Perhaps a little early to begin a Christmas story but those of you who know me know that when an idea crosses my brain, I have to get at least the start written down or it will give me no peace! So here we are!

Tage: Preteen, snuff, willing, oven-roast, exhibitionism, Christmas

Seasonal Samantha
By
Edward Hyde



“Is the oven definitely big enough?” Samantha asked for what was probably the sixth time but felt to her dad, Josh, like the six-hundredth. She was kneeling beside him on the sofa wearing the long pink t-shirt and baggy shorts she liked to wear for bed. Her shoulder-length, dark blonde hair was still damp and her honey-coloured skin bore the glow of cleanliness that comes after a nice, hot bath.

“It’s one of the selling points on their website!” Josh assured her, turning his laptop so that she could see the screen. “It even gives the measurements here!” he pointed to a diagram on the FAQ page of the booking site. Samantha narrowed her eyes.

“Yeah but it’s really hard to tell from numbers! Sometimes things sound bigger than they are?”

“I marked it out for you on the floor.” he reminded her with amused resignation. “Did it not look big enough?” Just then, what he hoped would be his salvation arrived in the form of a reply to the email he had sent at her insistence, asking the caretaker of the hall they had agreed to rent if the oven really was big enough for cooking a person in as the website had advertised.

“We don’t put these on the site for data protection and privacy reasons,” the email read, “but these were sent to us by a previous satisfied customer and we have their permission to share these pictures with potential hirers who ask for confirmation. Thank you for the deposit by the way, I’ll get the contract to you tomorrow morning but the hall is yours from 10am on 24th to 8am on 26th. You can leave the keys in the drop-box any time before that.” Attached to the email were three photographs but without thumbnail previews. Josh clicked on the first one to open it.

“See?” he grinned. The picture showed the oven in the kitchen off the main hall occupied by a young woman somewhere between the ages of seventeen and twenty, laying on her back with her knees bent in the classic turkey pose and hair wrapped in tin-foil. Although she was glistening with a mixture of sweat and melted butter and her belly had clearly been stuffed, she looked as if she was still alive at the time this picture was taken and, although it did look a little cramped, she definitely did fit in the oven. “She’s bigger than you and she fitted so I’m sure you will!” Samantha looked unconvinced so he opened the second picture. This one showed the same young woman now roasted golden brown, out of the oven and laying on a platter on the counter-top, surrounded by roast potatoes, pigs in blankets, balls of stuffing and other trimmings that were not immediately identifiable. Her hair had been brushed and tied into a neat braid which trailed off the edge of the platter. If she had been alive in the first picture, she was certainly not in this one.

“What if the pictures are fake?” Samantha protested. “Or she’s a midget or something?” Josh shook his head in amusement. He knew his preteen daughter just wanted to be absolutely sure that nothing was going to stand in the way of her plans but she did seem to be wilfully refusing to accept the assurances given to her.

“She looks pretty full-grown to me!” he observed, looking at the roasted young woman’s ample bosom and thick, meaty thighs. Although the meat of younger girls was more commonly eaten and was the focus of not only the Sidney’s restaurant chain but the other copy-cat establishments that had popped up in the wake of their opening, taking advantage of Britain’s strict anti-monopoly laws, the girl on the platter looked far more like the type of piggy to be cooked and eaten by “savage” cannibal tribes in old newspaper comics and even some low-budget “exploitation” movies.

“Daaad!” Samantha whined. “Midgets can have big boobs too, you know! In fact small boobs would look big on a midget!”

“I’m sure she’s quite normal size!” Josh chuckled, “And I’m really not sure you’re supposed to say midget anyway! Here, look!” He opened the final picture which showed a large, extended family sat at the long table in the middle of the hall and raising their glasses to the camera. In the middle of the table was the roasted young woman, looking delicious and waiting to be carved but, most importantly, in perfect scale with the rest of the adults around the table. “See?” Josh smirked a little. “Definitely not a midget!” Samantha opened her mouth as if to protest further, her dad guessing that she was about to suggest that everyone sat at the table could be unusually tiny, but thought better of it and closed it again, her eyes still narrowed suspiciously.

“Hey look,” he opened up the original listing page and showed her some of the generic photos used to advertise the hall, “they’ve got a barbecue pit with a proper spit and everything on the patio! If for some reason you don’t fit in the oven, we can roast you on there!”

“Spit-roasts aren’t very Christmassy!” Samantha replied huffily, slumping down into the sofa and folding her arms. Realising that there was probably only one thing that would satisfy his daughter and wondering why she hadn’t just come out and asked rather than going through this performance to make him guess, Josh offered a suggestion.

“How about I ask if we can go visit to check it out? Then you can see if you actually fit in the oven or not?”

“Perfect!” Samantha clapped her hands in delight. “Thanks, Daddy!” She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him noisily and extravagantly on the cheek. “You’re the best!” Chuckling in amusement, josh ruffled her damp hair then typed out an email thanking the caretaker for the photographs and asking about the possibility of visiting. Within five minutes, the reply came back that he would be there between three and five the next day so if Josh wanted to bring Samantha to inspect the kitchen after school he would be welcome to. It would mean leaving work a few hours early but Josh didn’t mind, he quite a lot of holiday still to use by the end of the year and he wanted more than anything to make his daughter happy. Samantha had run to the kitchen to tell her mum about the plans and, when the two most important women in his life came back into the living room where he had just closed and put away his laptop, he told them the good news. Samantha ran to him, pouncing him again but this time straddling his recently vacated lap and kissing him hard on the lips.

“I take it you’re pleased?” he chuckled a little awkwardly when she came up for air. The preteen just grinned and kissed him again.

“Come on!” her mum, Laura, laughed indulgently, shaking her head in amusement. “You’re supposed to be in bed already!” Again Samantha looked as if she might be about to protest but quickly realised that doing so could end up with her parents revoking their agreement. In that moment it hit her that, between now and Christmas, she really was going to have to be on her best behaviour if she wanted the only wish on her list this year to be granted!

“Thanks again, Daddy!” she gave him another, far more familiar peck on the lips then ran to hug her mum. “You too, Mummy! I promise to be a delicious turkey for you!”

“I’m sure you will be!” Laura chuckled, patting her on the backside as she scampered off towards the stairs. “Now get to sleep! Don’t want your meat to be all tough and stringy because you didn’t get enough rest, do you?” Already half way up the stairs, Samantha confirmed that this was definitely not something she wanted and, seconds later, they heard her bedroom door close with a distinctive click.

“So I guess we’re really doing this, huh?” Laura asked, sitting down next to her husband and refilling her wine glass from the bottle they had started over dinner which now stood on the floor in front of the sofa. “Having our little girl for Christmas dinner?”

“She seems to have her heart pretty set on it!” Josh chucked ruefully. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to tell her that we’d changed our minds!” Both parents sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, trying to work out how they had got to the situation they now found themselves in.

It had started as a joke many years ago when Samantha was three or four and, among the books they had brought home from the library for bedtime stories that week had been one called “Rosie the Christmas Turkey” which Laura had selected from the box of preschool story books without looking at properly, assuming it to be a typical cute story about a farmyard bird who goes on an adventure. It was only when Samantha had chosen it to be her bedtime story after her bath a couple of nights later that they found out what it really was.

Instead of being a story about an actual turkey who gets involved in some charming shenanigans over Christmas as they had assumed, it was about a little girl with lots of brothers and sisters whose family is too poor to afford a turkey for Christmas so she volunteers to be cooked so the rest of her siblings, as well as her parents and sweet, elderly grandparents, can enjoy a good meal. Laura had been a little shocked when she realised the true content of the book and had tried to stop reading, switching to a different story, but little Samantha had insisted she continue to the end and, once she got over her shock at the subject matter, Laura had been forced to admit that it was actually a very sweet story with a wholesome message about love and kindness. The illustrations had been simple but clearly showed the chubby little redhead taking off her clothes, getting stuffed and covered in butter then put in the oven with the final double-page spread showing her roasted golden brown with her hungry family looking on in excitement as her dad prepared to start carving.

The next morning, when she had gone to wake her up, Laura had found Samantha already sitting up in bed looking at the pictures and that night when Josh was putting her to bed, she requested the same story again. In fact she had asked for “the turkey story” every night until it was time to return the book to the library and had been so distressed at the idea of having to give it back that her parents had renewed it so that they could take it home with them again and had quietly ordered their own copy so that they could have one to keep.

Of course, as with all things for a child that age, the obsession with that particular story had waned over time but every year she had asked if she was going to be the Christmas turkey with her parents assuring her that they could afford a normal one this year. As she had got a little older, this had become something of a running joke with Laura and Josh teasing her from mid-October onwards that her behaviour and how she did at school would influence their decision as to whether this might be the year! All three had known this was a joke, however, and the teasing had become one of those simple, fun, family traditions, an in-joke that only really makes sense to those who are part of it. This year, however, had been different.

The teasing had begun a little earlier than usual, when they had been on holiday in August and had seen a pair of girls around Samantha’s age being spit-roasted at a private gathering on the beach. Their daughter had been quite transfixed by the spectacle, to the point that Josh had teasingly asked her of she wanted them to find out where the spits could be hired from, to which she had responded by reminding them that she was a Christmas turkey, not a seaside kebab! Neither parent had thought much more about the conversation until the drive home a couple of days later when Samantha had informed them quite nonchalantly that she really wouldn’t mind if they wanted to save money on an expensive bird for their Christmas dinner and roast her instead. They had laughed it off at the time but a few days later she had brought it up again, this time over dinner, asking if they had considered her offer.

It was then, for the first time, that they had asked if she was serious and, having been assured that she was, promised to think about it, although at that point neither had any real intention of following through, assuming this to just be another of their daughter’s odd little phases that would pass in its own time. It was the next day when Laura went to pick her up from school, however, that she had learned a little bit more about what had prompted this apparent new desire in Samantha and the pieces began to fall into place!

To be continued...