It was a dark and stormy night (of course), my relief hadn't shown up, and I was walking home from working a double shift. I was tired, more than a little damp and grumpy when I took a short cut over a railroad bridge, I knew the schedule, so it wasn't that dangerous. I was a little better than halfway across when I saw a kid getting ready to jump off the bridge. The kid put up quite a fight, but I was bigger and soon dragged him off the bridge to solid ground.
When things calmed down a bit, I realized the kid was an Oriental girl, about four foot nine or ten, weighing about 85 pounds. I'm afraid I just held her down and stared at her for a while.
"What the hell were you doing?"
She looked at me as if I were an idiot. "I want to die! What do you think I was doing?"
She was still thrashing around. "Look, if that's what you want, I won't stop you, but could we just talk a bit before you do this. I'll let you go if you'll just talk with me for a bit."
"What do you want? Let me go!"
"I'm not a cop or a rapist, I just want to talk to you for a while, then you can do what you want. Okay?"
She stopped struggling and looked at me. "Then what are you doing here?"
"Just taking a short cut home, I just got off from working a 16 hour shift... Look, I'm cold and wet, and I doubt if you're much better off. Why don't we go get a cup of coffee or something and talk when we're warmer?"
She shivered a bit in my arms, "Will you let me go then?"
"Only after we have that coffee, agreed?"
She nodded her head, and I helped her up. Keeping a hand around her upper arm, we walked back to the town. I could feel her shivering as we went on. When we reached civilization, she started pulling me toward the nearest neighborhood bar.
"You don't want to go there," I said.
"Yes, I do. C'mon, don't be so stuffy."
I was reluctant, but she dragged me into the bar anyway. By the time we had our jackets off and were seated in a booth, the waitress showed up. The girl was a tiny thing. When she ordered a hot buttered rum, the waitress gave her a look and asked for her ID. She stared at it for a long while, then handed it back and asked me for my order.
After the waitress left, I asked to see the girl's ID myself. I looked at it very carefully; if it was a fake, it was the best I'd ever seen.
Her name was Mariko, her age was 22. I gave her ID back.
She looked at me. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"You've seen my ID, who the hell are you?"
I gave her one of my cards. In the middle of the card it said: Suicidal? Maybe I Can Help. Right under that was my phone number. In the lower right corner in smaller type was my name and under that was Licensed Executioner.
"This is a hobby of mine, but I think you should be interested in this."
About this time, the waitress arrived with our drinks. I gave her my credit card and she left. We each took a sip of our drinks.
"You sure picked a fine night to die," I said. "What's the matter?"
"Do you have any sisters or daughters?"
I shook my head.
"Where is your mother?"
I gave her a direct look. "She died five years ago," I answered. "My father had to sell her to pay off some debts. She was killed in a gladiatrix show."
"You really don't know what it is to be a female." She took a deep breath. "Do you realize that in the last forty years less than five percent of females die a natural death? From earliest childhood we're told that we were going to die violently and that this was a good thing. Even if we go to college and become successful, we are still subject to the whims of our relatives and boyfriends. If we survive this, there is tremendous public pressure for us to suicide at the height of our powers.
"My family is not rich, when I wanted to go to college, they couldn't afford it. Did you know that 85% of scholarships go to males? Five per cent go to the superbrain girls, the other ten per cent have requirements such as being priority picks for a homecoming sacrifice for the team.
"I don't want to be killed for my meat or leather. I don't want to be killed just to entertain people. If I fall in love and get hooked with a guy, he could sell me into slavery on a whim.
"I'm twenty two years old and four feet eight inches tall. In spite of these odds, when I try to better myself, I'm treated like a kid." By this time, tears were dripping from her eyes. "As to why I wanted to suicide instead of volunteering for slaughter, I just wanted to have some power over my own destiny."
I put my hand over hers; she did not pull away. "I hear you, and can sympathize, but you know that I'm not a therapist. I do believe that I can help you with your project."
She smiled a bit at that. "You did promise to help me on the bridge."
"Of course," I said, returning her smile. "Unfortunately, I have to keep the bureaucrats happy first. Will you please come with me? I guarantee that I'll help you."
"We can't do it now?"
"Unfortunately, I am constrained by my license. You need to complete a pregnancy test, and I have to file some paperwork. Your death certificate will be faxed to me by tomorrow noon."
"Why can't I just go back to the bridge?"
"Do you really want all that pain? There's a better than even chance that you wouldn't die immediately, and lay there in the cold and rain in tremendous pain, waiting to die. There is a ten percent chance that you'd only break a leg or an arm and lay all night in the cold and rain and still live." I looked her in the eye. "You broke the law by trying to jump earlier. I only saved you because I thought you were a kid. As you know, attempting suicide is punishable by death. You can come with me and I guarantee a rapid, painless death, or I can turn you over to the sheriff and you can go through the judicial process which will be longer, and I don't know how your sentence will be carried out. Would you like to be scalped in a western movie, or burned at the stake in a horror movie? I have a comfortable guest room you can spend the night in, and we'll fix you up tomorrow as early as possible. Okay?"
"Damn ! You don't leave me much choice, do you?"
"Good. As long as we're here, let's have some dinner. My house is only a couple of blocks away."
When we got home, she removed her head scarf and shook her hair down. Long, straight, and black, it fell to her hips. I handed her a cup and asked her to fill it. While she was in the bathroom, I filled out a form describing her situation.
She gave me the cup, and I dipped the stick. She was not pregnant. I let her read the form while I made us a nightcap of hot chocolate liberally laced with rum. After she had signed the form, I borrowed her driver's license and faxed the two to the clerk of court.
I gave her an old shirt of mine to sleep in, and showed her to the guest bedroom. When we reached the door, she asked me for a hug which I gladly gave her, and left her for the night. After a few moments, I heard the shower in her bathroom start up. A bit after the shower stopped, the light in her room went out. I set the alarm early, and climbed into my own bed.
The next morning, the fax from the night court clerk had approved my paperwork, I was not surprised that her drivers license was valid. I unlocked my work cabinet and removed a red pill. During the Bio War, this was developed as an assassination drug. It is odorless and tasteless. When ingested, the victim gets very sleepy after about a half hour. After falling asleep, the victim cannot be awakened, and dies in about two hours. The developer of the drug, something of a wag, jokingly referred to the pill as "dammitol". The name stuck and is a standard, if rarely used, tool in the licensed executioner's kit.
I loaded the coffee maker with Colombian and started it up. Grabbed a girlham steak from the fridge, cut it in half and started it frying. I stirred up four eggs, but held off cooking them until she woke up.
I don't know if it was the smell of the coffee or the ham, but she soon came into the kitchen, still in her night shirt. The damned thing went all the way down below her knees.
"Good morning, sunshine."
"Mfrm ...morning", she mumbled as she took a seat at the table.
"Would you like a cup of coffee?" She nodded her head. I placed a cup before her.
"There's milk and sugar on the table. The eggs will be ready in a minute."
By the time I had made the toast and scrambled the eggs, she had drunk half of her coffee. I added a slice of girlham to the plate and laid it before her. Apparently, she was not a morning person. She dug into her breakfast. When she finished her coffee, I offered her a refill. With a mumbled "please," she handed me the cup. This time I slipped the pill into the cup.
I handed her the cup, she added cream and sucked down half of it.
"I have good news for you. The courts have approved our application."
Her eyes lit up and she started to smile, but the smile was broken by a tremendous yawn.
"Look, you've had a busy night. Why don't you go back to sleep for a while? I promise you, everything will be taken care of by this afternoon."
She stretched and yawned again, "I think you're right, I don't want to miss a thing this afternoon." Picking up her coffee, she went back to her room.
After I cleaned up the breakfast dishes, I relaxed with another cup of coffee. After about a half an hour, I went to check on Mariko. I knocked and entered her room, she was asleep in the bed. When I tried to wake her, she did not respond. Her eyes were moving behind her closed lids, she was deep in REM sleep. I was hoping that my actions would give her a pleasant final dream.
I sat down beside her on the bed and started unbuttoning the shirt she was wearing. Lifting her up to remove the shirt, at the same time I swept her hair from under her and spread it over the pillow. An absorbent pad was placed under her hips.
Undressing, I again sat on the bed beside her. She was perfectly proportioned, an exact miniature of a normal sized beauty queen. I ran my hands over her body, when I cupped her breast, her nipple hardened in my palm. Lifting one of her feet, I started to give her a tongue bath.
When I reached her hips, I found that she was well lubricated. 'Thank God,' I thought, 'I'm reaching her at some level.'
After a thorough cleansing of her nether regions, I continued up her abdomen, pausing briefly at her navel. Her nipples were still erect when I reached her breasts. Laving her neck, I entered her as I gave her closed eyes a gentle warm kiss.
I gathered her legs in my arms as I started moving very slowly. When her breathing started to become labored, I speeded up my movements. Releasing her legs, I stopped moving and with one hand hugged her hips closely, and held her head to my shoulder with my other hand as she stopped breathing.
Her entire body started trembling in her death throes. The clenching of her vaginal muscles brought me to a climax just as she started relaxing and her body finally accepted her death. I started to lay her on the bed and my penis was bathed in warm fluid as her sphincters relaxed. She had a smile on her face as I straightened her out.
As I was getting up, I kissed her on her forehead, "Mariko, I did the best I could, I hope it was good for you."
When she was ready, I dug a grave in my garden, laminated a copy of her death certificate and slipped it over her head in case she was ever dug up. Wrapping her in butcher's paper, I buried her. In due season, I planned to plant a Japanese cherry tree over her grave. She didn't want to have any parts of her body used by man, but Mother Earth recycles everything.