This time, when the lights came on, the audience in their roped-off area saw a cruciform gurney, cushioned with green faux-leather and with thick leather straps for wrists and ankles as well as one across the middle. Behind it were some metal apparatus, looking a little like adjustable standing lamps, but with clear tubes running from them to a six foot high gun-metal grey cabinet between them. Once again, there was a console set up to control the execution but this one had, next to three flashing buttons, the labels of which were too small to read from where the audience stood, a large dial and what looked like an over-sized version of a fader on a sound-mixing desk.

“Lethal injection!” Skye explained. “A common form of execution in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Like many methods before it, whether that be the guillotine or electric chair, designed to be a humane alternative to its predecessors but,” she bared her teeth in her wolfish grin once more, “also capable of inflicting great suffering on the unfortunate recipient of its terminal justice. Let us meet our next wrong-doer sentenced to pay the ultimate price for their crimes! Bring in the prisoner!” She cracked her whip and the prisoner was escorted in by two guards.

If anyone in the audience had been paying attention, they might have noticed that these guards were the same pair who presided over the beheading earlier but nobody was interested in them. All eyes, of course, were on the naked prisoner they escorted. Skye’s best friend Dinah, a Mediterranean beauty a few months her junior, with long, straight hair that was just a shade lighter than black and large, round eyes which appeared brown at a glance but sparkled with green when the light hit them just right, walked demurely between her two guards, her hands cuffed behind her back leaving her perfect barely pubescent body on display.

With the exception of those in the corridors, Dinah was the youngest to participate in the evening’s entertainment. Some of the teachers had been unsure about allowing such a young subject for one of the set-piece executions but Dinah had pleaded and even enlisted the help of her parents to lobby the school on her behalf and eventually they had conceded and Dinah had been allowed to volunteer. Of course, as Skye’s best friend, she had helped a lot with the planning too, coming up with ideas to make all the otherwise fairly straight-forward executions more fun for not only those watching but also those who would die, including herself.

Lethal injection had, in fact, been the one that Skye had struggled most with making interesting and it had been Dinah who had come up with the deliciously cruel idea, knowing that it would be her veins into which the lethal cocktail was pumped. As usual, the naked prisoner was presented to the audience and many photographs were taken.

“Now,” Skye smiled slyly once more, “the jury who convicted this particular criminal considered simple execution too small a penalty for her crimes!” Dinah shifted awkwardly on her feet, feeling an insatiable itch between her legs as her friend spoke, knowing what was coming, and wishing that she could take care of it right there in front of the eagerly watching audience, despite having thought she had scratched that particular itch well enough in the waiting room before the guards came for her.

In the yard behind the hospital, where the patients had once exercised, the headless carcass of Emily was being gutted and cleaned ready to be parted out, hung by the ankles from a metal frame. The once beautiful, now ruined bodies of Tammy and Tommy were being arranged as macabre decorations enhancing the final method of execution which would take place outside, bringing the tour to an end and providing a natural segue into the barbecue to follow. Already to coals were lit and burning down so that they would soon be ready to begin cooking Emily’s tender teen meat.

“And so,” Skye cracked her whip, “for the first part of this prisoner’s punishment! Guards! Restrain the prisoner!”

One of the grey-uniformed guards kept their hold on Dinah’s arm while the other pressed on of the buttons on the control panel, causing the hydraulics under the gurney to hiss into life. Dinah licked her lips as she watched the cruciform move almost fully upright and then move downwards so that the end of the central bed almost touched the floor. She was breathing very heavily now, more turned on than she had ever been in her short life.

Once it came to rest, the naked prisoner was led towards it and, one released from the cuffs, hands were roughly pulled out to the sides and her wrists strapped to the cross-beams. Since the bed was significantly longer than her twelve year old body, her arms were stretching up at almost forty-five degrees. With her wrists secured, her ankles were now strapped she that she was pressed against the green faux leather with the soft skin of her back and bottom exposed. With many cameras flashing and more of the audience filming, Skye cracked her whip menacingly and advanced on her bound and vulnerable friend.

Despite the apparent confidence of her demeanour, Skye’s heart was beating fast in her tightly-bound chest and she was feeling more nervous about this part of the show than any other – not because she was afraid of hurting her friend, Dinah was a total pain-slut after all, ever since she was six and confided in Skye how much she loved getting spanked, but because she had never had a chance to practice on a live victim before, only a mannequin, and now she was about to show off her skills in front of an audience eager for a good show. Taking a deep breath, she pulled her arm back, swung the whip in a wide arc then flicked it sharply forward so that the final ten inches or so struck across Dinah’s back,

To be continued...