Don eased the bulky MPI truck down the steep freeway ramp at Snow road exit, and wheeled east into the hazy morning sun.

"This rig feels damn sloppy in the turns," he commented to his assistant Jeneen, "and it desperately needs new shocks, but it does have plenty of power on the highway."

"She got a dandy tuneup a couple days ago," Jeneen said, smiling and shading her eyes from the bright morning glare, "Tracy really has a knack for engines. We're loaded down pretty good too. There's 28 delivery wenches back there; 16 of them are on spits with mini-ox tanks. That makes for a little under two tons of pussyflesh, with nearly half a ton of mobile equipment."

"Boy, that sounds like a lot of hardware" Don said, doing his best to avoid striking an old woman shuffling through a crosswalk. Wearing a long woolen coat, incongruously heavy for the warm June morning, she had stopped abruptly near the curb to fold her arms and fire an angry scowl at the truck as it roared past. "What's that bitty's problem?"

"Endangered species!" Jeneen said, drawling the words out with her best cockney. "Or, maybe just too old to ride the truck?" she added brightly.

"Yeah," Don agreed, smiling at her humor, "Now, what about all that equipment? Won't it get in our way?"

"Nope, not really," Jeneen said checking her face in the mirror's visor, "The spits are hollow, teflon coated alu-terium, with twin infusion tubes; they only weigh about 12 lbs each. The mini-ox tank and regulator for each girl are fairly lightweight too. All these things don't weigh as much as a standard 33 pound tote-frame does."

"Well, those things will be left behind as our girls are dropped off. So are you saying we'll go home lighter?" Don asked, stomping the clutch and poking his shifter into a noisier gear.

"Oh dear, no," Jeneen replied after the truck quit shaking, "Heavier. Remember we make pickups too. We've got enough stalls to park 48 meat wenches in their tote-frames, along this wall here behind us. Then, for those unfortunate ladies who neglected to use frames, they'll ride along on slow-nooses in the 16 cubicles against the side walls. Altogether, our pickup capacity is 64 women. Weight-wise our return trip cargo can be about double, counting in the tote-frames too. Now, Don, when you get to Constitution, you'll turn right, and then pull into the first driveway of the second office building to your left. We're going to meet one of your steadiest customers, Mister Mulholland."

Don brought his truck to a squeaking stop at the loading zone of a circular driveway in the shadow of a 14-story building with silver initials MF perched on its top floor. Waiting for him under the large awning of the front doors were five smartly dressed people, three men in business suits, and two women in short skirt-suits. All members of this welcoming committee were clad in expensive brown silk with small green ML logos embroidered on their breast pockets.

"The little bearded fella there is Larry Mulholland himself, owner of Mulholland Financials." Jeneen said, as she wrestled out of her safety belt, "The old boy's a real stickler. Goes through the same ritual each time, including the butt-grab he gives me. Insists every time on greeting us with those same two VPs who never talk, along with whatever girls are playing their options."

"What do you mean about playing options?" Don quizzed.

"I thought you knew about all that," Jeneen said, wrinkling her nose, "You know that meat-wenches are submitted in three different ways, right? First there are the regular volunteers who usually come along packed up in cozy frames; then there are girls chosen by government lots, in that peculiar mix of random chance and regional statistics your country is fond of using. Then there are those companies whose employees families are exempted from government selection, by signing their chances over to their employers. Whenever someone is picked up that way, around here they call it playing her option."

"Oh, I know all that stuff." Don said, "I just never heard your option lingo used for it. At Champion Fabrics, we called it site-picks. It's the same thing though"

As the two climbed out of the truck, Mr. Mulholland stepped up to greet them.

"Hello Jeneen," he said happily, "Is this your new driver?"

"Yes, sir! This is Mr. Don Bowman sir. He will be taking care of your stops from here on."

"Pleased to meet you sir," Don said, shaking hands with the wiry man who held Don fast.

"I like him already!" He said to Jeneen before turning his genial eyes back to Don and relaxing his fist, "Don, it's good to know you too. You've got a great assistant there. Keep her around, OK? I've grown kind of fond of her. And there's no vendor I appreciate more than MPI!"

"Certainly, Mr. Mulholland," Don responded in his best kiss-ass mode, "We appreciate your business."

"I am showing four spit-prepped deliveries for you today, sir," Jeneen said sweetly, releasing the latch and throwing up the cargo door which released a blast of cold air, "Would you like them brought down now?"

"Yes please!" Mulholland boomed excitedly, "Bring Brenda and Mariah out first if you would. My porters should be here any minute to take them up through the building, and to drive the other two over to St Thomas."

The additional two girls Mulholland was taking delivery of this morning had been purchased from MPI's regular stock of meat wenches for the banquet being held this evening at his secondary office facility, located above the exclusive shopping malls at St. Thomas Square.

But Brenda and Mariah had been local employees, optioned straight from the executive office suites. Larry Mulholland always liked to have the girls originating from his home base brought back through the front doors and paraded through his building so all their friends and co-workers could greet them, chat briefly and say goodbye, before his porters took them down to the kitchens to meet their fate. Sweets from the suites, he always called them. Unless his wenches were being optioned for disciplinary reasons, he normally requested MPI's pricey number 11 spit-prep combination, where the girls were brought back one month to the day after being carried away in the truck.

During that time, MPI administered them with medium-grade tortures, and employed them in a variety of menial tasks at the processing plant. Despite being mistreated in many ways, including sexually, number 11 wenches were well-nourished during their month-long ordeals. Also, any imperfections of their bodies were carefully burnished away by use of tanning beds, electro-massage, breast augmentations, liposuction, and other cosmetic means, including permanent makeup which was applied very heavily with heat-resistant tattoo inks. Then, looking better than anyone had ever seen them, the wenches were ceremoniously carried back to the customer, live-spitted through their pussies, and ready for roasting. Ever the frugal executive, Mulholland tempered his phenomenally expensive preparation choice with special discounts from MPI, that were available only to their most long-term faithful customers.

Don and Jeneen hopped into the truck and walked slowly to the midpoint of their row of spitted females. Glancing up from her logsheets, Jeneen pointed to a petite black girl near the deepest end, quivering in mute agony upon her spit.

"That's little Mariah over there," she said, unlocking the spit-mooring with a small key, and pulling back a central lever which noisily unlatched all the spits at once. "She's a Stint, and a dear one too. And this one over here is Brenda. We can take her first. Just a moment, sir, while I secure her tank. Then you can grab Brenda's spit from the mouth end."

While Don walked around to the other side, where the spitted women's heads were, Jeneen lifted a 12-inch tall cylinder from it's tight pocket set into the truck floor. This was the mini-oxygen tank connected to Brenda's spit by two thin aluminized tubes. The valve and gauge assembly atop the tank included a sturdy steel ring that she slipped over the ass-end of the spit until it nearly reached Brenda's feet, which were cruelly attached to the spit by means of slender steel pinions. The narrow rod between her feet holding the two sharp pinions was attached to the main spit pole by an adjustable ring collar. This ring-collar also held Brenda's anal shunt firmly in place. As all spitted wenches do, Brenda's ass bore a two-inch thick cooking nail planted 10 inches deep into her rectum. This anal shunt served to stabilize her hips while the spit rotated her slowly over the fire; it also distributed heat more efficiently so that her pelvic region would cook evenly.

Brenda Davies was a platinum blonde with a smooth golden tan who had worked as a market researcher at Mulholland Financials for the past 6 years. She appeared to Don to be in her late 20's and quite beautiful. Her large conical breasts hanging below her spitted form swayed in time with her labored breathing. Like all the spitted girls, her hair bore a thick coating of flame retardant gel, and was pulled up very tightly and wrapped into a severe bun behind her head.

Facing the back door of the truck, Don grabbed his end of the spit that protruded nearly two feet from Brenda's mouth, while Jeneen grabbed the other end. Like two weightlifters doing a simple curl, they brought the pipe to shoulder height clearing Brenda's folded legs above the other spitted wenches. As she was being lifted, the woman emitted an eerie pain-wracked howl, partly muffled by the two-inch thick metal tubing that filled her mouth. Startled by her baleful noise, Don glanced over at Brenda's face and saw her heavily madeup eyes, wide with terror and pain, darting back and forth. Her lips, lacquered to a bright shining red, arched away from her teeth as if to speak. Her mouth, grimacing in agony, desperately tried to negotiate the foreign object propping it open.

"Um, she seems to be in serious pain over here," Don whispered to Jeneen, "Is anything wrong?"

"Not at all." Jeneen said casually, "It's always a pretty bumpy ride. And they experience it much differently than we do. But she's wide awake now, and that's a good thing."

As they carried the suffering woman to the opening of the truck, a small crowd of employees had gathered by the entryway of the building. Some could be seen holding their hands over their mouths in astonishment, or pointing fingers of recognition at their former coworker. "Oh, my God!" Don heard one cry, "There's Brenda Davies! Look at what they did to her!"

"Splendid! Simply splendid!" Mulholland beamed once he had gotten a good look at Brenda's flawlessly copper-toned beauty, "She's precious! Her skin and makeup are absolutely perfect! And those breasts are four times the size of the ones she carried away a month ago! This is some of your best work!"

"Thank you, sir," Jeneen said, smiling proudly and pressing a footswitch that activated a motorized ramp to extend from the truck. "They're full of natural breast milk also, due to the hormone therapy, which makes them quite painful I'm afraid."

"Oh, that's quite alright!" he said, following alongside them as they carried Brenda down the 6 foot wide ramp. The executive was nearly prancing, like a happy child spying two cherries atop his sundae, "No problem at all. We'll be sure to milk them well before roasting her -I just love them!"

"Now Don . . . Jeneen, just a moment. I'd like you to meet a couple of my associates here." Mulholland said when the two had reached the sidewalk and stepped away from the ramp with their spitted woman in tow. He waved the two skirt-suited ladies over to join them. "These two are Pamela Sanchez from my customer relations department, and Lorraine Eiderhorne from human resources. They have graciously agreed to ride back to the plant with you today, to become the focus of our celebrations this time next month."

The two women nodded in greeting to Don and Jeneen, but their attempts at smiling for this introduction resulted in little more than a fearful flinch of their cheek muscles. When they took a closer look at the woman held grotesquely upon the spit, they exchanged a despairing glance between themselves and said nothing. Don and Jeneen nodded silently in response.

Mulholland smiled, briefly enjoying the irony of this awkward moment. He had craftily timed this meeting so that no hand-shaking would be possible, and so that Pamela and Lorraine would have a good chance to stare straight into the blinking eyes of a former friend whose wretched fate they would come to know first-hand. Brenda, Pamela, and Lorraine had all lunched together regularly for several years. The immediacy of their peril was bought home to these two newly-optioned women, and it devastated them.

"Oh good! Here come my porters now, two for each of our wenches," Mulholland said gleefully, as eight men dressed in all-white uniforms walked up, "Gentlemen, two of you may take Brenda here and make the office rounds with her. Be sure everyone gets a chance to visit with her. And please be gentle with our dear Brenda; she's carrying a lot of my milk around with her!"

Don and Jeneen carefully handed Brenda to the two men nearest them, and started back up the ramp to fetch Mariah.

"Pamela. . . Lorraine?" Mulholland said expectantly, "It's time for you two to begin undressing now. We don't want to hold these nice people up on their rounds, do we? You know the rules, down to the buff!"

The two women's pained expressions said it all. Blushing with the extreme humiliation of having to strip naked at the front door of their own workplace, and in plain view of all their friends and associates, they slowly began to disrobe, handing their jewelry, shoes and other garments to the two vice-presidents who placed them in small plastic bags.

"She really is a tiny thing, isn't she?" Don asked Jeneen as they easily lifted Mariah's spit from its mooring slots, and heard her whimper feebly in response, "When was she stinted?"

"I think when she was around fourteen," Jeneen answered him. "Her family is from Kenya. They do lots of this in Africa still. She's 24 now I believe, not that she looks a single day closer to fifteen."

For the last twenty-five years the stinting process had been gaining popularity in many parts of the world, ever since Swiss genetic engineers had perfected it. Administering a series of five injections of the agent Amylhystercycline over the course of five weeks, a human female's physical maturation process could be stopped dead in its tracks, along with any visible signs of aging. The scientists had originally been searching for a youth serum to prolong the human life span. They discovered instead a treatment that accomplished half of that job perfectly. It would ensure that in every way, from head to toe, a girl never looked a day older than her fifth injection. Amylhystercycline, or Stint, as it came to be known, was indeed the perfect recipe for anti-aging enthusiasts.

But it wasn't exactly a free lunch either. It didn't in any way prolong life as researchers had hoped, nor did it do anything at all if it was given after a girl's 16th birthday. Once the test results were in, knowledge of this frightening potion and its use had been banned worldwide. But gradually, under the pressure of black-market profiteers, pandora's secret slipped out of the box, and Stint became a widely distributed illegal designer drug. Suppressing it's use proved to be impossible. So, after 7 years, bans around the world were lifted and replaced with regulation and education, to encourage doctors and their patients to use the drug more responsibly. This approach proved to be much more successful. It was soon found that with the benefit of free choice, the notoriety of stinting diminished somewhat, with fewer people overall trying to administer it. And when they did, the exorbitant fees mobsters used to collect were filling the tax coffers, and supplying research grants instead.

Mariah Tusumi was an extraordinarily beautiful young black woman. She had been an interoffice courier at Mulholland for nearly 3 years. In a new process known only to MPI, her lips and eyelids had been permanently bonded with shining metallic polymers, and now gleamed with a reflective golden surface. In another variation of the same process, her skin glistened everywhere with an alluring deep bronze glitter. Her appearance had been embellished in all the ways that MPI's number 11 girls were subjected to, except one. In keeping with the illusion of her body's anti-aging spell, her breasts had not been augmented, merely pierced and linked together with a heavy chain. Otherwise, they remained exactly as they were the day her doctor and her consenting parents had, with the hopes of improving her chances of a good marriage, legally performed her fifth and final injection of Amylhystercycline.

Mariah was greeted by the growing crowd of Mulholland's employees with even more amazement than for Brenda. No one had ever seen anything like her. The startlingly surreal appearance she presented as a glamorously live-spitted stint hushed the crowd as if they were in the presence of a tiny goddess. Mulholland himself was struck speechless.

By the time Mariah and the additional two meat-wenches had been handed over by Don and Jeneen to Mulholland's porters, Pamela and Lorraine were completely naked, shivering with shame and fear, and weeping loudly. The two silent VPs had already tethered the women's elbows and wrists very tightly together behind their backs to comply with MPI's secure loading requirements.

All girls who are submitted without MPI tote-frames must have their hands and elbows tightly bound behind them with regulation MPI fetters, which are available at all supermarkets and hardware stores. It is not mandatory that they be gagged, though many are, but it is required that they be as naked as the day they were born.

Also, since Pamela and Lorraine weren't properly tote-framed it was required they be loaded into vertical stretch-lockers that line the longer two sides of the truck. Mr. Mulholland, who was very fond of asphyxia-torture for his optioned girls, greatly preferred they be submitting in this way, even though it was much more expensive for him. The lockers are designed to keep as many as sixteen wenches on the truck in peak distress, held in a tiptoe slow-hanging position until they finally arrive at the plant.

The two-foot-square locking enclosures have an unusual sloping floor. The edge of the floor facing inward to the locker door is about 4 inches taller than the floor edge meeting the outside truck wall, where there are tiny slots for the runoff of urine and other body fluids. Upon entering the booth and turning around, Pamela and Lorraine's nooses will be adjusted by Jeneen so that they must climb up to the high side of their cramped cell, and maintain that position on tiptoe. Thereafter, every time the meat truck tips or turns, the victims must struggle to keep the highest available perch against the door, or strangle.

But to accentuate their problems, when Jeneen shuts the door on each of their lockers, there is a small lever that Jeneen may pull which extrudes 12 short steel spikes inside the door at breast level, which Pamela and Lorraine must press tightly against if they have any hopes of surviving their journey. There are glass windows in the locker doors and in the dividing walls just large enough to reveal the women's faces so that handlers can see them, and so that the prisoners can see each other. This was the nightmarish ride of strangling torment that awaited Pamela and Lorraine.

At long last Mr. Mulholland handed Don a copy of the MPI confirmation printout, showing he had paid his bill in full via webwire earlier this same morning. Don did his best to disguise his shock at seeing the staggering total of the invoice which Mulholland paid so joyously. But Mulholland was more than pleased. He was beside himself with satisfaction.

"Don, I know you are kind of new to all this," Mulholland said, pulling the dazed driver aside with another one of his patented bearclaw handshakes, while Jeneen was busy leading her two new submissions to their lockers aboard the truck, "but I just want to say that you have a customer for life right here. I have never seen anything like the quality of work your people do. And you just keep getting better and better! I want to thank you. And I want you to pass that along to everyone you know at the plant."

"You're welcome, Mr. Mulholland," Don said, no longer feeling like he was acting the part. He was genuinely impressed with this man's bellowing sincerity, "We just want to thank you too. You are a very special customer to us."

"Well! See you next month then!" he crowed, releasing Don's hand with a slight push off, "Now you drive carefully mister, and take real good care of my girls there!"

Don waved to the smiling executive who was shooting him with corny two-handed pistol-fingers. He climbed into the drivers seat and shut his door to await Jeneen's return from securing Pamela and Lorraine . "God," he thought, rubbing his temples, "What an annoying man! And what a crazy stop!" Suddenly the realization washed over him that this was only their first appointment of the day. "I wonder. can anyone ever get used to something like this?"

If they remain conscious, stretch-girls are able to see around the interior of the truck And there is much to see. When fully loaded, the opposite wall of the truck may reveal as many as eight more faces in little windows, awash in tears and expressions of a bitter struggle, just as theirs are. Displayed center-stage on the truck's central aisle, they witness the gruesome sights and sounds of remaining meat wenches being delivered to their final destinations, as well as the loading of pitiful new volunteers in their tote-frames, who are just beginning their brutal journey.

Demonstrating MPI's unique methods of self-promotion, truck walls behind the stretch-girls are fitted with large glass side-panels that reveal the naked backs of suffering wenches as the truck moves along city streets. The sight of this hapless female cargo is all the signage an MPI truck needs to excite pedestrians and motorists throughout the city and keep MPI ordering desks hopping all day long.

Needless to say each minute of the ride is pure agony for the stretch-girls, as well as for the tote-framed girls, but it is an agony with a dark purpose. From their first minutes of MPI possession, weaker girls are scientifically culled from the stronger ones in a strict method of grading and classifying MPI meats. The strongest and heartiest wenches are the most prized for live spit roasting. Whereas, the weaker girls who fall by the wayside are utilized for less expensive cuts, and temporary slave-servants, such as Tera, whose ability to withstand torture was being extended significantly in her daily service to Ms. Meeks. The sooner the two categories of wenches are recognized and managed, the better.

Every bump in the road transmits a special message to the stretch-girls throats and breasts as they face their dilemma of self-impalement in order to stay alive. Wenches who are in their tote-frames are of course spared this battle, but they have their own profound discomforts to contend with.

Many would even say they are far worse off. . .

END OF CHAPTER TWO