the executioner let her kneel down and then he held her up by her hair; she shook and gagged and squirmed for at least ten minutes. It was a terrific show, really exciting."

Audrey grimaced. "That's how I'm going to die, too," she murmured. "A live gutting."

"It'll be different for you, though. You're going to vivisected. They'll open you up very carefully. You're not going to be ripped open like Mitzi was." She smiled. "It'll be even better, I think. You must be really excited!"

I wish I was, Audrey thought. Outwardly, she merely nodded; it would be different, yes, but I'll be just as dead.

"You ever seen an execution up-close, Audrey?" the thin girl asked.

Audrey closed her eyes for a moment, remembering. "Yes," she said, nodding. "A year ago. My best friend, a girl named Joan Lattimore--her dad decided to have her executed, and he decided to have it done at home, privately. They made a party out of it. Joan wanted me to come--I didn't want to, but she was my friend, I couldn't say no..." She closed her eyes again, seeing Joan's slim body, her curly dark hair cut into bangs over her forehead, her dark eyes, her pouty mouth.

"So you went."

"Yes. I came for dinner, and we had a nice meal--me, Joan, her parents, and her boyfriend Eddie. About an hour after dinner, the professional executioner they'd hired arrived. He was a big man, with a short beard. It was funny--he seemed nice, he seemed like a nice guy."

"Just because a man kills girls for a living doesn't mean he isn't nice," Chloe offered.

Not quite the way I think about it, Audrey told herself. But, again, she nodded. "Anyway, the executioner then asked Joan's dad how he wanted it done. He said that they had all talked it over beforehand, and they'd decided that she should be stabbed to death. He also told the executioner that they wanted it done so that it would take a little while for her to die, so they could all say good-bye to her while she was dying. Joan just sat there nodding, and she didn't look at all surprised, so I guess she knew all about it. It all sounded very romantic then."

"It does now, too. So what happened next?"

"Well, next, the executioner told them that executing a pretty girl like Joan was a real turn-on for him. He said he'd reduce the price by two hundred dollars if Joan's mom would consent to have sex with him while he was killing Joan." She paused. "Then he looked right at me and said he'd take off another four hundred if I'd do it too. Before I could say a word Joan's dad said I could have half of the four hundred if I agreed."

"Really?"

Audrey nodded.

"So did you?"

Audrey shrugged. "What could I say? They were my friend's parents, and this was the last night of her life. And, like I said, the man didn't seem bad. I hemmed and hawed for a minute, but finally I said okay."

"What about Joan's mom?"

"She said okay too. Maybe she felt under pressure to say yes, or maybe she would have anyway, I don't know."

Chloe licked her lips. "Wow..."

"Yeah. So we all went into the living room and we started talking about where it should be done. Joan suggested her bedroom, but the executioner said there's be a lot of blood and it would really make a mess. He said he'd noticed that they had a swimming pool, and he reminded us that it was a nice summer night, and suggested we do it out there. Everybody agreed with that, and we all went outside. It was strange--watching Eddie lead Joan out--she looked scared but she came right along, letting herself be led to the place where she was going to be killed... Anyway, once we were all out there the executioner asked that us girls get naked, so we all took off all our clothes. Eddie did too, and so did Joan's mom--everyone but her dad. Then they sat down in chairs to watch."

"Did the executioner get naked too?"

"No," Audrey answered, shaking her head. "I guess he wanted to look the part. He was wearing all black leather--pants, boots, vest open in the front to show his chest. When he was having sex with us he just unzipped his pants and took his dick out."

"Ooo. Was it big?"

Audrey shook her head. "Average, I'd say. He took it out right away, and he wanted me and Joan's mom to suck it some. We both knelt down in front of him; I sucked it first and it was pretty nice, it got all hard and bouncy in my mouth. Then Joan's mom took over for a while. She sucked him while he kissed me and played with my tits."

"Sounds nice..."

Audrey flushed a little. "It wasn't bad. Well, okay, it was exciting. It was more exciting when I looked over and saw that Eddie was fucking Joan. But all that didn't go on very long. Pretty soon the executioner stopped us and he stopped Eddie and Joan, too. He took Joan by the hand and led her over to the edge of the pool where there was a garden hose lying beside it and had her sit on the edge with her legs dangling in the water. She was trembling, there were tears in her eyes, and she was breathing in short hard gasps. But she sat there, she didn't move, and she didn't argue. He told her it was important that she not try to interfere with him and she might not be able to control her hands. So he took out some handcuffs. He told Joan to put her hands behind her back; she did, and he snapped the handcuffs on."

"So then he did it?"

"No, not right away. He called us all over. He arranged us, me sitting in a pool chair, Eddie behind Joan holding her shoulders, and Joan's mom standing beside Eddie. He told Joan to lean way back, and he turned on the hose. Then he took his knife out a sheath at his waist. It was shiny steel, long, sharp... he asked all us girls to kiss the blade, starting with Joan, and we all did. Then he rinsed the blade off for some reason, using the hose." She paused and sighed. "He knelt beside Joan and he told her it was time to begin. Her mother told her to be brave. Joan nodded and said that she'd try real hard, and she told her mom that she didn't mind being executed, and that she was ready to die. The executioner told her she was a good girl and put his hand on her chest, between her tits. She looked so scared I thought she was going to faint, she was just gasping for breath. But she didn't faint, and a second later he stabbed her in her belly, just under her navel. She let out a yell--like 'Uk!'--and she stretched herself back against Eddie. Her legs were thrashing around in the pool, splashing the water. She was squirming and her head was going back and forth and she was trembling so much--but the executioner pushed down on it hard, and it went in deeper, and she went stiff again."

"Oh, that sounds nice!" Chloe exclaimed. She was fingering her own belly below her navel.

You are crazy, Audrey thought. She shook her head. "I don't know about nice. I can't know what it was like for Joan. For me..." she trailed off.

"Yes?"

Audrey sighed. "For me it was weird. I was all bent out of shape about watching my friend being killed. But it was exciting, too. I won't say it wasn't." She sighed, "I'll never forget watching that blade going into her... the sound it made..."

"What happened next?"

"Well, the executioner left the knife sticking in Joan's belly and he picked her up and put her in a lounge chair so she could lay back. She groaned real loud when he moved her. Then he came over to me. He had me lean back in the chair and spread my legs, and then he stuck his cock into my pussy and started fucking me. I was really turned on, really excited, and I felt bad about that, because Joan was laying there with a knife sticking in her, dying. Eddie was right there with her, he was holding her shoulders and kissing her and all and telling her how brave she was. He was all excited too, his cock was just bouncing up and down, but Joan couldn't do anything, she was just lying there twisting from side to side and moaning. The executioner fucked me for a few minutes and then pulled out. He went back to Joan, leaned over her, and pulled the knife out of her. There was so much blood--it just gushed out. The executioner took the hose and started washing it away, and this long red streak started to appear in the pool. She just bled and bled, it went on for a long time. He had Joan's mom come over and suck his dick while he was washing the blood off, and the water and blood were washing around her knees, I was hoping he wasn't going to ask me to do that because I didn't want to kneel in the blood..."

"I would have," Chloe declared.

"I guess. Anyway, he finally put the hose down and by then there was just a little blood coming out of this neat little hole in her belly. She was still alive though, and still conscious, but she looked really weak. She'd stopped squirming and groaning, and she looked sleepy. The executioner seemed to be really satisfied with his work. He left Eddie and Joan talking--saying goodbye, I guess, I couldn't hear--and then he fucked Joan's mom for a few minutes, and her dad held her hands while she was being fucked." She sighed. "But he still didn't come. After a few minutes he pulled out again and went back to Joan. He told her he needed to hurry her along a little; she looked scared, but she didn't say anything. I stopped it at that point, though."

"You stopped it?"

"Well, just for a moment. I said hey, Joan is my best friend, I should have a chance to say good-bye too. The executioner said okay, go ahead. So I went over there and she held my hand for a minute and she said it wasn't so bad, it didn't hurt that bad anymore and she wasn't scared anymore. And she thanked me for being there to see her off."

"Wow. What happened next?"

"He pulled her up to a sitting position and straddled the lounge chair where she was lying, behind her, so his knees were against her back. Then he reached around her and he ran his knife into her side, up under her ribs. She screeched a little and jerked and twitched and trembled but he went right on, he pushed the knife right on in, all the way, and he did it real slow. Joan still didn't die, though."

"Sound like he knew what he was doing."

"I guess. He asked us all to gather 'round close, then. He said Joan wasn't going to last very much longer. I could see the hole in her belly and his knife sticking in her side, and I could see the fear in her eyes, too, in spite of what she'd said to me. I don't think she was feeling very much pain, though, not by then."

"Shock."

"I suppose. Anyway, he had us all gather close. He arranged us again, he had Eddie holding Joan's shoulders and Joan's mom's tits pressed against his back. Then he told me to get down and start sucking him, so I ended up kneeling in the blood anyway. He turned himself so I could see while I had his cock in my mouth. Then he jerked the knife out of Joan's side; she looked surprised, and before she got over looking surprised he ran it back into her, right under her breastbone. She gasped and her eyes got real big and she started to twitch wildly; her feet were sorta flipping back and forth. He pulled the knife back a little and slammed it in again, and I saw Joan's eyes roll back in her head and I knew she was dying, right then. He did too, I think, because he started coming in my mouth. By the time he finished coming, Joan had died."

"Did you swallow it?"

Audrey stared at her for a moment. "Yes," she replied finally. "I always do."

"What a great scene," Chloe breathed. Audrey started to reply, but before she could, Allison, who'd been listening to Audrey's story intently, suddenly gave a grunt. She raised her hand and called out to the nurse, telling him she was feeling really full--and it dawned on Audrey that she was too. Alfred came back over and removed the tubes--none of the three girls remembered his instruction that they should pull it out themselves--and each of them emptied her bowels into the toilet. The nurse flushed them, then, using fresh bags, reinserted the tubes.

"My little sister committed suicide one Saturday afternoon," Allison told them as the water began to flow again. Her eyes has a distant look. "It was funny... Cindy was a year younger than me, but looked enough like me that sometimes people took us for twins... she had this boyfriend a couple of years older than she was, and I guess he kinda talked her into it. Mom and dad were out, but I was home and so was my older brother Stu. I was watching TV, and Cindy came downstairs and said she was going to kill herself and would I like to watch? It was a real surprise."

"I'll bet," Chloe commented.

"Did she say why?" Audrey asked.

Allison nodded. "Like I said, her boyfriend Don--he was there, still upstairs. They'd been talking about it and watching some film where a girl stabbed herself and he'd been telling her how much it turned him on to see a girl stab herself. She said--playfully, maybe, I dunno--maybe I'll do that for you someday. He told her he didn't believe she had the guts to kill herself with a knife. She decided to prove him wrong, right then and there."

"Wow," Chloe breathed. "Cool... so what'd she do?"

"Well, we went and got Stu--he was outside, working on his car--and Cindy went into the kitchen and got the biggest knife she could find. Then we all went into the bathroom. She said she was going to do it in the bathtub so she didn't make a big mess for mom to clean up when she came home. She was really cool about it, very calm... that surprised me at the time. Anyway, she took off all her clothes and she sat down in the bathtub; she'd turned the water on first, so it was running, she said she did that so the blood would wash on down. Don handed her the knife--she'd asked him to hold it while she was undressing--and laughed. He said he was sure she wasn't going to do anything."

"But she did," Chloe prompted.

"Oh, yes. She sure did. She asked him where he wanted to see her stick it in, and he poked her belly under her navel. So she turned it around and poked herself with the point and said 'here?' and he said, 'yeah, right there.' She was poking right here." Allison touched a spot on her own belly, perhaps two inches below her navel. "Then she sorta cupped both her hands over the back end of the knife, her hands down between her legs, and she pushed a little. Donny laughed again. When he did she glared at him, and she suddenly pushed really hard and really fast and about half the blade went right into her belly."

"Damn," Chloe whispered.

"Yeah. It looked to me like she even surprised herself. She half sat up, her mouth was open in a little 'O,' and her eyes were just starting out of her head. Don was just stunned; we were all staring, that big wide blade was stuck in her belly and blood was already running out and washing down the drain. Cindy looked down at it, then looked at all of us, with this like 'what have I done?' expression on her face. She bent forward and Stu put his hand on her shoulder and told her she couldn't stop now."

"He was right, I guess..." Audrey murmured.

"I'm sure he was. Cindy was still bent way over, but she turned her head and just stared at him for a minute or two, then looked back at Don. Then she got this really desperate look on her face and she pulled the rest of the blade right up inside of herself, the whole damn thing. She kind of folded over on herself then. She was shaking and gasping for breath; she kept lifting her head and there were tears running down her cheeks. None of us did anything, we just stood there watching her. Finally she straightened up and sorta choked out that she couldn't get it back out of herself."

"Did she manage?" Chloe asked. "I know that can be hard..."

Allison shook her head. "No. Don knelt down on the floor and he told her to let go of it. She shook her head, but, after a minute, she did. It didn't even move, it was in so deep... Anyway, Don reached over and grabbed it, and before she could say or do anything, he tore it out of her. Blood just came squirting out, and Cindy doubled over again, grabbing at her belly, moaning, gasping, and sobbing."

"Dying..." Audrey put in.

"Yes. But not very fast. Don and Stu helped her sit back up straight, and they were both telling her she needed to do it again. She shook her head and she cried, but the boys told her that all she was going to do by refusing was make herself suffer longer. Finally they got her to lie down and Don gave the knife back to her. He told her to put the point right here." Allison touched her own body just below her breastbone. "She did, she stood it straight up there. Her head was turned, she was looking at us, there were tears all streaked down her cheeks and blood at the corner of her mouth. She looked just pathetic. The boys started urging her on, telling her to drive it in. They were both really turned on, they had these huge hard-ons... Cindy shook her head at first, but then Stu said it would bring things to an end quicker, and after a while she started to nod. Still, she didn't do anything, and I was wondering if she was going to pass out before she could, she was bleeding like crazy. The boys kept after her, though; Don leaned over and kissed her and told her he loved her and told her that what she was doing was just really beautiful. Finally she closed her eyes and tensed her arms and then she did it, she drove it right in."

"Brave girl," Chloe commented.

"I thought so. She didn't even get half of it in that time, and Don started yelling at her, telling her to push harder, to get it deeper. She yelled too, and kind of arched her body up and pushed another few inches of it in. It went in with this funny wet tearing sound... Don didn't let up, and she did it again, and this time it went way deep. Blood just came gushing up around it, and she fell back, this kind of stunned expression on her face. She was just kind of staring past us then, and she looked really calm, but her body started bouncing and jerking in a weird way, splashing the water and throwing blood around the room. A minute later it just stopped, and her hands fell off the knife and she just laid there, staring. She wasn't breathing. I guess she was dead."

"That was a great suicide..." Chloe breathed. "Just great."

"It almost went bad, though," Allison continued. "My folks called the police when they came home, of course. They acted like they thought Don had killed her, and of course he had no legal right to do that. When they found his prints on the knife they were ready to charge him, but Stu and I backed up his story and finally they listed it as a suicide."

"How's it coming, girls?" Alfred said, walking back over to them.

"I think I'm ready," Audrey said. "Cramping a little..."

"That's normal." Alfred shut off the water, then reaching down and rubbed her lower belly with a firm hand; it did, Audrey told herself, help. Reaching between her legs, he pulled the tube out of her, then repeated the action with the other two. After the girls had emptied themselves, he again flushed the toilets, reinserted the tubes, and turned the water back on. "Last time," he said as he turned away.

"Almost time," Allison said, "for us to die." She stared straight ahead, her face expressionless. "Funny. I never thought it would end this way for me."

"I always knew it would," Chloe said. "I can't wait. I know it'll hurt, but then I'll get to that death orgasm. I just can't imagine, I can't wait."

I can wait, Audrey told herself. I could wait for years.

"You scared, Allison?" Chloe asked.

The thin girl shrugged. "Yes. I'm afraid to die, and I'm scared of the pain. But I can't let myself think like that. I have to go out on that field and let them shoot at me. I don't think I'll make it too hard for them to hit me, either. And at the end--if I can--I'll kneel down and hold my head up and let them shoot me in the head. I'll do that because that's what's right."

"I don't feel a lot different myself," Audrey noted. "I think--"

"I think you girls are about done," Alfred said, walking back into the room. Chloe voiced a mild protest, but he shut down the water, pulled the plugs out, and allowed them to evacuate a third time. He then had them step into a shower, stand in a line, and bend over; using a hand spray, he carefully washed down each girl's rear end. Tossing them towels, he told them to dry off, then come out to his outer office. They obeyed, but they'd hardly gotten themselves seated before Alfred called Chloe back to the examining room. Left waiting, Audrey's nervousness and her feeling of hopelessness increased as the time grew closer. She was sure Allison felt the same way.

"We have to do it," she said after a moment, speaking as much to herself as to the thin girl. "Like you said, it's what's right."

Allison nodded. "Girls can't refuse to be killed," she agreed. "Things'll break down. We have to set an example, if nothing else. We have to let them kill us." She took a very deep breath. "We have to let them strangle us, stick knives in us, shoot bullets into us, tear our bodies apart. We have to go to our deaths willingly and cheerfully. It's our duty."

"Yes," Audrey murmured. "Our duty..."

The examining room door opened, and Chloe came out. She had dressed; she was clad in a very pretty party dress and heels. While Alfred watched, she said her good-byes to Audrey and Allison and left the room. Alfred then took Allison back to the examining room, leaving Audrey alone with her thoughts. After what seemed to her like a very short time, the thin girl came back out, still naked except for her shoes and socks. She gave Audrey a quick hug, then turned and walked out the door, her head high and her shoulders back. I'll go out like that too, Audrey promised herself. Alfred summoned her; she turned and walked into his examining room.

"You," he told her as they walked back, "will need a little more preparation than Chloe and Allison, and that's going to take a little more time. That's why I left you for last." He led her to the sink, then sat down on a stool beside it. He asked her to turn around and bend over, and when she did he stuck a finger far up into her anus to feel how clean her large intestine was. Finding everything satisfactory, he had her stand up, turn back around, and spread her legs. He then felt around her pubic region carefully for any missed hairs.

"Put one foot up on the edge of the sink, Audrey," Alfred asked. She obeyed without question, and he probed her vagina deeply with two fingers of one hand while rubbing her belly with his other hand. "You look great to me," he said, pulling his fingers out. He gestured toward a standing chair nearby, and Audrey sat down in it. "Audrey, you know you're going to be vivisected today; your instructor is going to cut you open and take your insides out. The procedure will result in your death, of course, but I'm sure you have no problem accepting that."

I have a big problem accepting that, Audrey thought. But outwardly, she just nodded.

"You do have a problem the other two girls don't have, though," Alfred went on. "Chloe will be hanged, she won't have many choices to make. Allison is going to be shot, and where and how she's hit is unpredictable, she may die an easy death and she may suffer, we can't know. In your case, we have to take steps to ensure that you don't go into shock, which means that, under ordinary circumstances, you'd experience a great deal of pain. Besides that, you have much more of an active role to play than they do. You can't scream and thrash around. If you do the demonstration won't go well at all."

"I understand," she answered. "I plan to do my best."

"Your best," he said dryly, "isn't going to be good enough. For that reason, I'm going to give you a series of injections to help you control the pain. It won't eliminate it, it'll just mute it. You have to do the rest yourself, you have to be disciplined. Remember, it isn't going to go well if you scream and thrash around." He stood up, opened a drawer in the cabinet near the sink, and took out a tray. Several pre-loaded syringes lay on it. He picked one up and took the cap off the needle. Audrey gazed at it blankly, then offered him her arm.

"No," he told her. "This is a spinal, it goes in your neck."

Cooperatively, Audrey turned around, bent her head forward, and held her hair out of the way. Alfred leaned over her, rubbed her neck, and, very gently, started inserting the needle. Almost immediately she felt a strong sharp pain and a sense of extreme discomfort. Giving voice to a low groan, she held onto her knees tightly.

"Easy," Alfred said. "I know this hurts, but it's nothing compared to what you'd experience without it. The needle has to go between the bones in your neck." He pushed it deeper; the pain increased sharply. Audrey groaned again and had to force herself not to squirm. Then, suddenly, there was a different kind of pain, not as sharp but somehow stranger. She felt a odd sensation, like a coolness washing down her back.

Alfred pulled the needle out of her neck; the pain started to fade. "Good girl," he told her, patting her bare back. "Turn back to face me now." She obeyed; she felt a little odd.

"Are we finished?" she asked. Her voice was flat and lifeless and sounded somewhat hollow to her.

"No, not yet," Alfred told her. He reached forward and touched her belly, running his fingernail up the center line of her body from just below her navel. "Mike's going to cut you open along this line," he told her. "And he'll take your entrails out through the incision. Are you looking forward to it, Audrey?"

She looked up at him, trying to decide whether to be honest with him or not. In part because of what was taught at Valleybrook, a lot of girls did look forward to deaths like this, expecting to find the experience erotic. Chloe, she told herself, had exactly the right attitude.

But Audrey decided on honesty. "No," she said, shaking her head. "I'm really scared. That's all I feel, scared. Scared and hopeless."

"I suspected as much. We want to try to fix that." He picked up another syringe from the tray and popped the cap. Bending forward, he touched the point to the skin of Audrey's belly, just above her navel, and slipped it carefully and gently in. The pain was minor; she watched as he pushed the plunger and the pinkish fluid inside disappeared. "That," he told her as he pulled the needle out, "will help diffuse the pain and discomfort as your abdomen is cut open and your organs are removed. Let me remind you, it won't eliminate it, not completely. It'll just help you deal with it."

"I understand."

"Good." He laid the empty syringe aside and picked up another. When he popped the cap on this one, Audrey saw that it was tipped with an atomizer head, not a needle. "Spread your legs," Alfred told her. She obeyed; he slipped the tip into her vagina and pushed the plunger. This time, she felt a sensation of warmth.

"What was that one for?" she asked.

"First, it'll make your vagina much more elastic than usual," he answered. "And that'll help with some of the procedures. The other effect it has should become obvious to you in a moment." He smiled and picked up yet another syringe. "Now I'll take that arm," he told her. She offered it again, he located the vein below her elbow and injected a straw-yellow fluid. He then leaned back, laid the syringe aside, and watched her. "How are you feeling now?"

She took stock of herself. There was a warm tingling around her genitals and they were now a little wet, even though she didn't feel especially aroused. Her nipples felt slightly hypersensitive. She thought she knew how she was supposed to respond, what the atomizer spray and the final injection were supposed to do. "I'm not really sure," she temporized.

Alfred stood up, unzipped his pristine white trousers, and pulled out his penis. It wasn't even slightly erect. "What do you want to do with that?" he asked her, almost challengingly.

She could not misunderstand now. Although the idea of having sex with him was not in the slightest appealing to her, she told him what she knew he wanted to hear. "I want to suck it," she said, trying to sound sensual. "And I want you to put it inside me."

He grinned. "No, you don't. Not yet, at least. But that was a good answer. That's the sort of answer you're expected to give, and you were pretty convincing, too. Most men would have been convinced." He tucked himself back into his pants and zipped them up.

She looked up at his face. "But not you."

"No, not me. I've seen far too much of it. Remember, I do this every semester." He smiled; Audrey was finding that her respect for Alfred had jumped a couple of notches, and she suddenly liked him more than she had before. "You were very controlled about it. Quite a few of the girls in your position react to that question by grabbing my dick and stuffing it into their mouths."

She smiled back. "And do you let them suck it?"

"Depends," he said unwaveringly, "on the girl." He reached out and patted her knee with apparent affection. "Now listen to me, Audrey, because this is important."

She nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Since you enrolled here at Valleybrook, you've been told that girls should look forward to their own executions because they can be intensely erotic. There are some, like Chloe, who buy into this--you heard her mention the 'death orgasm.' But most don't."

Her eyes widened a little. "They don't?"

"No. Most of them are like you, they're just scared. They don't want to die. But they walk to their own deaths freely--just as you are doing--because they know it's what they have to do; exactly what Allison was saying a while ago. It is, all the talk about there being too many women in the world is absolutely true and a look around any of your classes proves it." Audrey nodded, and Alfred went on: "But the idea that for a woman, death is somehow the ultimate orgasm--that's the great myth." He shook his head. "Well, it's a myth we promote at Valleybrook, and a lot of other colleges promote it as well. For all we know it's true. Every woman or girl who could tell us is dead and can't talk about it."

"But I thought..."

"I know what you thought. What I want to impress on you is, that's what your classmates think, too. And that's what we want them to keep thinking."

"But why? If it isn't true..."

"Because, my dear," Alfred said, "it makes it easier. Chloe believes it. She'll go to her death in high spirits, and by the time she realizes the myth isn't true--and again, let me stress, we do not know it isn't true, we just don't know that it is--it'll be too late. Audrey, girls and women must die, and they must die in large numbers, to make today's society work. Maintaining a myth to help them through it is not a bad thing." He paused and shook his head. "You might as well know," he went on, "that this 'myth' is something that colleges and universities all over the world deliberately promote. It was started at Harvard decades ago, and it was quickly found--research was done, of course--that the myth greatly increases acceptance and volunteerism among educated women."

She peered at him closely. "So you want me to... play the role." He nodded. "Why me?" she flared suddenly, her voice rising. "And what's supposed to get me through it?"

"Why you," he answered promptly, "is, because you are female, you volunteered in order to be in the anatomy class, and you had the bad luck to be the girl in that class that Mike found the most appealing. You--"

"That was it? That was the criterion? That I was the one Dr. Roberts found the... the... sexiest?"

"Yes." He pointed a finger at her. "But that's a perfectly valid basis for the choice, Audrey. If he picks the least attractive girl the other students won't be as attentive when he's taking her apart. Take it as a compliment; it is one."

She shook her head. "Not one I wanted."

"I'm sure." He held up a hand, silencing further comments from her. "You also asked me what's going to help you get through it. The drugs I've already given you--and some that Mike will use during the course of the vivisection--will help. But Audrey--and this is important--I don't tell every girl scheduled for vivisection this. Some I just drug much more heavily than I've drugged you. Vivisection is a long drawn-out process, a very slow death--you've drawn a much harder task than Chloe, or Allison, or your friend Joan. And you are a very bright girl, I could see it in your face and I could hear it when you were telling your story. You have doubts about the myth. And you would have, I think, expressed exactly what you were experiencing at each stage of the process."

Audrey pursed her lips. "Probably," she agreed.

"Including the fact that you weren't finding it erotic--if that was the case."

She hesitated. "I guess."

"All I can say is... don't. You know why, now. Let them have the myth. A lot of them will be executed at some point. Don't take it away from them, don't make things harder for them."

"But I have to get through it on... what?"

"The drugs. The drugs, and your own self-discipline, knowing you're doing what's right. Can you do that?"

She didn't answer for a few seconds. "All I can say is, I'll try. I understand the importance of it. I'll do my best."

"No one could ask for more." He glanced up at the clock. "You have a little time before you need to go. Stay here and relax if you want."

She looked at the clock too. "Okay." She threw him a quick glance. "Alfred, would you like me to suck your dick before I go let them kill me?"

He laughed. "Why are you asking me that? You don't need to convince me you're all that turned on at the moment."

"That's not why I asked. I think what you're doing here is important. I'd like to do that for you, but only if you'd like it."

"Why thank you, Audrey." He unzipped his pants again. "That would be very nice, yes."

A little more than a half-hour later, wearing only her sneakers and socks and with the taste of Alfred's semen still in her mouth, she walked nude out through the nurse's office and out into the hallway toward the science classrooms. A couple of teachers who saw her in the empty hallway waved to her or spoke a few words of greeting.

One of these--Marvin Thompson, her math teacher--stopped her for a moment. "We missed you in class yesterday," he remarked, looking her up and down. "I can see why. You were chosen for something today, right?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir. Vivisection in anatomy and physiology 207."

"Ah, that explains it." He stared fixedly at her breasts. "Going to be cut open, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

Thompson smiled. "You're a beautiful subject, Audrey." He reached out and touched her breasts lightly. She stood still and let him do whatever he wanted. "I wish I was in the class. You do know that the viivisections Roberts conducts are as much sex education as anatomy, and the subjects are expected to have sex while..."

"While they're killing her? Yes, sir, I do know that."

He laughed. "While they're vivisecting you, Audrey. They aren't killing you. You will die as a result of the vivisection, but the idea is not just to kill you. There's a big difference."

"Not to me."

He didn't argue, he just teased her nipples. "That class has already started... I wish you had a little more time..."

"So do I, Dr. Thompson."

He grinned; she knew how he'd taken that statement, and didn't bother to correct him. "Well, you don't." He stroked her belly gently. "Off with you, now."

"Yes, sir." She disengaged and walked on.

Arriving at the classroom, Audrey hesitated in front of the door for a moment. At that moment, she was hardly remembering her talk with Alfred. If you walk through that door, she told herself, they're going to kill you. They're going to cut you open, take out most of your insides, and then watch you die. She looked down at her naked body and wondered how it was going to feel to have someone cut into it with a knife. She was still, she admitted to herself, terrified. She did not want to die; she had been sure when she signed up for this course and signed the obligatory "volunteer" papers that she would not be the one chosen--after all, the odds had been in her favor. It was worth the risk, the course would have looked so good on her resume, and, in her world, a good resume could go far toward keeping a young woman alive.

But she'd lost that bet. She turned around; the hallway was at that moment empty. Not far away was a door leading outside. If she made a run for it, no one would chase her, no one would try to stop her. She was not a criminal or a lottery choice and had not been converted to slave status, there was no law requiring her to submit to the vivisection even though her parents had given their permission, they had not made a formal legal request for her execution. She could live; at least for another day, another week, another month. Her parents would be bitterly disappointed in her and she would certainly have problems with the school, but she'd be alive. She studied the tile floor for a moment, then looked up at the trees visible through a window. Amazing, she told herself, how beautiful they looked right now. One thought kept running through her head: she did not want to die. She wanted to live, very badly.

She sighed deeply. Then she turned back, opened the door, and walked into the classroom.

Roberts was just finishing a lecture on some of the vivisection procedures as she came in. He, and all the students as well, were wearing white lab coats that fell to their knees. Underneath, Audrey knew, they were all nude; she also knew that this was done--in part, at least--because at times the blood splashed, and it often soaked right through a lab coat--presuming they kept the lab coats on and closed throughout, which she knew was, in fact, unheard-of. There was a locker room in the back with showers to allow them to clean up afterwards. Everyone looked up at her as she came in and, just inside the door, stopped. Roberts and the three boys in the class in particular stared at her fixedly, and that made her feel a little better.

"All set, Audrey?" Roberts asked.

"Yes," she replied, forcing her voice to be steady. "I am."

"Excellent. Please hop up here on the lab table, and we'll begin. Class, please gather round."

Slowly, Audrey walked to the lab table and climbed up onto it. The students stood up and gathered around as Roberts turned on the overhead high-intensity lights. He told Audrey to sit on the tabletop, to remove her shoes and socks, and to lean back against a rubber-covered backrest he placed on top.

"Okay," he said when she took up her position and had discarded her shoes. "Knees up, legs spread now." She complied, exposing her clean-shaven pubes to her classmates. "Arms down, hands on the tabletop. Good." He peered at her face. "We can," he told her, "manacle your wrists and ankles if necessary. You think you can control your hands? You can't grab at the knife when I'm cutting you."

Audrey nodded. She had not forgotten her father's admonitions, or the nurse's instructions. "I'm sure I can, Dr. Roberts. You don't need to manacle me."

"Good." He turned back to the class. "Audrey's been examined by the nurse, who reports that she's completely healthy. As you know, we are going to take this opportunity to observe the internal anatomy of the human body, but that can be done with a cadaver or even with a computer model. What cannot be studied in a cadaver or with a computer model are the physiological processes, those can only be seen in a living subject. We will therefore be focusing on these, in particular Audrey's responses to sexual stimuli." He smiled. "I am quite sure no one will object to that!" The class tittered lightly. "In any case, our first task is the placement of sensors which will allow us to observe her physiological processes in a rigorous way. The electrical activity in her heart and her blood pressure will be monitored by ultrasonic equipment built in to the table, but for her sexual responses we need more sensitive measurements." He took a long cable from the computer next to the lab table and brought it over, a cable that ended in four separate leads.

He glanced back at the other students. "Kelly," he said, offering Audrey's friend a finger-sized black plastic cylinder which was attached to one of the four leads. "Would you please place this anal sensor in its proper location?" he asked. He smiled. "I'm sure you can figure out where it goes!"

Kelly took it, then turned to Audrey. "This is a little weird," she said with a giggle.

Audrey shrugged. "Just put it in, Kelly."

"Okay... let me know if I'm hurting you..." she said. She placed the end of the sensor against Audrey's pink puckered anus and began pressing it in. Audrey tried to relax her sphincter muscle. "I don't think it's going in right," Kelly said, a note of concern in her voice.

"Audrey, please grab your knees and pull them back," Roberts ordered. "That's it. Now Kelly, start by pressing your finger into the sphincter to relax it. Then swap the sensor for your finger quickly."

Kelly pressed her index finger against Audrey's pink rosette, and felt it go in. Audrey's muscle relaxed somewhat as the soft finger entered, and Kelly felt it relax. "Oh, that works," Kelly said as she quickly pulled out her finger and pressed the sensor in. She pushed on until it was out of sight, leaving only the wire protruding.

"Good job, Kelly," noted Roberts. He looked around at the students again. "Tom," he said, pointing to a slender dark-haired boy. "Would you do the honors with the nipple electrodes, please?" Nodding, Tom stepped forward and Roberts offered him two leads. Each had a heavy needle, two and a half long inches long and perhaps a sixteenth in diameter, attached to the end. The steel shaft was divided into three sections by narrow black bands, one very close to the end where the wire was attached. "You push them into her nipples," Roberts explained. "Right down the center. Get them all the way in. Don't worry about losing them in there, it won't matter, they're disposable, we won't have to take them out." He indicated the divisions. "The point," he explained, "will end up in her lung, and the computer will use that to monitor her respiration. The middle section will monitor the level of activity in her chest muscles, and the back end will remain in the nipple itself, which we trust will react to erotic stimuli."

Tom held it awkwardly. "Shouldn't it be... sterile?" he asked.

Roberts smiled. "It really doesn't matter, now does it?" he replied--and Audrey winced mentally at the meaning behind his words. It indeed did not matter; she'd be dead long before she had a chance to develop an infection from a non-sterile needle.

Hesitantly, the boy approached Audrey, who waited with a nervous look on her face. He carefully pressed the point of one of the needles into the center of her left nipple, then paused. "I guess," he said, "I shouldn't even ask if I'm hurting you..."

Audrey stared at the big needle. "It doesn't matter if it hurts me, Tom," she said, surprising herself with how calm her voice sounded. "It needs to be done. I'm ready. Just go ahead and do it." The boy nodded again and pushed on the needle. It folded her nipple in; he pushed harder and the point popped through the surface. Audrey, watching it, flinched and bit her lip, but she nodded as well. "It only hurts a little," she said, although she told herself that this was an exaggeration; it wasn't excruciating, but it hurt more than a little. Tom, seemingly more confident, pushed on, and the big needle started sliding into her chest. Still holding her lower lip with her teeth, Audrey watched it go in--and as it went, she wondered if she was supposed to be feeling the sharp pain the point was producing as it cut through her breast. She saw the final black division approaching her nipple, when suddenly there was a deep heavy pain far down in her chest. She gasped and flinched. Tom stopped pushing and looked up at her.

"That reaction," Roberts noted, "probably means the point has entered her lung. Go ahead, Tom." Tom nodded and pushed on, stopping when only the tip of the needle remained visible. "No, keep going, it has to go in a little further," Roberts said. Tom pushed down on it with his thumb to get the last few millimeters in, after which Audrey was left with a fine wire emerging from the center of her nipple.

He then moved to her other breast, centered the other needle on the nipple, and began to repeat the procedure. Knowing now what to expect, Audrey forced herself to endure the pain without reaction.

But, well before the needle was down to the point where the other had caused the deep heavy pain, she was abruptly hit by a much stronger and sharper pain. She gasped, her eyes flew wide open, and her hands clawed at the table. Tom frowned, pushed again, and Audrey gasped louder and started to squirm.

"I hit something hard," Tom said, almost apologetically. He let go of the needle altogether, leaving it buried in her nipple with an inch of the shaft exposed.

"It hurts bad..." Audrey added, almost desperately.

"What's happened is that you've hit one of her ribs," Roberts explained. "You'll need to go around it. First, pull the needle back a little." Tom did; Audrey visibly relaxed as the sharp pain faded. "Now, what you have to do it move the point either up or down so that it passes between her ribs. It may help to palpate her breast and see if there's intercostal space--the space between ribs--close above or close below where you have it." He then grinned down at Audrey. "Or you can just do it by trial and error. You'll cause Audrey considerable pain each time you hit the rib, but I think our subject can handle it."

Tom, however, was already palpating her breast by the time Roberts finished speaking, pushing his fingertips in hard. "I think I've found the space," he said. He angled the needle downward a bit, then pushed it deeper. Audrey stiffened, waiting for the sharp pain that she'd feel if he hit her rib again, but this time the needle slipped on in smoothly--and it ended with the same deep pain she'd felt before, which was much milder than the pain of having her rib poked. "Got it," Tom said as he pushed the rear end of the probe out of sight. As he turned away, everyone could see the raging erection punching his lab coat outwards.

"Now," Roberts said, "the clitoral sensor." Holding up another needle electrode, he moved toward Audrey. "This one I'll do myself, since it has to follow a very specific path." Standing between Audrey's legs, he told her to spread her knees. "This," he told her, "won't hurt even as much as the needle electrodes did." With that, he located the point just above her clitoris and swiftly shoved the tip of the needle in. Once it was started, he shoved it on in firmly. Audrey jerked and frowned--he'd lied, this was at least as painful as the placing of the nipple electrodes--but she made no sound. When the needle was in place, it, like the others, could not be seen at all.

Roberts looked at the PC and saw that all of the sensors were working. "You can now see Audrey's normal sexual physiological state on the screen. Now, we want to try to bring her to orgasm." He smiled at Audrey. "You like boys or girls? Or both?"

Her cheeks colored slightly. "Boys," she answered.

"Fine. Just lean back and relax, and spread your legs as wide as you comfortably can." He turned back to the class, where the remaining two boys were standing close to the table. "Carl," he said, gesturing toward a strong-looking young man with unruly reddish hair and a short beard. "Let's have you here, between her legs." As he moved into position, Audrey smiled at him--of the boys in the class, Carl was easily her favorite. "And you, Jim, you can stimulate her breasts." Jim, tall and blond, stepped up as requested. "Don't worry about the needle electrodes, gentlemen," he went on. "The drugs she's been given should make any pain she feels from them negligible, or maybe even exciting. Keep going until she starts showing signs of arousal. I've turned one of the PC screens so you can all see from where you are. Everyone else, please watch carefully."

Jim began lightly massaging Audrey's breasts, first with his fingertips, and then moving on to kneading them slowly. This time, Roberts was correct; there was a little pain from the needles, but it wasn't bad. Audrey's small pink nipples hardened. "That does feel good," she said honestly, closing her eyes and arching her back. Her legs were spread, her knees bent.

Carl was by then caressing Audrey's belly and legs. Watching closely, Roberts told him to begin lightly rubbing her pubes. With her legs spread her outer lips had parted slightly, exposing a small pair of inner lips and a delicate clitoris. Both boys were reacting themselves, their lab coats beginning to protrude in front.

Tom, meanwhile, had not lost any of his erection. He was watching from the side, and after a moment he eased up close to Barbara Peele, a tall girl with long light brown hair who was standing in front of him. He allowed his hard cock to touch her rear end; her response was to push back toward him. Soon they were grinding into each other as they watched Audrey become more excited.

Roberts noticed what they were doing and grinned. "We do understand," he said, "that it's pretty arousing to watch a pretty girl like our Audrey here being sexually stimulated. You cannot imagine, I assure you, how much effort it has taken to get all the proper permissions to run this class the way we run it. You must remember, though, that this is primarily a laboratory demonstration. You must pay attention; you will be tested on this material later. However, there is no reason you should not enjoy it, either. If you want to take off your lab coats, if you want to masturbate, or to couple with one of your classmates, you are free to do so. Just don't let yourself get so distracted that you don't learn what you're here to learn."

Barbara wasted no time; she threw off her lab coat immediately, revealing an exquisite long-legged and high-breasted body. "I'm ready right now!" she declared. Several of the students laughed, but Tom followed suite quickly. Barbara leaned forward, her hand on the edge of the lab table, and Tom slipped his raging erection into her from behind. Watching them, Jim unbuttoned his lab coat with one hand while still rubbing Audrey's breast with the other, and began to slowly work his erection with his hand. Carl, meanwhile, began to focus on Audrey's clitoris with one finger. Audrey, who'd turned her head to watch Tom and Barbara, was now bucking slightly and moaning audibly, and her hips were moving in small circles. Looking up at Jim, seeing him stroking his erections, she reached for it with her hand, and he shifted position to allow her to hold and gently pump it while Carl continued to stimulate her clitoris. She grinned broadly; at that moment, in spite of the needle electrodes buried in her body, she was having fun. Boys were rare enough in her world that for a girl to be interacting sexually with more than one at a time was a very rare thing; and she understood, as she had not before, some of reasons for Chloe's enthusiasm.

"Looks like things are progressing nicely," Roberts said with a smile. "Carl, why don't you slip a couple of your fingers inside Audrey's vagina and begin sliding them back and forth? Carl obeyed instantly; Audrey moaned a bit more loudly. What the boys were doing to her was both pleasant and exciting, but she could not entirely push her awareness of what was to come out of her mind, and it seemed to be holding back her orgasm.

She wanted to give them one, she wanted this demonstration to be a complete success. "Can one of you kiss me? Please?" she asked.

She expected a response from Jim--who was close to her head--but Carl quickly pre-empted him. "Sure can," he said quickly. He half-climbed onto the table and leaned forward, kissing her deeply while he kept stimulating her genitals. She, in turn, began massaging his rigid cock slowly with her right hand while still working Jim's with her left. It wasn't long before her body stiffened as she started to have her orgasm.

"As you can all see from looking at the screen," Roberts told them, "Audrey is definitely at the plateau of an orgasm. Her respiration is rate is up around 30, and her heart rate is elevated to 140. Look at the muscle tension shown by the nipple electrodes; it's eighteen times normal, compared to when she's not aroused. And here you can see the spasming in her anus. All of her pelvic muscles are regularly contracting now, and I bet Carl can feel Audrey's vaginal contractions."

"Oh yes, Dr. Roberts," Carl said, breaking the kiss. "I sure can."

Audrey's orgasm faded away and she started to relax; Carl slipped his fingers out of her. Yielding the field to Carl, Jim moved back. One of the girls, a willowy blonde named Anne who'd already shed her own lab coat, caught Jim by the hand almost immediately. In seconds she was on her knees in front of him, eagerly sucking him. Another girl, a heavily freckled redhead named Denise whose lab coat was hanging open, moved close and started kissing him, putting his hands on her breasts. Carl stayed close to Audrey, gently caressing her torso and thighs. Still holding his cock, she smiled up at him.

Roberts let the caressing and sex go on for a few minutes. "Okay, class," he said finally, "I know you're having a good time, but it's now time to see what's inside of this fine young woman, and, before we can do that, we have to cut her open. Tom, would you bring the cart out from the back room, please?"

Tom looked up, a little surprised; he was still fucking Barbara from behind. "Sure, Dr. Roberts," he said. He pulled out of the girl and, his erection bouncing, walked to the back room. Seconds later, he returned pushing a long lab cart that had a tray of surgical instruments laid out on it, and several stainless steel and glass pans arranged on the top and bottom shelves. Some were as large as a large turkey pan, and some were the size of a lunch box. Audrey could not help but stare at it. These, she told herself, were the instruments Roberts would use to kill her.

"Please pull that right up here, and put two large pans up on the lab table," said Roberts.

Tom did as he was asked, and then went back to Barbara. "Wait, not yet," she said when he started to enter her again. "I don't want to miss any of this."

"Actually," Tom agreed with a grin, "neither do I." He stood beside her; she held his cock in her hand, and he cupped one hand around one of her breasts. The other students packed in close, watching intently.

Roberts picked up a scalpel from the tray. "As I've mentioned, Audrey's been given some injections to help her control the pain," he told the class. "It doesn't mean she won't experience any, though." He studied Audrey's face. "You have to do your part," he reminded her, echoing the nurse. "How do you feel?"

She looked up at him with wide innocent eyes. "Right now," she replied, "I feel okay..."

He tousled her hair. "Scared?"

Terrified, she thought. Panicked. Outwardly she forced a smile. It was small and fragile, but it was there. "Yes... a little..."

"That's normal," Roberts said carelessly. He laid the edge of the scalpel on her skin, just above her pubic mound. "Okay, let's get started here. Keep me posted on how you're doing, Audrey." He pressed lightly and dragged the scalpel up toward her navel. The keen blade parted Audrey's skin cleanly, and a long red line appeared behind the scalpel--as if it were a pen drawing a fine red line on her belly. A small amount of blood began to ooze from the incision. The class had become absolutely quiet as the students watched this first cut.

"How does that feel?" Roberts asked, stopping just below Audrey's navel.

"It stings," she responded, staring fixedly at the knife, which was still lying against her belly. "But just a little. I'm still doing okay..."

"Good. We'll proceed, then. Kelly, would you get the sealant from the cart and a couple of large retractors?"

Kelly, who had also unbuttoned her lab coat, had been lightly rubbing her crotch as she watched Roberts slice into Audrey's belly. She picked up a tube of surgical sealant and a small brush from the tray, two retractors, and stood close, holding them. Carl, evidently planning to get out of the way, took his hand off Audrey's leg and started to move back.

"No," she protested quickly. "No, please, stay with me, keep touching me," she told him. "It helps, it helps a lot..."

Carl grinned and, moving closer again, laid his hand on her thigh close to her groin and positioned himself so his face was close to hers. He touched her cheek, then put his other hand on her shoulder. "I'll be happy to," he told her. "You're being very brave, Audrey."

"I'm scared to death!" she whispered.

"You aren't showing it."

"But I am. Stay with me, watch it with me, watch him cut me open..."

"Let's go on, students," Roberts said brusquely. Carl and Audrey fell silent as he bent over and placed his scalpel at the top of the cut. "We won't cut directly through her navel," he went on, "because there's a lot of fairly tough connective tissue in that area." Matching action to words, he made a semi-circle around her belly button, then continued onward to a point just below her breastbone. The incision, barely skin-deep, was spreading open a little. Roberts laid his scalpel aside, took the tube of sealant and the brush from Kelly, and spread the transparent sealant along the edges of the cut to stop the bleeding. He pointed. "You can now see the thin layer of fat over the abdominal muscles," he told the class. "Audrey's layer is very thin, so we'll go through it and the muscle layer all at once. I'm going to have to be very careful cutting through down by Audrey's pubic arch, because her bladder is right behind the bone and peeks over the top when full." He paused and glanced up at her face. "Do you feel like you need to pee, Audrey?

Focused on the fact that Roberts was about to slit her belly open, Audrey didn't even understand what he was asking at first. "Uh, no, not really..." she replied finally. She puckered her lips. "Not at all, in fact."

"Hm. Your bladder's empty, I suppose. Well, for the purposes of the demonstration we want it full, and getting it that way by having you drink water is going to take too long. We'll do it a different way--but we'll take care of that in a moment. Right now, let's open your abdomen on up." He picked up the scalpel and handed the sealant back to Kelly. Putting the point of the blade into the incision at the bottom of the shallow cut he'd already made, he pushed it firmly down and in. Audrey gasped and her body jerked again as he slipped the blade into her, even though the pain, as she'd expected, was muted. One of her hands came up, but she controlled it and simply laid it on Carl's wrist. Several of the students sighed audibly as the blade went in, as if they'd been holding their breath. Roberts pulled the blade along her belly, toward her head, slitting open her abdominal wall. There was a tugging sensation and a little more pain, but nothing she couldn't control. Roberts glanced up at her face, and she nodded. It was not too late, she told herself, not too late for her to survive. This incision could be closed, it could be sutured. It would not be, she knew that, but it seemed to help her to focus on that idea.

Roberts smoothly dragged the scalpel on up through the shallow slit he'd made in her skin. Audrey stared fixedly at the blade, much of which was inside her body and not visible, watching it move along, watching it slice deeply into her flesh. Bright red blood welled up as it passed, spilling over her side and onto the table. Her belly was beginning to open, the bluish-pink organs inside becoming visible. There was a little pain along with the distinctly uncomfortable tugging feeling, but she understood that the pain and discomfort were far less than what she would have experienced without the drugs Alfred had given her. The pain was there, she was aware of it, but it was distant somehow. Under control, she kept watching--and the small sharp blade kept moving on upwards. She glanced at Carl. His rapt and excited expression, the way his cock bounced in her hand, helped her to accept things a little better.

After he'd passed her navel, Roberts put down the scalpel, took the sealant from Kelly, and painted the muscle and fat layer to stop the blood that was flowing from the cut edges of the muscle layer. Picking up the knife again and propping it point-down at the point where he'd stopped cutting, he looked up at Audrey to see how she was doing. She was alert, her eyes wide, watching intently. Roberts pushed the blade firmly back down into her body, and again she could hear several of the students sigh. He then began moving it again, cutting on, continuing until he'd reached the base of her sternum. Laying the knife aside again, he painted the upper half of the incision with the sealant. Audrey studied the cut edge of the incision. It looked like rare steak.

"This may be a little uncomfortable," Roberts warned her. She started to ask what he meant, but he gave her no chance; he slipped his fingers into the open incision and pulled the sides of her split abdomen open. Audrey gasped loudly and her legs twitched sharply, but it was more surprising than painful. Taking the two retractors from Kelly, Roberts placed them so they would hold the sides of the incision open, leaving a space about twelve inches wide. Audrey stared down at the tightly-packed mass of wet-looking tubes and round organs that were now visible. Your belly has been slit open, she told herself. Those are your entrails you're looking at. Your vital organs, exposed to the light of day.

Roberts patted away the remaining blood with a gauze pad and looked around at the other students. "Carl," he said, "would you please point out the bladder, small and large intestines, liver, stomach, and spleen?"

Carl, his hand still on Audrey's thigh and his erection incredibly hard, leaned over and pointed out each organ. He touched each one lightly as he identified it; at the first touch Audrey gasped, but after that she was passive, just watching his face as he touched her internal organs.

"Very good." Roberts looked up at the PC screen. "Now everyone, you can see from the monitor that Audrey is, in general, doing fine." He paused and watched the screen for a moment. "Judging from your heart rate, Audrey, it looks like you're more than a little nervous."

She nodded; there was no hiding it, not from the sensors. "A little. I can't believe this is really happening, that you've really cut me open. I was scared of the pain, but it wasn't really that bad..." As she spoke she stared down at her slit belly. In her world, women and girls were not supposed to fear death, they were supposed to accept it--even welcome it. She wished she could be like that ideal, but she was not.

However, she did not want to reveal that, and she hadn't forgotten what Alfred had told her. She gave Roberts a smile she hoped was seductive. "I feel like I'm totally exposed..." she went on. "And it's sort of a turn-on..."

"That's perfectly normal." He turned to address the class. "Vivisection is usually very arousing and, as I mentioned before, I do expect most of you to seek some form of release. Just keep paying attention." He looked back at Audrey. "Now," he told her, "we need to empty your bladder. But before we can empty it, I suppose we have to fill it!" He rummaged around on the cart and found a two-liter bag of saline. After fitting a length of tubing to it, he hung it on a hook overhead. Then he opened a case and took out another hypodermic needle; this one was very large, three inches long and at least a quarter of an inch in diameter. It had calibration marks along its length.

"This may hurt a little," he warned as he planted the needle's point just below the beginning of the incision and just above her pubic cleft. Audrey nodded, and he punched the tip in. Her body jerked, but only briefly. "I have to be sure," he said as he forced it deeper, "that it's in the right place. Otherwise the fluid will just drain into her body cavity." Audrey's leg spasmed and she grimaced as he pushed it on in further. He checked the calibrations, then pulled it back a bit. Finally, he attached the tube from the bag and opened the stopcock. "What do you feel, Audrey?" he asked.

She chewed her lip. "I think it's in right," she answered. "I'm starting to feel full."

"Good. This'll take just a moment, then." There was then a pause as the bag rapidly emptied; Audrey squirmed a little as the fluid drained.

"I'm feeling really full now," she said after a moment.

"Okay." He closed off the valve and rather casually pulled the needle up and out of her. A bead of water appeared, followed by a little dilute blood. "Now that your bladder is full," Roberts said, indicating Audrey's lower belly, "we'll drain it with a catheter so we can observe the urination function from inside the abdomen. Carl, would you get the catheter and collection bag from the cart, and place the catheter in Audrey's urethral opening?"

Disengaging from Audrey somewhat reluctantly, Carl retrieved the catheter tube and uncoiled it. He hung the collection bag on a hook on the side of the lab table, then moved to a position between Audrey's spread legs. Reaching up, he spread her vaginal lips and stuck the finger of the other hand into her vagina, then began feeling around just above it.

"Could you rotate your hips back so I can see better?" Carl asked. Cooperatively, Audrey shifted her hips and spread her legs more.

"How's that?"

"I think I'm in," said Carl as he found the urethral opening and began pushing the catheter in. "I've pushed it in a little and got some resistance."

"Good. You should be right at the urinary sphincter," replied Roberts. "That's right where we want the catheter. Okay, Audrey, could you please try to pee? That will relax your urinary sphincter." She did, and she felt Carl slip the catheter in. "Good," Roberts said. "Class, please watch the bladder as it empties." Urine started flowing through the catheter into the collection bag. The students watched as Audrey's bladder shrank and emptied. "Now notice," Roberts went on, "that the bladder nerves are not visible from here. They approach from below, and we'll have to be careful removing the bladder not to sever any nerves in Audrey's vulva doing it. So we're going to leave the bladder for later. I'm going to remove the small intestine now."

Taking a handful of small plastic clips from the cart, Roberts turned back to Audrey's open belly. He began to pull at the loops of exposed intestine near the top, just under Audrey's ribs. Pulling the upper end of her intestine out slightly, he placed two clips on it just below the connection with her stomach. Audrey, watching wide-eyed, couldn't restrain a gasp and a nervous wriggle. This, she told herself, was it--the point of no return. He was about to cut through her intestine, and once he did that, there was no turning back--she was going to die, she was going to die here, today, now. She raised her hand, reaching for Carl; he took her hand in his, then put his other hand on her thigh again and squeezed.

"You okay, honey?" Roberts asked.

She nodded and swallowed hard. "Yes... go ahead... it's okay, do it..."

"Good girl." He lifted her intestine a little more and, with a quick slice of his scalpel, severed it between the clips. It was not especially painful. Audrey let out a choking sob, but she did not move or speak. Outwardly, she seemed calm; inside she was screaming. You've just been killed. Now it's real, now you're dying. The words kept echoing in her head as Roberts, businesslike, moved to the end of the intestine that entered the colon and performed the same procedure. He then began pulling her intestine out from the stomach end, placing the loops in one of the large pans on the lab bench. As he pulled it out of Audrey's belly, he placed plastic clips on the severed arteries and veins supplying it. Cutting through the blood vessels and ligaments holding the intestine to Audrey's body, he pulled the long fleshy tube on out and casually piled the coils in the pan. There was some cramping pain, nothing she couldn't easily control, but the terror was much worse. Blood from smaller unclamped vessels now ran out of her, pooling on the table and running into the drains.

Roberts continued lecturing while he worked. "As you can see, the typical adult has around twenty feet of small intestine." He pulled her intestine straight up, raising his arm high. "Later, we'll stretch out the intestine and see how long it actually is. The clips I've installed will let us keep the stomach contents contained, and they'll keep Audrey from bleeding out." As he worked, he glanced at Audrey's face. "How're you doing?" he asked her.

"This is... weird..." Audrey said as she watched him pull her intestines out.

"And exciting?" Roberts asked her.

She knew how to respond, how she was expected to respond. She managed to force another wan smile. "In a way... yes..." She focused on Carl and squeezed his fingers. His erection was again bouncing. "Is it exciting for you?" she asked him unnecessarily. "Does it excite you to watch him cut me open, to watch him kill me?"

"God, yes," Carl answered passionately. "You're so beautiful--so sexy--and you're just laying there and letting him cut you..."

I don't have much of a choice, Audrey thought. I can't get up and run away, not now that he's cut out my intestine. I'm already dead, I just haven't stopped breathing yet. "He isn't just cutting me, Carl," she said in a whisper. "He just killed me..."

Carl's eyes were almost unnaturally bright. "I know," he answered.

Roberts tousled her hair. "It's exciting for all of us, Audrey," he told her. "You're an excellent subject, you're doing a great job." He turned to the class. "Now for the large intestine, or colon. Who can name the three parts of the colon and point out the appendix?" he asked.

"I can," said Denise, the freckled redhead. She had been watching intently and had by then discarded her lab coat, revealing a small but firm pair of breasts with puffy pink nipples, and a small fiery red fuzz on her groin. Her shoulders, breasts, arms, and legs were covered with freckles. She came up to the lab bench and pointed to each part of Audrey's colon.

"Ascending, traversing, and descending," she said pointing to the three parts of Audrey's large intestine. She then touched a small finger-sized protrusion. "The appendix is here," she said, taking the organ between her fingers. Her nipples visibly hardened.

"Good job on the anatomy, Denise," Roberts said. "Thanks very much." He grinned, "It looks like you're enjoying this quite a bit."

The redhead chewed her lip. "It's very... arousing," she admitted. She caught Audrey's eye and their gaze locked. 'You've cut her open... she's lying there wide awake and conscious and you've cut her open and pulled part of her entrails out. And she's... you're... you're..."

"He's killing me," Audrey finished for her. "Don't be afraid to say it. I'm dying, Dr. Roberts is killing me. It wasn't real to me until he pulled my intestine out. Now it is."

Denise could not keep her hands away from her own nipples and groin. "In a way," she murmured, "I wish it was me lying there cut open..."

"In a way," Audrey noted, "I wish it was you too, Denise!" Several people, including Roberts, laughed. Denise, a little embarrassed, started backing away. Grinning, Jim stepped behind her and let her collide with his stiff erection. She glanced back at him, then bent over partially and allowed him to slip it into her from behind. As he pushed deep, she moaned loudly.

Watching, Roberts reminded himself that he would have to keep the vivisection moving along before the class became an orgy. He felt his own erection start to grow, and the front of his lab coat was beginning to push out. He noted that most of the students had shed their coats except for two of the more modest girls, and even they had theirs partially unbuttoned. Jim and Denise were the only ones actively fucking at the moment, but everyone else was either rubbing their own crotch or that of the person next to them.

"Okay, let's remove Audrey's colon now," he announced. He picked up some clips and blocked off the rectum four inches from Audrey's anus, and clipped off the supply blood vessels . He then cut the colon free and lifted it into the other large dish on the lab table. "As you can see, the colon or large intestine is about three to four feet long. Normally it would be filled with fecal matter, but the nurse cleaned Audrey out this morning." He glanced up at Carl. "Could you please pull these pans down to the other end of the table please? And Kelly, would you please get three smaller pans from the cart?" Kelly took three smaller square glass pans from the cart and placed them next to Audrey's leg. "We are now," Roberts went on, "looking at the key digestive tract organs that also have metabolic functions. Who can tell me what's left of Audrey's digestive tract?"

"I can," Anne said. Tom was down on his knees licking her clitoris, but she was paying rapt attention to Audrey's open abdomen. "There's the liver with the gall bladder, the stomach, and the pancreas."

"Very good. Could you come up and point them out to us?" asked Roberts.

Anne broke away from Tom and stepped over to the lab table. She leaned over from a point between Audrey's legs and reached up to touch the three organs in Audrey's open belly. She smiled and leaned closer. "You're doing great!" she whispered. Then, rising, she walked back to Tom, who was now standing, and began massaging his hard erection.

"All right class," Roberts said, pointing again. "The stomach seems to be partially full. Did you have breakfast this morning, Audrey?"

Audrey, still staring at her partially-emptied abdomen, nodded. "Yes, sir. I had a dish of corn flakes, orange juice, and a muffin. Nurse Jones said I should eat..."

"Absolutely. We'll be able to examine the contents of your stomach, which should be a good demonstration of enzyme action and starch conversion," Roberts told her. "Now let's get the rest of your digestive organs out." He took a handful of clips and closed off the blood supply to the liver, the entrance to the stomach from the esophagus, and the blood vessels that fed the stomach and pancreas. Then he picked up the scalpel and cut the stomach and pancreas loose, and put them each in a glass pan together. Audrey watched closely as he removed these organs, but the pain wasn't bad and she reacted very little.

"The liver is one of the hardest organs to remove. You have to be careful to get the major and minor blood vessels leading to it," Roberts said. "If we don't do this right, we'll lose Audrey very quickly." He leaned over her, put his hand inside her open abdomen, and moved her liver around. She gasped; Roberts looked up at her. "That hurts?"

She bit her lip. "Some, yes. Mostly it just feels strange."

"I'm sure. Try to control yourself, okay?"

"Yes, sir. I will..."

Turning back to his work, Roberts clamped off, then clipped, several major blood vessels. He missed one and blood squirted out, splashing across the table and hitting Barbara's chest and stomach. She looked down at it; Jim bent down in front of her and started licking it off. Finally, after clamping and cutting the bile duct leading from the gall bladder, Roberts started pulling Audrey's liver up. She groaned and squirmed; another missed vessel broke and more blood sprayed out. Muttering to himself, Roberts asked Carl to hold the liver up and partially out of Audrey's body while he clipped and then cut the blood vessels behind it. "There we are," he said as he lifted the liver free and placed it in the third glass pan. He paused to study Audrey's ashen face. "You doing okay?"

She nodded. "Yes, sir. It hurts... some... it's not too bad..." She closed her eyes tightly for a moment, fighting the pain and the terror. "I can handle it..." Carl moved in very close to her and after wiping his bloody hands on a towel, held her legs. She opened her eyes and offered him a fragile smile.

"Good." He pointed inside her. "Now we see the female abdomen with only the urinary and reproductive tracts still in place. Here are the kidneys, which were hidden behind the intestines and colon, and you can now see the ureters leading from them to the bladder. Since Audrey's already drained her bladder, we can remove it fairly easily. I'm going to remove the entire urinary tract intact. Carl, could you please slide these pans down by the others at that end of the table? Barbara, please get a large and a small pan from the cart." Carl grabbed the three square glass pans with the digestive organs in them and moved them down by the dishes with the intestines in them. Barbara put a large and a smaller pan on the bench next to Audrey. "The urinary tract is fairly simple," Roberts continued. "The kidneys filter the blood and pass the urine to the bladder. We've seen Audrey's urinary function, so we don't need the catheter any more. Carl, would you please pull out the catheter, seal off the bag, and put that over on the bench?" Carl did as the instructor asked, pulling the tube slowly out. While he did, Roberts blocked off the blood supply to the kidneys with four plastic clips. He then paused and looked at Audrey's face. "This," he warned, "will hurt. Much worse than anything we've done so far."

Audrey stared at him for a moment. She had already, she told herself, suffered more pain than she'd expected, considering the drugs. She bit her lip, then looked up at Carl. "Please," she begged, fighting down her terror, "hold my hands while he's doing it..." Carl complied immediately. Audrey looked back at Roberts. "Okay, okay, I'm ready now... I think..."

"Good. Here we go, then." With that, he cut into the bundle of tubes leading from her left kidney. Pain flared in her ruined body. Her eyes flew open, her body jerked; she opened her mouth as if she was going to scream, but made no sound. Her legs shook violently as her kidney was cut free. Several students moaned; her demonstrations of pain was more than arousing for them. She clutched at Carl's hands, but his expression clearly showed that it was no less exciting to him.

Audrey continued to squirm. "Oh... that did hurt... bad..."

"You took it well. One more to go." He reached for her other kidney.

"Oh, please, I... mmm! Ah! Ah! Oh, please, ohhh!" The other kidney came free; Audrey shook violently for a moment. Everyone watched her intently. Letting the freed kidneys lie inside her body cavity, Roberts let her rest for a moment. Releasing her hands, Carl started caressing her thighs and then her breasts.

"How do you feel now, Audrey?" Roberts asked. He looked at the PC screen. He was becoming seriously aroused, and he'd unbuttoned the front of his lab coat. His rigid erection poked straight out from his body. He started stroking her leg. "You look like you're getting excited, and you're definitely getting me interested." Even through the haze of pain, Audrey knew exactly what she was expected to say; it was "common knowledge"--the "myth" Alfred had talked about--that the pain associated with the vivisections were arousing to the girls subjected to them.

Audrey was not aroused at all, she was hardly aware of Carl's activities, and it was a moment before she noticed that Roberts' hand had strayed to her genitals. The pain, excruciating a moment ago, was now dull but pervasive. Her fear was acute, and she was feeling uncomfortably weak and cold. Still, she remembered what her father had told her, and she remembered vividly what Alfred had told her. "Yes," she whispered, "I am..." With an obvious effort she started slowly moving her hips and her shoulders to meet the rubbing and massaging of her groin and her chest.

"I was wondering how long you would last," Barbara said to Roberts. "We've all been getting really turned on by this, and I've seen that bulge in your coat for a while."

"Well, I'm human too. One of the great aspects of vivisection is seeing how she reacts to being cut open, and also how we react to what's happening to her. It's not just dissecting a body," he explained. He smiled. "Especially if the girl is as lovely and charming as our Audrey here." Audrey tried to smile too, but she did not succeed; Roberts didn't seem to notice, he just bent back over her body, the bloody scalpel in his hand. "Okay, now I'll be able to tell if I nick any nerves around the bladder that I don't want to. Audrey, please let me know immediately if you lose any feeling in your clitoris or vulva." Using one hand pulled the bladder to one side, he severed the ligaments holding it on top of the uterus. He pulled it to the other side and did the same, and then severed the urethra at the bottom. "Here is the entire urinary tract," he said, lifting the two kidneys connected by the long ureters to the bladder into the large pan. He laid the bladder between the two kidneys in the pan. "How does everything feel, Audrey?" he asked.

"I... I feel like I'm about to... pass out..."

"Well, we don't want that!" Roberts said jovially. He pulled open a drawer under the counter and took out a hypodermic syringe and an unlabeled small bottle. "We want you to stay with us, right to the end!" he went on as he filled the syringe. Inside her open and mostly empty abdomen, he found one of the blood vessels he'd clamped off, stuck the needle into it, and pushed the plunger. Withdrawing it, he paused and watched her for a few moments.

Audrey felt the effects of the stimulant washing through her system. Her head began to clear; the pain also faded noticeably, leaving her wondering if there was also a painkiller in the compound he'd just given her.

There was also something else, apparently, because her nipples and her groin began to tingle noticeably.

"Better?" Roberts asked.

She nodded. "Much better. It's okay, I'm doing okay now." Her voice had grown thick. "The pain isn't so bad anymore..." She was leaning her head back with her eyes closed, breathing rapidly. The tingling increased in intensity. Evidently, she told herself, they want to make sure that the idea that being killed is sexually exciting for a girl at least looks like it's true. "I'm really getting... turned on... now..." Carl, vigorously fingering her clitoris, grinned. The PC screen showed that she was, indeed, showing signs of becoming aroused.

Roberts grinned. "Okay, what's left in here? Anyone?" he asked the class.

"I know," said a thick-set girl with short dark hair, glasses, and large pendulous breasts. Linda was normally the quietest girl in the class and rarely spoke. But now she was naked, and had been getting very excited watching and fingering herself. "There's the reproductive tract with the uterus, ovaries, and fallopian tubes."

"Yes, that's correct. These are also the female sex organs, connected via the vagina to the outer vulva and clitoris, and we will turn our attention to these now. First, we'll demonstrate how extraordinarily elastic the vaginal canal is." He glanced down at Carl, who was still rubbing Audrey's clitoral area. "Carl, what I want you to do now is to put your whole fist into Audrey's vagina. Start slowly; and be gentle--we don't want to accidentally tear it."

Nodding, Carl began by slipping two fingers into Audrey's wet vagina. He slowly but rhythmically began finger fucking her, and then slipped in a third. By now Audrey had placed her hands on her knees to pull them back a little and provide a better opening. She was leaning her head back over the backrest with her eyes closed, panting. Carl slipped a fourth finger into her, and was now working his hand with some effort.

"I think she's loose enough now, Carl," Roberts said. "Push your fist up inside her." Carl, nodding, pulled his hand almost all of the way out of Audrey's vagina, placed his thumb in the center of his fingers, then plunged his hand in.

Audrey grunted as Carl's whole hand and wrist went in. Everyone in the room was watching raptly; the shape of Carl's fist was obvious inside her uterus. Roberts had a raging erection, and Barbara, standing close to him, began to gently and tentatively stroke it. He smiled at her, and her ministrations became less tentative immediately.

Audrey raised her head, opened her eyes, and looked down to see Carl's arm protruding from her vagina. There wasn't much pain, she told herself, and this certainly wasn't erotic; mostly, it just felt very uncomfortable.

"Very good," Roberts said as Carl wriggled his fingers inside her. "Now we'll remove the last of Audrey's abdominal organs. Carl, please remove your hand so I don't cut you." Roberts leaned over and applied clips to block off the blood supply for the uterus, and then severed the womb from the vagina at the cervix. Audrey was leaning her head forward, watching closely as the last of her organs were being removed from her gaping belly. The muscles of her back, viewed from the inside, the bumpy line of her spine, and the pulsating tube of the aorta were now all clearly visible.

"Here are the sex organs," explained Roberts, placing the uterus with the ovaries attached in the remaining small glass pan. "Now I'm going to demonstrate the female sex function. Please gather round so you can see what's happening." He climbed onto the lab table on his knees and prepared to mount Audrey.

Audrey, knowing this was a part of the procedure, smiled tiredly. She spread her legs a little more. Roberts rubbed the head of his erection against Audrey's vaginal lips, getting his glans lubricated with her blood and her juices, which had covered her outer lips and had been flowing down around her anus. He began to push into her, and he leaned forward on his arms to support himself so the students could see clearly. The head of his penis almost poked through the end of Audrey's severed vagina as he began deeply stroking in and out. "If you look at the monitor," he said, sounding rather breathless, "you can see that Audrey's vagina and anus are beginning to rhythmically contract."

Roberts and Audrey were both breathing heavily now. He was leaning back with his back arched, while Audrey was pulling her head forward to look into her yawning abdomen. She could see Roberts' erection moving within her contracting vaginal barrel, and that, she found, really was arousing. Roberts let out a faint "Ahhh...." as a spurt of white semen arched out of Audrey's vagina and landed in her empty abdomen. He continued to pump out three more spurts, slowing his rhythm as his peak subsided.

Roberts pulled out and stepped back. "I will admit," he said, "that that's one of the better parts of this job." He glanced at Barbara. "Would you clean me up, honey?"

"Of course!" He might have meant for her to use a towel, but instead she knelt in front of him and licked his penis clean. It was coated with semen and blood, but she licked it away and then swallowed it all.

"The vivisection is essentially over now," Roberts said. He gazed at Audrey's face. "We're going to bleed you out, Audrey, and the collected blood will go to the local blood bank," he explained. "This will be essentially painless, and, if everything goes well, you'll experience it as gently drifting off to sleep."

Audrey stared at him fixedly. "You mean gently drifting off into death."

"Yes, honey." He tousled her hair affectionately.

She smiled at him; she looked tired and sleepy, but the smile was relaxed and genuine. "I don't mind," she said, her voice soft. "It's funny; when I walked here I was so scared, I didn't want to die. I know girls are supposed to be accepting of their deaths, but I really wasn't. I even thought about running away..."

"But you didn't," Roberts reminded her. "You came in here and laid on the table and allowed me to vivisect you."

She nodded. "Yes. And now I'm glad I did." She looked down into her empty abdomen. "I think I look pretty like this... go ahead, kill me... I'm ready to die..."

"You look beautiful like that," Roberts said. He picked up a six-quart blood bag and hung it on a hook on the lab bench. After uncoiling the clear plastic tube leading from the bag up to Audrey's abdomen, he picked up a very large needle from the tray and twisted it onto the end of the plastic tube. "I'm going to pierce your aorta just above where your renal arteries branch off," he said as he checked the needle for tightness, "and you'll bleed out into the bag. It won't be painful at all. You've been a wonderful subject, and this has been a great vivisection." He bent over Audrey's opened cavity and stuck the large needle into the pulsing aorta. Instantly, bright red blood began to pass down the tube into the collection bag. "Now," he told the students, "to make Audrey as comfortable as possible, we want to stimulate her continuously as she bleeds out." Matching actions to words, he began kneading her breasts and teasing her nipples.

"As she dies," Audrey insisted. Jim moved between Audrey's legs and brought his head down to Audrey's hairless vulva. He licked Audrey's clit several times, tasting her juices, tasting her blood. Audrey, her eyes closed, moaned. "Yes, yes, do me while I'm dying... I'm dying... I'm going to be dead soon..." Her eyes popped open. "I'd like to have a cock to suck," she said bluntly, looking at Carl as she spoke. He immediately clambered onto the table and offered her his; she took it into her mouth and sucked it with a passion.

After a moment, though, she stopped. "Please come," she begged him. "Please come in my mouth before I die..." She looked around at the other students. "Touch me, please, don't leave me alone..." She then took Carl's erection back into her mouth.

Roberts motioned to the PC monitor. The heart rate trace was growing faster, but weaker. "As you can see, Audrey is both beginning to climax, and feel the effects of blood loss. Her heart rate is rising, brought on both by her sexual excitement and her body's need for blood, which her heart is pumping out fairly efficiently into the bag." As he spoke, Carl groaned and sprayed his semen into Audrey's mouth. She swallowed it, and the other students watched it run out of the cut end of her esophagus.

The collection bag was starting to fill out with deep red blood flowing from the tube leading from Audrey's open abdomen. Audrey was now letting her head lean back, as she began to moan softly. Roberts installed two stirrups in the lab table, placing the steel arms into sockets in the side of the lab table. He then gently placed Audrey's feet in each stirrup. As he did, Carl, staying close to her, caressed her face with one hand and her breast with the other. Tom was stroking Audrey's legs; she looked down at him and he climbed onto the table and slipped his erection inside her vagina.

"I'm elevating your feet and legs to help you bleed out, Audrey," Roberts explained.

Audrey was looking groggy now, and she looked at Roberts through half opened-eyes. "Helping me die..." she murmured. She smiled sleepily. "Not so bad... dying... I don't mind..." As she spoke, Tom moaned that he was coming, and he shot a huge spurt of white semen into Audrey's empty belly. As he pulled out, Kelly stepped up and licked Audrey's clitoris. Audrey was noticeably paler now, and the blood bag half full. She was leaning back, lying very still, breathing hard as her heart pumped at over 180 beats per minute trying to keep up with both the waves of pleasure emanating from her belly and her crotch, and the demands of her blood-starved body. The auburn-haired girl sucked as much of Tom's come as she could out of Audrey's vagina, and then stepped aside to allow Jim to shove his erection in. Roberts watched the PC monitor for signs Audrey was approaching heart failure.

Audrey didn't need the monitor to know she was close to death. "Dr. Roberts?" she said. Her voice was very weak.

"Yes, honey?"

"Would you please cut off my head now?" she asked. "I'd like it if you did that before I die, I want to feel it..."

"Of course, honey," Roberts said. He rummaged around in the cart for a moment, then came up with a large, long-bladed electric knife. "This'll do a nice clean cut," he commented as he plugged it in. Audrey's body was almost completely limp by then as she approached cardiac arrest. The heart line on the PC began to show continuous small fluctuations.

"Hold my head," she whispered to Carl. "Please, hold it while he cuts it off..." Carl, smiling, complied.

Roberts asked everyone to gather around. "Audrey's heart is now in ventricular fibrillation," he said. He held the edge close to Audrey's throat and switched it on; it whined loudly as the blades worked back and forth. "Even if I didn't do this," he went on, raising his voice to be heard above the knife, "in a few seconds her heart would stop, as it has become oxygen starved. Does anyone know the metabolic state her heart muscle is in now?" He lowered the knife, touching her throat with the reciprocating blades. It sliced right in, and fresh blood spurted out. Weak as she was, her body jerked; he pushed the knife on down, cutting deeply into her soft throat. More blood squirted out, showering Roberts and Carl. Audrey's body was jerking, and her eyes were darting around rapidly.

"I think it's in anaerobic respiration," Anne said. Her eyes were fixed on the knife cutting into Audrey's throat. "That's the cycle that uses no oxygen to conduct metabolism."

"Right," Roberts said. Audrey's heart had now stopped vibrating, and the PC screen was still. "Anne, please pull the monitor leads, and put them in a small dish on the cart." The knife screeched, a new sound. "Damn, got to get between two of the vertebrae..." He moved it down a little. "Yes, there. Carl, hold her head tight, I'm almost done here."

Carl nodded; Roberts pushed the knife on down, and Audrey's head came free in the boy's hand. Roberts told him to hold it over the sink and let it drain; he did, but only a few drops of blood dripped from the severed neck. Her face looked as if it were frozen in a sleepy expression of satisfaction.

Roberts, meanwhile, pulled the needle out of Audrey's abdomen, capped it and coiled the plastic tube up. "Denise, would you put this blood in the refrigerator, please?" Denise took the bag from him and carried it toward the refrigerator, as he'd asked. "Barbara," he said, "would you get that large jar there?" She did, brought it to him, and sat it on the table. Roberts then took out a thin ten-inch stainless steel tube with a large round base, and placed the tube upright in the jar. "Now, Carl, if I might have her head, please." Carl gave it to him; he held the head over the jar and firmly pushed it down on the spike, continuing until the tube was well up inside the brain case. A small amount of blood drained into the jar.

"Audrey's family," he said, gazing at her face, "wanted her head back. We'll prepare it later for presentation. Notice that the look of her final orgasm is preserved in her expression."

"Oh, she looks so good," Kelly said, bending to examine Audrey's features closely. "I might ask my dad to have me vivisected, too. I would want to become meat as well, though."

Roberts gave the auburn-haired girl a speculative look, then turned back to the headless corpse. He asked Carl to place two plastic shackles connected by a wide plastic strap around Audrey's ankles, and while the young man was doing that, he moved the electric chain hoist over the body.

"Anne," he said, "would you please lift the feet, and catch the hook on the strap?"

Anne, still naked, lifted Audrey's shackled feet to meet the hook Roberts was lowering. She caught the shackle on the hook, and Roberts hoisted Audrey's decapitated corpse into the air and positioned it over the sink in the lab table. Blood dripped slowly from the severed neck. Audrey's empty abdomen gaped open, the retractors still in place. The class was silent, gazing at the body of their former classmate, headless, vivisected, and dripping blood, her organs in pans spread out on the lab table, her body suspended on the hook.

"Well, that's it for this portion of the class," Roberts said cheerfully. "I'm going to let the body drain for this afternoon to remove the residual blood. I'll need three people to stay behind to help put the organs in preservative, and to help me put her body in the tank. After lunch, we'll return to begin examining some of the digestive tract." He paused and looked them over. "Please remember to fill out your lab manuals, and to answer the questions. Okay, who wants to volunteer to help with preserving the organs?"

Several girls raised their hands. Roberts selected Denise, Barbara, and Kelly to help. The other students were filing away, headed for the showers. "Don't forget your lab coats," Roberts called to them. "They go in the hamper at the back corner." He then turned back to the three girls, all of them still nude, gathered around the lab table awaiting his instructions.

"It's too bad," Kelly mused, "that we're not doing any more vivisections this semester. I wouldn't mind being a subject myself if it makes me feel like Audrey felt."

"Yeah," Denise agreed. "The way she just came, again and again, as her organs were being pulled out of her, that was really exciting for me. I can't imagine what it was like for her."

"It was amazing for her," Barbara declared. "Just look at her head, you can see it in her face."

"I really do wish it had been me," Denise murmured.

"Well, ladies," Roberts said, gazing at the three girls, "you do understand that to do a vivisection, I have to have my certification as an executioner."

The girls turned to him. "Yes, we know that," Kelly said. "So?"

"You may not know that my certification includes some exemptions, since I am also a certified teacher. I have educational and research exemptions."

"I didn't know that," Barbara said. "But it makes sense..."

"And it helps," Roberts went on, "with a side business of mine."

"Side business?" Denise asked.

"Yes. I have a little sideline offering fresh live organs to hospitals. I provide them in first-class condition, which is only possible if you vivisect the donor. Naturally, the donor must be a volunteer." As he often did, he paused for effect and looked at each of the three girls in turn. "The earnings are more than twenty times the average slave-sale price for a girl, and I split the proceeds with my donors' families."

The three naked girls looked at each other. Kelly began a tentative little smile, Barbara took it up and expanded it, and it bloomed fully on Denise's face.

Roberts smiled too. Peer pressure, he thought, was a wonderful thing.