The Tasting 3

Jason Geth had never been to a strip club before. He was nearing his thirtieth birthday and was neither a sexual neophyte nor a middle-aged beer-guzzler. Glancing around the crowded lobby, he wondered if that made him stand out. Other than the suited and heavyset bouncer at the end of the room, all the men in the vestibule (Jason saw only one woman) looked like either twenty-year-old frat boys or someone's plaid-clad uncle whose gut wobbled as he shouted his commentary at referees.

Forbidden Fruit, which was the name of this place, was on Jason's route to work. He'd had his current job at an investment firm for going-on two years and the club had appeared closed almost every time he'd driven past it. This made him wonder at the number of people in the room.

The amorphous line moved Jason closer to the bouncer. He felt around in the pocket of his slacks (the internet had said to wear slacks to a strip club) and felt the folded piece of paper on which he'd printed his barcode and ticket number. There were only a few people ahead of him now, each presenting a ticket to the bouncer, who scanned the barcode with some handheld device before nodding them through the nearby doorway into the darkness beyond.

Jason extracted his ticket from his pocket and unfolded it. There was a ticket number- A7246685, a barcode, and a checkbox labeled "Contest". When Jason bought his ticket a week prior, checking this box had cost him an additional $25. He figured this whole thing was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, though, and the jpeg of a woman's flirtatious winking face proclaiming he could be a "lucky winner" gave him more of a boner than it had any right to, so what the hell.

The man in front of him was waved through the door and Jason approached the bouncer, ticket in hand. The bouncer was one of those ageless guys. He could have been Jason's age, a decade older, or anything in between. He was a large man, though not especially tall, sporting a dark suit and a Rolex watch. As Jason handed over the ticket, he noted the tattoos on the man's fingers. They were letters, one on each finger, in the way that you sometimes saw spelling out "love" or "hate" or maybe a year. In the bouncer's case, they spelled "chew". Well that was fucking stupid. Maybe it was the name of his dog or some shit? Jason was pretty sure that no one was that into 5 Gum.

"Contest, huh?" The bouncer said, examining the ticket. "You don't look like the type. Good luck to you, though."

Jason moved through the open doorway without questioning further, not wanting to hold up the line. He wasn't sure what the type looked like, but he was sure he probably wasn't it. He'd never been in a place like this before and probably wouldn't again. The whole thing really seemed like a waste of money, but hey. Might as well have the experience one time.

Experience wasn't something Jason had much of, truth be told. In his three decades, he'd never really been in a relationship and he doubted if he ever would. He'd had sex a few times in college with a girl he still sometimes texted with, but she had a boyfriend now and had never really been interested in pursuing much more with Jason anyway. That was okay. Jason certainly found women attractive and he spent plenty of time jacking off, but he wasn't certain if he really wanted a partner- either romantic or sexual. In some ways, commitment to a relationship seemed like an extreme choice to him and he wondered how anyone ever did it. Hookups, on the other hand, seemed like they'd get boring fast.

So, here he was. Jason supposed that he was at Forbidden Fruit to seek novelty. It seemed like he felt compelled to do that every so often. One time it was skydiving, another it was entering a backyard MMA match for Youtube. It was things that got him to feel. If you were feeling, you were living and maybe doing something worthwhile with your life. At least he hoped so.

The room wasn't so different from a theater- rows of gray padded chairs on an incline above a large open stage. Jason took a seat at about midway between the stage and the door he'd come through. Within a minute or two of having sat down, there were men seated on either side of him. It was hard to tell in the relative darkness, but it soon seemed as though it might be a full house.

Jason shifted in the darkness, feeling crowded and increasingly overheated. This wasn't the setup he'd expected a strip club to have. He was far too up close and personal with the other patrons. The men to his left and right seemed intent on staring straight ahead, despite the stage being empty, so Jason tried his best to follow their example. Maybe he'd be more comfortable once distracted by the show.

A pulse started. It wasn't quite music, though it was certainly coming through speakers, but it could certainly have passed for the heavy bass underscoring club music. In some ways, it reminded Jason of a heartbeat. Between the sound and the hot, sweaty conditions he found himself in, it was almost as though the auditorium were some oversized animal and he was inside of it. The light changed, intensifying slightly over the stage, as a voice sounded over the speakers.

"Introducing Amethyst!" came the robotic vocalization, monotone and tinny.

A woman strode onto the left end of the stage, smiling into the darkness of the audience. Her hair was a dark brown, hanging about her shoulders and framing the soft paleness of her skin. On her chest, she wore a garment which Jason had no name for. It was the shape of a bra or bikini, but made of leather and clutching her breasts as tightly as a second skin. At her waist, she wore a skirt. It reached nearly to the tops of her bare feet, which would have been unexpectedly modest were it not of a nearly-transparent silken material. Her legs were mostly bare beneath the thin fabric, but Jason couldn't quite tell if the woman was wearing any sort of underwear.

"...And Harper!"

Another woman entered the stage, this one from the opposite end. Her hair was darker than Amethyst's; Slightly shorter and more wavy. She wore a bra, covered over on one breast by rhinestones. She wore a skirt of red lace, which encircled her on the sides and rear but reached barely below her crotch in front. Her feet were clad in stockings of alternating black and orange stripes, looking like those one might expect to see as part of a witch costume.

The dancers moved toward each other, each slowly pirouetting until they stood facing each other in the center of the stage. Faces a fraction of an inch from each other, their lips met forcefully- locking together and devouring each other, smearing lipstick across each other's faces like warpaint.

The faces parted and the women sashayed around each other to stand back-to-back. They turned in a circle until Harper filled the audience's view. She caressed herself slowly, hands sliding gradually over her cheekbones, her jaw, her neck, her breasts, and finishing at the subtly toned muscles of her abdomen. She stepped aside then and Amethyst rotated to face the audience. Her breasts were bare now, their leather garment discarded on the floor of the stage. Jason felt his body react to the sight, his cock stirring to press against the clothes that held it in place. He wished he could touch those tits, squeeze them, suck them, maybe jack himself off with them.

Harper soon shed her rhinestone bra and the two dancers faced each other, pressing their chests together and grinding their crotches against each other's thighs. Amethyst flicked out her tongue, snake-like, teasing Harper's earlobe. This seemed to elicit a giggle, though Jason couldn't hear it over the heartbeat sound that still filled the room. Playfully, Harper gave a little bite to Amethyst's neck, making the pale girl smile. That was when it happened.

Amethyst lunged forward, her bared teeth closing around Harper's ear. Harper gave no sign of pain or distress, indeed both women's smiles never faltered, but when Amethyst pulled away she left a flat bloody hole on the side of her partner's head where an ear should have been.

Jason tensed up in his seat, feeling the sweat on the backs of his hands instantly change temperature from hot to cold. He looked to his left and right, incredulous, but could discern no reaction from anyone else in the audience. For as far as he could see into the dark room, the men continued to stare straight ahead, unphased. One old dude in the next row up, who had to be in his seventies, had fished out his cock and was openly beating off. Didn't Reddit say you weren't allowed to do that in places like this?

Jason shook his head. This had to be some weird practical effect. For shock value or some fucked up fetish or something. Still, he wasn't into that. If they were going to pull some wacky faux-vore stuff, they should have clearly said so on their website. Jason thought about leaving, but he'd have to squeeze past about twelve dudes before he got to the aisle and he doubted he'd get his money back anyway.

Harper, now coated in thick wine-red fluid all down her neck and shoulder, turned her head sideways and closed her mouth over Amethyst's nose. The dancers stared into each other's eyes as blood began to flow out of the corner of her mouth and fall onto the floor. There was a wet crunching sound, audible even from the audience. When Harper pulled away, Amethyst's nose hung at a strange angle.

Amethyst, unphased, threw herself forward and tackled Harper to the floor, sprawling atop her. Both of them maintained wide toothy grins as they began biting at each other's faces, marring the skin and tearing away scraps of flesh. Deep juicy crimson ran down Amethyst's chin and dripped onto the soft skin of her breasts. Flecks of vermilion began to spread on the floor around Harper, forming spines and satellites worthy of Jackson Pollock.

This was fucked up, decided Jason. It was an impressive effect, certainly, and Halloween was in a week or two, so maybe it was in the spirit of the season. Still, it wasn't what he'd signed up for and he was feeling increasingly light-headed. He wasn't as squeamish as he used to be when he was younger, but this was far too much. Surely it had to be over soon.

Amethyst brought her face to Harper's chest and sank her teeth into the exposed left tit. She shook it in her mouth as a dog does with a rope toy, before tearing away and leaving an incomplete mound leaking hot fluid like magma from a volcano. This was Harper's moment to strike. In the instant in which Amethyst pulled away, bloody breast meat still visible in her open mouth, Harper sat up and bit hard into Amethyst's trachea. She grabbed at the other woman's head, pulling her close. Both women's eyes rolled back in what looked like ecstasy.

Harper's next move was the undisputable coup de grace. Holding Amethyst's head in her hands, she brought the tips of her long maroon-colored thumbnails to the other girl's eyes. Slowly, she pressed them in. There was resistance at first, but the nails began to stab deeper and deeper into Amethyst's eyeballs. Finally, Harper's thumbs disappeared fully into her opponent's face and Amethyst fell forward, motionless, on top of her. Both women were still smiling.

A woman slipped through the curtain and entered the center of the stage. She was completely nude from head to toe, her tan Asian skin smooth and perfect. Jason noted her immaculately shaved pussy, before feeling ashamed to be thinking of such a thing in this bizarre moment. The woman held two metal implements, one in each hand. In her right hand was a long blade, akin to a kitchen knife, but finer and narrower. In her left, something like a pair of tongs. She made no acknowledgement of the watching crowd, as she knelt beside the bloodied strippers. She sank her knife into Amethyst's back, kneeling over the two prone women, who still lay one atop the other, burying it to the handle and then twisting it back and forth, eliciting some cracking sounds. She worked for about a minute more, her hair falling before her and obscuring her actions from view.

The woman stood up, revealing a gaping hole in Amethyst's back and a hint of exposed spinal column. The two metal implements lay discarded on the floor, both stained red. The woman strode forward to the front of the stage. Both her hands were slick with gore, glistening in the light. One hand was outstretched, holding an object just smaller than her fist.

Jason stared for a moment, cogs turning as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. The object being presented was irregular in shape, near amorphous. The wetness clinging to the object obscured it further, but parts of the thing appeared to be a deep purple color, while others were a dirty off-white. The vague, bulbous shape was interrupted only by a set of tube-like protrusions at one end. Oh. Was this a heart? Was this Amethyst's heart? A cold, creeping doubt began to probe the back of Jason's mind. If all of what he had seen tonight had been a stage show, then this rarely-open strip club had better effects at its disposal than most Hollywood movies. But the alternative...

The stage went dark, save for a small circle of light illuminating the nude woman. She raised her arm, holding the heart aloft. As she did so, Jason found his eyes having to adjust to a change in brightness. He looked down to see his lap illuminated against the darkness that surrounded him. He looked up, winced, and immediately looked down again. The woman leveled an arm at the audience, bloody finger aimed directly at Jason, as heads throughout the room began to rotate toward him.

"The winner of this year's contest," The woman spoke. "Is Mr. Jason Geth."

With these words, she leaned forward, passing the heart to someone in the audience. Jason couldn't see in the dark, but that person must have passed it to someone in the row behind them and so again and again. Finally, the man seated in front of Jason turned to face him, stretching over the backrest of his chair, bloody hand holding out the heart.

The room went silent. He could see the expressionless eyes of the unclad figure on stage boring into him and he could feel the gaze of everyone in the audience even if he couldn't see most of them. The interlude, full of expectation, couldn't have lasted for more than a second or two, but it felt like far longer. Not knowing what else to do, he held out his hands and felt the subtle weight of the heart fall into them with a wet slap.

"Chew. Chew. Chew."

The chanting began somewhere far off in the dark, but soon it seemed to come from everywhere. Jason felt a hand on his thigh, as the man to his left leaned in, staring deep into Jason's eyes and intoning "Chew. Chew. Chew."

Jason felt an infirmness in his hands, almost as though they had gone to sleep. They shook a little as they raised their bloody cargo closer and closer to his face. He opened his mouth wide, baring his teeth.

"Chew. Chew. Chew."

The woman on the stage stared silently at him. He tried to slow his breathing, but that only made him inhale the scent of the thing in his hands, which was dirty, foul, wrong. He forced down a gag. There was no escape here. No path to an exit. No way to hide with everyone watching him. He closed his eyes and brought the thing closer. It didn't touch his lips, but it was close enough that it now occupied the space of his open mouth. If he brought his teeth together, they would touch the thing.

"Chew. Chew. Chew."

Jason let his mind race for a second more, eyes still closed and mouth still wide-open. Then, he made a decision. What the hell, right? It had only been $25 extra.