With a wink and a smile, Anka asked the soldier on guard duty outside the barracks to tell Bukur she was waiting for him. To her surprise, the flustered soldier simply let her inside and guided her to the training yard. There Bukur was lain on a bench on his back, pushing a stone pillar up and down in the air. His face switched from pained concentration to boyish delight as soon as he saw her.
“Anka! You’re looking well”
“Thanks, Lurush said I can stay with her. I’m now officially
a resident of the Rush”
“That’s great!”
“I was wondering, do you want to come back to mine and help
me celebrate? I’ve realised I never properly thanked you for protecting me when
everything happened”
“Sounds good! Actually, let me get something from my bunk”
After Bukur returned with his hand holding something in his
pocket, they walked through the Rush. The sun was setting, turning the narrow
streets into dark ravines lit only by the warm golden glow of the sky. Goresh
was standing guard outside as always.
“Goresh, this friend of mine is a disciplined soldier,” said
Anka, “he knows how to follow orders, right Bukur?”
“Yes ma’am!”
“Are you gonna cause any trouble?”
“No ma’am!”
Goresh looked away as though he was bored of them, which
Anka took as his approval, so she whisked Bukur up to her room.
“Wow, you’re really living it up, aren’t you? You can see
the mainland from here. You’ve even got a bed”
Anka poured some olive oil into a shell-shaped lamp and lit
it with another. With a mischievous grin, Bukur took a pouch and a polished
stone smoking pipe from his pocket.
“Ever tried shibanak? Anything good, it magically turns into
something amazing”
He sprinkled the purple herbs into the pipe, lit it with the
lamp and sucked in the smoke like a boy trying to hold his breath. When he
finally breathed out, a wave of sweet smoke washed over Anka. Bukur made
himself comfortable on the bed, and Anka clambered on next to him, nestling
herself in the crook of his arm and taking the pipe. The smoke burned her
throat, but as she breathed it out it felt as though every bone in her body had
turned to jelly.
“Before we melt into the bed,” said Anka, “I wanted to play
a game with you”
“Anything but Battlefield. My mother forces me to play it
everyday, and she never goes easy on me. The Ushi Karsh is the only hereditary
position in Kurush, and I happen to be the only child of the Ushi Karsh. How
unlucky can you get?”
“No, I wanted to play Hunt, I bought it from the market
earlier. Come on, you’ll get a prize if you win”
Bukur searched Anka’s eyes, but she only replied with a
playful smile. She pulled him off the bed and set up the board. There were five
golden beads representing hurums and five jade pyramids representing lishas.
The board was a forest with five criss-crossing paths running from one side to
the other. The hurums had to get from one side of the forest to the other, and
the lishas had to catch as many of them as possible. The roll of the die
determined how many spaces to move, but the player decided which piece to move.
Anka played as the hurums and Bukur as the lishas. It wasn’t
long before she realised that he was an idiot. More than once, the die gave him
the spaces to take one of her hurums, but he somehow failed to see it and moved
a different piece instead. The die gave Anka the spaces to take one of his
lishas, but she decided to ignore it and move her piece forward instead.
However even going easy on him like that would probably lead to a draw, and she
was not going to let that happen. She moved one of her hurums into the space
adjacent to a lisha, and then Bukur rolled a one.
“Oh damn it,” said Anka, “how silly of me to move it there”
“Happens to the best of us. By the way, did you see Misha at
the market? I haven’t seen her for a while”
“No, now pay attention. You’ve almost got me”
The game was over once all of the hurums had either made it
to the far side of the forest or been eaten, and whoever had the most surviving
pieces won. Anka had four pieces left, Bukur had all five. Her heart started
pounding.
“Good game. I think you’ve earnt your prize”
She rose, slowly rolled her tunic up and threw it off.
Bukur’s jaw hung agape, his eyes drinking in the sight. Anka started breathing
deeply, her skin tingling. A voice in the back of her head was frantically telling
her to run from the predator so eager to dine upon her, but she pushed it down into
the recesses of her mind.
He slipped his enormous hands under her arms, curled his
clawed fingers around her chest and gently pulled her closer. His snout almost
touching her face, he slowly took in a lungful of her aroma.
“Mm, so good. I can’t tell you how long I’ve wanted this
for. But I didn’t think you were the type? Are you sure you want this?”
“I’ve been imagining this for years. It’s about time I made
it reality”
Bukur grinned, “When fantasy and reality meet, wonderful
things can happen”
He leant down and slowly led the tip of his tongue around
her bellybutton. Her instincts forced her to try and wriggle out of his grip, but
the warmth of his tongue against her terracotta skin was soothing.
“D-do I taste good?”
“Just as delicious as I’d hoped”
Anka took a deep breath, “Are you hungry?”
Bukur gulped, “I’m starving”
He threw her onto the bed, making her squeal in surprise.
Before she could sit up, he had already climbed on top of her, kneeling over
her, enveloping her in his hulking shadow, his prey trapped. Both of their
chests were rising and falling in anticipation. He licked her cheek, then moved
down her body. His tongue titillated her chest, then her belly, then her
thighs, then her feet, speeding down her like a famished pauper gorging upon a
sumptuous feast. She squirmed as he lifted and turned her this way and that in
his feverish quest to taste every single inch of her, her delicate skin
prickling and flushed from her head to her toes. His stomach grumbled loudly.
“Are you ready?” Bukur asked
She nodded nervously, took the gourd of orokosa off from
around her neck and gave it to him. She caught a noxious whiff of it as he
downed the gourd in one and threw it onto the floor. As he reversed off of the
bed, Anka rolled over onto her front. She felt him take hold of her legs and
she gasped when she felt her feet slide into his warm, slippery throat.
Suddenly it felt like her brain was spinning wildly in panic
and her heart was desperately trying to leap out of her body. You’re being
eaten! You’re being eaten! her instincts screamed at her, Do anything to
escape! Anything! But Anka stayed on the bed as Bukur made his way up her
legs, breathing rapidly as she was thrilled by the hot fear coursing up and
down her body, making her hairs stand up on end, her muscles twitch, her
fingers dig into the mattress. She could feel his hunger to instantly wolf her
down, impatiently gulping down her legs as though he was suffering from
starvation, he had to force himself to slow down and take his time enjoying his
meal.
After Bukur had swallowed her rear, he stopped to savour her
belly. With his hands now gripping her around her chest, as though he couldn’t
bear to let her escape, and his blunt teeth pressing into her tender flesh, she
truly felt like a meal. He groaned as he lightly, rhythmically chewed on her,
and his tongue firmly stroked her skin as it explored her body. Anka knew she
was delicious, she felt delicious, which made her bafflingly, inexpressibly happy.
Maybe it was the shibanak, but she felt like she was melting in his mouth, she
felt her rich flavour flowing into his tastebuds. Bukur and Anka had always been
friends, but right now, she was nothing more than a scrumptious dinner for him.
She broke out of her reverie when he lifted her up so that
he could sit on the bed. She felt the pull of gravity, the only things stopping
her from sliding down his gullet were his hands around her chest. Moments away
from being swallowed, teetering on the edge of oblivion, panting with
exhilaration, Bukur’s tongue desperately relishing her bellybutton one final
time, the whole of Anka’s body was buzzing like lightning was flowing through
her.
His hands loosened their grip and he started gulping. She
found her chin on his tongue, his teeth in front of her eyes, her outstretched
arms being guided into his jaws by his hands as she descended. As she passed
through his throat and the light of the outside world grew distant, she was
inundated with conflicting emotions all at once: blinding ecstasy at the
consummation of her devouring; shuddering disgust at the slimy, elastic walls
of the gullet; icy fear that the orokosa would somehow fail; and finally,
hitting her over the head like a hammer as she plopped into the stomach, guilt.
She was in total darkness. The air was stifling, thick and
putrid. The walls squeezed her, forcing her into a ball, oozing and gurgling
happily now that the stomach had finally received something to digest. This is
what her mother’s, father’s and Shanessa’s final moments would have been like.
Trapped, alone, waiting in the revolting darkness for the acid to start its
work. And yet here she was, in someone else’s stomach, having fun as though she
had completely forgotten her family’s dreadful fates. How could I be such a
terrible, obnoxious, repugnant, despicable person, thought Anka, there’s no
other way I could have insulted their memory more.
Just as it started to become difficult to breathe, the
stomach began quivering. She was thrown from side to side as Bukur shifted his
position. Suddenly the walls clamped together, pushing her back up into the
gullet and the bright outside world. She erupted out of his mouth and tumbled onto
the floor. She lay there catching her breath, dazed and soaking wet.
“Fuck that was amazing!” said Bukur as he caught his own
breath, “By the Sun you are delicious! Are you okay? Was that fun?”
Her brain was still reeling, “Yeah… yeah…”
She slowly picked herself up and went out onto the terrace.
The sky was inky, but the air was still warm. She poured a bucket of water
she’d prepared earlier over her head, then with a damp rag she wiped off the
remaining gastric slime. The heady cocktail of pleasure and shame leaked away
from her mind and calm washed over her.
“Do you have another rag?” said Bukur, “Let me help, it must
burn quite a bit”
“Thanks, could you do my back? Also, listen, could you not
tell anyone about tonight?”
“Er, okay, but why?”
“I don’t want lishas to think I’m on the menu. I’m not one
of those weirdos or prostitutes you find in the Sapphire Temple. So anyway,
what is it like to eat a hurum? Is it like sex?”
Bukur looked baffled, “Sex is what you do to make babies”
“Yes I know that. I mean, is it a similar feeling?”
He still looked baffled, “No. I’ve only had sex once. I just
remember feeling overwhelming relief once it was over. Once a year, we get the
urge to fuck like our life depends on it. But the rest of the year, all we want
to do is eat good food. And no other food even comes close to a hurum. It feels
like we’re just not meant to eat anything else, like we’re meant to spend our
lives eating you. It’s simply bliss”
“So what do we taste like?”
Bukur stroked his chin, “Hm, like a big chewy fish that
smells like pork. Or a giant, juicy grub that-“
“Stop, stop! I regret asking”
“You’re a very cute grub”
“Thank you”
Constructive criticism welcome
© Paul Bramhall
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