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The author of this story has read and accepted the rules for posting stories. They guarantee that the following story depicts none of the themes listed in the Forbidden Content section of the rules.
The following story is a work of fiction meant for entertainment purposes only. It depicts nonconsensual sexual acts between adults. It is in no way meant to be understood as an endorsement of nonconsensual sex in real life. Any similarities of the characters in the story to real people are purely coincidental.
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- This story is part of the Flash of Desire Tournament
- It competes against Smugglers in the SF match
- Theme: Odd One Out
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Under the Palms
2 March 1931
Quilon District, Princely State of Travancore
‘… and Nangeli sliced off her breasts and gave them to the tax collector on a banana leaf! She died—but the tax was abolished and we Ezhavas gained the right to upper garments,’ Thankamma finishes her story.
Must be just a village tale, I say to myself. I’ve heard a lot of them during the last year and a half spent wandering all over India, living and dressing like the natives, learning their dances and smatterings of the many languages spoken here.
‘That’s awful,’ I answer. My Malayalam is getting better, and I understand Thankamma very well—she is very considerate and uses simple words when she talks to me. For the last month, I’ve been staying at her hut while the young, dusky-skinned widow has been teaching me the dances of the Ezhava, her low-caste people.
I’ve been teaching her… No. Not teaching. I’ve been helping her to discover herself, when our bodies do the speaking. When nothing is forbidden to us.
‘It is awful…’ Thankamma agrees quietly, her strong, calloused fingers kneading my breasts. Thankamma works at the local coir yard, retting coconut husks, beating fibres, spinning ropes and nets. The economic slump has engulfed the whole word, and she has to work harder for less.
The dawn is breaking. Having just put our mundus—waist-cloths—on, we are kissing languidly as we sit the woven mat spread on the mud floor of Thankamma’s thatched hut, my arm encircling her bare torso.
Who would expect to find a young British woman in such an odd situation?
The five silent Nayar men rushing into the hut through the open doorway would.
Their hands are all over our bodies as they drag us, kicking and screaming, outside. ‘Quiet!’ The tall man, the best dressed of our high-caste assailants, tells me in English. ‘Quiet, memsahib!’ Him I know—he owns the coir yard where Thankamma works.
I don’t know what a burra memsahib is supposed to do when she is manhandled by the natives while bare-breasted, but screaming blue bloody murder seems good enough for me—until the second man puts a knife to Thankamma’s throat.
‘Good,’ the Nayar leader says with a thin smile, ogling my bare breasts. ‘I couldn’t believe it when they told me. Two women, a memsahib and this toddy-tapping whore, lying together… What you do is... is… inspired by evil powers you two worship. Go away, evil memsahib. Leave our village alone. You are not welcome here.’
‘I’m not leaving until you let Thankamma go!’ My throat dry, I meet his angry stare.
‘No. Thankamma is ours. In our power. My power,’ the leader says, still ogling me.
‘Wh-what are you g-going to do to her?’ I stutter.
The coir-yard man nods at the stocky, well-muscled Nayar by his side, grimly clutching a thick leather whip.
‘Oh no, no, no, no!’ My voice raises to a scream. ‘You can’t flog her! You can’t!’
‘It’s over. Just… go and don’t look back, Madhavi,’ Thankamma says quietly in Malayalam, calling me by my Indian name, her dark face impassive even if tinged by grey pallor.
‘Look, if you’re going to whip her, you’ll have to whip me too!’ I yell in English. ‘I want to share her fate!’
It’s the only thing I can do.
‘Don’t be silly, memsahib,’ the leader answers. ‘Go away! Now!’
‘Never!’ We the British should leave India, but be that as it may, this Welsh follower of Gandhi is standing her ground!
‘I won’t whip a memsahib. But you, you two evil women who... love wrong. We will show you how. Strip!’
‘Oh no!’ Tears in my eyes, I try to wriggle out of the hold of the fourth man who is clutching my forearms from behind. Next to me, Thankamma groans in shame when her mundu is ripped off her curvy hips, leaving her naked.
‘Strip or we kill the dirty toddy tapper!’
‘Forgive me,’ I whisper to Thankamma. She smiles with her eyes until she is thrown on the ground.
‘Please don’t hurt her! I’ll do what you want,’ I say.
The man behind me frees my arms. They seem not to belong to me as I unwrap the mundu. Out of the corner of my eye, blurred by my tears, I see the stocky Nayar on top of Thankamma.
Now nude, I turn aside from my lover and lie down on the damp ground, fixing my gaze at the palm fronds swaying gently in the breeze.
The large hands on my knees.
Thankamma has taught me to move like the palm fronds… The flow. The side-sway...
The leader rams into my dry pussy, and I choke down the cry. He spends quickly—my pussy is tight, and I must be his first white woman. I stay silent. Short groans is all they force out of our throats, even when Thankamma and I have to take two men each at once, the fifth, the odd man out, stroking his prick, watching his friends penetrate our pussies and arseholes, our sweaty bodies pushed to and fro on the ground. Over the shoulders of our defilers, we look one another in the eyes. I want to think it makes us stronger.
Sated, the men leave us on the ground—two exhausted bodies, one dark, one pink-tanned, stretched under the tropical sun, splatters of seed drying on our skin.
‘I’m sorry—I’m sorry—I’m sorry…’ I keep whispering.
‘Let’s go,’ Thankamma says without looking at me, sitting up.
‘You need to leave, Madhavi,’ she tells me when we finish washing the filth off our bodies.
I know that’s true. ‘What about you?’
‘That’s our land. The Ezhava land. I’ll live somehow. And we’ll do like they did in Russia,’ Thankamma says firmly.
I kiss her goodbye. How I wish I shouldn’t have.
