Return of the Disclaimer: The recognizable characters in this fanfiction were created by R. A. Salvatore in association with the legal entity Wizards of the Coast, who owns relevant copyrights to additional Forgotten Realms material referred to herein. The characters are used without permission but no material profit of any kind is being made from the following work. WotC reserve rights to Forgotten Realms material, but all of the characters and situations unique to this work of fan fiction are property of the writer.
A/N: If I'm going to continue this, I'm going to agree with crushingsky and just forget chronological order. I appreciate the people who took the time to make a case for chronological order, but it doesn't work; I feel like I'm trying to shuffle the course of a river. I know this will screw people up, but if you like these experimental pieces for more than just the degradation, corruption, and sex, I think you'll understand.
Afterparty
Dimly, beyond the flickering haze of warm red, there was the sensation of being rocked. There was hot pressure compressing flesh and folding bones. Tendons were too tired to feel anything or recognize what they were, where they were, or what their purpose was.
But he understood warmth: it was a primal element he recalled from before he was ever ejected from the unfriendly terrain of the womb. Perhaps that is where the deception began; the insistence that there could be warmth for even him. The tightly held form, rocking hard, battered and weak, wanted to fill out until there was nothing but surface area to touch. He wanted to strain against the too tight embrace. He wanted to blow up like a goat's bladder and explode against the warm constriction of tight bands of heat, against the warm thrum of a foreign beat.
A thing known as sound was another part of mostly sightless existence, but it did not matter. The sounds made no sense, they came from indiscernible sources, they battered through him and against parts of his form he didn't recall. What mattered was the surface and how it constricted and constrained. More pressure was needed to constrict the stuff of soft, empty, existence into something hard and impenetrable.
The warm red haze became black; coolness assaulted his form where there was no pressure. He had no strength or faith in his senseless tendons and did not fight the loss of half his warmth. Not when the sounds grew sharper, more invasive, nor when all warmth was lost and the tangle of flesh and bone was dropped and spread out over a cold, hard surface. The blackness claimed him in a frigid vice and for a time he knew nothing, nothing at all.
A sharp odor stabbed sharply through his nostrils, straight into his brain, giving sudden and hateful clarity to the world.
His thickly fringed eyes snapped open as did his crusted lips. Like he had at birth, Shadash screamed and thrashed in blind, horrified, confusion. In response, a heavy weight crushed over him. The weight was warm and, though there was a violent edge to it, he found it comforting.
The noises were hard and fast, but his understanding was slow. He continued to scream, knowing the pressure would leave if he stopped, knowing he would no longer have that suffocating protection. There would be something he had to face if the pressure was removed and he feared whatever it was would claim his life.
Survival condensed down to a single pure shrieked note.
Popping noises followed, tinkling noises after that, prickling sensations, screams, and then a wad of rough material was forced into his mouth. His piercing cry was softened into uselessness.
"By the gods! The tea glasses! The wine bottles!"
Deprived of his voice, Shadash subsided and began to process the sharp-edged shapes his eyes had tried to deny. Nasoos was on top of him, Lolah was holding her head, the ceiling above him belonged in the back kitchen: a place well insulated against the clatter of cutlery and butchery. Off to one side Mirna, the afternoon manager was surveying broken bottles of vinegar, olive oil, and various fish and vegetable stocks. Her husband, Yato, was shaking a finger at the injured form of his masters' most popular entertainer. Shadash stared at him, not comprehending the dancing finger in his face.
Nasoos was quickly shoved away, replaced by the profile of the daytime chaperone. No doubt she was there to collect as much information as possible for her guild. It was just as well; Shadash sold them more information than his owners knew.
The young dancer could not find his fingers to lift the gag from his mouth. He let his head fall to the side; his mouth opened and closed, passively working the dish towel loose. It did not fall fully away, it stuck to his face with caked dirt, adhering to the thick fluid congealed to his face.
I threw up... Blinking against the confusion, he looked to Lolah for help. She was paid to care for the house entertainers, though that care hardly extended in an emotional sense. Lolah was a failed cleric who had lost her deity's favor and the healing abilities that came with it. Her healing arts were anything but magical and less than expensive. She made most of her living off animal husbandry.
She was still rubbing uselessly at her ears when she noted his gaze. "Stupid boy," she scolded loudly. "You're home safe! No more of that banshee wail. Gods, you'll bring Terthus the Voice Thief back from the dead like that."
Not even mention of the man once feared by all who valued their voices phased him. There was no home. There was no safety. Shadash's mouth opened and shut a few more times for good measure, but he made no sound and the rag still clung. There was nothing to rely on. The pressure was unrelenting, eternal, the only true reality.
People flashed through his mind. There were his patrons of both genders that paid to use his body in every way imaginable. There were the merchants that wanted his money; money that bought the use of his body. There were his owners that wanted the money he brought in. There were the chaperones and bodyguards that kept them caged and sometimes reaped favors through the threat of violence. There were the other entertainers who generally fought over every copper and careless glance the customers gave them.
His hazy mind went deeper into dangerous territory. He thought of Aisha, whom he had liked and whom he had once loved in his own way. He thought of his mother; a woman said to have been dead in all but body. Who had given him suck? Not her. Why had he been weaned at all? For profit. Like an animal. There was no mother, just a body that squeezed tissue out.
Lolah pulled Shadash up into a sitting position and ripped the gag from his crusted mouth. His finely tone muscles were lax, his once white linen pants and silk sarong were yellow with vomited curry, gray with dirt from the street. His hair hung about his face in sticky tendrils. Many of the trademark jewels he wore in his hair were missing. Both eyes, red and green, were staring blankly.
"Did somebody cast a spell on him?" Lolah asked bluntly.
Childish fantasies of magnificent sires danced before his eyes. The visions were more humiliating than anything anyone had ever done to his body. They were stupid, childish, wretched fantasies of brilliant, handsome men, dark of skin and studded with emeralds and sapphires that sparkled in bright sunlight. At one time, each of these fantasy men had come to Shadash in his dark hours. When his body was numb from abuse, when his mind was unhinged from smoking opium or drinking alcohol, when he could no longer move due to ropes, injury, or starvation.
These men did not exist. There was no mother, there was no father, there was no home, there was no safety, there was no caring, there was no savior. There was nothing. Shadash was devoid of all but the horrendous sucking pain of emptiness. He felt keenly the isolation of complete singularity in a world of cold grabbing hands. Seventeen years or more of being unloved and a good portion of elven longevity to appreciate it.
All his life Shadash faced his life with utterly outraged defiance. His armor was often battered, his heart ultimately broken, but he faced every challenge without giving up. All he had was his spirit, which was never tamed, no matter what befell his form. No matter how bad things became, he always fought back.
But this time the pain was too much. His dream exposed for the naive fantasy it was, Shadash was humiliated in a way he had never thought possible. The deepest dream of all, beyond the visions of a charitable father, was to be loved and this only hope was shattered.
All those within the kitchen had seen him wail and cry before and they all knew that such moments were brief and theatrical. They were simple performances which worried no one. But when the boy began to shake like the leaf his back resembled, they knew something was different. And when the tears filled his eyes and slipped down his face, they began to worry. When he made no noise and shook, but his expression remained blank and empty, they wondered if they would need to find a new source of income.