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To be Devoured by Tigers

Part One of Two

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Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Evergreen North

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Jack should have been more careful working with the Bengal tigers, but even a zookeeper like him could become complacent after so many years. It was easy to forget how big and strong they were when he was in their enclosure, his head down, working away, ensuring that they had plenty of enrichment in there to keep them busy. Of course, the tigers had a secret that only he knew and that was that their words were not only kept between them in the language of tigers. That was one of the reason that he had swapped back from the hemp sacks, for lumps of meat to tear into, to burlap sacks again: they'd said it was easier on their teeth.

Still... That did not mean that his life was easy, that the tigers could talk to him and tell him what they wanted. The zoo was as busy as ever and the head keeper for the tigers had plenty of work to do. Cleaning, feeding, watering, ensuring that their every need was met: those were only a few of the things that he had to concern himself with, pushing on even through his own breaks as his stomach growled. It did not mean, of course, that he went without food directly for their benefit but more that things seemed easier when he put their needs above his own.

He muttered under his breath, down on his knees, reaching under a wooden platform for something, he could not see what, that probably Machali had stuffed down there. The female tiger was the more boisterous of the two and he had wondered before that she was happy in captivity at all, with all that she seemed to have to do to amuse herself daily. She had, of course, assured him that she was quite happy there, though had put in some requests for special meat that he was to convince the powers that be to fetch for her.

Jack knew that Taj was watching him, the male tiger of the pair. He was quieter than Machali and larger than usual, something that was noted on the information board outside the enclosure. He could have slipped up on Jack without the man even knowing he was there and yet he still held back, for that was the man who brought them food and fulfilled their needs. Even one who did not possess human morals knew that there was sense to be had in a kill.

But Taj, oh... He remembered. One time, he'd been in a zoo that fed live meat, though it had been much to the dismay of visitors there. Maybe that had been why it had been shut down, though Machali had had a penchant for playing with her meals back then with him. He killed quickly and decisively, wasting no time, while she would chase and bat and mock and put on a show for the horror of all.

Eating into a hunk of zebra haunch (a special order) in their concrete pen, Taj growled, savouring the flesh melting across his tongue. It was not live, but it would do.

“Here you go, guys."

Jack smiled as he passed more through to them, safe on the other side of the fence, for he still had to keep up appearances to the rest of the zoo. That was how they expected the tigers to be fed, thus that was what happened even if he was at no risk at all with them.

Machali grunted, looking up at him with fierce, intent eyes that seemed to bore through him, her tail lashing the ground.

“Dead meat bores us," she rasped, digging her tongue into the marrow of the bone, gnawing without crunching. “Some live prey would make things more interesting around here..."

Jack winced.

“Is that why you stuffed the old meat sack under the platform again? You know how long it takes me to get that out!"

Her eyes danced in a way that was beyond either humanity or the intelligence that Jack had thought tigers had – at least, before he'd met them. They had changed all expectations.

“Entertainment, sweet one," she purred, tail still flicking in that feline embodiment of softening pleasure. “If you could bring me some live meat to sink my teeth into, well, I might just stop doing that. Maybe. It's not certain. You could even fill in yourself if you can't make arrangements, it would be the easier choice."

Digging into his haunch, Taj chuffed a laugh, paws and claws gripping the meat, tearing strips away as his tongue helped work it free where the sinew was tougher than expected. Grumbling, Jack took a step back away from the fence, shaking his head, though there was a warmth in his neck and cheeks that hadn't been there before.

“Yeah, yeah, you would say that, wouldn't you? I'll see what I can do about getting something fresh for you but no promises there."

It was a joke, surely, but why, in that case, did it make him feel so strangely warm inside to imagine the tigers chasing him, hunting him down? Jack tried to busy himself elsewhere but his feet simply would not lead him away from the enclosure where the tigers were feeding a little back and away from visitors, for some things were too bloody for more sensitive souls. The public feedings were more of a spectacle that the tigers were more than happy to put on a show for and those that came to view those knew just what they were getting themselves in for.

But he stayed to watch them feed, how their teeth worked over the bone, scraping and then crunching through. To crack through bones like that was an easy task for tigers like them, though it still made him jump every time a bone so thick snapped. Machali grunted as she ate with obvious relish, though it was not as if a tiger had to worry about appearances when they were satisfying the primal urge of hunger.

Flesh and blood... There was not much blood left in older meat as Taj stripped it away, tiring of slowly savouring and cutting it down to the bone. But it still stained the tiger's jaws even if not as much as if he had sunk his teeth into a fresh haunch, Jack imagining his maw dripping with fresh blood, beading on his whiskers and trailing down his chin.

What if...those bones were his?

Oh, it was a strange thought, not a thought that he should have been entertaining in the slightest, but Jack could not shake it off, not even as he went about his work for the day. He had to hustle and he had to give talks, a smile on his face at all times, but his mind was elsewhere. His mind was with the tigers, their huge maws, how wide they gaped when they jawed, exposing those dark lips and the fleshy, rippling pink of their tongues. Would their tongues be as rough or rougher than that of a domestic feline? It was those tongues, undoubtedly, that helped them strip fur and feathers especially off their prey, a part of him wanting to know just how that felt. But it did not make sense, not that he wanted to play that part, something confusing twisting in the pit of his stomach that could not possibly be so easily swayed.

It was a joke, just a joke. Machali had not meant it. But something in how Taj's eyes had lingered on him for a moment too long after that “joke" stayed with him.

He dreamed of them that night, tossing and turning, seeing a flash of jaws, a growl and teeth. Claws pricked into him but he did not shy away from them in the dream, gasping and panting, intent only on pleasure, on pleasing, of sacrificing his body to the greater good of the tigers. If there was one way to serve them wholly and completely, that was it, something that brought him down deliriously to nothing at all, flesh and bones, meat for their jaws, no pain at all lingering in his body while they devoured his flesh.

Jack woke in a sweat, though he did not want to think about what the lower part of his body had been doing.

“Just a dream... A dream, nothing."

Then why could he not stop thinking about it? It stayed with him as he worked, avoiding being in direct contact with the tigers more than would have been usual for him, though he never failed to watch a feeding, observing how they tasted and chomped through the meat. There were many different techniques to feeding and Jack had never before given much thought to how he had catalogued them all, thinking that it was all good research. Yet the splintering of bones as thick as his wrist should not have sent goose bumps down his skin like the coming of the end.

A few days later, however, he was forced to think about things in a little more intimate detail. Machali, of course, was as sly as ever, her hind end wiggling as she stalked him. She was not even trying to be all that stealthy as he worked to clean out their enclosure – what they had not buried to mark their territory, at least. The tigers built up cleaner habits than their wild counterparts when remaining in one location, but that did not mean that Jack did not want it to be a nice environment for them too.

He didn't hear the tigress as she closed the distance between them, but he did feel how her teeth closed on his hand, taking it into her maw and holding it there. Words could not come from her lips with such an object within her teeth but her eyes danced in wicked glee, the lashing of her tail telling a tale that she had him right where she wanted him. Jack, to his credit, did not jump too much but his skin erupted in a cold sweat of true dread, the sweat of a prey animal that knew when they had been caught.

He stuttered, tried to take a deep breath and failed.

“M-Machali," he forced out at last as Taj appeared from between the planted bamboo, sitting on his haunches, his eyes intent as he watched over the scene. “Let go, come on... I've got to...ah...get back to work."

Yet the heat in him, warming through the chilling fear, could not be denied, blushing fiercely, his breath quickening, imagining every time that he had seen them feast and feed all over again. Their tongues rasping, pulling, tearing even the hide from the creatures that were brought, dead, for them to feast on. How their huge paws cradled their meal between them, claws digging in to hold it in place with toes folded around. The feel of her teeth lightly digging into his hand, though not pushing enough pressure behind the light yet restrictive bite to draw blood.

Machali growled, licking her lips as she obligingly released his hand. That was a new flavour... A very interesting new flavour indeed. The tigress half-closed her eyes, taking a moment to let the scents wash through her, her sensitive nostrils filtering through them for the scent of man that she really wanted to dwell on.

“You taste good, man..." She purred, making a show again out of licking her chops noisily, the slurp of her pink tongue overdone. “Jack... It's better if I don't use your name, isn't it? Are you sure you don't want to offer yourself up as live meat? You would be delicious to sink my teeth into..."

Taj growled his agreement, though a tiger of few words like him did not speak in that way all that often. It was the power behind his eyes, the tiger's stare, that was his strongest tool, Jack's jaw dropping and he took a shaky half-step back, the magnetic force within Taj's eyes calling him in.

“I... Uh... Oh..."

Yet all words fell away. A prey animal, an animal like him, didn't have to wonder about the logistics of a tiger eating or not eating him. He didn't have to think, didn't have to worry, just had to be.

Flexing his hand even as he stood there before the tigers, a rake in his free hand, he recalled just how her teeth had indented his flesh, his skin still returning, slowly, to its original shape and elasticity. There was a lingering pressure there and he could not help but be enthralled, for the power of the tigers was not something that he, nor any other man, should ever have disputed. Maybe that was just why they had drawn him to them and drawn so many visitors, everyone there wanting to get a glimpse of their power without actually having to face up to it themselves.

But Jack was right there before him even as the tigers left him be, leaving him rather than him leaving them. It was strange to be so frozen there, the instinct to freeze washing coolly over him, some part of the man accepting his fate the very moment that Machali's teeth had closed over his hand. One of her massive teeth had tucked itself between his middle and fourth fingers, parting them lightly, a tiny act of control that, even then, had sent a fluttering shiver of chills straight down his spine.

He was not the one in control, not anymore.

He finished up cleaning the enclosure wondering if he should have taken more care to lock the tigers away when he was cleaning, though it was something that he had grown laxer and laxer about in recent months. The tigers were no threat, not really, for they loved him as much as he loved them, though it was a very different kind of love than what a man felt for beasts of their size and stature. Despite his relationship with them, he should have known that they didn't truly see him as anything more than meat, something that came and went but was merely a passing influence in their lives. Jack's worth only came through in what he could do for them and any more than that, well – that was for the tigers to decide, ultimately.

He dreamed again, unable to wake as the sheets wrapped around his ankles. The bed was a trap but the trap, truly, was the maw of a tiger larger than him, larger than even Taj, though the tiger in his dream had the same eyes. They bored into him, seeing through everything that he had ever even tried to hide from himself, leaving nothing there to conceal the bones of him, the true skeleton of his being. There was no way to hide from a beast as those teeth closed around his feet, taking them into a maw that was hungry for only one thing, forcing his body to submit while a shadow fell over him.

“Time to fill our stomachs, human," Machali said, looming confidently, not needing to do any more than that to exert her easy, casual dominance over a lesser being. “I do hope you enjoy your trip."

Maybe that was Jack putting his own words into the mouth of the dream-tiger but there was no cry of pain to slip from his lips, not even as her jaws opened wider and wider, dripping with ropes of saliva. She engulfed his head easily as the giant tiger, who had to be Taj, chomped through his ankles, teeth grinding over bone, sawing through with the massive biting power of those jaws behind them. Machali's tongue pressed up against the back of his head, rasping and pulling him deeper and deeper into her maw, though Jack could barely see, barely say a single word, breath caught in his throat, hardly where it belonged.

He didn't need to breathe anymore when he was going to end up in the belly of the tigers anyway. He groaned, letting the darkness envelop him, her jaws moving down to his shoulders, pulling him deeper, though the end was near. The dream shuddered and trembled around him, her tongue fluttering and pulsing, yet the darkness of the aftermath was not for him, not even as the giant Taj went to work on his calves, devoured from both ends by tigers that were as ravenous for him as he was eager to allow it all.

He woke slowly the next more, no more cold sweats for him. Rolling over in bed, Jack moaned, his shaft pressing into the mattress, though there was a wet patch there too that could only have come from one means. It was an excitement in something deeper and more primal than he could have ever have thought existed, though perhaps he should have paid attention to other needs, deeper ones, ones that he doubted before could have ever have seen the light of day if not for Taj and Machali coming into his life.

It was standing before the bathroom mirror that morning, seeing the same stubble, the same line of his jaw that told Jack exactly what he had to do. Sometimes, there were only some things in life worth doing – and just what had he done so far to make it worth it? He was not a bad person but something pulled him towards the tigers with an inexplicable force and if anyone believed in both fate and destiny going hand in hand, or maybe claw in claw, it was Jack.

It was a risky choice, one that would affect the course of his life forever. He took a deep breath, steadying himself, brushing his hair back from his face where it had grown a little long, pulling over his forehead. That wouldn't matter anymore.

Not after he'd given himself to the tigers.

To be continued in the second/final part, part two.