A Cruel Passing of Innocence

by J. D. Jensen

  The headman was at his usual place, standing motionless and aloof in front of the assembled slaves. With a curt nod he signalled at Ahmood, and instantly the young attendants scurried to take up position, each behind one of the prostrated slaves and still holding their bowls in front of them. Quickly they knelt down, barely an arm’s length behind the proffered rumps before them.

  When Ahmood’s face was turned away Nassara took an imprudent chance, whispering urgently to Belithza. ‘What new torture do they prepare for us?’ But Belithza only shook her head, hissing anxiously under her breath that she did not know.

  Just in front of Nassara was a pair of dusty feet, scarcely a hand’s length away from her forehead. Four girl attendants were kneeling there, motionless, one behind each prostrated male slave. Behind her, Nassara could hear the quiet shuffling of hasty movement, and she knew instinctively that the boy attendants were taking up their positions directly behind each of the slave girls. Sensing it was Achoochi close behind her she strained to look back between her legs, and there he was.

  Walking slowly behind and between the lines the fat men moved, flexing their fingers as if readying themselves for whatever task was ahead, and ever mindful of Ahmood’s roving eye, Nassara watched furtively as one of them took up position beside the servant girl just ahead of her.

  ‘Kaach-achari!’ Ahmood called out. ‘Aventi!’

  Whatever order it was, an immediate flurry of movement came from in front and behind them. It was difficult for her to see clearly, but the fat men appeared to be taking the ringed silver shafts from out of the bowls, and the one directly ahead of her bent over the thrusting backside of the male slave prostrated before him.

  But before Nassara could understand what was happening, Babbushan came behind her. He muttered something to Achoochi, the attendant’s timid voice answering briefly in reply, and immediately Nassara caught the muffled sound of scraping metal. The silver shaft was being withdrawn from the bowl Achoochi held, and stifling a little gasp of shock she felt the icy touch of Babbushan’s podgy fingers touching her left buttock.

  ‘Keep yourself still, Nassara,’ he warned. ‘I must open you. Do not resist my work. There will be no pain.’ His fingers began to move down between her buttocks, and his other hand touched her right flank, quickly following. She heard him grunt as he bent forward, feeling his way with both hands, exerting pressure, prising her buttocks further apart. On her left cheek she felt another hand, its fingers thick with greasy balm. ‘I tell you again, slave girl; hold still lest Ahmood comes with his whip. Do as I command.’

  Achoochi pushed his greasy fingers deep into her anus, and despite Babbushan’s warning the shock of such defilement made Nassara jerk forward, gasping, pulling away from the unexpected intrusion. Although she fought to retain her posture she could not help her buttocks flinching, contracting inward in protest at the impure entry into her forbidden depths.

  ‘Keep your posture, girl,’ Babbushan urged. ‘The lotion Achoochi puts inside you will make easy the instrument’s passage. Think of other thoughts and soon its presence inside you will be forgotten.’ His hands were still clamped on her flanks, his grip stopping her from any sideways movement, firmly holding her flesh apart.

  ‘W-what…?’ Nassara began to ask in a croaky whisper, turning her head to him. ‘What are you putting…?’

  Babbushan hissed at her into silence, his fingers tightening more on her flesh. ‘Be silent, girl! Ask no questions. It is the masters’ will. Speak no words or Ahmood will hear and he will lash you. Then your discomfort will be twice suffered. The masters’ will shall be done to you, whip or no whip.’

  Nassara forced herself to become calm and still again, even though her lips quivered in humiliation and frustration. Tears formed in her eyes, her breath coming in little pants of silent protest as she resigned herself for the inevitability of whatever foul intrusion would soon come to her opened flesh.

  Babbushan grunted impatiently again and Achoochi worked the grease into her, his nimble fingertips reaching deep into the well of her tight passage, moving around the puckered entrance. It seemed to her that the very core of her lower body was being invaded by chilled impurity, feeling its unnatural expansion of her well. Yet she knew instinctively that there was still more defilement to come. This intrusion was but a prelude to a more hostile plugging that her mind feared to contemplate; she had seen the glinting implements in the bowls.

  Through her tears she saw movement directly in front of her. The male slave there gasped suddenly, his buttocks immediately pulling away from the object the fat man was trying to insert in his lubricated rear. Cursing the slave the fat man, at first thwarted in his task, reached down and yanked the chain hanging between the young man’s legs and kicked his feet in warning. There was another gasp and the slave struggled back into the required humbling posture, his legs and thighs trembling.

  The fat man placed the ring-tagged shaft against the exposed entrance, and with an obscene wiggling motion that defied the natural resistance of the slave’s unwilling flesh, he drove the rounded end of the silver shank deep inside him until only the blunt end with the toggle-ring was visible.

  It seemed to Nassara’s disbelieving eye that such improper penetration had wedged the young man’s flesh asunder, the shaft driven into him like a plump spear. She heard him groan and saw the servant girl reach out and grasp the chain, arranging it so it hung down between the gaping rift of his buttocks, jangling against the other thicker chains that hung from his sack and the ringed base of his manhood.

  The fat man’s task was done, and mumbling some words of meagre comfort to the slave he patted him on one buttock before standing straight again, and moved to the next slave… Zheeno.

  But Nassara had no time to reflect upon the grossness of what was to come to Zheeno, because her turn came sooner… and it was shocking. Despite Babbushan’s reassuring words, the suddenness of the entry of the rounded nub of the metal shank made her jerk forward again as it penetrated, the metal sliding easily into the lubricated path already laid for its coming. The smooth head of metal invaded the tiny puckered well with scarcely more than gently defiant resistance. Babbushan manoeuvred the foul implement onwards and deeper into her forbidden passage, quickly finding the angle of its path. She shuddered and gasped, struggling to keep her posture rigid, grimly fighting her anger and dreadful humility. The loathsome instrument sank further into her, parting the nimbus extremity of her velvety flesh as the increasing circumference of the shaft penetrated deeper. She gasped aloud but the procedure went on, Babbushan breathing heavily as he worked the instrument, concentrating intently upon the meandering act of its propulsion.

  ‘There, my poor Nassara, it is not so bad,’ he encouraged soothingly as he worked. ‘This master’s manly symbol of his future pleasure; it is only preparing you for him, to make your place ripened and moulded to his girth, to make it more pleasurable for him when he comes for you.’

  Even in Nassara’s numbed mind the strangely impure words floated confusingly, before eventually settling in the innocent recesses of her brain, the images coming to her no longer as hazy shapes, but stark and clear.

  Babbushan was firm but gentle, as if the task was a familiar one, knowing instinctively the precise angle and direction with which to guide the intrusive metal, being cautious, sympathetic to any fleeting resistance, or any involuntary reflex of natural protest. But the pressure was nonetheless relentless, oblivious to such brief tokens of opposition, until finally the metal was positioned, its alien presence seeming to invade the deepest confines of her body, as if it had entered a forbidden internal void of her being, one she never knew existed there before.

  The initial numbing shock slowly gave way to a dull, throbbing ache, and she felt her own expanding flesh, as if her walls were being slowly prised apart in unnatural distension. The unkind presence of the metal was hard upon her newly compliant flesh, just as if it were
a nurturing pod that grew around the implanted axis of unwanted and impure conception.

  Yet despite her own discomfort and misery she dared a glance forward, remembering Zheeno with a sudden burst of selfless anxiety, and she saw that he and his three companions were similarly plugged to the hilt of their prised open rears. Only the peeping tips of silver protruded, together with the toggle-rings and slender chains that hung down between the young men’s buttocks, so defiling nature’s own grace and purpose. On her father’s farm she had never seen a single animal so wrongly treated by man, neither lowered in its natural dignity, nor delivered any undue act of ungracious inhumanity. Now the final frontiers of Nassara’s innocence had perhaps been breached, each new sunrise bringing some new learning of man’s cruel pursuits of pleasure. Not even in her nightmares had such malevolent inhumanity as this appeared. No curious or unwelcome thoughts had before ever conceived of such perverse cruelty, or associated such bodily places with the lustful desires of men.

  Ever since that day of her stepfather’s instructional penetration, her mind had been equipped to deal with man’s hardened flesh thrusting between the soft lips between her legs, but she had not been prepared for this. This was no cosy fitting place of nature’s intended purpose. Had she not seen farm beasts in their acts of procreation? Could she not even now imagine the stirrings within her own flesh and soul if she were to feel Zheeno’s proud hardness between her thighs? Yet now she must contemplate other more sinister places into which man’s hardened thrusting might come, to invade an unnatural place that seemed unworthy of such strange penetration.

  Her mind could scarcely grasp such concept. After all, that man and woman should focus their mutual passion and coupling desires upon that wholesome bodily place where the seed of man could plant itself in the fertile passage of woman’s life creating recesses was a notion her mind could easily accept. But now it seemed a woman’s sexual place, so well designed and sculpted for such purpose, was not alone as an orifice for the pursuits of masters. It must be that they, in their supremacy above ordinary man, required other entry places for their indulgences, just as if one ripened fruit alone were insufficient for their lust.

  Feeling her own discomfort again, and the unyielding harshness of the bolt within her, she was aware of its precise angle and the start and finish of its long, defiling immersion into her depths, realising that in her now despatched innocence she had never perceived this freshly desecrated place as having been anything other than that intended for nature’s bodily evacuations. Now it had other purposes that required preparation for the preoccupations of her masters. Flesh must be adapted for them, expanded beyond nature’s own perfected sculpture to accommodate the impure burst of man’s gratuitous seed, as much as to accommodate the exit of the impure waste of slaves.

  Yet what of the young men who prostrated themselves before her in such graceless fashion? Were there perhaps female masters here with whims for youthful men, requiring them to be plugged in such preposterous manner, as if maybe to diminish or deny their very status of masculinity? These confusions in Nassara’s mind made her ponder the strange fate of the dead slave, who had taken his own life after whatever prior ordeal had befallen him. Had it not been the sultan master who had taken him for his pleasure? Nassara had seen no sign of any women masters, therefore, could it be that male masters lusted for the flesh of slaves irrespective of their genders? Did masters go from one slave to another at the whim of the day or night, and with casual indifference, careless of whether their irreverent hands groped male or female flesh as long as it was the compliant flesh of slaves? Was it possible that masters found the flesh of young men as desirable as that of young women? Moreover, whether or not this was so, were the channels of the rumps of slaves – male or female – of greater appeal to masters than nature’s budded portals of female slaves? She did not know the answers to such perplexing contemplations, and besides, the nagging defilement of the alien shaft within her dulled her mind.

  She glanced again at Zheeno and at his companions, so cruelly plundered in the same way as she was. Their humbled rears that seemed to line up before her eyes so ignominiously were thrust out like a row of oiled vessels, as if awaiting their cruel plugs to be withdrawn. Only Zheeno’s tautened cheeks were different. His glistened brighter than the others from the recent greasing of healing lotion, so thickly coated over them after his beating. So dreadfully ravaged were they, bearing still a network of livid swollen ridges.

  Once or twice she saw him sway, noting the tiny tremor that seemed to pulse in his leg muscles. She willed him to find the mental strength to endure the misery, knowing how the welts must throb and persecute him beyond the normal burden of his plugged debasement.

  The sun beat down. She the butterfly and he the bee hovered over the scented courtyard, playing and laughing in their flitting fantasies, gambolling in and out of the rich vegetation and tinkling fountains, until they tired of their game and came down to rest in the cool shade of the shrubbery.

  Several slaves had begun to sway alarmingly, trembling and groaning in their torment, the strain of keeping their bodies in such unnatural posture becoming ever harder to endure. Legs, arms, spines, feet and knees were beginning to weaken. However, human pulp grew slowly more accustomed to the gloating silver invaders lodging there, slumbering contentedly in their grotesque work. Such was their stretching proficiency they became more tolerable to bear with every passing moment, forming some irreversible, ductile expansion of their subjects’ internal passageways. As time passed so did the agony of hosting those hateful visitors. Having settled so comfortably into their newly forged burrows, they slowly accomplished their purpose, not wanting to be drawn out again from such warm, dark embrace, nor wishing to return to their porcelain bowls.

  Nassara wondered what internal hurt might befall any slave who collapsed to the ground. She had noticed how the young man to the left of her vision appeared to be in particular distress. Beads of sweat had collected between his buttocks, trickling down to form a tiny pool on the stonework beneath. He could surely not endure for much longer. He was swaying, arms trembling, his breathing coming in laboured gasps.

  Ahmood, ever vigilant, had not failed to notice his plight. Stealthily he moved nearer, his long whip lazily dangling from his hand. Surely, Nassara thought, he would not lash the wilting slave while the metal plug remained embedded in so vulnerable a part of his body? But even as she watched, another whip-boy crept up behind him and reached down as if ready to grasp the thin chain at the protruding end of the shaft and remove it if so required. But slaves quickly develop a sixth sense, and the young man seemed to compose himself, willing himself to endure the passive torture for a while longer.

  By now every slave craved water, the trickling fountains only adding to their torment. The sun was at last beyond the high rooftop, a shadow moving with excruciating stealth across the courtyard and over the slaves, line by line. Nassara and Ugimba, on her left, were less fortunate than the others, as they were furthest from the advancing shade. For Zheeno, at least, Nassara was glad that the sun’s fierce rays were lifted from him, but Ugimba was another matter.

  For some time now she had been almost teetering on her limbs, moaning sometimes, seemingly close to collapse. Despite her natural strength and healthy build, her spirit was as if sapped since her dreadful flogging the day before, her mind stricken by her misery.

  ‘It must not be for much longer now,’ Nassara whispered, trying to moisten her lips with what saliva remained, hoping to bolster the girl’s flagging reserves. ‘Be strong, Ugimba… soon you will rest.’

  She had scarcely spoken when movement stirred. Her own limits of tolerance were near to being breached, and she scarcely dared hope that the end of their ordeal might really be in sight. The fat men and the attendants reappeared, taking up their respective positions behind the slaves and waiting impassively, not quite ready, it seemed, to undo their impure work. Nassara sweated, swayin
g slightly, trying to look back beneath her body at Babbushan’s feet, and where Achoochi’s knees were rested once more on the hot flagstones. As if knowing Nassara’s impatience, Babbushan whispered to her.

  ‘You are brave, my poor girl slaves. It is only for a few brief moments more. Soon now you shall be free to go and drink and rest.’

  The inner gate swung open and the headman appeared through the archway, walking leisurely and fidgeting with the huge cuffs of his richly threaded garment, not looking at the slaves, as if their presence were inconsequential to his ambling passage. Which slave in those two lines of misery would not have kissed his feet to make him hasten to give his order for their release?

  He nodded to Ahmood, and together they walked behind the rows of exhausted slaves. From time to time he stopped behind a pair of sweating, thrusting buttocks to peer down critically at the handiwork of his servants, before moving on again to the next slave.

  It was Nassara’s turn for brief examination. She sensed Babbushan drawing back to give room enough for his master to stand behind her. She grimaced and cringed inwardly.

  The headman moved on to Ugimba, and daring to glance sideways Nassara saw the unmistakable look of consternation in the girl’s face as he stopped, bending over her. He spoke curtly to Ahmood, before giving a little snigger, and Ahmood hastened to do his master’s bidding, removing the silver plug with a brief rattle of chain, Ugimba gasping and nearly collapsing onto the ground, only just managing to recover her posture. But such involuntary movement was construed as an act of impertinence and the master was angered.

  ‘Arribaja, chicah!’ he snarled. ‘Queda-te majari!’

  ‘Prezza!’ Ahmood joined in, his whip raised. ‘Prezza! Ashami!’