Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience. Piggy Tales - Chapter 4 By Orestes orestesw@yahoo.com ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/Orestes *** Out of consideration for you, the reader, I feel it appropriate to remind you that one of the story codes for Piggy Tales is "Caution". This final chapter takes a turn, and if you don't think you can handle it, please walk away when you see it coming. Or, read through it, and then complain to me. Either way is good. *** After the others left, Kit and Kat took their own turns, right there on the floor of the piggery. There was a very specific flavor to those last sex acts of the evening. There was, of course, the setting. The floor was covered in litter. Straw. Beer cans and plastic cups. Pig droppings. Discarded clothing. Shannon was caked in spit and lube and cum. Sex with these two sorority organizers was not frenzied, as was rest of the evening. They took their time, now that they were no longer hosting an event. This was a time to kick back. The work was done, and they no longer had to be on their game. That Shannon would cooperate was a given. They didn't even ask. Kat simply pulled the young girl up into position, on her knees. She leaned back against the rails of the pen, still fully clothed, and set her legs apart a bit. It was subtle body language, but it was all Shannon needed. The student nuzzled her face into the crotch of Kat's tight fitting pants, sniffing and licking to demonstrate her willingness. Kat hooked her thumbs under the waist of her pants and pulled them down low on her thighs. Then, she leaned back again, and relaxed while Shannon forced her face up and between to find the right spot. No urgency. She cracked her beer and relaxed, enjoying what was an experienced tongue. When she was satisfied, she offered the same to her sorority sister, who had been catching up the messages on her phone. Kit demurred for a minute, particularly engrossed in texting, but after she clicked the phone closed, she reconsidered. " Why not?" she mused to her friend. "I'm late already. Better that I don't show up late *and* horny." It was an afterthought for Kit. A convenience. That was the feeling that stuck with Shannon. She, as a person, was unimportant to these sorority women. They had enjoyed abusing her in the hazing ritual. They certainly enjoyed her lips and tongue, but they had no regard for her except as an amusement. It shamed her that she had been so willing. Shannon had plenty of time to relive those moments, hogtied overnight in one of the rooms of the sorority house. Hogtied. Hands to ankles in the front. She had slept that way, when she could, on the floor of a comfortably furnished room in an upper floor of the main sorority house. It was quiet here, even when morning came, with few footsteps in the hall. Shannon guessed that this floor was restricted to sorority officers like Kit and Kat. They had used a key to get past at least one of the doors when they brought her here. Shannon was a mess, inside and out. She was disturbed, of course, by the direction this was going. It seemed there was very little she could do about it, and there was some strange comfort in that. There was no pretence that her opinion mattered. The women had told her that she would be given a choice, but that time had clearly not arrived. Right now, her feelings were unimportant. What she *did* feel was an unrelenting arousal. This treatment, whether intended or not, kept those shameful appetites very near the surface. It felt like she was meant for this. Which was ridiculous, Shannon scolded herself. But that's the way it felt. Despite all the time she had spent struggling with her nature, this felt... right. So she allowed the thoughts to wash through her unfettered. She relived her humiliations. She didn't concern herself with the way she smelled or looked after the revelries of the previous evening. But she did need to pee. And she was getting hungry. There. She could think about her bladder, and her stomach, and about the feel of those ropes on her hands and ankles. No need to go any deeper than that. Mid morning, a new stranger came in and attended to her needs. The woman was older, maybe in her forties. She was straight down to business. " I'm Carissa," she introduced herself politely, but firmly. "I'm going to be taking care of you, and if you cooperate, I'll be able to do it without hurting you much." The woman was built strong, and heavier than the other sorority girls Shannon had met. Not fat, just solid, like someone who had to do a fair bit of physical work for her living. Carissa detached one knot, which left Shannon's wrists and ankles still bound, but not to each other. She pulled Shannon up. For a moment, as she balanced herself close to the body of the woman, Shannon caught the scent of freshly baked pastries or something similar. Carissa gave quick directions as she brought Shannon to the washroom and cleaned her up. She was firmly in control, never releasing the ropes in one place before tying a new knot someplace else. Even in the shower, Shannon was secured. " If you've got to pee, now's the time," Carissa told her. It took a minute for Shannon to overcome her shy bladder. It felt strange, peeing on command, much less doing it in the shower with another woman watching. That done, she was fed. " Leftovers, I'm afraid," Carissa told her. "But plenty of them." They weren't just leftovers. They were table scraps. Yes, pastries, but eggs, cereal and toast too. Some were half-eaten, and all were served up in a plastic tub, as would be used to clear plates in a kitchen before washing up. They were carrying the humiliation even this far, to have her gingerly lowering her face into a slop bucket to pick out the least touched portions of food. Then, back to being hogtied and waiting. For what, Shannon wondered, but then put it from her mind. No more wondering. In the late afternoon, Kit arrived first. She was dressed in scrubs, having come directly from her job. She was a doctor, it appeared. She didn't address Shannon for a while. While waiting for Kat, she changed her clothes and spent some time answering messages on her cell. Kat came about an hour later. When they finally focused on Shannon, it was Kit who started up. The blonde woman sat casually at the edge of the bed, looking down on her naked captive. She had the upper hand in every way, and she carried that attitude in the way she spoke. " I talked to a couple of the girls you know. They tell me you're a good student. Is that so?" " Yes," Shannon agreed. " I found that a bit surprising, seeing how you've performed for us. They say that you're quite competitive, and that it bothers you when things don't go your way." Shannon nodded quietly. " Is anything bothering you right now?" A ridiculous question. Shannon had been trying to avoid it for most of the day. What was wrong, she asked? " Everything," Shannon admitted quietly. " For instance?" Kit pried. " I'm missing class." What a stupid place to start, Shannon thought. It was just the first thing to come to her head. " I've spent the whole day tied here, a captive. Last night, I did terrible things to earn my way into this sorority. I'm scared about the stupid risks I've taken. My reputation is probably destroyed. Not to mention..." She paused to hold back a shudder. " I had unprotected sex with all those boys. What if I get pregnant?" Kit laughed. " Listen, piggy - two things: firstly, you overestimate yourself. You don't have a reputation to protect. I've asked all about you, and had to really pry to get much feedback from classmates. Yeah, you're smart, but that doesn't exactly earn you influence, does it? You're nothing to these girls. You could disappear from the face of the earth, and no one would fret." " Secondly, you won't get pregnant. It's impossible." The insults made Shannon's face burn. She wanted to argue back about her reputation, but the second statement seemed to be the easier one to challenge. " Impossible? There were no condoms. I'm not on birth control. How can you say it's impossible?" " Because you're a pig." The statement hung in the air for a minute. Kit was wearing a thin smile, and watching Shannon for her reaction. " I don't think she knows what you mean," interjected Kat, who was allowing her blonde friend to take the lead today. " You're right, Kat. I should spell it out for her. I don't mean you're a pig, like, as in `see how many guys she just screwed! That girl is a total fucking pig'. It's true that you're a fucking pig in exactly that way, but I mean something different. What I mean is that you really are a pig. Biologically. With exactly 38 chromosomes to prove it. You're pork. Ham. Swine. Back bacon." Kat cut in. " Take it easy, Kit. You might hurt her feelings." " Sorry, but there's no easy way to tell a pig that she's a pig. Besides, you had your fun last night. This is my part." The women were bantering now at Shannon's expense, enjoying her utter confusion. " She doesn't believe you." " No. Well, I guess it's a pretty hard thing to accept. She's always thought she was pretty much like all the other girls. It must suck to learn that she's not even on the right level of the food chain." Shannon finally reacted. " Impossible." She wasn't sure what strength of argument she could expect to make, from her position hog-tied on the floor, but she felt she had to speak up. " Not impossible," assured Kit. " The science is boring, but I'm told it's very possible." " The science is *not* boring," Kat snapped back, but in a friendly way. This was their shtick, and they were obviously enjoying it. It almost sounded as if they'd done it before. " Think of it. Most of the world's geneticists were snapped up by the pork industry. True, much of their research work had become quite illegal, but their *knowledge* itself was not. A handful of them, I'm told, were convinced by an executive, a man named Roark Harper, to begin a program of genetic mimicry." " This Roark Harper was the patriarch of your friend Bethany's family - an individualist who had previously opposed the subsidization of the pork industry, and indeed all of the constitutional reforms. The story goes that he finally relented, accepting subsidies as a way to level the playing field with his competitors, and inexplicably recruited a handful of senior geneticist to start his project." " How can you say this isn't boring?" challenged Kit. "This is all, like, what... a century ago?" The Asian woman wouldn't let her enthusiasm be dampened. "It's not boring. It's beautiful. He took their rules, and twisted them to his own end. Why? I don't know. Maybe Bethany could enlighten us. But he did it. He didn't insert a single human gene. He didn't break the letter of the law. It was all done with pig embryos. These senior geneticists, they had it all mapped out. They knew exactly what kinds of mutations they would need to see in pig DNA to get characteristics that would appear human." " They produced millions of embryos per week, growing most of them just large enough to sample the DNA. Then, the junior researchers would do the - excuse the expression - grunt work. They'd look for those promising sequences. Most of them didn't even know that they were contributing to. Maybe they thought that they were finding traits useful for medical research. Some likely thought they were producing organs suitable for human transplantation. Others probably even thought they were looking to develop - how did you put it in class, Shannon? A better tasting pork chop?" Kat was clearly delighted by the story, and especially the conclusion of it. "But they were all clueless to the big picture. Only Roark Harper and his closest associates knew that they were developing something that looked and behaved like a human." " The basic mutations didn't even take that long, I'm told. Pigs aren't that far from humans in the grand scheme of things. You may have an anatomical difference here and there - spiral intestines, a developed and active vomeronasal organ - but at surface level, you pass for human. They've been able to turn out pigs that appear more or less indistinguishable from humans for over half a century. But behaviorally, it's a little more difficult. That's why you're here..." Shannon didn't understand her own emotional reaction. It couldn't be true. Not a word of it. But why was she beginning to sob? " That's why I'm here...?" she echoed as a question. " Yes," cut in Kit. "Now that we're through all the lame genetic science, it comes down to whether you pass for human. That's why the company grows out a pig like you every few years, and lets it be reared amongst humans. Then, when the pig reaches maturity, she comes here, and tries to pass pledge." Elizabeth Fisher. Was that why she had pushed so hard for Shannon to pledge? Was she from the company? Blood rushed to Shannon's cheeks with this speculation, and the tears came harder. " They always finish at the back of the pack. Something about the light from a flashlight confuses a pig in the dark. I'm told that farm kids have fun real fun spooking pigs like that at night. And once we have a pig in the piggery, she isn't hard to spot." Shannon tried to sniff back her tears to plead her case. "How can you be sure? Maybe you've got it wrong." " Maybe," conceded Kit. "But not for long. Remember how Kat mentioned that pesky vomeronasal organ that the geneticists never bothered to breed out?" " What... what organ?" " Vomeronasal," explained Kat. "It's a scent organ. It detects sex pheromones. Specifically, it picks up androstenone, which is present at high levels in the saliva of male pigs. When a female pig comes into heat, and she detects this pheromone, it signals her to present herself for sex. Pigs of your kind don't have to wait to be in heat. One of your genetic mutations is that you're always in heat. Explains a bit, doesn't it? Anyhow, if we're right, seeing your reaction to androstenone would prove it." Kat brought out a spray bottle. " Here. I've prepared a solution." " No, please don't..." Shannon reacted with horror to the thought of being sprayed with it. Please, she wanted to beg irrationally. Leave me some doubt. Leave me denial, at least for a while. " Aw, c'mon piggy..." teased Kat. "All the sows just love it. It'll drive you wild." The spray came, and every thought of being human disappeared without a trace. Whenever the illusion of humanity returned to her, Shannon was hit by a wave of nausea. It wasn't like she was unaware of what she was doing, when they took the spray to her. She remembered it all, and was desperately ashamed of her behavior. She just had no way of controlling it. It was exactly like the worst of those times, when she allowed herself to become too aroused, and her head emptied of everything except her need to be taken. Kit and Kat were torturing her with it, and driving home their message again and again. " You know what you are," Kit would gloat. "Why do you even struggle?" " No... please... please..." Shannon would beg when she saw the bottle. The women used her to entertain themselves and special friends of the sorority, and a couple of sprays to the face made Shannon very entertaining indeed. " These people have no idea of your genetic situation. They just think the sorority is being especially generous," Kit explained. "And you won't let them down, will you?" " I'll do it without the spray," Shannon begged, but they wouldn't let her. They probably could have made her equally receptive with other methods. Kat had become quite good at handling Shannon. But then there was the risk that the student would try to communicate something about her captivity. And the spray, Shannon had to confess, left her quite incapable of that kind of notion. Besides, this was much more degrading. When the spray took her, she was gripped with an instinct so strong that she couldn't do anything but mindlessly beg. The men - how many she didn't know - were happy to oblige. They took her in the mouth, in the pussy, in the ass. Sometimes they took her two or three at a time, but Shannon was always begging for more. She wallowed in whatever degradation the women had in store for her. After it was all over, Shannon was attended to by Carissa, who appeared at the same time each morning, leading Shannon to think she was an employee here rather than a member. " Come on, pig. Let's get you cleaned up," she said, with a touch of disapproval in her voice. "What have you got yourself into this time?" Different things. A line up fraternity boys glazing her face with semen. One of the school administrators putting out a cigarette on her ass while he fucked her. Kit, deciding to top off the evening by squatting over Shannon, and pissing on her face. Whatever it was, Carissa would scrub Shannon down firmly with a loofah sponge, and finish with a stiff spray of water. Shannon would empty her bladder or bowels then too, in the hot water. There was no need for pride. Then, hungry from the previous night's exertion, she would welcome her slop bucket. She was no longer particular about the table scraps. She would eat until her belly was full, a momentary diversion from any other thoughts creeping in. There were unanswered questions. How could the sorority keep a secret like this? What was the relationship between the company and Alpha Nu? How many pigs had there been, and what had become of them? These questions were fading in importance. What did any of it matter, in the end, Shannon scolded herself. Over the course of just a couple of months, they had transformed her from bright student with her own ambitions, into *this*. Now, the highlight of her day was to fill her belly with slop. Only one question seemed significant, and it was a day when Kat was visiting alone that Shannon worked up the courage to ask it. Kat was the nice one of the two, as it turned out. Not that the difference was striking. " Didn't you..." Shannon stammered out, "didn't you say I'd have a choice?" The Asian woman appraised her pig. " Are you sure that you want one?" " Yes." " Okay then. I'll arrange it. Now, help me relax a little, would you?" It was one of those things she probably would hesitate to ask of a human lover, but there was no guilt in demanding it from a pig. Kat enjoyed long sessions with a tongue in her ass. Some days, it would be an hour with the woman face-down, enjoying her rear hole being tongued. Shannon would lose herself in the act, slurping away greedily for the submissive thrill it gave her. These encounters, at least, were done without the pheromone. There was at lease the illusion of this being consensual. Kat would take this relaxation time to catch up on some reading, or sometimes she would chat on the phone. Then, when Shannon's tongue and jaw were numb from the extended use, Kat would roll over for a quick orgasm. On this day, Kat dragged the scene out even longer, but didn't distract herself with any other activities. She pushed herself back into Shannon, and even reached back to hold Shannon's hair. " Deeper, piggy. Come on, don't be shy. God, how I'm going to miss these times we have together." Bethany Harper found her friend in the library, right where she was supposed to be. The lost expression on Shannon's face told Bethany that she had already looked through the folder that was now sitting on her lap. " When did you know?" Shannon asked. Her eyes were red and swollen. She was emotionally drained. " About you? When we were twelve. You took the top prize at the history fair - you were always good at things like that. I remember how upset I was to take home a red ribbon instead of blue. My mom never could stand to see me cry. It was that night that she told me about you - it was her way to fix things for me." " You must have really enjoyed having that over me," Shannon said. She tried not to sound accusatory. " Yes," Bethany admitted. "I did. I was competitive, like you. It gave me a lot of pleasure to know that even if you measured up, you would always be... well, *less* than me. I swear, though... things changed. I began to question the things my family taught me, and I developed mixed feelings about you. I knew you were struggling, but mostly you were succeeding - and with the disadvantage of your nature, I found it compelling. Even admirable." That word again. It still didn't seem appropriate. " Did our other classmates know?" " No. God, no. The company would never let that out. My family is... well, you know, important in the company. So my parents are involved enough to know. But other than that, there are just a few people left who have any idea. Not more than a dozen at the company who know the big picture. Maybe the same number here at Alpha Nu." Shannon dropped her gaze back down to the folder in her lap. She strained to keep control of her tears. Of all the people in the world, this was the only one who she cared to keep her composure for. The pictures in the folder left a lump in her throat. Even against the bizarre events of the semester, this was unbelievable. Shannon handed the folder to Bethany, but Bethany didn't open it. She knew. " That's Julia in the pictures. We were in a foster home together for a while." " I'm sorry." " Was this in your ancestor's plan?" Bethany was clearly pained by the question, and weighed her words carefully when she answered. " Not at first. I think Roark Harper was trying to make a point. He was going to reveal the whole program as something obscene, the product of government corruption of human ingenuity. It would affirm evolutionary science. It would reveal the politicians and their dirty money. It would make a mockery of the laws that prevented progress to protect the so-called sanctity of God's creations." " Then what the fuck happened?" " He thought he could turn corruption against itself. He was wrong. Once he began to take government money, and he began to use the political system to promote his own interests, there was no turning back. Corruption corrupts. The big joke was on him. This..." Bethany held up the folder, but still didn't open it. "... what they did with Julia, and with the others... well, I can't explain it. My family - the company - they couldn't let it go public, for the very reasons that Roark Harper first contemplated. They didn't know what to do with the breeding lines. They contemplated raising the animals for the overseas sex trade, and some of the breeding work was geared that way... but the economics didn't add up. Human flesh was bought just as cheaply, in the end." " So the program continues, with a handful of geneticist quietly improving the stock, and releasing test animals into the community every few years. It's too much money - too much inertia - to simply throw it away. The long-standing relationship with Alpha Nu ensures secrecy, and this... these pictures... this is how they finish the evaluation of the test animals." Test animals, Shannon reflected. That's what I am to these people. A test animal. " So what's my choice? Do it now, or do it later?" Bethany shook her head. " I can offer something else. I have special standing. They'll let me do this. Come live with me." " ...as your pet," Shannon finished. " I didn't say that." " But what else is there? I'm an animal, and I'd be your possession." An object of pity and ridicule, at the hands of her lifelong rival. Despite the horror of the other option, it was really no choice at all. " No. I won't." " Please, Shannon. I don't want it to end this way." " Answer me this, Bethany..." Shannon was, for some reason, desperate to justify this to a girl who could never really have been her friend. She couldn't hide her bitterness. " Which is more shameful? For a pig... a pig with high abilities, to be sure, but a pig nonetheless... to chose to live out her nature." " Or, is it the humans who have the more shameful role? Humans who could live to a different nature, by their rationality and ingenuity... but who have chosen to subject their whole civilization to irrational superstition, and the hypocrisy of corruption? Which is worse, Bethany?" " How very Ayn Rand of you," was the girl's answer. The name sounded familiar, but that didn't matter now. It was time to go. This was pure irony. Shannon had never felt so alive as now, minutes away from being gutted. " It's true that you are only a pig," Carissa told her, "but you are a special pig. Our guests will want to feast with their eyes even before I begin to cook you." Thus she was displayed like this, oiled for the fire, already helpless on the spit, but not yet touched by the knife. The guests would want to see her like this; alive, frightened, and breathing quickly through her nose. Her mouth was forced open around an apple, in classic presentation. Carissa had frozen the apple to keep Shannon's teeth from biting through it and dislodging the fruit. Nothing would ruin her presentation. To be absolutely sure, Carissa had secured the apple in place. That had been painful. The cook did it with a metal pin, long enough to protrude out of Shannon's cheeks by a couple inches on either side. She had taken care not to chip any teeth as she drove the pin into place. Then, she cleaned up the wounds with something that stung Shannon badly, but stopped the bleeding. The spit itself was like nothing Shannon had ever seen. It was around eight feet long, so that it could support her full length, with her hands tied above her head. " Normally, I prepare my pigs splayed open around the spit," Carissa explained. "For your kind, I use the larger spit and secure it behind your back. It means I'll have to use quite a bit of wire to support you, but it's necessary if I want to be able to gut you and bleed you in front of the guests. That's the way they like it." Indeed, Carissa was securing Shannon with quite a lot of wire. The stainless steel loops felt cold against her skin at first, as Carissa fitted them into place. Then, as she tightened them, the coldness was replaced with intense pain and pressure. Every time Carissa used the pliers to twist the ends of the wire, the tight loops bit into Shannon's flesh. Carissa used the same cleaner on these wounds to stop any inadvertent bleeding. " See," she instructed as she secured each point, "I do above your ankles. For your knees I do both above and below. Tight, tight on your hips. There. A few times around. This will be where a lot of the weight is secured. But here's the tricky part. I need to leave quite a gap, so that when it's time, I can slit you open cleanly from your pelvis to the bottom of your ribs." Blind panic, and for the first time since the preparation began, Shannon found herself fighting instinctively against the restraints. " Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. No need, my darling. Those wires will hurt you quite badly if you struggle. Calm down. That's a good pig. You see, you'll be gone before I slit you open. I need to bleed you out first." Carissa didn't even pause in her work as she talked. She continued with the wires, under the armpits, above the wrists, and along Shannon's forehead to keep her head from flopping around. " I'll have you upside-down for that, when I cut your throat. That way your blood will drain cleanly." Every place where the wire bit into her, Shannon could feel the pain and numbness of her body reporting the injuries. Shallow, fast breathing, as she contemplated the actual act. It would be soon now. Carissa was already warming the coals. The roasting pit was larger than anything Shannon had seen before, built with blocks of reddish stone. There was a heavy steel upright on either end, one of them with the mechanical parts of the rotisserie. " Well, this is just about it for us," Carissa came face level to her main course. She held a long stainless steel knife, and a sharpener. "I can hear the guests arriving now, and I still have a lot of meal prep ahead of me. Let me just get you into position now." Carissa handled the loaded spit surprisingly well, positioning one end into a depression on the floor, and hoisting the other up with a chain. Shannon's head was down to the ground now. She could see the groove in the floor, and the little drainage dip that would catch her blood and direct it to the drain. The sound of the knife being sharpened shivered through every nerve in her body. Here, in her final moments, Shannon tried to be free of thought, but that had always been difficult for her. She was nothing more than meat now, or soon would be. There was no use at all for stray thoughts, particularly for wild imaginings. Like, for instance, the one that was burning through her as the first of the guests, all senior sorority sisters she assumed, began to filter into the room to admire Carissa's work. The thought was outlandish. What if, she thought for just a moment. What if this was still a trick. Maybe the so-called pig sex pheromone was something else entirely. Maybe Bethany's performance was calculated to convince her to do this willingly. What if the whole pig story was an outlandish lie, perpetrated on girls who fit just the right psychological profile to be manipulated into believing it. Maybe vulnerable girls, like orphans in the foster care system. Too far fetched. It would take someone with access to years of records. It would take someone with the kind of skill to manipulate those existing insecurities into something near neurosis. Someone like... " Why hello Shannon," a familiar voice belonged to the well-dressed woman who was standing quite closely now, teasing her long fingernails around Shannon's nipples. It was Elizabeth Fisher. " You're surprised to see me. I never told you that I was a recruiting officer of Alpha Nu Omega. But you never asked the right questions, so we find ourselves right here." The woman's voice still sent chills down Shannon's spine. She was so confident, so in control. Her touch made Shannon whimper. It was all she could do, with the apple pinned in her mouth. Elizabeth ran her fingers all over Shannon's oiled body, pausing to finger her hairless slit and watch the student squirm. " Lovely presentation," she complimented Carissa. " Thank you, ma'am." " You've fattened her up a bit since I last saw her." " Yes ma'am. It makes for better roasting." " I see you have her all ready to be bled," Elizabeth said with authority to the chef. " But I'll be taking over for a while. Don't worry, I'll give her back to you with plenty of time to finish the meal preparation. This pig is quite special to me, and I'm sure she'd be happier in my hands." While everyone else may have been enjoying the spectacle that had become of Shannon's body, Elizabeth knelt down tight to look Shannon in the eyes and appraise her mind. " You've been such an amusing pig, Shannon, with that beautiful brain of yours. You're a living contradiction. So capable, so intelligent... but look at what you've willingly become. First you've surrendered yourself to the sexual desires of your sorority. Now, you're willing to sacrifice yourself and become meat for their appetites. I know this must be quite uncomfortable, but if you could see yourself on the spit, it would confirm everything you've always known." The woman always knew how to make her react. That burning in Shannon's skin had nothing to do with the fire. She flushed with shame, but also from the background arousal that Elizabeth Fisher was such an expert at manipulating. " I can see your mind moving right now. You're still struggling, somewhere in there. You're still wondering, even, if everything we've told you is true." " I'm tempted to leave you with those doubts. That would be delicious too, in its own way. But I think I'll enjoy it more, seeing you live out your own nature as a pig, because that's exactly what you've always know that you are. And now, I'm going to change the chef's instructions so that you can experience it all. First, I'll put you over the fire a while..." Shannon tried to cry out, but the apple in her mouth prevented it. She tried to fight, but the wires were all too tight. " Calm yourself," Elizabeth soothed, but she was clearly enjoying this. " I won't finish you that way. Before you pass out, I'll bring you back down and have you gutted, so you can feel that too. I'm sure that's where I'll lose you." " It's too bad we couldn't convince Bethany to be here. You were wrong about her, you know. I'm sure you've convinced yourself that you couldn't trust her, and that life with her would have been unbearable. I only met her for the first time yesterday, when she came to plead your case. It's a funny thing, pig. I think she may even have a little crush on you." She paused. " Oh well. It works out nicely for the rest of us. Maybe I'll have a plate sent to her room." End.