The Hellbound Heart: Open the doorway to ultimate pleasure…

by Clive Barker

snatched at the handle. It turned easily (why should it not?; yet she was relieved)

The seasons long for each other, like men and women, in order that they may be cured of their excesses.

So August gave way to September and there were few complaints.

Their coupling had had, in every regard but the matter of her acquiescence, all the aggression and the joylessness of rape.

She didn’t love him; no more than he, beneath his infatuation with her face, loved her.

She wanted nothing that he could offer her, except perhaps his absence.

Within the space of those five words the actress in Julia seized control.

while September’s breath brushed her face from the open window,

They recognized no principles of reward and punishment by which he could hope to win some respite from their tortures, nor were they touched by any appeal for mercy.

She hesitated before replying, not certain that her larynx was the equal of the deception.

as unshooable as October wasps.

Why didn’t her nerves share her disgust and die beneath his caress?

His lashes were intended to kill; that they did not was testament less to her speed than to the imprecision of his fury.

learned, as he watched them change, that the greatest torments were often the subtlest.

moving with graceful sloth,

But if it failed to show itself she would not grieve too deeply, for fear that the mending of broken hearts be a puzzle neither wit nor time had the skill to solve.