Remittance Girl's Blog, page 2

The Baptism

(Originally published in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 9, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, 2010)

1870, Annam, French Indochina

The church of Dak Rede was a small wattle-and-plaster affair, perched inconveniently on the crest of a hill, just beyond the reach of the humid clutches of the jungle. Its placement, however, afforded the cool morning and evening breezes so dismally lacking down in the village below.

The young, recently ordained Jesuit priest surveyed his meagre and apathetic congregation with a sigh. Kissing the surplice in his hands, he draped it over his narrow shoulders. There were only five congregants: two he had bribed to attend with a promise of rice, and one was asleep and snoring, even before Father Jean-Michel had intoned the first few words of the Latin mass.

He’d been sent to the Kon Tum highlands of central Annam, to this poor, insignificant village, to bring the word of Christ to these wretched natives, to save their ignorant souls from eternal damnation. But as far as he could tell, they were all – and he included himself in this – already there.

No amount of coaxing would induce the attendees to participate in any of the proscribed responses; he’d given up trying to make them do it. So he simply said them himself. He quickly finished the reading of the gospel and skipped the sermon altogether. Father Jean-Michel didn’t speak Vietnamese and the only person in the village who spoke French with any real fluency was a Chinese apothecary who resolutely refused to attend mass.

As he launched with as much vigour as he could muster into the Credo, somewhere, close by, a late-sleeping cockerel woke up and began screeching its existence to the whole village. As the priest invited the worshipers to the table of Christ, in Latin, the chicken was calling out, “Here I am, I’m dinner! Come and get me,” in a language much more familiar to the souls he was attempting, and failing miserably, to save.

He turned, as proscribed, and opened the little doors of the tabernacle, to retrieve the communion implements. He deftly flicked a dead cockroach off the tarnished silver salver, before turning back to place the things on the altar.

To his surprise, he realized that while his back had been turned, his congregation had grown. Three young, almost identical women had slipped into the back of the church and seated themselves in the last pew. Pretty maids all in a row, mused Father Jean-Michel vaguely, as he performed the transubstantiation – changing the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

At the appropriate time, he perfunctorily invited his congregation to take the host, assuming no one was listening, and no one would come up to the altar to receive it. They never did. But to his amazement, the three girls, for what else could he call them, filed up to the front and presented themselves in a line. It took Father Jean-Michel a moment to get over the shock. He quickly took up the plate and went to the rail, unable to take his eyes off the trio. Each wore the same dark silk tunic over white silken pants, each wore their hair in identically long and neatly plaited braids, each looked up at him from under epicanthic lidded, almond-shaped eyes.

“The body of Christ,” he said, holding a small round wafer out to the first one. She took it in the palm of her hand and placed it on her tongue discreetly, giving him, he was almost positive, a hint of a smile.

“Body of Christ,” he repeated, stepping before the second girl. No – not a girl – for at close range their superficial samenesses evaporated. This one was a little shorter and more rounded of body. In fact, her breasts were remarkably large for a native of the Indochine, where most women possessed boyish, androgynous figures by European standards. Father Jean-Michel gave himself a mental chastisement and held out the host. This girl did not hold up her hands for it, but opened her mouth instead, offering the tip of an impossibly red, betel-stained tongue. Despite his best efforts, the priest’s heart began to race as he placed the wafer on her tongue and watched it disappear into that dark, velvety interior. Her lips closed, shutting him out, and she whispered, “Amen.” The priest shook himself out of his reverie and moved on.

The third was the tallest. He looked into her face, expecting the same lowered eyes as the other two, but this one’s gaze did not waver from his – it pushed back as if having substance and power in its own right. He had the sensation of having something thick, black and viscous forced down his throat.

“Body of Christ,” he managed, after freeing his gaze from her eyes. He stared at her mouth.

The woman’s lips were almost obscenely plump. Like a ripe purple plum, squeezed and split in two along its cleft, they parted to reveal an almost serpentine tongue. It slithered out, curling at the tip like a whore beckoning a client. It required all the willpower the priest had to raise the host and lay it upon that profane altar. His fingers shook as he did and brushed against her open lips.

In that instant, he felt a needle-like sting that made him snatch his hand back. Glancing down, he noticed a small drop of blood had budded like a carnal pearl from a tiny wound at the tip of his index finger. Father Jean-Michel returned his gaze to the woman’s mouth, confused. But it had already closed, her luxuriant lips curved into a smile.

Unable to quell a sudden and overpowering vertigo, the priest stepped back, jostling and almost upsetting the altar.

“Go…go in peace,” he croaked, and stumbled toward the back door of the church.

* * *

Every muscle ached, as if he’d been caught like prey in the coils of a boa constrictor. Father Jean-Michel had, like everyone else in Indochina, suffered numerous bouts of fever, but this felt like none he’d ever had before. He groaned pitifully, pulling himself free of his miserable, sweat soaked sheets. Lethargy dragged at his shoulders and it was only after what felt like a monstrous battle that he managed to sit up and hang his legs over the side of the cot.

It was late afternoon and the rains had started. The murky green light that always accompanied the monsoon storms gave his room and the view of the village beyond his window an underwater quality. Nothing could be done, nothing accomplished until the downpour was over, and Father Jean-Michel granted himself the refuge of curling back up on the mean pallet and retreating into fevered dreams.

He dreamed of dragons, huge and sinuous, moving through the ebony waters in a river gorge. There were three of them; iridescent scales breached the placid surface here and there, meeting to intertwine before dispersing to pursue their solitary frolics again. The dreams left uncomfortable erotic echoes that coiled like the dragons themselves in the pit of his stomach and groin. The priest rolled over, struggling to purge himself of the afterimages, and stared at the wall beside the bed. The paint had peeled back and flaked away to reveal a conspiracy of black mould. In his fevered state, the stains on the wall took on ominous shapes. Someone – the last priest to be posted to the village, Jean-Michel assumed – had scratched the word ‘merde’ into the soft, crumbling plaster with a fingernail.

Oh, God, what had he done to deserve this?

What had possessed him to say those things to the Bishop of Ruen? Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut? This posting in the deepest of all hells had been his Dantean punishment for remarking that if the Church really cared about its flock, it might consider spending less money on itself and more on the poor. Two months after the quip had been made, he’d found himself struggling up the muddy hill track to the village with a coolie behind him carrying his few possessions. He had been assured that the priest he was replacing would be there to help him settle in, but the Church and the crumbling residence had been abandoned for more than a month.

“Pere…”

Father Jean-Michel groaned again and rolled over.

“Pere!”

He sat up, clutching the damp sheet around him, head spinning, nausea overwhelming him.

His servant, Hai, hovered at the threshold to the priest’s room. “There is a woman asking for you.”

“Really? Oh.”

He felt so ill, the priest considered telling Hai to ask her to come back another time. But in nine months, no one had ever come to see him, no one had ever called him to perform last rites, or officiate at a wedding. How would it play out in the village if, the first time anyone bothered to ask for his help, he sent them away?

“Tell her I will come shortly. Just give me a moment to get dressed.”

He waited until Hai retreated back into the shadow of the hallway, and forced himself to get up. At first his legs felt so weak, he was unsure he could keep himself upright, but he took a few deep breaths and blinked, and stumbled over to where his underclothes and his cassock lay, draped over the back of a chair.

* * *

Hai brought tea for the visitor, as Father Jean-Michel hobbled into the reception room. Like everywhere else in the house, it smelled of damp and rot. No matter how thoroughly he tried to air it out. The climate’s corrupting influence was everywhere, and would not be defeated.

His visitor sat on the hard mahogany bench that served as a sofa. It was impossible to see her, for a heavy black veil almost entirely covered her head. She wore a loose, dusty black tunic that exposed only a pair of almost bone-white hands, as if two dead albino spiders had crawled up and died in her lap.

“Madam?” he said, cordially, wincing soundlessly when he lowered his aching bones into the chair opposite hers. The priest nodded his head at Hai, who hovered in the shadows of the room, waiting. “Will you take tea, Madam?”

“No…Father. I won’t.” The voice rustled and hissed like dry leaves on a stone path.

Although the rain was still pouring down in sheets, and the room was very dim, Father Jean-Michel looked into the tunnel of the woman’s headscarf, and almost recoiled at the sight. His guest’s face stared out from the surrounding layers. Two shiny black eyes set into a hideous face. Pale skin stretched tautly over her bones in such a way that it was impossible not to think he was looking into the eyes of a cadaver. But the oddest thing was that the woman had a dreadful skin complaint. The skin itself was seamed in such a way as to give her the appearance of having scales instead of human skin. A lipless slit of a mouth smiled at him, revealing a toothless black maw. “Today you met my daughters, I think.”

The woman’s French was accented, but understandable. It was the slurry, rasping sound that was disconcerting. “Ah,” said the priest. “Yes, yes. They came to mass. Your daughters?” Impossible that three such exquisite creatures had come from the womb of this… atrocity.

“Indeed. And they have asked me to come to you, and make a petition on their behalf.”

Father Jean-Michel nodded, still unable to stop himself from staring into the shadowed ruin of her face. “A petition? Of course, I would be happy to accommodate you in any way I can, Madam. If I can,” he added, remembering when a parishioner had asked him to bless his pigs for luck. “What can I do for them?”

“They want to be baptised.”

The priest was shocked into silence for some moments. My God, he thought, perhaps all my efforts to bring the Gospel to this place of spiritual emptiness had finally born fruit. Then he remembered the morning’s mass. “Baptised? But they took communion this morning. They acted as if…” He hesitated a moment. “One is not supposed to take communion without first undergoing conversion, and being baptised,” he said. The words came out quickly, like an outrage or an admonishment. This wasn’t the way to attract people to the faith, he thought. “Well, it’s not usual,” he added, in a softer tone.

An uncanny, bubbling noise emerged from the old woman sitting opposite and her small, black frame twitched. It took Jean-Michel a moment to realize she was laughing. “Forgive them Father. In everything my daughters are impulsive and over-eager. It was youthful exuberance, and not a lack of respect.”

“And you, Madam, are you a Christian?”

“No.”

“I would be honoured if you would allow me to perform the sacrament of baptism for you as well.”

Again the little black form shook, and the bubbling returned. “No-no. I am far too old for all that.”

“But for that very reason, Madam. Baptism would ensure your place in God’s everlasting kingdom. It is never too late.”

With the sound of clicking bones, the heavily covered woman got to her feet. “Oh, it is far too late for me, Priest. A different kingdom awaits me. ” The finality in her words would tolerate no argument. She shuffled on small, hidden feet to the entrance, opened the door before Hai could reach it for her, and stepped out into the torrential rain.

* * *

“I do not like that lady, Father.”

“A baptism,” the priest said, clasping his hands together, his illness and fever forgotten. “Three baptisms in fact! This is wonderful. Wonderful!”

“Pere?”

“I shall…I think…” Father Jean-Michel paced around the reception room in a high state of excitement. Suddenly he stopped and tilted his head towards the ceiling. “Oh, thank you. Thank you, Lord! You won’t be sorry. I’ll bring your Gospels to this wilderness yet!”

“Pere!”

The priest glanced at Hai with annoyance. “What? What? Can’t you see? This is the beginning of everything. And in this place… I shall honour the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. Not in a mean little font like they do in Ruen, but like St. John did, in the river. I will baptize these women in the river!”

Hai shrugged. “Take care, mon Pere. I do not like that woman.”

It brought the priest to a halt. “What do you mean you don’t like her? How ridiculous! What’s the matter with you?”

Shrugging again, Hai collected the teapot and the cups neatly back onto the tray, and picked it up. “She’s ugly…very ugly.”

“And so you don’t like her! Typical of the outrageous ignorance and lack of Christian compassion among your countrymen. The poor woman is obviously suffering from an illness. That’s no reason to dislike her.”

The servant lowered his head and shuffled towards the scullery with the tea tray. “Inside herself, she is very ugly.”

“One should not paint others with one’s own sins, Hai,” called the priest. “After all, God has forgiven you the sin of sodomy.”

* * *

By the following Saturday, Father Jean-Michel had ensured that everything was prepared. He had sent word to the daughters through the apothecary in the village that they should meet him by the bank of the river at nine o’clock in the morning, and that they should bring towels and dress in white. At first the old Chinaman had refused, but the priest had nagged and bullied and nagged again until the apothecary had finally relented, for a twenty Piastre bribe.

“And tell the rest of the village,” Father Jean-Michel had said, “they can come and witness the sacrament if they want to. Perhaps if they see it, they won’t be so reluctant to participate.”

The day dawned humid and overcast, but the weather could not dampen the priest’s spirits. He performed his own ablutions and devotions, taking his special white cassock out of mothballs and slipping it over his naked body. He would go to the river barefoot, as John the Baptist had done.

Nothing could dampen his spirits as he rushed around the residence, packing his special bible – the one he’d been given at his ordination – a small envelope of salt, and a vial of holy water into a basket.

“Come now, Hai. You can help me. You can assist me in the administration of the sacrament.”

The servant looked pale, as if he’d had no sleep the night before. “No, mon Pere,” he said, in a very odd voice. “It’s not an auspicious day for this. Please don’t go to the river. Do it some other time.”

Jean-Michel stared at him angrily. “Don’t be a superstitious fool! Any day is a good day for a baptism. Come along now.”

“Father, I… I do not feel well. I cannot go with you. Please don’t make me.”

“Idiot!” the priest said, shaking his head. “Fine then, you lazy, good-for-nothing sinner. Don’t come!” He walked out of the residence, making sure to slam the door behind him.

As he began his walk down to the river, his anger at Hai smoldered like a stick of incense, but then he reasoned that it would not be pleasing to God if he performed the Baptisms with bitterness in his heart. Silently he mouthed a prayer as he picked his way through the jungle scrub and approached the edge of the river.

They were there waiting for him, and dressed just as he had instructed in pure, virginal white. Joy surged in Father Jean-Michel’s heart. They looked like three incarnations of the blessed Virgin Mary, with their lustrous dark hair loose and hanging about their shoulders.

“Good morning,” he called, as he approached them. All three turned in his direction and, almost as one, gave him a slight bow.

“Children, beautiful children of Christ! This is a wonderful day. God has brought a miracle to this wilderness.” The priest spoke with his arms held wide. “Today you will be reborn into everlasting life!”

The priest put down the basket, after retrieving the vial of holy water. He turned towards the river, uncorking the vial, and let the liquid drain upon the wet riverbank, asking God to bless this place as a site of rebirth for the three young women.

He turned and beckoned the women down to the water, glancing around in the hope that some of the other villagers had come to watch, but they were alone. He shook off his disappointment and, picking up his bible and the small twist of salt, said: “I have taken the liberty of choosing your Christian names. These will be the names by which you are called to the Catholic faith.”

The priest was not altogether sure they understood everything he said, but it mattered not; he was saving their souls and, after all, that’s what counted. Wading out deeper into the water, he stopped only when it reached his waist.

The cool liquid seeped through his cassock and it billowed out around him in the gentle current. “Come,” he said to the tallest, reaching out his hand. “Don’t be afraid, Christ is with us.”

The girl he’d beckoned smiled and stepped into the water. As she approached him, it seemed to Father Jean-Michel that she was changing already; her face shone with an unearthly radiance.

To his amusement, the other girls followed their sister. “One at a time,” he said and chuckled. “I cannot baptize you all at once.” But they didn’t seem to understand, and came towards him, gliding as if free of earthly gravity.

The tallest girl put her hand on his arm. “My sisters want to be near me, Father. Please allow them.”

The priest smiled, and nodded, paging his bible open to the page. “Alright then. We must begin.” He turned to the tallest girl. “Do you renounce all other faiths and give yourself wilfully to the holy mother church?”

She inclined her head and smiled. “Of course.”

Father Jean-Michel unwrapped the twist of paper containing the salt and pinched a few grains with his fingers. “Open your mouth, child.”

The girl before him lurched in the water. It seemed she lost her footing in the current, because before he could stop her, she’d pressed herself up against him, her dark red mouth open, her face too close to his. He stepped backwards to allow himself the room to administer the salt, but there was someone behind him. He turned to look, and was confronted with her smiling, rounder sister. “Oh… I’m…”

Hands touched him in the water. He turned again, only to be faced with the third girl, who pulled the bible from his hand and stretched out her arm, casually letting it float away on the current.

“No…no,” he said, confused. “This is not how it…”

A pair of slender arms slipped under his own and embraced him from behind, and the other two were suddenly on him, pressing their ripe lips to his face, his neck, his mouth. He felt the combined weight of the sisters pulling him down into the water, and further into the middle of the stream.

Sinuous bare legs entwined with his beneath the surface. Hands slithered and caressed his bare flesh. “No,” he cried out. “No…”

They did not stop. The one he had been planning to name Mary lifted her robe over her head and, smiling the same impassive smile as the other sister, released it to the river’s hunger. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him lewdly, mouth open, her curved tongue working its way into his mouth.

Behind, he could feel breasts pressing into him, rubbing hard, cruel nipples into his back. Unseen fingers closed around his cock and stroked it. The priest wanted to fight them, wanted to push them all away, but even as he dreamed that short dream, his will evaporated as the blood coursed into his cock, making it instantly hard.

“He is ready,” one of them whispered. “You first, older sister.”

The sensation of carnivorous, enveloping heat made him whimper, and the sister at his lips slipped a long, satisfied hissing breath into his mouth. Jean-Michel felt his soul abandon him, releasing a long-dormant beast within his heart. He reached beneath the surface and grabbed at Mary’s exquisitely formed ass, pushing her onto his cock. Her hips rolled as she rode him, holding him tight with her legs, her tight, hot passage milking him. She gave a low growl and bit into his lower lip.

Pain and pleasure bloomed in equal measure. He savoured his own blood on his lips at the same time she did. The taste triggered something inside her, for she tilted back her bloody mouth and keened as her body shuddered violently. Then just as suddenly at it had begun, she released him, wriggling free of his grasp, and floated away, licking her lips.

Almost immediately, the little round sister – the one he had called Elizabeth – took her older sister’s place. She gazed into his eyes for a moment and he saw himself reflected, distorted, in hers.

Opening her mouth, a long flat tongue flashed out and lapped at his face, picking up the blood that her older sister had left behind. Jean-Michel embraced her, lifting her higher in the water and pressing his hungry mouth to her round, firm breast. Arms encircled his head and pressed him to it.

Beneath the water, a curious caress – then arms surrounded his hips and a burning mouth took his cock, fellating him as he nursed ravenously on the breasts at his face. Not possible, he managed to think, although his mind was a riot of desire and sensation. The mouth at his cock was unbearably clever. A rough tongue writhed away at the underside, even as the gorgeous sucking continued. He pumped his hips in the water, feeling the head slip into a tight throat. Another body was at his back, rubbing frantically against his skin. The sensation was unexpectedly rough, as though the unseen girl’s flesh was as coarse as scales.

“Oh, God,” he moaned, reaching back to touch the woman who tormented him from behind.

He felt another pain, this one at his neck, sharper and deeper than the first. The mouth around his cock was gone and the girl in his arms slid down his body, impaling herself on him.

The pain didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the sweet cunt that drew itself up and down on his rod. Thrusting upwards, he heard the girl grunt with pleasure and so he plunged into her again, and again, each time increasing the violence of his penetration. She pressed her face to his neck, feeding as he fucked. With each hungry suck, he felt his cock harden and grow until he could hardly squeeze into her passage. She left off feeding, flung back her head and groaned.

Never had Father Jean-Michel taken the Old Testament literally, but now he knew without a doubt that he was having congress with demons. The moment he realized it, the girl in front of him changed. The pale skin of her neck and breast took on a new texture. As she lowered her head, the eyes that met his were those of a serpent, and between her plump lips, needle-sharp fangs glinted in the grey, morning light.

Despite the acute pleasure, he shoved her away, but he needn’t have bothered, for she released her grip on him with a serpentine smile.

“Get thee behind me, Satan,” he shouted, backing away desperately, towards the river’s bank.

Arms surrounded him from behind, blocking his way. The thing that slithered its way between his legs was not human, but the tail of a serpent. “My little sister has not had her fill yet,” whispered a voice at his ear.

The priest tried to turn around, but the lamia clung to him. The sisters in the water swam towards him with undulating strokes. Before he could protest again, they were on him. The youngest, the one he’d planned to call Magdalen, slithered up his body. Her beautiful, inhuman form swayed hypnotically, locking him with her eyes. She mounted him with a sigh.

The fear, the revulsion, the hate, all drained away the moment she enveloped him, for hers was the most delicious of all carnal embraces. He knew in that moment that his life was over. And in that same moment, the priest surrendered. His hips arched upwards into the clutches of that deadly beauty. In only a few thrusts he was lost. Seating his cock fully, he cried out and poured his seed into the lamia’s womb. Warm, scaled bodies surrounded him even before he finished coming, pulling him under the cool waters of the river.

Veiled Girl With Lute – Audio Version Reposted

As the publishing restrictions on this long short story have expired, I’ve re-uploaded the audio version of this tale. Please be warned: this is erotic fiction, not romance. The story deals with not only mature but transgressive subjects, including non-consent and violence. Like all transgressive literature, it is morally ambiguous; specifically, the story eroticises torture – which is absolutely reprehensible. It’s entirely natural that you should be morally offended, as long as you keep in mind that this is fiction, and intentionally examines a transgressive theme within the bounds of fiction.

It’s available, at my Libsyn podcast page here

Episode 1 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute
Episode 2 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-2-0
Episode 3 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-3-0
Episode 4 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-4-0
Episode 5 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-5-0
Episode 6 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-6-0
Episode 7 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-7-0
Episode 8 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-8-0
Episode 9 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-9-0
Episode 10 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-10-0
Episode 11 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-11-0
Episode 12 http://remittancegirl.libsyn.com/veiled-girl-with-lute-part-12-0

If you are an iTunes user, these podcasts/episodes will eventually turn up on my iTunes page (it usually takes about 24 hours)

The Travails of Dr. Linh: Neglected Gardens

[image error]Clever people say you can never truly go home but, in my experience, it’s almost depressingly the opposite. Too often, you can’t escape it. Standing in the humid midnight, beneath an old mango tree, I looked up at the pontianak dangling from a branch. It was a young one, with long, tangled black hair, wearing a ridiculously diaphanous white shift. I thought of all the money my parents had wasted on my excellent Western education and sighed.

“Get the fuck out of this tree, bitch,” I called up.

The spirit hissed again and rubbed her thighs together seductively. Even amidst the cloying reek of decay, the scent of ripe cunt was pungent.

As if.

It’s not that I don’t like women. Personally, I prefer them to men. But I don’t go for the supernatural kind, especially ones with claws on their shoulders and an appetite for human blood.

“Ain’t gonna work on me, missy. Move along, now. You’re upsetting Mrs. Bui and you almost gave her husband a heart attack. Piss off back to the swamp.”

The pontianak’s thick, wicked talons tightened around the branch, scoring the living wood, making it creak. A cloud skittered across the moon, turning the shadows in the trash-strewn garden into darker, wetter places. I sighed again and rummaged in my pocket.

“You can go, or you can die. It’s really up to you.”

“Fuck you, witch. I like this place. The woman is old and ugly. I will take her husband’s seed, and this garden will be mine.” The voice was high and glasslike.

I shook my head. “No, you really won’t. Promise. But I’m offering you this one time deal to find somewhere else to hang out. Or else.”

“Or else what?” The demoness mocked. “Are you good at climbing trees, four eyes? Bet the boys don’t sniff around you much. Look at you!”

I hate it when they get personal like that. “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I pulled the rice out of my pocket and sprinkled it around the base of the tree, chanting softly. Inviting the rats to come and savour it. Then, pulling a few sticks of incense out of my backpack, I stuck them in a crevice in the tree’s bark and lit them. This time, I chanted another summons, inviting the bats to feast on the ripe and succulent mangos weighing down the tree’s limbs. Of course it wasn’t the season for them yet, but the sweet, fruity scent of the incense would trick them into coming near.

Close by, the undergrowth began to rustle. Hundreds of tiny, pebble-bright eyes looked out from between leaves and from under the broken crockery, the rotting chicken cages, and the fallen masonry. Above my head, the soft fluttering of leathery wings, and the piercing calls began.

“What are you doing, witch?”

Ignoring the question, I stepped back just in time for a glistening brown carpet emerged from the shadows and encircled the base of the tree. Sharp white teeth snatched at the grains of rice, a thousand pairs of whiskers twitched, glistening little black noses rose up, scenting the tree’s obscene fruit.

“Come, little creatures of the dark. The Buddha in his mercy and generosity bids you eat your fill,” I whispered.

“No. No!” Screeched the pontianak.

If the clouds above my head had subdued the moon’s light, the thousands of black, furless wings almost eclipsed it completely. The fruit bats gyred around the tree in ever tightening circles, their cries painting the demoness with sound, honing in on the largest, juiciest thing in the tree. And the rats, all the rice devoured, rivered up the gnarled old trunk, in such numbers, cloaking the ancient mango in a coat of living fur.

I didn’t stay to watch her demise. I’d seen the trick work often enough. It wasn’t pretty. In the morning, Mrs. Bui would find a torn and bloodied shift at the mango’s base and I’d send my housekeeper, Lan, for my fee and the strong recommendation that she clean up the garden.

Evil thrives in abandonment and chaos.

State of Fear

[image error]I very rarely post political stuff on this site, but I’m breaking my rule.

We are being steadily acclimatised to live in a state of constant fear. We are being trained to it by the media who profits from it, from the political elites who use it to manipulate us, by a financial system that trades on it and enslaves us with it.

While it is easy to point at the people who voted for Brexit and dismiss them as uneducated racists and xenophobes–while it is marvelous fuel for our self-righteous anger–it doesn’t help. A 52% majority voted, ostensibly, to leave the EU, but when you break down the reasons for voting that way, what you find is a group of people who’ve been manipulated into focusing their fear and anger on the other. People who grabbed the tiny moment of power being offered to them and who were shamelessly steered into doing something very destructive with it. They don’t want to recognise or admit this – who would? Who would want to acknowledge that they’d been used in this appalling way? Who wants to cop to being an extra in a Frankenstein film?

And while I voted to remain, I have always been critical of the power structure that runs the EU. It does need to change and, in my opinion, staying in and working toward that change was important, not just for Britain, but for the stability of Europe.

But I was on the losing side; I accept that. But I don’t accept that, now the decision has been made, we can go back to business as usual and continue to tolerate a system that has been responsible for a rapidly widening wealth gap, a political elite who use a population as fodder, an erosion of worker’s rights, a complete disdain for the truth and for expertise, an engine that manufactures fear and division and uses it to their purpose.

I will not be governed by the likes of Boris Johnson. Brexit and the break-up of the United Kingdom can be firmly and incontrovertibly laid at the door of ten years of Tory pillage. Nor will I be governed by Blairites who materially contributed to the fundamentally immoral social, political and economic trajectory that has led us to this place of blatant self-interest and the smug, pitiless commodification of everything that constitutes the humanity in us.

Join me in spirit.

The Unsightly Eroticism of Trauma: A Review of Constraint

[image error]It would be so much easier for the cause of social justice if our erotic fantasies would fall in line with progressive, feminist doctrine; the uncomfortable truth is that they often don’t. There are plenty of women and men who live with the uncomfortable inner turmoil of acknowledging that, while passionate and active supporters of gender equality, sex-positivism, inclusivity, and the importance of consent in the real world, they also harbour erotic inner lives that are very deeply aroused by the opposite. This curious dichotomy has always interested me. I’ve spent the better part of fifteen years trying to understand it: talking to people who recognize this paradox in themselves, reading about the phenomena of internal conflict, writing creatively on the subject myself in an effort to see if some sense can be had from it. I haven’t completely solved the puzzle, but I think I’ve come to a deeper understanding of it.

Siri Ousdahl’s Constraint is a fictional work that depends on a very problematic erotic trope: rape. Some use labels like ‘dubious consent’ or even ‘non-consent’ but I reject this as a reluctance to broach the matter honestly. The main female protagonist of this fiction–a rather socially isolated contemporary artist named Linnea–is drugged, kidnapped and engaged with sexually against her will over a long period of time. To call it anything other than rape is disingenuous.

Genre and authorial approach have a considerable bearing on an examination of any novel where rape is central to the plot. If Constraint were a thriller where the focus of the protagonist’s experience was of fighting her way to freedom, people might consider it an emancipatory text. But this is not the case. If the narrative consistently emphasized the outrage and horror of the rapes in the story, scrupulously stuck to language reflecting moral condemnation of the events, or downplayed the protagonist’s changing response to them, it would be far less disturbing.

Not everyone was turned on by lurid imagery of Fay Wray struggling against the vines as a bestial King Kong prodded her, but many were and ashamed to admit it even to themselves. The same can be said for works like The Collector, written by John Fowles and The Night Porter, directed by Liliana Cavani. We have always had a slow but steady trickle of works that addressed the titillating potential of ‘capture and ravishment’ narratives. These days it’s not hard to find ‘erotica’ novels that exploit this particular quirk in our libidinal fantasies but few do so without glossing over our discomfort with the darkness of it. They often use language, imagery or clunky plot devices that ‘softens’ or glosses over the immorality and abjection at the core of the fantasy. More disturbingly, the news media makes a great deal of money by addressing our unsettling attraction/disgust response to real life horrors like the case of Josef Fritzl, employing a barrage of moral outrage to obscure the fact that it’s feeding an appetite for dark voyeurism.

Constraint is a brave and literary novel because it unflinchingly addresses the reality that, for some readers (by no means all readers), the premise of the novel is both arousing and problematic and problematic because it arouses us. This takes a considerable level intellectual and literary skill to force the reader to own the ambivalent nature of an eroticism that is both arousing and morally reprehensible. And this, in my estimation, is what Ousdahl does. There are no heroes in Constraint, nor are there any excuses. No false moral outrage, no cringingly convenient plot devices that offer the reader shelter, no patronizing, didactic subtext. Nor does the author seek to find cover for herself in pastiche or cliché; the prose is exceptionally well crafted, the imagery is strong and sometimes deeply poetic. For me, the theme of living with paradox and inner conflict runs through the entire novel, in the symbolically forced pairing of uncooperative materials that are a feature of the protagonist’s sculpture.

Constraint addresses and feeds an unarguably transgressive erotic fantasy. But what I want to argue is that, counter-intuitively, Constraint would not be effective as an erotic novel if we weren’t essentially moral beings. Transgression is fundamentally different from disavowal. In order to transgress a law or a taboo, one must recognize the moral authority, the intrinsic value to society, of the law or taboo being broken. Conversely, concepts like consent would have little importance or sacredness for us if they weren’t fragile and vulnerable to profanation. If we had no fear of the taboo of rape, gave no moral authority to the supremacy of consent, this story wouldn’t be truly transgressive.

And so we are left at the end–which I will not spoil for you– much like the protagonist: in the uncomfortable position of owning our own paradoxical natures, coming to terms with the fact that what is most human about us is also maddeningly inconsistent. And that we are marvelously fortunate to have a sphere, in fiction, in which to explore the parts of us that are better never explored in reality.

I strongly recommend Siri Ousdahl’s Constraint as a piece of transgressive literary erotic fiction: outrageous, offensive, triggering, and very hot. We live in a consumer society that falsely markets ‘transgression’ as a comfortably consumable product. But anything that can be ‘comfortably consumed’ cannot be, by definition, transgressive. It is available in Kindle format via Amazon here

 

Little Prick

This is a revisitation of a much shorter piece that I reworked.

[image error]I sat up amid the swaddle of bedding in the berth and rolled up the sleeve of my cotton nightdress, waiting in a tangle of fear and anticipation, hating the idea of having a piece of metal stuck in my arm and yet bearing the pathetic hope that the medicine would make me feel instantly better. As the minutes ticked by and the ship continued to roll, always it seemed in the opposite direction to both my head and my stomach, the idea of the needle changed from frightening to benevolent and then to a mythical instrument of deliverance. My desire to feel its prick, to see it slide beneath the surface of my skin grew in proportion to the misery of my nausea.

To my twelve-year old eyes, the ship’s doctor was a god. Austere and handsome and uniformed in a crisp white shirt with gold on the epaulets, he had watery blue eyes and sandy blond hair that was going grey just in front of his ears. He entered the cabin, requisite stethoscope dangling from his neck, carrying the sort of bag borne by doctors in really old films. He was so perfectly doctorish and he was going to cure me.

“I hear there’s a very sick little girl in this cabin,” he said, closing the door behind him.

For a moment, I thought the seasickness had gone. “I’m not a little girl,” I said. “I’m almost thirteen.”

“Oh, pardon me,” he said, putting his bag down and unlatching it. He glanced back at me and smiled. “A very sick young lady.”

The nausea came back just in time to swish and break against the wave that was tilting the ship in the other direction.  I just nodded, worried that if I opened my mouth, there’d be vomit instead of words.

The wrapped syringe he took out of his bag looked small and well meaning. So did the little bottle of clear liquid he placed on the lipped dressing table. It shifted slightly as the ship rolled again.

“I can confidently guarantee that you’re going to feel much better in less than ten minutes.” The doctor tore the wrapper off the syringe and uncapped it. Standing with his feet apart, he held it up to the light as he pushed the little needle into the soft pink rubber top of the bottle and drew out the clear liquid.

Ten minutes. I pushed up my sleeve. How long is ten minutes? I could die in ten minutes. Ten minutes seemed ten years too long.

A tiny spurt of liquid erupted from the tip of the needle and he placed it, with a plink, into a little metal tray. Back in his black bag, he rummaged around and pulled out a little foil square, which he ripped open. I could smell the sharp sting of alcohol, like a soothing promise, and yanked my sleeve up higher, over my shoulder.

The ship’s doctor tilted his head and gave me a consolatory smile. “No, I’m afraid this one doesn’t go in your arm. Please lie down on your side and face the wall.”

Maybe I wouldn’t have been struck dumb in horror had he been uglier, or a lot older, or wearing a white coat, or if I’d been in a doctor’s office, or if I’d had the foresight to wear undies under my nightgown.

“Go on, lie down,” he prompted.

Heart racing and my stomach knotting, I slid back down into the berth, rolled on my side, and stared at the mute, semi-gloss bulkhead.

“That’s a good girl.”

He pulled the covers down with what I imagine now was utter dispassion. But trapped in a slow, stately ritual of monstrous humiliation, I lay frozen, unbreathing as he drew up the hem of my nightgown with embroidered strawberries on it. I felt his hand on my thigh, warm as took the fabric with it, baring me in a terrible unhurriedness. Up over my hip. The coolness of the air against my butt was my only measure of exactly how horribly naked I was under that nightie.

In fairness to the doctor, he was probably doing all of this with as much efficient speed as possible in consideration of the 300 other upchucking passengers he had yet to see, but to me, stars were born exploded and became red dwarfs over the course of my modesty’s total annihilation.

“Now,” he said, swabbing the upper part of my left butt cheek with the chill alcohol swab,  “You’re going to feel a little prick. Just a little one.”

It was the faceless voice, bored and cold and topped with the cherry of superficial optimism, which would, in later years, send my thigh muscles into clenched quivers. It was the admonition to lie-completely-still-please that would bring the blood to my chest and cheeks and turn my nipples into hard little beads of need. But, most of all, it was that moment when the needle dimpled my flesh, just before it breached skin, that would forever remain the faithful source of my most productive masturbatory fantasy.

In that creaking, rolling room, blinded by a vista of plain white wall, still as a corpse, I felt the needle push into my flesh and, even before I felt the chill liquid seep into my body, I gasped, pressed my balled fists between my legs, and shuddered through my first and most titanic orgasm. I twitched, gasped again, and felt the stinging slide of needle sinking into the meat of me. I shook and my cunt spasmed with a violence that obliterated the needle’s ache.

The doctor said nothing. I said nothing. He withdrew the needle, drew my nightgown down over my nakedness and pulled the up the bedclothes.

I was still staring at the white wall when I heard the cabin door close gently. The nausea was gone.

The next day, even though the sea had calmed, and the ship had stopped rolling, and even though I had plowed through an adult-sized breakfast, I told my grandmother how sick I felt again. And again, she called the ship’s doctor.

WIWIWYG (What I Write Is What You Get)

[image error]About five times a year, I receive either comments or emails asking me why I don’t write erotic fiction on a slew of topics: “why don’t you write about wife-swapping, cougars, cock and ball torture, shoe fetishism, choking, violet wands, water-sports…?”

While I realize that most of the world has come to view erotic fiction writing (indeed most forms of genre writing) as a consumable product, like ice cream or vodka coolers, it is entirely natural to then be frustrated when one is not offered a standardized array of ‘flavors’ to choose from. And, indeed, if you do a quick google search, you will find sites that offer literally thousands of stories, classified by kink or sexual act, or orientation. I completely understand why you might want to have that same ‘demand and supply’ consumer-relationship with my writing.

But that is not the relationship I am interested in having with you.

In the same way that it is entirely possible for you to screw the top on your shampoo nice and tight and use the bottle as a dildo, it is important to note in the end, that it’s not manufactured as a dildo, nor did it set out to be a dildo; it’s a bottle of shampoo. And while it might work well for you as a dildo, if the bottle leaks and you end up with a vagina full of detergent, you really can’t complain to Head and Shoulders.

I want to be entirely clear about this: I write erotic fiction, not pornography.  I am not a textual sex-worker. I don’t write stories with a view to sexually servicing you. I do not set out to help you gratify your immediate sexual desires. I do not write with the aim of facilitating your masturbatory practices. Some of my stories may work that way for you, but that is not what they were created to do so, much like the shampoo bottle, if it isn’t quite the perfect dildo shape, you’re shit out of luck.

I write about what interests me erotically. I choose themes that I feel will most efficiently facilitate an examination the greater human condition through an erotic lens. I’m deeply uninterested in many of the pornographized categories of acts or memes which serve to draw a line between the erotic and the everyday world. Categories are useful for finding things quickly, but they also serve to set things apart. I’m interested in just the opposite – in looking at places where those boundaries leak and fail, where human eroticism bleeds into the non-sexual parts of our personas, our lives and our society.

If I have any specific aim as regards my readers, it is to write things that encourage my readers to think about how their erotic desires constitute and shape and twist the very complex individuals they are.It would be very surprising  if all the readers who arrive at this site (or even a majority of them) were always in complete agreement with me as to the themes that might best accomplish this goal. It’s always going to be a hit and miss thing.

I do not ask you for money to read my work on this site. In all the time I have had this site (over a decade now) I have never monetized it in any way: no google ads, no banner advertising, no links to commercial sites. While I could have easily coded it in such a way as to at least cover my server costs, I have consciously chosen to keep the site rigorously non-commercial in order to ensure that our relationship can never be conceived of as commoditized or transactional. You are free to read and leave. You are also free to read and discuss your reactions in the comments area. You are free to express your disgust, your disappointment, your frustration at feeling you’ve wasted your time.

What you are not free to do is mistake my writing for a dildo and then complain that it’s not the right shape.

Selfish Flesh

[image error]

Mask on vine leaves and bunches of grapes” (20-10 BC) – from Pompeii

I just read a most interesting set of blog posts over on Molly and Michael’s blog – on reactions to partners masturbating. I’d ask you to read both posts first. Molly’s is “How I feel When I Am Not Used” and Michael’s is “It’s My Penis and I’ll Wank If I Want To.”

The discussion brought me up short. It shocked me in a gentle sort of way. It forced me to think about how I conceive of masturbation and sex drive and sex with another person, and how I associate them. I don’t believe there is a right or wrong way to associate these things. My only goal here is to proffer my own perspective, after a little consideration.

Or a lot of consideration.

What I discovered is that I conceive of my own sexuality in radically different modes. I have an intensely erotic relationship with myself. I don’t let anyone else into it – there’s no room for anyone else. It is utterly mine and I have never had any desire to share it. The idea of allowing anyone – even someone I loved and lusted after passionately – into this part of my existence literally makes me want to bring up my breakfast. The prospect of having to make room for anyone else in this part of my life is repulsive to me.

The erotic intimacies I share with another person are completely unrelated conceptually. Yes, there are genitals involved, yes there are orgasms involved, but they are entirely different discourses of the body. One is about me, the other is about us.

Meanwhile, I have always simply assumed everyone felt this way. When my lovers masturbated (unless they started in front of me and it was clear I was meant to be a witness or a participant), I assiduously gave them their space to do it, because that is what I would want and I assumed they felt the same.

God knows, I have never wanted to be distracted by the realism of a lover, of another intellect, or another body when I’m in self-service mode. I want the space to fantasize about all that is NOT possible or even desirable in reality. I don’t want him or her in my face when I’m having a nice implausible wank about something with tentacles or Donald Trump. Meanwhile, I would never allow myself to fantasize about being with someone else while I’m being sexual with my lover. I’m weirdly Catholic. When I’m with them, I feel the need to be absolutely with them, mind and body. And perhaps, for that reason, I need my autoeroticism to be mine alone.

Masturbation is often presented as a substitute for sex with someone else, or somehow lonely. And perhaps for many people it is. But not for me. It’s never a substitute. It’s always a glorious act in and for itself. And I never feel lonely; I love my own sexual company.

Now, of course, I realize that most people are probably NOT like me. And perhaps those times when I politely left a lover to their own devices after interrupting their wank, they saw it as a rejection. I hope not. But perhaps. Who knows?

What about you? Where does masturbation lie in your constellation of erotic possibilities?

 

 

 

 

Back to Nature

[image error]The girl’s hair is short and of no particular colour. That mid-brown so many American girls have and dye to something more interesting. Elizabeth suspects she cuts it herself, in despair, in front of the bathroom mirror on Friday nights when her loneliness threatens to choke her. The girl – because she is just a girl, really – is called Caroline. Not beautiful. Not ugly. Just plain. Her jaw too wide, her eyes too small. Her arms plump and untoned, exposed in her cheap, brightly patterned sun dress. She’s long-bodied and inelegant.

Caroline sits at the bar in the Caravelle Hotel, her chubby elbows propped on the chrome rail. A loose sandal dangles from her left foot and her toes are bright with chipped cherry polish.

Wine glass in hand, standing in the open doors out onto the terrace, Emile whispers into Elizabeth’s hair. “Pick someone else…”

Elizabeth forces herself to release the smile. “No. Her.”

“Jesus.” He breathes into the curve of her neck. His hand molds into the curve of her back, then slides onto her hip. Desire unsteadies his fingers. “Jesus Christ.”

“Can’t you do her?”

“Of course I can do her. I can do anything. She’s just…”

He can do anything. It’s an ability she finds alien but enviable, disgusting and fascinating in equal measure. “Yeah, she’s sweet. She’s painful. She’s a saint.”

“Exactly.”

“Then her. I pick her.”

“You’re an evil bitch. I fucking adore you.”

There’s too much saliva in Elizabeth’s mouth. No matter how often she swallows, it feels like it will leak out of the corners at any moment and expose her. She takes the stool next to Caroline and flips on the warm charm.

“We met last month, didn’t we? At that seminar on governance?”

“Yes! I remember you. It was good, wasn’t it?”

Caroline is so earnest it makes Elizabeth’s gums itch. So well meaning, so sure that good old American know-how can salve the wounds of this crumbling, impoverished city. That obscene and cheerful arrogance is the plump, ripe sin that Elizabeth has decided merits punishment.

Emile doesn’t know this. That’s part of the game. He must trust her to choose a worthy victim.

* * *

Caroline sits between them on the cracked oxblood leather of the ancient Mercedes as it crawls through Saigon’s night traffic. The street is thick with insanely expensive SUVs on one side and over-burdened motorbikes and rusty bicycles on the other. Beyond Elizabeth’s window, a thin, bow-legged grandmother wrestles her soup cart over broken paving stones. She wears the expression of someone resigned to the fact that life is just going to keep serving up shit forever. The instant rage dries out her mouth. Its violence never ceases to shock her. After all these years, she keeps expecting to find that she’s grown a thicker skin, but it never happens. You can’t save everyone, she used to tell herself. Now she knows she can’t save anyone. In the dark, noisy chill of the air-conditioned car, Emile strokes Caroline’s thigh with the back of his hand.

Elizabeth feels her flinch, reads the girl’s distress through her clammy shoulder, and turns to her.

“Sh-hh. It’s alright. It’s what you want, isn’t it?” Her eyes slide past Caroline’s worried face and settle on Emile. “He’s handsome, isn’t he? You want him, don’t you?”

Emile’s fingers have drifted up the bare left thigh. They’re pushing into the crevasse of compressed flesh, moist with sweat and perturbed arousal.

“Well, I…”

Elizabeth cups her head and kisses her, wet against Caroline’s nervous, parted lips. “Don’t you want to be his little toy for the night? I want it. He wants it. Don’t you?”

And that’s all it takes. The girl’s reluctance is a scoop of vanilla ice cream defeated by a noonday sun. Her thigh muscles relax and Emile slides his long, clever fingers into her cunt. He worries her clit to orgasm just as they turn the corner onto August Revolution Street.

In the front seat, the driver chuckles at Caroline’s choked sounds of pleasure. She stiffens.

Elizabeth strokes the girl’s cheek. “Oh, I haven’t introduced you. I do apologize. Trung, this is Caroline. Caroline, Trung.”

Trung glances into the rear-view mirror. “Chao, Em Caroline. Be careful with these two. They’re the strangest foreigners I’ve ever worked for.”

“We love you too, Trung,” says Elizabeth. Beside her, Caroline is mute, her body rigid, distress has soured the scent of her sweat. “You’re welcome to stay and watch.”

Trung makes a sound of disgust. “White girls aren’t sexy. They have breasts like cows udders.”

“Fuck you too,” quips Elizabeth, as they pull into the driveway of the crumbling villa.

“Don’t you approve of fucking the natives?” coos Emile. “Is that,” he pulls Caroline’s head back against the seat, licking her neck, “too politically incorrect for you?”

Caroline’s response is an unintelligible blend of anguish and arousal.

“Go on, get out of my car, you perverts,” says Trung. “My wife’s got dinner waiting for me.”

* * *

The house smells of stale afternoon heat, of damp clay tiles, of soft, decaying plaster and, now, of the girl. Her odor rises up to him as he kneels between her spread legs. Her is dress wadded around her waist and unbuttoned to her navel. Her panties now a striped lilac garter around one thigh. Her hips are arching up off the sofa cushions to accommodate the three fingers he has inside her grasping, sopping cunt. Emile caresses the memory of her distress, sucking its bones. Each flinch of fear, each flush of anxiety is a chunk of sweet, meaty marrow. It makes his cock throb. It makes him want to hurt her and roll her pain around his brain like a gobstobber, but he knows she wouldn’t be willing.

“Not a kinky bone in her body,” he says to Elizabeth, nested on a nearby armchair, feet tucked beneath her, sipping cheap rice vodka from a cracked bowl. It’s leaking. A rivulet has run down her forearm. The tang of the alcohol mixes with the smell of cunt.

“I’ll take your word for it. Can she suck cock?”

“I don’t know.” Emile gazes down at rumpled, half naked Caroline. “Can you suck cock?”

“Yes,” says Caroline, in an almost whisper.

“Good, because you want me to fuck you, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re not exactly a beauty. It’s going to take that to get me hard enough to do it.” This is a lie. Mussed and aroused like this, she’s really quite sexy, but Emile knows she doesn’t know it. He stands, unzips his pants and fishes out his cock, which is as hard as it ever gets.

“You cruel bastard,” says Elizabeth. “You awful prick.” Her voice snags on the vowels.

He grins at her and, cupping the back of Caroline’s head, slides into her mouth. The girl sucks with poignant and eager ineptitude. She gags as he pushes her head down, feeling the tip of his cock breach her throat. Her hands fly to his hips, her mouth loses its suck. She doesn’t like this. The twin cobras of pleasure and self-disgust coil around the base of his spine.

He could come like this, feeling her fingers grappling at his hips, consuming her paradox, her desire to please and her discomfort at gagging. But he won’t. Elizabeth wants to watch him fuck this girl. He knows this. She likes the sin of it – of being cruel together. And she loves imagining herself the discarded wife, the illusion of martyrdom. She wants him to be guilty.

God damn it, he’s about to come. Emile pulls his cock out of Caroline’s mouth, only to notice her face is tear-streaked. That almost pushes him over the edge.

“She’s crying,” Emile says.

“That’s so sweet. Fuck her, then.”

“Hey!” says Caroline. “Stop that. Stop…”

Emile smiles down at her and strokes her wet cheek. “Stop talking to my wife?”

“No. I didn’t mean that. Just stop acting like I’m not here.”

Elizabeth’s laugh worms through the penumbra of the room. “Good for you, Caroline. Assert yourself.”

Emile lays Caroline back onto the sofa, pressing kisses onto her teary cheeks, her hot, damp neck. “Of course you’re here. And I’m going to fuck you. When was the last time that pussy of yours was well and truly fucked?”

Caroline opens her mouth, but Emile doesn’t let her finish. His fingers are back between her legs, inside her while his thumb circles her clit. Then, spreading her thighs wider with his other hand, he replaces his fingers with his cock and shoves into her.

Women’s bodies, thinks Emile, are so easy. He has never understood why some men find them such a mystery. Caroline has forgotten what she was going to say. She’s straining beneath him, canting her hips as he thrusts, pushing her pelvis upwards to meet the pleasure of the thumb he has pinned to her clit. She’s making almost no sound, just soft squeaks that cut off as he hilts himself.

Across the room, Elizabeth is crying quietly. Like she always does. Emile has held her while she cries. He knows the jerky heaves of her shoulders, the sound her closed throat makes as she gulps air through the spasms, the way she unconsciously balls her fists, the creases at the corners of her eyes that channel the tears onto her cheekbones. The way they nestle into the folds of her nostrils, the crook of her mouth.

Beneath him, the girl is coming again. Her cunt squeezes his cock, making it just that much harder to withdraw before he shoves himself into her one last time and erupts.

* * *

The bedside lamp flickers. There’s a break somewhere in its wire and air from the ceiling fan buffets it, causing it to short out. Caroline has been dispatched by taxi, back to her hotel, with a minimum of awkwardness. The afterwards is always the tricky bit.

Elizabeth rolls on her side to look at Emile who is staring back at her over a field of worn, white cotton.

“Absolve me,” she says.

Emile smiles and pulls a strand of hair away from her lips. “Of course I do. Tell me the same.”

“You know I do,” she says. Rolling onto her back, she takes his hand and pulls it over her face. “We did a bad thing. Again,” she whispers against his salty palm.

“We always do, love. It’s in our nature.”

IWD: A Tribute to the Women Who Made Me Who I Am

[View the story “IWD: The Women Who Made Me Who I Am” on Storify]