Chocolate-Covered Cheerleaders
in the Skanky Boonies

(Mf+ choc snuff? <*>)

Father Ignatius

©January, 2005

For Gary.

Rejected by Ruthie’s Club :

• “We encourage authors who wish to submit stories in the more extreme genres—in this case, self-snuff—to motivate their treatment with strong elements of plot, resolution and character development. Unfortunately, this story does not qualify under these criteria. Ruthie’s Club is also committed to maintaining a tastefully sexy image in the erotic story community. Under this criterion, the story also fails.”

Teaser:

• When a ’busload of sophisticatedly urban cheerleaders leaves the leafy confines of Richmond on special assignment to the boonies, anything may happen.  Up to, and including, self-inflicted painful death…

Instructions to Illustrator:

• The scene: a suburban sitting room.  A fuller-figured, bearded, older man is standing facing a pyramid of topless, chocolate-covered cheerleaders.  The chocolate in some strategic areas has been licked off.  The top cheerleader in the pyramid is bent over, because her back is brushing the ceiling.  She is temptingly holding out an opened chocolate bar to the man.  There is something in her demeanor of those shapely young ladies who feed fish to sea lions in pools.  There is something in the man’s demeanor of a sea lion in a pool.

Dedication:

• This débâcle is Entirely Gary’s Fault: “On the other hand,” he said, “this might qualify as a ‘But what a way to go’ story. Chocolate covered cheerleaders…”

“I still don’t get why we’re doing this,” pouted sultry Sabrina (her real name was Judith, but they wouldn’t let her on the cheerleading squad until she changed it, obviously). “Like, we never had to leave Richmond for fundraising before. Let alone go out into the skanky boonies.” She glared reprovingly out of the ’bus window at the passing parade of boonies, each apparently more skanky than the last.

“I told you,” sighed Amber (formerly Ruth), their busty, and hence popular, leader.  It’s to raise funds for our accommodation during the team’s next tour.”

Sabrina snorted.  “Yeah, right.  Like we’re not going to be in the guys’ rooms, anyway.  It’s a total waste of money.”

“Yeswell.  We’re doing this for our parents,” said Amber diplomatically.

“Otherwise they won’t let us go,” pointed out a pragmatic voice from further down the ’bus.  Amber nodded approvingly.  Quite so.

“And, this way,” pointed out Amber, “we get to select the hotel, instead of the coach.  So we pick something nice that has massages and beauty treatments and stuff, that we can do while the guys are getting drunk and watching television in the bar.”

“Yes, Sabrina,” hissed Britni (formerly Margaret), “that’s quite a criterion.  If you’d been on tour before, you’d know that.  Remember the Motel Cockroach in Tappahannock?”  There was head-nodding from the members of last year’s squad.  The newbies watched, and learned.

“Anyway,” revealed Amber, “we’ve got a contract with this dude’s doctor.”

“What’s his name?”

“The doctor?  Kavorkian.  Something like that.”

“No, the guy.”

“Jordan.”

“Michael Jordan?” came an immediate, interested chorus.

“Naw.  Gary Jordan.”

“Gary Jordan?  Who’s he?”

Amber, nettled, went on the offensive.  “Don’t you know anything?   He was bass guitarist for Police.  In the original line-up.”  The ploy worked.  The others backed off.

“So,” asked Fern (formerly Fern), after a silence.  “About this contract.  What’s this doctor’s shtick?”

“He wants his patients to die happy.”  Amber bottom-lined it.

“He does?   Remind me to use a different doctor.”

 “My dad’s a doctor,” said Sabrina.  “He says doctors have this oath thing.  It’s a total pain in the butt, he says, for a working man trying to earn a buck to support his family.”

“That old stuff’s so out of date,” jeered Amber.  “It’s, like, so twenty-six centuries ago.  In modern life, we want to be happy.”  She started humming Don’t Worry, Be Happy in a leadership kind of way.

“My dad’s a lawyer,” said Fern.  “He doesn’t want me to follow in his footsteps, though, because, he says, the law has a coarsening influence on all who follow it.  It exposes you too much to human nature, he says.  And then, on top of all that, you have to come home at night and face your family.  It’s simply too much for flesh and blood to stand, he says.  And every time there’s a case from out-of-town, he says, it’s like in-breeders, and stuff.”  She waved an accusatory hand at peri-urban Virginia streaming past outside.  “It’s like, he says, they don’t even know that there’s a law to disrespect, until they get arrested.  It’s most satisfactory, he says.  It’s the only thing that keeps him going, he says.”

“Well, that’s why I’m not cool about this,” sulked Sabrina warningly.  “In-breeders!  I don’t think we’re safe out here.  Tell the driver I’ll give him a blow-job if he remembers the way home.”

“Well, if you’re not related to them, surely you’re safe from in-breeders?” enquired The Voice of Reason from further down the ’bus.  But Sabrina was not to be mollified.

“Will you really give the driver a blow-job?”  Bambi (formerly Sarah) asked her, even more wide-eyed than usual.  She was always the slow one.  The other cheerleaders liked having her around, though, because she made them feel smart.  And she was popular with the team, too—she often forgot to bring along condoms, for example.  Indeed, she was destined to remain popular right up to the point where she forgot to take her Pill as well.

“Nah,” said Sabrina.  “But I really will offer.  Just get me safe home to Richmond, is all I ask.”  There was a pause.  “Unless he’s cute, of course.”  As one woman, they all turned to stare appraisingly at the driver.  He chanced to glance into his rear-view mirror at that moment.  Catching the full force of the entire cheerleading squad’s appraising gaze, he nearly drove into a ditch.

“See?” said Sabrina, triumphantly.  “We’re not safe, I tell you.”

“Oh, live a little, why won’t you?” came an exasperated plea from someone.

“Before I die, you mean?” said Sabrina spiritedly.  She wasn’t the sort of girl who never, ever gave up, ever.  That’s what made her unpopular on the cheerleading squad but, in one of those paradoxes of Life, it was also why the football team liked her so much.

Sabrina sensed her moment.  “That reminds me,” she said, exercising Leadership Through Critical Intervention, just like on this Cheerleadership course she was on. “In the contract, there’s this special premium bonus if he dies on us.”

“Ewwww!” they all chorused.  But thoughtfully.

“Provided that he dies happy,” stipulated Sabrina.  “Happy is key.”  As a group, they tended to be scornfully dismissive of this stipulation.  No one had ever died unhappily on them yet.  “Which reminds me,” said Sabrina, “this one has a special condition.  We have to be covered in chocolate.  There’ll be tubs waiting.”

“Ewwww!  My hair!” came the inevitable chorus.

“I found a new product for that,” offered Britni.

They all swung excitedly on her.  A new product!?  “What!?  What?!”

Britni leaned forward confidentially, and announced, “Innoxa Foot-Balm, with Witch Hazel!”

There was a reverent hush that was eventually broken by the driver when he couldn’t stand it any more.  “How does foot balm help get chocolate out of your hair?” he asked.  There was a half-pitying, half-exasperated silence during which—although he didn’t know it—the driver’s prospects of a blow-job died an irretrievable death.

Eventually, Britni took pity on him.  “It’s not for your hair, silly,” she explained.  “It’s something to keep you occupied in the bath while all that other gunk soaks off, after your Cosmo has gone all squishy in the steam.”  They all nodded, as if to say “Duh!”  Shees, did guys know nothing?

“When you say, ‘if he dies on us,’” asked Fern, after a thoughtful silence, “do you mean, like, actually, you know, I mean, basically, on us?”

Sabrina blushed.  She’d hoped to avoid going there, but…  Womanfully, she squared her shoulders.  Her breasts stood out magnificently.  “Actually,” she said, trying to look them all square in the eye at the same time, “the bottom line is that we have to leave him happy.  But, since you bring it up, there’s actually a double-special premium bonus in the contract for that.”

An uncharacteristically thoughtful uncharacteristic silence fell over the ’bus.

“Now what are they up to?” worried the driver to himself.

“Shees,” said Fern critically as they piled out of the ’bus, “Is that him?  He looks old enough to be my dad.”

“Doesn’t look like any bass guitarist I ever saw,” muttered Sabrina, but everybody had long since stopped listening to her.

“He looks old enough to be your granddad,” said Vixen (formerly Marjorie), bitterly.  But they ignored her.  She was like that before her period.  Like, anything up to twenty-eight days before, y’know?  But the football team was emphatic that they wanted her on the squad, team player or no team player. She had “other assets,” they said.  She sure did.

“Where’s the stadium?” asked Bambi.  “Where’s the change rooms?”

“No stadium,” said Amber.  “And no change rooms.”  There was an incredulous gasp, and immediate mutterings of mutiny.  Amber crushed them mistressfully: “Some of us are going to change in Gary’s bedroom, and the rest are going to change at his daughter’s house a couple of blocks away.”

“His daughter’s house?” enquired Fern.  “She must be pretty understanding.”

“She’d have to be,” muttered someone.

“Yeah, she really seems to be,” said Amber.  “Now move it.”

“Wait… you mean that half of us are going to have to run back two blocks topless, covered in chocolate?”

“Sure.  And, after, run back, slightly less covered in chocolate.  Now, come on, it’s not anything we haven’t done before, you know.  Okay, ladies,” said Amber, clapping her hands briskly, “Let’s get this show on road.”

“Well,” said Britni much later as the ’bus, piloted by a hopefully tumescent driver, headed directly for Richmond by the shortest, surest, quickest route, “that’s one old fart who hasn’t lost the will to live, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah,” said Sabrina, resentfully.  The loss of the special premium bonus still rankled.  And the loss of the double special premium bonus double-rankled.

“Old fart?” jeered Fern satirically.  “That’s an old goat.”  They looked enquiringly at her.  “My dad had a case about that,” she explained.  They nodded, acceptingly.

“Gary and his daughter really need more hot water, though,” said Vixen.  There were emphatic nods up and down the ’bus.

“Maybe they’ll fix that when the plumber comes to steam-clean all that chocolate out of the drains,” contributed Amber.  “Still, we left him happy, huh?  That what matters.”  And that’s the bottom line the contract, she though privately.

“Sure did,” confirmed Britni.  They all nodded.

“My Dad always says,” confided Sabrina, “‘Medical science be damned—it’s amazing how a little of what you fancy does you good.’”

The cheerleaders gave this serious consideration.  There was judicious nodding.  That sounded okay.  It slipped neatly into the cheerleader Weltanschauung.

“Yeah,” said Fern, darkly.  “My Dad says he’s had quite a few court cases about that in his time, too.  That’s how he paid for my orthodontist, he says.  And now, he says, it’s gonna finance us a pool, too.”

“Hooray!” cried the whole squad.

• Edited by Alexis
• Illustrated by Nat
• Thank you for reading me.
• To the Stories Page of Father Ignatius
• I would be pleased to hear from you, at FatherIgnatius@ANTISPAMananzi.co.za , about whether or not you liked this story, and why.