Without another word, you leave me, returning a few moments later. I can already hear the sounds of conversation as your guests begin to arrive. Though I cannot see it, you carry in your hand a long, dark cigarette inserted into a carved ebony holder. You blow a stream of cigarette smoke in my face and then, tapping the holder a single time with the tip of your index finger, you drop a small bit of ash into the cup. I hear a familiar but unplaceable feminine laugh as you do so. An old lover, as you have promised, enjoying my transformation into a mere ashtray.

The evening unfolds as you have told me it would. The cup slowly fills with the remains of your cigarettes as well as a few smoked by others who wished to share in my degradation. I hear familiar voices, both male and female, mocking me and praising your ingenuity and imagination. I am aroused despite myself, a sight which draws further laughter.

"The little slut is actually enjoying it," you announce to much amusement.

After hours, I feel the strong hands of your guards removing the cup from my mouth and the chains from my limbs. Weakened by hours of strained muscles and weeks of deprivation in the horrible recesses of your dungeons, I have no hope of escape. Still, your guards waste no time in binding my wrists behind me with thick, coarse rope. My ankles receive the same treatment. The heavy tape again seals my lips and I am dragged up the unpainted wooden stairs of the gallows you have designed for me. A noose fashioned of the same coarse rope is slipped over my head and drawn tight around my throat. It is your own hand that rips the tape from my eyes, revealing to me the assembly of supposed friends and former loves who, dressed in their very best, stand sipping Champaign and waiting impatiently for my imminent death.

Do as you will with him, you tell them, and they happily oblige. They pass by me, individually or as couples. Sometimes just to examine me with a condescending smile or a whispered comment between them followed by a laugh which can only be at my expense. More often they want a more personal encounter, mocking words, drinks thrown in my face or poured over my head, a slap to my cheek or a kick to my genitals. . . All of it is without anger. I am a figure to be laughed at rather than hated. Hatred is for equals and I am no longer that. I never was, they now realize with satisfaction.

I cannot see a clock, but the rising air of expectation, the surge of tormentors unwilling to miss their chance of a final moment with me assures me that midnight cannot be far away. In the distance, through the open doors to the terrace, I hear the strains of Auld Lang Sign from another, more typical party where the clocks are just a bit faster.

Now it has reached this home as well. Every eye is turned toward me as you climb the steps of the gallows, the slit in your evening gown parting to reveal a long, athletic leg with each stride. In your long fingers is the cigarette holder and, when you stand before me, your only goodbye is a final puff of smoke blown carelessly in my face. You place the tip of your index finger, one long and perfectly manicured nail, on the small button that will be my end.

I can hear the counting as if it were far away. . . Ten. . . Nine. . . I can see the faces. The evening gowns and the tuxedos. . . All of it seems very far away now. I close my eyes for the last time as a few random calls punctuate the count. Each mocks me and each is from a voice which once spoke kindly, even lovingly, to me. I am nothing to them now. My life can give them nothing, my death will culminate an evening's amusement. As a grandfather clock in some distant corner of your home chimes the beginning of a new day and as your guest's counting reaches its conclusion, a gentle pressure depresses the button beneath your fingertip.

The door beneath me opens.

All is dark. The celebration has begun.