Story: SB028 A Fair Catch


Posted by Sawney Beane on June 10, 2006 at 15:38:33:

The Collected Works of Sawney Beane: Volume #28

A FAIR CATCH

by Sawney Beane

1-4, 13 October 1995

6,067 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 female and male snuff and cannibalism. If you find such things offensive, please steer clear; you have been warned.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: The society in which the story is placed works all right if you can suspend your disbelief. I feel very sorry for poor Cyndy, but there was really nothing I could do for her. The final scene is based on a Dolcett drawing which I think has been called both D29 and DOLC003, but I later discovered that it was a slightly edited (text removed) version of one of the "Meredith's Last Interview" series and called MLI-011. However, my interpretation had nothing to do with that series, so I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. In any case, I think the story is quite nice.
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Cyndy felt very clean. It was a strange and welcome feeling after working for nearly a month amidst the mess of the slaughterhouse. Every night she had returned to her room after a cursory shower with the irritating feeling that the blood still clung to her smooth fair skin. But tonight was different; today she was clean for sure.

Cyndy had just been released from an all-day intensive cleaning and maintenance routine during which every square inch of her skin had been thoroughly scrubbed. She had also been thoroughly shaved, and her pubic area, now hairless for the first time in twelve years, felt somewhat odd in the cool air of the residence hall. Cyndy still hadn't really gotten used to having short hair, her waist-length blonde tresses having been shorn to shoulder-length immediately after her arrival at her new job.

She felt surprisingly good at the moment and was as relaxed as she had ever been since the beginning of her tenure in the slaughterhouse. The approaching scheduled arrival of Jakob pleased her far more than usual. But she had to do something while she waited for him. Lying nude on her back in bed on top of the blankets with her head propped up on her pillow, Cyndy read the letter for what she vowed would be the last time:


Dear Cynthia,

The prospects don't look good. I've tried everything I can think of and am out of ideas. The ransom demanded is more than I can scrape together even if I sell the house and cars and beg my friends for loans. The banks won't loan money for this purpose, and I've visited and begged at every one in the city. I've filed a lawsuit claiming that the Mandatory Reasonable Ransom Price-caps Act prohibits demanding a price for your safe return so much above my ability to pay. I hired an excellent lawyer, and he says we have a very good case. But the judge, while accepting the suit for a hearing next month, refused to issue an injunction. I may not pursue this case further since a posthumous victory would not be worth the lawyers' fees. My employer regrets his inability to advance me the money we need, and your boss was unsuccessful in claiming you as an essential employee. Your mother's been upstairs crying for three days now. Tim is well since he's too young to understand his sister's situation. However, Mickey has been moping around the house even more than usual lately. Greg asked me to send you his love, and he says he can't bear to go to the movies without you. He's taking it very hard and has stopped by every day to check on my efforts to get you back. He still wears your ring and gets very angry when anyone mentions dating other girls. Well, this will probably be the last letter you get from us unless we make a breakthrough. You know that I'll always love my eldest child even after this horrible world takes my darling little girl away from me. There's nothing any of us could do for you. I know you always face trouble bravely, but never let anyone convince you that you deserve this. It will all be over soon, and you won't have to worry about anything ever again when you reach a better world. I have to stop writing now because I can't see through the tears in my eyes. It's very difficult to know what to say to you. I hope I'm making you feel better rather than worse. I will always be...

Your loving father.


Cyndy had received the letter two days earlier. The first time she had read the letter, she'd cried for a solid half hour. The fifth time she'd cried for only five minutes. By the tenth time she viewed it with a certain detachment. Now, uncounted readings later, Cyndy viewed the people in the letter as strangers, mere shades of characters from a book or movie. Life before the slaughterhouse was rapidly slipping away from her, which was probably good since it prevented her from brooding on how much she'd lost in that brief moment almost exactly one month earlier.

Cyndy slid the letter back into its envelope and placed it on the nightstand. The unfortunate woman closed her eyes and imagined that perfectly remembered moment in which everything had changed for her.


She hadn't intended to be out after 7:00 pm. Very few young people were foolish enough to deliberately walk around outdoors during the open season hours. Ever since the population explosion had prompted enactment of the controversial Culinary Conscription Statutes, young men and women avoided to the best of the abilities being caught outside between the hours of 7-9 am and 7-9 pm. During those dangerous four hours a day, any male or female aged 18-25 was vulnerable to capture by a gathering team from one of the licensed andro-food processing operations, although the law did specify in a caveat that during a declared war, males were ineligible for culinary conscription, their corpses being obtained by more traditional forms of barbarism.

Once tagged and abducted, only two ways existed for a captive to escape the slaughterhouse. If the captive's employer claimed him or her as an essential employee, an arbitrator from the Federal Andro-Food Bureau would consider a reprieve. Such claims were only rarely accepted. The only other way out was to pay the ransom. As a concession to politicians opposed to these drastic social reforms, it had been required that all captives be offered back to their relatives for a stated ransom. The law specified maximum permissible ransoms, the price being largely determined by the family's financial status. Even so, it was usually difficult to scrape the money together. To make things worse, the processing companies often violated the price caps, but lawsuits challenging this usually ended as Cyndy's father's attempt had.

Obviously, it was very dangerous for young adults to remain outdoors during the open season hours. Unfortunately for the young adults but essential for the continued operation of the slaughterhouses, was the fact that job and school obligations frequently forced people to go outside and take their chances.

That fateful day, Cyndy had been walking home from work and decided she had time to stop at the grocery store on the way. She shopped quickly and would have made it in plenty of time were it not for an elderly woman with an enormous stack of coupons. Cyndy had nervously watched the minutes tick off on her watch as she waited in the checkout line. When she left the store at a gallop, the time was 6:55 pm.

At 7:02 pm, Cyndy was trotting along a block from her apartment building when a man in blue coveralls jumped from behind a garbage can wielding a small gun. Cyndy jumped first from shock and then stared down at her chest in dismay at the spatter of red that had appeared on her white blouse. Her bag of groceries fell to the pavement with a clatter and a splash of milk and broken glass jars, and Cyndy staggered backwards clutching at her chest as everything she ever had in this world abruptly ended. Every aspect of Cyndy's life was changed in an instant, shattered like the eggs scattered all around her.

The man with the paint gun approached Cyndy, while two of his co-workers emerged from the nearby alley. One of the latter complimented the marksman. "Rick, nice going, that was a dead on shot!" Rick savoured the acclaim for a moment before the trio turned its attention to the woman lying on the sidewalk in a ruined business suit amid the debris of her groceries.

"Come on, darling, take my hand, and I'll help you up," said Willie, the leader of the team.

Cyndy didn't reply but extended a numb hand and allowed the man to pull her to her feet.

"Let's see your card," said Denny, the junior member of the team.

Cyndy handed the man her whole purse, and he dug around until he had found her drivers' licence.

"Yep, she's 24; it's a fair catch," confirmed Denny with a proud smirk.

"I could've told ya that just from her reaction," said Rick, "A 26 year old bird in a suit like that would love to get hit with one of my paint pellets and sue us to finance a whole new wardrobe!"

"Yep, this one knows she's done for," said Willie as if she couldn't hear him.

"Breaks my heart..." said Denny with obvious sarcasm.

"Can you talk?" asked Rick.

"Mmmm? Yeah, I can," a glimmer of hope returned Cyndy's coherence. "Can't you guys give me a break? It was only 7:02!"

Willie laughed in a way that would have been describable as "good-natured" in other circumstances. "Darlin', we make about half our captures in the first five or ten minutes after the open season hours start."

"Yeah," added Denny in an effort to appear knowledgeable, "some broad like you gettin' home a little late from work. Them's the best targets."

"Besides," said Rick, "we'd get fired on the spot if anyone found out we let a gorgeous chick like you go after we captured you fair and square."

That much Cyndy could not deny: it was a fair catch. She left the groceries on the sidewalk and allowed the three men to lead her back to their truck parked in the dark alley. Cyndy felt numb and her mind drifted away as she sat in the dark cargo compartment.

In the next two hours, the capture team added two young men and two more young women to the cargo area of their truck. It had been a bit of a jackpot, the trio happening to come upon a pair of couples in a park who had been too busy making out to notice the time. After a short ride back to the processing facility, the five captives began their new lives in the slaughterhouse, and each one's next of kin was notified for ransom purposes.


Cyndy's sad memories were interrupted by a firm but polite knock on her bedroom door.

"Come in, Jakob!" she shouted at the door.

Jakob entered and walked slowly to the side of Cyndy's bed. She gazed up and down his muscular nude body. One thing Cyndy had to admit about the Homo Delicious Meat Company was that it knew how to hire its entertainers. Jakob had performed superbly as Cyndy's personal sexual attendant for the duration of her stay. The fact that the company planned to appropriate her body for its own purposes did not mean that it wished her to not enjoy the time she had left to her.

Although Cyndy enjoyed Jakob's work, she always had the nagging worry that she was nothing to him. He was, after all, being paid for this duty, probably quite well.

"Jakob, do you really like me?" she asked, knowing it was against the rules.

"Yes, ma'am."

"I told you yesterday to call me Cyndy. Would you like me if you weren't being paid for this?"

Jakob's stoic expression changed briefly into an embarrassed but sincere grin. "Yes, without a doubt."

"Will you miss me when I've left this place?"

"Yes, ma'am." Cyndy thought she detected a slight sadness in his expression. "But..."

"But what?" she continued the interrogation. "And please call me Cyndy; this 'ma'am' stuff makes me nervous."

"I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but after a while you kinda get used to this sort of thing, and you sort of learn to not be affected by it."

Cyndy was silent for a moment. His honesty was touching, but maybe she would have preferred to be lied to just this once. Would her family forget her eventually? Would Greg continue to think of her embrace?

"What will you do tomorrow?" Cyndy asked.

"I'll be reassigned," he replied without looking at her.

"I hope she enjoys you as much as I have," Cyndy replied softly and sadly.

Jakob took the compliment in stride, "I do my best, ma'am. How can I please you this evening?"

Cyndy made no reply but closed her eyes and arched her back ever so slightly. Jakob must have taken the hint because Cyndy soon felt his big hands sliding under her and massaging her shoulder blades. Jakob's warm chest rested against Cyndy's nervous belly, and she felt his tongue licking her nipple. At first it was so gentle that Cyndy was not certain she had felt it, but the motion of his tongue increased in both speed and intensity. Soon, Jakob was nibbling, kissing, sucking, and licking all over her shapely breast. Through experience Jakob knew her limits perfectly and brought her quickly to ecstasy without the pain that all of her boyfriends had inflicted through their over-eagerness. When she thought she was quite as happy as she could be, Jakob abruptly switched to the heretofore neglected breast. His performance here was, if anything, better than the last.

Eventually, Jakob started to kiss her lower and lower, moving down her chest, across her belly to her navel. His tongue probed her bellybutton, producing a sort of pleasant ticklishness. Through closed eyes, Cyndy imagined what Jakob's lips looked like as they moved across the serial number tattooed just below her navel and on to her hip near where the "USDA Choice: Grade A" seal was tattooed. These reminders of her predicament interrupted her pleasure momentarily, so she was happy when Jakob moved on down her thigh.

Jakob seemed unsure how best to please her now, and she let him go without guidance. Soon, he had kissed his way down her long athletic leg and began attacking her perfect foot. She laughed as his tongue tickled each of her toes in succession and then abraded her instep.

When the other foot had had its turn, and Jakob had kissed his way back up her other leg, he had to ask for directions. "May I..." he began.

Cyndy kept her eyes closed and said nothing but spread her legs invitingly, and Jakob soon had his tongue deep in her vagina. This was Jakob's specialty, and she often had dreams about the experience. It was slightly different with her lack of pubic hair. She wasn't sure if it was better, but it was different. It did, however, seem that Jakob was able to get everything a bit deeper and more thoroughly than before. But perhaps this was just the result of his making an extra effort to make her last encounter with him memorable.

She sighed happily, a broad grin spreading across her face, as Jakob completed his task and pulled himself alongside her and planted a gentle kiss on her cheek. It was just about now in the proceeding when Cyndy was expected to ask him to enter her. For some reason company policy forbade Jakob from suggesting it himself, but he was required to comply whenever she brought it up. But something deep within Cyndy didn't want Jakob to enter her on this, the last night of her life. Somehow she thought it would be anticlimactic.

Still, Cyndy was very hungry after having had nothing to eat or drink for the last thirty-six hours except water. So, she decided to do something she hadn't done before. She wrapped her long fingers around her sexual attendant's firm penis and used it as a handle to guide him further up the bed until she could reach it with her mouth. A few short licks around the outside and then she sucked it deep into her mouth. Jakob was surprised; after all, he was the servant and she the mistress. On the other hand, it was her choice, and he really had no reason to complain.

Cyndy chewed on the genitals of her servant rather roughly, but not rough enough to injure him. But he had that feeling of having all the air sucked out of him through his built-in anatomical straw. Just when he thought his penis was about to break off, he could hold back no longer. Cyndy felt the hot thick salty fluid on her tongue and sucked even harder until every last drop was used up, and her sex slave collapsed deflated at her side. She rolled over onto her back and savoured the fading taste of her last meal.

Jakob was the first to regain the power of speech. "I won't forget you, Cyndy." She smiled a contented smile and enjoyed a small bright spot in her dismal life. She nestled next him and enjoyed his tight embrace.

"Shall I stay with you tonight?" he asked.

Cyndy pondered this a moment and replied. "No, Jakob, I need to be alone tonight. You've been wonderful to me, and I hope you have a long happy life."

Jakob's smile was a very sad one. After a few more minutes of pressing their bodies together, Jakob got out of bed and stood next to her. "It's been a pleasure serving you. Is there anything I can do before I go?"

"No, Jakob, you've done quite well enough," Cyndy said dreamily moments before Jakob left the room and she drifted off to a sound sleep.


Cyndy awoke from a dimly remembered dream and glanced at the digital clock. It was 3:47 am, and she suddenly felt no desire to sleep. Morning loomed like a sheer precipice toward which the relentless march of time was pushing her. It was difficult to comprehend the reality of her situation. She didn't know exactly when it would happen, but sometime within the next twelve hours everything would end for her. She would cease to be. That much was certain.

Only her body would remain. It would be abused, divided, shipped, purchased, cooked, and consumed. How long would she sit on the grocery store shelf or the restaurant storeroom? Who would devour her remains? Would she be enjoyed? Would anyone consider the sacrifice she had been forced to make for their dining pleasure?

Cyndy thought back to her own experience with regret. In her short life, she'd been treated to four morsels of human flesh. She'd enjoyed them immensely; it was the ultimate treat. But she had given little or no thought to the men and women who had died to populate her dinner plate. Now she was appalled by her former insensitivity. Her present predicament gave her a far different perspective, forced her to look at the thing as it really was.

The first had been at her cousin's wedding when Cyndy was sixteen. It had been an elaborate ceremony, and the families had gone all out and bought matching male and female roasters. They'd looked so nice side by side on a steaming bed of rice. The girl couldn't have been very old when she was conscripted. Perhaps she was newly turned eighteen. This sort of indicated that she was either very careless or a volunteer. Cyndy had deluded herself into believing the latter, but in fact voluntary consumption was rare. Still, it did happen once in a while. However she got there, the girl was a pretty brunette with compassionate eyes and small shapely breasts. The male was older and athletic, quite a nice specimen. Cyndy had thought it a shame to eat someone like that, so she got in line and received a bit of the young girl's forearm. The taste was exceptional, but Cyndy later regretted not sinking her teeth into the hunk. It wasn't as if her abstinence helped him any.

The second had been prom night. Cyndy's date had taken her to an elegant restaurant. Her date had blown most of his money trying to impress her by buying her a delicious chunk of some poor man's shoulder. That time it had hardly crossed her mind that what she was doing might be wrong. Unlike at the wedding, she had not seen the whole man before he was carved. She'd just received her meat on a plate next to a jacket potato, which makes things much less personal.

Her third human meal was the best of all. Her parents had splurged for her high school graduation gift and bought her a complete set of male genitalia. It was really too expensive for them, but they loved her and wanted to do something very nice for her. She enjoyed it immensely. It was different in consistency from any other meat she had tasted, and some bits were even a bit tough and unpleasant, but the knowledge of what she was devouring made it one of the best experiences of her life. Her friends had sure been jealous. This poor man had crossed Cyndy's mind occasionally as a befuddled young man searching in vain for his misplaced dick. Now it pained her that she had not really allowed herself to think what was most likely the truth: that the poor man was dead and being consumed by dozens of consumers.

Cyndy's fourth and final taste of human flesh had come at a company picnic about a year before her abduction. She'd not really seen that girl whole either but had just observed the scattered bits of flesh on her and her colleagues' plates. Being a lower echelon manager, Cyndy had rated only a meagre slice of the victim's thigh. This poor thing had been granted the least consideration amongst Cyndy's meals. She could have been roast beef for all Cyndy cared. By this time Cyndy was herself at risk of abduction, and the only way she could deal with that fact was by distancing herself from the human meals she encountered. Cyndy could not let herself believe that the woman feeding the picnic-goers had once been, like Cyndy, a person with hopes, dreams, aspirations, pains, and disappointments.

But now everything was different. She now realized how thoughtless she'd been. And it was too late; soon other thoughtless people would be feasting upon her flesh, commenting on its flavour, comparing it's quality to previous human meals, and completely ignoring that she had once been so much more than steak.

Cyndy lay in bed unable to sleep. She thought about the people she'd consumed, the people she'd known, and the life she had lost. Soon the first faint twinklings of dawn appeared in her window. She'd watched in horror as the light gradually increased in intensity, eventually completely eradicating the last night Cyndy would ever see. Since her ransom deadline had expired at midnight, Cyndy's doom was certain. The closer she came to fate, the faster the world seemed to move. Now she was peering over the precipice, but she couldn't see the bottom.


Promptly at eight o'clock, Cyndy heard a sharp knock on her door, and the head attendant for her floor entered the room without waiting for Cyndy's answer. The white-gowned woman in her late forties maintained a brisk, businesslike air. She had a job to do, and that job was to get Cyndy ready and in the butchering line as soon as possible. The attendant set to work at once and didn't seem to notice that Cyndy was not at all enthusiastic about her work.

Cyndy's attendant led her out of her room and down the hall to the elevators. Cyndy felt she should say good-bye to everything she set her eyes on. This was a trip she wouldn't be coming back from.

The elevator contained three other white-uniformed female attendants, each with a nervous nude man or woman in tow. The attendants chatted with each other, and the attendees maintained an uneasy silence as the elevator descended through the residential floors of the slaughterhouse to the lower, more ominous levels. The elevator stopped at the pre-preparation level, and everyone filed out.

Cyndy had been here the previous afternoon and had received a thorough cleaning. The previous day's attentions were intended to make the final preparations easier.

The first part was the worst, the rest being reasonably pleasant. Cyndy was instructed to straddle the floor drain with her legs spread wide while her attendant used an automatic machine to give her a thorough internal rinse. Very little came out of her, which reminded Cyndy just how empty her stomach had been for two days now. After her insides had been cleaned, Cyndy slipped into the bath, which was warm and resembled a large whirlpool.

Cyndy's attendant stripped down to her white bikini and joined Cyndy in the bath. Cyndy was soaked, scrubbed, shaved, closely examined, scrubbed and shaved again, and finally dried. All of this was quite nice, except the attendant's irritating whistling throughout the procedure. Cyndy was laid out on a bench so that her attendant could give her a wonderful massage and rub sweet-smelling and taste-enhancing lotions into her soft skin.

Cyndy was just about ready now. Her attendant gave her sandals and led her into the next room for her final inspection. The government inspector, an underpaid medical doctor, was waiting for them and immediately began to examine every inch of Cyndy's skin with the aid of a magnifying glass. Cyndy didn't get too annoyed until the man started sticking his fingers up her various orifices and peering deep within her. When the physical inspection was finally completed, the attendant showed the inspector Cyndy's charts, which confirmed that she did not have any disqualifying illnesses and that she had received the necessary immunizations.

When it was over, the man smiled a genuinely warm smile at Cyndy, which Cyndy though odd considering the circumstances. The inspector complimented Cyndy on her beauty and good temper and then complimented her attendant on the thoroughness of Cyndy's preparations. The inspector made it official by signing his sloppy signature with a permanent marker on Cyndy's hip, just below the USDA seal of approval.


It was nearly 11:00 am when Cyndy was led into the waiting room by her attendant, who wished her luck and departed. Cyndy sat down with a horrible nervousness deep within her belly. There were seven women and nine men in the waiting room when Cyndy arrived, about half of whom she recognized. Cyndy knew from her work on the line that a new candidate was brought through the ominous black door marked "female" about every twenty minutes. In addition to the seven women in line before Cyndy, there was the poor girl currently being attended to and another being made ready inside the slaughterhouse. Throw in a few ten-minute breaks, and Cyndy estimated that she had less than four hours to live.

Cyndy took a seat near the door with the others. Every once in a while, someone would make an attempt at conversation, but these brief interludes quickly faded into an uneasy silence. Cyndy was interested to watch the various reactions the members of the group had to their nearly identical fates. Cyndy's own means of dealing with the situation was to bury her emotions and take on an appearance of detachment. But her seemingly unconcerned demeanour was merely a front. The terror and despair was still frothing around within her, and occasionally sent a shiver down her spine.

Others in the room reacted more overtly. Quite a few, men and women alike, were sobbing uncontrollably. Several others looked on the verge of vomiting. One man was very red in the face and stomped around the waiting room in a searing fury. An eighteen or nineteen year old girl, one of those who had been picked up in the park shortly after Cyndy's abduction, sat on the floor in the corner with her knees pulled up to her chin and her eyes wide with silent terror. She was as motionless as a statue save for the intermittent sudden inhalations that shook her small body like a flower in a thunderstorm. Her boyfriend was not in the room, and Cyndy did not know if he'd been taken into the male side of slaughterhouse before she arrived or if he'd been ransomed back to his family. A shapely auburn-haired young woman and her muscular blonde boyfriend, the other couple Cyndy had shared a truck with, were together on the opposite side of the room. Tears ran down both of their faces, and they clung to each other as if to a life raft on stormy seas.

A few minutes after Cyndy arrived, the leftmost of a pair of doors opened, and an aproned attendant called for Reggie Taylor. As usual, no one admitted to being the possessor of the doomed name, so the attendant compared the numbers on his clipboard with the serial numbers tattooed just below each candidate's navel and took a young well-built man by the hand, almost dragging him through the door to his fate. As this drama was being played out, the rightmost door opened, and another attendant asked for Debra Sanders, who turned out to be one of the sick looking girls, a slim brunette in her early twenties.


Over the next two hours, five men and five women had been led out through the jaws of the slaughterhouse. Meanwhile, new terrified faces had entered through the room's third door to await their turn to die. Of those in line ahead of Cyndy, the girl in the corner and a tall attractive blonde whom Cyndy had never met were the only females left in the room. The auburn-haired beauty had just been dragged kicking and screaming from the arms of her boyfriend and led out of the room. Her boyfriend was now wailing at the door through which his love had just disappeared. Three other males who had preceded Cyndy's arrival lingered on, including the angry stomping man.

It was thirty minutes before any more were taken, which indicated to Cyndy that the butchers had taken a short break. On this round, the angry man and the catatonic brunette girl in the corner were led off. The former made a great scene, while the latter did not react at all and was finally carried off over the shoulder of the attendant.

Cyndy searched the room for something to reassure her. There was nothing, and the line was getting shorter. At 1:50 pm, the auburn-haired girl's bereaved boyfriend was taken to his own doom, and the tall blonde was summoned by the name of Sandra Beam and led out with wide eyes and a mixture of terror and disbelief painted across her face.

Now it was different. All the women Cyndy saw around her, about five of them, were destined to outlive her. It was true that they'd only get an extra hour or two, but it was an odd feeling to look at them with this knowledge.

Cyndy was almost relieved when the attendant arrived and called her name. Cyndy didn't want to die, but she had learned during this day and throughout the last month that dying is not nearly as troublesome as waiting to die. At least when it was done, she would not have to worry about it any longer. The man who came for her was a balding man named Hank, the junior member of the crew Cyndy had worked with for nearly a month. He put an arm around her waist and led her into the slaughterhouse. She did not resist, but her insides suddenly felt very hollow and heavy at the same time.

Hank paused on the other side of the door just long enough to tie Cyndy's wrists together behind her back. "It's real nice seeing you again, Cyndy," he said amicably. Cyndy responded with only a faint grim grin.

Hank and Cyndy walked around a partition side by side onto the slaughtering floor. "Hey, Buck, look who I brought to see you!" said Hank as he hugged Cyndy's naked body closer to his bloodstained jeans and T-shirt.

"Just a sec," replied Buck without looking up. The tall blonde Ms. Beam was kneeling in front of the guillotine. Her hands were tied behind her back, and Chip, the third member of the butchering crew, was busy tying her ankles together. Buck was leisurely twisting the doomed girl's nipples, but this was the least of her worries. When Chip had finished securing the woman's legs, Buck pushed her body forward until her torso was horizontal and supported on one end by her knees and on the other by her neck resting in the cradle of the guillotine. The look of dazed agony on her face intensified as Buck snapped the wooden restraining bar across the back of her neck. Chip was looping a meat hook over the rope between the Blonde's ankles.

But then, instead of pushing the button that would release the blade, Buck ruthlessly left his victim in suspense and turned his attention to Cyndy. "Well, looky here! My favourite girl Cyndy brought us back those fabulous tits of hers."

"Hi, Buck," said Cyndy through tense lips, "If we've got to do this, don't jerk me around; let's just get it over with."

"What's your rush, honey?" asked Buck with mock indignation. "Don't you want to have a little fun before the end?" Buck didn't wait for a reply but leaned over and licked one of Cyndy's nipples, sucking the flesh of her breast into his mouth.

"That's gotta be some sort of health code violation," said Cyndy with forced indifference.

"Perhaps, perhaps, but it's worth it, and I doubt you'll be telling anyone about it." At this point, Sandra let out a mournful sigh that she soon regretted. "Oh, yes, I almost forgot you, my blonde bimbo, but I want to chat with my girl here before I snuff you, so be patient."

Cyndy looked over at the bodies of the last few victims hanging in a row by meat hooks between their tied ankles. The closest corpse, apparently the remains of the small petrified brunette, was strangely attractive stretched out and headless, with the last few drops of blood streaming out of the severed neck.

The second body, which had once belonged to the auburn-haired beauty, was in the stage of preparation most familiar to Cyndy. A terrified-looking girl with a big knife and short dark hair was endeavouring to slice open the body from the base of the sternum to the top of the pelvis. Cyndy watched in detached wonder as the auburn-haired girl's guts began to spill out into the tray held by the dark-haired girl. The latter reached into the carcass with her bare hands to pull out all of the remaining organs, and a look of disgust crossed her face.

"Bridget's not nearly as good at that job as you were, Cyndy," said Chip with a distracted sigh. "She wrecks a lot of good organs with her carelessness."

The thought suddenly came home to Cyndy that her own organs would be the ones at risk of Bridget's wrecking soon enough. This made them twist within her belly.

But Sandra Beam's time was rapidly approaching. Buck turned back to his work with a sad sigh and one final pinch of Cyndy's left nipple. "Ready, Sandy, darling?"

"No, no, no, no, please no!"

"Sorry, baby, gotta do it," replied Buck with a sneer. He tickled her belly with one hand while he pushed a green button with the other. The blade screeched down its track, and Sandra's head lurched away from the rest of her body and slid down the chute to the preparation rooms downstairs. There was an entire floor devoted to preparation and packaging of the heads.

By the time Sandra's head reached the conveyor belt on the floor below, Chip had hoisted the rest of her body in the air by its meat hook. Ms. Beam's body now hung in the line next to the brunette's body, which was just beginning to be ravaged by Bridget's vicious knife. Blood streamed out of Sandra's neck down the outstretched bound arms. Cyndy's eyes widened, and she swallowed hard with a dry throat.

"Let's take a break now, guys," said Buck, "C'mon Cyndy, let's see how much fun we can have in ten minutes."

Cyndy watched as Buck removed his apron and approached her trembling nude body. Cyndy couldn't have enjoyed those last ten minutes if she'd wanted to. There's something about imminent death that saps one's sexual desire. It was all downhill for Cyndy from there.