Yummy Girl Magazine


Chapter 1: The Intrepid Reporter.


The glossy eight-by-tens hit the conference table like a slap.

Terri watched them skid across polished mahogany, her knuckles still pressed into the wood where she'd released them.

“What’s wrong with traditional Meat-girls? But this—”

One photo caught the fluorescent light: a ten year old girl curled inside a commercial oven, her wrists bound to the wire racks with butcher’s twine, cheeks flushed pink from heat, her little body happily roasting a way.

Another showed a tween girl trussed and spitted on a stainless steel spit, a chef’s basting brush glistening against her inner thigh.

The third—Terri couldn't look at the third for more than a heartbeat. A copper pot steaming away. Herbs floating on the surface of oil-slicked water.

Three little girls, could be no older the four, reclining with their head tipped back, eyes closed, lips parted.

“Nice shots, Penny.”
The editor’s voice cut through the silence.

Frank Morrison had been staring at the photos for a solid ten seconds longer than anyone else at the table.

His thumb traced the edge of the oven photo.

Penny, the new intern, nervously turned the color of a radish. Her brown ponytail quivered.

“I was there yesterday. The restaurant owner was really nice. Let me into the kitchen to take photos of the girls.”

The room contracted.

Every staff member in that conference room—Carlos from research, Maxwell from print, three sales associates, the graphics team lead—all of them shifted their attention to the Eighteen-year-old in the oversized cardigan and the skirt that rode just slightly higher than HR would’ve approved.

“And?”

Frank’s eyebrow arched.

Penny’s fingers fumbled with the lens cap of the camera slung around her neck.

“Oh, the children were excited to get their pictures taken. The spit girl, wiggled and moan roasting over the electric grill, seemed to really enjoy being basted by a hot-looking chef.

I kind of felt myself—”

She bit her lip so hard it blanched white.

Frank let the silence breathe. Then he leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers.

“Okay, team. It’s just cannibalism with children now. The law says consensual cannibalism is legal, they never bothered to put an age limit on it.

As far as I’m concerned it’s just another fad and legal for now.

Kids as young as eight are allowed to enjoy Bondage and sexual humiliation. Nothing new in the S&M community. As long as it’s consensual it fine with our magazine.

So they want to become food like the adults? Their body their choice.

It’s just a new fad. We need to get on it. I say we run an editorial section in our next issue.”

—-

“No.”

The voice came from the back of the room. Robert Calloway, owner of Yummy Girls Publications, a magazine dedicated to all things kinky. Aimed at teens entering puberty to guide them through the impressional year.

Half the magazine assured the girls were perfect the way they were. The other half sold them on things to make them better. Not to forget advertising dollars pouring in to sell products.

Robert Calloway, tends not to get involved in the daily decision of the magazine. Yet this was different.

He had been so still throughout the meeting that Terri had nearly forgotten he was there.

He was in his sixties now, silver at the temples, a man who’d built an empire on understanding what people wanted before they knew they wanted it.

He rose slowly. “I think we should run a full exposé.

I’m talking cover page, restaurant owner interview, chefs, staff. What are the inner workings. What of these new desire for children to wants to be added to the food chain?

Talk to the volunteers.

What makes them tick? Let’s put them in our Confessions section as well.”

He stepped up to them, his is palm flattened against the table.

“This could double or triple our subscribers.”

“Frank.” Bob turned. “Who’s your best reporter?”

Frank’s gaze traveled across the conference room with the inevitability of a slow-moving freight train.

It passed Carlos. It passed Maxwell. It landed on Terri Tart, twenty-five years old, dressed in a charcoal blazer and a silk blouse buttoned to the throat, her dark hair pinned back so severely it pulled at her temples.

Terri’s face arranged itself into a very specific expression. The one that said don’t you dare.

“We got this, Bob,” Frank said.
The owner nodded once, good as done.

Frank clapped his hands. “Okay, you heard the boss.

Carlos, do a search of any other places offering to cook children.

Maxwell, make sure print knows what angle we’re taking.

Graphics department, set up for a full spread issue.

Sales, let our advertisers know advertisement space will be limited with a thirty percent increase.

Dismissed!”

Chairs scraped. Papers shuffled. The room emptied in a rush of murmured conversation and clicking pens.

“Terri. Stay.”

She didn't turn around immediately. Her jaw worked, teeth grinding against each other as she watched the last staff member file out.

Bob paused in the doorway, his hand finding her shoulder with a squeeze that was meant to be paternal but landed somewhere closer to proprietary.

“Do a good job and I’ll promise you a promotion,” he murmured, and then he was gone.

The door clicked shut behind him with the finality of a gavel.

Now it was just Terri and Frank and the photographs still fanned across the table like a dirty tarot deck.

She spun on him.

“Frank, I swear—”

“Okay, I know what you’re going to say.” He held up both palms in surrender.

The sleeves of his oxford were rolled to the elbow. Terri could see the faded ink of an old tattoo peeking out, something he’d gotten in his twenties before journalism had swallowed him whole.

She didn’t let him finish. “I’ve been in the bondage scene for years. I’ve seen all kinds of kink, my younger sister got into the whole cannibal scene. She wounded up of a platter.

But this? These little girls are being trussed up like holiday roasts.”

“Look at these photos.”

Frank gathered them, spread them out again, his finger tapping against the oven shot. “Do these girls not look erotic-dear I say delicious?

Look at her face, Terri. Really look.”

She looked.
The little girl in the oven had her thighs pressed together. Her lips were parted around a breath she’d clearly been holding when the shutter clicked.

Her nipples, visible hard, and she doesn’t even have breast yet. they were peaked tight.

And her eyes—there was something in her eyes that Terri recognized.

That glazed, faraway look of someone who’d gone so deep into sensation that the outside world had ceased to exist.

Terri’s throat tightened.

“They’re getting off on the humiliation of being treated like meat,” Frank said, softer now.

“With adults being roasted everywhere It seems logical the kids would pick up on it. That’s all it is. A new flavor of an old dish.”

“Pun intended?”

A smile cracked his face.

“There she is.”

He leaned against the conference table, close enough that Terri could smell his coffee breath and the faint trace of the cigarette he’d definitely smoked on the fire escape before the meeting.

“Listen. See if you can get an interview with the owner. Take Penny with you—she seems to have an in with him. Do this, and I promise your raise and promotion are all but guaranteed.”

Terri folded her arms. The wool of her blazer itched against her wrists.

“Who knows,”
Frank added, pushing off the table and gathering his notes.

“Maybe you’ll see the value in this new youth cooking phase.”

He left her there, standing alone among the photographs.

The last assignment had sent her to India during their Scat Festival. That had been a week of squatting in fields and trying not to gag behind her notepad while Frank’s voice echoed in her head—It’s just cultural exploration, Terri, keep an open mind.

She’d come back with a sinus infection and a profound hatred for the man who signed her paychecks.

And now this.

Terri scooped up the photographs. The paper was warm from the table, from the hands that had passed them around.

Her thumb caught the corner of the spit-roast image—the girl’s back arched, the chef’s hand steady on the brush, the sheen of oil catching light like liquid gold.

A pulse beat once, low in Terri’s belly.

She shoved the photos into her leather satchel and snapped it shut.

—

The bullpen was humming when she emerged. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

Someone’s phone rang unanswered. Carlos was already hunched over his monitor, muttering search terms under his breath—
“Children used for culinary purposes,” “child food fetish” “Child friendly restaurants,” “Roasting kids for a delicious dining experience.”

Penny sat at the intern desk near the water cooler, her oversized glasses slipping down her nose as she scrolled through the digital proofs from yesterday’s shoot.

The cardigan had fallen off one shoulder. The strap of her camisole was pink.

Cute as a button, Terri thought. And dressed like she’s waiting to be unwrapped.

“Pack your gear,” Terri said, not slowing her stride.

“We’re going to that restaurant.”

Penny’s head snapped up. Her eyes went wide behind those frames, bright and startled and—unless Terri was imagining it—eager.

“Right now?”

“Right now.”