I have written the following story to help myself and my friends, both men AND women, deal with our fantasies of erotic demise. This story is ONLY A FANTASY. I would rather die myself than have real harm done to a real human being in any attempt to make this fantasy a reality.

Secret Agent Recruit Tara Black and her bunkmate, Secret Agent Recruit Cindy Fairfax, filed into the lecture hall with the rest of Secret Agent Trainee Class 99-6.

"God, I hope this is better than that 'Jurisdictional Procedures' class this morning," Tara said in a low moan to Cindy.

"I hope so," rejoined Cindy. "And after that big pasta lunch they just fed us? If this lecture isn't awesome from the get-go, I'm going to be cutting 'Zs' in my chair after the first five minutes."

"Don't even think about it, Cin. I'm counting on you to keep me awake."

The two of them found their seats in the lecture hall as did their classmates. The usual soft noise of notebooks opening and papers shuffling subsided and the instructor mounted the stage.

"At least the instructor's cute," whispered Cindy to Tara.

"Nice suit he's wearing too," Tara whispered back.

"Good afternoon," intoned the instructor from center stage.

"Good afternoon sir!" shouted twenty recruits in reply.

"Ladies and gentleman, I am Veteran Secret Agent Nicholas Steele. I will be your primary instructor today for your lab work in autopsy procedures and ballistics analysis. Normally this is a pretty dry subject, but today we are going to spice things up for you with a special demonstration followed by a hands-on practical exercise. . . ."

Steele paused a moment and then resumed, his tone of voice becoming grave.

"Last night, we had a major undercover operation go bad. Sometimes these things happen in our line of work. One result of the failed operation was that the name and face of one of our agents became known to the Other Side--her cover was blown. This makes her an easy target for kidnapping and interrogation under torture by the enemy. You all had it explained to you what has to happen in a situation like this when you volunteered for The Force. Both for the security of The Force and for her own good, this agent must now be terminated. Luckily for you all, this agent is a true patriot and she has agreed that her execution be part of your training in autopsy procedures and ballistics analysis. Without further ado, let me introduce Secret Agent Guinevere Jones."

Steele turned and walked out of view into the right wing of the stage. "This can't be real," breathed Tara.

The toc-toc, toc-toc, of a woman striding confidently in high heels echoed in the lecture hall and Guinevere Jones appeared from the left wing of the stage. She walked to center stage, stopped, and turned to face her audience. Struck dumb by what they still only vaguely sensed was about to happen, the recruits stared at her in awe, mentally registering everything about her appearance.

She was tall, slender, lithe, and attractively muscled. She made herself seem even taller, the way she carried her shoulders proudly up and back and her head erect. Her austerely beautiful facial features added to her regal look. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, her jaw clean and firm, her nose long, narrow, and straight. Her lips were sensually full, but without exaggeration. And her eyes--her eyes were dark and deep, yet, when the light caught them, they seemed to radiate a shower of sparkles from where they were set in her fair-complexioned face. Her hair seemed to be any shade between medium brown and ash blonde depending on how each long lock lay beneath the light. She wore it long, simple, and straight, parted down the middle. It fell past her shoulders in a natural mane and went down her back outside the collar of her shirt.

Like her facial features, Guinevere's clothes were simple and sharp yet consummately elegant. She wore a plain but crisp looking shirt, light blue in color, with French cuffs fastened with silver cuff links. Her shirt had three buttons down the front, plus two more at the collar. The lower button was at her navel and the middle button was at her heart and she wore these fastened. The upper button and the ones at her collar she left undone, revealing the smooth flesh of her upper chest in a plunging "vee" neckline. Her wide, long, pointy shirt collar formed angular planes that complemented the angularities of her facial features. About her neck was a choker necklace of dark blue and dark red American Indian beadwork. She wore her shirt tucked into a slim, simple, dark blue miniskirt. The skirt did not have a belt, per se--rather, it had a broad, snug-fitting waistband that laced up in front in the peasant style. The waistband of her skirt snugly gathered in her shirt, accentuating the contours of her ample but firm breasts. And her high heels--her dark blue high-heeled sandals gave her an added few inches that made her an imposing tower of beauty.

The recruits were jolted back to the issue at hand as Guinevere began to speak, the deep, rich resonance of her voice filling the lecture hall.

"Hi. I'm Secret Agent Guinevere Jones . . . I guess I'm not so 'secret' anymore, huh Nick?" she said, turning her head and calling out her side comment to Steele where he stood off the end of the stage--a big smile that was almost a laugh crossing her face. She turned her attention back to her audience and continued. "I will be your subject today for your lab work in autopsy procedures and ballistics analysis. Also, I will serve as a graphic example of the risks you must be prepared to accept and the grim things you must steel yourselves to deal with in our line of service. In just a moment I will demonstrate the death of a young woman from multiple gunshots."

"My God, she's serious," Tara moaned low.

"And she's so beautiful," Cindy almost sobbed in quiet reply.

Guinevere went on. "Secret Agent Steele is standing offstage with a gun that is concealed to you. He will pump several bullets into my chest and abdomen. I will take the bullets into my body until I fall down and die. After I die, you will work with my dead body when I am laid out on the examining table in the lab. You will observe, and some of you will get to practice, the correct way to extract bullets from a body. You will then analyze the bullets to determine what type they are and to identify the gun that fired them. You will graphically see how bullets become deformed when they pass through layers of clothing, skin, bone, and soft tissue. Working with these deformed bullets to trace them to the weapon that fired them will be your main challenge in your lab work today. Before I am killed, are there any questions?"

Tara, Cindy, and all their classmates were too appalled to even squirm in their seats, much less form the words to ask an intelligent question.

Guinevere sensed that she had left the recruits speechless--as she had anticipated. She resumed speaking in a loud, clear voice, a big broad smile glowing on her face. "I almost forgot. After the lab period is completed, you are all invited to my funeral." Then she winked at them.

The recruits remained dumbfounded. Guinevere pivoted on her spike heels to face Steele where he stood in the wing of the stage, his pistol raised. She closed her eyes. She laid back her head and her sharp, clean facial features glowed in the stage lighting. She took in several deep breaths and let them out again, her chest rising and falling. She opened her eyes and brought her head level to stare down the muzzle of Steele's gun, to stare along the top of the barrel into his eyes. She stood tall and proud, knees and feet together, arms at her sides, shoulders up and back to push her chest bravely toward the bullets.

She spoke.

"Kill me."

BANG!

"Unnhh!"

Guinevere's utterance of sudden pain resounded in the lecture hall. Everyone saw her reaction to the bullet striking her. Her eyes snapped shut as her head jerked back, her face raised to the sky. She remained standing, her whole body taught and tense from head to toe. Her arms suddenly bent at the elbow and her hands flew open, her fingers spread wide. She seemed frozen in that position.

Steele had the best view of the bullet's impact. A small, round, neat red stain blossomed on the light blue cloth of Guinevere's shirt, one inch directly below her middle button.

Guinevere saw it and felt it all. Light travels faster than a bullet, so her eyes and mind registered the muzzle flash of the gun a nanosecond before she felt the bullet impact her chest. She felt like she had been punched very, very hard as she felt the bullet come boring into her and pass just beneath the lower end of her sternum. She sensed her own eyes closing, her own head reeling back, her own body tensing, as an eruption of pain surged through her body. She felt the bullet shudder to a stop, a spent slug embedded deep within her, just below her heart.

BANG!

"Unnhh!"

The second bullet and the second cry of pain echoed out. Guinevere's body position had already been established by her reaction to the first bullet and did not change. Steele saw a second small, red, round wetness bloom on light blue cloth half an inch below her lower button.

Guinevere's closed eyes did not see the muzzle flash this time. She did not need to see it. The sensations pulsing through her body told her all she needed to know even before the "bang" of the gun died away. She felt the bullet drill perfectly into and through her navel. She thought the pain would make her teeth explode as the bullet ripped through her viscera and stopped. She felt her blood ooze warmly out from where her navel had been.

BANG!

"Unnhh!"

Steele saw the third little round red wetness appear on the light blue cloth in the approximate center of Guinevere's left breast.

Guinevere felt the bullet punch in immediately below her nipple. She felt the edge of the bullet just barely break the lower edge of her aureole. She felt her breast compress and then return to its original shape as the bullet passed through it to lodge deep in her lung. She felt the cloth of her brassiere become wet and sticky and warm as her blood oozed into it.

BANG!

"Unnhh!"

Right breast this time, in a spot corresponding perfectly to where her left breast had been pierced.

For Guinevere, all the sensations were the same, just mirrored from the left side of her body to the right. Her pain-swamped mind marveled at the precision of Steele's marksmanship. She choked back the rush of blood that she felt try to surge up her throat. She did not want the sight of blood trickling out of her mouth to demoralize her audience any more than they already were.

The audience marveled that after four bullets, Guinevere's upright posture had not changed. The watching recruits noted with awe that when the first bullet hit her, her face had been a painful grimace--but as more bullets dug their way into her, her grimace became a beatific glow.

BANG!

"Ohhhh . . ."

Perfect center chest, straight to the heart. This little red circle on light blue cloth was just a bit bigger than the previous four. It was half an inch above her middle shirt button, in the last cloth there was before the cloth parted to form her deep "vee" neckline.

In a cascade of sensations that lasted a micro-second each, Guinevere felt the bullet break the skin in front of her heart, she felt the bullet splinter her sternum, she felt shards of her sternum go spinning and ripping through her heart, she felt a hot heavy slug of lead rupture the front wall of her heart, and she felt that hot heavy slug thud to a stop in the middle of her heart. She felt her heart thump and throb as it vainly tried to beat around the bullet.

The audience watched thunderstruck. Guinevere spread her arms wide to each side. The tension flying from her body, she made a half turn as her knees buckled, her ankles bent, her waist flexed--gracefully, but with increasing speed, she sank to the floor of the stage and laid herself out.

She laid herself out flat on her back on the floor in the middle of the stage. Her arms were spread wide to each side. Her palms faced up at the ceiling, her fingers lightly curled. Her legs were gracefully together. They were both slightly bent at the knee, though one knee was bent upwards a little higher than the other. Her chest arced upwards toward the heavens, five small red wet circles on light blue decorating the front of her shirt.

But. . . .

Guinevere was not yet still. The recruits gaped at her in astonishment. Her chest pumped, her chest heaved, up and down in great slow waves of sweet agony. With each heave, a long low moan passed from between her lips.

Guinevere was beyond pain and she reveled in it. The nerve endings of her shattered flesh around each bullet hole sent shock waves of ecstasy surging to the tips of her toes, the tips of her fingers, the ends of her hair. With every heave of her chest she felt herself falling deeper into her death orgasm. Through her closed eyelids, the light became concentrated and deliciously blinding . . . she felt herself become one with the Universe and she felt the Universe slide out and away. . . .

She lay still.

Steele calmly walked onto the stage and stood over Guinevere's prostrate form. He knelt beside her. He placed two of his fingertips on her carotid artery for several seconds. Then he intoned from his kneeling position at Guinevere's side: "Secret Agent Jones is dead. Class will recess for ten minutes. We will reconvene in the exam room at thirteen forty-five hours. Dismissed."

As the students began to quietly bustle about to leave, Steele gazed down into Guinevere's dead face. He murmured, so low that only the angels could have heard him. "Well, Guin, you always told me that your death would be your best orgasm."

Cindy was one of the last to leave the lecture hall. As she passed out the exit door, she looked back over her shoulder toward the stage. She saw eight men in white lab coats, four on each side, kneel down, gently slide their arms under Guinevere's body, and lift her onto a gurney.

Tara, Cindy, and all their classmates quietly filed into the exam room after their break. They formed a solemn semicircle around the exam table. The top of the table was a marble slab with attractive veining. Guinevere lay full length on the table in the quietness of her death. She was still wearing the same clothes in which she had been shot.

The recruits could not help but stare at her. They could not help but think to themselves how lovely she looked. She was flat on her back with her body laid out in a neat, straight line from the part in her hair to the tips of her high heels. Her arms and hands lay comfortably along her sides. Her long, smooth legs extended full length and lay tightly together. Her feet were tightly together as well. Her firm bosoms now were lovely mounds that pointed toward heaven. The flesh of the middle of her upper chest curved smoothly where the deep "vee" neckline of her not quite halfway opened shirt revealed it to view. The morgue attendants had taken the time to arrange her glorious long mane into a halo that lay about her face on the marble tabletop. And her face--her eyes were lightly closed and her sensual lips were just oh-so-slightly parted in a facial expression that radiated the most perfect peace and serenity in sleep. Her high, angular cheeks still had the glow of the life that had been in her.

Guinevere's simple but elegant garments helped Death to seem a lovely thing indeed. Her spike heels were perfectly parallel. But now, her spike heels were horizontal and the tips of her heels pointed out into the air--instead of being vertical and pointing into the floor as they had done when she was alive. Her dark blue miniskirt lay smooth over her upper legs and lay evenly on either side of her thighs. Her light blue shirt still looked crisp and sharp, even though it had been rent by five bullets. The points of her shirt collar lay straight and even. The fabric of her shirt lay smooth and taut over her flesh, flattering the curves of her body. The dark blue and dark red beadwork of her choker necklace nestled at the base of her throat.

But the incongruity of it all was what most struck all those who gazed silently down at Guinevere laid out dead before them. Her face and her form were all peace and elegant composure--but there, for all to see, were five bullet holes in her shirt and five little red circles staining the light blue cloth in shocking contrast.

Steele made his entrance, a white lab coat now over his suit. "Good afternoon!" he said in a pro forma tone as he strode up to the examining table.

The responding "Good afternoon sir!" was thin and weak.

Steele seemed to take no notice of the tepid response. He positioned himself at the middle of the exam table, level with Guinevere's waist. He took a moment to look around at the faces of his students who stood clustered at the opposite edge of the table from him. Casually placing his hands on the edge of the marble slab in front of him, he leaned forward slightly, across Guinevere's dead body. He spoke.

"The morticians, will, of course, strip, bathe, and re-clothe Secret Agent Jones' body in preparation for her funeral. However, out of respect for the feelings of Secret Agent Jones' family, we will conduct this lab exercise leaving her fully clothed rather than stripping her naked. We will only extract the bullets from her body, pulling them out through the same holes they made in her, so the clothes will not affect our work." Steele did not mention that after the lab, it would be he himself, alone, who would prepare Guinevere's body for her funeral.

Steele paused in his speech. His pause became noticeably and uncomfortably long, and Tara and Cindy raised their eyes from gazing down at Guinevere to connect with Steele's eyes. He spoke again, a subtle change coming to his tone.

"Secret Agent Jones was--is-my friend. I do not think she will mind if, to make things easy, I refer to her as 'Guin' in your presence."

Tara and Cindy felt their guts suddenly contract and start to ache with incredulous sympathy for the sorrow that they now understood their instructor to feel beneath his coldly professional facade. Steele continued.

"Now class, our purpose here is to learn to identify a murder weapon based on evidence left by the murder. This will of course entail extracting and examining the bullets, but there are other clues that are more subtle that can give us a good approximation of what sort of gun did the deed. You all saw Guin take the bullets into her body, fall, and die. Assuming that you were witnesses to a murder, what is there about the way Guin died that could help us identify the weapon?"

Steele leaned farther out over Guinevere's body, his eyes searching the faces of his students for someone with an answer. After an uncomfortable pause, one of the students cleared his throat and opened his mouth to speak. Tara and Cindy glanced at him sharply. It was their classmate, Delbert Snead. They held him in low regard as a bespectacled geek who had announced his attention to make his career in intelligence analysis rather than undercover fieldwork.

"Well sir," Delbert's reedy voice piped up, "we saw Secret Agent Jones remain standing as five bullets hit her and then fall down slowly after the fifth bullet. Also, we saw that none of the bullets exited out her back. We know that she was shot at close range. All this would seem to indicate that the bullets that struck her were small, with low velocities and probably with soft points--I would bet that she was shot with some type of twenty-two caliber pistol, certainly not with anything bigger than a thirty-two caliber."

"That's very good, Snead," Steele said with the tone of one favorably impressed. Tara and Cindy noted with silent approval that Delbert at least had enough good taste to not appear too pleased with himself.

"All right then," proclaimed Steele as he stood over Guinevere in his white lab coat. "Let's see if the results of our tests confirm Recruit Snead's hypothesis. We're going to extract the bullets from Guin's body in the same order in which they entered her. This is a test of your powers of observation under stressful conditions. Who here can tell me which of the five bullet holes we see in Guin was first?"

Tara surprised Cindy and even herself when she spoke up. "Sir, the first bullet to hit her was the one that made a hole in her shirt immediately below her middle button."

"Outstanding, Recruit Black," said Steele, allowing himself a half-smile. "Now, it's time to get on with the extractions." Steele reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out what seemed to his students to be an astonishingly long, narrow pair of tweezers. "These, class, are bullet extraction forceps. They are not very high-tech, but they are effective. They just require patience and a steady hand to use. Again, out of consideration for Guin and her family, we must do everything we can to minimize further tissue damage to Guin's body."

With that, Steele poised the forceps vertically over the bullet hole just beneath Guinevere's middle shirt button. Using both hands and with a slow steadiness, he guided the forceps into and then down the bullet hole. Cindy felt her head start to swim as she watched the shiny metal of the long, slender forceps disappear through the cloth of Guinevere's shirt into the bullet channel that went deep into Guinevere's lower chest. Steele's face became knit with concentration as he let the forceps slowly sink ever deeper. Then his expression became even more intense as the recruits saw the forceps stop. Steele wiggled the forceps ever-so-slowly, ever-so-gently. Tara and Cindy saw a look of satisfaction suddenly came to his face. With great deliberation, he now brought the forceps up and out. The jaws of the forceps at last cleared the hole in Guinevere's shirt. Steele held the forceps up for all to see. There, neatly poised between the forceps' jaws, was a slightly bent, somewhat squashed looking slug. With seeming nonchalance, Steele placed the bullet in a little metal tray on the small work table that was behind him. He repeated this performance for the bullet hole in Guinevere's lower tummy and the one in her left breast. He then paused and threw a significant glance across the faces of his students. "Okay . . . who would like to try their hand at this?"

Before she realized what she was doing, Tara spoke up with a bold-sounding "I will." She felt her heart come up into her throat as Steele reached across Guinevere's body and laid the forceps in her extended hand. Tara cleared her throat and delicately poised the forceps over the bullet hole in Guinevere's right breast. She let the forceps pass through the hole in the shirt and enter the wound channel, not daring to breathe as she did so. Incredulous, Cindy watched the forceps sink out of view and into the depths of Guinevere's breast. Cindy felt sudden awe at the juxtaposition of the images before her. Guinevere's body was, in a sense, being violated, but even as the forceps sank into her breast, her face remained in the deep peace of deep sleep.

A bright smile suddenly came to Tara's face, as, with utmost care, she withdrew the forceps. She held them up in triumph. Bullet number four was once more in the open air. Tara handed the bullet to Steele who deposited it in the tray with the others.

"Can I try?" chirped Cindy, amazing herself as she did so. With a wry grin, Tara handed her the forceps and the two of them changed places at the side of the table.

"Finally. Now for the heart," was everyone's unspoken thought. Cindy steadied herself by leaning slightly forward against the edge of the slab. She put the forceps to the last bullet hole in the very center of Guinevere's chest. To her own happy surprise, Cindy was no less deft than Tara or Steele himself had been. As the spent slug emerged from the hole in Guinevere's shirt, Cindy thought she saw Guinevere's peaceful expression become even sweeter with gratitude.

After a few murmurs of congratulation subsided, Steele reassumed control of the proceedings. "Outstanding job, class. You will now go on break for ten minutes. Then report to Professor Moriarty in room number 334B for the actual ballistics analysis of the bullets we have just taken out of Guin. Remember, Guinevere's funeral will be tonight at seven for those who would like to attend." It then struck Steele that he had just used the full form of Guinevere's first name.

Steele was alone in the exam room now--alone with Guinevere laid out on the slab before him. He canted his head downward to gaze into her sweetly peaceful sleep. Then his words came forth in aching breaths.

"Well, my beloved wife, here we are--just like you always warned me we would be someday. Why do you always have to be right, my love?"

He looked up at the ceiling for a moment and composed himself. Then he set to work.

He unbuckled her high heels and slid them off her feet. He undid the lacing on the waistband of her miniskirt and slid the skirt down her legs and off. He unbuttoned her shirt the rest of the way, and as delicately as he could manage, he canted her body left and then right to lever her shirt from around her torso and down and off her arms. He peeled off her undergarments: hose first, then panties, then her brassiere heavy with her now dried blood at the center of each cup. Her necklace was the only thing he left in place.

He paused to contemplate the one he loved as she lay in magnificent dead nakedness. Her muscle tone was astonishingly superb even in death and her breasts remained taught and firm regardless of the bullet hole that pierced each one immediately below the nipple.

He reached behind him and brought forth a small wash basin filled with warm water and a washcloth. He moistened the washcloth. With exquisite delicateness, he half-rubbed, half-dabbed around each bullet hole in turn to sop up his dead wife's blood. When he was done, he laid the cloth in the basin and set the basin aside. He stood over his love, looking down at her. He placed his hands on the edge of the slab to steady himself. He bent forward at the waist. He placed a long, slow kiss on each bullet hole in turn: lower chest, navel, left breast, right breast--heart. He brought his lips to her face. He kissed her forehead. He kissed each closed eyelid, each cheek, the base of her throat just above her necklace. He kissed her lips. He gazed into her sleeping face from no distance at all.

"Farewell, My Love."

He stood up straight. He turned and went to the closet that was in the corner of the exam room. He drew forth the set of clean, fresh clothing that was identical down to the last stitch to what Guinevere had been wearing when she was shot. She had purchased the spare set of her favorite clothes for just this eventuality. He returned to the table with the clothing. Taking his time, he dressed his wife for her last party. Then he stepped into the next room to ask the morticians to bring in her casket.

He swallowed the sob that tried to escape from him as he remembered how insistent Guinevere had been that her casket have a light blue lining that would color-coordinate with her shirt. "Only a woman," he thought, smiling to himself now.

The recruits stood in small clusters of bunkmates and friends around the funeral parlor, talking quietly among themselves. A recording of Albinoni's "Adagio in G Minor" was playing softly. Every now and then, one of the recruits would cast a sidelong glance at where Guinevere lay on display in her casket. Finally, Tara and Cindy, arms linked in mutually supportive friendship, walked up to the very edge of the casket and looked inside.

They both sighed in sad pleasure at what they saw. Guinevere was laid out before them exactly as she had been laid out on the examining table--the same proud posture, the same expression of serene peace on her face. Only now, she lay in a warmly upholstered casket rather than on a cold slab and her bloody light blue shirt had been replaced with an identical shirt that was fresh, un-pierced, and clean. The two friends sighed again at Guinevere's loveliness in repose.

"She looks so cozy in there," opined Cindy with yet another sigh. "I like the way the casket lining color-coordinates with her shirt. I can't believe how beautiful she is even when she's dead."

"You mean you can't believe how beautiful she is even when she's dead with five bullet holes shot through her," corrected Tara. "Maybe we'll be so lucky ourselves someday. . . ."