Short Story: Bound to Serve

Here is my short story for the Writing Battle Winter Short Story competition. I was given the genre of Historical Fiction, with the character a servant and the theme wrath. Let me know what you think!

“Hold it still Zet! She cannot bite your fingers anymore.”

His smile, delayed for as long as possible, came crooked, forced, and with the thinnest veil of compliance - I’ll bite your fingers off if you talk to me like that again.

“My humblest and most honourable apology,” came his words. “It seems my palms have become stuck to the creature's skin. I will try my hardest to remain still.”

Zet turned back towards the priest whose shoulders moved up and down with excitement. He hit a tiny chisel with a tiny hammer up the cat’s nostril and the hairless corpse jumped up off the table once more as Zet squirmed.

It wasn’t fair what had happened to him over the last few months, but it had all led to this day; with Zet holding the corpse of his master’s prized cat whilst a barbaric psychopath created a feline brain paste - and lucky old Zet got to share the experience as bits of bone and red matter splattered across his face.

Killing his master should’ve been simple, yet there he was, gurning stupidly across the room at Zet’s blood speckled pate.

It started the day the master’s new wife returned from the slave market with that son of a kat-taht: Amosis, even the name was repulsive, with its serpent like quality. Zet, now there was a strong name. You could spit it out and still have saliva left to swallow your bread.

Zet spat on the ground.

“Careful. We don’t want to taint the corpse.”

Taint the corpse! It looked practically inside out at the moment.

Amosis had been welcomed into the family like a long lost brother, not the next generation of household slave. Zet knew his time would come one day, but that time was far from now. He might yet survive another Pharoah before the gods would take him. But the way Amosis strolled around the house, his youthful muscles oiled and scented. He was a bastard slave, not a chariot racer!

Where Zet’s hair had begun to thin and fade, Amosis’s was curly, black and silken. Zet’s skin hung grey and loose, Amosis’s tanned and smooth. His eyes were bright and energetic, Zet’s drooping and dark. His step quick and gainly, Zet’s slow and lubberly.

But the distaste he felt for his colleague was but a mere spark of discontent compared to the blaze of rage he held for their master.

Zet’s life of service had seen him rise up through the ranks of household slaves like a fresh green shoot through a pile of moulding dung. If there was a job to be done Zet had done it, and done it well too. He was particularly skilled at pre-empting the needs of others, his attention to detail immaculate. He liked to think of himself as pre-emptive, attentive, and coercive. He hadn’t risen to the top without a few little lies whispered into the right ear at the right time.

His first master, Buneb III, had been a noble man, if not a little sour and moody after his wife’s passing and he had died a lonely man, survived by his eldest son - Buneb IV. And what an Asp’s scrotum he had turned out to be.

The house had quickly gone from the most noble and pious in all of Memphis to somewhat of a party palace, with a reputation amongst the local wealthy youths as a place where anything goes. Things settled down somewhat with the introduction of the fair Berenice II.

The marriage of Buneb IV to Berenice the II had been a somewhat royal affair, with the great Pharaoh, Ramesses III, sending his fourth cousin to attend the ceremony on his behalf.

But the introduction of Berenice had begun the power shift in the house. She had disliked Zet from the start. His attempts to influence Buneb’s thoughts and decisions were taken over exclusively by her. The trust and respect afforded to him over the previous decades had been eroded away by the warming embrace of a pair of fleshy bosoms. The arrival of Amosis had been a direct move to replace him, and Zet had been caught off guard by how bluntly she had enacted the change.

However, the crux of his rage, the zenith of his wrathful intent, the moment that had led him down the hate paved path to murder was brought about by her next move - Zet was to become shabti servant to Nearbibi; Berenice’s feline pest.

“Hold out your hands Zet, this is the most important part - the extraction of the brain.” Zet peeled his hands away from the hairless skin and cupped them both together. The priest’s voice was muffled through the Anubis mask but Zet knew how to assist with the mummification process. “Hold them steady now. Once you have the brain I will hold the jar and I want you to place it carefully inside. Understood?”

A foreign slave with a brain injury could understand those instructions.

The priest turned the cat upside down, and, shaking it slightly, pulled the hooked instrument out of the nasal cavity. Lumpy bits of grey sludge slid out of the nose and landed in Zet’s palms. He turned his head away, suppressing the urge to vomit.

It hadn’t taken much persuasion for that little voice at the back of his mind to take over his fantasies regarding how to end the lives of Buneb and Berenice. The arousal of suffering occupied his mind permanently and he spent his days plotting how best to do it. Pain would be important. He wanted them curled up in agony at his feet, to be left broken and malformed by their struggle to cling to life. He also didn’t want to get caught. The punishment for murder was to have your hands and feet cut off before being fed to the crocodiles of the Nile.

His first attempt at murder had been design to take them both out at the same time. Poison would be both painful and slow, and he had the perfect excuse to visit the herbal sellers at the local market. Zet had been suffering with an aching bulge in his groin for some time now. Every time he stooped to pick up Nearbibi’s scat a wave of thunderous pain rippled through his abdomen. He was hoping to pick up a herbal remedy at the market, which gave him the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.

Buying the poisonous plant had been straightforward and the reason he gave the seller (to kill local street dogs) didn’t even raise an eyebrow let alone any suspicion. It seemed no excuse was needed to buy poison in this town. The next step was easy. All he had to do was pour a little of the green herbal powder into the master's food and bide his time. Turtle stew with pears and bread was always a popular choice. At dinner he stood fanning Berenice as she greedily slurped down the stew.

“Amosis, this stew is particularly delicious this evening. Is it a new recipe?” The glee emanating from Zet’s beaming face almost gave him away. But eventually the stew was finished and they moved onto the pears. Finally the hour of bed arrived and Amosis was summoned to the master bedchamber as reward for his stunning culinary creation.

The next morning Buneb and Berenice broke their fast with youthful vigour. “Was that you howling like a dog last night Zet?” asked Berenice. “You will scare the cat making noises like that.” Zet’s increased pain as he hobbled about for the next few days was noted only by Amosis.

Attempt number two only increased Zet’s thirst for blood. Buneb had a deep love for beer and after a heavy drinking session he would be up and down to the toilet all night in a wobbly daze. A cunning and devious opportunity was presented the morning Zet came across Nearbibi hissing at a hooded cobra in the rear orchard. Zet had managed, at great risk to his personal wellbeing, to capture the cobra and render it docile in a reed basket. Now all he had to do was provide Buneb with a flagon of ale (no excuse needed again) and wait for nightfall. Under darkness Zet crept past snoring bedrooms and along the corridor to the toilet closest to the master bedchamber. There he made sure the lid was securely fastened on the long drop before tipping the snake out of the basket and shutting the door.

He had barely slept a wink in anticipation at the grisly surprise Berenice would have on discovering Buneb’s stiff corpse.

“Tighter Zet, you must wrap the bandages tighter, or Nearbibi will not make it to the afterlife. A Shabti servant needs to ensure safe passage. The two of you are bound together in this, your role is only just beginning.” He tightened the bandage around the foreleg with a twist of anger and heard a small crack as the bone broke underneath.

Zet was awoken by a scream. He sprang from his bed, threw his loin cloth around his waist and skipped down the corridor. In front of him stood Buneb and Berenice and Amosis, and they were staring at a corpse laying on the toilet floor.

“Ah Zet, thank goodness you are alright. We had an assassin sneak into the house last night. He hid in the toilet waiting for us all to sleep. See there,” Buneb pointed at an s-shaped track on the dusty floor. “A snake must have gotten into the house, or he brought it with him. Either way he was bitten.”

“That could have been us!” wailed Berenice. She turned to Amosis, “If you hadn’t taken that extra offering to the temple we would have all been killed. However can we thank you?”

Zet’s final and most ambitious murder attempt was also his most brazen. His two previous failures had increased his dark despair. He could wait no longer.

A window ledge looked out over the veranda where Buneb and Berenice ate all of their meals. Zet knew every brick and beam in the house, and this window ledge had been coming loose for years. A lever in the right place was all that was needed for it to fall and crash down on the table below…right where Buneb took his meals.

As a thank you to Amosis for having saved the day a luncheon was prepared. Now was the perfect time. Zet would not wait for another opportunity to kill. He laid the baskets of food in front of the three diners, excused himself and went straight up the stairs to the ledge. The block was heavy and Zet had to brace his leg against the wall to give it some purchase. With two strong heaves the stone block fell away and crashed down on the table below.

He found out later what had happened. Amosis had begun to choke on an olive almost as soon as Zet had left the room and Buneb and Berenice had rushed to his assistance. With plates now left unattended Nearbibi had jumped up onto the table to steal a bite of her master’s food. Seconds later the stone block almost cut her in half as it crashed through the table.

“Well Zet, that is the end. Nearbibi is all set for the afterlife, now it is your turn. Make sure you look after her won’t you? It has been an honour my friend, can I call you that Zet?” A tear ran down Buneb’s cheek. “Well I don’t care about protocol, you have been such a rich part of our lives I almost consider you family. Goodbye, and thank you again.”

The priest held up a curved blade. “Ready for death?” he asked.

By Jamie Baptie (2022)

© Jamie Baptie 2023 All Rights Reserved.