My very first story! I hope it's good ^^

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"Nanette!"

The short plump girl turned her head, smiling at her new friend bouncing up and down with excitement.

"Aria! What is it?"

"The exhibition! They've posted the sign-up list on the board! Come on!"

Nanette let her friend pull her by the wrist towards the school news board.

She'd only recently transitioned into this private girls-only boarding school after her aunt finally won custody of her from the state after both her parents had their parenting rights taken away. She frankly didn't care who was going to 'officially' take care of her, having spent her entire life in one establishment or another; this particular school had a reputation for being weird, though, and she was looking forward to finding out what would happen.

"What exhibition?", she whispered in her friend's ear as they entered the massive crowd in the corridor where the board was. Clearly Aria wasn't the only one excited for the upcoming event.

"Oh, you don't know?", - giddiness in the girl's voice suggested she was more than happy to tell her new friend ALL ABOUT this. - "It's a twice-yearly event! There's an exhibition of torture devices and execution methods from around the world. They have a huge pool, and they randomly select several every time! They post the list on the board, and students sign up for auditions! The torture devices are real, too, and used for real, and execution methods are usualy not!"

"Usually?..." - Nanette's voice jumped up and down, reflecting her surprise at the information. That people would volunteer to have torture devices demonstrated on them was weird enough... although she was admittedly curious to participate herself.

But - would they actually for real kill their students? The school DID have a weird reputation - Nanette's aunt needed quite a bit of convincing to let the girl choose it for herself...

"Well, yeah! They randomly, again, choose one exhibit every half-year to be real. Students who audition for that one are warned, and then forbidden to tell anyone! If someone tells, they do a complete shuffle of all the roles and choose another exhibit to be real that time!"

"Shuffle all the roles?..."

"Well, yeah! I mean, they have someone else to warn their exhibit is going to be lethal, and they can agree or refuse all over again, and they can't let it slip what it's going to be, so they have to change everything!"

"Huh", - Nanette murmured. - "So you can refuse if your exhibit turns out to be lethal?..."

"Of course! They'll just ask the next one in line after you. I dunno what they are going to do if no-one agrees, that hasn't happened yet..."

Nanette blinked wondrously. The crowd was functioning as a sort of line to sign-ups, and they were slowly getting pushed closer to the board. She could make out that most papers had long sing-up lines already; as a new student, she doubted she would be picked out of many, and she was already very eager to participate, in whatever role, so she decided to pick whichever one was the shortest. Some papers still seemed blank or almost blank...

"What are you going to pick?" - it was a bit of an assumption on her part that Aria would want to participate, quite a few students seemed to only elbow their way to the board to gawk, but the girl's excitement made it not that far a reach.

"Dunno, some torture," Aria replied happily, validating the guess. "If you choose an execution, you only get a very slim chance of any action, and then that'd be the last one. I don't know what exactly I'll pick until I see the list, though!"

Nanette nodded. The reasoning was solid to her. She wondered what were Aria's chances of being picked.

If the auditions were held on appearance, they both weren't anything special; then again, the school wasn't exactly full of supermodels. Now, if they looked for athletic ability, Aria would be a good choice: tall, lean, flat as a board, muscles not large but clearly defined. Her pale blond hair fell down her shoulders in two girly-looking pigtails, which looked funny given that she towered over most of her peers, and her long-nosed, sharp-featured face with small grey eyes did not look childish by any stretch. Nanette found her pretty attractive, but she was aware her tastes did not align with majority.

Nanette wasn't weak herself, but she hadn't established that at the new school yet, and you couldn't tell from her appearance. Short and plump, with round face - now she could pass for a middle-schooler easily. Her short dark hair fell in feathers with dyed ends barely past her ears, dispelling that impression somewhat, but still you couldn't tell she'd easily beat most her peers in a marathon.

Perhaps what they looked for was acting ability; but why would they, if the torture devices were real? Then again, it could be needed for executions, and if they wanted to set a specific scene... Nanette wasn't too good at acting, her chances definitely didn't look good.

(They also probably wanted healthy girls for the torture, so it wouldn't have lasting side effects, she decided. She was pretty healthy herself, but didn't know what Aria's chances there were, they hadn't known each other for that long.)

Finally the crowd spit them out right in front of the board, and Nanette got the chance to quickly look over the options. Many people seemed to take their time picking, but she didn't want to take up space for long; her picking criteria would be pretty visually simple anyway.

The lists were organized simply: there were lined sheets with the exhibition name and schematics on top, one per exhibition. Some were filled completely and had students scribble their names on the margins excitedly. Others were nearly completely blank; Nanette tried looking over those, but was soon disoriented by the multitude of options.

"First-timers usually choose execution", Aria chirped into her ear, having evidently already put her own name somewhere. "It's not too intense and if your one is picked for real, you can always refuse! Look here", - her finger jabbed at one list, and Nanette took a closer look.

It was a form of beheading: the subject was to put her head on a stump, an axe was stabbed into it at an angle right above the neck, and then it was to be hammered down until the head came off - presumably, the last part wouldn't be executed in a not-real exhibition. There was just one name there; she didn't know it.

Nanette quickly scribbed her own on the second line and let Aria pull her away to the side along the wall.

"So, what did you pick?" she asked with mild curiosity.

"Water torture!" - Aria was positively beaming. - "You get water dripping in your mouth, and you don't get to close it. It doesn't seem like much, but it gathers up over time; also, they usually stretch you painfully for those less immediate ones. There weren't many candidates, it's not one of the popular ones, so I'll most definitely get picked!"

"Huh," Nanette murmured. "What are the popular ones?"

"Oh, you know," - Aria waved her hand. - "Lashing, asphyxiation, stretching. All simple stuff. They even let primary schoolers participate in those with parents' permission. I've tried some of them; they just aren't interesting, you know? And you never know if you'll get picked if you sign up for those. I like not coming too early to the sign-ups, then you can choose something interesting and with good chances!"

Nanette nodded. This seemed like good sense to her, too.


---


The audition was held the very next day. The exhibition was still two weeks away, but there wasn't any need to waste time. Not like there was much to prepare; the only thing required of auditioners was to read up on their chosen exhibit's history, and there were leaflets just for that given out in the library.

The other girl sitting near Nanette for this exhibit was a short, tiny thing; her dark long thin braids fell all along her sides, accentuating her small size even more. Narrow black eyes, thick eyebrows, sharp chin... Nanette didn't consider herself a lesbian - she liked guys at least as much! - but this girl caught her eye instantly. She allowed herself for a moment to fantasize about their exhibit being picked to be real and this girl getting her head slowly hammered off, blood streaming all over her neat school uniform...

"Mariam!", the voice called from behind the door, and the short girl jumped up and hurried inside. Nanette had nothing to do but wait; if she were them, she thought, she'd definitely pick Mariam. Dark blue, neartly ironed uniform just hung down too prettily down her sides; perhaps they didn't choose based on looks, but despite her own desire to participate Nanette wished they would. Watching would be fun too, wouldn't it?

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the door opening again, the thin-braided girl leaving with a carefully neutral expression on her face - she gave Nanette a short glance and turned away, hurrying down the corridor, - and the voice calling out her own name.

Inside, there was a woman sitting at the desk, a chair in front of it. Nanette sat down.

"Hello," the woman smiled. "I see you have recently transferred, and it's going to be your first exhibit?"

Nanette nodded.

The woman sighed.

"Then this is perhaps not for you. This exhibit is chosen to be the lethal one this year."

Nanette's mouth made a tiny "o" shape. Were her fantasies coming true? She thought about her tiny competitor.

"Will you choose Mariam, then?"

The woman shook her head.

"No, she refused when she heard it would be lethal. If you refuse, we'll just shut down this exhibit like we do with ones that get no sign-ups and choose another one to be real. We'll have to hold re-auditions tomorrow, of course, but that's not weird, the final decisions are usually not made right away anyway."

Nanette nodded slowly. That's why the sign-up was so early before the exhibitions, she thought: to give time for all the shake-ups to happen.

"Does this happen often?" - she asked. Aria said it never did, but surely that couldn't be true?

"Often enough", the woman nodded. "We don't let the students know so the ones who refused won't face stigma. We don't tell them who refused and who wasn't chosen for all lethal exhibits, either. They generally don't babble about it themselves, either."

Nanette nodded again. This made sense; she could just refuse now - surely it was the logical choice, she hadn't even seen the exhibit once!...

"When does the lethal exhibit happen? How are other ones arranged?" - she hoped the questions were clear enough. Her mind was too busy with considering the possibility of signing up for her own quick death to also pay attention to forming coherent sentences.

"It happens just before the end of the day," the woman explained, raising her eyebrows - perhaps Nanette not refusing immediately was weird. "You'll be able to see the other exhibits from your position - they are all arranged in a circle. There are crowds, of course, but the exhibition lasts the entire day, so you'll have ample time to goggle yourself."

Nanette nodded. A thought occured to her regarding Aria, were she to succeed in her goal...

"But they won't be able to see me die, will they?" - that sounded so strange to say out loud, yet so easy. For a moment Nanette thought that maybe she misunderstood, and the woman will laugh and correct her on the whole 'die' thing - but there was nothing of the sort.

"Not immediately, no, but there will be many cameras, and full video of the event is given out for free to all exhibition participants." The woman sighed to herself. "Only for them, theoretically, the others have to pay, but usually it ends up distributed to the entire school in makeshift copies anyway. We still make money in selling it to other clients, though."

"Oh..." Nanette opened her eyes wide. This was new! "You'll sell it?"

The woman nodded.

"Well, of course. Consensual snuff videos are in quite a bit of a demand. Does it make you uncomfortable? Most students know this, but you are new..."

Nanette shook her head. It made sense to her now that someone agreed to die every year - what other chance would she get to be a worldwide star, with her body type and frankly below average acting ability? Many girls perhaps held this view...

Of course, she'd get another chance next exhibit in half a year... but a very slim one. What were the odds she'd pick the exhibit to be real again, and what were the odds she would be the one picked of the entire line? It was now or never, and between those Nanette always made only one possible decision.

"I want to participate. Where do I sign?"

The woman frowned.

"Are you sure? We don't really expect participation in lethal exhibits from first-years, and..."

She left the rest of the sentence trailing. Maybe she had nothing to say, or maybe she just read the look of annoyance and boredom on Nanette's face. She was NOT up for a lecture right now; this was decidedly not how she wanted to go out now that it came to it. She figured she'd have to deal with some beurocracy to give them permission to snuff her, but not discipline lectures!

"Well, if you are determined, here, read through all of those, and if you agree, put your name and today's date at the bottom of each", - the woman pushed a stack of papers toward her.

Nanette took the first one. Consent to participation in the exhibit; the next one was consent to be snuffed - this one had three copies; then there was consent to be filmed and separately consent for video to be sold; then consent to be organ donor - Nanette suspected this one was optional but she signed it anyway, why not do a good deed? She barely bothered to read through the next ones. She knew to read legal contracts attentively, but what difference could it make when she was going to die anyway? Of course, there was her aunt to consider, but Nanette barely knew her and surely, no matter what, no-one would hold the woman who's only been formally taken care of her for like a month responsible for Nanette's choice now? If there was anyone to blame for Nanette's indifference to her own fate now it was her parents, and for all Nanette cared they'd earned everything they theoretically could have coming.

Perhaps the woman expected her to be deterred by the massive stack of legalese, but Nanette was done pretty soon. She lifted her head, smiled sunnily at the woman and pushed the papers back to her.

"Are you sure?", the woman asked again. "It's still not too late to feed all of this to the shredder. Frankly, this is a rash decision, isn't it?"

Nanette shook her head. She understood that this woman's job was to make sure her consent was real; but it was. It really, for real, was. She wanted to die there, and she wanted it to be like that.

"Well, so be it", the woman sighed and started arranging the paper neatly. "Come here tomorrow after school, there'll be a rehearsal, you'll need to act for the entire day until you get snuffed..."

"Oh... yeah." Nanette wrinkled her nose. "I'm not too good at acting, to be honest. Sorry. I'll try my best though!", she added seeing that the woman stopped her hands, perhaps intending to ask her if she was sure she wanted this again. She still was, and if her snuff film had mediocre acting - well, she always thought those had all the more charm for it.

"I'll be here! See you", she cheerfully jumped up from her seat and left the room.

The thin-braided Mariam was waiting for her just outside, perched on the window-sill slightly to the side from the door.

"Hey", - she jumped down and approached Nanette.

Nanette nodded to her.

"Hi!"

It was hard to keep her bubbling excitement from spilling over. She knew she wasn't supposed to talk about what she agreed to, but on top of being chosen for the lethal perfomance, she was also now approached by a cute girl she was fantacizing about just before, and there's only so much a person can take with a poker face!...

Mariam sighed.

"So you've agreed, haven't you?"

Nanette nodded cheerfully.

"I have. Aren't we not supposed to not talk about this, though?"

Mariam looked around. The corridor was mostly deserted for the moment, but someone was coming from the other end already... this wasn't the best place to chat.

"Point. Come along", - she draged Nanette by her sleeve towards the staircase.



After letting her have the lead for a while, Nanette found herself in a small flat corner of the roof. There were perches like this at different places on top of the school; this one seemed to be particularly unfortunately situated, its only window between the walls of other parts of the building looking out at the dumpster. Well, surely this meant it couldn't be popular; good choice to be alone, she supposed.

"So," Mariam stated, perching on the end of the railing of said window, her back to the wall. "You've agreed to die for enjoyment of the masses, and you are entirely happy about that."

Nanette followed suit, perching up at the opposite end. Thin railing cut unpleasantly into her soft wide bottom, but her still bubbly mood prevented that from feeling too uncomfortable.

"I did and I am, yeah. Isn't that normal?..." Nanette let her question trail. She actually had no idea what was normal for this school, being new, but surely?...

"Aren't you new?" Mariam echoed her thoughts. "How are you falling into this pattern already? Honestly, sometimes I think they use mind control at those auditions, but then again, I didn't agree myself, so maybe not... Maybe I'm just immune!" - she pulled on one of her braids in clear annoyance.

"You auditioned too", Nanette pointed out.

"Well, yeah..." Mariam let go of the braid and sighed. "Maybe I'm not all that immune either. And," she bit her lip.

"And what?" Nanette was curious. Why did Mariam bring her here, anyway? Did she expect to change her mind? Could she change her mind now? Nanette recalled the woman's pestering; she probably could. She probably could change her mind any moment; she wasn't going to, though.

"And I find it hot", Mariam said bluntly. "I also find you hot. And weren't you ogling me right before the audition? Imagining me dead or dying, I imagine, no?"

Nanette felt her skin redden from forehead to ears to neck. How?...

"How do you know?..."

Mariam snickered.

"So I guessed right, didn't I? Lots of people fantacize that about me, apparently. I guess it's something about being small and spunky, everyone just wants to murder you!"

"I don't want to murder you!" Nanette protested. "I just - well, okay, I - see, I wouldn't want to do anything to you that you didn't want!..."

"That's sweet," Maryam had a smile flash on her face for a brief moment. She'd mostly kept her face neutral for most of the discussion until now; smile seemed like a rare sight on it.

She hopped down from the railing.

"Well, right now I want to make out with you. You up for it?"

Nanette slid down and stepped up to her. This was definitely shaping up to be the best day in her life!..


---


The morning of the exhibition, Nanette, along with all other participants, was waiting in a small room near the hall as the equipment was being prepared. The small group - Nanette counted, fifteen people total - was mostly quiet. Aria was there, too, holding tight onto Nanette's arm. Just as she predicted, she was chosen with barely any competition.

"So," - a tall freckled redhead of Nanette's complexion broke the silence. "Spill it. Who's dying?"

Nanette frowned and looked at Aria questioningly.

"Yeah, that's the tradition", she confirmed. "The participants get to know right before the exhibit starts. It's not exactly allowed, but there's no way for adults to know, anyway... So, who?"

She looked around the room with curiosity. There were five other girls in execution exhibits - these things, all the participants learned about each other during rehearsals, - all looking at each other with the same eager wonder.

Nanette coughed shyly.

Aria turned to her, eyes alight with wonder.

"You?! For real?"

"Yep", Nanette confirmed. She wanted to add that she was chosen because the other girl refused, but thought better of it. Mariam, who she's been semi-dating - they mostly just made out and experimented with how many different places and positions lesbian sex could be had in - definitely didn't deserve being thrown under the bus like that.

Aria blinked, then blinked again.

"You - but you're new! They never choose the newbies! I mean, I guess it's not forbidden, but - wait, nobody else wanted to, didn't they?"

"Er," Nanette murmured. "I did choose the shortest list so I would be likely to be picked..."

"Right, I helped you myself! Wow, I chose this for you..." Aria didn't seem to want to press the topic, thankfully.

The room was buzzing with excitement. Everyone was looking at Nanette, now; one girl, a stocky punk-looking one, had her hand not-too-subtly under her skirt. Nanette caught her eyes and smiled; the girl looked away and blushed slightly, but didn't take out the hand out.

"Wow..." Aria murmured again, caught up in the moment.

This was as good a moment as any, Nanette figured.

She reached up, pulled Aria's head down to her level - Aria didn't struggle - and gave her a deep kiss.

Aria blinked wondrously and kissed back.

The half-hour left until the start of the exhibition passed as fast as ever.


---


The hall designated for the exhibition was not round, but the exhibits were arranged in a circle. Corners were taken up with recording equipment and tables with some papers or other. Each exhibition had an attendant other than the subject herself - Nanette wasn't sure who these people were, but they'd all gotten to know them during the rehearsals. She herself walked up to her stump, knelt, put her head down - it was at a pretty comfortable height, allowing her to look around fairly freely - and her attendant stuck the axe down.

Nanette stared at the other exhibitions. Aria, right across from her, was being mounted on an uncomfortable-looking construction that had her bend over backwards at the waist, belly up, her ankles and wrists stretched out and fixed to it with leather restraints. She could move her head around freely, and the attendant made a short experiment by pouring a cup of water into her open mouth and then telling her to spit it out to the side. There was a wide bowl under her head, and instead of spitting, Aria, as countless times before during the rehearsals, let the water spill straight downwards from the corner of her mouth. All was ready; the attendant pinched her nose with a clothespin and put on her a sort-of gag forcing her mouth open and leaving an opening into it. Then he opened the faucet on a dropper-like jar above her head, and water started dripping into her mouth. There were several more jars of water standing behind the exhibit, out of sight of the upcoming visitors.
Aria was going to spend the entire day in this uncomfortable position, with her nose closed so she had to breathe with her mouth that water was dripping into. Sometimes she would be allowed to vomit/spit out the water and then returned to the position. Sometimes during the rehearsals she'd choke on the water. Her bent position was in part to prevent this happening - all the water would flow down back to her mouth.
This wasn't going to be fun for her - which, Nanette supposed, was the entire point.


The girl right next to her was mounted on a very painful-looking wooden horse. Aria had said before that she'd have preferred to be chosen for that one, but it was way too popular for her to gamble on it. The lucky girl was even shorter than Nanette - and looked a bit younger - chubby, with peachy cream skin, chin-length brown curls arranged in pretty locks and huge brown eyes made to look even bigger with subtle makeup. This was one of the exhibits involving full or partial nudity: the girl had a simple white bra on, but her lower body was nude, up until the simple white socks and dark brown uniform shoes on her feet. All the visitors were treated to the sign of the slightly rounded edge of the horse biting into her pussy.

The rehearsals were always held with clothes on whenever it was possible, and Nanette found it hard to pry her eyes away from this one. By the time she's had enough of the brown-haired girl's painful wincing and shifting from side to side, first visitors started coming in, so she shifted her face into a pre-trained fear grimace.


The next exhibit over was hanging. The redhead who'd spoken first in the room before was the subject: she stood on the stool with her hands and feet bound and eyes pretty naturally-looking wide with fear, a noose lying on her neck. The noose was pretty short and the stool was pretty tall; Nanette was looking forward to the prepared perfomance.

And there it was - she projected shock on her face and kicked the stool back with both feet. There wasn't enough drop to fracture her neck, but the noose tightened up for real, so she would twist and twirl around for a bit - at this point the visitors crowded around her, blocking her from Nanette's view. She knew, however, that after about half a minute of that she would be pulled up on the stool again and the noose relaxed. Death was not part of the program - not until evening, anyway, and then it would be her own, not the redhead's.


After the redhead was another partially nude torture - Nanette liked her positioning in relation to all those a lot. This one featured the stocky punk who'd masturbated in the waiting room; it wasn't surprising, in retrospect, that she'd have signed up for this one. It was pear of anguish - a torture device with actually questionable historic origins. Some sources claimed it was just used as a gag - this was, of course, too boring for the exhibition.

In this case, it was inserted in the punk girl's - Nanette was pretty bad at names of people she wasn't violently attracted to - vagina. It was a metal pearl-like device - or at least it appeared pear-like until pulled open, which caused it to separate into spoon-like 'petals' stretching the insides of the opening it was shoved into. The girl was tied to a chair, again wearing only a bra - she chose to be barefoot, too - with her legs pulled wide enough open to present the visitors with a nice view of the handle of the device sticking out of her pussy. There was a stand right next to her explaining the construction of the device, as most of it was not visible. As a group of visitors gathered, the attendant would slowly open the device, eliciting howls and screams of pain from the girl, then close again as they moved on.

Nanette was briefly annoyed she wasn't a visitor herself, as all the best view was blocked from her by them - but then the first crowd moved out, and the girl caught her eyes. She smiled and whispered something to the attendant. He looked over to Nanette, nodded, bent down and, clearly holding his hand so as to provide her with the best view, slowly turned the device open as the punk girl moaned and then gave a short scream - and Nanette saw a small stream of blood trickle out!

The attendant quickly turned the handle the other way, bent over to the girl, but after another whispered exchange repeated the show again, and then after another consultation with the girl, despite her hissing in pain even when the device was closed, kept repeating it until the next group of visitors came in.

---

To be continued! If I keep the inspiration, after I finish this, there'll be more stories to come from other instances of this event, too~