Taster

My job is simple. It is to eat and survive, or eat and die. Life or death, it’s all left up to who prepared the food, who handled it, who wants my lord dead. I know I do.

Handsome, well-bred, rich, powerful, cruel, sinister, manipulative, these are all words that describe him. Before becoming a taster, I had been one of the girls in his harem. I was demoted to this position after accidently sleeping in instead of rising early for his morning massage. Before being a part of his harem, I had been sales clerk at Best Buy. Yeah. I got to this point by walking home drunk early in the morning when the sky was still dark in Amsterdam.

I’d give anything to be back at my old job, telling a seventy-nine year-old woman for the tenth time how to work a 3-D printer. But hey, at least I never had to sleep with my lord. He was actually pissed off when I was brought to him. Something about wanting them to have bought someone for the kitchens, not some drugged up new whore. He was so angry, I got off free that night. Apparently there are no refunds at illegal slave markets.

And now, here I was, sitting at his left waiting for the food to be served so that I can see if today is my day to die from poisoned food. I’m kinda hoping that it is.

“You know how much of everything to eat, correct?” My lord asks me. This is the first time he has actually spoken to me, so I looked at him with eyes as wide as a startled dog’s. I nod my head slowly, not sure if I’m even allowed to speak. “Good. Some girls eat too little, and some girls eat too much. I’d have a male do this, but they are much harder to control. They also get sold much more quickly by torturers.”

I’d heard of torturers. One of the people who had been in charge of watching over a few girls, myself included, had been talking about the different types of people who shop at the market, I was glad I wasn’t sold to a torturer.

“After a full year of taste testing my food, we will have someone else do it, and you will be sent back to the harem. Understood?” I nodded again, really hoping that I wouldn’t make it the whole year.

The food was served, hot on white plates with teal flowers scrawled on the edges. The lord’s voice sounded like it was Australian, or Scottish, something around those parts. If I could hear him speak for more than ten seconds at a time, I would probably be able to place it, especially if I was able to ask where he was from, or where we were. But those questions were against the rules. So when I saw the food, I really wished I knew where we were. One plate had some sort of meat dish, another with some weird green soup looking thing, and the final one had these odd caramel covered chocolate scone things.

Looking at the food like it had come from another planet infested with live jello blobs, I tentatively took a fork and pierced each edible treat they had prepared for my lord. They were each interesting, and if I had been with friends, it would have been a great thing to share and laugh about. After each bite, they asked me how it tasted, and I had to describe it. When I tried to describe the green thing, my lord laughed under his breath and covered his smirk with his hand. Until I mentioned that it tasted a little too sweet.

He looked at me how I had looked at him when he spoke to me. All shocked dog. My eyes grew a little hazy, I could feel my eyes wanting to droop, and my throat felt like it was shutting. I didn’t really try to fight it either, it felt terrifying and comforting at the same time. This is what death felt like.

I woke up to a white room and a light beeping noise. I knew what that noise was, it was the same noise I heard when I was in the hospital, listening to my mother’s heart beat as she slipped away.

One day down, three-hundred and sixty some-odd more to go.