Posted by Menagerie on July 01, 2004 at 21:30:15:
FALL COLORS
It was an old tradition, as old as the hills surrounding the two western Pennsylvania towns. Their boys had met on the gridiron every autumn for a century, knowing the tradition would be with them, as surely as the leaves would turn and dust the hay and dairy farms of the countryside in a brilliant red and bronze patchwork…as surely as the boys would become men, and follow their fathers into the steel mills and mines, as they had their fathers before them.
One of those mills had turned out the cast iron pot. They had long ago given up another tradition, that of inscribing the names of winners on the foot-high cauldron, because there was no more room; the ancient carvings, detailing heroism of the past, had been worn by the decades and were now barely legible. Now, they were just content to award the pot to the winners, during the post-game ceremony. The Stew Bowl, they called it, and it was a part of them, part of the tradition.
So, too, were the pits erected outside the little high school stadium every year before the game, dug out and filled with firewood, stakes propped on either side. Jodi passed one as she walked to school with Tom, and shivered. “Tommy,” said the wide-eyed brunette, looking up at him, “you won’t let them put me on that, will you?”
The tow-headed, sinewy young man squeezed her tighter to him and smiled reassuringly. “No way, Jode!” he said, winking. “We’ve got this one in the bag.”
Jodi looked down at the ground gone brown with the death of summer, and frowned. Straight ahead, next to the old stone Varsity Bench with its big bronze plaque (“Jud and Mabel Barsoch, in memory of Christine, 11/3/78”), were two sophomores digging another pit, a nearby junior lecturing them on the proper depth and width. He saw the pair coming and smiled. “Keep her safe, big man!” he cried.
“No prob, D.W.” laughed Tommy. “Those Eagles will be all yours.”
D.W. trotted up alongside the couple. “I’ve got a hankering for that chubby little blonde of theirs,” he whispered.
Tommy thought. “Sheila?”
“No, the one whose sister we got two years ago. Lisa. Lisa Olczewski.”
Tommy grinned. “Better dig that one deep, then; she’ll take a long time.”
The junior made an OK sign, returned to his supervision. “No, no, square the sides,” he yelled at his charges.
“Tommy?” swallowed Jodi. “Did you—did you get Lisa’s sister?”
“Sure did,” he said. “Joan.”
“How was she?” The voice was barely audible.
“Not bad,” said Tommy. “Pretty good.”
Squads of red and black, green and yellow, did their calisthenics under the lights of the tiny stadium; parents and students crowded into the ancient grandstand, their breath showing in the cool November evening. The air smelled faintly of smoke; the wood in the pits had been ignited. Underclassmen were dispatched to ensure the fires were going strong at game’s end.
When six girls clad in colorful yellow sweaters, short green shirts and tidy white tennis shoes ran onto the field, gaily waving their pompons, a roar arose. From the Red side of the field. Eager eyes scanned a dozen bare legs, examined acrylic knit jerseys filled to various degrees by young breasts.
Old Mr. Binelli had sat through fifty of these games; he turned to his neighbor, a gleam in his eye. “Over there,” he rasped, his chest heaving with the effort; the mines had taken half a lung. He pointed to a limber young lady in yellow; with each jump and flailing of her pompons, her bouncing breasts caused the silhouette of an eagle in green and white on her sweater to bounce up and down. “That one.”
His neighbor, a short, thin man with a pencil mustache, raised his binoculars. “Janey. Armbruster’s girl,” he said in a heavy Slavic accent. “She’s a tall vun.”
“That is the one I want,” croaked Mr. Binelli. He fumbled through his program. “The southeast corner of the stadium, it says here.”
“That’s vhere ve vere last year,” said the mustachioed man. “The black girl.”
Mr. Binelli smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Very well built; nice legs.” He smacked his lips, remembering.
Mustache shook his head. “Ve’ve vun four in a row, you know. Ve’ve not gone home hungry in a vhile.”
The arrival of six more cheerleaders, clad in red and black, brought an excited buzz on the Green side of the field. A sign went up: JUICY JAGUAR JUGS TONIGHT, and two guys in yellow letter sweaters brought out an effigy; it was a naked female mannequin spray-painted red, a pole through its mouth and rear end. The guys each held up one end of the pole, thrusting their fists in the air and howling.
The Eagle cheerleaders were also ready for their rivals; they faced the Red side of the field and chanted:
Jaguar ladies,
You’re all through!
Eagles will make
Roasts of YOU!
…and they jumped high, long, graceful legs folding under them as their knees bent, budding young breasts shimmying under the sweaters. The Jaguar girls smiled, haughtily, hands on hips; Jodi yelled, “O.K., girls, let’s remind ‘em!” They squealed, hurriedly lined up to face the Green spectators and shouted:
Last year, Eagle girls we ate!
This year’s feast will make five straight!
As Jodi clapped and whooped with her teammates, she heard a voice in her ear. “I’ve told Ricky,” Lisa Olszewski told her, “I want the first slice out of your ass.”
Jodi turned and laughed at the chunky blonde. “I hear Joan tasted pretty good, Lisa,” she taunted, and pointed to the Eagle girl’s big breasts. “I want one of those, and Tommy’s going to get it for me!”
A red-faced referee rushed between them. “Save it for later, girls,” he snapped. “Back to your own sideline, Lisa.”
“Yes, sir,” said the girl, now subdued, and rushed off the field. Jodi watched as the girl’s green skirt flopped up and down, exposing a plump bottom that wiggled as she ran. “How about you, Mr. Swensen?” she asked.
“I’m impartial,” he said. “But if the Jaguars win…” he paused. “Yes; I believe she’ll be in the pit by the Varsity Bench.” Yes, she will, thought Jodi silently; that was the pit reserved for both Head Cheerleaders. “Maybe I’ll see you there,” Swensen continued benignly, and with that he put his head down and trotted to the 50-yard line where the team Captains waited, patiently…
Tommy had prepared for the game by studying videotapes his uncle had shot from the stands of last year’s game. He knew the Eagles, knew their offense, their defense. He even knew Ricky Madarek, but that didn’t mean he could stop him; the Eagles’ Captain and All-State lineman was that good. But last year, they’d beaten the Eagles by forty points. Their cheerleaders had spent most of the second half huddled together like a half-dozen sheep, crying and looking up at the Jaguar side of the stands. The Sheriff had positioned a couple of Deputies near the main exit to make sure none of them slipped out of the stadium; none of them did.
To his surprise, at the end of the tape, Tommy found footage of the post-game ceremony and cookout. Saw the Eagle cheerleaders, their uniforms stripped from them, paraded nude around the stadium. Saw a slender, pretty girl with long, blonde hair—Missy, he thought, or was it Cissy?—sobbing in terror, lying on her back before a fiery barbecue pit, as hands belonging to unseen Jaguar players and fans disemboweled her…then flipped her over and rammed a steel pole through her rear end and out her mouth, tied her hands and feet to the pole, and placed her over the fire. Tommy felt a pang of regret; Missy, or Cissy, really looked good—she had been the Eagles’ Head Cheerleader—but she was the seniors’ reward. He had been over in the northeast corner, roasting a fat little junior with glasses named Judy, Lisa’s cousin. Although that had been fun, too; she’d squealed like a pig as the spit was rammed home, and had struggled for several long minutes over the flames. He remembered they’d left her glasses on.
At the 50-yard line, the Captains met for the coin toss. Ricky Madarek smiled coolly at Tommy; Tommy grinned back, the black semi-circles of burnt cork highlighting his pale blue eyes. Madarek was at least a head taller. “I’m gonna smear you, Jackson,” the big boy said, “and me and Lisa are gonna split Jodi’s ass, later!”
“Think Lisa’s jugs’ll be as good as Joanie’s, Rick?” Tommy shot back. He licked his lips. “I can taste ‘em now. Want me to save you some?” Madarek didn’t budge, just stood straight and hard. Tommy had heard he’d gotten a scholarship to a state school down south. “Gentlemen,” said Swensen, the ref, and tossed the coin. “Call it, Mr. Madarek…”
“Heads.” It came up tails. Tommy whooped.
“A big bite out of Lisa’s boob, Rick!” he roared. “We’ll receive, Mr. Swensen. Eagle girls on the spit tonight!”
Madarek pointed to the west goalposts. As he turned to leave the field, he never stopped smiling.
The man on the P.A. was doing the customary introductions. His amplified voice echoed through the stadium and across the hills and valleys. As he said, “…the defending Stew Bowl champion Jaguars!” Tommy raised the tiny pot in triumph, and the Red and Black faithful shouted their support. The seniors on both sides were honored, running out as their names were read. Then came the cheerleaders.
“She’s eighteen, five-foot-seven, 120 pounds,” said the man in the booth; “What do you think of KAREN MONAGHAN?” Gamely, Karen leaped, shaking a pompon and kicking her long, lean legs, her mop of curly auburn hair catching the stadium lights as it shook; the Green side of the stadium erupted into oohs, aahs and wolf whistles. Another sign; a crude drawing of a girl on a spit over a fire: KAREN GETS COOKED TONIGHT. Jodi saw a tear trickle down her teammate’s freckled cheek. “They’re just trying to get to us, Karen,” Jodi whispered. The announcer blared, “And the Captain of the squad, eighteen, five-foot-five, 118 pounds…She’s beautiful, she’s built, she’s JODI SIMMONS.” And as Jodi strutted her stuff, doing the splits in mid-air and shaking her jet-black mane, an adolescent voice cried from the Eagles’ crowd: “I can’t wait to sink my teeth into her!”
On the sidelines, the Eagle coach knelt; two dozen boys in green and yellow surrounded him, their breath hanging over the huddle like fog. “You guys are ready,” he boomed out. “Remember who we’re doing this for.” He looked right at a slender red-haired end, who gulped. “That’s my daughter out there, Yancey,” the coach said evenly, gesturing with his head toward a prancing, built-like-a-brick-shithouse Eagle cheerleader. “No drops.” The boy nodded. The coach stood, put a beefy hand out; they all reached out and touched. “Let’s GET ‘em!” he proclaimed, and the kick team rushed out onto the field.
They were fighting for their classmates, their sisters, their girlfriends. It was a bloody war; it was all Swensen and the other refs could do to keep it under control. “Remember,” he would growl to the players, “You do them no good if you’re out of the game!” For a change, there were no fights.
It was a seesaw affair; each time the lead changed, the trailing teams’ cheerleaders got a catch in their throats, tears in their eyes. Rival players loudly claimed body parts. “Let’s see more thigh, Karen!” an Eagle tackle yelled at the Jaguar girl. “I wanna know what I’m getting!” Karen sniffled as he roared with laughter.
Tommy threw two touchdown passes, then fumbled; Madarek was at the bottom of the pile, cradling the ball. Their facemasks were nearly locked together. “I’m gonna gut Jodi myself, Jackson,” the big kid laughed. “I’m gonna rip her belly open.”
Tommy was breathing hard from the hit he’d taken, but he spat back, “Your Polack girlfriend is gonna look good on that spit, Rick; just like her sister.”
“What’d I tell you guys?” Swensen snapped, taking the ball from Madarek. “Green ball. Who’s your backup quarterback, Jackson?” “Yes, sir,” mumbled Tommy, taking his position in the defensive backfield.
Half time found the Eagles ahead by three. Rushing past the Jaguar cheerleaders to the locker room, the players in green commented on how delicious they looked, how much they were going to enjoy the postgame cookout. “You’ve got plenty of ass, Jodi,” Madarek shouted over his shoulder. “Me and Lisa are gonna have a party!”
Gamely, the Jaguar girls bounced and pranced, trying to rev up their stunned faithful. The Jaguars were undefeated; they had been expected to make it five straight in the Stew Bowl series. Despite her tears, Karen shouted, “Let’s GO!…Let’s GO!…Let’s GO!…”
“You’re going, all right, Karen…on a spit,” whined that nasal voice from the Eagles’ side of the stands. Karen kept bouncing, but the tears were smearing her makeup; snot was trickling down her lip. Marie Quinones sidled up to Jodi as they leapt and shook their pompons; the dark, pretty girl muttered, “She shouldn’t even have gone out for cheerleading this year.”
The underclassmen kept stoking the fires; the logs glowed a dull red, shooting sparks like fireflies into the night sky. The smoke rose almost vertically, a clear white; later, it would be black with grease. On the sidelines, the defending champion Jaguars brought out a half-dozen shiny, steel poles, sharpened at each end, each eight feet long; they leaned them against the foot of the grandstand, where they glinted in the field lights. Janey Armbruster saw them; her eyes got wide, her lip trembled, and she stumbled in mid-cheer. Lisa Olszewski saw them, too; she thought of Joannie with one of those poles through her, naked, over the flames…“Go, RICKY!” she hollered. “Go, EAGLES!” and shook her pompons violently, her big boobies bouncing as she jumped and kicked her muscular legs behind her.
The score kept spiraling higher; time ticked down. Otis Jones burst down the field for the Eagles, a 72-yard gallop that put the underdogs in front by a point. The young man politely flipped the ball to Swensen, turned to Tommy, said, “That’s for Letitia.” It had been his sister last year smoldering over the fire in the southeast corner of the stadium. He sprinted past the stunned Jaguar cheerleaders, saying as he passed Marie, “I could eat you up, baby, and that’s a fact.” Marie bit her lip, made the sign of the cross.
The two-point conversion failed. Ninety seconds left; Tommy took the Jaguars down the field, confidently, as he had so many times. Thirty wins in four seasons, after all. The shrill cheering of the red-and-black girls whose lives now depended on him got more frantic. ‘TOUCH-down,” they screamed, “TOUCH-down…”
But all they needed was the field goal, and Tommy never missed. A sideline pattern netted thirteen; an option brought twelve. Tommy rolled to the turf in front of the Eagles’ bench; Lisa was exhorting the crowd. “JAGS ON THE SPIT,” they were chanting, “JAGS ON THE SPIT.” She looked down at the huffing, puffing QB. “Jodi’ll taste damn good,” she said. Tommy just stared. I’m gonna stick the spit up her Polish ass personally, he decided.
Five seconds left; time out. Ball on the seven. Easy. The Eagles’ coach’s daughter, Sheila, was on her knees, pleading, her huge breasts rising and falling with each deep breath. The Jaguar girls leaned forward, not even daring to breathe. Red side quiet, Green side raising a ruckus. Swensen blew the whistle. Four…three…two…the snap; the hold, the kick—
Ricky Madarek got a hand on it. No good. Eagles win.
For a moment, it was as if they were frozen in time; then, the yell went up from the Eagles’ side of the stands, and the crowd rushed the field. Tommy watched it all dully, in a daze; he saw the exultant Green side grab the six Jaguar cheerleaders and, one by one, strip them naked. The sweaters, the tiny skirts, the sneakers…the socks, the bras, the panties…all passed around for souvenirs. A fat guy wearing an Eagles cap held Jodi’s letter sweater aloft triumphantly. The six crying, nude teenagers were bound hand and foot; the gleaming steel poles were passed through the loops of rope, and the girls were carried like sides of beef in a victory procession around the dirt track that surrounded the interior of the stadium. Tommy saw Marie, shaking her head vigorously and struggling, a look of desperation on her face, her smooth skin glistening with sweat, a harsh brown in the stadium lights; he saw Karen, who hanging limply by her bound wrists and ankles, sobbing uncontrollably. A junior girl, Heather, was shouting, “No!—No!—”; one of the Eagle kids hauling her slapped her savagely on the rump, laughing at her tears. And then—“TOMMEEEEEE!…TOMMEEEEEE!…PLEEEEEEZ!…”
He had seen Jodi naked before, of course; the long lines of her sleek thighs extended to the swelling of her plump calves. Her firm young breasts bounced with each step of her captors; as her round, fleshy buttocks bumped the harsh gravel of the track, she squealed. The two Eagles track lettermen holding either side of her pole guffawed; one yelled, “We got the grand prize, Jackson.” Jodi’s eyes met his. “You promised,” she screamed, “you promised…aaahhhhhh, hahhh, hahhh…” and she began to bawl. Tommy turned away.
Teammates were grabbing at Tommy, ushering him away from his helpless girlfriend, toward the 50-yard line. “Gotta give the trophy away, man,” one of them said. “Come on—you beat ‘em three in a row. Fair’s fair.”
Madarek towered over him; still smiling. “Good game, Jackson,” he said, clutching Tommy’s hand in a bonecrusher grip. Silently, Tommy handed over the little pot; Madarek held it up high, the cheers of the Eagle followers drowning the screams of the doomed Jaguar cheerleaders. And he shouted, “To the victory party!” And the mob, holding high their prizes—six hysterical, bare girls, kicking against their bonds—departed through the main exit.
In the stands, Mr. Binelli got slowly to his feet. “No party for us this year,” he rumbled, watching Janey Armbruster leading the cheers as another naked, weeping Jaguar cheerleader was hauled away.
“Vell, ve’ve had our fun,” shrugged his neighbor. “Now, it’s their turn.”
The old man’s eyes were still on the long-legged Janey. “She’s a senior, isn’t she?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the Mustache…then added, hopefully, “But…she has a sister.”
Each girl was brought to a different pit; Jodi was carried to the one D.W. and his assistants had dug, but they were nowhere to be found. This was the Eagles’ celebration, after all, the first in six years. The track men unceremoniously slid her off the pole to the ground, a couple of feet from the flames; futilely, she struggled with her bonds. Excited schoolkids, and not a few adults, rushed up to examine her; they fondled her bare flesh, declaring dibs on this bit of her body or that one, speculated on her flavor, on how quickly she would die over the fire. The eyes of the Captain of the Jaguar cheerleading squad were glazed in terror; the leaping flames reflected in her eyes, shone on her peach colored skin. Her plump ankles and slim wrists chafed as the ropes rubbed against them. “We finally get to eat a cheerleader!” yelled someone, and they all cheered. Then they cheered again.
Ricky Madarek had arrived. He held the game ball in one hand; the other arm was around Lisa Olszewski. The blonde smiled wickedly down at her naked, defenseless nemesis. “Tommy did Joanie, you know,” she told the crying brunette. “Ricky promised me I could do you!”
Jodi saw the gleaming blade, the fury in Lisa’s eyes. She closed her own eyes, tears trickling from them. Then came the pain, searing, intense, as the knife made its way through her belly; the sea of Green crowded around and helped as Lisa pulled out Jodi’s entrails. The agony was such that she hardly noticed when the point of the steel pole entered her asshole; two other football players held her by her soft, round shoulders as Madarek put his 240 pounds of brawn behind it and shoved the pole through. Finally, it emerged from her mouth; her teeth ground against the cold metal as her now-limp arms and legs were retied to the ends of the pole. The other two players lifted it at each end and carefully placed it over the stakes; Jodi’s consciousness was ebbing as the flames licked at her breasts and jagged, open belly, the tops of her thighs, her womanhood…
Tommy sat dejectedly on the Varsity Bench; around him, delighted Eagle fans were gnawing roasted pieces of his girlfriend out of greasy napkins, smearing on ketchup and mustard, washing Jodi’s flesh down with soda. Lisa giggled as she bit into one of Jodi’s butt cheeks, tearing away the rubbery meat and chewing voraciously. Ricky Madarek held a drumstick—one of those thick calves, by the bone end; he took a big bite, raised the limb in triumph. Someone sat next to Tommy; it was his coach. “I’m—“ he choked on it; “I’m sorry, coach; I lost the game.”
The old man, his craggy face showing concern, nodded, patted Tommy on the back. “I know, son. It’s rough; she was a real nice girl. But I’ve been through twenty-eight of these, and we’ve won more than we’ve lost.” He paused; Otis Jones had ripped away part of Jodi’s ribs, the breast hanging limply from them, and was waving the meat around to the delight of the Eagles backers. “I’ve learned something from every loss,” he continued, “and I know you’ll learn something, too. It’s times like this that build real character—” The coach was drowned out again; Madarek was leading the crowd in the Eagles’ alma mater, using Jodi’s roasted leg as a baton; the crowd sang along, the words muffled by mouths full of the poor girl’s flesh.
Six young girls, roasting nude over hot fires, their cheerleader uniforms to be placed in trophy cases in the next town. Six young women whose cooked flesh would be enjoyed by their rivals, whose bodies were the prize in an annual athletic contest. Six cheerleaders, hanging limply over barbecue pits, spits through their asses and mouths, to be carved into cuts of meat for the victors.
Tradition.