All the children and young teens looked back at her, a little puzzled. The only ones to raise their hands were the adult women who accompanied them.

“You’ve never played it?” she asked, genuinely surprised. “We always used to play it on the first night of camp when I was in the Brownies! It was so much fun!”

“We had to stop in the end due to parental complaints.” Cath explained from the back of the room. Mollie looked at her a little quizzically. “When I was a girl,” she continued by way of explanation, “getting eaten was still fairly uncommon but with so many occasions now where a roast girl, or boy I supposed,” she added with slight reluctance, clearly sharing the fairly common view that male meat was a definite downgrade from female, even ‘though blind taste-tests proved that most people could not tell it apart if the same cooking method was used, “that parents started to resent having their kid wasted in a game, as they put it, so we had to stop.”

“Oh I see.” Mollie nodded thoughtfully. “That does make some sense I suppose. I never went up to Guides, I left at the end of Brownies, so maybe I would have noticed things starting to change if I’d stuck around. Anyway,” she turned her attention back to the girls, “I know getting boiled is probably near the bottom of most of your list of ways you’d like to be cooked, so we used to make a game of it! Who’d like to hear how to play?” Now every hand shot up.

“Great! So everyone would get naked,” she grinned, “and sit in a circle around the cooking pot. We would only light the fire underneath at the start of the game so the water would be cold to begin with. One of the leaders would bring around a tray with a dice and a little cup for shaking it in. Everyone would take their turn to roll the dice. If you rolled a six, you had to go get in the pot until the next person rolled six when you would get out and they would take your place. If you rolled five, you had to get in and whoever was already there had to stay there too. If you rolled four you had to get in but could choose someone to get out, three meant you got to choose someone to remove but didn’t have to get in yourself, two and one didn’t do anything.” The girls listened, transfixed, clearly trying to follow the explanation in their heads.

“As you can imagine,” she continued, “the pot could get pretty full at times and of course the water kept getting hotter and hotter. The game would usually end when the first person passed out but there were a couple of different ways it could go after that. I think different groups had their different ways of playing, you know how every family seems to have their own rules for Monopoly?” There were several chuckles and nodding heads of agreement.

“The way we always played it was once one person passed out, they were left to cook and everyone else got out. Some of my friends at school who were part of other packs, or went to Girl’s Brigade, or just played the game on Summer Camp, said that once the first person had passed out, everyone in the pot at that time had to stay in and cook. I have heard some groups would even carry on playing until everyone in the pot was passed out, with the rule being someone could only be taken out if they were still conscious. Not quite sure what happened with the sixes at that point, personally I think it would get too complicated. Anyway,” she grinned again, “who thinks that sounds like a pretty fun game?” The agreement was not universal this time but still a fair majority. She was not surprised, really. It was a very rare thing to meet a girl who would choose to boil when she had the option to roast!

This had been the lead-in to showing the pots which came in a variety of sizes and power sources. She then showed them some of the more specialised equipment, like the pretty white guillotines used for beheading Flower Girls at weddings and the roasting frames which worked very like a spit but kept the meat alive for longer and could be useful for smaller girls or boys who wanted the experience of roasting over open coals but for whom the standard spit would be too thick and would likely cause too much damage to their sweet young meat. There were also the frames where a live buffet would be restrained and displayed to allow hungry guests to cut their own steaks from their living body and the tools used for on-site butchering. Mollie loved the way the girls gazed in awe at the equipment and she knew that most of them would be picturing being used either on themselves or on a particular friend that they had a secret, or perhaps not so secret, desire to eat!

“Okay!” Mollie grinned once all the equipment had been thoroughly shown off and explained. “Now it’s time to move onto the practical part of our tour today! Please follow me to the inspection room!” All the girls, but Emma especially, looked incredibly excited by this and as they stepped out into the corridor, they were greeted by the sight of a young man in his late teens being led by another of the senior caterers down the corridor towards reception, stark naked of course, with his chemically-engorged erection skewered and secured to his naval. The girls all stopped in their tracks, their eyes wide. Many blushed and some hid their mouths but Mollie was proud to see that none of them actually giggled or pointed.

“Ladies!” The young man gave them a polite nod as he passed, smiling a little awkwardly and his cheeks pink.

“Is he getting cooked today?” one of the girls asked once he and his handler were through the door at the end of the corridor.

“Yup!” Mollie grinned. “He’s off to a Hen party. That’s a special kind of party,” she explained, “that brides-to-be have when they’re getting married so he’s going to get eaten by forty rather drunk young ladies!” Now the girls did giggle. Coming up the corridor the other way, escorted by another of Mollie’s colleagues, were a pair of twin girls, twelve or thirteen years old, with long blonde hair so pale it was almost white. They were fully dressed for the moment in identical summer dresses. They waved cheerfully at the tour group before being led into Inspection Room 5.

In Inspection Room 4, Lydia was waiting for them as arranged, sitting at the terminal and ready to record Emma’s details and score as Mollie called them out. The younger worker who was only a few years older than the oldest girls in the troop stood and introduced herself and, at Mollie’s suggestion, told them a little about the equipment in the room, promising to describe its use as the demonstration took place.

“Okay now,” Mollie grinned, “if I can ask everyone apart from Emma to go take a seat over there.” She gestured towards the chairs. “Do you have your phone with you, or a water bottle or anything, hon?” The pretty blonde fished in her pockets and produced her phone, wallet and a pack of chewing gum, all of which she passed to Mollie. “Okay, great!” Mollie grinned. “Now, normally we would pack all your stuff up for your family to collect, but for today I’m going to entrust it to Captain Cath, is that okay?” Emma nodded cheerfully and Mollie took a bag from the box under the computer terminal along with a marker pen.

“What’s your full name again, please?” She asked in a friendly tone. “And your date of birth, please?” Emma gave her the information and Mollie wrote it on the bag so that it would still be visible once the top was folded over and sealed. “I’ll hold onto this if you don’t mind?” waving the teen’s phone at her. “I’m guessing your mum might appreciate some pictures as we go along?” The excited Girl Guide agreed enthusiastically. “In fact,” Mollie thought for a moment. “Jess, honey? Can I borrow you for a moment?” Jessica obligingly hopped off her chair and crossed the room to where Mollie and Emma were standing. “Can you take charge of Emma’s phone, please?” she asked with a smile. “Make sure you get lots of photos of the whole process so we can get them sent to her mum later.”

“Sure!” Jessica grinned. She took the phone and asked Emma for the unlock code, checking that it worked properly and that the camera app worked the way she expected it to. “Oh!” A thought struck her and she looked up at Mollie. “But what about… you know? What we discussed earlier?”

“Oh right!” Mollie nodded, remembering the fun activity she had arranged with the sisters as a surprise for the group. “Well for that bit, you can give it to Lydia, okay?”

“Sure thing!” Jessica grinned, happy to be entrusted with this important job.

“Okay Emma!” Mollie clapped her hands together and turned back to the rightful star of the show. “Let’s get you out of those clothes so we can take a look at your meat!”


To be continued...