Off With Her Head
(or Eat Me – Dinner in Wonderland)
By
Edward Hyde
“Curiouser and curiouser!” Melanie chuckled as her four cast members trooped out to the minibus and it was indeed an apt statement, as the four girls, ranging in age from ten to fourteen, looked very much as if they had just climbed out of an animated movie. Either that, or a fever-dream brought on by mouldy cheese! They stopped and lined up by the side for a final costume inspection then climbed aboard and got strapped in, making themselves as comfortable as they could in the strange costumes, the two with tails pushing them to their right and left respectively as they sat side by side in the middle of the row of seats with the other two sitting at either end of the row in front.

Before climbing into the front passenger seat, Melanie repeated the key points of her pep-talk about how important this event was, how big and opportunity it was for the company, how grateful she was to all of them for agreeing to be a part of it and how much it mattered that everything went off perfectly as arranged. She wanted to praise her cast members, of course, to make them feel good about themselves and enthusiastic for their upcoming performances, and what would follow, of course, but she also wished to impress upon them the significance of this event for the future of the company. If it went well, then Fantasy Feasts would be transported into a whole new tier of status and profitability. This party had the feeling of an unofficial audition – pass it, and Fantasy Feasts could expect to become the go-to caterers for the wealthy and powerful, fail it and they would forever be stuck hosting low-budget parties in church halls and suburban gardens. Since Melanie had been the one to arrange this booking, the event was truly make or break for her too! If it did indeed prove to be the start of bigger and better things, she had been promised a promotion to head of her own division created specifically to manage these high status events. Complaints or demands for refunds would very likely see her out of a job.

“What kind of a name is Strawberry anyway?” Ten year old Gemma asked, smoothing out the front of her pretty pinafore dress.

“That’s not the worst of it!” Melanie chuckled, strapping herself in and signalling to the driver that they were good to go. The girls in the back all leaned forward curiously. “Her middle name is Cheesecake!”

“Really?” Tania exclaimed. “Like, seriously? They christened her Strawberry Cheesecake?”

“Strawberry… Cheesecake…” Gemma repeated incredulously while Becky and Andrea giggled from behind.

“I’m afraid so!” Melanie shook her head in amusement as they pulled out of the car park in the colourful minibus with the company logo and airbrush-paintings of various public-domain characters on the sides. “Strawberry Cheesecake Miller!”

“Sounds like a job someone in a Shrek movie might have!” Becky laughed.

“You know how celebrities are!” Melanie shrugged. “Heck, think of Rainbow Coleman! Her dad was an actor who was probably as big as Lance Miller back in his day!”

“Yeah but unless her middle name is Sprinkles or something like that…” Gemma retorted.

“It’s Jane.” Tania informed nobody in particular, more interested in the view out of the window and wondering what people in the other vehicles they passed might make of what they glimpsed inside!

“Sorry?” Gemma turned to her.

“Rainbow Coleman’s middle name! It’s Jane.” Tania repeated, smiling proudly at knowing this piece of trivia. “I read a book about her sister and it was mentioned in that!” Everyone else nodded, intrigued.

“Damn site better than Sprinkles!” Gemma giggled. “Or Cheesecake!”

“Good thing you will only be referring to her as Your Majesty!” Melanie reminded the young girl ever so slightly tartly. Yes, the name was stupid, but she did not want her cast members’ amusement over it being the factor that turned the party from a success to a failure!

Fantasy Feasts was a catering company with a gimmick. Although not exclusively, the bulk of their bookings were for children’s birthday parties, although increasingly they had been getting enquiries from adults wanting to put a big of magic back into their celebrations and had even catered a few themed weddings! They were also popular for book launches and school events, offering customisation options that allowed authors to see their characters come to life, albeit temporarily!

Their gimmick was that the meat-girls and occasional boys that they cooked would arrive at the party dressed as a popular character with the catering staff also in related themed costumes. Princesses such as Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were very popular choices but they had also been asked for superheroes or characters from sci-fi and fantasy movies and TV shows.

It had been quite a shock when they had received a request from a Personal Assistant on behalf of Hollywood superstar Lance Miller and his wife, the model Carolina Enchantra-Miller who also ran her own, asking them to cater their daughter’s sixth birthday party. Over a number of phone calls and emails, Melanie had discovered the full brief.

The party was to be themed around “Alice in Wonderland” and would be a fancy dress party where the birthday girl would be dressed not as Alice, as might have been expected, but as the Queen of Hearts. The little girl, it turned out, had become obsessed with the idea of ordering “Off with their head!” and they wanted to make her dream come true by purchasing a meat-girl Alice who could be beheaded at her order, her body then chopped up for a barbecue. As well as Alice, they wanted to serve Mock Turtle Soup with oysters and deep-fried lobster. They also expected an array of sandwiches, cakes and jam tarts.

Fantasy Feasts had a long-standing policy of working closely with local theatre groups, dance clubs, choirs and stage schools, recruiting as much of their meat as possible, referred to as cast members, from such sources. Providing an Alice and the three requested creatures would provide a variety of challenges. While a professional-quality Alice costume was easy enough to come by, for there was not way such a high-end client would be satisfied with the meat showing up in a fancy dress costume from a party store, the chosen meat-girl would have to not only be delicious and willing to be beheaded rather than being roasted alive as most girls seemed to crave but also to look the part, enough to satisfy a no doubt rather spoilt six year old girl who was obsessed with the character.

The challenge of the animal characters was not only to find girls willing to be cooked by those methods, boiling often being seen as the option for lower quality meat, something no girl or boy wanted to see themselves as, and deep-frying being an incredibly painful way to cook, although admittedly quick with the pain really only lasting for a maximum of thirty seconds, but also how to present them in a way that would satisfy Hollywood professionals! Taking their cue from tie-in promotions that Sidney’s had offered for the Wicked movies, repeated periodically for their various anniversary re-releases, Melanie and her team had decided to go with a mixture of skin dye and edible body paint coupled with costume pieces made from rich velvet and stuffed like cuddly toys. These, of course, would need to be removed for the cooking but could, in the case of the lobsters at least, be put back on when they were served or displayed close by.

The cast members were not just providing the food, of course. They would also be an important part of the entertainment! Tania, as the Mock Turtle, would sing the song “Beautiful Soup” before being lifted in and Becky and Andrea, the lobsters, would dance the carefully choreographed “Lobster Quadrille” along with two men from the catering team who would be dressed as the Walrus and the Carpenter from “Through the Looking Glass”. Gemma as Alice would mingle with the guests and join in some games before the time came for the order to be given for her execution, at which point she would be stripped by two team-members dressed as playing card soldiers and kneel at a block to be beheaded with a heavy, very sharp, executioner’s axe modelled on the one on display in the Tower of London. As the lead caterer for the event, Melanie was dressed as the Mad Hatter.

Having spent the whole morning at the Millers’ country house, which was to be the venue for the party, setting up in the garden, Melanie had been forced to leave the final costuming to members of her team and the professional body-painters they had brought in for the occasion. Although she had been nervous about not being able to oversee this part of the operation herself, she had been delighted with the results when she got back and she was confident that the clients were going to be equally thrilled when they saw the girls!

Tania, who had been the first to be recruited and, like the three others, would have made a prime roaster under other circumstances, along with the two older girls, chosen not only due to the lovely bodies and proven dance skills but also the promise of their high pain tolerance, another reason that Melanie and her team had targetted older volunteers to be the lobsters, had agreed to have their heads shaved in preparation and had been given the hair-removal treatment all over, including eyebrows, while Gemma, with her long, golden curls and pretty blue eyes making her the perfect Alice, had only received the more conventional neck-down treatment. Becky and Andrea had been recruited from a stage school that specialised in dance while Tania and Gemma had come from two different theatre clubs although they knew each other from school.

The hair removal had taken place two days earlier and, although after her treatment, she was technically free to go home, Gemma had stayed to watch the dying process. Tania’s had been the most complicated, requiring two separate sessions with an hour to dry off and set the dye in between, while the teens had only required one session each.

To give her a turtle-like appearance, it was decided that Tania’s chest and tummy, down to her luscious plump fillet, should be yellow to simulate the front of a turtle’s shell and the rest of her green, with extra details and shading added by the body-painter’s airbrush. To achieve this, she had first gone into a bath of deep amber-coloured vegetable dye, at the same time as Andrea had gone into the bath of deep red which had looked as if she were submerging herself in blood like Elizabeth Bathory, a site which Melanie had been forced to admit was rather erotic!

Before submerging themselves, the girls’ nostrils were stopped up and they were given long metal straws to breath through as they lay on the bottom of the bathtub-like tanks and the liquid was slowly heated up around them to near-boiling in order to infuse it into their skin. They were reminded to wriggle every now and then so that there would not be lighter patches where their rumps and shoulders were resting on the bottom and encouraged to play with themselves to make sure the dye got absolutely everywhere! After reaching its maximum temperature and holding there for three minutes, the dye was allowed to cool and the girls were helped out.

“You look like Homer Simpson!” Gemma had teased her friend as she emerged from the bath with her skin dyed deep yellow, an effect only exaggerated by her bald head! Rather than being offended by the compassion, Tania had loudly exclaimed “D’oh!” before giggling and sticking her tongue out at the pretty blonde. She and Andrea, who was now crimson from head to toe, went and stood in the upright cubicles with the glass fronts which were effectively walk-in ovens, the intense blast of heat that they produced used to finalise the chemical reaction between dye and skin, fixing the pigment semi-permanently. Although was not sub-dermal like a tattoo and would have gradually faded as it grew out over the next few months, had the girls continued to live for that long, no amount of bathing or scrubbing would remove the colour now that it was boiled into their skin.

While the girls were receiving their heat treatment, the dye in the red bath was replenished and the liquid in the yellow bath drained away to be replaced by a deep, greenish-blue which, Melanie had confidently told them all, would interact with the yellow dye to turn the exposed areas of Tania’s body green.

Both lobster girls had lovely dancer’s bodies – tall for their age, very well toned with long legs, tight, flat stomachs, firm, meaty rumps and perky little tits, Becky’s a little bigger and rounder than Andrea’s but both incredibly appetising. The vivid red skin combined with her completely bald head gave Andrea a distinctly other-worldly appearance, almost like some kind of alien or spirit. It was a striking look and not at all unattractive. Becky had stood excitedly by the tub, impatiently shifting her weight from foot to foot and waiting to be told that she could get in while Tania was prepped for the next stage.

This had involved coating the parts of her that should not be turned green with a special, thick, water and heat-proof gel which Melanie had applied herself, rubbing it across the ten year old’s chest which was pleasingly soft with big, puffy nipples but otherwise flat, down her belly and tapering towards her lovely plump lower lips. Once the general area was covered, she carefully applied the gel around the edges. These could be neatened up with the body-paint, of course, but she wanted to be as accurate as possible. This time, as she climbed into the dark liquid, Tania was warned not to play with herself and, indeed, to avoid touching any areas where the gel had been applied.

“How do I look?” she had asked as she stood up in the bath once the dye had done its work, her gel-covered front still yellow but the rest of her deep, bottle-green. “Still like Homer Simpson?”

“No,” Gemma had giggled, “but some guy in spiky samurai armour came looking for you while you were under the water!”

“Hey!” Tania had stuck out her tongue again. “I’m a Mock Turtle, not a Ninja Turtle!” The heat-treatment not only fixed the new layer of dye but turned the gel into a rubbery sheet which could be very carefully peeled away. The three dyed girls were then sent to take a normal shower and get dressed then go meet their parents who were waiting for them outside. Gemma had waited for them to be ready so that they could all leave together and had promised to arrive at the same time as them on the big day even if there was far less preparation for her to do.

Even ‘though it was the Mock Turtle and the Griffin who sang the song to which the Lobster Quadrille was danced in the book, for the party it would be Gemma performing it to a pre-recorded backing track so she and Tania took it in turns to practice their respective songs on the journey to the Miller Mansion which was not all the far away as the crow flies but only accessible by a long and windy country road since the Millers, as celebrities, relished their isolation. They had other properties of course, both in the UK and in America, but this was their largest and the one that their daughter, Strawberry Cheesecake, considered home.

Slightly less than half an hour after setting off, the minibus pulled onto the large gravel forecourt of the mansion and the PA who had made the original booking came out to greet them. The guests, they knew, would already be in the back garden where all the equipment and other food were set up.


To be continued...