Fresh Meat

Literotica edition © 2013 Guy Bailey

*

At twenty-four years of age, Boy stood two metres twelve centimetres in height and weighed one hundred and fifty three kilograms. He ate anything his mother cooked for him but found the greatest enjoyment in the flavour and texture of human flesh. He preferred female, and young. It was almost all gone though, and he was in the back shed mincing up the last of the stocks from the freezer; the arm of a mature man, the father of the last female. He had cut the flesh from the bone and was feeding the strips into the meat grinder Papa had bought from a catalogue with his new credit card.

Boy chuckled slowly to himself. Soon there would be another female come to stay in the caravan with the $25 a night sign painted on it. He had made the sign much brighter by adding a fresh, lime green outline to the letters earlier that day. He figured girls liked pink and green letters and numbers, and pretty dollar signs too.

***

Isabel checked her purse: a twenty dollar note and a few coins. She looked at the lip-gloss again: two dollars fifty. Her father's Peter Jackson cigarettes were sixteen dollars ninety-five. She grabbed a cherry bomb lip-gloss and put it on the scratched glass counter beside the smokes. "And three snakes," she said to the fat service station attendant. The big jelly snakes were fifty-five cents each.

The guy smiled. His teeth were different shades of grey and his puffy cheeks were red with burst blood capillaries. There was a nerve or something twitching his right temple, or maybe he was about to wink; a thought that made Isabel feel a little queasy.

She grabbed her lip-balm, snakes and her dad's smokes and took off out the door, leaving behind the chilly air-conditioning and feeling the heat from the concrete driveway hit her like a nuclear powered spotlight. It was early afternoon of a scorching summer day.

The tiny roadside village of Kangaroo Flat consisted of the one service station, a post office come general store, and a pub. There were seven houses. The highway was bitumen for a hundred metres either side of town then gravel for a couple of hours east and west beyond that. It wasn't really a gazetted highway but the number of road-trains carting cattle in recent years had forced an upgrade in the standard of the gravel surface.

There were no tourists of any description to be found at Kangaroo Flat. The pub catered to the few people in town and those from surrounding farms. Early afternoon it was pretty quiet. Isabel found the bar empty and just two men playing pool. She sat at the bar. The two men looked over and smiled.

"How you going, honey?" It was the taller of the two who had spoken. He would have been around thirty. He had dark eyes and a slightly pointy nose. The shorter guy was bald, or shaved bald. He had a familiar face. He had been in town the last time Isabel was there, she decided.

"Buy you a drink, love?" the tall man asked amicably enough.

The barman had approached. Isabel had only a few coins left; not enough for a drink, other than ice water, which she had hoped to get for free. She considered what accepting a drink from the two men would perhaps lead to.

"Could I have a glass of ice water, please?" she asked the barman. He was a grey haired man with sparkly green eyes. Isabel had seen him and exchanged smiles many times before. He scooped some ice and opened a bottle of mineral water. "I don't have any money," she said to him. "Usual water will be fine."

"That's fine, miss." He placed her glass of water on the bar mat in front of her and returned to a back room where there was a golf game on television.

The tall guy approached and leant back on the bar quite close beside Isabel. "It's rude you don't answer a man when he talks to you, sweet cheeks." He had bad breath. His eyes lowered to Isabel's cleavage then lifted to meet her gaze.

"Sorry. No thank you," she said.

The bald guy had edged closer. He sat on a stool along the bar a ways, leaning on his pool cue and looking towards the doorway where the barman had gone. He nodded to the tall guy, signalling that the barman was occupied, it seemed.

"Come play pool with us, eh?" The tall guy's breath was really bad. Isabel found it stifling.

"No thank you."

Isabel looked beyond the tall guy to another man who had suddenly appeared in the pub doorway. He was a complete stranger to her, and she hoped, to the other two men as well. She smiled and waved to him. "Over here, Kenny!" she called out cheerily. "This is my boyfriend Kenny," she informed the tall guy, who stood, backing up a bit.

'Kenny' was nicely built, Isabel noticed. He had on Levis and a white t-shirt that clung to the definition of muscle in his shoulders and chest. His face was lined with the maturity of a man in his mid-thirties. His hair was dirty blond. He was twirling a set of car keys around a finger as he looked over in confusion. His hands were huge.

Isabel glared at him, rolling her eyes sideways at the sweaty oaf that was harassing her.

'Kenny' smiled. "What's up, Lois?"

***

'Kenny' (Brad Oakshot) was lost. He had left the city at 3am in a company 4WD with a tractor part for urgent delivery, and a mud map of where to find some place called Dalton. He had been driving for nine hours with the mud map having let him down about three hours ago.

This was merely another in a line-up of days that had not gone well lately. The reason he was delivering some stupid tractor part to a farm in the middle of God knows where, was that he had been shifted sideways. He had been kicked out of the office, where he enjoyed an air-conditioned thirty-eight hour week with an early knock-off every Friday, and shoved into sales and deliveries. He was picking and packing orders and driving a damn delivery van in city traffic every day. Often until six or seven at night.

"Hey, Brad—you're single right? You've got nothing planned for tomorrow eh?" his new boss had asked, smirking. "Got this delivery that has to happen!"

This was tomorrow; a Saturday. His old job had been in accounts receivable, in an office that didn't even exist on a Saturday.

He eyed the girl who had called him Kenny. He got that she was asking him to step up and help her out with the two sweaty looking farm boys. She looked a bit like Lois from the Superman TV series that he used to like. She was in a short sundress and boots. He could see why the farm boys were trying their luck.

"You okay there, baby?" He shifted his gaze to the guy sitting at the end of the bar then to the one edging back away from his 'girlfriend'. "How ya going, buddy—you all good?"

Brad worked out and did a bit of Karate. He was confident, and could see a lack of that in the eyes of the other men. 'Lois' stood and slipped her arm within his as he approached. She smelled like lollies. The feel of her fingernails digging into his bicep sent a warm tingle through his chest.

The farm boys left the pub and sprayed gravel as they took off in their rusty tray back utility. The barman pulled Brad the beer he ordered then returned to his television in the back room.

Brad took a long swig of the cold ale. "You okay?"

"I'm fine. Just a pair of dickheads. Thanks."

Brad pointed to himself. "Brad."

The girl smiled. "Isabel. Although Lois is a nice name. What made you call me that?"

"Popped into my head."

Brad took his mud map from his back pocket and opened it on the bar. "You heard of a place called Dalton around here anywhere, Isabel?"

She shook her head. "No, I haven't. Sorry."

"What about Westmont?"

"No. I'm from Athol Grove, about an hour that way. But we haven't been here long." She had indicated the direction Brad was travelling with a toss of her head. Her dark hair bobbed about her shoulders. Her neck was slender and her skin looked soft and enticing.

Brad followed the line of her neck down to the open top button of her dress. Her skin was lightly tanned, but as she leant forward to sip from the straw in her drink on the bar, he noticed the distinct line of her tan and the milky-white roundness of her breast. The light cotton fabric of her dress was gaping to reveal a smallish peak with a dark little raspberry of a nipple.

"Ugh, I'm so hungry!" she exclaimed suddenly. "I have to get going."

Brad had pried his gaze from her chest and met her chocolate-brown eyes. "Is there anywhere to buy lunch here in town?"

She nodded. She had picked up her glass and was slurping the last of the water with the straw. "The general store has nice sandwiches."

"I need to eat too. Join me?"

"I haven't got any money."

Brad shrugged. "I'll shout you. Or my company will, since I'm on account for this trip."

"Hmm." She eyed Brad steadily, taking a very deliberate tour of his body before meeting his eyes with an unfathomable grin. "You're cute," she stated flatly.

Brad's cheeks heated but he just shrugged again. "Is that a yes?"

"It's a maybe." She pointed to his beer.

He nodded.

"What if we play for lunch?" She sipped daintily and motioned to the pool table with her eyes. "If I win you buy me lunch."

"Oh yeah—and what if I win?"

She had a small cotton shoulder bag sitting on the bar. She searched inside of it for a moment and found a tube of lip-gloss. It was pink in colour and made her lips shiny as she applied it. Brad was still looking at her lips when she answered his question.

"Well, if you win you still have to buy me lunch, but you get to taste my cherry-bomb afterward."

She flashed the lip-gloss, biting a lip teasingly.

Brad met the tease in her eyes steadily. He very much liked the idea of kissing her.

She turned and flung more tease over her shoulder as she walked towards the pool table. "But you won't win."

He finished his beer and held a hand up to the barman who had appeared to check on drinks. One beer was all he could have. He had seen a highway patrol car passing as he pulled up at the little pub. No doubt the cop would remember him having stopped, and would probably see him as a likely candidate for a breath test.

Brad watched from the opposite end of the table as the strange dark haired girl set up the pool balls. As she rolled the rack into position, her dress gaped again and revealed her small breasts, with her eyes lifting before Brad's did.

She smiled that off, very knowingly. "You should break, in case it's your only shot and you end up having to watch the rest of the game."

"Wouldn't mind just watching," Brad said.

She tossed another teasing smile over a shoulder, and as she turned from picking a cue from a stand against the wall she was fastening the top button of her dress. Her playful eyes widened into a mock glare. "It might have been safer letting those other guys buy me lunch."

Brad looked up from his cue. "Probably," he quipped, and broke with the nine balls flying all around the table. He sunk a couple and downed the one and three balls before missing the four and handing the table over to the incredibly sexy creature that tossed him yet another teasing smile as she edged past. She had softly brushed his front with her back and bottom to get by and to where she wanted to take her first shot.

She peered up from her cue and made the shot while keeping eye contact with Brad. The four ball dropped into the pocket and the white rebounded into perfect position for the next numbered ball. The remaining balls all dropped into their assigned pockets with ease and she peered up from her cue as she was making the final, winning shot. "No cherry-bomb for you, huh?"

Brad laughed. "Nope. No cherry-bomb for me. I think I just got hustled."

She lifted and kissed his cheek as she passed. "Come on, I'm hungry."

Brad followed. The bright sunlight shone right through her dress as she stepped from the shade of the pub. It was a white and light green, floral print dress. The skirt was short and lifted at the back upon a gust of breeze. It was almost revealing her underwear as it was, until she did a pirouette and the shirt fanned out to reveal that her panties were chequered blue and white. She caught the skirt and pressed it down, flashing another tease over her shoulder at Brad.

"Come on, slow poke!"

Brad caught up but she kind of pranced along mostly in front of him, pulling on his hand as they entered the general store to a blast of icy air and the aroma of freshly baked bread. There was another customer being served. The sandwich bar was behind glass with a range of fresh salad, cold meat cuts and cheeses.

"I'll have two cheese and tomato," Isabel said. "I don't eat meat. Do you?"

"Yeah, I guess."

It was an odd question, Brad thought. It seemed to matter to her, as the playfulness left her eyes momentarily.

"Okay. You can have it then," she said, looking down and away.

"Could we have eight cheese and tomato, please?" Brad asked the buxom woman who had dismissed her other customer and looked to him. "White or wholemeal?" he asked Isabel.

She beamed. "White please."

"All on white," he informed. His hand was being squeezed at that point.

"You can have meat if you want."

"No—you won fair and square. You get to order. A drink?"

"Can I have Coke?"

Brad took two bottles of Coke from the glass display fridge and placed them on the counter. Isabel claimed his hand again and intertwined her fingers, holding their joined hands against her body. The back of Brad's wrist was then pressed to the skirt of her dress in front, with the heat of her crotch noticeable enough to make his chest tingle with excitement.

There was a small café section in the shop where they sat to eat. Brad attempted to question the strange, exhilarating girl he had met about her life there in the middle of nowhere. She offered nothing of substance, just that it was extremely boring and that she often drove to Kangaroo Flat to get out of the house for the day.

"I really have to go," she said. They had finished eating and remained chatting for nearly an hour.

"Okay. It was nice to meet you, Isabel. Where are you parked?"

"Just out of town." She pointed in the general direction of the western end of town; the direction Brad was traveling.

She suddenly lifted and leant across the table to plant a kiss on Brad's lips. It was a closed mouth kiss with her sweet, cherry flavoured lips. "It was nice to meet you too, Brad. And thank you for before—with those other guys."

She grabbed her shoulder bag and turned back from the door to blow another kiss. "Bye!"

"Can I give you a li—" Brad was cut off with the bang of the screen door, and he watched through the window as the strange girl ran across the road and towards the tree-line at the end of town.

***

The 4WD was near on empty and took a while to fuel up. It was heavy on fuel, and Brad was pleased to be collecting receipts for reimbursement when he got back to the city.

If I ever get back.

He opened his mud map on the bonnet of the vehicle and scratched his head. The fat man who had just served him wandered over sucking on a red ice-block. Brad glanced at him. "You ever heard of a place called Dalton?"

He nodded. "Dalton's Scrapyard? Closed years ago."

"A scrapyard—yeah, that could be it. Where is it? Around here somewhere?"

The fat man thumbed in the direction Brad had been travelling. "About an hour. Watch for the Athol Grove sign on the right, then another ten miles there's a candy striped awning on an old abandoned café and servo. That was Dalton's but he closed down back in the mid-nineties and retired over the coast somewhere. I think someone moved into his old house but I haven't heard of the scrapyard reopening."

Brad packed away his mud map. "Cool. Thanks, man. You wouldn't know if there's a motel or something anywhere in that direction?"

The fat man patted the roof of the 4WD and leant there by the driver's window when Brad had buckled-up. He pulled the used ice-block stick out of his reddened mouth. "There's lodgings in Athol Grove. The pub has clean rooms and good tucker."

"Thanks, man," Brad offered again as he drove off, powering the window up and cranking the air-conditioner dial up to full.

He had bought a couple of big bags of chips and still had three of the sandwiches from lunch, not knowing where he would end up and whether there would be any shops. The vehicle was a wagon and he had a cooler in the back seat that was plugged into the cigarette lighter. He stuffed the sandwiches and the two bottles of water he had also bought into that as he drove. Just out of town he came across the highway patrol car parked with red and blue lights flashing. It was in a truck parking area with the cop kicking the tires of a red, late model Falcon.

The cop looked over as Brad rolled slowly past. It was a sixty kilometre an hour zone so Brad was watching his speed. Then the bitumen ended and the one hundred speed limit sign set him free, but as the broad gravel road swept around a bend he came across the girl from earlier walking along.

She waved and smiled. He pulled up beside her and powered the passenger side window down. "Hello again!"

"Hi," she said, leaning on the window with her pretty brown eyes roving around to inspect the interior of the car. The top button of her dress was undone again and Brad could see some milky white breast beyond the line of her tan.

"What happened? Is that your car back there?"

"Nope. I haven't got a car," she replied lightly.

"But you said you were parked out of town." Brad had no interest in challenging the girl and didn't really care what she was up to. "Well, I thought you said—" he corrected himself, easing back from any kind of confrontation that might discourage her from accepting a lift.

"I know. I did say that, but I lied. I often hitchhike and I know I shouldn't."

Brad motioned to the passenger seat with his eyes. "Well?"

"But where are you going?" She was biting her lip and smile. She opened the door and climbed up onto the seat. Her long tanned legs swayed towards Brad. "Didn't you say you were looking for some place?"

"I found it." Brad tried not to look as she buckled-up and her legs swished together. He swallowed dryly. "I got directions back at the servo. I can drop off the tractor thingy and take you to Athol Grove. The guy said I could get a room at the pub there."

"Okay. It seems you are my hero today. It was so hot out there."

Brad reached into his cooler and produced one of the bottles of water. She thanked him and drank thirstily. They had chatted a little about his life back in the city over lunch and as they drove the conversation returned to that.

"I still think it would be way scary to live there all alone," Isabel was saying. "Especially as a girl and not knowing where it's safe to walk at night and stuff."

"Well that's easy. It's not safe to walk alone anywhere at night. But you don't have to. You just make sure you don't get caught without a ride home, or when you're out at night you stick with the crowd. There's plenty of young single girls living in the city."

"I nearly did it once," Isabel went on kind of wistfully as she sat gazing out the window.

The country was flat and lifeless. There were fields of brown grass and stands of short, sad looking mallee trees with the occasional out-of-season creek, sandy and dry. The red gravel road emitted shimmering heat waves that produced glassy mirages that evaporated as the 4WD cruised on through them.

"What happened with your wife though?" The question had ended a long period of silence. It seemed to be tacked onto the train of thought Brad's young hitchhiker had been pursuing before.

He noted her interest in his life with amusement, imagining a teen girl stuck out there would probably live for any news of the world beyond Kangaroo Flat. He wondered how old she actually was.