Story: Intoxication

Looky here, a new story! Writing was completed 27 May 2018, but I've been working on it since February 2018..

It's another Saturday night in the frontier town of Dinkins Creek. You drink at the saloon and have a good time, and then around closing time you head back to where you're bunking on the far side of town, boots scuffling up dust on the streets as you go. You think, “maybe I had a little more whiskey than usual, but damn it was good....” It's a little out of your way, but you take a detour to walk by the gallows on the north side of town.

Four weeks ago, they hanged a guy who raped and killed a woman. Of course the whole town turned out to watch as the sheriff, a preacher, and the hangman prepared the man and then dropped him through the trap, giving him a six-foot ride to a broken neck. The crowd started breaking up a few minutes after the drop, having seen what they wanted to see, but you and a few others stayed until the doc came out with a short ladder and his stethoscope to listen to the guy's chest. When the doc declared that death had indeed occurred, the man was lowered from the gallows and put in a pine box. Later that night, you had your beers at Dolan's saloon, where a few people were still discussing the hanging but most were not. Then you decided to walk by the gallows on your way to your bunk. When you saw the gallows that night, it looked as if nothing had ever happened. You just looked around for a few minutes, thinking about the event you'd witnessed, then moved on.

The next week, you just walked by again, pausing only for a moment. You thought it was a little strange that the scaffold hadn't been taken down, as was done in a lot of towns that didn't have hangings very often. Two weeks after the hanging, you got brave enough to walk up the stairs to see where the rapist stood along with the hangman, sheriff, and preacher. You stayed near the stairs, but you could see plenty from the height of the platform.

Tonight, you go to the gallows again, and again you climb the stairs. Maybe you'd had just enough to drink, finally, but you got brave enough to walk to the middle of the platform. Not on the trap door, God, that would be too much. But just behind it. And you stand there looking out where the crowd had stood murmuring and waiting for the killer's drop. Tonight you see no one in the open area in front of the scaffold in the darkness. But on the day of the hanging, you were toward the front of the crowd, mesmerized by the nervous grizzled face of the condemned man until the hangman pulled the hood over his head.

You close your eyes as you play the scene in your head, imagining the fear and expectation the rapist felt. As he stood on the trap door with his hands tied, the hangman pulled the hood over his head, then brought the noose over the hood and tightened it around his neck. Was he trembling as he waited for the trap to open? You could see the fabric of the noose work like a bellows as he gasped his last breaths. Remembering all that makes you a little scared. Still, you get stiff in your pants. You find that strange, but it's undeniable.

You stand like that for a few moments, your thoughts circling around that image of a man just before he is dropped through the trap door and hanged. Then you open your eyes.

You are looking through a noose.

It wasn't there before, was it? But dangling in front of your face was the loop of a half-inch, well-worn rope tied in a seven-turn hangman's knot. How did you not see it when you got here?

You look through the loop, but the only sharp object in your vision is the noose. The ground beyond is blurry darkness.

Just as you're thinking you're scared enough, you should go down the stairs and get out of here, you realize that you are not alone. An older, barrel-chested man stands next to you, looking straight at you.

“Um,” is all you can say, your heart thumping from the surprise presence. You realize who it is.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself, boy?” the hangman says in a gruff voice. He leaves a silence you aren't able to fill. “You've been visiting this platform and getting real familiar with it. More familiar than most men are allowed to.”

“Sorry, Sir—” you start, though you really don't have any clear thoughts after that.

“I know your type … there's something intoxicating you, and I don't mean the whiskey at Dolan's,” the hangman continued. “You can't explain it, you're just drawn to this,” and I could feel the truth to the big man's words. “Some men kill just to get here. Some kill themselves.”

He takes a step closer. “You're ready.” Is it a question or a statement? You can only bow your head in submission, in acknowledgment.

You see him take a rope out of his pocket, a thin one a few feet long. He moves behind you, grasps your left hand and loops rope around its wrist. Then he pulls your right hand to it, binding both wrists together behind you. You feel a stretch in your shoulders and upper chest. You feel a stretch in your crotch, too, a hardening cock.

The bull-chested man comes around the front, standing just off the trap door, and pulls you firmly to the middle of the trap. The trap gives just enough to make your heart thump hard. “On your knees,” he orders as he undoes the fly of his pants. You've never knelt with your hands tied, so getting down is a little awkward. You've never knelt for a man's cock, either, but you smell the musk as the hangman's member is freed from his clothes and you know what's expected. With a hand on the back of your head, he guides your mouth to his thickening cock. Slowly you lick the head, take it into your mouth. He slides the shaft in, his hand telling you there is no saying “no.”

He uses you, relatively gently at first, then more insistently as you just about find a rhythm. You gag, trying to keep quiet in the darkness. His smell is strong, manly, good. His cock hardens and drips so you taste not just your saliva but also his juice. This goes on for five minutes, ten minutes. He's breathing hard. His cock is like forged iron.

Then he slides his cock out of your mouth. You're gasping, trying to catch your breath. Your own cock is as hard as it's ever been, still buttoned securely in your pants.

“Stand,” he orders. It's just as hard for you to do so with your hands tied, but he helps you this time. When you stand, the noose is just inches from your face.

“I'm going to hang, ain't I?”

“Yes, son. It's time for you to hang.”

You swallow. “Will it be … quick?”

He nods.

A long moment passes. The hangman pulls something from his belt, shakes it out. It's a hood. He looks into your eyes. You blink, then lower your head. He brings the hood over your face and pulls it down to around your neck. You suddenly see nothing, only feel the hangman's presence. You're sure it's the hood that the rapist had four weeks ago. Your breaths mix with the remains of his last breath.

Then you feel something dragged over the hood, down to your neck. It's the noose, and he pulls it snug, with the knot next to your left ear. You swallow by reflex, and feel the thick rope as your Adam's apple slides by it up and then down.

You're shaking now. You can only think of breathing and the hood expands and contracts as you gasp your final breaths. You think of the sunny day weeks ago when you and the crowd watched the hangman send the rapist through the trap which you now stand on. You don't want to die, but you're going to hang and there's nothing you can do now except hang. You're going to know what that man felt.

You hear the hangman's boots on the platform walk away and stop a few steps behind you.

Then there's the sound of a lever being pulled.

Then the trap drops from under your feet. You hear the trap door bang against the platform as you fall. You scream—

And then you stop six feet below the platform as the rope goes tight and snaps your neck. You bounce slightly. You don't feel that bounce and you don't feel your cock shooting thick cum into the crotch of your pants. All you feel is your release into utter, total darkness.

The hangman watches you drop through the trap. Sees you come to a stop. Sees you twitch just slightly as the last electrical pulses go through your nerves. When he comes down the stairs, he sees a wet spot grow in the crotch of your pants. Your body turns from the rope, but otherwise it is still. Then he walks away into the dark night.

In the morning, a small crowd is gathered around the gallows, where your stiff body hangs still. They murmur, trying unsuccessfully to work out what happened that led you to be hanging dead from the gallows. They don't even know who you are, with the hood still over your head. The wet spot in your pants is just about dry. Someone has gone for the deputy, and you'll be cut down and buried soon, but there's no rush. Off to the side, two young men stare at your dangling body with thoughts they don't understand and bulging crotches they don't want to explain.