Chapter VII
Dancing in the Lowest Depths
Waves of pain surged through my body from my groin to my chest and my throat, surfing me on through brief interludes of lucidity, then crashing me into the confused darkness of nightmare. I became aware that my arms were stretched and shackled, my legs strapped wide apart to bars alongside the bed. There were tubes and cables attached to all parts of my anatomy, above me I could see a plasma bag feeding blood.
The medical attention I received was a good deal more thorough and intensive this time than in my previous sojourns in the Medical Care Unit, white-clad men constantly checking various monitors, entering data, replenishing drips, I was rarely left alone. Not that there was any kindness in their eyes as they scanned my pulsating nakedness, just a cold, contemptuous disinterest, merely obeying their orders to compel me to remain alive.
As periods of consciousness became gradually longer, I sank into deep depression, conquered by pain, resenting their determination to force life into me. What they had done to me on the Scaffold had revealed, had forced into awareness in the most intimate parts of my body and soul, the dark depths of their vicious hatred and savage sadism. The bleak future of 'rigorous and punitive hard labour' was a torture even to think of, there was nothing I could do to protect myself from their cold, relentless cruelty, nothing I could do to save Laura, Marie, Julia, Carina, all those girls close to me who are now in their clutches...
I turned my head, tried to lean across to bite at the tube that was feeding blood into my arm in the wild hope of stopping my life-support and provoking a fatal haemorrhage. Immediately an alarm screeched, two men were seizing me, forcing a clamp on my head, which they locked by a short chain to the bed-head, restricting my movement even more. I moaned softly, trying to accommodate the increased discomfort and restraint.
Yet, as the blood continued to pump, lucidity grew, I experienced a strange transformation. First, a profound calm. Not that the pain had subsided, it was still kneading my innards with a rhythmic pressure, but the body that was suffering was somehow not mine. My very helplessness, the fact I could do absolutely nothing, permitted me to cease struggling, to simply accept my situation.
As my condition, in the cold eyes of the medics, 'improved', the tubes and cables were gradually withdrawn, the clamp was taken from my head, the restraints on my limbs were relaxed though not removed. I was able to sleep more deeply, and must have done so for long, long stretches, even days. And when I woke, I felt a new excitement - I could not believe it, I could only guess they'd filled me with mind-altering drugs, or else I simply must have been driven mad – but I was actually feeling curious, eager to find out, what further horrors they had in store for me!
It was not long. A pair of Guards arrived, a male nurse removed the remaining monitoring wires, the Guards unlocked my wrists and legs. I pulled myself round, put my feet on the floor, and got to my feet, swaying and reaching out for support. My arms were grabbed, I was swung round and made to walk, though my legs were constantly shaking and barely supporting me.
Out of the Medical Care Unit, along a passageway that brought us to the corridor between the cages where nude girls were awaiting trial like I had done, and so to the Stripping Room.
The Director of Punishment was awaiting me there, the officer who had supervised my flogging, tall, black-haired with dark, piercing eyes and a thin-lipped smile, big ears – a shock of recognition threw my mind back to that hot afternoon in the Coffee Shop, could it be him? His black MSC uniform, crisply ironed with polished badges and buttons like stars in a black sky, a long, smart whip tapping his gleaming leather boot, he clearly revelled in his role. I bowed low to him, as I knew I must.
"Up!" I watched his eyes patrolling my nakedness, inspecting the traces still vivid from the chastisement he'd overseen. "Time for you to get to work, you lazy bitch, Eulalia Merida – you've been spared execution, at least for the time being, haven't you, cunt?" As he spoke the c-word, he suddenly jabbed my pussy with the whip-handle. "Y-yes, Sir...." "Well, I'm going to make sure your life is a lot worse than death, even Crucifixion – understand?" He flicked my girl-part again. "Yes, Sir."
I understood, I knew all too well that was their intention. Instinctively, my loins quivered, my thighs parted slightly wider, as if anticipating, even inviting, further attentions from his whip. I stood upright, mirroring his smartness with my own ready posture, head up, eyes meeting his gaze, shoulders back, presenting my bare breasts to best advantage. Instinctively, my body was accepting its fate, acquiescing but not shrinking, focused on the fight, on playing the game by his rules.
"You're going straight to work in the body-boilers. You won't need any thong, your oppo will give you hers at the shift-change, you know the system." I nodded. "You've just got to get your squad number changed on your leg –" he cut the whip across my thigh where it was branded – "then you go straight to the Human Body Processing Plant, report to the office, they'll set you to work. Got it, turd?" He gave my pudenda a final sharp sting, I staggered back a step but righted myself and responded crisply, "Yes, Sir!"
The Guards took me along through the Store to the Branding Area. I knew the routine, held out my wrists for the manacles to be tightened, lay down on the slab, legs wide, arms stretched. They soon had me locked and ready, I smelt the acrid smoke from the heating metal. The men positioned themselves over me, one kneeling to hold my right leg at the knee, the other knelt across my waist, clutching my hip with one hand, my groin with the other.
The Sergeant in charge of branding performed the operation. My former squad number, M68, was obliterated with a pattern of dots, burnt into my skin like a waffle-iron. My shriek of pain confirmed my lungs had regained their strength. The new number, P41, was pressed in immediately below – my thighs are quite long, there's room on them for several rebrandings!
When they released me, I naturally wanted to nurse my burning skin, long to pour cold water on the still sizzling inscription, but of course I was ordered "Up!". I staggered to my feet, still unsteady. "You know where to go?" "Yes, Sir!" "Right!" He pointed to the open door out to the Parade Ground, I obeyed.
In the open air, the warm, dusty wind made my burning thigh torment me, and my whole skin tingled, my whip weals still raw and sore. I walked briskly, though still reeling unsteadily, so unready were my legs to obey me. Out through the gate, checking my identity code at the Guard-Post, down the roadway where heavy lorries trundled past, I crossed at the junction with Death Hill.
As I passed the endmost cross, a sepulchral moan startled me, I glanced up at what I'd thought was a long-dead cadaver hanging there, once beautiful, long dark hair still drifting in the breeze, but the crows had already gorged on her eyes. The torso twitched, a slow, laborious movement slightly straightened the muscles in her long, flexed legs, then she slumped still again – still alive!
I turned down a pathway that led to the deceptively bland entrance of the Human Body Processing Works, it could have been any office or factory, but its name now revealed to me the full horror of its function. I'd learnt from Caterina, the youngster renditioned with me now slaving on the Tip, that waste meat goes there to be 'processed', but it's not just animal meat, and it's not just from the Tip, what those trucks are rumbling in with day and night, what is producing the smoke, steam and constantly sickening smell is human flesh and bone!
I passed through the glass-doored entry and reported to a reception desk, where a hard-faced woman checked my barcode on my wrist-iron. She looked at her computer screen. "381152?" "Yes, Ma'am." "You're down to work in the body-boilers." "Yes, Ma'am, the Director of Punishment told me." She eyed me sourly, weighing up my body as if she were judging how long the new slave would last – she probably runs bets on it! "Through that door, down the passage, keep straight ahead through the work areas, then through the double doors at the far end. The other girls will show you what you have to do."
I followed her instructions. There was a dense, clammy heat in the building, which increased as a walked through. The passage passed a few offices, then opened into a large, barn-like space where the heat, humidity, stench and noise threw me back for a moment. To my right there was activity going on, naked girls moving about in steam, rumbling machinery, barrows being trundled.
I kept on as instructed, straight ahead, along by the wall. At the far end, through a pair of swing doors, I entered a smaller space where the turkish bath clamminess was even more oppressive. I stood for a few moments, taking in the sight of more nude girls, some moving about, several squatting on the floor working away at large chunks of what appeared to be cooked meat, a few smaller ones were pushing trolleys, others were moving briskly back and forth.
Soon a big, sturdy blonde spotted me. "Hey, you!" I crossed to where she was, "You new?" "Mm" I was still trying to get enough air to speak. "Good, I need help. Follow me."
She led me across to the far side of the area, where a wall was divided into three sections, each with a massive metal shutter. The right-hand one was open, there was activity around it, girls with barrows coming and going, but I did not pay attention to that. The central one was closed, but the left hand one open. The space behind it was illuminated with bright neon lamps, but was so full of dense steam I could not make out anything in there. The girl took me to the entry and I saw then that the steam was swelling up from some kind of tank, though I still could not see the bottom or what was in it. She turned to step onto an iron ladder down into the tank, saying "Follow me down!"
When I reached the bottom, I came down into thigh-deep, very warm, greasy, water, filled with bodies – yes, human bodies, some whole, some in pieces, cooked to a stew.
Above us, a pair of heavy chains swung with big, sharp hooks on them. My companion stretched up and grabbed one of the hooks, nodding to me to do the same, we both tugged and the chains came lower. Then she plunged her hook into one of the bodies that we were now crawling over, half kneeling, half straddling. Closing my eyes and trying not to be sick, I did the same, the very feel of what I had to do made me retch.
Next, I had to help her move and lift the body we'd hooked until it was floating free of others on the surface of the foul pool. We climbed back up the ladder, and she pointed me to a large winch-handle at one end of the entry, she went to a similar one on the other end. It was hard work turning, in the tropical heat I was already panting, but we managed to haul the body up so it swung, ghoulishly, above the tank.
A pair of poles with hooks on them enabled us to bring the corpse where we could haul it onto the floor and remove the pulley-hooks. We dragged it by the legs to an unoccupied part of the floor. From a rack in a side wall, we each took a rough wooden scraper – obviously no sharp tools are allowed in the hands of us slavegirls! – and squatted down to begin our task of separating flesh from bone.
In time, I learnt, or worked out for myself, the routine of Human Body Processing. Day and night this goes on. Bodies are constantly being delivered. In the big work area, they are checked for any items like rings, fitted jewellery or gold teeth fillings that might have been overlooked, though these are rarely found. Hair is removed, a very marketable commodity, then the cadavers are skinned, the hides taken to the IPCG Whip works for tanning. Human skin isn't ideal for whips, but in great demand for decorative bindings, accessories, even toys - especially soft, fine girlskin, as I'd witnessed in the gifts given to general Piniero and his horrible family.
The flayed bodies are then taken to a boiler. In any shift, one boiler is being filled with bodies and water, and being heated up. A second one is kept shut, still heating for four hours, then very slowly cooling down. The third one is opened up and slaves like me have to get to work on the stewed bodies.
I couldn't bear to think about what I was doing, I deliberately avoided asking myself had "it" been male or female, adult or child. Best not to remember it had once been a human. The very word 'Human' in the name of the plant was an obscenity, nothing of humanity can exist in this place, nor in the minds of the monsters who conceived and operated it.
Flesh goes into one trolley, bone into another. When we'd filled a trolley, we had to take it to a checkpoint by the double-door entrance, show our wrist-irons to an automatic reader to register our identities, and park the trolley on a weighbridge to record our work. All self-service, no Guards or Cadets could be expected to work in this hell-hole, only slaves. But of course we were being watched, our labour monitored, all the time.
Once our trolley had been weighed, a small, tough-looking urchin wearing the kind of hauling harness I'd worn when I worked on the ramp, hitched herself to it and dragged it away. Flesh, I learnt in due course, goes to the huge sewage plant to be mixed in with slurry, ground down then filtered into various grades of organic fertiliser and compost; bone, likewise, goes to a mill to be crushed and ground down to bonemeal. All the energy is supplied by slaves on treadmills. Nothing is wasted.