(3)

Cecil awoke surrounded by the putrid stench of death and decay. The deep pit she had been dropped into was filled with the city’s dead, be they men, women, or children, in various states of both undress and decomposition. With tall walls being so expensive to build and maintain, only the richest got marked graves. For everybody else, their corpses were discarded by tossing them outside, all equal before death.

Her thoughts raced through everything she had done last night. Of all the things she could have done while drunk off her ass, to treat her own hanging as a sexual show, and perform for the entire public square. She certainly wouldn’t be forgotten for a few days at least. Meaning, even if she somehow could get back into the city, she might actually be recognized by somebody. Not that there was, with neither money nor even clothing to her name.

With the new day, her neck felt perfectly fine without a single bruise, despite dying on it just half a day prior. However, her crotch was once again covered with dried sperm, and she could even feel more of the liquid still stuck inside her womb, as well as taste the bitterness all along her dry throat.

Clearly, somebody had seen fit to ravish her body even as it was growing cold. Cecil reached one hand down to spread open her lips and squeeze out what was stuck inside, and was surprised to find them already moistened from the thoughts and memories alone.

Her outburst had not been merely the result of alcohol and asphyxiation, but something she had enjoyed doing both in the moment, and looking back on it again. Who else could publicly masturbate in front of a crowd and not be interrupted by the guards, even receive their cheers? In a way, a dead girl was more free than anybody else, she rationalized. Something had already irreparably broken inside Cecil by now.

Licking what remained off her lips, she swallowed to slightly wet her parched throat. Her roaming hand found her clitoris and she briefly considered laying right there all day to pleasure herself, but ultimately decided against it.

Just beneath her was the body of another girl, probably a couple years older than herself. Importantly, she was covered with a thin gray sundress, which might be a little too big for Cecil, but the fabric looked to be in good repair aside from the dirt, with the added advantage of being easy to pull off of a heavy corpse.

With a tug, she pulled the dress off the dead girl, and put it over her own head. The bra beneath she obviously didn’t need, and unfortunately the girl was without lower underwear, so Cecil had to go without as well.

As she stood up and started to look around for more clothed girls, an arrow whizzed by, grazing her cheek. Looking up in a hurry, she saw a soldier aiming a bow down at her.

Occasionally a body thrown out turned out to be barely alive, or the pit attracted looters and animals from outside. In either case, the guards would use anything moving in the grave as target practice when they so felt like it.

Hurriedly, she clambered over the fresher bodies and up the slope of the pit, pulling herself away from the wall. A second and third arrow flew her way, but each was further than the last. Fortunately for Cecil, this particular soldier seemed a terrible shot, and couldn’t hit a running girl, and she made it over the edge, dashing straight into the nearby forest as fast as her legs could take her.

Her breathing quickly became ragged from exhaustion as she ran further than she ever had in her life. She didn’t expect pursuers to bother leaving the city just to chase some scrawny looter, but she couldn’t be certain either, and being caught would be a fate literally worse than death, in her case.

Suddenly, with a sharp crack, a searing pain tore through Cecil’s ankle, and she fell face-first into the forest floor.

Looking behind her, she saw through tears in her eyes that she had stepped into a hunter’s bear trap. Her own leg, being so much smaller than a bear’s, had been less trapped, and more mangled into a pulp, hanging on by just a few threads of skin and muscle preventing it being amputated entirely.

She let out a tearful scream, the sudden loss being an entirely different brand of pain to anything she had ever felt before.

Her stump of a leg tore loose as she moved, leaving the foot behind inside the trap’s closed jaws. Running like this was impossible, she could barely even crawl. If indeed nobody was following her, she would bleed out or starve here for however many days or weeks it might take for the hunter to come back and check his traps to find they had captured a fresh slave. Assuming hungry animals or monsters didn’t find her first. Compared to that, she might even have preferred pursuers.

However, in that moment, Cecil had an insane idea. Just a week ago it would have been unthinkable, but while she couldn’t move far, she might just have enough strength left to pull the bear trap open once again.

Leaning her entire weight into it, she could just barely pry the jaws open and rig the spring. Her own severed foot sat next to the trap like some macabre bait, but she didn’t need it anymore. Taking a deep breath, she nervously lowered her own head into the trap, hanging her little neck exactly where the jaws would close.

In that moment, fear overtook her, and her body froze. She had died twice before, but this was her first time trying to deliberately kill herself, and in such a gruesome way. Her eyes focused on the bloody metal that she needed to press, only her hand refused to move any closer.

More bizarre thoughts entered her head. Her other hand slid under her dress and between her legs, resting on her pussy. She slowly, rhythmically began to rub. Closing her eyes, she forcibly distracted herself from what she was about to do. Strangely calmed by her actions, she pressed down on the metal trap.

With a thunderous snap, the metal jaws tore through Cecil’s neck and shredded her spine. Her eyes shot open as her head rolled and her headless body fell away, twitching and spasming with its hand still on its crotch. Her vision focused on the mangled cross-section of her neck pouring blood on the dirt, even as she felt like a ring of fire was burning at the bottom of her head where the rest of her body was supposed to be.

She wanted to scream, to cry out in pain, but no air came out of her severed head, it only continued to open and close its mouth like a fish out of water. It was only after a minute of living life as a freshly severed head that Cecil’s gaze finally faded and her blue eyes closed.

Cecil woke up an hour later, standing on two legs, with fresh blood now covering the neck of her dress.

Without a word, she ran off deeper into the forest, now looking beneath her feet as she moved.