8 - An Arm and a Leg

The next month or so passed by, and Elizabeth's life quickly settled into a pattern. She would return to school each Monday, low on or out of pep and anxious for more. Mr. Riggs would refuse to give her enough for the whole next day, but would give her a tiny amount to keep her steady throughout her Monday afternoon extra credit session. By Tuesday afternoon, Elizabeth would clearly be out of pep and miserable, and she would wobble forward eagerly after class ended to Mr. Riggs's desk and wait, impatiently, for him to refill her little bottle. She would then be happy and energetic for the rest of the week, and quite eager to please Mr. Riggs by constructing, deconstructing, and modifying his ovens for him.

The ovens she worked on grew more and more strange as the weeks passed, and each time Mr. Riggs introduced a new one it would be more oddly shaped or have more bizarre "features" than the last. She had mostly given up on asking about or trying to understand what each feature was supposed to accomplish, especially since most of them were non-functional placeholders that didn't actually work yet anyway. The latest oven, however, didn't seem to have the usual array of side gadgets that Mr. Riggs had been obsessing over. It was actually quite simple, really, just a one foot by one foot by three feet rectangular glass box, with adjustable holes of varying sizes at either end.

It was a Friday afternoon session, and Elizabeth was feeling good. She had energy to spare, and was quite looking forward to the weekend. She had just completed assembling this latest oven for the second time, after a few minor revisions which had come after the first assembly, and was testing and calibrating it. Mr. Riggs was grading the homework that her classmates had turned in, which she happily no longer had to do, as she finished the oven.

"Mr. Riggs, I think this one is done." she said, leaning back in her seat and staring at the oven.

"Oh, good. Let's take a look, then." replied a happy Mr. Riggs. Mr. Riggs was happy most of the time, these days. He'd said that it was from seeing so many of the things he could see in his mind's eye finally becoming reality.

"Hmm, yes. Very good." said Mr. Riggs, mostly to himself, as he inspected the oven. He continued making little happy sounds as he adjusted the size of the holes at each end, wiggled the control dials back and forth, and opened the side of the oven to feel the heat inside.

"Mr. Riggs, what's this one do?" Elizabeth asked, after a few moments.

Her teacher looked up at her, surprised.

"Haven't I told you?" he asked, goggling at her.

"Mr. Riggs, you don't tell me what most of these ovens are supposed to do. You just give me a big pile of parts, an instruction sheet, and tell me to build it." Elizabeth replied, wryly.

"Oh. Well, you'll have to forgive me. I spend so much time thinking about them that I guess I forget that you don't." Mr. Riggs said. "This one is a limb cooker."

"A limb cooker?" said Elizabeth.

"Yes, indeed. The meal to be inserts one of her limbs into the oven through these holes, whichever is most convenient, then simply dials up the heat and lets it cook away." said Mr. Riggs, enthusiastically.

Elizabeth looked at the contraption she had helped create. Most of the time when she was working on Mr. Riggs' ovens, she didn't really think about their intended purpose. She simply focused on the very real task at hand of putting parts together or taking them back apart, rather than speculate on the uses to which those parts might eventually be put. Mr. Riggs' description had started her mind turning, though, and now she was picturing, very vividly, a girl putting an arm or a leg through one of those holes and then simply sitting there and waiting, watching a part of herself cook. Elizabeth shivered a bit at the thought.

"Um, why does the side open up, then?" she asked, to cover up her moment of unease.

"For basting, of course." replied Mr. Riggs, beaming.

"The limb sits in a pan, like one of these." he continued, feeling around under the work bench and pulling out a long, thin pan. "As the meat bakes, juices and sauce will drip into the pan, which can then be collected and brushed or basted back onto the roast."

"I.. see." said Elizabeth, doubtfully.

Mr. Riggs, hearing the tone of her voice, misinterpreted its origins. Elizabeth's doubts were actually about the wisdom of wanting to cook someone's arm or leg in the first place, not about whether the oven could in fact actually accomplish such a feat.

"Well, I can demonstrate it for you, if you like, Elizabeth." said Mr. Riggs. "I'm quite confident that it will work splendidly."

"Ah, no. That's alright, Mr. Riggs. I don't want to watch you cook your arm in that thing." replied Elizabeth, an expression of mild revulsion on her face.

"My arm? This oven is for cooking girls, Elizabeth." came Mr. Riggs amused reply, which put extra emphasis on "girls". "Why on earth would I put my arm into it. That's just silly."

"No, we'll use your arm, Elizabeth." finished Mr. Riggs, with a satisfied expression.

"Umm.. I don't want to watch you cook my arm either, Mr. Riggs." Elizabeth quickly replied, alarmed.

"Well, of course we're not going to actually cook it, Elizabeth." Mr. Riggs said, rolling his eyes. "How would you put my ovens together for me with just one arm? No, this is just a test run. Practice, nothing more."

Mr. Riggs grinned at her, then his eyes widened as he apparently got an idea.

"Actually, we can cook two birds with one stone, so to speak. Elizabeth, I'm going to go fetch a couple of things, so would you please roll up the sleeve of your right arm and scrub it down as well as you can in the lab sink over there while I do? I'll only be gone a minute."

"Uh, I guess so." Elizabeth replied, halfheartedly, but Mr. Riggs was already on his way out through the door and probably hadn't even heard her.

She sighed, then rolled up the short sleeve of her shirt and soaped up her right hand and arm, scrubbing them hard with the rough green pad next to the lab sink. Mr. Riggs actually took more than five minutes getting whatever it was he was fetching, much longer than Elizabeth took to scrub and rinse her arm. During the extra time, Elizabeth simply sat and stared apprehensively at the oven she had put together.

When Mr. Riggs returned, he was carrying a medium sized, unlabeled, transparent squeeze bottle, which appeared to be full of.. something. He also had what appeared to be a small, rough bristled brush and a turkey baster.

"I've been talking with Miss Evans, the home economics teacher, about my little hobby. I've been hoping that she could help me with recipes once I actually get one of my ovens to the final testing phase. I was asking her about sauces just last week, and she said that she would try to whip something up for me that might go well with girl." said Mr. Riggs. "I think this is it. Let's give it a try, huh?"

Soon enough Elizabeth's arm was through one of the holes in the oven, which had cooled off quite a bit since Elizabeth had calibrated it, and resting in the pan Mr. Riggs had produced from beneath the work bench. Mr. Riggs adjusted the hole through which Elizabeth's arm passed, an arm that had become quite a bit leaner over past few weeks than it had been before, to close the gap between her flesh and the wall of the oven. The hole adjusted sort of like a film camera shutter, with lots of flat, straight pieces somehow coming together to make a neat circular opening which cinched down on her arm firmly, but not painfully. Every piece was, of course, glass, which meant that Elizabeth could see into the oven quite clearly.

"There we go. I'll turn up the heat just a bit, then baste your arm with the sauce." said Mr. Riggs, happily fussing over the oven.

Elizabeth felt the heat under her arm almost immediately. It wasn't very intense, but definitely noticeable. Elizabeth was then distracted from this fact by a squirt of cold, oily marinade splattering across her hand and up her arm.

Mr. Riggs coated her skin liberally with the sauce, then used the brush to spread it over and around her arm, even going so far as to ask Elizabeth to angle her arm upwards, so he could make sure the underside was coated as well. The smell of the sauce, strong and spicy, wafted out from the oven and filled the small room they were in.

"There we go." said Mr. Riggs, when he was finally satisfied with the amount of sauce on Elizabeth's flesh. "Now I'll just close up the oven and turn up the heat a little more. Still comfortable, Elizabeth?"

"Umm, I suppose so. It isn't very hot yet." replied Elizabeth, a bit uncertainly.

"Well, let's give it a few minutes, shall we?" said Mr. Riggs, as he closed up the side panel and turned the temperature dial up slightly.

Mr. Riggs and Elizabeth sat in silence for several minutes, watching Elizabeth's arm through the glass of the oven. Eventually Mr. Riggs looked over at Elizabeth, inquiringly.

"Um, it's warm. Er, kinda hot actually, but only like a very hot summer day hot. Not oven hot, Mr. Riggs."

"Very well. I'm going to re-baste you, then turn the oven up a bit more." Mr. Riggs replied.

He opened the oven and started using the brush to mop up sauce that had pooled in the pan around the underside of Elizabeth's arm, then slathered the sauce back on to its top. He tried sucking the sauce up with the turkey baster, but it was too viscous and not deep enough to work very well. He then closed the oven back up and turned the temperature knob up even higher.

Mr. Riggs repeated this procedure every few minutes, and the temperature inside the oven increased after each repeat.

"Ahh.. Mr. Riggs, it's really hot now. It's starting to hurt." said Elizabeth, finally.

"I see. You've done very well, Elizabeth. I didn't expect you to be able to endure this much heat, but you've held up splendidly." Mr. Riggs replied, smiling at her. "Let me baste your arm one last time, then I'll turn off the oven and we can get you out of it."

Mr. Riggs opened up the oven again, and used the turkey baster to suck up the copious amounts of hot sauce pooling around the bottom of the pan. He squirted the steaming fluid over Elizabeth's arm, producing a groan from the girl as the heat settled deeper into her flesh. Mr. Riggs had added more sauce to Elizabeth's arm during the third basting. The increased amount of sauce, and the sauce's decreasing viscosity as it heated up, meant that the turkey baster had slowly become the better tool to re-baste Elizabeth's arm.

Mr. Riggs closed the oven, turned the temperature dial all the way down, then loosened the glass iris that kept Elizabeth's arm within the oven. It took a few moments to open up the portal, as the glass components of the device had expanded slightly with the heat and wedged into each other tightly.

"Hmm, one more thing to redesign." stated Mr. Riggs, not unhappily.

Elizabeth started to extract her arm from the oven, but halted when she heard Mr. Riggs' voice.

"With the pan, Elizabeth. Let's not make a mess of the workbench or your clothes, alright?"

Elizabeth reached her free hand into the oven and grabbed the pan underneath her right arm. She winced slightly at the heat of it on her left fingertips, even though the fingertips of her right hand, which lay within the hot sauce on the bottom of the pan, felt only a little uncomfortable. It made her think about that old saying about frogs and boiling water.

Elizabeth carefully removed her arm and the pan from within the oven, turning to place them along side the oven on the workbench. Mr. Riggs hovered around her, looking ready to catch the pan if she fumbled it.

"Well, that looks pretty good, doesn't it." said Mr. Riggs, looking down at Elizabeth's arm after she had set it and the pan on the work bench.

"I suppose the only thing to do now is to have a taste."

To Elizabeth's surprise, Mr. Riggs promptly picked up her arm by the wrist and casually popped several of her fingers into his mouth. Elizabeth heaved in a startled breath as she felt her fingers brush over her teacher's lips, tongue, and teeth. Mr. Riggs then started sucking on her digits, rubbing his tongue back and forth against her fingertips, pushing them up against the roof of his mouth. He even started gently mashing her fingers between his teeth, almost, but not quite, chewing them.

"Ah, ahh.. um." Elizabeth breathed, in little gasps.

Mr. Riggs had a look of intense concentration on his face, and he seemed to be savoring the taste of her fingers, judging by the time he took in sampling them. Finally, though, he slid them from his mouth with a studied neutral expression on his face.

"Try it, and tell me what you think." Mr. Riggs instructed her, as he let go of her hand.

"Umm.. okay." Elizabeth said, in a small voice.

She peered at her hand for a moment, thoughtfully, then brought it to her mouth and sucked at her thumb. She didn't suck or chew as enthusiastically or vigorously as her teacher had, but she did run her tongue around it several times, tasting the sauce that coated and soaked into her skin.

It tasted.. Bad. Not really, really bad, but definitely bad enough to be unpleasant.

"Yuck. I taste horrible." said Elizabeth, after she spit out her own thumb.

"No, no." said Mr. Riggs, contradicting her. "You tasted fine, I think. The problem was the sauce. It doesn't complement you at all. It's quite revolting, really. I'll have to let Miss Evans know. Maybe it would be better if cooked in all the way, but I honestly doubt it. A pity."

"Still, may as well finish it off, just to be thorough." said Mr. Riggs, as he took Elizabeth by her sauce covered arm again.

Over next few minutes, her teacher sucked, licked, and nibbled his way up her entire arm. The oddest moment, perhaps, was when Mr. Riggs' eyes briefly met hers while he was sucking on her elbow. It was absolutely ridiculous, seeing him there with most of her bent elbow buried in his mouth. She almost burst out laughing. In contrast, the several moments he spent on the inside of her elbow was.. something else. The sensations of her teacher's mouth and tongue on her skin there made little shivers run up her arm and across the rest of her body, surprising her.

Soon enough, Mr. Riggs had removed the majority of sauce from her skin. He set her arm back down on the cooling pan, and heaved a little sigh.

"Yes, quite disappointing. Perhaps we'll do better next time." he said, covering him mouth to stifle a small burp.

"Uh, next time?" Elizabeth asked, skeptically.

Mr. Riggs shrugged and waved his hands, noncommittally.

"You had better get cleaned up and on your way home. You may as well wash the pan, brush and baster off while you're at it." Mr. Riggs said, motioning to the lab sink. "I'm going to go return this dreadful sauce from whence it came. I'll see you on Monday, Elizabeth. Thank you for all your help."

Elizabeth spent a few moments cleaning her arm off, then washing up the pan and utensils Mr. Riggs had semi-cooked her arm with. Her hands, the right one still a little discolored from the marinade and feeling a bit odd after the heat of the oven, went on autopilot as she pondered what had just happened.

Mr. Riggs had said that she "tasted fine", and she wasn't quite sure whether she should be happy at the positive assessment or more worried that the man who made it was a self admitted enthusiast of the idea of cooking girls. Elizabeth herself happened to be a girl, funnily enough, and thought that it might be a bad idea for Mr. Riggs to start liking how she tasted.

Elizabeth shook her head, dismissing her concerns from her mind. Mr. Riggs had said that he needed her to build his ovens, so she probably didn't have to worry about him trying to put her into one of them at some point. Besides, she thought, her mind returning to more immediate prospects, it was now officially the weekend, and she had lots to look forward to.

Smiling, Elizabeth forgot her concerns and left the classroom, happily anticipating the next few days.