Execution Night: A Thoroughbred's Last Race
by Kinto mythostian


I shouldn't be here. 

I'm a thoroughbred mare, and that means two things: One, I can name every single one of my ancestors going back eight generations; and two, my life has been planned out since birth. I'm supposed to run races until I'm old enough to retire, mate a thoroughbred stud, and poop out thoroughbred foals who can name every single one of their ancestors going back nine generations. Thoroughbreds value the Integrity of the Breed above all else. All my life, I was taught that my breeding made me better than every other horse; unpedigreed horses were scarcely better than mules. It took me a long time to realize that was all a bunch of apples, and not the kind you eat.

I come from a good bloodline; I've competed in dozens of races, and even won a couple. I'm a striking bay, with black mane and tail, white points at both hands and both hooves, and a white spot in the center of my forehead. I've had stallions falling over themselves trying to seduce me - which, for thoroughbreds, means them showing me their family trees to demonstrate how well our bloodlines would mesh. 

I never wanted all that. I never really even cared. Volunteering to die at a snuff festival was never part of their plans for me. I've told no one of my own plans; they would only try to stop me. Breathplay and its darker cousin have enthralled me since I was a filly, before I even knew there was a name for it. Tonight I get to indulge my most secret fantasy. I'm going to go all the way, right up to the edge and then over it. Let my siblings propagate the family line. I want this.

Hearing the roar of the crowd as the night's first trapdoor opens sends a shiver down my spine right into my loins. My vulva throbs throughout the prolonged silence that follows, knowing that the silver wolfess is out there strangling to death, and I fight the temptation to touch; I want to be hot and ready to give them all a good show when my turn comes. Riotous applause sounds to mark the wolfess's passing and we five remaining volunteers know that it will soon be time for another of us to join her on the gallows.

We are watching the tent flap when the executioner returns. She is an eland antelope, six feet tall not including her tightly spiraled horns, stout and husky but not obese. Her coat is jet black except for twelve thin white stripes across her back. She is nude from the waist up, but there is nothing to expose - like myself, she has no breasts on her chest, but rather a pair of teats down below her belly button. Her teats and her genitals are hidden behind a long white silk skirt that hangs to her ankles; it is split in two by slits all the way up the sides that expose her sable legs. Her ebony snout protrudes past the blank white mask that hides most of her face except for her liquid black eyes.

She stands with a regal bearing, her tail swaying idly as her piercing gaze scans the tent, looking at each of us in turn. Her eyes come to rest on me, and I don't even have to ask. I know that she's decided I will be the next to die.

I step forward and submissively present my neck. "It would be my honor to hang for you," I say quietly.

"Very good, my darling," she purrs; I can smell her feral, almost masculine musk. I quiver as the eland runs a hand through my perfectly-groomed black mane, down the back of my head to the base of my neck where she buckles a leather collar loosely around my throat.

At her command I shed my blue jeans, my white blouse, and my pink panties to bare my rich walnut brown hide, and then place my white-haired hands behind my back. The antelope binds my wrists tightly - very tightly - in place with strips of leather and attaches a leash to my collar. The collar and leash are mostly for show; we both know they're not needed. Without a backward glance I follow the eland out of the tent to my death.

The sun has set, though the western horizon still glows red. Some of the brightest stars have begun to twinkle in the firmament, but I barely notice them. My eyes are immediately drawn to the morbidly beautiful sight of the silver wolfess hanging lifeless beneath the gibbet. Her fur glows as though the moon itself has been pulled from the sky to ornament the gallows.

I'm scarcely aware of the cheers of the audience as my executioner and I climb the steps. I see pearls of nectar glistening on the wolfess's platinum thighs, and I'm glad to know she enjoyed her last dance. Our hoofbeats clop heavily across the wooden stage as we proceed past her corpse to the second gibbet. 

The eland tethers my leash to the log railing and begins to make a noose. My noose. I look back and forth from the wolfess's hanged corpse to the lethal snare taking shape in the antelope's hands, and it hits me. This is really happening. I'm actually going to die. My fantasy is no longer a fantasy. The thought sends a thrill through me like I've never known, and I tug at my bonds in a reflexive desire to quench the burning lust in my naked loins. I'm going to hang. I'm going to strangle. I'm going to die.

My executioner holds the completed noose up for me to see and my knees knock together, barely able to stay standing; my leash is unclipped and I prance eagerly forward to stand on the trapdoor. I moan desperately as the eland loops the noose around my muzzle and guides it over my head. She pulls it tight around my throat just beneath my chin and I gasp. "Thank you," I whisper, "Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"You're welcome, my little condemned," she hisses in my ear and the word sends a fresh pulse through my folds, already quite damp with arousal. It's similar to the restless excitement I used to feel before a race, but exponentially more powerful.

My executioner begins to take up the slack and I stand up tall and proud, my neck perfectly arched, my tail hiked in a pose of postcard-perfect posture. I display myself to my final audience as I used to display myself to the odds makers before a race. The rope pulls taut and I let out a feral whinny of excitement. 

The hood is suddenly before me and I lean into it as the eland pulls it over my head. The ancient brown leather reeks; I inhale deeply, absorbing the preserved odors of the dozens of furs who have met their end within its confines. My vision is eclipsed, my hearing muffled as my ears are forced flat against my skull. My executioner is speaking, addressing the audience, but I can barely hear her. I let my mind wander. I imagine myself at the starting gate of a racetrack, the heavy leather hood my racing silks, the noose my bridle, ready to run the Deadly Derby. The Strangulation Stakes. The Run for the Lilies. Or maybe the Mandrakes. I hold back a giggle.

The eland has stopped talking. My sentence will be carried out any second now. I snort into the stifling hood. My hooves paw at the planks and I toss my head. My powerful lungs swell with the last breaths I'll ever take. My whole body is tensed, primed for the ordeal to come. It reminds me of those excited seconds right before the race begins, when everyone is in position, waiting for the signal, and again my imagination transports me back to the track.

The trapdoor slams open like a starting gate, banging like a starter's pistol. My hooves take off running in Pavlovian reflex, but instead of pounding against rich clay they find only empty air. The rope stretches taut as I sink abruptly into the noose's choking embrace, and if I thought it was tight before then I had no idea what tightness really was.

Instinctual panic takes control of my body, and I let the pain and the terror claim me, welcoming the experience. My hooves kick desperately at the air. My long black tail thrashes from side-to-side, my body swaying. Adrenaline surges through my veins, amplifying every sense. Time slows.

I have complete self-awareness. I've felt an inkling of this in some races, when I'm running as hard and as fast as I can, sprinting for the finish line with nothing but wide-open track in front of me, when the acid pain in my muscles only pushes me on harder. It's the reason I raced, striving for the supreme satisfaction of that moment where everything else disappears and I feel truly alive. But no race has ever made me feel this terrified, or this aroused. Now, I can feel *everything.*

I can feel the evening breeze surrounding me, caressing my velvet hide. I can feel my muscles rippling with useless strength, fighting a battle they cannot win. I can feel every ounce of my weight, pulling me inexorably down. I can feel every coarse turn of the rope, digging deep into the fragile flesh of my throat. I can feel my trachea collapsing, trembling feebly with every withered breath forced from my heaving lungs. I can feel every panicked pulse of my heart thudding against my ribs, pounding harder than it ever has before. I can feel my carotid choked tight and individual capillaries rupturing to blossom bruises under my hair.

I revel in the constriction, bask in the burning agony of asphyxia as my body heedlessly consumes my rapidly diminishing oxygen. My loins throb so hard it hurts. I'm being hanged for everyone to see, and no one will come to my rescue. I have no hope for survival. The sensation is everything I had ever hoped it would be and more. 

Abruptly my vagina contracts as an orgasm quakes my body. A weak, strangled whinny squeaks past my lips as my nectar dribbles onto my thighs. It is the most exhilarating climax I've ever known and still I want more. 

Even as the climax tremors through me my body is screaming in agony, begging for relief, and conscious thought is becoming harder, but I don't care. Let the perfectly tuned machine that is my well-bred body destroy itself with struggling, let my powerful lungs collapse in impotence, let me die, just so long as this ecstasy lasts. Nothing is more important right now than this incredible feeling. 

I redouble my struggles, my thundering hooves flinging up clods of dirt on the racetrack in my mind in relentless pursuit of my fatal lust, all other concerns falling away in my dust. My arms tug forcefully against their bonds, the leather thongs digging into my wrists, setting my body twisting. I kick back and forth, bucking at the open air, feeling the noose forced incrementally tighter with every thrust, hastening my death with every movement, killing me a fraction of an inch at a time.

Sweat foams from my flanks and my face; I can smell it running down my muzzle, sucking the foul hood to my skull. I can taste the salt on my swollen tongue and the drool oozing from my mouth with my shallow, stale breaths, the dying exhalations of another soul soaking into the leather.

Still I keep pushing my body. I'm in the homestretch now. My lungs are on fire, my body screaming for air that it will never receive. I can see myself barreling towards the finish line. Tears squeeze from my eyes as a second orgasm even more powerful than the first wracks my body. Thick pearls of nectar squirt from my loins to the ground far below. I kick and arch my back in powerful ecstasy, the sharp spasm jerking my body abruptly forward.

I hear a snap.

I can *feel* my neck break. It hurts. 

I gasp breathlessly. My mind fractures. Completely spent. Knackered, even. Stars of light like flashbulbs bursting in front of my eyes. I am dying. Really and absolutely. Dying. Flashbulbs. Ecstasy. Cheers. I can hear the crowd cheering as my brain shorts out. Cold. Dying. Pleasure. It was worth it. Victory.





First draft begun September 28, 2012. First draft finished October 3, 2012. Editing completed October 30, 2012.