After talking to Martha I felt a little bit better so came back to my room and logged onto the cannibal sites to see what sort of responses my videos had got over night. There were a couple asking why kiddie porn was allowed on the site now and others asking where my parents were but most were very positive saying things like “That’s more like it!” or “Absolutely delicious!” On the second site I went to, there was one comment that really stood out for me. It was from a user called Texas_Cannibal_Queen and it said “Looking scrumptious, honey! Backing you all the way! L xxx” I knew Mrs Webber’s first name was LaVerne although I always call her Mrs Webber so I guessed this message must be from here which means I was right and she had seen most of my other videos before I showed them to her and explained why she’d been so comfortable with the conversation in the kitchen!

After that I went to the pool in the back yard which is smaller than the one in LA but still nice and swam without my suit as I knew that Daddy wasn’t home and that Martha would be busy. Besides, I had a feeing that the adverts I was going to make for the campaign would likely have me with nothing on, like those pictures I had made of me and Jessie based on the PETA posters so people needed to get used to seeing my naked butt!

After that I went and read the three stories about the girls in the Rockies again and the one about the rich peoples’ party then it was time for the meeting.

I had thought it was just going to be me and Martha but there were two other people there too, young interns I think, both about twenty years old. One was a young black man with glasses and perfect skin and fingernails, wearing a purple shirt and matching tie. He was sitting in the table at the meeting room off the living room with an open notepad in front of him and a tablet in his hands but way bigger than an iPad. The other was a woman with dark blonde hair wearing a light gray pant-suit like the ones Martha often wears and a simple collarless blouse underneath. She had a laptop in front of her and seemed poised to take notes. I thought her makeup was a bit too much and she should take some lessons from Martha who always looked very elegant and professional.

Martha greeted me and introduced the other two as Claude and Moira who were going to be part of my campaign team. She quickly let me know that she had explained to them that Jessie would not be involved for now and said that my Daddy had told her what I wanted but that she wanted me to explain it to her myself so I told her the whole story from the joke book to the sites and stories and the games me and Jessie had played up to telling Mrs Webber about it and asking her to speak to Daddy.

[Editor’s Note – At this point, Sidney attempts to record the conversation verbatim resulting in a lot of confusing and run-on sentences where it is not always possible to identify who is speaking. Fortunately, Martha St.Claire was a scrupulous record-keeper and a hard-copy of the meeting’s minutes, transcribed from an audio recording on Moira’s laptop, was retained among her personal papers which, like this diary, have only just come to light. We must remember that Sidney was only eight years old at the time this meeting took place and, articulate and intelligent as she clearly was, we cannot expect her to record such an event in the most helpfully readable fashion. We have therefore taken the decision to allow a professional author to synthesise the following account from Sidney’s own recollections and the transcript. All the dialogue is 100% accurate as reported and tone is suggested by Sidney’s own recollections but some artistic license has been taken. Sidney’s account in unedited form will be included with the unabridged release of the diary. To better blend with the rest of the entries, Sidney’s first-person perspective has been retained.]

“Thank you for that.” Martha smiled kindly. “That definitely matches the story I’ve been told. Now, before we go any further, I must ask if you are really and truly, absolutely sure about this?”

“Of course I am!” I replied confidently. “You could cook me right now if you wanted to!”

“Well sadly it’s not a matter of what we want!” Martha chuckled. “But that’s what we’re here to solve! Now of course, nobody is going to hold you to this, even if we’re successful. Right up until the last minute you will have the absolute right to change your mind and back out, okay?”

I nodded, feeling a little annoyed at the idea that I might change my mind but on the other hand being pleased that I would still have the freedom to choose. I thought about the girl in the party story and about how she had been told, once the contract was signed, there could be no backing out. Not that she had any thought of backing out either but I did feel a tiny bit sorry for her when I read that bit!

“Now,” Martha continued, “as I’m sure you know, eating human flesh is very much a taboo in nearly all cultures. Now I know you’ve done a little digging around online,” she raised an eyebrow at the two young interns, “goodness only knows why your father never thought to have a filter put in place like he does at the hotels but that’s by the by! I suppose he thought you were still too young to go looking for…” she hesitated. “Such things! But anyway, I know you have seen that there are people out there who have fantasies about this or even want to see it come true and we can definitely harness that but for the public in general, we’re going to have to tread very carefully. Claude here had some thoughts he’d like to share with you.”

I turned to the young man who had been sketching in his note-book as we talked, eager to hear what he had to say.

“Well, honey,” he smiled, “why do you think it is that your Daddy agreed to do this for you? Scrumptious as you are, do you think really, deep down, it’s because he wants to eat you?”

“Well, no.” I replied tentatively. “I guess not? I think it’s just because, well, because he loves me and wants to see me happy?”

“Bingo!” Claude grinned like the host on a game show when a contestant answers correctly. “Because he loves you he’ll do anything to see you happy, so for you to get your way with the public, we need to make them fall in love with you too, which should be easy enough, seeing as how you’re cute as a button!” I giggled at this but felt pleased.

“We have to be careful.” he continued. “If we go all-in with the cannibalism message we’re going to put people off. In fact, I think it’s best that we avoid that word all together. Far too many negative connotations. Equally, we don’t want them to forget what your campaign is all about so I’m thinking the best way to go is to have a series of cute ads with you showing off that sweet little body of yours, yes,” he chuckled, “we’ve all seen the videos!” I blushed a little, realising that they must have been pretty easy to find online once I told my Daddy and Mrs Webber about them. “And talking about how tasty you will be. You know?” he smiled, “like those ads with the potatoes excited to be turned into chips or the vegetables desperate to be part of your healthy diet?” I nodded happily. “I’m thinking, since you’re a Texas gal born and bred,” he grinned, “we should give you a farmer cowgirl look, something like this?”

He lifted his notebook so that I could see what he had been sketching. It was a picture of me in the nude sat on a gate with my hear in chunky braids wearing a cowboy had and boots and a kerchief round my neck.

“What do you think?” he asked, hopefully.

“Looks great!” I grinned. “I really love the idea! Try to get people to see me as a happy potential ingredient. I guess if this works,” I turned to Martha, “it will mean the law gets changed and other girls will be allowed to get eaten too if they want to be? What about boys or grown-ups?”

“Yes absolutely,” Martha nodded, “any changes in the law would apply universally which is another reason to be careful. If we call for a blanket legalisation of cannibalism, even if we’re not calling it that,” she lifted a placatory hand in Claude’s direction, “might be too much all at once so we’re going to focus for now very specifically on the rights of girls, and only girls, between the ages of eight, as you are now, and fourteen, to become meat. Keep it specific enough and people won’t be so afraid of it. In the future we can probably get it expanded out but,” she grinned, “that’s not going to be any concern of yours!”

“Hopefully not!” I giggled. “So how do we start?”

“I think some more videos like the ones you’ve been making.” Martha suggested. “But in the costume that Claude suggested. You might have to wear a bikini on the ones for social media to begin with.” she explained apologetically. “We’ve had our legal team looking into it and the law is slightly hazy when it comes to nudity. Now,” she explained, “it’s not illegal per se as long as you are not engaging in any sort of sexual activity, you know what the means, right?” I nodded. “Good. In fact, I have a list here of movies from the past fifteen years that feature full-frontal nudity of girls around your age, and of course there are books of art photography openly sold through mainstream sellers that have the same. Social media companies, however, are allowed to set their own rules and while many might allow, for example, a picture of a toddler in the bath, most tend to er on the side of caution when it comes to child nudity. I believe Moira has some ideas about that?”

“That’s right.” the young woman nodded a little stiffly and I realised that she had an English accent. “I think it will have to be a part of the campaign, to encourage social media companies and publishers to classify you, and others who seek to follow you, as animals for the purposes of your videos and animals, such as pigs, cows and chickens, do not typically wear clothes.” I giggled thinking about this. “Of course they will not want to open the flood-gates for any girls to start filming themselves prancing around in their birthday suits so there will have to be some kind of caveat that all such videos do relate in some way to the message of girls as meat.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” I agreed. “But what about TV and billboards and stuff?”

“Much like the social media companies,” Moira explained, “they all have their own rules but, since we will be paying for the ad space, I’m sure we will be able to get them to come around far quicker than some others.”

“So, we’re thinking,” Claude took over again, “for your first photo-shoot we do two versions of every shot, one where you’re wearing a bikini and one where you’re not. I know, honey,” he dropped his shoulders, tilted his head and looked at me sympathetically, “it sounds like a lot of fuss and extra work but I’m sure it will only be these first couple of times then you will be able to show yourself off naked as a jaybird!” He gave an expansive and fabulous hand gesture concluding with jazz-hands that I couldn’t help but grin at. “How would you feel,” he made another quick sketch in his book, “if we went for something based on the Texas state flag? Kind of like this?” He turned the book around again and showed me his bikini top design with thick red and white stripes on the right cup and a blue background with a white star on the left cup.

“Looks good!” I smiled, always proud to be a Texas gal. “What about the bottoms?”

“I’ll work on those!” He assured me rather conspiratorially. “If we’re not careful, they can end up looking more suggestive than if you were wearing none at all so I’ll have to give it some careful thought!” I giggled and agreed, hoping that the nothing at all option would be the one I was able to go with most often.

“Now, about what we were discussing earlier,” Martha spoke again, “about your motivation. We need to give you a nice, simple origin story for the public to embrace and I recommend that we focus on the joke book. Do you still have it?” I nodded to say that I did. “Good!” She smiled. “I don’t think it would serve our purpose well at this stage to mention the websites or stories. Let’s just keep it simple and fun. You read the joke book and it put the idea in your head. We should also say you thought about it for months before going to your Daddy.” She explained. “I know what a smart and sensible girl you are but you have to remember that the public don’t know you at all and if they find out that we were already at this stage not even a week after you first had the idea, they’d assume you were either being dangerously impulsive or that you’d been threatened into it. So the official story, for when you’re asked in interviews, is that you first read the book right back at the start of the New Year, okay? In early January. And since Mrs Thornton has said that Jessie is not allowed to be involved, for the time being at least,” I felt another pang of sadness when she said this, “I think it best that we say you simply found it in your Daddy’s library. Goodness knows it’s so huge there could well be a copy of it or something very like it in there anyway. Okay?”

“Yes, okay.” I agreed, unable to shake the feeling that I was betraying my friend.

“Good.” Martha smiled. “Well, that’s about all for now, leave everything with us and we’ll get a press-release sorted out. I’ll try to set up a photo-shoot for before you go back to school and we’ll go from there. In the mean-time,” she smiled, “please don’t post any more videos or discuss this with anyone who doesn’t already know. What we’re doing here is essentially creating a brand that you are going to be the face of so we need to make sure, going forward, that every single public statement from you is on-brand, okay? I know it’s going to be hard work,” she smiled in that kind way she has, “but I hope you’re going to think it’s worth it to get your dream?”

Impulsively, I ran over and gave her a hug, then Claude and Moira although Claude seemed to be a far more natural and willing hugger than Moira who went kinda still but at least she didn’t push me away. This was it. It was official! I was going to do my darnedest to become the world’s first real, legal meat-girl!

[Editor’s note – Sidney’s own account resumes in its unedited form from here. Where this technique has been employed later in the text, it will always be identified.]

I went back to my room and thought about everything they had said in the meeting. Martha had said not to post any more videos but she didn’t say I had to take down the ones that were already there so I went onto TikTok first to see loads of comments and quite a few reaction videos of girls agreeing with us, and a few calling me a stupid dumb blonde and other rude names but that’s normal for the internet. I watched the videos other girls had posted, lots of them in bikinis too, and it made me feel happy that Jessie and I were not the only ones who felt this way and I was pleased that my campaign was going to help everyone.

Then I went on the cannibal sites to see if there were any more comments and there seemed to be lots. I wanted to reply to them and say thank you but I remembered what Martha said about having to be on-brand so I hoped once things started I might be able to have an official account for these sites. If they were really strict about users having to be over 18 it could always be Martha or maybe Claude but I hoped they would let me under the circumstances.

I was afraid Jessie’s mom would hear if I called her so I sent her a message telling her how the meeting went and promising to show her the photographs when they got done. She didn’t reply for ages and I was just about to send another message when she sent me a thumbs-up then said she’d look out for them. It didn’t really sound like her and I badly wanted to take to her but didn’t want to make more trouble between her and her mum.

Since I was going to be showing off my body a lot I thought I’d better keep it in good shape so I ordered a rowing machine and a running machine for here and a small set of weights on my Daddy’s account. I guess I will have to get a personal trainer or something too and start following a special diet but I know Martha will sort all that out. There last season of Game of Thrones has finished so I’m going to binge-watch that tonight before bed. I know I’m supposed to be too young for it and some of it is a bit boring but I love the dragons and the action and magic.


(To be continued...)