Chapter 3 - ch. 3-queen aratrix

"Q-Queen Aratrix!?"

The extravagant woman before me smiled, but it was cold and unkind. It was the smile that could reduce a man's heart to mush and send poisoned daggers through the hearts of everyone else, for concealed in those bleak blue pools was a vague flame of desire that set my heart aflutter.
Why was she gazing at me so intently? Truly, it frightened me.

"Hello, Number 604792A. Also known as Grey," the Queen said with a wink. "Welcome to our facility. As I am sure you have already gathered, this is no ordinary place."

"Oh, I've gathered," I growled. "How could you do this to people!? Turn everyone who could ever challenge your beauty into stupid fat slobs that are addicted to food? Why would you do that to the people you're supposed to take care of and look after? Your own citizens?"

Queen Aratrix tossed back her pretty blonde head and laughed. "Sweet girl, sweet girl, you've no appreciation for the influential power of beauty! Tell me, are you naturally more inclined to trust a hideously ugly person or a beautiful person, given the choice? And how about your friends, would you rather be friends with someone disgusting or someone attractive, someone you'll look good with? And, dear me, let's not forget romance! Want someone who can make you melt with a single gaze, or some dirty old creep you can't even look at without getting grossed out? Hmm?"

I raised my chin defiantly and looked her straight in the eyes, undaunted by the ice I found in them. "Appearance has never mattered to me, because I choose to value people based on what is truly important; Their personalities and who they are as people."

Aratrix looked as though I'd slapped her. She straightened up until her back was a steel rod and her impressive height was increased, making her appear even more intimidating. Despite her diminutive, doll-like features, the Queen's tall and regal figure made her look like a force to be reckoned with.

Her blood-red lips curled back from her sharp, luminous teeth in a disdainful sneer. "Very well. Be a little goody-goody, why don't you? But we'll soon make you a BIG goody-goody, have no worries about that."

"What do you want from me?" I demanded.

Aratrix chuckled. She glanced down at a lock of her wavy platinum hair which she was winding absentmindedly around her index finger. Each of her long, slender fingers was adorned with various rings, each set with large, resplendent jewels.

"Why, the same as I want from everyone, my dear. To fatten you beyond recognition, to replace all that dreadful beauty of yours with flab so no one will ever know you as anything but a sick, out-of-control cow," she spat.

"Why can't you just love yourself the way you are? You've always been one of the loveliest women in your kingdom, and even people overseas envy you. You're the talk of the land! You don't need to...To go to these lengths to ensure you're the most beautiful! You're already so very pretty," I told her, hoping she would sense my sincerity.

The Queen's eyes softened a bit and she sighed, dropping her hands to her lap where she placed them on top of each other.

"I appreciate your flattery, Grey, really I do, but you see, I have never been able to stand for being second-best. There will always be someone prettier than me, and it is that fact alone that I simply cannot stand. In fact," she said, her glare becoming more acidic, her voice turning sharp and cold again, "There is someone I know who is already more attractive than me."

"Who?" I wanted to know.

Queen Aratrix shook her head and laughed, but it was a laugh void of any amusement. She fixed her caustic glare on me and I understood the envy seething in it.
"You."

"Unfortuntaly, we couldn't fatten you the way we do with the bulk of the citizens," the Queen said. "As you have probably figured out, there are chemicals we pump into the air that instigate a powerful appetite, but that didn't work on you. In some cases, people who are unaffected by the basic atmospheric substance can be reprogrammed by a more potent form of the drug, but you, it seems, are also immune to that."

She shook her head and sighed.

"You should've thought of that and made a stronger drug, I guess," I told her, unable to help my smile.

"Oh, we know there will always be outliers. You won't be escaping your physical ruination, if that's what you think," she said, wiping the grin off my face.

She studied me for a moment, drinking me in from head to toe. "No, we'll just have to do it the manual way."

"Manual way?"

The Queen smiled. "Of course. You'll receive special treatment and won't have to be fed in a herd like the brainless cattle down there," she said, indicating the people in the cafeteria. "We'll place you in our feeding room and force-feed you."

She turned to me and smiled so ruthlessly, it disturbed me. She was insane, I thought, downright mad.

"In fact," Aratrix said, "I think it's time you had some lunch now, eh? Donovan! Prepare the mixture and once you have, lock her in there."

The guard who'd brought me up here nodded and hurried off to do what he'd been told, leaving me alone with the Queen.

"Know what the best part of all this is?" She asked.

I shook my head, dreading the answer.

"I'm going to be the one doing the feeding."

The feeding room was a small, cramped, white-washed cell similar to the place dangerous psychos are confined in a mental hospital, and, like someone mentally unsound, I was strapped securely in a chair so as to prevent any attempt at escape.

A small window overlooked the room, and I saw Queen Aratrix gazing down at me with glee written all over her face as she powered on the feeding machine full of a viscous tan liquid that would be issued down my throat via a plastic tube.

With the machine on, she practically danced into the room and snatched the feeding tube which she slid with almost motherly care down my esophagus.

She couldn't keep the smile off her face or out of her eyes as she lovingly performed the task, and I wondered why, aside from the obvious reasons, she took so much pleasure in this. I sensed another reason, and I learned what that reason was as soon as the actual feeding began.

While the creamy substance made its slow descent into my throat, I saw Aratrix's face clearly in the window, and it was much softer than before, far-off and dreamy. Her eyes were closing some and her mouth was dropping open as her head tipped back, and over the noise of the machine, I distinctly heard a moan coming from her room.

Dear God, I thought, she didn't just want me fat to make herself look better: She enjoyed this! She actually got off on seeing me made fat and disgusting. She really was a wackjob.

The moaning undulated, at times growing louder and much more obvious, other times becoming mere subdued whimpers, but there was no denying the fact that this turned her on, big-time.
As for me, I had never been more humiliated. My midsection ached something terrible, and in that short session, I had already destroyed my flat stomach. I felt as though everything that had been forced down me was going to come up the same way it went down, and, knowing I felt this way, the Queen allowed me a nausea pill.

"You'll get used to it over time," she informed me, chipper as ever and all smiles.

It was time I was sent off to my own private room, but before I went, Aratrix grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face her.

"Grey..." She said, eyes limpid pools of longing. Her gaze flitted down to my bloated stomach and widened with lustful hunger.

Then she grinned. "You're going to make such a nice little piggy."

I scowled. "You're crazy."

"Maybe," she said, but I could tell she liked it.