Posted by hisdinner on January 22, 2007 at 20:42:18:
Salad Days
Emma knelt between two abundant rows of tomato plants, knees in the warm earth, filling a basket she held balanced on her thighs. Every bit of her was bare beneath a short muslin sheath. The soles of her feet received the morning sun filtered through a few crumbs of rich, brown dirt that clung to her toes and heels. She was absorbed and didn't see John approach, but she felt his presence behind her, a cooler shadow on her sun-freckled back.
"Good morning, Sir." She smiled and twisted her upper torso to peer into his face, but it was shadowed, a halo of reddish light framing the darkness of his face.
She offered him a ripe tomato. He shook his head slightly, and then touched a hand to the side of her head, his fingers trailing from her soft, auburn hair along the line of her jaw. He pushed a finger into her mouth; she suckled it. He tasted of business: ink and parchment, tobacco bits.
Drawing her toward him, using his finger as grappling hook, John turned Emma closer, until her lips brushed against the rough fabric of his trousers. The tomatoes tumbled from the basket perched on her thighs and nestled into the warm hollows in the earth where her knees had been lodged moments earlier.
Emma couldn't see the glint of amusement in his eyes as John regarded the wide, flat basket which had slipped onto the ground as well. She had begun to open his trousers, her fingers redolent of tomato scent. He stilled her with a touch of fingertip to brow. She canted back onto her heels to await his wishes. John tut-tutted and drew her up onto her knees again, then reached down beside her and grabbed the basket. It resembled a wide, round platter with only a slight curved lip around it, bristling with the cut ends of reeds. John eyed his slave's supple legs and felt the scratch of the basket's lip against his calloused hand. He was quite certain that it would be difficult for Emma to maintain her balance while she held that basket between her thighs.
John touched the inside of her thighs with one hand and used the basket to spread her legs apart. Soon Emma's knees were wide apart in the garden dirt, the basket wedged high and tight between her thighs, the reed ends sharp and unyielding. John took a few steps back to regard his handiwork. Emma smiled quizzically and raised her shoulders, a slight shrug to ask him what he intended for her. John's smile grew wider as he returned to stand just over a foot away from her.
"Put those tomatoes back into the basket, girl." He felt himself stiffen as he watched her struggle. Emma knew she wasn't to let go of the basket as she filled it with the lovely, ripe tomatoes—so many of them, more than a dozen, and dark red, bursting with juice. Each fruit added considerable weight and forced her thighs to squeeze a little tighter against the biting edges of the basket. She imagined that later she'd wear twin lines of gouges and teeth marks from the reeds. Her legs were strong but the basket had forced her knees so wide apart that soon she felt her muscles quivering. Master was a genius at surprising her with new ways to please him.
Emma heard John clear his throat. He waited, his trousers half-opened, and just too far away from where she knelt, the tomatoes perched precariously, the basket biting into her thighs. She gauged the space between them and began to reach across the distance to brace her hands against him, mouth open, lips wet.
"Hands behind your back, girl. Are you forgetting yourself?" She could hear the amusement in his voice. He did not demand that she clasp her hands behind her, normally. This was all designed to test her balance and her grace under pressure, then. She was game. She thrilled to be the one selected to give him pleasure.
Leaning forward, Emma felt the tomatoes shift and adjusted herself so that she kept her legs as straight as possible, bending at the waist. So awkward! Her arm muscles twitched, wanting to help right her. She canted forward, each millimeter forcing her thighs tighter around the sharp edges of the basket. Her small breasts were displayed as her shift gaped open, bee-stung nipples puffy, alluring. John's cock stirred again. Finally, her mouth reached her master's trousers. She nuzzled him, shifted her face back and forth and used her deft tongue. His cock emerged, steely hard and already twitching. Apparently John was enjoying the show.
For the next few moments she drifted into the blissful rhythms of taking him in, of laving her tongue around his cock, of relaxing her throat as he thrust deeper. The basket pricked and gouged at her, the weight of the tomatoes dug errant reed-ends deeper. Emma felt a tickle, then two or more ticklish trickles running down the inside of her thighs. Blood or sweat? She wasn't sure. Her master tensed and pulled her head close, smothering her against his body as he fed her his seed. The basket tilted wildly, tomatoes spilled out as it tipped. Emma lost her balance as John drew back. The girl fell face-first and quivering into the warm earth. All around her, tomatoes rolled.
"They're too bruised for salads, now. You'll make a sauce."
John tweaked her chin and closed his pants and strode off, leaving Emma spitting out little crumbs of dirt and gathering tomatoes in his wake. Her thighs were streaked with clotted dust as well, clinging to tiny rivulets of blood from the uneven rows of reed-wounds. Emma daubed the corner of her thin shift to her master's new marks, uttering tiny gasps of pain as she cleaned each one.
John took pride in his vegetable garden and expected his girls to care for it as they did for him. His house, his fields, all of it—part of John, himself, and to skate by on half-done chores was to risk his wrath or worse, his cold disdain. Emma looked around her on the walk back up a gentle rise. The horses ran in the northern fields, unfettered, free within the stone walls enclosing—how many acres? Emma couldn't fathom such space. Bonnie toiled in the pasture, tending John's herd of milkers. They were a petulant lot, and Emma didn't envy Bonnie's job one whit. To the south, Janet was disappearing into the mill behind a cartload of grain. Her arms were muscled, straining to maneuver the over-laden cart and not spill anything. Emma's thighs tingled in remembrance.
Although John's tone had been light, he truly disliked bruised fruit. His meatgirls were another thing entirely. It amused him to pass this way and fuck them hard, stripe them, cuff them, bruise them. Like fine spice, their hurts added seasoning, John believed.
Emma passed the barn on her way to the kitchens. Three girls peered from the row of stalls. Two were on hands and knees, and one stood tall. She was the newest to be captured, branded, and penned. Bree. Such a lovely girl. Emma caught her eye and smiled at her. Bree stared at her with such big eyes, tears brimming. The other meatgirls gazed into space with vacant expressions, more bovine than girl, anymore. Emma remembered the tomatoes in her basket and had an impulse to soothe the new girl.
Stepping into the cooler confines of the barn, she brushed past the first two stalls and the girls within barely registered her presence. They sniffed the air, and, not smelling their master or their dinner, they turned away. Bree had taken a step backward meanwhile, eyes fearful, hands vainly trying to cover herself. All meatgirls were kept nude, of course. This far from the villages, what magistrate would ever hear their cries? Why, even the milkers in the pasture, should they be observed by some gentlefolk in a passing carriage, might be written off as silly heathens out celebrating Midsummer Eve.
John's estate was sacrosanct, after all. None questioned the doings of a noble who pursued raising exotic vegetables and fine horses. Some wondered at the way he'd cloistered himself, emerging only to display his produce at the harvest festivals. Most envied his independence if they thought of him at all. He was as removed from petty politics as his estate was from the world.
A soft whimper from Bree brought Emma around from her reverie. She looked into the stall and noted the iron bracelet around Bree's ankle. It chafed against her tawny skin. There was nothing Emma could do for her but offer her some of the fruit she carried, and so she did. Bree came forward, warily at first and then rushing, ravenous, biting into a large, overripe tomato, letting its juice cascade from her chin, down hands and wrists, even onto her breasts.
"So good! So good," Bree murmured. Emma fed her another, and another, transfixed, watching the golden child as she devoured each juicy bite. The apples were warm in her hands, holding onto the sun. Poor Bree was already taking on the pallor of the stable girls. Her golden skin needed sunlight. Emma felt a pang of loss on Bree's part. When John had captured her, the little heathen had been swimming naked and she'd fallen asleep out on a sun baked slate above the pond.
The tromp of heavy boots echoing from the darker reaches at the back of the barn alerted both girls to the presence of John's foreman, David. He was a leering, surly man, kept for his prowess as a breeder and butcher. Emma slunk away from Bree's pen, slipping along the two remaining pens. She had nearly reached the lighted doorway when David hollered at her. Bree jumped into the far corner of her pen, using the dark to hide herself.
"What're you about in here? No good, for sure. Who is that? Emma!" David's voice went from menacing to incredulous.
Emma shifted, uncertain. Her feet felt lodged in muck. If I run now there will be no doubt left in his dim brain that I am not allowed here. Emma shook her head, in a quandary. John liked to keep his meatgirls separated from his workers. Better leave now and hope DimDavid forgets that he saw me. Emma decided to continue backing her way outside, keeping her eye on David as if he were a half-mad dog, quivering and ready to leap at her.
In fact, he was just that. David's back still bore the master's lashes from last week when John caught David lurking outside the kitchen, watching Emma prepare her master's food. He might have sent him about his business with a warning, but for the large knife David made a bad attempt to conceal behind his filthy coat. Instead, John striped his stout back and threatened David with dismissal if he strayed past the barn and abattoir again.
"But she's just a bit of tail and ass, passing fine meat, Master John." David whined as he tugged his shirt on, after, wincing at the welts received.
"You butcher the meat I select, and touch nothing else of mine. Nothing. Understand? Your breeding days are through." John shoved David against the rough barn door.
David howled from a knock on the head, and bellered outrage. "But look at them pups I seed! Fine stock, all of them. You'll rue this day, Cousin."
John spat on the ground. "Not a hand on any girl until she's consigned to the abattoir. That's my last word on it. Get out!"
John watched as David skulked past him and into the night in the direction of his slovenly cabin. He considered sending him packing, blood kin or not. John weighed keeping him against the alternative of taking on all David's chores, himself. The brutish man had his purposes. John enjoyed fucking his girls but wasn't keen on butchering them.
His father had passed on this estate and a taste for girlflesh, but had shielded John from the worst of it. Generations of his family had lived this way, selling horses for king's ransoms, keeping girls instead of cattle, filling their selective bellies with the finest meat on Earth. Hard to believe that what they practiced here on this estate was outlawed, unthinkable, unspeakably horrible to the rest of the gentlefolk, out there in the world.
Girlmeat tasted ambrosial. How could something so delicious be wrong, indeed? John recalled the revulsion he'd felt when he chanced upon David, saw the grimy knife clenched in his hands as he lurked and watched Emma, his kitchen girl. He'd never questioned the way things were before this moment. Seeing the brutish man so close, so ready to pounce and slice a soft, slim throat made John stop cold. He glanced into the shadows of the darkened barn, past the stalls, into the killing place. The abattoir.
In all his years, he was ashamed to admit that not once had he the stomach or the nerve to enter that place. Before he could reconsider, John pushed the heavy door open and lit a lamp that hung from the ceiling from a chain. It swung in circles, assaulting John's eyes with a garish spectacle of errant trails of blood, dried dark brown, but unmistakable. Hooks danced from the ceiling, too. Empty hooks. John had not ordered fresh meat for over a week. The cool air did not dispel a lingering odor, metallic, and a darker one: misery. John saw a huge marble slab mounted on oaken legs, fitted with grooves which led to an urn, below. A fly perched on the lip of the tarnished metal. John's motion disturbed it and it buzzed angrily into his face.
He fled the bloody place.
John was shaken, more disturbed at himself than at the sights inside his own slaughterhouse, finally revealed. What had he imagined happened when a girl was transformed from a soft, sweet bedmate and into a roast? John sat outside his house, smoking a pipe, absently staring back toward the abattoir. John pictured himself fucking one of the meatgirls, running his hands over her body, testing it. He had no illusions, and yet he'd never killed a girl, himself. Never held a knife to girlflesh until it was hot and succulent, steaming on a platter. Something stirred his cock, made it hard again. John let himself begin to picture it. The trembling girl, hung upside down, or tied to that marble slab as her throat was slit. Whose hand held the knife—his?
The more he thought of that ogre's hands on soft, sweet girls, the more John was resolved to steel himself and slay the girls he'd already chosen for his table. If I am willing to eat them, I should be willing to take them there—to the cutting place, to drain them, to the marble slab, to cut them up. Claim them.
John shuddered and strode off to his well-lit house. He'd think on it some more. He avoided the kitchen. It would be wrong to let any of his girls see him in this state—unsure, so changed. But as John neared the kitchen, he thought of Emma's lush, soft lips and yielding body and he could not resist. He entered the kitchen as she stood with her back to him, chopping vegetables at the counter. A small pot of tomato sauce bubbled on the stove. He drew up close behind her, inhaling her hot scent, his nose against the nape of her neck. Her hair was damp from working in the steamy kitchen.
"You haven't eaten, Sir." John did not respond but to slide his arms around her, running his hands over her belly, cupping her breasts, biting her neck lightly.
He took the knife from her hands. Emma sighed, pressing her body against his, feeling his cock jutting into the cleft of her buttocks. She moaned and rubbed against him, offering herself.
"Mmmpf. First, this." John's voice was harsh with urgency, his grip rough. He pushed her onto the counter's surface, staining her thin shift with brightly colored juices from chopped peppers. He rucked up the hem of her shift, spat on her tender anus and was inside her in an instant, ramming hard, his hands gouging deep into the soft flesh of her arms. She struggled to shift and lessen the hurt he caused. His hands slapped and pinched her body as he pummeled her.
He growled and filled her, gripping her shoulders, hammering her against the wood. She'd bear great purple bruises along her belly. Her backside felt torn, bloodied. She fought back tears. The vegetables were scattered everywhere, lost on the hard-packed dirt floor.
John smacked her backside hard, chuckling, but his laugh sounded unnatural, forced.
"I'll eat right here tonight, Emma-girl. Some of that cold leg and plenty of the tomato sauce with the day's bread. Quickly, now."
John wiped his face on a rough cloth as he watched the girl set down his dinner. She was a good cook and a better fuck. And such fun to challenge—she never pouted, never a frown his way, no matter what he did to her. He tried to focus on the girl herself but tonight, every thought he had was tinged blood-red. While he fucked her what he saw was his hand holding a knife, her body yielding, her belly slit and spilling red. His meatgirls were close by, but it was Emma he pictured tonight. And not David, killing her. It was him, John—his hands tearing out her heart.
He took a bite from the tender thigh steak offered him and chewed. Emma added a bit of oil and salt to a small dish of tomato sauce and set it next to a basket of bread torn in coarse chunks. He watched her, noting a new streak of red tricking down her leg, showing just below the hem of her knee-length shift. Such a good girl. Why did he feel so angry? He didn't know. He tore off another chunk of bread and daubed it into the sauce. Delicious. He ate another and the sauce was gone.
"More of this," he said, shoving the bowl toward her. Emma was standing nearby, having swept up the bits of vegetables around her feet.
"There's none left, Sir. Sorry." Emma showed him the empty pot.
John's eyebrows went up. "You had a large basket of tomatoes this morning, girl. Did you leave some in the dirt?" John was proud to be the first gentleman to raise this crop in the area. He frowned at her.
Emma was disconcerted. He lacked that customary twinkle that signaled a playful punishment was coming. Before she'd thought it through, she blurted, "No Sir. I fed a few to the new meatgirl."
John gaped at her. "Fed the--! My prize tomatoes!"
Emma stammered, "Yes. Sir, she looked so miserable and... These were bruised, you said so yourself, and—"
Her words were cut off by his backhand, swift and harsh against her cheek, once, twice, a third blow dropping her to her knees.
John didn't understand his actions nor did he think to question himself. He felt a thrumming inside his head and his groin, unreasonable anger unrecognized as such. He only knew that he was enraged at something, and what he could focus on was this crumb of indiscretion, this lapse in behavior from his little cook slave, Emma. Somehow, it freed something inside him. It gave him an excuse—but who was there left who needed to excuse him, and for what? No one! And for nothing! John swelled with heat and purpose, though he couldn’t form the words. He knew what he needed. Now.
Emma touched a cloth to her mouth, felt a loose tooth and winced. John had never hurt her this way, never shown such malice, before. Something had changed in him. She cowered on the floor and watched him stride out the door, disappearing into the darkness toward David's cabin. Her heart froze.
For the next half hour, Emma busied herself, cleaning pots and pans, straightening shelves. Outside, she heard distant voices, male, strident. She couldn't guess what was happening now, though her worst fear seemed dispelled. John had not gone to fetch David to butcher her. They would have been back long before now. She felt the remnants of a nervous shakiness gradually leave her and the ache from John's brutal use resume its throbbing presence. She wondered at his dark mood tonight.
The kitchen door slammed against the wall and John burst through. Without speaking, he grabbed Emma, wrapping two coils of her long, auburn hair around his fist. Yanking her beside him, dragging her when she stumbled, he strode through the darkened barn to a dim light at the back. Emma scrambled to keep up with him, begging forgiveness, pleading with her master for punishment. But not this!
He wrenched the door open and threw her inside the abattoir. Back in the barn, the meatgirls stirred, moaning, feral sounds from the two on their knees, frightened by the scent of old blood and fresh fear. Bree slipped to her knees, hands clinging to the wooden slats of her stall, head averted, afraid to look. The idiot girls beside her were unable to explain a thing. Their tongues had been cut out, their brains gone with them, and now the three girls were all quivering in the dark as Emma squealed and pleaded.
John's face had turned to stone, his ears closed to her noises. He found the sharpest hook and glanced down at the squirming girl. Emma's face was covered with tears as she begged him endlessly. "Oh Master, please, not this? Oh please, Sir... anything but this?"
He shook his head, not at her pleas, but at the hook before him. He suddenly felt incapable of piercing the girl's legs to suspend her from her heels. He snorted in frustration—he'd never done this before! His mind quavered in momentary hesitation and his body drooped. Emma held her breath. Ah. John's body regained its nervous energy. He'd tie her to the tabletop, instead. Something elegant in the marble surface reassured him. John felt his determination reassert himself and he crouched and drew her up into his arms, meaning to still her struggles.
Waves of shock coursed through her body as Emma felt John's arms envelop her. He held her close and Emma trembled, afraid to speak a word. Had he relented? Was this all another playtime for him, another test of her mettle? Emma felt John's body tense as his hands gripped her shoulders and hips. No. No hope for her, for any of them out there. Everything had changed. Master dismissed his butcher and became butcher, himself.
And me? She wept. Emma felt so empty. I pretended I was something special, his plaything, didn't I? Not his food.
John lifted Emma onto the table. She was numb already; the marble barely registered as she felt John lash her wrists and ankles to the corner posts. He drew her head down and rested her neck in a narrow channel against the table lip. Her head tilted back, exposing her throbbing pulse.
Outside, the girl cows whimpered and shifted in their pens while Bree sobbed in a corner, not knowing what was next, afraid of every sound she heard. She'd been penned less than a week and had never seen a girl disappear inside the heavy door and later, be carried out as meat. The other girls, the lost ones, had seen three go before them. They screamed without words as they heard the slap of Emma's flesh on marble, and knew it had begun.
Outside the barn, moonlight revealed carrion hunters converging on a slumped mass. David's flaccid body lay in the shadow of the barn, flat on his back, his throat slit. His face bore a look of dull surprise which was to be obliterated as rats sought out the softest bits. His scabbard had been emptied of its knife.
Emma's eyes were squeezed shut as John paused, his binding done. He stared at her. A moment passed, then two. John reached out his hands and ran them over her body, tracing her curves, following the line of her belly, slipping fingers inside the weeping girl. He touched her lips, shushing her. She opened her eyes, searching his. Fire raged there, and dark delight. She tried to smile, and failed. And then her Master made his first cut. It was sure, and bold, and true.
John had never tasted better girlflesh than the meal he ate that night.