Nov. 25, 2024: "Picture a grand masquerade ball, where a tiny man sneaks in to observe the extravagant lives of the wealthy and powerful. He’s drawn to a striking, mysterious woman towering above the crowd, her mask covering her face but not her charm."
Cassandra, as far as anyone knew, detested these much-vaunted affairs held by some grand high muck-a-muck or another. As she was the arm candy of a city councilman with his eye on a state representative seat, she tolerated what she had to and made a show of distain for the rest. Gilroy could go ahead and cheese it up with the judge, the AG, whomever he liked: Cassandra was going to wait for the tasty snacks to be brought out and tolerate this shallow pageantry—and make a display of her tolerance of it.
The elderflower cocktail she got at the bar was delicious, with a droplet left in her glass and the memory of it in her nostrils. But it wasn’t $20 delicious, she thought, as she ran her fingertip around the rim of her glass. Gilroy would front her for another one, but not without a lecture, and the irony here was that she would need another couple of these to tolerate one of his lectures. Hers was truly an O. Henry story, or perhaps Joseph Heller.
Cassandra, as far as anyone knew, turned and surveyed the crowd of expensive cuts and imported masks, all shifting and nudging within a miasma of desperation: needing to be seen here, needing donations, needing to be seen giving donations, needing a promotion, needing to not be seen accepting funds and services for a promotion. She sucked in her breath through her nostrils, and not for the last time she judged these political scamblers and thinly veiled predators, longing for a time when by all rights they would have been devoured by wolves long ago.
“Pardon, miss.” The voice at her elbow was not rough, but deeper and less polished than most of the noises coming out of this crowd. She started and glided smoothly aside, so one of the waitstaff could lay down a new tray of snacks: samosas, fresh out of the oven. Whatever else might be said about the posturing and pretense in the governor’s mansion, someone in the kitchen truly loved his or her job, and that love fairly radiated off this tray. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to go back and pepper that chef with questions about their background, their hobbies, where they’re from, where they’ve been, but Gilroy wouldn’t have tolerated that, and the only thing worse than enduring Gilroy was enduring Gilroy when his social status was threatened. “One simply does not talk to the help,” he’d instructed her, with the tone of a parent pulling a discarded sock out of a child’s mouth.
She could have left him. She should have left him a while ago. She could any day now. But then she’d have to find something else to do, and the sad truth was that she wasn’t raised to have brilliant ideas or lucrative connections. Her parents had carefully groomed her for a situation much like this, only they’d placed too much stock in her Nurture and hadn’t factored that her Nature might have endowed her with a restless intelligence. Cassandra, as far as anyone knew, wasn’t anyone’s victim, nossir. She just had a morbid curiosity as to where this lifepath was taking her, and when it became too intolerable, when the record of Gilroy’s ambitions began skipping too frequently, then maybe she’d borrow one of her father’s cars and—
A movement on the table snapped her out of her self-indulgent reverie. She looked back, sweeping her gaze but maintaining her diffident posture. There was no air movement in this area, no oscillating fans, no emotional-support terriers making their way up to the source of meat. What was it? For the first time tonight, she was grateful for the gaudy mask she’d been pressured to wear—it wasn’t like no one could guess who she was, turning up willowy and sulky on Gilroy’s arm, and his sycophantic aura superseded any disguise—because now she could tilt and angle her head almost in the direction she wanted, giving her eyes free rein to roam, letting her expression relax and be honest for once behind the satin and lace shielding.
She couldn’t spot what had caused the disturbance. But something had told her that an adventure was afoot. She had very good instincts about these things, and now something was telling her to linger around the samosas and wait for events to reveal themselves. Perhaps it would help if she … looked away for a moment. Oh, there, the chamber quartet was taking a break, that was always interesting.
And perhaps it would help if she … fingered her cocktail glass a bit more, turned a little more bodily away for a moment. Yes, it was time to turn toward the crowd of undesirables and petty power-mongers. Perhaps Gilroy could tear his eyes from whatever asshole he was latched onto and notice her gesture of really needing another one of those elderflower drinks.
And now, yes, perhaps it was time to sample a samosa. Was it goat curry? Was it chicken or vegetarian? She didn’t even care, she simply reached behind herself, wrapped her fingers around one, and … bingo. Extra treat.
The band started up again, the couples and groups mixed and reformed slightly, and she turned her back to everyone to see what her prize was.
A lesser woman might have screamed. A dignified woman might have turned the “pest” over to waitstaff and noted the infestation as future leverage against the governor. Cassandra, as far as anyone knew, was neither of these, and her slender, tapering fingers engaged the little fellow in her grasp, gently but resolutely.
There was a tiny man in a shockingly interesting suit, pinned beneath one of the fresh samosas. Within the shadows of her mask, her eyes strained far to the side to perceive him. Most importantly, he was cute; second to this, he was somewhere he absolutely was not allowed to be. For that alone, she would defend him with her life.
Until that moment, however, she was going to have some fun.
She munched the samosa noisily, steadily, letting him know that it could easily have been him if he weren’t more careful. With a casual sweep across her collar bones, she dropped him into her cleavage, and if he had two clues to rub together in that puny little acorn-skull of his, he’d recognize a lucky break when he saw it.
Under her mask, turned away from the crowd, she nonetheless stifled her gratified smile when she saw that he did recognize such a thing.
The rest of the evening opened up to her. Rather than being the demure wallflower on the periphery of the ball, she felt a renewed motivation to get in there and mingle. First order of business: she made a beeline for Gilroy, who was making time with some saucy piece of fluff whose idea of a masquerade costume was day-glo taffeta and what looked like a Pokémon hoodie. “Gilroy, darling,” she slurred in his ear—he hated it when she was in the cups; hated it worse that she could drink him under the table—“don’t you think it’s time we had a spin around the floor? Let’s show these losers what we’re made of.”
Grinning at the woman freshly of legal drinking age, he gently swatted at her over his shoulder as though she were a mosquito. “Move along, darling, there’s a men’s room waiting for your regularly scheduled disorientation.” One remarkable thing about this man the entire Central time zone seemed to want her to marry was how his jaw worked despite his entire face being injection-molded plastic. Safely dismissed, she made her way to the dance floor by herself, all according to plan.
The tiny man squirmed only slightly between her tits. He was confused, reasonably so, but he was smart enough not to expose himself for very long as he righted himself. She’d dumped him head-first, and even at his size it was probably uncomfortable for all the blood to rush to his head, but the bright boy pulled a slow and sensual 180 in her bosom, leaving his rusty little head peeking only occasionally from her cleavage. He was assessing her, it seemed, and his caution (and his curiosity) pleased her very much.
“Join me for a dance, won’t you,” she murmured, shouldering past the last crust of staid political scamblers and onto the floor. Among the brace of useless, socially viable skills her parents had drummed into her, the waltz had come in handy more often than she liked to admit. Now she spun and swept around the floor, arms sweeping wide yet never interfering with the other dancers. She swooped, trip-tripped, swooped, trip-tripped at unlikely angles that played out well, gathering her shoulders before thrusting her bosom.
Almost in the manner of an empathetic dance partner, her tiny captive knew how long he could keep his head out, staring up at the elegant arc of her throat, her graceful jawline, before tucking himself back into her boobs just as she pulled her shoulders back and half-spun on the floor. Cassandra, as far as anyone knew, was playing a dangerous game with the little man, and the fact that he knew how to manage his end of the gameboard made her … a little gooshy downstairs.
This only called for a challenge, of course. Upping the ante, raising the stakes. To her right was a recently retired Navy officer, only half a generation older than herself and amenable to her invitation to dance. His hips were stiff and his shoulders squared, but he had the wherewithal to show her off to extravagant effect, turning her about and letting her spin and pirouette among the wearier, more perfunctory couples.
The tiny man did not show his face at all at this time. As she matched and rejoined the old sea-salt’s small talk, she kept track of what the little villain was doing on her body. After a minute it seemed he’d dislodged himself from her breasts, and now he struggled against the constriction of her corset (as did she), working his way down her belly.
Oh, he was being daring, this rascal. Unfortunately, her dance partner misinterpreted her dimpled grin as encouragement and launched into oh my goddess who even knew what, which was still useful cover in which for her to nod and uh-huh and pay attention to the tiny trespasser who had slipped past her navel and … no, he wouldn’t.
Would he?
Her eyes brightened, and there was no covering her inappropriate blush, but she made all the requisite listening noises as the hot little lump of the tiny man’s body clawed over her fluttering belly, down and down some more, stymied only briefly by the compression of her corset against the waistband of her undergarments. Only briefly, that is, and electricity sparked through her arms when she felt one minuscule hand swipe through the three-day old stubble of her pubes.
“Thank you so much, rear-admiral,” she burbled, “but if you’ll excuse me, I think the goat curry skewers have an argument they’re dying to stage.” The way this veteran stumbled back spoke an unpleasant truth about the richness of his military career, perhaps, but at any rate the path was clear for her to break from the crowd and find the powder room.