The sounds of the audience, as gentle breezes riffling through leaves, quieted suddenly as the overhead lights grew dimmer, while spotlights brightened the stage. A flurry of angry-sounding shouts came from behind the curtain. Two girls, dressed in desert-sand-colored uniforms that suggested the military through shoulder insignia and berets, though the blouses left their midriffs bare and the trousers ended just above the knee, wearing low-cut boots with two-inch heels, entered the stage from behind the curtain, holding a now-robed Pam between them, supporting her with hands under her cloth-enclosed armpits as her bare feet, now held together by ankle shackles with a single metal link between them rendering her unable to walk, dragged along the floor. Pam's hair was disarranged, her right cheek smudged with dirt. Several other girls, dressed in more civilian fashion with worn, faded short skirts and halter tops, trailed along behind, one of them, Darlene, shouting "Who is she? What's she done?"

The "soldier" on Pam's right, Rita, snarled, "She killed the king, that's what," causing the civilians to gasp in horror. The soldier on the other side, Samantha, said, "Let's get her strung up now and then start looking for accomplices."

One of the civilians, Hayley, dressed a little more nattily, said in an officious, lawyer-like way, "You can't hang her without a trial."

Samantha snapped back, "Don't need a trial. We seen her do it!"

Hayley responded, "Well, you need to say so at a proper trial."

Both soldiers heaved heavy sighs, and dragged Pam across the stage, in front of the bemused graduates, towards the desk from which Ms. Bennett had awarded the red collars. Behind it now sat Molly, wearing a judge's robes. As the soldiers arrived in front of her with Pam, Molly intoned, "Prisoner, you are accused of the foul murder of our beloved king. How do you plead?"

Pam said, in a ringing voice, "I am guilty, your honor."

Rita threw her free hand in the air. "Then what'd we need a trial for?"

Molly held out her hand, palm up. "My fee will be five gold coins."

Samantha groaned. "That's why," and reached into the pocket of her skirt, afterwards dropping several coins to clink into Molly's hand, as the audience, graduates included, chuckled. The graduates all recognized that this was an abbreviated, fast-paced version of the Assassin scenario, with some extra amusing touches thrown in. In a normal show, men would have played most of the roles, generally the Hanging Girl's owner and his friends, but this was entirely a student production.

While the cast members had been in front of the "judge," Christie, dressed in the traditional black of the executioner, had come out from behind the curtain to stand beside the hanging platform, and now stood at parade-rest, awaiting her turn in the play. Rita and Samantha now pulled the unprotesting Pam once more across the stage in front of the graduates. As the attention of the audience shifted to that side, Shawna's roommate Monique, mostly unnoticed, quietly left her seat among the graduates and rounded the far end of the row of seats to disappear crouched down behind them.

The soldiers now hauled Pam onto the platform, a two-way platform that was in its "down" position, so that its surface was only a few inches above the floor of the stage, making it easier to lift the hobbled Pam onto it. Behind her, Christie pushed the lever to raise the platform, and then hopped onto it beside Pam. Once the platform had reached sufficient height, Christie grasped the dangling noose, slipped it over Pam's head and tightened it around her neck. Amy was close enough to see that both Pam and Christie, their lips barely moving, exchanged some whispered words one last time. Again, Amy could only make a reasonable guess as to what was said. Christie then took a fistful of Pam's robe and leapt down from the platform, ripping off the loosely-secured robe and taking it with her.

At that moment, two brighter spotlights from different angles suddenly shone directly on Pam, and the audience, nearly all first-timers at such an event, sounded the inevitable gasp of astonished appreciation at the sight of Pam standing alone and naked, her body, as perfect as any Hanging Girl's always was, coated with cooking oil and glowing, seemingly of its own internal light. Her hands were cuffed behind her to a metal belt circling her waist, the cuffs attached to a chain running between her legs to the front of the belt.

Samantha intoned formally, "Executioner! Perform your duty!"

Pam shouted, "Wait! I'm allowed to speak!"

The civilians all nodded, and the soldiers groaned and shrugged in resignation. Rita said grudgingly, "Make it fast."

Pam, her posture already perfect, somehow stood even straighter, her breasts thrust forward defiantly. "You don't have to do this! Don't you understand? I've killed the tyrant! You don't need to follow his laws anymore. You're free, all of you! You should be dancing, not killing!"

Samantha said irritably, "In times of trouble, the traditions must be followed."

Pam, pleadingly, said, "We can make new traditions! We can be a new people, live our own lives, free from oppression!"

One of the civilians said impatiently, "Okay, she's had her say. Get on with it." Heads all around nodded to indicate consensus.

Pam sighed. "Okay. It's too soon for you to understand. You don't yet know how your lives will change. Someday you'll know. Just... remember me."

With only the most subtle change in her posture, it was clear that Pam's next words were addressed to the audience rather than the cast. "That's all I want. Just remember me."

Heads, with mouths slightly open in fascination, were nodding all around the room. Amy knew, as all of the girls around her knew, that Pam's sentiment expressed every Hanging Girl's wish. And Amy, and all the girls around her, could tell that Pam was going to get her wish.

At a hand signal from Rita, Christie reached forward. Having, in practice in their dorm room, hanged her roommate hundreds of times in the last two years, Christie did so one last time, pushing the lever forward.

The audience seemed breathless, leaning forward, as the platform slowly sank, and at last went below the reach of Pam's feet leaving her to dangle by the neck, as she had so many times before.

Whatever nerves Pam may have been feeling during the play, Amy felt sure that now, the playacting done, Pam would be feeling comfortable for the first time today. Amy knew well that combination of focus, self-confidence, and peace that only reached their maximum levels at the end of a rope.

Pam wriggled with no particular pattern at first, her movements somewhat hindered by the joining of her feet, but not enough to cause her to lose the instincts for what she needed to do. After a little less than a minute, she made her first hip thrust.

It was a variation on Megan's original motion, but different in character. Jana had developed it, seemingly spontaneously, as she and Megan had worked on coming up with a routine for this type of hanging. Megan had then helped Jana refine it. It started with bent knees, and a sudden downward thrust of bound feet, straightening the lower body and pushing the hips sharply forward. Rather than being sexually receptive, suggestive of a woman on her back on the bed during lovemaking, her legs entwining around her lover, it suggested something much more aggressive, a woman on top, controlling the coitus, grunting in combined effort and ecstasy -- most of the girls watching Jana doing it swore she had been grunting, even though it was impossible while hanging. Several times in practice, Megan had been so aroused, watching Jana, that at the end of the session she would push Jana onto the bed as soon as she got the noose off her and make love to her, not stopping to untie her hands or feet. Jana, of course, didn't want to be untied. Amy, when she wasn't otherwise occupied, usually joined Megan in playing with the helpless Jana.

Pam now switched for a time to the "flag in the wind" move, involving her whole body, from neck down to feet, with ripples of back and forth movement flowing from her shoulders downward, each ripple not even complete before the next started. Jana had visualized it, and she and Megan together had practiced, standing on the floor, working to teach their bodies the sequence of muscle movements needed before trying it in mid-air. It wasn't easy to learn, and it was the move on which Megan and Jana had spent the most time with Pam, in the past week, helping Pam improve on it to the point of feeling confident enough to do it in public.

Now Pam alternated the hip-thrust move with Shawna's desperately-seeking-support move -- Shawna and Megan were still the best at that.

Amy was barely able to tear her eyes away and look at the audience, of whose presence she had been nearly unaware for some minutes. They were, as always, enthralled, many of them already at the door of orgasm. Beside her, Amy could hear Megan whispering instructions that Pam couldn't possibly hear, willing Pam to remember everything she'd been working on.

With feet together it was much more difficult to turn and show her back to the audience, but Pam succeeded and gave the audience a chance to watch her arm and back muscles straining with the effort to "free" her hands, before turning back.

Tiring now, some ten minutes in, Pam now began working on her own pleasure, pulling at the chain running through her pussy, her movements becoming more jerky as her arousal mounted. As always, this began taking the audience to a yet higher level of sexual consciousness, and there were gasps of orgasm, from audience members of both sexes and even some of the students, who were a lot more accustomed to what they were seeing but never, ever immune to its effects. (Amy had seen, and together she and Megan had laughed over, the invitation Megan had signed that went out to her father, suggesting that all guests wear some sort of absorbent undergarments.)

Knowing the end was near, the graduates began clapping their hands, joined immediately by the students behind the guests, and then the guests themselves. Amy could tell that the recognition, the approval, the excitement of the assembled witnesses gave Pam an extra burst of energy.

At last Pam stiffened, her entire body wriggling in something like a completely disorganized rippling-flag move, and Amy knew she had reached her climax. Drained of all energy now, she swung back and forth, her muscles making a few random, jerky movements, until at last only the pendulum swinging remained, slowly dying down until Pam hung altogether motionless.

She had kicked for thirteen minutes. Amy knew, since joining the feet usually cost a Hanging Girl three or four minutes, in addition to the two or three minutes for the energy-intensive choreography, that Pam would almost certainly have passed the Fifteen that faced her classmates a few weeks from now. Amy smiled, suspecting that Pam had been, in the end, aware of that.

After another minute, Christie, holding the heart monitor, nodded to someone unseen by the audience -- Monique, who now rose slowly from behind the seats of the graduates and lifted her bow, with its arrow, into position. Sighting along the arrow, waiting a little longer than she probably needed to, adding to the audience's breathless anticipation, she let the arrow fly at last across the stage, the head penetrating Pam's right side below her ribs and emerging from her left, releasing a spray of blood in an arc across the stage, and a brief flow of it down Pam's hip and leg afterward. Pam twisted and swung in renewed motion from the force of the penetration, and gradually subsided again.

The applause began again, punctuated by raucous cheers from the students, everyone standing, some of them stamping feet. Amy, knowing how far Pam had come in just the last week, wished she could somehow hear.

Amy stood, a little nervously, as Megan, her arm around Amy's waist, said, "Daddy, this is Amy, my roommate." Behind Amy, several of her classmates and their families were assembled near the still hanging Pam, discussing her performance, the girls fielding their families' questions.

Megan's father was a pleasant-looking man, only a little taller than Megan herself, beginning to bald, his face creased in a way that suggested the smile he wore now was often there. He held out his hand, and Amy shook it. "Paul Sadler. It's nice to meet you, Amy." He looked around. "Is your family here? We could get together."

Amy shook her head quickly. "No, sir. They couldn't make it." To change the subject, Amy asked, "What did you think of the show?"

He grinned. "Well, I've seen a graduate performance, but this was really something. Second Year, was she? I'm very impressed. I remember the girl mentioned you and Megan had helped her."

Amy smiled. "We really worked hard with her. Oh, and I know about your sister-in-law. Serena."

He was about to reply, but Megan, biting her lip in anxiety, interrupted. "Daddy? Where's...?"

His smile dipped a little. "Kathleen?"

Megan nodded.

He sighed. "Well, you know how kids are. Or, well... I have to remember you haven't seen her since she was nine. She's twelve now, if you can imagine that -- I can't -- and she can't tear herself away from her friends. They're at the mall, planning to take in a movie. I understand boys are involved. One of her friends' mothers is along as a chaperone, so I trust she's on her best behavior. She's really a good kid, Megan. I'm sure you're not surprised by that."

"But..." It required none of Amy's training and years of love for Megan to read her face: Kathleen had skipped this for something she could do any day? "Did... Did you at least try to get her to come?" Megan was near tears.

Paul now gave her a serious, understanding expression. "I did try, honey. But you know I never forced you to do anything. I don't force her either." He smiled again. "Not that it would do much good. She's as stubborn as you, if that tells you anything."

Megan gave him a fleeting smile, and turned to watch as the kitchen staff took Pam's body down and rolled her away on a cart to begin preparing her meat as part of the promised refreshments.

Paul spoke again, to Megan, in a voice of encouragement. "You're still coming to the house next week, right? Both of you? I have a feeling getting to know you again will take as much time as getting to know Amy." He chuckled. "You'll see Kathleen then. I'm sure she's really eager to see you, whether it sounds like it or not."

Megan smiled again, and kissed him on the cheek. "Of course we're coming. Anyway, get me caught up. What's been happening at home?"

THAT NIGHT

Amy, lying on her side, wriggled slightly against Megan in the bed, feeling Megan's stomach and breasts against her own, the skin of Megan's back against her arms, the light pressure of Megan's arms across her own back, the warm feel of Megan's thigh against her pussy, the dampness, from their earlier lovemaking, of Megan's pussy against her own thigh, the light brush of Megan's lips against her own, the soft movement of air moving in and out of Megan's nose beside her own.

She felt sleep beginning to steal towards her, but a thought tickled against her mind. She pressed her lips slightly more firmly against Megan's for a moment, felt Megan's move in automatic response. Amy mumbled, "That was so neat today, the way Pam went. All those parents getting to see what we do. It's like she really represented all of us, even more than when any of us usually does a show."

"Mmm-hmm." Megan was poised just on the border of sleep.

"Do you think you'd want to go like that?" Several times a day now, Amy returned her thoughts to Megan's hanging. It had to be right. It had to be special. And it had to be what Megan wanted. It always seemed to stay teasingly just out of Amy's grasp.

Megan was silent long enough to make Amy think she'd already lost her to dreamland. At last Megan mumbled sleepily, "Don' think so. Was nice, iss jus... people din't know what they were seeing. Nothing to... compare her with. I bet my dad was only one there who... ever saw Hanging Girl b'fore. You know I want to... be the bess..." She stopped, seeming to drift off.

In an instant. A single instant. That idea, that image Amy had spent months groping for. It assembled itself in her mind, fully formed, perfected and complete. Amy sucked in a gasping breath, her whole body spasming. She had it! That was it! She blurted out "Honey!" before she realized she'd said anything.

Megan was instantly awake, alert, alarmed. "What?? What's wrong, Amy??"

In one move Amy disentangled herself from Megan and pushed herself out of the bed to stand upright beside it, crouched over, pumping her fists jubilantly. "Your hanging! Your hanging! Listen! Listen!"

Megan, now sitting upright, still hadn't grasped whether this was something good or bad. "Amy, what's going on?"

Amy went on, in a tense whisper, not wanting to wake up the girls in the other rooms. "You said when you hang, you want people to really know what they're seeing."

"I said that? When?"

"Just now! You do, don't you? You want people who can watch you hang and think, wow, she's the best ever! They'd all have to be familiar with Hanging Girls."

Megan nodded slowly, her eyes wide, as if she was starting to see where this was going. "Uh-huh..."

"The members! The club members! We need to hang you at a party! The members have all seen Hanging Girls before. They wouldn't even be members if they hadn't, and when they come to the parties they've seen lots more of them! Imagine them watching you hang! They are connoisseurs of hanging! They're going to know exactly what they're seeing when they watch you!"

"But... Amy, the dean's not going to go for that. He's going to want to sell me, not give me away."

"No!! Not give you away! He can..."

THE NEXT MORNING

"...charge admission?" The dean's eyes, skeptical up to this point, lit up suddenly.

"Yes, sir!" Amy grinning, knowing she had him now. "They all know who Megan is! They've seen her when she and I do our shows at the parties! And they've heard girls thanking her for teaching them stuff. They know what she's capable of... or no, I mean they can imagine what she's capable of. Think how much they'd pay to see her hang! A once-in-a-lifetime thing. You could... I don't know, you know more about the money end of it than I do. But maybe, what... five thousand each, for a ticket to see Megan hang? Or even... the price could be the standard selling price of a Hanging Girl -- but each person pays that much. Announce it about a month ahead. Do it separate from the parties, a standalone event. For members only! Only people who know her would pay that kind of money." Amy stopped herself from going on. She decided she had given him enough to think about. She really had no clue about the actual amount of money the Academy might charge. She just wanted the dean to start thinking big. He alone knew the finances of the members, could guess at the amount of money they might be willing to pay. Charge too little and he would be passing up greater amounts he could have made. Charge too much and nobody would buy a ticket. But he could work that out.

The dean sat back in his chair, tapping his finger idly against his lips, lost in thought. He looked up at Megan. "This is what you want?"

Megan leaned forward. "Oh, yes sir! Amy thought of it, but the moment she started talking about it, I knew... I just knew. I have to go like this."

The dean resumed the lip tapping. Eventually he said, "Let me do some figuring, and look at the calendar. We can figure out when we want to do this..."

Amy nearly jumped to the ceiling. "So we're doing it??"

The dean smiled. "You know how to sell an idea, Amy. Now, I want to wait a few months on this, at least. The two of you are the best teachers I've got, and I'm not ready to let go of either of you just this instant. And in the time that remains, I want both of you to work out a timeline -- decide what there is left for you to do here, what sort of instruction you still need to do. Decide who is the best student or students among the undergraduates who might take over some of your duties when you're gone. Understood?"

Megan and Amy both nodded eagerly. Megan said, "So, about three months, you think?"

The dean thought for a moment, then nodded. "Let's say that. Work towards that as your goal. Amy, are you actually speaking for both of you here? Do you want this sort of hanging as well?"

Amy blinked at the suggestion that she was quite in the same league with Megan, but in any case immediately knew the answer. "No, sir. I want to go in the more usual way." There was no goal higher in Amy's mind than to have exactly the kind of final show Miranda had had. "But I'll wait a few months too. That planning you're talking about, that is something for both of us to be working on, right?"

He nodded. "I've never set an assignment like this for any of our graduates before their hanging, but... well, I've never before had a pair of students do quite as much stirring things up." He smiled. "In a good way, I mean. You've set some things in motion that I think should be brought to some sort of completion, with a guarantee of continuity, before I let you get out of here."

Amy hugged Megan, both of them almost bouncing in their chairs in excitement. Megan let go suddenly. "Oh! Sir, there's just one more thing. This is really important to me. If it's okay."

He raised his eyebrows and waited.

"When you do set a time for my hanging, could you issue two free guest passes? One for my dad, and one for my sister?"

The dean laughed. "I thought you were going to ask something hard. There's no problem with that."

Megan grinned and hugged Amy again.