Spiking the game? Making it work?

It was a long Friday. The last of the H&S team was now safely back and all of the hens were sitting at the couches, or grabbing something to eat. David had gotten the evening figures from Candy.

Carol and Vicky were working on the last of the court filings for Night Court. Some of the magistrates there had agreed to review the last minute exception and exclusion requests, as well as granting one-week extensions.

The rest of the crowd was finishing with showers, and things were locked up for the night.

Margaret, Abby, Helen, and Kim were sitting on the couches when Nancy and Cindy came in from locking up the front. Cathy and Melanie were going to be running the chat rooms for tonight and were headed to their rooms, and so far everyone else was upstairs, or eating dinner.

“We have another “While I’m Alive” request. That makes over thirty of them. If I didn’t know better I would say Merle Hill was running ads.” Nancy said.

“Nancy, what do you think the demographics are on this?” Margaret asked.

“I don’t know, I think we need to ask Liz. But most of them seem to be mid to late twenties, with strong romance streaks and no real grasp on the reality of what is going on.” Nancy said.

“I’ll drink to that.” Helen said. “If I never hear another woman scream like Mary Magill did again it will be fine with me.”

“What happened?” Kim asked.

“You remember the reporter that Merle spitted live on camera? Well, our friend Mary was selected and was graded as parts. She was too vain and wanted to be spitted. Merle said that he couldn’t do it, claiming his reputation for his foodstuff would suffer. So Mary and George hired a licensed butcher to come over and spit her at a party and then serve her in a Backyard Bar-B-Que.” Helen said.

“Neither of us really knew what Mary had planned.” Margaret said, drinking a sip of wine. “And when we did, we were too intrigued to leave. David was here, so I stayed to see what happened.”

“So what happened?” Kim asked.

“They threw her down on a table, and tied her legs to the table legs. Then the guy just shoved a steel rod up inside of her vagina, and told her to get ready. Then he shoved it through her a few inches at a time. She was screaming the whole time and whenever she asked him to stop for a moment, he said to her to get ready, it would be over soon.” Helen said, taking a drink from her glass. “It was the worst thing I could ever imagine.

“David told me not to expect anything very appealing” Margaret said. “And he sure wasn’t kidding. It was messy, and then after Mary died, she had to be gutted and cleaned out all over and then put on the coals. She did taste pretty good, though” Margaret said with a smile.

“You know” Kim said, “Merle normally had the butchers hit them over the head when they were strapped into the machine. The place was noisy enough without that sort of screaming. The Jessica 3,000 had a slow drive motor, that would only go about two inches in five seconds”.

“Leave it to our engineer to have the specs” Margaret said with a grin. Seeing Kim’s expression, she continued, “For which we are all grateful. Kim, your work has made a difference here. I have to admit your process modification is great. But that brings back the question. How did Merle handle Meredith?”

“What you didn’t know was that the “sauce” Merle gave the woman was something called Demerol with five milligrams of Morphine. The dosage was low enough that it wouldn’t get caught up on the blood test they did. They had something in the water they gave her in stripping as well.” Kim said.

“Really? Susan and Jack didn’t say anything about that” Margaret said.

“They didn’t know. Merle didn’t want to let them know he did stuff to endanger his license to process. He only bragged about it to one of his guys when the show was broadcast. I think it was Nick or Peter.” Kim said.

“Yes. Tim called them Nick the Prick and Peter the Greaser”. Helen said. “I interviewed both of them and they were pretty elusive characters. And corrupt. They didn’t make the cut when we took over H&S”

“So. Given that drugs worked, why can’t we do the same here?” Nancy asked. “Given what you all have said about making the trip for the client fit their fantasy.”

“Well, Abby, You are the MD here. How do we drive a spit up your cunt and out your mouth without too much pain?” Margaret said with a snicker.

“It would have to be a combination of engineering, Medical and social process.” Abby said. “You wont’ get it done simply by drugging and shoving. Unless you are a real actress, you won’t be able to avoid the pain while you are awake. Even a Saddle block won’t mask all of it.”

“Well, if we could do it, for real, we could really charge for it” Nancy said. “It’s getting pretty high up on the Fantasy requests. It’s starting to be mentioned as often as Hanging and Guillotine.”

“And the damn tub is still too expensive in terms of time” Margaret said. “Kim, I thought you were looking at speeding up the drain on that?”

“I am. High-speed pumps and water heaters in combination can do it. But they are expensive to set up. It takes a lot of energy to take three hundred gallons of water from sixty eight degrees to a hundred and four degrees in fifteen minutes.” Kim said

“And we probably need a vent hood overhead to take care of the initial steam injection if we do it with a steam boiler” Kim continued, after taking a sip of her wine. “And that cost has to be recouped somehow. I don’t want to go to David with that without a funding plan for it.”

“Kim, you sound like Mark.” Helen said. “He is always talking about project and program funding, cost recovery and revenue development. You are making me homesick.”

“I don’t mean to, dear. I just don’t want to have any added expenses here that are not funded, or Margaret will look to cut costs. I don’t want to be cut”. Kim said with a nervous laugh.

Margaret sputtered into her wine glass when Kim said that. “Girl, you demonstrate your value a couple of hundred times every day. Don’t sweat it. You proved a while ago you were worth far more upright than on any platter. “ She said when she recovered.

“Even if it is a mechanical proof?” Kim asked with a smile.

“Don’t go rubbing the Craftsman verses Mechanic comparison in too far,” Cindy said. “Or she will remind us that any monkey can operate a foot treadle.”

“Yes, but how many women can say “Come here please” In three languages?” Kim said in rebuttal.

“All of us here.” Abby said.

“Yea. We need to review how the union defines skilled vs. non skilled labor.” Cindy said. “You have to admit, slicing a throat while missing all the major nerves is a skill.”

“Yes, but it only counts while the subject is alive and conscious” Abby replied. “Mechanization has made that skill almost as obsolete as making Buggy whips.”

Later that night, when Helen and Carol had gone up to bed, Nancy asked Abby what she meant by “Social and Medical process”.

“Simple.” Abby replied. “You can build tools to handle penetration. I can think of a couple of ways myself. Specialized surgical tools are a norm. For instance, a hollow shaft with a “X” cut in the end of it to allow a broad-head razor arrow head to extend out and slit the upper wall of the vagina, and then retract to allow the shaft to be forced up through the abdominal cavity to the bottom of the stomach. Then you extend the broad-head again to pierce the bottom of the stomach and wind your way up the esophagus.”

Listening in, Kim thought and commented, “That would work. Start with a one and a half inch diameter hollow tube. Build a rounded end for it with an “X” cut in the center and a smaller rod to extend the broad-head. You would have to work it pretty carefully after your initial piercing to move it around things and through. Schedule forty titanium tubing would work. Biggest issue is the proper formation of the front end.”

“How about the drugs?” Nancy asked.

“I ‘me a MD. I can prescribe. And it would be Demerol and Morphine. We are talking about Terminal pain management here.” Abby said with a laugh. “This would be manual though. None of this mess like the courthouse or Merle had on his TV Special. Kind of like a massive liver biopsy coming up from the bottom.”

Cindy, who had come up from the office and was sitting listening, interjected “Live Spitting? Cool. But you would still have to gut them before cooking. Else you would have sick customers”

“Yea. That was what got Merle closed down in the first place. E-coli killed people down in Moline Illinois.” Margaret said. Thinking to herself that this is something that Carol and Helen would not want to hear, “Nancy, we would have to price it as a total trip with no cost recovery for meat”

“Not even pet food?” Nancy asked.

“No. Don’t want anyone’s dog or cat getting sick. Maybe Lion food or something like that. A predator that has a higher tolerance for e-coli”. Abby said.

“Biggest thing is the mechanics. We don’t have anyone here except you, Abby, who is familiar enough with anatomy to wind the stake up from the bottom” Margaret said.

“I’m not so sure. Candy is pretty good with Grey’s. And Cinderella here isn’t too shabby either.” Abby said, drinking her wine.

“It isn’t much worse than Air Dancing” Cindy said. “Of course, you are dealing with a longer time for the client to change her mind.”

“Not really” Abby said. “Once you pierce the upper vaginal or uterine wall, you pretty much are committed. Even if you pull the pole out, you still have a fast bleed. The spit would tamponed the wound somewhat while it was there. But this is just like a knife. First thing you learn in EMT is you never pull a knife out. You pack it so it won’t move and get them into surgery”

“How long would the client live?” Margaret asked.

“Five to thirty minutes” Abby said. “Depends on how bad things were in the leakage around the esophagus and the vaginal walls. If you didn’t hit any artery piercing either while you had the blades extended, it would be longer. Other issue is suffocation from the stake closing off the throat”.