THE PLEASURES OF THE HUNT

©2004 Cameron Smith

Part 1

Amelia was nervous. She had just toweled off after her shower and already streams of perspiration were trickling down her sides from under her arms. She wished she could put on the little leather vest that two of the six girls were wearing. There was no way of cinching it closed in front and the gap was so wide it concealed the nipples only if you stood stock still, so it was useless for purposes of modesty, but at least it would help keep the other five girls from seeing the evidence of how scared she was. She and Ken had decided on complete nudity, however, because for every item taken into the Hunt thousands of dollars would be subtracted from her prize. They needed every penny to pay off her debt. At his suggestion she had even turned down the shoes and sandals. They had decided that a month of training in bare feet should toughen her soles enough to withstand the abuse of running through the forest.

The one item she had elected to carry was a six-inch knife in a nylon sheath which she was now buckling in place around her narrow waist. She had removed her belly ring so the belt wouldn't snag on it. Ken had questioned it value, saying her best insurance for survival would be to run fast and far and hide well. But she insisted she would not attempt to run in the Hunt without that minimal piece of survival equipment and last ditch defensive weapon, even if — as Ken scoffed — the weapon the hunters would be carrying rendered a knife practically useless. She was glad she had won the argument. Strapping it on now did make her feel a tiny bit more in control.

Ken had made a half-hearted effort to talk her out of entering the Hunt at all, but her logic and strength of will had prevailed. Still, she was surprised he had not put up more resistance. After all, more than half of the quarry who ran in the Hunt were captured for slaughter. "Yeah," he had said. "I sure hate to see you taking such a risk. It will kill me if they catch you. But I guess I underestimated you. Who would have thought that my beautiful, soft-spoken, 110 pound girlfriend could stand up to my185 pounds of solid masculine authority? Who would have guessed that those incredible blue eyes and that curly blond mane could melt my arguments so thoroughly? How could it be that so handsome a young man as myself could be so easily pussy whipped by any female, no matter how exquisite her figure and lush her endowment and astonishing in bed?" Her most compelling argument, of course, had been that only a month earlier Ken had risked his own life running as quarry in the Hunt to pay off his own debt. So why shouldn't she, especially with the stakes so important to her?

Theirs was a familiar quandary. The times being desperate, both their parents, finding themselves up against the financial wall, had done what most parents were doing these days. They sold their children to the National Meat Service as soon as they reached the optimum ages for prime meat, 12 for boys and 15 for girls, simultaneously taking out options on them through bank loans. The infusion of cash greatly helped the family and the understanding was that the children would take over the loan payments within three years. It was important to pay these loans off quickly because the payments increased steeply every year the body aged beyond prime. To default on an option, of course, was an instant ticket to an NMS abattoir.

In Amelia's case, the urgency was even greater. Extinguishing her debt and its crushing payment schedule would enable her to afford a Baby License. She couldn't bear the thought that she and Ken might accidentally make a baby without a License. Giving birth to an unlicensed child was unthinkable for her. She would have to give it up to the National Meat Service to be raised in a cage until old enough for slaughter. Better to give herself up as captured prey in the Hunt than do that! With mandatory pregnancy tests every sixty days and abortions easy to detect, it was impossible to undo a pregnancy without incurring a particularly horrible penalty: any woman reported by the NMS testers to have aborted an embryo without NMS approval would be arrested on the spot and detained without a hearing to be gutted and cooked live at the next NMS Punishment Banquet.

At 18, Amelia was three years past prime. Her monthly loan payments were taking more than half her income and were about to increase again. But she could still command more than enough in quarry prize money to pay off the balance, with some left over to put toward the Baby License. In fact, her potential prize was several times greater than what Ken had been able to claim. The reason, of course, was that she was a young, beautiful female and sporting gentlemen would pay tens of thousands of dollars more to hunt lovely young women, bind them up and take them in for the kill — all as part of the vital national meat harvest. But the most scintillating aspect of the NMS Hunt was what happened between the capture and the kill. Amelia had no illusions of what that would be.

She stared at her clothes, neatly stacked in the locker, wondering if she had worn them for the last time. The girls around her were absorbed in their own thoughts, probably contemplating their own self doubts and fears.

All but one: a girl named Shara. Tall, close to six feet, long dark hair verging on black, large dark eyes, slim graceful body, she appeared cool and collected, almost bored. This was her fourth Hunt. She had amassed a small fortune in prizes and could now afford the entire array of accouterments available to quarry: leather vest, running shoes, knee-high leggings, sweat bands, knife and a packet of rations. Amelia particularly envied her the vest because while it did little to cover the breasts, it nevertheless offered protection for the upper back, the broadest target for hunters in hot pursuit. Overall, Amelia's feelings toward the tall, bronzed beauty were mixed. She admired her daring in going up against bad odds, not just once but four times. On the other hand, she resented her presence at this particular Hunt because it lowered Amelia's own chances of survival. The hunters were allowed to bag only one girl, so, there being four hunters and six quarry, two girls were sure to survive. Shara would almost certainly be one of those two, which lowered Amelia's odds of survival from two out of six to one in five. From 33 percent to 20 percent. Thirty-three percent was bad enough!

Amelia removed the knife in its sheath from its hook inside her locker and began to strap its leather belt around her waist. It felt better than being completely nude, but a knife would be meager defense against the hunters. They could wear whatever clothing they wished and would be armed with dart guns and tough, thin cords to bind up their quarry. The darts, she had learned during last night's orientation, had a range of roughly 100 feet and were loaded with a serum that would cause intense pain and some loss of muscle control in the immediate vicinity of the dart, but would not kill them. That would come later when they were carried or dragged back to the lodge to have their throats cut.

She fingered the watch locked on her left wrist. That was the only additional equipment quarry were allowed. Awareness of how much time was left in the Hunt would be crucial information, of course, but the watches also contained a GPS locator so that those who escaped capture in the vast hunting territory could be found and picked up by helicopter. It also contained her identifying serial number which the hunter would need at the time of her capture to confirm her as his. The watch had been locked in place last night as part of the orientation.

She considered the difference between her two meager possessions and what the men would bring to the Hunt. In addition to clothing, hats and shoes to protect them from the weather and assaults of forest vegetation, they each had a cell phone, inflatable bed roll, compass, food packs, water, knife, binding cord, watch and, of course, the dart gun — carried as a side arm with God knows how many darts.

As she waited for the call to assemble at the starting line, Amelia found herself focusing on the disturbingly confident Shara. The contrast she made with the frightened young women around her was riveting. Amelia wanted to talk to her, glean from her the secret of her survival through three Hunts, but felt cowed in her presence. Damn! She scolded herself! Now is not the time to be shy. Your life is in the balance! She forced herself to approach the olive skinned beauty.

"Hi. I'm Amelia."

"I know. We all introduced ourselves last night."

"And you remember all the names?"

"Of course. Retention of details can mean the difference between being alive or being meat. It's a skill I hone constantly."

"I'm impressed. I mean, I don't think of myself as stupid, but remembering six names from a single introduction when I can barely concentrate on anything but the possibility I'll be dead tomorrow is more than I can manage. How old are you? If you don't mind my asking."

"Nineteen."

"Nineteen! And this is your fourth Hunt?"

"Yes."

"When did you start? When was your first Hunt?"

"Four years ago."

"You were fifteen?"

"That's right. They offered top dollar because I was not only juicy young pussy but maximum prime."

"Were you scared?"

"Of course."

"But you're not scared now?"

"Now I know how to beat them."

"How?"

"I kill the hunter before he can capture me."

"That's allowed? They didn't mention it during orientation."

"Of course they didn't. Why put the idea in your head? They downplay the death of hunters. Bad for business. The big, bad hunters out there aren't keen on the idea of their prey making meat out of them ."

"Do the quarry ever go in groups?" She was hoping to tag along with Shara.

"Sure. And they invariably wind up in grocery stores. The special of the week."

"So you always run alone?"

"Always. It's easier for the hunters when the prey sticks together. They're easy to track and take down."

"How about the hunters? Do they hunt in groups or alone?"

"Both."

"Which is more dangerous? For us?"

"Depends. Stupid hunters make stupid groups. They're loud and easy to avoid. Smart hunters are deadly in groups. They lay traps and flush their quarry into the trap."

"Oh God!"

Shara smiled. "Don't sweat it, Amelia. You just have to be smarter than they are. If you aren't, you shouldn't have signed up in the first place." She took a moment to assess Amelia's crestfallen look. "So why did you sign up?"

"To pay off my NMS loan. And I want to have a baby. It's the only way I can afford the license."

Shara sighed. "I assume that's why you didn't buy the vest. You didn't want to spend the money."

"Yeah. My boyfriend ran in the Hunt a month ago. He said the darts aren't that bad."

Shara laughed. "Did he get hit with one?"

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"In the arm. The left arm."

"Good for him. The thing about the darts is that if they hit you in the right place it's just pain. Terrible, soul shattering pain, but something that comes and goes. On the other hand, if they hit you in the leg, you can be disabled. Your leg just won't work. If they hit you in the back, breathing becomes a real chore. In the face or neck, you go berserk! Next thing you know, you're trussed up and on your way to a gang fuck and then you're strung up by the ankles for the final kill."

"O my God!"

"The good news is, the jerk hunters usually aim for your midsection. I caught a dart in the breast on my second Hunt. The pain was sheer hell and I fell down, rolling around in agony. But I had the presence of mind to draw my knife and have it ready. When the asshole hunter stepped in to tie my hands, I stabbed him in the nuts. He screamed, clutched his gonads and I stabbed him again in the heart. I slunk off to a thick bush and lay there crying and shivering for half an hour until the pain subsided enough for me to function again. Thing is, don't ever give up. That's why I'm still here and getting rich off the scumbags who think they can turn me into meat. I never give up."

"Why don't we just go hide? Find a really concealed place and just stay there."

"Yeah, right!" Shara snorted. She tapped her watch.

At that point the door to the locker room opened and a sleek, middle-aged woman with tightly knotted black hair and shiny spandex leotards glued to her still striking figure — the Hunt Mistress — announced that it was time. They were to assemble now at the starting line inside the lodge main entrance where they would be given their final instructions.

Amelia closed the door to her locker. There was no actual lock. What would be the point? No one was about to steal the few scraps of clothing a girl wore for her appearance at the Lodge as quarry. Indeed, the papers she signed when she originally registered for the Hunt advised against wearing or bringing anything of value, because in the event of her capture, it would all be destroyed.

All six girls shuffled forward through the door and found themselves walking through a gamut of leering men, cheering them on. Amelia, agonizingly aware of her nudity, felt herself turning beet red. She had never been naked in a crowd of fully dressed strangers before and no matter how much she had mentally prepared herself, it was excruciatingly embarrassing. She swallowed hard and kept her eyes glued to the floor as the six young women lined themselves up on a line painted in front of a large double door. She barely heard the final instructions of the Hunt Mistress, aware only of the gaze of dozens of male eyes on her private parts.

How ridiculous this modesty! she thought. If I'm captured I'll be gang raped and strung up naked for slaughter. If I'm carried back in a helicopter, I'll still be naked. Get over it! But public nudity is not easy for a girl who has never exposed herself to any men but her lovers.

The Hunt Mistress was checking each girl against her registration, making certain no one took anything into the Hunt that would not be paid for out of her prize.

"You will have a twenty minute lead on your hunters," she was saying. "The hunt will last thirty-six hours from the time you leave here. Check your watches. It is now 7:00 a.m. Is everyone's watch in agreement?" There were no complaints. "Good. At 7:00 p.m. tomorrow the hunt will be over. Those of you who have not been reported captured at that time will be picked up by helicopter and returned here to collect your prize. Those who are reported captured and on the way back, dead or properly restrained, will be returned to this facility by their captors on or before 9:00 PM Sunday to be presented in the Concluding Ceremony, after which all carcases will be claimed by the National Meat Service. Good luck to you. The Hunt has begun!"

The doors were opened and the six young women dashed forward into the open parking lot, and beyond that into the forest.

Part 2

The far side of the parking lot presented a variety of paths leading across a field and into the woods. Many feet had traversed these paths. How many led to death? Probably all of them. Amelia watched Shara cut to the left. Should she follow her? Why not? Maybe she could learn something.

She followed the dark haired beauty into the deeper woods. Then, suddenly, Amelia lost sight of her. How did she do that? She stopped and glanced around, conscious of precious moments passing by. She checked her watch. 7:05. In fifteen minutes the hunters would be hot on her trail! She took off down the path again, trying to think of what she should do next. She was on her own!

Despite her training in bare feet, the forest floor presented endless tortures to her soles. Pebbles. Pine cone scales with their sharp needles. Dried branches stabbing into her skin. Soon she was leaving bloody footprints for her pursuers to follow. Oh God! She had to run faster!

It occurred to her that staying on a path would make it easy for her pursuers to follow. But how could she get off the path without leaving an obvious swath through the underbrush? She decided to keep running until her lungs gave out. Surely the hunters would not be running. They had a day and a half to find her. Her only hope was to build up enough of a lead to give her time to devise something clever. As opposed to what she was doing now.

Amelia took her mind off the burning pain in her lungs and the stabbing pains in her feet by reflecting on the amazing ease with which the world had shed a taboo that had been an unspeakable abomination for millennia. Her great grandfather had been alive during the transition, when the catastrophic effects of global starvation had prompted the rise of cannibalism — not in the jungles of Africa or New Guinea, but in the back alleys of the world's most advanced nations, spreading gradually to the desperate poor of every region on earth. It took about fifty years for the phenomenon to advance from the poorest neighborhoods, where the death of a friend or family member became the life-saving sustenance for those still living, to an everyday occurrence in thousands of cities and drought-blasted farming communities around the world. Ultimately it led to the legalization of cannibalism under strict government controls. Extreme over-population had outstripped the planet's ability to feed humanity, so it was only sensible, if not inevitable, that the very excess humanity be used to solve the problem. Human meat was now the most abundant protein source on earth and the cycle of propagation and consumption had been balanced.

But not without human pain. The free market had soon pounced upon the potential for untold profits arising from the harvesting of human meat, including such enterprises as the hunting lodges where young people risked themselves as game as a solution to their heavy indebtedness so that others could pay to indulge their passion for blood sport and sex. Of course, some hunts favored the quarry, pitching two or three hunters against five to eight runners. But the better the chances of surviving the Hunt, the smaller the prize. It was the abundance of desperation loans secured by human collateral in this crowded world, and the high cost of paying them off, that assured an ample and continuing supply of young men and women willing to go for the highest stakes at the worst odds. It was now common practice for parents to do what had been done to them, what Amelia's had done to her: sell their children to the NMS and option them back with a loan. Children had become valuable assets and ready collateral.

By 7:20 Amelia's lungs were on fire! She should have practiced long distance running more! The hunters were already on their way. Nevertheless, she had to stop; her legs were turning to rubber. As her breathing and heart slowed, her concentration sharpened. Watching and listening intently for the slightest hint of approaching hunters, she almost missed the gurgling of water off to the right of the trail. Now she could smell it as well! Her spirits soared and she began walking toward the sound.

It's about time I got off these trails , she thought as she picked her way carefully through heavy vegetation, trying not to make her exit from the beaten path too obvious. There seemed to be no painless place she could place her sore feet. She began to think again about how pleasant it would be to find a really concealed place and just curl up to wait out the thirty-six hours of the Hunt. But Shala's contemptuous dismissal of the idea kept spoiling the image. Why? What was intrinsically bad about a good hiding place? She checked her watch again — 7:22 — and remembered Shala tapping hers just as the Hunt Mistress opened the door to summon them. She thought at the time that Shala — experienced with the routine — simply knew their locker room time was up, that it was time to go. But now she suddenly thought of another explanation.

The watch. Hiding. Yeah, right! Shala had snorted. Of course! The GPS chip in the watch! If the Hunt sponsors could find her after the Hunt by honing in on the locator, why not the hunters during the Hunt? The possibility had not been mentioned during their orientation, but neither had they been informed that they were allowed to kill their pursuers. No wonder Shara had sneered. No wonder the damn watch was locked on. The minute she stopped moving she would be a sitting duck!

So, what did that mean? She had to keep running for 36 hours? Didn't the hunters stop for sleep at some time? Where did they sleep? Was there some kind of alarm that let them know when a particular quarry had been stationary a certain length of time? She had not seen night-vision goggles included in the equipment they were allowed to carry, but that could be another "unmentioned" detail.

Amelia felt the sharp edges of panic slicing away at her reason. She wanted to run blindly, fast and furiously, as long as she could, as far as she could! The panic was quickly whelmed by a feeling of hopelessness. She thought about her knife. She thought about the instant of pain she'd suffer as she sliced her wrists open, followed by the comforting peace of death. But that was foolish! She shook her head violently. If she were cornered and the situation were really hopeless, that would be soon enough to slit her wrists. She still had life. She still had hope.

Suddenly the stream emerged before her. She trotted into it, the cold water shocking her out of her doldrums. She stood, balancing on first one foot then the other, letting the frigid water soothe her injured soles and wash away the blood and dirt. She dropped to her hands and knees, put her lips to the water and drank deeply, amazed at how thirsty she was. She had known that hunger would also be an issue, but that packet of food that Shala had added to her knife belt was expensive! She had decided she could fast for 36 hours and save the money for her Baby License. Was it a foolish decision? Too late now for second guessing.

Amelia prostrated herself in the shallow stream, enjoying the wash of water past her naked flesh, cooling her body. She spread her legs to let the rushing stream tease the lips to her birth canal and the little pleasure button in its sheath, reminding her of the reason she had embarked on this journey through hell.

She began to plot her next move.

Part 3

UP! UP! UP! she screamed to herself. You can't afford to lie here while the hunters close in! She pushed herself to her feet and glanced around. Where to go from here? The answer seemed obvious. Farther away! If hiding was not an option, she had to go for distance. She had to get as far away from the men with dart guns as she possibly could. How far could she travel in two days and a night on sore, bare feet? Could she take time out to sleep? Could she afford not to?

Most of her run, so far, had been in the shelter of the forest canopy. Standing in the cold water of the stream she noticed the sun was considerably hotter on her skin than when she began in the parking lot and the open meadow. She had prepared for nudity in the open as best she could by getting a tan, but she and Ken lived in the city and there was no place to sun bathe except in tanning booths. (Especially in the nude!) Money being tight, she hadn't been able to afford much of a tan, so she'd have to stay out of the sun as much as possible. Shouldn't be hard.

She started to walk downstream, the opposite direction from the lodge, and was in immediate pain as her feet encountered the small pebbles and debris that made up its bottom. She grit her teeth and bore it, telling herself it was the price of being able to have a baby, assuming she could survive this ordeal at all. If a hunter spotted her departure from the path into the river, he would surely figure she'd go in this direction rather than head back toward her pursuers. But it couldn't be helped. She could no more go the other way than eat a tree!

Amelia kept her eye out for a place to reenter the forest without leaving a trace, at the same time wondering why she bothered if they could locate her with the damned chip. But she didn't know for sure they could do that. It was just a logical supposition because Shala had tapped her watch and sneered. What kind of evidence was that? Maybe there was some kind of time limit to give the quarry a sporting chance. Maybe she had a certain number of hours to outwit them before they zeroed in on her fucking watch. Did it matter? YES! Two girls would survive this hunt. She wanted to be one of them.

That meant she had to outlast all but one of the other girls, presumably Shala.

Again, that seemed to point to opening up the greatest possible distance. She had to get out of this stream without leaving an obvious trail and head off through the forest without using a path. She eyed a weedy knoll on the far side of the stream and, a little farther down, a boulder jutting into the water from a blackberry patch. She weighed the possibilities. The knoll was closer and the weeds would be less painful to push through than the thorny blackberry bushes, but they would flatten more and might give away her route to a really sharp-eyed hunter. She opted instead to splash downstream and clamber up the boulder and into the punishing blackberry bushes. By carefully spreading them and stepping through the opening, then closing them behind her (while enduring the painful scratching of the thorns), she was able to conceal her entry into the forest. She hoped.

But progress from that point was hardly easy. For one thing, it was a lot slower than on the open trails. Climbing over and scrambling through scrub vegetation and brambles was tough going. Her arms, legs and feet were a mass of scratches, cuts and dried blood. Still she slogged on, ever conscious of the threat of death behind her and the promise of a decent life ahead. If she could just move fast enough. And long enough. And stay concealed.

By midday she was lathered in sweat, her skin burning with abrasions. After five hours of running, walking, trudging and climbing through endless tangles of undergrowth, including masses of spiny juniper cockleburs, she was nearing exhaustion. She had begun to dread every footfall on the unforgiving forest floor. On top of all that, her thirst was building up again and the exertion had made her terribly hungry.

She was sure the hunters had been given a hearty breakfast before setting off, but the quarry had been denied anything to eat since five o'clock the previous evening. As the Hunt Mistress had so kindly explained to them this morning, "Since statistics show that four of you will be returned for processing as meat, the NMS prefers your digestive system be empty, for sanitary purposes. Those who have purchased food packs may, of course, use them, but please be forewarned that if captured, the mandatory intestinal cleanse prior to slaughter will be much more severe." Nevertheless, Amelia now wished she had invested the several thousands of dollars they charged for that pathetic little pack of dehydrated food.

At 1:30 she suddenly stumbled on to the verge of a large meadow of twenty or more acres rambling over three hills. She gazed longingly at the soft grasses, acutely aware of the increasing pain attending each step on the harsh litter of the forest floor. How wonderful it would be to walk across that gentle expanse. Yet she would be completely exposed! If any hunter was hiding in the forest surrounding the field, she would be easy game. She considered walking around the perimeter of the grass so she could duck into the woods, but what good would that do? If she were spotted, she could hardly expect to outrun a hunter through the thick forest in her damaged condition.

She looked behind her. Oh shit! In her exhaustion she had been neglecting to hide her passage through the undergrowth. She may as well have laid down a trail with spray paint! The hell with it! She would risk a trot across the fields and hope for the best. At least she could put more distance between her and the starting line.

She nearly cried with relief as the cool grass caressed her punctured and bruised feet, but kept a wary eye on the edges of the forest. Her naked body felt baked under the hot sun by the time she reached the far side of the fields and reentered the woods. She cringed as her feet once again encountered cruel torments, but forced herself on.

Then, as suddenly as the fields had appeared, she found herself on a path. The ground was smooth and relatively free of painful debris. She knew she shouldn't stay on it, but the relief was too great. Terrified by her softness, she nevertheless struck out along the path. At least it was headed in the right direction.

By 5:45 exhaustion, dehydration and hunger were causing her to stagger as she alternately walked and jogged. When she came across a stream, she dropped to her hands and knees and drank deeply, splashing water on her face to revive her spirits. She was still alive! There was not the least sign of a hunter or any other human being. She had to keep going until nightfall. Then it would be another full day. NO! She couldn't think about that! First she had to survive this horrendous day. That tomorrow would be even worse was too demoralizing to think about! She got to her feet and resumed her trot despite her body's painful objections.

As she forced her body onwards, she thought about the other girls, wondering where they had gone in this vast expanse of forest and meadows. Had any of them been caught yet? If so, it enhanced her own chances of survival. The instant the thought came to mind she was engulfed in self-disgust. It was shameful to wish disaster on the others to improve her own odds. They had all signed up to be hunted for the same reason she did: desperation to pay off the NMS debt heaped upon them by desperate parents. All except Shala, whose debt had already been paid. Shala was in it now only to add to her wealth. She had learned how to beat the system, but did so at the expense of the others.

While Amelia resented Shala's contribution to her peril, she felt no resentment toward her parents for taking out a loan on her life in the first place. The reality was, she and Ken would probably end up doing the same thing with their own children. Most people did. Survival in today's world involved a complex of desperate financial measures. It cost a lot to give birth. It cost much more to raise the child. It cost even more to feed, clothe and house yourself and your family. Failure to meet these costs resulted in conversion to meat to feed those more worthy of survival. Life was hard, and, without enough money, short. How could she resent what her parents did?

By 6:30 Amelia was struggling to ignore the agony in her lungs, legs and feet. A training schedule tailored around her work days had simply not prepared her for this endless, naked flight through rough, hilly terrain on a mercilessly hot day with no stops for rest. And all on an empty stomach. She could feel her legs growing weaker. She had to stop soon or she would stumble and collapse. Yet she could not! As long as there was light she had to keep ahead of the hunters.

At 7:15 she came across a dead tree blocking the path. It was a small tree, no more than three inches in diameter and only a foot above the ground. It should have been easy to step over, but her strength was so drained she tripped and crashed to the ground on the other side. She lay there for several minutes weeping in frustration before she could summon the energy to climb back to her feet and struggle on. Half an hour later she banged a toe into a rock and tripped again, this time to the accompaniment of immense pain. She rocked herself on the narrow path, gritting her teeth and hugging her knees to her breast until the pain faded to bearable. She made herself stand up and start walking again, grunting each time the injured foot touched the ground. Had she broken the toe? It didn't matter. Better she suffer the pain than be caught! The toe would heal. Death is permanent.

The sun set at 8:13 and by 8:30 the it was becoming difficult to see. Amelia knew she had to stop. So did the hunters, she hoped. Walking slowly, her legs trembling with exhaustion, her toe aching, she searched the forest on both sides of the path for a place she might lie down and sleep in relative safety and with a minimum of discomfort. She had seen a number of cave-like shelters in hillsides and clumps of boulders in rocky outcroppings that would hide her from view, but they would also present a wall on one side against which she might find herself entrapped. She wanted the option of being able to run from an approaching hunter in any direction. She kept walking, squinting in the darkling, moonless gloom.

Finally she spotted a tall stand of weeds and dense bushes off to the left of the path. It looked feasibly opaque to passing hunters if she were careful to obscure her route to it. She continued up the path until she found a rocky area surrounded by raspberry vines and other ground cover that would not (she hoped) show her exit from the trail. Stepping gingerly onto the rocks and then into the prickly vegetation on the other side she carefully made her way back around to the back side of the tall weeds and bushes. Pulling down just enough of the weeds to make a thin leafy bed over the rocky ground, she nestled down and curled into a ball, shivered from a combination of fear, exhaustion and exposure to the increasingly cold night air. Every inch of her body ached or itched or both, but she lay still, listening intently for footsteps or telltale rustling in the forest around her. Her misery mounted as the minutes dragged by but she forced herself to lie still until exhaustion swept her into sleep.

She slept soundly. Too soundly.

Part 4

Amelia didn't know what woke her up, but she was instantly alarmed! The sun was up. She glanced at her watch. 9:27! She heard a snort and snapped her head around in the direction of the sound. A man in full hunting garb was sitting cross legged staring at her with a nasty grin on his face, his dart gun in his lap. A quick glance at her limbs confirmed that she was not tied up. He'd been sitting there waiting for her to wake up! Waiting for her to attempt an escape.

She sprang to her feet and started to sprint away from him, into the weeds. She heard a click and a terrible pain exploded in her back! Suddenly she couldn't exhale! Panicked, she staggered several steps further before another explosion of pain in the back of her right thigh took her leg out from under her. She tried to crawl on her hands and knees, desperately trying to breathe at the same time, but the leg wouldn't work, she had to drag it.

Suddenly remembering Shala's story of her own attempted capture, she plucked her knife out of its sheath. The next instant a booted foot crushed her wrist to the rocky ground and the knife was easily plucked out of her hand and tossed aside. The same wrist was then grabbed and yanked up behind her back, the new pain eliciting a scream. Within seconds her assailant grabbed her other wrist as well and quickly lashed both wrists together. Then her ankles. Wracked with pain, barely able to breathe, Amelia was now helpless. She burst into tears at the realization that she had gambled and lost. By the end of the day she would be dead. In the meantime she was now nothing more than a sex toy for this dreadful man to rape and torture at will.

The boot that had crushed her wrist now dug under her ribs and rudely rolled her over on to her back. She glowered up at the man who now owned her body. He was probably in his late thirties, early forties. Athletic build. Black hair salted with gray and beginning to recede at the corners. Eyes dark and merciless. Face filled with the expectation of a fun-filled day. Lips curled up in cruel satisfaction.

"Well, I've got my money's worth here!"

He bent down and placed a heavy hand over her left breast, squeezing it hard until Amelia managed to wheeze out a pitiful groan. Loosening his grip, he let his fingers slide up to her nipple and pinched it viciously between his thumb and middle finger, digging his nails into it, pulling it out until the tit was stretched into a painful cone and Amelia managed a scream despite her half-paralyzed diaphragm. He laughed at his cleverness.

"What's your name, slut?"

Fuck you! is what she wanted to say, but what would be the point of asking for more torment than he was already planning? She tried to squeeze out her name, but couldn't supply enough breath to make it audible.

"You'll have to try harder than that, slut." He kicked her in the side, but that only produced a series of anguished gasps. "Oh fuck it. Who cares what your name is? It's gonna be a little while before you can walk, so let's make use of that sweet shaved little cunt."

He untied the cord around her ankles and spread her legs roughly apart. When she tried to kick at him with her one functioning leg, he drove a fist into her belly, shocking her into open-mouthed rigidity. While she struggled to breathe, he opened his pants, pulled out his stiffened member and drove it savagely into her dry vagina. Amelia grit her teeth against this new flaring of pain and lay quietly as he pumped at her until she felt his hot discharge pulsing against her cervix. He lay atop her, resting from his labors, deflating within her.

She made no effort to do anything but breathe. The terrible pain in her back and leg had begun to subside.

With a sudden inhalation, her captor pushed himself up off her body and rolled to his feet. He withdrew a handkerchief from a back pocket of his cargo pants and blew his nose into it vigorously. Then he carefully laid it out on the ground beside Amelia's head as though it were a doily, stood erect and pissed on it. Taking the cord that had recently bound her ankles in one hand and scrunching the piss-soaked handkerchief in the other, he pinched her cheeks in a powerful grip to force her mouth open and stuffed the wet handkerchief into it, then quickly wrapped the cord tightly around and around her mouth and the back of her head, tying it in place with a square knot. Amelia gagged as she was forced to swallow the urine that dribbled down her throat from the saturated cloth.

"Get used to it, slut," her tormentor chided. "That hanky will be in there for a long time." He chuckled grimly as he pulled a packet of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out and lit up. "You smoke, slut?"

She shook her head miserably. There could be no answer to such a question from a sadistic captor that would not result in additional suffering.

"Well, with only a few hours left to live, time you learned how." He squatted beside her, pulled the cigarette from between his lips and shoved it into her left nostril. Unable to breathe through her mouth, she immediately began to cough and choke. "Don't worry about that," he said. "It takes a while to get used to it." He lit another. "But with so little time left, we'd better hurry your training up a bit."

He shoved the second cigarette into her right nostril and sat back on his heels, watching with amusement as she thrashed about on the ground, struggling for air but dragging in mostly smoke. She shook her head violently until the cigarettes flew out of her nose. The hunter picked them up.

"What are you trying to do, slut? Start a forest fire? That ain't very responsible. You need some discipline."

With that, he seized her hair with his left hand to immobilize her head, then shoved the lighted end of both cigarettes into her nose. She screamed through the gag and her body thrashed more violently, but he held her head steady with both hands until the red hot tips of the cigarettes were extinguished inside her nostrils and she subsided to quiet sobs. Satisfied that the butts had inflicted as much pain as they could, he pulled them out and made sure they were dead. He hauled the weeping girl to her feet by her hair and tied some cord around her neck, then clipped a dog leash to it. He unclipped a cell phone from his belt and punched in a number.

"Hi Kevin. It's Taylor. I got me a splendid piece of ass here! I'm about three hours south of the big meadow. See where we are?" As he waited he pulled another device, the size of a large wallet, out of his pack and flipped it open to show a screen. "Yeah, that's me. Which one? Remember the cute little blonde with the big tits in the middle of the lineup?" He snickered. "Yeah, that's the one. Which one did you get?" Another pause. "No shit! Hey, I can hardly wait! That you in Sector Nine? Okay. I'll hustle this little cunt along and we should be able to have us a real good party this afternoon. See ya in a few hours."

He clicked off the phone and clipped it back on his belt and stuffed the GPS locator back in the pack. Stooping over, he picked up a long, green stick which had obviously been recently hewn from a fresh branch. He whipped it back and forth in the air to let his captive hear the dismaying threat of its sibilant hiss.

"See what I whittled for you while you were taking your beauty rest."

He began tapping it on each of her breasts alternately, lightly at first, then increasingly harder. Red stripes began to appear but Amelia stood still and took it, cringing with the new pain, but knowing that ducking away from it would merely inspire him to punish her more severely. When she finally began to whimper, he grabbed her shoulder, spun her around and shouted, "Walk!" delivering a brutal blow to her rump at the same time. She screamed into her foul gag and lurched forward toward the path, limping on her still weakened leg. Once on the path heading back toward the meadow he kept her ahead of him on the leash so he could whip her periodically when she faltered.

"I don't want to hear no whining from you," he growled, "and I ain't impressed by your pitiful limping. This here whip will work real nice to adjust your attitude if you slow down or fall. And I'd love to use it after all the work I put into makin' it. It's sort of a cross between a riding crop and a cane and it raises a nice purple welt on your sorry ass.

You're gonna be bouncin' off that ass a lot when we get to that meadow, so don't tempt me to add too many more welts to your pretty pink skin, 'cause it will sure make the bouncing unpleasant."

But, of course, he found several reasons as she struggled along to add painful new weals to her back, bottom and thighs. In addition, she was feeling light-headed from hunger and thirst. When she became unable to walk in a straight line despite corrections from the whip, her captor finally jerked on her leash and brought her to a stop. She swayed, eyes closed, waiting for the whipping.

"You ain't much for stamina, are ya, slut?" he said. "Looka me. I've been as far as you have but you don't see me staggering around, do ya?"

He drew a bottle of water out of his food pack and swallowed long and deep as she watched. "Ah! Refreshing. Oh, I forgot. You ain't had nothin' to drink this morning. Well, let's fix that. On you knees!"

When she hesitated, he lashed the front of her thighs with the cane-whip. She collapsed at once, sharp stones biting into her knees on impact. He cut the cord binding the handkerchief in her mouth and pulled it out. Then, standing in front of her, he unbuckled his belt, unzipped and dropped his pants and underpants to his ankles.

"Open up, slut!" he ordered, brandishing the whip with his right hand.

She did so and he clamped the fingers of his left hand into her cheeks to hold it open and keep her from averting her face. A moment later he was aiming a thick stream of dark yellow urine into her mouth, forcing her to swallow in rapid gulps. When he finished, he used both hands to clamp her mouth shut until she had swallowed every drop. He smiled at the tears dribbling down her cheeks.

"Nothing like fresh, warm piss to hit the spot. Ain't that right, slut?"

She said nothing, made no move.

"Stay right there!" he said. Glaring at her, he squatted and emptied his bowels on the ground, then picked up the still-damp handkerchief and wiped himself clean. Smiling, he forced the soiled material back into Amelia's mouth and used some duct tape from his pack to wrap around her head and hold it in. He took a few moments to enjoy the expression on her face as she fought the urge to vomit. She would rather have her throat cut in the closing ceremony than drown in her own bile.

Without warning, he pushed her over on her back, took out another roll of cord and began tying one ankle to a tree beside the path. Then he tied the other ankle to a tree on the opposite side, spreading her legs out painfully. Rolling up his pants and belt with the food pack still attached, he lifted up her hips and crammed it under her butt, elevating her vaginal entrance.

"Time for a little mid-morning nookie," he announced, lowering himself between her legs and ramming his hardening cock into her. To avoid the terrible pain of a dry vagina, Amelia blocked out her loathing of this man and concentrated on memories of the times she and Ken had played at dominance and submission, how sexy it was to submit, to feel helpless to prevent her lover from ravishing her. This time the pounding went on much longer, but Amelia felt her clit responding to the stimulation, her juices lubricating the thrusts, and rode them to orgasm even before the hunter had detonated his own load.

"There now," he panted as he approached his own climax, "that's the way to get into the spirit of things! When you only got hours to live, enjoy every fuck you can get! And before I put your lights out, you'll be fucked plenty."

From around the edges of his hammering, driving hulk, Amelia thought she saw movement. Just at the moment of his last fierce thrust with it's burst of hot semen, he let out an odd grunt and became suddenly still. With a look of abject surprise, he slowly flopped down on top of her, his body limp. There, standing between Amelia's ankles, was Shala holding a very bloody knife.

Amelia squealed and writhed with excitement, but could say nothing with the gag taped in her mouth. Shala made the rounds of her restraints, severing each one with a swift stroke of her knife. Her hands freed, Amelia tore the tape from around her head and spat out the gag. She continued to spit frantically, trying to eliminate the taste of its coating of excrement. Shala's arms went around her and held her until she calmed down.

"It was shit!" Amelia cried, trying to explain her behavior. "It was covered with the bastard's shit!"

"It's okay," Shala soothed. "You're okay now. For a while. But you've got to get going."

"Thank God you're here! How did you do it? How did you find me?" Amelia clung to her savior, the tall woman's firm, muscular body lending her a feeling of safety.

"I've been following you, more or less. After your trek through the puckerbrush, when you were back on a trail, it was easy to figure where you'd be at nightfall. I've trained myself to wake up before dawn, and when I saw you'd been captured, I circled around to intercept you here. They always take their quarry to the big meadow for a gang bang before the helicopter picks everyone up."

"Have all four been captured now?" Amelia asked hopefully.

"I have no way of knowing. But we can get some idea by checking our dead friend's GPS locator."

Shala removed the GPS device from the pack and punched in some numbers. The screen immediately lighted up with a grid and a number of dots. Amelia looked closely. There were ten dots all together: four green and six red. Shala pointed to a triangle of two red dots and one green dot.

"That's us. And we'd better split up fast before someone else notices this, if they haven't already. Two hunters fucking one captured quarry is commonplace, but no hunter is allowed to bag two girls, so this cluster of two quarry and one hunter tells them something is wrong."

She took the hunter's knife, which was larger than hers, and began hacking at his left wrist.

"What are you doing?" Amelia gasped. "You're not going to eat him, are you?"

Shala chuckled. "No. We'll let the NMS take care of that." With a few more blows and some prying between the wrist bones the hand separated from the arm. Shala slipped off the watch. "I'll take this and hopefully the good folks at the lodge will think he's taken me captive. For a little while, anyway." She pointed to a blank area on the GPS screen. "You go in that direction."

"Where is that direction?"

Shala pointed southwest. "That way. If you keep moving they may not be able to catch you."

"Can I take the GPS with me so I can see where they are?"

"No, honey. I need it."

"Well, how about the dart gun, then? It'll help if I can defend myself."

"Damn right it'll help. Which is why I need it. How long do you suppose it will be before they figure out Mr. Great White Hunter here has come to a bad end? How long before they figure out which of the six red dots did it and go after her full bore? Take another look at the screen. What does the layout of the dots tell you?"

Amelia studied the screen for a moment. "There are three pairs of red and green dots. O my God! Does that mean three of the girls have already been captured?"

"Bingo! And they're all converging on that meadow for the big gang bang this afternoon. I'm guessing all three will get there within an hour, at which point one will be left to guard the quarry while the other two join in the hunt for me."

"Why you? What's to keep them from coming after me?"

"Because if you keep moving southwest, I'll be closest. They'll also want revenge for what I've done to their buddy and they can only get it if they catch me during the active hours of the Hunt."

"But I'm defenseless! All I've got is this stupid knife and it didn't take long for that hunter to take it away."

"Honey, listen to me. I do these hunts for two reasons: money and the chance to kill some of these bastards. The only reason I'm still alive is because, in the first place, I'm smarter than they are; but mostly it's because I use every advantage I can get. That includes using their own weapons against them. If you want a dart gun or a GPS screen, Cookie, go kill your own hunter and take them. What I will leave for you is lover-boy's water and food pack because I was smart enough to buy my own. I'll also do you a favor by heading toward the meadow with his watch so it'll look like he's still traveling with a captive, but in about five minutes they'll figure out it's the wrong captive. As soon as his cell phone starts ringing I'll ditch the watch. But even if one of them breaks off to go after you, you'll still have a five minute head start. So you get going!"

Amelia could not bring herself to haggle further with this battle-hardened woman who had, after all, just saved her life. So she strapped on the hunter's belt with it's precious cargo of food and water, thanked Shala with a kiss and limped back down the path in the direction she'd come from.

Starving, her mouth still fouled with the taste of the hunter's urine and shit, she tore into the dried trail food, chewing furiously as she walked. Her toe hurt dreadfully, but she tried to ignore it. The one thing she couldn't ignore or forget was the image in her mind of the little red dots on the GPS screens the hunters were carrying, and how easy she was to find.

Part 5

By 3:00 PM Amelia's legs were trembling with fatigue as she took whatever paths led her in a generally southwesterly direction. She had consumed all the dried food but had been able to replenish the water when she crossed another stream. (Or was it the same one?) Her body begged her to stop and rest, but her mind urged her on, reminding her that she was still a red dot on every hunter's screen, and that a healthy, determined man could still run her down before the 7:00 o'clock deadline. If she'd had the courage, she would have amputated her own hand to get rid of the damned watch and its traitorous GPS chip! But Ken had survived the Hunt without mutilating himself. Would he forgive her for maiming herself when all she had to do was keep running?

Four hours. That's all she had to endure. Four more hours and the Hunt would end. Then she'd want the locator, otherwise she'd be lost in this vast expanse of wilderness with its maze of paths. The Hunt Masters certainly wouldn't bother searching for her; they had another Hunt to get underway.

At 5:20 she came to another stream. This one was more like a series of rapids — much wider and faster flowing than the preceding brooks, and filled with water-slicked stones and sharp rocks. She could see where the trail continued on the opposite side, parting the thick tangle of brambly vegetation that grew along both banks. It was obvious she had no choice but to cross here.

She stepped carefully into the fast current, and immediately lost her footing, falling heavily into the water. She quickly checked herself out. No damage. For a few minutes she just sat there to let the rushing water cleanse away the encrusted semen that had seeped out of her vagina following the two rapes. Then she leaned down and drank, washing her mouth out as well. She refilled the water flask before standing up again to resume picking her way across the rapids. She had almost made it to the other side when her foot slipped on an algae covered stone and threw her down again. This time there was a searing pain in her ankle, and when she tried to stand up it blasted her with such agony that she had to finish the crossing on her hands and knees.

"O God, please, NO!" she pleaded. But God had already acted. By the time she reached the shore and examined the ankle, it was swelling alarmingly and was too painful to walk on. It was either broken or badly sprained. She crawled on all fours up the path until she came to a stand of cat-o-nine-tails she could hide behind while she considered her options.

She had two. She could hide there for the next hour and a half and hope the hunters would not catch up to her. Or she could fashion a crutch out of a small tree and struggle on. Both options seemed hopeless. She looked again at the watch and considered what it would take to cut through her wrist. She took out her knife and placed the point of it on the line where the arm meets the hand. If she lifted herself up and dropped her body on the hilt of the knife, would it sever the wrist? Probably not. Shala had had to whack away at the hunter's wrist bones and connecting sinews to detach the hand. There was no way Amelia could do that to herself! All she really wanted to do was lie down and cry, but she knew that would not be helpful. And just hiding there was a poor option, given the technology arrayed against her.

So she looked around for a branch or sapling she could fashion into a crutch. Nothing presented itself within view from her hiding place, so she crawled out on to the path and kept going on her hands and knees until she came to a young oak that seemed to fit the bill. But a knife, no matter how sharp, is not a hatchet. It took her until nearly 6:00 o'clock to cut down the sapling and cut it down further into a crutch. Finally she was able to haul herself up onto it and resume her flight, albeit much slower going than before.

The silence of the forest was her friend. Aside from the noise of her own solitary journey, the quiet was her reassurance that she was still alone and safe. Every now and then she stopped to savor it. And check the time. 6:19. Only forty minutes to go. 6:35. Less than half an hour. She can make it! 6:43 . . .

But suddenly the silence was not complete. The sound of breaking twigs. An animal? A hunter? She looked around but could see neither. Shit! She searched hastily for a place to hide. The best hope for concealment was a scraggly clump of bushes about twenty feet off to the right. She scrambled over to it and flattened herself behind the screen of leaves, drawing her knife. And waited.

Snap. She couldn't tell where it came from. Checked her watch. 6:45.

Another snap. Closer. She held her breath.

More sounds. Something walking. Or some one .

With a crash the leaves in front of her parted! She was looking into the leering face of a hunter. In his left hand he held the long stick that had opened a swath in her hiding place; in his right hand he held a dart gun which he pointed directly at her.

"It's all over, cutie pie. All but the fucking."

He fired a dart into her right breast. She screamed and plucked the dart out, writhing and twisting with the swiftly intensifying pain, but still clutching the knife. The hunter reloaded, leaned in and fired a second dart into her right biceps. She screamed louder and grabbed for the dart, but her hand had opened involuntarily and spilled the knife. By now Amelia was in such agony that there was no room in her mind left to think about the knife. The hunter retrieved it, then, while she was still helpless in the throes of mind-blotting pain, bound her wrists behind her. He wound more cord around her neck, as the first hunter had done, attached a leash to the improvised collar and dragged her to her feet.

"C'mon, bitch," he muttered, and began dragging her with the leash. She was still crying and struggling with the pain in her breast and arm, and now she was being forced to walk on her broken ankle. She stumbled and fell to her knees.

The hunter turned and placed the snout of the gun against her left nipple. "You want one here, too, Blondie?"

"NO, NO!" she screamed, tears flying as she shook her head.

"Then get on your fucking feet and walk!"

"Please, my ankle's broken!" she blubbered.

"Aw, izzat so? Well, lemme fix that. See that log?" He pointed to a dead tree the wind had blown over beside the trail. "Bend over it!"

Without waiting for her to react, he grabbed her sore arm, lifted her up and threw her face down over the log. The bark grinding into her injured breast created such immense pain that she hardly noticed when he sat astride the small of her back, pinning her to the log and facing her rump. He drew something from a jacket pocket.

"I whittled this here little item while I was chasing you down, Sweetmeat. It should help take your mind off your ankle."

She felt a hand spreading her ass cheeks and the point of a hard object pushed into the gaping anus. She looked back in time to see it was a wooden stick about eight inches long and two inches thick with slivers carved into the sides and pried outward like small wings, flanges to hold it in place. In the next moment the hunter hammered it into her with a hilt of his knife. She screamed. The added load of pain was too much, and she passed out.

He revived her with a dose of ammonia under her nose and grinned as he watched her thrash in the enveloping agony once again.

"Maybe you shoulda stayed with Taylor," her new captor taunted, " 'cause I ain't gonna treat you nice and gentle like he did." He grabbed her hair and hauled her to her feet. "Now you stay on your feet and walk or I'll ram a even bigger dildo up your fuckin' cunt!"

He yanked at the leash and Amelia stumbled forward behind him in a sea of torment. Each step not only brought stabs of pain from her ankle but searing pain from inside as the barbed wooden dowel scraped and lacerated her intestines. Blood ran down the inside of her legs. With any luck, she thought bitterly, I'll bleed to death here on the path.

After an eternity of hellish traveling, a wounded lamb being led to slaughter, they came to a small clearing where he brought her to a stop.

"Get on your back, jizzbucket!"

She gladly laid down. Anything to get off the ankle and stop moving around with that diabolical barbed rod gnashing at her insides!

Armed with more cord from his pack, the hunter bound each ankle to the upper thigh, relishing her screams as he tightened the cord around the swollen one. Fashioning two stakes from a sapling at the edge of the clearing, he drove them into the ground on either side of her neck, then pinned her neck to the ground with cord tied to the stakes.

He removed his boots and pants and knelt over her face, his cock hovering above her mouth. Once again her pressed the muzzle of the dart gun into her left nipple.

"You're going to lick and suck my dick and get it all wet and slippery so's I can have a nice comfy fuck in your tight little twat. If I so much as feel your teeth, I'll put a dart right into the pointy tip of your tit. And after that, right up your cum chute. Any doubts about that?"

She shook her head miserably.

"Then do it!"

He lowered his manhood slowly into her open mouth, his finger on the trigger. She used her lips and tongue to put as much saliva on it as possible, careful to keep her teeth from touching it. She could taste the residue of another woman and realized she was not his first rape victim today. No doubt she would not be his last. Nor would he be the last one to rape her .

He began to groan and move in response to the swirls of her tongue, pulling out abruptly to move around to the other end and force himself between her doubled-up legs. Without preamble he punched his laved penis into her vagina and began pounding brutally. If he was oblivious to the jagged-edged wooden dildo in her neighboring orifice, she was not! Once again pain screamed at her from inside her guts and blood began puddling under her bottom. She sobbed in agony as the hunter, with seemingly endless endurance, pummeled her vigorously, all the more aroused at her tears. Suddenly he pulled out and the cold barrel of the dart gun replaced his hot flesh.

"NO!" Amelia screamed. "PLEASE! I did what you asked! I was good! PLEASE DON'T!"

"Okay," the hunter said mildly, "I won't, if you do one more little thing for me." He poked the gun in harder.

"WHAT? WHAT? I'LL DO IT!"

"Keep your eyes open while I cream your face. One blink and a dart goes up your cunt."

"YES, YES, YES, I'll do it!"

He left the gun barrel in her birth canal as he positioned himself over her neck and began masturbating. Within seconds a fountain of white semen pulsed out of his purple-headed cock and splashed into Amelia's wide open eyes. Despite her determination, she did, of course, blink. She managed to force her trembling lids to stay open despite the terrible burning of the semen, but that first blink had been involuntary. When the hunter had enjoyed the last aftershock of his orgasm and wrung the last drop of cum over his captive's face, he smiled ruefully down.

"Not a bad try, candycunt, but you did blink. I warned ya!" He reached back.

"NO NO NO!"

But he did. She felt the powerful recoil as the weapon fired its dart up the remaining inch of her vagina and a blistering explosion of pain as the needle punched deep into her womb, instantly unloading its venom. She screamed the entire two seconds that she remained conscious.

Part 6

She awoke to a loud thumping that grew louder every moment. Pain was everywhere, even in the noise. Opening her eyes was painful, but she felt she must.

She was lying on her back. A helicopter was descending, it's blades stirring up a vast cloud of dirt, grass, leaves and other debris, nature's litter in wild and open land. She thought it would land on top of her and maybe put her out of her misery, but it came to rest a dozen feet away.

She tried to move but bolts of savage pain took her breath away. White hot fire burned in her belly and between her legs. Red hot coals smoldered in her right breast and arm. She wept in agony.

Her hands were now in front of her. She raised them to examine her latest restraint. But she could only lift with her left arm. The right arm was dead weight, a useless mass of fiery pain. The watch was gone and her wrists were tightly bound in cord. She raised her legs and saw that her ankles were also bound together.

The hunter was talking to two men in the helicopter. After a few moments, the men, wearing the uniforms of the National Meat Service, hopped to the ground carrying a pole. They approached Amelia, one at her feet, the other at her head. Without a word they picked up her arms and legs and threaded the pole under the bindings on her wrists and ankles, then lifted the pole to their shoulders and carried her, like a slain deer, to the helicopter. They dropped her pole into one of four pairs of brackets outside the body of the craft and locked it down. The two NMS men and the hunter then climbed into the cabin of the helicopter and the engine began to rev up. Amelia saw the ground receding beneath her as the machine roared skyward. But the pain from her ankle and sex was so great she cared nothing about the fact that she was swinging wildly in mid-air hundreds of feet above the forest.

She had closed her eyes to deal with the excruciating pain and was only aware that the craft was landing by the rough bump that sent a new wave of agony through her body. She recognized where they were at once. It was the large expanse of meadow where she had worried she might be caught exposed. How foolish in retrospect! The bastards knew where she was every moment anyway. It was only a matter of time before they caught her. And they had done so twice! This was the place her first captor — Taylor was it? — had planned to bring her to share with his buddies. All she had done was to delay the inevitable.

The two NMS men took her off the helicopter rack and carried her to a place in the meadow where three other girls were spreadeagled on the ground. She noted that Shala was not among the other captives. The men dropped Amelia on her back, removed the pole, cut her bindings and splayed her out like the others, stretched into an X in the grass, her wrists and ankles lashed to stakes.

The hunter who had captured her swaggered over.

"This is the bitch who killed Taylor," he announced. "She's got a dart up her twat. I'd better fish it out before anyone fucks her."

She saw him pour some oil on his right hand, then felt him insert the tips of his fingers between her labia. They forced their way into her, deeper, twisting, spreading her impossibly wide. She felt the knobs of his knuckles grating against her tender inner flesh, then the entire hand brutally pushing inward, the new pain multiplying the raging pain that already engulfed the far end of the invasion route. She heard herself screaming again, her body writhing madly in its bonds. Then suddenly the hand was gone. She saw the hunter stand up, a bloodied dart dangling between his thumb and index finger.

"She's all yours, boys. You won't have to worry about ramming your schlong into this baby. But watch out for that plug in her ass. I can't pull that one out because it'll rip her up pretty good. You don't wanna be fucking her in a puddle of blood. Besides, if she bleeds to death here, them NMS boys will probably bitch that her meat ain't as fresh as it should be when they collect it tonight." Everyone laughed.

Everyone except Amelia and the other three girls spreadeagled in the grass.

Ring gags were produced from the helicopter and strapped into each girl's mouth to make it available for safe penetration. The two helicopter pilots climbed back in their machine and took off to retrieve the surviving two girls, leaving the three hunters to spend the next hour and a half making brutal use of the four available mouths and cunts of their quarry. Two of the girls got flipped over so the men could make use of their ass as well.

The three hunters reserved special cruelties for Amelia because she had been involved in the death of one of their number. Every one of them took time to whip her breasts and sensitive inner thighs with the whip stick before jamming their hardened cocks into her cunt, or flooding her throat with cum. They pinched and pulled her nipples and clit so severely that her vocal cords were torn from screaming, reducing her noise to a whisper. Her captor would have liked to see her suffer more, perhaps flogged with a serious whip, but her sale value would drop significantly if her meat were bruised. It wasn't worth the added satisfaction. Being able to rape and torture four lovely young women after an invigorating hunt was satisfaction enough.

Although it was titillating for the hunters to think of this activity as rape, technically it was not. By law, those captured in an authorized Hunt became the property of their captors with the legal status of animal livestock. As mere property with no rights whatsoever, captured female quarry could expect their last hours to be grueling at best, agony at worst, until it all ended at the closing ceremony. When the festivities were over, their carcasses would be purchased by the National Meat Service.

Amelia's captor did manage to inflict on Amelia one further painful degradation. Having exhausted his potential for additional erections after jetting one last load into another of the other three females, a sobbing brunette, he cut down a thick sapling at the edge of the meadow, hacked a ten inch section from it and carved a series of wing flanges, just like the one still locked in Amelia's rectum. When he had ascertained that his fellow hunters were finished using her, he showed Amelia what he had wrought, then introduced its jagged top end into her vagina, reddened and sore from hard servicing. As she whimpered in horrified expectation, he used the heel of his hand to ram the devilish piece of wood all the way in as semen from all three of her abusers bubbled out around it. The wretched girl issued an eerie whistling scream, blood spraying from her torn vocal cords. The hunter tugged on the end of the dowel to make sure the sharp flanges would hold it in. They did.

The helicopter returned ninety minutes after its departure, right on schedule. The four weeping girls were slung from poles once again and lugged to the helicopter where the poles were mounted and locked down on the outside racks, two on a side. The three hunters and two pilots climbed inside the machine to enjoy a comfortable ride for the flight back to the lodge.

The pain from the darts had dissipated and vanished. But the pain from the two rough wooden dowels cruelly inserted into Amelia's cunt and ass was matched only by the pain from her broken ankle as the bindings and pole pulled and wrenched it constantly with the lurching of the helicopter. She swung wildly in the torturous draft of cold air from the rotors and the pitching of the aircraft in the wind. Shivering, in agony and utterly miserable, she no longer feared death as the machine clawed its way through the sky, praying only that her torment would end soon.

Part 7

Seconds after landing, the helicopter was surrounded by a cheering, rowdy throng of revelers. Lewd encouragements were shouted as each of the four girls was unloaded and carried through the crowd, slung like a dead elk from her pole. The ends of the wooden stakes protruding from Amelia's privates evoked lots of pointing and bawdy jocularity. A few men reached out and tugged at them, but although the effort produced amusing squeals and writhing from the wretched girl, the stakes remained firmly anchored in place.

The parade of captured prey and well-oiled celebrants snaked its way through the main doors of the lodge, the place where both quarry and hunters had begun the Hunt the previous morning. It continued through the Great Hall where the feast, dancing and closing ceremonies would take place. At this point most of the guests peeled off to the bar to reload. The hunters and those who enjoyed watching the cleansing process accompanied the quarry carriers into the Prep Room.

The four girls were laid out on the floor and the carrying poles extracted from under their wrists and ankles. One by one, each girl was picked up by the three surviving hunters and a volunteer assistant from the crowd, one to each arm and leg; her bindings were cut and she was flopped face down on the rim of a wheel. There were four such wheels, one for each captive. They were just wide enough to support the torso — about twelve inches — with the top of the rim about four feet off the floor. The arms and legs of each girl were firmly strapped to the sides of the wheel, which were then rotated so that their rumps were on top. The technicians attending Amelia shook their heads at the sight of the wooden plugs.

"You've been up to your old tricks, Kevin," one of the technicians observed.

"She needed some extra care. Her and that bitch Shala killed Taylor."

"Got cha. Well, they'll have to come out. They're going to rip her up if we just yank on 'em, right?"

"You bet!"

"Gina, go get the hot rod and pliers."

A gray haired woman went to a drawer in a steel cabinet and returned with a large pair of channel-lock pliers and an electrical appliance in the form of a smooth metal rod about two inches in diameter with a rounded tip and an insulated handle. A 12-gauge grounded electric cable extended from the handle. She plugged it in to a floor outlet. While they waited for the rod to heat up they checked Amelia's straps, adding two more, one over the small of her back, the other over her upper thighs. All straps were cinched extremely tight. By the time they were satisfied that her hips were totally immobilized, the rod was glowing a dull red.

"Let's remove the anal plug first," the male technician said to the woman. "You get ready with the rod." He took a grip on the exposed end of the anal plug with the channel lock pliers and positioned himself so he could yank it out. When his assistant nodded that she was ready, he yanked out the plug. Blood gushed from Amelia's anus as the assistant shoved the red hot rod into it. Amelia's ability to scream had been destroyed when she ruptured her larynx, but her body made the effort anyway as immense pain blasted from her rectum, an agony more terrible than anything she had yet suffered. She was still trying to deal with that as a second explosion of pain from her vagina reeled her into unconsciousness.

When she revived, a cold shower was soothing the burns inside her intestines. But as her belly filled, the pain of her burns was crowded out by a desperate and escalating need to empty her bowels! But she could not! The enema nozzle that continued to pour liquid into her was sealed inside her sphincter by an inflatable balloon. Turning her head to each side, she could see that the girls on the wheels beside her were in similar distress, gasping and crying and begging for relief as their bellies swelled enormously. Tears rolled down her own cheeks as the incredible filling went on and on! Just as she was certain she would explode, someone rotated her wheel so that her ass was pointed down, then deflated the plug so it could pop out. A gush of liquified intestinal contents poured out to the applause of the audience. Through the framework of the wheel she could see there was an opening in the floor through which the contents of her intestines were pouring. She could hear the torrent landing in some kind of collection basin but could not see it. Any time earlier in her life the humiliation of being forced to shit in public would have devastated her. Now she no longer cared. She just wanted her torment to end.

But it was not yet to be.

"She ate Taylor's food supply," her captor volunteered helpfully.

"Did she! Well, that's good for two more cleanouts."

So while the other three girls were taken off their wheels, put in chains and led off to the showers, Amelia was forced to endure two additional extreme enemas, and two more rounds of cheers from the enema afficionados.

When the water came out looking as clean as it went in, Amelia was unstrapped and lifted off the wheel. The technicians attached steel shackles to her ankles, oblivious to the fact that one of them was grossly swollen. The ankle cuffs were connected by a heavy twelve-inch length of chain. Handcuffs were snapped on her wrists with her hands in front of her. A steel collar and chain was snapped around her neck and she was led, shuffling and limping badly, to the showers.

She was ordered to stand over a deeply recessed drain in front of a sink, her feet spread as far as the chain would allow. A tap and turned on and a technician held her hands under the flow of water.

"Pee!" she was told. But there wasn't much there, her bladder having already emptied during the three enemas. The dribble that came out ran down her left leg, off her foot and slithered into the drain.

She was brought next to the center of the shower room where a meat hook hung from the ceiling. It was hooked under the links of her handcuffs and winched up until she was standing on her toes, arms straight over her head. The technicians used hand-held nozzles and scrub brushes to clean her off thoroughly, with special attention to her ass and the inside of her legs. Her hair was wound into a tight bun and clipped in place. My final coiffure , she thought, and I won't even get to see it.

The meat hook was lowered. She was freed from it and led out of the showers into the Great Hall. There, cheered on by leering guests, she was brought to the steps that led up to the stage, but kept falling when she tried to climb them on her broken ankle. Finally a technician helped her up the stairs and to the display frame reserved for her. The other three girls were already in their frames, their feet spread wide as they hung by their ankles from the top bar.

As she stood on the stage in front of her frame, Amelia's handcuffs were removed, but her arms were quickly brought around to her back and bound together with rope, forearm to forearm. Other ropes that ran through pulleys at the top corners of the frame were tied to her ankles before the shackles were removed.

The head technician stepped to the front of the stage and called out, "Who'd like to help hoist the last of our quarry?" Several men shot to their feet waving their hands. The technician picked out two and they hurried to the steps and up on to the stage. As all this was going on, the other technician stuffed a ball gag into Amelia's mouth and strapped it in. The two volunteers, having watched the first three girls hoisted, knew just what to do. They gripped Amelia's upper arms, turned her back to the audience and lifted her off her feet as the two technicians hauled on her ankle ropes, drawing her feet all the way up to the top bar. When the two guests released her arms, she swung from her ankles, upside down and facing out toward the crowd. The pain of the rope crushing her injured ankle was immense, but in a way she was glad for the added suffering. It would help take her mind off the humiliation of being publically displayed like this, naked and demeaned. Death would be a welcome release.

Tables had been set up for the Grand Barbeque and the guests were settling in with platefuls of food. Two prime girls had been acquired from a meat farm and had been roasting on spits all afternoon over applewood fires. Their once shapely bodies, now bronzed and shimmering from multiple bastings over the fire, were now being carved up and dispersed amongst the guests. Amelia was glad she had been spared the sight of them being gutted and spitted alive. She wondered how long and how horribly they had suffered as they cooked over the low flames before they died. Her own end would be easy compared to theirs.

She'd always thought it was a bit of an irony that the Lodge brought in farm-raised roasters when they were in the business of providing slaughtered human game for the National Meat Service. The reason, of course, was simple economics. Free-range females were far tastier and worth five times more than girls raised in a cage on industrial feed.

The scene, upside down to her as she hung in her frame, had a surreal quality, a perspective that helped her come to terms with the rapidly approaching end of life. How upside down it was to have put everything on the line for freedom from debt and an opportunity to create new life! All her bravura had accomplished was the end of her freedom and extinction of her own life. Had she been too greedy? Did cupidity breed stupidity? The crazy rhyme lilted in her head to the pounding rhythm of her pain.

She wondered if Ken was out there somewhere. Surely he would have checked with the Lodge to find out which of the quarry had been captured and which two had been rescued. If he was out there among the diners, she couldn't recognize him upside down.

She looked across the row of doomed young women. She didn't know their names. One was a dark auburn redhead; another was a honey brown and the third a dark brunette, almost black. Like hers, their hair was tightly wound into a wet bob. Oh well, she thought, it was better than being shaved bald as the live roasters were.

Guests began climbing up on the stage to amuse themselves with the condemned captives. The technicians were keeping watch, apparently to protect the merchandise from damage, although they raised no objections to fingers, spoons, forks and sundry harsh vegetables being stuffed into gaping genitalia, or nipples being twisted hard enough to evoke muffled shrieks of pain.

A gentle feminine hand caressed her buttocks. She looked down (up) into Shala's inscrutable eyes. The tawny beauty was dressed in a short black frock that concealed very little of her lean, elegant body, her height accentuated by high heels. She sank down on her haunches so she could talk directly into Amelia's face, the background noise having become quite raucous.

"Hi. Guess this didn't quite work out the way you'd hoped, huh? Sorry, Babe. But I did my bit to help. Went above and beyond the call, in fact. Kenny didn't plan on my helping you at all, comes to that."

Kenny?!

"You're probably wondering why he hasn't come up here to say goodbye."

Silenced by the gag, Amelia's expression registered a mix of puzzlement and frustration.

"He's chickenshit, that's why. He pretty much set you up and is too much of a pussy to come up here and look into your eyes. That's him back there." She pointed at an unidentifiable point at the back of the Great Hall. "We've been guzzling their liquor and chowing down on girl meat. Those farm grown cows don't have much flavor, but the chefs here season them well. I expect you'll be scrumptious, though. Kenny and me have already special-ordered a couple of your flank steaks, and I gotta tell you, girl, you don't come cheap! Kenny wanted one of your breasts, of course, but you're way too expensive for that. Thought you'd like to know that, girl. Thing is, now you'll be part of Kenny and me forever. Part of your body will be part of ours. Kinda sweet, huh?"

Amelia was making furious attempts to talk through the gag. "Hen . . . hen . . . hen . . !" she kept saying, her face contorted in anger. Shala knew well enough what was bothering her.

"Yeah, yeah. Ken. Dear Ken. Honey, I'm sorry to be the one to lay this on you, but since he's too cowardly to haul his sorry ass up here, you have to know he's been playing on both sides of your fence. Him and me have been fucking regular for over a year now. Couple times a week. But as far as your being here, it wasn't my idea and you can't in all honesty blame it all on him. I mean after all, he did run the Hunt first, so it wasn't like he didn't take any chance himself. And you were the one who brought up that maybe you could do it, too. Furthermore, I gotta say, sweetpea, that you were pretty damn gullible to let him talk you into running stark naked with nothing more than a fucking knife. You don't think he did that, do you? Hell, I trained him on how to survive it, and that included wearing shoes, cap and every stitch of protective clothing they allow. Course he didn't pass on any of the rest of what I taught him, either, and that wasn't very nice of him, I admit. But when you think about it from his point of view, why should he? He was in a win-win situation. If you survived uncaptured, you two would be free and clear of debt, and he'd have a bedmate to fuck whenever he wanted, with me on the side for variety. If you were captured and converted to meat, he'd still be free of your debt and just take me in to take your place in his bed full time." She chuckled, ignoring the angry hurt in Amelia's eyes. "What he doesn't realize, yet, is he's caught a tiger by the tail. The asshole hunters at this place are scared to death of me, as they should be, because if they come after me, they're dead. If Kenny thinks he can run around on me the way he did you, he's gonna wish he'd been captured and had his throat cut, like you. Because I will cut off his gentiles with a dull knife and make him chew them up. Then I'll then boil him alive, one arm and leg at a time, cutting it off and eating it while he watches. The thing is, I happen to know that our boy Kenny can no more restrict himself to fucking one woman than raindrops can keep from falling. So rest assured, little lamb, lover-boy Kenny will one day regret that he duped his little blond plaything into a suicide mission. Me, I don't give a shit. He's a good fuck, but so are a zillion other studs. What I can't stand is when some jerk thinks he can play me for a fool."

Shara gazed down into Amelia's tear glazed eyes.

"Aw, hon, face it. You didn't stand a chance from the git-go and Kenny knew it. That first hunter out there, Taylor? He caught you fair and square. If I hadn't saved you, you'd still be hanging here, only as Taylor's trophy instead of Kevin's. I gave you a second chance that other girls don't get, and you blew it. Kenny gave you bad advice, but you weren't born yesterday. You should have known better. For that matter you should have smelled me on his dick a hundred times over the last six months and known he had another bimbo in the wings. You were just too fucking trusting and blind. And this is where it got you. So don't look at me that way. Sure, Kenny was a traitorous jerk and I'm the other woman, but when all is said and done, you ignored the clues, the statistics and common sense. You are responsible for your own life and, especially in this case, you have mostly yourself to blame for losing it. You fucked up good, girl!

"But if it's any consolation," Shala continued in a softer tone, "the other survivor is a young woman named Apple. The girl with the pretty green eyes and cute nose, remember? She's the mother of eighteen-month-old twin girls and was about to default on her loan. If Kevin hadn't been chasing you, he would have caught her. That would have orphaned her little girls, who, of course, would then have been sold to a meat farm. So, your fuckup saved three others."

Shala stood up, bent her head between Amelia's thighs and placed a delicate kiss on her exposed vulva. "Bye, sweetie. You really gave them a worthy chase at the end. I am really, really sorry it turned out this way for you. Close your eyes when they do it. It'll be over fast."

She strode away, descended the stairs and disappeared into the upside down crowd.

Amelia was emotionally devastated. The man she had hoped to marry and make babies with was a sham! He had deceived her on every possible level. The man she loved with all her heart had another woman on the side ready to step in and replace her. Already had stepped in. Ken had lured her into a deadly contest knowing she had little chance to survive. She had trusted this horrible excuse for a man with her dreams, her pride, her life.

She wanted to hate Shala for stealing Ken's love and destroying her future, but she knew Shala was right. She should have been more alert to the clues of his infidelity and less eager to agree to participate in a Hunt with such terrible odds. She should have known better than run barefoot and naked when the only reasonable chance to survive was a successful flight over harsh ground in a dense forest.

Then she thought about Apple. She remembered her. A sweet girl, not yet twenty, with light brown hair streaked with blond. She had played soccer in high school and probably had been able to outrun and outlast her pursuers. That made Kevin's decision to switch to Amelia for his quarry more appealing. As Shala had suggested. If there was any up side to her coming death, it was knowing that her sacrifice would at least save a young mother and her two little children.

What a cruel world!

She searched the audience trying to find Ken's face. Why would she want to do that? Hadn't he hurt her enough? Yet she couldn't help it. But the upside down commotion in the huge room made spotting and recognition nearly impossible. The bastard was probably hiding behind a planter somewhere.

Suddenly Kevin, her captor, was standing at her side, laughing. Someone else was holding a camera. Fingers invaded her cunt. The hunter's hand gripped her painfully as he smiled and the camera flashed. Other flashes in front of the other frames. The hunters posing with their game. Lots of flashes. Pictures from various angles.

Then the announcements began over the PA system.

"Gentlemen, prepare for the kill."

This was it. Despite her resolution to be brave, Amelia was trembling. She didn't want to die, and yet she was helpless to save herself.

"Our first hunter on the left is Mr. Anthony Jenkins of Mobile, Alabama. His quarry is the former Mandy Zblowski, age eighteen, five feet five, one hundred seventeen pounds. The capture took seven hours and twenty-three minutes. As you can see, she is a splendid specimen and will undoubtedly yield a tasty product. Congratulations Mr. Jenkins. You may dispatch her, now."

Amelia caught a quick movement in front of the last girl over. Her body bucked once in its frame, then hung still as the audience burst into applause. More flashes. More pictures.

How cute of the Hunt Masters, Amelia thought bitterly, to mention the girl's "former" name; a tactful reminder to the squeamish that the trussed up female they were killing was no longer legally human. Just so much meat. At the same time, it was an obscene assurance to the prurient that this naked, dying creature whom the hunters had raped and defiled mercilessly before hanging up in this lewd display was a real girl from a real family who was suffering a debasing death for their amusement.

The PA system resumed it's smooth incantation.

"Our second hunter is Mr. Joshua Pendell of Nashua, New Hampshire, where you 'live free or die.'" Chuckles from the audience at his droll reference to that state's motto. "His quarry is the former Andrea Walker, age twenty-three, five feet seven, one hundred twenty-nine pounds of well distributed meat. The time of her capture was twenty-seven hours and five minutes. Congratulations Mr. Pendell. You may dispatch her, now."

This one was closer. She could see the flash of the blade. More applause. More photo flashes.

"Our third hunter is Mr. Jamison Burroughs of Cody, Wyoming. His quarry is the former Paige Lorraine, age nineteen, five feet eight, one hundred thirty-two pounds. Captured in twenty-eight hours and forty-three minutes. A fine specimen Mr. Burroughs. Plenty of meat on those well-shaped limbs! Congratulations. You may dispatch her, now."

Amelia had a clear view of the blade slicing through the girl's throat, the blood spewing into a basin under her head, the girl jerking briefly in her bonds, then growing quiet as her blood poured out in a continuing torrent, finally slowing as the applause died down. A technician was pulling the basin out from under the dead girl and was shoving under Amelia's head. She could hear the blood inside sloshing.

O God! It was her turn! Her breaths were coming in shudders. Her eyes filled with tears . God damn you, Ken and Shara! God damn you all! You stole my life! You stole my whole life!

"Finally on the far right, Mr. Kevin Parrelli of Elmira, New York. His quarry is the former Amelia Harding, age eighteen, five feet three, one hundred ten pounds. A cute little thing, but she sure gave you an exciting run, didn't she Kevin. Thirty-five hours and twenty-seven minutes. Wow! She almost made it, too, but you finally ran her down. Congratulations. She looks like she'll be as good to eat as she was fun to catch. You may dispatch her, now."

She closes her eyes. A sharp sting across her neck. Her eyes snap open with the pain and her body jerks. Flashes of light in her eyes! Blood pouring off her chin, running into her nose, eyes, ears, the corners of her mouth, over her forehead, soaking into her hair. She blinks it away frantically, snorting it clear, trying to breathe. She can hear it splashing into the basin, her life draining from her body, mixing with the blood of the other girls, carcasses now, hanging beside her. She's breathing fast, her heart hammering, missing beats.

Please let this be a dream!

But it's not. Her vision is breaking up. It's getting dark. She can feel consciousness slipping away, spilling into the basin. Applause. Loud at first. Growing more distant. Are Ken and Shala applauding? Is Ken thinking about the last time they made love, how it felt when they kissed as he came, her legs wrapped tightly around his back as if to hold him to her forever? Will he be there when the technicians remove her bloodied head . . . when they drain out the rest of blood . . . when they eviscerate and skin her carcass right here in its frame? Will he and his lover watch as the butchers slice her body into fresh, marketable cuts of meat? Expensive cuts.

Too bad you can't afford even one of my tits, you scheming bastard. They're a lot bigger than Shala's, and firmer and juicier. But you'll never taste them. And you'll never suck on them again while you get yourself hard. And if you go on the prowl for substitutes, Shala has a nice surprise for you. I'll see you in Hell, lover.

The pain in her ankle is gone now.

All her torments are gone now.

She doesn't hurt any more.

It's all going away . . .

and she doesn't . . .

care . . .