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4. Flight of the Damned
He's made it pretty clear. She's going to die, although she's not sure how. But at least she's fairly sure he won't be using that cattle prod on her any more. Fear and relief make strange bedfellows. Joy and Dread. Her position in this box is becoming more stressful by the minute. The trip seems endless, but she's not sure she wants it to end because the longer she suffers here, the longer she stays alive. As long as she's alive there's hope for escape. Or rescue.
She is in serious pain by the time she feels the SUV roll to a brief stop. There are several more short spurts of travel before the clunk of a door slamming indicates a more permanent stop. A few minutes later she feels her box being dragged out of the vehicle. The fluid motion of the box tells her it's being lifted. She feels it land on something solid. Then it's tipped at an angle and begins to vibrate with a new kind of motion. They must have put her container on a dolly. This new trip is even more uncomfortable because she's tilted ass end up with her head jamming into the end of the box. Finally the rolling stops and she hears the sound of the lock being opened.
A rush of cold air chills her as the top is thrown open. The rope binding her into a fetal position is removed and strong hands lift her out of the container. She's dripping with perspiration from the stuffy heat of the cramped box and now shivers in the fresh air, inhaling it deeply. She sways on her feet momentarily, trying to get her balance in spite of the straps around her arms and legs.
She makes a quick visual survey and discovers she's at the front of a small commuter-size aircraft looking toward the rear. The pilot and co-pilot seats are right behind her, and unoccupied.
Two men, one on each side, take a firm grip on her arm — as if she could go anywhere with her legs and ankles bound up. A short, dark-skinned man with a heavy five o'clock shadow approaches holding a fishhook. Dangling from it is a small oval piece of plastic, exactly like the keychain I.D.s given out by supermarkets for check cashing customers. It even has a bar code on one side. The obverse side has something written on it with a black marker. He holds it up so she can read it. "US-6."
"Dass you," he says in a heavy accent.
One of the guards holding her, a very burly man with a leathery face, sandy hair and a disarmingly friendly expression, says to her, "Hold still, sweetheart. This will hurt a little, but if you move it will hurt a lot. It'll be over in a second."
The dark man takes her left nipple between his thumb and index finger and stretches it out, hurting her. In a smooth, well-practiced motion he pushes the fishhook through the nipple. Lili stiffens and yelps into her gag. The two men hold her tightly until she stops wriggling.
When she settles down — it was more shock and a sharp sting than real pain — the two men begin removing the straps that bind her. As they do, she counts the rows in the aircraft. There are six, each consisting of three seats, two on the side of the aisle to her right and one on her left. Four white plastic containers, exactly like the one she just vacated, are stacked near the door on her right. Four of the window seats on that side are occupied by young women wearing burgundy colored robes. They're all slim and attractive and all look glum, like cheerleaders returning from a losing game.
She looks down at the tag swinging at the end of the fishhook. The nipple is beginning to hurt again from the trauma of the piercing and the crude material of the fishhook. She's been labeled. For some reason the thought makes her feel even more demeaned than her forced nudity.
The large man with sandy hair is talking to her. "Welcome aboard. We're removing the ropes so you'll be more comfortable for the flight. They'll be replaced, however, with handcuffs and leg shackles. You'll be able to walk if you take small steps, but not run. All the guards on this aircraft are equipped with cattle prods and tasers, including me, so don't even think of getting pissy."
His voice is cordial, matter of fact, like his face. But the words solidify her despair. As the men are attaching the steel shackles to her ankles, the big man helps her into a robe, just like the ones the other passengers are wearing. Her gratitude almost overwhelms her. She won't have to endure the flight naked after all, with all these strange men ogling her. She knows it's an irrational priority in the light of what's planned for her, but she can't help what she feels. After the handcuffs are snapped back on, she's led to the first empty window seat, just two rows from the front. She's pushed over to the window seat. The cuff on her left wrist is opened and then clamped to the arm rest between the seats, pinning her right wrist to the seat.
The view from the window is of open fields with trees in the distance. No houses, no people. A very private air strip. It's getting on toward dusk.
Two more men board the plane and slip into the seats at the controls up front. The pilot is half bald with a gray fringe. The copilot on his right is much younger with waves of unruly, brown hair. They go through an elaborate routine of systems checks while the guards secure the last of the five white containers with bungee cords and find seats beside the shackled women. The man who greeted her coming out of the box chooses the seat next to her and buckles them both in.
"This is going to be a long flight, darlin.' I'm talkin' eight or nine hours. Am I gonna have to tie you up and leave that gag in your mouth, or are you gonna be a good little girl?"
She sighs, quelling her annoyance at his condescension, and nods.
He strips the tape off her mouth so she can spit out the saliva soaked cloth. "And you'll address every male you speak to from now on as Sir, " he says gravely.
"Yes, Sir."
He reaches for the oval I.D. and turns it so he can read it. The slight pull on her sore nipple makes her grimace.
He reads it aloud. "U-S-six."
"What does that mean?" she asks. Her vocal cords and jaw hurt from the effect of the gag over many hours.
"That's your I.D. Identifies your country of origin and your inventory unit. The order for this banquet consists of twelve units and you're number six. Eight of you will be on this flight. The other four are part of a separate shipment."
"I'm just a unit now? No name?"
"That's right, sweetheart. I won't tell you my name and I don't want to know yours. One of the perks of this job is I get to participate in the feasts and I prefer not to get to know my next meal on a first name basis. Got that?"
"Yes, Sir."
"I've been assigned to you because I speak English. The only others on board who do are the pilots. Pilots all over the world speak English. It's control tower speak. So, if you wanna ask me questions, go ahead. I'll answer what I can."
"Why the sudden consideration for what I might want?"
"We don't want the merchandise to be a total freaked out mess when it arrives, so the company lets us talk to them if it calms them down."
"That's all we are? Merchandise?"
"Yep. You got it."
"Even to you?"
"Especially to me. I told you. I don't let myself think of you as anything but meat. Talking meat."
"And these other women don't speak English?"
"One does, but she also speaks Spanish. It's the blonde cutie two rows back."
"Where do they all come from?"
"The blonde is from L.A. The other three are from Guatemala, Chile and Brazil."
"What's going on here, anyway? Where are you taking us?"
"Well, first we'll stop at a little place outside Amsterdam to pick up the last three girls for this shipment, then it's on to Munich."
"We're crossing the Atlantic? In this little airplane?"
"I told you it will be a long flight. This 'little airplane' is a Gulfstream jet modified to fly up to eighteen hours non-stop."
"What's going to happen in Munich?"
"Didn't the guy who recruited you tell you anything?"
"Recruited? He ABDUCTED me!"
"Recruited, abducted. Same thing. What'd he tell you?"
"Nothing sensible! He talked about something called M ä dchenbraten, and about Isis and snuff houses. He said he had to give me enemas to clean me out for the chefs. What the hell was he talking about?"
"Nothing you're gonna be happy to hear about. Der M ä dchenbraten is the name of a semi-annual banquet held in Munich. It means 'The Girl Roast.' The name is self explanatory. It's a snuff banquet. You and eleven other girls are this year's featured entre é s. Isis is the name of the company that puts on the banquets. They put on similar feasts in Columbia, Thailand and Indonesia."
Lila couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "I don't know what you mean by a snuff banquet. Am I going to die?"
"Be hard to cook you without you being dead at some point. Of course you're going to die. Don't tell me you hadn't figured that out."
"Cook me? You mean they're actually going to roast me? Like in an oven?"
"Over a fire, actually. You and all the others. You're all on the menu."
"Oh my God!"
"Don't worry, you'll be long dead before you go on the spit. I've watched them do it lots of times. Seems pretty quick and painless to me."
"They're going to EAT us?!"
"Sure. That's the whole point of a snuff banquet. Pretty girls slaughtered, roasted and eaten."
"My God! That's cannibalism!"
"Absolutely. And a hell of a rush!"
"Who are these people?"
"They call themselves the Society of Isis, named after an ancient super-star Egyptian goddess. She was goddess of just about everything — home, hearth, creation, destruction, sex, motherhood, apple pie, you name it. Had a gazillion alternate names, too, one for every function and language. She was married to Osiris — god of agriculture, harvest, the underworld and other shit. One of her sons was Horus, a nice guy god who was always getting chopped up by his brother, Set, then patched together again by Isis who had these awesome magical powers. When the Egyptians hit bad times, they blamed it on old Set and prayed to Isis for help. When the good times rolled around again and they were prosperous, guess who got the credit. Isis! Kinda like good god, bad god. Which fits this bunch, because the fat cats who can afford to be members of Isis are over-the-top prosperous."
"Do you . . . join in, too?"
"Wouldn't miss it. I get a hard on just thinking about it. They put on quite a show. And girl meat is terrific! Too bad you won't get a chance to taste it.
She shudders. "That's horrible! Disgusting! Its inhuman!"
"Only from your point of view. And don't give me that 'inhuman' shit. Humans have been engaging in cannibalism and human sacrifice for hundreds of millennia. Just because the self-righteous anal-retentives of the world frown on it doesn't mean it isn't still being done by perfectly sane human beings. Hell, Isis puts on a dozen of these things every year on three continents. They charge ten to fifty thousand bucks per plate. And every banquet draws hundreds of participants. Now, why do you suppose that is? It's because lots of people find the ritual killing and eating of a beautiful human female a turn-on beyond compare. Believe me, your sacrifice is going to inspire a lot of orgasms tonight."
She sits stunned, trying to grasp the horror of it, that this is her last day of life, that this man and others will soon be eating her! The pilots have revved up the engines and the Gulfstream begins to roll along the narrow runway, faster and faster. She has only flown a half dozen times, but this is by far the roughest runway she has ever experienced. By the time the plane bounces into the air and angles up sharply her knuckles are white. How ironic, she muses, that she worries about the plane crashing when she's about to die anyway.
"How will they kill me?" she asks.
"Do you really want to know all the gory details in advance? Why not just let it happen?"
"You're sitting here casually telling me I'm going to die and you're going to eat me, and expect me to just put it out of my mind and watch the scenery?"
"Well now, I don't know that I'll be eating you specifically. There's a dozen girls altogether and I don't know which ones I'll be eating. Only the paying guests get to choose, and it costs extra."
"What do you mean?"
"The employees don't eat with the guests. We get the leftovers."
"The leftovers?" She's beginning to feel light headed.
"Yeah. A table rarely can eat an entire girl, unless she's really skinny."
"A table? What are you talking about?"
"There's four seatings. Four, six, eight and ten o'clock. Each seating has three tables. They cook three girls per seating, one for each table. Everyone gets to look over the merchandise in advance and the high rollers who can afford the extra charge get to choose which table they want to sit at; in other words, which girl they want to eat. Whatever's left over on the carcasses gets served to us employees later. But I don't mind. There's plenty to go around and there's only a subtle difference in flavor between one girl and another. The real difference is in the cut of meat. Most customers go for the breast meat, if they can afford it, because not only is it sweet and juicy, but the idea of eating a girl's tits has a certain erotic cachet. Personally, though, I prefer the rump steaks, especially with mint or apple sauce."
She feels like she's been kicked in the stomach. He was right, this glib-tongued man who is casually escorting her to her death: she doesn't really want to know any more of these terrible details. She'll soon be dead. That's all she needs to know. She's seen her last sunrise, shared love-making for the last time, drawn her final bath. Everything is wasted, everything she lived for, all the years of schooling and training, all her dreams of home and babies and family. She grieves for the waste of the body she's worked so hard to make beautiful for the pleasure of her lover. She grieves for all the things she's about to lose and all the things that will never be.
And yet even death is not as dark and frightening as the unthinkable desecration that lies beyond it. That she will be cooked, carved up and eaten.
She thinks about the alternate fate to which she might have been consigned by her kidnaper. Sex slavery. Instead of being headed for slaughter, she'd be headed for life as a dick-hole for any male willing to pay the going rate to her owner, no matter how scabrous or disgusting he might be, no matter what degradations he might require of her? Would that have been better? At least she'd be alive. Except, she remembered, he had also suggested to more than one prospective buyer that when she's past her usefulness as a whore, she could still be sold for snuffing.
She sat silently, calculating her bleak prospects for escape, unwilling to talk further with a man who is casually escorting her to her death and actually looking forward to eating her.
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