A Sumptuous Feast

…if I offended you?

Good

Cause I still don't give a [expletive]

-Marshall Bruce Mathers III

“Tonight!!!” roared Lord Morris in his deepest and most grizzly throated tone, “There shall be held the most sumptuous of feasts.” This declaration caused his auburn, jerry curled mullet to shake with volume as he over enunciated sumptuous, and salivary particles to burst from his plump, red lipped, white toothed mouth as he quiverously vocalized feast. Lord Morris was a portly ruler, and feasts were of the utmost importance in his court. Presently, he was announcing tonight’s feast to an empty obsidian hall, spare one lone servant, Rudolf Cocksworth. Morris stood in proclamation, as was his monthly habit, before his throne of ivory, upon fair velveteen sandals, resting the majority of his bulk upon a golden, ruby tipped scepter. Chubby toes wiggled side by side as he spoke, and pale hairlessly regal legs led upwards into a bleached white robe. Rudolf supplicated himself before the ruler, fearful of the next command, but as still as a stone to mask his growing anticipation.

“Is this command understood,” Morris continued, now frothing at his goatee rimmed mouth with anxious expectancy. Rudolf, pale, frail, and as a thin as a rail stood before the ruler, head bowed and hands interlocked. Of course the command was understood, he thought, inwardly raging. There was nothing un-understandable about it! The same blasted feast, on the same blasted day of the month, for 12 years straight. Never a deviation, not even in menu items, or table cloth color patterns, or silverware arrangements, or nothing! The same bloody thing, once again. Morris would announce it to Rudolf, and then Rudolf was to announce it to the kingdom, atop the parapet down the hall which overlooked all of the land. When would it end, was Rudolf’s eternal cry of pain, when would it end? But the cry was silent, and his only response to the king was a nod, followed by “Of course, my liege.”

But the response was delayed, much longer than it should have been, and keen to detail, Lord Morris noticed the blip in routine.

“Is this command understood?” he repeated, rumbling with subdued fury as veins emerged, like a crown, on each temple and at the tip of his forehead. Rudolf quickly looked up from the ground to the king, his heart now aflutter and his mind racing with the possibilities to come. He had tripped up; he had delayed his response to the Lord when an immediate response was the only thing that could keep the short fused man from exploding into an evil tirade of anger and rage, after which only small mammalian creatures would emerge, limping from the ring of fiery hatred that an upset Lord Morris could produce when he felt so inclined. Morris was hard to please, and easy to enrage. He was the Lord of a small territory given to him by his much more glorious and successful uncle out of pity, and he had few opportunities to act in ways that his Lordship allowed him to act. Punishment to the subservient often filled this void, and Rudolf, Morris’ most trusted servant was well aware of this fact.

With blue eyes watering, Rudolf responded. His voice shook, but his body still remained motionless. “Yes, my liege of liege’s, the command is well understood, as it should and always be,” adding that last part with a patronizing flare that he hoped would quell Morris’ anger.

But the beast frothed on.

“Rudolf, you insolent bastard,” spitting as he spoke, intentionally at his feet, as if the very word Rudolf put a terrible taste in his mouth. “You fool, you wretched, inbred, beast of a fool! Do you not know why…” he paused for a breath, his large chest and belly laboring for air as he rambled with apparently no direction, but certainly plenty of force, “why I rage now as I do? Hmmm?” And he paused for a moment, giving the words a moment to travel down the hallway to soak into Rudolf, some thirty feet distant.

But the question was rhetorical, and Rudolf was well aware of this too. There was no answer to the mystery of Lord Morris’ endless anger. Perhaps it was because he was a short, fat, ugly, hairy little man, with a bad haircut and a bad sense of fashion (white togas with red velvet slippers). Or perhaps instead, it was his small kingdom, and relative lack of power (a phallic metaphor?). Or maybe, just maybe, it was because he had high blood pressure, and wasn’t properly medicated, as he did live in an era that was pre-prescriptionary. Whatever the case may have been, the answer that Rudolf wished to give him was a swift sword to the neck, and the more he thought about it, the more it seemed entirely possible.

“Do you even know, what the feast entails?” continued Morris, a screamed response to Rudolf’s silence. There was another pause, and the obsidian room fell quiet. This question was ambiguously un-rhetorical, and it took Morris’ imposing bug eyed stare to inspire Rudolf’s response, which came in one breath as a constant, confidently flowing list. Rudolf knew the feast, he knew every single item.

“My liege, your feast, which is the most sumptuous of all feasts, involves a variable blending of the finest flavors in all the land, arranged in the most delicate of all arrangements. The event begins, as most events do, with an explosively enticing hors d’oeuvre; Parisian squid egg paste, richly marinated in a bath of lemon clove oil and cinnamon sticks, thickly spread upon toasted flatbread, from the very shores of Greece itself! You’ll then find your goblet filled with the liquid eloquence of your very own, cask aged, elderberry wine, straight from the cellar to your gullet!” At this Rudolf squirmed with excitement. Just thinking of the fine wine upon his lips soothed his soul and made him forget the predicament he was in. Wine, just the thought of it in fact, filled the servant with insurmountable confidence, and as he looked around the empty hall, he realized that a murder would go completely un-witnessed.

“Then,” Rudolf continued, clearing his throat and remembering the insolent pug-eyed bastard standing before him, “you will be most pleased, and refreshed, my liege, by mouthfuls of the freshest garden salad comprised of the greenest greens, the most potent tubers, and an exquisite collection of fanciful fungi, all topped off by your very own home squeezed oil of St. John’s Wort dressing.” At mention of the salad Morris seemed to loosen the grip around his scepter and took a seat upon the thrown. The preview of the feast, that would come in no less than seven hours, was most pleasing to the ruler and as Rudolf continued flawlessly, his madness eased. He remembered why the servant was his most excellent and trusted, and was considering lessening the degree of punishment he would soon inflict.

Noticing Morris’ visible relaxation, Rudolf’s confidence grew. “Next, the table will be cleared and a steaming pot of your favorite, hand selected turkey broth stew within which floats testicles coming from four of the area’s wildest beasts: boar, mountain lion, ogre, and Moor, will be placed at its center. Loaves, no less than twelve, will emerge from your hearths of brick to accompany the stew, and minstrels will be summoned to welcome the meal’s first course.”

“And what will the minstrels sing Rudolf?” Morris interrupted lazily from his throne, knowing the answer, but simply toying with his plaything. As he asked he raised a gold rimmed goblet in his left hand and suspended it, delaying a sip until Rudolf’s response.

Rudolf huffed, insulted by the interruption, but unable to rebuke his royal master. Eyeing the cup of wine, he prayed against all reason that it be poison. Remembering the emptiness of the room he made a mental check of his scabbard. His sword, a modest but smartly built Scottish blade lay sheathed within. Merely a withdrawal from its holster and a deposit into Morris’ chest cavity would end this humiliating debacle. If only! cried Rudolf within, if only!

“Sire…would you like me to sing a verse?” Rudolf questioned, already readying himself to sing at least three or four. His chest quivered with unseen anger at the request, but once again, his trained voice and body remained stiff.

Moments previously, Morris had been throned with a pleasant grin smeared across his face, and eyes staring off into the void of nothingness that royal ones often stare off into whilst in the grips of contentment. At Rudolf’s questioning however, this gaze and grin where broken, and a menacing scowl took their place. Questioning! Insubordination! Rudolf, Rudolf, Rudolf! How dare he, thought Morris. A mere servant posing a question to he, the king, the king of all the land that stretched between the Foxtrot River and the Elusian Apple Orchard (3.7 square miles being a modern estimate of this area). Inconceivable! This wretched slave had gone too long unpunished, and had grown too confident with pride. Penalization, if not death, was the necessary remedy.

He answered Rudolf in disgust, his plump red lips pursed to the point of popping with eyes squinted, serpentine and thin. “Sing? You think I want to hear you sing!?” The statement was a howl, a question, and a horrible chortle all at once. Rudolf tightened his sphincter and bowed his head. The time to strike was now, or never, or maybe three weeks from today. Indecision, like this chodical tyrant, was his nemesis, and he grabbed the hilt of his sword in hopes of an answer.

“Master, forgive me, I was only…” he fumbled once again - another mistake. Morris rose from the throne, pounding his scepter with a metallic clank upon stone that not only supported his heft, but reverberated throughout the room and into Rudolf’s core. It was the sound of fear, produced by a master of tyranny, and the tyrannical oppression was about to commence.

“Fool! Forgiveness is a weak concept perpetuated by paupers and saints, and I am neither! Are you suggesting that I am but a lowly miser, a servant of God?”

“My Lord, of course not,” came weakly from Rudolf’s lips, but his focus was not wordly, twas swordly.

“Precisely. I am your Lord! I am your God! I don’t serve him, it is you who serves me and I don’t believe for a moment in the granting of forgiveness!” At this, Morris paused, took a breath, and for an instant calmed. His face became a pucker, and his mind, under curled locks of hair, and thick skull, twisted in blackened delight. “In my court, Rudolf,” addressing the servant, for the first time by his name, “forgiveness is never given, it must be earned.” And the pucker became an oily smile, the oily smile, an omen of the incredible perversion to come. “Approach thy master.”

Looking up, Rudolf stepped forward, walking towards the throne and his persecutor. Now was his moment to face punishment, mildly like the dog he had been for so many years, or viciously, howling moonward, wolfish and feral. A yard from the throne he halted, as was custom, and awaited the verdict. Lashes at the whipping post? A public fruit stoning? Or perhaps bastinado? All were tolerable, but a vision - sword through noble flesh, a slicing of silk wrapped blubber, pervaded.

“Closer,” spake Morris, his voice now the palatable scent of merlot and roast lamb.

Rudolf came closer, within striking distance; fate seemed to be an ally. His head remained bowed; sweat beaded his face, hands stayed clasped before the waist, his breathing became an audible struggle. Morris saw the slave as a ball of nerves, and fluttered with glee.

“On your knees, knave!” came as a piercing command, oblivious to Rudolf’s proximity. A rhythm arose from the beat of two hearts, both equally anxious, both beating out of lust.
“Now…” Morris trembled, and looked around the empty hall, barely able to contain himself, “now, now, now!”

Confused, Rudolf raised his stare. A third party had entered the hall, and he stood between master and servant. His height was roughly fifteen centimeters, and he lay fully sprawled, a thin fleshen rod, bridging the horizontal gap between the two other men. He pulsed nervously, longing to make a connection.

“Now Rudolf Cocksworth, I shall truly show you a cock’s worth!!! Suck my royal scepter, you filthy faggot, indulge yourself upon this sumptuous feast, and fill your gullet with the milk of the gods. Cask aged in the sac of yours truly ” At this, this mockery of Rudolf’s feastly description, Morris deftly disrobed, revealing pasty skin covered with curly hair, identical to that on his scalp, only thinner. Pussuous boils speckled his potbellied torso and a belly button, the size of a quail egg, jiggled with regality. The third party, now eye to eye with Rudolf winked before him, exuding a single tear of thick, joyous apprehension. Like Morris, he too bore a curly auburn mane, and it rimmed his neck conspicuously.

Appalled at such faggotry, but shocked and empty of any other thought Rudolf moved forward, lips pursed in expectancy. To Morris, he took the form of a beautiful, blue eyed, female flower, sticky stigma open for reception of his mighty, king sized anther. In the breadth of a moment, parts merged, and all three men became one.

Thrusting, Morris spoke. “And another thing, Rudolf, you left something out in your description of the feast,” at this he moved his left hand downward, under the balls, and with a cupped palm wiped them in one vigorous, manly motion. “Gorgonzola cheese!”

Rudolf shuddered as a thick white cream of fetid gooch crust was applied along his upper lip by the sausage-fingered king. He continued to suck, horrified at his own inability to act, paralyzed by a deep throat reaming. Though every ounce of him burned with fury, his fury was that of servitude, a servitude that could not be broken - a servitude that felt almost right, and as a consequence, bred into the enslaved nothing but timid hesitation. In resignation, Rudolf Cocksworth loosed his halt harboring grip, and prepared to carry yet another load. A sumptuous feast indeed.