HER LAST RESORT

by C. A. Smith ©2005

Chapter 1: The Crime

Jesus God Almighty! How did she get herself into such a fix? It can't be happening! Not one single soul had so much as whispered to her when she won this vacation trip that unpaid casino debt by tourists on Paradise Island is a capital crime! It certainly wasn't noted on their web site. Nor had anyone happened to mention that cannibalism can be sanctioned by the court for capital offenses on this godforsaken tropical island nation . Not her travel agent. Not her lover. No one. Not one fucking soul! Now she was in deep, deep shit!

And there's not even a U.S. embassy! No one had mentioned that little fact, either.

Okay, true. No one had recommended this place; she had decided on it all by her little blonde self. But it seemed so sensible at the time! She'd won the damned airline tickets and a week's free stay for herself and Kevin in the honeymoon suite at the Princess Xarnia Luxury Casino Resort and Health Spa with her winning essay on the subject: “Why My Lover and I Deserve a Vacation on idyllic Paradise Island.” Of course they weren't exactly on their honeymoon (since they weren't exactly married), but she'd bet most of the “honeymooners” who booked that suite were also one wedding shy of being married. Besides, she and Kevin had used every square inch of the bed, furniture, floor, shower and Jacuzzi to do what any madly-in-love, authentic, marriage certificate carrying, honeymooning couple would do. And then some. Which, if you looked at it in a certain way, made it okay.

Then, as if a dozen orgasms the night before weren't enough, the next day in the Casino, Sunday, she actually came away four-hundred dollars richer than when she started! This had been the real attraction of Paradise Island, of course. She had been to Atlantic City and loved it! She'd spent three days on a casino cruise ship out of St. Thomas and hardly poked her nose out of the gaming rooms the whole time the ship floated in circles outside the three-mile limit. She had been to Las Vegas and had the time of her life! She loved the thrill of gambling and was good at it. True, she had maxed out her credit card in both Vegas and Atlantic City and had struggled to pay it off, but she'd come out three hundred dollars ahead on the gambling ship. She figured the tropical heat had something to do with her improved relations with Lady Luck.

She wanted to cash in the chips, now, so she could enjoy holding the four hundred dollars in her hand, but Kevin talked her out of it.

“Caitlyn, my sweet,” he cajoled, “think about it. We're going to be on Paradise Island for a week. What's the point of cashing them in now when we'll just turn them back into chips tomorrow so we can play some more? With your skill at blackjack, you can easily triple that in a couple more days. It's all a matter of confidence and persistence.”

Right. She'd been plenty confident and persistent and look what happened! Ignorance and stupidity was more like it. She should have caught on that second night when her four-hundred dollar winnings had withered to twenty-five dollars. But she'd had a few really good payoffs along the way and was sure she was due for another biggie. Trouble was, they closed the Casino at two a.m. before it came.

“It's just a matter of timing,” Kevin assured her in the elevator on their nine story upward journey to another night of frenetic, naked revelry. “You were just starting a really good roll there. Another few hands and you would've cleaned up! You've got a special aura, sweetheart. It attracts the good cards. We'll pick it up again tomorrow. You'll see. I've got a really good feeling about this!”

And he gave her a really good feeling that night, too, beginning in the crowded elevator on the way to their room when he had the audacity to sneak his left hand under her mini skirt. They were up against the back wall so nobody noticed (she hoped) and she had no way to stop him without drawing attention to it. She was just plain helpless to keep his finger from sliding under her thong and up into that wet, sensitive place that had been itching for attention all day. She just bit her lower lip and concentrated on not moaning. They were the last ones in the elevator when it reached the ninth floor, so he felt no need to extract his wiggly finger as he marched her down the hall. She was just giddy enough (and just drunk enough from complimentary vodka screwdrivers) to let him, despite her desperate fear that someone would pop out of a door at any moment and catch them. To make matters worse (and more exciting) he slid his right hand down the front of her scoop-neck tropical halter, pushed down her barely adequate black lace bra and gently pinched her nipples as they walked to the door of the honeymoon suite.

By the time they had closed it behind them, she was gasping at the brink of an orgasm and practically tore his clothes off to get at the remedy for her ache. She fondled and caressed it encouragingly as he took an outrageous amount of time to peel off her own skimpy apparel and lay her down on the king size bed. She writhed in delirious frustration as his tongue found every spot on her body that craved attention. He let her lick and suck the tip of his huge male sex toy while he did the same for her little female version. Then, using that same male appendage, now drenched with saliva, he traced a delightfully teasing path from her eyelashes, over her lips, across both nipples, around her navel and into the valley of her raging desire where it was suddenly swallowed by a very wet, very urgent and very greedy vagina that wouldn't let it go until it had surrendered a large cache of liquid assets. And that was only the beginning of the night's debauchery.

Tuesday (which began at two thirty in the afternoon after a long soak in the Jacuzzi to relieve the soreness in their wonderfully abused sexual parts) Caitlyn and Kevin spent a little time at the indoor pool (where the chlorine stung her eyes and threatened her hair), a little time at the first class restaurant (where the food was a little too tempting) and a little time at the beach (where the sun was a little too hot and the air too humid).

As they ambled along the hard wet sand where the tide was pulling back, they came to a high knoll covered with thick vegetation. A sign at the start of a foot path announced, “NUDE BEACH.” Kevin was eager to take a look. Giggling, Caitlyn let him lead her by the hand up over the knoll to the other side. The beach on this side was just as populated as the one they had left, but with two major differences. More than half the beachgoers were black — native islanders, Caitlyn assumed — and everyone was stark naked. Kevin urged her on but they were stopped by a uniformed policeman who told them no one was allowed on this portion of the beach while wearing any kind of clothing. “Okay,” Kevin said brightly. “Let's get rid of the suits.” Caitlyn was tempted, but balked. She told him she needed another day to work up her courage before she could get totally naked in public. He reminded her that the bikini she was wearing only covered a few square inches of skin. True enough, she agreed; but those few inches made all the difference to a girl. She promised him with a kiss, however, that tomorrow (with a deal of fortification from the bar) she would return with him and strip to the buff. “You're my witness,” he said to the policeman. “You heard her promise!” The man grinned and nodded. Finally Kevin led her back up over the knoll where they made a bee-line for the Casino to resume her roll.

And roll she did! By about eleven o'clock she was five hundred dollars in the black and a card away from doubling it. But it turned out to be the wrong card. “Confidence! Persistence!” Kevin reminded her. So she soldiered on through a stomach churning night of good cards, bad cards, ups, downs, more downs and still more downs, until — when the closing bell rang — she was a little more than two thousand dollars in the red.

Later that night Kevin did miraculous things with his tongue in all the right places, but somehow the half dozen orgasms he induced failed to lift her entirely from a darkening funk. She tried to take her mind off the financial hole she had dug by concentrating on increasing the girth of Kevin's love tool with her own well honed oral skills, but her attention to that tender task was niggled by a nasty inner voice reminding her that she had drained all her meager savings and was within a thousand dollars of blowing past her credit card limit.

But Wednesday morning (well, one in the afternoon to be precise), Kevin reminded her that with four days left of their vacation there was plenty of time to get back on her roll and restore her credit and bank accounts. Confidence! Persistence!

A long visit to the bar to drown the stubborn remnants of her modesty wasted just enough time for a tropical downpour to show up, giving Caitlyn a temporary reprieve from her promise to bare it all on the nude beach. She fully intended to fulfill her promise to Kevin and knew how silly this last scrap of modesty was, but nevertheless, she felt vastly relieved at the postponement. In fact, she took it as a sign that Lady Luck was once again in her corner. She was ready to return to her place in the winners circle!

Sure enough, back at the Casino the cards started coming her way. By seven in the evening she had won back fifteen hundred dollars. Things were looking bright again!

But somehow Lady Luck slipped out the back door when Caitlyn wasn't looking. By closing time Thursday morning she had lost it all again and a great deal more. In fact, the Casino Manager, an enormous black man with a large, affable smile and small, hard eyes regretted to inform her that her credit card debt had exceeded her limit.

Shaken out of her gambler's daze (and the happy buzz of several free screwdrivers) by this unpleasant news, she turned to Kevin in boozy alarm.

“Jesus, Kevin, I've run through all my money and now my credit card's maxed out. Where's yours?”

“Where's my what, sweetie?”

“Your fucking credit card, sweetie ! You heard the man. Mine won't work any more.”

“I didn't bring my credit card with me on this trip. You said it was all paid for.”

“The flight and the room and the drinks were paid for. Not the fucking chips! What do you have left for cash?”

“Thirty dollars. Enough for breakfast tomorrow.”

“Thirty dollars!” Her well hammered brain went into a fuzzy panic. “Jesus Christ, Kevin! Thirty dollars barely pays for a spam sandwich around here! And I can't win any money back without more chips!”

The large Manager cleared his throat politely. “I'm afraid it's a more urgent problem than that, ma'am. You see, visitors who are not citizens of this country must clear all debts incurred in a casino before they are allowed to leave the premises. To do otherwise is a serious felony. You now owe the Casino . . .” He consulted a paper drawn from an inside pocket. “. . . four thousand seven hundred and sixty dollars, payable before you leave the Casino tonight.”

“Before I leave the Casino?!!” Very little happiness remained in Caitlyn's vodka-based buzz. “How the hell am I gonna pay four thousand dollars before leaving the fucking Casino? I don't have two cents! Kevin! Help me here!”

“I'm afraid I don't have it, either,” he reported sadly.

“But he says they're gonna hold us here until we pay it!”

“No ma'am,” the imposing Manager said through his very white teeth. “The debt is yours. You will be the one detained. And it will not be here in the Casino. We do not have the facilities for that.”

“Come on, Kevin,” Caitlyn said, jumping up from her chair at the blackjack table. “Let's go to our room and figure out how to get some money.”

The Manager lifted a heavy hand into the air and made a slight beckoning signal with his index finger. “No ma'am, I'm afraid you will be detained elsewhere unless and until you have satisfied the debt.” Two equally burly black men in uniforms appeared at her side from out of nowhere. “Kindly put your hands behind your back, ma'am,” the Manager said blandly.

“What?!” Caitlyn's indignant frustration turned swiftly to shock.

“I said place your hands behind your back. It is necessary for the authorities to take you into custody until this matter is resolved.”

“You can't . . . I won't . . . This isn't . . . Kevin!” she sputtered.

But Kevin said nothing, did nothing, as one of the two burly men moved behind Caitlyn, took hold of her wrists, drew them behind her and snapped handcuffs over them.

“Kevin!” she pleaded, “Do something! They're gonna put me in jail! Call someone! Your credit card company! My mother! The Ambassador! Don't just stand there, for chrissakes! Do something!”

But he did just stand there. And they did take her away, her eyes afire with anger and fright. She had never been in a jail before. Not even a police station. Definitely not a jail in a tropical country filled with extremely poor black people who spent miserable lives groveling out a sub-poverty income serving rich, haughty white tourists. Like her. Her brain filled with stories she had read where innocent white female visitors to the third world were framed and sent off to a grim prison cell from which they were dragged daily into the head jailer's office and gang raped.

The jail to which she was taken, as it turned out, was indeed pretty grim. But not for the reasons she had feared. She was not targeted by bitter and resentful natives for mayhem and abuse. She was not thrown into a filthy cell crammed with lice-covered, venereally infectious prostitutes and thieves. She was not dragged into the head jailer's office and savagely raped by sweaty guards calling her a worthless white whore bitch cunt.

In fact, all the jail attendants — from the two gentle giants who brought her in, to the exquisitely polite desk sergeant who booked her, to the big-bodied courteous Matron who led her to her cell, were kind and gracious.

“Now don't you worry, dear,” the Matron told her as she opened the steel door to the cell block, “you'll be just fine. Everyone here will treat you with respect, right up to your dispatch.” Caitlyn took “dispatch” to mean when Kevin got hold of the money to free her.

She had hoped all the inmates would be asleep, it being two thirty in the morning, so she could slip into an empty bunk unnoticed, postponing the jailhouse horrors she had read about until morning. But as she and her entourage of Matron and guards started down the corridor, there was a rousing cheer! Behind the wall of bars on both sides was a sea of black faces — mostly men except for one large cell filled with women — smiling at her, nodding appreciably, taking in every inch of her long straight blond hair, lush white cleavage, slim shapely white limbs and flat white tummy fashionably exposed between her short halter and low-riding mini skirt.

To her surprise, she was led to an open door near the far end of the corridor and put in her own private cell. It's furnishings consisted of a dirty, torn up plastic pallette and a truly filthy metal toilet with no seat. She could just make out in the dim light a tiny square barred window up near the ceiling. The burly guards removed her handcuffs and withdrew to just outside the cell door until the Matron had safely locked her in.

“There's no blankets, dear,” the large woman said through the bars, “but you won't need any. Try to get some sleep. We'll see you in the morning and prepare you properly for the Magistrate.”

Caitlyn was too shell shocked to reply. She stood in a helpless rage listening to the cadence of their feet retreating back down the corridor, followed by the solid clank of the cell block door and the shunk of its lock. She took stock of her surroundings: cinder block walls, cement floor and ceiling, iron bars, disgusting pallette, revolting toilet. Not even a sink. She sank cautiously to the pallette and burst into tears. It wasn't long before she became acutely aware of the torrid heat. No air conditioning for “detained” prisoners. She could hear a constant scrabble of cockroaches and other unseen vermin and smelled the fear-driven stench of her own heavily perspiring body. Eventually, out of sheer weariness, she managed to put her head down on the foul pallette and wept herself into a sweat-drenched sleep.

Chapter 2. Detention

The clambering noise of the cell block woke her up to an even more stifling heat as morning sun blazed through the tiny window. She had no idea what time it was. They had taken away her watch, jewelry and shoes. Her expensive Gucci shoes with the three inch heels! She hated to put her bare feet on this nasty floor that was undoubtedly a festering carpet of foot fungus, but she had no choice. She had to use the toilet.

To her horror, she realized she would be in full view of any guard who happened by and looked in. But there was no help for it. Unwilling to let her body touch the incredibly filthy rim of the toilet, she spread her feet wide for balance and hovered just above it as she peed. Sure enough, guards emerged from nowhere to stare in at her through the cell bars, leering at the view between her legs. Torn between offering them this supremely lewd show or sitting on the sickening layers of dried piss and shit that coated the toilet rim (which would allow her to close her thighs), she opted to remain as she was, in her wide open, cunt agape straddle.

Worse than the debasement of having to urinate in public was the dragging of time in which Kevin did not show up to get her released. Where the hell was he? How hard can it be to call a friend or her mother to wire an emergency loan of four lousy grand? She'd only known Kevin for a few months, but he seemed responsible enough. Why the fuck would he leave his credit card behind on a trip out of the country? Could a man with such great looks — black hair, blue eyes, cleft chin, rock muscles, ramrod cock, the whole nine yards — be such a nitwit? Or — the thought added a hot dash of anger to her indignation — could he have been lying? Could it be that he had a card and just didn't want to use it? After all, he'd made no protest when they cuffed her and dragged her off. What was going on?

Many more hours dragged by. The Matron returned with a cup of something to drink. It tasted dreadful! She refused to drink it. The Matron looked sad, but not surprised. She snapped her fingers and the two giant guards appeared in her cell, one with a device which he identified as a cattle prod. He demonstrated it on her bare thigh. They picked her up off the floor and assured her they would not use it again if she would be a good girl and drink the stuff in the cup. She did. Hurriedly!

She spent the next several hours periodically rushing to the disgusting toilet to gush out every trace of last night's expensive meal in torrents of thick, chunky, liquified shit — each trip observed by a laughing, hooting audience. Eventually her intestinal distress calmed, but her anus had grown very sore. There was no toilet paper in the cell (and the Matron merely smiled when she asked for some) so she had been forced to use a corner of her own skirt to wipe herself. It was not only disgusting but totally inadequate.

More hours crawled by. The cell grew dark. No less hot, humid and dank, but totally dark save for the low wattage naked bulb far down the corridor outside the bars of her cell door. She crawled on to the hard plastic pallette and wept herself to sleep for a second night as unseen vermin tippytoed around and over her.

“I demand to make a phone call!” she demanded Friday morning when the Matron brought her another cup of the noxious drink.

“Of course, dear. Drink up first.”

“Do I have to?” she whined. “I haven't eaten real food since I got here and this stuff gives me diarrhea. Please don't make me.”

“This is good for you, dear. Cleans you out. This is the last time you have to drink it, and then you'll be ready. You don't want to make these gentlemen use the cattle prod, do you, hon?”

“No,” she moaned, and choked the wretched stuff down. “Now, please, take me to a phone. Please?”

“Certainly, dear. Do you have money? It's a pay phone.”

“No! Of course I don't. They took away my purse.”

“Well, then, the phone won't do you any good, hon.”

“No! I have a right . . .” Caitlyn began to shout, but stopped quickly as the burly man with the cattle prod moved toward her. Instead, she dissolved into the safer stratagem of weeping.

“That's all right, dear,” the Matron said, patting her head. “It won't be long now. You get yourself all nice and cleaned out. We'll be back in a while to give you a nice bath.”

Caitlyn had hardly been alone again before her bowels began calling her back to the toilet. As always, the male guards invariably showed up to watch and make lascivious remarks as she hovered there, skirt in hand as a wipe rag, spewing a soupy mess into the dirty bowl. This time there were no chunks; just slightly tinted watery effluent.

Her growing hunger and thirst began to consume all her thoughts. She looked longingly at the water in the bowl. Why were they doing this to her? How could they treat an American citizen so cruelly who had done nothing worse than hand over to their damned casino every penny she owned plus everything she could borrow? And where was fucking Kevin?!!

More hours. She listened to the prisoners down the block as they sang island songs interspersed with American rap lyrics chanted to rhythmic clapping. They laughed and exchanged dirty jokes across the aisle, apparently oblivious to the ferocious heat and lung-clogging humidity. In the farther distance she could hear a radio with rock music, probably coming from the head jailer's office, she decided, the place where she had not been dragged and raped (yet).

Finally they came for her.

The door to the cell block opened with a clang. She heard the voice of the Matron and the clatter of several feet. Her heart leaped with hope! Surely it was Kevin with the money to pay off her debt and get her out of here. She was at once overjoyed at the prospect of freedom and pissed off at Kevin for letting her rot so long in this moldy, superheated hellhole where vermin ran over her at night and the guards gawked while she shit and she had nothing to eat or drink but that goddawful chemical concoction that made her shit her guts out! And not a peep of encouragement from him through the whole ordeal!

Then things took an even more ominous turn.

For one thing the other prisoners in the block had gone utterly silent. That had never happened before.

The Matron was the first to appear at the bars of her cell. Closely behind were the two burly men, one holding the cattle prod, the other a pair of handcuffs. Following them and forming an arc behind them in the corridor were four men she had never seen before: an older man with grey temples and tiny gold-framed glasses highlighting his dark face; a short, fat man with several chins and hands constantly kneading each other; a tall thin man with sad, sleepy eyes and clothes sized to expect another seventy pounds; and a brawny young man in a muscle shirt whose skin was so black is shone blue when the light struck him at a certain angle.

The Matron unlocked the cell door and stepped in, followed by the two burly men.

“Hold out your hands, dear,” the Matron said in her soothing, motherly tone.

With a leery glance at the cattle prod, Caitlyn did as she was instructed. The handcuffs were snapped on to her small wrists and squeezed tight. At least her hands were in front of her this time, far more comfortable than behind her back. She forced herself to look on the bright side: there was probably a rule here, as in the States, that prisoners must be handcuffed during transit. That meant they were planning to take her somewhere. She prayed to the God she didn't believe in that it would be to where Kevin was waiting with the money to obtain her release.

A terrible thought occurred to her. What if they had missed their flight back? How long would she be stuck on this horrible island? She vowed she would never set foot out of her hotel room again until it was time to board whatever flight they could arrange to get the hell out of here.

“Come along, dear,” the Matron was saying. “We have to clean you up for your trial.”

“My trial?!” Caitlyn shouted, her image of rescue shattering.

“It's just a formality, dear. Don't worry your pretty head about it.”

The man with the cattle prod grabbed her left elbow and propelled her forward through the cell door. She didn't resist.

“Where is Kevin?” Caitlyn whined to the Matron's back as she was escorted down the eerily silent aisle. There were no faces watching this procession, she noticed. “This is a terrible mistake,” she pleaded. “Kevin will get the money and straighten it all out.”

The Matron dropped back and fell in at her right side. “Kevin? Is he that handsome white boy with the black hair and blue eyes?”

“Yes!” Caitlyn answered, nearly weeping with joy. At last she was getting somewhere!

“I should have known,” the Matron said with a sidelong grin. “He brings in the most beautiful ones. They just can't resist him. And I don't blame them. If I was young and blonde, I'd volunteer. It'd be worth it for a month or two in the sack with him. You're a lucky girl.”

Caitlyn had no idea what the woman was talking about, so she clarified the situation. “He's gonna borrow the money and get me outta this so I can go home!”

The Matron gave her an appraising look. “You really don't know, do you honey? You ain't got a clue.”

Dark terror was crowding out Caitlyn's flagging hopes. She decided the best way to sort out these scary obfuscations was to yell. “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!”

“Why do you think you're here, hon?”

“I'm here because I won an essay contest. I wish to God I had lost it, now!”

“Ain't no way you could have lost it, hon.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who told you about the contest, dear?”

“Kevin. It was on the internet.”

“And how hard do you think it is to put up a site on the internet, dear?”

“What are you saying?”

“Any fool trolling for innocent girls to lure to a tropical paradise can put an essay contest on the web, hon. Didn't you know that?”

“But it was real! They paid our way here and for the honeymoon suite and everything!”

“Course they did, hon. We always do.”

We? This had to be a misunderstanding. This kindly and rather sizable black woman could not be saying that her Kevin had tricked her into coming to this place with some kind of fake contest. Not the Kevin who for these two months has filled her days with romance, and her nights with outlandish orgasms (and often the days as well). That would be too cruel a twist. Before she could recover enough aplomb to point out this discrepancy, they had arrived at an ugly steel door which the Matron unlocked with a large key and pushed open.

“In you go, dear.”

Caitlyn was propelled through the doorway by one of the two burly men. It was a shower room with an ordinary cement floor centered by a drain. Six ordinary showerheads poked out of the far wall and an ordinary steel sink containing a bucket and a brush stood against another wall. Oddly, a hose tipped with a spray nozzle, the type used for lawns and gardens, hung from the ceiling a few feet from the center drain. In addition, two chains eight or ten feet apart hung down from the ceiling on either side of the center drain, each ending near the floor with one side of a pair of handcuffs. She supposed they were there to restrain prisoners while the door to the room was unlocked.

The burly guard who had put her in handcuffs now used his key to unlock and remove them. At the same time she heard the steel door clank shut behind her. She heard the snick of the dead bolt sliding into place.

“Now, dear, it's time for your bath,” the Matron said. “Take off your clothes.”

Caitlyn was stunned. Could she have heard right? The two male guards were still standing right there! She glanced behind her; the other four men in her entourage were lined up in front of the door watching. No one showed the least inclination to leave the room.

“Hurry now, dear. We're on a schedule,” the kindly black woman urged.

“But . . . but . . . they're still here,” Caitlyn sputtered with an eye roll toward her audience.

“Yes, hon. They're here to observe for their report. Hurry, now.”

“Report? What report?”

“For the trial, dear.”

“But I can't get undressed in front of six strange men!”

“Sure you can, hon. All our girls do. It's required by law. Of course, if you prefer, these two gentlemen . . .” she nodded toward her guards, “. . . will be happy to cut your clothes off for you. They actually enjoy that.” The guard with the handcuffs slipped a switchblade out of his pocket and snapped it open so Caitlyn could admire its razor sharp edge. “But it would be a shame to waste pretty clothes like yours. There are lots of girls on this island who would love to have them. They'd be snapped right up at our next church rummage sale.”

Caitlyn was beginning to feel faint. She didn't like the implications she was catching in the woman's somewhat abstruse references. She couldn't bear the thought of stripping naked in front of a bunch of leering men. But she didn't like the way this smiling burly guard was holding that evil knife, and these were expensive clothes — the mostly cotton, scoop-neck halter with the tropical floral print, the cute red mini with its tantalizing side slit, and her best Victoria's Secret black lace bra and thong — even though everything was soiled and smelly at this point. “Please,” she whimpered in a last ditch attempt to salvage what was left of her badly stressed dignity, “can't I have privacy for my shower? I mean with you here, of course.”

A harder edge crept into the Matron's voice. “No. I told you, dear, the law requires that these gentlemen be present. It's for your own good. You don't want to be classified as sub-standard, do you?”

Caitlyn had not the foggiest idea what she was talking about, but “sub-standard” did not sound like a good category to be in. “No,” she admitted in a barely audible, defeated voice.

“So start undressing, dear, or we'll slice them off. Right now!”

An image popped up in her mind of this huge man, in an excess of enthusiasm, accidentally slicing off a breast. It pushed her over the edge into the start of her very first public strip tease. She pulled the frail little halter up over her head and handed it to the Matron. That was easy. She unsnapped the top of her mini skirt, pushed it down her long legs and stepped out of it. That wasn't too bad, either. She had bathing suits almost as skimpy as what she was still wearing. Now came the first really hard part. She bit into her lower lip in a useless attempt to distract herself from her extreme embarrassment as she reached behind, unsnapped the little lace bra and slowly peeled it away from her breasts. Thank God her back was to the four new men, but the burly guards beside her made no attempt to hide their interest in her firm, well-proportioned tits, the nipples naughtily erect in response to an extremely unwelcome stirring in the place yet to be revealed. She wasted as much time as possible handing the flimsy bra to the Matron as she girded her mental loins for the final and most excruciating unveiling. Leaking tears, she subdued her sniffles by holding her breath and carefully pushed the tiny, nearly transparent thong away from where it was clinging to her very damp crotch and let it drop to her ankles. She could feel her face burning up as she stepped out of the little bundle of lace and bent over to pick it up, providing the audience behind her with an unimpeded view of her lovely round rump and a peek preview of the rosy lips between her legs which would soon be on much better display.

The Matron accepted this final delicate garment and stepped out of the way as the two burly guards seized her elbows, turned her around and centered her over the drain. Now she was on full frontal exhibit for all six men. Somehow their appreciative grins helped lessen the extremity of her discomfort. She knew (although it wasn't couth to admit it) that she had an exceptionally beautiful body with slim shapely limbs, tiny waist, flat tummy, trim ankles and exactly-the-right-size-and-shape breasts. She was well aware that her boobs were large and firm enough to draw the eyes of every male in a fifty foot radius; large enough to fascinate every man who had ever been allowed a more intimate acquaintance with them; but not so large as to flop or hang like the droopy bags of some girls she knew. She could be confident that when she crawled on hands and knees over her lover's aroused body, or presented herself doggy style for his eager obelisk, her tits would remain firm and perfectly shaped. On the other hand, she found herself becoming painfully self-conscious about her cleanly shaved pussy. They were staring at it! Was it because they associated a hairless pubis with sluts and tramps? Or was it simply that they were indulging the typical male fascination with naked cunts?

The Matron, having ditched the cast off clothing in the sink, arrived back at Caitlyn's right side holding one of the cuffs suspended from the ceiling by a chain. The guard on that side grabbed her right forearm and helpfully extended it toward the Matron who snapped the cuff over the proffered wrist. The Matron made sure it was locked, grunted with satisfaction and ambled over to the other cuff hanging from the chain on Caitlyn's left. She brought it back to her prisoner and when the guard presented Caitlyn's left arm to her, locked that cuff on as well. Now Caitlyn was tethered in place, her arms held out away from her body. No chance now of covering herself with her hands from the steady gaze of the six men. She was helpless to do anything but accept whatever they planned next.

The Matron's next order doubled her humiliation. “Spread your legs, dear. Nice and wide.”

The guard with the cattle prod brandished it in front of her face when she hesitated. Obediently, she separated her feet as far as she could, lewdly exposing her genitals.

This was all in preparation, of course, for her “nice bath.” The Matron armed herself with the bucket and brush while the guard without the prod found a large wash cloth. The bucket turned out to be filled with soapy warm water which they thoroughly lathered all over Caitlyn's body. The guard apparently decided her boobs and labia were especially dirty because he spent an inordinate amount of time attending to them. He even had to use his bare hand to help work the lather into her fair skin and pink nipples. She had and urge to bite a finger while he was lathering her face, but the other guard was only a few menacing feet away tapping the cattle prod on the palm of his left hand (his finger carefully removed from the trigger).

When the scrubbing stopped, Caitlyn dared not open her eyes lest the soap on her face get into her eyes. In a way, it was a blessing; she didn't have to watch her audience ogling her. She pressed her lips tightly together and waited for the hosing. Would it be hot or cold? She heard the water being turned on and a few seconds later a blast of cold water hit her in the belly, answering her question. She yipped, but ground her teeth and accepted the watery assault as stoically as she could. At least it wasn't scalding hot. In fact, after a minute it didn't feel cold at all. It was a huge relief from the murderous heat of this tropical torture pit. It was so wonderfully refreshing that she almost complained when it stopped; but when she opened her eyes, she changed her mind. There stood the gargantuan guard tapping his ever-ready prod, looking like he was just waiting for an excuse to use it. They left her dripping wet, which was almost as good, anyway.

Now the lineup of men gaping at the spectacle of her helpless nudity began to move away from the wall, coming directly toward her. She swallowed and wondered if it would be okay to close her legs again. A glance at the vigilant guard with the prod told her not to risk it. She tried to look defiant, but it only came off as scared.

“Come on, men, get on with your inspection!” the Matron said. “I've got to do her hair.”

In a moment they were all over her, touching her where they shouldn't, squeezing her arms, tits, legs, butt. Running fingers into her. Tweaking her nipples. Examining her like a whore in a bordello. Or a slave on the auction block. My God! Was that it? Were these people white slavers who had tricked her into their lair? Her spirits sank several notches closer to despair, but she dared not say a word with that damned prod only inches away.

“All right, men, you've seen enough.” The Matron was unlocking the steel door. “This is an open and shut case, so go get set up for the trial while I wash the poor girl's hair. It's a smelly mess. And such beautiful hair, too. She'll want it to be nice and clean and shining at her dispatch.” She made shooing gestures with her meaty hands and four of the men filed through the door, leaving only the two burly guards behind.

While the Matron was locking the door again, the handcuff guard was releasing Caitlyn from her wrist restraints. The other guard dragged a salon chair from a far corner of the shower room and backed it up to the sink. Caitlyn was led to the chair and ordered to climb up into it. In short order she was handcuffed to the arms of the chair and tilted back so the Matron could sweep her long hair into the sink. What followed was a heavenly half hour of hair washing, toweling, combing, brushing and drying.

“By the way, dear,” the Matron said as she ran a large comb through the blonde tresses, chased by the blow dryer, “how would you like your meat prepared: boiled or roasted?”

The question was so out of the blue that Caitlyn didn't quite know how to respond. Until now they hadn't offered her anything to eat or drink except that dreadful milky stuff that gave her the major runs. She was glad they were finally getting around to it because she was starved and dehydrated. The fact that they were giving her a menu choice was a pleasant surprise.

“I don't know that I've ever had boiled meat,” she said, wrinkling her brow, “except maybe in stews, but even that was cooked first, I think. But I do know I like roasts, so I'll go with roasted.”

“I'm so glad, my dear. That's my favorite way, too. I'll be sure to tell the cook.”

This was certainly an unusual jail, she thought. First they throw you in an abysmal cell and starve you, then they make you strip naked in front of a bunch of men and string you up so they can molest you, then they give you a lovely shampoo and a choice of boiled or roasted meat. Weird! But at least they were finally planning to feed her. As she pondered these mysteries, one of the guards sauntered over with a pair of leg irons and locked them on her ankles. The chain between the cuffs was only about a foot long. For God's sake, just how dangerous a desperado did they think she was? she wondered. It's just a damned unpaid bill and she'd pay it if they let her use the fucking phone! Her mother would loan her the money. She'd done it before. It would be worth the inevitable barrage of lectures she'd get about her reckless gambling and fornicating with a man she'd only known for two months. She studied the sweet face of the Matron and decided to make one more appeal to her motherly nature and sense of rightness.

“Please,” she purred, “there must be a way I can use a phone. I'll call collect. I can pay the casino the money I owe them if I can just use the phone to arrange it.”

“Foreigners with gambling debts must use the pay phone, dear. It's the law. You need fifty cents to reach the operator for a collect call. Doesn't look like you have it, hon.”

“But I do! I do have it! It's in my purse. You must have my purse here somewhere.”

“All we have is what you were wearing, dear. No purse.”

“Then Kevin must have it back at the hotel. Call him! Tell him to get his ass down here with my purse.”

The Matron chuckled. “Ain't no way that boy is gonna bring you your purse. Besides, it's against the rules. I can't call for you. Prisoners have to make their own phone calls.”

Caitlyn wanted to scream in frustration! “I need a lawyer. If I'm going to have a trial, I need a lawyer. Someone has to call me a lawyer.”

“Okay, dear. You're a lawyer.” The Matron giggled at her wit as she put down the comb and dryer.

“I'm serious!” Caitlyn was screaming now, which swiftly gained the attention of the guard with the prod. At the sight of his swift approach, Caitlyn shrank back in the chair, eyes wide with fear. “I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!” she pleaded. “Please don't use that! I'll be good! I promise. Please, please, please!!”

Her terrified contrition seemed to appease the guard because he stopped beside her without zapping her with the diabolical device.

“All right, dear, time to get out of the chair,” the Matron said.

The second guard unlocked her from the chair and helped her to her feet. She shied away from the altogether too close cattle prod, her steps now reduced to a shuffle thanks to the leg shackles. She relaxed only when she was certain she had escaped it's fiery touch. There was no mirror, but she could see as she straightened up again that the hair flowing down over her tanned shoulders was back to its soft, golden glory.

The guard drew her hands behind her back, cuffed her wrists and pulled her over to an old fashioned weighing scale with a rusty slide and weights. The Matron was waiting there with a clipboard.

“All right, dear, step on the scale,” she said.

A physical, too? Caitlyn was thinking.

The Matron fiddled with the weights until the beam balanced. “One hundred sixteen pounds,” she announced, and made a notation on the clipboard. The machine also included a device for measuring height. She settled the horizontal bar on the top of Caitlyn's head and made another notation. “Five feet, three inches. Your age, dear.”

“Twenty two.”

She wrote it down. “You're perfect!” From a locker next to the weight/height machine she retrieved a white terrycloth robe which she wrapped around Caitlyn's shoulders. Actually, it wasn't a robe at all; it was a cloak. No sleeves. It was held together in front by a single frog at the neck. She looked her charge over with a satisfied smile. “All right, dear, time to attend your trial.”

“But I need a lawyer,” Caitlyn murmured meekly. “Please,” she added, eyeing the cattle prod.

“Hon, unless you can magically come up with fifty cents for that phone call, you gotta be your own lawyer.”

“Can't you please loan me fifty cents? Please!”

“No, dear. It's against regulations. But don't you fret. A lawyer won't make no difference. This case is open and shut.”

That was the second time she'd said that. Caitlyn definitely didn't like the sound of it. Furthermore, Kevin's continued failure to show up and rescue her was making the Matron's chilling intimation that he had actually tricked her into this situation seem more and more plausible. But what was the point? They weren't giving her a chance to pay the debt. Could it be she really was in the hands of white slavers? But that didn't make seem right, either. This was a real jail and these people wore official uniforms and badges and everything.

So when the Matron said, “Come on, dear, the Magistrate is waiting,” and they started to march her toward the door, she panicked!

“Wait!” she squealed. “I'm not dressed.”

“Of course you are, dear,” the Matron replied as she unlocked the door. “You look lovely. Hush now. You don't want another touch from that nasty old cattle prod, do you.” It was a statement, not a question. And it was true.

Mortified, wishing she could just pass out and be spared this unspeakable humiliation, Caitlyn was led down the aisle between the cells once more, her inadequately fastened cloak gaping open as she shuffled along. This time, once again, the bars of the cells were filled with huge white smiles on dark faces taking in the peep show with a cacophony of cheers, explicit suggestions and obscene compliments.

Chapter 3: Trial

She could hardly breathe by the time they reached a door marked “Office.” O God, she thought! This is where I get gang raped! They've probably been inviting all their friends to come get a piece of their new little blonde prisoner with the big boobs! Well, all right; medium sized boobs. But nice ones.

The Matron opened the door and Caitlyn was ushered in on rubbery legs. What she saw didn't look at all like the setting for a sleazy rape scene. There were the same four guys who had ogled her in the shower room, plus two more, one of them the Casino manager. They were all sitting behind a long teakwood desk ogling her again, and obviously pleased with what they saw. The tall man with the sleepy eyes sat in the middle dressed in a black robe and wearing an absurd white wig. He was holding a gavel which he struck three times on the desk. What she did not see was Kevin and any hope of a happy ending to this “trial.”

One of the two new strange men intoned pontifically, “This court is now in session, the honorable Magistrate Clifford Mbona presiding. The accused will stand in the dock and will respond to all questions, addressing the Magistrate as ‘Your Grace'.”

Caitlyn was escorted to a four-by-four patch of wooden flooring resting atop the ubiquitous cement directly in front of the robed, sad-eyed man who was tall even seated in his place. The dock was fenced in on three sides by a low wooden railing. The two guards stood just behind and to each side of her. She was trembling both in suppressed anger and a feeling of helpless fear, but tried not to show it.

“Are you Caitlyn West of Cincinnati, Ohio, United States of America?” he asked, reading off some papers in front of him.

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“And were you lodged in the so-called honeymoon suite of the Princess Xarnia Luxury Casino Resort and Health Spa as of last Saturday?”

“Yes, Your Grace, along with . . .”

“And did you gamble in the Casino associated with that resort, Ms West?”

“Yes, Your Grace, but I . . .”

“And did you run up a debt you could not repay?”

“That's not right! I would have paid it if . . .AAAAH!” She leaped to the left, collided with the railing and crumpled to the floor clutching her right buttock and squirming in pain and issuing little yips. “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah . . .” After several entertaining seconds, the two guards lifted her to her feet and planted her in the center of the dock again, facing the Magistrate. She hunched down, rubbing her bottom and whimpering.

“You must answer with yes or no , Ms West, unless I ask for a detailed answer. Any further outbursts from you will result in a much harsher use of the cattle prod. Is that clearly understood, Ms West?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she sniffled.

“Then I will ask you again. Did you run up a gambling debt to the Casino that you could not pay, Ms West? Yes or no.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” she replied, biting her tongue and keeping an eye on the prod for any threatening moves in her direction.

“Mr. Combstock, you are the manager of the Princess Xarnia Luxury Resort and Health Spa's Casino, are you not?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” said the man at the far end of the table who had started this horrible ball rolling.

“And you are the one who filed the complaint against the accused, is that correct?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

This is outrageous! Caitlyn was thinking. She's forced to stand here with her pussy showing, in handcuffs and without a lawyer while her accuser sits on the bench with the judge! What kind of trial is this?!

“Would you kindly inform the court of the circumstances and extent of Ms West's indebtedness to the casino.”

“Certainly, Your Grace. Ms West arrived in the Casino Saturday night and began the evening by working the mid-level slot machines. She won one hundred twenty . . .”

“Yes, yes. You've documented all her winnings and losings very thoroughly right here.” The Magistrate waved a sheaf of papers over his head. “Just get to the bottom line, Mr. Combstock. Why is she here? What is your compliant?”

“We all know why she's here,” the manager sniggered.

“None of that!” snapped the Magistrate. “I've told you before, these matters must be carried out formally, legally and with decorum. Now, state your complaint.”

“Very well, Your Grace. By closing time Thursday morning Ms West had run up a gambling tab of four thousand, three hundred and sixty dollars, U.S. and attempted to pay it off with a worthless credit card.”

Caitlyn nearly screamed an objection, but she'd had quite enough of that cattle prod.

“Worthless, Mr. Combstock?” said the Magistrate.

“It was overdrawn, Your Grace.”

“That's what I thought. There's no point in impugning the character of the Accused beyond her actual crime.” He lifted a document to where the manager could see it. “Is this the official notification from her credit card company of insufficient funds?”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

“Is this your account, Ms West?” He handed it to one of the guards who showed it to Caitlyn.

“Yes, Your Grace.” She wanted to say more but clamped her mouth shut.

“Very well. I'm ready to issue my verdict. I find the accused, Caitlyn West, guilty as charged. To wit, failure to pay her casino gambling debt in a timely manner as is required by law for a foreign national. I'm now ready to pronounce sentence. Are you ready to receive it, Ms. West?”

“Your Grace, Sir,” Caitlyn whispered, glancing nervously at the prod, “may I be allowed to defend myself, Sir? Your Grace.”

“No. There is no need. The evidence is absolutely clear and I have already issued the verdict. You may hear your sentence now, or you may return to your cell for a few minutes so these gentlemen can bring you to your senses. Which shall it be? Are you ready?”

She swallowed. Surely there must be some way to appeal this later. She certainly was not about to argue her case with a cattle prod. “I'm ready, Your Grace.”

“The penalty for this crime is mandatory. I therefore sentence you, Caitlyn West, to be taken to the Dispatch Center at once, there to be put to death in the manner prescribed by the laws of Paradise Island; after which your carcass is to be cooked in accordance with your stated preference — which is to say . . .” (he consulted his papers) “. . . roasted — and served tonight at the Luana Beach Bi-Weekly Festival. This court is adjourned.” He slammed the gavel down hard and all the men at the desk rose as one.

Caitlyn swayed, the world swirling out of control. The two guards, ready for it, grabbed her arms and carried her to a waiting chair. The Matron was right there with a helpful dose of smelling salts to buck her up.

“Now, now, my dear,” she soothed, “it won't be all that bad. You'll see.”

Chapter 4: Punishment

Caitlyn struggled to keep her thoughts lucid as she was led out of the jail, across a strip of black parking lot pavement the temperature of a frying pan over low heat and up a ramp into the back of a van the size of a truncated bus. That her cloak flapped wide open as she shuffled along in her clanking shackles was the least of her concerns now. Jesus God Almighty! How had she gotten into such a fix? Where was that bastard Kevin? Did he know that the penalty for running up a gambling debt here was death? Worse: that they cook and eat the condemned!

The prisoner compartment of the van had two benches running along each side. The Matron nudged Caitlyn forward and told her to sit on the right, up against a wire mesh screen separating the prisoners and guards from the driver.

“Are they really going to kill me?” Caitlyn asked, her voice trembling with the terror simmering in her empty bowels.

“Oh certainly, dear. That's the law.”

“But I can pay them back if they'll just let me!”

“Too late for that, dear. This is why you were brought here.”

“Brought here?”

“Yes, by that lovely blue-eyed boy.”

“Kevin really did this?! He let me come here knowing I'd run up a bill and be sentenced to death?”

“Of course. And he certainly outdid himself this time. You'll be the loveliest girl we've cooked in months. Everyone will be so pleased.”

“All the time he was making love to me he was planning this?”

“Oh probably long before that, dear. He usually spots his girls in casinos and if they're pretty and unattached, he finds a way to meet them. Then it's all over. What normal girl can resist a spectacular hunk like that?”

“Well I sure didn't! But how can he do that? It's horrible!”

“For money, dear. We pay him a nice fee for each girl.”

“He betrayed me for money?!!”

“And because he enjoys girl meat.”

“That's worse! He sold me for meat!”

“Oh no, dear. We just paid him to bring you here. You were the one who broke the law. You committed a capital offense, dear, so it's out of our hands, now.”

A clanking of chains on the ramp drew Caitlyn's attention. To her amazement two more female prisoners were being led and pushed into the van, each accompanied by a Matron in a uniform identical to her own Matron. The two prisoners were shackled and cloaked the same way she was, except for the colors. The youngest girl — she could not have been out of her teens — had dark brown hair that fell straight to the center of her back. She had a deep tan, the kind of sexy puffy lips that movie actresses pay big bucks to acquire and huge brown utterly terrified eyes. She was draped in a burgundy cloak. The other woman was equally attractive in a more mature way and looked remarkably like her, except for lighter, auburn-tinted hair, a much larger bosom that the flapping cloak could not contain and a grimly set mouth. Her cloak was a royal blue. She sat with her Matron on the same side as Caitlyn. The younger girl sat across the aisle.

“Who are these?” Caitlyn whispered to her own Matron.

“The other two convicts for tonight's banquet. We always have three.”

“Three?!”

“Certainly, dear. These festivals are very popular. There'll be hundreds there. You couldn't feed them all just by yourself.”

Until now Caitlyn had assumed she was all alone in this deadly dilemma. “Did they just have their own trials, too?”

“No. They were convicted last week. We've been holding them in another cell block. It's quite a touching story, actually. Would you like to hear it, dear?”

“Should we be talking like this right in front of them?”

“Shortly they'll just be meat, dear. What difference does it make?”

Caitlyn shuddered. Shortly she would be meat, too. “None, I guess.”

“They're actually mother and daughter. The girl, Alissa, is sixteen, the same age her mother was when she had her. Her Mom, Danielle, is thirty-two. Anyway, Mom went off to do some sightseeing and left daughter Alissa to do a little gambling. She gave her a casino voucher, too, with strict orders not to charge more than five hundred dollars. Well, Alissa took advantage of her freedom to buy some drinks and soon got so hammered that she lost track of her tab and ended up charging over three thousand dollars. Mom could only cover twenty-five hundred of it, so Alissa was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. The girl was devastated and terrified, of course; so her mother, realizing that it was all her fault for leaving a naive young girl where she could get drunk and run up an impossible bill, decided she owed it to her to stay with her to the end, and the only way she could do that was to get herself convicted. So she ran up her own unpayable tab and now they can die together.”

“That's awful,” said Caitlyn, remembering that the hotel brochure had listed the legal age for women to drink and gamble in a casino as sixteen. Now she knew why.

“I think it's sweet,” said the matron.

“Did they get to share the same cell while they waited for . . . for today?”

“No. Unfortunately, regulations require condemned females be kept in separate cells. This is the first they've seen each other since their arrests and I think Mom has decided she made a big mistake.”

Four burly guards, including the two that were assigned to Caitlyn, were the last to climb into the van. They slammed the double doors. The temperature inside the already hot passenger compartment instantly rose by thirty sweaty degrees. The van rumbled into life and lurched forward.

There were no windows on the sides and back. The only light and air came from the driver's compartment. Caitlyn stared at the floor. She didn't want to see where they were going. But the thoughts that churned out of the silence became unbearable.

“They're really going to eat us?”

“Of course, dear. It's tradition. The festivals are every other week and they're very popular.”

“And he's going to be there? Kevin?”

“Of course, dear. He always stays for the banquet. The providers always get a slice of the tit meat and a nipple. Those are the best parts.”

“I can't believe this is happening.”

“It's an honor, dear.”

“An honor?! In that case, why don't YOU volunteer?”

She laughed. “I'm too old and fat, hon, or I would. They like the pretty young girls.”

“Why? You'd provide more meat.”

“Not really. When you cut away all the fat, there's no more of me than there is of you, and you'll look so much more beautiful on the spit or in the pot. But when I was young . . . ah! That was a different story.”

“So why didn't you volunteer then?”

“I did! When I was sixteen. The same age as Alissa. I was a heartbreaker back then. I didn't have your wonderful yellow hair, but my tits were bigger and just as firm. The boys were always trying to get into my pants. Some did.” She giggled.

“But you're still here!”

“Yes. The girl I was to replace became available after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Mostly we use foreign white and Asian girls because they look so exotic when they're cooked and are really tender. But if a foreign girl fails to run up a casino debt so she can be legally condemned, we substitute a local volunteer. There's always a waiting list and I was at the top of the list. I was really excited when they called me and ready to be spitted, but at the last minute the white girl went over her credit card limit by fifty dollars, so I was set aside. By the time another opportunity came along I was pregnant with my first baby and ineligible.”

“You really wanted to be killed and eaten?”

“I'd love to be in your place right now, dear, but it's not to be. I live out my dream through the girls I bring to the Dispatch.”

“And you say there's even a waiting list?”

“Always.”

“Why would a young girl want to be on a death list?”

“It's exciting! You're honored by the whole island. All your friends and relations come to see you off and share your meat. Besides, they pay you for every month you're on the list.”

“But I don't want to die!” Caitlyn wailed.

“Of course you don't, hon. I didn't, either. But that's part of the excitement, both for you and the crowd. Who cares if an old cow like me is slaughtered and cooked? But when they lay eyes on you — young and lithe and lovely — it will be exquisitely painful to watch you die, which will make eating you a wonderfully sensuous experience. It's a tremendous rush!”

“No it isn't! I don't want to be eaten!”

The Matron patted her knee. “It won't hurt, dear. You really impressed the Magistrate and the Cook. You're slated to go first. You get to choose how you'll be snuffed.”

“I don't want to go first!” Caitlyn wailed. “I want to go home!” She broke into soft sobs.

“You are home, dear. This is where your bones will stay forever. Even the ones they use for soup.”

Caitlyn wailed louder.

“You need to pull yourself together, dear, and start thinking about your choices. We'll be at the Dispatch Center in a minute.”

“What choices?” Caitlyn blubbered.

“How you want to be dispatched. You can make it quick, or slow, or decide to be cooked alive.”

“Cooked alive?! What kind of a choice is that?”

“It's the best. That's what I had chosen, before they set me aside.”

“O God!”

“You've already selected roasting as your preferred way of being cooked.”

“No I haven't! When did I do that?”

“I asked you, remember? You said you liked your meat roasted.”

“I didn't mean ME!”

“You, someone else . . . it's all the same. You said you preferred your meat roasted, so that's what they're planning to do. Personally, I think it's a great choice. You'll be absolutely delicious roasted. I can hardly wait.”

“YOU'RE going to eat me, too?!”

“Of course, dear. I've been looking forward to it since I first laid eyes on you.”

“This was all just a setup, then, wasn't it? That wasn't really a trial. It was just part of the scam.”

“Oh no. It was quite legal. We always stay within the letter of the law.”

“But the verdict was a foregone conclusion. And the sentence. I was doomed from the moment I set foot on the island.”

“Not necessarily. If you hadn't run up a debt you couldn't pay . . .”

“But dear old Kevin made sure that I did! Has any ‘provided' girl ever walked away from here?”

“Oh certainly. But they always come back.”

“Why on earth would they come back?”

“Because if they don't lose in time to be condemned, we make sure they're big winners. They can't resist coming back to do it again.”

“So once a girl is lured here, she will eventually be meat, no matter what.”

“Exactly. How lucky you are, dear, to have won that honor the first time around.”

At that point the van jerked to a stop. Caitlyn's eyes filled with terror.

“Now don't you worry,” the Matron said, patting her knee. “I'll be right beside you the whole time. It will be easy as pie.”

“Please don't let them kill me!” Caitlyn blurted. “There must be something you can do!”

But the guards had opened the doors, climbed out of the van and were setting up the ramp. One by one the three prisoners were off-loaded and made to stand on the hot gravel until the van was empty, shut and driven off.

A huge stage the length and height of a ranch house loomed in front of them. Through its concrete supporting legs Caitlyn could see the front ranks of a vast throng of people gawking back at them from the other side. A deep male voice suddenly erupted from an enormous pair of loudspeakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Island Dispatch Center and our bi-weekly Luana Beach Festival! Our convicts have arrived and the show is about to begin. This is shaping up to be a fine day and fabulous evening for all of us. We have three beautiful young ladies to dispatch and I know they're gonna give you great performances. If you haven't already purchased tickets for the feast tonight, you'd better do so right away. There's lots of us and only three of them.” He chuckled and the crowd made appreciative but impatient noises. “Are you ready?” the unseen voice shouted.

A giant cheer went up from the crowd!

“Then here we go! Bring up our first convict, gentlemen.”

The mother, her hands trembling visibly threw a quick, accusatory glance at her hyperventilating daughter as she was hustled up a long flight of very shallow stairs on the left side of the stage. The steps were shallow enough for the prisoners to navigate in spite of the twelve-inch chain connecting their ankle cuffs. When she reached the top another cheer went up from the crowd. Her attending Matron followed closely behind her. Caitlyn, who had edged somewhat under the stage to take advantage of its shade from the blistering sun, lost sight of them just as another, louder cheer went up.

“This is Danielle,” the voice went on. “She's five foot seven, one hundred forty delectable pounds and still in her tastiest prime at thirty-two. Turn around, Danielle, so the folks can appreciate what they'll be biting into tonight. Turn slowly, now.” A minute went by with nothing more from the announcer but a groundswell of mostly obscene remarks from the audience. “Nicely done, Danielle. Now go stand over by your robe while we bring up the next young convict. Gentlemen?”

The girl Alissa, now openly weeping, was hustled to the foot of the stairs and up to where Caitlyn could no longer see her. The crowd greeted her appearance with a solid cheer.

“This is the pretty Alissa, who is, by the way, the daughter of Danielle. It's a rare treat to have a mother–daughter combination to dispatch and cook, especially when they are both so beautiful. Take a look!” Suddenly the crowd erupted in a great cheer, much louder than any before. “Sensational isn't she? This lovely creature is sweet sixteen — and I know she's going to be as sweet on the plate as she is to look at!” A roar of agreement. “She stands five foot eight, weighs in at one hundred twenty nine pounds and is a genuine, certified virgin! The gods will be happy tonight!” Much laughter from the crowd. “Now then, Alissa, your tears are most charming, but the good folks who are going to dine on you tonight want to see more of your lissome young body, so give us a nice slow turn. Come now, you don't need encouragement from the guards, do you? No, I thought not. Go ahead, then.” Another long clamourous roar from the crowd filled the announcer's gap. “That very nice, Alissa. Very sexy. Now go with the Matron and stand by your robe.”

Caitlyn's heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest as two guards grabbed her arms and moved her toward the stairs.

“And last, but far from least, is our star felon for today's festival. Bring her up, men!”

She hardly felt the wooden steps under her bare feet as the guards rushed her upwards, her leg irons clinking on the risers, her cloak flapping open as her knees knocked them aside. She kept her eyes down so she wouldn't stumble, raising them only when she reached the top. What she saw staggered her. A sea of mostly black faces staring up at her expectantly, separated from the vivid blue of the ocean behind them by a wide expanse of gorgeous white beach. The same beach she and Kevin had explored between fevered bouts of sexual frenzy and long hours of fateful gambling in the Casino. She spotted several white faces among the hundreds and studied each one. Sure enough, there he was. Smiling up at her! Here to watch her die before pitching in to eat her later! “This, ladies and gents, is the lovely Caitlyn, condemned just this morning and rushed here for our ultimate enjoyment. She's a petite five foot three, weighs in at a cuddly one hundred fifteen pounds and is at the perfect age of twenty-two: young enough to be tender and succulent, old enough for maximum flavor. And not only that, wait'll you get a load of this.”

The Matron's voice from behind her murmured, “Be proud, now, honey. We're gonna show them how exquisite you are.” With that she unhooked the one clasp holding the cloak together and slipped it off.

Caitlyn gasped in horror, barely aware of the huge cheer that went up from the crowd. She was stark naked in front of hundreds of gawking men, women and children. She thought her heart would stop. But it didn't.

A prolonged, throaty cheer went up. “As you can see, she's adorable. Truly lovely! Look at those perfect tits, that wasp waist and firm tummy, those elegantly tapered legs! And that spectacular blond hair! As a result of her beauty and cooperation with the criminal justice system, she has been granted first choice this afternoon for dispatch and cooking. Turn around, my dear, and let your admirers see how truly blessed we are today that you have been delivered to us.”

The Matron spoke in her ear. “Turn around slowly, hon, or the boys will use the cattle prod on you. You don't want that, dear, in front of all these people. Turn all the way around now. Nice and slow.”

Caitlyn did as she was told. What was the point of inviting the terrible pain of the cattle prod if they were just going to kill her anyway? She turned slowly so that the appreciative crowd could ogle every part of her nude body. But she couldn't prevent her eyes from welling up with the tears of her humiliation and fear. As she turned she saw Danielle standing at the back of the stage, her own cloak a little pile at her feet. Several feet away her daughter stood, equally naked and sobbing.

“Wow! What a superb body!” the loudspeakers said. “I don't know about you, but I can hardly wait to sink my teeth into a slice of that!” More cheering. “Festival goers, you'll be delighted to learn that Caitlyn has elected to be roasted.” Another cheer! “Now, Caitlyn, it's time to make your choice of dispatch so our Cook can get to work turning you into a memorable dining experience.”

The guards seized her bare arms and forced her to the right side of the stage in a fast, clanking shuffle where an ominous trio of frightening equipment waited. The first was a heavy, angled blade suspended in a frame. Caitlyn didn't need any help figuring out what that was.

“If you're looking for a quick, probably painless way to be snuffed, the guillotine is the ticket. Most heads remain alive three to five seconds after being severed. A girl gets to see what her body looks like with her head freshly chopped off. On the other hand . . .”

The guards urged her further along to a noose dangling from a scaffold. “. . . if you'd rather not go out in a spray of gore, you could create a lovely death scene with slow hanging. It usually takes about twenty minutes and is wonderfully entertaining for us to watch. We simply loop the noose around your neck, pull you up gently to the tips of your toes and watch you dance while you struggle to breathe. Some girls actually get off on it before they die.”

They pushed her to an evil looking contraption at the far end of the platform. “Now this is the Cadillac of dispatch methodology. If you want to give yourself a real treat as well as us, this is the way to go. You'll be put on a spit, massaged with spiced oils by handsome young men, carried around the beach in a Grand Procession with music and dancing, then placed over the fire to roast, all while you're still alive and all totally without pain or discomfort. You can easily last two or three hours.

“So . . . take a few minutes and decide which option you prefer. Meanwhile, let's have Danielle and Alissa do a few turns around the stage for us so the good folks out there can have a nice preview of where tonight's meat is coming from while it's still sexy, alert and full of life. Go girls!”

Caitlyn felt caught in some sort of time warp. Trapped in a horrid dream from which she could not wake up. She felt the Matron's soft tap on her bare shoulder.

“So, dear, which one . . .”

Caitlyn spun on her. “He's here! He's out there!”

“What?”

“Kevin! That deceitful slimeball! He's out there in that mob, grinning at me! Grinning, for chrissake!”

“Well, of course he's here, hon. You don't think he'd abandon you at this point?”

“Abandon me! He fucking tricked me into being sentenced to death! I'm up here naked and shackled and being told to pick the way I want to be killed, and he's out there grinning!”

“And you want to get back at him?”

“Damn fucking right I do!” Caitlyn was so furious and so frustrated and so frightened she would have thrown up if there'd been anything at all in her entire digestive system.

“Then you have to chose the method of dispatch that shows him you're not going to go out with your tail between your legs.”

“How's my dying up here going to wipe that shiteaten smug grin off his face? That's why he tricked me into coming here in the first place. To have me killed!”

“Exactly. That's why you can't choose to crawl on your belly into the guillotine to have your head chopped off, or hang by the neck and slowly strangle to death while everyone drinks beer and watches you hop on your toes. You have to choose the one way that lets you look him in the eye and grin back because you're having a more exciting time than he'll ever have in his whole life.”

“You want me to tell them how to kill me? I can't! I can't do that! I don't want to die at all!”

“But you are going to die, love. One way or another, you'll be dead in a few more minutes or a few more hours. Do you want to spend your last twenty minutes doing a lewd dance for Kevin while you gasp hopelessly for air? Do you want your last living memory to be the sight of your headless body lying in a guillotine spouting blood from the neck stump?”

“Noooo!” Caitlyn wailed pitifully. “But to be cooked alive! Jesus Christ! That's horrible!”

“It's painless dear. You won't feel a thing.”

“How do you know?”

“I've talked to lots and lots of girls while they were still alive on the spit. They all told me the same thing. It doesn't hurt. In fact, it feels good. Their only regret was that it wouldn't go on for days and days.”

“Really?”

“Really. Come on. They're running out of patience. I can tell you this: if you don't choose the live spitting, they'll give it to Alissa, because she's the next most beautiful.”

“But I can't just . . . tell them to . . .” She choked on a sob.”

“But you want this to be your choice, dear, not theirs. Would you like me to help you tell them?”

“Yes,” she said in a small voice, giving in to the inevitable. “I can't tell them how to execute me. I just can't.”

“Then we'll do it together, dear.” The Matron raised her hand for the announcer's attention.

The voice crashed out of the speakers. “Well, it looks like the lovely Caitlyn has made up her mind. Which will it be, Caitlyn: the guillotine, slow hanging or live spitting? Walk right over to the dispatch machine of your choice.”

Caitlyn froze, but the Matron took her elbow and guided her over to the live spitting display, then spoke for her. “She has decided to be spitted and cooked live.”

“Is that true, Caitlyn?” the amplified voice asked. “Have you chosen live spitting for your method of execution?”

Caitlyn nodded her head miserably.

An enormous cheer exploded from the crowd.

“Excellent!” said the voice. “Cooks, begin setting her up immediately.”

She felt more than saw movement under the stage where she stood naked and shivering in the heat. Strangely, now that there was a name to her fate, now that her “method of execution” was established, she felt a certain relief. The hammering of her heart had not diminished, but suddenly her mind was free to begin letting go of life. As she waited for the cooks to arrive (whoever they were) to begin setting her up (whatever that meant) she listened and watched with a detached curiosity as the announcer turned his attention to the other two condemned women.

“As to our other two comely convicts, Danielle and Alissa, the court has instructed that Alissa is to have second choice for the method of dispatch. Alissa, please move at once to either the guillotine or the scaffold.”

The girl looked guiltily at her mother, then shuffled over to the noose.

“An excellent choice!” said the announcer. With any luck we will get to enjoy to sight of your lovely body flailing about in a delightfully obscene dance for another twenty minutes or so. That means, of course, that your mother, the beautiful Danielle, will be executed by the guillotine.

A milder, but still enthusiastic cheer went up as mother and daughter were led to the devices that would shortly take their lives. No one had yet come for Caitlyn, so she stood quietly next to her own death machine (the Matron holding her hand for comfort) and watched.

Alissa was tended to first. One guard held her in place as her Matron dropped the noose over her head and snugged it around her neck. A second guard removed her leg irons and replaced them with a spreader bar that forced her legs well apart and opened up the cleft of her sex for public viewing. They then simply backed away as a winch drew the noose upwards, tightening it around the girl's pretty neck and lifting her slightly off the stage floor. She could still touch it with the toes of one foot or the other by rocking her body to that side and pushing down, which provided a second of relief from the grip of the noose, but her breathing distress was immediate. She hopped back, pushing off from the left, then the right, dragging in small breaths.

Danielle had been allowed (forced?) to watch the beginning of Alissa's ordeal, and it's effect on her was palpable. Her face, until now hardened in resentment, crumbled into tears as she watched her daughter begin a struggle for life that was already doomed. But after a few moments, she was ordered to kneel down before the guillotine frame and bend over, placing her neck in the U-shaped slot. Her Matron pulled her hair out of the way and the holding bar was brought down over the back of her neck to hold her in place. She was trembling noticeably as the safety bolt was withdrawn that kept the heavy blade from accidentally sliding down at an inappropriate moment. The Matron took a firm grip of Danielle's hair at the scalp and nodded to the guards. The guard placed the trip rope in Danielle's handcuffed right hand behind her back. Her Matron spoke up loud and clear. “Pull the rope, Danielle!” The condemned woman began to shake but did not pull the rope that would drop the blade. “Pull it now or the guard will give you a long dose of the cattle prod,” the Matron warned. The woman sobbed, drew in a deep breath, held it, and tugged on the rope. The blade slammed down and her head swung free, suspended in the Matron's hand. She turned it so the dying woman, now only a head, could see the blade pulled quickly back up, revealing the gory stump of her neck spurting blood. The crowd emitted an appreciative howl. Caitlyn nearly fainted. The Matron turned Danielle's head toward the audience for a final look, then after seeing her eyes glaze over, dropped the head in a plastic bucket.

A moment later hard masculine hands grabbed Caitlyn and forced her closer to the death machine she had chosen. A gleaming metal shaft about two inches thick with a sharp point jutted vertically out of the stage floor, centered between two small metal plates angled like the peak of an A-frame roof that did not quite come together at the top. To Caitlyn it looked like some kind of fiendish saddle, an impression that was confirmed a moment later when the guards removed her leg shackles and sat her astride the plates directly above the pointed shaft. Her ankles were inserted into a pair of metal cuffs bolted to the floor at least three feet apart in a direct line with that same shaft.

At this point she realized just what the shaft was and where it would be going. How was this not going to hurt? Had the Matron gulled her as Kevin had?

With the turn of a crank the metal “saddle” rose upwards, carrying her with it, straightening her legs and stretching them into an inverted V. Another guard showed up carrying a long broad bar that looked like a metal 2x6. He inserted it into a slot just behind her rump and dropped it down until the top as at about the level of her shoulders. While one guard attached two wide nylon straps around her hips and just below her breasts and cinched them up with slip buckles to pin her tightly against the vertical 2x6, the other attached a cross beam to the top of the 2x6. Her handcuffs were removed and her arms stretched out along the cross beam and strapped to it at the shoulder, elbow and wrist. She was now transformed into a T atop an upside down V and completely immobilized, except for her head and fingers.

Apparently satisfied with their work, the guards stepped back and the Matron moved in behind Caitlyn. She began twisting Caitlyn's long hair into a single golden braid. Caitlyn, who wouldn't have dared talk to a guard, muttered in a low voice, “I'm scared. There's no way that . . . thing . . . isn't going to hurt when they run it through me. Can you please ask them to knock me out first?”

“Now don't you fret about that, hon,” the Matron said. “It won't hurt a bit.”

“But it's so big!”

“It's designed to numb you on the way through, dear. Just relax. Look at poor Alissa over there. I'll bet she's wishing right now she was as beautiful as you so she could have chosen first. She'd be over here in your place getting prepped for the grandest joy ride of her life, instead of hippity hopping at the end of that rope.”

“Will she actually last twenty minutes like that?”

“Oh she'd last for hours, dear, but when they're ready for her they'll just pull her up a little higher so she can't touch the stage. That's when they go into a really wild air dance for about two minutes before they die. Just be happy you didn't choose slow hanging. And look what they're doing to Danielle's carcass.”

The mother's body had been pulled out of the guillotine. Her wrists, no longer cuffed behind her, were now tied in front with rope. Her leg irons had also been removed and her ankles were similarly tied with rope. A six foot pole had been inserted between her arms and legs and she was being lifted and carried down into the crowd slung from the pole like game carried from the forest.

“That's not how a lovely child like you should be displayed. Carried through a bunch of drunken revelers so they can stick fingers up your hole. And with no head. How pretty is that? They won't be sticking no fingers up your pussy, hon, because it's gonna be plenty occupied by that spit. What they're gonna do is drool watching you turning over that fire.”

“O God!” Caitlyn squeaked.

“Now, now, don't get upset. I told you, dear, it ain't gonna hurt. You'll hardly feel a thing. Just relax and enjoy it. Show that mean old Kevin you got the last laugh.”

The braiding finished, the Matron reached up for a thin rope dangling from a pulley in an overhead beam and tied it into the braid. A gentle pull on the rope brought her head up stiffly. Caitlyn was now a straight line from the top of her neck to the base of her spine. Only her fingers remained free to wiggle.

Unable to turn her head without pulling painfully on her scalp, Caitlyn stared out into the crowd, most of whom were engrossed in watching either her or the struggling Alissa whose face was now beet red, her eyes bulging. Caitlyn knew she must present quite a spectacle herself and that it would get even more so. She spotted Kevin, still grinning up at her. She glared at him, unable to pretend she was having a last laugh. How she wished they could magically trade places, let him find out what it feels like to be stretched out bare naked on a stage in front of a zillion gawkers waiting for you to be skewered for dinner!

A fat man with multiple chins came into view from behind her. She recognized him as one of the quartet who had observed her being showered then pawed her all over. He was the one who squeezed her arms, thighs, calves, butt, boobs, and even pinched the flesh around her belly (even though she was nice and flat, for godsake!) like she was a side of beef. Which, as it turns out, she was. In his left hand he held a small box, like a TV remote, trailing a cable. He crouched down in front of her and with his right hand touched her pussy with his thumb. What the hell was he doing? He pressed a button on the TV remote and the saddle moved smoothly forward a fraction of an inch. He stood up, gave her a friendly smile and pushed another button. A motor hummed to life. Seconds later she felt the cold tip of the metal spit touch her outer labia. She stiffened. This was it! The man walked off and out of sight. The metal was turning, worming its way deeper into her.

The loudspeakers crackled back to life. “Ladies and gentlemen, the spitting of our live roaster has begun. The spit is about an inch into her love canal and heading on up. Every few minutes our chief cook will give you a progress report by marking off the point in her body the point has reached.”

It was a queer sensation. The spit was much bigger, harder and colder than the warm human flesh that had occupied that space many times before, and instead of thrusting in and out it turned lazily. But it wasn't painful. It was even oddly pleasurable. Of course, the sharp point had not yet ripped through her cervix and womb. As Caitlyn nervously prepared herself for that inevitable pain, another strange thing happened. Something liquid splashed against that very cervical wall. She was familiar with the exciting sensation of a lover's spurting jizm. This was similar yet very different. For one thing it was cold. For another, all feeling at that point quickly dissolved, leaving a kind of blunt rubbing sensation that was not at all unpleasant. It was as though she were being massaged from the inside out.

The Matron's voice brought her attention back to the world outside. “How you holding up, hon? Not so bad, is it?”

“No. I'm okay. So far. It's like you said: doesn't hurt. So far.”

“And it won't, dear. My own daughter was done this way and she loved every minute of it.”

“You had a daughter who was eaten?”

“Honey, I had five daughters and one son. How'd you think I got this heavy? Two of my girls signed up as volunteers as soon as they turned fifteen.”

“Fifteen? I thought sixteen was the minimum age.”

“It used to be, when I was a girl. Still is for drinking and gambling. But they lowered the minimum age for volunteers to fifteen about eight years ago.”

“But why would your daughters volunteer to be eaten?”

“Same reason I did. Honey, they'd been coming to these festivals their whole lives and saw how exciting it was to be up on this stage and how the crowd worships the girls about to be cooked. These bi-weekly festivals are the biggest deal on the island and when local girls are added to the menu along with the visiting white and Asian girls it's a huge honor. Nothing else a girl can do here on Paradise Island comes close. It's also a terrific feeling knowing how delicious you'll taste! Girl meat is fabulous. There's nothing like it. Unfortunately you won't have a chance to taste it, but take my word for it: girl meat is the ambrosia of the gods. Besides, you know how teenage girls are. Looks are everything and there's nothing more sexy than a pretty girl on a spit.”

“So both your daughters went through this?”

“Well, Raylene did. But Savannah was up against a gorgeous seventeen-year-old L.A. starlet and got bumped to second choice, so she chose slow hanging. She made the best of it, though. She came at least seven or eight times before she died. Also, the Cook oven-roasted her. They got this great see-through roasting oven they can set up on the beach right next to the live-roasting pit. They can roast a whole girl carcass in it. Savannah looked really sensational cooking in that oven.”

“You don't mind that you lost two daughters? That they were eaten?”

“Of course not, dear. We all have to go, and that's the best way. If I was young and pretty enough to volunteer again, I'd do it in a heartbeat.”

The fat man was approaching again.

“Here comes the head cook, hon. He'll show us where the spit is.”

The cook unrolled a measuring tape and used a chalk marker to draw a horizontal line just above Caitlyn's navel. The crowd made appreciative noises.

“It's that far up?” Caitlyn marveled to the Matron when the cook had left. I felt something kind of tickling in there, but there's no pain at all. Will it stay like that?”

“Yes, sweetheart. It's just like I told you. Painless. So enjoy it. Now when it gets up to your throat it will be hard to breathe for a little while, but don't panic. We'll fix it and you'll be just fine. Shush now. I'm going to step away for a little while so the crowd can enjoy watching you. You're such a lovely visual treat!”

Caitlyn's nervous system seemed to have zeroed in on the point of the shaft and the surface of her clit. The lump-like, tickling sensation working its way up the center of her body was as vaguely pleasurable as it was odd; but the thick, slightly ribbed and very hard cold metal of the deadly shaft relentlessly turning and rubbing against her sexual apparatus was becoming a great deal more than merely pleasurable. Whatever miraculous chemical concoction the spit was excreting that was mercifully numbing its invasion route through her body had blessedly spared everything south of her cervix. While the highly evolved part of her cerebrum demanded that she not allow any part of this appalling process to give her pleasure, her primal animal brain stem paid heed only to the sexual currents radiating from her vaginal walls, labia and clit. Much to her intellectual annoyance her body was increasingly in the grip of responses that were wildly unseemly in her present circumstances, her nerve centers on the brink of a full fledged, high voltage orgasm! All it took was a glance over at the frantically hopping Alissa with her starkly revealed cunt, and another down at the body of Danielle slung from its pole being circulated through an openly horny, hands-on crowd, and her sensual command center went on overload!

At the same moment she felt a hand on her shoulder. Hoping it was the Matron she pleaded, “Help me! O God! I'm going to come!”

“Of course you are, dear,” the Matron said in her calm, comforting tone. “I told you, didn't I? And this is only the beginning.”

“But I can't do it . . . here in front of . . . all these people!” She was taking in heavy ragged breaths, trying to stave of the inevitable.

“Of course you can, dear. All our girls do. That's what everyone is waiting for. You'd better do it now, though, because you'll have to be still when the spit gets up between your lungs.”

“No! I can't! . . . It's too . . . They'll all see . . . Ahhhhh!” Her body squirmed on the saddle like an eel stretched between two hooks as she let out a long, distinctly unseemly cry of ecstacy. The crowd cheered and applauded.

When the sizzle subsided, she opened her eyes in time to see the fat Cook make a chalk mark on her belly half way between her navel and the undershelf of her breasts. Another man stood next to him. It was the greying older man with the gold-rimmed glasses from the shower room observers. He was now surveying her carefully from several angles. He gripped her narrow waist with both hands and pressed his thumbs into her abdomen, apparently feeling for the shaft. Then he stepped back and said in a mellifluous voice, “It's going very well, pretty lady. Exactly on target. Now don't you have any more orgasms like that until it's out your mouth. Little ones are okay, but not big ones. You don't want it to tear your heart or rupture your lungs.” With that, both men wandered out of her line of vision.

The Matron was back at her side, being careful not to obstruct the view of her audience.

“I can't believe I did that,” Caitlyn told her. “That was even more humiliating than being stripped naked and raped by a spit in front of a beach full of men and women.”

“But it felt good, didn't it?”

“Lord yes! God help me.”

“And you're wanting more, I'll bet.”

“It's building up again right now!”

“Well, you do what the doctor said, dear. Come a little at a time. Don't hold it back. Once the spit is past your heart and your lungs and is sticking out your mouth, then you can let those little rushes grow into great big volcanic orgasms and it won't matter. But you don't want to die before the real fun begins. I promise you, dear, before this is over you'll understand why all the island girls would rather ride that spit than any man ever born.”

It occurred to Caitlyn that once the spit did fill her mouth she would probably not be able to talk any more. She would no longer have the Matron's comforting voice to help her through her ordeal. Desperate to keep her talking, Caitlyn said, “What I don't understand is how you keep from depleting the island of girls if you keep eating them. I would think the boys would object.”

The Matron broke into a high-pitched cheerful laugh. “Oh the boys love to eat pretty girls. We only use five or six volunteers a year because there's a plentiful supply of pretty white girls who like to come here to gamble, especially when it's all free. Besides, for some reason there are many more girl babies born on Paradise Island than boy babies. Believe me, the waiting list is always a long one. Most girls become too old or get pregnant before they're selected.”

“How old is too old?”

“Seventeen.”

“So I guess I'm kind of old to be cooked.”

“Not at all, dear. You'll be very tender and tasty. And you'll look wonderful. White girls' skin turns a sexy shade of bronze when it's fully roasted.”

“I'm scared.”

“About what, dear.”

“The fire. I'll be alive when they put me over the fire!”

“And it won't hurt a bit. Look out at the crowd, dear. So those babies sucking at their mother's tits, and the little toddlers and young girls? Do you think their mommies and daddies would let them come and watch this if you was being tortured? Every female out there, young and old, is envying you right now.”

“Even though I'm staked out here naked with my boobs and cunt exposed and everything?”

“Hon, didn't you notice that half the shoreline of this island is nude beaches? For us locals, tits and pussy ain't nothing to hide. They're natural. At home me and my daughters are nude half the time. And a lot of the tourists don't mind stripping off those silly bikini bits when they see it's officially approved and no big deal.”

A flurry of activity on the stage to her left drew Caitlyn's attention. Alissa had been raised several inches higher and was no longer able to touch the stage with the toes of either foot. She was thrusting her legs at the floor in a chaotic and desperate attempt to relieve the deadly clutch of the noose. The spreader bar holding her ankles apart turned her hopeless efforts into an exceedingly obscene dance. At the same time Caitlyn could see a rivulet of liquid running from her pink cunt down both inner thighs. The girl, in the midst of her final death dance, was coming like crazy! After a few minutes, her body froze, twitched in a final few spasms, and became still. Her eyes and mouth were wide open, her tongue protruding, drool dripping from the corners of her lips. Much to her shame, the sight pushed Caitlyn over the edge once more and she shuddered in a rapid fire series of small orgasms as the crowd applauded Alissa's final performance.

Then she began to suffer her own distress. The tip of the spit, as gentle as a bubble, had touched the part of her throat that enabled her to swallow. It was also beginning to cut off her breath. Her body bucked in protest, a more restricted version of Alissa's last throes, and her mouth was open to scream for help, but her voice no longer functioned. In a total panic, she felt her head snapped backward by the hair so she was staring straight up. Pleading silently for a gasp of air, she felt the metal shaft push quickly into her mouth, slide over her tongue and ram past her teeth. She saw the bloody tip emerge from her mouth and at the same moment felt a life-saving rush of air blast into her desperate lungs. The relief was so tremendous it took several seconds for it to sink in that she was now fully spitted. She didn't know how she was still able to breathe with this huge shaft filling up her throat and mouth, but it was irrelevant. Her body was beyond salvage now. She was just a skewered morsel of girl meat ready for the fire.

Chapter 5: En Brochette

There's nothing like a metal pole running through your body from cunt to mouth to put things in perspective. With her fate sealed, physically and irrevocably, her inhibitions and fear of death melted away. She didn't care any more that she was naked on a public stage. She didn't care any more that her audience was planning to eat her. She was still a little worried that the Matron had sugar-coated what it would be like to be cooked alive over a fire, but she was way past any ability to mitigate the situation so she decided not to think about it. Whatever they were going to do to her, they would do.

The spit was turning faster, now, moving through her body faster. She watched the bloody ridges on it's surface going past her nose, an inch away from her eyes. It was about all she could see, now. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the feelings at the other end of her body. Intense, electric feelings! The speeded up shaft was doing egregiously delicious things to her super-sensitized G-spots! A new seismic wave was building rapidly! She focused on it. Helped it grow. Urged it on! Why not? She remembered reading somewhere that the last resort of the defeated is to surrender and make the best deal you can.

The irony of the word did not escape her. She'd been a party girl, addicted to the twin lures of full-throttle sex with unabashedly macho men and blackjack tables in noisy gambling resorts. Kevin — strong, commanding, handsome — had baited the hook and she had snapped it up like a hungry trout. Now she was a trophy on a stick. He had lured her to her last resort. She had gambled and lost.

Time to make the best of it! She let it come! The wave swept up through her! Took her breath away! Stiffened her body with electric fire! She trembled and vibrated on her spit, rolling her hips, fucking the shaft, feeling its new slipperyness in her cunt as her girl juices poured out. No sound issued from her demolished vocal cords, but her lips made indecent sucking movements on the hard steel.

As she drifted down from the peak of her orgasm, she felt hands removing the cuffs and straps that had been holding her rigidly in place. She felt the metal board behind her lifted out and removed. Her arms were pulled severely behind her, hands on the opposite elbow and wired together, forearm to forearm. It pulled her shoulders back and forced her breasts out. She remembered how reluctant she'd been just a day earlier to bare her nipples and pussy at the nude beach. How ridiculous such modesty seemed now! The wires bit into her arms and really began to hurt. She whimpered a little. But someone painted the afflicted area with a cold substance and in a moment the pain was gone. Apparently the Matron was being honest with her. This was really going to be painless.

A fist worked its way under her bottom and took a grip on the spit. Someone said, “Okay boys, up she goes,” and she felt herself move. They were lifting her out of the machine that had impaled her, the fist in her crotch keeping her from sliding down the spit while it was still vertical. She couldn't see much since she was unable to move her head at all and the spit obscured most of her vision, but as the spit was lowered to horizontal she caught sight of a trestle, like a small saw-horse. She saw the end of the spit beyond her mouth dropped into a notch in the trestle and all movement came to a stop. She guessed there was an identical trestle at the other end.

Her body was impaled on the spit, but her legs hung down, her toes touching the stage floor. She found she could lift them a little, but it caused burning pain elsewhere in her body so she quickly desisted. There was a clanking of metal and vibrations in the spit. They were doing something to it but she couldn't tell what. She felt a familiar hand caressing her shoulder

“Now you just relax, dear,” the Matron said. “All they're doing now is attaching a little crossbar to the spit so they can wire your legs to it. That will hold you in place so you'll turn with the spit and roast nice and even.”

Even as she said it, hands lifted her legs and stretched them out along the spit. She felt the “little bar” against the back of her knees and the wire being wrapped around them, snugging them tightly and painfully to the spit and bar. More wire cinched her ankles to the spit. A moment later the unseen brush painted numbness into her knees and ankles. Once again she was pain free.

She felt the Matron doing something with her hair. Wrapping it into a bun and pinning it in place.

“Honey, they're gonna carry you down into the crowd, now, so everyone can get a good look at how beautiful you are and maybe run their hands over that silky young skin of yours before we baste it. So you just relax and enjoy yourself. If you feel yourself coming, you just go ahead and come! You've earned it. And don't you feel embarrassed about it, either. These are good folks and they like to see you having a good time. I'll bet my daughter had at least twenty orgasms while they were parading her around. I could see her humping that pole and dripping pussy juice the whole time. So you just go right to it, dear.”

Caitlyn felt the spit move and rolled her eyes up to see the meaty hand of a guard picking up the front end of the spit. The shaft had been cleaned of her blood and gleamed in the sun. She felt the Matron's hand give her bottom a friendly slap as the floor began moving beneath the spit. The motion of the spit immediately triggered shivery blasts of pleasure from her clit and vagina as the shaft teased the sensitive flesh. Yesterday's Caitlyn would have been horrified at the idea of having orgasms and dripping pussy juice in the midst of a crowd, but then yesterday's Caitlyn wore tiny strips of cloth to hide her now very public nipples and vulva. Yesterday' Caitlyn confined all her sexual activity to private rooms, but today she was meat on a skewer and had already delivered a spectacular public orgasm or two. So what did she care? What dignity was there left to preserve? She gave in to her body's demand and began a soft undulation on the spit that caused an instant explosion of pleasure! Then another. And another. The combined movement of the spit as the men carried it along and her own bodily squirming brought on a cascade of orgasms that blotted out all the embarrassment of yesterday's Caitlyn.

She thought about the porn movies her various boy friends had shown her to heat her up for their own ambitions. How could those actresses strip naked and fuck in front of a camera crew in a film that thousands would see, she had wondered? Now look at her. She heard a group of musicians playing guitars and rhythm instruments and singing. She heard laughter and loud chattering voices. The sounds made her come! She felt a sea of hands sliding over her body, competing for possession of her tits, fingering her labia, stroking her arms and legs, grasping her feet. She caught sight of little girls, their small hands patting her face and hair, brushing the tips of her nipples, looking adoringly into her eyes, dreaming of being in her place one day. Every touch made her body come harder, longer, sizzling her to the soul, flinging her into far galaxies of ecstacy. She wanted it to go on and on and on forever.

But it didn't.

It got better.

They had placed her spit on trestles again, but not up on stage. She was near the roasting pits. She could smell the aroma of roasting meat. A heavenly fragrance like grilled ribs. Slightly sweet. One or both of the other girls, no doubt, roasting whole in a timed sequence a little ahead of Caitlyn to spread out the availability of freshly cooked meat.

Multiple hands began massaging an oily substance into her skin. All of her, from her face to the soles of her feet and toes. Again waves of ecstatic pleasure swept through her, leaping to screaming peaks whenever a finger flicked across the tip of a nipple or touched the hair-trigger lips around her clit, or especially the clit itself. They turned her slowly as they worked in the buttery oil, making good natured remarks about the tremors racking her body and the delicate flavor of the juices she produced with each successive orgasm and which they collected in a drip pan and sipped. The fat head cook, whose hands were not covered with basting oil, periodically ran a middle finger between her vaginal wall and the spit to scoop out a taste for himself. When they had finished basting her, they wrapped the golden bun of her hair in aluminum foil and pinned it in place.

The Matron's face appeared next to hers. “It's time now for you to be cooked, dear. Now don't you be scared. That oil they rubbed into you will take care of the pain. I've been watching you and you've had some real good honkin' orgasms. The boys have been drinking up your juices while they've been feeling you all over and every one of them's in love with you. They gave me a taste, too. You can tell what a girl's gonna taste like by the quality of her pussy juice, and honey, you are A number one first class meat! These folks are in for a real treat tonight! That young girl Alissa who's already cooking, she's gonna be some tasty, too. But you're the best. And you're the feature attraction! So have fun and give ‘em a good show, dear. I gotta go now, so they can put you over the fire. They're on a strict schedule. Just relax, and let those big O's roll. Buh bye, sweetheart.”

She was gone.

Caitlyn saw that her spit was being lifted again. She was face down but could see not much more than the ground directly below her on either side of the thick shaft. Her body seemed curiously detached. Then she realized it was because she could barely feel the movement of the spit. Now she could see the roasting pit, a bracket on both ends to hold the spit. Now she was hovering over it, low flames licking the surface of red hot coals. The heat forced her to close her eyes. She felt something change and squinted to see what it was. She was rotating. Except for her eyes the fire didn't hurt at all, and if she closed her eyes while face down that wasn't too bad either. She felt terribly warm, hotter than she'd ever been in her life, but her skin was not searing as is should have been. Or at least she couldn't feel it, if it was.

The extreme heat did have an unexpected effect. It set off a tremendous sexual charge from her clit that brought on a monumental orgasm. The sensation drove every other thought out of her mind. She was only aware of the battering waves of ecstacy that electrified her from the roots of her hair to her toenails. Nothing else mattered! Nothing else came close to mattering. Nothing else even existed! Nothing!! Nothing!!!

Epilogue: Next!

He watched the cute Asian girl steadily, not caring if she noticed or not. He kept his boyish grin in place, however, because women always knew when a man was staring at them. There was a fine line between threatening behavior and romantic interest and he knew exactly where it was. He had no intention of frightening this quarry away.

Normally he would look for blondes. His clients paid much better for blondes, and for good reason. Blondes didn't taste any better, of course, but the contrast between the fair golden glow of a blonde and his clients' dark hair and complexion was extremely sexy.

His last procurement was a good example. They offered top dollar for her. Caitlyn was certainly tasty; he enjoyed the slice of breast and the crunchy nipple he was presented as part of his payment. But she was no more delicious than a hundred other girls whose tits he had enjoyed over the years. If she stood out in his mind at all, it was for the months of intimacy leading up to her sale. She was an astonishing fucking machine! For one of the rare times in his career as Provider for the Paradise Island festivals he regretted having to turn over his catch. Fucking her was the one perk that really meant anything to him. No woman had come as close to capturing his heart and his prick as that astonishing woman! But he had no choice, of course. Having brought a gambling addict to a Paradise Island Casino, he had sealed her fate.

Oh well. He focused his attention on his latest target. She had just won a few hundred dollars and was jumping up and down and hugging her girl friend and roommate. They were nineteen year old college sophomores and she had the kind of fire in her belly for gambling that spelled big bucks for Kevin. She peeked over at him as though she had never noticed him before. An innocent, ripe plum. He grinned back boyishly.

She was his for the picking.