Jack walked down the hotel corridor, trying to look inconspicuous: not too briskly; not too slowly; not looking over his shoulder. He always thought he must be terrible at this. When he reached the room, he knocked four times. While he waited, he thought about drumming his fingers or tapping his foot, but rapidly decided against it. The door swung open and he quickly stepped inside, before Stella clicked the door shut almost silently behind him.

As soon as they were alone together, they fell into each other's arms. For about ten seconds, neither of them spoke as they stood in the middle of the bedroom, squeezing each other tightly and feeling each other breathe in and out.

"God, that was intense!", Stella murmured eventually.

"I know," said Jack, still clutching Stella tight. "All the years I've been doing this job I've been dreading that would happen. I don't think I've ever pushed the lever without holding my breath."

Stella paused for a moment, before asking, "Was it just dread? Come on: weren't you the slightest bit curious to know what it would look like to see someone struggling and squirming and snorting and snarling at the end of the rope like that?" As she spoke, she leaned in closer to his ear, lowering her voice and exaggerating her sibilance as her fingers traced the crotch of his trousers, where she detected a pronounced and growing tumescence.

"Yup - just as I thought: my diagnosis is that someone else found it exhilarating as hell too!"

"It's just that, after all the preamble - the praying, the screaming, sometimes having to virtually wrestle them onto the trap, listening to them say how they want their mothers or whatever, you push the lever and, a second or so later, you've basically got a lump of dead meat hanging at the end of the rope. Sometimes they don't even twitch. It's what you strive for, but it still feels kind of...anticlimactic...Are we bad people?"

"No!" Stella said faux-sanctimoniously. "It's for society to decide whether it wants to execute people or not: we're just professionals doing a very stressful job as efficiently as possible." Then, conspiratorially, she whispered, "This is our stress relief: perhaps we should submit the hotel bill to the prison authorities as expenses!" Instinctively, she playfully bit Jack's earlobe.

"Is this a recognized, validated school of therapy, doctor?" smiled Jack.

"Well, I don't seem to have a psychiatrist's couch, but will the bed do?" Stella began to unbutton Jack's shirt.

"I think we might be able to manage, doctor," he said with emphasis, as she took his hand and drew him down onto the bed. "Speaking of which, have you any idea how foxy you look in that PVC apron, with the stethoscope around your neck and those smart girl goggles?" Jack unbuttoned and removed Stella's shirt, before unfastening and slipping off her bra.

"Aaaah! Is baby having kinky-nursy fantasies about me?" laughed Stella mockingly as she slipped off and discarded her skirt. "How disappointingly vanilla!"

"Oh shut up!" said Jack. He cupped Stella's breasts in his hands, momentarily almost hypnotised by their texture and warmth, before slipping his arms around her back and interlocking his lips with her own. He felt his penis twitching against her pubic bone as their tongues danced and he sucked her lower lip. He traced his hands down the small of her back onto her buttocks and pulled her in tighter, pressing her breasts against his chest and feeling her pebble-hard nipples.

Eventually, they both sank down together on the bed, lying on their sides facing the same way. Jack stretched out his arms and embraced Stella, pressing his chest into her back, before squeezing her tight and kissing the back of her neck.

"You're purring," whispered Stella. Jack made no reply, but slid his right hand slowly down over Stella's navel and between her legs.

"Do you know why I actually need a PVC apron and goggles?" Stella continued.

"Yes. But I want to hear you tell me anyway."

"Well, when I step up, it might seem like it's all very professionally done and dusted to you: a slamming trap, a snapping neck and a peacefully creaking rope..." Stella inhaled sharply as Jack slipped his fingers inside her vagina..."Oh yes...now on my clit...Oh, fuck, yes, don't stop...but when you put a stethoscope up against their chests...their bare, sweaty, warm chests"...She gasped at the touch of Jack's fingers on her throbbing clitoris..."Their bodies are still desperately, hopelessly fighting to survive. Even if you don't SEE their bodies twitch, their hearts are usually fighting desperately, hopelessly, helplessly in a doomed attempt to get blood to their brains Oh God Oh God Oh God"...the pitch of Stella's voice rose suddenly, she screwed up her eyes and bit her bottom lip. "They sometimes get little internal muscular spasms as their nervous impulses drain away - a bit like you're twitching now...oh, God, yes...and they can empty their bladders all over themselves, all over their clothes and sometimes all over you if you're standing underneath them... Aaah...Oh fuck yeah...That's assuming they didn't piss themselves already as they stood on the trap, of course, in which case it still ends up dripping on you. Oh God, yes." Jack pulled Stella closer and gave an approving moan.

"You like the idea of me being peed on, especially by a corpse, don't you?" whispered Stella provocatively. "Now THAT'S more like it!"

"It didn't seem all very professionally done and dusted today," sighed Jack, still massaging Stella's clitoris. "That poor girl! I'm sure I did nothing wrong, but..."

"A little to the left...Oh yeah, that's it, right there, don't stop..." Stella inhaled sharply again. "Listen to me: people's bodies are complicated. Take it from a doctor - that schoolboy mathematical formula you learn can't possibly capture all the complexities necessary to work out how much force is needed to snap a specific person's neck neatly like a twig without decapitating them. Oh yeah, put your fingers inside me again...She probably just had unusually strong bones - probably drank a load of milk or something...Now back on my cli"...Stella gasped as Jack anticipated her.

Jack leaned in close and kissed Stella's shoulder: "She did have that gloriously ruddy, milk-maid look about her."

"Yeah, I know, she had fantastic tits didn't she? I'm not saying you did, but if you were going to botch a hanging, I'm so glad you chose hers - they looked fantastic flailing around like that as she struggled!"

"Honestly," Jack said mockingly, "Do you ever consider that, not so long ago, they hanged sodomites like you."

"Mmmm..." purred Stella, "Only every time I have a wank: the thought of the smell of that canvas bag as it goes over my head; the rope pulling it tight against my neck; the knowledge that every breath could be my last..." Stella let out a squeal of pleasure as her clitoris continued to throb under Jack's touch.

"Well: I know I'll have to go before a review board, so I just hope that - if they're not as appreciative as you - they're at least as understanding about what went wrong today," said Jack.

"Look," said Stella firmly, "You know what they say about the best defence being a good offence: just tell them that, not only are some long drops inevitably destined to fail, but that the situation could have dragged on much longer had you not used your initiative to bring it to a conclusion - at considerable personal risk, you might add - you should be commended!" Then, mischievously, she added, "You looked like Tarzan swinging on her shoulders like that!"

"I bet," said Jack, "I just felt I had to do something."

"Did it feel good?" whispered Stella.

Jack hesitated for a moment, then closed his eyes and let rip. "Oh God...as soon as I caught that rope, and my feet landed on her shoulders: it just felt - everything just felt so tactile, so immediate. I could feel the warmth of her shoulders in the arches of my feet as her entire body sank slowly under my weight. What was most fucking amazing, though, was that I could...I could feel in my feet the texture of her neck as the noose wrenched it apart bit by bit - first the rough tearing of the tendons and the muscle fibres, and finally the clean snap of her spine..." Stella cut off Jack with a loud scream. He felt her entire body racked by orgasmic convulsions and, as quickly as he could, he climbed on top of her, sinking himself inside her while her vaginal muscles were still contracting rhythmically.

"I thought at first I might have wrenched her head off, and I'd be left swinging on the rope with a decapitated corpse in the pit below me," Jack said, thrusting rhythmically.

"Yeah, would you have liked that - blood everywhere, mediaeval style?" said Stella.

"Oh, God, nothing could have been better than the way it turned out," said Jack, "Looking down, hearing the splash of her piss on the stone floor below as her bladder suddenly emptied like that; feeling her twisted, broken neck flop over and her head land on the top of my foot as her body just went still like that. Except...she didn't quite"...Jack's rhythm accelerated gradually. "Even when she probably looked still and dead and gone to the rest of you, I could still feel these little twitches of her muscles through my feet, like you mentioned. It was...Aaaah!" The recollection pushed Jack to climax, and he squeezed Stella tight as he felt himself empty into her.

When they had finished, Jack looked deep into Stella's face, which bore an otherworldly smile. He sank his fingers deep into Stella's vagina, then into his own mouth. Neither of them spoke until, after a long kiss, Stella smiled and said: "You know, I've changed my mind: you are a bad person. It's a fucking disgrace there are people like you on the public payroll: if there were any justice you'd all be strung up!"