The Abbattoir

4. Sampling the meat

She felt paralyzed. She heard the click of her neck chain released by the guard. She felt his vice-like grip on her arm. She felt herself moving. It didn't seem real. Her mind felt numb. Her heart was pounding, adrenalin making her lightheaded. She wanted to crawl out of her skin. She heard the clink of her leg irons on the floor and felt them bite into her sensitized skin as she shuffled toward the steel door. It opened magically to let her through and snickered shut behind her. She was in a short corridor lined on all sides — walls, ceiling and floor — by sound-proofing materials. As her mind began to function again, the reason for the strange silence in the room she had just left behind became obvious. This corridor was a sound barrier, keeping the screams of the tortured from overly stressing the nerves of the waiting damned.

She was led through another electrically controlled door and on to a platform that overlooked a high-ceilinged chamber. This was the “theater” for processing, only it was backwards. She, the audience, was on the stage and the scene to be enacted for her was spread out on the floor of the auditorium. Jan was being spreadeagled on an odd looking table made of narrow beams in the shape of a horizontal X. Her arms and legs were being strapped down to the crossbeams and a gag had been stuffed in her mouth and strapped in so tightly that it distorted her face. Her breasts were smeared with blood. The men working over her wore smocks drenched in blood and blood was splattered all over the several stainless steel cabinets that formed a partial arc on the far side of the X-shaped table. The floor glistened where it had been recently hosed down and little pink-tinged riverlets snaked toward a floor drain.

While Kayla was taking this in, the guard led her up to a 4x4 wooden beam that functioned as a railing at the edge of the platform. It was bolted to two vertical steel posts. A second guard materialized with another 4x4 about four feet long and placed it on the floor of the platform just in front of the railing. They made her step up on it. She could barely lift her legs. Her handcuffs were removed and the guards, one on each side, took her hands and placed them palm down on top of the wooden railing. They looped chains around her wrists and around the railing beam to hold them in place. Her leg irons were also removed, her feet spread apart and chains wrapped around her ankles and the railing posts to hold them there. She was so absorbed by what was happening to Jan that she barely noticed as they taped down her fingers, wrapping the tape around the beam. What finally drew her attention from Jan was the slippery feel of the beam on her palms. She looked down and saw that the railing beam was covered with blood. Instinctively she tried to pull her hands away, but the chains and tape held her fast. Then the guard on her right produced a large nail and a hammer. He grinned at her, carefully placed the point of the nail on the back of her hand where it wouldn't contact a vein or mar her tattooed ID. He lifted the hammer and drove the nail through her hand into the beam. Kayla screamed as he continued to hammer until only three inches of nail protruded from the back of her hand. Blood flowed from both sides of her hand and her whole body trembled from the shock of it. The pain was fiery and she tried not to let her hand move to aggravate it, even as the guard ripped away the tape from her fingers and removed the wrist chain. Then he handed the hammer and another nail to the guard on her left who repeated the process, nailing her left hand to the railing as well.

Still they weren't finished. One guard held her lower leg while the other guard hammered a nail through her foot into the beam she was standing on, first the left, then the right. They removed the ankle chains and left her there to watch the show about to take place below. She wept with agony, but willed herself to stop shaking so the pain would become bearable. It occurred to her that if she could screw up the courage to yank her hands and feet upward hard enough, she might tear them off these nails. But what would be the point? Even if she'd had the strength to do it, the guards were still behind her, watching, no doubt hoping she would try so they could hammer more nails through her. She grit her teeth and held as still as possible.

A voice cut through her concentration.

“Well, look what we have here,” it said. “The bitch spy who acted as go-between in the conspiracy. And a lovely little traitor she is, too. Even prettier than the cunt laid out for butchering.”

Kayla, swaying, held her tongue. The man leering up at her from the main floor was wearing a green smock drenched in blood. He had a big square face with dark eyes, bad complexion, an acne pocked nose and thick, curly light brown hair. His face and hair were speckled with blood. Even his freshly washed hands had blood under the fingernails. How did he know who she was? Well, that was no secret and all these people seemed to have clipboards.

As though reading her mind he said, “My name's Bert. Me and the cunt on the table go way back. I have to apologize. I wanted to have those gorgeous tits of yours nailed to that plank while you watch the fun, just like we did with her. But it seems some rich Asian guys have coughed up a pile of money for the privilege of eating your tits, and the chef feels they should be presented unblemished. But I trust you'll be content with being nailed in place by your hands and feet. It's not as aesthetically pleasing, but I know you wouldn't want to deprive The Company of the nice profit it stands to make on your boobs. Your hands and feet have no market value and since you won't be needing them any more, might as well make them useful for something , right?”

Kayla couldn't bear to look at him, so she looked over to where Jan was tightly bound to the X, her legs and arms cinched down with four straps each. Another strap pinned her hips and still another passed over her shoulders and under her outstretched arms. She could only wiggle her hands and feet. For the first time Kayla noticed two naked young women standing quietly near the cabinets next to a pile of what looked like picnic coolers. One was very young, a petite, blue-eyed blonde with spectacular breasts and a caesarean scar on her abdomen. The other was vaguely exotic with a very slim, elegant body, long black hair and shy, soft eyes. The IDs branded on their foreheads had healed into purple scar tissue. They stood perfectly motionless, apparently waiting for orders of some sort.

Bert, seeing where Kayla's attention had wandered, said, “You like our little slave girls over there? Very pretty little things. And quiet, too. We cut out their tongues as part of our agreement to let them work here for a while. They're very helpful.” He smiled mirthlessly at them and added, “They'd better be.”

He snapped his fingers at them and pointed to Jan on the table. The dark haired girl immediately trotted over to Jan and washed the blood off her breasts with a wet cloth, wiping them dry with another. Then she returned to her place by the coolers. Blood continued to ooze from the entrance and exit wounds of the nails.

Bert ambled over to a cabinet near his captive on the table and selected a huge syringe filled with white fluid. He plunged the thick needle into Jan's right breast and pushed the plunger. Jan's face contorted in pain and she balled her hands into tight fists. When the syringe was empty, he took another full one and emptied it into her left breast.

He turned to Kayla and held up the empty syringes. “Milk,” he said. “Makes the tits nice and juicy. Improves flavor. ‘Course they won't be anywhere near as tasty as yours. Nothin' like natural mother's milk to bring out the true succulence of young tits. That's why they let you keep pumpin' ‘em in jail, so you'd provide them with some nice milk-soaked mother's tits. Big profit in those babies.”

Turning back to the cabinet, he picked up some kind of instrument which he tapped lazily on the palm of his hand, then on Jan's right breast, swollen now to half again its normal size.

“Well, 7K9B5,” he said to her, “you'll be pleased to learn you've been invited to the snuff banquet tonight. In fact, you're the featured entree.” He smiled and brandished what Kayla could now see was a boning knife. “Course, they're getting you at a discount. Know why? ‘Cause you're damaged goods. Oh you're not damaged yet, but you will be.”

He giggled and put the point of the knife on the nascent rise of Jan's breast. Blood seeped up and surrounded the blade. Jan tried to keep the fear out of her eyes by thinking angry thoughts, but her terror was transparent. The muscles of her jaw bulged as she bit into the massive, soggy gag filling her mouth, and its leather strap.

“Actually, as a reward for my contribution to the arrest and conviction of you and your fellow conspirators, The Company has agreed — very generously, I must say — to let me sample your meat. They gave me my choice of cuts. I selected this.”

He pushed the blade into her flesh and began slowly carving her right breast from her chest. Kayla felt herself growing dizzy at the sight of it but knew if she fainted she would tear painful gashes in her hands and feet. She struggled to stay conscious while Jan vibrated in pinioned agony on the X, her muffled screams tearing at Kayla's heart. It took only a minute for Bert to slice the breast free of Jan's body. Blood ran off both sides of her chest, dripping on the floor. He placed the disembodied breast on her stomach while he laid a surgical dressing over the gaping wound in her chest to keep her from bleeding to death. Then he picked up the breast with a flourish and put it on a plate. Mocking the delivery of a TV chef, he described how he was preparing his “dish” with seasoned butter, which he smeared on with a rubber spatula. He sprinkled on some basil and tarragon. For a garnish, he pinned a sprig of mint leaves to the nipple with a toothpick. He slid the finished product into a microwave that stood atop one of the cabinets, set the timer and turned on the oven.

As if on cue, two older men entered the theater from a side door. They wore immaculate smocks with surgical gloves, caps and masks. Bert stood back smiling as they took over the processing. “Sorry, Bitch,” he said to Kayla. “This is the boring part. You'll just have to wait while the meat cooks.”

With expert swiftness the two older men drew three sides of a large square with scalpels, beginning where her right breast had been, slicing across under her left breast, then down that side to her hip and across her lower abdomen to the other side. As Jan continued to scream into the mass of cloth in her mouth, the men slashed at the underside the huge flap of skin, separating it from the flesh beneath, then folded it over her right side, exposing the abdominal muscles beneath. They made a deep vertical slice through those as well and folded them aside. Most of her internal organs were now exposed to the bright lights overhead. With speedy efficiency the two men — obviously trained surgeons — began cutting the organs free, cauterizing the severed vessels in her body with the surgical equivalents of a soldering iron and a blow torch, to keep her from bleeding to death. One of the slave girls kept smelling salts under her nose to prevent her from passing out from the pain and horror. As each organ was extracted, the other slave girl opened a cooler to receive it and hurried it off through the side door, returning a minute later to await the next delivery. In this way they took out her entire intestinal track, both kidneys, her womb, her liver, her spleen, pancreas and stomach.

Above Jan's muffled screams, the microwave oven dinged its cheerful announcement that Bert's snack was ready. He pulled out the plate with the steaming breast, now a rosy pink, and placed it on a cabinet which he rolled in front of Kayla where it lay sizzling in its juices. Removing a fork and carving knife from the cabinet drawer, he carved it into three thick slices. The outside two he offered to the guards who accepted them eagerly. The middle slice, with the garnished nipple, he kept for himself, taking large bites and chewing noisily in front of Kayla. When she wouldn't look, he sauntered over to Jan and leaned over her, taking another bite.

“Delicious!” he informed her. “I only regret that I can't put the rest of you in my freezer and enjoy you for several more months. But I mustn't be greedy. I'll take your gag out if you'd like to taste yourself. Of course your stomach is gone, but that doesn't matter. Your taste buds are still intact. No? Well, don't say you weren't given the chance. This is pretty expensive meat, you know. You'll be even more delicious when you're roasted properly on a spit over a fire. That'll be in about . . .” he checked his watch, “. . .twenty-five more minutes. Gives the kitchen crew time to clean you up, stuff you, run the spit through you from cunt to neck and rack you up on the rotisserie for roasting. You'll be done to juicy perfection by the time your party arrives for the feast.” He snickered at the look of horror in her eyes. “Be a nice touch if they could leave your head on with an apple in your mouth, but Dispatch Central insists on getting it back uncooked for identification.”

He would have continued the taunting, but Jan's breaths were coming in short pants and her eyes were beginning to glaze. Within a few minutes her eyes had drooped shut, her hands twitched and, with a final shudder, she died.

The surgeons quickly reached up under her rib cage and cut out her heart and lungs. One of the naked girls whisked them away in a cooler. The muscles and skin flap were repositioned on the body, sinking into the emptied abdominal cavity. Bert drew a pair of long-handled pruning shears out of a cabinet and, to Kayla's further horror, snipped off Jan's hands. He used a hand-held cross-cut saw to cut off her head. It flopped to one side as the saw finished chewing its way through the bones of her vertebrae and dropped to the floor as the final swatch of skin was sliced through. The girls picked the hands and head up off the floor and dropped them into a plastic bag which they carried out of the room. The men released the straps, placed Jan's body on a gurney and rolled it through the side door.

“Well, she's off to the kitchen,” Bert said. “Nice fresh girl meat for our visiting Asian businessmen.” He turned to Kayla and smiled. “You're up next.”