A Centauress Dances Pt. 1

Henry sighed and scratched his head as he looked over the day's list. A single convict, one Marianne Shelley, age 21, a rap sheet extending to her early teens, a short life spent on sin and vice. But if it were only as simple as it sounded. She was a centauress, 1100 pounds of equine muscle and bone mated to a humanoid upper torso and head. He'd never done a centauress before, in fact he'd never even seen one before today. They were rare as hens teeth in the near tropical Neutral Economic and Military Cooperation Zone, their ancestral lands being far north of the equator, along the windblown steppes of the Great Grass Ocean.

Marianne had drifted down to the NEMCZ, lured by the siren songs of easy marks, cheap synthetic opioids, and handsome men. Within a week of arriving she was on the docket after she had drunkenly trampled a fellow prostitute to death during a heated argument. The verdict came down fast, Murder in the 1st degree and a date with the noose within the month.

The weight of her body ruled out any form of long drop hanging, as the gallows were constructed and rated with only standard biped humans, orcs, elfs, and dwarves in mind.

Which had left him with only one real option. He modified the transport truck with an extended height bed and removed the trapdoor on the gallows platform. The plan for the day? Back the truck up underneath the gallows with the convict restrained on the bed, noose her, then drive away, leaving her to asphyxiate with a good foot of clearance from her hooves to the ground. With some skilful knot placement around her neck, the convict would hopefully lose consciousness within 10 seconds. Short, quick, and relatively easy.

He glanced at his watch. An hour and thirty minutes before the scheduled execution. It was time to gather Marianne from her cell.