Posted by Menagerie on January 24, 2005 at 20:14:30:
KEPT AND LOST
It had been a joy to be Blake’s.
Amie had given herself to him on her eighteenth birthday. There had been no contract, no solemn ceremony; she had just presented herself, on her doorstep, wrists out, wearing a tentative half-smile. Blake nodded, half-distracted, as always; he had slipped the cuffs around those slender wrists, motioned her to enter. From then on, she was his.
That way, they had both avoided The Market—such a grotesque, caricatured way for a slave and Master to find each other. The line of hopeful women, in various states of undress or wearing nothing at all; men in leather or uniforms or garish suits, laughing and joking, commenting on this slave’s tits or that one’s mouth; an auctioneer barking out numbers, the winning bidder posing triumphant, the human prize meek and vanquished.
How childish, Amie had thought, even though she was just sixteen; she stood on the sidelines of The Market, watched its comings and goings every month, got to know the women who offered themselves to potential owners, their hopes and their fears. She shared their visceral need to be the property of a strong one, a man who would reward them when earned and punish them, too. She saw them come back, time after time, leaving with another man every time; some would lug their prey out the door over their shoulders, caveman style. Others would lead them by the neck, an old-style antebellum Massa. A few acted more like they and their slaves were boyfriend and girlfriend, or husband and wife; they’d leave giggling, billing and cooing. Amie knew they would both be back the following month, each seeking a new partner. She would have none of that.
That was why Blake fascinated her so. Like her, he stood on the sidelines, watched the shenanigans. He was a doctor, a specialist in rare diseases; he traveled all over the globe, he told her, months at a time. He wasn’t looking for a girlfriend, or a cavewoman, or a girl to keep shackled in the dungeon. He simply needed an obedient slave, one who would honor his every whim, maintain his household, give him what a man craves, and be there at every moment. Amie felt a twinge, the passion. She wanted to be kept, the property of a man of means, his servant and confidant and lover. She told him that, and then she told him her age. He laughed. “See me when you’re eighteen,” he said, and meant it.
She had rarely left his side for the first forty-eight hours; she ministered to him, her body becoming his plaything, his flesh hers to please. They taught each other, learned each other’s needs. She moistened his entire body with her mouth, tasted its salt and sweetness; he bound her to the bed, blindfolded her, made a surprise of each moment of pleasure and pain. At last they lay spent, and knew they’d chosen well.
But one thing troubled Amie, and as they spent the next year together, she saw more and more of it. Blake drank. His was a hard life; he saw a great deal of agony, worked many days nonstop to the point of exhaustion; when at last they were safe in the tidy house in the old part of town, he would crumple to a chair in the den, exhausted, and drink. It didn’t really change him, but it made him cloudy, dark, more abrupt. Still, he accepted her soothing; they would go to the bath, or to his bed, and she would slowly and carefully ease him through the distress, make him once again the firm, gentle Master he’d always been to her.
Love, though, can be sharp. Amie needed the lash, the clamps; she needed to be bound tightly so her body ached, her arms back as if her shoulders would pop out of the joints, her mouth filled with cruel wooden bands that clamped tight around her tongue. She jerked as each strand striped her flesh, her head and hands held immobile by rough wood, her rear wriggling with each solid blow from his big, callused hand. She endured—no, savored—the pain, knowing that the instant it was over—only Blake knew when that would be—she would again be free to explore the sensations of his body. She came and came in the delirium of the whip and the stocks, because it meant the pleasures of the flesh, times two, later.
Amie, too, got to know his friends. Or rather, she grew familiar with them; she was property, a servant, and her role was to make sure that visitors were comfortable, and that Blake was satisfied with her performance. For the most part, they greeted her with a nod; sometimes she was dressed when they came to the door, sometimes naked, sometimes shackled. There was never even the hint of a smile from any of them. Except one.
Amie couldn’t understand what Ragan and her Master had in common. He was big, dark, hairy; he dressed like the boys trying to be men at The Market, but she sensed it was different, that he really was as he appeared to be. He drove an expensive imported sports car; his leather was worn and relaxed, a perfect fit on his huge frame. When he looked at her, Amie caught her breath; like a wolf, she decided, inspecting a lamb, with a fence between them.
When Ragan visited, the drinking increased. They had known each other for some time; perhaps they had worked together, for they compared stops all over the world, the people, the food. Ragan talked a great deal about food; as Amie refreshed his drink, he would look at her—not a glance, but a slow, measured look—and then comment to Blake, “My offer still stands. In fact, I’ll sweeten it.” Blake, his eyes lidded, looked at Amie, and then shook his head before belting back another drink. Amie wondered, What offer? Were they talking about her? Would she be sold…?
She had heard this happened; she also heard it did not always go well for the woman who was sold. The girls outside The Market whispered about it; the people Blake met in his travels spoke of it. It was—Colombia? Peru? Halfway up the Andes, Amie’s lungs had begged for air. In Amie’s presence, a local merchant spoke favorably of her; she wore a single cloth wrap, tight around her body, her wrists tightly bound. They were several weeks there, and she had started to comprehend the tongue; “Give her to me,” the merchant had begged, “and you will not want; you can stay here and live a prince.”
Blake laughed shortly, the inevitable drink fired back against his throat. “I give her to you,” he said, looking at no one, “and she winds up in pieces in your cellar. She is too fine a womanservant to lose in that way,” and the man shrugged, and laughed. Amie ignored the grisly implications as she saw to her Master, but an icy finger traced up her spine to her neck. Pieces in a cellar. Her Master was a wonderful man, but if he chose, he could simply hand her to the likes of the merchant and go to The Market or its Andean equivalent for her replacement, and she would wind up…nervous, she spilled her own cup of water, and the man laughed, again.
Was Ragan such? Blake had the same look in his eyes as he rejected the offer. Then the cards came out, and they would play, into the night. A wild game Amie didn’t understand, full of shouts and cards slapped onto the table and money changing hands frequently. She never could tell who was ahead, who was winning or losing; they simply played, shouting and cursing each other and laughing wildly as they swept in their gains.
On this night, Ragan stayed very long. Blake and Amie had just come back, a difficult stretch in southern Africa, and he was uncoordinated, cards splattering from his hands, occasionally slipping back into near catatonia before erupting into a slurred tirade of profanity. Amie had poured drinks, emptied ashtrays, brought food, rubbed necks and shoulders; now, she sat curled next to her Master on an overstuffed leather couch, rectangles of red and black scattered across the faceted glass table from Tibet. Ragan sat thoughtfully, peering at a fistful of cards and shifting their order, smoke curling from a thin, black cigar clenched in his teeth. Finally, he said, “I’ll bet my car.”
Amie’s eyebrows shot up; she looked at Blake. He was studying his own hand, barely breathing; his hand groped for a waterglass full of tea-colored liquor. After a couple of beats, Ragan said, smiling, “I know it’s what you want. And you have something I want, as well.” He was looking directly at Amie; within his eyes, the wolf licked its chops.
In desperation, Amie turned to Blake. He still stared at his cards, absent-mindedly. He had drunk a good deal. “I do,” he said. Another long pause, another long drink from the waterglass. “I have never known you,” purred Ragan, “to back down from a challenge.”
He was taking advantage of her Master, Amie thought to herself. It’s not fair. And, then, Blake nodded, once. “You’re on,” and suddenly the cards begun flying again, two in one direction, more in another, discards piling on top of the now-forgotten ante, and a final triumphant fanning of cards on the Tibetan table, simultaneously, each man confident he has won the goods.
Blake stared at Ragan’s hand, disbelieving. “You did this to me, once before,” he said. “You son-of-a-bitch!” But there was no malice in his tone; he was simply astounded that he had been taken again. And had lost his prize.
“With all due respect,” grinned the big man, “I believe I’d best be getting home. If we continue to play, I might end up owning your balls!” And they laughed, though Blake’s laugh was somewhat strained. “I know you,” he said, standing to go. “There are no papers, no contracts. She’s mine, on your word.”
Blake had slumped back. “She is,” not even turning to Amie, not even acknowledging the year she’d been his servant, his slave, his to use as he wished. He still stared at the two arrays of cards that bore mute testimony to Amie’s changing of hands. And she felt one of those large, strong hands grip her under the arm, a grip that threatened to crush her flesh like that of a ripe tomato. “I expect,” Ragan added, “you will join us at the party. Expect it two weeks from tonight.” And the hand effortless raised Amie erect, placed her on the floor, and guided her to the door.
Amie knew she had nothing to say, and shuffled meekly to her new fate. She dared not even look behind her—this new Master, she had decided, would respond harshly to such an act; in any event, she knew Blake, knew he was still looking helplessly at the cards. Besides, he could lay claim to another. Ragan, though, was stiffly thrusting Amie through the door, into a newly awakening world, dawn red as blood and life stirring as if in the pains of birth. In the midst of that gleamed the fancy car, the symbol of what Amie was worth, mechanical beast bet against flesh and blood.
Ragan was massive and strong, and he put Amie into the passenger seat as if tossing a package. The cuffs, not expectedly, came out; but then followed a steel collar, her long hair fluffed so he could fix it around her neck, a bolt in the front that caught the chain between her wrists. He was prepared, she thought; he knew he was going to do this to Blake, tonight. The big man stared at her, his hair wild and eyes red from the long night of hard play; he pulled Amie to him, and she felt the roughness of his face, tasted his tongue inside her mouth, hurt with the rough grip on her hair. He drank his fill of her, then pulled her away, smacked his lips, paused as if in thought. His eyes fixed on her again, smiling but with brows knit, a devil behind them. “Not bad,” he said. “Not bad at all.”
The big man’s home was not like Blake’s older house in a quiet neighborhood, as rumpled and low-key as Amie’s former Master had been. Ragan lived on sprawling land far from town, an elegant manse in the midst of several acres, guarded from the road by towering pines. The house itself was flanked by tall trees, and behind a hill sloped down to a manmade lake, a small pleasure boat tied to a splintered dock.
The seclusion, Amie would learn, fit her new owner quite well. Blake, for all his bookishness and introspection, was open, thoughtful. Ragan was guarded and hostile. His home was her prison; doors were locked, only he knew how to open them. A door off a showy, ostentatious dining room led up a flight of stairs; the attic room was equipped with instruments of torture—a rack, a pillory, ceiling pulleys, a chair affixed with clamps on the arms and legs.
Amie took it all in, silently but wide-eyed. She had known the lash and the clamps, of course, with Blake, but those cold implements were applied in the fever of love. He was training her body; her mind was free, and she knew a reward would follow, the pleasures of his bed. Ragan sought Amie’s mind, as well; the punishments would be applied until, finally, she broke, sagged and wept under the heat of the nylon line; gasping for air from the blue jolts of pain in those clips.
And there was no passion, in their sex; she was a doll to him, bent every which way to take on his organ. Her ass, her mouth, her pussy, all were cruelly violated. He wanted her, not when she was vivacious and ready to please, but when she was hurting and defeated. Only then did he enjoy filling her with his seed, again and again, till her asshole was raw, till she choked, her throat clogged with his essence.
Even Amie’s sleep was under harsh circumstances; she no longer had the pleasures of her Master’s bed, but instead was kept suspended from the ceiling pulleys, her shoulders aching and her wrists chafed from the unpadded, iron cuffs, only glimpses of dreams coming between the dull red surges of pain. Or she was kept in the stocks, bent forward awkwardly, feet spread; as often as not she was awakened by his hard cock in her rectum, or the smack of a thin, whiplike birch across her buttocks.
With days and nights equally unpleasant, Amie had gone from willing slave to a ragdoll, a vessel for torment. She learned to sob when the pain needed to go away; Ragan seemed to be preparing her, but for what? She remembered the offer of a party in just two weeks; she had lost track of time with the unceasing agony, but sensed the day must soon be coming. Her Master’s remarks seemed satisfied. “I believe I have you ready…Just a little bit more, and you’ll be perfect…This one will be memorable…”
When Ragan talked to Amie, he did not talk to her as Blake had. Blake had that quiet determination; even as he subjected her to the ecstasy of pain, he told her, You are learning. This will make you whole, make you a woman. The voice soothed her, even as the whip turned her skin to shredded fire. But Ragan gloated. It was not she who was gaining mastery over her own body; no, he was sculpting her, turning her into something pliant, something to be molded into a shape in his dreams. And his words told her that, told her that she was totally his, that he was using her body and mind to his own purpose—Amie was no longer anything, no longer a person.
She was meat.
That had occurred to Amie, all the talk about the upcoming party, about how she would serve well in her role. She dared not ask; the second day, she had spoken, a single word, and the hour of torment that followed had left her screaming like a banshee. But the way Ragan beat her down—sometimes his own fists, or a truncheon; sometimes a whip handle cruelly stuffed into her, or brought against her kidneys—had left her unable to resist, even to steel her body against the next assault. And at the end of each session, the huge man would run his hands over her, fondle her flesh, measure its resistance. “My guests,” he murmured, “will love you.”
It must, Amie decided, be the day. She had again been left hanging by her wrists during the night; rather than beat or fuck her, Ragan took her down, attached a chain to the collar that had remained around her neck these two long weeks. Amie felt herself mechanically marching as her cruel Master led her back out of the torture chamber, into the dining room, and then through a swinging door to the kitchen.
Despite her dulled state, Amie gasped. The intent of the room was clear. A steel table was in the center, gutters on the sides, to catch the blood. A large pan rested on an elegant, carved table, mounted on wheels. A gigantic oven filled a half a wall, its door a good four feet square. Implements dangled from hooks over the steel table, some long and tapered, some curved, some built to pare tissue away and empty cavities. Amie knew she was seeing Ragan’s ultimate depravity, and despite all she’d gone through, it still traced a chill through her that radiated from her genitals.
“The human body,” Ragan was telling her, “is a fascinating cornucopia of gustatory pleasures.” Amie felt numb as he lifted her, set her on the table; the cold steel drew heat from her buttocks as if a vampire punctured the cheeks. “Every part of your body,” he went on as he casually pushed her onto her back, “has subtle flavors which can be brought out with the right kneading, proper, seasoning, appropriate cooking…”
He looked down at her and smiled. “You are quite numb; this is how I planned it. For your flesh to be most succulent, you must go willingly to your fate; you must see the flames of the oven as an adventure, think of the knives that will soon cut your meat from your bones and the teeth that will shred it as your proper place. And I think you knew that this could be your end; that’s why I prized you, why I schemed a way to pry you from my dear friend Blake.”
Amie felt the rough hands stretch her arms and legs to the corners of the table, clamps at each edge gripping them tightly; she felt the motion as Ragan reached overhead, held above her belly a gleaming length of knife. She knew he was right; she thought back to the encounters in the Andes, to the lurid stories heard outside The Market; she thought about her own dreams, where she was owned not by a Master but by demons, ethereal, grinning beings whose yellow fangs sunk into her flesh and drew out her ichor.
Now, it was cold, and cruel, and real. With precision, he laid her open; Amie felt a new fire, then a warm weakening as her inner workings were carefully pulled from her. Something had replaced them, something cold and rough, clods of it, fistfuls, pushed into her. The skin of her belly was drawn tight over it; steel needles pierced the flaps and held them closed.
“I only wish,” Ragan was saying, “you would be able to see yourself when you are done. There is nothing prettier than the sight of a female slave, fully roasted and served at a banquet. It’s as if she has attained the greatest possible service to her Master, to treat his guests to the ultimate pleasures of her body, to allow them to take her into themselves, the use of her as the most base of property, our food.”
Amie was in a dreamlike state now, and found herself strangely agreeing. If she was coming to an end, better she be on display after being prepared lovingly by an expert chef, than simply dumped in a dark pit. Her hands and feet were unlatched; Ragan tied them together with rough hemp, ankles crossed and then wrists attacked. Shears removed most of her long tresses; the cruel man’s hard, callused hands spread a grease all over her body, turning her skin slick and shiny. Then came double handfuls of gritty herbs, coating her, piercing her skin; Amie’s head was back, as she thought, helplessly, I must really look like a pig, ready for roasting.
The pan fit her neatly; it was layered on the bottom with sliced fruit. “It will absorb your juices,” he told her as she stared up from the bottom. “Your meat will be quite sweet, almost a delicacy. We’ll enjoy you immensely.” And then the leering face was gone, and the claustrophobia of the enclosed heated space was upon Amie, the walls gettingtighter and tighter against her…the heat drawing away her breath, just as had Ragan’s evil fingers…the oil on her skin seeming to catch fire, the aroma from the herbs coating her body filling her nostrils. This, she thought weakly, is how I will taste; she heard sizzling, her skin screamed at her, as did her lungs, and then she began to fade…
Ragan’s parties were held irregularly, attended by friends who shared his doctrine of absolute control. Some of the couples in attendance were partners; others were Master and slave. In some cases the roles were hidden, in others, dramatically obvious—a woman on a chain lying at her Master’s feet, another with her wrists shackled at her waist.
He played the gracious host; there was plenty of drink, and a bit of food—they munched sparingly, knowing what was coming. There was talk about the world and business; some had recently visited The Market—things weren’t the way they used to be, they’d decided. Too many grinning roleplayers, men flaunting bankrolls and willing to play only until they were exhausted, girls from town who would be their playthings until the money was gone. That’s not the way it’s meant to be, grinned Ragan, and ducked into a side room, to emerge a few moments with the elegant table, a large lid covering the platter set upon it.
Amie was indeed breathtakingly beautiful as the main course of a feast. Her flesh had turned a deep sepia and glowed with her own fat; the meal with which Ragan had stuffed her abdomen had swollen with her juices and strained at the steel clamps which held her belly closed. A large carrot was wedged up her asshole; steam wafted from the opening of her pussy, which had been plugged with an onion.
She was the perfect vision, a slave who’d become meat to please her Master, and Ragan’s guests were awed. But that gave way to hunger; the expert’s knives plunged into Amie’s carcass, and the oven-crisp skin fell away. Ragan knew what he was doing; as he had promised, the meat was sweet and delicate. The men and women sighed and gasped in sexual exhilaration as they savored it, allowed their teeth to rest on a thin slice of breast meat or thigh until the shreds of muscle fell away.
Wine flowed freely as, bit by bit, what was left of Amie was cut away. Bones were exposed; ribs, arm and leg bones wound up in a pile on a large plate, discards from the magnificent feast. The erotic sounds that had filled the fancy dining room had given way to moans, the sounds of people who are now sated and resting…as if in afterglow. Ragan smiled, pleased; he had used Amie’s body like an artist, had converted her delicious flesh into tender meat. And he hadn’t forgotten his dear friend.
“Blake,” he said, dropping to one knee before him. The physician had very carefully made a selection from Amie’s carcass, had slowly and luxuriantly tasted it, then feasted upon it, washing it down with ever so much wine. “I hope I have pleased you, lad,” he winked, and Blake nodded, his eyes shifting to the woman by his side. She was dressed plainly; a slender redhead, apparently just eighteen, and the mark of a new collar around her neck. The girl was wide eyed, caught Ragan’s gaze, and stared curiously; the host’s smile broadened.
“I hope,” he told Blake, his eyes not leaving the girl, “you will return the favor. I’d love to visit, some night soon.”