new story: "tit for tat"


Posted by Menagerie on December 08, 2004 at 19:21:18:

TIT FOR TAT
“Whatsa matter?” Amy taunted. “Cat got your tongue?”
Lauren giggled, poked a finger in between the bamboo bars of Marissa’s cage. “I think she’s just hungry. Relax, honey--it’s almost feeding time!”
The two young women on the other side of the bars giggled. They were dressed like the natives, elaborately pattered sarongs cinched at the waist, their breasts bare, but their legs covered to their ankles. Months in the sun had burned color into them almost as deeply as the tribe’s; both were a rich umber, a stark contrast to the pasty, pale complexions Marissa remembered. “Now, Marissa,” Lauren said sternly, waggling that intruding finger, “you be sure to eat your fill. After all, we all know where you’re heading…”
Marissa nodded, numbly. She was crouched on all fours in the sturdily designed cage; unlike her former friends, she wore not a stitch, and her own skin was turning a deep crimson in the tropical haze. Her large breasts hung nearly to the bottom bars of the cage; her padded rump nearly brushed the top. Yes, she thought dazedly, she knew where she was heading, and her ex-roomies had put her there…
It had started as a string of practical jokes; wadded toilet paper plugging the stool. Buckets of water on doorjambs. All sorts of nasty, slimy things slithering out from between the sheets. They were freshmen, dizzy at the thought of being on their own for the first time, and the all-night parties and cheap wine binges had morphed into the one-upswomanship hijinks. Originally, when the pranks started, all three were both perpetrators and victims--but Marissa had the small, single bedroom in the cramped, three-room dorm, while Lauren and Amy were crammed in together. So it eventually became two-against-one.
Marissa didn't mind the pranks so much; it meant a lot of extra trips to the Laundromat after getting bombarded by water balloons from the third floor, and some additional investment in shampoo and pumice soap when the shower head spurted an emerald green. But she gave as good as she got, and delighted in Amy's howls when her feet made contact with the raw eggs in her running shoes, or Lauren's tears when the vanishing ink on which she'd unsuspectingly sat reappeared as a dark brown stain on her tush.
No, that was the real problem--Marissa's new roommates couldn't take it. They were gleeful when they dished it out, but hurt and resentful when the jokes were on them. That meant a really good comeback by Marissa--locking them out of the room during their morning showers with only their towels, just as Parents' Day was beginning, was a master stroke--ended with a lot of crying and injured feelings. Then, they would both start brooding, and wanted to sit down and talk about their problems with Marissa , who was nearly a year older, popular, and busy. She just didn't have the time, with dance club, and labs, and student teaching, and the drama team...Amy and Lauren would wind up sulking, going off to their room, and then they finally moved out. There were sporadic calls, usually to bother Marissa with more of their problems, but those, too, eventually died out; she finally lost track of them entirely, and good riddance.
So out of school, and looking for a job, Marissa was as surprised as anybody when she heard from Lauren, for the first time in years. "Why, how are you?" she gasped. "Not bad," came the smug voice on the other end of a crackling line; "I've lost a few pounds, made a few friends. Amy and I are in business together; fashion accessories."
Well, thought Marissa, that wasn’t hard to believe. Lauren always thought of herself as preppy; she was a bit on the chunky side, but dressed like she was about to set sail on the family yacht. Amy was a jock, and built like a model. So the two of them were into designer clothes? "Oh, it's quite a system we've developed," Lauren laughed. "The fabric is hand woven and dyed on a small island in the South Pacific; we get tariff breaks from the US Government, and rake in a small fortune, soon to be a bigger one. I'm there right now, soaking in the sun." She laughed again, a chirpy sound against the static of the far-away telephone connection.
Marissa figured the two of them were going to try to get her to buy into their "business"--she had no money, she was ready to say--but was stunned to instead hear her old, ungainly roommate offering her a job. "It's doesn't pay terribly well, at least at first," Lauren purred, in a high-falutin' accent--she must have been practicing--“but the perks are excellent-lying in the sun all day, watching the waves pound the beach. And the natives--well, they don’t have much use for designer clothes; they don’t wear much at all. You should see the men down here…”
That did it. Marissa found herself on an endless flight, staring out the window at the blue, churning waters of the Pacific. For hours, she never saw land; eventually they set down in Sydney, then took a smaller plane to Auckland, then a little puddle jumper to an island resort…and then, a powerboat, skippered by a grinning, olive-skinned man. About fifty, trim and bare-chested, he called himself "Captain Jack," and looked over Marissa intently. She blushed; her blonde hair was tied in a kerchief, and she wore a safari shirt that stretched tight around her deep bosom, and little shorts that displayed her muscled, dancers' legs to perfection. “You come here to Makubo?” asked Captain Jack. “You with them others? Two girl, one fat, one skinny?”
Those are the ones, said Marissa. The man laughed, an uproarious bellow that carried over the engine’s drone. “They sure be happy to see you!” he called, and made a hard right; the speck on the horizon grew larger, turned into palm trees and a mountain, and a beach of endless white sand. The islander powered the boat around in a slow circle, stopped on a dime and roped a rickety, old pier. “Enjoy your visit to Makubo!” he crowed. “Your friends come now!”, pointing to the two figures padding up the beach.
The fact that their breasts were hanging loose and free wasn’t the only thing Marissa found surprising. They’d also put on a bit of weight. Amy, who had always prided herself on that rock-hard, athlete’s body, was practically full-figured. And far from "losing a few pounds," Lauren was plump as pudding. They greeted her like it was some sort of society do, and the outlandishness of it--two burnt-brown white chicks on a Pacific island, nude from the waist up and greeting her with cries of, “Oh, my dear, how are you!”…Well, the hell with it, she needed the job. “Where do I take my things?”, gesturing with the two heavy handbags.
“Oh, my dear,” Lauren gushed, cattily, “whatever is in those bags, they just won’t do. You’re on Makubo, now; you’ll have to dress as a-a Makuboean.” Marissa shrugged; she saw natives emerging from the trees ringing the beach. Lauren had been right; the men were decked out in loincloths, the women in the same waist-high, colorful sarongs. “The natives arrive!” laughed Amy. “Aren’t they gorgeous?”
Marissa didn’t know whether she was talking about the men or the sarongs, but she could affirm to both. The men were broad shouldered and lean muscled, sinewy as track runners; they observed the women with great curiosity. “We told them you were coming,” Lauren explained coyly. “They seemed quite interested in what you looked like!” One of the men was talking excitedly to his mates, and they all responded with equal fervor, eyes riveted on the three women on the beach. “I feel like I’m on display,” admitted Marissa.
“Not yet,” Amy said, cheerfully, and tossed her a sarong. “Time to suit up!”
Well. She certainly couldn’t cite modesty, not surrounded by all these bare bosoms. Peering around at the men, who continued to watch her intently--the women didn’t appear to be paying her much mind--Marissa stepped out of her sandals and wriggled out of her shorts; she was glad, she thought with relief, that she’d put on fairly modest undies.
The glow-in-the-dark skirt rode on her ample hips quite nicely; when Marissa lost her baby fat in college, it was replaced by very womanly hips and a derriere to match, and the native garb showed them off, fetchingly. Down slid the panties; Marissa kicked them free. She hesitated a moment; Amy and Lauren watched her with heads cocked, hands on hips, big grins on their faces, and Marissa smiled, sheepishly, and unbuttoned the Land’s End blouse. She took it off, folded it once, twice, then realized there was nowhere to put it.
The other girls were eyeing Marissa’s bosom with a trace of envy; her plump, cushy breasts, the object of many a man’s leer, were barely held in by Maidenform’s finest. “No restraints here,” Lauren told her, severely. “Let gravity have at ‘em,” and suddenly, all those practical jokes flooded back into Marissa’s mind. Her eyes trained evenly on the other girl’s, she reached behind, unlatched the clip, and let the brassiere fall. Check these out, she thought as she traded cool stares with her two considerably flatter sisters. A murmur arose from the ring of natives; I guess, Marissa thought, they hadn’t seen a real woman until now.
"So, how did you...find this business?' Marissa asked; the three of them were trudging along a hewn path through the trees, toward the village. The stones and serrated-edged brush along the trail hurt her bare feet, but she sure wouldn't admit it; Amy and Lauren were skipping along, as lightly as if they were kindergartners headed to class.
"Daddy staked me," Lauren said brightly. "After I almost got my degree, I decided to move ahead with a career in the rag trade; Daddy's company had a connection with an offshore firm that imports from developing countries, and they had just found these exotic garments, complete with a new source of labor! Isn't it fabulous?" Despite her now rather ample belly, Lauren twirled daintily, her skirt flaring and exposing thighs and knees as brown as her torso. "You've been sunbathing," Marissa observed.
"Oh, yes; plenty of free time," Lauren said carelessly. "You'll have time for the sun, too; all Amy and I need for you to do is to supervise the workers. They're right here."
They had reached a clearing, which had been turned into a "factory" for the colorful garments. Freshly dyed fabric hung out to dry; pots filled with dark, oily liquids sat next to a thatched hut. Marissa peered inside, her boobs hanging, and saw a half dozen of the bare-breasted native women at a table, meticulously stitching the clothes together and using cutout shells to imprint patterns by hand. They looked up disinterestedly, then returned to their work. "Very nice!" exclaimed Marissa.
"We just moved a shipment to the States this week," said Amy. "You met Captain Jack; he's our harrier. He costs more per load than everybody in this room combined, but don't worry--there's plenty left over for us!"
"Daddy's stores are buying the clothes, for now," added Lauren. "But once more people see them, we'll have more business than this whole island can handle!"
Marissa was still doubtful. Lauren's father paid for the business; Lauren's father was buying the merchandise. Maybe Lauren's father just wanted to find his spoiled daughter something to do--so why did they bother to bring her in? Those practical jokes again flitted through Marissa's mind; would she wake up tomorrow morning and find the island deserted? Were they going to feed her something that would give her malaria?
In fact, their open-air dinner was as elegant as could be given the setting; torches gave off oily smoke and lit the tropical night sky a brilliant orange, as tribesmen served the girls plates of meat and root vegetables. "What is it?" Marissa asked suspiciously, poking at her slab of meat.
"They used to be cannibals," Amy said brightly; she'd already dug in. "Maybe it's people."
Lauren chuckled around a mouthful. "Oh, dear, we did forget to tell you to watch out for that," she said. "Now, I suppose this to be pork, but we'd better do a head count at the 'factory' tomorrow. By the by, dear," her huge brown eyes now locked on Marissa's, "we're told the bigger the breasts, the more the Makuboeans like them." Marissa grudgingly tore off a piece of the flesh and chewed, at first slowly, then relishing the smoky taste. Unexpectedly, the nearly naked native standing next to Marissa said, "No, no cannibal...just pork today."
Marissa gasped, her eyes rolling to look at the glum-faced native; he had not cracked a smile. "Thank you, Mikey; you may go," said Amy, her own eyes still riveted on her food, and the man stiffly departed. "Mikey?" asked Marissa.
"Um...” Amy gargled out a lengthy group of syllables that sounded like a prolonged stammer. "Mikey for short; he's the son of the chief. He lines up the workers for us, helps us haul the goods to the beach. And serves dinner. Ignore the joke."
"Mikey" hadn't sounded like he was kidding, but at the word "joke," Marissa's eyes flitted around the table. Was Lauren trying to hold in a guffaw? Amy's eyes shone, a faint smile on her face. "Don't worry," she said, soothingly. "We won't let the cannibals get you; we need you to do the work."
As it turned out, Marissa discovered, they needed her to do all of the work. She rode shotgun over the tribeswomen, collected the finished garments, radioed Captain Jack for pickup, and arranged with Mikey to bring them to the beach. She paid the Captain out of packets of cash Lauren's father mailed from the States; he then delivered goods--crates of food and tools, barrels of fuel and the machines that ran on it--which the natives received in lieu of money. Then Marissa took her share of the money, and gave the rest to Lauren and Amy...when she saw them. Sometimes not for a week, sometimes two.
They seemed to be growing plumper every day, Lauren now wide of hip and round of belly. Amy was built more like a linebacker than a marathoner; the little mesh shorts and sports bras she used to wear around campus, Marissa reflected, would look like pasties on her now. "You're doing a wonderful job," they would tell her breezily, "keep it up." Marissa was getting a bit chunkier, herself; a lot of fatty meat in her diet, a lot of starchy manioc and yams, and she had to keep letting out her sarong, her belly taking on a bit of a jiggle over the drawstring, her titties hanging pendulously low. "Fattening up very nicely," her roomies teased.
The cannibal talk was starting to unsettle Marissa. She rarely saw the main village, where Amy and Lauren stayed; it had permanent houses made of wood and stone, a headquarters building, and a central gathering place for meals. There were herds of pigs and goats; the natives cooked in earthen ovens, heated with stones that were fired and then placed beneath the meat. The men of the village kept their eyes on Marissa from the moment she entered the village. "They really like your breasts," teased Lauren, and Marissa blushed, tried to shrink her chest inward between her shoulders. It was no use. "I think they'd like to see them on a platter," said Amy.
So Marissa didn't go there very often, staying in her lone hut at the 'factory'; anyhow, she was usually too tired to relax on the beach. She'd tried to send letters back home; Captain Jack promised to deliver them, but she never got a response. It looked like Lauren and Amy had decided to use Lauren's dad's money to make her into a slave while they loafed, and after a couple of months, she'd about had it. "I'm going back," she radioed Captain Jack, and he laughed, long and hard.
He was supposed to be there at 0600 the next morning for a shipment, and Marissa was going to take the wad of greenbacks she'd gotten from the job, and a makeshift bra she'd secreted from the 'factory,' and get out of there. She stayed up nervously the whole night before, sipping a high-caffeine drink the natives made out of mashed berries; her feet had toughened so she could make the trek through the palms without howling in pain. A cloth bag with her bundle of cash under one arm, Marissa made her way an hour early, tiptoeing rapidly though the trees...
When she woke up, she was hanging upside down. A pair of sturdy vines held her by the ankles from a bamboo scaffold; her blonde hair, matted and kinked from a couple of months of limited care, brushed the ground. When she tried to orient herself, Marissa realized her hands were tied behind her back; she also realized the sarong and the spare-parts bra were gone. And when her eyes refocused, she saw a quartet of feet in front of her. "Feeling better?" she heard Lauren's voice.
Marissa was still groping for her voice; she swallowed to moisten a mouth that felt as dry as the island's sands. "Our employees tell us you tried to leave your post prematurely," the fat girl went on with mock severity. "Fortunately, you can be replaced; we've decided to terminate you with prejudice. Mikey?"
A big pair of men's feet joined the foursome. "She's all yours," said Lauren's voice. "Marissa, we weren't kidding about the cannibals. We've reached a new business arrangement with the Makuboeans; in addition to trinkets from the mainland, we're giving them you. A long pig, as a gift."
"You're crazy," Marissa choked out hoarsely; she struggled, started to sway. "You can't do this; people know where I went..."
"And do they know that you got here?" came Amy's mocking voice. "Who have you talked to, other than Captain Jack? What do you think happened to those letters? Your trail dead-ends at the resort." Amy crouched down, her eyes now dead even with Marissa's. "This was the best joke of all," she said, smiling with malice. "It really was. You thought you were coming here for a job, and wound up staying for dinner!"
Lauren laughed, as Amy went on, "They do something special with their long pigs, here. They fatten you up, and then celebrate a tribal feast at the full moon." She pointed; a slim crescent of the orb was still present in the violet pre-dawn sky. "I'd say you have two more weeks to go. Bon appetit!"
And that was how Marissa found herself on all fours in the bamboo cage. Three times a day, Mikey or another tribesman brought Marissa pulpy, mashed tubers, poured them from a funnel into the baked clay bowl within her tiny cell. She wouldn't eat at first, a tactic Lauren and Amy corrected by swatting her bare rump through the bars with stinging nettles. She howled, and then tearfully complied, her face dipping into the trough and coming up smeared with the mess.
She really did feel like a pig being fattened in a stall, and her tormenters reinforced it. "Ooh, Marissa!" they would gush. "You're growing so plump and meaty; we can't wait to see you at the feast! Just a few more days, and you'll be roasting in the oven...you just keep getting nice and fat, and we'll enjoy your meat that much more..." They compared Marissa’s body parts, described which would be the tastiest, would cook up the best. “Those are luscious thighs, dear,” jeered Lauren. “They’ll make marvelous steaks, so thick and rich!” Helpless, on all fours and naked in the cage, Marissa blurted that Lauren’s thighs were even more massive. “Maybe,” the girl who had lured Marissa to her doom laughed. “But I’m not going into an oven at the end of the month.”
In Marissa's dull, tortured mind, it did occur to her that this was the ultimate practical joke; her roommates were getting last tag. They had tricked her into coming to the remotest place on earth, had gotten a couple of months of hard labor out of her, and now were going to watch her get slaughtered and cooked like a pig. The cage was tied tightly with vines; a couple of the hulking men would lift and move it a couple of times a day, so she wasn't wallowing in her own waste, and occasionally rinse her with a bucket of water, but she was still always in the sun. Her skin was beyond burnt, now blistering with no chance at protection. Lauren and Amy took advantage of her vulnerability, slapping at the fragile skin through the poles, tittering as Marissa howled in pain.
The moon was now nearly full in the sky; it might still all be a joke, Marissa thought hopefully, and those two witches would let her out and say it was all a gag. But then she saw the natives scurrying around, preparing breads and vegetables, readying the torches that surrounded the central gathering place. Marissa imagined it, imagined one of the steel knives bought with Lauren's dad's money, ripping her open, taking out her entrails. She imagined herself laid lengthwise in the oven, her belly filled with the rich, multicolored fruit grown on the island, the heat drawing her juices out of her, her muscles becoming meat. She closed her eyes and wept, and finally sunk into a deep sleep.
When she awoke, the sun was high in the sky. She was still in her cage; the natives were bustling around before her. Mikey was standing nearby; he saw her stirring. "What--what's happening?" she croaked out to the chief's son.
He dropped to one knee and looked at her earnestly. "We have new plan," he told her, and then Marissa heard a commotion, saw people shuffling aside as an entourage passed by.
It turned out to be several of the bigger men, and Amy and Lauren. This time, they weren't swaggering and giggling. They were stark naked, dragged by a rope that had been tied in slipknots around their necks; an islander impatiently tugged at them, as they screamed and tried to dig in their heels. Their hands were bound behind their backs. Marissa could see how much weight they'd gained; Lauren was plump and porcine, her body sleek with fat, her sun-bronzed skin seemingly bursting with flesh. Amy was simply thick, her limbs and torso heavy. They both sobbed as the men pulled them along; Marissa could still hear their wails as they disappeared over a hill that led to the communal area. "My daddy," she heard Lauren say, but the threat was cut off by a blood-curdling shriek.
"Your friends," said Mikey. "They pretty high class ladies, huh?" Yes, said Marissa in a small voice. "We decide, all this work since they got here--Makubo people need a rest. Time for big feast. You not big enough," a finger as stiff and thick as a roll of quarters poking between the bamboo bars and prodding Marissa's ample butt. She heard a second scream in the distance, then nothing but the hubbub of low voices in the Makubo dialect. "You come later," said Mikey, and turned to leave. "You wait; they be done right."
It was twilight when two tribeswomen finally opened Marissa's cage and dragged her to her feet; she leaned on them, swaying unsteadily, as they led her over the hill to the commons, where a full-fledged party was in session. The men drank fermented brew from bowls and played a manic game with sharp knives that resembled mumblety-peg; naked children ran between the bamboo tables in a boisterous game of tag. The scent of rich meat was in the air, a heady aroma that drowned out the smells of the jungle and the petroleum odor sent off by the torches. And then, the main courses arrived.
Lauren and Amy were on their bellies, lying side by side on a huge platter, hefted by four strong tribesmen. Their hands were still tied, as were their feet; they were cooked so well, bone ends jutted through places where the meat had become soft and fallen away. Their eyesockets were stuffed with leaves, their mouths filled with fresh guava; from their plump buttocks protruded the round end of cassavas, steam drifting upwards from the aperture, and a mound of the baked roots surrounded the girls' roasted carcasses. Their charred skin had been glazed near the end with a thick, sticky fruit sauce, multicolored chunks adhering to their bodies; the glossy sweet stuff baked right into them, meshing with their flesh.
The tribe gathered around the cooked long pigs excitedly, as Mikey's father--bald as a billiard ball, layers of fat slopping over his loincloth--raised a staff topped with carved, miniature wooden horns, brought it down once, twice on the ground, and the feast began.
Marissa found herself tethered to a stake in the center of the gathering area, her hands tied before her. She watched as the Makuboeans tore into the meat of her former roommates; Lauren's back was thick and succulent, and the knives used in the game were now employed to cut deep slits in her torso, then pare away the flesh in strips. Her juices gushed as the blades pared through layers of fat and meat. The men gripped long chunks of the preppy girl and bit lustily, voraciously chewing and swallowing the greasy meat and washing it down with the fermented fruit juice. The tribeswomen shared smaller bits of the meat with the children, tearing the soft flesh with their hands; the kids popped it into the mouths with great joy, wiped their hands on their bare bodies and raced off for more tag.
Amy was a bit tougher; the men found themselves chopping up her legs and butt and grinding the pieces between their back teeth. But roasted and lying on the platter, Lauren looked as much like a pig as a woman, and her carcass was quickly carved clean of flesh. The villagers tore the meat off her fingers and toes, sucked it down, even as Amy was still half eaten.
The feast lasted well into the night; eventually, the two snobbish women who had laughed at Marissa's misery were reduced to a pile of scraps and bones. Marissa remained mute, dazed at the day's events; occasionally a native would saunter up to her, perhaps squeeze her buttock or rub his hand over her belly. Then, Mikey arrived; one of Amy’s smallish breasts in his big hand, he took a big bite, then clamped the other hand over one of Marissa’s own formidable tits. “Much better,” he said. “Next moon, mine.”
She looked at him, her brain half-clouded. “Lauren’s daddy,” she slurred. “He’ll be looking for her…”
Mikey, for the first time in their brief acquaintance, grinned, and pointed toward his father, who was greedily gnawing on a rack of the fat girl’s back ribs. “Yeah?” said the chief’s son. “Look, there! The head of state!” And throwing his head back at the joke, Mikey released Marissa’s breast, dove down for another bite of Lauren’s and continued on.
Marissa dully realized she was there on display, something for the islanders to look forward to at the next full moon; when the grisly banquet was done, she'd be back in the cage, to be fattened up some more until it was time to face those traded-out knives. But as she gazed over at the still, oven-stiffened heads of Lauren and Amy, and shuddered as she contemplated the thought of lying on that platter herself, Marissa still allowed herself a rush of satisfaction. The joke, she said silently to the picked clean carcasses, is on you.