Nicole Kidman's jealous husband gives her a computer-controlled slow hanging in this story, oh what fun!

"Oh, God, Tom, please don't do this," Nicole whimpered.

"So you feel a little bit differently about things, now that your wrists are cuffed behind your back and there's a noose around your throat? I thought you might. But I'm afraid it's too late for that, Nicole. My minds made up. You're going to hang. What's more, you're going to hang slowly, so you'll have plenty of time to think about what you've done."

"But I haven't done anything!" she sobbed.

"Don't give me that bullshit. I know perfectly well that you fucked Val Kilmer while you were filming that goddamned Batman movie."

"No, Tom! It isn't true! You know I love you!" Nicole protested.

"All I know is that you're a slut. I know you've been lying to me for years, and I know you're lying to me now. So go ahead and lie, Nicole. Enjoy it. Because these are the last lies you'll ever tell."

Tom sat down in front of a Macintosh computer and took hold of the mouse. There were only three icons on his desktop: the hard drive, the trashcan, and something that looked like a drawing of a gallows from a child's "hangman" game. Below the gallows was the phrase "Hang 'Em High 1.0." It was the only software program installed on the computer. This was, after all, a computer with a very specific purpose.

Tom double-clicked on the gallows icon. "This program cost me a fortune," he grumbled. "So it had damn well better work."

The screen was filled with a black and white cartoon of a beautiful, naked woman dancing on air, a noose tight around her throat. Next to the cartoon were some words: "Hang 'Em High 1.0 Gallows Operation Utility. Requires motorized noose winch and electronic trapdoor release (not included)."

"Yeah, yeah, we have all that shit," Tom muttered impatiently.

"Tom, please..." Nicole begged.

"Shut up, bitch! I'd be more than happy to ball gag you if you don't stop whining. Ah, here we go." The intro screen vanished, and Tom was left with two menus labeled "noose" and "trapdoor." Clicking on "noose," he saw three options: "auto up," "auto down" and "manual." He chose "auto up." A dialog box asked him to specify, in inches, how far he wanted to raise the noose. He paused for a moment.

He wanted to keep Nicole's feet on the ground. For this part of the hanging, he wanted her in pain but able to breathe. He took a guess and entered "5," then hit "return."

The winch motor hummed. Nicole started to protest, but she was cut short as the rope dug into her throat. Her soft, blue eyes bulged in fear and pain as the noose pulled her up onto her tiptoes. And then she was in the air, hanging freely, her feet kicking and swinging as she strangled.

"Damn!" Tom cursed under his breath, and quickly selected "manual." He was presented with an up-arrow and a down-arrow; positioning the pointer over the down-arrow, he clicked and held the mouse button. The motor hummed again, and Nicole returned to the earth.

Tom held the mouse button down until Nicole's toes began to brush against the gallows platform. When he released the button, she was perfectly positioned: standing on her tiptoes, she could avoid complete strangulation, but Tom could tell by the look on her face that breathing was difficult and very painful for her. Tom turned now to his "trapdoor" menu. Here he had three options: "manual," "timed" and "random." He hesitated here. He had planned on setting the trapdoor to drop after a certain period of time, but there was something exciting about the "random" option, so he selected that instead.

The dialog box read: "%chance of drop each minute." Tom entered "1," because he wanted Nicole to suffer through a nice, long period of partial strangulation before she hanged for real. There was another field which read: "Begin checking after __ minutes."

Tom entered "90." That was good. Now Nicole would be held right where she was for at least an hour and a half, and probably much longer. The trap would most likely drop out from under her feet after she had been through three or four hours of agony. Best of all, she wouldn't have any idea when to expect it. Even Tom didn't know when it would happen.

Tom took a moment and explained to Nicole what he had done. She was giving most of her attention to the very challenging project of trying to breathe, but something in her eyes told him that she understood. Tom switched on the video camera and made sure that it was pointing right at his suffering wife.

Tom's new girlfriend was deeply into asphyxiation. She loved to play hanging games, and when Tom had told her of his plans for Nicole, she had made him promise to film the session. Tom knew that the video of Nicole's hanging would drive his girlfriend wild; no doubt she would put it on Tom's big-screen TV and fuck his brains out repeatedly as they watched Nicole die over and over, in infinite slow-mo repeat.

"So long, Nicole," Tom said. "You were a good lay. Too bad you were such a cunt." Nicole gagged softly. Tom turned and left her hanging, locking the door behind him.

Nicole stared at the locked door in pain and disbelief. He was really doing it! Her husband was murdering her! And he didn't even have the decency to grant her a clean, easy death. He had to make sure she suffered first, suffered tremendously.

And she WAS suffering. God, it hurt so much, and she had only just begun! From what Tom had told her, she knew that she had hours of this to endure. She didn't see how she could do it. She gazed in horror at the computer, which was silently counting the seconds to her eventual doom. What a cold, impersonal thing it was, this electronic hangman!

Tom didn't even have the courage to hang her himself; he had to get a machine to do it for him... and another machine to watch it for him, she added to herself, glancing at the camera. He didn't even care about her enough to stay and watch her die. Somehow that made it all hurt even more.

She imagined him watching the videotape, enjoying it with his new girlfriend. What would they see? Nicole was a gorgeous young woman; she had no illusions about that, and Tom had dressed her--or undressed her--for her death. Apart from a slip of lacy, black silk, she was entirely naked. The slip had spaghetti straps, which plunged to a low neckline, revealing her ample cleavage. Her breasts were round and firm; Tom had always liked them.

Nicole's nipples were very hard now, for reasons she didn't quite understand. She imagined that they were poking rather conspicuously through the thin black silk. The slip was quite short; it showed off her smooth, sleek, well-turned legs. It also revealed quite a bit of creamy, white thigh. Nicole decided that she probably looked pretty great in her slip. But she was in agony; what would that do to her appearance? She imagined what her face must look like: eyes bulging out in pain, tongue rolling out of her mouth, tears pouring down her cheeks. She imagined her soft, red hair in disarray around her face.

She listened to the soft, desperate gagging sounds she made as she strangled. Did Tom really think that was sexy? Obviously he did. Nicole tried to understand. There WAS something pretty sexy about being this helpless. And there was a certain familiar rhythm to the way she moved as she struggled; it was actually quite similar to the way her body moved when she was fucking.

Suddenly she found herself wishing desperately that Tom would come back. She saw now what he needed, what she had never been able to give him, what had driven him to that other woman. If only he'd come back and save her, she'd play his hanging games with him! He didn't need that other cunt! Nicole would let him hang her every night. He could hang her while she fucked him.

But Tom wasn't coming back. There was only Nicole, and the noose, and the computer. And so Nicole suffered. She stood there balanced on her toes, in perfect equilibrium, partly strangled and in tremendous pain, but still able to breathe a little. And the seconds dragged on into minutes. Slowly, very slowly, the minutes became hours. How long had she been up? She had lost all sense of time. There was only a single endless, undifferentiated pain.

What did it matter, anyway? Even if she knew how long she had been hanging, she still wouldn't know how long she had left. Only the computer knew that, and it wasn't talking. What had Tom said? A one percent chance every minute? Well, what if that one percent never came up? She could be here all night, caught halfway between life and death, in spectacular, eternal agony. She felt sure that the pain would drive her mad if it went on much longer.

She hadn't moved an inch the whole time--at least, she hadn't moved up or down, though she was certainly wiggling her sweet, pale young body. And yet the pain was getting worse all the time. How could that be? She didn't understand why, but each breath was harder than the last; it was a constant struggle to force the air down. Her lungs felt like they were on fire. Such pain! She didn't know how she was able to endure it. Clearly she had greater endurance than she knew.

Nicole realized that her body was wearing out; she was simply exhausted. Was it possible that she might just die right here like this, before the trapdoor ever opened? Surely there must be limits to how long a woman could be slow hanged like this, and she must be nearing those limits. Nicole was startled to find herself hoping that the end was near. It was the first time she had actively wished for death. The slim hope that Tom might have a change of heart was gone now. She just wanted the pain to end.

Just when she felt as if she couldn't possibly endure another minute of torture, there was a beep from the computer, and Nicole's world fell out from under her. This was it! She was swinging freely, dancing on air; she was well and truly hanged. She felt an overwhelming sense of relief. She was almost free. But she still had some work left to do.

The noose was even tighter at her throat now, and it had strangled her completely. She found herself panicking as she realized her breathing was totally cut off. She began to kick desperately. These were her death throes, the last helpless struggles of a dying woman.

Her entire body quivered with the tension. She arched her back, thrusting her pert, proud breasts forward. She felt her bladder relax; warm piss trickled down her naked thighs. "Goodbye, Tom," she thought. "I hope you enjoy my death..."

And then she relaxed, still and lifeless in the noose.