Posted by Sawney Beane on August 10, 2007 at 15:35:39:
The Collected Works of Sawney Beane: Volume #131
CLIMAX
by Sawney Beane
30 April 2006
2,979 words
DISTRIBUTION NOTICE and DISCLAIMER: Sawney Beane requests that any distribution of this work of fiction remain within the realm of social responsibility. This story is suitable neither for minors nor for the seeming majority of adults who have difficulty distinguishing fantasy from reality. It is pure fantasy, which means that, for whatever reason, someone has found it interesting to think about the events depicted herein. It does not in any way mean that the author would like to see this fantasy become reality, so if you are the type of person who might be swayed into doing something irrational by reading a work of fiction, the author respectfully requests that you decline to read further.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Sawney Beane, originally a native of Edinburgh, lived for twenty-five years in a cave on the coast of County Galloway, subsisting on the flesh of unfortunate travellers, roughly a thousand of them all told. He and his wife raised a large family of eight sons, six daughters, eighteen grandsons, and fourteen granddaughters. Eventually, the family was captured, and the whole lot was brutally and unjustifiably tortured and executed without trial. Since his death in the early 17th century, Beane has reformed his ways and now confines his atrocities to his literary endeavours.
WARNING: This story contains scenes of non-consensual snuff and gynophagia. If you find such things offensive, please steer clear; you have been warned.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: This one has been rattling around in my head for about a year now. It is getting more and more elaborate and needs to be released before it gets too ridiculous.
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In my town, if you're one of the last ten people up the south hill on the first Saturday of the month, only one of two things can be true. Not going up the hill at all is, it need hardly be mentioned, out of the question. Even the entire police force makes the monthly trek up the hill, which is not as bad an idea as it seems since all of the criminals go along as well. It might be wise to leave a token contingent of the fire brigade down in the town below, but there have been no major incidents so far, and none of the firemen have been eager to volunteer to stay behind.
But, to my point, if you're one of the last ten to arrive at the top of the hill, there's an eighty percent chance that you're a ceremonial guard, and a twenty percent chance that you won't be coming back down the hill-not in one piece anyway.
This week, I am one of the last five; and in contrast to the four men who are walking up the hill with me, I am not a guard. I find it rather ridiculous that they need four men to lead me up the hill. It's not as if I have any real option, and even if I chose not to walk this path, where would I go?
My best friend Stephanie and her four guards left about four hours before I did. My guards were rather irritated with me for exercising my option of departing later rather than the more usual all of us going up at once. They were even more annoyed with me for denying them their rather crass requests for blow jobs in compensation for their loss. I may be doomed, but I know my rights, and the last thing I want to see in my final hours is my best friend's pole dance. Anyway, I didn't really feel all that sorry for them. They get to see a woman ride steel the first Saturday of three out of every four months, so one missed event won't kill them. As for the blow jobs, I'm just not in a particularly charitable mood today.
And so, after sitting morosely for four hours in the preparation centre at the foot of the hill contemplating my fate, my fate came to fetch me, and I am on my way up the hill. I'm taking my time, but there is a limit to how slow you can walk and still be moving, so I know I will get there all too soon.
I wish I could complain about the unfairness of it all. But I can't. One thing they do make sure of is that everything is completely fair. Everyone has to participate, and the procedures are independently controlled and audited. From the first Saturday of the month after your twentieth birthday until the last Saturday of the month before your twenty-fifth birthday, no matter who you are, you know there is a chance you will be one of the two people picked by fate. It just so happens; this is my month.
Stephanie and I chose to have our names linked, so that we would go together if one of us were picked in the first round of the choosing. It's not as bad as it sounds. On the one hand, you have twice the chance of being selected in the first round, but you can't be selected in the second round, so the probabilities even out, or so I've been told.
Still, I wonder if linking my fate to Stephanie's was such a good idea. But that may just be my superstition. Just last month, a few days before the last Choosing, Stephanie celebrated her Middleday with a big party. Middleday is the point halfway between your twenty-second and twenty-third birthdays. It signifies that you are midway between the beginning and the end of vulnerability. Most people in their early twenties wait until their twenty-fifth birthday to get married or think seriously about the future since it is entirely possible that they might not have one.
People are split on how to treat Middleday. My Middleday was several months before Stephanie's, and I superstitiously kept it mostly quiet. Making a big deal about Middleday to me was just asking for trouble. But Stephanie thought differently.
Stephanie, in contrast, threw a big party and even went so far as to, in a move considered reckless even by people who spit in the face of fate, announce her intention to wed her long time boyfriend Simon on her twenty-fifth birthday.
My frequent expressions of concern over her extravagant behaviour were invariably met with exasperated sighs of, "Oh, Susan, don't be so bloody negative!"
Negative is one thing Stephanie never is (or perhaps by now it is more appropriate to say was). Even when, in the first round of the very next Choosing, in accord with my dire predictions, her name popped up, she did not lose her composure. She just turned to Simon who was sitting next to her with a protective arm around her waist and said brightly, "Oh, well, Simon, looks like the wedding's off."
It took me another few seconds to realize that my life was off as well. The truly annoying thing about it is that Stephanie and Simon had planned to resubmit their names as a pair, which would leave me as a single again (and incidentally alive when Stephanie was called up). But, tragically for me, the process was not completed in time, and Simon dodged a bullet (or more accurately, an axe).
As I approach the top of the hill, I begin to see the cheering crowd. I've been in that crowd 273 times in my life. It looks different when you're not one of them. When they see me, they cheer louder and louder. I feel hurt and afraid. Many of them are strangers, but a good proportion of this crowd is everyone I have ever known in my life. All the people I grew up around, all the people I knew as friends and family. And now they are all cheering for my grisly fate. How can they be so heartless?
Even though I can't see her just now, I know the happiest person on this hill is my younger sister Emily. She just turned twenty this year, and for her my demise is the biggest jackpot a person can win in this town. There is a rule that says no more than three full siblings can be claimed in the monthly celebrations, so once I am gone, lucky Emily will get the rare privilege of living her early twenties without the spectre of death hanging over her.
I am the third. My older brother Evan was the first. He was two years older than me, and he was beheaded almost immediately after he entered the vulnerable years. My older sister Elaine was actually older than my brother, but she lasted until just a few months before her liberation before being chosen for the pole dance, so she went a year later than he did. Perhaps she is the reason I am superstitious about Middleday. You're not out of harm's way until you're out of the vulnerable years.
But back to Emily. I love Emily perhaps more than any other person on the planet. I think I can honestly say that earning her freedom is perhaps the only thing that can help me to face my own fate with equanimity. I'll die to save her from fate and fear. But it irks me that she is so happy about it. I would like her to show a little bit of regret or remorse as I walk the path of fate, but all she has shown since the day my doom was announced was giddy glee. Typical!
And now I am seeing what I didn't want to see. The flames of the fire pit are coming closer as I walk slowly toward the centre of the crowd. My friend Stephanie, of course, has been for most of the last four hours bathing in the heat of the pit. I can't see her clearly yet, but the thing several men are turning over the pit and slathering barbecue sauce onto must be what was once my best friend.
She was a small woman, really not meaty enough to bother with cooking. But she was beautiful. Not much over five feet tall, but she had long blonde hair and was the sort of happy busty girl that men love to flirt with. I am much bigger, a brunette, nearly six feet tall with heavier more athletic limbs and smaller breasts and plainer features. The cruel irony of it is that, at the end of the day, I will fill probably twice as many bellies as my friend will, but she will fill nearly all of their minds.
Of course neither of us will fill very many bellies. There are thousands gathered her, the whole town, and two girls are not enough to go around. Most people have brought a picnic lunch, and only about a hundred and fifty people expect to get a piece of us. This lucky group is divided roughly in thirds between 1) about fifty town leaders and prominent citizens who get to eat every month, 2) close family and friends who hold one of the twenty-five tickets Stephanie and I were each given to distribute, and 3) a group of fifty townspeople who have been nominated this month for special honours, ranging from largest charitable contribution to salesperson of the month at the local auto dealership. These are the people I will go home with tonight.
Getting closer, I can see that it is, in fact, Stephanie on the spit. I look away quickly. I didn't want to see that. Something else I don't want to see is just to my left. It's a large block of wood at just the right height and shape for a familiar gruesome purpose. And behind it is my ex-boyfriend.
Well, it's not a surprise, but I have been dreading it. Rick took over from his father as the town's headsman about two years ago. He is of a vulnerable age, and technically he should be in the running for the Choosing, but I have no doubt that there is some force at work behind the scenes that will prevent his name from ever showing up on a Choosing day.
When I knew him, I was just a teen in school. We got on well together, and had quite a romance for a couple of years, but we drifted apart and separated as friends. And now he was going to kill me. Typical!
"Hi, Susan," he says cheerily.
"Hi, Rick," I replies somewhat less positively. "How have you been."
"Great, how are you?"
"Um, not so well I think."
He smiles. "Oh, it's not so bad. You may enjoy it."
"Don't count on it."
"Your friend certainly did."
This comment has the annoying side effect of making me glace over in ex-Stephanie's general direction. I see her face clearly for the first time, and she does seem to be smiling around the steel rod she is fatally fellating. Then again, it is probably just the way the muscles stretch around a thick steel pole. In any case, Stephanie was always able to be happy about anything; and many would say the opposite about me. So it would not be the most surprising thing if she were at least mildly turned on as the vicious steel penetrated first her womb and then tore through her guts and throat.
I only know I didn't want to ride the pole. It was another good reason for me to have paired with Stephanie. About half the time, the Choosing comes up with one male and one female selection. In this case, normally, the male is beheaded and turned into steaks while the female is spit-roasted. So it would not have been to my liking to be paired with a male.
When two females come up, those are the months the crowd really enjoys for some reason. Perhaps the meat is perceived to be better; perhaps people just prefer watching nude women getting snuffed. But then usually the smaller of the women gets the spit. Hence my current situation.
The months that the crowd dreads are the roughly twenty-five percent when it is two males. The smaller one who has to be spit-roasted has to endure some truly horrific punishment. At first glance it would seem obvious that, lacking a convenient vaginal entrance, the man would just be spitted anally, but in fact this is problematic as food safety authorities stress the hygienic difficulties involved in anal spitting. Thus, since no orifice exists to aim the spit through the male nether regions, a new one has to be created. The man receives the extra-sharp spit tip just behind the scrotum, and it is seldom pretty. Fortunately, there are no men being spitted today. Well, I would prefer it to the choice of victims we have, but you know what I mean.
"Well, honey, time's a wastin'" says Rick as he slips the long white robe off my shoulders and reveals my fully nude body to the entire appreciative crowd. Everyone pauses to clap politely for a moment before resuming their more raucous cheering and whistling.
I don't resist. What chance do I have. Rick leads me over to the chopping block and helps me to kneel down next to it.
"I always remember our time together," he says gently. "I loved you very much."
"Good," I say lamely. I'm not feeling very sentimental at the moment.
"You were my first, you know."
I did know of course; how could I have failed to notice that? "Really?"
"Yes, you were," he says earnestly. "You'll always have a special place in my heart."
He was not my first, but it doesn't seem to be the time to mention it. It does seem that, in a certain unpleasant and entirely non-sexual way, he will be the last to fuck me.
"This will not hurt a bit," he says. "I promise."
"Good." I say. Is there a better response?
"Just relax, Susan, it will be all right."
No, actually, it won't. In a few minutes my head and body will no longer be attached! By what possible meaning of the words can that be considered "all right"? I say nothing.
As he brushes my dark hair away from my neck to get a clear view of his target, I imagine that I can almost hear him smile as he uncovers an embarrassing remnant from my school days. Like many other girls of my age or thereabouts, I succumbed to the then current fashion, which had young women getting a particular tattoo on the back of their necks. I stuck with the simple iconic version with four narrow rectangles forming an unmistakeable dotted line across the back of the neck. Some of my peers went for the version that added in tiny letters the words "CUT HERE" next to the dotted line, but this had seemed unnecessarily lacking in subtlety to me.
I had this tattoo merely as a slightly fatalistic fashion statement and had kept my hair long ever since I grew wise enough to be embarrassed by the tattoo. It did not indicate an enthusiasm for decapitation, which, to be sure, was in fact the motivation of a small subset of the girls so labelled. It was just fashion, and interestingly since three out of four women who are Chosen end up riding the spit, probably a good number of those marked for decapitation are spit roasted instead. Then again I never heard of a similar tattoo relating to the pole dance.
But aggravatingly enough, Rick finds it amusing. "You'll make it easy for me," he laughs.
"Wish it was so easy for me," I say.
"It is," he says, "nothing to it; just relax and let go."
"Sure," I say. "Simple."
And that's it. The world is about to end. I can see in front of me the multitude of people all clamouring for my death. Cruel world. They are excited now as the payoff comes closer and closer. Behind me, some distance away and thankfully out of my line of sight, my former best friend is sizzling over a roasting pit, her body completing its transformation from girl to meat.
Off to my right, I can, if I am so unwise as to look that way, see Rick's father standing behind an enormous butcher block with a meat cleaver. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to think that it is my meat he is ready to cleave. Once my head is artfully detached, someone will drag my carcass over to him and he will take it apart in a matter of well-practiced minutes. Everything that I have ever considered to be me will be something else entirely. It will be steak. And I will not be-at all. The thought is so inconceivable that it brings me near to fainting.
Behind Rick's father there are five of the town's best chefs poised next to grills and portable outdoor counters. They will take the hacked up pieces of me and make them into delectable dishes for the expectant guests. It makes my mind reel.
But that is too remote to think about. Now I can hear even the imperceptible sounds. I can hear the grunt from my strong young ex-boyfriend/executioner. I can hear the air rushing past the axe. I can hear fate crashing down upon me. And there is nothing I can do to change it.
And then there is just nothing.