The Book of Apex: Volume 2 of Apex Magazine

by Jason Sizemore

  The woman was Pimi’s mother. Dressed in simple muslin, with naked head and shrunken crop she was almost unrecognizable. She stared at nothing, listless save for the tapping of one hand. Her other hand was wrapped in a bandage; only two fingers emerged from the gauze.

  Pimi turned and vomited. Great dry heaves shook her shoulders, leaving the sickness still deep in her body. Behind her, Maja walked down the line of girls from the seraglio and put a hand on Pimi’s back. “Are you ill?”

  Pimi wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “No. Not at all, I only wanted to be certain that I was truly empty.”

  “Such a good girl.” Maja stroked Pimi’s scalp.

  Behind her mother’s row of repletes, guards paced, checking shackles and muzzle straps. What had her mother done to merit such treatment? A guard connected a web of hoses to each of these repletes’ muzzles. The hoses led back to a pulping machine, its coarse iron gears and blades standing in sharp contrast to the civilized world she had left behind.

  The band started to play a bouncing tune that begged its listeners to dance. A slender boy, too young to have more than a child’s belly, stepped forward on the stage and raised a megaphone to his lips.

  When the irarad saw her mate

  With a sigh and a hiss she knew,

  Oh—she knew that she’d be late.

  And when fate showed me your sweet face

  With a sigh and a hiss I knew,

  Oh—I knew I’d found my place.

  As soon as they had finished with harvest, Pimi would sneak out of the seraglio and find her mother. It could not be so hard. She knew where the isolated alcoves were. Likely, her mother had been next to her and she had never known. Pimi craned her neck, looking around the yard. Perhaps Ero was here too.

  Though she saw one man that she thought she recognized as a servant from House Imarja, she did not see any of her family besides her mother.

  What if the raiders had dealt with them as they had dealt with Duurir? She had put him out of her mind as a way to survive in this place, but now the thought of him filled her like bittersweet nectar. Her pores pulsed with anguish that she had not known him longer, that one so young and fair should have perished.

  The first of the laborers came in with carts of dayfruit. Straining under the load, they deposited baskets in front of each waiting replete. The sweet fruit sent a heady fragrance into the air, of musk and honey, with the warm notes of spice tangled in the midst. Pimi took one in her hand, warm from the sun.

  As she bit into it, the juice spurted down her throat. Across the room, a guard dumped a basket into the pulping machine and turned the crank. The pulp and fluid coursed down the hoses to her mother and the other muzzled repletes.

  Pimi swallowed. The dayfruit slid down her throat and landed heavily in her crop. Mechanically, she ate another piece, transfixed by the sight of her mother, who swallowed without any seeming awareness of her surroundings.

  The bulge in her mother’s crop grew faster than Pimi could keep pace. She picked up fruit and shoved it into her mouth, barely taking time to chew. Beside her, Keria picked at the fruit daintily, her crop barely showing any growth.

  “Are you afraid they will run out of food, Pimi?” Hissing, Keria looked at her crop. “I’d always wondered why you were so anxious to distort yourself like that. Your family must have been starving all the time.”

  Shocked, Pimi stopped with a dayfruit halfway to her mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “Back in Repp-Virja, it was all we could talk about in the kitchens. As if any of us would demean ourselves to carry food around if we could afford not to. And then your family shows up, pretending to be from a Dynasty House across the sea, but it’s clearer than the sky in Deep Summer that you aren’t. Carrying great big loads like you’re thinking you’ll never see another meal.”

  Keria had never spoken to her this way; their couches were on opposite sides of the room to keep the new girls mixed in with the established repletes.

  Maja came down the line, bearing a tray of spices. “Here chicklings, here are some fine things to add special flavor to your nectar.”

  Covering the gold tray, an embroidered cloth held long seedpods, pale grey-green dried leaves, tiny round seeds and bundles of purple blossoms. She glanced at the uneaten dayfruit Pimi still held. “What’s the matter, chickling? Is there a borer in your dayfruit?”

  Pimi opened her mouth to answer, but words did not come.

  “Pimi spotted the Matriarch of her house.” Keria popped a dayfruit in her mouth.

  Maja showed her tongue to Pimi. “Matriarch? Don’t try to tell me that you are from a Deep House. We never harvest nobles, so I’ll not believe that, Pimi.”

  “But she is. Or they claimed they were.” Keria patted her belly, which undulated under her touch. “All of them came to a feast at House Imarji, showing their disdain and repleteful like they were better than Matriarch Imji just because they came from the old country. I was serving. I saw them and they were all bigger than any of us.”

  “You are from Arropp-Yraarja?”

  Pimi inclined her head in agreement, but Keria answered for her. “The lot of them.”

  “And your matriarch is here?”

  “Over there.” Keria pointed at Pimi’s mother.

  Maja almost dropped her tray. “That’s your matriarch?”

  Pimi nodded and squeezed her eyes tightly shut, not wanting to see or hear anything else.

  “Ah, poor thing. I’d not have had you discover her like this.” Maja brought the tray over to Pimi. “Still and all, you’re a sweet girl. You won’t give me cause to doubt you, not like her. Now swallow these down and show me I’m right to be proud of you.”

  Her gorge rose in her throat, but Pimi swallowed it down. If she had any hope of seeing her mother she had to stay in Maja’s good graces. Tilting her head back, she let Maja place the spices in her mouth.

  Chewing each took an eternity, though the band played only one song. Pimi continued to eat dayfruit, no longer tasting it. Maja returned to palpate her belly after Pimi had finished the first basket, mixing the spices with the dayfruit.

  Except for the muzzled repletes, the sense of celebration was unbroken. No one, save Pimi and the guards, seemed to notice them. Only the music reached into their corner, as Pimi’s mother tapped her hands in time with it.

  After her third basket of fruit, Pimi shifted to a reclining position to let her crop hang off the couch and rest on the ground. It was harder to watch her mother from this position but between swallows she stole peeks across the yard.

  Salina topped off while Pimi was on her fourth basket. When Maja came to lead Salina back to the seraglio, the girl staggered as she stood. Despair bleached her face of color. She waddled without a hint of grace in her movement.

  Pimi would not do that. She would show the other girls the graceful sway she had learned from her mother. Maybe, if she could show Maja how much her mother could teach the girls in the seraglio, they would take the muzzle off.

  During the seventh basket, Pimi felt herself close to topping off. Her crop was comfortably full and firm to the touch, but without the harsh pressure of the stretching fluid. Her mother was almost twice the size she had been when they had boarded the Tep-Tep steamship to leave home. If Pimi could contrive to leave the Deep Yard at the same time as her mother, she might have a chance to speak to her in the hallways.

  Where before she had raced to keep pace with her mother, Pimi slowed down now, trying to delay the moment when she was taken back to the seraglio.

  By the eighth basket, Pimi would only eat a piece of dayfruit when Maja looked at her. With each piece she swallowed, she thought that surely she could not hold any more.

  And then it was true. Stretched beyond capacity, her belly hurt. The last piece of dayfruit she swallowed lodged in her sphincter, holding it open. She strained, trying to push it in by sheer will.

  Maja came down the line and touched her belly. She hissed appreciatively at the
hardness. “Well done, Pimi-min. There will be a fine treat for you in the seraglio tonight.”

  “Let me rest a moment. I would like to finish this basket.” Dayfruit still filled half of it and her throat tightened in involuntary protest.

  Maja pushed again. The piece of dayfruit caught in Pimi’s sphincter rose in her throat. She held down a cough.

  “You seem topped off to me.”

  “But my skin will relax. It always does.”

  “Truth. Though if you can fit the rest of that basket in, I will be beyond surprised.”

  With a hand stained blue by the fruit, Pimi picked up a dayfruit and swallowed it, sending it into her primary stomach. “See. I still have space.”

  “You are a sweet girl, Pimi. Don’t hurt yourself trying to make me proud.” Maja glanced across the yard at Pimi’s mother. “I wish all our repletes were so eager to please. If we’d known she was a matriarch…”

  Pimi ate as slowly as she could, but still filled her primary stomach before the bottom of the basket. As she had hoped, her crop relaxed somewhat and she was able to get three more dayfruit into it. The rest sat in her throat, neither in her stomach nor in her crop. Her breath came in shallow gasps; it felt as if her entire body consisted of nothing but dayfruit. The blue of the dayfruit tinted her amber belly green. Maja looked down the line and Pimi swallowed another bite which sat in her throat, itching.

  A guard checked Pimi’s mother and unhooked the tube from her muzzle.

  Pimi struggled to sit. “Maja, I am ready to go now.”

  From where she palpated Dama’s crop, Maja did not look up. “When I finish here.”

  The guard wheeled Pimi’s mother toward the door. Pimi could not wait for Maja or she would miss her chance. Putting her feet on the ground she pushed to stand. The weight of dayfruit in her crop, so much greater than the half-belly of stretching fluid, pulled her forward and down.

  As she lost her balance, Pimi’s sharp cry fell into a sudden silence between songs, cutting through the harvest crowd. Her distended crop smacked against the packed gravel ground.

  The sudden force pushed the overabundance of dayfruit up her throat. She vomited blue juice and pulp down her front.

  The girls nearest her shrieked. Baraida screamed, “Pimi’s ruptured!”

  Her mother raised her head. Horror bleached her features of all color.

  Pimi scrabbled, trying to get her feet under her, trying to stand and get away from the mess she had made. Her own body was too heavy for her limbs. She was trapped on the ground as surely as her mother had been when the Abarine raiders had come.

  In an instant, Maja was by her side. By the time she had ascertained that nothing beyond overfilling was wrong, the cart bearing Pimi’s mother was gone. Pimi had to wait crouched on the gravel until a gurney was fetched to hoist her onto a cart of her own.

  “What has happened here?” Councilor Hadan came to stand by Maja. Even at harvest, he wore his distinctive armor; the spirals of inlaid metal swirled across each overlapping horn plate.

  “I’m afraid Pimi over-filled herself, Councilor Hadan.”

  Pimi nearly vomited again as he crouched in front of her. She had not been so close to him since she was captured. Pimi kept her eyes downturned, her stained tunic and belly filling her vision.

  “Now why would you do that, little girl?”

  Always, her size made people assume she was younger than her true age, but he was very nearly her height. In fact, with his amber and green coloring, Pimi had an impression of what she might have looked like had her mother wanted a boy and placed Pimi’s egg in a cool part of the deep-family’s hatching cave.

  “Speak,” he said, giving her permission to respond.

  “I wanted to be beautiful for you,” she whispered. “So you would pick me instead of Dama.”

  “And why would making yourself overfull do that?”

  Pimi did not know how to answer him—to her, still, it seemed so obvious that a full crop was the most beautiful adornment a person could have. Though, looking at her stained and sorry state, she could not see any glamour in it.

  Maja answered for her. “Pimi is from Aaropp-Yraarja.”

  “Like Kejari?”

  “That is in fact, her matriarch.”

  “Sa-ha!”

  “Did you know you’d claimed a Dynasty House in your conquests, Councilor?”

  He was silent for a moment and the music twirled around them. “I did not. Well. I hope you are better behaved than your mother. She tried to claw my eyes out when they brought her to me.” Hadan tilted her chin up. “You do not look much like her.”

  Maja hissed. “Were you ever in Aaropp-Yraarja, Councilor?”

  “I’ve not had the pleasure, though I have heard much about their social season.”

  Maja waved a cart over. “Pimi is the sweetest girl you can imagine.”

  Hadan straightened. “Well, next time Dama is unavailable, send me Pimi.”

  Primped and scented and oiled, Pimi held still while Maja broadened her forehead spots with paint. Across the room, Dama writhed and groaned in the grip of sour crop. A doctor oversaw the tortuous task of draining the congealed clumps from her, while the other girls affected not to watch.

  Pimi tried not to let the guilt she felt show on her face. Had she not slipped the cheese into Dama’s mix, who knew when Hadan would have called for her.

  Maja had wondered how Pimi had gotten rug burns on the bottom of her crop. Pimi had feigned ignorance. After all, if they thought a replete’s crop was reason enough to not shackle a girl, who was Pimi to let them know that by sliding backwards she could still drag the weight of her belly across the floor.

  The outer door of the seraglio opened and two attendants arrived to push Pimi’s cart to Councilor Hadan’s chambers. Her toes gripped the edge of her couch as if she were not anchored firmly enough.

  Ornamented tapestries covered the walls of Hadan’s apartment, finer than anything in the seraglio, which Pimi had thought opulent.

  As he conferred with his fellow councilors, Hadan’s voice carried from a room on the far side of the apartment in uneven waves. At times, it was an indecipherable murmur, at others she would hear words or whole phrases. “…other sorties might…” or “…stay within their borders….” And once, “…from Aaropp-Yraarja in the last raid.”

  Her toes curled tighter then.

  When they broke the meeting and came to her, she kept her eyes downcast and lips parted as Maja had taught. Councilor Hadan ran a hand up her crop, over the crest and across the smooth dip where it belled from her chest. With his hand resting gently on her neck, Hadan said, “This is our newest prize gentlemen. A daughter of one of the Dynasty Houses of Aaropp-Yraarja.”

  One woman hissed in amusement. “I see you don’t boast of having the mother.”

  Hadan fondled Pimi’s chin. “We broke her before anyone realized that we’d taken a noble.” He turned to the man nearest him. “You saw her. All puffed out like a Repp-Virji serving girl.”

  “Bigger than that.” The man hissed. “I trust she’s worth it?”

  “Shall we find out?” Hadan lowered his head and put his mouth over hers. Pimi opened herself and disgorged in a smooth steady stream. Hadan grunted in satisfaction. He pressed on her crop, swallowing greedily as the flow increased.

  He tapped her arm and stood, almost before she could stop disgorging. Bound up as it was, his crop formed a rounded mound at the top of his chest. It could not have held much more than a one-day belly. “Maja’s created a fine brew in this one. Please, help yourself.”

  In all, Pimi fed each of his three companions. Hadan led them back into the inner room of his apartment, but did not call for the attendants to wheel Pimi away.

  Left alone on her couch, Pimi shifted with impatience. She had not expected him to have company. Her slackened crop quivered in response to her movement. They must have taken nearly five days out of her. She tried to stand and could almost raise her bulk. She hoped th
ey had not lightened her too much.

  As she lay waiting, she listened with half an ear to the conference in the other room. The words and phrases she heard hinted at another raid on Repp-Virja. She could gather no details, only the impression that it must be immanent if they were spending so much time discussing it.

  After what seemed hours, the group filed out of Hadan’s apartment, leaving her alone with the man. As short as Pimi was, she was almost of a height with Hadan.

  Hadan said nothing to her and without his permission, she could not speak. He walked behind her, casually, as though she were a varamid at market. He ran a hand up the nape of her neck and fondled her bare scalp. Pimi shivered as his hands touched the delicate skin above her ear panels.

  “Do you like that?” He leaned close, so that his breath tickled her skin.

  Pimi nodded. It was expected that she would like anything that he did to her.

  Sliding his hands down to her shoulders, Hadan tugged on her tunic, pulling it down her arms. Pimi shifted to let him slide the garment off. Her skin contracted in the cool air of his compartment.

  Hadan reached around her and pressed his hands into the soft skin of her crop, leaning against her, so his hard leather armor pressed into her back. He nuzzled her neck. “Well, my exotic beauty. Tell me how they do this in Aaropp-Yraarja. Speak and teach me something new.”

  Pimi had been through Maja’s training for the seraglio, but Hadan would know all those tricks. She prayed that he would find the love scenes from Opperad’s play, The Brothel of Intention, exotic. If not, she would have to think of something else. “I would not presume to teach you, Councilor, but it is true that we do approach things differently in Aaropp-Yraarja. If you were my groom, I would want you filled to hardness, and to let the weight of my crop rest on yours as I straddled you.” She turned her head and looked out under the edge of her eyelid at him. “I find it strange how skinny everyone here is. A man at home is not considered attractive unless he has at least a five-day belly.”