Posted by Sawney Beane on September 08, 2007 at 07:24:51:
The Collected Works of Sawney Beane: Volume #143
HUMANE CONVERSION
by Sawney Beane
18 October 2005; 12 March 2006; 8 July 2007
2,659 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 took several tries. The core of the idea was the conversation at the end, but I got wrapped up in the opening scene and had to put aside before I got finished. Finally managed to finish it off.
-------------------------
"What time is your appointment?"
Sarah Baker blinked in consternation at the neatly dressed receptionist who smiled back with forceful pleasantry. "An appointment?" she replied feebly.
"Yes, ma'am," replied the receptionist patiently. "Don't you have an appointment?"
"No, I don't have an appointment!" Sarah moaned in frustration and waved her notice at the woman. "All I have is this fucking piece of paper that says I have to be meat. I can't believe this is so difficult!"
"Now, ma'am, calm down please," replied the receptionist in a soothing voice. "I know this must be stressful for you, but do try to relax. I'll see what I can do to fit you in." She took the paper and studied the details of Sarah's demise.
Sarah looked around the office, absorbing her surroundings for the first time. The décor was neat, tidy, and fashionable. Everything about the office from the soft chairs to the soft pastel colours could be described as soothing. The office was clearly intended to say, "Relax. Everything will be fine." It almost screamed it, in fact. Sarah found the aggressively soothing interior decorating alarmingly dizzying.
The receptionist was a pretty woman in her late twenties, probably not much different in age from Sarah herself. Sarah wondered if working in a place like this gave her immunity. She considered asking but thought it would be rude.
"Well, dear," said the receptionist after concluding her research. "It says here you have until the end of the month for processing. Don't you want to enjoy your last three weeks before you check in?"
Sarah looked back at her with some intensity. "You've got to be kidding. That thing came in the mail a week ago and I haven't slept since! I just have to get it over with."
"Well, ma'am," replied the receptionist silkily, "I will try to find you a spot, but we are all fully booked, and all of the women waiting out there have to be done today, so I'm not sure we will be able to fit you in."
Sarah gazed around the crowded waiting room and noticed the dozen nervous-looking women, all dressed in elaborate designer gowns and adorned with expensive jewellery. She looked down at her tattered jeans and t-shirt in minor confusion. "I didn't realize getting snuffed was such a formal affair," she said half to the receptionist, half to the thin air.
The receptionist replied in a softer voice. "There's no requirement about it, but at a private conversion facility like this one, the women like to show off a bit right up to the end. There's always a bit of one-upmanship amongst the rich you know."
"I just wore something I didn't mind seeing burned."
"Oh, we send all the gowns and jewellery back to the next of kin as soon as they are stripped, but you needn't worry, it doesn't matter a fig."
"Sure, right," Sarah was distracted in bizarre thoughts.
"Well, ma'am, I can get you in the register and you can wait and we'll see if something opens up for you."
"Yes, please," said Sarah, placing an order for her own death.
It was then that the receptionist named an atrocious price for the atrocious deed. And immediately after, Sarah wrote out a cheque for the atrocious amount, unblinkingly thinking it was the best money she had ever spent. After all, when your number came up in the meat lottery, it was either pay the extortionate fees of the private conversion houses or go free to the public slaughterhouses. Sarah was grateful that she had been able to save enough to afford this final luxury thus avoiding the unspeakable horror of the anonymous slaughterhouses.
Several dozen signatures and a few minutes later, Sarah found her waiting in the room with the well-dressed women. The women sniffed a bit contemptuously at her and pointedly declined to speak to her. Instead they carried on their own conversations in groups of two or three.
Each conversation was the same and was carried out in exaggerated tones to show deep emotional commitment.
"When my number came up," one decorated and busty blonde was saying, "Well, my Jeremy he sat me down and said 'Fiona, my peach, now don't you worry one bit. I know we have Simon at Oxford and Graham at Cambridge' (those are his sons from his first wife), 'but it won't be any strain at all to make sure you get the proper send-off. You don't think I would send any wife of mine to the common slaughterhouse do you?' My Jeremy is such a sensitive loving man, and we are so blessed to be able to afford the best for our family."
A slender redhead with pale skin and enough red lipstick to alert the fire brigade piped up at the mention of the slaughterhouse, which appeared to be a favourite topic of conversation amongst these women. "Oooh, I hear it's just dreadful!"
"Yes," chimed in a brunette, "I hear they don't even sterilize the knives!"
"Can you just imagine?" tutted the blonde.
"God, how would it be having yourself all mixed in with, err, everyone else!" said the redhead with a shiver.
"How common!" concluded the brunette.
Sarah felt uncomfortable and just prayed for the minutes to pass quickly.
Two hours later, several of the peacocks had been called to their presumed doom, and several more had checked in. The receptionist motioned for Sarah to come to the check in desk. "Mrs. Alexander had an appointment with us this afternoon, but her husband decided to spend his money on wooing her replacement instead of giving her a final gift, so she's going to be processed at the factory, and she just called to cancel. So I have a spot for you." The receptionist added with a sly smile in something near a whisper, "It's the last appointment of the day, but if you're eager, I'll bet you won't find a lady out there who objects to your jumping the queue on this occasion."
The receptionist negotiated Sarah a new place in line, and the women were as showy in yielding their position in the queue as they were about blessing their wealthy husbands for sending them to their deaths in a cosy clinic rather than in a factory.
Sarah waited with short frantic breaths until a few minutes later, when a white-jacketed young woman opened the frightful door and called out her name. Sarah stood on shaky legs and stumbled through the door into the beyond while the remaining peacocks made snide remarks about her.
Inside the mysterious door, a woman in a white bathing suit relieved Sarah of her clothing, which she opted to throw into the incinerator rather than taking the time to box and address them for her next of kin. There was something frightening and therapeutic about watching her clothing flaming away in the fire. She could get through this. She didn't want to be converted, but after it was done, what would it matter? Just get through to the end and all will be well.
The attendant demonstrated the reason for her bathing suit by leading Sarah into a large pool in the centre of a large room. Several other similarly-clad attendants performed various duties, including offering Sarah a tall glass of champagne, while the first scrubbed her back with a long-handled brush.
Were it not for the lurking fear of what was behind the next door, this would have been an especially thorough spa weekend for Sarah. She tried to relax and enjoy the attentions as the experienced women prepared her for her doom. When they finally brought her out of the bath, she had never felt cleaner. Her skin tingled a bit, but overall she felt warm and comfortable. This was why women paid the big money to experience this facility.
But then the lovely interlude had to come to an end. The first attendant led Sarah, still wearing nothing but a pair of sandals, through a set of double doors on the opposite side of the room from where she had entered.
Behind it was a man in a white apron waiting to kiss her hand and smile ingratiatingly. He was not a bad-looking man, but his manner put Sarah off immediately. They both knew what they were here for, but this man seemed to want Sarah to like him nonetheless.
"My dear, please step right this way, and we will make sure you are taken care of with all comfort possible."
"Yeah, whatever you say," replied Sarah sullenly.
"My name is Dr. Stevens, and I will be guiding you through the conversion process."
Sarah just glared, not knowing what she was supposed to say in reply to this formal introduction.
"May I call you Sarah?" the doctor asked after checking her identity on his clipboard.
"Sure, it's my name," she said.
"Fine, you may call me Joe."
"Hi, Joe, nice to meet you," she said to her executioner with thick sarcasm.
"Don't worry about a thing, everything will be smooth."
Sarah smiled grimly.
The doctor showed her the fearsome device, which dominated the centre of the room. It was shiny and clean, as if it had never been used before. Apparently, part of the soothing ethic of this place was to clear away all of the blood and guts after each killing. And so this clean antiseptic device looked fresh and oddly like an exercise machine. This didn't change the fact that it was a guillotine.
Dr. Stevens led her to the device and stood her next to the vertical board. It had one strap around it for securing the victim's shoulders. Sarah trembled slightly, but did not complain as he strapped her in. The strap had a quick release catch that would be unhooked the instant after the blade fell.
Sarah gasped slightly as she was tilted forward to a horizontal face down position and the board she was strapped to was pushed forward on rails until her vulnerable neck rested in the wooden cradle. This was no longer a spa day.
The doctor did not immediately attend to securing her head but instead tied her ankles with a thick rope and hooked the rope over a steel hook at the end of a long cable. Sarah could not see much of what he was doing, but she imagined that the purpose of the cable was to pull her body quickly into the air in order to dangle it and allow her blood to flow freely, no doubt into a collection bucket. As soon as her head was release, her body would be jerked away and bled, probably gutted in this position as well. She tried not to imagine such horrors. Such nastiness need not concern her. She would be beyond caring when all of this was to occur.
"Just about ready now, dear," said the doctor as he walked to her side and brushed her long hair away from her neck before sliding the lunette down over the back of her neck.
The slender and crucial connection between her body and her head was now a target. Her vulnerable neck was the only thing keeping her mind and body together. She despised the tenuousness of her existence. Sarah's racing doomed mind cursed the unfairness of the lottery and the world at large that believed it was fine to reduce women to meat. She briefly wondered how it could have been worse at the processing plant. Of course, it could have, but it was little comfort to her as she teetered on the brink of death.
"Well, Sarah, everything is prepared for your conversion," said Dr. Stevens. "Just let me know when you're ready, and I'll push the button."
Sarah blinked at her smiling executioner in disbelief. Several minutes passed.
Dr. Stevens coughed. "Whenever you're ready, dear, just give me a nod and it will be over instantly."
"You really want me to tell you I'm ready for you to kill me?" she said in a puzzled voice.
"I am allowing you to let me know when you are ready for your conversion, ma'am," replied Dr. Stevens with a continuing but increasingly strained smile.
"I don't think I'm ever going to be ready to be killed," she said with genuine puzzlement.
"Take your time," he replied in a silky smooth voice.
"You want to murder me and you want me to make it ok by telling you when to do it?" Sarah was astonished.
"My job it to aid in your conversion."
"You can call it what you want, but it's still murder."
"No, ma'am, it's humane human to meat conversion. The distinction is very important."
"You're going to convert me from alive to dead, and that's murder."
"May I remind you that you have paid this establishment for our aid in facilitating your conversion?"
"Only because I don't want to be snuffed in a factory, but at the moment it is beginning to look preferable to your attitude."
"My only desire is to make your conversion as smooth as possible," he replied knowing that his desire was failing quickly.
"The workers in the plant get used to killing because they murder so many women that they start to forget that they're human in the first place. You want to look me in the eye as a living, breathing human being and rationally ask me to give you permission to kill me!"
"Is that not preferable?"
"I don't fucking know, but I do know you want me to legitimise your murder by giving you permission to do it. You want to go home to your wife and kids and believe that you are not a murderer just because I told you I was ready!"
"It's not fair to criticise me for performing my job, which you are paying me to perform!" Dr. Stevens was losing his smile a bit by this time.
"Fair? You want fair? You are going home to your wife and kids at the end of the day. I'm going to be gutted and butchered and probably parts of me will be roasted before your comfortable head even hits the pillow tonight! And I don't even know why I am debating you on this point because you can win the argument any time you want just by pushing that damn button and lopping off my head! Where's the fairness in all of that?"
"My dear, we perform a service here for women who wish to avoid the discomforts of the public processing plant. We make sure your conversion experience is as comfortable as possible and minimize the disruption to your life. I am only completing the task for which you have employed us."
"You can call it what you want, but you are still a murderer. How many women did you snuff today?"
"You're my twelfth conversion of the day," he replied. The smile was gone now and had been replaced with an expression of tense exasperation.
"Why are you so surprised that I object to this process? Do all the other women just go meekly to the slaughter and tell you they don't mind that you're 'converting' them?"
"Most do cooperate in the services they have contracted us to perform, yes."
"Fucking sheep," spat Sarah. "How can they be so ignorant?"
Dr. Stevens was perceptive enough to realize that this conversation was rapidly spiralling out of control. So he gave a long sigh and pushed the button that would guarantee him victory in the debate. But he didn't feel like a winner.
As he looked down into the basket at the still fierce expression on the beautiful face that had once belonged to a Miss Sarah Cummings, he knew he would remember this face for a long time. And it would not be a pleasant memory. He had converted many women in his career, but this was the first one he had killed.