Candace was about to die and she desperately had to pee.

She had to poop, too. Only, she couldn't. Literally. She was now incapable of exercising those normal bodily functions.

That's what Phillip meant when he mentioned getting her "prepped and plugged." He explained that dying people reflexively urinated and defecated and the United States government had decided that wasn't something they wanted to include as part of their execution broadcasts. Somehow her exposed naked body, her dying shrieks, and her horrific death were perfectly acceptable viewing material. Yet, they drew the line at pee and poop.

So, in the prep room, they'd strapped her to a gyno chair, and then squeezed a type of liquid foam up into her butt and up through a catheter they inserted into her bladder. The catheter was quickly pulled out, but the foam remained. It went in as a liquid and then quickly dried to a foam-like consistency that would serve as a plug to prevent any excretion during the execution.

The foam also expanded as it dried and solidified, filling her to the point where it felt like she would burst. As Candace walked to the death chamber, she soon had to pee worse than she ever had in her life. However, no matter how she tried, and reflexively squeezed her muscles down there, nothing would come out.

"I know it's uncomfortable," Phillip told her. "But look at it this way: Soon, it won't matter."

That did not make her feel any better. Nevertheless, she said nothing, trying to refrain from squirming too obviously at the intense sensation of her full bladder and equally full rectum.

Then, there was the cream that Phillip gently rubbed into her. At least, it was probably the cream, and not the act of rubbing it in. Or maybe both. She shouldn't feel...

"I know this is embarrassing, but this is meant to relax your blood vessels and help get the blood flowing down here. First, they want everything to slip in easily, and second more blood flow will mean increased sensitivity in your clitoral nerves. The protocol calls for increasing sensitivity because, well, it's meant to be cruel. You may find yourself getting wet. Don't worry, that's perfectly normal."

Well, Candace had to admit, she was a bit wet. And aroused. A man had been touching her between her legs for a few minutes, the last time anyone would ever touch her there. He was an attractive man, too and she could smell his scent as he worked on her. She could...

She could ask if he wanted to have sex. If it didn't happen now, it would never happen. No one had to know. One last time before the end. He was married, he had a kid, but he was a guy, maybe he'd go for it. Or maybe she could offer to suck him? She could...

No! She couldn't think that way. He was evil. He was her executioner and anyone who did what he did was a vile piece of scum. How could he?

However, that didn't change the embarrassing moisture forming between her legs.

The men, the misogynists that passed these fucked up laws like to label feminists as sluts. It was stupid, she'd never had sex with anyone other than Sean, and hadn't let him sleep with her until they were already engaged. She didn't even curse, something everyone she'd ever known since high school had teased her about. She'd never been a slut.

But now, minutes away from death, a little lube between her legs, the smell of an attractive man and she was dripping. They'd made her into a slut for this freakish, sadistic performance. She wasn't going to say a goddamn word. She'd been told that sometimes the women tried to touch themselves, to get off on the stake before they died, which was evidence of how slutty they were. In spite of what she was feeling, she wouldn't stoop to that. She would be.. she would be damned if she would let anyone see what she was feeling.

Actually, she was just damned, period. The were going to burn her on the stake.

Candace shivered. Mostly from fear and the discomfort of her unfulfilled bodily functions. Mostly.

Clink, Click. Clink, Click. Clink, Click.

The only sound in the hallway was the click of the chains around her feet and wrists coupled with the click of her stilettos as she walked slowly towards her death. For some reason, Phillip had directed her to put on the shoes before forcing her into the gyno chair to get "plugged." What was up with that? Did Phillip save the uncomfortable part for last to spare her pain, as he would no doubt claim? Or, did they want to ensure the shoes were part of her torment from start to finish, a genuine artifact of this grotesque ritual execution that would get a higher price at auction? She suspected the latter.

Soon enough, she reached the door to the room where she would die.

"I'm going to go in first," Phillip told her, "I'll give my little speech about what's going to happen, while you wait here. Then, we're going to bring you in and get started. Okay?"

"Okay." Nothing about this was in any way, shape or form, okay. She was, however, quite obviously not being given any say in this. They were going to burn her no matter what she said or did.

In these last few moments, alone in the hallway with Phillips attractive, well-muscled female assistants, Candace found her thoughts wandering. to Alex, her old friend. They were going to burn her friend too, and it was all her fault.

Candace hadn't ever made an effort to reach out to Alex after the trial. Alex probably hated her. In her friend's shoes Candace would hate herself. It was all her fault, she was going to die, Alex was going to die, and, and... this was really the end, wasn't it?

Oh god, this was the end. And it was going to hurt so much. Down there. Those screams she'd heard through the covers when they'd broadcast that execution in her cell, they were like nothing she'd ever heard. She could tell that woman was dying, just from the inhuman sound she made as she died, as if her very soul was being ripped from her body. That was going to be her. And Alex, too.

She'd never told Alex, either. If it wasn't for Sean, well... Candace had always tried to act the proper lady, someone who followed the rules, in spite of that rebellious streak in her. In spite of the fact she was more Bi, than straight. Girls could be attractive too, and Alex hit all the right buttons. That infectious smile, framed by those freckles, that beautiful coppery red hair, not to mention those magnificent curves. And besides, Alex had always been so, so, so obviously crushing on her. She probably thought she was hiding it, but really, it was hard not to notice. It had been cute. And, maybe kinda-sorta hot.

Or really hot. If it hadn't been for Sean...

It was that damn cream, making her think these sexy thoughts, wasn't it? Well, so what? Alex wasn't a misogynist, she'd been fighting that crap. She was even more a victim, than Candace. If Candace could have been anywhere in her last moments, it would have been with Alex, their arms around each other, their lips pressed together...

She felt the warmth between her legs intensify. God, she was getting so horny at that thought.

But well, Alex probably hated her, and for good reason. Even if it were magically possible to see her friend, she'd probably just as soon slap Candace across the face than kiss her.

She was so alone, now. Alone, and naked, and unable to relieve herself, and horny, and about to die by one of the worst possible execution methods anyone had ever invented.

She was breathing heavily, on the verge of panic. This was really about to happen. To her. For real.

The door opened and was there, gesturing for the guards to lead her in.

There, in the center of the otherwise white, featureless room stood a raised, circular wooden dais about ten feet in diameter. The only other feature of note was a large black digital clock on the wall with red numbers that currently stood unchanging at 00:00:00:00. A polished steel pole rose from the center of the platform, to about knee height. However, everyone knew that pole could and would be adjusted higher, as high as was required. It was the stake on which she would be burned.

The end of the metal pole flared outward, into a phallic cylinder with a rounded top, essentially a stainless steel dildo. The side of that deadly dildo was engraved with the image of a cartoonish older man wearing a crown and a diabolical grin. Just as they'd given some of the old electric chairs whimsical names like "Old Sparky", they'd named the stake "Big Eddie." The name was a reference to the legend, which was probably not historically accurate, regarding the death of the English King, King Edward II. Big Eddie was intended for a different hole at a different temperature, but the similarities were obvious.

Candace was led up onto the dais and made to stand directly over the pole. The assistants held her firmly in place as Phillip flipped a switch on the remote control he held, and the pole began to rise very slowly. Standing upright, she couldn't quite see how close it was, or tell when it would reach the level of her crotch, but sometime within the next ten seconds Big Eddie would penetrate her.

In a surreal daze, she listened to the motors whir quietly, waiting for the metal to reach her.

When it slipped in, it wasn't particularly painful. She was already so wet that the smooth metal pushed easily into her body, with minimal resistance. But, the pole kept rising. Candace gasped in pain when Big Eddie filled her completely, forcefully pressing against her cervix. Only then, did the motors power down, and the pole stop moving upward.

The guards stepped back.

Phillip pressed another button on his remote control and the shackles around Candace's legs opened, the restraints falling away. Likewise, the chain connecting the wrist cuffs behind her back fell away, leaving her hands free. One of the assistants used something that looked like a broom to sweep the fallen restraints off the dais and away from view.

She was now able to swing her arms and legs at will, but it didn't matter. She was trapped on the steel pole, on the stake. The purpose of the stilettos was to forced her feet upward, so she was effectively on the tips of her toes. That meant there was no way she could get the leverage necessary to jump up and off the pole. There was nowhere on the pole for her hands to find purchase to push herself upward either. She couldn't bend very far, either filled by the rigid, steel dildo. She was utterly and completely trapped in place by the massive steel phallus filling her vagina.

This sexualized method of restraint had initially been invented by sexual deviants, and named a "one bar prison." Then, it had been perverted even further, turned to an even more obscene and terrible purpose. Some Russian sadists decided to turn the one bar prison into a method of execution by putting a powerful heating element in the business end.

Even though Candace could move her hands, the extra-wide wrist-cuffs remained, covering her entire wrists. She'd been told they did this specifically to prevent her from killing herself prematurely by biting through her skin and severing the major arteries in her wrists. She could and would scream and kick and wave her arms like a mad-woman as she died, but there would be absolutely no way to escape the pain as Big Eddie began to cook her alive.

"Candace Linneman," Phillip announced in a loud clear voice. "You have been convicted by a jury of your peers and sentenced to die by burning on the stake. Do you have any last words?"

She hadn't prepared anything. Somehow, she never quite believe this would really, truly happen to her. She winged it.

"You're all evil!" She declared. "Evil. Every single one of you creepy scum-bags out there, watching this. Why? Just, why? If you can't understand why killing women just for wanting the same rights as men, as the pigs, is a serious problem, you are the problem. If you can't understand why killing any woman for any reason like this is barbaric madness, you are the barbarians, the mad-men who've lost their minds. They fought wars to stop people like you. Yes, you! Everyone out their watching included! But, here we are! I mean, what the Hell?"

She'd told Phillip that, and it seemed like a good thing to say now.

"Oh, and one more thing!" She continued before they decided her time was up. "Alex, if you're out there, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry, okay? I had no idea this would happen. It's even less your fault than my fault, but I never... I, I'm sorry. I'm just sorry. These scum-bags, these men, that do this to us, to you, can all go to Hell. And, and, and.. okay, here it is, I knew about your crush on me, and I thought it was cute, and I would have totally explored that if Sean wasn't in the picture. I would have. I so, regret not finding out where that might have gone, and, well, like I said, I'm just so sorry. Maybe try to forgive me? Please?"

She paused. She had nothing left to say. This was happening.

Phillip waited expectantly, seemed to wait for her to signal she was done.

"...and, what are you waiting for you gutless perverted pigs? Are you going to murder me or not?"

Philip nodded curtly and flicked another button on his remote control. "Let's begin, then."

Candace didn't feel the heat right away, it would take about five minutes before the metal inside her reached the target temperature. But, the process that would inevitably end in her death had started.

The red numbers on the clock began to rapidly count upward, marking off the time, down to the hundredths of a second since the execution began. Across the world clocks were synchronized, and began to tick relentlessly along with it.

* * *

"And NOW," thundered Reverend Nathaniel Ezekiel King, on the set of Righteous Atonement. "NOW! We shall SEE that the JEZEBEL shall be RENDERED unto the LORD for his MERCIFUL judgment. Only the LORD may judge, but you all shall BEAR WITNESS, as the SINNER must finally contend with her VERY own, VERY personal... FIERY PIT OF HELL!"

The live studio audience went wild, as they always did when he uttered his catch-phrase. On the enormous screen behind the stage where he preached, the naked woman squirmed on her stake as it began to warm within her.

* * *

"As always, the real question is whether it will be heart failure or heat stroke," Dr. Katrina Blumenthal explained to the viewers of Medical Odds and Legal Ends, as she did during this phase of every burning.

"The first thing you have to understand is that the heat is only being applied only to her vagina. There's a lot of nerves down there, but there's a good fifteen to eighteen inches between her genitalia and the organs that will kill her quick if they fail. That is, the heart, the lungs, and of course the brain but that's higher still. While the lungs extend lower than the heart, they're cooled somewhat by the constant contact with room temperature air as she breathes, so it's the heart that starts to have problems first. Additionally, shock from the extreme pain can substantially weaken the heart muscle. On the other hand, blood is circulating through her body, and as time passes her core body temperature starts to slowly rise. If that gets too high before her heart fails she'll pass out, then die of heat stroke."

"Also, they keep the temperature low, to prolong the process, right?" Her co-host, Kenneth asked.

The show-runners insisted that there be dialogue between the co-hosts, instead of a "monolithic biology lesson," which meant Kenneth had to ask the same inane questions every time, to break up the explanation. It irked Katrina, but she was paid well, and the she couldn't argue with the viewership. Also, while the medical board was more open minded, and would let her keep her license, finding a hospital that wanted a female doctor on staff was a challenge in the modern world. Her employment prospects were rather limited if she lost this job.

"That's right," she confirmed. "The second important thing to understand about a burning, is that despite the name they only heat the probe inside her to one-hundred-forty degrees Fahrenheit, or sixty degrees Celsius. That's more than enough to burn her skin and kill her, but significantly lower than the flames of a candle or burning wood, which clock in between five hundred and a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. A 'red-hot' poker, of the sort that allegedly killed King Edward II would similarly be around a thousand degrees. It's also worth noting that women burned at the stake back in medieval times, frequently died of lung failure from inhaling burning smoke and embers, long before the heat of the flames around them penetrated deep enough to cause major organ failure. A modern burning employs a very limited, focused heat without any smoke, which significantly prolongs the execution."

"When I have family over for the holidays, I slow-roast my prime rib at around two-fifty degrees, a hundred degrees above that." Kenneth commented.

"Well, they're not cooking meat for consumption here, and they're not cooking her all the way through like your roast. I'd also point out that the final internal temperature of your medium-rare prime rib is probably pretty close to one-forty Fahrenheit. The stated reason for the low temperature is to prolong the destruction of her nerve endings, particularly the nerve endings in her clitoris, which has a higher nerve density than any other human body part, male or female. When the nerve endings are destroyed, a person no longer feels pain. So, to maximize her pain, the temperature is set low enough that she's only going to start losing all feeling in that region when she's about to die of heat stroke anyway."

"So the goal is to slow-roast her clit while she's still alive?"

Katrina nodded, then gestured to bring up a rotating 3D model of a woman's clitoris in the lower right hand corner of the broadcast screen. "You got it. Keep in mind that the clitoris is a larger organ than many people realize. The external glans is small, but as you can see in this diagram the internal portion extends under the skin and wraps around the birth canal, exactly where the heated metal is being applied."

"Alright, then, you tell me: heart attack or heat stroke?" Kenneth prompted her.

"Well, as you know, past statistics favor heart failure two-to-one. But, Candace here is young, thin, and no history of heart failure among her immediate family. so she most likely has a good strong heart. In her case I'd say it's about fifty-fifty, maybe slightly favoring heat stroke and right now it looks like the money agrees with me. Looks like the odds market has it at fifty-three-point-eight-one percent chance of heat stroke vs forty-four-point-six-one percent chance of heart failure, leaving a one-point-five-eight percent chance that another organ failure or medical problem kills her first. Heart failure is typically a quicker death, which means that we have a higher probability that Candace will last beyond the one hour mark. We project a ninety percent confidence interval of time of death between thirty eight minutes and ten seconds and eighty-two minutes and forty seconds, with a seventy-seven percent chance she lives beyond forty five minutes and thirty-nine percent chance she survives the hour.

"We'll keep you updated as those odds shift during the course of tonight's event, so watch closely! Oh, look, She's really starting to squirm. Here we go."

* * *

"Did you see how easily that dildo slid in her? She was sooooo wet!" Candi crooned to her sister. "Talk about a girl who needs to get laid!"

She briefly replayed the shot from the camera mounted under the stake, aimed directly at the condemned girl's vulva, as Big Eddie penetrated her. There was clearly moisture there, and there was no denying how smoothly the dildo slid into her.

"Well, she was in prison for the last year, wasn't she?" Brandi countered. "I mean, unless she got lucky with a hunky guard, what do you expect? Oh, wait, do they allow.. whadda-ya-call 'em comical visits? To get fucked?"

"I sure hope so," Candi nodded. "I mean a hot, hot metal cock is one thing, but a whole year without getting a good, hard pounding? That's just wrong!"

* * *

An anthropomorphic cartoon doe with huge breasts was impaled on a crude metal pole. Several other animals with humanoid characteristics crowded around, as a small fire was started at the base of the pole.

"Now, Deerie, you knew that eating the marigolds all along Main street was against the rules. We just can't have that, you little rascal. Sunshine Glade is a happy, friendly place, and there's no room for naughty little animals like you. That's why we have to burn you!" a pompous looking cat, with a pink bow on her head declared to the assembled animals..

The other animals cheered as the doe, along with the dying human displayed in the opposite panel of the broadcast, cried out and began to wiggle her body in distress.

* * *

After spending the last three months building a self-bondage rig for herself, Samantha Wang was finally ready to find out how well it worked.

The wrist and leg cuffs, latched with an electromagnetic lock bound her firmly to the chair. The circuit was wired to the death clock on the burning of Candace Linneman, and would only unlock when the power was cut or the clock stopped, at the moment of Candace's death. Likewise, the circuit for the magic-wand style vibrator pressed against her clit would only shut off, when the execution was over. The restraints meant that she couldn't wiggle off of it, only endure.

The forced-orgasm suggestion she saw on Triple-D had turned Sam on so much. At first, she tried to force herself to hold her vibrator there herself, but quickly learned that after her first two climaxes she just couldn't do it anymore, it was too intense.

Then, she asked her boyfriend. Unfortunately, as soon as she really started to squirm and struggle under the vibrator he got uncomfortable and stopped. He'd taken the whole safe, sane, and consensual thing to heart, and insisted on using safe words. She, however, couldn't help but safe-word out after a certain point.

Also, she got the distinct sense he wasn't as into these burnings as she was. The idea of being up there, utterly helpless, made to suffer... it did things to her.

Sam tried to explain to her other half that there was nothing dangerous about what she wanted to do: It was just orgasms, it wasn't dangerous and she wanted this. She just couldn't help herself at the time, and used the safe-word. Couldn't they skip safe-words just for this?

He said no.

She therefore designed, programmed, 3D printed and assembled her very own self-bondage rig. She wanted to experience this, to be forced past her limits, forced to come and come and come until it hurt and the girl on the screen was gone.

Sam was just as helpless as Candace, now. She had no way whatsoever to stop what her rig was going to do to her, even though unlike Candace she would be fine afterwords. That thought turned her on immensely.

The vibrator buzzed incessantly against her clit, and Sam felt herself near her first orgasm.

If this worked the way she intended, she had an idea about selling a similar rig, or maybe just the code or plans for it online. She couldn't be the only one who wanted this, could she? She'd have to ask her boyfriend if she could open all the necessary accounts with the payment processors and the banks in his name, but he'd probably agree to that. She was good at convincing him to do what she wanted, so long as it didn't involve hurting her... though she was working on that.

The screen in front of her was broadcasting Odds and Ends. Candace let out her first real scream, drowning out Dr. Blumenthal, just as Sam reached her first orgasm.

* * *

Alex was in tears.

Candace was so, so beautiful, but at the same time what was being done to her was so, so ugly.

She'd called out Alex by name, asking for forgiveness, begging for forgiveness she could no longer communicate. And she'd known about her feelings. And she might have returned them, if only...

If only. If only she could tell Candace that yes, she forgave her. If only, there was a world where she could run away with this beautiful, amazing friend and they hold each other close, naked and in bed, forever. Away from here, away from a reality where anything like this could ever happen.

Except, this was reality, and it was happening. A high pitched shriek, the first of many, forced her to focus on what was happening on the video feed.

Candace stood there on the metal stake, writhing, flailing, eyes wide, as she began to truly howl in agony.

Alex wanted to turn away, to hide from that horrible sound. Yet, this was Candace. Beautiful, sexy Candace. She forced herself to watch as the spectacle unfolded.

* * *