The Culling Lottery

©2004 C. Smith

1. Arrival of the Candidates

What a difference forty years makes! mused the C.E.O. as she watched the Candidates tumbling excitedly out of the limos. Tiffany Boylston had been a child when the news first leaked out that a company named JFA — Justice for All — was not only selling the internal organs of executed prisoners for transplants, but was also butchering the carcasses and cooking the meat for private "snuff" banquets. She remembers her parents' reaction, which turned out to be, Why not? In a world beset by high crime rates and higher taxes, that turned out to be the majority reaction. Get rid of the criminal element and reduce the overpriced penal system at the same time. Use the free market to clean the streets and communities of lawbreakers. What's wrong with eliminating human refuse while simultaneously helping to supply the huge worldwide demand for transplant parts? And who cares if a few perverts like to chow down the flesh of this rabble. Better to use their money to finance the purge of criminals than money out of taxpayer pockets.

Even the revelation that prisoners condemned for capital crimes (and that covered just about every offense in this tough-on-crime society, including many that were formerly misdemeanors) were being brutally tortured as part of the execution process failed to elicit sympathy from anyone who counted. The inevitable protests from hand-wringers and bleeding heart liberals were treated to contemptuous derision by the three media conglomerates that controlled nearly all the electronic and print news media in the country. With nowhere to voice their puny objections, the whiners eventually gave up.

The Administration and Congress got the message. Their constituents didn't care about JFA and how they dispatched their charges nearly as much as they cared about lowering taxes. In fact, widespread morbid curiosity grew to a demand to make the process more public. Almost overnight the approach to dispatching the swelling ranks of condemned prisoners changed. It moved from secrecy to open exhibition on the web and stiff competition for government execution contracts. By the time Tiffany was in high school, JFA was only one of many capital disposition centers carrying out executions, organ harvests and snuff roasts, and showing the entire proceedings on subscription internet sites. The snuff shows rapidly developed huge audiences and immense profits. Competition inevitably led to rating wars, which, in turn, fueled the need for ever more "dramatic" (i.e. erotically stimulating) methods of punishment and execution. Videos of the Snuff Banquets featuring the roasted victims and associated parties and orgies were shown later to a more select audience.

The number crunchers and programming gurus soon noticed that the greater the cruelty, the higher the ratings. Which led to a fatter bottom line. By the time Tiffany was finishing her Masters Degree at Harvard, the business had grown from that primitive origin in a secret abattoir to a multi-billion dollar industry with a world-wide audience eager to pour out an ocean of money to watch real live sex, suffering, death and cannibalism.

Along with the need for more ferocious methods of execution was a need to increase the supply of victims. Trouble was, no matter how many offenses were added to the list of capital crimes, and even though it was now nearly impossible for suspects to prove they weren't guilty and avoid a swift trip to a snuff show, there were just not enough condemned criminals to meet the demand.

The industry solved this dilemma (with a lot of help from the media) by bringing to the attention of key governmental lawmakers in nearly every country the very real, growing and woefully neglected scourge of worldwide overpopulation and the alarming depletion of natural resources resulting from it. Although global population had been redoubling every decade since the turn of the century, creating acute pollution problems and shortages of practically everything, the industrialized nations somehow failed to grasp the urgency of the situation. But all that changed, as cynics have noted, when billions of dollars found their way from the snuff industry into the pockets of powerful politicians around the world. Soon new laws sprouted everywhere as population control leapt to the forefront of global fervor. In the spirit of saving humanity from its fecund self, it was now considered a noble exercise in selfless altruism for anyone eighteen years or older to volunteer himself or herself for officially sanctioned snuffs.

Naturally, most people do not jump at the chance for an early, painful, humiliating and very public death, followed by being the chef's special. Substantial incentives are required. The snuff companies, anticipating this inconvenience, had a ready solution. It all boiled down to money — the universal motivator — and odds. They simply sent out world-wide casting calls, offering extremely large payments along with extremely low odds of actually getting snuffed.

Tiffany's company, Ultimate Reality Productions, was among the most generous in the industry. Applicants, if accepted, were offered a fee (daintily referred to as an "honorarium") of ten times the average income of their country of origin. Instant riches! Furthermore the odds of living to enjoy it were extremely favorable: each week, out of a cast of one-hundred, only four would be selected in a lottery for snuffing. Even the most mathematically challenged could figure out those odds: a 96% chance to become an international cyber-celebrity, have loads of sexy fun and walk away with lots of cash, vs. a minuscule 4% chance of ending up on someone's plate. For millions it was an irresistible gamble, especially for poor families, thrill seekers and people with drug problems, heavy debts or expensive tastes and a get-rich-quick mentality.

Even for the unlucky ones in these Culling Lotteries, as they were called in legal circles, there was a certain consolation in knowing that their contract fee would go to their named beneficiaries, plus any "option bonuses" and royalties from the snuff and roast videos. Some loved one, in most cases, would get a nice windfall as a result of their highly unlikely demise.

Fresh out of graduate school and mother of a baby girl whose father had split for parts unknown, Tiffany had decided URP's offer of instant wealth was the solution to her overwhelming school debt and bleak future. The four percent chance of being snuffed was far better than the one-hundred percent chance of being arrested and executed for failure to pay her debts. She had signed up, been accepted and survived. In fact, her creativity in helping with the torture and execution of the losers on that show was so outstanding that it led to her invitation to join the company as Chief Execution Officer.

During these seventeen years of her tenure as CEO, Tiffany had kept Ultimate Reality Productions at the top of the ratings pile. It was an industry truism that audience share soars when the snuffs involve beautiful young people, especially females, so she always made sure her casting department accepted only the sexiest, youngest, most desirable applicants from among the hundreds of thousands who answered the weekly calls, and that nineteen in every twenty were females. Males could range in age up to thirty-five if they were really hot, but none of the females could be older than twenty-five, and most were closer to the minimum age of eighteen. Let her competitors snuff and cook the older chicks. She wanted the youngest, shapeliest and prettiest girls for URP. That's why her audience numbers were burning up the charts.

Each new weekly batch of Candidates arrived at the studios on Tuesday, and it was always a scene of delightful pandemonium. One hundred highly excited young people, all hyped on adrenalin as they bounced giddily between anticipation, niggling misgivings and the euphoria of sudden wealth. Each group represented a variety of countries and their socializing was always somewhat frustrated by language barriers, but most had at least a smattering of English and they all shared a common bond: they were here to participate in a show that had a global audience of millions. For many, the most scary thing about the next five days was not the itty bitty, tiny possibility of death, but the absolute certainty that they would soon be getting naked in public, or maybe even having sex while millions watched, including their own families. But the excitement of arriving in a fleet of limousines at the famous Los Angeles studios of URP was heady beyond compare. Everyone in the world knew this place, had seen it on TV and on their monitors. Everyone had thrilled at the pageantry of the snuff shows and at the bravery of the world's most beautiful youth nobly volunteering their lives to help cull our overpopulated species, an act of breathtaking (and incredibly erotic) humanitarianism.

Of course everyone also knew, especially Tiffany and her fellow professionals, that it was not the killing that thrilled the audience, it was the way they were killed. It was the torture they had agreed to endure. Fortunately for the industry, there were more than enough potential candidates out there willing to suppress that thought and respond to the money. Why worry about someone else's bad luck?

Those first days were a blast. Settling into luxurious accommodations. Enjoying world-class meals. Choosing a whole new wardrobe. Rehearsals for the production numbers. Coiffed and made over by the world's foremost beauty experts. For the women not already so adorned, a labia piercing and insertion of a gleaming 24 carat gold ring. All courtesy of URP. Then there were the parties! Five of the hottest guys from four countries cavorting with ninety-five of the loveliest females from nine countries (many having brought their own party consorts at URP expense) in one of the world's most action-packed and sin-soaked cities! It all made for a wild three day romp during which that wee, trifling possibility of torture and death was easily ignored. Shyness and awkwardness of communication were soon trumped by deliberate abandon, youthful exuberance and all-out sexual excess!

Directly after lunch on the fourth day, Friday, Tiffany gathered all the candidates together, along with the translators for those who did not speak English. It was time to get down to work. She herded them into a small auditorium with upholstered theater seats arrayed in three concentric semicircles around a raised dais, then took a seat on the dais where she could see them all and they could see her.

Although it was to be expected that many of the candidates would already be intimately acquainted by now, it was always true that not everyone would know everyone else. So she began with the usual protocol: self-introductions — each candidate standing to state his or her name, place of origin and a brief personal bio.

That done, she moved on to a description of just how the scenes would go on Saturday and Sunday. Everyone had watched these snuff shows at least once either in a live cybercast or from the archives, but the faces, restraints, physical layout and lottery devices changed from show to show, along with the faces.

The live show would get underway at 22:00 hours Pacific Time (19:00 hours Eastern) with an introduction of the one hundred Candidates to the studio and internet audience. Clips had already been made of them enjoying themselves during the preceding three days and nights and would be blended into the introductions. She warned them that they might be seeing themselves on screen in situations and activities they thought were private. Some faces turned scarlet at that revelation, but she reminded the group that their signed contracts specifically allowed for candid cameras at any and all times and places, and that anything captured on chip was preauthorized for broadcast.

"Besides," she soothed, "a little sucking and fucking is mild stuff compared to what you'll be seen doing tomorrow and Sunday."

When they had quieted down, she addressed the problem of who was going to wear what. It was a discussion of little interest to the five males, but passionately consuming for the females. Tiffany let them hash it out, noting that the regulars — the girls who had been on the show before — sat quietly, saying nothing. They knew that in the end, when the democratic process had disintegrated to chaos, Tiffany would impose her own will anyway. Which is what happened.

That decision having been made, she continued in a matter-of-fact tone, "Following the Introductions of the Candidates to the audience will be the official Oath of Induction, then the Lottery. This week we're going to have you, the Candidates, come up, in advance, with four general scenarios for the torture and death of those selected in the Lottery. I will then divide you up into four smaller groups to work out the details. This is, after all, your show and we find it's more fun if you all take part in designing the snuffs as well as carrying them out. We are cognizant, of course, that the ruthless creativity we desire of you might tend to be dampened by the small chance of being selected to be snuffed yourself and having to suffer the fate you helped design. For that reason, we formally guarantee that none of the four victims will die at the hands of her or his own group. It will be so announced before the Lottery. Understood?"

There was a general murmur of understanding, if not assent.

"Good. So let me ask if anyone has any general thoughts about how the snuffs should be carried out. Frankly, we're looking for ordeals that will be highly erotic, exquisitely painful and stretch over thirty-eight hours, from midnight tonight to 14:00 hours Sunday, which is when the chefs need to begin preparing the Honorees for the banquet. All that time you must keep our audience fascinated, sexually stimulated and panting for more. We want them to be so thrilled with the four snuffs that they'll be back again next week to watch us do it again. Remember, the enormous paycheck you will be receiving is enabled by our success in drawing and satisfying paid viewers."

Sveta raised her right hand. She was a strikingly beautiful Ukrainian girl with long black hair and bright blue eyes. She was twenty-one years old and a regular, this being her eighth appearance on the show. She had been eighteen when first recruited, the minimum age allowed, and her seven previous appearances had made her fabulously wealthy, but she was hoping to parlay these appearances into a career as a film star. She was a very focused and ambitious young lady with a sex appeal few could match. Tiffany liked her a great deal and was more than happy to welcome her back as often as she wanted to come.

"Yes, Sveta. It's good to see you here again, by the way."

"Thank you, Miss Boylston."

"Candidates, as you may recall from other shows and our earlier introductions, Sveta is from Kiev. What would you like to suggest, dear."

"I was thinking, Ma'am, that maybe we could have the different motif for each of the victims. I mean, think of different kinds of the deaths, different ways of people to die. Like, in general. I'm sorry, my English is not so good."

"It's better than my Ukrainian, dear, so don't apologize. And I think I understand what you're suggesting. Do you mean categories of death: drowning, fire, hanging, drugs, that sort of thing?"

"Yes! Yes! Categories. Different kinds of the death."

"Interesting. Anyone else want to expand on that? Or make other suggestions?"

"I like her idea," said a petite blond.

"Your name again? And where you're from?"

"My name is Jackeline. I am from Chiclayo, Peru. I am agreeing. I think it is being fun to think of ways to snuff our friends and stay within the motif. The theme."

"All right, let's go with that for a while. What shall we use as the four motifs?"

A young man whose face might have been cloned from any full page ad in Maxim raised a hand. "I'm Roberto, from Napoli, Italia. I agree with the idea of motif. I like those motifs that you said, especially fire and drowning. But drugs are too . . . too delicato, too difficult for the camera to catch, do you see?"

"Too subtle?" Tiffany prompted.

"Yes! Subtle. And maybe even drowning could be more . . . embrace more . . . be wider."

"Asphyxiation?" suggested a soft voice from the opposite side of the semicircle.

"And your name, dear?" prompted Tiffany.

"Corrine. I'm from Belfast, Northern Ireland, Miss Boylston.." It was a small girl with black hair, large dark eyes and a bosom almost as spectacular as Sveta's. "Drowning is a form of asphyxiation, so you could expand the category to include other ways of not being able to breathe."

"No, no!" an excited female voice spoke up. "I am Yulia. I am from Novosibirsk in Russia." Tiffany located her hand in the last row on her left. She appeared to be a tall girl with a wild mane of russet hair and a long, slender nose to match her slim, elegant frame. "To drown means water or other liquid covers face. Can have many interesting ways. To asphyxiate means to cut off air. Like to hang, or to strangle. Also many interesting ways, but in air, not under liquid. I believe these are best to be two difference in categories."

"Yulia has a good point there," Tiffany said. "Shall we agree, then, on death by drowning as one category, death by asphyxiation as a second category, and death by fire as a third?"

"May I make a suggestion?" The hand was in the second row directly in front of Tiffany. A cute girl with multi-hued hair tumbling in curls to her shoulders and an obvious penchant for dramatic cosmetics.

"Please remind us; you are . . . ?"

"I am Nikki from Amsterdam, The Netherlands. I think fire is too restrictive. I think we should broaden it to death by heat. That leaves room for things like branding irons and hot coals. And maybe there could be another category of death by cold. Using ice and cold water and stuff."

"Excellent!" cooed Tiffany. How amusing it was to have the candidates concoct their own demise! "So, what do we have so far? Death by Heat, Drowning, Asphyxiation . . . and what else? We need a fourth category. Should it be cold, as Nikki suggested?"

There was a short silence.

Sveta spoke up. "I think cold is not exciting enough. How about crushing?"

More silence.

"Crushing is good," agreed Tiffany, urging things along. "Any other thoughts?"

"How about death by fucking?" The voice was male and came from a smirking blond in the front row. It was just today's variation on a traditional recommendation, and it usually came from the male minority.

"And who is the horny young man who would like to be fucked to death?" Tiffany deadpanned.

"Tony. I'm from White Plains, New York. I think it would be maximum cool if the victim is fucked by us male candidates, and maybe a bunch of bad-ass machines, until all three holes are ripped to shreds and she bleeds to death with a smile on her face. Don't you think?"

"I think, Tony, that it's not terribly original," Tiffany answered dryly, "and that unless you can come up with a dozen or so entirely fresh new ways to fuck a girl to death, you'd be best off considering other avenues of torture. There'll be plenty of fucking going on in any event."

Her tone seemed to take the edge off his smugness. He slumped into his seat without further elaboration. The crease in his brow indicated that either he was actually considering novel new ways of fucking girls to death, or (more likely) of how he could do the world a favor by culling this old bitch.

"Miss Boylston? I have idea."

Tiffany recognized the voice immediately with it's soft Chinese approximation of the "r" sound. She spotted the small hand in the air and smiled at the adorable vision beneath it.

"Yes, Lin? Candidates, this lovely creature is Lin from Hong Kong. This is her . . . what is it? Fourth appearance?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"This is her fourth appearance with URP. She is one of our most popular regulars and I'm delighted that she has chosen to grace our studios one more time."

Not satisfied with merely being rich in a country where most still hovered at the edge of poverty, Lin was determined to be a player as well. She had made it known to earlier URP audiences that she hoped to use both her wealth and celebrity status to build a company featuring her own signature designs in sensual lingerie and undergarments, peek-a-boo beachwear, see-through clubwear, cosmetics, sexy footwear and jeans, hair products, perfumes, and many other items. The casting department kept accepting her applications because the audience consistently e-voted her one of their top favorites, right along with Sveta and a half dozen others. Who could resist her classic Chinese beauty? She had a perfect figure, the lustrous black hair and sweet delicate face of a china doll, and the small firm breasts so admired by Asians. It didn't hurt that she loved to be nude on camera and carried herself with elegant grace.

"I am thinking, Miss Boylston," she said, "that name of group . . . of . . . what is word? Cat - ah - goalie. . ."

"Category."

"Yes. Name of category must be basic and sexy. Maybe water, fire, wood and metal. Like four elements of Greeks."

"I think it was water, fire, air and earth, " said a man in the second row.

"You are?" asked Tiffany.

"Georg, from Frankfort, Germany."

"I believe you are correct," Tiffany acknowledged, "but perhaps air and earth are too vague. I think Lin's choices will be easier to work with in finding tortures that fit. Any other thoughts on that? Agreement? Disagreement?"

"Ma'am?" It was a soft-spoken girl in the second row who came across as timid and modest. Tiffany knew better, having reviewed a chip from last night in which she was anything but timid with one of the men and two of the other girls. The smoky blonde pixie had managed to keep her fingers busy in both cunts while bringing off the young man with her mouth.

"Identify yourself again, please."

"I'm Olga from Lupeni, Rumania. I am not speaking English as well as Lin, but I think perhaps the word 'metal' is not . . . is too . . . I'm sorry, but when I am with boys who speak English and they . . . they put me in metal, they use word 'iron' although it is not iron really. They say it sounds more sexy. Is true, this?"

"Yes, Olga," Tiffany says. "An excellent observation. In English it's sexier to say someone is 'in irons' than to say she's in metal. So, that brings us to water, fire, wood and iron. Those sound like categories that have a sensual, earthy sound and allow us a good deal of latitude for designing torture and death. Are we agreed on that?"

No one said a word, but she noticed several were nodding.

"Excellent. That will be it, then. Water, Fire, Wood and Iron. Those will be our four themes, or motifs. Immediately following this meeting I will formally break you into four groups of twenty-five and send you to four separate rooms to come up with plans that relate to your assigned motif. As it happens, we are blessed this week with the presence of five veterans of past shows who already know the ropes, so to speak. I will put four of them in charge of a group. They are . . ." she pointed them out as she named them . . . "Sveta, Lin, Justin and Lilya. Sveta and Lin you've already heard from. Justin is from Basingstoke, England and he's back with us for the third time. Lilya hails from Gomel, Belarus and this is her fourth appearance. All four are as cool and well organized as they are brave and good looking, and I'm sure you'll enjoy working with them."

Tiffany carefully avoided looking at the fifth regular and made no further reference to her.

Now, she knew, was the time to rachet up their motivation. "As you work out the plans for your motif, remember that our audience is looking for extreme cruelty. To help get your creative juices flowing, URP is offering two special incentives. First, we're letting the audience choose by e-vote the snuff they like best and the winning team will receive double the fee stipulated in your contracts. You will be doubly rich!"

Tiffany watched with satisfaction as their bright, greedy young eyes lit up. For the moment they had forgotten they might not live to enjoy it. Time to tweak their enthusiasm a notch higher.

"Second," she went on, "members of the winning team will receive a bonus option which can double their take-home pay yet again! In other words, members of the winning team will have a chance to quadruple their contract fee!"

Her listeners squirmed in their seats, hardly able to keep from jumping up. She was talking millions of dollars! Neither they nor their families would ever have to work again! All they had to do was be really, really vicious. Could they do that? Why not? Soldiers do it in warfare, and for a pittance. They had been dubbed soldiers in the noble fight against overpopulation, legally free of all civilized restraints, free to indulge their darkest fantasies for fun and immense profit!

"I thought you'd like that news," Tiffany chuckled. "Now listen up! It's almost 13-hundred hours. After I've assigned you to your motif groups, I want all of you to take a tour of the supply area and take note of the stock of equipment that's available to you. You'll find it's an extensive collection. But if there's something we don't already have that would make possible some impressive new torture, let me know right away and I'll see what can be done to provide it. I want you back here in the assigned work rooms by 14:30 hours. Your group leaders will organize things from there. The ceremonies begin at 10-hundred hours in the Main Studio with the Introductions, then the Oath of Induction, and finally, the Lottery. You are to be backstage fully dressed and made up for final rehearsal and prep at 900 hours. Any questions?"

A girl with dark auburn hair and a lush body that radiated sexuality raised a skin-bronzed hand. "My name is Mariana. I'm from Niterói, Brazil. You said if we are picked as a victim we will not be snuffed by our own group. Who decides which group will do it?"

"I do, dear."

"But what if all four come from the same group?"

"An excellent question. Actually that's never happened. The odds are roughly that of getting a straight flush in poker. But if it does . . . well, let's put it up for discussion. Candidates, what do you think would be the most equitable way to handle it?"

A waif of a girl with short dark hair and startlingly green eyes raised her hand. "I'm Victoria from Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. "I think the results of that lottery should be thrown out and all the names put back in for another drawing. We should keep doing that until at least one victim comes from a different group."

"Oh the hell with that!" Roberto shouted. "Just let all four draw straws or something and the winner gets reprieved. Then keep the lottery going until someone from another group comes up."

"Why even bother with that?" said Tony, making an impatient face. "Just do it like they do foul balls in baseball. If the last selection is from the same group as the first three, toss it and keep drawing until you hit a different group."

Arguments supporting all three ideas immediately bubbled up. After a minute of cacophony, Tiffany quelled the ruckus with a clap of her hands. "Thank you Victoria, Roberto and Tony for your suggestions. It's always interesting to hear how the Candidates themselves feel about these issues. Actually, the method we would use is the one Tony suggested. We would keep disallowing the fourth selection until we hit someone from another group. Any other questions?"

She allowed only a beat before nodding to a young woman with a sheaf of papers.

"Good. Before I divide you into four groups and send you off, there's one more thing. My assistant is now passing out personalized copies of the Oath you will be taking tonight. It's printed in English and in your own home language, if it is not English. If you have trouble speaking English during the oath, don't worry about it. Just try to imitate what the officiant says. It's raising your right hand on camera during the reading of the Oath that counts. That's what legally commits you. Until then you can still back out. But do remember that there are consequences for quitting at this point. They were spelled out in your contract. You and your named beneficiaries would have twenty-four hours to reimburse URP for all expenses incurred in bringing you here — including recruitment, transportation, accommodations, meals, entertainment, wardrobe, bodily adornments, medical exams, consorts and so forth. Plus thirty-eight percent interest. That's an amount that bankrupts most people instantly. Failure to pay in full and on time means you would be charged with breach of contract, theft by deception and unlawful flight to avoid a certified culling lottery. Your named beneficiaries will be charged with aiding and abetting. Every one of those charges is a capital offense and convictions are pretty much automatic. Something to think about."

Tiffany paused to let it sink in. "But none of that is going to happen. You're all here to have fun and get filthy rich! The risk is part of what makes it exciting! Nothing ventured, nothing gained. A tiny risk for a huge payoff! The minute you raise your hand for the Oath of Induction, you will be rich and in a position to get even richer! On that happy thought, I bid you farewell until 900 hours. Remember to check out the supply area. But most of all, remember that you are one hundred of the world's most beautiful people. I want you to be stunning this evening when the cameras find you! I want our audience to cum in their pants the instant they clap eyes on you."

She jumped to her feet, grinned and pumped a fist in the air. "Ready to get rich?" she shouted, radiating enthusiasm.

"YES!" they yelled back with youthful ebullience.

"That's it then," she shouted. "Let's go!"

The fate of the one hundred had been set in motion.

2. The Lottery

Suspense was an important element for a successful snuff. The camera picks up every subtle indicator of nervous tension and Tiffany milked every trick in the book to maximize that tension.

All one hundred had shown up on time at the studio where a live audience of nine hundred was being seated. Tiffany arranged the Candidates so that the four groups were kept together and they went through a quick reprise of the entrance drill they had worked out in rehearsal on Thursday, entering the stage through a split in the red velvet backdrop curtain, cris-crossing through each other in opposite directions to form a large arc extending into the audience on both ends. When they had returned behind the curtain again, they were closely inspected by Tiffany, trailed by her makeup and costume crews. Everyone was dressed in shiny leather outfits featuring clever cutouts that yielded tantalizing peeks at firm young flesh while leaving plenty of room for more revealing costumes to come. She had lined them up so that each group (which they had decided to call "teams") was together and identified by a colored sash draped over one shoulder. Numbers 1-25 at the beginning of the line on her left had tan sashes, signifying Wood. 26-50 wore the blue of Water. 51-75 were sashed in Iron gray. 76-100 were adorned in red for Fire.

Two officials of URP carefully went down the line, checking identities and placing a lanyard around the neck of each Candidate at the end of which was a large gold medallion bearing his or her number.

When the band blared the opening fanfares and the Host, a film star whose career had once blazed very brightly and was still able to draw rousing cheers from studio audiences, announced the start of another spectacular snuff show and banquet from Ultimate Reality Production. The nervous tension of the young cast was palpable. His voice, recognizable to hundreds of millions, rambled on enthusiastically. He made the expected opening allusions to the "noble effort" at hand "to reduce the world's disastrous overpopulation," and how "wonderfully grateful everyone is for the many brave heros and heroines who have already sacrificed themselves to help lead the way, and continue to do so in the persons of these young people we are about to meet." As he talked, his listeners behind the curtain fidgeted, trying to wrap their minds around the enormity of what they were doing. Millions were watching this drama where they would be pronounced happy killers or wretched victims, and it was way too late to back out.

Finally they heard the cue.

". . . And here they are! . . ."

The curtain parted just far enough for the long double line of young women and men to begin filing out briskly, one line crossing through the other like the cogs of a great living machine.

The host went on. "They've come from all over the world to meet their moment of truth, ninety-five beautiful young women and five young men who are about to demonstrate their courage and honor by volunteering for the Culling Lottery where four of them will be chosen for death. And not merely death, but to die in the tradition of all the great martyrs, through the cleansing ordeal of pain and suffering; that by embracing death in its cruelest form in the spring of their young lives they may draw attention to the critical fight to save our planet from self-destruction through overpopulation."

The audience was applauding wildly as the host prattled on. The panorama of beautiful youth parading around the circumference of the stage, four of them soon to be marked for death, was breathtaking and poignant. And, of course, erotic.

When everyone was in place on stage, the host began the introductions, starting at stage right and working his way around. With a hundred people to talk to, only the scant essentials were touched upon: name, age, home town and measurements. In-depth interviews with clips showing childhood photos and other biographical memorabilia had already been recorded and would be used as filler during the two day show, along with increasingly salacious material captured during those first giddy days in LA as well as the two bawdy nights to come.

Then it was time for the Oath of Induction.

The signed contract, as Tiffany had pointed out, was legally binding; dropouts would be pursued through the legal system. Most would wind up before a tribunal, together with the loved ones who had so eagerly signed up as beneficiaries in the event of their snuff; all would be quickly remanded to URP for execution. A win-win situation for the company.

Once Candidates raised their hands for the Oath of Induction, it was even better for URP. There was no longer a need to bother with tribunals. The Candidates automatically became legal chattel; they belonged the Company until their release at noon on Monday, or their death, whichever came first. If they tried to bolt, they would simply be dragged back for snuffing and their beneficiaries could kiss their compensation goodbye.

It was a thrilling sight when one hundred young people raised their right hands and repeated (as best they could) after Federal Judge Merle Obery of the fourteenth circuit court of California, phrase by phrase:

"I, being of sound mind and body . . . . . do of my own free will and desire . . . . . surrender my body . . . . . my life . . . . . and all rights whatsoever . . . . . to Ultimate Reality Productions, Incorporated . . . . . to be their wholly owned property . . . . . for a period beginning from this moment . . . . . until Monday at twelve noon, Pacific Daylight Time. . . . . . and that during said period of ownership . . . . . Ultimate Reality Productions . . . . . may submit me to torture and death . . . . . as accorded by law . . . . . and that my body may be used . . . . . for any purpose whatsoever . . . . . that United Reality Productions . . . . . deems appropriate."

"Congratulations," the judge intoned. "We, the citizens of the world, commend you all for your courage. To those among you who will be chosen for the culling, we offer our special thanks. You will be tested to the extreme, but your vast audience of admirers salutes you for your intrepid devotion to humanity. Embrace the satisfaction of knowing you have set a standard of philanthropy and bravery to which the rest of the world may aspire."

The audience broke into tumultuous cheering and applause! In was, indeed, an emotional moment. Such beauty! Such fearlessness! Such tragedy! They could hardly wait to find out which ones were to die!

The oily voice of the host took over again. "Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the Lottery!"

A louder cheer! Full-throated! Savage! Impatient!

"Our brave Candidates have chosen to have the four victims among them, whoever they turn out to be, suffer torture and death at the hands of their fellow Candidates by one of four modes: Wood, Water, Iron or Fire. The Candidates were divided into the four teams you see before you this afternoon, each team wearing the color representing that mode of death — beige for Wood, blue for Water, gray for Iron, red for Fire — and tasked with devising torments and deaths appropriate to that mode. Furthermore, to guarantee they would show no mercy in their tortures, they were promised that you , the live and web audience, will be voting for your favorite snuff. The teams you choose with your votes will be given an opportunity to double their payoff. As an additional incentive not to hold back, no Candidate will be snuffed by her or his own team, so the inventiveness of their cruelty can only work for them, not against them. Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we will be treated this weekend to one of the best snuff shows we have ever broadcast. Let us begin the official Culling Lottery!"

As often as she had witnessed this moment over the years, Tiffany still enjoyed the look of fear that came into the eyes of the Candidates at those words. They tried to look calm, especially the regulars, but despite the odds in their favor, four of them were about to be singled out for death. And although they may not have figured it out yet, more would follow.

To the wild applause of the audience an old-fashioned bingo machine was trundled out onto the stage and rolled over to the first Candidate at stage right. Its main feature was a plexiglass barrel with paddles on the inside walls, like the barrel of a clothes dryer. Two other officials converged at that end of the line, one with a sack of ping-pong balls, the other with an indelible marker.

"If you have ever played beano or bingo, or watched this show before, you know how this works," the host said. "Each Candidate's number will be written on a ball which will then be dropped into the transparent barrel of this machine. When every Candidate has been added to the barrel, we will start it up and begin the drawing."

The cameras were trained on the three officials and the numbers being written on the balls as passed along the line of Candidates. The huge overhead monitors showed the number on each gold medallion being marked on a ball, which was then tossed into the barrel of the machine. The expressions on the Candidates' faces was a marvelous tension of nervous excitement and outright fear. It was terrific drama!

When the one-hundredth ball had been dropped into the barrel, the machine was rolled to center stage beside the host.

"We will now ask for a volunteer from the audience."

Some two hundred hands went up. The host descended a flight of steps at the lip of the stage and strolled up the nearest aisle to the third row. He tapped the shoulder of a pretty middle-aged blonde seated on the aisle. "Your name?"

In her excitement, she could barely control her bladder! "Courtney!"

"Courtney. Would you please come up on stage with me and chose today's four lucky Victim-Honorees?"

She fairly jumped out of her seat, excruciatingly aware of millions of eyes watching her. She had told her family and all her friends back home that she would be in the audience this day. God! she hoped they were watching.

She followed the famous (but not recently featured) actor up the steps to the stage and stood on the opposite side of the bingo machine from the host. He flipped a switch and the drum began to rotate, tossing the white balls around like a snowstorm in a glass globe.

"And your name?" the host asked the lady from the audience.

"Courtney," she answered.

"Where are you from, Courtney?"

"Readfield, Massachusetts," she answered earnestly, as though it had some bearing on what she was about to do.

The host turned to the audience and poised the traditional question they had all been waiting for. "Are we ready to select our Victim-Honorees?"

"YES!" was the traditional unrestrained reply.

He nodded to the lady. "Go ahead and press that button." He pointed to a conspicuously red button, "It's time to find out which of our Candidates will face the Ultimate Reality!"

She pressed it.

A ping-pong ball popped out of the spinning maelstrom into a glass funnel, which rolled it into a glass tube and out to an open chute where it came to rest.

"Go ahead," the host prompted. "Pick it up. Who is our first Honoree?"

Courtney from Readfield read the number written on the ping-pong ball. "Sixteen."

As they had been instructed back stage, the neighbors of the selected Candidate, numbers 15 and 17, took her by the elbows and escorted her to center stage. She was a slim girl with black hair and brown eyes, trembling now and very pale as an official of URP handcuffed her wrists behind her back.

"Ladies and gentlemen, our first Victim/Honoree is Nina from Izhevsk, Russia, a member of the Wood Team." The host read from his notes: "She's twenty-three years old, five feet three inches tall, and only 95 pounds. She's a 34-B cup with a 22-inch waist and a very pretty little thing, as you can see. Let's give her a warm round of applause for her courage and beauty. I'm sure she'll give us a great show!"

The audience broke into cheers and applause. Nina only looked frightened.

Tiffany had no sympathy for her. If you choose to roll the dice, she thought, you must be willing to accept the outcome. If . . . oops! . . . it turns out that you're among the unlucky four, too damn bad. You read the rules; you filled out the application; you signed the papers; you took the money; you raised your hand and recited the oath; you dropped your number into the barrel. In short, you willingly and eagerly sold your life to URP. Now we're taking possession. Simple as that. Changed your mind? Tough titty. We haven't changed ours.

The drum with the remaining ninety-nine balls continued to spin. At the urging of the host, Courtney punched the button again. The machine spat another ball into the chute.

Courtney plucked it up, looked at it and called out, "Number twenty-six!"

There was an audible gasp from stage right as a petite blonde clapped both hands to her mouth. Numbers 25 and 27 grabbed her elbows as her knees began to buckle and supported her on the walk to center stage.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, our second Victim/Honoree, number twenty-six," the host drawled as he hurriedly scanned his I.D. sheet to find her, "is a member of the Water Team. Her name is Cory and she's from Sydney, Australia. A tiny little thing, she's nineteen years old, only five feet one, and weighs a charming one hundred and two pounds. Her vitals are 35, 22, 35, and — I think you'll all agree — she's cute as a button. Scared, too. Don't you love those pretty tears? I think we'll be seeing a lot more of those shortly," he winked knowingly at the audience. "Congratulations, Cory."

The official who had cuffed her hands behind her backed away slowly, prepared to catch her if she collapsed, but she remained standing and weeping as the audience cheered and applauded.

How grievous are the regrets of the foolish, Tiffany thought, as she watched the delicate blonde melt into despair. She thought she had a sure thing; instant riches with just the teeniest chance it would turn into horrible death.

The host was getting a "move-it-along" signal from the Stage Manager.

"Ready to draw our third victim. Courtney?"

Courtney was really getting into the spirit of things now. Her stage fright had given way to bravura. She pushed the button and snatched up the ball the instant it was ejected, squinting at the number. "Eighteen!" she cried boldly into the cameras.

All eyes were suddenly on the group sashed in beige and a stunned young woman whose face had suddenly drained of color. It was Sveta. She seemed on the verge of collapse. She had pushed her luck once too often. Why had she not been satisfied with the immense wealth her seven earlier appearances had accumulated? Her desire for stardom had eclipsed her common sense. She tried to look cool and brave as two of her teammates, smiling with relief that they had escaped her fate, led her forward and held her arms behind her for the handcuffs. But she trembled in fear and self-disgust.

"Well, well, well! Look who we have here!" the host chirped with exaggerated glee. The cat eating the canary. "All our regular members and viewers will recognize the lovely Sveta from Kiev, Ukraine. As you heard during the introductions, this is Sveta's eighth appearance on Ultimate Reality's Culling Lottery, just one short of the record set last year by her late countrywoman, Teplota from Odessa. Isn't she gorgeous with that long black hair and those brilliant blue eyes? You just want to eat her up! And some of us will be doing just that Sunday night," he added in a smirking aside. "As you can see from the color of her sash, Sveta is also from the Wood Team; in fact, she was its leader. She's 21 years old, five feet four, 115 pounds, and I can hardly wait to see those luscious 38-C tits again. Well, Sveta darling, you've given us some wonderful entertainment during your seven earlier appearances and helped us produce some terrific snuffs. I know that on this, your final appearance, you won't disappoint us. Congratulations!" He turned to the crowd. "Let's give it up for Sveta, our third Victim-Honoree!"

As the cheers and applause thundered through the auditorium, Tiffany felt herself slipping into an unaccustomed gloom. She liked this girl and would miss working with her. She was so incredibly beautiful, so cheerful and creative. Such a waste! It was so sad when these young women let themselves be seduced by the ease of it all, the temptation to double and redouble their wealth with little regard to the possibility that their luck could change. She was no mathematician, but surely exposing yourself to a four percent chance of death over and over somehow worsened the odds. She knew of Candidates on other shows returning again and again — the record so far having been set by a Brazilian woman at JFA whose luck ran out on her twenty-ninth appearance — but the payoff at URP was so good most sane Candidates were content with one or two appearances. Poor Sveta. Like Teplota before her, she had let her determination to win fame as well as fortune lead her to the ultimate gamble once too often. So sad.

"It's time for our final drawing," the host said, oblivious to any collateral grief. "Go ahead, Courtney. Let's find out who it is."

Tiffany held her breath. She had already lost a sweet friend in Sveta, but a far worse nightmare could still happen with this fourth drawing.

Grinning broadly, basking in her once-in-a-lifetime role, Courtney pushed the button again. Out popped another white ball. The camera panned the tense faces of the Candidates in a screen insert as she picked up the little round object and studied its numerical death sentence. Then, brandishing it dramatically, she called out, "Number fifty-nine!"

A scream from near the center of the arc of Candidates drew everyone's attention to a tall blonde, her hands clutched to her face in horror, her green eyes filled with the question How could this have happened? Roberto on her left and Corrine on her right escorted her to the right end of the little row of victims; they gently pulled her arms down away from her face and drew them behind her back for the waiting handcuffs. All the Candidates were smiling now. They were off the hook. They were rich and would live to enjoy it!

"Another blonde!" the host proclaimed. "I love it! Two blondes and two brunettes. And our quartet of Honorees is all female! I know some of you out there will be a little disappointed by that, but most of us find a special thrill in witnessing the sacrifice of tender young feminine beauty. Our fourth lovely Honoree is Lilya! She comes from Gomel, Belarus, is 25 years old, five feet seven, and weighs in at a voluptuous 130 lbs. And here's a first: she, too, is a repeat Candidate, having first graced our show seven years ago when she had just turned eighteen." The mammoth overhead screens flashed a clip of Lilya from that first appearance. Gesturing at it, the host said, "I'm sure you all agree she's even more lovely now. And certainly more . . ." he ogled the lush globes naughtily peeking through the cutouts in her costume, ". . . fully developed." Lusty laughs from the audience. "Lilya has been working as leader of the Iron Team. We've never had TWO regulars in our victim lineup before. But then, none of THEM have ever been VICTIMS before, right?" He shared a chuckle with the audience to reinforce his waggery. "Congratulations, Lilya! Folks, let's have a nice round of applause for all four of our brave new Victim-Honorees: Nina, Cory, Sveta and Lilya!"

While the audience applauded and cheered, anticipating the torture and desecration to come of these four gorgeous women, Tiffany allowed herself the luxury of relief. Briana had again slipped past fate unscathed. Tiffany was finally able to do something she hadn't been able to do until this moment: look her daughter in the eye. There she was, number 82, smiling and giggling with her teammates on the Fire Team. She had lucked out again, as she had twice before.

Why did she keep doing this? Tiffany had begged Briana not to volunteer again, but the girl was determined. She had just turned eighteen when she first volunteered; she knew everything, needed no advice on how to run her life, especially from her mother, and saw the Culling Lottery as a quick way to get out on her own in style, just as her mother had. It worked! She had great fun on the show and had blown most of her money on a Porsche, a Harley, a wardrobe to drool over and a splendid home in Malibu overlooking the Pacific. Three months later she was back to restore her bank account. Again she found the risk exhilarating, the money fantastic and the show, with its wild and public sex, exciting! Within eight months she had come up with a new scheme requiring still more money. She wanted to buy into a company that had developed 3-D TV technology that would be worth billions within a few years.

When Tiffany saw her daughter's name on the list of Candidates once again, she had pleaded with her to withdraw; she even offered to pay off the URP expenses for her to get her off the hook. But the girl was not yet nineteen and had already proved to herself that the risk was both insignificant and a rush, and certainly worth the fun, sex, celebrity and money. Now she was on stage laughing, tossing her blond curls around, applauding the losers and eager to get on with the sensual overload yet to come in her still-intact young life.

The host was moving things along.

"Now that Lady Luck has selected our four victims, it's time for Tiffany, our Chief Execution Officer, to assign their fates. As you know, our Candidates were promised that they would not have to suffer the fate they had helped design. That helped them to go all out to win your votes. Now they are about to find out just which fate has been chosen for them."

Tiffany never appeared on camera anymore except for this one function. When she turned thirty, she had been tactfully informed by the studio brass that they had decided to "refresh" their on-camera image by bringing in "new faces." Meaning younger chickies. At that point she had stopped starving herself. Now, at age thirty-seven, with 180 pounds packed on her 5'6" frame, dressed all in black and with her dark hair swept up and screwed down into a severe bun, she provided a starkly different image from the sweet fragility of her twenties, an image that was perfect for her role as Death's Handmaiden. She stepped up beside the host and enjoyed the heat of the lights and the pressure of invisible eyes by the millions staring at her.

"Thank you," she said aloud, mentally directing the words to whatever gods had spared her daughter. Four chain leashes were draped over her left hand. Crossing to the host's right, she placed a hand on the first victim's head.

"Nina, your death will be by iron," she said, nodding to the Iron Team and holding out a leash. They immediately hustled down stage to where the diminutive Nina stood trembling and pulled her to center stage where they tore her costume off. The leather panels were held together with Velcro so that they could easily be rent apart with satisfying ripping sounds. One of them, a redhead named Gina from Alabama, attached the leash to the gold ring in Nina's smoothly shaved labium and led her down the steps from center stage into the center aisle. The other Iron Team members followed.

Tiffany moved on to the next girl and laid a hand on her head in the same way. "Cory, your death will be by fire." The Fire Team was upon her at once and soon she, too, was being led on a leash, naked, down the steps.

Tiffany closed her eyes as she placed her hand on the head of her old friend Sveta, unable to look at her. "Sveta, your death will be by water." She had chosen what she hoped would be the gentlest death, probably drowning. The Water Team hustled her off to strip and leash.

Finally, she settled her hand in the blond hair of the fourth girl. For a moment her breath caught. It was so like Briana's! But she composed herself. "Lilya," she said at last, "your death will be by wood."

As the Wood Team tore off Lilya's costume, the host sang out, "Ladies and gentlemen of our live and cyberspace audiences, our four volunteer victims have been chosen and sentenced. Let us follow them now and cheer them on as they begin the traditional Death March."

To music many decibels louder than the frenzied cheering of the audience, the four girls were led on their leashes up one aisle and down another, while URP personnel made a valiant (but not too valiant) effort to keep the occupants of the high-priced aisle seats from mauling them as they passed. Sveta and Lilya, who had witnessed this before, knew where it was leading; they stared at the floor as they walked through the hooting audience and flogged themselves mentally for tempting fate once too often. Nina and Cory, who had not seriously considered this possibility, wept in humiliation and fear. Hands clutched and pawed at them, nearly knocking them over again and again as they traveled endlessly through the frenzied audience, everyone wanting to rake their fingers over a doomed pussy or soon-to-be-eaten breast.

An eternity later the four were led out of the auditorium to the short street that led between the auditorium and the studio lots. The leashes were replaced by a long chain that ran between their legs, clipped to each labium ring. Their colleagues-turned-captors kept a goodly distance ahead and behind, towing the four nude females with long chains as they passed through thousands of hyped up, screaming men, women and children pelting them with mudballs, fruit and eggs (as well as some strictly forbidden items like cans, bottles and rocks). It was a tradition dating back to when all the condemned were convicted criminals and the chain ran from iron collar to iron collar.

By the time the Four arrived at the shelter of the main studio complex, they were bleeding and covered with filth. Weeping, leaving footprints bloodied by broken glass, they were herded into Studio Lots 1, 2, 3 and 4. This is where they would live out the final two days of their lives.

These would not be their best days.

3. Friday Night

Cameras were everywhere and were on all the time. Not a square inch anywhere was hidden. Lenses and microphones tracked and preserved on chips every word, every move, every moan, every chuckle, every scream. Anything not being shown live was being recorded for possible use later, either during the current broadcast or in a later ancillary show. Nothing the team members did among themselves or to the victims was private. The sleeping quarters, wardrobes, showers and toilets for the Team members were right out in the open in each of the four studios. Tiffany was always amused at the attempts of the more timid to hide their embarrassment at being on global display during their most intimate moments. But tough shit. They knew what this was about when they signed up. Not everything was shown, of course, only those things that appealed to the prurient and sadistic. Fornication and pissing were second only to torture and killing in audience interest, so the company encouraged both.

Once inside the main studio building, Tiffany ordered the victims detached from one another and taken by their execution teams into the studio assigned to them: Wood into Studio 1, Water into 2, Iron into 3 and Fire into 4.

After a thorough hosing down in the open shower, each victim was spreadeagled face down on a rectangular steel grid and strapped tightly down with her face protruding through a framed oval cutout in the grid. The grid was mounted on a universal joint that could be swivelled in any direction. The first position was vertical, as though she were standing up. An O-ring gag was shoved into her mouth and strapped in place. A long, slim dildo was inserted through the O and down her throat until she gagged and vomited. It was pushed in again and again until her heaves came up dry. The O-ring gag was then replaced by a ball gag, trapping the burning acids from her stomach in her mouth and throat, stretching her jaw painfully open. Two of the victims would wear this gag for the rest of their lives, never eating, drinking or speaking again. The other two would wish they were so lucky.

The next position of the grid was horizontal, ass side up. Steaming water was poured into a five a gallon transparent container suspended two feet above each prone girl. An enema hose and nozzle extending from the bottom of the container was plugged into her rectum. Soon she was writhing in her restraints and screaming into her gag as the hot water streamed into her bowels. A team member with a cattle prod warned her to hold it in. It took only a few touches with the prod to convince her to tighten her sphincter and bear the lesser pain of the hot water. When her bloated stomach made it obvious she could hold no more, the nozzle was removed and the grid rolled over so she was hanging from the straps face up, gushing watery shit into a tub under the grid. Two more hot enemas were administered (three in the case of Cory) until the outflow from the scalded intestines was clear. This multiple enema was to prevent the victim from making an undesirable mess in the throes of her future suffering.

Every studio was covered by several cameras, some mounted, some hand held by technicians. Every image was fed to a wall of monitors in the control room where Tiffany kept an eye on all four proceedings at once, although she listened to only one audio feed at a time to avoid an unintelligible jumble of sound. She listened first to Studio 1 where the Wood Team had clamped Lilya's wrists and head in wooden stocks hung by ropes that ran through ceiling pulleys and had been pulled taut, keeping her upright, the wood pulling up against her chin. The wrist holes were wide apart so that her arms were stretched out. She was kneeling on a wooden bench, her legs spread and her knees tied down to the bench. The position accentuated her lush figure, her full breasts and the gleaming gold ring in her pussy. A rack was situated nearby bristling with ratan canes of varying lengths and thicknesses.

Since Sveta, their original leader, had refused to consider the possibility that she might need a replacement, the team had been rudderless for their first ten minutes, but while Lilya was receiving her mandated enemas, Tony had emerged as their new leader, mostly by virtue of having the loudest voice.

"All right, ladies," he now announced, "the first thing on our program is a caning. I happen to know a thing or two about caning, and I suspect some of you do, too. But if you haven't caned or been caned, here's how it works." He selected a medium cane with a fair amount of whip. "As you can see, her position leaves her arms, body, thighs, calves and feet nicely exposed for caning. You begin by warming up the area you're going to punish with a lot of light taps, like this." He began a steady tattoo of light taps on Lilya's left buttocks. After several seconds, she began to squirm and whimper. "This heats up the area of choice and makes even these light taps quite painful, setting her up for the full-force blows. I'll monitor each caning and let you know when it's time to give her the heavy whacks. Everyone will get five of those. Now watch how I do it. The pain is not immediate but starts about a half second after the blow and quickly builds to an intense agony." He drew back and smacked a hard blow to her reddened ass. She tensed every muscle and began bucking and screaming into her gag as the pain washed through her. He did it four times more, measuring the timing so she would experience maximum pain with every blow. "You can use any cane of your choice," he told his eager crew, "but I'll pick the spots for each team member to cane. That will be her ass, the back and inside of her thighs, her calves, upper arms, armpits, feet and — of course — her pussy and tits."

The twenty-three other members of the team lined up, selected a cane and began to cover the voluptuous young woman pinned helplessly before them with a mass of painful purple welts.

Tiffany turned her attention and audio to Studio 2. Sveta was kneeling on the floor in front of one of the exposed toilets, her body turned away from it. She was bent over backwards with her head held in place, face up, over the bowl by a leather harness. Her wrists and ankles were tied together and to eye-bolts in the floor at the base of the toilet. The O-ring gag was back in her mouth and Justin, the leader of the Water Team, was inserting a large funnel into the O.

"If you let so much as a drop escape from your mouth without swallowing it," he was telling her, "we'll ram that enema hose up your cunt and fill it with boiling water. Is that clear?"

Sveta made a sound approximating yes .

Once again Tiffany was struck by the extraordinary perfection of Sveta's body. Even in this awkward position every slender limb was elegantly shaped, her waist amazingly narrow, her belly flat and well toned. Her breasts thrust deliciously up from her arched body, firm in spite of their size. The pink nipples with their hard nubs jutting upwards seemed to beg for nibbling.

The cameras began panning the other members of the Water Team, every one of them grinning and holding a drink, mostly beer and soft drinks. The levels remaining was evidence that they had been tanking up since their arrival in the studio to be ready for this first event.

"Okay," Justin called out to them, "who's ready to burst?"

Several hands went up.

"Okay," he said. "We'll do this three at a time. That's about all her stomach can hold at any one time. If anyone can't hold it until your turn, do it in that tub over there and we'll pour it into her later tonight. Now, who REALLY needs to piss?"

Three girls hopped up and down and waved their arms more vigorously than the others.

"Okay. We'll start with Jackeline, Olga and Sarae.

Jackeline, the petite blonde from Peru, made a beeline for the toilet, peeling off her costume as she ran. She threw her right leg over Sveta as though mounting a horse and straddled her face, hovering just above the funnel. A few seconds later a solid stream of urine poured from between her legs and into the funnel. Sveta's body stiffened as her throat worked furiously, trying to swallow the tide of warm pee as fast as it filled her mouth. Laughter from the other team members mixed with Justin's taunts.

"C'mon, Sveta baby! You're the old pro at this stuff. Show us how it's done in Kiev. Chug it down! We've got a whole bunch of full bladders here and you're gonna get every drop, bitch, so swallow faster. Unless you want me to boil your fuckin' cunt."

Tiffany couldn't bear to watch it any more. She'd known this type of degradation would be inevitable with the Water Team, of course, and in the long run Sveta would be spared the more horrible possibilities of wood, iron and fire. But it was heartrending nevertheless.

She switched to Studio 3. Lilya had been the leader of the Iron Team. Unlike Sveta, she had recognized her vulnerability in the Lottery and had named Briana as her successor if the worst should happen. Briana, the only one of the five regulars who had not been named to lead a team, had been the natural choice, and now, with Lilya suffering a severe caning in Studio 1, she was making the most of her new role. One part of her understood that her mother had to avoid the perception of nepotism; but another part of her was insulted at having been passed over in favor of Justin for the fourth team.

The victim assigned to the Iron Team was at that moment being attached to the inside of a wide, flat, cylindrical iron band that resembled the rim of a huge truck tire. She had been splayed out in an X inside the rim. A close-up shot revealed that they were using barbed wire around her wrists and ankles. More barbed wire had been wrapped around the Russian girl's hands and feet. When she was secure, four team members hoisted the giant rim on to a motorized roller bed and it began to revolve slowly on the rollers. The girl, Nina, cringed and cried in pain as the rim turned, gradually inverted her, shifting her weight from her feet to one hand and one foot, then to her hands. The barbs pushed into her palms and soles at the bottom of the rim and tore into her wrists and ankles at the top. She could push herself up on barbs to relieve the tearing, or pull up on barbs to relieve the puncturing. It was continual, ever-shifting agony. Briana, who had quickly latched on to the handsome Roberto, had an arm around him as she gaily announced to the audience that Nina would be left turning and turning in perpetual torment for the rest of the night while the members of the team found other ways to amuse themselves. She emphasized the latter point by reaching over with her free hand to give Roberto's jewels an affectionate squeeze through his leather costume. He reciprocated by ripping away part of her top and pinching her closest nipple. She giggled.

When her daughter was not scheming to get rich, Tiffany thought with exasperation, she was angling for rough sex.

She switched to Studio 4, the Fire Team. That group was also getting ready to begin the evening's revels. They had put their victim, Cory, from Sydney, Australia, inside a large wheel cage that looked exactly like an exercise wheel for a giant hamster. The "hamster" was Cory, her hands cuffed in front of her and a hobble chain clamped on her ankles. A leather hood had been locked over her head both blinding her and preventing her from removing the gag. The wheel was suspended over a gas fire and to keep from being painfully seared, Cory had to keep climbing up the inside wall of the wheel. A braking mechanism had been adjusted so that as she climbed away from the flames, her 102 pounds would start the wheel slowly turning, bringing her back down to the blistering heat, forcing her to resume her endless climb. This ordeal would last all night long: climbing blindly and clumsily up the side of the wheel over and over again.

Tiffany knew from past experience with this device that increasing exhaustion would force Cory to withstand the pain of the heat for longer and longer rests between climbs. At the moment she was averaging about ten seconds. The machine had a timer that measured the resting periods. If the wheel remained motionless for more than twenty-five seconds it would turn on a motor that would start the wheel turning on its own. They didn't want their victim cooked prematurely. It also triggered an alarm so team members could check on her condition. All the teams had been warned of severe consequences if their victims died before 1400 hours Sunday. Once the motor started, the wheel would continue to turn itself until its human hamster was taken out for a new torture in the morning. Cory would be tumbled to the bottom over and over unless she somehow managed to cling to the cage through its full 360 degree rotation. All night long!

The Fire Team, having set things in motion for the night, was already beginning to party in the background. Five of the girls had peeled off their costumes and were as naked as Cory, but having a lot more fun.

Tiffany switched back to Studio 1 to see how the Wood Team planned to leave Lilya for the night, after her caning. The first thing that caught her attention was the frightening latticework of purple welts all over the backs of her legs, her feet, the inside of her thighs, her pretty ass, her armpits, and her ample breasts. The area around her labia looked particularly bruised and swollen. Black trails of mascara had streaked her face from copious weeping. She was standing up now, her head and wrists still clamped in wooden stocks, but another set of stocks was being clamped over her wide-spread ankles. The upper stocks were hanging from slackened ropes attached to ceiling pulleys, but the leg stocks were bolted to the floor. One of the girls on the team produced a pointed wooden pole. She applied some oil to the pointed end and pushed it between Lilya's sore pussy lips and up into her vagina until it met resistance. Lilya squealed and rose up on her toes, confirming that the point had reached her cervex. The other end of the pole was anchored in a slot on top of the lower stocks. As long as Lilya could remain standing perfectly still during the night, the pole in her cunt would be merely irritating. If she allowed her body to sag or droop in any way, she would start to impale herself on the point. It would be a long night for her.

Tiffany checked on Studio 2. The team had apparently decided to spice Sveta's liquid diet of urine with semen. One of the camera techies had been recruited (or, more likely, volunteered) to let the busty Sarae masturbate him over Sveta's face while he massaged Sarae's considerable boobs. In due course he groaned and jerked as a thick load of cum spurted into the O-ring strapped in Sveta's mouth. She gulped it down. Tiffany hoped the fools who had strapped her in this position over the toilet would accidentally let her drown in her own vomit, putting an early end to her suffering and giving Tiffany a chance to spread some pain to her tormentors. It was a back-breaking position and no doubt they planned to leave her in it all night.

The cameras would keep a constant vigil on both the victims and their torturers until dawn, switching between views of the ongoing suffering and opportunistic voyeurism as the team members loosened up and got lewd. There would be much intermingling during the night as the Candidates visited each other's studios to see what the competition was up to and extend their range of play and partners. To offset the overabundance of beautiful females the company encouraged their male employees and selected male guests to join in the revelries and orgies. There was never a problem achieving an acceptable balance of sexes, or ample sexual excess.

But Tiffany had had enough. Maybe these girls could substitute drinking, dancing and orgasms for a night's sleep, but she couldn't. Tomorrow would be the first full day of intense torture for Lilya, Sveta, Nina and Cory, and she had to keep it all moving smoothly for a jaded and demanding audience. Furthermore, she knew something these cavorting bubbleheads did not: that more than just these four victims would be dead and in the roasting pits by Sunday night.

4. Saturday

By 3:00 most of the heavy-duty partying had ended. A few sloshed couples were still licking and sucking on each other in small cum-coated entanglements of naked limbs, but most had dropped off to sleep, often with intimate connections of hands, faces and sex organs still intact. Briana, sensing that she should be reasonably alert for the activities ahead, had called upon her reserves of self-restraint and called it a night after her fourth partner and seventh major orgasm.

None of the four victims slept that night. The torment of immovability for Sveta, strapped painfully on the toilet bowl, its porcelain edge grinding into her spine, was no less terrible than the torment of ceaseless movement for Lilya dancing on tiptoes to keep from being impaled on the pointed dowel; or Nina doing endless cartwheels on barbed wire, her arms and legs caked with blood; or Cory struggling eternally uphill in her hamster's wheel. Each had resigned herself to the inevitability of death, but how can one resign oneself to another two days of escalating agony?

A klaxon sounded, the call to breakfast for the team members. It catapulted Briana out of a desperate situation: she had been backed to the edge of a cliff by a terrible black beast that she had only recently been cuddling against. Without warning it had turned on her, its rows of sharp teeth snapping just inches from her face, intent on killing her! The noisy alarm saved her, but the dream was slow to dissolve, the fear reluctant to ebb.

There was a pressure on her inner left thigh and she looked down to see what was causing it. Recognizing Roberto's thick, unruly black hair, she remembered. Her last moments of consciousness before slipping into dreams were tinged with the wet tingling sensations of his tongue lapping gently at her clit. Too satiated from her earlier sexual gymnastics to encourage more serious stimulation, she had simply sighed and drifted away. How had those first softly erotic dreams turned into an attack by a murderous, treacherous beast?

But it was not in Briana's nature to spend time or energy on intellectual analyses. She eased Roberto's head off her thigh, wincing at the scrape of his morning stubble on her tender skin, and slipped off the communal mattress. Other couples were coming groggily awake, too, but Briana was quick to draw the attention of the cameras by going into a series of languid stretches, putting the shapely perfection of her small nude body to maximum visual advantage.

As she lathered herself sexily in the open shower, she thought back on her several performances last night and hoped her night-owl fans had enjoyed as them much as she did. Particularly memorable was an impromptu scene she had concocted in Studio 2. Inspired by the sight of Sveta's arched body topped by perky nipples at the summit of those sumptuous boobs, she came up with an idea she knew the show directors (including her mother) would love because it combined sex with torture.

She needed a collaborator and looked around for potential recruits, spotting one immediately. He was one of the Banqueters, a guest who had paid a small fortune to partake of the roasted victims Sunday night and be allowed to wander through the torture studios to observe the fun first hand. On the plus side, he was quite good looking: tall, mid thirties, athletic build, thick brown hair and sexy, commanding eyes. On the minus side: he had a young woman with him, another Banqueter. No wedding ring, though, so there was a good possibility he might cooperate even if the woman objected. Briana, who had put on a filmy cape to tease the viewing audience and was very much aware of her seductive powers, had beckoned the man aside to ask if he'd be interested in taking part in her scene. She watched with satisfaction as his eyes wandered to where her hard nipples poked the flimsy material of the cape outward. It turned out he was more than willing to be cooperative, and the woman was no obstacle. The man, named Paul, was a bdsm Master and the woman, roxanne, was his sex slave. She would do what he told her to do. Perfect! Briana revised her plan to include roxanne — a tall, slim brunette with long legs and a proud, patrician face that gave no clue to her submissive personality. Until Paul gave her an order.

With no need to speak confidentially, Briana explained her scenario aloud. At her Master's command, roxanne stripped down to her high heels and stockings, moved to Sveta's right side and began suckling the breast on that side, expertly pulling on the long bud with her lips and teeth. Briana sat on the floor at Sveta's left side facing away. As Paul straddled her, she opened his pants, withdrew his stiffening manhood, put her lips around the glans and, with her hands on his butt, pulled him deep into her mouth. Holding her head impaled on his cock, he bent over her head and began sucking on Sveta's left teat. The cameras moved in for closeups of all three action points. After a few minutes, Paul lifted himself off Sveta's tit and pulled out of Briana's mouth.

"I'm ready for stage two," he said, and ordered roxanne to come around between Sveta's splayed knees, lie face down on top of her and push her tongue into Sveta's O-ring gag. Then, with Paul's help, Briana climbed up on roxanne's back and laid on her facing up, creating three layers of girl. Paul draped Briana's legs over his shoulders and maneuvered his rigid cock to the entrance of her love hole, already wet with anticipation. The alignment was perfect and he slipped his full length into her, pleased with her gasp of pleasure. They humped at each other feverishly for a full minute, the thumping and the weight of the two women grinding the back of Sveta's neck painfully against the toilet bowl. The cameras caught her obvious anguish.

Alerted by Paul that he was about to cum, Briana pushed him back, unplugging him, hopped off roxanne and knelt down to accept Paul's load in her mouth. She gripped his pumping rod with three fingers to prevent it from jamming into the back of her throat, forcing her to swallow. Instead, she milked him dry while holding it all in her mouth, then, pushing roxanne aside, spat it slowly through the O-gag into Sveta's mouth. As an added touch, she had Paul order roxanne to clean him off with her tongue, then do the same to the inside of Briana's mouth and Sveta's mouth. To finish the scene, she laid face up on top of the groaning Sveta and had Paul and his sex slave stand on either side of her suckling her own tits while she reached out and played with what lay between their legs.

Paul provided an unexpected bonus when Briana's skillful handwork brought him to orgasm again. This time she had him squirt it directly into Sveta's O-ring. All three helped her wash it down by taking turns peeing into her open mouth, not bothering with the funnel. Who cared if some of it splashed on her face? More fun for everyone but Sveta.

Briana's other exploits of the night had yielded greater orgasms for her, but that was the best one she had been able to contrive involving one of the victims. It was too dangerous to climb into the hamster wheel with Cory. Nina, barb-wired inside the revolving rim, was good for a cartwheel or two if you clung tightly to her body, but you had to be careful not to knock over the rim as you climbed aboard her. Lilya, impaled on the pointed rod, was good for some labia pulling and nipple-nibbling, but not much else. Most of Briana's energies, therefore, were spent on the huge orgy mattresses supplied in all four studios where her lively contributions to the debaucheries unfailingly drew the attention of the camera operators and any males in the area willing to doff their pants.

After toweling off, a process comprising an arousing repertory of salacious poses, she put on a minimal toga-like dress and walked to Studio 6 which had been laid out as a dining hall. There the first of the night's revelers to regain consciousness were swilling down coffee or nursing hangovers. A lavish spread of morning delicacies were laid out on a long, linen covered, flower-laden table. Briana pointedly disdained the fancy confections, croissants, doughnuts, pancakes, waffles, omelettes, meats and other tempting delights, selecting instead a mixture of fruits and a spicy herbal tea. Unlike her sexual appetite, she kept her gustatory appetite under strict discipline. She had no intention of letting herself go like her mother. She planned to be svelte, sexy and in demand far into her sixties and beyond.

When she had finished her bowl of fruit, she picked up a water bottle with a steel straw and brought it to her victim in Studio 3. Nina's eyes were filled with a desperate plea for relief from her barbed wire bonds. Briana ignored it and pushed the straw through a hole in the ball gag. She squeezed water into the girl's throat. Nina swallowed greedily. The gag not only stretched her jaw mercilessly, but resulted in most of her saliva escaping as drool, leaving her throat parched. Briana's action had nothing to do with salving her misery, however. It was strictly business. Without occasional infusions of water, gagged victims could become so dehydrated they might pass out during the latter stage of their torture, possibly ruining a good snuff.

By noon all members of all four teams were back in action and ready to compete for Best in Show. Tiffany watched it all from the cloister of the control room.

Sveta had been equipped with a copper stim pushed deep into her vagina and held in place by rivets through her labia. She had been released from her position over the toilet but her face and hair remained encrusted with semen and dried urine. Her wrists were tied behind her with leather thongs, her gag was removed and Justin lifted her into a glass tank for a "bath." The floor of the tank was covered with inch-high, sharp-pointed spikes, forcing her to hold herself off them as best she could with her fingers and toes. Wiring for the stim ran from between her legs to a coiled heap on the spiked floor and up over the top edge of the tank. A steel grate was locked down to the top of the tank. Immediately water began to flow in from a pipe at the bottom and within minutes Sveta was forced to swim in an eel-like fashion both to stay off the spikes and breathe at the surface. But the surface gradually contracted to a mere inch from the grate, so she had to press her face against it to gulp in air. She (and the viewers) were informed that any attempt to give up and let herself drown would result in a painful shock from the stim. They demonstrated. She screamed and promised she wouldn't let herself drown. (Of course, the team was ready to rescue and revive her if she did. They had something better planned for her actual snuff.)

The Wood Team had placed a wooden broom handle between Lilya's back and her elbows, locking it in place by cinching up her wrists with rope in front of her. Five members of the team held her firmly by her arms, waist and ankles while Tony, the team leader, slowly pushed and twisted a thin, pointed wooden dowel into the side of her left breast, all the way through it into her right breast, and then out the other side. Rivulets of bright fresh blood ran down from all four entrance and exit wounds, drying to match the darker blood smeared on her inner thighs from her long night on the impaling rod. The pinioned girl trembled and sobbed with this new agony. She was led under a beam which extended outwards from a center axis on a vertical pole. Cords were tied from both ends of the rod skewering her breasts to the overhead beam, then down again to her ankles. The cords were pulled taut. Tony produced a short single-tail whip, cracking her on her sore bottom, already well striped from the previous night's caning. "Walk!" he yelled. She began to walk in a circle around the axis pole, the cords tugging painfully at her skewered breasts with every step, forcing her to take small, hurried steps on tiptoe. Soon her leg muscles would be on fire, but she could not stop without a terrible whipping, and could not let herself collapse without hanging from her tit rod. She had begun to pine for death, but it was still a long way off.

The Fire and Iron Teams had received permission to combine for a joint torture in the form of a game that Briana had devised. She and Lin, who headed up the Fire Team, had their respective squads stretch out two forty-foot coils of concertina wire side by side. Briana had come across them in the supply area. The coils had a diameter of about three feet, enough to allow the passage of a human body on hands and knees if one didn't mind crawling along in a tunnel of barbed wire. Briana and Lin didn't mind a bit, since they wouldn't be doing it. Nina and Cory were prepped for it by being equipped with special incentive gags. The gags were expansion devices, much like the expansion bolts used in drywall to hold heavy pictures or shelves, except that these were more like clam shells covered with metal thorns. An allen screw opened up the two halves of the "shell" inside the mouth, spreading it painfully open and driving the thorns into the tongue, cheeks and roof of the mouth. The incentive was that the loser would continue to wear the spiked gag right up to the bitter end of her snuff. Further incentives (to prevent stalling) came in the form of a cattle prod and a blowtorch.

The two weeping competitors, blood now mixing with their drool, were led to one end of the twin coils of barbed wire and released from their restraints. Both were tiny — the pretty Russian weighed only 95 pounds and her 19-year old Australian counterpart was only seven pounds heavier — but the Iron and Fire teams took no chances, surrounding them in a solid phalanx to discourage any thought they might have of avoiding an experience that promised to be extremely unpleasant. The girls were inserted head first into the tunnel openings. "Go!" Lin called out, and Nina and Cory began their tentative crawls into hell. Dissatisfied with their progress, Briana touched Nina's ass with her cattle prod and Lin gave Cory's a kiss from the blue tip of the blowtorch flame. With simultaneous screams, both girls scrambled forward, leaving a trail of blood from hands, knees and toes. The disturbed coils bounced around, the vicious barbs slicing into their arms, back and legs. Cory's long blond hair kept tangling in the barbs, forcing her to stop and rip it loose under the threat of Lin's yellow and blue flame. It was the little Russian, her knees shredded to a bloody pulp, tears mixing with the blood now streaming from her lacerated mouth, who emerged from her tunnel first.

Vexed by the failure of her own entry, Lin had her teammates pin the hapless girl over the coils of her own tunnel and burned an "L" into her left buttocks with the blowtorch. "That's for LOSER!" she yelled over Cory's screams.

Briana, meanwhile, gave Nina her reward. She reversed the allen screw to close up the clamshell gag in Nina's mouth. Nina moaned with relief as the thorns tore free and the gag slipped out. Cory would have to suffer with hers until the end.

But there was yet another contest they must endure. This one was Lin's brainchild.

Two new expansion devices were produced that resembled long, black dildos — smooth except for a profusion of small holes. There was an allen socket in the blunt end. While members of the teams tied the arms of the two victims behind them, forearm over forearm, Briana and Lin demonstrated for the viewers how the devices worked. When the allen screw was turned, sharp pins about a quarter-inch long emerged from the holes. There was no need to explain how they would be used, only where . The pins were retracted, the surfaces oiled, and when both victims were bent over trestles, the devices were shoved rudely into the upraised rectums. As Briana and Lin turned the allen screw, the two wretched victims screamed into their gags, Nina into her reinserted rubber ball, Cory into her mouthful of thorns. Once again the two girls were informed that the winner would have her butt plug removed; the loser would die with it still in place tomorrow.

The contest was another race. This one would be on top of a series of seven steel plates, each eight feet long, laid end to end on concrete blocks, heated from beneath by gas burners and covered with a thick layer of old fashioned thumb tacks. Briana and Lin added a further degree of difficulty and pain by jabbing fish hooks through the contestants' nipples and attaching a chain between them; then they connected the girls together with a six foot chain between the fish hooks. Two more pair of fish hooks were pushed through their labia and connected by chains the same way. If one of them fell down or stopped, the other would be forced to stop or have the hooks rip through her nipples and pussy lips. Once again Briana armed herself with the cattle prod for added incentive. Lin switched to a soldering iron. The unhappy contestants were to travel the full forty-eight feet of hot steel plates, touch first one ear then the other to a red hot branding iron, then race each other back to the starting point.

Two pairs of the strongest girls lifted Nina and Cory up and, at a signal, set them down on the starting end of the steel plates. The searing heat of the plates made it impossible to put their feet down long enough to sweep a path through the tacks, so they engaged in a hopping dance as they headed to the opposite end. The piston-like movement of their legs made the spiked butt plugs twist inside their intestinal walls, puncturing and tearing at the delicate tissues. They screamed and sobbed in their agony, high-stepping onward as more and more hot tacks imbedded in their bloody feet. Ten feet from the finish Cory slipped and fell to her knees. Nina danced wildly in place, unable to continue forward because of the chains linking them, while Cory squirmed screaming on the stovetop surface of the plates. A frenzied crowd of team members and guests shouted at them to get going, a demand emphasized by fiery touches of the prod and soldering iron to their thighs. Both girls were in a panic, but Nina, having slightly less pain to contend with, was the first to recover some wits. She turned her back on the thrashing Cory, grabbed a handful of her blond hair and pulled her up to where she could get her feet under her. The flesh on Cory's left arm, hip and leg was seared red by the hot steel plate and covered with imbedded thumb tacks. With no time to feel sorry for themselves, both women started hopping forward again toward the branding iron waiting for them ten agonizing feet farther on.

Nina, who had been pulling Cory along with her tit chains, reached the branding iron first. Deliberately leaning over to touch her right ear to the red hot iron was the most difficult thing she had ever done, but the part of her mind still functioning through her torment told her there was no way out of it. The pain was incredible, but so was the agony radiating from her burned and punctured feet as she danced in place. Quickly, before she could think about it, she turned her head and touched the other ear to the branding iron. She screamed and shook her head violently, trying to throw off the new pain.

Cory meanwhile, nearly crazed with her own pain, was sobbing hysterically, her eyes wide on the branding iron, shaking her head, spraying blood from her thorn-filled mouth. Even touches from the soldering iron on her butt only increasing her sobbing and the height of her hopping. She would not touch her ear to the ruby red iron. She just couldn't do it! Nina knew the teams would let them fry here if Cory didn't do as commanded. She couldn't yell anything intelligible at her through the rubber ball gag, so she reverted to the method that had worked before. She backed up to Cory, grabbed her arm and tried to slam her against the hot iron. Cory resisted and nearly knocked her over. Desperate to avoid more painful shocks from Briana's cattle prod, Nina spun Cory around. Working with her hands behind her back, she grabbed the chain between the hooks and yanked hard. One hook tore through the nipple and was free. Another savage yank tore the other hook free as Cory screamed and fell to her knees again. Nina felt no sympathy. Let Cory suffer the consequences of her own cowardice; they were both going to die and be eaten tomorrow anyway. Nina's only interest now was to reduce her suffering in the meantime. She sprinted quickly back to the starting point and was lifted off the hot race track. She never knew what became of the little Australian blonde. She didn't care. Her only concern was that the tacks were being removed from her feet and the barbarous spiked dildo from her ass. Whatever agonies lay ahead, at least she was rid of those. Unlike Cory who would spend the remaining hours of her life with her ass filled with nails and her mouth with thorns.

From the control room, Tiffany watched little Cory floundering to her feet at the far end of the torturous racetrack, blood streaming from her torn nipples as well as her mouth and rectum, her feet loaded with tacks and splashing blood with every hop on the superheated plate. Tiffany depressed the button that fed her mike into Lin's earpiece and ordered her to have her team remove Cory from the hot plates and prepare her for her next ordeal. She reminded Lin that URP wanted it's volunteer victims alive and well for their eventual snuff, and their flesh in reasonably attractive condition for the following Roast. Their Roast clientele had, after all, paid a hefty price to see these lovely living girls converted into beautiful presentations of meat on a spit. (She didn't mention the special arrangement Justin had just made that would allow a special snuff for Sveta.)

Two of Tiffany's screens showed Briana bouncing around among her team members celebrating Nina's win, oblivious to Cory's anguish. She watched this jubilation with unease. Tiffany was no squeamish bleeding heart, having presided over thousands of executions over the years, but even she felt some sympathy for these poor, damned women. Briana acted as though she might not have been one of the victims herself. Last night she had added gleefully to Sveta's torment as though the two had never been friends and cohorts, working and playing together on two previous shows. Tiffany could not help but wonder if raising her beautiful child in the shadow of her own ugly profession had not somehow damaged whatever connections there are in the human psyche that enable us to feel compassion. Could this be the same golden haired tyke who skipped around the breakfast table singing nursery songs? Who had listened with wonder as Tiffany read her the story of the Little Rocket that Could? Who had cried when the family dog chewed off her doll's head? Were these shows, in fact, dulling not only Briana's sensitivities, but numbing an entire planetload of humanity to cruelty? But this job paid handsomely and this was not a line of thought she could afford to pursue, so she shook it out of her mind and switched to Studio 1 to see how Tony's Wood Team was doing with Lilya.

In one sense they had chosen the easiest and most obvious means to dispatch their victim. On the other hand, they had decided to do it in an historically accurate way, more or less, to make the most of it's extreme cruelty. They had decided to crucify her.

The wooden dowel that had been run through her breasts for the previous night's torture had been withdrawn. She had been dressed in a white gown that draped over one shoulder, leaving the other bare. Tiffany caught their show just as they were ceremoniously stripping it off and stringing her up with harsh hemp ropes bound around her wrists and ankles, holding her spreadeagled and naked, a ready and helpless target. As the Romans had done, they chose for her scourging multi-tailed whips with bits of metal tied to the ends of the thongs. They showed them to the live and video audiences, explaining that their purpose was to rip to shreds the skin on the condemned prisoner's back, not just for the immediate pain, but so that later, when she was hanging on the cross, any movement would result in raw flesh scraping against the roughly hewn wood. And there would be a lot of movement. The Romans would have used the whips both front and back, but — and Tony apologized profusely to his audience — they were allowed by URP to use them only on her back so that her front side would remain fairly presentable for the spit roast. For her breasts, belly and thighs they would use canes. With proper cosmetics, basting and browning, bruises disappear. The chewed up flesh on her back would not be as appetizing, but she would be laid face up for carving, so it didn't matter all that much.

The team drew lots for the privilege of scourging her. Four were chosen: two with canes in front to deliver twenty-five strokes each; two others alternating twenty-five strokes with the whips on her back. They did it slowly, letting the pain from each blow blossom and careen through every nerve in her body, watching her writhe and shriek, tears rolling down her pretty cheeks. When they had finished, her breasts and belly were a purple network of old and new stripes, her back, buttocks and the back of her thighs a pulpy mass of raw flesh. She moaned ceaselessly in a misery of pain that was only just beginning.

The cross consisted of a fifteen-foot vertical beam and a seven-foot cross beam, both were 6x6s and had been roughed up with an adz. The team detached the cross beam and laid it on the floor behind Lilya. They took her down, toppled her over backwards on to it, stretching her arms out and lashing them to it with ropes. They hauled her to her feet and made her trudge through the studio and out into the street carrying the heavy cross beam. Using whips to keep her moving, they forced her to walk the perimeter of the studio lot twice, a distance of about two miles. The hot California sun seemed to boil her tattered flesh and the beam ground against her wounds with every step. But this was the gentle part. What followed was a horror that had been hundreds of years in development, beginning with the Persians and reaching perfection with the Romans in the third century. They led her into a roped off area in a large sandy lot. The vertical beam of the cross had been laid beside a cement-lined hole in the center of the roped area. Lilya was unstrapped from the cross beam and watched in a kind of detached trance as it was bolted in place on the upright. She knew they were preparing it for her, but she wouldn't allow herself to think about it. But in due course she had to. She was seized by the arms and thrown down backward on the cross. Four team members held her arms down as two others produced large spikes and placed them carefully on spots Tiffany had marked on her wrists. The pain of the spikes being hammered through her flesh was sudden and fierce, but not as bad as the pain the rough wood was causing on her raw back and shoulders. She looked over and was surprised that there was little blood. The spikes missed the arteries and veins, merely smashing through a few bones. The tops of the nails were bent over with the mallets so she would not be able to tear her hands free. As they were doing that, another group of team members had taken hold of her legs and bent them so her knees were pointing outwards away from each other, exposing her sex in the most obscene possible way. One heel was laid across the other and another huge spike was hammered through them. This, too, was bent over so that she would not be able to kick free. As they were taking care of these details, other members of the team were applying honey to her body and to the upright beam to which her heels were nailed. They smeared it on her face, up her nose, on her eyelids and poked it into the corners of her mouth around the ball gag, as well as into her widely gaping cunt and her anus. When that was finished, Tony and four of the strongest team members heaved the cross and it's hundred pounds of suffering girl to a vertical position and dropped it into the concrete sleeve. An auburn haired girl with a shovel scraped sand up to the base of the cross and two others drizzled honey over it to alert ants to the banquet hanging above, mewling now from the intense and constant pain in her wrists and ankles.

Lilya's true agony had just begun.

She soon had difficulty breathing. Stressed by the angle at which her arms were being pulled, her diaphragm muscles started to tire, making it hard to exhale. By pushing downward on the spike through her heels she was able to breathe a little better, but the added pain was excruciating and the strain on her thigh muscles could not be sustained for long. If her knees had been together, she could have lifted her body more easily, but with her knees splayed lewdly apart the lifting process was awkward. She knew she should let herself stop breathing; death was the only way to end this torment. But her body would not allow it any more than it would allow any of us to strangle ourselves with our own hands. Every time the lack of oxygen became acute, her nervous system made her push herself up involuntarily for another gasp of air. This is how she would spend the last days and a half of her life: grinding ceaselessly up and down on the cross, the roughened wood rasping the raw flesh off her back. Up and down. Up and down. Hour after agonizing hour.

Tiffany switched to Studio 2. The Water Team had just finished strapping Sveta to a plank on the rim of a water tank, her wrists tied to the board just above her head. Her gag had been removed. They had wound electrical tape around her eyes as a blindfold and were sliding her on the plank head-first out over the water. Justin was reminding Sveta and the audience that this first dunk would be for ten seconds, but if they saw any bubbles, they would bring her up and zap her with the dreaded cattle prod in a very tender place. They tilted the board downward until her head was completely submerged and the whole team picked up the audible count from Justin. "One. Two. Three . . ." Sveta knew they wouldn't let her drown herself — this was only Saturday — and she desperately wanted to avoid contact with the prod, so she cooperated grimly. The next dunk was for eleven seconds, then twelve, then thirteen — each submersion getting longer. When the count reached thirty-three seconds, her burning lungs exploded and her body thrashed on the plank as water rushed into her lungs. The plank was pulled out quickly and turned over so she could cough the liquid out of her lungs. When she was breathing fairly normally again, the plank was flipped so that she was face up again.

"We'll have to do that one again, darlin,'" Justin drawled, "and here's what you get for failing." He touched the prod first to her left armpit, then the right. Each touch brought a scream and a jerk of her body in its restraints. She broke into tears, knowing from experience it was going to be a long, long day.

Tiffany couldn't watch any more. She had spared Sveta the kind of torment Lilya was enduring on the cross, but even was too hard to watch. She switched to Studio 3.

Whatever delight the Iron Team had enjoyed with Nina's recent victories in the concertina wire race and on the hot plates was not being shared with their winning entry. They had taken a long strand of barbed wire and were wrapping it in loops around her breasts. Her arms were being held behind her back, forearm over forearm, and the ends of the strand were looped tightly around her wrists — the left wrist attached to the right breast, the right wrist attached to the left breast, the excess wire wrapped around her forearms to bind them together. A collar had been fashioned out of barbed wire and her hair tied to it in the back so that her head was tilted up. Blood trickled down the pale skin of her neck where the barbs bit in. More blood dribbled down her rib cage and belly from the many punctures around her breasts. Another length of barbed wire was used as a hobble around her ankles. Steel nipple clamps were attached, the kind with teeth, and a leash clipped to a chain running between them. Thus adorned, restrained and bleeding, she was led by Briana out to the street where a mob of guests waited to see live what they had been watching on huge screens. Briana handed the leash over to Corrine for the first of four torturous circumnavigations of the URP lot as elements of the crowd tagged along, sometimes throwing rocks at the suffering girl, cheering when the added insult made her burst into tears.

Tiffany knew what would happen next when Nina's long march was finished. In the meantime she switched to Studio 4 and the Fire Team.

Cory, still trying to cope with the spiked expansion devices in her mouth and ass, was being prepared for something far worse. She was standing on a platform between two gas jets; they were aimed at her ankles but not yet activated. Each wrist was handcuffed to a horizontal iron pipe over her head and one of the female members of the team was locking a choke chain around her neck to the same pipe. All the slack had been taken out of the chain so that Cory had to stand to her full height to breathe. Alligator clips were attached to her torn nipples with wires running to a nearby control board.

Lin, the lovely Chinese team captain, her raven hair swept teasingly over one eye, was holding up a carrot-shaped device with two flanges, an electrical wire and foot-long translucent tail all extending from one end. The wire also ran to the control board. She was lecturing.

"If our victim's other two holes were not already occupied, we would put one of these in both those places, too. But she is already in much pain there, so instead we put it in cunt. Nikki, you have better English than me. Please explain."

The Amsterdam beauty with the multi-colored hair sprouted a broad smile and stepped up beside Lin, lifting her chin and doing what she could to maximize her modest bust. "The device was designed specifically for URP and has proved very popular. Although not by those using it, of course. It contains both refrigeration and heating coils and goes very fast from one extreme to the other. In its A mode when the victim is standing or trotting on the platform it becomes cold, reaching the temperature of ice within a few minutes. In its B mode the heating coils are activated, bringing it to a temperature hot enough to burn flesh in eight seconds, and hot enough to melt solder in thirty seconds. Mode B activates when the victim pulls herself up on the overhead bar. There are two reasons she will be doing that. One: we will shortly be turning on the gas jets which will burn her feet and ankles if she does not keep jogging in place. That is an extremely painful action for her because of the thing in her ass which will be constantly ripping at her intestine, besides which she will soon tire and need to pull herself up away from the flames. The second reason is that if she goes longer than twenty seconds without pulling herself up for a minimum of five seconds, it activates a painful jolt of electricity in her tits which will keep up until she does." She nodded at Lin. "Okay?"

"Yes. Thank you, Nikki. We now insert hot-cold device."

Nikki and another girl took hold of Cory's ankles and pulled her legs apart so the cameras could get a clear shot of Lin inserting it into Cory's vagina. A rivet gun was used to drive rivets through her labia and the flanges to hold it in place. Lin fanned the tail that now hung between Cory's legs.

"These filaments light up red when heat is on so you know when victim is burning inside," she said. She pointed to a light on top of the control board. "Green light there tells when victim gets shock in tits. Also, she will scream. Now we add one more torture."

Two girls lifted Cory off her feet by the waist and Nikki slipped a rubber mat covered with spiked points on the platform. It was the kind of mat put on top of a carpet with spikes to keep it from slipping. Cory cringed as she was set down on it. Right now the points merely jabbed at her feet (already blistered and sore with early stage infection from the earlier races); but if she had to jog in place, as Nikki had said, they would easily puncture through the skin.

Lin circled around to look Cory in the face. "You understand what you must do?"

Cory nodded miserably. No use stalling. They would just start anyway and let her learn the hard way. Like the other three victims, she cursed herself for the millionth time for the greed and stupidity that had put her in this position. With a whoosh the gas jets lighted and flames licked out horizontally, just touching her ankles and quickly creating blistering pain. She did indeed jog, lifting her knees high in an unconscious attempt to escape the flames. The thing in her ass was shredding her colon and with each step the flames burned deeper into the skin on her ankles. There was no help for it! She grabbed the bar and pulled herself up. She hung there as long as she could to let the burn pain subside, but soon her arms were burning from the inside and could no longer hold her up. She had to let herself down and start over. After several such cycles she couldn't imagine how she would survive another hour, much less till nightfall. Or maybe they expected her to keep this up all night, too! Agony was everywhere: her feet, ankles, legs, ass, lungs, arms, mouth! How sweet the thought of death was to her now!

Tiffany flipped back to Studio 2. Justin was announcing the special arrangement they had made for Sveta's snuff.

". . . and since we don't know how long she'll be able to hold out — maybe an hour, maybe twelve hours — we'll start her final ordeal now. This snuff will destroy much of her body, obviously, which would cheat the fine folks who have registered for the Roast Banquet, so in order to be given permission to perform this snuff, we have made a special arrangement with Ultimate Reality Productions to provide a substitute to take Sveta's place in the roasting pit. The Water Team has all agreed to participate in a drawing which will determine her substitute. For taking this extra risk, the entire Wood Team will receive double our normal compensation and be entitled to opt for the Bonus Option along with whichever of the other three teams wins tonight's vote."

A nice deal, Tiffany thought, for those whose luck held out and didn't get greedier. It did not, however, ease her sorrow for what was about to happen to Sveta.

Tony, who had a flair for the dramatic, was handed a dead chicken. He walked over to a large tank. "This is where the lovely Sveta will die," he said. "This tank contains water bountifully laced with an acid that dissolves flesh on contact. Let me demonstrate."

He dipped half the chicken into the acid bath and lifted it out again. Only half a chicken remained.

"I won't tell you what the acid is, because I don't want to give you unhappy husbands any homicidal ideas," he chortled. "But if you stay with us long enough, you'll see how effective it is at dissolving even the most reluctant female."

The camera's view climbed upwards to reveal Sveta's nude body suspended over the tank. Her hands where taped to the ends of a three-foot bar and her long black hair was tied to the middle of it. She could relieve the pain in her scalp by pulling herself up by her hands, but the hair was tied too close to the bar to allow her to pull up to where she could hang by her chin. The bar was suspended from a winch which began to lower her toward the acid. It stopped just as her feet would have touched the surface, but she had pulled herself up a little.

"As you can see, the winch is holding Sveta just above the surface of the acid in the tank. If she lets her feet droop so that her toes touch the surface, she will lose her toes. We will begin lowering her into the acid at precisely 8:00 in the morning. The winch will drop her one-eighth of an inch every forty-eight seconds. For a while she'll be able to pull herself up on the bar to postpone the terrible pain of the acid burning her flesh and bones away, but muscles can only hold out so long. Furthermore, the acid will cauterize her flesh as it's eaten away, inch by inch, so that she won't bleed to death. We figure she will lose her nice long legs and about half her torso before she dies. That's about three feet of her and will take about six hours. Her scrumptious tits should be ready for harvesting in plenty of time for at least two of our Roast guests. Meanwhile, from now to eight-hundred hours in the morning she can think about it while she hangs by her hair. Oh, and Sveta, be sure to keep your knees bent a little, just like that. You definitely want to keep your toes out of that acid. Nasty stuff! Now then, let's get to that drawing to find out which of us will replace Sveta on the spit."

The twenty-four members of the Water Team were gathered along one side of a series of tables set end to end, stretching some seventy feet. Justin took a position at one end and a technician handed him a deck of cards. He shuffled them as he talked.

"We have agreed to use a normal deck of cards. I will sluff four of them . . ." he dealt the top four cards face up, ". . . which leaves forty-eight. There are twenty-four of us, so that means we could conceivably go down the line twice before someone gets the death card, although I doubt it will take that long. The death card is the Queen of Spades which, as you can see," he gestured to the four sluffed cards, "is still in the deck. Whoever is dealt the Queen of Spades wins the honor of replacing Sveta in the roasting pit, the method of execution to be determined by the Chief Execution Officer. I will deal, beginning with myself. But first, everyone gets to cut the deck."

He set the deck down in front of Jackeline, the first team member in line, and she cut it. Then he continued down the length of the table until everyone had done the same.

"Now there can be no question of a fixed deck. Right?"

"Right," was the murmured response, muted by a discernable nervousness.

"We start with me." Justin dealt himself the first card. The ten of hearts. He realized he'd been holding his breath and let it out. "I got the ten of hearts," he announced cheerfully, and turned to Jackeline who, he noticed, had also inhaled but had not exhaled. She sagged with relief when it turned out to be the four of diamonds. He called it out and moved slowly on down the line, pulling each card off the top and deliberately hesitating just a little before turning it over to build an exquisite tension. His jauntiness deserted him, however, as he neared the far end of the line without having turned up the deadly Queen. Then he was at the end. Still no Queen of Spades.

It was time to put his own life back on the block. He returned to the head of the table, unconsciously biting his lip, and after a brief silent prayer, drew off the top card and turned it over. The two of spades. He swallowed, waited till his heart slowed down a little, announced it, and looked up into Jackeline's terrified eyes. He had now gone through more than half the deck. Luck was swiftly running out for one of the twenty-three women at the table. Their foreheads were all shiny with nervous perspiration.

He turned over Jackeline's card. The King of Spades. A trembling sigh of relief escaped the petite Peruvian.

Next to her the dark blonde Rumanian pixie, Olga, was chewing on her lower lip, her eyes huge with fear. She followed the course of the card as it was drawn off the top of the deck, laid softly on the table face down, then turned slowly over. The nine of clubs. She closed her eyes and made a sign of the cross.

Justin moved on to the tall American blonde next to her, Sarae. He admired her capacious bosom for a moment, then looked up into her frightened blue eyes as he drew the top card off the deck. She was almost as tall as he, probably five-ten, and wrung her hands nervously as her gaze fixed on the moving card. Justin turned it slowly over. Her eyes widened and she backed away from the table with a sharp intake of breath. He glanced down at the card. And there it was. The Queen of Spades, her gentle aristocratic eyes staring off to her left with nun-like innocence, waiting steadfastly beside a scepter that looked like a bedpost. Perhaps waiting for her King to peel back her chaste red, yellow and black robes and take possession of what lay beneath. Or perhaps averting her eyes from the ominous black spade beside her face. The better to bury you with, my dear; for after I've had my way with you, I plan to put you to death.

"Well, Sarae!" Justin purred. "Looks like you have the honor. No, no! Don't back away. Stay where you are. You know the drill." He was walking around the end of the table. A Studio official handed him a pair of handcuffs. "Be a good girl and don't give us any reason to be angry with you. Remember, we get to decide how you'll be treated until your execution tomorrow. You want to be nice and cooperative."

He was standing in front of her now, her teammates forming an arc behind her in case she should panic and bolt. He allowed himself a minute to let the cameras see him enjoying the vision before him: a tall beauty with naturally honey-blond hair streaked with brighter strands of gold and a well formed athletic figure. But the highlight, of course, was that wondrous bosom of spectacular dimensions. He held out the handcuffs.

"Take them!"

Her lips quivered and she plucked them gingerly out of his fingers as though he had handed her an asp. In a sense, he had.

"Lock one of the cuffs on your right wrist, Sarae."

She pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to run. He was making her put on her own restraints. Her hands shook so badly she had to try three times before she could close it around her wrist and lock it shut.

"Good girl," said Jason, as if to a family dog. "Now put your hands behind your back and finish the job."

Sarae wanted to be strong, but tears leaked from her eyes betraying her terror. She reached behind her with both hands and fumbled for the still open cuff. Cradling it in her right hand, she slipped it around her left wrist, inserted the male side into the female side and squeezed them shut. The click of the lock sealed her fate.

Justin was still eyeing her. "Can't wait to get you naked again, Sarae. And the chefs are gonna love you! Not only are you gonna look great turning on that spit, but you've got lots of nice firm meat on your bones. I bet you'll be tasty as hell, what with all that good mid-western fare they raised you on back there in Mankato, Minnesota. Bet you never thought you'd end up as meat, huh?"

Even as Sarae parted her lips to answer, Olga handed Justin a ball gag and he shoved it into her mouth. He buckled the strap behind her head. Her answer was now buried forever behind a round red ball.

Justin smiled at her. "You like sex, don't you Sarae?"

She knew there was no right or wrong answer. All roads led to pain. She nodded sorrowfully.

"Then let's see that you spend your last hours enjoying yourself," he said, and took her by the arm.

Tiffany, watching on the monitor, knew where he would take her. She switched to Studio 3.

Nina was back from her painful trips around the perimeter of the Studio lot. Her ankles were ripped raw from the barbed wire hobble. Her neck appeared to have been slit, but it was only the blood from her barbed wire collar. Her arms were bathed in blood from the barbed wire that bound them together behind her back. Now she was being mounted on a device that made those torments pale by comparison.

The Iron Team had set up a "pony" for her to ride consisting of a rip-saw blade set into a trestle. The barbed wire hobble between her ankles was cut and she was made to straddle the saw blade. A triangular iron beam had been set on the floor under the trestle and by standing high on the balls of her feet atop the sharp edge of the beam Nina could keep the teeth of the saw about a millimeter below her labia. The ends of the barbed wire from each ankle were fastened to the floor so that standing on her toes to avoid the saw dragged the barbs into her ankles. More barbed wire was used to hold her feet to the beam edge so she couldn't escape its bite. Her gag was removed and replaced with a spreader. A hemostat was clamped on her tongue and it was pulled out as far as it would go. A decorative stud through her tongue was removed and an eye bolt forced through the hole, then secured with washers and a nut. That eye bolt was connected to another in the floor with a wire. A second wire was tied to the barbed wire loops tightly encircling her breasts and connected to a beam overhead. The two wires were pulled taut and adjusted so that Nina had her choice of two agonies. She could rise to her tiptoes on the sharp edge of the beam, pulling painfully at her tongue. Or she could let her heels drop and hang from the barbed wire around her tits, the saw blade cutting into her vulva. She would alternate between these two flavors of torment for the rest of the night.

There would be no sleep for Nina or any of the other three victims. They'd get plenty of that starting tomorrow afternoon. By then it would be most welcome.

Tiffany glanced at the clock. It was time for the viewers to start voting for their favorite team.

5. The Game

The results were not lopsided but they certainly left no doubt. The Iron Team won by several thousand votes. Briana's team. The audience loved the way they treated Nina so harshly, even after she had won both contests against Cory. They loved how blood trickled continuously from Nina's myriad wounds, torn open every time she shifted from pulling at her tongue to sitting on the saw blade, from standing on the cruel edge of the triangular iron beam to hanging from the barbed wire wrapped around her tits — swollen now like purple balloons. It had been particularly exciting when she had developed cramps in her feet and calf muscles during the night and thrashed about wildly, screaming. Her frenzied dance on the sharp-edged beam had opened up wounds on her feet, so even the iron was smeared with blood.

Lilya's agony on the cross was actually even worse than Nina's torments as she rose and sank, hanging from the nails in her wrists, then pushing up on the nails in her heels to breathe, then down again, then up, down, up . . . endlessly through the night, her legs splayed obscenely open, ready for cunt tortures to come during the morning. They would break her legs at 13:30 hours and she'd no longer be able to push herself up to breathe. She would asphyxiate just in time to be prepared for roasting. The Wood Team had wanted to use a wooden pole to break her legs, but Tiffany had insisted they use a heavy bat to avoid unnecessary battering of the legs. The team had no idea how hard it is to break the shin bones. The chefs had enough skin damage to cover up without having to deal with a mass of unnecessary welts on her shins.

Cory's feet and ankles were seriously burned by morning. Her chin, breasts and belly were red with blood still dribbling from her mouth where the barbs chewed ever deeper into her ruined tongue and palate. She could still summon enough strength to jog in place and occasionally pull herself up on the bar to lift her feet out of the flames for a few seconds. But she was noticeable weaker, slower. She had wept herself dry. Her eyes were hollow, betraying her longing for death.

Tiffany's lips trembled when she glanced at Sveta's monitor. The Ukrainian girl with the spectacular bosom was still strikingly beautiful as she hung over the vat of acid. But her feet and ankles were gone. She had barely enough strength to tuck her legs up an inch or so to prevent continuous contact with the liquid surface, preferring to let them down for short bursts of agony as her slowly lowering body edged her closer to death. By late morning most of her legs would be gone. By mid morning they would end at the knee. By noon those long slender limbs would exist only in photographs of the vibrant young woman entering the best years of her life. By mid afternoon the lower half of her torso would be gone and the upper half would give up its struggle to support life. It would be time to harvest those wonderful breasts. The chefs would probably also grill the meat from her shoulders and arms, tenderized by the long hours of stress. Sarae, the girl who would take her place in the roasting pit, was still chained to a bed as a whore for whatever guest chose to fuck a tall, beautiful blonde during her last hours of life. And many already had.

It was time to meet with the Water Team and the Iron Team to congratulate them on earning a doubling of their earnings and offer them the Bonus Option to quadruple it. Tiffany dearly hoped that Briana would be satisfied with the huge fortune she had already amassed and not press her luck. None of these young fools knew it, but their chances of escaping this "bonus" option alive was far less favorable than they imagined. If Briana had deigned to consult with her mother before signing up again for the URP Lottery, she could have warned her. But no. Children are smarter than their parents. Briana was focused on the money, not the odds.

Tiffany confronted the twenty-four members of the Iron Team and the twenty-three surviving members of the Water Team in the small auditorium where the full contingent of Candidates had met on Thursday. Standing on the dais before the cameras, she read a prepared speech off the teleprompter.

"Congratulations to you all of you on both teams. In your separate ways you have doubled the payout of your original contract. But that's only the beginning! URP is now offering to double that again. Four times the original amount! Enough for a lifetime of elegant ease! IF you're brave enough to accept the Bonus Option. You are not to know in advance what this entails, but the winners are assured of riches far beyond the hopes of most human beings. Those of you who lack the courage to accept this challenge may simply accept what you have already won and withdraw. But those of you who have the vision and the guts to go to this ultimate level of conquest, take two steps forward!"

More than half the members of the two teams stepped forward, Briana among them. Did the girl have no sense at all? Tiffany couldn't just let her do it without making one last try to warn her off, even though it meant risking her job. Worse, she could be charged with breach of contract — a capital offense. Nevertheless, she looked her daughter directly in the eyes and added a remark that was not on the teleprompter, choosing her words carefully.

"While there is still time to back out, I want you understand the finality of your decision." She held up an envelope. "This envelope contains the rules for the Option Bonus game. I don't know what they are. I don't know the odds for winning or losing. What I do know is that the winners will be fabulously wealthy and the losers will be permanently dead."

She paused to let that sink in. Briana didn't flinch, although a few of the others looked a little startled. Do these kids never seriously consider the possibility of death, she wondered?

"So here's your last chance to decide whether to walk away with what you have, or put your life back on the line to redouble it. Anyone care to step back?"

A few chewed on their lips and looked a little dubious, but no one moved. Briana glared defiantly back at her mother, tossing her golden curls in a saucy gesture of contempt for the faint-hearted. Tiffany swallowed her sorrow. She had once defied death herself and could understand her daughter's youthful bravado. But she also knew something Briana did not. There would be no 96% safety net in this "bonus" game. Yet with a sinking heart she knew it was too late. Briana was determined and there was no way to discourage her short of dragging her out and tying her up. Tiffany returned her gaze to the teleprompter.

"Excellent!" she read. "Those in the back row who are too timid to reach for the pot of gold, move to my left!" She pointed to a wall painted gray. "Those who stepped forward, who are ambitious and strong and want it all, as well as those who meant to step forward but momentarily doubted themselves, move to my right!"

She gestured to a wall painted in brilliant orange. The entire front line moved right, plus two more from the rear.

"Excellent!" she shouted. "These are the worthy ones!" She looked balefully at the others. "Is there anyone on that side of the room who realizes he or she is passing up a golden opportunity to multiply her wealth many times over? This is your last chance to turn a small fortune into a huge fortune."

Another four girls crossed to the "Bonus Option" side.

"That's it, then. On this side we have . . ." (she counted,) ". . . thirty-eight brave souls who want to extend their riches. On the other side we have . . ." (she counted,) ". . . nine who do not. Is that how it stands?"

She glared pointedly at the nine. God! If only Briana had enough sense to be among them!

"All right then. You nine may go immediately out that door." She pointed. "You others, congratulations! Come immediately with me to Studio 5 and we'll get started on your next level of riches."

She marched out the door and led the thirty-eight out into the California sunshine and several hundred yards through the URP lot to a large building near the center. She ushered them into a vestibule, and when the last of them was inside, the doors snickered shut behind them. Again, she knew what they did not. Only a few would emerge from this place alive.

The thirty-eight volunteers were herded down a long corridor and out into an arena about the size of a football or soccer field. Stands on both sides of the arena were filled with spectators, a little over five thousand by Tiffany's estimate. She could tell from the expressions on the faces of her charges that they had expected another lottery. Why this large crowd? They had little inkling at this point that most of them would be meat for tonight's feast, and that those who would be enjoying their roasted young flesh were these spectators, here to watch how they came to be on the menu.

Tiffany lined the contestants up by size, the taller more muscular specimens to her left, the smaller more delicate ones to her right. Briana was not tall, but she was strong and fit, so Tiffany had no choice but to include her among those on the left side. Then she assigned them numbers, starting from the left. Each contestant was a One or a Two. Briana was a One. She had them form two lines, the Ones facing the Twos about ten feet apart.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Tiffany's amplified voice boomed around the arena. "Please welcome the volunteers for this morning's special games."

There was a resounding round of applause and cheers

"As you know, the winners will go on to great riches, and the losers will be meat for this evening's festivities."

More cheers and applause. Gasps of surprise from the two rows of young people. She held her envelope aloft.

"In this envelope are the rules for the engagement that will determine the winners."

Tiffany tore it open and studied it for a moment. As she did so, eight officials of URP emerged on to the field carrying baskets. Two of them began tying electric blue sashes around the waists of the Ones. Two others were wrapping red armbands around both upper arms of the Twos. The other four officials began attaching leather wrist and ankle cuffs to the players on both teams. The cuffs were also colored, matching the sashes and armbands. Dangling from a single chain link on each cuff was one side of a locking device. On the right side: a thick steel pin. On the left side: a steel sleeve. A set of the cuffs was handed to Tiffany and she demonstrated to the crowd how they worked. Push the pin in the sleeve, there's a click, and it's locked in place.

She gestured toward the two teams lined up on both sides of her.

"As you can see, our two teams are now color coded, so I shall refer to them from now on by their team color: Blue or Red." Suddenly her voice hardened. "Teams: strip! I want you completely naked within sixty seconds, except for your cuffs, sashes and armbands."

Both lines broke into an immediate flurry of disrobing and well within the minute all thirty-six females and two males were wearing only the requisite items, their clothing in heaps around their feet.

"Spread your feet apart!" she barked.

They obeyed promptly.

"You will now bend over and touch your hands to the ground so the officials can insert one last piece of equipment."

Some didn't look especially happy about what would obviously follow, but no one hesitated. Four of the officials, working from both ends of the two lines, began planting dildos into the presented female vaginas and male anuses. A fifth official handed one to Tiffany to demonstrate for the audience.

"Many of you have seen this little number before. We affectionately call it our 'spine cone.' It's a small dildo, about six inches long. But it's no ordinary dildo. See these cute little spring-loaded spines, or barbs?" The giant arena screens showed it in close-up. "They fold neatly into the dildo while it's being inserted." She demonstrated by making a circle with the thumb and index finger of her left hand and pushing the dildo harmlessly through. "But then the little buggers pop up again to hold it in place. Doesn't hurt at all, unless you move." She smiled malevolently. "There are two ways to take it out. You can rip it out with this leather strap that hangs down to about knee level — also color coded. That hurts quite a bit. Or I can push the button on this little remote . . ." she brandished it, "and all the little spines fold down again so it can slip out nice and gently." The screens showed a close up of the barbs retracting into the dildo.

When all the contestants had been fitted with their dildo, the blue and red strips of leather now hanging between their legs, she ordered them to stand up again.

"Now as you can see, members of the two teams are easily identified. The Blue Team with their sashes. The Red Team with their armbands. All of them with their colored tails between their legs. The game is Capture the Flag , the same game you may have played as a youngster, only this will be somewhat more lethal. If I may direct everyone's attention to each end of the field, you will notice that flags have been set in place, Blue on my left and Red on my right. The object, of course, is to capture the other team's flag and bring it back the length of the field and plant it in the hole beside your own team's flag. To win, a team must not only have both flags in place at their end of the field, but every member of the opposing team must be dead."

She paused to let that sink in.

"And not just dead, but in good condition and ready for roasting. The chefs are very fussy about that. They want these carcasses delivered without the kind of damage the original four are suffering with their various tortures. They want them in pristine condition: no unsightly cuts, abrasions and contusions. They want, and URP demands, that in the process of winning this game these contestants produce for them at least eighteen beautiful, unblemished specimens turning on the spits for our valued clients to enjoy. Therefore, the kill must be made with this instrument."

Tiffany held the dildo in her left hand and pushed a button on its base, next to where the colored leather strap was attached. A short knife blade popped out the front end.

"As you can see, the spine cone is also a switchblade. To achieve a proper kill, the competitors must remove the spine cone from their opponent's cunt or ass, deploy the blade and cut her throat with it. Or his. The kill must be with the same blade that was inside the victim. Any improper kills will be punishable by death to the killer. It doesn't matter who makes the kill, as long as it is done properly. Every cut or contusion on the corpse, however, aside from the mortal wound to the throat, will be penalized by a ten percent reduction of the bonus to every member of the winning team."

She paused to let them think about that. The officials reappeared with single-tail whips draped over one arm and began handing them out.

"In addition to the weapon buried in your opponent's vagina or rectum, you will be allowed to use the six-foot whip now being distributed. It can be used as a whip or as a garrotte, but keep in mind that death by garrotting is illegal. You must cut your opponent's throat with her own spine cone. Any kill made in any other way will be considered murder and the perpetrator will be delivered to the chefs. Is there any question?"

A girl with red and blond stripes in her hair, both on top and below, raised her hand. "How can we be unblemished if our throats are cut?"

"A fair question. The stitching machine and cosmetic pastes used by the chefs will conceal most contusions and lacerations. The chefs also cover it with a special choker that's both attractive and heat permeable. When the carcass has turned a lovely bronze, the choker is removed and the cut is practically invisible. Nevertheless, every cut you make them conceal will deduct ten percent from your winnings. Any other questions?"

The thirty-eight were silent. It had finally sunk in that at least half of them would be dead before this game ended.

"Good," Tiffany said. "Now I want each team to go to their own the end of the field and prepare to defend their flag and figure out how to capture the other one and slaughter the opposing team. You will have two minutes to decide on your leader and plan your strategy. Starting now!"

A digital clock appeared on the giant screen, counting down from three minutes. Both teams scurried toward their own flag.

Briana was not about to waste time by letting the team argue over a new leader. She began issuing orders even before her eighteen teammates reached the blue flag.

"Roberto! You are the strongest one here. We need you as the last line of defense at the flag."

"But I can take out three of four of their smaller girls before they even get this far," he countered.

"I'm sure that's true. But while you're doing that some others could slip through. We can't let them grab our flag before we get to theirs! You stay here! Gina, you team up with me to charge their front line. You're tall and strong and I'm fast and wiry. Are you squeamish about yanking out the fucking dildo and cutting their throats?"

Gina looked like she'd been kicked in the stomach.

"Oh all right. I'll do that. You use your whip, right in their face, and I'll trip them up. Once we get them down and at least partially disabled with the wrist or ankle cuffs, I'll jerk the damn thing out and cut their throats. I don't like it either, but better them than me!"

"But we just partied with them last night. How can we just kill them?"

"Fuck all that! One team or the other is going to be dead within the next twenty minutes. Are you ready to be killed and eaten?"

"No." Gina's voice was weak but definite.

"Then dump all that sentimental shit and get ready to kill the bastards, because they're sure getting ready to kill you." She shouted, "Does everyone understand that? Those guys are not our friends anymore. They're our enemies and they're making their own plans to kill us . If you want to live to see nightfall and not wind up on a roasting spit, you'll start thinking of them as the deadly threats they are and concentrate on how you can kill them before they kill you!"

Briana spent the last minute pairing off taller girls with shorter ones while desperately trying to conjure a battle stratagem in her mind. She soon had eight pairs of girls paired up, with two women and Roberto as the last ditch defense of their flag. She glanced at the clock. Twenty seconds left to lay out a battle plan for her troops. If only she could think of one!

"Listen up, guys!" she shouted, trying to think of something sensible to say. "We don't know if they'll come at us as singleton fighters or in clusters, so we'll have to prepare for both possibilities." She pointed out five of the teams, including herself and Gina. "We will be the front line attackers." She pointed out three more teams. "You guys will hang back just behind us to tackle those who get past us. The final three will have to lay into anyone who breaks past the first two lines. DO NOT show any mercy whatsoever! The rules are simple. Either they die or WE die. When you get them down, rip out the fucking dildo, push the fucking button and slit their fucking throats! Our first objective is NOT to capture the fucking flag, but to kill every one of the Red Team. Is everyone clear on that?"

There was a general shout of assent, although not as ruthlessly fervid as Briana would have hoped. A klaxon sounded and Briana heard her mother's voice over the PA system.

"The time for planning is up. You must now engage. If no one has been killed within the next three minutes, all of you will die."

"Go!" shouted Briana, and her front line began trotting toward the Red Team. "Remember, kill them all first, then go for the fucking flag!"

Tiffany watched her daughter rally her troops and charge toward the opposing team with a mixture of pride and despair. Her heart broke to see the perfection of Briana's body. Narrow waist. Perfect breasts. Pretty face. Cascades of natural blonde hair. And such a small chance of survival.

The Red Team, under Justin, had elected to present a line of apparently single fighters, including Justin himself, as the advance offense. Briana immediately swerved to meet him head on, shouting at Gina to follow her. Last night he had fucked her. Now she would fuck him with his own dildo! He smiled as their courses converged, drawing back his whip arm to strike at Briana. She was expecting it. As the whip whistled toward her, she spun 180 degrees and took the painful snap on her back, then continued her spin to face him and snapped the end of her own whip on his testicles. At the same moment Gina's snap caught him in the face. He screamed and faltered. In that moment Briana was upon him and grabbed the leather strap attached to his butt plug, yanking it viciously. He screamed a second time and clutched at his torn anus as Briana found the button on the dildo. The blade snickered out and Justin simply stared at her in disbelief as she sliced his windpipe and jugular vein in a single swipe. Even before he toppled to the ground to bleed to death Briana and her cohort had charged on to the next target.

Gina turned out to be a quick study and an excellent fighter. By their third encounter she was really into it, charging a frightened girl who was flailing her whip around ineffectually and knocking her to the ground. While Briana wrenched the girl's arms up behind her and locked her wrist cuffs together, Gina grabbed the leather strap between her legs and ripped the diabolical "spine cone" from her vagina. As the girl screamed and writhed on the ground, Gina grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back and neatly cut her throat.

Four of the original Red front line had managed to reach Roberto and his two flag defenders. Briana managed to quick glance toward them just in time to see one of the girls grab the flag while Roberto was fighting off the other three. She screamed at Gina to follow her and immediately set a course to intercept the dark haired girl who was hot-footing it back to her own end with the Blue flag.

As they approached her, Briana realized the girl was huge. At least six foot one and well muscled. But failure was not an option. Failure was death. The girl slowed but did not stop as Briana and Gina drew between her and her destination. Suddenly she darted to her left, Gina's side. Gina, instead of sprinting in that direction, snapped her whip, but missed. Briana was instantly behind her and catching up, but it was too late. The tall girl with the Red armbands had reached the flag platform and planted the Blue flag beside her own Red one.

Briana launched herself at the girl and knocked her down. Gina, following closely behind, grabbed at the leather strap between her legs and jerked the dildo out of her in a spray of blood. The girl screamed and clutched at her wounded cunt as Gina snapped the switchblade out and cut her throat. Briana yanked both flags out of their holes, and wheeled about to run them back to her own end of the field when Gina screamed. Her partner had dropped her whip and was clutching at her own face. Jackeline, the petite blonde from Peru, had successfully taken her out with a crack of the whip and was closing in on her. Briana started to go to Gina's defense, but was quickly set upon by two other girls. Briana recognized one of them at once. Olga, the Rumanian girl. She liked Olga. They had enjoyed a pleasant night of pleasuring each other and a couple of male URP technicians, when they had first arrived in L.A. Now she had to kill her as quickly as possible or it was all over. She dropped the flags and took a better grip on her whip. The second girl was bigger than tiny Olga, so she kicked Olga in the crotch to disconcert her as she cracked her whip in the larger girl's face. The girl flinched from the pain and Briana instantly dived at her crotch, grabbing the leather strap and tearing the barbed dildo out of her vagina. As the girl doubled over in agony, Briana popped out the blade and slit her throat.

Olga, recovering from the kick, was aghast at what Briana had done to her partner. But it was too late. Briana flung herself inside Olga's whip snap and quickly looped her own whip around the girl's throat, shutting off her air supply. Olga thrashed mightily, but Briana was stronger and kept the garotte tight until Olga sagged and collapsed. Briana quickly loosened the coil of whip, ripped the dildo out of the Rumanian girl's cunt, snapped its blade into working position and, looking directly into her stunned eyes, drew the blade across her neck.

Without bothering to watch yesterday's friend tumble backwards clutching her neck, blood spurting between her fingers, Briana spun around to meet the next threat. It was Jackeline, her whip hand drenched in blood. A glance at the ground behind the Peruvian blonde confirmed that it was Gina's blood. Her partner was still writhing as she died, grasping not at the gaping wound in her neck but at her bloodied crotch where the "spine cone" had been torn out of her vagina, shredding the sensitive tissues inside.

Before she could react, Briana felt the tip of Jackeline's whip bite into her neck as it coiled itself around her throat. A brutal jerk of the whip pulled her off balance and within reach of Jackeline who grabbed a handful of her blond curls and pulled her to the ground. Then Jackeline made a mistake. She was kneeling in front of Briana's face, knees spread for stability, trying to throttle her victim with the whip. And succeeding — Briana couldn't breathe and knew she would soon pass out if she didn't do something. That's when she spotted the dildo strap dangling between her assailant's spread thighs. Briana was lying on her right arm and someone was twisting her left arm up behind her with one hand while trying to shove the other between her gets to get at her own dildo strap. As consciousness began to dissolve, Briana used all her remaining strength to heave herself up off her pinned arm, reach up and yank on the strap in front of her face. There was a scream and the whip around her neck came loose. She yanked again and the dildo came free with a gush of blood. She was fumbling for the switchblade button when a terrible pain erupted between her own legs! The second attacker had pulled out her own dildo!

The hell with the rules! She had no time to waste! This woman was about to cut her throat. She rammed the blade of Jackeline's dildo into the nearest target — Jackeline's belly — and twisted it, hoping that would distract her long enough to deal the other girl. She pulled it out of Jackeline and slashed wildly behind her. She felt the blade slice through something; there was a gasp and the hand holding her wrist let go. Ignoring the fiery pain in her vagina, Briana rolled away from Jackeline and scrambled to her knees. A tall dark haired girl with a fresh gash in her cheek was closing in on her, a dildo blade in her right hand, her left hand extended to grab Briana's hair. Briana slashed at the arm as she rolled sideways to avoid the onslaught. A spray of blood indicated she had done some damage. Her attacker, maddened with frustration and frightened by the blood filling her mouth and pouring from a long diagonal slash on the underside of her left forearm, lunged toward Briana, aiming the blade at her neck. Briana rolled again and the blade missed, plunging harmlessly into the ground. This time Briana managed to clamber to her feet while her opponent was still struggling to regain hers. Without a second's hesitation she propelled herself into the wounded girl's body, driving her blade into her windpipe, ripping it sideways to tear open her throat. At the same time another sharp pain just below her rib cage told her the girl had managed a final cut of her own. The two staggered away from each other.

The dark haired girl was staring down at the blood streaming between her breasts and off the fingers of her left hand. She began to shake. Briana could see teeth through the gash that had opened up her left cheek. She dropped to her knees, her head drooping, the rich mane of hair falling across her ruined face. She began to sway, fending off death, fighting for a few more precious seconds of life.

Behind her Jackeline was standing in a puddle of her own blood, holding her belly, her eyes empty. Briana glanced around to make sure there was no other immediate threat, then circled around behind her, seized a handful of blond hair, tilted her head back and slit her throat. Jackeline grunted, sighed and slipped to the ground.

Briana made a visual survey of the arena. The sight was appalling. The field was littered with dead and dying girls. Both of the male combatants were dead as well. Only six others were still on their feet, besides herself, and were paired off in what amounted to three wrestling matches. Briana was still holding Jackeline's dildo switchblade; in fact, its spines had dug into the palm of her hand. She had to peel it away, adding a third point of pain to her growing list. She picked up the two flags she had dropped and jogged to the other end of the field to plant them at her team's end.

Now there was just the matter of killing the last three opponents. It turned out to be easy enough. She approached each of the wrestling couples from behind the girl with the red armbands, reached between her legs and yanked the spine cone out of her cunt. The terrible pain invariably shocked them into a momentary freeze, just long enough for her to grab their hair, tilt their heads and slit their throats. All three were dead or dying within a minute and a half.

Only four were still standing. All wore the blue sashes. Both flags were proudly on display at the Blue end of the field. Five-thousand spectators were cheering wildly, waving a sea of blue flags!

She had won! She was fabulously rich! She was fairly confident that surgeons could repair her badly torn vagina; it would be a shame if she could no longer enjoy sex. But she would worry about that some other time. It was too bad about all these dead girls, too. But hey, they had volunteered for the risk, just as she had. She was just smarter, and a better fighter. Her mother was out on the field and about to speak. Why didn't she look happier? Did she resent the fact that her daughter had prevailed in spite of all the gloomy warnings?

"Ladies and gentlemen," Tiffany was saying, her amplified voice cutting through the noise of the crowd. "We have our winners! Come, girls! Join me here at center field to receive your honors. They were certainly hard won."

Three other officials joined Tiffany at center as Briana and the other survivors threaded their way through the bodies on the field. One of the officials carried three gold medallions embossed with the URP logo and suspended from a necklace of blue ribbon. As Tiffany read the name of each girl, a second official hung the medallion around her neck and the crowd thundered their approval. Why only three medallions, Briana wondered? She was fourth in line. A niggling fear crept into her belly.

When the officials reached her, two of them took her arms and drew them behind her. The third snapped handcuffs on her wrists. What was this? Briana began to tremble.

"Unfortunately," her mother was saying, "this fourth Blue Team survivor, Briana Boylston of Malibu, California, made an illegal kill. She used a spine cone taken from Jakeline Aroyo of Chiclayo, Peru, to kill Ute Gerhardt of Dresden, Germany. This gave her team an unfair advantage and, under the rules of play which were spelled out at the beginning, constitutes murder."

Tiffany paused to get her emotions under control. She had to get through this. The crowd was murmuring with renewed blood lust. She turned to face her daughter.

"Briana Boylston: as much as it pains me to do so, it is my obligation as Chief Execution Officer at URP, which owns all rights to your body until noon tomorrow, to impose on you the mandatory sentence for your crime. Through the authority vested in me by Ultimate Reality Productions, Inc., the State of California and the United States Department of Justice, I order that you be taken to the roasting pits where you will be put to death by whatever means is deemed appropriate by the Head Chef. I further order that your body shall be roasted and served at tonight's feast, along with the others who have fallen on this field of battle."

Briana was too stunned to speak. Which was just as well because a ball gag was forced into her mouth. In her mind, as they strapped the gag tightly in place, she replayed that egregious error, that single moment in a desperate fight that both saved and condemned her. She had been trying to survive. So much for that. She had fought fearlessly in the arena where victory was possible. Now, as the officials buckled a collar around her neck, survival was no longer a possibility. She felt her knees grow weak as they led her off the field on a leash to begin a long walk to the roasting pits. She had finally drawn the short straw. She was out of luck and almost out of time. She was only eighteen and would be dead in an hour. Or sooner.

The cruelest cut of all, the one that finally cracked the shell around her emotions and allowed her tears to trickle out, was the image of her own Mom pronouncing the death sentence. Yet was that any worse than the ease with which she had killed her friends in the arena? We all have to do, she thought to herself, what we have to do. It was a bitter philosophy. Not enough to hold back her sobs.

Chapter 6

It’s funny.  A few days ago death was an abstract certitude, a future event always superceded by more immediate concerns.  An hour ago it had become very real, an immediate and terrifying possibility.  Yet, when there was a definite timetable and there  was literally no tomorrow, the terror was gone.  What remained was a kind of simmering fear spiced with frequent episodes of sexual arousal.

The guards — I no longer think of them as “security” men — had put a collar on Katerina and clipped a leash to it.  In my case, one of them simply attached a leash on my labia ring with a tiny padlock.  They led us to the Kitchen like a pair of cows.  It was humiliating.  And exciting! It was my childhood fantasy come true, just as Lyle had said!  I was an animal being led to slaughter.  I was a prisoner, captured by cannibals for meat.  Only this time it was terribly, erotically, deliciously real!

The Kitchen here is a stainless steel, butcher block marvel.  The first thing that hit my senses, as the guards clipped our leashes high on a pole where we couldn’t get at the fasteners, was the mouth-watering aroma of roasting meat.  The second thing I noticed was a pair of leather cuffs hanging from the ceiling over a shallow tub. The bottom of the tub seemed to be coated with what looked like congealed blood.  Katerina saw me staring at it.

“That’s where they dispatched the reserve girl.”

“What?” I mumbled, my brain having turned to mush.

“That’s where they slaughtered the reserve girl,” Katerina repeated more loudly, as if to a deaf dolt.  “That’s her blood.  They hang you up by the ankles and slit your throat so the blood can drain out.  That’s her cooking in the oven.”

“The reserve girl?” I said stupidly, squinting at the steamed up glass door of a huge oven.

“Yeah.  See that cage?”  Katerina nodded toward what looked like the travel kennel for a medium sized dog.  “That’s what they keep the reserve girls in down in the basement. They carry her up here in it because after a week or so in there, you can’t walk.  They pull her out, hang her up and cut her throat.”

“Is that what they’ll do to us?  Cut our throats?”

“Hell no.  We’ll get the full treatment.”

I had no idea what that meant, and didn’t ask.  There were five white-smocked kitchen staffers rushing around working with vegetables, fruits, sauces, breads, cakes, pies and things I didn’t recognize.  Two of them were men, a blonde and a man with dark brown hair.  The other three were young women, two of whom were vaguely familiar.  The third was obvious nude under the smock and was entirely familiar.  “Hey,” I said, “That’s Simone, the girl who was matched up against Candy on the walkway.”

“That’s right.  And the other two girls are Anne-Marie and Josie.  They went out in the first round.”

“Even the kitchen staff go into the Lottery?”

“You betcha.  These days every female on the premises has to be a sponsored Member, wear a homing anklet off campus and take her chances in the Lotteries.”

I was still squinting at the stove, trying to see what was inside, when one of the white coated girls opened the door and slid out the rack.  The “reserve meat” was in a shallow pan surrounded by fruits and vegetables.  She was trussed up, wrists wired to ankles, her oven-browned skin glistening under the brilliant florescent lights.  As Tad had said, she was just a tiny thing.  She seemed emaciated, her arms and legs thin, her breasts flattened to pancakes, her ribs showing.

“That’s pathetic,” Katerina observed.  “If they wanna keep the runaways for reserve, they ought to at least fatten ‘em up a little, not starve ‘em.  What a dumb ass thing to do!  She used to have tits.  I doubt there’s enough meat on her now to feed two people.”

“Do you know who she was?”

“Sure.  Name’s Brittany.  Eighteen, I think, or nineteen.  Made it through two lotteries, then lost her nerve.  Tried to skip out on Dave, her sponsor.  Guess she thought she could get that homing anklet off before Lenny found her.  Dumb cunt.  She’s lucky they didn’t let Lenny skin her alive.  That’s his favorite thing, you know.  Strings ‘em up, skins ‘em and filets ‘em right down to the bone while they’re still alive.  Uses tourniquets and soldering guns to keep ‘em from bleeding to death, so they’re screaming the whole time.  Quite a guy.”

I watched Simone and one of the other women baste little Brittany with paint brushes, spread some crushed pineapple and sprinkle some brown sugar over her, then slide her back into the oven.  The aroma was heavenly.  Will I smell so delicious, I wondered?  The thought made me tingle.

“That’s beautiful,” I found myself saying.

“What is?”

“Her.  Brittany.  The way she looks in that pan.  Is that how I’ll look?”

“No, dumbo.  You’ll be on a spit.  En brochette.  Like your sister.  Only you’ll still have your head.”

“I mean, all shiny like that, and browned.”

“Well, duh!  You’re gonna be roasted.  Basted with butter.  What do you think?”

“So . . . how do they do it?  Give us the full treatment, I mean.”

“You’ll find out soon enough.  Why spoil the fun?”

“Tad said it won’t hurt much.”

She snorted.  “Tad isn’t about to have a nine foot steel rod shoved up his cunt.”

“Jesus!  What a way to lose my virginity.”

“Sweetmeats, you already lost it.”

I raised an eyebrow at her.  “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been fucked over, honeybuns.  Royally!    We both have.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Those two bastards screwed us over.  Got rid of us.  Two birds with one stone.”

“What two bastards?”

“Oh fuck, even for a virgin you can’t be that naive.  Who do you think?  Fucking Lyle and fucking Tom, that’s who!”

“Are you saying they had something to do with us being . . . put on the menu?”

“Something?  Christ!  Wake up, China doll!  They had everything to do with it.”

“Now wait a minute.  Tom did volunteer you and, I admit, that was a nasty thing to do.  But how can you say Lyle had anything to do with my being here?  I lost fair and square.  It was just pure chance.”

“Pure chance?  Did you happen to notice I’m six inches taller than you and about thirty pounds heavier?  Shit, my boobs must weigh half as much as your whole puny body. Now what kind of a match-up is that for a shoving contest?”

“Okay, that was unfair.  That could’ve been arranged.  But that bundle of  ropes, and the wheel.  There’s no way those could be rigged.”  She was giving me a Yeah, right, Dummy! look.  The bottom dropped out of my certainty.  “Is there?” I asked meekly.

“Oh come on!  You can’t be that dense!  The trap door latch is electrically operated.  How the hell do we know what those ropes were attached to.  If anything.  How hard would it be to wire up a switch to control who gets dunked and who walks away?”

A sick feeling was growing in the pit of my stomach.  “Okay, but that still leaves the wheel.  We were spinning around when we dropped the ball.  How could that be rigged?” 

But as soon as the words were out, I knew the answer.  Katerina must have read it in my face.  She nodded as if to say, Yes, idiot. 

What she did say was, “Ever heard of magnets?  You think golf balls and roulette wheels can’t be rigged?”

“All right,” I said, defeated.  “But why?  Why would Lyle want me turned into meat so soon?  He’d already told me Ming had been eaten.  Hell, he even fed me a slice of her.  Yet I still agreed to come here with him.  He can’t think of me as a threat.”

“Of course you’re a threat.  You’re not like twat-brain Brittany over there.  You might figure out a way to expose this place, get revenge for Ming.  Besides, Lyle is constantly trolling for new girls.  He had two on the hook while Ming was living with him that he’d met on a Dolcett site.   Not that he didn’t like Ming.  Shit, he pretended to marry her just to keep her happy.  But what she didn’t know  . . .”

“They got married?”

“Ming thought they did.  But it was all phoney.  Fake justice of the peace.  Fake wedding ceremony.  Fake marriage certificate.  All the while she thought they were lovey-dovey husband and wife, he was softening up these other girls.  When one of them, a girl in Seattle, agreed to fly in and meet him, he decided to cash in Ming.  She was totally clueless.  Never suspected a thing.  Thought she’d lost fair and square, just like you.  She planned a real nice banquet for herself, too, as you saw in the pictures. Unfortunately for Lyle, Miss Seattle got cold feet.  Didn’t come.  Not yet, anyway.  So he’s been playing house with Candy and Cherry and some of his patients while he turned up the heat on the second girl, a blonde babe in Tucson named Carly with tits almost as spectacular as mine.  In fact, Carly was all set to come visit him when you showed up.  From what I’ve heard, she’s real hot to visit Millennium.  My guess is he’ll have her living with him before another week is out and sponsor her at the next banquet.”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the guts.  The part of me still in denial asked,  “How do you know all this?”

“I eavesdrop on Tom.  Or used to, the traitorous bastard!  He and Lyle are cast from the same mold.  He’s been wooing replacement girls, too.  I know about three of them. One in San Diego, one in Billings and one in my home country, Ukraine.  By the way, I’ll bet Lyle never mentioned that he and Tom are on the Lottery Board?  They actually help plan the games.”

“Did you hear them planning this one?”

“Not in detail.  I knew they were gonna do you, but I didn’t know they were gonna do me, too.”

“Jesus Christ, Katerina!  You knew what they were planning to do to me and you didn’t warn me?”

“Oh grow the fuck up!”  Her eyes grew hard.  “I knew you were gonna be meat, but I didn’t know how they were gonna do it.  Even if I did and I told you, do you think it would have saved your scrawny Asian ass?  Lyle had no intention of bringing you home tomorrow.  One way or another you’d be meat tonight.  Would you have been happier to know it sooner?”

Would I?  I honestly didn’t know.  I had agreed to come here, to become a Member, knowing it would lead to winding up on a menu some day.  I had even accepted that it might be this very first day.  All in return for the tremendous rush it gave me.  I was the proverbial moth unable to resist the deadly seduction of the flame.  Still, Lyle had deliberately betrayed me!  A real lottery is one thing.  A fixed lottery is another.  I ducked the question.

“How about you?  Why did Tom turn you in?”

“Same reason.  He’s been secretly testing the water for some time.  Thinks I didn’t know.  He and Lyle troll the same Dolcett and dating sites.  I know for a fact that Tom has three or four girls he’s been working on.  He’s probably got one primed and ready to go for membership.”

“You knew this and didn’t say anything to Tom?”

“What would be the point?  How would I make him stop?  If I made trouble, he’d just have Lenny pick me up and put me in a cage.  I’m near the end of the line, anyway.  I’m thirty-two.”

“So what?”

“The unspoken cut-off age for Millennium females is thirty-five.”

“Then what?”

“What do you think?  We’re fun to play with but at the end  of the day we’re meat stock.   Thirty-somethings don’t look as good on a spit as twenty-somethings.  Plus, males around here like their poon young.”

“But Lyle hasn’t even fucked me yet.  I’m still a . . .”

“. . . virgin.  Yeah, yeah, I know.  And I bet you told him you were saving your precious little unsullied pussy for your wedding night.”

“Well, yeah.”

“Well, yeah.  Well, Lyle doesn’t have time for another fake wedding just to put his meat in your locker.  He’s got a hot blonde comin’ in Monday with jugs that put your measly size B’s in the shade.”

“Size C.”

“Sure, if you don’t exhale.  The point is, your insistence on keeping your baby-chute inaccessible to his big old male organ guaranteed your tenure would be very short.  Who knows how long he might have kept you on as a fuck toy.  You are cute.  But he’s got no use for nuns.  You fucked yourself, sweetmeats with that virginity shit.  The irony is, you’re about to lose it anyway.  Only instead of Lyle’s warm hard love muscle busting your cherry, it’ll be a cold steel spit.”

Simone, who had been issuing heated instructions to the other kitchen staff, turned and walked briskly toward us.

“Katerina!” she said as though she had just noticed her presence.  “What are you doing here?  Shouldn’t you be out there quaffing vodka gimlets?”

“I should be, but peckerhead Tom turned me in.”

“So you’re our extra roast!  Fantastic!”  She gave both of Katerina’s breasts an appraising squeeze.  “There’s a lotta folks here who’ve been waiting to sink their teeth into these babies.  I might sneak a taste myself.”

“Be my guest,” Katerina said.

“Old Tom must have found himself a real hottie to give you up, huh?”

“You can count on it.”

“Can’t wait to see her!”  She turned to me.  “And you’re Doc Lyle’s new girl, right?  Ming’s sister?”

“That would be me.”

“She gave us quite a roast!  And you’re just as pretty.  Too bad you couldn’t have been with us a little longer to enjoy the banquets from the diners’ perspective, but that’s how the ball bounces, right?  We’ll all be in your place sooner or later.  In your case, it happened to be sooner.”  She unclipped our leashes from the pole.  “Well, let’s get to it!”

She led us over to a side of the kitchen where there was a row of windows.  A number of members were watching through the windows as Simone lined us up in front of a pair of saw horses with padded tops.  They were about hip high and topped with cushions.

“Bend over the trestles, ladies.”

Katerina knew the drill and I just did what she did, doubling over so the trestle was supporting me by the pelvic bone.  Simone quickly lashed our leashes to the lowest cross bar between the legs of the trestles, effectively pinning us in that position, our bottoms in the air.

“Okay, girls, you’re gonna get two enemas to clean you out.  It doesn’t have to be an ordeal.  Some girls enjoy this particular abuse.  Others don’t.  Just depends on your mindset.”

That’s when I noticed the four bags hanging from a rack and the long hoses ending in a nozzle with a small bulb about two inches from the end.  She inserted one in Katerina first.  Then I felt the nozzle, nicely lubricated, slide inside me.  It was definitely more comfortable than the butt plugs.  A moment later the bulb began to enlarge, stretching me painfully.  Simone must have noticed the distress in my face and patted my head.

“Don’t worry, sweetie.  That’s just to help you keep it in until we’re ready to have you expel it.”

“With all those people watching?”  I wailed.

“It’s all part of the show.  They’ll see a lot more of your insides than that before you’re cooked.”

A moment later the solution in the bag began pouring into me.  Warm and pleasant at first, in seconds it had brought on an urgent need for me to empty my bowels.  Katerina beside me had her eyes closed and her lips clamped tightly together as she fought, like me, to hold it in.  I could see her belly distend as the minutes crept by and her jaw muscles harden.  I could feel my own doing the same.

“Please stop!” I cried, feeling I was on the verge of exploding.

“No more whining if you don’t want to be gagged,” Simone warned me.  “You’ll take the entire contents of the bag.  You can cry if it helps, but no begging.”

I was, in fact, fighting back tears when the inrush finally stopped.  Two  portable commodes had been placed behind Katerina and me and by the time my leash was loosened from the trestle and I had been placed on mine and the butt balloon deflated, I no longer cared about the gallery of gawkers.  My intestines and bladder exploded their contents and all I felt was relief.  The second enema was just as distressing but less humiliating.  This time I kept my own eyes closed and pretended I was alone in the darkness, like when I peed beside the car in my blindfold.  I also said the hell with my pride and let the tears flow.  It did help.  Both Katerina and I were moaning and grunting a lot with the stress long before we were allowed to sit on our portable potties, but that was apparently okay.

“You should be thankful you’re not getting a third dose,” Anne-Marie told me, wiping away my tears with a finger.  “We used to do that until we started the fasting routine on banquet mornings.”

With the enemas over, Anne-Marie and Josie stood Katerina up off her commode and pulled her over to a three-walled tiled alcove set into the inside kitchen wall in full view of the windows on the opposite side.  A pair of wide nylon cuffs hung from chains in the center of the enclosure.   The two male kitchen staffers strapped the nylon cuffs to Katerina’s wrists and removed the metal handcuffs.  A moment later her arms were pulled up and out as far as they would stretch.  Two more of the cuffs were attached to her ankles.  She was ordered to spread her feet wide apart.  Short chains were connected from the ankle cuffs to floor rings, holding her in an immobile X.  Anne-Marie plucked a hose nozzle out of a wall holster and began spraying Katerina’s body while Josie produced a bucket and brush and began soaping and scrubbing. 

“Jesus!” Katerina groused, wincing.  “Why don’t you just use a wire brush?”

The two girls paid no attention.  They finishing the cleansing by pushing the nozzle into Katerina’s vagina to flush it out.  That elicited a small cry of pain, but again, they ignored it.  They had obviously done this many times and their subject’s reaction to it was of no concern. 

The two male staffers returned just as Anne-Marie finished up her work.  At her nod, they moved in, relaxed the chains holding Katerina in her X and removed the wrist and ankle cuffs.  Gripping her firmly by each arm, they brought her over to a narrow stainless steel table in a prominent position in front of the windows.  These two were clearly body builder types and if Katerina or I had any notion of making a break for it, they would be more than capable of subduing us.  A glance at the locks on the two doors leading out of the kitchen, however, made me quite certain their overstated musculature was merely to prevent any inconvenient resistance by the meat during processing.

Katerina had an air of complete nonchalance as she let them help her climb on to the table.  She stretched out on her back and let the two men move her arms into position at her sides.  Using nylon belts threaded through slots in the table, they strapped her arms down tightly at the upper arms, elbows and wrists.  Each of her legs was strapped down separately at the crotch, knee and ankle.  Another strap was cinched across her rib cage just under her breasts, a second over her neck and a third over her forehead.  Everything was tightened down so that she was totally immobilized.

While the two men worked on Katerina, Anne-Marie and Josie turned their attention to me.  My labia chain had been tethered to a ring at the base of the portable commode.  Now they detached it and led me over to the washing area where they strung me up exactly as they had Katerina.  The nylon cuffs, it turned out, were simply locked on with Velcro tabs and could be easily removed.  But not by me.  They may as well have been welded iron because with my arms stretched out above me, I had no way to reach the tabs.  The water from the hose was pleasantly hot and the scrub brush not as brutal as Katerina’s sarcasm had led me to fear.  It was only when Anne-Marie approached my pussy with the nozzle that I began to squirm in my bonds.  She stopped and looked at me with a puzzled frown.

“Lyle said you’re a virgin.  Can that be true?”

“Yes,” I answered quickly, hoping it would lead to a reprieve.  Katerina’s discomfort with having hot water forced up her cunt had looked pretty extreme to me.

“Still?” she asked, as if I’d told her I could fly.  “I mean, didn’t he have a go at you this morning before the lottery?”

“No.  I’m still a virgin.  Will die a virgin.”

“I never saw a cunt ring in a virgin before.”

“Well, you have now.”

“He didn’t even tease you with his pistol?  Push it in just a little ways?  Maybe leak a little cum in there?”

“No.  Absolutely not.  I was saving myself for marriage.”

“With Lyle?”  She burst into laughter.

Josie gave her arm a rap with the back of her fingers.  “Don’t laugh.  He conned her sister into thinking they were married.  He was probably gonna use the same scheme to get his pork into this one.”

“Yeah, probably.  Well, let’s see.”  Anne-Marie poked the middle finger of her right hand into my vagina, brushing aside the gold ring in my labia.  “Yeah, there’s a cherry in there.”  She pulled the finger out and sniffed at it.  “Don’t smell no jizz.  Guess you really are a virgin.  What a shame!  Too late now.  But at least you don’t have to have your snatch hosed out.”

“I think it got a good washing out in the pool, anyway,” I offered.

“I hope you didn’t piss in the water,” she snickered.  “I’d have to hose you out for punishment.”

“Not me,” I said.  “Chinese girls are well bred.  We don’t pee in pools, even when we’re hanging by the neck.”

“Good for you.  I hope all Chinese girls taste as good as your sister did.”

With the scrubbing finished and the hose turned off, I glanced back at Katerina and was shocked to see her belly had been ripped open.  The two sides of the wound, which ran from just under her breasts almost to her slit, were held wide apart by some kind of metal spreader in the shape of a U that allowed full access to her insides.  Her belly had been emptied out. I could see the white ropes of her guts in a barrel next to the table and one of the men, the blonde, was groping around inside her.  I had known evisceration would be part of the preparation, if only from the Dolcett drawings and common sense, but seeing it done to a human being was shockingly different from seeing it in drawings.  I could see Katerina was still alive; she was grimacing hard, but had not screamed.  How could that be?  Was she  impervious to pain, or just incredibly brave?  Would I be that brave?  I’d find out in a few minutes.

Inner organs I couldn’t identify went into the barrel along with the guts, and then they started doing something that was both fascinating and horrifying.  The bottom end of the table was designed so that it could be split apart into a V with each of Katerina’s legs strapped down to one side of the split.  They opened up the V as far as Katerina’s hips would allow.

Then the blonde man scooped a yellow substance out of a bowl with two fingers and inserted it into Katerina’s widely exposed sex, smearing it over her vaginal walls and labia.  As he lubricated this entrance to her body, the dark haired man removed from a wall bracket a long, steel pole about two inches in diameter with a pointed end and a cross bar about a quarter of the way up from the blunt end.  He lowered the pole to horizontal and aimed the pointed end between her legs.  This, I realized, was the spit.  The blonde added the yellow substance to the point and several inches beyond it on the shaft of the spit.  He carefully guided the point into the vagina as his partner steadied the shaft and pushed gently.  Once the lips of Kataerina’s sex had swallowed the tip of the spit, the man holding it began to push and twist it at the same time, screwing it into her body while the blonde smeared more of the yellow stuff (butter, I guessed) on the metal just before it passed between her genital lips.  Still Katerina was not screaming although her mouth was open in a strange grimace and she was pumping her hips at the shaft.

The point of the spit reappeared inside the hollowed out abdomen, a gleaming metal spike where Katerina’s womb had resided only minutes before.  The man with the butter shifted his efforts to the point of the shaft as it advanced through the empty space.  When it began to disappear under her rib cage, he bent down, his head almost inside Katerina’s empty abdomen, and slid a hand up the shaft.  A half a minute later he extracted himself from her abdomen and moved around to her head.  With the press of a button, the portion of the table to which Katerina’s forehead was strapped swung down, forcing her head back as far as it would go.  Her mouth gaped open even wider.  She seemed to go into convulsions, her body bucking futilely in its tight restraints.  The man at her head picked up a scalpel from a tray under the table and calmly cut a small slice in her throat.  She immediately quieted to just hips movements again as the man inserted a small round device into the cut he had just made.  He turned his attention to her open mouth, inserted  two fingers into it and guided the point of the spit past her teeth and out.  The dark haired man at the other end continued to twist and push the spit forward until about a foot of shaft extended beyond her mouth.  A mixture of blood and saliva dribbled from the corners of her mouth around the edges of the shaft and the blonde man packed some paper towels between her lips and the spit to absorb the flow. 

Josie had moved to the table with a large pan filled with something the men had been working on while Katerina and I had been leashed to the pole.  Resting atop it was some kind of thick material bent into an odd shape.  As one of the men pulled open the gash in Katerina’s belly, Josie spent a couple of minutes carefully positioning the thing inside the empty cavity of her abdomen.

“What’s she doing?” I asked Anne-Marie.

“That’s the barrier we use to keep the stuffing from damaging the heart and lungs so you get to live longer during the roasting.  Your boyfriend designed it.”

“Lyle?”

“Yup.’

“So that’s what’s in that tub Josie has?  Stuffing?”

“Sure is.  And we’re still using Ming’s recipe.  It’s fabulous!”

“Will they use that for me, too?”

“Pretty much. There will be some differences to keep the two roasts distinct.”

So not only had Ming beaten me once again, this time to the most exciting moment of my life, but she had also provided the recipe that would make me a culinary success.  Should I be aggravated or thankful?

Then I thought about Katerina.

“This isn’t fair,” I blurted out.  “I went through that whole lottery thing to become the featured entree, and Katerina is going to be the first to be presented.  She’ll get all the glory with her big tits.”

“Oh don’t you worry about that, hon,” Anne-Marie said.  “Lyle specifically asked that you be processed second so you could see what we’d be doing.  But you’ll be the first one carried into the Banquet Hall.  Katerina will be brought in only when you’ve been completely stripped of meat.”

“But you said everyone wants her tits.”

“And they’ll be cut up into little bite size bits and distributed around.  But this is your banquet, sweetheart.  Katerina is just extra meat.”

“Who’ll get her cunt lips?”

“Tom.  Like Lyle will get yours.  They’re your sponsors.  But hon, that’s just tradition.  The important thing is, this is your show.  Katerina got shafted, as she richly deserves.  The honors will go to you tonight.  Katerina is just a second helping.”

“And that barrier Josie put in is to keep us alive longer during the roasting?”

“Yeah. Let’s you enjoy more of the roasting experience.”

“But isn’t cooking over a hot fire really painful?”

“Not really.  Not now.  Lyle invented a way to let us cook painlessly.  That’s what we always opt for now when we become meat.”

“Do we last right up to when we’re served?”

“Well, not quite.  But for a couple hours, anyway.  After you’ve been cooking a while, even over low heat, the blood congeals too much and your heart can’t pump it.  So far, your sister is the only one who was there to see herself served and eaten, but that’s not for me.  I don’t wanna be just a head.  Gross!  I want my carcass to be all there and look great when they bring me in.”

“How do you look when you’re fully cooked on a spit.”

“Your skin is a kind of bronze and all shiny like that girl in the oven, only much more spectacular.  Since you’re the featured meat on tonight’s menu,  Savanna is planning to have you presented on a big silver platter surrounded by steaming vegetables and fresh fruits.  She’s going to have you face down with your legs tucked under you and your hands beside your shoulders like a cat about to pounce.  That pretty rump of yours will be up in the air with a carrot sticking out, and an apple in your mouth at the other end.  Your eyes will have burst, so she’ll replace them with glass eyes the exact color of  your own.  You’ll look alive, wide awake, sexy and absolutely scrumptious!

“And Katerina?”

“She’ll be carried in later on her spit.  That will show those stupendous tits to best advantage.”

“What about that girl in the oven?”

“Brittany?  Oh she’s just extra meat for tomorrow.  Cold cuts, sausage, ground meat, dog food.  Stuff like that.  We’ll carve her up here in the kitchen.”

“But she smells delicious!  I’ve never tasted fresh . . . you know.”

“Girl meat?”

“Yeah.  The only . . . girl meat I’ve eaten was a sliver Lyle saved from Ming.  But that had been frozen, thawed and reheated.  It didn’t taste anywhere near as marvelous as Brittany smells.”

“Hon, you wait right here.”

As if I could move in my restraints. 

Anne-Marie went to the oven, opened the door and rolled out the rack containing the steaming girl.  A new burst of divine meat fragrance filled the kitchen.  She grabbed a carving knife and fork off a nearby counter and proceeded to carve a wedge of meat out of Brittany’s left breast, laying it in a small dish before rolling her back into the oven.  Using a smaller fork, she picked it up again and blew on the meat to cool it as she brought it to where I was strung up. 

“Since this will be your first taste of fresh roasted girl meat, and your last, I decided you deserve the best cut.”   She blew on it some more.  “Every cut has its own distinctive flavor and they’re all great, but tit meat is best of all.”  She tested the slice against the back of her left hand.  “I think it’s cool enough, now.  Open up, take a bite!”

When I opened my mouth, she put just enough of it between my teeth for me to bite off a small fragment.  She was right.  The taste was extraordinary!  Quite unlike any other meat I’ve ever tried, and infinitely more juicy and succulent than Ming’s year-old, reheated flesh.  It was slightly sweet with a rich flavor and the texture of the finest filet mignon.

“O my God!” I said after I’d swallowed it.  “This is fabulous!  Will I taste like that?”

“Oh, you’ll be much, much better.  Poor Brittany was starved and dehydrated from being in that cage for a week.  She was emaciated.  You’re properly fleshed out and Lyle tells us you’ve had a healthy, nourishing diet all your life.  Your meat will be naturally flavorful and we’ll enhance it with butter and lots of carefully selected spices and oils and fruits.”

She held the remaining morsel of Brittany up to my mouth and I eagerly took it in my mouth.  As I slowly chewed and savored it, a new awareness washed over me.  It was both comforting and exciting to face death knowing that my body was being prepared as an erotic visual spectacle and would yield such stunningly delicious meat.

“From what I’ve heard,” I said, “cunt meat is supposed to be a big deal.  Could I have a taste of that?”

“‘Fraid not,” Anne-Marie said.  “Even though Brittany was a runaway, her ex-sponsor still get first dibs on her cunt meat.  But you wouldn’t like hers, anyway.  When you’re cooked on a spit, the hot metal of the spit crisps the lips and vaginal wall up nicely; but when you’re boiled or oven roasted they have to be crisped separately in deep fat.  Otherwise they’re too tough, and not all that tasty.  It’s mostly the guys who like it.  Eating a girl’s cunt is strong erotic symbolism.  By eating the most female part of her body, he celebrates both her life as his sex slave and his gift of her body to his friends for meat.  It both honors and demeans her at the same time.  It also signifies that she was his property.”

“So Lyle gets to eat my pussy.”

“Yup.”

“But I’m not his sex slave.  I’m still a virgin.”

“A minor detail.  If you hadn’t lost the lottery, you’d have lost your virginity soon after, I guarantee it.”

I glanced over at Katerina.  They had sewn her belly back up with wide, black stitches and she seemed to be squirming sinuously on the spit, as though the limited movement gave her some kind of pleasure. 

“Why is she moving like that?” I asked Anne-Marie.

“You’ll find out,” she laughed.

One of the men had been wrapping wire around her knees and the cross bar, then used more wire to bind her ankles to the pole.  At that point Simone reappeared from where she’d been working over in another part of the kitchen, and while the two men hefted both ends of the spit to lift Katerina up off the table, Simone turned Katerina so they could lower her face down on the table.  Having done that, the men swiftly wired her arms behind her, forearm to forearm while Simone snugged a foil bonnet over Katerina’s hair and pinned it in place.  Then she unlocked the door leading out on to the patio as the men picked up Katerina’s spit once again and carried her out of the kitchen.  She locked the door behind them, turned and came directly over to me.

“Okay, you’re next,” she said cheerfully.  “Are you going to be good, or should we wait for the men to return?”

“I’ll be good.”

“I hope so.  All the doors are locked and we can always call in Lenny.”

“No!  I’ll be good.  I promise.  I agreed to this and I’ll go through with it.  You’ve agreed to it, too, haven’t you?  If you lose the lottery?”

“Absolutely.”

“And will you need Lenny to make you be good?”

“No, of course not.  When it’s my turn, I’ll climb right up on the table.”

“Well, it’s my turn now, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Simone’s exquisitely beautiful face remained tranquil, her black eyes scrutinizing me for any hint of pretense.  At last, finding none, she broke into a beaming smile and told Anne-Marie and Josie to let me down and remove my restraints.  They did.  She gestured at the table.  Determined to show her I’m as good as my word, I promptly walked over to it and hopped up on it, then laid back to let the three women strap me down as Katerina had been strapped down.  In a few minutes my entire body — head, neck, torso, arms, wrists, legs and ankles — were cinched down tightly.  They might as well have unlocked the doors at that point.  I’d never again be going anywhere under my own power.

“We’re going to clean you out, now,” Simone explained tactfully. 

“You mean you’re going to gut me,” I translated.

“Exactly,” she agreed.  “But we’ll be using some topical anaesthetics as we go, so it shouldn’t be terribly painful.  You can thank your Dr. Lyle for that.  He supplies the stuff and showed us how to do it.  He even redesigned our spits.  You can scream if you need to, but I’ve done four of these now and so far no one’s complained.  Are you ready?”

“Uh-huh,” I grunted, trying to sound more brave than I felt.

“We’re gonna start with a spray.  Some girls think it’s ice and some think we’re burning them, but it’s really just an anaesthetic.”

Josie handed Simone a can and I heard the whoosh of an aerosol spray.  A stab of mild pain hit me at the breast bone and ran quickly down to my bikini line.  She was right: it could have been either hot or cold.  I couldn’t tell.  Simone exchanged the can for a short, scalpel-like knife and, having seen the results of this part on Katerina, I clamped my teeth together and held my breath.  But instead of searing pain, the sensation as her hand traveled down my belly was more she was drawing a line with a crayon.  Pleasurable, actually.  Because my head was strapped down and immovable, I couldn’t see the results of the slice, but the activity of the other two women made it clear they were moping up blood.  I could feel the wet sponges on both sides of my body. .

Anne-Marie bent over my mid-section and a burning pain began blossoming up from within my belly.  But before I could unleash a scream, I heard more squirts of the aerosol can and the pain was mostly quelled.  I knew from watching Katerina prepped what they were doing.  Anne-Marie was stretching the gaping incision in my belly wide open and inserting the spreader.  I could feel the hard metal claws gripping my skin while Simone started to pull out my intestines.  The pain was bearable so I said nothing, but I was intensely curious and felt an urgent need to talk while I still could.

“Are you cleaning me out now?”  I asked the ceiling, since that was pretty much all I could see.

“Sure am.”  It was Simone’s voice.  I saw her hand rise into the air to show me a loop of white intestine.  “You don’t need these things anymore, so we’re making room in here for some really delicious stuffing.  We’ve been working on the ingredients for two days.  It’s a variant on the stuffing recipe Ming gave us.  I’m including bread that has a somewhat nuttier flavor.  You’ll smell it, I hope, before you’re gone.  It will do you proud.”

“What else are you taking out?”

“Stomach.  Bladder.  Kidneys.  Liver.  Womb.  Pancreas.  Gall bladder.  Spleen.  Everything but your heart and lungs.  You still need those.”

“Are none of those edible?”

“Sure.  The liver and kidneys and tougher cuts like the shanks go into our sausages.  We even use your bones after the banquet for soups and stews.  Most of the scrap organs and any leftover meat gets ground up and fed to the guard dogs.”

“Will they bury what’s left of my bones?”

“Not a chance.  Goes into the crematory and turned into ash.  Three days from now there’ll be no physical evidence that you or Katerina or Brittany were ever here.”

“What about the gallery?  All those pictures?  My sister’s head?”

“If the wrong people come snooping, there will be a tragic fire.  An exceedingly intense tragic fire.  And it will start right down there in the gallery.”

The sensations from inside my abdomen were strange, to say the least.  Fleeting stabs of pain that made my body clench up were quickly followed by short blasts of the anaesthetic that let me relax again.  I could feel tugging and poking, but no pain of any duration.  The sound of my organs plopping wetly into the container was disconcerting and contributed to the growing realization that I had passed the point where anything could save me.  An old nursery rhyme popped into my head.  All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Ling back together again. Not even the brilliant Dr. Lyle Bach.  But strangely, with that same realization came an increasing sense of peace that allowed me to being enjoying the coming to life of my oldest and deepest fantasy.  I was a slave being turned into meat, and I was loving it!

I saw a flash of the barrier that would separate my remaining organs from the stuffing and felt the soft nudges within me as it was seated into position.   I saw the silver tip of the long spit as Josie carried it from the wall rack.  It disappeared from my view and I knew she was aiming it at my vagina.  Again I needed to talk.

“Will that barrier get in the way of the spit?” I asked.

“Nope.  There’s an opening.  I just have to guide it through.  Now I don’t want you to be alarmed, hon, but Josie is gonna swab your clit with something that’ll make it a whole lot more fun for you when you’re on the spit.  But it will sting a little at first.”

Amazingly she took my right hand in hers and held it tight as a blaze of fire shot though my clit and right up to my teeth!  I seized her hand twice as tightly and screeched!  But it was over in three seconds.  Just faded away.  I felt Josie’s finger’s open up the hood and touch the clit.  A most remarkable thrill roiled up through my loins and up my spine, almost making my hair stand on end.  With a shock I realized my body was shuddering on the verge of an orgasm!  She took her finger away, giggling.

“Well!” Simone chuckled.  “I see it worked.  Now I’m gonna put some butter on your pussy so the spit will slip in nice and easy.”

Her fingers were warm and slippery as they greased my labia and well up into that vagina.  When she applied the butter to my clit my whole body locked up in a wondrous orgasmic spasm.

“Okay, hon, we’re going to start inserting the shaft of the spit, now.  Don’t fight it, sweetie.  Welcome it!”

The cold steel touched the outer lips of my vulva and, in spite of her admonition, I held my breath.  In the next moment it rubbed against my clit, which must have been swollen and protruding well into its path.  Another tremor, exactly like the ones she and Josie had triggered with their fingers, rushed up through my body and into my brain like an electric charge!  Involuntarily I began to buck my hips.  My body was making love to the spit!  I can only imagine what a man’s shaft feels like inside there, but if it generates half the sensation this steel one did, I bitterly regret those wasted years of virginity!

“You can thank your boyfriend for this little miracle, too.” Simone was saying.  “I don’t know what the clit stuff is, but all the girls we’ve used it on have gone out wildly happy, to say the least.”

It was hard to talk with that staff doing what it was doing to my hyped up clit, but I managed to ask between gasps, “Why don’t you try it yourself?  It’s . . . (pant, pant)  . . . It’s fantastic!”

“Can’t.  It does permanent damage to the clit.  After a couple hours of sky rockets, the clit goes permanently numb.  Ain’t worth it.  Not until the rest of me is about to be dead, too.   Then, you bet!”

I could feel the spit worming it’s way through my vagina, setting off sexual claxons as it grazed past the berserkly oversensitized  clit, turning my breathing into a succession of gasps.    It made me all the more desperate to keep talking. Any topic would do.  “Are you the Head Chef?” I croaked.

“The very same.”

“What if . . .  uh!  uh! . . . what if you’d lost the . . . aaah! . . . the lottery?”

“Then I’d be strapped down where you are and Anne-Marie would be sitting here.  Josie’s next in line after her.  And Savanna and Ariza are signed up to join the kitchen staff as soon as there’s a vacancy, which means as soon as one of us gets eaten.  Lots of backup.” 

“How about . . .  ohh . . . the two men?”

“No chef material there.  They just help out, make sure the meat cooperates until it’s on the spit or in the pot.  On a day like today with two girls to process, they help with the gutting and spitting.  To give him credit, though, Kyle — he’s the hunk with the blond hair and blue eyes — he’s really good at baking breads.  He made the bread we’re using in your stuffing today.  He’s also my own personal fuck toy, although he thinks I’m his.”

“He’s . . . aah! . . . your Sponsor?”

“You got it.  Two hundred pounds of muscle and gristle, in all the right places.”

“Does he have . . . uh! . . . other girls . . . uh! uh! . . . lined up?”

“Course he does.  They all do.  Guys can’t come here alone.  If a Sponsor’s girl gets put on the menu and he wants to come back again, he has to have another babe ready to recruit.  And she’s gotta be young and good looking.”

Simone was bent down out of my line of sight.  I could feel her hands moving around inside my belly, guiding the spit.  It’s point touched and rubbed at things under my ribs.  There was no pain, only a dull, uncomfortable sensation, like a gas bubble you want to burp up from your stomach, but it won’t come.  I knew my ability to speak was only a minute away from ending, so I kept myself talking around the fusillade of orgasms. 

“What if . . . uh! . . . the others. . . Ahh! . . . think she’s not . . . uh, uh, uh, uh! . . . .”

Simone’s voice was muffled by my own flesh.  “Not suitable?  Not pretty enough?  Well, I asked that question myself when I first got here and saw how beautiful the others girls are.  Kyle told me the men have a meeting to discuss new girls and if they decide she  doesn’t measure up, they have her slaughtered that same day.  If we had a big crowd like today, we’d oven roast her for the extra meat, like Brittany.  If nothing else, we’d do her right after the banquet and feed her to the maintenance staff.  But that’s never happened since I’ve been here. The guys are too proud to bring in a dog and risk being twitted by the others, to say nothing of having to start a whole new hunt.”

The spit was now at the base of my neck, niggling against my throat. Anne-Marie released the support holding up the table leaf under my head and lowered it so my chin was in the air.  In a few seconds the skewer would punch into my windpipe.   “Please, Simone!”  I gasped between the jolts exploding from my cunt, “keep talking . . .  uhh! . . . even when I can’t . . .  aah!   aaah! . . . Please!”

“Sure, hon,” she said.  “I love to talk.  Most of the time at home Kyle won’t let me talk at all.  I have to ask permission and give him a blow job first.  But that’s okay; I love to swallow his cum.  He makes me call him ‘Master,’ too, when no one’s around, so’s I’ll remember I’m just livestock and he’s my owner.  But I like that, too.  Thinking about being where you are now makes me horny.   Hold on, now, hon!  This next part is scary because the shaft cuts off your breathing.  But don’t worry, I’ll fix it.”

Anne-Marie kept her hands on the sides of my head as the spit suddenly slid into my windpipe.  Suddenly I couldn’t breathe and panic overwhelmed all else, even the still raging thrills from my clit!  My body began fighting for air.  Despite my resolve to remain calm, I found myself jerking furiously in my restraints.  I was lashed down far to tightly to allow more than a few millimeters of movement, but every muscle joined in a futile battle to burst the bonds!  A moment later a sharp sting on my throat was followed by a rush of air into my lungs and a sense of relief that instantly took the fight out of me.  I collapsed as limply as a doe brought down by a hunter.  

Now my attention focused on the feel of the spit entering the back of my mouth.  Twisting.  Sliding along the roof of my mouth.  My head was bent back as far as nature would permit to prevent the point of the shaft from tearing up my palate and breaking my teeth.  Using both hands, Anne-Marie hooked her fingers under both my upper and lower teeth, spreading my mouth wide open and holding my tongue down and out of the way.  Fascinated, I watched the blood streaked point of the spit emerge from my mouth and continue to slide forward another foot or so before it finally came to a stop.  I tried to say something, but the spit was jammed against my tongue and my voice box no longer responded to my will.  The thickness of the spit and the angle of my head forced my jaw open as wide as it would go and my teeth to clamp down firmly on the hard metal.  I could move only my lips.  I remembered how Katerina seemed to be sucking on her own spit as she was carried out of the kitchen.  The blitz of orgasms had stopped now that the shaft was no longer rubbing past my clit, but an experimental wiggle of my pelvis proved I could induce another jolt whenever I wished.

While Anne-Marie wiped the leading end of the spit clean, Simone had gone somewhere and was returning with a small tub.  The rich aroma of warm stuffing filled the air and I felt her starting to press it into my emptied abdominal cavity.

“This is some of the best stuffing I’ve ever tasted here.  Or anywhere!”  Simone said, babbling for my benefit, as she’d promised.  “Since there are two roasts on a spit today, I don’t have to overstuff you.  I can put in just enough to give you a real sexy flat tummy.  Of course, no one will be able to appreciate that at first because you’ll be presented belly down on the platter when we bring you in from cooking, so’s we can make you real pretty on a yummy bed of veggies and exotic fruits.  I’ll put a bright red McIntosh apple in your mouth and a big fat fresh carrot in your bum, with a nice plume of greens for a tail.  You’ll be surrounded by tomatoes, broccoli, mangos, papayas, pears, baby bananas, kiwi, star fruit, apples, radishes, parsley, scallions, cilantro, limes, berries — all kinds of stuff.  And you’ll have a chain of pineapple rings down your spine.  You’ll be amazing!  Colorful and gorgeous!  Your hair is the perfect length, too, for your cute little face; so we’ll protect it with aluminum foil and let it curl in under your chin the way it does now. You’ll be posed on the platter in a little crouch, like a roasted piglet so everyone will get to admire you in presentation, all evenly cooked with your elegant little ass up in the air. With the glass eyes in place, you'll look so lifelike and ready to leap off the serving tray. It will be very tasteful. We’ll baste you every half hour as you roast, so you’ll be glistening with ten or twelve coats of delicately spiced butter.  You’ll look and smell absolutely mouth watering!”

I felt the skin of my belly  being closed up again, followed by a dull poking sensation.

“I’m sewing you up now, hon,” Simone went on, “and I’m using a nice flesh-colored thread instead of that black stuff we used on Katerina.  You don’t mind if you look prettier than her, do you?”  She leaned back where I could see her and winked at me.  “I’ll also spread a brown sugar paste over the whole incision before we take you off the spit.  It’ll be toned the same color as your fully cooked skin, so the incision will disappear completely.  That way when we turn you over on the platter to begin carving you up you’ll look slim and sleek.  The first thing we do is slice off your cunt lips and  present them to your sponsor, Lyle.  In your case, since you have that sexy cunt ring that Lyle’s been using to lead you around,” she flipped it with a finger, sending another blaze of electricity out of my clit, “we’ll make good use of it.  He’s asked us to present him with your leash with your crispy hot cunt hanging from it.   That’ll be a new one!  The crowd will go nuts!” 

As she talked I felt the straps holding my legs and body to the table being released.  Strong hands brought my legs together against the spit and began binding my knees to the crossbar and my ankles to the lower end of the shaft with wire.  The wire bit rather cruelly into my skin but no attempt was made to use the anaesthetic. As this was going on, Simone patted my belly, stood up and came up by my shoulders where I could see her.

“The next thing we do is slice up your breasts,” she said, “and distribute them to designated Members.” 

She began squeezing my boobs and pulling on the nipples to make them stand up.  Again, shocks blasted through all my sex parts!

“They tell me you’re worried that these little beauties don’t compare favorably with Katerina’s.”

All I could do for response was crease my brow and suck on the spit. 

She smiled patiently at me.  “Well, in the first place, to each his own.  I think Katerina’s tits are excessive and vulgar.  Yours, on the other hand, are in perfect proportion to your body and, like the rest of you, absolutely lovely.  In the second place, since tits tend to shrink a little during cooking, we’ll pump yours up a bit with milk so they’ll be standing up full and firm when we flip you over.”  As she talked, she began releasing the straps around my head, throat, upper body and arms.  “We use natural mother’s milk that Ariza donates.  She has a three year old daughter she encourages to nurse to keep her milk flowing.  The milk enhances flavor, too.  I guarantee your tits will not only look great, they’ll be divinely delicious!  Pumping all that milk in, though, hurts like a sonovabitch, so we won’t do it until you’ve had your spinal prep.  Then, I promise, you’ll hardly feel it.”

She gave my nipples a last pull and said loudly, “Okay folks, let’s flip her.”

I felt myself lifted up on the spit, turned face down and lowered again.  One pair of strong hands pulled my arms behind my back and held them forearm to forearm while someone else wired them together and to my body.  When you’re impaled on a metal shaft you’re pretty damned helpless.  This was the finishing touch.  Now I really felt like a piece of meat.

“Well!”  Simone patted my bottom.  “Time to get you to the roasting pit.”

Peering down the length of spit in front of my face I saw one of the two men who had worked on Katerina.  Blonde and blue eyed.  Simone’s “master.”  I wished I could ask her if she’d had to suck him off for the privilege of giving orders to the crew and talking to the meat today.  There was a moment of jostling and suddenly I was lifted off the table again.  Enough pain leaked through Lyle’s miraculous anaesthetic that I was very glad he’d invented it!  I had never given any thought to the potential for pain inherent in being hoisted up by a rod through your body, like a fish on a hook.  I could well imagine the agony live spitting must have been for all the girls who went through it pre-Lyle.  But of course, with a thick metal skewer in their mouths and their vocal cords out of commission, there would be no complaints.  The movement of the spit struck new sparks from my clit that sizzled all the way to the top of my head!  But I had to enjoy the pleasure in silence.

It’s dismaying how little one can see when being carried face down on a spit, especially when your hormones are a raging inferno, blasting you with every step, making it nearly impossible to focus!  I knew we had gone out to the patio and were moving through the crowd because I could hear their laughter and lewd comments, and I could certainly feel their hands groping me, pinching my nipples, slapping my ass and pulling at my labia ring.  My forward view was mostly of Kyle’s rear end, but at least it was a gratifyingly sexy rear end and correlated well with the sexual tornado roaring out of my tormented clit.  Did these people realize I was having multiple orgasms right in front of them?  How could they not?  I was wriggling and humping uncontrollably!  Was Lyle in the crowd?  If he was, why didn’t make himself known?  I silently cursed him for his indifference even as I thanked him for this astonishing sexual maelstrom.

I was in such an orgasmic frenzy that I hardly noticed when our little procession finally came to a stop.  The spit had been set into a set of brackets.  At least I assume it was a set.  I could see only the bracket in front of my face.  Simone was beside me again, stroking my hair.

“Did you enjoy the ride?  Don’t pretend you didn’t,” she laughed.  “There’s too much girl juice dripping out of your pussy.  And it’s gonna be just like that right up to the end.  What a way to go!  You don’t know how I envy you!  Maybe next time I’ll get lucky and lose the fucking lottery. That skewer beats any man’s pee pee by a mile, including Kyle’s and Lyle’s.  I’ll tell you this, hon, you’re gonna have more orgasms in the next two hours than you’d have had if you’d lived another hundred years.  So you just enjoy yourself.   Me and Josie are gonna baste you now with your first coat.  It’ll feel real good.”

And it did!  Josie began with my feet and ankles while Simone pinned my hair into the promised foil bag, then started painting my face with a soft brush, making sure to touch it to an exposed edge of my tongue so I could taste its buttery flavor.  It was wonderful! Delicately seasoned with rosemary and something I can’t identify.  I wished I could ask.  She worked her way down over my throat and neck as Josie worked up my legs.  Then they rolled me over slowly to paint every inch of my skin, the spit turning in its brackets.  I could see people watching, hear them commenting on how good I looked, how tempting the aroma of the baste, speculating on the seasoning and what recipe was used for my stuffing.  Simone kept chattering away, as I had asked.  She’s such a sweet girl!  I’m so lucky that she’s the Head Chef, that she’s the one in charge of cooking me, especially since Lyle has apparently abandoned me.

“Okay, hon,” Simone was saying in my ear.  “It’s time for your spinal prep so you won’t suffer while you roast.  It’ll hurt, but only for a few seconds.”

I caught a glimpse of a syringe.  I hate needles!  But I suppose fire is worse, so I closed my eyes and waited.  There was a prick in the back of my neck at the spine, then a flame erupted and raged all the way down my back and legs.  My whole body was vibrating from the pain!  It was worse than anything I’ve ever known or imagined possible!   But then it was gone!  My whole body seemed to have disappeared, head and all!  I couldn’t feel anything!  Was I paralyzed?  No.  I wiggled my hips and my clit showered me with sparks again.  I held myself still to calm the orgasm and opened my eyes.  Simone was scooched down on her haunches beside my face, smiling at me.

“Don’t worry.  You’re not paralyzed.” 

It was like she’d read my mind, but it’s probably what everyone thinks when they get that shot.

“Another Lyle miracle drug,” she said.  “You’ll still feel things physically, but differently.  You’ll know you’re in pain, for example, but it won’t really hurt.  You’ll see. Now for that milk.  I won’t show you what I’m doing because it’ll scare you, but it won’t hurt.  I promise.”

There was  some clanking of equipment out of my range of vision.  Then I was turned on the spit so I was face up.  I felt something go into the under part of my left breast.  It must have been some sort of large needle, but what I felt was more like the tip of a ball point pen pushed against my flesh.  It was followed by a tremendous but distant ache.  The same thing happened to my right breast.  Then I was being rotated back to a face down position, the motion swamping me with another grand orgasm.

“Wow!  You sure are spectacular now!” Simone gushed.  “And that didn’t hurt a bit, did it?  So don’t you be afraid.  We keep the fire low until you’re gone so you’ll have about two hours to enjoy what your clit is doing for you.  Just envision yourself at the feast.  You’re going to be magnificent!  In fact, you already are!  I wish you could see yourself.”  She kissed my temple and nodded to someone beyond my view.  “Okay, hon.  Off you go.”

Kyle’s backside reappeared.  He picked up his end of the spit, touching off my clit again!  O God!  It was awesome!  I was panting from a series of climaxes, trying to catch my breath as they brought me over to a pit with four long rows of lighted gas jets sprouting low flames.  There was a second pit beside it where Katerina was already turning over a similar bed of fire.  They eased the ends of my spit into a new set of brackets.  My face, breasts, belly and legs where instantly battered by an intense heat.  But within a few seconds I was beginning to rotate slowly above the flames, the heat spreading to every surface of my body.

And I’m still turning, so far as I can tell.  Still cooking.  I’m sure it’s been at least an hour, but I  seem to have lost track.  Simone was right.  I’ve been in constant and increasing agony — and yet I’m not.  The pain just doesn’t seem real.  Or rather, it seems to be someone else’s pain that I’m sharing out of mere empathy.  All I can really think about are the continuing ecstatic explosions engulfing and overwhelming my brain and body!   My lungs shudder with the effort to breathe and my heart hammers in my chest.  But is it because my body is slowly turning into roasted meat, or because of the incessant orgasms, that relentless cascade of electric currents?  I don’t know.  Can’t tell.  Don’t care.

They’ve basted me three times now.  Or is it four?  The turning goes on and on over the brutal heat, but the brushes are gentle.  Stroking, stroking.  Katerina is still beside me, turning on her own spit over her own fire, her body leaking fat, glistening with steaming butter.  We watched each other turn for a long time, our rotations putting us face to face again and again.  But a while ago her eyes stopped moving, stared at nothing, turned white in the heat of the fire.  The flames under her grew taller and her skin turned a deep bronze, then a rich brown.  The passers by comment on the aroma of our roasting meat.  Tantalizing, they say.  But I can’t smell it because my breath comes in from my throat.  My eyes have grown foggy.  I see the outlines of people watching.  But they’re getting too blurry.  It’s getting dark.  Much too dark.  They’re talking, but I can no longer hear them over the roar of my clit.

The heat is intense, penetrating to my bones.  Between orgasms I can feel my flesh popping as it roasts, hear it sizzle.  I wish I could smell it.  I’m going to look great on that platter!  Simone said so.  She promised.  She’s the Head Chef, you know.  She’ll see to it.  I can see her now, slicing into my breasts, laying the slices on decorative plates.  They’re lovely tits, she says, standing up all full and firm with milk.  Juicier than Katerina’s.  Much more tasty!  Now she’s carving out my cunt, dangling it from a leash in front of Lyle.  Isn’t that a riot?  He ate my sister’s cunt, too.  Now he’s eating mine.

But that’s all right.  They envy me, all these girls.  I saw them watching me, watching me hump this spit, watching my juices flow around it, dripping off the shaft, wishing they could share it, ride it with me.  But they can’t.  Not yet.  This one is all mine.  It’s my lover, fucking me blind while holding me over the fire.  Roasting and fucking me!  Fucking and roasting!  

O God! I feel another big one coming on.  This one is huge!  It’s lifting me up!  I’m heading for the edge!   Wait!  There’s Ming!  She’s found me!  It’s about time!

Thank God you’re here, Ming!  You almost missed it.  Come on, take my hand. We have to hurry. They’re about to carry me in!