Chapter 7. Expensive Education.
Not fair. Aster thought as she put together a few things. Not that she'd need much, if she were going to die. Not fair. I was supposed to be Zookeeper, not hauled off to be raped by some monster. I hate the Maestro. What did I ever do to him? Read some books too fast? Be smarter than him at the same age? What was I supposed to be able to do about that?
Thumb woke up, squinting at the first beginnings of the early morning sun coming through the window. "Aster, what are you doing up so early?"
"Go to sleep, Thumb." Aster said.
Of course like any 9 year old, Thumb didn't listen much to older siblings. She sat up and saw Aster packing some things in a canvas bag. "Are you going somewhere?"
"I…" How did you tell your sister that you were going off to be raped by a monster, something that would probably kill you, and the monster would probably kill you afterwards even if it didn't. And that if you didn't go, if you hid or ran away or killed yourself, the monster would probably kill her and your father and all the animals in the Zoo instead. After which (if you chose to hide or run away) the monster would find and kill you anyways.
No, that was not something she could tell Thumb. She had no idea what her father would tell Thumb. There weren't any really clever lies, at least that Aster could think of, to explain away the fact that she was probably never coming back. That she'd probably be dead in a few days at the most. Still, she could lie about why she was going away. If there was a better lie, let her father think of it.
"The Maestro's horses are sick." She told Thumb. "Father can't leave the zoo right now, so he wants me to look at them and see if I can help them."
"Oh." The lie fooled Thumb. "What do you think is wrong with them."
"Well, I won't really know until I look at them, will I." said Aster. "Probably it's just botflies or worms or something."
"Is that why Mister Wolfkiller was here yesterday?" asked Thumb. "About the horses?"
"Yes, it was about the horses." It was about ME. "Wolfkiller isn't sure what's wrong with them. I need to find out. If I don't know, I'll look it up in the Library. Wolfkiller doesn't read very well, so I can find out from books a lot faster than him."
"I like horses." Thumb said. She looked over at a small figure of a horse made from pre-War plastic that she kept with her toys. "I don't like Mister Wolfkiller, though. He's scary and mean."
"I don't like him, either." Even though he came to warn us what the Maestro wanted. "But he has a job to do, and so do I. You don't always need to like someone in order to do a job with them. The job is the important thing, not how you feel. You understand?"
"Not really." Thumb pulled her blankets around her. The sun was higher now. "Maybe if I had a job, if I was going to be Zookeeper like you, I'd understand it."
"Never mind." The Maestro would probably be there for her before noon. She regarded what she had packed. A change of clothes that she probably wouldn't live to wear, or be allowed to wear even if she did live beyond the next 24 hours. A few of her favorite books. A stuffed animal, a gaudy orange and black tiger cub with green plastic eyes that had been sold in the gift shop of the Bronx Zoo, before the war. The synthetic cloth had faded only a little with time. She looked at one seam on the toy tiger. She had spent a few hours carefully picking out a few inches of the old seam, removing part of the stuffing, and hiding a jar with the opium solution and syringe inside. She didn't think the Maestro would allow her to take along the means of escaping him so easily. Not if he knew she had it. But he might let her take along a toy. She pressed the stuffed toy along different sides. Good. The seam where she had stitched it back up by hand was barely visible, and she couldn't feel the jar or the syringe deep inside the stuffing, either.
"You stay inside." She warned Thumb. "The Maestro is in a really bad mood, because of his horses being sick. He doesn't want to be bothered by little kids like you. Okay?"
Thumb nodded her assent, and Aster looked around at her room, scanning the possessions accumulated during fourteen short years. There was really nothing else to bring. What good were all her books, now? She had read most of them so many times that she had them all practically memorized, anyways. Jewelry? It was all cheap glass and old chains and seashells on leather cords she used as necklaces, nothing like the gems she had seen the women at the Maestro's palace wearing. Possibly she'd get gems like that to wear. Not that she wanted them. Not that she'd likely even live to wear them.
She went to the closet and dressed up in what she thought of as her 'Zoo Uniform'. Of course, the Bronx Zoo had never made uniforms in her size, and all the old uniforms from before the war had long since been worn to rags, but she had made her own 'Zoo Uniform' from tan pants and shirt, with a real embroidered badge, in red, gold and yellow, that had a brown gazelle, an extinct animal something like a deer, in the center, and that read "OFFICIAL ZOOKEEPER – BRONX ZOO" in neatly embroidered letters around the edge. That the patch was not actually one worn by actual Zookeepers before the war, but rather, a souvenir sold in the same Zoo gift shop that her stuffed tiger had come from, was something Aster was unaware of. So far as she was concerned, it was preWar, and that made it official.
She finished packing her canvas bag. Should she write a will? Probably not. All her things would go either to her father or to Thumb. She picked up the bag with one hand, tucked the stuffed toy tiger under the other one, and went outside. Her father was there.
"Do you want me to stay with you?"
Aster nodded silently. Tears trickled from her eyes. It was now late enough in the morning that the Maestro had had time for breakfast, to wash and get dressed, and leave his palace. He was probably on his way to the Zoo to get her by now.
Not fair. This is not how things were supposed to be. Of course, she didn't really have any clear idea of how things were supposed to be, other than becoming zookeeper when her father got too old to keep up with the work. Being a late developer, physically, Aster had never really thought much about who she might marry. If anyone. Certainly not to a horrible, hateful monster ten times her size, though.
Then again, they weren't getting married. The Maestro's only use for her was sex, the same as men used the women in the brothels for, and he certainly wasn't going to marry her, any more than men married the women in the brothels.
Soon enough, Aster heard the Maestro approaching, with his usual retinue of servants. He had two of his robotic War dogs on a leash in front of him. Aster still hated the sight of the things. Behind him were several servants. No women. All men or eunuchs, though she couldn't always tell the difference. Except she saw Daniel Wolfkiller with them, wearing the same clothes he had had on the previous day, rifle still slung over his back. She knew that Wolfkiller wasn't a eunuch. Eunuchs didn't have any use for prostitutes. There was also a flat wagon, pulled by two white horses, with a small cage on top of it, maybe four feet along each side and eight feet tall.
Meant for me. Aster thought. Apparently she was to be paraded through Dystopia like some sort of captured exotic animal.
The Maestro frowned as he saw her outside with packed bags, and frowned worse when he Zoo Uniform. He squinted at her, then glared at her father. He spoke to her father in a rumbling voice. "So someone told you I was coming for her. No matter. But that being the case, you might have dressed her in something more appropriate."
Joshua Aversa shrugged helplessly. It was pointless to tell the Maestro that all of Aster's clothes were suitable for doing work around the Zoo. "What would you regard as appropriate?"
The Maestro shrugged. "Take off your clothes, Aster."
Aster's jaw set slightly at being made to take off her Zoo uniform for this ugly, hateful monster. Then an old memory, unbidden, drifted into her mind. Something she hadn't thought of for a few years, but it gave her comfort now.
Never mind. It doesn't really matter. She clenched her jaw tighter, reached up, and unbuttoned her shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra. She didn't even begin to need one. She saw her father open his mouth, then shut it again and turn away. She was alone. She took off her shoes and socks, then unbuttoned her pants and pulled them off, along with her underwear. The Maestro leered at her.
Nevermind it. She thought. Animals don't wear clothes, and they don't care. Never mind the way he's looking at me, either. Just pretend he's a big stupid, like the boys who tease the animals in the Zoo. I'll just pretend I'm a tiger, like my toy.
She jutted her jaw forward and pulled her lips back over her teeth slightly, pretending they were sharp fangs and that she was making the same fierce expression an angry tiger would. The Maestro shrugged, not sure why this girl appeared to be grinning, and not familiar enough with animals to know that in every species but man, baring the teeth was a sign of aggression. Perhaps the girl was actually looking forward to this. A lot of women were attracted to power. Or perhaps she was mad. No matter, for the purpose he had in mind for her, sanity (or the lack thereof) were both pretty much irrelevant.
"Open your mouth." He ordered Aster.
Aster obeyed, and let the Maestro look at her teeth, thinking that if she were really a tiger, and had sharp teeth, she'd bite his finger right off and see how he liked that.
"Good teeth. No cavities. You've brushed them regularly." The Maestro glanced over at where her father was looking at the ground. "You've taken good care of her. But I expected no less, you've always taken good care of the animals in the zoo, so you would hardly do any less for your own daughter."
Her father looked up, and fell to his knees. "Please… my Lord. Let her go. Look at her, she's still a child. Take me instead. I'll care for your horses or Wardogs. Or kill me if you want. Anything. Just let her go. I've spent years training her to be Zookeeper. Who's to take care of the animals once I'm gone if you take her away?"
The Maestro frowned with disapproval. "Girls are not meant to be zookeepers. Or to be educated at all. They have only two purposes. Pleasing men and breeding. You're not that old, Joshua. Find another wife and have a son, and train him. Or find an apprentice somewhere on the streets. But as for training your daughter to be Zookeeper, honestly, you really should have known that you were wasting your time. I don't know where your head was when you thought of that idea. You need several men here to help you run the place. What sort of man would let a woman order him around?"
The men who helped with the tremendous amount of work needed to run the zoo had been listening to Aster for at least a few years now, but it wouldn't do for her father to mention that. He noticed that most of the men who worked for him were not around. Two were, one was looking down at the ground, apparently fascinated with the mineral composition of some pebbles near his feet. The other was smirking at the sight of his nude daughter.
I'll fire that man. Joshua thought coldly. But first I'll beat him bloody with a club. Hell, maybe I'll break both his legs and throw him into the tiger enclosure.
He knew as he thought it, that he wouldn't throw the man to the tigers. The other men who worked for him would hardly put up with one of their own being murdered. And for the sake of his other daughter, he couldn't do something that rash, that would get him hung. But he would damn well beat him bloody before tossing him out the front gate of the zoo. Probably he'd have to pay a fine. Screw the fine, he'd pay it.
Daniel Wolfkiller was looking right at Aster, too, Joshua saw. But he wasn't smirking. His expression was… odd. More the way a man would look at a freak, than a nude woman. Or girl. It was as if his daughter had suddenly grown an extra head, or turned as green as the Maestro.
Having finished looking at Aster's teeth and giving his opinion as to the stupidity of her ever having been educated, the Maestro looked at the rest of her body.
"You still look like a boy." The green tyrant declared. "But you have good muscles. There's potential there. I can always see potential in a woman."
Aster's father and the Wolfkiller, unbeknownst to eachother, had nearly identical thoughts at that remark. That the Maestro had completely ignored Aster's greatest potential, her mind, in favor of something utterly trivial dictated by his lusts. It was as if someone were to find a diamond the size of their fist, completely ignore the value they could get for it as jewelry, and decide that the greatest use for it would be as a paperweight.
Having finished assessing Aster's body, the Maestro turned his attentions to the belongings she had brought. He pointed to the canvas bag. The laces that held it shut were too small for his overly large fingers.
"Open that." He ordered Aster. "Take out whatever's in there."
Aster complied, lining up her few changes of clothing and the favorite books she had decided to bring.
"You won't need any of that, where you're going." The Maestro admonished her. "Those are hardly suitable clothes for a woman. And it's a waste of time for a girl to read books. Leave them here."
He turned his green eyes to the toy tiger. "What's this?"
Aster hugged the toy to herself. "It's Tony Tiger. I've had him since I was little. I keep him on my bed near my pillow."
"Take it." The Maestro waved his hand dismissively. "It'll make a good decoration in the women's quarters. Now get on up there into the cage."
Without looking at her father, Aster tossed her stuffed toy onto the wagon, then went over to one of the wheels, intending to use the spokes as a step, but before she could, the Maestro seized her around the waist, and lifted her bodily up onto the wagon. He took the opportunity to feel with one finger between her legs as she did so.
"Nice." He purred appreciatively. A green tongue snaked out and licked his lips. "Smooth and tight."
Aster shuddered inside, but said nothing. She just made her tiger face, wishing again that she had fangs to bite off the finger that was violating her, and waited for the Maestro to release her. As soon as he did, she picked up her stuffed tiger, went into the cage, and sat down crosslegged.
Daniel Wolfkiller regarded the Maestro's latest acquisition in silence, his face carefully blank.
The Maestro took the wrong things away from her. He thought. She did not bring that toy out of any childhood affection. Something's inside it probably. The Maestro is judging her by appearances, and she LOOKS like a child. And he wouldn't suspect a child of smuggling. But she's older than she looks in years, and is probably the smartest person in this entire crowd right now. Including her own father, who is no dummy. Worse yet for him, is the fact that the people who are going to see him bringing her back to his palace aren't going to know that she's fourteen, and they aren't going to know what's in her head, either. All they're going to see is a girl who looks closer to nine or ten than fourteen, who has tits the size of radishes and doesn't have a hair anywhere on her except her head. A girl still young enough to be hugging a stuffed toy for comfort. And being brought back to be raped by HIM. The Maestro might want 'respect' but after today I think he'll get precious little of it. The Maestro might not realize it yet, but that girl and her little stuffed toy are going to deal him a blow far worse than any he got from the Shulk or the Abomination when they tried to kill him.
Once Aster had sat down, the Maestro snapped shut the overly large padlock on the cage. She dimly heard him telling Daniel Wolfkiller to get the horses going. She hugged her tiger to her, glad of the comfort. She couldn't bear to look at her father any more, and instead looked at the zoo, as she went past all the cages.
I guess I had some good things in my life. Aster thought, her eyes tearing up. I learned about animals, and got to pet a lot of them. The goats liked me, and Mr Stubs liked me, except when he bit me that one time, but otherwise he was good and learned to jump through a hoop pretty fast. And I got to show people around the zoo and tell them about the animals, and they thought I was pretty smart.
She thought again of the old memory that had comforted her, when the Maestro had forced her to strip out of her Zoo uniform. It was a bit of a mystery, it had always been in the back of her mind, and she had honestly meant to try to find out about it when she was older. But now she guessed she would never find out. Maybe someone else would. Someday.
The wagon left the Zoo, and clattered through the streets of Dystopia, which were crowded with people who scrambled to one side or the other as soon as they saw that it was the Maestro who was coming. The streets were dirtier than Aster remembered. Or maybe it was the whole situation that was dirty, and affecting her perception. But there were stinking puddles, scraps of spoiled food, and lumps of ordure everywhere. Despite her situation, she couldn't help taking the surroundings in with cold analysis.
Going to wind up with disease from all that filth. She thought. She wrinkled her face at the people looking at the wagon, sure they were laughing at her. It would serve them right if they got sick. For laughing at her, and for letting the streets get so dirty. Her father would never tolerate such filth in the zoo, that was for sure.
In point of fact, at least a few people were laughing at Aster. The harsh conditions in the post-War world meant that a lot of people were not particularly nice, and there was also rather little entertainment. The sight of a nude woman in a cage, even if she did look like just a girl, was an exciting diversion from the usual boring, unpleasant routine of their lives. Not to mention that a few of them had been annoyed in the past when Aster had flashed her ID card identifying her as the daughter of the Zookeeper to force them to forego having just a little fun with her. So far as they were concerned, she was a rich, spoiled brat who had now gotten her comeuppance.
However, despite the fact that in Aster's immaturity and fear she thought just about everyone the wagon went past was smirking and laughing at her, most of the people were not. Rather, it was as Daniel Wolfkiller had predicted. There were hidden pointed fingers, gasps, and whispers of "Just a girl. Not even any hairs. Can't be more than ten."
The Maestro was oblivious to this. He and Aster had psychological conditions that, though diametrically nearly opposite, sometimes had the same external effect. Aster bordered on the autistic part of the psychological spectrum. In pre-war times, she probably would have been diagnosed with Asperberger's syndrome. She cared greatly what people thought and felt, but often had a hard time knowing what they thought and felt, resulting in her inadvertently offending them and then having the dual problems of not knowing exactly why they had been offended but feeling bad that she had done so. The human proclivity for concealment and deception of emotions did not aid her in this. In fact, she probably understood animal behavior better in many ways than she did human behavior. Animals didn't lie about what they felt, or try to hide it.
The Maestro, on the other hand, had little difficulty in discerning the nuances of human emotion. He would have easily been able to tell what the people in the crowd were thinking, if he had cared. But he didn't care. So far as he was concerned, they were human rabble, and he had no more interest in paying any attention to what they might feel or think than a typical person would have in paying attention to what a bunch of scurrying ants might feel or think. So because of his lack of caring, or attention, he was literally unaware of the shock of the people that the wagon went past. After all, he had taken nude women through Dystopia, on the way to his palace before. The fact that people who, like medieval peasants before them, had resigned themselves to accepting that their liege Lord had the right to the best looking peasant women, might possibly feel differently about that same Lord abusing girls as young as Aster appeared to be, did not occur to the Maestro. Nor would he have been concerned about it even if it had occurred to him. As Aster's father had once told her, it took a very great man to retain morality, when there were no consequences for bad behavior. And the Maestro was far from being a great man, and there was no-one in Dystopia strong enough to impose consequences of any sort on him. As a result, he had lost most of whatever morality he might once have had. Which, given that he had devoted his life prior to becoming the Hulk to creating weapons of mass murder, was not all that much in the first place. And would no doubt continue to lose whatever little morality he might have left, in the future.
The streets got noticeably cleaner as the retinue approached the Maestro's palace. Those who lived or worked nearby were obviously afraid to offend the Maestro by allowing any sort of garbage in the streets that might cause a stench that would reach to the palace. The went through the public square in front of the palace, where white, clean picked skulls were still on top of tall poles. The Hulk's skull was gone, Aster noticed. The Maestro had probably destroyed it, as her father had predicted.
They went in through a side gate of the Maestro's palace, which led to a large yard full of patchy grass. Aster saw some stables, and a few horses peeking out of their stalls. There was a fenced in area with some Wardogs wandering around in a mechanical daze, and others sitting in large kennels with their pink tongues lolling out. Aster had heard that the Wardogs had a better sense of smell than even the best normal dogs, and could sniff out a person from a trail weeks old. It was one reason very few people tried to run away from the Maestro, such as she had briefly considered doing. The chances of doing so successfully were slim, at best.
As the wagon went farther in, Aster heard a snarling noise. Was one of the Wardogs angry? She looked up. In one far corner of the yard, where there was no cooling grass, and no trees for shade, she saw a tiger in the cage. The surviving one from the pair her father and Daniel Wolfkiller had trained for the Maestro. Despite it's obvious rage, it looked… awful. Pathetic even. It was obviously starving, it's stomach shrunken to nearly nothing, it's ribs and backbone showing right through the thick fur, the once magnificently curved muscles on it's four legs dwindled away to mere knotted strings. There was blood on it's mouth. Not from food. Some of it's teeth were missing, and Aster saw that one eye was swollen and dripping pus.
The tiger roared, and Aster trembled, not in fear, but in pity. If only she had Wolfkiller's rifle, she would put the poor, hurt creature out of it's misery. But she didn't have his rifle. She couldn't help the tiger. She couldn't even help herself.
The wagon came to a halt, and the Maestro fished a large key out of his pocket and used it to open the door of Aster's cage. "Come on out of there." He ordered.
Her stuffed toy tiger cub under one arm, Aster stepped out of the cage. The Maestro took her around the waist, and she steeled herself to be felt up again. But apparently he was satisfied, for the moment, with his previous violation. Several servants ran out of the palace.
"Clean her up for tonight." The Maestro ordered them. "She stinks of the zoo where she came from. And see to it that she's dressed appropriately."
The servants took her by the hand and led her down green hallways, decorated with stained glass windows and beautiful statues, much like the one she remembered from when she had visited the Hall of Fallen Heroes, a few years back. They took her into a room where there was a large green bathtub, big enough for the Maestro himself, carved from what looked like a single huge piece of dark green marble shot with white veins. Two women, wearing barely more than she did stood near it. There were bubbles on the water, which Aster didn't understand. She had never seen bubblebath before.
The soap, washrag and scrub brush on a shelf she understood. The Maestro had said she stunk and was to be clean, though in her opinion he smelled a lot worse. His hair was greasier than his stablemaster's, and that was saying a lot. She hadn't seen bugs in the Maestro's hair, but maybe that had something to do with the radiation. She remembered that the flies hadn't gone anywhere near the Hulk's head, back when it had been on one of the poles in front of the palace, because of the radiation.
Aster set down her toy tiger on the floor, got into the tub and picked up the soap. It was snatched away from her immediately by one of the women near the tub.
"The Maestro wants you properly washed." Said the woman apologetically. "We need to make sure that's done, or he'll be displeased with us."
Aster resigned herself to the humiliation of being washed, like a dirty zoo animal. Really, the very thought that she couldn't wash herself properly! Ridiculous! She'd been taking a bath by herself for as long as she could remember. Not to mention sterilizing the operating tables at the zoo, prior to surgery on any of the animals. Such as the tigers she and her father had castrated, prior to training them for the Maestro, so he could have a new toy. She recalled the condition of the surviving tiger, in the cage she had seen. The Maestro didn't take good care of his 'toys' once he got tired of them. She was under no delusions as to how long it would take for the Maestro to get tired of her, as well.
"What's your name?" She asked the woman who was scrubbing her arms with the brush.
"Betty. Betty 5." The woman smiled vacantly.
"I'm Betty 10" Said the other woman.
Aster looked at their eyes. Drugged. She decided. It was much what she had in mind for herself, but proof that despite the obvious wealth and beauty of the construction, decorations, and furnishing, this was not a good place. Not at all. Even if you survived the Maestro's attentions, you lost yourself. Down to your very name. Your first name was 'Betty' or whatever the Maestro said it should be, and your last name was nothing but a number.
The two women finished washing her, toweled her off, and clucked over her hair. It seemed there was little they could do to style hair as short as hers, and eventually settled for trimming it neatly with a small pair of scissors, and putting jeweled clips into it. Then she was dressed in a tunic made of nearly transparent white silk with a low neckline and slits in the short skirt that went up to her waist. She was given ornate gold chains to wear around her neck, wrists, and ankles. Aster frowned at them. They reminded her of shackles.
She was not given any underwear to wear.
"Come now. The Maestro said to bring you to the feast as soon as you were cleaned and dressed properly" Said one of the women. Was it Betty 5 or Betty 10? Aster couldn't keep them straight. Not that it really mattered.
Things just get Betty-er and Betty-er around here, don't they? Came a sarcastic, unbidden thought in her head. She turned to one of the two women. "I have to use the bathroom… really bad. Is there one here? If you give me a washrag, I'll clean up good, afterwards. I promise."
"Over there." One of the two Betties pointed towards a small door. "But don't take too long. The Maestro will be displeased if you are late."
"I really got to go bad." Aster said again. "But I'll try to be as quick as I can."
She picked up Tony Tiger and carried the toy in what she hoped was a casual way towards the bathroom. Once inside, she looked around. Unlike the huge tub, it was obviously meant only for use by the Maestro's human servants. The room was far less ornate than the one with the bathtub and the toilet obviously far too small to be used by someone as large as the Maestro.
How DID the Maestro take a crap anyways?, Aster wondered. She couldn't picture him just going on the ground or in a hole he dug, like the zoo animals. Did someone in Dystopia make a special, overly large sized toilet, reinforced to take his weight, or did he have to use a large bucket? Then again, she really didn't want to know. There were a lot of problems involved in being so much larger than everyone else, if you thought about it, and using a toilet was probably the least of those that really needed to worry her at the moment.
Using her teeth, she pulled at the stitches she had made last night in the tiger, until she had re-opened about two inches along the seam. She poked around with her fingers and managed to get out a small hypodermic syringe, then brought the jar of opium solution towards her until the lid was jutting partly through the opening she had made. She unscrewed the lid, and filled the syringe. Not to inject herself. Taking opium via the blood was deadly for reasons she didn't understand. It had to be taken orally, rectally, or smoked. And though she didn't want to endure what was to come, she didn't want to die. Not if there was a chance to live. No, the syringe was to accurately measure what she took. She filled it up with the solution, regarded the dark liquid, death diluted and deferred, perhaps, then held it up to her mouth, pushed the plunger, and let it trickle over her lips.
Her tongue tingled slightly and went a little numb.
She swallowed.
Taken through either the mouth or lower intestine, opium took longer to have an effect than if it were smoked. But it lasted longer, as well. Good. She didn't want the effects of it to wear off in the middle of whatever it was the Maestro was planning to do to her.
There was, of course, a problem with the dosage of opium that Aster had given herself. Opium was a crude product, at best, containing several different substances. Which was one reason why it couldn't be injected. Aster did not want to take too much of it, as she didn't want to overdose and die, but more problematic, she didn't want to render herself completely unconscious. The Maestro would not be happy with an oblivious toy, she was sure. He would either kill her on the spot, or more likely, simply wait for the opium to wear off, then rape and kill her. As a result of erring on the side of caution, she vastly underestimated how much opium she should take. She could have taken nearly twice as much, and still been moving around and talking.
Aster screwed the lid on the jar, pushed it and the syringe back into the stuffing of the tiger, then closed the gap as best she could. Hopefully, nobody would be too curious about a raggedy toy stuffed tiger. She flushed the toilet, then ran water in the sink, making sure to get the soap wet, and went back out.
"Alright. I'm ready to go now." She told the two 'Betties'. One of them took her by each hand, led her out of the bathing room, and down a few hallways to a large room with several tables filled with food and people. The air was filled with sounds of loud, happy chatter, as if this occasion were actually something to celebrate. Like a real wedding, instead a farcical prelude to a rape.
The Maestro, wearing purple velvet trousers and a metal chestplate sat at the largest table, in front of the room, with absolutely huge platter in front of him that had what looked like half an entire small roasted fawn on it, the legs dangling over the edges of the sides of the serving dish. It was surrounded by what looked like dozens of potatoes and countless mushrooms.
My God, how can he eat the whole thing? Aster thought. It's enough to feed 10 people! No wonder he was always taking animals from the Zoo to eat, if he has to eat that much all the time.
Having to eat such huge amounts, in a place and time of scarcity, was another disadvantage of the Maestro's large size. Not that it had inconvenienced the tyrant as of yet, since he simply took as much as he wanted from those who produced it, without caring whether or not his actions might cause those who produced his food to starve to death, or what he might do if and when he ran out of people to steal from. His entire mind for decades had been devoted almost entirely to serving whatever provided him with immediate (if momentary) gratification without considering such long term consequences.
The Maestro saw Aster being led in by the two 'Betties'. "Come in. Sit on my lap." He told the girl.
Aster wanted to turn and run away, but knew better. With trembling legs, she went down a center aisle of the room, between tables full of the Maestro's guests. The Maestro's lap was nearly four feet above the floor, and Aster had to use the edge of the table to pull herself up, onto it. The Maestro waited until she was settled, then felt her chest through the sheer dress with one finger.
"You've hardly got any tits. You're too thin." He said in a deep, disapproving voice. "You'd think with all the food I gave him for his animals, your father could have fed you a little better."
Aster said nothing. Her father had fed her and Thumb just fine.
It was stolen food, though. That had never really occurred to her before. Food the Maestro stole from other people, farmers on the Outside. And now you're finally paying for it.
She looked at the feast in front of her. She didn't want to eat the Maestro's crummy old food. She wanted to go home, even if there was nothing there but rabbit stew or oatmeal.
The Maestro would have none of that. After Aster had just sat in his lap like a lump for over a minute, he ordered her: "Eat. You need to put on weight."
Aster's head felt a little dizzy now. The opium she had drunk was taking effect. The effect on her thoughts was like a cloth put over a lantern. The light didn't shine through clearly. The people in the room seemed to move and talk too fast. Dimly, it occurred to her that it was dangerous to eat. But she couldn't remember why. Because the food was stolen? Was it poisoned? The Maestro was eating it.
She picked up a plate, no bigger than a small saucer to the Maestro, and put a slice of venison, some mushrooms, and a baked apple stuffed with raisins onto it.
The food was delicious. It turned her stomach when she swallowed it.
Things were foggier now. The people around her seemed to move in jumps through time, as often happened in a dream. There was a big cake, with creamy yellow frosting on it. Aster took a slice. Using her silverware took a lot of concentration now.
There was something uncomfortable behind her. She had forgotten where she was sitting, on the Maestro's lap. What was poking her? Was he feeling her up again? She turned around. What was that? It wasn't the Maestro's hands, both of those were occupied with holding a leg of the roast fawn up to his mouth. So what was it? She couldn't quite see. Putting down her cake, she felt behind her with her two small hands, trying to figure out what the hell it was, jabbing into her hip. If it wasn't the Maesto's hands, what was it? A bowl? Some part of the fawn the Maestro was eating?
Aster realized just what it was at the same moment she noticed that the Maestro had set down his food and was grinning down at her. She turned pale. There was no way something that large was ever going to fit inside her. It would kill her. She was sure of it.
The Maestro leered at her inadvertent feel of him, through his trousers, and she saw what was under there grow even bigger. Terrified, Aster slid off the Maestro's lap.
"So you do want it." He pointed towards his own crotch, where Aster had been unknowing feeling. "Nothing but a little slut, aren't you? Just like all the rest."
Aster knelt down in front of him, fearful and ashamed. She wanted to cry, but the haze of the opium seemed to keep her from that release.
"Please." She said in a broken voice. "Don't do this to me. I'll do anything. I'll be good. I won't read any more books or be Zookeeper any more, if you don't want me to."
Her pleading offers were a complete betrayal of almost everything she had ever believed in and lived for throughout her entire life, but she didn't care any more. Had the opium let her feel the true extent of fear, she undoubtedly would have lost control of her bladder.
The light tap the Maestro gave her nearly snapped Aster's neck. Red light flashed inside her head, and when she recovered, the Maestro was glaring down at her angrily.
"Won't read any more books." He said in a sneering voice. "And just what good do you think that will do at this point?"
He picked her up by one arm and carried her into a curtained room in the back of the feasting hall. There was a huge mattress, made of quilted silk on the floor. The Maestro threw Aster onto it, and she twisted her ankle as she fell. She screamed in pain, and the Maestro roughly tore the silk dress she wore off her body, leaving her completely exposed. Aster tried to cover herself, awkwardly, with her hands, but the opium seemed to keep her body from obeying her the way she wanted it to.
The Maestro didn't even get undressed. Nakedness equaled vulnerability in the minds of most human beings, and despite his gamma induced transformation, he was still human to the extent that he shared that belief. And under no circumstances whatsoever would he ever allow himself a moment's vulnerability in front of others. His determination never to display any weakness in front of others would eventually cost him a great deal. But for now, Aster was the one paying the price for it. The Maestro merely unbuttoned the front of his pants, freeing himself.
Aster looked at at the Maestro's cock for a moment. Hideous. Green like the rest of him, and gnarled and lumpy with far too much muscle. Gorge rose inside her, the effect not only of what she saw, but of the mistake she had made in eating food after having consumed opium orally. It was why she and her father administered it rectally in zoo animals during surgery. Vomitting could be deadly when an animal was unconscious. Aster was not unconscious, but the nausea inducing effects of opium taken into the stomach still affected her.
The Maestro spread her legs apart. Pain flared in her hip joints. Only a trained gymnast could get into the position the Maestro forced her into, without any discomfort.
Then he pushed himself into her, and the pain she felt THEN made what she had felt in her ankle and hip a moment before seem like sweetness in comparison.
"NO!" Aster shrieked. "STOP! IT HURTS! GET IT OUT!"
The Maestro pulled back, and Aster sobbed, thinking he was going to show mercy, that maybe she had been punished enough now.
Then he pushed into her again. Harder, this time. Her flesh tore open and blood poured, providing grisly lubrication to her sexual violation by a monster. The Maestro grunted and pushed against her small body. The weight felt like one of the old, broken refrigerators at the zoo had fallen on top of her.
He pushed again. Three of her ribs cracked, and something wrenched the wrong way in her shoulder.
"Daddy! Please!" Aster was incoherent. "Make him stop! Make him take it out!"
Her left arm broke in two places. The Maestro bellowed with pleasure, but Aster had the small mercy of not hearing or feeling him come. Pain had finally done what the amount of opium she had taken had been insufficient to do, and rendered her unconscious.