Reaching the front, the applauding crowd now behind them, Cammy led Alisa around behind the main stage, where a woman sat behind a table. As Cammy started up the steps to the stage, the woman stopped her. "Wait, hold on, I've got some forms for you to fill out."

Cammy laughed a little at her own impatience. Of course there would be forms.

One of the forms was brief, having her simply sign to acknowledge her acceptance of the draft, and her willingness to participate in the contest, with the understanding that she had one chance in four of dying. The second form was longer, with spaces for her to fill out the name and address of her next-of-kin, and specify the disposal of her meat. She put her father down as her nearest relative -- she wished she could put Alisa, but they weren't married yet. Then she filled in her desires: That her father should receive her lower legs, everything from the knees down, and that all of the rest -- that would include meat, organs, and in particular her heart -- should go to Alisa Atwater. Alisa gasped at that, leaned down next to Cammy where she sat at the table and kissed her passionately.

Now, together, she and Alisa mounted the steps to the stage. By this time, the three volunteers had emerged from backstage, along with their partners. Cammy and Alisa both shook hands with Susan, and Susan turned to face the crowd. "Let's meet our contestants. First, our volunteers." She turned to the blonde woman standing nearest her. "What do you want to tell us about yourself, sweetie?"

The woman smiled as Susan held the microphone towards her, and spoke confidently. "I'm Karen Peters. I'm thirty-five... Oh, and this is my sister, Darla." She patted the shoulder of the woman standing beside her. "I just always wanted to go out in front of a huge crowd, and I thought, well, today could be the day!" Her choice didn't seem too surprising to Cammy. It was clear that the crowd energized Karen.

Next was Beth Short, thirty-six, who was here with her husband David. Beth spoke more shyly than Karen, and managed to stammer out that she had recently been thinking it was time, and that she and David couldn't afford a big party, and that this was a good opportunity. "And it's free!" she giggled. The crowd laughed with her.

The last of the volunteers introduced herself as Kat Gibson, thirty-three, who was here with her wife Hayley. She explained that she and Hayley couldn't agree on who would be snuffed first, so that the other could eat her, so they had been taking turns at Hanging Roulette, to leave it all to chance.

Susan was intrigued. "And how many tries is this now?"

Kat beamed at the crowd. "This is our third one. We've each survived one. I hope I get through this, because I really want to eat Hayley." She and Hayley laughed, and the crowd did as well.

Hayley leaned to the microphone and said, "Not going to happen. I've got to get a taste of this after all these years," as she patted Kat's butt. More laughter.

Susan turned, at last, to Cammy and Alisa, looking uncertainly between the two. "And our draftee is...?"

Cammy made a gesture with her hand. "It's me. I'm Cammy Felton. I'm a student here..." She looked adoringly at Alisa. "...and this is my fiancee, Alisa Atwater." Alisa blinked and grinned happily. She knew the word applied, but she hadn't heard it out loud before.

It occurred to Cammy to wonder what Taylor, standing out there in the crowd, was thinking, remembering that a few hours ago Cammy wouldn't even acknowledge that Alisa was her girlfriend.

Thinking she should say something more, Cammy said, "Assuming I get through this, Alisa and I are going to have each other's baby." She took a quick look at Alisa, who gave her a happy grin and mouthed "I love you," and then at the crowd, which had immediately started buzzing. Most would not have heard of Dr. Colton's program, and were probably trying to work out exactly what Cammy meant. Some had heard of it, in the same way Cammy and Alisa had, and it was likely that some of the buzz was explanations. Cammy leaned to the microphone again and said, "That's really a thing, trust me." The crowd laughed, many of them applauding. Cammy smiled. If getting the crowd on her side and interested in her well-being had any power to affect the spinners, then this probably helped.

Susan said, addressing the crowd, "All right, that makes it interesting! Okay, we've met our contestants, let's see which one of them doesn't leave the fair alive!"

Cammy's breath caught. She ran the words again and again through her mind: This isn't my time to be food. This is our time to make a family. This isn't my time to be food...

As she ran through the internal chant, she gave Alisa a reassuring abridged version: "We're going to make a family." Alisa gave her a hopeful smile.

Susan continued, "Contestants, it's time to take your places! Partners: get them set up for us!"

Kat was nearest the steps down from the main stage, so she moved first and led the rest down to ground level. Cammy, holding Alisa's hand, went last, and saw, to her horror, that an assistant had set out four plastic tubs, and Kat was already standing in front of one, peeling off her t-shirt and dropping it into the tub, then reaching behind her back to unclip her bra.

Of course, thought Cammy, biting her lip hard, where is my head? How could I have forgotten? She simply hadn't focused on the hanging, as she worked so hard at mentally projecting herself past it.

There were a number of different ways to snuff women, some of them very popular, others with niche appeal. But the various options shared one thing in common: by unbreakable tradition, women were always snuffed nude, giving full display of the meat being offered.

Cammy, since the not-really-remembered days of her mother bathing her (Cammy had ejected her mother from the bathroom at a very early age), had never shown her body unclothed to anyone. And she now very much wanted Alisa to be the first to see her naked. Instead, she would be seen in the altogether by a thousand people all at once.

And that wasn't the worst of it. In the rush to get herself ready this morning, trying on one outfit after another for her first date with Alisa, it had occurred to her that she ought to shave, but she had rejected the idea: there wasn't time, and she had told herself rationally that it wasn't realistic to think she and Alisa really were going to have sex, so soon in their relationship. It was Cammy's impression, judging from all of the available evidence, that these days only ponygirls and virgins had untrimmed bushes. Now she'd be standing up there showing her dark, tangled thatch of pubic hair to all of the same people who'd just heard her declare Alisa to be her fiancee. People were going to wonder.

Hesitation would be perceived as pigging, Cammy told herself. Just focus on Alisa. Imagine that only she is here.

Cammy turned to face Alisa, stared straight into her eyes, took off her shoes and socks, and started unbuttoning her blouse.

She was startled when Alisa, not taking her eyes from Cammy's, kicked her own shoes off, peeled off her socks, then pulled the hem of her t-shirt up and over her head, discarding them all in the same tub into which Cammy was putting her clothes.

Cammy could read in Alisa's eyes what she was doing. She was telling Cammy that she knew Cammy was imagining herself stripping for Alisa alone. Alisa's response: I'm stripping for you too. Just for you.

The assistant, watching Alisa in surprise, said, "You don't have to..."

Alisa cut her off. "I know." She continued removing her clothes in synchrony with Cammy. Her bra was off now.

Cammy loved the type of breasts Alisa had. Not large, but firm. Nipples uptilted, of the type like pencil erasers. Cammy wanted so much to touch them. To kiss them. Not the time now. Later, Cammy told herself. There will be a chance later. It's not my time to be food...

The danger Alisa was putting herself in suddenly occurred to Cammy. We're pretending we're all alone here, she thought, but the fact is that we aren't. She wasn't sure Alisa was thinking about consequences. She started, "You can't..."

Alisa interrupted, "I won't," as she pulled her jeans down and off, her eyes still fixed on Cammy's, and dropped them into the tub.

By tradition, eventually made official law, any free woman who appeared naked in public was offering herself as a slave to the first person to claim her; in a case, such as the one at present, in which there were too many people present to be reliably sure who had claimed her, she became the property of the city, to be sold at auction. Cammy was protected, in this situation, by the Competition Exception. Alisa was not.

They were each wearing only panties now. Cammy, with so many threads of thought running through her head now as chants: Only Alisa is here; it's not my time to be food... took a deep breath, added a new chant (Alisa, don't do this, don't do this...), pushed her thumbs in under the waistband of her panties, and slid them down her legs, carefully trying to avoid visibly coating her inner thighs with the gook of secretions of sexual arousal that had so thoroughly drenched the pad she'd inserted into them.

To her relief, Alisa only stood and watched, making no move to pull down her own panties.

Cammy looked down and blinked, smiling. She could see that Alisa had also put a pad in her panties. And the odds were that it wasn't for blood either. Alisa, like Cammy, had anticipated spending the day very aroused. Cammy looked into Alisa's eyes again. "I love you."

Alisa responded, with as much feeling as anyone can put into such a short sentence, "I love you."

Cammy held out her hand for Alisa to take, and together they walked up the steps onto the only remaining available platform. Reaching the top, she held her mouth in a tense line as she faced the crowd, conscious of everyone looking at her entire uncovered body.

The other women were already atop the other three platforms. Cammy had the yellow, the one nearest the main stage. The other platforms were to her left. Kat was on the nearest one, the blue; Karen beyond Kat on the red platform; Beth on the farthest one, the brown.

The buzz among the onlookers increased in volume as they saw that Alisa was unexpectedly nearly naked. At least Cammy believed that most of the buzz was for that. Not at all surprisingly, Cammy could see now she was the only one of the contestants unshaved, so some of the conversations were surely about that. She felt her face, already hot, growing hotter.

On the other platforms, the partners were already putting the nooses around the contestants' necks. There was a set of handcuffs on the floor of each platform, and Darla had cuffed Karen's hands behind her back first, then set the noose.

Alisa, not making a move towards the noose or the cuffs, stepped up beside Cammy. Cammy gave her a puzzled look, which Alisa ignored. Facing the crowd, Alisa hooked her thumbs under the waistband of her panties and, just for a brief instant, pulled the front down far enough to make clearly visible the tangled triangle of reddish-brown hair between her legs, the same dark copper color as the hair on her head. Immediately she then readjusted her panties to hide it away once more. Cammy blinked in surprise, but immediately understood that Alisa's gesture declared to the crowd: See, I don't trim mine either. We both like it that way. If she's weird, we both are.

The crowd's buzzing rose in volume, and there was some applause, especially in front where people could more easily see what Alisa had done.

Cammy stared at Alisa. Her move with her panties had stayed just within safety limits, but it was so...

Cammy's breath caught in her throat as she realized the word that came to her mind was "daring." That quality in their favorite character in the Mantanor books, Sandra, the "daring" that Alisa had expressed a wish she could emulate, but apparently had felt was beyond her. I'm not Sandra, Cammy realized, but Alisa is. I'm not standing up here because I'm daring. There's a chance I will die here, but I didn't choose to put myself in this danger. And I didn't choose to stand naked in front of a big crowd. The luck of the draw and tradition made those choices for me.

But Alisa doesn't need to be (nearly) naked, Cammy told herself, and she certainly didn't need to show a thousand strangers an embarrassing detail of her personal grooming. She is doing it all only for me. To calm me, to make a scary situation more bearable, to mute my feelings of embarrassment about what the crowd is thinking about me so I can concentrate on surviving. And to do all of that, by stripping down to nothing but her panties, and then taking it even farther and partially uncovering herself from behind them, Alisa has dared to go to the very borderline of something I know she doesn't want: being taken as a slave.

All for me.

The only thought Cammy could process, driving all others out of her head for the moment, was: Alisa, whether it's only another half-hour or many years to come, I will love you all of the rest of my life.

Alisa took the noose, loosened it slightly so that it would go down over Cammy's head (everyone knew how to deal with nooses from seeing hangings, both professional and amateur, on television), and tightened it around Cammy's neck. Then she bent to pick up the cuffs, and used them to fasten Cammy's hands together behind her back.

She came around in front of Cammy then, and said softly, "Listen to me. They're going to do equalizing in a minute. Remember to keep your heels on the floor."

Cammy nodded. "I know." Unsurprisingly they had read the same articles about Hanging Roulette, the same reminiscences of survivors. Cammy understood exactly what Alisa was referring to.

Alisa put her hands gently on Cammy's face, on either side of her mouth, and leaned closer. "I mean it. It's hard. You have to concentrate on it. Don't lift your heels! Remember it!" She said "I love you" one more time, reached around Cammy to take Cammy's hands in hers against Cammy's buttocks and kissed her, softly rather than out-of-control-passionately, her bare breasts pressed against Cammy's for the first time. She broke the kiss, and simply said with a smile, "Later."

Cammy, breathing hard from both mounting tension and from the kiss, nodded. "Later." She felt, again as before, what seemed literally to be a squirt of lubrication from between her legs, this time with no panties to absorb it. She could feel the juices trickling slowly down the inside of her thigh.

Alisa gave her one last very brief kiss and walked around her and down the steps.

Susan said cheerfully, "All right, we're ready! Partners: take your places next to the hand cranks in front of the platforms! Contestants: we're going to equalize the ropes so you each have twelve inches of slack."

Cammy took a deep breath and closed her eyes, working to slow the suddenly runaway pounding of her heart. It's starting, she told herself, and she resumed her internal chant: It's not my time to be food. It's our time to start a family... She felt, rather than hearing it over the buzz from the crowd, a slight humming as the computer-controlled mechanism overhead began slowly reeling in the rope hanging down to her noose. In moments she felt an upward tug on her neck.

She knew what was happening. At this moment, arrangements were being made to ensure that all contestants had an equal chance. This was the process Alisa had been talking about: "equalizing the ropes," so that all participants had exactly the same amount of slack in the rope.

The rope was raised until sensors in the mechanism measured seventy pounds of tension in the rope -- not enough to raise the contestant off the floor of the platform, but enough so that cheating by slouching was impossible: anyone pulled up by the neck with that much force could not avoid standing ramrod straight. The rope would then be lowered by exactly twelve inches -- in some games it was more, or less, depending on how long the people in charge wanted the contest to last. Once the contest began, Cammy and the others could each afford to have twelve inches taken away while standing flatfooted on the floor.

As the rope now gently, and then more insistently, pulled upward on her neck, Cammy's heart began to pound hard again. She couldn't breathe, the pull continued, and the entire experience, which had until now been only theoretical, was suddenly very, very real. The sticky film of sexual fluids coating her inner thighs was joined by a warmer, more runny stream of urine.

She struggled automatically to free her hands from the cuffs, desperate to reach up to loosen the rope choking her. Within her mind, alongside her "It's not my time to be food" chant, an equally insistent voice drummed into her consciousness, the memory of Alisa telling her: Don't lift your heels! Don't lift your heels! Cammy knew that going up onto her toes would be the worst mistake she could possibly make -- it was, in fact, the only action it was within her power to take, to relieve the pressure on her neck, and that made it that much harder to avoid doing it.

Going up on her toes would make that posture, heels off the floor, the standard from which the twelve inches would be measured: instead of having twelve inches to give away during the contest while standing flatfooted, letting her heels leave the floor during the equalization would mean that by the time her rope had been pulled twelve inches upward later, she would already be on tiptoes.

Don't lift your heels! Don't lift your heels! Alisa's words filled her mind completely. She cleared everything else out of her head except the imperative to keep her feet flat on the floor.

Finally, just as Cammy was about to panic over the possibility that the mechanism had somehow become stuck, choking her, with her unable to make a sound to call attention to something being wrong unless she did go up on her toes, the rope began unwinding. Cammy, able to breathe again, took advantage of it in great heaves, using her lungs to their fullest possible advantage.

She resumed the chant: It's not my time to be food...