Little Big Man

LITTLE BIG MAN – a serial novel by Travis Creel

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR: AT THE ROYAL PALACE

Previously: Alex(ei) is describing the third of his `three stories', his trip to the IAMSO convention, held in the Prince Regent's country – where Matti is a slave. He told Dmitri that Thursday's events were more important than Wednesday's. On Wednesday, he watched an assembly in which rules and regulations were spelled out for new and prospective slaveowners. He is dispirited as he sees that what he had perceived as Dmitri's harshness is actually just his following of established policy, and that he has no hope of ever escaping slavery. The next day, he finds himself on exhibit as Little Big Man is pitched to the convention by Oleg, their best English-speaker. When plans for an expansion into Europe are announced, Alexei worries that Dmitri will bring home other slaves to replace him - and sell him to some unknown future Master.

ALEXEI: THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, LATE AFTERNOON – SUITE 2702

The room was a party. Not like the party last night, which took place mostly in my ass. For this one, I stood obediently in the corner of the living room as five Men conversed convivially, celebrating the success of Oleg's presentation. LBM had received lots of inquiries and requests for invitations to next year's auctions. I knew this much because a lot of the conversation was in English, thanks to the presence of Master's friend Horst, who spoke very little Russian.

Horst divulged an interesting – and surprising – piece of news. Derek, Bruce Donnelly's slave who had been sentenced to nonstop sex during last night's orgy (and tonight's), had not appeared there. Members looking forward to rendering his asshole useless were upset and protested, asking why he was absent – had he been flogged so severely that he was hospitalized? They were told simply that he was not available. Master, upon hearing this, seemed suspiciously circumspect, as if he knew something.

The doorbell rang. Grateful for something to do, I rushed to answer it. The visitor was naked, so I didn't have to display. But in a moment disconcertingly like what happened yesterday, he handed me an envelope. "For your Master," he said, and left.

I looked at the envelope. The writing was in script – calligraphic script, in fact – elegant. And the envelope was fancy as well. This was clearly not a summons. The envelope read, "Master Dmitri + 3 + 0". That was confusing. However, it wasn't my responsibility to decipher it. My responsibility was to give it to Master.

Master opened the envelope, read its contents, smiled delightedly, and read it aloud.

"You have been invited to a tour of the Royal Palace Thursday evening, September 8th. Reception to follow for special guests. Meet in front of the hotel at 9:00."

Congratulations were offered to Master – an invitation to the Royal Palace had to be a rare thing, even for someone with business dealings with the Prince Regent. But no one knew what "+ 3 + 0" meant.

Master himself looked puzzled and then Oleg's phone rang and he answered it.

• Da, da. . . (looking pleased) . . . Master Dmitri plus three plus zero.

He waited a moment and then laughed.

Master said something in Russian which I interpreted as "So?" Oleg answered in English, for Horst's benefit – and possibly for mine.

• That was Nurbek. Yuri got a similar invitation. His said Master Yuri plus two plus zero'. They asked the messenger for an explanation. Here's what it means: Boss, you're going to the Royal Palace. Plus three' means that so are Sasha, Ilya, and myself.

• And `plus zero'?

• `Plus zero' means so is he.

And he was pointing straight at me.

Master could not disguise his shock.

• Alexei? Alexei has been invited to the palace?

• Well, Boss, he IS a zero.

A zero who had been invited to the Royal Palace. WTF.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, EVENING – IN FRONT OF THE CONFERENCE CENTER

In the corner of the invitation was the letter D, which, I learned later, meant we were in Group D of those invited to the Royal Palace. How many groups were there? If a lot, then it wasn't such an honor to be invited.

We met in front of the hotel at 9:00. Though it was dark then, it was still quite warm. But there was a breeze and the desert air felt good against my bare skin. It was nice to be outdoors for the first time since we had arrived.

There turned out to be only four groups of about twenty individuals each, so most of the conference attendees had not been invited. Boris was annoyed that we were in Group D, especially after Groups A, B, and C were picked up first and we had to wait until almost 9:20 before transportation arrived. I think he felt insulted – or maybe he just didn't like to wait.

However, anyone observing Group D could see that it was unique. It was the only group that included slaves: the LBM quartet, the Black slave from the elevator, and four whom I didn't know. But, other than the Black slave's owner, I recognized all the other Men. Astonishing. I hardly knew anyone at the convention – how could I? But here was Jaakko Koivisto – the President of IAMSO himself! Here was Judge Spirazzi. Here was Major Sadiq. And – most peculiarly – here was Bruce Donnelly. The four unknown slaves would belong to these four, assuming Donnelly had already found his replacement for Derek.

The other groups kept staring at us, doubtless wondering what the hell SLAVES were doing there, slaves who had no business going to the Royal Palace. Or thinking `why the hell wasn't MY slave invited, worthless cumdump that he is'. Men threw ocular darts in my particular direction: That's the slave from the trial. Why the fuck are they rewarding him – just because he didn't lie? Ridiculous.

I wished we could talk. What was it like to belong to Koivisto or the judge or Military Guy? How did the Black slave feel about the trial? And I longed to chat with Rhody and Nodak, even Wyoming.

All of a sudden, one of the slaves – a mestizo – spoke to me quietly. Though several of us tried to warn him non-verbally, he smirked and kept on talking, apparently figuring that no one would catch him if he kept his voice low. He expressed amazement at his circumstance – just yesterday he had been the property of this asshole from Brazil' and today he was sold to this tall white guy'. And now he had been invited to see the Royal Palace. Could I believe his luck?

What I could believe was that if he didn't shut up, I might soon be a witness in another trial. The only `tall white guy' in our group was the President of IAMSO himself. Oleg had told me that Koivisto obtained a new slave at the convention every year like clockwork. This had to be him.

Choosing rudeness over danger, I walked a few feet away to escape this fool. At which point, the limousines arrived – one for each Master. The slaves' transportation arrived just as the last limousine (driven by naked chauffeurs) was departing: a pick-up truck, the back of which the nine of us had to clamber into.

I didn't mind. The air felt good as we drove. And it beat hell out of the inside of a trunk.

We arrived at the palace. I hopped to the ground and drank in the surroundings. Were I a tourist, I would spend pages describing the palace. Open the dictionary to the word `opulent' and a picture of this building would materialize. Imagine tons of marble and gold and spectacular architecture and whatever you conjured up in your mind still wouldn't do it justice. It was rectangular – possibly square – and maybe a hundred feet tall, not counting the dome that emerged gracefully from the center of the building. If you stood on the roof you would see the dome in front of you rising another twenty feet or so.

It would have taken my breath away if there weren't so much else on my mind.

Like who lived here. I was convinced that Matti was somewhere inside this building.

Somewhere inside this building.

Somewhere. . . . It was maddening to think that, having been separated by thousands of miles, we were now going to be in the same location – with no realistic hope of getting together.

For the last few hours, I'd been fantasizing about that very thing coming true – that I would see him tonight.

The fantasy had several variations.

In my favorite variation, we met, had a chance to talk, had a chance to hug, had a chance to kiss, had a chance to more than kiss. And then, seeing how happy we were, our respective Masters decided to release us and we lived happily ever after. I told you it was a fantasy.

Other scenarios played out, more plausible ones:

• I saw him and we had a chance to talk before parting, and would have a chance to see each other again.

• I saw him and we had a chance to talk and we obtained some closure but it was the only time I would ever see him.

• I saw him and we had a chance to talk but he was still angry with me and wouldn't forgive me for not declaring that I loved him on the boat or in Mogadishu. And it ended badly.

• I saw him and we were able to exchange a few words but they were so strictly controlled that they were perfunctory and meaningless.

• I saw him but we did not have a chance to communicate.

• I saw him but he didn't see me.

• I never saw him. The odds-on favorite on the parimutuel boards.

There were alternate versions of the above in which Matti appeared as a eunuch. I couldn't help but think about Del and South Dakota and others who had been gelded on the boat for the amusement of the Prince Regent. Clearly, it was thinkable that the same had been done to Matti.

I tried to push those versions out of my mind – but couldn't.

All of them – ALL of them – were painful, the only difference being the degree of the pain. Unless my dream scenario miraculously unfolded, this was unlikely to be an evening from which I emerged stronger than before it began.

We went inside. The entrance hall was bedecked with paintings – Rembrandt, Degas, Fra Angelica, Klee, Matisse, even what looked like a Vermeer, though not one of the thirty-four known ones in the world.

• (a voice) These are the originals.

I realized that the palace tour had begun, and we had a personal tour guide, standing with his back to me in front of what was without a doubt a Titian.

• A few of these you might recognize. This Corot, for example, you might have seen in the Hermitage, Dmitri – but theirs is a copy. This is the genuine article.

`Dmitri'? The tour guide knew Master on a first-name basis?

And then he turned around to face us and it was all I could do to stop from gasping. Our tour guide was none other than the Prince Regent himself.

Holy shit. And Boris was upset about being in Group D?

We were led through a long hall lined with Greek and Egyptian sculptures and into the rotunda – the room underneath that monumental dome. But the dome wasn't the first thing I saw. At the center of the rotunda was a sculpture.

Now I had studied Renaissance Art in my last semester at UW-Superior and the epitome of the male nude sculpture was supposed to be Michelangelo's David, in the Academia in Florence – which I will now never get a chance to see in person. But for my mind, the finest male nude sculpture in the world predated that work by several centuries: the Discus Thrower, attributed to Myron.

What an exquisite body that was. Every line so smooth, every proportion perfect – and I'll say it now – an ass that was heaven to look at.

I was looking at it now.

Or was I? I knew there were copies of the Discus Thrower in existence – genuine, contemporaneous copies, not modern fakes. Was this one of them? Or was our tour guide about to announce that THIS was the original?

Neither, as it turned out. When we approached the statue, the Men began to laugh. The Prince Regent was grinning broadly, enjoying the joke. Apparently, there was a joke. When the Men parted enough to let the slaves in on it, I saw that the discus thrower had been modified.

Between his perfectly cleft cheeks was the stub of a butt plug protruding from his anus. And those perfectly-shaped buttocks had stripes across them, as if he had just been disciplined with a cane.

I surveyed the rotunda. Everything gold, everything marble. Except for the dome, not gold on the inside – and not even solid on the inside. The dome consisted of four petal-shaped leaves that met in the middle, separated by vertical gaps about a yard wide. Through the openings you could see the stars – quite stunning. The `petals' were white with trompe l'oeil male nudes of different ethnicities staring down at us. Each nude had his arms behind his back and his legs were spread to give you a clear view of his testicles underneath a diminutive cock. Above the cock there was no bush. There was no hair anywhere on the body. These were paintings of slaves.

There was more. In each of four – well, you can't call them corners in a round room, so call them compass-directions – there was a curtained-off area. I noticed that they were directly underneath where the open vertical strips of the dome were. Koivisto had wandered over near one of them, obviously curious about what was behind it.

• (Prince Regent) Ah. Do you want to see my other works of art?

I wasn't sure I did.

• These curtains are not normally here. I do not hide my works of art from my visitors. They are here tonight just so I can do this.

He snapped his fingers and three large slaves – who had somehow entered the room without my noticing them (which, considering their size, was an accomplishment) – walked over to each of the three drapes and pulled them down dramatically.

Behind each was a pair of marble statues – one nude figure with its arms around another, as if holding him in some kind of a wrestling lock, about to toss him down onto the floor. But when I looked again, I realized that only the figure in back was a statue – the one being held was a live nude slave, painted alabaster white so that he matched the color of the marble exactly. While the rear figure appeared to be marble, on close inspection you could see hinges at the shoulders, which apparently allowed the arms to be moved to hold the slave in place. The slave's wrists were strapped to the statue's wrists, and his ankles, bound against those of the statue, were spread widely, putting the slave's penis and scrotum on full display. And the scrotum was clearly empty.

The scrotum was empty. Omigod. Was every slave here a eunuch? Was Matti? Please, no, let him keep his balls.

The fourth curtained-off area, however, remained so. The Prince Regent walked over to it and pulled it down. I closed my eyes, half-expecting to see Matti tied up there.

But there was no one. No slave. Just the sculpture of the nude male with his arms open wide, as if about to hug someone and his feet spread a good yard apart. And a cock in full erection, standing up toward the dome at about a 75 degree angle from horizontal.

• (P.R.) You see, it is not just the arms of the statue that are holding these slaves in place.

My eyes widened and I unconsciously exchanged looks with the nearest person to me, the Black slave from the trial. His mouth was agape. That cock was firmly up the asses of those other three slaves. They were impaled on that thing.

• (Ilya) Wow. That is really hot. But aren't you afraid others are – I mean, you must have state visitors who are not so open minded. Surely you don't let them see this, do you?

Master looked alarmed at Ilya's impertinence, and leaped in.

• Beg your pardon, Your Majesty. My young assistant is not used to the presence of royalty.

• (P.R.) I can see that. But, if somewhat impolitely posed, it is, in fact, an excellent question, one which some others of you must be wondering but have too much discretion to voice in public.

I saw Ilya shrink a couple of inches, and I tried to suppress a smile.

• (P.R.) I think this might be a good time to make some remarks that I had intended for later. I am, of course, a member of IAMSO. So how can I keep in compliance with IAMSO guidelines and meet the obligations of my position? How can I keep an all-male household with nude slaves when – as you rightly suggest – I am a head of state with important visitors?

• Well, in point of fact, there are not one, but three royal palaces. The first is the public palace. That is about three miles from here. It is entirely appropriate for visitors of both genders and all sexual persuasions, is filled with beautiful art, most of which are fakes, and contains nothing that would offend a soul – just impress them with its grandeur. It is for affairs of state, but I do not live there.

• I live here. In fact, all male members of the Royal Family live here. The third palace, further away, is for the women and for young children. It is luxuriant for the benefit of the children – the women we do not care about, but the children – the boys – must be exposed to nothing but splendor from a young age.

• The natural question which arises is – if all the Men live here, they can't all be gay. And the answer is – yes, they can, and they are. Or as near to it as doesn't matter. Scientists in our country have been working on the structure of DNA even before Crick and Watson. They can identify genes that make a person more likely to be heterosexual versus homosexual.

• No Man here ever has sex with a woman. To procreate, he has sex with a test tube. We have been doing in vitro fertilization since before there was in vitro fertilization. And we can screen out the fertilizations that would result in a heterosexual child and implant into the womb those that would tend to produce a homosexual child. A sixty percent affinity is good enough.

• At the age of two, boys are gradually weaned from their mothers and transferred to male nannies, to ease their transition to an all-male environment. We pay the nannies well and give them vasectomies to ensure that no stray sexual encounter results in non-royal progeny. At age five, the boy is moved here, where he will not again encounter women unless and until he leaves home for university or elsewhere. He will be properly educated in male sexuality and grow up with the certain knowledge that sex with women is disgusting and that the only kind of proper sex is with a submissive male. When he reaches puberty slaves will begin sucking his cock. At fifteen he is allowed to fuck. He will see dominant male-on-male sex as the only kind of sex there is. And even if he is only sixty-percent homosexual at birth, he will be culturally one hundred percent homosexual by the time he is seventeen. He will associate his penis with the image of male asses and male mouths. He would not even conceive of the idea of being attracted to women, as he won't have seen any that he even remembers. And he will be in heaven at a palace full of available, fuckable male slaves.

• And so, young man, we are able to maintain this palace within the guidelines of IAMSO – and now, if I may continue with my presentation of the art in this room?

The irony of the Prince Regent asking permission of Ilya was missed by no one in the room – except Ilya.

• (Ilya) Of course, Your Majesty. Sorry, I didn't realize there was more.

• (P.R.) There is more. Surely you noticed that only three of the statues are occupied. This fourth one looks, if you will pardon the expression, naked. I think we need to mount someone on him.

My heart stopped. There were nine slaves in the room, huddled together, all thinking the same thing: oh god, not me. Is this the reason we were invited? Surely you don't mean me.

He didn't. The Prince Regent had someone else in mind. He snapped his fingers and two of the large, well-built slaves left the room and came back dragging a wriggling figure who obviously knew what was in store for him and foolishly thought that if he struggled hard enough he might change his fate. The wriggling figure was painted white. And his balls had been removed.

It was Derek, the convicted slave from the trial.

Pieces fit like a jigsaw puzzle that was solving itself. The phone call Master had made yesterday was to the Prince Regent: would you accept a donated slave even though he's a crap slave who needs to be broken and broken hard? The phone call Oleg had made yesterday – in Italian – was to the judge: could Derek's sentence could be modified so that he could be transferred to the palace? Derek's non-appearance at the orgy last night was because he had already been delivered here. And the other figures from the trial – Donnelly, the judge, the prosecutor, the Black slave and his Master – were here precisely to witness this very moment.

Which, I suppose, could explain why I was here, and Master. But not the rest of the Russia contingent. It was like two separate groups: Little Big Man and trial folks. Was it a coincidence that I was the nexus between them?

As Derek struggled, the third muscular slave was slathering the marble cock with something wet, to lubricate it. I wondered if Derek had been lubricated as well, or whether the coating on the statue's penis was going to be it.

The two large slaves hoisted up Derek and slid him down over the erect cock, skewering him on the thick marble member. Holding his legs wide, they pushed him down over the big white dong until his ass-lips were touching the statue's balls. His wrists and ankles were strapped to those of the statue. And then the big slaves maneuvered the hinged, outstretched arms of the statue so that they crossed Derek's chest and held him in a bear-hug – the statue's arms folding across his own. The statue's arms then locked in place, ensuring that he would remain securely in place and could not wriggle off. He was immobilized as surely as if he were in a strait jacket.

• (Prince Regent) These are failed slaves. Serving out the end of their terms as decoration – they have no further use for us. I have twenty of them. They serve in four-hour shifts, with sixteen hours off before they go on again. One shift on, four shifts off. We do it that way deliberately so that they never have the same time-slot twice in a row. Sometimes daytime, sometimes at night. Never a regular sleeping pattern, you see – keeps them off guard.

• (Judge Spirazzi) Ingenious, Your Majesty.

• (Prince Regent) These big boys are some of my trusties. They're the bosses of the slave quarters, which are downstairs. With as many slaves as we have, you need slaves to keep other slaves in line.

• (Ilya, not having learned how to shut up) You call them trusties. But how do you know you can trust them?

The Prince Regent took a deep breath but held his emotions in check.

• Fear is a great motivator, young man. These boys know that if any of the slaves under their control mess up, they will be punished as well as the miscreant. But we employ the carrot as well as the stick. Every week – provided there have been no incidents – we allow the trusty to fuck any one of the palace slaves, other than the personal slaves of the Family. Trusties are fucked daily, like any slave, but they like being able to top. They make sure they keep that privilege.

• But you have not seen our dome slaves at their most decorative!

He nodded to one of the trusties, who found a button on the far wall and pushed it.

And then there was another sound as the slave-statues suddenly retracted several inches into the wall.

And then they began to slowly rise. Climbing up the wall several feet and pausing so that the slaves appeared to be suspended about fifteen feet above the floor. Underneath the statue, the open space was replaced by what was in essence a section of movable wall, filling in the area left by the statues so that the sides of the rotunda wall looked like one smooth surface, other than vertical grooves at the edges of the new sections of walls.

The judge and Koivisto began to applaud, joined in by all the other Masters. I wasn't sure if we were supposed to applaud as well, but I took a gamble and put my hands together. All the other slaves saw what I was doing and made quick decisions. Rhody was the first to join in, then, rapidly all the others, not wanting to be the one left out. Well, with one exception – the mestizo.

The button was pressed again and the slave-statues were lowered.

• Oh, that was just the appetizer. I wanted to show you that we could elevate these sculptures. Here's what normally happens after they are mounted for their shift.

And the trusty pressed a different button and the four impaled slaves shot up at lightning speed toward the ceiling, as if it were a ride at an amusement park. In three seconds they had reached the top of the walls, where the true dome began. But then they continued on to the very top of the dome, the movable wall filling up the gaps in the dome between the leaves of trompe l'oeil slaves. When they finally stopped, the heads of the four impaled slaves were separated by only about a foot. They were facing directly downward as if hovering over the discus thrower. And the dome appeared completely solid, as I had originally envisioned it from outside.

It would not be a ride I would have chosen at Six Flags. I think I would have vomited from the velocity, not even accounting for the fact that I'd be impaled on a marble phallus.

From my spot on the floor, they looked almost tiny, probably about a hundred feet up. I heard screams. Derek was freaking out. The Prince Regent turned to Bruce Donnelly.

• Your boy has a lot to learn about being a slave.

He pressed the button himself and Derek came shooting back down in an instant, crying his head off and saying, "Oh my god, oh my god" over and over again.

The Prince Regent nodded to a trusty, who, seeming to have anticipated this reaction and been pre-instructed on what to do if it occurred, went over to Derek and fitted a ball-gag into his mouth. He then wrapped duct tape around that, completely obscuring the ball-gag.

• You won't say another word tonight. Not an intelligible one anyway. We'll allow you to scream tonight until you get used to it. But no words. You have one week, no more. After that, any sound out of you at all, so much as a whimper and you'll lose this. (He had hold of Derek's cock.) And if that doesn't shut you up, I'll have your vocal cords removed. These are not idle threats. I'm the fucking ruler of this country, boy. I can do what I please. Understood, slave?

Derek, terrified, nodded. He gave a quick, pleading look to his former Master, and I could read everything it said: Please, take me back. I'll be good. I'll do everything you want and I'll never disrespect you again. Just get me the hell out of here.

Donnelly was just as good a mind-reader as I was.

• Sorry, lad. You made your own bed. Now you'll have to bloody lie in it.

• (Prince Regent, to Derek) Now, then, I think we understand each other. Off you go!

And Derek shot back up the sides of the rotunda. As he rocketed toward the dome, I could hear a muffled scream, but I think he was trying to hold it in. As he did so, the trompe l'oeil leaves retracted, opening up to a full view of a sky full of glittering stars, with only the four curved strips of wall extensions, with the impaled slaves at their terminus, interrupting the view.

The Prince Regent nodded again to the trusty and suddenly a light show began, bouncing off the suspended bodies in glorious colors of blue, pink, green, orange, white, purple, and more. Sometimes all the slaves were the same color, sometimes they were different colors. If you weren't aware that those were human beings up there, hanging face down over the rotunda while anally impaled on thick marble phalluses, it would have been beautiful.

• (Ilya) Fucking awesome.

Master sighed.

FLASHFORWARD: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19, MASTER'S BEDROOM

• Was incident with Australia boy frighten you?

• Yes, Master.

• But that not why you write about Thursday, yes?

• No, Master. It was because of what happened later.

• At pool.

• Mostly that. And also on the roof.

• Andrei incident?

• Who's Andrei?

• Boris slave.

• Oh, right. I forgot his Russian name. That . . . was not the main thing. But it was a shock, Master.

• I understand, Alexei. To tell truth, I also surprise by what Prince Regent do.

[COMING UP NEXT: CHAPTER 45 - UP ON THE ROOF]