"Between a rock and a hot place" is a joined effort of the marvelous writer Pie/Chart (member of Pulptoon) and Corneel. Subject of this story is the beloved Dede (member of Pulptoon as well) who has provided Pie with some basic idea's. Pie has created this great epic story and Corneel has taken care for the artwork. The amount of work and time involved in this project is enormous: it took Pie several month's to create the story, Corneel has used 6 months to finish his part!

Carol changed position in bed for the third time in as many minutes. Despite the care with which she moved Danny stirred. “Whasthetime?” he murmured sleepily, and yawned.
 
“Half past one.”
 
“Oh.” Danny absorbed the information, and started to come round. “Can’t you sleep?”
 
“No. Your son’s trying out for the Bears again.”
 
Nearly awake now Danny stretched out a hand and patted Carol’s hot, swollen belly. Beneath his hand a pair of tiny heels lashed out. “He is lively tonight!” He thought for a moment. “I need a drink – you want me to get you something?”
 
“Uhu. Hot milk please. And a sandwich. White bread, and meat please…”
 
“  ‘kay” Danny said, and slipped out of the bed.
 
Five minutes later he was sat in the bed with a coffee, while beside him Coral nibbled at her sandwich. “You know” she said reflectively between bites, “once Junior is a few months old were going to have to stop eating people. At least we are until he’s old enough to understand, and we can be sure he won’t say the wrong thing to the wrong person. I mean, can’t you just imagine it, Junior going up to his Elementary School teacher and telling her she looks delicious and he’d like to eat her for Thanksgiving!”
 
“Huh?” Danny turned the idea over briefly between sips of coffee. “Why would he do that?”
 
“Heredity perhaps? After all, that’s where we started – eating our teacher….”


“Look out, look out, The Miller’s about!”
 
The voice echoing along the corridor of the Robert E Lee High School in Derreksville was unmistakable, and Ms Miller recognised it instantly. ‘Some children just never grow up’ she thought, and Danny Boyce was one of them.  At 15 going 16 he was a natural leader of the pack, and intelligent with it; he had collected several troublemakers into his circle, and between them they were a constant disruptive influence. She taught them history, a subject that Danny held in open contempt, but she was also their Head of Year, and that brought with it certain other contacts. She snorted, and entered the staff room for morning break.
 
The Principal was there already, and he looked up as she entered. “Ah, Denise – can I talk to you please” he said, and ushered her into his office where the other Year Heads were already waiting. “What do you make of this?” he asked, spreading a sheet of paper out on his desk. “I got it in the post this morning. Abby McMahon’s parents sent it in. Apparently Abby found it blowing round in the street outside our gate and took it home. Her mother found it and felt it wasn’t the sort of thing a 13 year old should be seeing.”
 
It was a simple, probably unfinished, line drawing of a naked teenage girl bound and gagged, and being boiled in what seemed to be a glass cauldron of some sort.
 
“Wow! Nice artwork, nasty subject” Collin Grant, Head of the next year down, commented. “She reminds me of someone …. one of the Fisher girls I think; probably Holly. Who is the artist?”
 
“Don’t know” the Principal replied, “but I’d like to. I guess just another of the kids, but we need to be aware of it just in case.”
 
“The quality of the drawing suggests an adult rather than a pupil” Ms Miller noted. “I see it’s signed – that any help?” She picked it up and peered closely at it. “Seems to be ’Dede’. Doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Nor me. Anyone else got any ideas?” He glanced round, and there was a general shaking of heads. “OK, well I don’t think an actual offence has been committed but it sure isn’t healthy. Keep your eyes and ears open, and don’t say anything.” He shook his head slowly, and sighed. “I sometimes wonder what Derreksville is coming to ….. let’s go get coffee.”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
Twenty minutes later Ms Miller entered the class room and as ever checked momentarily at the door. In that split second the instinct which any teacher of 10 years experience gains warned her of an undercurrent in the way the students reacted. Senses alert, she swept the room with her eyes, and just spotted that the dark grey fabric on her chair was covered in a darker grey powder of some sort. Aha! And presumably the joke would have been for her to sit on it and end up unknowingly with dark smudges on the back of her skirt and blouse. OK, two could play that game. She dropped the paperwork she had been carrying on the desk, and moved round in front of it. “Good morning guys. New project time!”
 
The class groaned. Ms Miller’s projects were notorious – she set difficult topics and marked hard, hard enough that getting a good grade required real concentrated effort. She listened to them, trying to work out from faces and nervousness of reply who the phantom chair-powderer might, but there was nothing obvious. Still, there was every chance it was Danny, or more probably one of his associates – Danny was smart enough not to get caught. She smiled. She would try a different tactic. “You know, the other day someone, I forget who, said it was unfair for the teaching staff to have more comfortable chairs than the students, and I said we needed them because we were much older and creakier, and entitled to our comforts – so I guess now I’m past 30 I’ll be able to bring a rocker in soon….” A tense little laugh went round. “Anyway, I thought it was my duty to find out just how comfortable or otherwise your seats are, so today I’m going to swap mine with one of yours. So, any volunteers to swap chairs ….” Her eyes swept the room noting expressions, noting who didn’t meet her eyes. “No one? Oh well, I’ll pick someone. Erm…Danny, you normally have a lot to say for yourself, so today you can have the comfy chair. Bring me your chair please, and take mine back to your table.”
 
There was a long silence and the two locked eyes. Someone tittered, and Ms Miller smiled. “Well? Come on then, we don’t have all day….”
 
Danny was trapped, and knew it. Did he warn her, tell her who had done it, rat on Coral? Or did he swallow his pride, sit on the chair and hope he didn’t get too dirty? Either way he got to look foolish.  While he hesitated the teacher fixed him a long searching look. “Well Danny, I guess I just called your bluff didn’t I? Touchdown! Miller 1, Boyce nil, and you loose!” The class dissolved into laughter, and in that moment Danny Boyce decided that he didn’t just dislike Ms Miller, he hated her with all his heart. And one day he’d get her back……
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
“History of cannibalism in primitive cultures” Marty Thomas snorted, “the bitch has really got it in for us this time!” Danny, Marty, Jim Collins, Delia Hood, and Coral Lord were sitting at a table in the library, overlooking the playing field, having a syndicate meeting which was rapidly turning into a “hate Miller” session. They had to be a bit careful with this since, despite her firm approach to the pupils, Ms Miller had the respect and support of the great majority of the student body. But amongst themselves they were unrestrained in their criticism.

“Another fucking project. ‘Written report, and presentation to the class’. Oh joy!” Delia took up the complaint. “We’ll work our butts off, only to get “C” grades if we’re lucky. Why can’t The Miller just set ordinary assignments like the other staff do?”
 
“Aw, come on, be honest. We’ll do as little as we can get away with, and let The Creep do most of the work for us” Marty replied.
 
“Yeah. For which the little bitch will claim all the credit, if not in class then when she’s brown-nosing The Miller afterwards. I’d really like to try cannibalism out on both of them; you know, lock them naked in a sealed room with just water and nothing else, and see which one of them ate the other! The Creep wouldn’t be anything like so smarmy to Herself then when she realised that she might just be going to end up on The Miller’s menu.”
 
“Or vice versa” Danny said looking round, “and speaking of which, where is The Creep this time?”
 
“Over there brown-nosing ‘Coach’. Bitches. Both of them.” Delia remarked dispassionately.
 
The five friends looked across the playing field to where the missing sixth member of their syndicate was paying court to Ms Miller as she ran a girls’ track training session. Little blonde-haired Beth Groves was cordially disliked by the five, and by most everyone else in the class; and though they didn’t know it, by Ms Miller as well. She was a bright, petite girl who never ever got into trouble, and who spent much of her time making up to all the staff members, and telling them tales about the doings of the other students. Ms Miller couldn’t really stand her, and had somewhat cynically dumped her into their syndicate because no one else in the class wanted to have her. But however much the five might dislike Beth they knew she could be relied on to do most of the hard work on the project, though no doubt, as Delia had said, she would make sure that everyone knew that she had done more than her fair share.
 
“Well, we’ll just have to take decisions without her again, and tell her what to do later on. She can do all the bookwork and the boring library stuff. We’ll do the rest, you know, the fun stuff” Danny concluded.
 
“Like what?” Coral asked.
 
“Like, I’ll get my Uncle Jethro, well, my Great Uncle really, to come in and give the class a talk on cannibals. He was out in New Guinea in the war, or somewhere like that, and he got left behind when an operation went wrong, and he spent most of the war living with the jungle tribes and getting them to hunt the Japs. He told me a bit about cannibalism when I was tiny, wrapped it up in little stories that terrified me then. He’ll advise us, and probably do a talk. The Miller’ll love it!”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
The Miller had indeed loved it, though exactly not for the reasons Danny thought. She’d heard odd rumours about the strange, bearded old man who seemed to have roamed the world, and she had willingly agreed to get the Principal’s permission for him to address the class. And Danny’s Uncle had come into the class room and within moments had every one of them in the palm of his hand. Partly it was his odd, old fashioned accent (which he told them came from an upbringing spread between Alabama, Newfoundland, and Birmingham in England), and partly it was what he told them about the tribes he knew, and the way they had lived, and how they had hunted and cooked pig and monkey and on occasion members of other tribes; and after he had got there and encouraged them, how they’d begun hunting the Japanese as well.

Cannibalism, as he’d explained, was a historical thing, not done all the time, but on special occasions, and especially after battles, when there were enemies available to cook. And he’d described how each tribe did things differently, some cooking in trenches, while others us spits. And then, inevitably, someone asked if he knew what human meat tasted like.
 
“Depends on how it’s cooked, and a mite on if it’s male ur female. Female meat tends t’ be a bit milder ‘n sweeter flavoured than male, but there don’t seem t’ be much difference between different races, least ways not so’s I could tell” he’d said.
 
“You’ve eaten human meat yourself?” one of the girls asked, her voice taut with horrified fascination.
 
“Yup, sure have. Enjoyed it too.”
 
“Eeugh! But you’re an American! Shouldn’t you have refused? Shouldn’t you have set an example of civilisation to the savages, not come down to their level?”
 
Danny’s uncle fixed her with an icy stare. “Young lady, you sure have a lot of growing up t’ do. First off, less uv the ‘savages’. You don’t have t’ like their culture, but you’ve no call t’ try t’ be superior, nor t’ insult them. Second, like the proverb says, ‘when in Rome do as the Romans do.’ We had a war on our hands; I had t’ get the tribes on the side uv Uncle Sam, so I sure wasn’t going t’ offend their hospitality. An’ anyways, if you’re amongst ‘savages’ an’ they offer you a delicacy an’ you refuse you run a good chance uv insultin’ them; an’ if you insult them there’s a real risk you’re going t’ end up ridin’ the rock yourself.”
 
“Erm, ‘riding the rock’; what does that mean?” Ms Miller asked
 
“Jest that. The first time I saw it I was with the A’Tassowee people in the Mulgun hills. They don’t use spits nur pits; they have a rock, a durn great big slab uv rock they believe was dropped by a giant lizard, ur dragon maybe, when the earth was young. When they got someone t’ cook they heat the rock by having a damn great fire on an’ round it, an’ then they use it sort of like a griddle plate. The trick is not t’ get the rock too hot ur the meat burns. Most often they cut the meat up int’ joints, an’ just place ‘em on the rock, but sometimes they fix the victim in a bamboo frame an’ rest it on posts a foot ur so above the stone. They tend t’ do that if they want the victim t’ cook alive. An’ t’ get the cookin’ even they turn the fame over once in a while. Sometimes they put a layer of wet leaves between ‘em t’ give a smoky flavour, an’ t’ shield the victim a mite if there startin’ t’ burn.”
 
And later the other equally inevitable question was asked: “if you could, who would you most like to eat in this class?”
 
“Susan, please!” Ms Miller said, though her heart didn’t seem to be in the comment. Several of the class giggled or laughed, but the old man treated it seriously. “Who would I most like t’ eat? Well, not you young lady – a man could get into a deal uv trouble eating folk back here in Virginia ! An’ particularly underage girls! But if y’all went out t’ the East, then it’d depend on why you were bein’ eaten. Now if it wuz as a battle celebration it’d be the enemy’s warrior dead an’ the captives the folk ‘ud be eatin. An’ that ud mean the boys, ‘cus only a man can be a warrior.  O’course, if it wuz a festival celebration that’d be different, cuz then girls ‘ud be on the menu. Now you young lady, you’d sure be sweet if you wuz cooked, but you’ve got no bulk, an’ no fat so your meat ‘ud be dry. Nope, if they was after cookin anyone here they’d look fur a mature woman with a bit ‘uv fat on her, and if you’ll pardon me sayin’ so, ma’am, but Miss Miller you’d be ideal – plenty uv meat on you fur starters, an’ I guess your flavour ud be a mite stronger. O’course your meat wouldn’t be as tender as Susan, but you’ve jest enough fat under your skin t’ make your meat cook up nice ‘n moist. Yes Ma’am, I guess you’d sure cook up well!”
 
The class were fascinated, Ms Miller seemed to be hanging on the old man’s every word, and the presentation ran well over the allotted 20 minutes..
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
The next session was not a happy one. “I’m appalled” Ms Miller told the syndicate. “The presentation by Danny’s uncle was great, quite fascinating in fact, and I really enjoyed it. But getting in a guest speaker doesn’t take much effort, and doesn’t get you much of a mark for your project work. This report…” she indicated a very thin document lying on her desk “… doesn’t even begin to cover the subject. You’ve done all but no work between you …”
 
“I have, Miss” Beth interjected.
 
Ms Miller turned on her viciously. “Oh yes! Yes you have, haven’t you? And written your own supplementary report just to show up the other five and get especial credit from me. I’m not stupid! I’ve been able to see what was going on for some time. But your job was to support the syndicate, not try to back-stab them. Teamwork is everything in this life.” She turned back. “But as for you five! Well, I think that if you don’t stop messing about and start to do some work you’re going to fail this year, and that means Principal’s Review …….”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
Sitting in the class room a few days later Ms Miller was trying to concentrate on marking some papers from another class, while her own pupils were working in groups. It was a warm afternoon, and try as she might she just couldn’t keep her mind on the job in hand. Danny’s uncle’s talk had touched deep into her fantasies, fantasies that she kept secret from everyone. It was not by any manner of means a coincidence that she’d set a syndicate a project on cannibalism. Oh no, not at all!
 
She glanced up. Directly in front of her but three rows back Fiona Thomas was standing, feet slightly apart, bending forward to look at something on one of the other student’s desks. She was a big girl, slightly overweight perhaps, though by no means fat, but plump enough to round out her jeans in a really delicious way…. And before she realised what she was doing Ms Miller had started to doodle on a separate piece of paper. Initially her 3B pencil just traced a series of ovals of different shapes. She looked critically at the result, rubbed a couple out and repositioned them. Liking the result she began to connect their outlines, joining them into smooth flowing curves, until what appeared on the paper was a good approximation of Fiona as she might be if she were naked, legs apart, bent forward, arms on the desk (only it was a butchers block she had sketched instead), big breasts dangling between her arms. Ms Miller looked at it again and, dissatisfied, rubbed the head out and repositioned it using a ruler, so the girl in the sketch was looking up. Satisfied, she added two straight lines at each end of the girl, making it look as though she had been spitted……
 
Sensing movement as a student came towards her she slipped the sketch under her work, and answered the proffered question. That had been a closed thing, but she didn’t think anyone had seen. But still she waited before getting the sketch out again, slipping it into an envelope, and tucking that into the file where there were already several similarly enveloped part-completed works. She would take them home, she thought, finish them off properly, sign them with her trademark “Dede”, and put them on the wall of her study alongside some of her other drawings, including the one Abby McMahon had found (it had been surprisingly easy to recover that one from the Principal’s office, though for the life of her she still couldn’t work out how she could have been so careless as to loose it in the first place - it must have been when she tripped going out to the car after school and dropped all her things – using individual envelopes made it so much safer now). And later perhaps she would try to show them off on a cannibal fantasy website she had found a year or so ago ….

But unbeknownst to her Danny had been observing, and had noticed the slightly guilty way she had acted, and the stealthy way the drawing had been hidden. And now he was determined to find out just what it was that she’d got in that file that she so often carried with her books, and guarded so carefully. One day she would make a mistake, and leave it where he could get at it, or perhaps leave her locker unlocked, or something. And when she did he would be waiting, waiting to investigate and copy anything worth having…..
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
At the end of the school year creepy Beth had done sufficiently well to go on with the rest of the class, though Danny was smart enough to realise that Ms Miller was glad to see the back of her. But the rest were on Principal’s Review. Not that Ms Miller had much choice of course, because while Danny had scraped through four of the other five had failed the end of year exams; but that wasn’t the point, and even if disliking her for just doing her job was like shooting the messenger, Danny and the gang didn’t care. As far as they were concerned this was something personal between her and them.
 
It was a painful session, with their parents called in (or in Danny’s case just his Ma, because he hadn’t seen Dad for, what, 5 years?), and the Principal was in a nasty mood. Marty and Delia were told firmly that there “would be no place for idle troublemakers like you two at this school next year”. Then he turned to Jim and Coral just told them that they could stay, but only if they went back and re-did the year; Coral agreed, but Jim told the Principal to fuck off, and walked out of his office, and out of the school there and then.
 
And then the Principal turned to Danny. “I think you’re the ringleader, but I can’t prove it. Ms Miller seems to think you are, but she also says you’re clever, and manage to avoid blame. She thinks you have the potential to do well if only you’ll get your backside in gear, grow up, and start working. I have doubts myself, but I’ll listen to her this once. You passed the exams somehow – I’m not sure how – and I’m reluctantly persuaded to give you a chance, but you need to start some real work. If she’s right then in two years you’ll be on your way to University. However if I’m right, and I’m darn sure I am, you’ll step out of line pretty early on, and then young man your feet won’t touch the floor – you’ll be gone out of this school just like that!” and he snapped his fingers to emphasise the point.
 
It was a sobering moment, and he’d hated it. But he realised that he was being given a chance, and at Ms Miller’s behest! But he’d work, and prove to her, and to that old fart of a Principal, that he could have gone on perfectly well anytime he chose, and without her patronising help!
 
Which he did, and graduated two years later, and even got a place at a college. Not a good college – he couldn’t afford that and neither could his Ma, who’d got another man in her life by then, but there was a place in Ohio that he could get into, and a chance to get some qualifications.  But it rankled, and what made the whole thing worse was that deep down he knew he’d been in the wrong, and that Ms Miller had saved his educational bacon, and he hated her for it even more ……
 
#--------------------------------------------------------#
 
A Tuesday in June 3 years later found Danny sitting in an Attorney’s office in downtown Richmond trying to get a handle on exactly what he was being told.  Although it was only just coming up to noon the day outside was already hot. The office, however, was cool, comfortable, and sufficiently luxurious that somehow Danny felt badly out of place sitting there listening to the Attorney’s explanations. “…. so your Uncle Jethro said to me that as you were the only member of the family who ever seemed to treat him like he was human, and he thought you and he were probably were similar characters, he would leave the bulk of his estate to you …… a few specific bequests of course, to family members …… $10,000 to the Marine Corps charitable funds, plus something for the Lions, and ……. So what with State taxes and my fees I calculate that’ll leave you with somewhere in the region of just a tad shy of $1M in shares and investments, and about half that in the bank. The final figures will take a few more days to sort out, but …… and so if you’ll just sign here Mr Boyce – thank you; and here …… and here as well…... Excellent! Well that completes the formalities. The rest of the paperwork is in the blue folder, along with the keys to your new home. You do know where “ Mistiquoin Lake ” is don’t you?”
 
Danny knew where his late Uncle’s lot was. He’d been there occasionally as a kid, and stayed a couple of times at weekends. Not that the family had approved of course. Uncle Jethro, Mad Jack as he was often known, was not a member that the family were proud of. No one really knew a lot about him, other than that he was Granddad Boyce’s younger brother who, age 16, had run off to join the navy in 1938 (he’d lied about his age). He’d been at the far side of the world when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour; and for some reason he’d been ashore in New Guinea with a small Marine Corps detachment when the Japanese arrived, and after the rest of the unit had been killed or captured he’d gone to ground. He’d stayed, made friends with the tribes, amongst whom he organised a campaign to harass the Japs, and had come out only when the war was over. What exactly he’d been doing was a mystery, but the Navy gave him an honourable discharge, and both the Marine Corps and the Australians had given him medals. He’d promptly disappeared back into the jungle for a few more years – “gone native” Great Aunt Flo had once sniffed - reappearing in Guatemala in 1952. Throughout Danny’s life he’d come and gone, still adventuring well into his sixties, and finally coming home apparently rich, though he’d never said how he’d managed that, nor how rich he was. They’d only been able to guess, and there’d been a lot of speculation, especially after he bought the Mistiquoin Lake property just above Richwood across the state line in West Virginia .
 
“Yeah, I’ve been there. Used to stay a bit when he was home, which wasn’t often, when I was little, before the family decided he wasn’t fit company for a ‘person of tender years’, It’s a strange old place, but really cool for a kid.”
 
“Hmm, I guess it would be. A bit above twelve hundred acres of mainly forest and mountain. Plus the lakes of course; several smaller ones, but the name-lake that the homestead overlooks is the biggest at about 100 acres. Yep, nice property, log cabin style homestead, miniature logging railroad, gold mine … Incidentally, given there’s a lot of odd things about that property, and since your late uncle didn’t do anything to dispel the rumours, there’s a lot of folk speculating about just what might be in the house. So much in fact that we hired a security company to put a guard in. Up to you if you keep them of course……”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
When he’d got out of the office he’d driven back to Derreksville an hour away to see just who he could find. Not Ma anyway – she’d gone to California 18 months back with yet another man (how many had she had in his lifetime?). He hadn’t really been back since going to College. Looked as though not a lot had changed in the old town, he thought, but neither did he see anyone he really knew. Longing for a familiar face he pulled his battered old Ford pickup over at the Bull Run Diner, which the gang had used so often in the past, and strolled inside. And the first person he saw was Coral, dressed as a waitress.

“Well lookee here” she laughed, “just look who the cat dragged in!”, and she dashed over and flung her arms round him.
 
“How’s things?” he asked a few minutes later when she had brought him a coffee. There were only a few other customers, and she had time to sit and chat. “And what’s with the waitressing crap? Last thing I heard you’d got hitched to that French Canadian guy, what was his name? Louis?”
 
She snorted. “Louis the Looser! That bastard walked out on me two months after the wedding. Said he had made a mistake, and marriage had finally shown him that he had to come out as a gay, and he wanted his freedom, and was going back to Quebec for some guy he knew. Left me with no money, no job, and nothing but bills. I’d dropped out of the system to marry him, and with that and what The Miller said about me at the end of school there wasn’t a chance of College. So yeah, here I am making my way in the world serving coffee and greasy burgers and fries. Wow, what a career!”
 
“What about the rest of the gang?”
 
“Jim’s dead.”
 
“Dead! Shit, how? When?”
 
“Couple of months back. He never really got his life together after The Miller got him chucked out of school. Went to Richmond to start with, got into heroin, and came back last Fall after doing 12 months for Possession with Intent. Couple of weeks later he OD’d on a batch that was just too pure.”
 
“Geez, he was a decent guy at heart! The Miller owes us for that one big time! What about the others?”
 
“Delia’s in town, working as a cashier at the gas station at 10th and Jackson. She’s been there for a year now – dead end, but secure. Marty was out of work for a year or so, but now he’s working as a Security Guard with some small outfit in Roanoke. So I guess you’re the only one in the gang to make anything of yourself.” She shook her head. “And all because The Miller didn’t have a sense of humour! Bitch.”
 
“Bitch” Danny agreed, and paused, wondering how much to tell her. A thought crossed his mind. “What about The Creep?”
 
“Beth? Ha!” She laughed. “The Creep got nowhere in the end. Just couldn’t get college places nor jobs. Didn’t know why – folks knew her I guess; they always do in a small town – but I hear she asked The Miller for a reference a few times, and only after she’d been rejected for jobs twice did she sort of work out that “my friend Denise” had been writing the truth about her on the references she’d given. Now she doesn’t have a good word to say for The Miller. Funny really; all that creeping and nothing to show for it!”
 
They nattered for a minute or so, and then Coral had to serve a new customer, and take payment from a couple that had been there when Danny came in, and it was a while before she came back. By then Danny had made up his mind to ask her along. He’d always liked her anyway, and he was just beginning to have an idea. “Hey, you doing anything when you finish here?”
 
“Nope. Going back to my apartment, if you can call one room and a shared kitchen and bathroom and apartment. As usual.  Nothing else to do on a Tuesday afternoon. Why, you planning something?”
 
“Yeah. Going to look at my new house. You want to come along for the ride?”
 
“Sure. Like I said, nothing else to do in this dump of a town.”
 
“Pick you up when you finish …”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
They turned off Highway 39 a few miles short of Richwood, and worked into the hills. After a few miles there was what looked like a fire break cut through the trees on their right, and unusually it was fenced up one side. Just pickets and a couple of strands of wire, but a fence none the less. At the corner where the fence turned and followed the edge of the road were two signs, a new one saying that the site was protected by Wildfire Security Limited, and an older one that said simply “Private lot. No hunting, fishing, or shooting unless you want to be hunted or shot yourself. Violators will be eaten when caught.” Danny smiled and shook his head. “The old man had a sense of humour! Well, I guess I might as well leave them in place.”
 
“This is your uncle’s place?” Coral asked.
 
“Uhu. Well, it’s mine now I guess. Hang on, it’s a while since I was last here, and ... ah, okay, there it is. Can you open it for me? It should be the key with the red tag.”
 
Five hundred yards (and three more signs) beyond the fence corner the road had dipped down over a stream, and where it curved back there was a turning with a closed barrier, with another set of warning signs beside it. As Danny stopped Coral took the key he proffered, hopped out, unlocked the barrier, and held it for Danny to drive through. She secured it behind the vehicle, and rejoined him.
 
The road, a dirt surfaced track, twisted and turned amongst the thick trees, keeping above the stream. After best part of half a mile it swung suddenly. They bumped over a set of narrow rails which emerged from the trees on one side and curved away on the other, and the next moment there was water in front of them. Danny pulled over to let Coral have a look at the lake resting between the arms of two forested ridges that dropped down from a low peak further away. To their right she noticed the little railway line running along the top of a bush-covered earth dam before disappearing back into the crowding trees. Then her gaze swung round the expanse of still water, until it rested on a couple of wooded islands which initially masked her view of a house 500 yards away on the far bank.

“Oh wow!!!” Coral whispered as she took it all in. “Geez, I never thought places like this really existed …. and now its yours! Oh man! You lucky bastard. You lucky, lucky bastard….”
 
“Yup, here’s Mistiquoin Lake, and that’s Uncle Jack’s log cabin beyond it.”
 
“What’s with the railway?”
 
“That? Oh, the guy who built the place had it put in. It runs right round the lot, with a couple of spurs, and it’s good for bringing cut logs back to the cabin. There’s a spur to the goldmine as well….”
 
“Goldmine! But I didn’t think there was any gold in Virginia…..”
 
“Nah, not a real mine. The guy, Dickson I think his name was, got his money in the 14-18 war making uniforms or guns or some such for the Army. Afterwards he stayed here because his business was in Annapolis, but  Uncle Jack said he’d always wanted to go out West, and so he turned this place into a little bit of the “Wild West”. That meant the lake, and the railroad, and having a goldmine even if there wasn’t any gold. During the Depression he hired a gang of out-of-work coal miners, and they dug this tunnel into the hill. Looks really realistic for something that’s totally bogus. I’ll show you later. Anyway, there should be a guard round there somewhere. Let’s go see how awake he is,” and he started the pickup rolling along the lakeside track. 
 
The guard was wide awake, and had spotted them. He was waiting for them at a point where the track had bent back from the water’s edge into the trees, standing in front of his truck, which he’d turned across the track to show off the “Wildfire Security” decals on the door. “OK, I guess you folks don’t read signs ….” he began as he started towards them.
 
Coral laughed. “It’s Marty!”
 
Danny wound down his window. “Hey, Marty, y’old son of a bitch, move that heap of junk off the road so’s I can get through will you.”
 
Marty pulled off his shades and peered at them. “Danny? And Coral? Hey guys, way to go! What you doing out here – hey, you’ll have to move off the lot ‘cos I’ve got the new owners coming round anytime this afternoon – they’re late now – I thought you could be them - and I guess they won’t be too pleased to find strangers here. But when they’ve been we need to get together for a beer or two. D’you mind turning and I’ll follow you down to the road barrier and we can talk there.”
 
“Well, I guess I would mind, Marty. Let’s go up to the cabin and talk. I want to get a look round…”
 
Marty frowned. “Danny, come on, play the game, man. I’ve got a job to do …” He stopped, and a puzzled look crossed his face. “Hey, how d’you get in - I left the barrier locked.”
 
“Used the key”, Danny said, and held it up.
 
Danny frowned, and started to put two and two together. “You’re not telling me you’re the new owner?”
 
“Sure thing. You might want to take a look at this…” Danny said, handing over a letter from the Attorney.
 
Marty scanned it quickly, and his eyebrows rose. “You two are the new owners?”
 
Coral laughed. “New owner singular. I’m just along for the ride. Now, if we can get past ….”
 
The Cabin, as Danny had called it, was indeed made of logs, but it was as far away from a western trapper’s cabin as the Whitehouse would be from a suburban condo. A front door took them into a lobby, and a quick inspection revealed the usual rooms beyond – kitchen, dining room, study, downstairs bathroom, and utility room. A corridor led to one end, and here the entire width and height of the house had been used to make a great room thirty feet square, with a huge stone-built fireplace and chimney at the far end. Beside the door stairs rose to a gallery that gave access to bedrooms over the dining room and kitchen. The three took in the huge room, with its windows looking out over the lake, and mounted heads on the wall – a Moose, an Elk, and some sort of deer none of them recognised. A stuffed bear stood upright in one corner, and there was a tiger skin thrown over a couch. “Oh wow” Coral breathed for the third or fourth time, “and this is all yours now…….”
 
For an hour they roamed the place, lost in amazement at the strange objects they found. At last they came to the utility room with a tiled floor and walls, and a big wooden butcher’s table in the centre, and here they found a freezer. On an impulse Danny opened it, and to their surprise it seemed to be part full of meat and things. “I’m hungry” Danny said, “and I’ve got some beer back in the truck. What say I grab a few steaks from here…” (he indicated a bag) “… I guess they’ll still be OK to eat – it says ‘Steak - April’ on the bag, so they should be OK – and I’ll thaw them in the microwave and we can grill them?”
 
“This is some steak!” Marty commented half an hour later, “real nice, but what sort of meat is it?”
 
“Pork I guess. Too light for beef, not strong enough for venison, and I doubt the old man would have mutton! I’ll have to have a look later. Terrific flavour whatever it is.”
 
“Mmm. Got a hint of turkey about it…. Tell you what, I bet its ostrich” said Coral, and took another bite.
 
Marty put his beer down. “Could be. I hear they’ve started a couple of ostrich ranches over towards Washington, and it’s all the rage in the diet conscious lawyer belt. Whatever it is I could use another bit. How about it Danny?”
 
Danny nodded, and rose to his feet. “I’ll just get a couple more from the freezer - half each OK?”
 
A few minutes later and the new steaks, freshly defrosted in the microwave, were under the grill. “Really smells great that” he said, “want another beer?”
 
Carol nodded, but Marty shook his head. “Going to have to drive back soon.” He glanced at his watch. “Shit, like very soon!”
 
“You can always crash here….?”
 
“No, I’m working tomorrow….”
 
“Me too” Carol said. “I guess you’ll have to run me home soon Danny.”
 
Danny though briefly. “Tell you what. Marty, can you run Carol home, and then both come back out here say Saturday afternoon? Bring Delia as well. I need a day or so to pick up my stuff from my pad at College, and sort things out, but we can make a date of it over the weekend. I’ll get a serious amount of beer in, and you guys can crash here overnight. Well?”
 
“Sounds good to me”.
 
Coral nodded her head in agreement. “Hey, what say we bring The Creep as well?”
 
“Fuck! Why?”
 
“Feed her to the wolves as punishment for all the trouble she caused us. Better yet” Coral laughed, “we could eat her ourselves! Remember how squeamish she was about some of that cannibal stuff we got up for The Miller’s project? Think how upset she’d be if she realised she was the food!”
 
The two men laughed with her. “Nah” Danny said, “I don’t have any wolves living on the lot, least I hope not. And if I was a cannibal it wouldn’t be The Creep I’d be wanting to eat; like Uncle Jethro said, I’d be after The Miller. She’s plumper!” and he laughed again.
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
There were many things that Danny needed to be done over the rest of the week - collecting his stuff, getting the house in order, and having a bit of a look round the paperwork in his late uncle’s study. But the truth is that while he intended to do what was necessary Danny wouldn’t have been normal guy if he hadn’t taken time out to play with the “boys toys” that he found were now his. There were guns to be tried out, and canoe, and a row boat with a trolling motor, and fishing kit. And, of course, the railway.
 
 On the second morning he wandered out the back of the house where the tracks ran past, and found a couple of minute flat cars side tracked by a log pile. A separate set of tracks led to a shed, inside which he found a locomotive. Not that it really justified such a grandiose title, being little more than a chassis with a motor and a tractor seat, and couple of basic controls. It has evidently been painted green at some point in its life, and he found what seemed to be a makers plate saying “Simplex – 1947”.
 
It had to be hand cranked to start, which took some time and a bit of sweat, but once running it was a simple matter to set off into the trees. The weed-grown tracks twisted in and out, steadily circling the lake, and here and there were spurs off the main track, generally in areas where the trees had been logged at various times. In a couple of places he found log stacks close to the tracks, and at one of them he found three more of the minute flat cars, one completely loaded with logs, and a start had been made on loading a second. He stopped, loaded a few more logs, and then for the sheer fun of having a proper train, backed into the spur, hooked up, and started off in the expectation that the tracks would soon come back to the starting point. A hundred yards or so short of the house the line ran out across a deep little gully on a embankment that seemed to be made entirely of mine tailings. 40 yards or so further up was a similar bank, which from his childhood visits he recalled carried the branch up to the mine. He must go have a look at that soon, he thought.
 
And then, just as the little train curved off the bank, he happened to glance down into the little valley between the banks, and caught a glimpse of a big flat rock stood on a number of small boulders like a table, and surrounded by blackened and charred stones. Only a brief glimpse, but somewhere deep in his subconscious an alarm bell rang quietly.
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
“Boy do I have something to show you guys!” Danny said, “And we’re starting in the goldmine. Come on!” There was a tone in his voice that Coral hadn’t heard for a long time, an excitement and a caution that reminded her of some of their riskier moments at school. In fact, she thought, Danny had been on a bit of a high since the three of them had arrived, but she put it down to showing off his new things, like this little train they were riding, grinding up a steep curving track. Then the trees opened out, and there was a clearing, and a couple of huts, and three tipper wagons parked on an overgrown spur track. Danny stopped and turned off the motor. “Shed on the right’s a smokehouse. Evidently the old man did some hunting, and smoked a bit of meat each year. One on the left’s a small office. Come on in and get torches and helmets.”

Minutes later they were at the big iron gate that closed off the mine tunnel, and when Danny had unlocked they switched on their torches and walked in. The tunnel ran with odd twist and turns for about 200 yards, and then forked, and neither fork was particularly long. The rail tracks ran up the middle, and it was cool and dry, but otherwise quite unexciting until they were perhaps 50 yards from the entrance on the way back. There was another smaller side tunnel there, which they’d not noticed earlier, and it too was protected by a locked gate and a sign saying “danger – keep out”. Flashing their torches through the bars they could see a pile of rubble where apparently the roof had fallen in, but despite that Danny unlocked and led them inside. “It’s a totally false rock pile” he told them, “and there’s a route past on the left where you can’t really see it from the gate. Go on through.”
 
They scrambled past the “fall”, and turned a corner, and as their torches lit up the small chamber beyond they stopped dead. “Geez, what’s that?” Delia demanded.
 
“Go look, it won’t hurt you” Danny replied, and when they did “that” turned out to be several haunches of meat hanging from the cave ceiling. Marty examined the meat carefully. “Deer I guess. It looks smoked – you said there was a smokehouse outside didn’t you? This’d be an ideal place to keep it. Neat idea.”
 
“Now look at the bit hanging over there behind it” Danny said quietly. The others’ torches followed his and rested on a totally different kind of leg, complete from ankle to buttock. Despite being footless it was unmistakably human, and from the shape of it, female.

“Oh my God” Coral whispered. “Oh shit alive!”
 
“Yeah, that’s pretty well what I thought when I found it the other day. Looks like my late uncle hunted other things than deer, doesn’t it?” and he gave the leg a gentle prod.
 
“What’re you going to do with it” Delia whispered.
 
“Leave it here awhile. I need to show you something else back at the house before we make any decisions.”
 
“It’s here” he said a few minutes later, as he opened the utility room freezer. He rummaged inside and pulled out the bag of steaks, which he put on the butcher’s table before diving back inside. “Ah, this is what I wanted”. He lifted out cardboard box, flipped it open, and pulled out another bag.
 
“What’s written on it?” Marty asked. Danny held it up for them all to read. “Oh fuck, ‘Tit – April’! I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it does!”
 
“ ‘Fraid so” Danny said, unfastening the bag, and tipping out something that looked like a white pudding, half round and half flat. He flipped it over onto the flat side, and for a moment the others stared in silence at the pale, frozen breast, with it’s small pink nipple and scattering of light brown freckles.

“Oh” Coral said flatly, too shocked to swear, “now what?”
 
“Now nothing” Danny replied. “Nothing at all. We don’t ever mention this, not to anyone, not ever.”
 
“Hey come on man, we got to get the cops involved. I mean I know he was your uncle, but this is murder we’re talking about. Murder and cannibalism!”
 
“Exactly” Danny said, “and Marty, that’s exactly why we don’t. Look, what happens if we do, eh? First off we’ll have every cop in the state and the Feds and shit knows who else come up here and tear the place apart to see if there’s any more bodies. Then we’ll have the press and TV camped on the door and creeping in all over the joint, and that’ll go on for years – a story like this wouldn’t ever die down completely. Next we’ll have all the weirdo’s in the USA coming over, either because they get off on ideas like this, or because they’re some sort of vigilantes that want to burn the place down to cleanse the world of evil. And what about us? We’ll be branded as cannibals as well, and even if it wasn’t our fault, and, well, that sort of shit sticks.”
 
They looked at him. “Yeah, I suppose…” Marty replied. “But, hey man, we aren’t cannibals, so why…?”
 
Coral’s hand went to her mouth. “Oh shit! The steaks we had the other night….!”
 
“Yup. And the meat at lunch today. Sorry Delia, but I had to. In this matter it’s one in, all in; and you had to have a chance to taste it without knowing what you know now.” He indicted the steak bag. “We thought April was the month the meat was frozen. It wasn’t. It was the meat’s name. April Davies from Moscow, Idaho, age 22, and hitching back home from college when she accepted a lift from this helpful old man. It’s all in his hunting register. He’s had 2 or 3 a year most years since 1963. Now do you see?”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
“So what are you going to do with the meat?” Delia asked an hour or so later, after Danny had shown them his uncle’s records. “I mean, I know we aren’t supposed to eat each other, but, well, when I ate it at lunch I thought it was really nice, but then when you told me what we had eaten I felt a bit sick. Now I’m, well, I’m not sure. Half of me says get rid of it, and the other half says it would be a waste, and I’d like to try a bit more. I don’t know.”
 
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t eat it” Danny replied thoughtfully. “I mean, it isn’t going to do us any harm, and we really ought to get rid of it, not that anyone’s likely to find it here, but we ought for all that. And just burning or burying it seems, well, somehow wrong.”
 
Coral nodded. “I think I understand that. I suppose if it was me that had been killed for meat I’d feel, well, sort of wasted if my meat was just chucked. Well, I would if I could feel anything.” She paused briefly, then looked up. “I vote for eating.”
 
And so they did. April’s steaks they ate that evening, and her breast and part of her thigh were thawed  and roasted and eaten the following night. They found some thinly sliced meat which they guessed was meant to be bacon, and they had that at breakfast, and over the next few weeks they ate their way through the rest of the girl in the freezer, until eating girlmeat became somehow no longer a novelty, nor a thing to fear and to cause slight revulsion, but something they could and did look forward to.
 
Coral spent more and more time at the house, several times sleeping over in a spare bedroom, and Danny seemed happy for her to do so. Both realised they were getting closer, but neither wanted to push the other too soon or too far. And then there came a long warm evening when the others had gone back to town, and Danny and Coral were sitting replete on the deck watching the sunset. The air was still, and in the stillness something quacked repeatedly from one of the islands. Coral got up and went to the rail. “You know” she said, leaning her elbows on it, “it’s so nice and peaceful up here. You are so lucky to have this place, you really are.”
 
The tone of her voice was wistful, and in that moment Danny made his decision. He stood up and quietly came up behind her, resting one hand on her hip. She stiffened slightly for a moment, and he waited in silence till she relaxed again.  “It’s great, isn’t it? You know, I really need someone to share it with” he said at last. He leant forward and kissed her the hair on her neck, hearing a slight intake of breath. He moved the hair gently, and kissed the warm sweet scented skin beneath. “How about it? You wouldn’t have to work if you didn’t want to – I’ve got enough invested to keep us both quite comfortably. Well?”
 
She didn’t reply at first, only reached for his hand and pulled it round to the front of her body, pulling him in closer. He put his other arm round her, and she clasped the hand. “I’m still legally married to Louis the Looser you know…” she whispered.
 
“Divorce him. I’ll pay, and I know a good firm of Attorneys” he whispered back, and kissed her neck again.
 
He felt her doing something, and at first he wasn’t sure what. Then she lifted his hand up and into the opening of her now unbuttoned blouse, and made him cup her breast. He kissed her again, and began gently rubbing her nipple through her bra. She signed softly, and moved his other hand down to her belt buckle. Taking the hint he unfastened the belt, and the button underneath, and slipped the zip down. As his hand moved inside her jeans he found that her hand was already there and holding the front of her knickers forward so his fingers could slip straight down the warm skin into the soft tangle of her pubic hair. He stroked slowly round and round, each circle moving his finger tip closer and closer to her clit. She reached back and squeezed his manhood though his jeans…... and then she laughed, and turned, placing a silencing finger on his surprised lips.
 
“This is silly. Very romantic, and very lovely, but silly. Here we are behaving just like a couple of 13 year-olds on a first date! And I’m a married woman…” she giggled briefly “…and I doubt if you’re a virgin either. At least, you’d better not be! And it’s just beginning to get chilly out here. So, what say we go inside, and you light that fire, and pull the tiger skin onto the floor in front of it. And while you’re doing that I’m going upstairs to strip and go to the bathroom, and put some perfume on. And then I’m going to come down, and the fire had better be going, and you’d better be naked, because I’m going to lie down on that tiger skin, and you’re going to fuck the arse off me. Adultery here I come!” And with that she giggled again, kissed him, and trotted inside.
 
Much later, very much later, they lay arm in arm in the fire glow, tired and happy, discussing plans for their future. “I really don’t care what we do” she said, “but you’ve got to promise that when we’ve eaten all of April you aren’t going to eat me.”

He kissed her. “No, that wouldn’t be sporting” he laughed. “Too much like shooting a sitting duck. We’ll go and hunt for someone else to eat ….”
 
She laughed with him. “An interesting dream, but not really the right thing to do. Eating folk is a tad, well, antisocial.”
 
“Unless of course it was The Miller …..”
 
“Yeah” she said, and yawned. “That’d be justice somehow I suppose.” She paused. “I’m tired. I need to be in bed.” She rolled over to look at him. “Take me to your bed my Lord, and make me yours.”
 
He smiled. “I thought I just did make you mine. Twice. But bed’s a good idea. Come on my Lady lover!”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
The next morning Danny awoke to sunshine coming through the opened curtains, and no Coral. He did have a vague memory of her getting up earlier and talking about coffee and breakfast, and after a while it seemed good to him to roll out of bed, go to the bathroom, and then potter downstairs to see what she was up to. Noises coming from the kitchen, and real nice mixture of smells wafting up the stairs, mainly cooking bacon, fresh coffee, and toast, told him where to find her. He pulled on an old T shirt and a pair of boxers, and strolled down.
 
Coral heard him coming, and as he came round the corner she turned and greeted him with a smile and a great big kiss. It wasn’t until she turned back to the stove, revealing a sweep of bare back and nicely rounded buttocks, that he realised that the big blue cook’s apron she was wearing was her sole garment. And when she had put their breakfast on the table she even dropped the apron and sat down naked to eat. A little later, when he asked he asked why, she replied simply that she liked being naked, and since the house was so private she didn’t see why she couldn’t be. And then she suggested he did the same, and Danny, being a normal male, readily agreed.
 
An hour or so later, as lunchtime approached, Danny gently suggested they might go and dress. Carol looked at him, a slightly puzzled frown on her face. “Why?” she asked.
 
“Because Delia and Marty are due in about 20 minutes” he responded.
 
“I hadn’t forgotten, and I wasn’t planning to dress.”
 
“But ….”
 
She sushed him. “Oh stop it you old prude! Come on, we’ve all been together naked before. Don’t you remember going skinny dipping after Eleanor and Tom’s party when we were in The Miller’s year …..”
 
“Mmm. Now you mention it, I do. In fact,” he added, brightening up, “In fact, thinking about it, I’m quite looking forward to seeing Delia naked again.”
 
Carol laughed, and reached for his stiffening penis. “I can see you are, you old pevert! Well, I don’t mind you looking, but you can’t touch! Touch Delia and I’ll bite this off and eat it!”
 
“Hello the house?!” Delia called, walking in through the back door a few minutes later. “Anyone in?”
 
“Through here” Danny called from the great room, “come on through … Ah, hi! Sorry, didn’t hear you arriving.”
 
“Evidently not! Or do you always greet your guests naked?” Delia said.
 
“No,” Carol said, walking over to exchange a quick kiss and hug. “No, that was my doing. I decided that as I’d always wanted to try naturism I might as well start here. Why don’t you join us?”
 
Delia giggled. “I ‘spose so. Might be fun.” She put her bag down on a chair and reached for her blouse buttons. “What d’you think Marty? I’m going to anyway. You will as well, won’t you?”, and she shrugged her now open blouse off her shoulders.
 
“Erm, yeah, well, erm, that is to say” Marty spluttered as Delia reached behind her back for her bra fastening. “Well, I suppose so, I mean, well if Danny is I ‘spose I’ll have to.” He looked at the two pairs of bare breasts in front of him, and swallowed. “Er, it’s going to erm, well, erm, ah, be a, er, a tad embarrassing … Well it  is, men can’t really hide their feelings, and ….”
 
The girls laughed. “I can see what you mean, you horny beast” Carol giggled, looking at the bulge in the front of his pants. “Tell you what, why don’t you and Delia go upstairs and get undressed in private, and then Delia you could probably give Marty a bit of private Embarrassment Relief therapy. You can use the bedroom on the right at the top of the stairs……”
 
Delia nodded her agreement, and practically dragged Marty upstairs.
 
“And just what are you up to, my scheming Queen” Danny asked as they disappeared
 
“Moi?” Carol was a picture of wide eyed innocence, but she grinned most crookedly. “Sweet, isn’t it? Delia’s been trying to get Marty inside her knickers for the last three weeks, but he wouldn’t play. Now he’s got no choice.”
 
“Humph! And do I have any choice?”
 
“No, I hope not”. She dropped to her knees and used her right hand to cup and gently squeeze his balls. Then she leant forward and equally gently used her free hand to guide Danny’s organ into her mouth.
 
It was a long half hour before Delia and Marty emerged, and from Marty’s flaccid state Coral deduced that the Embarrassment Relief therapy had been successfully applied.
 
“Coffee first, and then I thought we might go back up to the mine” Danny said. “We’re all but out of girlmeat now, so we might as well go and fetch the smoked leg and see if it’s edible. And while we’re doing that I’d like to have a look at that big slab of rock I mentioned that’s between the two branches of the railway.”
 
And a little while later that was exactly what they did, strolling up the tracks to the mine but dressed for the somewhat cold weather. The leg, hanging in it’s fenced-off larder area in the cool of the tunnels, was still in apparently good condition, so Marty threw it over his shoulder, and they turned back into the hot summer sunshine
 
“And now let’s have a look at the rock” Danny said as they strolled back down, “there’s a set of steps here going down from the track we can use.”
 
The rock was larger than they thought, a good 2 feet thick, and roughly oblong shaped, perhaps 8 feet long and half that wide. It stood on three boulders, giving a clear space underneath, making the top about 4 feet off the ground. While they investigated Marty dropped the smoked leg on the top, and saw that the surface looked as though it had been dressed smooth, and channel cut down the centre to the lowest edge. There seemed to be traces of wood ash all round, and the stones in the immediate vicinity had a burnt look about them. Danny suddenly bent down and moved a small rock, revealing the end of a metal pipe set in concrete. “Aha, I was looking for that” he said, “and there should be another one here abouts …. yep, got it … and another over here …. umm … ah, found it. Three. There’ll be another three at the other end if you wouldn’t mind Marty ……”
 
Marty and Delia started turning small rocks over, and soon had a further three pipe-ends uncovered. Marty scratched his head. “OK, so we’ve found what, one hole at each of the four corners, and one more at each end but ten feet out to the side? So what? What are they for?”
 
Danny swung up onto the rock, and sat with his feet over the edge. “It’s like this, you remember when he came to class he told us about one of the tribes that cooked people on a big flat rock that they preheated in a fire? Well Uncle Jethro had this put in as his own cooking rock. I found a drawing of it in his papers, and a couple of notes in his hunting book. He used it a couple of times, but only because it was such hard work to use, because there was only him doing it not a whole tribe. He put it down here in this narrow gully between the railway banks so’s to prevent any chance of the fire spreading out into the forest either side, and of course it’s impossible to see it down here except from the air. The way he worked it was this – the logs for the fire he’d bring in on his train, and tip them off the flatcars on the top of the bank there – you can see where they slid down. That put them real close to the rock. Then he’d cut any that were too big, pile the whole lot under and on top of the rock, and then set up rails made of steel scaffolding pipes using those holes – the way the ground slopes means that he could rest the outer ends on those two small concrete blocks. Once the fire had burnt out the rock and the ground close in would be too hot to walk on, but he’d got a sort of bamboo stretched frame made, and he could lash the person to be cooked inside it, and put it on the rails. Then all he had to do was pull them out over the rock using ropes, and when he wanted to turn them he could pull them back, do it, and send them out again. Neat huh?”

He dropped off the rock, and picked up the leg. “Might as well go back and think about a meal and a beer. Have to be something from the fridge though, ‘cos we’ve go no one to roast here today. Be fun to try it one day though, if we could find someone we didn’t like enough to want to eat them……”
 
Inevitably later in the evening when they were all in the great room lounging near the fire the subject of eating people came up again. After a moment Danny went off to fetch something from the study, and returned bringing a large envelope. “Here, what do you guys make of these pictures I copied ?” he asked, fishing out several sheets of paper, and placing them face up on the coffee table.
 
“Nice sketch!” Delia remarked, looking at the top one. “Some girl being spitted. For roasting I presume? Hey, doesn’t she look like….”
 
“…. Mo Anderson in the year after us” Coral finished. “No doubt about it, face is right, so it the hair – remember how she had it done in a long plait which she wore fixed I a coil like a bun? Who’s the artist?”
 
“Says ‘Dede’ here”. Delia handed the drawing to Marty, and turned to the next sketch. “This one doesn’t look finished. Odd idea, cooking someone in a glass cauldron …. she’s familiar as well, but I just can’t place her …”
 
“How about Holly Fisher?” Danny offered quietly, and the others nodded. “This one will amuse you then..”
 
There were gasps from both girls as they recognised their own faces on the two naked girls who were pictured lying face to face, covered in fruit, on a huge serving platter. Each had an apple in her mouth, and a carrot (or was it a parsnip?) stuck in the other end, and from the drops of (presumably) oil on their bodies and the steamy whisps the artist had put in, it looked as though they had been cooked. “Oh my! So someone is into cannibal fantasy, and it’s someone who knows the school, and knows us, very well …”
 
Danny handed out another sketch. “It could be worse” he said, “you two got cooked whole. How about this one ….” The new picture showed a neatly dismembered body on a butcher’s block, with price tags on the various parts, and a head placed on a spiked board at the end, a head that was instantly recognisable as “The Creep! And cut up and butchered. Danny, where the fuck did you get this lot from?”

He smiled. ”I stole them, along with the start of a story about cannibalism in a Dolcett world, when we were still at school. They were in a file which had been left unguarded for a few minutes by a certain Ms Denise Miller….” He smiled at their astonishment. “Yeah, you know that file she always seemed to carry? And you know how we sometimes thought she was drawing pictures when we were doing work and stuff? Well, one day I noticed her slip something into it, and she seemed very protective of it, so I decided to find time to see what was in the file. Managed to sneak these out, copy them, and put the originals back. I guess she never realised they’d been copied.”
 
“And the story?” Marty asked, picking it up “What’s this about? It looks like just the starting paragraph’s of a story that hasn’t been finished. ‘School Meat’ by Dede. In Dolcettville the High School never ran out of meat…’ ” he read. He looked up. “Where’s Dolcettville –  I never heard of such a place?”
 
Danny laughed. “Thought you might ask. Neither had I till I got on the web. Then I found there’s all these fantasy groups interested in cannibalism. They all seem to have respect for this guy Dolcett, who drew pictures. I managed to download some of his stuff, and its pretty cool ….” He rummaged in a second envelope, and pulled out some more sketches. “These are Dolcett’s – I’ve only pulled off a few random drawings, and a couple of his stories – there’s a short about this guy whose wife and daughter are selected to be turned into meat and he comes home at lunch and screws them, and then cuts their heads off, and gets some of their meat when they’ve been butchered; and a longer one about this student who designs a sort of electronic spit and has to be cooked to prove it works. And here’s a few more drawings off a different site by an artist called Le Chat. Same sort of stuff, but not as detailed.”
 
He handed the pictures round, and after a while Coral looked up. “So you reckon The Miller was into this stuff, and she drew these ones signed Dede? Weird!”
 
“Nah, not really. I guess she just had fantasies about it. Stands to reason – I mean, look how often we did project work on cannibals. Three times in 5 years wasn’t it, eh? So three times a year she has kids coming up with stuff about cannibals. And don’t you remember how interested she was in my Uncle? No she’d got the hots for a cannibal story, and she was fantasising about eating her pupils. Very naughty. Tut Tut!”
 
“That’s really weird! Are you saying she was sort of getting off on our project work?”
 
Danny nodded. There was a short silence as the pictures went round, and then Delia looked up. “I think I can understand it. I mean, we all liked eating April’s meat didn’t we? And it wasn’t just because it was nice to eat, but after we knew what it was we went on, and the fact that it was someone gave us a buzz. Some of this stuff” she hefted a drawing “is pretty heavy, but it’s, well, it’s sexy as well. I don’t mind admitting I’m getting turned on by some of the ideas, and I can see you are Danny!”
 
Danny laughed. “I’ll have to ask Coral for some Embarrassment Relief therapy then…”
 
“No problem” Coral said, rolling over and reaching for him.
 
“Hey, not down here!”
 
“Why not? We’re amongst friends. And I’m finding this stuff pretty cool as well…” and she leant forward.
 
“Hey, but…..” Danny spluttered as his organ disappeared into Coral’s mouth. A soft chuckle from behind him made him glance round in time to see Marty’s head descend between Delia’s open thighs.
 
When eventually the conversation resumed it was Delia who suggested eating The Miller. “Hey, that was so much fun – if we get that turned on from pictures, what would it be like if we really did this to someone? It’d have to be someone we didn’t really like, and The Miller would be perfect – remember what you Uncle said about her?”
 
Danny nodded. “Awesome idea! Or we could eat The Creep. Payback for all the times she went running to the staff to tell them what we’d been doing, and dropping us in the shit. That’s at least partly the truth with Jim you know – if she hadn’t snitched on him about the final exam paper business he’d probably have got through, and still been alive now. As it was she gave The Miller just the bit of ammunition she needed to fire his ass!”
 
“Agreed. They’re both bitches, so what say we do the world a favour and eat both of them? I wonder how we could get them up here without anyone knowing?”
 
“What if we invited them up for dinner, without telling them that they were the main course? I suppose we’d have to find some way of getting a message to them that couldn’t be traced. Now I wonder if we were to ……”
 
The conversation went from there, aided by several more packs of Bud, and a bottle Jack Daniels. And at some point of the evening they slipped imperceptibly from “what if” to “when”, and from “how could we” to a firm plan which stood the test of cold reason when they discussed it the next day at breakfast. “This is weird” Coral said as she buttered her toast, “we’ve just decided to kill and eat two people, and I feel a bit excited, but otherwise almost completely normal about it. Totally weird. Oh bugger, I’ve dripped some honey onto my bare tit. Danny, do you want to lick it off for me?”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
It took two weeks to set the plan in place. Some of it was hard physical work – moving logs up, cutting them to size, and packing them round and under the rock was a weekend’s work for all four of them, and it took some time to find and work out how to set up the scaffolding poles for the two rails. But all that was easy compared to the delicate manoeuvring necessary to get Beth on side. She was pretty pissed with Ms Miller anyway, but equally reluctant to trust the four, and it took a lot of careful work by Delia to convince her that they had a mutual interest in setting up The Miller for a scare – that was all it would be, a scare as a way of getting back at her.

“The ‘Dede’ pictures were what clinched it,” Delia told them. “She was shocked and scandalised when I produced the Mo and Holly ones, and lightened up a bit over ours. But when I showed her the one of her all cut up she nearly flipped. ‘she’s even cut my cunt and tits off’ she said. ‘That’s sick, fantasising about eating someone’s cunt! She’s got to be stopped!’. I knew we’d got her then, and so I pointed out that none of us wanted them made public, and least of all The Miller, so we’d all be safe whatever we did to her – I wasn’t too specific about what we were planning, just that she’d have to beg, and it would be incredibly embarrassing for her. The Creep’s really up for it now!”
 
So a few days later Beth had made the approach, all smiley and “how wonderful to see you again”, and then explained about Danny having got all his Uncle’s stuff, and there being some fascinating cannibal material which Danny didn’t understand, but he was sure Ms Miller might, but he was a bit shy of approaching her, because after all he’d made life difficult for her years back, but for all that he hoped that perhaps she might come out one Saturday and have a look at some of the stuff ……..
 
And Ms Miller took the bait, took it hook, line, and sinker, and agreed to come.
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
“Well, ‘D’ day” Danny said to the others. “The fire’s ready, The Creep’s started off to get The Miller, and the plan’s rolling. Now we need to be really, really sure we are all totally happy about this, and we’re not going to be slipping into self doubt and reluctance while its happening, and into recrimination afterwards. We’ve got to be clear that what we’re about is killing and eating two people. And if anyone isn’t totally good about it then say so now, and we’ll make friends with The Miller when she gets here, and she can just look at the stuff we’ve got upstairs. And if she smells a rat we can try a bit of gentle blackmail with the pictures she drew. That clear? Everyone happy about it?”
 
“Make friends with The Miller?! I could never do that, not after Jim. I’m good with it – they both deserve what they’re about to get. Lets do it!” Coral said. “what about you Delia?”
 
“Yeah, I agree. Eat ‘em both and rid the world of two pests. Public duty really!”
 
Marty was less certain, and thought carefully for a good thirty seconds. Finally he looked up, and set his shoulders with a little jerk. “I’m good with the idea for The Miller. I’ve some reservations about The Creep, but I know we can’t snuff one without the other, so I agree to her as well, but on condition that we do her as planned before The Miller’s done, and we killer her outright before we cook her. OK?”
 
“I can go with that – we’ll use the axe to start, and then set her up in parts like she is in the picture. We’ll show her to The Miller like that as an appetiser for her own end (hey we could call that call it ‘Denise’s Demise!’) Agreed? Yes? Awesome!” He checked his watch. “Hey, I need to get moving then ….”
 
Delia watched him walk over to his pickup and drive off. “I still can’t see why Danny doesn’t want either of them driving up here in their own vehicles, can you Marty?”
 
“Yeah. It’s like when their cars turn up Danny doesn’t want some smart-ass CSI finding some bit of forensic evidence under one that might tie them to this place.”
 
*  *  *  *  *   
 
Denise Miller had frankly been surprised, and if the truth were known, not a little suspicious when Beth Groves approached her. They’d hardly spoken since Beth left school, and even when their paths had crossed, as peoples’ paths inevitably do in any small town, the relationship had been at best formal, and since the three damning references she’d submitted to prospective employers, perhaps even frosty. Not that the references weren’t justified, just perhaps a little too black and white, but then for a teacher glossing over the truth is not really an option. Understandably, therefore she wondered just what was afoot when Beth rang her asking to come round and talk about something she mysteriously didn’t want to discuss over the phone. Reason told Ms Miller to say ‘no’, but her innate sense of fair play told her that no matter how much she disliked and despised Beth, she ought to see her.
 
And now, but a few days later, she was driving the same Beth Groves out to meet the absolute Bête Noir of Beth’s school year, Danny Boyce, who had apparently come good after all. She’d disliked Danny because of his influence, and distrusted him into the bargain, but she had seen his potential, and while they had been at war it was open and, well, almost a fair contest between them. Yes, she could cope with Danny far better than Beth, ‘The Creep’ as she knew Danny had on occasion called her. But this trip out was because Danny had, admittedly in a roundabout way, asked for her help in assessing things that he had inherited from his uncle.
 
She remembered the uncle – a short broad man, solidly overweight rather than podgy, with a full grey streaked dark beard, and thick eyebrows that just met in the middle. He’d had a smiling, slightly lined face and fascinating manner, and his weird accept had put them at their ease. He would make a fascinating drinking companion she thought; well, he would have done – he had passed on now apparently – and yet there had been something about him, a look in his eyes perhaps when someone asked a silly question (who was it now?), or when discussing who would be the best person in the room to eat, that had sent a shiver of fear down her spine. Fear and excitement, she corrected herself. And suddenly she shivered slightly, realising that she had once seen the same look in Danny’s eyes. Instinctively she wanted to stop, to turn the car, and go back, but that would be to give in, to admit defeat. And anyway, what was she afraid of? It was hardly likely that Danny meant her any harm, and certainly not if Beth was around – Beth who could be guaranteed not to get into trouble, and to snitch on anyone else who did.
 
No, today should be interesting, perhaps more. She admitted her own carefully guarded secret fantasy, knew just how much she fantasised about the kids she had taught (not that she would ever let the lines of fantasy and reality even come close, let alone cross). But she also remembered just how much of a turn-on it had been to listen to the old man talking about cannibalism as an every day thing, and when she realised that he had been a cannibal as well – that she was sitting in her class room with the real live genuine article…..
 
“Danny said he’d meet us at the pull off just up ahead” Beth said, dragging her back to the real world. “In fact I guess that’s his pick-up there now. Looks pretty muddy doesn’t it.”
 
As Denise pulled up in the otherwise empty parking area Danny got out and walked over. “Morning Miss Miller. Good to see you after so long, and thanks for coming…” He smiled impishly. “I know I wasn’t your favourite pupil, but thanks to you I’m doing OK now, and I do appreciate your taking time out to give me a hand sorting Uncle Jethro’s stuff. There’s things up there about the tribes and cannibalism and things that I really do want an older and more knowledgeable head to look at. Now, the track up to the cabin’s a mite rough and muddy, so I guess it’d be best if you two climbed into the truck, and left the car here.”
 
She hesitated for an instant before agreeing, fearing to be dependent on him, but Beth had no such hesitation, and almost without knowing how Ms Miller found herself in the truck heading off into the hills. Fifteen minutes later, having turned off the road, she got her first sight of Danny’s new house across the lake. Conflicting emotions swept over her – awe at the beauty of the scene, followed almost at once by a pang of jealousy, itself quickly replaced by a fleeting “wouldn’t this be a perfect place for a modern cannibal to live!” When a surprised young deer bounded up from the lakeside and across their front it was instantly replaced in her imagination by a naked young woman (Beth perhaps?) fleeing from hunters.
 
It was almost a shock when Coral welcomed her at the door, and she then found Delia and Marty in the great room standing beside the fire. They seemed friendly enough, but there was a barely discernable undercurrent of excitement which her teacher’s instincts detected, and which worried her, but before she could work out what it was about she was sitting down, and the girls had returned from the kitchen with iced tea, orange, and cake. And then Danny was beside her with a drawing in his hands. “Do you know anything about an artist called Dolcett? My uncle seems to have had an interest in cannibalism that went beyond what had happened in the war. He’d got all sorts of modern stuff – I hadn’t realised there was a cannibal fetish with its own web sites – and I think he’d been corresponding with I don’t know who – they all seem to have secret names. He’d downloaded all sorts of pictures, some pretty strong if you know what I mean – I wouldn’t want to show you it – by artists with names like Le Chat, and Dolcett, and Dede, and..” She didn’t hear who he said next – her heart gave a sudden lurch at the mention of her own nom de plume. What had he seen? what had she posted? None of the school stuff anyway – that would have been a big give away! Thank goodness she had had the sense to keep that totally private! She came back to reality to hear him saying “…I’ve found one drawing amongst his stuff that looks like an original though, by the one called Dolcett. I wonder if it has any value – would you like to see it?”
 
An original Dolcett! Wouldn’t she just… professional self control kicked in, and she calmed her voice before she spoke. “Well, I suppose so. I mean, I’m not sure if I know anything about art really, particularly if it’s a bit risqué …..”
 
Danny leant forward. “It’s in the envelope here; let me get it out.”
 
She recognised it instantly as one of the stand alone barbeque pictures, but she pretended ignorance. “It certainly looks original. Or a good copy of something possibly? Difficult to tell….” she said thoughtfully. “You say he had downloaded a lot of stuff like this? Hmm, does this look like the same sort of work? It does? Well, if it is original, you might have to trace the artist to know for sure, then I’m sure there are people who would pay well for it. Not mainstream though!” and she forced a laugh. “You’d have to be very careful who you showed it to, it could cause terrible offence.” This was not how she had anticipated the day going, discussing pictures that she knew well but had to pretend were new and shocking. What if she were suddenly faced with some of her work – would she be able to keep a straight face! She finished her drink. “Ahh, I think you said you had some artefacts and perhaps pictures from your uncle’s time overseas…?”

Danny grinned, and she saw the dangerous light flash in his eyes. Suddenly she was afraid, and wanting to get out, to get away. But she couldn’t because she didn’t have a car here, and she couldn’t run – too undignified, and if they were out to do something she’d be like that young deer. She shook the image out of her head. She was just being silly … Danny was back again with another folder, and Coral was refilling her mug and Beth’s with more of the iced tea.
 
“There’s something outside that you’ll just love when you see it, but I thought I’d show you these first – I’d like your opinions.” He fished several papers out and passed them over. The first was a Le Chat, and she passed it off with a light comment and turned to look at the next. Her heart lurched, and she took a drink to steady herself. It was one of hers, one she remembered doing a year or so earlier on vacation, one she’d posted on Pulptoon a few months before. She passed hurriedly on to the next, fearing what it might be, and breathed a mental sign when it turned out to be one of Shadowmane’s. She put them down on the table firmly in that “I’ve had enough of this” manner they knew of old. “Danny, I’m sorry, but I really don’t see why you are showing me these.” She finished her second drink and set the mug down firmly. “I am quite busy, so if there really is something you want me to see please get on and show me it rather than trying to shock me with puerile drawings”.
 
Danny grinned, remembering that frosty ‘no-nonsense please’ voice. “Oh but the ‘puerile drawings’ as you call them are critical Denise” Danny purred, and she suddenly thought of a cat about to pounce. She glanced round. The other three were sitting looking at her expectantly, greedily almost (‘my God, my imagination’s running riot’ she thought, ‘get a grip girl!’), all except Beth, who seemed to be half asleep in her chair. “Come on, you must look at this one Denise, or should I say ‘Dede’?” Danny said. Her head whipped round to the picture of Beth dismembered on a table, and her jaw dropped. “Surprised? It is one of yours isn’t it?”
 
“How did you get that – I never pos….” she stopped just in time.
 
Danny laughed. “Posted it? No I didn’t think you would have. I took it from a file you used to carry. You remember the term when you lost your keys? Well you didn’t; you left them in your car door and I ‘borrowed’ them for a couple of days, just long enough to get into your locker in the staff room – don’t ask how I got in there – and copy all sorts of stuff from that interesting file. Then I left you keys in a flower bed where I knew they would be found.  Cunning eh?” and he laughed again.
 
She gathered her wits, which seemed to be straying, and stood up, or tried to. “Danny, I thing I’d lyg to leave please. Are you cubing Beth?” There was something not quite right with her legs, and she flopped back down into her chair.
 
The cat-like grin on Danny’s face grew broader. “Wonderful stuff Rohypnol” he said.
 
Ms Miller blinked at him. “Wha…?”
 
“Rohypnol. Date rape drug. Wonderful stuff that can so easily be administered in a drink, especially a strongly flavoured one, and renders the victim pretty well incapable for 10 to 12 hours, and with very little memory of what happened in the intervening period. Not that memory is going to be an issue with you Denise, because you’re never going to leave here. I said there was something outside we wanted to show you, and there is – it’s a great big rock, and by the time you see it tomorrow afternoon it’ll be smoking hot, hot enough to cook your meat for us. You’re going to get to live your most secret fantasy, except that instead of you cooking your pupils it’s going to be them cooking you.”
 
Somehow it didn’t surprise her; somehow she almost welcomed the idea; somehow deep in the fuddled recesses of her mind it seemed to be a good idea. And then a tiny thought escaped to the surface. “Wha’ ‘bout Beth?”
 
“Beth? Oh don’t you worry about her. She was in on the plot, weren’t you Beth dear?”
 
“Uhhh?” Beth replied, blinking owlishly.
 
“Exactly. You see, Beth’s pretty pissed with you because of some job references you wrote, so she was happy to join in. Only Beth thought we were just going to put the frighteners on you, not eat you for real. Trouble is, little Beth’s got too much of a track record for running to folk in authority and telling stories for us to risk letting her go, so she’s going first, in bits, into the freezer!”
 
“Tha’s oright then” Ms Miller muttered, somehow comforted.
 
Danny stood up and looked at the two almost comatose women. “Excellent. End of Phase 1, and scheme on track. Right, we need these two naked and downstairs, and then on with the cover plan! We might as well strip them here.”
 
Beth, faintly struggling, was carefully lifted onto the big coffee table, scissors were produced, and her clothing quickly cut away. Danny donned surgical gloves, and carefully tore off one of Beth’s blouse buttons, dropping it into a plastic bag. Then once Coral had cut the girl’s blouse off Danny took the scissors and snipped both bra straps, and cut the bra across the front. Beth’s white breasts slipped sideways as their support was removed. “34C” Danny said looking at the label in the ruined bra. “Didn’t think she was that big.” He stuffed the remains into his bag.
 
“Nice big pink nipples” Delia remarked, fondling one. “They’ll cook up nicely. I’m calling dibs on one.”
 
The rest of Beth’s clothing followed quickly, and soon the four were able to admire her pale body lying spread out in front of them. “Nicely padded without being fat” Coral said as she bent and spread Beth’s legs. “She’s put on a few pounds since school. Nice fleshy cunt though, lovely soft blonde fuzz, and a very pretty pink colour inside”
 
“I wonder if people really do eat girl’s cunts” Delia mused. “I mean I know they do in those stories, but I wonder if they do for real, and if so whether they taste as good as the stories suggest.”
 
“Soon find out” Marty remarked, “do we fuck her first like in the stories, you know, to lubricate her for the spit?”
 
“Nice idea, because she’s attractive enough. But no, I don’t think we do. One, we aren’t spitting her; two, we don’t know who she’s screwed herself, and trying to explain I got an STD from a girl I was about to eat would be too difficult; and three, Coral says she’ll castrate me herself if I ever so much as touch another girl. Let’s get her downstairs, and then come back for The Miller.”
 
Beth was manhandled down into the basement and secured to the wall by a chain locked round her ankle. “Now, I need some hair and a few drops of blood” Danny said. He tugged a few strands from her head, dropped them into his bag along with a couple of the girl’s pubic hairs, and then picked up a hypodermic needle. It took him some time to achieve what he wanted, but at last he had managed to draw off several tubes of Beth’s blood and decant it into a glass bottle. “And now for The Miller” Coral said, and they went back upstairs.
 
They found Ms Miller on the floor a few feet from her chair. “Aha, someone’s trying to escape” Delia said, “come on guys, pick her up.” They lifted their second victim onto the same table, and quickly stripped her, though this time Danny didn’t bother with collecting anything.
 
“A more mature specimen” Coral said, “your uncle was right, she’s just that bit plumper than The Creep, so I guess she’ll cook up nice and moist.” She paused for a few moments, and the others watched as she explored Ms Miller’s body. “You know, I’ve never had a woman before, nor have I ever had a teacher. But tonight I think I’m going to do both. In fact” she said, pulling off her top “I think we all ought to have her, even you Danny.”
 
He smiled. “Thanks. But not before Marty and I get rid of the evidence. We’ll have her when we get back. But you girls can do what you like till then. Coming Marty?”
 
“Yeah. But I guess we ought to get her downstairs first, in case she comes round sooner than we expect.”
 
“Good point”, and with that Denise’s slightly heavier body was manhandled down, and she was secured to the wall the other side of the room from Beth. And then the two men left, Danny collecting Denise’s purse on the way.
 
“Playtime” Coral said as she heard the pickup leave, “and I don’t see why we shouldn’t include Beth in the fun and games…….”

*  *  *  *  *
 
Nearly five hours later the two men returned. “All well Danny?” Coral asked.
 
“Yeah, I guess we can feast in peace.” He looked at her, noticing the eyebrows cocked in a mute question. “As we planned. I got into The Miller’s car, put on that long wig, and went back to Derreksville to The Miller’s place, and I let myself in, having bagged my shoes.  Left The Creep’s blouse button on the bedroom floor, and a bit of her hair, and made it look like there had been a ruckus. Left a few blood drops on the carpet and a drag mark to the bathroom, washed some of her blood into the bath drain and put a few splashes elsewhere, plus a couple of her pubes in the bath. Then I found a kitchen knife, smeared it with blood, washed it badly, and put it in the garbage, tied the bag off, and put it in the utility room.
 
Then we drove down to a place a few miles north of Smithfield, and dumped the car at the water’s edge. Left The Miller’s purse in it, and The Creep’s bra, some blood, and a hair of hers in the trunk. Smudged the blood so it looked like a small pool that had had something on it. Made a drag mark to a wall beside the water, smudged some blood on the top, and left a few small drops on the drag. Then we came back. What about you?”
 
“Oh, nothing much. We just played with the two downstairs for a while, but it wasn’t too much fun because they were so doped up, so we came back upstairs, lit the fire, and opened a bottle of wine. By that time we were both so hot and frustrated that we thought we’d try things out, well, you know, on each other…..” She blushed slightly. “Sex with Delia’s fun, but it’s not as good as with you” She put her arms round his neck and kissed him. “And what I really want is for you to take your things off and do me now, or even better, take me downstairs and fuck me where they can watch, and while we screw we can imagine what it’s going to be like eating them….”
 
*  *  *  *  *
 
“Early start tomorrow” Danny had said, and early it was. The two captives were awake and alert, and despite having been given a blanket each they were cold and stiff. Ms Miller seemed resigned to what was going on, perhaps even to be anticipating it in a strange sort of way. Or perhaps she was just biding her time. Whichever it was she was calm, asked questions, and seemed to accept the answers quietly. Beth, on the other hand, was by now on the edge of hysterics, and had to be held down while they tied her wrists behind her. Then they gave Ms Miller a drink and a bucket to use as a chamber pot, and dragged Beth out and up the stairs to the bathroom. She struggled all the way until Danny had had enough and slapped her. That got her attention after which she just burst into tears.
 
“You have two choices” Danny said, “but they both end up with you looking like you did in that picture Dede drew, you know, all in bits and laid out prettily on a table. Choice one – cooperate, in which case you go to the toilet now, and them we take you outside into the yard for a date with an axe and a block. One whack, and all over. Choice two, you continue to fight us, in which case we fasten you to the butchery table and cut you up without bothering to kill you first. Choice one’s nice and clean and quick; choice two will hurt like hell for a long, long time. Which is it to be? Will you cooperate?”
 
Still weeping Beth nodded. “That’s a good girl” Danny told her, and with that they wheeled her backwards into the washroom, and sat her down on the toilet. When she was done they brought her out, and took her outside. A wood block and an axe awaited her, and she shuddered and all but fainted when she saw them. Marty picked up the big axe and took his position, carefully balanced with his feet wide apart.
 
“Time to go chicken” Carol whispered. The two girls brought Beth the last few paces to the block, and made her kneel. Danny, kneeling the other side of the block, reached up and pulled her forward till her neck was on the wood. With the girls pushing firmly on Beth’s back and against her butt she wasn’t going anywhere soon, and happy that all was ready Danny looked up at Marty. The axe rose, and fell. Beth was still snivelling right up to the moment of impact, but then she gave a little cough of surprise as her head jumped forward. Danny had his fingers entwined in her hair, and turned her quickly so she could get one look at her headless blood spurting body. Beth’s face registered total shock, and her mouth opened like she was trying to say something. And then her eyes closed.

A rope had been hung over a tree branch already, and it was but a moment’s work to move the corpse across, tie the cord round her ankles, and hoist her up so that her severed neck swung just over a bucket. Delia tied a cord to her bound wrists and stretched it up to her ankles, forcing her hands up. They stood back, and watched Beth draining for a few moments. “OK” Danny said after a while, “I’m going in to drop the head off in the utility room basin, and then I’m going to light the fire. Coming?”
(*)
Coral declined, wanting to have a quick wash to remove the blood, and then to get breakfast started, but the other three collected barbeque lighting fuel and matches and strolled off. Twenty minutes later they were back. “Big already. Really big, but little smoke. Still, I’m glad I warned the Forestry people and the Fire Service or we’d have all sorts of folk coming over to offer help. We’ll have to keep a check for drifting embers though…..”
 
An hour later they checked the fire, and an hour after that again. “Still burning, though well down” Marty reported.
 
“Well, Beth’s pretty well dried up, so we could butcher her while we wait” Carol suggested. “Danny, if we go and get her body could you go and find that picture so we know how to cut her and lay her out please.”
 
It was bloody work, and they were glad of being naked by the time they had finished. Hard work too, and requiring care. Both Marty and Carol had field dressed deer in the past, but this was different, and they were exploring as they went along. Beth had chilled a bit, but some of her insides were worryingly warm, and there was still a bit of blood to drain out. Still, at the end of an hour they had done, and Beth was in bits with just her guts in a bucket to be taken out and burnt in due course. Danny connected a hose to the mixer tap so they could wash the meat, the room, and themselves. And once that was done they laid her out, with her prime fillet and breasts at the front, and her head just behind (“when this is over I’m going to mount that for a trophy” Danny said), and the remainder of the joints lid out Dede style.
(*)
At midday they checked the fire again, and Danny was able to report that “it’s just about burnt out on the rock, though there’s a lot of gowing ash and charcoal, but man is it hot down there!”
 
“So it’s time to get The Miller” Carol said, and they all went down to the basement together.
 
“Ah, has my time come?” The Miller asked. She was sitting up against the wall, her blanket wrapped round her. “Is your uncle’s rock heated up and ready for me?”
 
“ ‘Fraid so” Danny said.
 
Denise Miller shrugged. “Oh well, I’ve fantasised often enough about eating people, and if the truth be known about being eaten myself. Now I’m going to find out if I was right!” She looked quizzically at them. “And Beth?”
 
“Already done – we’ll show you as we go up.”
 
“Oh dear, poor little Beth. Silly little bitch really; I couldn’t stand her you know, and I thought you all had the right name for her – The Creep just about summed her up.  So, what happens now? Tie my feet as well I suppose?”
 
“Up to you” Delia said. “You can walk up in comfort, or we’ll use force. Cooperate and you can have some more of that dope we used on you last night.”
 
“I see.” The Miller struggled up. “I just might have ‘a bit of that dope’ as you call it, but not too much; I’m only going to get one chance to experience this, so I don’t want to be to far out of it. But I’m interested, how are you going to cover my, well, our disappearance? Folk will notice you know.”
 
“Yeah, they will. And when they do there’ll be plenty to find, and all of it will point in the wrong direction” Marty said, and outlined the cover plan as they went up the stairs.
 
“Clever, very clever, but you’ve missed a few things, some of which you can do something about, and some you can’t.”
 
“Like?”
 
“Like I bet you’ve left Beth’s mobile on? Thought so – it’s traceable while it’s on. That’s one of the things you can do something about. Ahhh, yes …….. well that answers my next question anyway, you are serious and not pulling some rather elaborate bluff. I guessed as much, mind you.”
 
 They had brought her round into the utility room, and she had stopped to take in the dismembered remains of Beth. “Exactly as I drew her I think – did you copy my picture? You did? How sweet of you. May I?” she stepped forward and bent down to kiss Beth’s nipples and quim where they lay on the table. “Interesting. And quite enjoyable – I never thought I’d be able to try that. Quite a turn on.” She stood upright again. “Traditionally of course in all the best fantasies the meat girl gets screwed by all concerned. Am I going to be raped before I’m cooked?”

Delia looked embarrassed. “Erm, well, we did play with you a bit last night, you and Beth, when the boys were off dumping your car….”
 
“Really” The Miller’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “I don’t remember much – the dope probably. Still I do hope you’ll make up now….”
 
“You want to be raped” Coral asked in surprise.
 
“Of course, it’s all part of the whole experience isn’t it?”
 
“Erm, oh. Well, er, right. Yes. Danny, do we have time ….”
 
“Half an hour won’t hurt” Danny said. “Indoors, or outside on the grass?”
 
“Outside, overlooking the cooking point would be traditional” Ms Miller said.
 
Danny shook his head. “You are one strange woman Denise. OK guys, what we’ll do is tie her into the cooking stretcher, but we’ll leave her legs loose so we can free them when we get to the rock, and we’ll have her there.”
 
The frame, two very long thick bamboos joined with three cross bars, was waiting outside, and they secured Ms Miller to it, tying her arms to the sides, and then running cords back and forwards from side to side each a few inches further down than the last, and going alternately in front of and behind her body. Her waist was tied securely, but then round the legs the cords were left much looser. Danny and Marty lifted her off the ground, and onto one of the little flat cars on the railway. Accompanied by the girls carrying brushes and pots of seasoned oil they trundled Ms Miller towards the top of the bank above the rock.

“And what was the thing you were going to tell us about that we hadn’t done and couldn’t sort now?” Danny asked as they went along.
 
“My diary. I’ve put in it all about this meeting with you four” she said simply. “And that evidence will undoubtedly lead to your rapid arrest and imprisonment when they come here and find my remains and Beth’s.”
 
“Well darn” Danny said, “now we hadn’t thought of that had we? Still, there’s a deep crack in the mine tunnel floor. It’s normally covered by a steel plate, but it’s where Uncle Jethro used to dump the remains of the girls he ate. He wrote that it was impossible to see the bottom because it was narrow, too narrow for a person to get down, and it twisted. So that accounts for disposing of the remains. And the diary. I suppose that wouldn’t be the red leatherette one in the desk drawer would it? No? Oh well, then would it be the small black appointment book in your briefcase them? It would? Strangely the only entry I could find about this visit was in the little one, and all it said was ‘0930 Beth Groves’. Now that’s really going to give us away isn’t it!”
 
Ms Miller laughed. “You have been very thorough, so I suppose I don’t need to ask if you were in gloves….. ahh, is this it?” They had reached the top of the bank, and they tilted the frame so she could see down. “Impressive. And hot – I can feel the warmth from here. Well, well, this is going to be a major adventure. Is there anything at all that I can offer you or say to you that will influence you? Make you change your minds? Offer to join your group perhaps, and help you eat Beth? And whoever you catch next time? No?” She shook her head. “I was afraid not, but I had to ask. In a strange way I am looking forward to this, but I’d still rather miss it if possible … oh well, you’d better get on with it – ‘if it were done, it were best done quickly’ – Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Come on, put me down, fuck me, oil me, and get me cooking!”
 
It as most disconcerting to have a compliant victim, but they found a patch of level grass, put her down, and loosed her legs. Then the girls took over, kissing and stroking Ms Miller’s body, and sucking at her nipples, until she began to moan and writhe. Coral slipped three fingers inside her and put her thumb on The Miller’s clit, and Denise pushed up to meet her, coming yelling into a climax almost at once. “Your turn” Coral said to Danny, and guided him into The Miller sopping quim. Gentle lovemaking was clearly out of the question here, and Danny pounded into her while the two girls continued to massage her head and breasts. She came again when Danny did, and managed a third orgasm a few minutes later under Marty’s ministrations.

Then they lashed her legs tight to the frame, and fed her a laced drink. While it took effect they oiled her, and at last carefully (and it took all four of them to do it) they manoeuvred her down the bank and onto the rails. “Hot” The Miller said weakly, “what about an apple?”
 
“Hot’s the general idea” Coral replied, “you cook better if it’s hot; but what’s with the apple?”
 
“In mouth. Stop me screaming”
 
“Nah, why bother. No one’ll hear if you do. OK Danny, pull her on!”
 
While they had been talking Danny had laid out two ropes, and now he and Marty pulled. Ms Miller slid slowly sideways out above the still hot scorched ground, over the red hot ashes round the rock, and finally came to rest 18 inches or so above the great slab. At first nothing seemed to happen, but soon the heat got to her. They could see her start to writhe within her bindings, and she began to moan. Soon little drops of oil and sweat were beginning to drip from her onto the rock, where they sizzled briefly, and before the half hour was up traces of body fat were starting to show on the surface of her reddened skin.

At that point they pulled her back, oiled her up again, and since she was evidently weaker, gave her a long cool drink. Then they turned her face down and slid her back over the rock.
 
“That’s beautiful” Delia said a few minutes later. “I like the way her tits hang down, and they wobbled really nicely as she was pulled out. But it’s great the way the droplets are running down them and dripping off her nipples!”
 
“Awesome. This whole thing’s just awesome” Marty commented a little while later when they had pulled her back for the second time. “And she’s beginning to smell of cooked meat”. They oiled her again, and she managed another drink before she was turned on her back again, and slid back out to continue cooking.
 
“She’ll not last till next time” Coral said as Ms Miller slid away from her, and she was right. She’d been over the rock for a good hour and a quarter when her heart and brain finally gave out on her. The four didn’t realise until she was slid back in for the third time, and by then she was clearly cooking well. Her skin was darkening nicely, but the heat hadn’t penetrated deeply enough, and when Delia jabbed her buttock with a skewer she still got red blood. So they oiled her, turned her, and sent her back to her rock, as they did another five times until at last they got clear fluid wherever they stuck the skewer in through the crisp, brown skin. “One more time for luck” Danny said, and then we’ll eat.”

“Ahh, right,” and Coral turned away. “I’ll see you back at the house then, I’ve things to do” she said, scrambling up the bank.
 
When the half hour was up they pulled Ms Miller away from the rock for the last time, and then struggled up to the tracks with her where they dropped her steaming body onto the little wagon. They pushed her back to the cabin, where Coral met them. “Jeez, doesn’t she smell gorgeous! What say you just strip the frame away from her, and we’ll carve her on the wagon where we pose her? Can you guys bring the picnic table round from the deck, and I’ll bring out the salads and the hot bread.”
 
“And the wine” Delia said. “I’ve opened a couple of bottles of that expensive French Macon Rouge stuff – I thought red would be better with Ms Miller don’t you.”
 
“So, what about her fillet?” Danny asked twenty minutes later.
 
“Nice. Really nice. I didn’t think it really would be, but it’s, well, quite gamey, isn’t it Delia” Coral replied.
 
“Yeah. It’s really, well, delicious. And the idea of being able to eat my teacher’s clit is just awesome”.
 
“Yeah, eating her nipple was pretty cool as well, and the rest of her meat, well, I reckon it’s the best we’ve had so far. And we’ve still got to freeze The Creep’s bits. Marty, cut me a bit of Dede’s thigh and some of her cheek can you, and I’ll have another glass of wine.”

*  *  *  *  *
 
“Hey, check out this report in the Derreksville Herald” Marty called as he came through the door 10 days later. “Looks like The Miller made the headlines at last.”
 
Danny picked up the paper. “Wow – ‘DISAPPEARING TEACHER’S CANNIBAL FANTASIES’ – some headline there all right! But do they actually know anything?” He started to read outload “A spokesperson for Derreksville Sheriff ‘Jack’ Lockyer’s Department today confirmed that there was forensic evidence to link the disappearance of High School teacher Denise Miller with that of former pupil Beth Groves. The Herald understands that the Sheriff’s Department are now treating this as a murder inquiry, but refused to comment on the rumour that Ms Groves may have been the victim of a cannibal cult of which Denise Miller was a member. ‘We can neither confirm nor deny the recent speculation that evidence of such a cult has been found at Ms Miller’s home’ he said, but added that certain websites were being investigated. He stated that the Department saw no reason to bring in any outside assistance in what was a simple local matter’. In other words, they don’t have a clue, but dear old Jack Lockyer isn’t about to admit either that or the fact that he can’t cope. Nothing changes does it?”

#---------------------------------------------------------#
 

“Where does a year go” Coral asked, “its Halloween tomorrow! Well, at least we won’t get Trick-or-Treated out here – no neighbours!”

Danny laughed. “Marty and I were talking about that earlier. He and Delia are planning to get married in the Spring, and I thought it would be nice if we offered to let them build a place on the lot. What do you think?”
 
“Sounds good. With our shared interests it would be good to have them close by. Hey, you know we’re really getting a bit low on meat? The Creep isn’t going to last that much longer; I’m saving her rump and her fillet for your birthday, but if you want fresh meat for Christmas you guys are going to have to go off on an out-of-State hunting trip.” 
“Mmmm. I suppose….. Say, I wonder if we could get a black girl. I’ve always wondered if their meat tasted any different……..”