The Goodbar Special

The name of the place, spelled out in neon, was simply The Goodbar. Located on a sidestreet down near the waterfront, it seemed at a glance like a place that was much too elegant and expensive for its rundown location. I had noticed it one day while driving through the area, had wondered about it, and had decided to check it out some night. This was that night.

After paying what seemed to me to be a rather small cover charge, I walked in. The place was full but not packed; I found an empty table and sat down. There was a beautiful young blonde dancing on stage in front of me, completely naked. A man sitting at the rail was holding up a bill, but I could not see the denomination. She danced over to him and knelt in front of him; he reached up and fondled her breasts with his hands, pinching her nipples lightly. She offered no objections, nor did she complain when he started caressing her inner thighs. She allowed him to touch her genitals as well but backed away slightly when he seemed close to slipping a finger inside. Finally he tucked the bill in her garter and she moved back to the center of the stage.

"Mind if I sit down?" a voice said over my left shoulder. I looked around--and couldn't help but do a double-take. The woman standing there, dressed in a brief skirt, a midriff-exposing top that was tied in the front with a single string, and high heels, was slender, delicate-looking, and intensely attractive. Her hair was dark and hung over her well-toned shoulders; feathery bangs caressed her forehead. Her eyes were dark, very large, and very intense. She had a look of nervous anticipation that gave her a slightly vulnerable appearance.

"Please," I said after a moment.

She sat down and crossed her legs, drawing my attention to them. They were long, perfectly shaped, and perfectly tanned. "I'm Laura," she said, smiling.

"Charlie," I told her.

"This your first time here?"

"Yes, it is. Pretty nice place."

"Has anybody told you about the rates yet?"

I shook my head. "No, not yet."

She smiled again. "Well," she began, "table dances are ten dollars. Standard stage tip is a dollar if you don't want to touch, five if you do."

I nodded. "Touching is allowed with the table dance as well?" I asked.

She giggled. "Yes. Touching, anywhere you want, but you can't put anything inside of anything, if you get my drift."

I grinned. It was already obvious that the Goodbar was a sex club, simple strip clubs no longer existed in the modern word. "I assume there's an option for that as well?"

"Of course," she said without hesitation. "You can have a private dance with me--or any of the girls here. Fifty dollars per half hour, and we can do anything you want." She smiled. "Or, if you feel like putting on a show, we can do that right out here, as well." She giggled again. "Actually those private dances are held in the champagne room and it isn't really very private in there, we'd still be putting on a show. Anyway, they're all the same price--anything you want."

"Anything?"

She gave me a seductive look. "Anything." She glanced at the girl on stage. "And then, there's the Goodbar Special--what this club is really all about. If I'm your type for that."

She was, I told myself, very definitely, my "type" for pretty much anything and everything. "What's that one run?"

She looked back at me. "Five thousand dollars."

I almost choked. "Five thousand!?"

She nodded, and she scooted closer to me. "Of course," she said. "You do understand. It is very special, after all."

Under control again, I grinned. "I think five grand is just a little too special for me, honey." She looked a little crestfallen. "I'm sorry. What is the Goodbar Special, anyway?"

She smiled. "Did you ever see an old movie--or read a book--called Looking for Mister Goodbar?"

I shook my head. "No."

"Then you wouldn't have picked it up from the name." She folded her arms on the tabletop and gazed at me very directly. "I'd be willing to bet," she went on, "that you didn't even know that clubs like the Goodbars existed. In the US, anyhow."

"I'm not sure what you mean."

She lifted a little token hanging from a thin gold necklace and showed it to me. I examined it; it had a little icon on it, a tiny dagger. "Does this make things more clear?"

I shook my head again. "Not a bit."

She fingered the amulet. "Some of these," she said, "have nooses on them. Some a pair of hands. Some a gun. Some of them have more than one picture. Does that give you any ideas?"

"I'm afraid not."

She sighed. "I suppose I should be very direct, then. The girls working here are volunteers. We've all volunteered to be executed."

I paused, just studying her face. The modern world, with its superabundance of females and the corresponding scarcity of males, had created all sorts of mechanisms for the elimination of women, and for some to voluntarily agree to allow themselves to be executed wasn't a rare thing. Public executions, often involving dozens of convicted criminals, the so-called "requests," and volunteers--all women, of course--were held every other Saturday in the town stadium. I had attended quite a few of these, and watched many more on television.

But I still didn't understand. Women awaiting execution often provided sexual services to the public--it was a significant source of income for the state--but at the county jail, not in a sex club. "So," I asked her, "when are you scheduled to be executed?"

She smiled. "That hasn't been decided yet. When it happens isn't up to me." She paused and gave me a direct and meaningful look. "It would be up to you--if you decided to buy the Goodbar special."

I frowned. "You mean you have an executioner working here? I get to--what? Watch from up close, something like that?"

She laughed. "No. I volunteered to come here, work here, and allow myself to be killed here." She cocked an eyebrow. "By anyone willing to pay the price."

I was at first speechless, then I couldn't help but sputter. "You mean... you can't mean! If I buy the special I can kill you myself?"

She nodded. "That's what the special is." She touched the amulet again. "Of course, you have to do it my way, and my way is the knife. If your preference is a hanging, you'll have to talk to someone else." She nodded toward the cute blond on stage. "Like Amy, there."

I was stunned; I wasn't at all sure what to say. "But... but it's illegal! You can only execute free women if you're certified, if you're a trained executioner!"

She shook her head. "Not here. The bar has a special exemption--or they're using a loophole in the law, I'm not sure. Anyway, anyone can execute us. If the guy botches it and we suffer horribly, well, we volunteered, and we knew what we were volunteering for."

"But why here? Why not in one of the public executions?"

She shrugged. "I considered that. I considered some other things, too. But then I heard about this place." She looked down at the table demurely. "Working here seemed exciting to me. We work as ordinary dancers and prostitutes until someone buys us for the Special. It's been exciting, if a little nerve-wracking. Every night I approach at least ten or twelve men, and each time I don't know if he's going to buy a dance, a fuck, or the right to stab me to death." She paused. "Or nothing at all." She looked up. "So. Now you know."

"Now I know," I said. I fell silent, and the silence stretched on.

Finally she touched my arm. "Don't worry about it," she said. "Eventually someone will buy me for a Special." She smiled wistfully. "Although no one has yet. And I've been here quite a long time by the standards of the club--seven months." She smiled ruefully. "I have, it seems, an odd problem."

"And that is?"

She sighed. "Men like me," she said bluntly. "I'm not saying that to brag. I'm just telling you what they say to me. They want to fuck me, they want me to give them blowjobs, but they don't want to kill me. Even if I want to be killed."

"Do you want to be killed?"

She threw me an almost defiant look. "That's what I'm here for. That's what I volunteered for."

"That's not what I asked."

She sighed. "You're right, I didn't answer you. Okay. Yes, I do. It's what's right."

"I've heard woman say that before," I mused. "Women who'd volunteered for the public executions. I can't say I understand it."

Laura sighed. "I know. I'm sure you don't." Her elbows on the table, she folded her hands and rested her chin on them, a very appealing pose. "You didn't grow up as a girl in this world. You weren't sent out on the playground at seven years old with a plastic knife or a toy gun so you could practice committing suicide, you weren't asked to play organized 'execution' games at recess. You didn't come to school one morning in the third grade and see that the desk belonging to the girl who sat next to you has been cleaned out, you didn't listen to the teacher explain that her parents had decided she was too expensive to raise and had either sold her or had her executed. You didn't come up through middle school and high school watching your friends decide to offer themselves up for voluntary execution, or be sold for meat by their parents, or be convicted of some minor crime and be hauled off to be executed."

I just smiled. "Of course I did, Laura," I told her. "I went to school too, my third-grade class had something like 35 girls and two boys. I did sometimes play 'execution' with the little girls and I saw a lot of them vanish. Naturally, though, I was never on the receiving end."

She shook her head. "For women it's just constant, you get it all the time, from all different directions." She noticed, then, that I was more or less staring at her legs. She smiled. "Would you like me to get undressed for you?" she asked me. "If you would, just ask."

I looked back at her face and grinned at her. "You always get undressed when a man asks you to?"

She grinned back. "Try me."

"Would you get undressed for me?"

"Of course. If we were at a party or something I'd do it just because you asked me to. Here, though, it amounts to a table dance and it'll cost you ten dollars. House rules."

"I don't want you to dance. I just want to talk to you."

"Still."

I took out my wallet and pulled out a ten. She gave me a seductive smile, stood up, and moved around the table, closer to me. Then she reached down and untied her top. It fell open; she shrugged it off and laid it on the table. Her breasts were smoothly rounded, very firm, not too large, sitting very high on her chest, tipped by delicate pale pinkish nipples. I felt my cock begin to stir. She posed for me for a moment, then pushed her skirt down and off. Again she posed; then she picked it up and laid them on the table as well. She wore no underwear, and her groin was smoothly shaved, her vaginal lips large, smooth and prominent. Nude, her legs looked even better than before. She posed a final time, then sat back down, very close to me.

"Please, feel free to touch me if you want to," she said, leaning close. "That's part of the table dance, and I like to be touched." I put my arm around her, laid my hand on her thigh, and drew it slowly upward. Finally I cupped her breast and teased her nipple, and it shot to erection. She sighed softly and laid her head on my shoulder.

I lifted the little amulet hanging from the chain around her neck and examined the image on it. "So you're to be killed with a knife," I said.

"Yes," she replied, stretching her body seductively. "But the amulet doesn't say it all, not quite. For example, you might use a knife to slit my throat. If you bought me, and that's really what you wanted to do, I'd let you. But that's not what I really want for myself."

"What exactly do you want?"

She ran her hand up over her body, starting with her lower belly and moving up to her breast. "I want to be stabbed," she answered, her intensity startling. "Stabbed deep, over and over. Stabbed hard, stabbed to death."

Just thinking about that was causing my cock to stir even more. I glanced at the amulet again. "Did you choose this for yourself, or were you assigned it?"

"Oh, no. We all choose our own methods. Sometimes that's a problem for the club, everyone wants the same thing, but even so we have complete freedom."

"Why something so painful?"

She smiled rather darkly. "Well, I don't think it is all that painful, actually."

"That's hard to believe."

She shook her head. "No, I really don't think so," she told me. "I've watched several women die from having sharp things stuck in their bodies. When I was in college we had a seminar where they brought in a girl--a volunteer--and executed her in our classroom, so we could see the whole process up close and personal. The executioner stabbed her in her belly to start with, he used a damn big knife, and he stabbed her deep. She doubled over in pain when he did it, but pretty soon she was able to talk to us. She told us it hurt bad to start with but that the pain became muted right away--and explained that that was the shock effect you get when you get really seriously damaged. The executioner then stabbed her in her chest, way deep. She could hardly talk after that--there was a lot of bubbly blood coming out of her mouth and she was choking on it-- but she still managed to tell us it wasn't so very bad."

"Sounds like a great seminar. I'd like to hear more about it."

"Well, the idea was to get us girls comfortable with the idea of being killed, it was supposed to encourage us to be volunteers ourselves. We stood around with our hands on her body while the executioner stabbed her again, and we kept them there while she died. Her death throes, the way she twitched and jerked--it was unforgettable."

"Must have been a bloody mess in the classroom."

"They did it in the chem lab."

"Oh. All the girls in college attended?"

"No. They picked some of the smartest, best-looking, and most popular girls to attend this seminar--the kind of girls who they figured weren't likely to be volunteers and weren't likely to be executed for a crime. There were a few boys, too, we didn't know why at first but the volunteer explained that--they were the good-looking, popular boys who were sure to have lots of girlfriends and wives they could have executed."

"Tell me about it."

Laura shrugged. "Well, we came in and there was the girl, the volunteer, sitting naked on the teacher's lab bench. She was really good-looking, tall and slender and athletic with a nice allover tan--she had fantastic legs. Her hair was light brown and cut really short, and she had this cute pixie-face, the boys were just drooling. She was smiling, sitting there with her legs crossed, swinging one foot. She seemed to be completely relaxed and at ease. I couldn't imagine, then, why she had volunteered to have herself killed. The executioner, a big bearded man wearing only black pants and boots, was standing beside her with his hand on her shoulder. It was like they were lovers."

"Maybe they were."

"Maybe. Anyway, he didn't speak right away. The girl--she said her name was Carol--took charge completely. She told us to pull the lab stools into a tight circle and sit down, and she gave us a little talk, telling us that we shouldn't be afraid to die, it was a natural thing and everyone had to die sooner or later. She reminded us that even the boys and men had to die sometime, all of them, but she reminded us that, because of the imbalance between men and women, a lot of us had to die a lot sooner than they did to keep things even close to balance. She suggested we consider volunteering, and she told the boys that they could help out too--by having their girlfriends executed after staying with them for a few years."

I nodded. I was well aware of this. "Most men I know," I said, "do just that with their wives or live-in girlfriends."

Laura nodded. "It's only fair. There are so few good men--and if they stay with one woman most of their lives, other women are denied their time. But that wasn't what Carol was focusing on, she was talking about more casual boyfriend-girlfriend situations, like you have in college, where the girl can appeal an execution request. Her approach was really interesting. She told the boys to focus on how erotic female executions could be, and focus on how exciting it would be for them to see their girlfriend killed. She said they should take their girlfriends to see executions whenever possible, and that they should talk about it with the girls, before and during lovemaking especially. If the girls see how exciting it is for the guys--and if the guys are showing them they really care for them--many of them will suggest it themselves after a while. I can't say she was wrong."

I grinned. "No, I can't either."

"Anyway, she started talking about the common execution methods then. She spent quite a while discussing hanging, telling us the difference between hangman's knot hanging that breaks a girl's neck and slow strangulation hanging. She also talked about manual strangulation and garroting, and she said all of them could be nice slow sensual deaths if the executioner was expert except the hangman's-knot hangings, which she said was a quick death. She kept stressing that one of the big advantages of being a volunteer was that you could choose your own method of execution. You could choose a quick and relatively painless death from hanging, or beheading, or having your throat cut, or you could have a slower and more sensual death. Her own choice, she said, was to be stabbed to death. She told us that she felt that knife deaths were just about the most erotic of all, but that most people thought they were really painful and chose something else instead. It wasn't, she assured us, as bad as we thought--and she was going to prove it to us by having herself stabbed to death while we watched."

"I wish they'd had a seminar like that in my old school. He killed her then?"

Laura nodded. "She showed us this big knife and told us the executioner was going to start by sticking it in her belly. She told us in detail exactly what he was going to do, touching a spot on her belly below her navel and a little to the right and telling us he'd put it in there, all the way in, and angle it across from right to left and up a bit--she showed us, too, by poking herself with the knife's point and laying the blade against her belly. She explained that the blade would cut through her intestines and some medium-sized blood vessels and that it would be fatal given time, but not right away. She was still smiling, she looked excited but not at all nervous. Then she gave the knife to the executioner and got down off the desk. She stood with her legs spread and her arms up over her head, her fingers twined together. She told us not to look away, she said we should watch every detail. The executioner stood sort of beside and behind her and held her by her ribs under her breast. She pressed herself against him, puckered her lips, pushed her hips and belly forward a little, and said, 'here we go.' That was the executioner's signal, I guess, because he stuck that knife right into her belly, just the way she'd told us he was going to. He didn't hit her real hard and he didn't do it real fast but the blade sort of just slipped smoothly in--it must have been really sharp. Her breath went out with a whoosh and her eyes got real big. Her arms were just shaking, and her face kind of crumpled, she looked like she was in terrible pain. Her knees began to buckle and when they did the executioner tore the knife out of her. She jerked real hard and gasped when he did that, and blood just squirted out, all over the floor and all over several of us. He helped her down then, to her knees, and she kind of folded over herself, her head almost on the floor, clutching at her belly."

"Doesn't sound like a great advertisement."

"No, and it wasn't for a while; she was holding her belly and squirming around and moaning for a long time. A big pool of blood formed on the floor. But eventually she calmed down, and, with a little help from the executioner, she managed to get up. There was a big hole in her belly and blood was running out of it steadily. She was having trouble standing on her own, so he picked her up and sat her back up on the teacher's desk, and then he got some damp cloths and cleaned all the blood off her legs and knees. For a while she just sat there breathing really hard and shaking, but pretty soon she was able to talk to us again. She told us there hadn't been any pain to speak of when he'd done it, but that it had started to hurt, pretty badly, just a second or two later. After that, she said, it started to fade, and she told us that by that time it wasn't at all bad anymore, and she explained that it would keep fading as she kept losing blood. That was easy to believe, because as she kept talking her face relaxed and she seemed more and more under control. She said that a lot of her reaction wasn't to the pain but just her reaction to the knowledge that she'd just been fatally stabbed. She said the fact that she had volunteered for execution didn't mean her natural survival instinct had gone anywhere. Then she had us all come up and look at the wound close-up. I guess she talked to us for probably twenty minutes, telling us that she was proud of what she was doing and all that. One of the boys wanted to stick his finger in the wound and she let him, although it was obvious that it hurt her."

"Amazing."

"It was--I thought it was at the time, anyway. That same boy asked her why she wanted to die, he said he couldn't understand why a beautiful and sexy girl like her would volunteer. She thanked him for the compliment, but she told him that there were lots of beautiful women in the world and some of them just had to die. She said she felt that it was really important for her to give us this sort of demonstration. He asked her if it was a turn-on for her and she told him it was--she had him touch her nipples and stick his finger in her pussy to show him, and he told us she was really wet."

"Nice to hear that."

"Then she said that the executioner was going to stab her again, in her chest. She picked up the knife and she explained it all in detail again, how the knife would go in through her breast and between her ribs and into her lung, and again she showed us by holding the blade against herself. She told us there'd be blood coming up in her mouth after he did that, and she wasn't sure she'd be able to talk to us anymore, but she said she'd try. She encouraged us to watch her facial expressions if she couldn't speak. I really admired her, she was so courageous--and she was so matter-of-fact, even though she was already dying and she knew it. She sat still then, and the executioner came around behind her again and she said, 'here we go' again and when she did he stabbed her hard in her right breast, just above her nipple."

"How'd she take that?"

"She arched herself backwards and gasped real loud, then sort of folded up on herself again. The executioner told us it would be better for her--she'd be more likely to be able to talk to us again--if he left the knife sticking in her, so he did. He held her up in a sitting position while she coughed and choked; a lot of blood came out of her mouth and nose, and the executioner kept wiping it away with a damp cloth. Finally she was able to speak. She said she wasn't really feeling much pain at all anymore. She said she really liked the way the knife felt sticking in her chest, and she wanted us all to come up and touch it. We all did. The knife was almost completely buried but not quite, you could still see an inch or so of the blade. It was strange, I could feel her body trembling though the knife. A couple of the boys ran their fingers through the blood, up to the point where the blade entered her. She let them do whatever they wanted. She asked one of the boys to get some wet paper towels and wipe the blood away around the wound, so we could all see the knife piercing her flesh. He did, but he couldn't keep it clean, it just kept coming--but it served the purpose, he had it clean long enough that we could all see it. The guys kept touching her, too, and she encouraged that. She kissed all of them--and some of the girls--and had them put their hands on her breasts or between her legs while she was kissing them--almost all the guys stuck their fingers into her pussy. They kept commenting on how hard her nipples were and how wet her pussy was, and she kept telling each guy to imagine how sexy his girlfriend would look with a knife sticking in her body."

"To encourage them to request executions for their girlfriends"

"Yes. Anyway, a few minutes later she told us she wasn't going to be able to remain conscious much longer, so the executioner was going to finish her off before she passed out. Like before, she told us exactly how he was going to do it, that he was going to stab her through her solar plexus and that the knife would cut her aorta when he did. She encouraged us to put our hands on her, so we could feel her body die. After she finished talking the executioner laid her out on her back on the table, and we all gathered around close; as many of us as could laid a hand on her. I was touching her thigh, the boys claimed her tits and her pussy right away. I felt the muscles go tight when he pulled the knife out of her chest. Then he put the point against her solar plexus. While he held it there, she told us she'd enjoyed giving us a demonstration, and hoped we'd all take it to heart." Laura paused and stared at the table. "She was able to smile again. That amazed me."

"And then he killed her."

"Yes. He drove the knife down and in, real deep. Her body spasmed upwards like there was a spring under it. The executioner pulled the blade down a little and blood just poured out. She started trembling, really violently, and then the trembling changed into jerking. When that stopped, she wasn't moving anymore, she was dead."

"I take it that demonstration didn't make you want to rush right out and volunteer yourself."

Laura shook her head. "No. But at least two of the girls who saw that demonstration did, and one of the boys there immediately requested execution for his girlfriend. She was executed, too, she didn't appeal it, and her parents could have stopped it but they didn't." She sighed. "But it did make me think, even then--if this pretty and bright young girl can come in here and allow herself to be executed out of principle, why shouldn't I? There's no way I'm better than her. I didn't, though, not then. To be blunt about it, I was having too much fun. I was a popular girl in college, several guys wanted me as their girlfriend over the years but I knew where that ended up and I never accepted any of them." She paused and shook her head. "I know, my girlfriends then thought I was crazy, so few girls had boyfriends and here I was refusing opportunities. I always just said I'd rather have them for a night or a few days, have wild sex with them, and then move on. I did not want to die in the arena, in the public executions, and I knew that's where I'd end up."

I looked her up and down. "Your college days," I told her, "cannot have been very many years ago."

She shook her head. "No. I graduated a little over five years ago. My degree was in sociology, and I ended up getting a job in social services." She sighed deeply. "My duties involved counseling women and girls who had decided to volunteer to be put to death but weren't sure which way to go. I was to make recommendations, you should volunteer for public execution, you're suitable for the entertainment industry, you should sell yourself to a slaughterhouse for meat. Lots of things happened while I was doing that job. In spite of all my attempts to be professional I ended up making friends with some of these girls, they'd ask me to be there when they died and I could rarely refuse. And I was told, over and over, both by clients and by the people I worked with, how perfect I myself was for the entertainment industry, how I should go out to Hollywood or to Broadway and go out in a blaze of glory if I ever decided to eliminate myself." She smiled again and again shook her head. "Or, as many of them said, if I ever decided to do what's right."

"Heavy peer pressure," I remarked.

"Tell me about it," she agreed. She brushed her hair back; her eyes were a little moist. "The point is, they were not wrong. All through my college days and through my career as a social worker, I'd been dodging it, staying away from any commitments to men, carefully staying on very good terms with my family and making sure they profited when I got advancements, even though they are not poor." She shook her head. "And then I'd go out with these girls, my clients, and watch them die. A lot of them were attractive, bright, and well-educated. I kept asking myself what made me so much better. And finally..."

"You felt forced into it."

"Yes. But there was one other thing, too."

"Which was?"

She blushed prettily. "I tried to deny this to myself for a long time, and for years I was able to do so. Watching these women being executed turned me on. The whole idea of giving up your life and suffering the pain of losing it--that was just too exciting. The idea of dying is terrifying to me, but I got to thinking about how I could walk out in the street after work and get run over by a truck, and then I'd die without ever experiencing it. To be very blunt about it, I never serious considered volunteering for the public executions because you don't have sex while you're being executed in the arenas. I want that. I did consider Hollywood, but you can't be sure what sorts of roles you'll be offered there. I also thought about going to Europe and trying to get on one of those French or Italian 'erotikill' shows."

"Did you ever try for either one?"

"No. One of my clients told me about this place, and it seemed perfect for me. I quit my job and I signed up for a delayed start, I had six months before I started working here. I did it that way because I wanted at least six months to act as a total slut, to fuck as many men as I could, and I didn't know I wouldn't be killed my first night here." She crinkled her nose. "And now I've had more than a year. It's been good. But I still feel that truck might be waiting for me." She sighed. "I don't want the truck. I want a blade inside me, I want a man to stick a blade in me, I want to feel sharp steel cutting me inside. I want to feel that pain. I want to die in a pool of my own blood."

That little speech decided the matter for me. "Laura, do you want me to kill you tonight?"

She leaned over and kissed my cheek. "Yes," she whispered.

"Do you take credit cards?"

"Absolutely." I gave her my card and she went off to the bar to make the charge. After a moment she came back with the slip for me to sign; I did, and she left again. She was gone longer this time, and I saw her talking to and hugging some of the other dancers, evidently saying her good-byes to them. Then, smiling and looking happy and excited, she came back to me. She sat close to me and I touched her body as we watched a couple of the other dancers go through their routines.

Finally, she looked up at the clock on the wall. "If you're going to kill me tonight," she said, "and if you want to have sex with me before you do--and I sure as hell hope you do!--we'd better go get started. They try to close at two. It's a little after eleven now."

I held her hand. "You sure you want this? You really want me to kill you?"

She smiled richly. "Very sure. Ready?"

"As I'll ever be."

Still naked, abandoning her clothes, she rose and led me across the floor and down a long hallway, where she stopped in front of a closed door with a large brass "6" on it. "Here we are," she said as she opened it.

The room had a very utilitarian appearance. Along one wall was a king-sized bed covered with what looked like institutional sheets and a small nightstand beside it. Against the opposite wall was a dresser on which sat a small stereo. There was a chair in one corner. The carpet seemed to be made of some plastic material like astroturf--to facilitate the removal of the blood, I assumed. A door beyond the bed, partially open, led to a tiny shower--apparently, for me to use after we were finished.

Laura led me inside and indicated that I should sit in the chair. "Make yourself comfortable," she said, her voice cracking slightly. She went to the stereo, turned it on, and placed a CD in the slot. Soft music began to play. Moving to the nightstand, she opened the top drawer and took out a small, engraved box, which she placed on the top of it.

Then she came to stand in front of me. "You didn't make yourself comfortable," she said chidingly. "But we'll take care of that." Smiling, she came to me, leaned down, and kissed me. I raised my hands to caress her breasts and my erection began rising more seriously. Dropping to her knees, she undid my belt, pulled down my zipper, and worked my cock out of my underwear. Looking up at me with those soulful eyes, she licked it a few times, then took it into her mouth. Stroking her hair, I watched her as she sucked me skillfully and, apparently, passionately.

Then--too soon for me--she stopped and stood up again. "You have too many clothes on," she said. "Let's fix that." She pulled me up, and once I was standing she quickly removed the rest of my clothes and placed them in a hamper with a lid. "Bloodproof," she told me with a giggle. She then held me for a moment, trapping my now completely hard cock between our bodies, and kissed me again, again with apparent passion.

But, after just a moment, she broke the kiss. Turning away from me, she went to the nightstand, opened the little engraved box, and took out a small knife. Coming back to me, she handed it to me. I examined it. The razor-sharp double-edged blade was only about four inches long. She licked her lips nervously, then grabbed me almost violently and kissed me very hard on the mouth. Taking my right hand, the hand holding the knife, she moved it toward herself until the point of the knife touched her abdomen just above her pubic bone and somewhat to the left of the centerline of her body. Slowly, deliberately, she pressed herself against me--and against the point of the knife.

I drew it back instinctively. "No," she said. There was a certain desperation in both her eyes and her voice. "Do it, do it now, I need it now, I need to know there's no turning back. After you do this first one, you can do things any way you want, but I need this now. Stick it in me, get it in deep, and work it around in there. This won't kill me. I don't want to be killed quickly, I want to experience dying and I want to fuck you while I'm dying. Don't worry about hurting me. It's okay, I expect to be hurt."

"No, look, maybe we should--"

"Just do it, don't think about it," she urged. Her eyes were huge and luminous under the wispy bangs. "Please, get me started, do it now!"

I didn't argue with her any further. Watching her eyes, I pressed the knife hard into her belly. She pushed toward me at the same time, and a moment later I felt the point break through. Once her skin yielded, the blade sank right in, so quickly and easily I could not stop it until it was already a couple of inches deep.

She stopped pushing abruptly and so did I. Sitting perfectly still, she stared into my eyes, her own wide. Her face was very pale. "All the way," she whispered, her voice almost inaudible. "Go slow if you want to, but get it all the way in. Don't think about it and don't make me think about it! Just do it!"

I took her advice, I didn't think about it, I pushed again. Having breached her skin, the blade slipped on in softly and easily, sliding smoothly and sensually into her belly. Her face twisted with pain and she moaned softly. "Oh, god, I can feel it inside me, I can feel it cutting me inside." Her voice rose in pitch, her fingernails raked my shoulders. "Oh, oh, it hurts, it huuuurts... no, no don't stop, do it, please don't stop..." I kept pushing, on and on, feeling the cool steel slide into her body until it would go no further. Panting for breath and obviously struggling for control, Laura glanced down at it, then threw her arms around my neck and pressed her body against mine--although she turned slightly to the side so the handle wasn't touching my body. "Thank you," she whispered, kissing my neck.

Then she started sobbing.

"I'm sorry," she moaned. "I'm so scared, and it hurts... it really hurts..."

I patted her back. "I could do this quickly for you," I offered.

"No," she sniffed. "I don't want that." She suddenly groaned, threw her head back, and rolled her eyes. "Oh... I think I need to sit down for a minute..."

I helped her to the bed, although she seemed pretty stable considering the fact that she still had a knife buried in her gut. She sat down, her legs widely spread. I knelt in front of her. Looking down at herself, she laid her hand, palm down, alongside the fully-buried knife. There was very little bleeding, just a thin trickle, streaking her thigh and staining the bedsheet.

"Oh... look at that... finally..." She flicked her eyes up to mine. "You understand, there's no turning back now, we have to go through with it. If you don't kill me, if you don't do another thing to me, then Monk or Thompson--they're the managers--they'll finish me off. Those are the rules. Once you start, you can't change your mind."

"You want to change your mind?"

She shook her head vigorously. "No... no, I don't. I do want to go through with it. I want you to kill me. However you want to do that... I'd like for us to take our time with it, but if you just want to slit my throat and be done with me, that's all right too." She touched my ear. "Just please, fuck me or let me suck you off first..."

"I don't want to be done with you quickly," I said. I ran my hand down over her lower belly, down toward her groin. She spread her legs further. I let my hand slide on down, and my fingertip slipped between her labial folds. She was definitely wet.

"You've fucked a lot of men at this club, haven't you? How many, would you say?"

She shrugged slightly. "Hundreds. I have no idea how many. And not just here, for pay. On my nights off, too, outside. I work as a whore but I'm a complete slut, too--as I told you. That pussy and this mouth have been open to any man who wanted to stick his dick into them for a long time now. Sometimes I'd be in a store or on the street and I'd notice a man looking at me, maybe checking out my legs or tits--I do feel I have a good body and I always wear things to show it off, shorts and short skirts and filmy tops. If he was alone, I'd walk right up to him and ask him if he wanted to fuck me or if he'd like me to suck his dick. Ninety percent of them would say yes and we'd go off, maybe to a restroom, maybe a back alley or a car, whatever. I can't tell you how many times I've walked home with come running down my legs. You wouldn't believe some of the men I've fucked. Young boys, old men, ugly men, fat men. Didn't matter as long as he had a dick. Didn't even matter if he could get it hard, I've sucked dozens of old men who came in my mouth without ever getting hard. Three and four men at a time sometimes." She reached out and touched my chest. "And yours will be the last one. Even if you decide not to stick it in my pussy, it'll be the last one in my mouth, the last one in me." She cocked her head. "Want to just dispatch me now? Get rid of the whore, the slut?" Her expression suggested she already knew the answer.

But, grinning, I gave it to her anyway. "I like whores and I love sluts," I told her. "All you've done is turn me on more."

She smiled softly and ran her hand over my chest, tangling her fingertips in the hair. "My kind of man," she murmured. "Just the kind of man to end my life for me..." Her hand moved down until she touched my cock. She wrapped her fingers around it and pulled me gently toward her. Watching the knife so I didn't bump it, I moved in between her legs and allowed her to guide me into her. I pushed in deep; she moaned and raised her knees, gripping my sides.

She apparently noticed that I was carefully avoiding touching the knife. "Grab the handle of the knife," she asked me, staring into my eyes. "Hold onto it while you're fucking me."

I watched her face. "You want me to hurt you?"

She glanced away, then back. "I want you to--damage me."

"I think I understand." I wrapped my fingers around the knife's handle. I didn't move it, but even so it moved inside her a little. She gasped and arched her body, pushing her hips back and her chest forward, her breasts pressing against my chest. I put my other hand on the small of her back, held her, and moved my hips back and forth for a few seconds. Then I shoved my cock as deep as possible into her and at the same time I pushed hard on the knife, forcing the point a little deeper into her belly. She gave a soft cry and threw both of her arms around my neck, clinging to me. Holding her back, I kept grinding the knife into her while I slid the full length of my cock in and out several times. Blood started spilling out alongside the blade, a steady stream of it. Her pain was obvious. She was quivering against me, her face now pressed into my shoulder, but she never uttered one word of protest. After a while she started moving her own hips more actively, and a short time later she started shaking in obvious orgasm. I felt my own rise at the same time; grinding the knife in a little harder yet, I sprayed my come into her. As our orgasms faded I quickly pulled the knife out of her, provoking a loud but brief series of gasps from her. A swift-flowing stream of blood and some other bodily fluid, something thinner, followed it.

She looked down at the wound. She was swaying as if she might fall; I steadied her. "Feels very strange," she murmured. "My blood running out like that... very strange..." She shook her head just slightly. "I had a feeling tonight was going to be the night... I was thinking about it, earlier today, I was fantasizing about being knifed, about being killed, and it was turning me on..."

"In your fantasy," I asked, "where were you being stabbed?" Even though I had just come, my cock was beginning to stir a little.

"In my belly, where you stabbed me," she answered promptly. "And in my tits, and in my back."

"Well, we'll just have to bring all those fantasies to reality," I said, watching the blood flow from the puncture in her abdomen. The bleeding was significant but not alarming; I was pretty sure she wouldn't die from this wound alone, at least not unless she lived long enough to have a problem with infection, and she didn't seem to have lost much if any of her strength. I reached over to touch her breasts, and initially she leaned forward a little to give me access.

Then, without warning, she let out a choked cry, grabbed at her belly, and doubled over. A moment later she'd fallen onto her side on the bed, folded up into a fetal position, clutching at her abdomen.

I put my hand on her shoulder. "You okay?" I asked inanely, feeling stupid even as I said it.

"No," she groaned. "Ah, god, it hurts...!" She was squirming around on the bed, holding her belly. I wasn't sure what, if anything, I could do for her. I moved her hands and looked at the wound. The bleeding had almost stopped, and the little puncture seemed to be closing up.

"Look," I told her, "believe it or not, I think you're beginning to heal up, and that means the shock effects are wearing off. If you want me to I can open that wound back up. It'll hurt like hell doing it, but after that it should get better."

She waved a hand at me and shook her head. "No, I'm sure it'll pass," she told me, again covering the wound with her hands. "It'll be okay, just give me a minute..." Even so, she continued to squirm, her eyes closed, obviously in intense pain.

"I dunno, Laura," I said. "You remember the story you just told me, about the girl in that seminar, what she told you about shock and blood loss. I'm no biologist, but I do know the body wants to survive. That means that if it thinks it still has a chance to, it'll be trying to force the issue, and it'll do that with pain."

She opened her eyes. "So what're you suggesting?"

I held up the knife. "Let's get you bleeding again."

She stared at me for a moment. Then she moved her hands away from the wound and, with an effort, unfolded her legs somewhat. "Do it," she said.

I nodded. I laid my hand on her hip and stabbed the knife back into her belly, just below her navel, not hitting hard but just smoothly running the blade in. She grunted loudly and her body jerked. I yanked it out and, giving her little time to think about it, ran it in again, a little lower. She raised her arm as if she was going to try to stop me but her fingers simply fluttered in the air. Fresh blood began to flow. I kept sticking the little blade in her, over and over, in the general vicinity of her navel, until her belly was well-covered with blood and it was dripping off the bed. She grunted and spasmed with each strike. Then, having stabbed her at least six or seven times, I stopped. She laid still, her eyes open and staring at the far wall, breathing very hard.

"I know this is going to sound crazy," I said. "But is that better?"

She moved her head slightly and looked back at me. "It is crazy. But it is better, too. Still hurts. For some reason a lot easier to take." A little blood appeared at the corner of her mouth, and she swallowed hard a couple of times, apparently swallowing more. She studied my eyes. "Didn't you like," she asked, "seeing me in pain like that?"

I cupped her face with my hand. "Yes," I answered, "I do. But I don't want you in such pain it incapacitates you. But I think this experience suggests we need to keep moving along."

"I think you're right." She reached for my hand. "Help me up." I did, getting her back to a sitting position. She seemed to be recovering quickly. Still holding the knife in my right hand, I reached out to cup her right breast with my left.

She looked up at me, then lifted her own left breast, as if offering it to me. "A client I was screwing earlier today," she said, "said he couldn't afford me, but he did say, over and over, these tits were made for a blade..."

I smiled. "You think he was right?"

"Yes," she replied. "I do." She leaned forward, still holding her breast. Her eyes were huge and luminous. "Just be careful you don't hit my heart, I don't want things to end that soon..."

"I understand. I don't either." Bending down, I kissed and sucked her nipple for a moment. Then I straightened up again, put my left hand on her back to brace her, and pressed the tip of the knife firmly into her breast, just under the nipple. Her eyes were half closed, her lips parted slightly. She looked like she wanted to be kissed, so I kissed her. She returned it enthusiastically.

And, while I was kissing her, I pressed the knife in hard. Her breast folded in at first, but soon enough the point popped through her skin--and, as before, much of the blade vanished before I could stop it. She let out a muffled shriek behind the kiss. Her eyes flashed open and she grabbed my shoulder. I pressed on, driving the blade deeper.

She then broke the kiss and closed her eyes. "Oh... god... yes... do it to me..." she murmured. I pushed on, sliding the knife in deeper. Piercing her breast was very different from putting it in her belly. When I'd stabbed her in her belly, the knife went in smoothly, softly, and easily once it was past the skin. Her breast kept resisting it; it went in by jerks, half an inch at a time, and each time it sank deeper she moaned and squirmed. A moment later she grabbed my head and kissed me again. She choked a little behind it, and I could taste blood rising up in her mouth. I pushed her knife on in until it would go no further, then let go of it.

My erection had returned by then, it was at an almost painful hardness, pressing hard against her thigh as we broke the kiss slowly, reluctantly. She glanced down at the knife, which was fully buried in her breast. "This feels.... right," she sighed. "Oh, god, feels so... right... looks so right..." I looked as well. The knife stood very rigidly in her breast. There was some bleeding from around the blade, but not too much. She coughed, and a fine mist of blood sprayed from her mouth.

"I'm going to hurt you some more, Laura," I told her, stroking her face.

She smiled tiredly. "Whatever you want to do to me..."

I smiled too, and kissed her briefly. Then I wrapped my fingers around the hilt of the knife and started pulling it slowly out of her breast.

Her face contorted. "Oh, god, oh, that hurts so damn bad, oh god...!"

"Take it for me, Laura," I whispered. I pulled the blade back a little more.

She stared at me for a moment. "Yes... yes, yes, I will... hurt me, hurt me as much as you want to..."

I held her tightly, and, reversing direction, pushed the blade back into her breast. As it went in I forced it to one side, enlarging the puncture. The bleeding increased dramatically. Her face rigid, she ground her teeth as I pushed it fully back in and then drew it out gradually. "You're wonderful," I told her. I kissed her sensuously and pulled her close; blood from her pierced breast spilled over her chest and ran onto the bed.

It was dripping from her lips, as well. "You like hurting me? Seeing me bleeding?" she asked me.

I licked it from her lips. "You bet I do."

"Good... I want you to have everything you want... hurt me some more... make me bleed more..."

"Oh, I will." I gazed at her face. "But I do want to know, did that match your fantasy? If it didn't, just tell me what to do..."

She gazed back at my eyes for a few seconds, as if making a decision. "Put your dick back in me," she said finally. "Push it in as deep as you can. Then stab me, as hard as you can, in my tit. Hit the nipple if you can. Hit me really hard."

I nodded. I pushed her down onto her back, positioned myself between her spread legs, and pushed inside her. I pumped back and forth a few times, then shoved myself into her as hard as possible--and, just as she'd asked, I stabbed her violently, viciously, in that same breast. I succeeding in hitting the nipple almost dead-center, and the blade went all the way in. She gave a gasping moaning little cry and arched her body up as if to meet it, driving the knife harder against herself. I felt I knew what she wanted from me by then. I pushed her back down with the knife, shoved my cock in and out of her a few times, then jerked the blade free. As the blood welled up, I plunged the knife back down and back into her breast, a little higher, again burying the blade. She arched against me again, grinding her teeth, her eyes tightly closed--and at the same time, her hips were squirming hard against me. I pushed her back down with the knife again, and, an instant later, she erupted in an explosive orgasm. Just as she was finishing it, I yanked the knife out of her breast again.

After that she became very still. Her body quivered a little, and she was breathing very hard, almost gasping in air, but she wasn't moving. Blood ran freely from her breast and from the corner of her mouth.

"Still with me?" I asked.

Her eyes focused on mine. "Yes... but... I... can't breathe..."

Even though I had not yet come, I pulled out and pulled her up to a sitting position. She coughed up a mass of blood, but after that seemed to be breathing easier. I climbed onto the bed, crossed my legs, pulled her onto my lap, and let my cock slide back inside her.

She gave me a wan smile, wrapped her arms around me, and kissed my neck. "Stab me again," she whispered, her lips close to my neck. "Again. Stab hard, stab deep..."

"My pleasure," I said. I ran my hand over her smooth muscular back, then savagely drove the blade in between her ribs.

She jerked violently in my grasp. "Yes..." she hissed. "This is the way I want it, yes..." I held her head, slipped the blade out, and stabbed it back in, a few ribs lower. Again her body spasmed against me. As I pulled the blade out again, I was feeling my own orgasm beginning to rise.

Turning her slightly to the side, I slammed the blade into her belly, right into her deep navel. All the air went out of her lungs with a loud whoosh, and while she was struggling to breathe I started to come. As I released my semen inside her, I slammed the knife against her repeatedly, listening to her soft grunts, feeling her body spasm with each blow.

By the time I'd finished, she was lying against me passively. I pulled the knife out of her belly slowly, and she hardly responded to it at all. I moved her off my fading erection and slid myself back a little; she remained upright, in a sitting position, but her head was down. Most of the wounds in her breast, belly, and back continued to bleed, and a thin stream of blood ran steadily from her mouth.

"You need to finish me off now," she said in a low thin voice. "There's a bigger knife in the nightstand drawer if you want to get it..."

I shook my head. "No. This small one will do fine."

She raised her head and studied my eyes. "You'll have to stab me a lot more to kill me with that small knife. Or cut me open with it..."

"I know," I replied with a grin. "I don't mind."

She managed a partial smile as well. "I don't either." She choked, swallowed, and then let more blood drain from her mouth. "Do it to me," she urged. "I feel so tired, so cold, and nothing hurts much anymore. I don't want to pass out. I want to feel myself dying..."

'That's the plan," I told her. "To let you bleed to death." I put my hand on her knee and gently caressed her thigh.

"Stab me again," she urged. "Hit me hard..."

Smiling, I slammed the blade into her abdomen again, down very low, just above the arch of her pubes, hard enough to knock her backwards slightly. She grunted and then moaned, and I pulled the blade sharply upward, ripping the wound open. She looked down at it and again hung her head as fresh blood, mixed with urine, flowed out.

"More," she whispered without lifting her head. "More, it'll take more to kill me..." She was starting to sag, as if she were about to collapse. Ripping the knife out of her belly, I grabbed her hair and pulled her head up. Supporting her, I stabbed the knife in under her ribs on her right side, hard and deep. Her eyes widened and she grunted sharply again, but she barely flinched. "I like the violence," she murmured. "I like it when you're rough and cruel with me..."

I kissed her. "I want to give it to you the way you like it," I said. I whipped the knife out and immediately stabbed her again, three more times, in that same area, pounding the blade into her hard, listening to the "choonk!" sounds as it sliced through skin, muscle, and entrails. Rich dark blood from her lacerated liver flowed out.

"More..." she sighed. She was starting to look sleepy; her lips curved in a slight smile.

I discovered that--unreasonably, since I'd had two orgasms already--I was getting hard again. Laura noticed too, and she weakly reached for my rising cock. She started to lean forward. Still supporting her by her hair, I let her move her head until she was in position to begin licking my cock.

"Keep stabbing me," she said, "while I'm sucking you. Don't worry, the pain isn't bad, I won't bite..." With that, she slipped my cock into her mouth.

"Even if you did," I said, tousling her hair, "it'd be worth it." I ran my hand down over her back, then plunged the blade in between her ribs again. Her body jerked with the impact, but, true to her word, she did not even scrape me with her teeth. I pulled the knife out and more blood came out. It was everywhere now, all over the bed and all over both of us. While she sucked me I hammered the blade into her side three more times, hitting her so hard I wondered if I might break one of her ribs, pausing each time to move it around inside her while it was deeply buried. At last I started coming in her mouth, releasing a surprising amount of semen considering I'd already had two orgasms. She swallowed it all.

She looked up at me, her eyes soulful. "Please," she begged. "Please, get the big knife and use it on me. "If you keep stabbing me with the little one I'm going to pass out and I don't want that, I want to feel myself dying, I want to experience my death."

I decided not to push things any further. "I understand," I said. I reached over, opened the drawer, and took out the other, much larger, knife. It was quite large, the blade eight inches long and two inches wide. "Where do you want it?"

"Right through the middle of me," she answered. "Hard and fast. Go all the way through me if you can."

"Okay." I straddled her body on my knees. I drew the knife back. "Before I do this, I want you to know this has been the most fantastic sexual experience of my life. You are, truly, unbelievable."

She smiled faintly. "I'm glad to hear that..."

I leaned down and kissed her lightly. "You ready?"

"I'm ready. Kill me."

I nodded. I held her face with me left hand and I drove the big knife down with all my strength. It tore into her body midway between her solar plexus and her navel and just a little to the left of the centerline. I felt it slice through her abdomen, I felt it hit her spine and go on, the feel changing as it sank into the mattress. Her eyes flew open very wide and her body arched up against me with more strength than I thought she still had. Blood exploded from her; her legs came up against my rear end, then fell back. Her body quivered, her hands beat on the bed for a moment, I felt her legs bouncing behind me.

Then her body relaxed, suddenly, completely, and utterly. I watched her eyes glaze; her expression suggested nothing more than surprise. Although it certainly seemed to me that things had ended rather abruptly in a way, there was nothing further for me to do. Leaving her with the knife standing in her body, I got up, showered, retrieved my clothes from the hamper, and left. At that point I was a little confused, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do or what I should be doing or feeling.

I came back, two nights later. I looked up Monk, one of the owner/managers Laura had mentioned. We talked; I came back again, twice more, and we talked a lot.

At the end, we hammered out a deal.

I had never mentioned it to Laura, but I was a married man. As was the case with most married men--there being huge numbers of available women about--my wife Terri was herself a stunning beauty. Medium in height but slender and athletic, she had reddish-auburn hair, striking green eyes, pouting lips, and a miniature nose. Her breasts weren't large but they were firm and sat high on her chest; her waist was very narrow and her legs were long. In bed she was a tigress, her skills equal to Laura's or better.

Terri was more than fifteen years younger than I was. I had known her, casually, almost since she was born--her father was a close friend of our family, and Terri was his only daughter. She had always been a bright and vivacious girl, truly charming. Wanting her to have the best possible chance at life--and believing that she would be able to bear sons--he'd offered her to me in marriage when she was only fifteen. I had been married before, and my previous wife, in deep depression over the death of her closest friend, had--without my knowledge or approval--signed up for public execution. At the time Terri's father made his proposal, it had been only three weeks since Martha's death. Her death had been quite hard on me; I missed her, badly, and I felt badly that I had found her execution by beheading--which I witnessed--erotic. Not until I met Laura did I truly come to terms with my predilections in this area, which had turned out to be fairly strong.

At fifteen, Terri was rapidly growing into a beautiful young woman, and she told me she'd always had a "crush" on me--a crush she said she was very sure could easily turn into love. It all seemed very natural, very right--when we were married she was only sixteen. Eleven years had passed since then, eleven very good years--Terri and I were well-matched and I came to love her deeply. I was confident of her love, as well; she'd dated very little and was a true virgin when she first came to my bed. As far as I knew had always been absolutely faithful even though I had never demanded that of her--indeed, we had never even discussed it.

The only cloud on our horizon was that her father had been wrong. Nine times Terri had become pregnant, and, as many couples do, we had the embryo sexed early on. They were all female, and Terri had them all aborted.

For a full week I put off telling her about Laura and about the deal I'd cut with Monk. She herself finally brought the topic up; she knew nothing about any of it, but she knew something was different and she wanted to know what it was. As most wives do these days, she opened by asking if I'd become dissatisfied with her or tired of her and if I'd decided to have her executed.

"No," I answered, "I haven't become dissatisfied with you. And no, I'm not tired of you, and yes, I still love you."

"And? But?" she inquired.

"But, yes, I have decided that you should be executed."

Her shoulders slumped and she looked away. She might argue, but she knew quite well that a husband always has a right to have his wife executed, all women who marry these days understand that from the outset. "Why?" she asked after a moment. I told her the whole story then, about the bar and, in general terms, about Laura.

"So," she said when I'd finished. She seemed to be completely in control but her lip was trembling just a little, revealing her nervousness. "This place allows untrained men to kill women and it's all legal." She paused, lit a cigarette--she rarely smoked but did when she was nervous--and crossed her legs. She was wearing very brief shorts and the view was nice even if those legs were very familiar. "So... what? You want to take me there and kill me yourself?"

"I'd considered that," I admitted. "But Monk--the manager--won't permit it. He's afraid it might jeopardize the special deal he has--conflict of interest, something like that. So I can't do it."

"What, then?"

I took a deep breath. "I want you to go down to The Goodbar," I told her, "and sign up. I made a special deal with Monk. Whenever someone buys you for the Goodbar special, he has to wait 24 hours to claim you. When he does, I'll be there, and I'll be watching."

She dusted ashes. "So, let me get this straight," she mused. "I go down and I sign up. I then work as a dancer and a whore until somebody pays the price to kill me. When he does, I let him--and you get to watch."

"That's it."

She gazed at me steadily for a few seconds. "I can," she noted, "refuse. You do have a legal right to have me executed--by the state. Anything else, I can say no. And you have no legal right to ask me to work as a whore."

"I know."

She sucked on her cigarette. "And if I do say no--then you'll send me out to be executed by the state? Sell me into slavery?"

I shook my head. "No," I answered. "You say no and I'll be disappointed, but we'll go on, as we were." I sighed. "It's strange. I don't just want you dead, Terri. I do love you, I always have--I really don't want you dead at all, but I do want to watch you die--and I don't mean watching you die of old age fifty years from now. I just believe that this would be the ultimate turnon for me, the way this whole thing would play out. You find a customer, a man who's willing to pay for the privilege of killing you. You come home, you tell me about it, we spend our last night together knowing it's our last." I smiled at the vision this provoked. "The next night," I went on, "you'll go back. You'll know that you're going to your death, but you won't hesitate. When the man comes in you'll go to him smiling, you'll tell him you're ready to be killed. You'll let him take you into the back room, you'll let him knife you to death. You'll be cooperating with him, helping him do it, and you'll know that I'm right there, watching it happen."

"That's quite a fantasy," she said, her voice expressionless. She cocked her head. "You want me to be stabbed to death?"

"Yes. Absolutely." I hesitated. "And I'm hoping you'll get a guy who'll stab you a number of times, the way I did Laura. Take his time with you, take you down slow."

"You want to see me in pain."

I nodded; there was no use in holding back. "I want to see you accepting the pain, for me. I want to see you bleeding, for me."

"And dying, for you. For your erotic pleasure."

"Yes."

"I see." She paused. "And if I say no--then nothing happens? We forget about it?"

"Yes."

She stumped out the cigarette, uncrossed her legs, then crossed them the other way. "So, let me run though the whole picture," she said, "One more time. You want me to go volunteer at a place where I'll be dancing naked and working as a whore--fucking strange men, sucking their cocks, any man who's willing to pay for it--until someone decides to pay whatever it costs to buy my life. I'm to wear a pendant that says I want to be killed with a knife. When someone does decide to buy me, then I'm to tell him we have to wait 24 hours so you can be there and watch it happen. Then I come home and tell you and we have a wild passionate last night together. I then to go back the next night with a smile on my face and allow this man to kill me with a knife--while you watch. I'm supposed to cooperate completely, and I'm supposed to encourage him to go slow, to hurt me really badly, make sure I don't die too quickly, and make sure I bleed a lot." She smiled. "And finally, if I say no, then we just go on as we have been because you still love me." She shook her head and laughed a little. "But in spite of that, you feel this would be such a turnon for you that it's worth my life."

That sounded harsh, but I knew it would, and I smiled inwardly. "Well..."

"There's no need to explain," she said, cutting me off. "I have an answer for you."

"And?" I said, knowing she was going to refuse.

"And my answer is yes, I'll do it."

I stared at her. "Yes?"

She giggled. "Yes."

"Why?" I blurted. I was more than amazed, I was incredulous.

She laughed again. "Because you want me to!" she exclaimed. She leaned forward. "Because I love you, and because I do believe you love me, Charlie. I'm perfectly willing to die for the love we have, I'm more than willing to accept being tortured with a blade for the sake of that love. And besides..." she fell silent.

"Besides?"

She looked down. "It's what's right," she murmured, reciting the modern woman's mantra. "I can't have boys. You need another wife, you need to try again with a different woman."

"The doctors," I reminded her, "have said that that's me, not you."

"You never know." She looked up. "Regardless, I've lived with you for eleven years--eleven happy years. You're a good man, Charlie, and you've been a wonderful husband. It's time for another woman to have you. Time for me to die."

I could not believe what had just happened. What I had been doing was, in effect, spinning a fantasy, playing a game. I had been sure she'd refuse--it did, after all, sound very selfish of me when laid bare--and when she did, I'd laugh and we'd have sex and roleplay it. To make it seem real, it had been exciting for me to talk with Monk, to plan it out, believing it would never happen. Instead, Terri had shocked me by agreeing to it easily, and worse, by connecting the "it's what's right" equation to it. There was no backing out, and I knew it. I was trapped. There was nothing I could do but make the best of it.

I still felt I should try. "Terri..."

"Don't argue," she said, shutting me down before I'd even started. "You won't change my mind. Just understand that the main reason I'm doing this is because you want me to." She stood up abruptly and pushed her shorts down. "And now," she said, "I want to make love with you. And while we're doing it, I want you to tell me all about the way you killed this other woman. Where you stabbed her and how, how she reacted and how it made you feel. I want to hear all the details." She took off the rest of her clothes and, kneeling before me naked, took out my cock and started sucking it.

While she did, I started telling her about Laura. In detail.

I took her in to meet Monk for the first time on a Monday night. She was certainly dressed to impress; a very short bright red minidress, cut low at the top, and heels. She wore no stockings or bra; her legs didn't need them, and neither did her perky B-cup breasts. We were both very nervous, and we hardly spoke at all as we made the drive to The Goodbar. The doorman recognized me and probably knew what the deal was, he allowed us to come in without paying the usual cover charge. We'd hardly gotten seated when Monk appeared, carrying a briefcase. He put it down on the floor and sat down at the table with us.

"Hey, Charlie," he said affably. He looked at Terri, his eyes scanning her up and down. "This, I assume, is your wife?"

"Yes," I answered. "Terri, Monk. He's the manager here."

"Nice to meet you," she murmured, her voice far from steady.

"I gotta see if you qualify," he said bluntly. "Charlie says you do, in spades, but I gotta see for myself. Stand up and strip. Everything."

Terri started a little. "Right out here?"

"You'll be naked right out here a hell of a lot of the time if you work here, Terri. You'll probably have to fuck guys and suck guys off out here, in front of everybody--including your husband if he's here, and I got a feeling he's gonna be here a lot. If you're shy, this isn't the place for you."

She glanced at me and pursed her lips. Then she stood up and quickly pulled the dress up and over her head. All she was wearing besides the dress and her shoes was a tiny thong panty. She pushed it down and stepped out of it.

"Turn around," Monk said, gesturing with his hand. Terri obeyed immediately, making a slow turn. I noticed that many of the other men in the club were now watching her. Monk reached out and touched her belly lightly. She didn't flinch. "Everything in here that's supposed to be in here?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"You had any organs removed?" he clarified. "That's important to some guys, they like to kinda take a woman apart."

Terri's face remained expressionless, although she flicked her glance toward me quickly. "Oh. No, I haven't had anything removed. All my organs are intact." She hesitated. "And original, and natural."

"Good," he said, nodding. "You can get dressed now. If you want to. If you don't care, just sit down." Terri gazed at him for a moment, then sat down, still naked. Monk nodded again, in apparent approval. "We only accept," he went on, "exceptional women here. Charlie told me you were exceptional, and he was right, so we ain't going to have problems there. You know the details?"

She nodded. Sitting there naked, she looking fragile and scared. "One price for table dances, letting men touch me," she answered. "Another for sex, and that can either be private or out here as a show. I don't recall those amounts. And the, uh, the, er, the special. Five thousand dollars. A man pays that, he gets to--to--uh, kill me."

"You got it," he said. He went over the prices for stage tips with and without touching, table dances, private sessions, and public sex. "One more thing," he went on, "that you should know. There are times--it ain't rare--when a man buys a Goodbar special and then finds he can't go through with it. The rules about that are these." He counted on thick fingers. "One, there are no refunds. Two, if he hasn't hurt you or hasn't hurt you much, you go home, and you come back when you're healed up. But, if a girl gets hurt bad enough to require hospitalization--in my opinion, or Thompson's, he's the other manager--then we usually finish them off ourselves." He grinned. "In your case, since we've made an agreement that Charlie here gets to watch you get snuffed, we'll let him take care of that. If it happens." He turned back to me. "Okay with you, Charlie?"

I nodded. "Fine with me." I held up a hand. "Would it be my decision?" I asked. "Whether she's to be finished off or not?"

He frowned for a moment. "Sure, why not? She gets cut up and you want to take her out and get her patched up, there's no problem. But whether she goes on here after that depends on how much scarring there is and all that. I don't want no scarred-up girls working here."

"Understood," I agreed. Terri was watching me closely. I was sure there were going to be some discussions about this later.

"Okay, then." Monk reached into his briefcase and took out some papers. "You need to sign these," he told her, pushing them toward her, along with a pen. "You can read 'em if you want." He laughed. "They can't be any worse, I guess. You sign, you've agreed to submit to execution by any method at any time, unlimited, by me or Thompson or any agent we designate--and any customer in here is an agent of ours. Now, Charlie here says you want a blade amulet, so that means we won't force you to let somebody hang you or whatever, but anybody who wants to do you with any kind of blade and pays, you'll have to let him. Same with the sex. You'll be required to fuck or suck any customer who pays you and anybody me or Thompson tells you to get it on with, any time you're on duty. You sign that, we own you. We can do anything we want with you or to you at any time. Oh, we'll let you work a regular shift and have days off and all that, but legally we don't have to. Also, we can cancel the contract at any time and send you home. Understand?"

"Yes." She picked up the pen, then looked at me. "You want me to sign?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yes."

She watched my eyes for just a few seconds. Then, with a flourish, she signed the paper. "I'm yours," she told Monk as she handed him the pen. Monk grinned and put the papers back in his briefcase. He then took out an amulet identical to the one Laura had been wearing and handed it to her. She studied it briefly, then put it on. "When do I start?" she asked.

"Right now."

"Now?" Terri asked in a slightly choked voice.

Monk nodded. "Yes, now. You're on duty from now until three AM. That red dress is good enough for a floor costume; leave the panties off. Your schedule is, you're gonna be working Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday, seven to three. The DJ will call you onto the stage when it's your turn to dance. It don't matter much how you dance, the guys don't care, they just want to see you naked."

Terri looked at me, a touch of near-panic in her eyes. Then she turned back to Monk. "But--"

"Just circulate," Monk told her. "Sit down with the guys, talk to them. Standard openers are 'do you mind if I sit here?' and 'is this your first time here?' Ask them if they want a table dance and encourage them to touch if they do, but don't let them go too far there--nothing goes inside anything unless they pay. Ask them if they want a blowjob or if they want to get laid. Act like you find them sexy whether you do or not. If they agree to the sex, they have the choice of doing it out on the floor or back in the champagne room." He paused to point it out to her. "Give them whatever they want, but remember, it's fifty dollars for each half-hour--keep an eye on the time. Encourage them to buy the special, tell them you're looking forward to it, that you really want it, you want to have a man kill you. You got a special deal--the 24-hour wait--so be sure and tell them about that, too." He pointed to the hallway where Laura had taken me the night I killed her. "Down there," he went on, "are the killing rooms. So that nobody has to wait, we assign a room to each girl whenever she's on duty; yours is number eight, and it'll always be number eight when you're working. If the 24 hour wait business means you're gonna get offed on Thursday or a Sunday--the nights you wouldn't normally work--let me or Thompson know as soon as you can so we can assign you another room or reassign whatever girl might be assigned to number eight. Now: if the guy wants to bring in his own blade to use on you, that's fine, and you can bring in something of your own if you want. In the bedside table you'll find some knives; in the closet there are swords, rapiers, bows and arrows, and so on. All kinda stuff. Most guys, you show them what you want them to use to dispatch you and tell them how you want it done and that's what they'll do." He stopped speaking for a moment, then pointed at her, shaking his finger. "One more thing, you might know about it and you might not. More often than not, when a girl is being killed, she shits all over herself. The girls working here do enemas before they come in. In your case you don't have to, 'cause you got that 24-hour special, but don't forget about it, okay? Shitting all over yourself right in the middle of it, well, it ain't what the clients want and you probably wouldn't want it either."

She swallowed hard. "God." Then, shaking her head: "Okay. I understand." She reached for her dress, then stood up and slipped it on. Absently fingering the amulet hanging from her neck, she turned to me. "I guess," she said slowly, "I'd better get to work, huh?"

I smiled and squeezed her hand. "I suppose so."

Terri then walked away. I watched her as she crossed the room a couple of times, apparently just familiarizing herself with the layout of the place. I saw her go down the hallway to the killing rooms, find number eight, and go inside. A few seconds later she came out again and started back across the floor.

She didn't get far before a middle-aged man stopped her. She spoke to him for a moment, then sat down at the table beside him. They started talking; they were too far away for me to hear what was being said. But, just a few seconds later, the man laid his hand on her leg near her knee. She responded to this by smiling sweetly and squirming in her chair, hiking her skirt in the process so that her legs were fully exposed. The man moved his hand upward. Terri didn't hesitate, she moved closer to him and laid her hand on his shoulder. I just stared, amazed that she was getting into the swing of things so quickly--and, apparently, easily.

The man moved his hand on upward a little more, his fingers coming close to her groin. She slid forward in her chair, pushing her skirt up higher yet, and spread her legs a little. He rubbed his hand across her genitals and tried to slip a finger inside her, but when he did she scooted back a bit. He put his arm around her, and stroked her breast through her dress. With a move so completely natural it looked practiced, she slipped the straps off her shoulders and let the top fall, baring her chest. He grinned and teased her nipple gently. All this time she was talking into his ear. A moment later he nodded, took out his wallet, and gave her several bills. She rose, took his hand, and led him toward the champagne room. As they entered, I saw her glance at her wristwatch. Her manner, it seemed to me--the quick ease with which she fell into the patterns, the way she was doing everything right--suggested that she'd worked in this sort of business before.

But that, I reminded myself, wasn't possible. I had known this girl since she was a toddler.

I got up and went to a table nearby, where a pretty young girl, dark-skinned with long black hair and very dark eyes, was sitting alone. "How much for a lap dance in the champagne room?" I asked her without preamble.

She smiled up at me; she had a very appealing, very young-looking, broad face. "Fifteen," she answered. "Per song. With no sex. But wouldn't you rather--?"

"We'll see," I told her. "Right now, the main thing is that there's another girl in there I want to watch."

The girl shrugged. "You could just walk in."

"I'd rather have company."

"You've got it." She rose gracefully; she was wearing a very brief skirt, and her legs were very long and very shapely. I noticed that her amulet had both a knife and a gun on it. I gave her a twenty, told her she could keep the change, and we walked back to the champagne room.

I had not been inside before; it was a large open room with a number of couches, each of which was separated from the next by a wall. From the center of the room, however, all the couches were completely visible. Terri and her customer, I saw, had taken one in the center of the room along the near wall; I led my companion to one directly across from it and I sat down.

The girl sat down beside me. "I'll start at the beginning of the next song," she informed me, "so you get the full time."

"Sounds good," I said absently, watching Terri. She'd already discarded her dress; she was sitting beside her customer completely naked, toying with his thinning hair while he sucked on her nipples and stroked her legs slowly.

"She's really beautiful," the girl commented, watching as well. "She's new here, I've never seen her before. You know her?"

I nodded abstractly; I was feeling some sort of oddly pleasant anxiety as I watched my wife with this stranger. "Yes, I do. And she is new, she just started." Terri, meanwhile, had begun stroking the man's cock through his pants, and just a few seconds later the cloth tented up noticeably. Grinning mischievously, Terri pulled down his zipper, reached her hand inside, and deftly worked it out. Average to a bit large in size, it stood up rigidly. She toyed with it for several seconds while the man squeezed her breasts. Leaning down, she kissed the tip of it quickly and teasingly, then laughed at the man's unheard but obvious protest. Nodding, she lowered her head again and slipped it into her mouth. He leaned back while she sucked it with long smooth strokes. I couldn't help staring fixedly. I had never before seen Terri sucking another man's cock, and I could not believe how intensely the sight turned me on.

"She has a great style," the girl sitting beside me said. "She ever work in a place like this before?"

"Not as far as I know," I answered, feeling that a flat no would provoke more questions.

"A natural, then." She looked up at me; I could feel her eyes on me even as I continued to watch my wife suck this stranger's cock. "What's your name?" she asked. I told her. "Nice to meet you, Charlie. I'm Gillian Sullivan... Jill for short. You're the man who killed Laura, aren't you?"

I turned my head then and gazed into her wide dark eyes. She had undone her top, exposing very pretty breasts and a smooth flat belly. Unlike Laura and Terri, whose bodies were athletic and firm, Jill was very soft-looking, very delicate. "Yes," I answered. "That's me."

She touched my face. "I'd really like it," she said in a soft seductive voice, "if you would kill me too." She fingered her amulet; her eyes were very bright. "I'm ready to die, I want to die. I want a man to kill me." She either meant it or she was a very, very, good actress.

"If I were to agree to kill you," I said, "how would you want it done?"

"Oh, that's up to you." She touched the amulet again. "Stab me, shoot me, slit my throat--as long as there's blood..."

"No," I said, "I want to hear your preferences. I'm sure you have some."

"Well..."

"Please."

She looked down for a moment. "I'd like to be able to imagine," she said hesitantly, "that I'm being sacrificed to some ancient Pagan deity. In my fantasy I'm lying on a table or altar and the priest stabs me in my belly, in my navel or somewhere down below it." She picked up my hand and laid it on her belly in the vicinity of her navel. "He works the knife around inside me, then takes it out and lets me bleed. He's very methodical about it, he's not at all concerned about whether he's hurting me or not. My task--what I have to do to please the gods--is only to keep my hands away--I'm not bound---and to lie perfectly still while he does it. Then, while I'm bleeding, he fucks me, or makes me suck his cock--or both. He stops and does it all again; he stabs me a dozen times, in my belly and in my breasts, but--in my fantasies, at least--never fatally."

"How does it end?"

"Sometimes I just fade out from blood loss--in my fantasies, I mean. Sometimes he guts me, he rips open my belly and pulls out my insides. Other times he slits my throat or stabs me in my heart." She smiled darkly. "Or cuts my heart out, the way the Aztecs used to do..." I gazed at her eyes. She was trembling, breathing very hard, and perspiring slightly. Her nipples were rigidly erect, her breasts looked a little flushed, and her lips were swollen. "I get very excited," she said almost apologetically, "at the idea of having a man cut my heart out. I really do want to find a man I can give my heart to, in the most literal sense." I ran a fingertip down between her breasts and she stiffened and moaned as if she were about to orgasm.

"You," I said, "are very tempting."

"Tell me what I can do," she almost panted, "to make myself more tempting, and I'll do it."

"Right now," I answered, nodding toward Terri, "just sit here and watch her with me."

Jill turned her head. Terri was on her feet and facing us. She'd seen me, and she was watching me closely. She straddled the man's legs, aiming her groin at his upstanding cock, and slowly started bending her knees. She let her body drop down slowly, and when the tip of his cock touched her sex she reached down behind herself and guided it with her hand. I saw it enter her, and she dropped on down very gradually, letting the full length of it slide up inside her. She grinned at me, and I grinned back. Winding her hands in her hair, she started writhing on him, keeping his cock deep inside her body.

"You want to kill her?" Jill asked me.

"Yes, I'd like to," I answered. I was distracted, I wasn't thinking about what I was saying. "But I can't."

"You can't? Why not?"

Terri lifted her body, and the man's cock, exposed for a moment, was thickly covered with her fluids. She looked like she was enjoying herself thoroughly, and this was evidence that she was not acting. "Because," I answered, still distracted, "she's my wife."

I became aware that Jill was staring at me. "Your wife? Really?"

I looked back at her and sighed. It was obviously too late for any pretense. "Yes," I answered.

Her eyes were wide. "If you want her dead, why didn't you just sign her in for execution? Is the club paying you?"

"No," I told her. I explained it to her, just as I had explained it to Terri.

"And she agreed to it?"

"Yes, she did."

Jill sighed. "She must love you a lot."

I didn't answer; I was watching Terri again. She was now on her back on the couch, the man between her legs, his cock plunging in and out of her. She'd raised her legs and crossed her ankles behind the man's buttocks--something she often did with me--and was pushing her groin up against him at the same time she pulled him deeper with her heels.

"You like watching her fuck, don't you?" Jill asked me. She reached down and toyed with my cock, which was pushing hard at my pants.

"Very much," I answered. I glanced at her. "And this is the first time I've ever seen her with another man. I married her when she was just sixteen."

"Wow." She watched Terri as well; a few seconds later, the man pulled out of her and moved up so she could take his cock back into her mouth. She did, readily, and after just a moment he stiffened in orgasm. A little whitish sperm sprang up at the corner of her mouth and ran down her cheek, but I could see her throat work as she swallowed the rest. He pulled up his pants, said a few words to her that I could not hear, then left the room.

"I've already given you extra time," Jill said. "You want more?"

"Not now, no."

"Okay. Come see me again. okay?" She rose, and, to my surprise, went right over to Terri. I heard her ask Terri if she knew where to go to clean up and saw Terri shake her head. The two of them then left the room together. I got up and went back out to my table.

I didn't see Terri or Jill for a few minutes after that, but it wasn't too long before the DJ called Terri's name. Wearing her red dress again, she reappeared, mounted the stage, and began moving to the music. She seemed comfortable, at ease. After one song she stripped off the dress; naked and smiling, she played to each of the dozen or so men seated at the sides of the stage. Almost as soon as she'd stripped one of them held up a bill. She went to him on her hands and knees, kissed him, then rolled onto her side in front of him. He played with her breasts, stroked her thighs, and ran his hand up across her genitals. She smiled and squirmed, seemingly enjoying it. I left my seat and went to the stage to get a closer look.

As I sat down, Terri pushed closer to the man and stroked her flat belly. "Don't you think you'd enjoy running a knife into me, right here?" she asked in a seductive voice. She pushed her hips forward and lifted her leg. "I'm told there's nothing that can compare to fucking a dying woman... you and I could find out if that's true..."

Although I was staring at her in disbelief--I could hardly have imagined that she would've gotten into it this completely, this soon--the man just laughed. "I'd love to off you, honey," he said, teasing her nipples, "but I can't afford it."

"Too bad." She licked her lips. "You could afford a blowjob, couldn't you? Or a nice fuck?"

The man grinned. "Maybe I could handle that."

"Good. I'll come and see you when I get off stage."

"I'll be waiting." He gave her her tip; she had no garter to tuck it into, so she just tossed it onto the stage near the pole. Another man on the far side was offering her money; she went to him, played to him, let him handle her. At that distance I could only hear snatches of their conversation over the loud music, but I could hear enough to know that she was making the same sort of offer to this man.

I wasn't sure why I was so surprised or what I had expected. More hesitancy on her part, perhaps. I did understand that I had no reason whatever to complain, she was merely doing what I had specifically asked her to do.

By the time she finished dancing two songs--the standard stage set--she'd gotten tips from fourteen men and, as far as I knew, propositioned every one of them. She collected the money and came off the stage without bothering to put her dress back on, and immediately went to the first man who'd tipped her, the one who was sitting very close to me.

"So what'll it be?" she asked, leaning over him, her face very close to his.

He handed her fifty dollars. "Suck me off," he commanded. "Right here, right now."

She took the money and smiled winningly. "My pleasure," she told him. She kissed him, allowed him to fondle her breasts for a moment, then crouched down between his legs. As several other men gathered around to watch the show, she deftly undid his pants and extracted his half-erect cock, which she almost immediately took into her mouth. As she started working it with her lips and tongue, she looked over at me and winked. She kept watching me as she slid the man's cock in and out of her mouth.

The man, who had a very long slender cock--quite a bit longer than my own--sat passively and allowed her to suck him for several minutes. Then, abruptly, he put his hands behind her head and pulled it forward--forcing the entire length of his cock into her mouth and well down into her throat. She jerked slightly and looked up at his face, a startled expression on her face, but she did not gag. The man grinned and moved her head back and forth a little, mouth-fucking her but keeping the tip of his cock deep in her throat. She seemed to be struggling to breathe. My instinct was to intervene, but I restrained myself; it obviously was neither the time nor the place. As it went on, though, I began to wonder--I did not want to see Terri choked to death on this man's cock.

My concerns were unfounded, though. A few seconds later the man's body went rigid; he pulled her head hard against himself as he emptied himself down her throat. He then let her go, and she pulled her head back, releasing his cock with a slurping sound. Apparently unfazed, she grinned, rose, kissed him, and moved away--headed for one of the other men along the stage who'd tipped her.

This man, who was very large and muscular, took her to the champagne room. I looked around for Jill, but I could not find her; by the time I'd engaged one of the other girls and went in, Terri was stretched out on her back on one of the couches, her legs widely spread and her hands in her hair, writhing, looking tiny under the large man as he pounded a thick cock in and out of her. If she wasn't thoroughly enjoying the sex, she was putting on an award-winning performance. The man didn't last very long; soon enough he was pushing hard into her and spraying his come inside her. When she got up it trickled down her legs, shining in the reddish light. She left the room quickly and I followed, having hardly spoken to the girl I'd paid to escort me in.

I didn't see her again for a little while, and when I finally did, she was sitting at the bar with Jill, the two of them engaged in some conversation. This continued until a man approached them and led Jill back to the champagne room. Terri began to circulate again and within ten minutes had a new customer and was back in the champagne room herself. As the evening wound toward three o'clock, Terri had danced only twice but she had fucked or sucked at least fifteen men--I was quite certain that she led all the other girls at the club in that respect.

In the car, on the way home, I asked her about the fact that I had heard her, on more then one occasion, urging men to take the Goodbar special.

"Well," she answered offhandedly, "that's what I'm supposed to be doing, right? That's what Monk said. And that is, after all, what I'm really there for. To find a man to kill me while you watch. I'm just doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I didn't succeed tonight, but I don't think it'll take very long."

"It took Laura a year," I mumbled, a little embarrassed.

"It won't take me a year," she said firmly. "It won't take me more than a few days at the most. I don't know why Laura took so long, but I can see the look in the eyes of these men. They really want to kill me. I could have gotten things set up tonight if the price wasn't so high." She shrugged. "Of course, I didn't get far enough with any of them to tell them about the special circumstances, that you'll be there watching. That might put some guys off, but I'm sure I can sell it."

I shook my head. "You amaze me."

She laughed. "Why? I agreed to it, I'm going to do it to the best of my ability." She laid her head back on the seat. "I think," she went on, "that I'm going to amaze you a little more, too."

"Oh? How's that?"

"Two ways. Both of them, I think you'll like." She counted on her fingers. "One, you told me Laura played the total slut during her time off. I'm going to do the same thing, starting tomorrow. I'm going to try to bring men home and fuck them, and you can watch--I saw you tonight in the champagne room, I know you liked watching me--or join in if you want to. If I can't get them to our house, I'll just tell you all about it afterwards."

"You're right," I agreed. "That one I like."

"You'll like the other one, too, although it'll cost you money."

I frowned. "What?"

"That girl at the club, Jill. I want you to buy her for a Goodbar special. I want you to cut her heart out, the way she wants it done. And, if I'm still alive when it happens, I want to watch that myself."

I stared at her for a moment. "Turning things around a bit, aren't you?"

"Looks like it." She giggled. "Look. I agreed to it when you asked me to get myself killed, and I'm going to go through with it, too. Now I'm asking you for a lot less. I'm asking you to cough up another five K for something I know damn well you'll enjoy."

I nodded. "You're right--again. I can't say no. But--why?"

"Because she's a nice girl and I like her, I want to help her out. She's been here five months trying to get a man to kill her her way. Unlike several of the other girls there, who're doing this for the money or because they think it's 'right,' she really wants it for herself, she wants to have a man cut out her heart. She should have what she wants--and if someone else buys her, she may not have it that way. So, you're elected." She paused for a moment and grinned. "And you need to do it soon, Charlie. I absolutely guarantee, I'm not going to be around very long."

I was feeling a little thrill in the pit of my stomach. The idea of killing Jill wasn't, as Terri obviously knew, unappealing.

But there was something else in what she said that I didn't understand. "You mentioned girls working there who're doing it for the money," I said. "I don't understand that, they certainly don't have any use for the money after they're dead!"

She laughed loudly. "You mean you don't know?"

"Know what?"

She opened her purse and pulled out a wad of bills. "We get to keep," she said, "fifty percent of all the money we take in, and a hundred percent of stage tips." She looked at me closely. "You didn't read the contract I signed, did you?"

"No. I just listened to what Monk was saying."

"And he didn't tell you?"

"I'm not sure I know what you're talking about..."

"In the contract," she informed me, "there's a line for a named beneficiary. Monk had already filled in your name. When I get executed, you get half the fee. Twenty-five hundred dollars."

"I do?"

She laughed again. "Yes, you do."

"I did not know that."

"Well, now you do."

We were by then nearing our house. I glanced down at her legs. "You aren't too tired," I asked, "to relieve some of the pressure I've been building up all night?"

Once more, she laughed. "Not even close," she told me.

Even though we did not get to sleep much before five, Terri was up the next morning before ten. Seemingly happy and carefree, she dressed in brief shorts and a filmy top and was out and gone by eleven. I asked her, several times, where she was going, but she would not tell me, she just said I'd know soon enough. While she was out, I sat at the kitchen table, just reviewing recent events. While I had not really intended, to begin with, to send Terri to her death, the whole affair had turned into an almost blinding maelstrom of eroticism. I had replayed in my head, at least ten times, the scene where she had--so readily, so easily, so freely--agreed to my request that she spend her remaining days a stripper and whore and then allow some stranger to kill her. There was no longer a question about "making the best of it," which was the way I'd been thinking when she'd shocked me by accepting my proposal. Even my own memories of what I'd been planning when I started talking to her about the Goodbar were getting confused. I began to question my own intentions; if I had been really so very sure that she'd refuse, why had I bothered to set things up with Monk as I had? I'd been telling myself that it was merely to make it seem real, but I was no longer sure that was truly the case. There was no question I was fully into it by then, I was more than looking forward to the day when Terri gave up her life at the Goodbar.

I did want to find some way to space the two events--Terri's death and Jill's--out, though. The idea of killing Jill one night and then watching Terri get slaughtered the next day wasn't appealing. I wasn't rich, and after buying Jill I would have dropped more than ten thousand dollars at the Goodbar in just a few weeks. Getting a twenty-five hundred consideration for Terri did not do much to offset that. It might be, I knew, quite a long time before I felt I could afford to buy another special. I was a little amazed at my own attitudes, how they were shifting. The best I could do, I decided, was to take Terri's advice and dispatch Jill quickly, within the next few days at most, and then hope it took Terri a while to find her own killer.

That particular morning, Terri did not give me too much time to think about it, though. She returned around noon, carrying a shopping bag--and, to my further surprise, she had a tall young man in tow.

"Bobby," she said as she walked in, "this is my husband, Charlie. Charlie, this is Bobby Sanderson. Bobby works at the bookstore downtown, and we've been sort of flirting for a while. I just told him about what's going to happen and all. I like him and I want to make love with him while I'm still alive." She paused and giggled. "Good idea, huh? Anyway, we're going to do that, right here in the living room, right now." She put the bag down on the floor by the couch.

Obviously startled, Bobby looked somewhat embarrassed and ill at ease. Clearly he had not expected me to be there. "Man, I don't know..." he started to say to me.

'Do not," I said, interrupting, "worry about it at all. It's fine with me--it's more than fine with me. Just pretend I'm not here. Do whatever you--and Terri--want to do."

Terri had stripped herself naked while we were talking. "I told you," she said to Bobby. "He likes watching me get fucked." She stood before him, stroking her belly. "I told you as well, I don't have long to live. I'm going to be executed, I'm going to be killed. I've already signed the papers. Which means you need to take this opportunity now." She moved close to him and looked up at him. "Doesn't it turn you on?" she asked. "I'm going to let some guy--some stranger, somebody I just met--stick a knife in me. It'll go in deep, and there'll be a lot of blood and a lot of pain for me. He'll knife me again and again, and at the end, I'll be dead. Think about that, Bobby! It could be you if you have enough money..."

"Yes, Terri," Bobby said, "it does turn me on to think about it. But I couldn't do it. You're such a sweet girl..."

"If you really like me," she purred, "then you should try to get the money together so you can do it! I don't really want to be killed by some guy who hates women, but I'm going to take whatever I get. Being knifed is sexy anyway, but if it's being done affectionately... that's what I really want, that's what I'm hoping I will get. A guy who doesn't really want to hurt me but who has the balls to go ahead and do it anyway." She gave him a wide-eyed look. "I'd love to have you kill me..." She squeezed her abdomen around her navel.

By then, Bobby's pants were tenting up and he seemed oblivious to my presence. "Is that where you want to be stabbed?" he asked her. "In your belly?"

"Yeah," she answered, caressing his erection through his pants. "I want it slow, and painful, and bloody." She glanced at me quickly and smiled as she said this. "In my gut and in my tits. I really want to be stabbed through my tits." She held up a finger. "Let me show you something. Something Charlie hasn't seen yet, either." She bounced away, picked up the shopping bag, and pulled something out--a pair of long steel skewers, designed for shish kabob, fitted with wooden handles. They were attached to a cardboard back, which she ripped off. "See?" she said, holding them out to us; the shafts were rather thick, perhaps a quarter of an inch in diameter. "The points are needle-sharp," she informed us. "I'm going to take them in tonight and keep them in room eight. When the time comes, I'm going to ask the guy that buys me to run them in right through the centers of my nipples, through my tits, through my chest, and out my back. I'm pretty sure they're thin enough that they won't kill me right away, and they won't fuck up the appearance of my tits the way a knife blade would." She demonstrated, turning one toward herself and touching the point lightly to her nipple. "You'd like that, wouldn't you, Charlie?" she asked me, crinkling her nose in one of her patented mischievous grins.

"I'd love it," I admitted.

"Much as I don't want to see you hurt," Bobby said slowly, "I'd love to see it too."

She laid the skewers down on the coffee table, took Bobby's hands, and laid them on her breasts. "Good," she whispered. "You think about it, then. It's going to happen, and it's going to happen soon." While he toyed with her nipples, she started undoing his pants. Within a few minutes his pants were down and she was on her knees in front of him, his hard cock in her mouth, throwing repeated glances at me.

She sucked him for a while, then rose and asked him to undress. He did; she led him to the couch, laid down on her back, and spread her legs invitingly. He needed no encouragement, he moved between them and slipped his cock into her. She sighed deeply as he pushed deep and started moving her hips rhythmically. She held him close and murmured in his ear, telling him he was wonderful, urging him on.

After a few minutes, I walked over to the couch, still fully dressed, and sat down beside her head. She looked up at me, smiled prettily, then reached up to take one of my hands. Her lips were a little swollen, her eyes were luminous. "Bobby," she told me, her voice a little thick, "is a terrific lover, he's really turning me on, I'm sure I'm going to come soon. You like this, Charlie? You like watching me making love to another man and knowing I'm really enjoying it, really getting off on it? I hope so, I want you to..."

I squeezed her hand. "I love it," I told her honestly as I watched his cock, soaked with her juices, piston in and out of her.

"Good..." She grabbed my other hand. "Go in deep, Bobby," she sighed. "As deep as you can... Oooh, yes, that's it, oh, that's good..." She suddenly stiffened, squealed softly, and crushed my hands as her body trembled. Bobby pressed his cock far in and held still until she relaxed, her orgasm complete. "Ah, god, that was nice," she murmured. "I hope I can hold your hands while I'm being killed..."

They changed position then, Bobby on his back, Terri astride him. She encouraged him to play with her breasts, reminding him that she was planning to have them pierced through with those shish kabob skewers. She wound her hands in her hair as she moved up and down, pausing frequently when he was deep inside her to squirm around on him. After a short time, she turned around, facing away from him. I crouched in front of her, watching her face as his cock slid in and out of her. She pulled me to her, kissed me, and placed my hands on her breasts. I let one slide down to her lower belly, and I could feel his cock moving inside her. He did not last very long; a few minutes later he was exploding inside her, and his orgasm seemed to provoke another for her. She rose, and his semen dripped from her vagina onto his thighs.

I moved back to the couch and Terri sat down between us. "It's amazing," she said, "but I am finding that knowing that I'm going to die soon has pushed my sex drive right through the roof. I think the knowledge that I'm going to be stabbed to death makes it even stronger, the idea that there'll be pain and blood. It's all I can think about right now--how the knife will feel when it goes in, how it'll feel when the blood is running out." She looked up at me. "I can see why your friend Laura spent her time off playing the slut. There's something very primitive, very basic about this." She shook her head. "I can't say I haven't had hints of it before--in school, for instance, when we girls would play execution games, when they would talk to us about what a public service volunteering for execution was. But now, now that it's real, it's just overwhelming."

"Are you telling me," I asked, "that you're starting to look forward to this?"

She hesitated. "Yes and no," she replied. "I don't want to disappoint you, Charlie, but as I told you, I'm doing this for you. I am scared--I'm scared of the pain and the idea of dying terrifies me. So in that way, no." She grinned then. "I do remember, though, they used to stress this in school--that once you're hurt pretty bad you aren't afraid of death anymore. They also told us that's related to losing a lot of blood. So I have that to look forward to, the point where I've lost enough blood that I don't care about living anymore." She gazed into my eyes, her own very soft. "And in a way, I am looking forward to the pain, too, Charlie," she went on. "Because I know it'll excite you to see it. I'll be completely focused on the idea that I'm taking it for you."

"Terri, I..."

She held up a hand. "You don't have to say anything. This is a settled matter. I'm going in tonight and I'm going to really work hard at finding someone to buy me for a special." She flashed the mischievous grin again. "And fuck as many men as I possibly can," she added. She glanced at Bobby. "I had sex with seventeen different men last night--eighteen if you count Charlie. Tonight I want to break my record." As she was speaking, she leaned against Bobby's shoulder and began idly toying with his limp penis. Clearly she wasn't done with him.

He wasn't ready to stop either, and soon enough he had a fresh erection. Terri knelt on the floor in front of him and began to lick his cock, licking down over his balls and even running her tongue around and slightly into his asshole, which surprised me and seemed to delight him. Unable to resist touching her, I ran my hand down over her back while she drew his cock deeply into her mouth. She turned her eyes toward me and smiled around it. She rose, straddled his legs, and impaled herself on his hard cock. Pointing to my almost painfully rigid erection, she asked me if I was sure I didn't want to join in, but I told her I wanted to wait until the end of the evening. She just shrugged and continued fucking Bobby, and she had at least two more orgasms. When she sensed he was close, she lifted off his cock, dropped to one knee in front of him, and took his cock back in her mouth. After a moment he groaned, and she held still, looking up at his face, while he unloaded his semen onto her tongue. Turning to me, she opened her mouth slightly to show it to me--then swallowed it down. Bobby left shortly after that, saying he had to go back to work. She asked me if I wanted her then, but I told her I still wanted to wait until later in the evening, explaining that I was tremendously enjoying what was happening and did not want to take the edge off it too soon. Again shrugging, she showered, dressed in her brief shorts and shirt, and went out again.

She came back in at about five-thirty, her clothes slightly rumpled and her hair askew. "In case you're wondering what I've been up to," she said before I could say a word, "I've been out fucking men. And shopping." She grinned as she sat down on the couch and dropped a bag beside it. "Three more men," she said. "That's four today. I'm well on my way."

I sat down beside her and laid my hand on her thigh. "Three? All at once?"

She shook her head. "No. Just two at once. I like that, Charlie. One cock in my cunt and another in my mouth at the same time. You should have joined in when Bobby was here."

"I'd rather wait. Anyway--where'd you find these guys?"

She seemed to hesitate for a moment. "There's a bar," she told me, "over on Seventeenth Street, a bar I'm... uhm... familiar with. I wasn't in there long before these two young guys, college students, came up to me." She giggled. "They'd been staring at my legs. I asked them if they liked them, and they said they did. When they said that, I took my shirt off and asked them if they liked my tits as well."

"Right there in the bar? In public?"

She nodded. "It's a laid-back place." Again, she hesitated before continuing: "It's a sex bar, Charlie. A place where men can come and get laid anytime they want--not that they can't anyway, but at this place--it's called The Tropical--they pay small money for sex, whatever kind of sex they want, without any complications. And the girls there are all really pretty and all... anyway, it's no more unusual there than it is at the Goodbar."

I grinned. "I see. So you got paid for this?"

She shook her head. "No. That'd be cheating on the Goodbar, I work for them now. I only asked them to pay the room charge--the club's share."

"So you took them to this back room...?"

She stretched her body sensually, laying her head back on the couch and closing her eyes. "And fucked their brains out."

I watched her closely. "It seems," I noted, "that you were pretty familiar with the club."

She opened one eye. "I'd rather," she said, "that you didn't ask me about the Tropical."

"I don't think you can expect me not to ask, Terri."

She sighed and sat up. "Okay. The truth, then. I never told you before for two reasons; one was I was worried it would upset you, and the other was, I didn't want you to think badly of my Dad."

I frowned. "Your Dad? What's he got to do with anything?"

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "You might have noticed--you haven't said anything about it, but Jill sure noticed--that I pretty much knew what I was doing at the Goodbar last night." She paused. "And that's because being a club whore is not new to me. I've been working at the Tropical on and off for close to sixteen years."

I stared at her, unable to believe what I just heard. She's been working as a club whore throughout our marriage and I'd never known anything about it? Then I did some very quick math. "Sixteen years? Terri, sixteen years ago you were eleven years old!"

"That's right."

"But... but... you were a virgin--at sixteen--I mean, that's so damn rare today--"

"That's right." She gazed at me directly. "I had never fucked a man before you, Charlie. But I had given hand-jobs and blow-jobs to, jeez, I have no idea, hundreds of men, no, thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Dad sold them a contract for me when I was ten. Don't make a mistake, Charlie, it was good--he kept half the money for me and gave it to me when we married." Ignoring my stunned look, she went on: "The contract specified that I was never to be fucked, I was there to do hand-jobs and blow-jobs only, for men who had a thing for little girls." She smiled. "They said I was a pretty child. I was very popular, I normally was sucking off ten or more men every night I worked, and I worked an average of four nights a week. The men were almost without exception very nice to me, and--once I'd gotten into the swing of things--I loved it. I did very few hand-jobs, practically all my customers wanted me to suck them off. I discovered that I really did enjoy sucking men's cocks, I loved having them come in my mouth or on my face; I loved being naked with them and having them touch my legs, my breasts as they developed, and my pussy while I was sucking them. Working there so much meant I didn't date to speak of, and, to be honest, that's probably why I was technically still a virgin when you and I got together. My contract expired that year, and I fully intended to renew it--without the no fucking clause. But then, there was you..."

I just stared for a moment. This was not just a complete surprise, it was unbelievable. "And... you said off and on... you continued to work there after we got married?"

She nodded again. "I quit before our wedding, but they called me, over and over, asking me to come back. Finally, one day when you were at work and I was bored, I went down there--and I just fell right back into it, as if I'd never left. I worked daytimes occasionally, and nights when you were out of town on business. I'm very well known there, and I'm still popular."

I was speechless.

But she was not finished with me. "I guess I should also tell you," she went on, "that one of my pregnancies was not yours." She sighed again. "Frankly, I don't know what I would have done if it had been a boy. Tell you about it, I'm sure... but..."

"I only wish," I said at last, "that you had told me about all this sooner."

"You hate me now?" she asked, although her expression suggested she really didn't think so.

I leaned down at took her face between my hands. "Far from it," I said firmly. "I would've encouraged you to work more, I would've gone with you. And I would've wanted to hear all the details about your adventures." I gazed directly into her eyes. "I love watching you fuck other men," I said. "And the more you get off on it, the better I like it."

She suddenly grabbed me and hugged me. "I love you," she whispered.

Then, just as abruptly, she broke away and grabbed the bag she'd brought in. "Let me show you what else I bought," she said excitedly, reaching inside.

She pulled out a dagger; the blade was about four inches long and maybe an inch and a half wide total. It was not solid, however; down the center was an open slot.

"The man at the store told me, it's called a 'blood groove,'" Terri informed me. "To let the blood out when the blade is buried deep. I plan to ask the man who kills me to stab me in the belly and in my sides with it." She grinned at me. "You like?"

I nodded. "But you should tell him to wait to use it," I advised. "It'll move things along faster; you'll die quicker."

She caught her lower lip with her teeth. "You think?"

"I know it will."

"Then I won't even take it in," she said firmly. "I want to give you what you want, I want to suffer the pain for you. I know you want my death to take a long time. I can only do this once, it has to be done right." She dug into the bag again, and this time she pulled out several small pearl-handled switchblades--knives even smaller than the one I'd used on Laura, slim little blades barely three inches long, double-edged near the point, single-edged further back. "I got these too," she said. "Even the smaller one they had at the bar seemed a little bit large, and there was only one. I bought six of these. I figured I could ask the guy doing me to stick them in me one at a time and leave them there for a while. I thought maybe you'd like seeing me with those big skewers in my tits and three or four knives stuck in my belly. Or in my back, maybe, between my ribs." She gave me a questioning look.

"I'd love it," I assured her. "Those are great. And the idea of seeing you--seeing you being fucked while you've got several knives and those skewers sticking in your body--that's just a fantastic image, Terri." I picked up her hand. "You have no idea what it means to me... your taking the time to go out and get these, to plan things..."

"I hope it means a lot!" she said with a laugh. She squeezed my hand. "But tonight, there's something I want you to do for me."

I watched her eyes. "Jill."

She nodded. "Jill. She was nice to me, and I like her. I want to make sure she gets taken care of by a man who'll do things the way she wants them done."

"You want me to do this tonight?"

"Yes, I don't want to wait. Every night there's a chance she'll be taken by someone else."

There was little I could say. Shortly afterwards, Terri went to shower and get ready for work that evening. I went to the bank and drew out five thousand dollars. I also tried to go shopping, but I could not find what I wanted. I came back, took Terri to dinner and then to the bar--where I surprised her by dropping her off and telling her I'd be back later.

I returned a little after nine, having failed utterly in my attempt to find a replica of an Aztec sacrificial knife I could buy. Taking a table not far from the stage, I looked around for Terri and Jill, but I did not see either one of them right away. Time passed, several dancers went through their routines on the stage, and still I saw no sign of either one of them. Finally I got up, went to the bar and asked Monk where they were.

"They're doin' a private," he informed me. "Back in number four. Two guys got together, pooled their money, and bought Linda--you know, the tall blond with the long hair and the big tits?--for a Goodbar. They hired Jill and your wife to get them off after they snuff her." He glanced at his watch. "They oughta be out pretty soon, they been back there over an hour already."

It wasn't that soon--I waited close to half an hour before the two of them, fresh from the showers and dressed in their floor costumes, showed up and sat down at my table, on either side of me. I looked from one to the other; in spite of their sparkling hair and new makeup, both of them looked almost gray.

"I guess, " I ventured, "that that didn't go too terribly well."

"You know where we were? What we were doing?" Terri asked. Her voice was close to tremulous.

"Yes, Monk told me."

"Charlie, it was horrible, just horrible," she went on, and Jill nodded so vigorously I wondered that she didn't hurt her neck. "A nightmare, a living nightmare."

"What happened? What'd they do?"

"It wasn't so much what they did as how they did it," she answered. "They tied her up and gagged her. They never spoke to her, they never fucked her. To them she was just so much meat, meat that could feel pain, and they inflicted it on her, on and on. They burned her all over with cigarettes, they cut off slices of her skin, they snipped off her nipples, her ears, and even her nose with scissors. They dug holes in her thighs, they dug out her clit. They broke all of her fingers and toes, one at a time. And they laughed, on and on, continuously. They dug out her eyes with their fingers. They threw her down on the floor and stomped on her belly, they broke her ribs, and they just kept laughing. They killed her by stomping her--accidentally, I think, they stomped on her chest and her breast exploded and a rib broke and blood shot out of her mouth and she convulsed and died. Then, afterwards... afterwards..."

"Afterwards we had to fuck them," Jill finished for her. "I feel just... filthy... even after the shower... I've never felt like this before..."

I did not have to ask if the plan for Jill was still on for tonight.

"Charlie, I'm really scared," Terri told me. "I know, I agreed to this, I signed the papers. But... I could end up with a guy like those guys... I..."

"I understand," I said, frowning. "I don't want that to happen any more than you do. I didn't know it ever went down around here like that."

"Neither did I," Jill added. "I'm afraid to go work the floor. I'm afraid I'll get chosen. Every other night I've been hoping I would get chosen." She clenched her fists tightly. "I don't want it like that..."

I nodded. "You two stay here," I instructed. "If anyone approaches you, tell them you're waiting for a possible client, you're already committed, and you'll check with them later if things don't work out. Okay?"

"Okay," Terri said in a small, little-girl voice.

I left them then, and, after speaking with Monk, came back just a few minutes later. "Okay," I said. "Let's go."

Terri looked up at me wide-eyed. "Go?"

"Yes. Monk is not unreasonable, he knows what you've been through. You have the rest of the night off." I looked over at Jill. "Both of you."

Looking rather confused, the two women got their street wraps and we went out to our car. Jill, it turned out, never drove to work and had only an empty apartment to go home to, and so we took her home with us. This made it, in the end, a very nice evening for me; I had sex four times, with both women but mostly with Jill, who turned out to be very skilled sexually, especially when she was giving a blow-job.

It was during one of the pauses in this sexual marathon that I asked Jill if, considering what she'd been through that night, she would want me to buy her for a special the following evening.

I wasn't really surprised when she enthusiastically agreed. "I told you," she reminded me, "that I was afraid to work the floor now. Charlie, the best thing in the world for me would be if you bought me tomorrow night--and killed me tomorrow night."

"Then it's settled, that's what we'll do," I told her. "The only trouble is, I have no idea how you go about cutting someone's heart out."

She put her hands on my cheeks. "You'll do that for me?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"Yes, of course. As close to the way you want as we can get it. Believe me, that'll be good for me too."

"I love you, Charlie," she said, quickly and spontaneously. Then she threw a quick glance at Terri. "I hope you don't mind..."

"Not at all," Terri answered with a smile. "Just something else we have in common."

Jill turned back to me. "I've done my homework," she said. "I can tell you how." Naked, she knelt on the bed in front of me, her knees spread. "You cut me here," she told me, laying her hand on her abdomen just below her sternum. "Run the knife in deep if you want to, but use a short knife so you don't hit the aorta, the big artery that lays against the spine. Make a big cut, either up and down or across, it doesn't matter, but it had to be a big enough cut to let you to get your whole fist inside me." She sighed and shuddered. "Then you want to put your hand and the knife both inside. Shove my guts out of the way--or tear them out of me it you'd rather. Warn me so I can take a deep breath, then cut through my diaphragm--it's the big flat muscle right here--" she ran her hand across the base of her ribs and sternum--"and it's tough, it'll be hard to cut, so don't be gentle. You have to hurry a little then, because after you cut it I won't be able to breathe any more." She shuddered again. "Then you reach in--go through the hole you made in my diaphragm--and grab my heart. You'll be able to feel it beating. Twist it and pull it, hard--you'll tear the blood vessels and it'll come out in your hand. Hold it tight because it'll go on beating, and it'll jump out of your hand if you let it." She sighed deeply; her lips quivered. "I want to see it beating in your hand as I die..."

"Damn, Jill," Terri said. "That sounds really sexy..."

"I think so too," I said, touching Jill's belly. My erection had returned in spite of the fact that I'd had an orgasm not twenty minutes before. I had two women eager to put it to use, and it did not last very long.

Terri rose early the next morning and had a light breakfast ready for us when Jill and I finally rolled out. Jill told me she wanted to have sex with me again, but I warned her that we should hold off, that having orgasms now wasn't a good idea considering what was planned for that evening, and, after a moment's consideration, she agreed with that.

Terri, as had become her habit, left, leaving Jill and I alone. She looked very sexy in one of Terri's short houserobes and nothing else, and it was hard to not to take up her offers, but I was determined to hold out. As we sat sipping coffee, I asked her what her story was.

"My story?" she echoed.

"Yes. How you came to work at a place like the Goodbar, what made you decide to volunteer. And don't tell me, 'it's what's right,' I've heard that a lot. There's always a story."

She smiled. "Yes, I guess that's true enough. I've heard plenty of them down at the club, from the other girls. I guess for the most part only the most earnest and dedicated girls volunteer or commit suicide purely because it's what we should do." She shook her head and looked down at the table. "I'm not one of those."

"No?"

She shook her head. "No. The best I can do is say that for me, it's just the way I'm put together psychologically." She looked up at me. "You remember how little girls in school are expected to play suicide and execution games, right?"

That made me think of Laura. "Yes," I answered. "Of course."

"Most girls, I think, just go through the motions with those. Some try to avoid them. Not me. By the time I was eight or nine, 'execution' was by far my favorite game. I'd propose it to the boys at school, and if they showed the slightest interest I'd get naked--a lot of girls didn't want to take off their clothes when they played execution, but I always wanted to be completely naked when I was being killed--and stretch myself out or kneel down. I was always scratched and bruised up from being hit with plastic knives, but I just loved it, the whole idea of giving up my life, of letting a boy--later, a man--kill me, it was just irresistible. Starting when I was about eleven, I constantly asked my parents to sell me as a slave or volunteer me for execution, but they refused."

"You could have volunteered yourself."

She nodded. "I could have. I considered it, actually. But I wasn't--I suppose the word is independent--enough from my parents to do that, and they were dead set against the whole idea, they kept telling me the reality was way different from my fantasies. But that didn't change my mind. I went to the executions whenever possible, and watched them on TV a lot. Whenever I had sex with boys--and I've had a lot of sex, starting when I was about fourteen-- I still wanted to play execution games. I still do."

"What else do you do, Jill?" I asked. "I mean, what were you doing before you started working at the Goodbar?"

She laughed--a laugh that was, it seemed to me, tinged with a little bitterness. "You really want to know? Okay, I'll tell you. Nothing. I graduated high school with mediocre grades, never went to college. The Goodbar is the only place I've ever worked. Since I was fourteen my whole existence has revolved around my own death. I have become quite an expert on it, on how people die and what the process is, on all the mechanisms used around the world to put women to death. On this, my own subject, I read and do research all the time. I guess you could say I'm obsessed with it. There is no woman on the planet more expendable than I am, Charlie. I eat, sleep, have sex, and dream about being killed. Very little else."

"Wow," I said.

"Yeah, wow. Sucks, huh? And now I've been here five months and no takers. Having it happen the first day would've been fine with me."

"Jill, how old are you?"

"Eighteen. I started here right after my birthday, as soon as I could start without getting my parents' permission."

"How'd you find the Goodbar?"

She laughed again. "I told you, Charlie, I'm an expert! I know all the ways and all the places. If I had had the money I would've gone to Brazil and walked right out on the Special Beach naked. Or gone to the Impulse Park in Prague. I asked my parents to send me. They refused, they knew exactly what I'd do. My dad calls me often since I moved out, telling me to hold off, think of the life I have. Charlie, I have no life. I don't want one, I want to die. You'd be shocked if you saw my apartment. There's nothing there, I don't own anything except clothes and a few pieces of jewelry. I sleep on a bare mattress lying on the floor with a bare light bulb hanging over it. I do have a computer, so I can do research on the net, and I spend a lot of time at the library. You might think it's an odd life style, but it suits me. I don't need anything except a man to kill me."

"With that kind of single-mindedness," I observed, "I'm surprised you haven't committed suicide."

"I don't want to. I don't want to die alone and I don't want to do it myself. I want a man to kill me."

"Well," I noted, picking up her hand, "now, you have that."

"Yes. Just a few more hours. Just a few."

"I just have one more thing I want to ask you. How did you get focused on the idea of an Aztec sacrifice?"

She smiled. "A few years back," she began, "a number of countries had pageants of death, you probably remember those. When I was about sixteen, I rented the videos and watched them. To me, they were really exciting; a thousand nude Japanese women slitting open their own bellies in a perfectly choreographed act of seppuku, five hundred naked women writhing at the end of a rope in England, fifty women and girls being burned alive at the stake in Germany in a reenactment of the Middle Ages witch trials. But the one that really spoke to me was the Mexican pageant, a re-enactment of ancient Aztec sacrifices. More than three hundred woman walking to the top of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan to have their chests cut open and their hearts ripped out." She paused for a moment, again gazing off into the distance. "The videos I was watching were edited, of course, you did not see three hundred consecutive deaths, you saw just a few of the best ones. But oh, there was one--a small girl with short dark hair and--"

"I've seen that video," I interrupted. "The girl with the light skin, the big dark eyes, the really gorgeous legs."

"Yes, that one. The way she walked up the steps, that big smile on her face--"

"That really cute and appealing smile. I remember."

"And when she got to the top she stripped off the ceremonial robe, and--"

"Showed us one of the best bodies I have ever seen in my life." I grinned. "Comparable to present company."

Jill's smile was huge. "Thank you," she murmured. "But I don't compare to her, she was perfect. Perfect body, perfect face, perfectly graceful moves when she laid down on the altar stone, and--"

"The way she reached out to the men playing the priests, offering them her arms and legs. Clearly more than willing. Eager."

"And still smiling. Crinkling her nose, so damn cute, she was irresistible. Looking up at the man playing the sacrificer when he lifted the knife, her head up, her eyebrows lifted."

"And then he drove the blade into her."

Jill closed her eyes for a moment. "Yes... she looked so surprised, she choked, blood shot up out of her mouth... and then she smiled again. Laughing, it looked like at times. Her breasts and belly flushing red, I'm sure she was having an orgasm..."

"...while the priest cut her chest open and reached inside..."

"And pulled out her heart. God, it was beautiful."

"It was." I reached out to her, pulled her to me. "Jill," I said, "I'll do the best I can to recreate that scene for you. I promise."

She clutched at me. "God," she murmured. "I can't wait..."

Terri came back at about five-thirty. She'd been at the Tropical, she said, and had fucked several men. After listening to her stories, I took her and Jill back to the bar at seven that evening. In the car, I told them that I did not want to do Jill immediately, I wanted to watch them interacting with the other customers for a while: I also felt that letting the tension build for a little longer would make things better in the long run. Terri worried that someone else might claim Jill for a Special, but Jill assured her that it wasn't a problem, she could easily tell anyone who asked that she'd already been claimed for a Special--which was, after all, true. Understanding what I wanted, both of them left me as soon as we arrived. I ordered a drink and settled in while Terri and Jill began to work the still-light but steadily-increasing crowd.

Jill scored first. She'd seated herself at a table quite close to mine, and within a few minutes she'd talked the customer--a tall and athletically-built young man who was evidently someone she already knew--into buying a table dance. That she was intensely excited was perfectly obvious from the start; she was groaning and writhing almost as soon as she'd gotten naked and the customer began touching her breasts and thighs.

"If you want to fuck me again," I heard her tell the man, "you'd better do it now." She touched his face. "I'd like it if you did, but it has to be soon."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because, for me, this is it. Later tonight, I'm going to be killed."

The man cocked his head, squeezed her breast, and smiled. "Really?"

Squirming on his lap, she nodded. "Yes! Finally..."

"I wish I could have done that for you, Jill. But I just couldn't, I'd choke at the last minute. You know that, I've told you that before." He fingered her amulet. "Do you know how? Shot or stabbed?"

"Stabbed." She sighed deeply, then gasped in air. She seemed to be having trouble breathing. "He's going to cut my chest open and tear out my heart. Like the Aztecs used to."

The man caressed her chest gently. "Just what you always wanted," he said. "Looking forward to it?"

She shuddered. "I am. You can't imagine..."

"I wish I could see it happen."

"I wish you could too," Jill told him. "I would not mind having an audience, and I'd love to have you there, but--."

Hearing this, I made a spur-of-the-moment decision. Rising from my chair, I walked to their table. "You can," I told the man.

He looked up. "Excuse me?"

"You can watch. I'm the man who's going to kill her."

He stared up at me for a moment, and so did Jill. "You're inviting me?"

"I will, if we can come to an agreement."

"I don't quite understand."

"I know." I sat down. "I'm Charlie," I said.

"John."

"Glad to meet you, John," I grinned. "You should know, right away, that there'll be one other person watching besides you?"

"Oh?"

"Yes." I looked around the room, finally located Terri, and motioned her to come over. She was talking to a young man; she disengaged herself and came to the table.

"What's up?" she asked with a smile. She was wearing a short lime green dress and looked absolutely stunning.

I introduced her to John. "Terri," I told him, "is the other person who'll be there when I kill Jill."

John looked her up and down. "Very nice," he said. "But you said something about an agreement..."

"Yes. This may surprise you, but Terri is my wife. We have a special deal with the club, I get to watch when she gets killed."

"Which will be soon," Terri noted. "I'm working on it."

"Fascinating," John said. "But I still don't..."

"Terri's going to need some stimulation, I think. I want you to be having sex with her while I'm killing Jill." I spread my hands. "I love watching her fuck."

John glanced at Terri again. "That," he said, "is easy enough to agree to. What else?"

"That's it. You agree, you're invited."

"I'm invited, then."

Terri sat down next to John, opposite Jill. "Maybe I can talk you into killing me," she purred.

"Lots of luck," Jill said. "I've been working on John for months. Without success."

"This might be different," John said. He turned to Jill. "With you, I got to know you far too well, and I like you too much." He swiveled back to Terri, who was nodding. "This one," he went on, "is truly lovely, and at the moment I don't know her at all." He lifted her amulet. "A knife. My choice as well."

"There's more," Terri told him. "I'd want you to stab me many times, with a small knife. Kill me slowly and painfully. I've got some barbecue skewers back there, I want them used on my tits, and wherever else my killer would like to use them. Are we still on the same page?"

John touched her thigh. "More or less," he told her enigmatically. He turned to me. "She's really your wife? And you really want her killed?"

I nodded. "Just as she says."

"You're nuts. I'd want to take her home and keep her."

"He did that," Terri said. She pulled her dress up to give John better access to her legs. "He married me. Now, he's kept me long enough. It's time for me to die."

"There's really no need for you to die slowly and painfully."

"Yes, there is. That's what my husband wants to see, and I want to give him that." She smiled brilliantly. "And besides," she went on, "tell me that isn't what you'd like to see as well."

He squeezed her thigh. "I can't tell you that." He shook his head. "This," he commented, "is something I'm going to have to think about."

"Don't think too long. I'm going to find a killer soon." She pulled her dress on up, exposing her groin, then laid her hand on her bare belly and smiled at him seductively. "Someone with the discipline to run a knife into me right here, slowly and painfully, like I said. Fuck me with it, pump it in and out. Maybe twist it inside me some..."

"That sounds good to me," he told her, gazing at her belly. "But I wouldn't want to use a knife. At least not at first."

Terri cocked her head. "Oh? What, then?"

"I have my own toys. Special ones. Maybe you'll see."

"Cutting and piercing toys?"

"Oh, yes."

Terri's eyes sparkled. "Tell me about them."

"Not yet. Like I said, maybe I'll show you."

"Okay," she said reluctantly. "Have you ever killed a woman before, John?"

"Yes, he has," Jill pouted. "Just not me." She glanced at me. "Not that that matters now."

John was nodding. "I have, right here, and I used the knife the girl--her name was Mimi--had in her room. Afterwards, I had some ideas and I made some items. They've not been used before."

"You have really got me curious," Terri noted. She let her dress fall back. "And interested. But, as I say, don't wait too long. Unless you say I'm yours, I'll still be looking."

"I promise, I'll decide soon." He definitely looked interested, but apparently wasn't ready to commit to it.

I was hoping he would, he was easily the best candidate we'd come across so far. Even so, the frank discussion, with Jill sitting there completely naked and Terri almost so--along with the anticipation of what was to come that evening--had served to get me intensely excited. Terri, clearly focused on talking John into buying her for a Goodbar special, did not notice.

Jill, however, did. "Charlie," she said softly, "it's time. It's time and you know it."

I sighed. "I had hoped to wait until you two had screwed some other customers tonight, to get me on edge. But I don't think I can be more on edge than I am right now."

Jill stood up. "I'll need your credit card," she said. She turned to John. "And you need to pay Terri fifty. She's going to be giving you a private show. Club rules."

"Not a problem," John said. He took out his wallet, extracted a ten and two twenties, and gave them to Terri. Together, she and Jill went to the bar to pay the house.

"I am thinking," John said when they had left, "that I really would like to kill your wife. But I want to talk to you about it first. I'll ask again: you really want this done?"

I nodded. "Yes, I do."

"Like she says? Slowly and painfully?"

"Yes."

"Was this her idea?"

"No. Mine. I asked her to do this. She agreed--immediately--and she's thrown herself into it wholeheartedly ever since."

He looked over at Terri and Jill standing at the bar. "She is very lovely, and very charming," he commented. He turned back to me. "I've only killed one girl here," he told me, "and I've been coming here for a long time. It's not the money, I can afford it. It's that I get to know them, and then I can't do it."

"I've heard that before," I replied, "more than once. I'm not that way. The more I like them, the more I want to kill them."

"That's good for you." He smiled, and he started to say something else, but by that time Terri and Jill were on their way back to the table.

"Let's go," Jill said as they drew close. She was breathing very hard. John and I rose and we walked toward the back. Just as Laura had, Jill abandoned her floor costume at the table. As a final touch she draped her amulet necklace over the dress, which I had learned was a signal to the other dancers that the costume was free for the taking, that the previous owner would not be needing it any more.

Once we were inside the room--room 7, Jill's assigned killing room--Terri immediately stripped off her green dress and laid it aside. The two women embraced briefly, and then Terri passed Jill to me. I put my arms around her and held her close.

"Sure?" I asked her.

"Absolutely positive," she answered. "More sure than I've ever been of anything." She hugged me for a few seconds, then pulled away. "There's a locker over there," she said, pointing. "You all should put your clothes in there." She giggled. "There's going to be a lot of blood spattered around this room!" John and I undressed and put our clothes in the locker, along with Terri's dress and shoes. When we turned back, Jill had pulled a case from a cabinet on the other side of the room. She opened it, showing us a collection of knives of various sizes and shapes. "I have other stuff too," she told me. Her eyes were rather wide, and she continued to breathe hard. "You want me to get it out?"

"No," I said, looking over the collection. "No, we probably have everything we'll need here." I looked up at her. "Which one is most similar to an Aztec sacrificial knife?"

She caught her lower lip with her teeth for a moment. "This one," she said, picking up a knife with a seven-inch elliptical blade two and half inches wide in the center. "It's not obsidian, like theirs were, but those get dull, you have to use them right after you make them. This one is steel, it has a surgical edge."

I nodded and, to begin with, selected a small four-inch blade from the case. "Okay," I said. "Lie down on the bed here, on your back." I had not forgotten the fantasies she'd spun the very first day I met her. She obeyed immediately, stretching her legs out and putting her hands on her belly. I instructed her to put her arms up, beside her head, and to spread her legs a little. She did that too. "Now remember," I said, "your service to your gods involves lying still, keeping your hands where they are," I reminded her. She smiled a little and nodded. Terri and John were standing very close by, his arm around her and his hand on her breast, Terri pumping his hard cock slowly with her hand. Both of them gave me quizzical looks. I decided to explain that later. I put my hand on Jill's solar plexus and plunged the little blade to the hilt into her lower abdomen, not far from where I'd first stabbed Laura. She grunted sharply.

Given the depth of her fantasies, I had expected her to react either not at all or with a fresh smile. Instead, her head and her hands both came up, her eyes almost bulging. Before I could say anything or do anything else, she grabbed my hand with both of hers.

"Oh god, it hurts!" she cried. "Oh, oh, my god, mygodmygod... oh, stop, please, it hurts..."

I grimaced. I must have, I thought then, hit some major nerve bundle or maybe nicked the edge of a kidney. Not, I told myself, the best possible start. Against the resistance of her hands, I jerked the knife up and out; and her blood began to flow. She let go of my hands, covered the wound with both her hands, and rolled onto her side, facing me.

"Don't worry," I said, trying not to sound uncertain. "I know how to fix this. You aren't bleeding enough yet." Going between her arms, I plunged the knife into her belly near her navel, again burying it, then quickly jerked it out.

She gave me a wide-eyed look, then let out a soft little shriek and grabbed at the new wound with one hand. Blood ran from between her fingers. "Oh god," she moaned. "Oh god, no, no more, oh, it hurts, it hurts so bad... please, please stop..."

I took a step back, confused. This wasn't what I had expected at all. "Jill..." I began.

"Oh, please, please no more," she repeated. She was crying, her face red. She looked amazingly young, as if she had suddenly shed five or six years. I had been surprised when Jill told me she was eighteen, I had thought her older. Now she looked twelve. "Please, I can't stand it, don't do it again, please, oh please..."

"Jill, we have to go on, those two little stabs aren't going to--"

"No, I can't do this, I changed my mind," she gasped out. "Please help me, get me out of here, please..."

"Jill, you can't change your mind, you know the rules. If I leave you like this, Monk or Thompson will finish you off. That might be worse for you. We have to go on."

"No!" she yelled. "No, no, no, please, oh no, I don't want this, I can't stand this..."

I looked over at John and Terri. "Well, fuck," I said.

"You're absolutely right," Terri said. "If you don't finish her, Monk or Thompson will." She turned to Jill. "Honey, we have to go on..."

"No! No! No!" She squirmed around wildly on the bed, flailing her arms. "Please, oh, please, call my daddy, he'll save me..."

"Oh, christ," John muttered.

"There's no way I could ever get the Aztec thing done with her acting like this," I said. "And I promised her..."

"You can't worry about that now," Terri said. She rolled her lower lip in. "I think the best thing you can do is just kill her, as quickly as you can."

"Oh god no don't kill me I don't want to die!" Jill cried. "Terri, how could you say that? Oh please get me out of here please..."

I sighed deeply. "I'll need some help," I muttered. "Terri, can you hold her arms?"

"I'll try."

"I'll get her ankles," John said, moving around me.

"No!" Jill shrieked. She flounced and flailed even more. It took a few minutes, but finally John had hold of her ankles and Terri was gripping her wrists. She continued to fight them, and she had not lost any of her strength. There wasn't a way they could hold her long. I grabbed the Aztec style knife from the case and, with all my strength, plunged it in just below Jill's breastbone, angling it upward, hoping to strike her heart.

All the air left her lungs in a rush, and a huge mass of blood welled up around the elliptical blade. Jill stopped struggling and raised her head to look as a river of blood started flowing down over her side. She then looked at me, her expression that of a hurt little girl who could not imagine why she'd been hurt.

Then her body started jerking, very hard and very fast. She jerked one leg free from John's hands and kicked him hard in the chest with it, causing him to grunt and lose his breath for a moment. Her eyes were wild, but I could see that she was not breathing, these were her death throes. Terri hung on to her hands with desperation, and just a moment later her body relaxed. Her mouth opened once, then closed again, and after that she was still.

"Wow," John said, rubbing his chest. "I have to say, when I killed Mimi--my other girl here--it wasn't anything like this."

"Wasn't like this with Laura, either."

"No, I guess we can't say it went well," Terri noted. "Do you guys need--relief? I can--"

I gestured toward my totally limp penis. "Can't say I'm really in the mood," I told her.

"Same here," John agreed. "I suggest we shower up and get out of here." Terri and I agreed with this, and soon enough we were all seated at a table outside, having informed Thompson--who was on duty that night--that the room was ready for cleanup.

"I'm beginning to wonder about this whole thing," I said to Terri as we sat at the table, blankly watching the girls on stage. "Maybe this one wasn't as bad as the horror you and Jill lived through last night, but it was bad enough."

She shrugged. "It was a bet, Charlie. You and I have both watched those vids made on the Special Beaches and in the Impulse Parks. You know that you get a mix of nice erotic kills and just simple mayhem." She shook her head. "I must say I'm surprised about Jill, though."

I touched her hand. "I'm really sorry about that, I know you liked her--"

"Why are you sorry? I pushed you into this. It wasn't your idea, it was mine."

"I should have listened. She was telling me, earlier today, that she'd been asking her parents to volunteer her for execution since she was ten or so. She said her father had told her she'd built a fantasy about it that had no relation to reality. It's terribly clear now that he was absolutely right. She went in there tonight without the slightest idea about what she was going to experience."

"There was no way you could have known," Terri said. She turned to John. "Did you have a hint of this?" she asked. "Is that why you wouldn't buy her?"

He shook his head. "What happened in there was just as much a shock to me as to you. I was convinced she wanted it badly. I was refusing for purely selfish reasons. Ever since she started here I'd been coming in and having sex with her on a more or less regular basis, and I didn't want to give that up."

I drummed my fingers on the table and looked at Terri. "This isn't turning out the way I'd hoped," I observed. "I guess I didn't think it through enough. It's like you said, what we've seen in the vids. I counted on you playing a scene more or less like the one I played with Laura. If you end up with a guy who treats you like you said those guys treated Linda last night and I'm in there watching, well, someone besides you may end up dead."

"That would be really bad, one man dead and you in prison," Terri observed. "But there's nothing we can do about it now, I signed the contract."

"Can't you just quit?" John asked. "I mean, you signed an employment contract that lets them do this or that, including kill you--but only while you're working here. You didn't sign your freedom away, you didn't agree to be their legal slave." He paused. "Or did you?"

Terri looked at me, then closed her eyes for a moment. "As a matter of fact," she said, turning back to John, "I did. It was not just an employment contract, I agreed to be legally their slave. They do not really have to let me go home at night, they could keep me here 24/7 if they wanted to. They don't want to, they want to maintain an illusion that the girls are just working here. The guys don't really know they're buying a slave when they buy the Goodbar Special and the club wants it that way; after all, you can buy a decent-looking slave from Mike's or wherever for a lot less than $5000. Also, most of the girls did not read the contract and do not know they are legally slaves. I do. The Goodbar owns me, I can't quit."

I frowned. "How's that possible? They didn't buy you!"

She looked at me again. "When I get killed," she reminded me, "you get half the take, $2,500. That's more, though maybe not a lot more, than you'd get if you sold me to a standard slave dealer. The way it's written, the payment's just deferred, and if they decided to release me--fire me--then it's canceled. That's the loophole they exploit that lets just anyone come in here and kill a girl. When a guy pays the $5000 to kill me, it won't be mentioned but legally he's buying me as his slave. He then owns the rights to me and can, perfectly legally, put me to death at any time and in any way he chooses as long as he does so in private." She flipped the amulet hanging around her neck. "This is really just a suggestion, and it's pushed by the fact that there's no gallows in my killing room, no drowning tub, no guns. But if I go back there with a man who's paid the money and he decides to strangle me instead, I can't stop it and neither can Monk or Thompson. It's his legal right."

"Not what I had in mind," I said, still drumming on the table.

"Are you sure about all this, Terri?" John asked.

"Yes. I didn't read it before I signed it, but I did go back and read it later on."

"I see. Well." He looked around. "Now where is Thompson, I saw him a minute ago--oh, there." He rose from his chair. "I'll be back in a couple of minutes," he said, and walked away.

"Terri, I'm sorry I got you into this," I said. "If I had known..."

She patted my hand and smiled. "It's all right, Charlie. I'm sorry, too. I asked you to kill Jill and it turned really bad. As for me, I really do hope it turns out the way you want it. But my time is up, and--between you and me--not knowing, it's been exciting."

"It has?"

She nodded. "Don't get me wrong, I'd rather know that it's going to be someone who'll do it the way we've talked about. But the idea that it could be something else--something really violent and ugly, like Linda's death--I am really, seriously, afraid of that. But that fear adds spice somehow. I'm sure than sounds crazy, but that's the way it is." She shrugged. "In the end it doesn't matter much. Linda's dead and I will be too, just as soon as someone buys me."

I watched her as she spoke, visualizing it, someone really violent torturing her, breaking bones, burning her, even gouging out her eyes as she'd said Linda's were gouged out. I did not want that for her, not in any way, but to my amazement the thought of it still caused my cock to stir. I had changed a lot, I realized, since I'd first walked into the Goodbar.

About that time, John returned to the table and sat back down. "As it turns out," he told us, "I am not the first one to have this idea. Give me your necklace, Terri."

She frowned. "My necklace? Why?"

"Just let me have it for a moment." Still frowning, she took it off and handed it to him. He slipped another little amulet on the chain and gave it back to her. Terri took it and we both looked at it. It had a single word on it: "SOLD."

Terri's head snapped around. "John, what did you do?" she demanded.

He grinned. "Bought you. You're my slave now, legally. But we're going to go ahead and play it the way the club does things, you just go right on working here and go home with your husband at nights. But you are no longer eligible for a Goodbar special and no longer under contract to the Goodbar. Now, you have a choice."

"And my choice is?" she asked.

"One, you reimburse me the $5000 I just paid, I'll sign the appropriate papers, and you're a free woman again."

"And the other choice?"

"You know the other choice, Terri. A few days from now--I don't want to rush things--I'll take you back to your room in the back and kill you. I think it'll be pretty much the way you and Charlie want things, I think we have similar tastes. Actually you don't even have to answer right this minute, you can think about it, talk about it, for a day or two."

Terri threw me a quick glance. "I don't have to. You can have my answer right now. I want you to take me back there and kill me. Just make sure Charlie's here to watch when you do it."

"Fine. We can set the date right now, then, that'll respect your twenty-four hour notice. This coming Saturday. Okay with you?"

Suddenly, Terri was staring at him fixedly. "Saturday?"

"Yes. This is Wednesday, that'll give you three days."

"Saturday's fine," I said when Terri did not respond immediately. I looked at Terri. "We only expected to have twenty-four hours. We have three days."

"Yes," she murmured, still staring at John.

"Fine," John said again. He rose. "I have to go," he said, "but I'll see you again, between now and then. You working tomorrow?"

"No," she said woodenly. "I'm off Thursdays. I'll be here Friday."

"Friday it is, then." He then turned and headed toward the exit.

"This," Terri said as she watched him walk away, "is very strange."

"What is?" I asked.

"Well, as soon as he set the date, all of a sudden everything changed. I don't know why, I just know that it did. Saturday night, Saturday night I'm going to come to work, go to that back room with him, and when we get there he's going to kill me. He's going to stick a blade in me and I'm going to die."

I suppressed a frown. "Yes, and you're going to let him do it, right?"

She looked back at me. "Yes," she answered. "Yes, I am, I haven't forgotten, I don't go back on what I say I'll do. I'll do it just the way you wanted me to, Charlie. I'll come in with a smile and go back there with a smile, and cooperate as well as I can. It's just that--"

"What?"

"Suddenly I'm scared to death!" she cried. "I don't know why. Just knowing the who, the where, the how, and now, finally, the when--it made it real for me, for the first time. Saturday, my last day on earth. Saturday I'm going to die." She clasped her hands together and her knee bounced, presenting a perfect picture of anxiety. In fact, she looked close to panic.

"Terri, you don't think you're going to--"

"Do something like what Jill did? You know me better than that. No." She paused and frowned. "I know what it is," she said. "It feels just like it did when my dad first signed me up to work as a child whore at the Tropical. I was totally inexperienced at the time, but I was expected to go in on Saturday and start working, giving grown men handjobs and sucking their dicks. I was so scared, mostly scared I'd screw up and everybody would be disappointed in me."

"But you didn't."

"No. I got right into it, and every day it got easier." She shook her head. "This won't be the same though. This is just once." She brushed her hair back. "I've got to make some plans. A nice dinner out Friday night. An enema late Friday, I don't want to shit all over myself while I'm being killed. No food Saturday." She rubbed her thighs. "I've got to go find a man to fuck..."

"How about me?" I suggested with a grin.

"You? It would cost you fifty, husband or no. Later tonight you can have it free."

I pulled out my wallet and laid bills on the table. "If it calms you down," I said, "it's well worth it."

She looked at me, looked at the money, then stood up and stripped off her dress. Naked, she kneeled in front of me, pulled my pants down, and started sucking my cock. Once I was fully hard she straddled my legs and sank down on me. She was quite wet.

Keeping her body upright, I touched her nipples lightly, then ran my hands down over her belly. Keeping me deep inside herself, she moved on me slowly and watched my hands.

"You can see it happening, can't you, Charlie?" she asked me. "Blades going into me, my blood running out..."

"Yes I can. You too?"

"Yes. What would you do, Charlie, if you were doing it? Would you do it the same way as you did Laura?"

I shook my head. "No. I'd use the stuff you bought. The skewers through your nipples, I'd start there. Then those small knives. Each one in deep and left there. It's a pretty image, your body studded with those little knives."

She held my face in her hands. "And how would you be feeling about that? Would it excite you?"

"You know it would. You know it would be the most exciting thing I've ever experienced."

She folded me up in her arms and held onto me tightly. "You need to keep telling me that," she said. "Between now and Saturday. Over and over, you can't say it too often."

"I can manage that," I said, stroking her smooth back.

Terri seemed on edge for much of the rest of that evening, but, by the next morning, she was back to the way she had been, to all appearances eagerly anticipating Saturday night. We made love that morning and she went to the Tropical that afternoon and stayed a long time, fucking or sucking any man who showed even a slight interest in her. She told most of them, she said, that she was scheduled to be put to death Saturday night, and that she was going to be killed with a knife. That, she said, never failed to send them into a frenzy of excitement. She also talked to the proprietors there, and they expressed regrets, telling her that she'd be acutely missed.

That evening we went out for a nice dinner, and afterwards she called her father and told him the news. He did not, I found out later, take it at all well. She left that conversation in tears and went out again, back to the Tropical. By the time she came home she could hardly walk and she kept working her jaw back and forth as if to get it back in place. She was too tired and too sore to make love with me that night, but we had another extended session Friday morning. She did not go out Friday. I took her out for another fine dinner at an expensive restaurant and then took her in for her shift at the Goodbar.

As soon as we arrived, Monk came up to her and told her that since she was scheduled to be killed Saturday she could have Friday off if she wanted. She answered that she was expecting to meet John there and that she would stay and work as usual until he arrived. She did work, dancing on stage twice and finding one man who fucked her in the champagne room while I watched. He did notice the "sold" tag she was wearing and she explained what it meant; he did not last long.

John came in at about 8:30. Terri and I were sitting together at a table at the time, and he joined us as soon as he saw us.

"Are you ready for tomorrow night?" he asked her.

"No," she replied. "Not yet. I will be, tomorrow night."

"Good." He took out his wallet and laid a ten on the table. "I'd like to have you naked, Terri," he said.

She pushed the bill back across to him. "Let's go in the champagne room," she said. "You didn't get your show when Jill was being killed, so I owe you one. This one's on me." She stood up, stripped off her dress, and, naked except for her shoes, led us to the champagne room, where we sat on a couch on either side of her. "Just tell me what you want me to do, when," she said when we were seated.

"Right now," he said, "just lean back and spread your legs a little." She did, and he began stroking her body gently. "Damn," he murmured. "Such a fine little body. It is going to be such a pleasure to run a blade into it." Terri shivered slightly. "Where do you think the first one should go in, Charlie? That first one is so important..."

"Yes, it is," I agreed. "But I think it depends on how long the blade is. If it's long you want to make sure you stay away from the kidneys, and you don't want to pierce the liver."

"Why not?" Terri asked, sounding nothing more than curious.

"Putting a blade in the kidneys is much too painful for you," John explained. "At least at first. Later, when the shock starts to set in, it doesn't matter as much. As for the liver, you bleed too much from that, you go down too quick."

"I see," Terri said, nodding and looking down at her nude body. John and I went on for a while, discussing the ways in which my wife might be put to death. Terri made no comments. When the bulge in John's pants started to get obvious, she began rubbing it with her hand. A short time later she had his pants off and was on his lap, his cock buried inside her.

"I am very curious," she said as she ground her hips down and moved them from side to side, "about those toys you mentioned. You are going to bring them in, aren't you?"

"Yes I am," he answered. "Your husband will like them, I'm pretty sure of that."

"You're assuming I won't," she shot back. "Don't make that assumption. I've pretty much gotten into this, I may like them myself. I have some toys of my own, you know."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Some long thin skewers for my nipples. And some little three-inch switchblades you can stick in me and leave in me. They're already back in my room--the room where you're going to kill me tomorrow night."

"Hm. Well, there's a possibility you might like my toys after all, Terri. We'll see."

An hour or so later, after two orgasms, John left, and, with Monk's okay, so did we. It was only about eleven, but, as soon as we got home, Terri told me she had work to do. Not thinking about it, I asked her what work, and she reminded me about the need for the enema. She went off to the bathroom; I was left to my own thoughts. Naturally, I was so focused on what was to come the next evening I literally could not think about anything else.

The next morning, Terri and I made love yet again, a long slow gentle session, both of us knowing this was almost certainly our last. She did not go out that day, she stayed at home and ate nothing at all. Most of her time she spent alone, looking at old pictures, writing a few farewell emails to friends, and just touching things that had been precious to her, such as the pieces of jewelry I'd given her on her birthday, our anniversary, and at Christmas. Late in the afternoon she gave herself another enema, then showered. When she finally came back out, at about six-fifteen, her hair was done to perfection, her makeup was precisely applied, her fingernails and toenails glowed with fresh polish. Clad in a short bright red dress and open-toes high heels, she wore some of her cheaper jewelry along with the necklace bearing the two pendants. She looked absolutely radiant.

"Are you ready?" she asked when she came in. "Ready to take me to the Goodbar so I can be killed?"

I frowned. "Terri," I said, "you know, you could still decide, at this point, not to go through with this. I do have the money, the five thousand. I could pay John off and you could quit, we could forget all about it."

She gave me a wide-eyed look. "You'd do that for me?"

I frowned. "Of course I would, Terri."

She touched her lip with a fingertip. "That," she noted, "is the first thing you've said in several days that makes me think our relationship is even close to where it used to be. It has begun to seem to me that you're just obsessed with my death."

"No, look, well--okay, maybe I have been," I said, a little defensively. "I told you, when we started all this, that it would be an ultimate erotic experience for me. That hasn't changed. I also told you, at the same time, that if you didn't want to do it we'd go on like always. Thanks to John, that option is still on the table."

"And you'll take it I ask you to? Even though you'll be out another five thousand?"

"The five thousand," I answered, "isn't important at all. What you want, Terri, is all that's important."

She smiled. "That's my old Charlie. Glad to see him back, I've missed him. I appreciate your offer, Charlie, it makes me feel good. But I'm going to decline it, too. What I want to do is go down to the Goodbar, meet John, and let him stick blades in me. I want him to kill me. I want it so you can have that ultimate experience, I want it so he can have his, and because it's the right thing for a woman in my position to do. And I want it because I've wound myself up to wanting it. I want to feel the pain of a blade in my gut, I want to bleed, I want to die. Take me to the club, let him kill me."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure." She took off her wedding ring and handed it to me. "You," she said, "keep this. Give it to your next wife if you want. Have a next wife, Charlie. For me."

There was nothing else to say. We went out to the car and drove to the club.

We arrived at the club a few minutes before seven. John was not there. Monk told Terri that she was not going to be on stage and not to accept any dance offers from any men, to save herself for the main event. We sat down at a table together to wait. All the other girls working there knew what was going to happen, and all came to say their good-byes to Terri and give her a hug. Time passed; eight o'clock came and went, and Terri began to fidget a little.

"I do wish he'd hurry up," she said after a while. "When a girl shows up to be killed, it's kind of rude to keep her waiting."

"Would it help," I asked, "if we waited down in your killing room?"

She threw me a quick glance. "No. It'll ruin the presentation. I want him to see me out here like this, I want to walk with him to the killing room. I want to act like it's no big deal to me."

"But it is a big deal to you."

"Well of course it is, Charlie! He's going to kill me, there are no bigger deals than that!" Then, incredibly, she laughed. "I think maybe I just want to get on with it, too. I keep thinking about it, and that makes me eager to experience it and terrified of experiencing it at the same time, which is really weird."

"As a matter of fact," I confessed, "I'm feeling a lot the same. I'm eager for the experience but I do not want to lose you."

"You already have lost me," she said with a touch of hostility. "You lost me when you first proposed this."

"You haven't been dead," I countered.

Her manner softened. "Yes," she agreed. "I know."

John did not show up until about nine. When we saw him at the door, Terri took several deep breaths, composing herself. By the time he came to our table, she was the picture of coolness.

He sat down. He was carrying a little aluminum case, two feet long and about eight inches square. He put it on the floor.

"Your toys?" Terri asked.

"Yes," he answered. He gazed intently at Terri. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Nervous. Anxious," she replied.

"Understandable. But you don't look it."

"Good, I'm trying very hard not to."

He hesitated a moment. "I suppose," he said, "that we should go on back. We all know what's happening tonight. There's not a lot of point in sitting here and chatting, not now."

"No," Terri answered. "There's not. It's your call, whenever you're ready."

"Right now is fine with me, if you're ready."

"I am." She stood up, perhaps a little too quickly. She wobbled a bit, but caught herself on the table.

"Are you okay?" John asked.

"I am," she answered. "At the moment." Following protocol I had seen before, she took off her dress and draped it over her chair, then draped her necklace over that. "Let's go."

John picked up the case and got up; I did too, and we allowed Terri to lead us down the hall to her killing room. More than once she looked a little unsteady, as if her knees were giving her trouble.

I had never been in Room 8 before. There was no dresser and no chair, instead there was a long vinyl-covered couch standing against one wall. The bed was there, as usual, the nightstand, the hamper, and the shower. An open box containing Terri's skewers and her collection of little switchblades sat atop the nightstand.

"Welcome to my killing room," Terri said to John. "You two need to get undressed." She pointed. "The hamper is there." Following her directions, John and I took off all our clothes and dropped them in. John had a strong erection already and so did I.

"Where do you want me?" Terri asked. "On the killing bed, or the killing couch, or standing up in the middle of the killing floor?" Her manner seemed light, but her lips were tight and I could see that she was trembling a little.

John chuckled. "Let's try the killing couch. You in the middle, us on either side of you."

"Yes, sir." She sat down in the center of the couch and we did as well, John on her left, me on her right. As soon as we were in position she took our cocks in her hands and worked them slowly. "Convenient," she said with a grin. Sitting naked on the couch, leaning back, her legs slightly spread, she looked very small, very vulnerable, and very sexy.

John unsnapped the latches on the case he'd been carrying and opened it. "My toys," he said, reaching inside. He drew out a slender stainless-steel shaft about eighteen inches long and maybe an eighth of an inch in diameter. One end was thickened and strongly ridged, obviously designed as a grip. The other was fitted with a flat little diamond-shaped blade, an inch long and three-quarters of an inch wide at the center, that appeared to be made of surgical steel. "The plan," he went on, showing it to Terri, "is to run these little spears all the way through you, for example, in through your belly and out your back. The idea is that they'll leave your body looking as lovely as it does right now, but they'll bleed you, and you'll die of blood loss. It'll take a while, but I want to be able to fuck you while you have a bunch of them sticking in you. I'd like it if you lasted long enough for me to have two orgasms. They're very very sharp, they should not be too painful for you."

Terri studied the spear closely. "Nice toys," she said. "Better than my skewers."

"Are you ready to start?"

She took a deep breath. "My body," she answered, "belongs to you. Whatever you want to do to it, you're free to do, anytime you wish."

He turned toward her slightly. "Slide down a little," he instructed. "So your hips are at the edge of the couch." She complied immediately. Holding the spear in one hand, he ran the other up her thigh, then teased her clitoris. Continuing to rub it gently, he sucked each of her nipples for a moment, then kissed her lips. She kissed him back eagerly. By the time he broke the kiss she was breathing hard and working her legs back and forth.

Then, while Terri stared fixedly at his eyes, he propped the little spear on its point on her lower abdomen on the left side and pushed down, seemingly gently. The thin little blade parted her skin easily and the spear started gliding in.

Terri's body stiffened, her mouth opened slightly, and her eyes went wide. Her chest heaved sharply as the thin shaft slipped smoothly into her and I felt her hand tighten around my cock, which she had never released. She continued to work her legs, pulling up one and then the other, and caught her lower lip with her teeth. John pushed on, and after a moment she grunted sharply. Her eyes fell closed and she frowned deeply.

"The blade just broke through the skin of her back," John explained. Even so, he kept pushing it in, continuing until only about an inch of the shaft beyond the grip remained visible.

Then he let go of it. It had begun, and I had the strangest mix of emotions as I watched him drive the spear through her. It was incredibly exciting to me, much more so than killing Laura had been, since this was my wife, someone I'd known intimately for years, someone I truly loved. Another part of me was shrieking in outrage that she was being killed, that she was being taken from me forever. But the die, I knew, had been cast.

Still holding on to our cocks, she opened her eyes and looked down at it. There was only a tiny droplet of blood marking the entry point. "I still do," she said, breathing very hard, "like your toys."

Touching her breasts again, John smiled. "Would you like another?" he asked.

She looked up at him, her expression a study in innocence. "I doubt," she said, "that this one would kill me. Which means you should definitely do another."

"That isn't what I asked, I asked if you wanted another."

Continuing to gaze at his face, she nodded. "Yes, please."

He took a fresh one from the box, stood it on her belly a couple of inches higher and a little closer to the center, and pushed. Watching, I was amazed; it really did appear as if her skin opened voluntarily to admit it. As her chest heaved upward again, he pushed it gently on down and in, neither quickly nor slowly, and this time she let out a brief cry as the point emerged from her back. This one showed no blood at all. Again, he continued until only an inch or so of the shaft remained exposed. He was, I realized, not just driving them through her but also driving them deep into the couch she was sitting on, pinning her to it.

"You were right," Terri said after a moment. She seemed completely under control. Her calm manner, her seemingly easy acceptance, was far beyond anything I'd imagined. "They do hurt, pretty badly, but so far it isn't agonizing. The problem is that there's almost no bleeding. I'm not complaining but it's going to take forever to kill me this way."

"Well, as I said, I do want you to last for a while. But forever? No. Trust me, you'll see in a few minutes. Let's do another." He took a spear from the box and, to my surprise, handed it to me. "You do this one, Charlie," he said. "Just do what I did."

I took it automatically. "But John, I can't, I have no right to do this! You bought her, it's your right to--"

"Who," he demanded, "is going to know? When we're done Terri will be dead. I don't plan to say a thing, why would I? How would anyone ever find out?"

"Do it, Charlie," Terri said impatiently. "Just do it, you and I both know you want to. Don't just watch, help him kill me." I touched her face, then kissed her, and felt her lips and tongue working against mine. Breaking the kiss, I stood the spear on her lower belly, just as John had done, in about the same spot but on her right side. Looking back at her face, I hesitated. "Push it in, Charlie," she whispered. "Run me through with it."

I pushed down, and found that it took almost no effort to force the scalpel-sharp blade through her skin. It passed into her abdomen softly, smoothly, an incredibly sensual feeling. Her chest heaving yet again, she stared at me with wide eyes. Her lips were slightly parted and she was squeezing my cock hard. A small amount of blood beaded up around the shaft and ran down over her side. The spear sank on in, and finally I encountered a slight resistance--the skin of her back. She gasped, jerked, and pulled up one leg as I pushed the spearhead on through, which took only slight effort. Following the example John had set I kept pushing, felt it rip through the vinyl covering the couch and move on. When I had it about as far in as the pair he'd done earlier, I let go of it and kissed her again, and again she kissed me back with even more than her usual passion. I thought I could taste blood in her mouth.

"You really are into it, aren't you?" I asked when I broke the kiss.

She gave me a quizzical look. "I told you before we came in I'd wound myself up to it." She then looked down at the spears piercing her body. Letting go of my cock, she touched one lightly. "Besides, this is... interesting. They go in so easily." She flashed a quick little smile. "A nice way to die..."

"We'll do another one, then," John said. He propped a spear on her belly on the right side. "And then I want to fuck you."

She looked up at him and spread her legs a little more. "That sounds good to me." He pressed on the spear a little and it sank right in. She gasped in air but made no sound.

"How does it feel?" he asked, pushing this spear in more slowly. "You know I've never used these before."

She watched the spear go deeper. "I can feel it cutting me inside," she told him. "Strange sort of stinging sensation. Cramps afterwards. Feels hot and cold at the same time." It slipped in deeper yet. "Ah, oh, that hurts, when it gets close to my back, oh, that--ah!"

"It just came out your back," John informed her.

"I know," she groaned. He pushed it on down as before. "That feels really strange, the feeling of it sliding through me," she said, her voice somewhat tight. "Not very painful. Just a sort of an odd tugging." Her abdomen spasmed. She grimaced and swallowed, but a little blood ran from the corner of her mouth.

Having driven it in to the usual depth, he let go of it. "You're taking it very well, Terri," he said. He took another spear from the box and handed it to me. "Your turn," he told me. He then rose from the couch, positioned himself on his knees between her legs, and slid his cock inside her. She moaned and threw her head back.

"Any suggestions on where?" I asked. "It is your scene, after all."

"Anywhere, just save her chest for later and don't hit her kidneys. Close to her navel would be good as long as you don't hit her spine. Just do it while my cock's inside her. I'll return the favor a little later."

I nodded, then turned my head to look at her face. She was watching me, waiting expectantly. I fondled her breast, touched the point of the spear to her belly an inch to the right of her navel, and pressed down. As before, it slipped into her very easily. She frowned and her lips tightened for a moment, but then her expression changed. She looked down at John and started pushing her hips toward him. He, in turned, caressed her thighs.

"God, the way you're trembling, it's just wonderful..." John panted.

Terri threw her head back and grabbed one of her own breasts, squeezing it tightly. With her other hand she was squeezing my cock, hard enough to be a little painful. "Go slower, Charlie," she asked me, her voice very tight. "Slower..." I did as she said. "Ah, mmm, oh, it's cutting me, I can feel it cutting me, oh, god..." She moved her hips more vigorously, although, nailed to the couch as she was, she could not do much. She stared at John. "I want you to kill me, I really do..."

"We will, Terri," John assured her. His voice was as ragged as hers, his intense excitement obvious. "We will kill you." He then began shaking violently with his climax, and that sent Terri into one of her own. As she was having it I pushed the spear slowly on through her and deep into the couch.

After his climax was over, John refrained from leaning forward but just hung his head for a few minutes. He then got to his feet, and to my considerable surprise, his knees and shins were covered with blood.

"What?" Terri asked, staring. "Is that mine?"

He nodded. "You're bleeding pretty freely from your back, Terri. That's what I meant when I said this wouldn't take forever."

"But... I don't understand..."

He took a new spear from the box. "You didn't examine it closely enough," he said. Holding it close to Terri's face, he indicated a pair of deep grooves in the steel shaft, grooves that ran up from the point but stopped four or five inches from the rear. "Blood grooves," he explained. "The rear part of the spear blocks the hole once the smooth part is in, but they're open in the back. They aren't big but they allow for a steady flow of blood."

Terri looked at me. "Like that knife."

I nodded. "I guess so. Much smaller than the one that knife had, but you have five of these things stuck in you now."

John used a towel to wipe the blood from his legs, then sat back down. "Charlie, I'm expecting you'll want to fuck her too, or have her suck you off, or both. Just go for it, any time." He grinned. "Like now, while I'm sticking another spear in her."

I wasted no time. Climbing onto the couch, I offered my almost painful erection to her lips. She took it in immediately, and began sucking it even as John was propping another spear on her abdomen, just below her navel. She frowned deeply and her eyes dropped closed as the little blade bit into her flesh. Watching her suck my cock, John started sliding the spear in rather slowly, angling it to the side a bit so it wouldn't hit her spine. My orgasm was rising fast; when the spear went through her back and she groaned around my cock, I unloaded my semen into her mouth. Opening her eyes and looking up at me, she swallowed it all.

I sat back down. "This," I said, caressing her cheek, "is just amazing. Far beyond anything I could've expected. You cannot imagine how beautiful, how sexy you look right now."

She had an odd expression on her face. "Far beyond anything I could've expected, too," she said. "I feel beautiful, I feel sexy. I had wound myself up, yes, but I was still scared when we came in here. I'm not, not now, not anymore." She licked blood away from her lips and swallowed it. "The pain isn't all that bad and I'm actually looking forward to feeling my body die, to experiencing my death."

"We're not there yet, Terri," John advised her. "I want you to stay with us for a while longer. I'm going to want one more orgasm before we're done and Charlie might want another one too. We'll rest a little while, then start again." He touched her breast, then teased the nipple. "I want to stick some spears in these nice tits, too."

She turned to him. "Actually I was hoping you would," she told him. "Or use my skewers. When you do it, could you go in through my nipples?"

"Of course I can," John said with a smile. He ran his hand down the center of her body, carefully avoiding the spears piercing her, and ended with his hand between her legs. "And, when we're done fucking you," he went on, "maybe I'll stick one right up your cunt."

'It's up to you," she replied. "But I wouldn't wait too long. I'm feeling weak, and I feel like I'm drunk."

"Blood loss," he said with a nod. He continued to stroke her body and her legs. "And you're right, we shouldn't delay too much. We won't have to, I don't think. Just looking at you like this is getting me going again."

"Me too," I agreed. "But I don't think I want to come again until the moment of truth."

She looked back at me. "When I die." She nodded. "I understand that."

"Let's go ahead, then," John said. He took another spear from the box. "These," he said, "are especially for your chest, they don't have blood grooves."

"Are you going to do my breasts now?"

"Just one of them. I want you to keep breathing for a while. I'm not sure you'd be able to if we do both of them."

Gazing steadily at his face, she squeezed her left breast up with her hand and he carefully placed the tip of the point in the exact center of her nipple. He paused for just a moment, then pushed it down. Her breast only indented a little before the razor tip broke through. Even here, it was sharp enough to move steadily into and through her chest.

"Ohhhh..." she sighed. "Oh, god, that's so weird, so weird, such a fucking sensual pain... hurts so bad, but it feels so good, too... ohhh... uh!" He kept going, and she let out a sharp cry when the spear exited her back. There was very little bleeding from this one. As always, he pushed on until only three inches of the thin shaft remained visible.

"Damn, Terri, I cannot believe how sexy that looked going in or how sexy it still looks," I commented.

"I've never seen, anywhere, " John said, "any woman take it as well as your wife has, Charlie."

I shook my head. "Neither have I." Terri, lightly touching the shaft imbedded in her breast, said nothing but managed to smile a little at the compliments.

"Here, put another one in her belly," John told me, handing me a spear. He then got up on the couch as I had before and offered his cock to her lips. When she took it in, he held her head and started mouth-fucking her.

I decided to change the pattern a little. I moved to the floor, between her legs, and pressed the spearpoint into her left side at her waistline. As always, it slipped in easily. Her belly heaved and her legs started working back and forth as I drove it in across her abdomen. When it was about halfway, I stopped and slipped my cock into her; once I had it in deep I moved the spear on. She was trembling unevenly, and her leg movements seemed less coordinated that before. As I continued to push the spear on, I could see John's cock plunging in and out of her mouth. A mixture of blood and saliva drained from around it, and her chest was moving jerkily as if she was having trouble breathing. The spear I was pushing broke through her right side, and as I could see twin streams of blood running freely from alongside it. With a loud groan, John had his second climax, in her mouth. She seemed to be trying to swallow his semen but, heavily mixed with blood, much of it ran back out.

"It's pretty much over," John said as he pulled his softening cock out of her mouth. "We need to finish her off now."

"Yes," Terri said weakly. Blood was spilling freely from her lips, and she seemed unable to catch her breath. "Finish..." she gurgled, "me off."

John grabbed another spear from the box. He kissed her, smearing blood and semen on his own face. "You've been fantastic, Terri," he said. "Worth every penny ten times over." He glanced back at me. "Let's kill her, Charlie."

He then plunged the spear quickly into her under her ribs on her right side, driving it into her liver. Her body jerked; he yanked it out and drove it in again, then repeated the action twice more. A heavy stream of dark blood erupted, gushing down her side. Her eyes wide and her mouth open, she twisted her body, but John kept plunging the spear in, over and over. After a moment he moved to her breast and drove the spear back in there. My own orgasm rising, I grabbed one of the spears piercing her belly and yanked it out, and a new stream of blood followed it. I pulled out two more, then drove one back in, squarely through her navel. Terri's whole body was heaving and bouncing wildly by then as she began her death throes. Her vagina tightened on me and that was all it took to send me into the most intense climax of my entire life. I worked the spear around inside her body violently as I was coming and as she was dying.

Then it was over. Terri was dead, John and I were sort of collapsed on the body, there was blood everywhere. For quite a while, neither of us moved. Finally, without saying anything, John got up, almost casually pulled all his spears out of Terri's ruined body, and went to the shower. I stayed with Terri, touching her face, feeling her body cooling, gazing into her open but sightless eyes. John came back, got dressed, packed up his case, and left without saying another word to me. After a while, I too showered, dressed, and left, leaving the mess for the club to clean up.

My initial experiences at the Goodbar have left me a changed man. In the days following Terri's death I was often lonely, our house and especially our bed seemed very empty. But in the modern world, no man has to be lonely for long. I returned to the Goodbar after about a week, I'm still a regular there, and I frequently see John there as well, we have become good friends. I also started going to the Tropical, and by now my face is familiar there, as well.

It was at the Tropical that I met Jessica, a truly beautiful girl with long black hair and very dark eyes. When we met, Jessica was just nineteen, but, like Terri, she'd been contracted to the Tropical for the child-whore business by her family, and had been working there for seven years. We began dating outside the club and, after about six months, I married her. As Terri asked, I gave her Terri's wedding ring. Jessica has a strong maternal instinct and we have had two daughters, Jamie, now five, and Andrea, now almost three. After Andrea's birth, Jessica had tubal ligation to prevent further pregnancies. At the moment she is a stay-at-home wife and mother, but when Andrea enters pre-school next year she plans to go back to work at the Tropical.

I have kept no secrets of any sort from Jessica, and she has kept none from me. She's been to the Goodbar with me, she's met John and has sex with him several times while I watched, and she knows all the details of Terri's death. Jessica and I have an agreement: assuming that she retains her exquisite good looks--which she retained easily through two pregnancies--she will, when she turns thirty, sign the same contract with the Goodbar that Terri signed, with all the same agreements. Monk and Thompson have met her as well and have no problem with the twenty-four hour wait, and John has already said that if nothing changes he might well be the one to purchase her. He had asked me what I'll do if, when the time comes, Jessica declines to sign the contract. She assures me she will, but, as I have told John, would not try to force it on her and cannot legally require her to in any event. I do not plan to and really don't want to request her public execution or sell her into general slavery, so I suppose we would just go on, as I told Terri we would if she had refused.

But that, of course, is all six years in the future. Right now I'm a happy family man with a wonderful wife and two beautiful daughters I love dearly. John and I have also have taken on something of a mission at the Goodbar. As regulars, we notice the new arrivals and we try to pick out the Lauras, the Jills, and the Terris among them. In six years we've never encountered another that we agreed was like Jill, but there was one girl whose whole demeanor was one of terror and resignation but who had been pretty much forced by an overbearing father to sign in at the Goodbar. We spent a good bit of time with her, finally talking her into leaving both the bar and her father. Monk and Thompson agreed and voided her contract. She stayed with John for about six months, then moved on to find her own place in the world or to choose her own death, as she wished.

Others, those like Laura and Terri, we've taken into the back and killed--soon after their arrival, rather than take a chance on them being killed by artless brutes like the ones that killed Linda, we feel we are protecting them from that sort of fate. At this point I've killed four by myself and four more in partnership with John, and he's dispatched five alone. It has not been cheap, I've paid the Goodbar thirty thousand dollars in Goodbar special fees alone over these six years, and that has strained the budget--although things should get better when Jessica goes back to work, she has the looks and skills to command high prices at the Tropical.

Jessica and I have had many discussions about our daughters' futures. When Jessica takes her turn at the Goodbar, Jamie will be eleven. Assuming she retains her good looks--she looks very much like Jessica--I am strongly inclined to contract her to the Tropical at that time, and to do the same with Andrea two or three years later. It seems to me that growing up that way produced very fine women in Terri and Jessica, and I want the same for my daughters. Jessica is not as sure, she wonders if a more normal childhood is not better for a little girl. I wonder if the childhood of any little girl is anything like normal these days. In any case, these discussions are ongoing, we have not arrived at any conclusions as yet.

But I have a secret plan as well, something I've not mentioned to either Jessica or John. When Jamie and Andrea reach the age of eighteen or so, I'll talk to them about the Goodbar, about how proudly Terri and their mother went to their deaths there. My hope is that one or both of them will take the hint and decide to sign the contract, and that I am able to watch as they are killed there. It might be perverted, but the fact is, I do love them--just as I loved Terri, just as I've come to love Jessica, and I've found that there's nothing I like better than seeing women I love being killed.

I wonder, if they understand that, will they be willing to do this for their dear old dad?