The School Play
By
Edward Hyde


“Oh come on, you two!” Mrs. Parker chuckled, finding Elizabeth on her knees on the tiled floor of the shower cubicle, Preston’s willy in her mouth. “People are starting to arrive and you need to get into costume!” Elizabeth, since she knew it was rude to talk with her mouth full, held up a finger to ask the amused teacher to wait as she bobbed back and forth faster than before, determined to get the result she’d been working towards before having to dry off and get ready. Steadying himself on the wall of the cubical with one hand and with the other on the back of her head, Preston gave a long groan as she squirted his hot cum in his friend’s mouth. Satisfied, Elizabeth lucked the last couple of drops from the end of his rapidly wilting willy, swallowed proudly then stood up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

“Sorry!” She smiled, not at all embarrassed by having been caught in such a compromising position but feeling a little guilty at potentially holding everyone else up and having asked her teacher to wait like that. “I just wanted to take care of that before we start. Don’t want him putting someone’s eye out when his clothes come off, do we?” she asked with a giggle.

“You can talk!” Preston teased, flicking her perky pink nipple with the tip of his finger. “It’s not even a cold day!”

“Just as well!” Elizabeth stuck out her tongue, rubbing her stinging nipple with her palm as if to soothe it but succeeding only in making herself more aroused. “Else your little fireman might disappear entirely!” In truth, Preston was not badly hung for a ten year old but what was the point of a friendship as close as theirs if you couldn’t tease each other under such circumstances? Instinctively, Preston covered himself with a cupped hand, the head of his willy still tingling from Elizabeth’s surprise but very welcome blow-job. He certainly felt more relaxed as a result of it and, while he couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t get another erection when he was actually spitted, he was fairly sure he would not have to spend the entire show with one!

“Enough mucking about, now!” Mrs Parker shook her head in amusement. Twenty minutes until curtain-up! Mrs Jennings is waiting to help with your hair so hurry up and get dressed!” The pair promised that they would be as quick as possible and both reached for the hanging towels. The rest of the cast had gone straight into the main changing rooms to get into their costumes but, as their roles required a higher level of cleanliness than can often be found amongst ten year old school-children at the end of the school day, they had been sent through to the showers. Of course they had opted to share one, despite five being available, so, they had said, they could make sure each other were properly clean! None of the teachers or parents who had agreed to help out had been fooled for a second but all concluded that the friends were entitled to have a little fun since they would not survive the performance, and since they had both put in so much work to the story and script of the play itself!

The idea for the story had started on a visit to the museum on a school trip into the city. In one of the exhibitions the children had seen several human skulls covered in gold and jewels. At first they had thought that they were just model skulls like the crystal ones they had seen on TV, but the information board and short video displayed beside the artefacts themselves showed that these were real skulls that had been ornamented by the Central American culture that had created them. Elizabeth had got to wondering who the skulls had belonged to and whether it was something they did to honour dead people or to show off trophies? While they ate their packed lunches, she had started talking about them with her best friend Preston and he has questioned how they ended up in the museum – whether they had been stolen by explorers or worse, or whether they had been a gift from the people who made them? They had giggled together, imagining a scenario where some explorers went trying to steal the people’s treasures and ending up with their heads turned into these decorations that had then been gifted to the museum.

The other exciting things they saw that afternoon had pushed the skulls and this story from their minds until a week or so later when their teacher had told them that it was time to start planning the class play and asked if anyone had any story ideas. Elizabeth had pitched the story that she and Preston had come up with and suggested it be a comedy. The rest of the class had liked the idea and they had all worked together, throwing in ideas and jokes until, by the end of the lesson, they had a pretty robust outline in place. Over lunch, the friends had chatted about their idea some more and, by the time they went back in for afternoon lessons, they had come up with an additional idea to make the performance all the more memorable.

Since pupil-roasts were an established part of the annual summer fair, and the Christmas fundraiser, so the idea of spit-roasting a couple of the class-members during the course of the show, while novel, was not that shocking, and would be considered a nice treat. Neither Elizabeth nor Preston could remember the casting of the two explorers ever really being discussed, nor could they remember agreeing to take on the roles, with everything that would entail. It just seemed to be assumed from the start that they would be the stars of the show they had conceived but they would not have had it any other way and they could not be happier.

Of course, permission had to be sought from their parents but this was really a formality. The only time the teachers had ever known a parent refuse the school permission to cook their child was when they had earmarked them for a special meal themselves, perhaps a family wedding or as Christmas dinner, and both friends were sure that nobody had called dibs on their meat so far. Of course, there were some families who had religious or cultural objections to cannibalism in general but these were very rare and considered weird outsiders by the majority of society. Preston and Elizabeth’s families were certainly not among them. When Mrs Parker had called both sets of parents for preliminary permission, explaining that the official forms would be sent home with the children that afternoon, both had agreed on the condition that they be allowed to attend, both to watch the performance and to taste the meat afterwards. This was a condition that the teacher was well used to and accepted happily.

The rest of the class had been assigned their roles – some playing other characters and some who were less comfortable on stage taking on other no less essential tasks such as helping to make costumes, props and scenery with five forming a little band to provide backing for the few repurposed popular songs that would be included in the production, similar to most pantomimes.

As well as taking the central roles, the friends had insisted that they wanted to make the prop skulls that would be passed off as their own, because of course there was no way that their actual heads could be stripped, and their skulls decorated during the run of the performance. Preston’s mum was very into art and dabbled in many different mediums so had offered to help them at the weekend.

On Saturday morning, Sarah had gone round to Preston’s house, enjoying as she always did the smell of incense in the air and the general artistic and bohemian atmosphere within the small but cosy family home.

“Daddy says I can stay over, if that’s okay with you?” she smiled when Preston’s mum, a tall, elegant olive-skinned lady with long black hair in a bun and dressed in a light, floaty dress which was almost see-through but not quite, welcomed her in.

“Of course it is!” she cooed in that welcoming way she always did. “I did suggest to him it would be a good idea when he called. If we’re going to do this properly, we’ll need to leave them on the stove overnight anyway so it’s good that you’ll be here in the morning!”

“Leave what?” Sarah asked, intrigued. She knew that some types of clay needed to be baked but she was sure that her friend’s mum had said “on” rather than “in”.

“Why, the heads of course!” Preston’s mum, Amanda, grinned. “Simmering them for several hours really is the best way to strip the flesh away. I’ll show you how to clean them out inside of course,” she smiled warmly, “it’s really quite a lot of fun!”

“Wow!” Sarah gasped, not really sure why she was quite so surprised. “We’re using real skulls? I thought we were going to make pretend ones!”

“Oh no! The real thing is much better!” Amanda beamed fondly at her. “I’m afraid we’ll have to make do with gold paint rather than real gold but we can still make them look beautiful! I’ve had a good old rummage through my craft drawers and found all sorts of plastic jewels, sequins and other shiny things we can stick on!

Just then, Preston appeared behind her. He was carrying a box of art supplies and grinned when he saw his friend.

“Oh great, you’re here!” he beamed happily. “Did Mum tell you? We’re going to the butcher to get some heads!”

Only a few minutes later, they were in Preston’s mum’s car, having managed to find space on the back seat among the paper coffee-cups, cookie wrappers and other debris that the free-spirited lady seemed to accumulate there. Elizabeth was intrigued. She had shopped for people-meat with her dad before, plenty of times, and even watched a few slaughters when they happened to arrive at the shop at the right time, but she had never given much thought to the heads of the people, mostly girls, she saw harvested. She knew that sometimes bits of meat, like the tongue and cheeks, were stripped from them, and some people even considered the brain and eyeballs to be delicacies but generally, she knew, heads were considered a waste product. Sometimes they were turned into trophies or sex toys but the taxidermists generally only wanted the most attractive heads and made use of no more than five percent of all the girls and boys slaughtered for their meat every day, either in small butcher shops or the larger slaughter-houses.

When they arrived at the little high-street shop with its window display of various cuts of boy and girl alongside the pork, beef, lamb and chicken, Amanda led the sway, sweeping in the way she seemed to sweep everywhere.

“Morning!” The cheerful butcher greeted the little party. “Buying or selling?” Elizabeth giggled – she was well used to this joke from the times she and her Daddy had visited and knew that it was something the butcher said to every parent who came in with their home-raised piggies.

“Just buying today, I’m afraid!” Amanda replied with a chuckle. “We’re actually here for something quite specific!”

“Go ahead!” grinned the butcher. “There’s not a lot I don’t have or can’t get if it’s out of stock!”

“We’re actually looking for a couple of heads.” smiled Amanda. “A boy and a girl, about their age if possible?” She indicated her son and his friend.

“I see!” The butcher rubbed his chin, slightly surprised by the unusual request. There was a bin of heads out in the courtyard of his shop, waiting to be collected and incinerated, but when people did ask for heads they were usually looking for something particular and he wasn’t sure he’d have what they wanted. Not only that but the morning was warm and, as they were simply waste waiting to be destroyed, they were not refrigerated or preserved in any way and he would be very uncomfortable selling them for consumption. “You want to put them out for the birds or something?”

“No,” explained Amanda while the children listened with interest, “it’s for an art project! We’re going to be stripping the flesh and using the skulls!”

“Oooh I see!” the butcher visibly brightened. “I’m sure I can find you something. One boy and one girl, you say?”

“Yes, please.” Amanda nodded happily.

“We get a lot more girls than boys through,” he explained reflectively, “but I think there’s a few boys to choose from. My last pickup was Thursday, so the bin is pretty full. Tell you what,” he smiled, “why don’t you come through and pick for yourselves? It’s outside so the smell won’t be too bad, and you can put masks and gloves on if you want?” Amanda immediately agreed but the children looked a little hesitant, exchanging glances.

“Don’t worry!” the butcher chuckled even more heartily, guessing what might be going through their minds. “I get more than enough volunteers, I don’t need to go around tricking anyone! You’re perfectly safe in my slaughter-room and yard! Unless you decide you want to volunteer while you’re there, of course?” This was an obvious joke and both friends chuckled along with him. “Come on!” he grinned. “Let’s find you some heads!”

“Let’s go, gang!” Amanda smiled happily to the children before turning to the butcher. “Yeah, sorry,” she giggled, “but these two are spoken for!”

The butcher led the excited little party through the back room – the tiled work-space where the boys and girls whose meat he sold were slaughtered. Elizabeth couldn’t resist looking around at all the equipment, the chains and the knives and the saws, and imagining herself being processed in this room. Although there was an appeal to being butchered like a farm animal and turned into anonymous cuts of meat, she was fairly sure she preferred the idea of being whole-roasted and eaten by her friends and family. The idea of whether or not she actually wanted to be eaten never really occurred to her – it had always felt like a question of when and how rather than if.

At the back of the room was a door labelled as a fire-exit which opened with a big bar. The butcher pushed it open and ushered them out into a small yard, concrete with a drain in the middle. It was enclosed by buildings on three sides with a double gate at the far end that a delivery fan could be backed into. At the end nearest the door was a large industrial bin on wheels. The butcher opened it and Elizabeth and Preston stood on tiptoes to see the contents. What they saw within was dozens and dozens of severed heads, some from children as young as four or five and a few that looked adult but most from children around their own age.

A few flies were buzzing around inside the bin and some of the skin on the heads had discolored, especially around the mouths and the neck-stumps where they had been cut off. This was especially noticeable on the Caucasian heads which made up the majority of those in the bin, the peach-colored flesh turned greenish grey in places. But that didn’t matter – they weren’t planning on eating them after all! Despite the decomposition, the smell was not too bad. Not putrid or vomit-inducing like the friends had worried, just sort of musty like a compost heap or the general smell that lingers around farms in the countryside.

“How about that one?” Elizabeth suggested with excitement, pointing at the head of a pretty blonde like herself not far from the top, laying on its side with the eyes rolled upwards. It looked as if the girl had been around the same age as her and there was a pretty reasonable resemblance – it would certainly seem plausible, once the flesh was stripped away, that the skull inside was her own.

“Excellent choice!” the butcher chuckled, pulling it out by the hair and holding it up for the young girl to inspect. Standing behind the children, Preston’s mum signaled her approval with a nod. “Pretty fresh too!” he chuckled, “Just harvested her this morning in fact! Sweet girl, kept singing that song about sausages right up to the end!” Elizabeth giggled.

“Did you turn any of her into sausages?” Preston asked.

“I did, in fact!” the butcher grinned. “Seemed fitting!”

“Oh Mum, can we get some please?” He looked up pleadingly, giving his best charming smile and making the most of his famously long eyelashes that his mum’s friends always remarked upon. “You can make your famous sausage casserole for dinner!”

“That sounds like a great idea!” Amanda smiled warmly, to her son’s great delight. “So that’s one. What about the second one, do you have a boy in there?”

“Let’s see…” The butcher passed the selected head to Elizabeth then leaned over the edge of the bin, rummaging a little and pushing other heads aside. Boy volunteers were less common but he knew there were a few in there, he just could not quite remember if any were suitable. Although when he had started out in this business, when his own children were around the age of many of those who came for slaughter, he had promised himself that he would remember each and every one of them and treat them with respect and dignity, he had found this a promise impossible to keep. Sure, there were some like the singing girl who stuck in his mind, and others that stood out for one reason or another but with an average of ten children and teens harvested per day, it was impossible to remember all of them. Still, he prided himself on treating them well up until slaughter and making sure that they enjoyed the experience as best they could, so he did not feel too guilty that their faces and bodies tended to blur in his memory most of the time.

“Ah-ha!” he grinned, taking hold of a mop of light-brown hair. “Here’s the fellow!” He triumphantly pulled up the head in question. It was indeed that of a boy around ten years old and, although he was more decomposed than the girl, his flesh discolored and swollen, it could be seen that his bone-structure was not too far off Preston’s.

“Great!” Preston clapped his hands together excitedly. “He’ll make a great stunt-double for me!” The butcher chuckled once more as he led the party back into the shop, explaining what they would need to do to strip the skulls as he went.

“Best that you do it in the garden,” he said, “or put some plastic down at least. The rotten stuff actually comes off a bit easier, but you’ll find if you make some cuts with a sharp knife you’ll be able to peel the flesh away pretty easily, just don’t expect it not to be messy. Eyes you can pop out with either a long knife or anything you can get behind them really, and if you don’t want to break the skull open, which I’m guessing you don’t if it’s for a project, you can scoop most of the brain out with a tea-spoon through the eye-sockets and the nose. Bit like making a Halloween pumpkin really!” he chuckled. “I do sell brain too,” he pointed to the counter where there were some slices on display, now that they were back inside, “but there’s not a lot of call for it so I only really do two per day. You saw some of the heads had the top cut off?”

“Yes!” Elizabeth giggled, “Like boiled eggs!”

“That’s right!” the butcher laughed, ringing up the sausages and agreeing a token price for the heads with Amanda, “Then to get the rest of the flesh off, you just have to boil them over night, and you’ll be left with a nice clean skull!”

“In the museum it said that the people used to put the heads on ants nests and the ants would strip them clean!” Elizabeth piped up, eager to show off her knowledge. “Is that right? Does that work?”

“Well it does,” the butcher rubbed his chin again, “but it takes a long time. It’s the best and safest way of doing it if you want to be sure you won’t damage the bones, I think that’s what museums still do with their samples, but it takes a couple of months!”

“Oh, we haven’t got that long.” Elizabeth confirmed a little sadly. She had somehow imagined hoards of ants swarming the heads and stripping the flesh away in mines, like piranha fish in movies. “Oh well, the other way sounds fun too!”

Soon they were back in the car and on their way back to Preston’s house, the friends both holding a head each, securely sealed in plastic bags. When they got back to the house, Amanda ushered them straight out into the garden and set down a couple of plastic bin-liners for them to work over, to contain the mess as well as possible, then gathered an assortment of utensils from the kitchen.

“Oh! Wait a minute!” She exclaimed as the children readied themselves to attack the heads. “Your mum will kill me if you go home with your nice clothes messed up!” She grabbed two plastic aprons off the kitchen door. “Take your clothes off and pop these on! You too, Preston!” A little shy but knowing it made sense, Preston pulled off his t-shirt and jeans, leaving his underwear on, and put on the apron. Elizabeth turned her back on her friend as she undressed, also stripping down to her panties, not yet having any need of a bra but considering her bare, slightly budding chest “private” none the less, and putting on the apron quickly before she turned back and handed her clothes to Preston’s mum.

Amanda chuckled and tutted at the children’s modesty, considering what they had agreed to, and came up with an idea to help them get over their shyness.

“You two have fun!” she grinned. “I have to go and make some phone-calls.” Once she had left them to it, the friends got stuck into their project. As the butcher had said it would, the flesh on Preston’s head practically fell away while Elizabeth’s, being fresher, took more work. The most satisfying part, she found, was when she was able to cut around the hair-line and peel the hair off like a wig! Popping out the eyes was also lots of fun – Elizabeth used a long spoon meant for sundaes while Preston, being a typical boy in many way, made a much messier job of trying to stab them out with a steak knife! Soon they were both happily scooping the brain-matter out with the sundae spoons which, they both found, worked very well for the task!

After a while, Amanda came back out and sat watched them happily as she sat on a garden bench and enjoyed a cup of lemon tea. Preston actually noticed a few ants crawling around and tried carefully picking one up and dropping it onto the skull but, to his disappointment, it showed very little interest and soon wandered off again. The pair chatted happily as they worked, their voices and laughter punctuated by the chinking of the spoons on the inside of the skulls as they did their best to scrape them clean.

“Looks like you’re nearly finished?” she smiled, finishing her tea and walking over to take a look. Preston held up his skull proudly and Elizabeth also grinned, scraping some last scraps of flesh off the top of hers with the back of a knife. “Perfect!” she beamed. “Let’s get them into the pots to boil then we can clean up out here, then I’ve got a little surprise for you to help with the play!”

“Ooh, what?” Preston asked excitedly.

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise!” Amanda stuck her tongue out playfully at her ten year old son. He pouted but Elizabeth giggled, just as eager to find out as he was but recognizing that her friend’s mum was not going to tell them until she was ready. In the kitchen, Amanda had prepared two large saucepans with lids which were two thirds filled with water, set on the two back burners of the stove. “Pop them in!” she smiled and the children leaned over the hob and carefully lowered their stripped and emptied skulls into the water where small fragments of blood and debris immediately floated to the surface, some bobbing held by almost invisible threads. Amanda then lit the gas burners underneath, turning them very low, then popped the lids on.

“Okay!” she grinned, looking at her son and his friend stood smiling up at her dressed in underwear and colorful plastic aprons. “We’ll need to check these again in a few hours and I’ll top up the water before I go to bed but now, let me show you the surprise!”

“Ooh!” Elizabeth bounced excitedly, then looked around for her clothes. “Should we get dressed again first?”

“Oh no,” replied Amanda with an enigmatic smile, “that won’t be necessary! Follow me!” Intrigued, the friends followed her into the living room where she had rearranged the furniture so that the coffee table was moved close to one wall with a tablecloth covering it and the other chairs, including the wooden ones that were normally around the coffee table, arranged in a sort of semi-circle pointing towards it.

“What’s this for?” Preston asked, puzzled.

“My friends from the art class are coming over soon,” his mum grinned, clasping her hands together, “and you two are going to pose for them, nude.”

“Nude?” Preston gulped. “Like, naked? Nothing on at all?”

“Nope, not a stitch!” chuckled Amanda. “It will be very good practice for you!” Preston blushed deeply but Elizabeth nodded, understanding.

“We have to be naked when we cook!” she reminded him, but then she turned to Amanda. “But why do we need practice for that? All we have to do is take our clothes off? That can’t exactly go wrong!”

“Ah but you’re not just taking your clothes off, are you?” Amanda smiled. “Undressing to be cooked or butchered is just the same as taking off your clothes for a bath or shower, simple enough as you say, but that’s not what’s going to happen, is it?” Both children looked at her, a little puzzled. “I’ve read your script, remember?” she smiled, “When I was helping Preston with his lines, and I see that your characters lose their clothes about halfway through, rather than just being stripped at the end before you cook.” Elizabeth felt a little tingle between her legs at hearing her real death described so casually, and really realizing for the first time the implication of the line in the script she had not thought too much about but which meant that she would spend at least half an hour stark naked in front of the whole school and lots of the parents! “So you’re going to need to act in the nude, and that’s quite different from just being naked!”

“Ooh…” Preston nodded. “Yeah I kinda didn’t think about that. I guess I just sort of thought… Oh, yeah, that feels stupid now.”

“What, honey?” his mum asked kindly. “I’m sure it’s not stupid!”

“Well I kinda knew we’d be naked,” Preston explained, looking down and twisting his fingers around each other, “but I was thinking like that would be another costume. A naked person costume, you know? I mean…” he sighed, “I knew that’s not what it would really be but I hadn’t really thought about, you know, actually being naked and everyone seeing my…” He broke off, blushing even deeper.

“That’s exactly why I set this up!” Amanda smiled. “Posing for my friends will show you what it’s like being looked at like that and you’ll be able to get used to it a bit!” Both children nodded, agreeing that she was right and that it was a good idea. “So,” she smiled again, “let’s get you ready and no being shy this time!”

Elizabeth reached around behind her back and untied the apron then pulled it over her head.

“Come on!” she urged her friend as she stood in her underwear, folding the apron and handing it to Amanda. “If you can’t take your clothes off for your mum’s friends, how are you going to handle stripping off for the whole school?” Of course she did feel a little self-conscious exposing her bare chest to her friend and his mum and was definitely nervous about taking off her panties and displaying her own full-frontal nudity to a group of strangers but she knew that Amanda’s point was valid. Also, she could not deny the excitement she felt at the idea of posing in the nude while everyone stared at her body, and although she only thought of him as a friend, she was certainly intrigued to see Preston naked too!

She watched as her friend took off his apron then played awkwardly with the waistband of his underpants. He seemed to be avoiding looking her in the eye and she noticed, to her amusement, that the front of his pants was bulging. She has seen her Daddy naked often enough, and played with his willy enough times in the bath or even in bed to know exactly what was going on inside her friend’s underwear! Still, her Daddy was the only person she had been naked around since she was a toddler so she understood Preston’s reluctance.

“Okay,” she smiled, tucking her thumbs under the elastic of her own panties, “let’s go together, on three, okay?” Preston nodded. “One… Two… THREE!” She tugged down her underwear, exposing her smooth, plump pussy and watched as Preston did the same, his ten year old willy standing to attention. Both children giggled as they tugged their underwear off over their feet then stood and looked at each other with interest.

Although used to seeing her Daddy naked, getting to check out a boy her own age was a rare treat for Elizabeth. Naked girls were a bit more of a common site, either on posters and billboards advertising girl-meat or places where you could buy it, or in person either stood in shop windows or handing out flyers but still it was exciting for Preston to see his friend in the nude for the first time. There was no way he could keep his body from reacting and he blushed sheepishly as she giggled at his erect willy.

While the children checked each other out, Amanda looked them both over. They were certainly a beautiful pair – both quite tall for their age, around the same height as each other, and with healthy, athletic figures, toned without being muscular. Preston had her own colouring – olive skin, dark brown hair that flopped nonchalantly over his forehead and eyes that could be grey or green depending on the light, while Elizabeth was a golden child in every way – honey-coloured skin and thick, wavy, golden hair. She thought they looked lovelier naked than they ever could in any type of clothing and it was exciting to imagine them turning slowly over red hot coals, their delicious meat roasting. Both, she observed, had round, peachy rumps and she hoped, as the parent of one of the volunteers, she’d be able to get a slice from each. Elizabeth’s chest was just starting to bud, her dark pink nipples perky and prominent as if they had large marbles behind them, although how much of that was her normal state and how much was from the excitement of the moment, she did not like to guess!

“Oh dear!” she chuckled, looking down at her son’s admittedly impressive erection. “That’s going to be a bit awkward for the art class! Maybe you should…” she started to suggest before having a different, more interesting and exciting thought. “Elizabeth, dear?” she smiled. “Do you ever give your Daddy relief with your mouth?”

“Relief?” Elizabeth asked, a little puzzled.