Despair

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 234 of 267 · 20 per page

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Tonja Burden recalls “one boy held in there for 30 nights, crying and begging to be released.” Affidavit of Tonja Burden, Jan. 25, 1980. Monica Pignotti also writes about the chain locker: Monica Pignotti, “My Nine Lives in Scientology,” www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/pignotti/ . Sharone Stainforth recalls seeing a four- or five-year-old girl with her top half sticking out of a ship chain locker, and that she was filthy and red-faced from crying. Sharone Stainforth, theapolloseries.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-transcript-for-dublin-conference.html . According to another former Sea Org member, the little girl’s name was Angela, “a cute little blond girl that LRH thought was an SP and assigned her to the chain locker. She was so small I believe she crawled out of the locker up the chain to the poop deck as I remember seeing her coming out of that hole. I don’t remember what she did but it certainly made me swear to myself to never let that happen to me. I believe Lonnie Garrapie (not sure of the spelling), young boy from Canada, was assigned to the chain locker for stealing and throwing people’s belongings, that he stole, over the side—he did that with Kenny Campelman’s silver flute, David Ziff’s jewelry, and other items. Divers were sent over the side to try and retrieve the items, as they were all of great value.” Anonymous former Sea Org member, communication with Lauren Wolf. 118 Hubbard ruled that they: Interview with anonymous former Sea Org member. 119 One little girl, a deaf-mute: Corydon, L. Ron Hubbard , pp. 29–30; Atack, A Piece of Blue Sky , p. 180. 120 “did not have the confront”: Interview with Hana Eltringham Whitfield. 121 “You would say to yourself”: infinitecomplacency.blogspot.com/2010/03/17-tracing-it-back-to-source_29.html . 122 “hidden government”: Hubbard, “Orders of the Day,” Dec. 8, 1968. 123 “useless or unfixable”: “Catherine Harrington,” personal communication. 124 “I like how you Americans work!”: Interview with “Catherine Harrington.” 125 “for your protection”: Ibid. 126 All were registered: Robert Gillette, “Scientology Flagship Shrouded in Mystery,” Los Angeles Times , Aug. 29, 1978, http://www.anti-scientologie.ch/Nan-McLean/Video-Transcript-for-Australia-Final.pdf [inactive]. 127 “the pride of the Panamanian fleet”: “About the Apollo,” undated press release. 128 “the sanest space”: Monica Pignotti, “My Nine Lives in Scientology,” 1989. www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/pignotti/ . 129 “secure Morocco”: “Catherine Harrington,” personal communication. 130 Mary Sue was thrilled: Interview with Jim Dincalci. 131 A hundred people were killed: Henry Ginger, “Hassan II: Never Sure He’ll Be King at Nightfall,” New York Times , Aug. 20, 1972. General Oufkir’s daughter Malika placed the toll at “more than two hundred.” Oufkir and Fitoussi, Stolen Lives , 81. 132 creation of an elite guard: Interview with Hana Eltringham Whitfield. 133 “Stop firing!”: Joseph R. Gregory, “Hassan II of Morocco Dies at 70; A Monarch Oriented to the West,” New York Times , July 24, 1999. 134 had committed “suicide”: Oufkir and Fitoussi, Stolen Lives , p. 94. 135 The shaken king turned his attention: Garrison, Playing Dirty , pp. 79–80; Gillette, “Scientology Flagship Shrouded in Mystery,” Los Angeles Times , Aug. 29, 1978.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I swallow and listen. A hum. Oh God. We couldn’t hear that from behind the three inch plated windows. We are caged in like animals. There has to be a way around. An electrical wire we can cut… something. I look at the snow. It covers the trees beyond the fence and falls in a graceful white skirt down a steep ravine that drops off to the left of the house. There are no roads, no houses and no breaks in the cover of white. It never ends. Isaac starts walking back toward the house. “Where are you going?” He ignores me, his head down. The effort it takes to walk through the snow makes it look like he’s climbing stairs. I watch as he circles around the back of the house, not knowing what to do. I linger for a few more minutes before following him, grateful for the path his struggle has cut for me. I find him facing what looks like a shed. Since there are no windows facing this way, it’s the first time I am seeing what’s back there. There is a smaller structure to the right of it. The generator, I realize. When I look at Isaac’s face I see that it’s neither the shed nor the generator he’s looking at. I follow his eyes past the structures and feel my breath seize. I stop shivering, I stop everything. I reach for his hand and we plow together through the snow, our breath returns, laboring from the effort. We stop when we reach the edge of the cliff. Laid out in front of us is a view so sharp and dangerously beautiful I am afraid to blink. The house backs right up to a cliff. One that our captor—our zookeeper—didn’t give us windows to see. It seems like he’s trying to tell us something. Something I don’t want to hear. You are trapped, maybe. Or, You’re not seeing everything. I’m in control. “Let’s go back inside,” Isaac says. His voice is wiped clean of emotion. It’s his doctor’s voice; factual. His hope just fell down that cliff, I think. He heads back without me. I stay to look—look at the spread of mountains. Look at the dangerous drop-off that could turn a falling body into a sack of skin and liquid organs. When I turn around, Isaac is carrying armfuls of wood from the shack and into the house. It’s not a house, I tell myself. It’s a cabin in the middle of nowhere. What happens when we run out of food? Fuel for the generator? I walk back toward the shed and peer inside. There are piles and piles of chopped wood. An axe rests against the wall closest to where I stand to the back of the shed are several large metal containers. I am about to go investigate them when Isaac comes back for more wood. “What are those?” I ask. “Diesel,” he says, without looking up. “For the generator?”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Isaac doesn’t come down from his room. I put his plate of food in the oven to keep it warm and climb onto the kitchen table. It’s big enough for two people to lie side by side. I curl up in the middle, my face turned toward the window. I can see the window above the sink, and in it the reflection of the doorway. The kitchen is his go-to place. I’ll wait for him here. It feels good to be somewhere I’m not supposed to be. The zookeeper wouldn’t care that I’m lying on his table, but in general, tables aren’t for lying on. So, I feel mildly rebellious. And that helps. No it doesn’t. Who am I kidding? I unroll myself from the ball I’m curled into and jump down from the table. Walking to the silverware drawer, I pull it back forcefully until the silver clatters. I eye its contents, examining the selection: long, short, curved, serrated. I reach for the knife Isaac uses to peel potatoes. I run the tip across my palm, back and forth, back and forth. If I press a little harder I can draw blood. I watch my skin dent underneath the tip as I wait for the puncture, the inevitable sharp pain, the red, red release. “Stop it.” I jump. The knife clatters to the floor. I place my palm over the blood that is beading on my skin. It wells, then flows down my arm. Isaac is standing in the doorway in pajama bottoms and nothing else. I glance at the stove, wondering if he’s come down because he’s hungry. He walks briskly over to where I’m still standing and bends to pick up the knife. Then he does something that makes my brow furrow. He puts it back in my hand. My mouth twitches as he wraps my fingers around the hilt. I watch, numb and wordless, as he points the sharp end at the skin just above his heart. My hand is locked underneath his, gripping the hilt with trepidation. I can’t move my fingers—not even a little bit. He uses his strength against me when I try to pull away, yanking my arm and the blade toward him. I see blood where the knife is pressing into his skin, and I cry out. He’s forcing me to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to see his blood. He pushes harder. “No!” I struggle to break free, pulling my body backwards. “Isaac, no!” He lets go. The knife drops to the floor between us. I stand, riveted, and watch as the red gathers and then trickles down his chest. The cut is no longer than an inch, but it’s deeper than one I would have made on myself.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Despite his passion for Uruk, Sin-leqi had to admit that civilization had its discontents. Poets had begun to tell Gilgamesh’s story soon after his death because it is an archetypal tale, one of the first literate accounts of the hero’s journey.4 But it also wrestles with the inescapable structural violence of civilized life. Oppressed, impoverished, and miserable, the people of Uruk begged the gods to grant them some relief from Gilgamesh’s tyranny: The city is his possession, he struts Through it, arrogant, his head raised high, Trampling its citizens like a wild bull. He is king, he does whatever he wants The young men of Uruk he harries without a warrant, Gilgamesh lets no son go free to his father.5 These young men may have been conscripted into the labor bands that rebuilt the city wall.6 Urban living would not have been possible without the unscrupulous exploitation of the vast majority of the population. Gilgamesh and the Sumerian aristocracy lived in unprecedented splendor, but for the peasant masses civilization brought only misery and subjugation. The Sumerians seem to have been the first people to commandeer the agricultural surplus grown by the community and create a privileged ruling class. This could only have been achieved by force. Enterprising settlers had first been drawn to the fertile plain between the Tigris and the Euphrates in about 5000 BCE.7 It was too dry for farming, so they designed an irrigation system to control and distribute the snowmelt from the mountains that flooded the plain each year. This was an extraordinary achievement. Canals and ditches had to be planned, designed, and maintained in a cooperative effort and the water allocated fairly between competing communities. The new system probably began on a small scale, but would have soon led to a dramatic increase in agricultural yield and thus to a population explosion.8 By 3500, Sumer numbered a hitherto unachievable half-million souls. Strong leadership would have been essential, but what actually transformed these simple farmers into city dwellers is a topic of endless debate. Probably a number of interlocking and mutually reinforcing factors were involved: population growth, unprecedented agricultural fecundity, and the intensive labor required by irrigation—not to mention sheer human ambition—all contributed to a new kind of society.9

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Quentin was indeed headed for Nevada. It was one of the very few times in his life when he was on his own and free. He stopped in St. Louis on his drive west and took a VIP tour of the giant aerospace manufacturer McDonnell Douglas. He was enthralled by the display of aircraft and artifacts of the Mercury and Gemini space programs; he even got a ride in one of the company’s business jets. “He was so happy,” Cindy Mallien, who had lunch with him that afternoon, recalled. “He was just beaming.” But only a few days later, Las Vegas police were trying to identify a slight young man with blond hair and a reddish moustache who had been discovered comatose in a car parked on Sunset Road facing the end of the runway of McCarran Airport. He was naked. He was five feet one inch tall and weighed just over a hundred pounds. There were no identifying marks on his body and no personal identification. The license plates had been removed. The engine of the white Pontiac was still running when he was discovered. The windows were rolled up, and a vacuum tube led from the exhaust through the passenger’s vent window. Two weeks later, on November 12, 1976, the young man died without regaining consciousness. Las Vegas police were finally able to connect the Pontiac with Quentin through a Florida smog sticker and the vehicle identification number. An agent from the Guardian’s Office came into Hubbard’s office in La Quinta as he was having breakfast and handed him the report on Quentin’s death. “That little shit has done it to me again!” Hubbard cried. He threw the report at Kima Douglas and ordered her to read it. The report said Quentin had died of asphyxiation of carbon monoxide. It also noted that there was semen in his rectum. When Hubbard told Mary Sue that Quentin was dead, she screamed for ten minutes. For months, she was disconsolate, hiding behind dark glasses. Everyone knew that Quentin was her favorite. A spokesman for the church said that Quentin had been on vacation. Meantime, Mary Sue arranged for three further autopsies to be performed. In the last one, the cause of death was said to be unknown. She put out the word that he had died of encephalitis. Hubbard himself was convinced that Quentin was murdered as a way of getting at him. 1 Harriet Whitehead, an anthropologist who conducted fieldwork in Scientology in the United States and the United Kingdom between 1969 and 1971, writes of the “fundamental kinship” between psychotherapy and religion. “The cosmological system that surrounds a renunciatory discipline cannot for long remain ‘secular,’ that is, finite and this-worldly, in its orientation,” she writes. “This is one of the reasons ... secular therapeutic doctrines often develop a religious or mystical cast.”

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  On “white nights” they would be roused suddenly from sleep and informed that they were about to be killed by U.S. agents; suicide was said to be the only viable option. They were then given a drink that they believed to be poisoned and waited to die. On November 18, 1978, the community had been visited by U.S. congressman Leo Ryan, who had come to investigate reports of human rights abuses. After Ryan left, Jones dispatched Temple members to shoot him at the airstrip and then summoned the entire community to the Jonestown pavilion. There medical staff administered potassium cyanide in a batch of the soft drink Flavor-Aid, which parents fed to their children before taking it themselves. Most seem to have died willingly, though the two hundred children were certainly murdered and about a hundred of the elderly may have been injected involuntarily. They recorded their last messages on audiotape. Jones had taken the concept of “revolutionary suicide” from Black Panther leader Huey Newton. 4 “I made the decision to commit revolutionary suicide. My decision has been well thought out,” said one Jonestown resident. “And in my death, I hope that it would be used as an instrument to further liberation.” “It’s been my pleasure walking with all of you in this revolutionary struggle,” one woman stated. “No other way I would rather go [than] to give my life for socialism, communism.” People who were convinced that they had no voice in their own society had come to believe that they could be heard only in the shocking spectacle of their dying. Jones was the last to take the poison: “We said—one thousand people who said, we don’t like the way the world is. We didn’t commit suicide. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide, protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” 5 The community dynamics of Jonestown were, of course, complex and imponderable. Although religion was clearly not the cause of this tragedy, it has much in common with instances of “revolutionary suicide” that have been articulated in religious terms. The Temple was a protest against the structural violence of American society; it had developed a highly developed history of grievance and suffering that, its members claimed, mainstream society chose to ignore. Jonestown was an assault as well as a protest: Temple members were laying their deaths at the door of the United States, a demonstration that its systemic injustice had made their lives so intolerable that death was preferable. Jones clearly believed, however psychotically, that he was engaged in an asymmetrical struggle with a superpower that held all the cards. All these elements would also surface in the wave of religiously inspired terrorism that broke out in the 1980s.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I moan. It’s an ugly, guttural sound. “Why did I forget all that?” I’m still treating her like she’s my shrink; asking her questions like she’s sane enough to know the answers. She’s your zookeeper. She tried to kill you. “It happens. We block out things that thrrreaten to break us. It’s the brain’s best defense mechanism.” I’m struggling for air. “This was all an experiment to you. You took advantage of your position. Of what I told you.” All my gusto is gone. I just need answers so I can get out of here. Get out of here and go where? Home, I tell myself. Whatever that is. “Do you remember what you asked me in our last session?” I stare at her blank faced. “You asked, ‘If there were a God, why would he let these terrible things happen to people?’” I remember. “With free will comes bad decisions; decisions to drink and drive and kill someone’s child. Decisions to murder. Decisions to choose whom we love, whom we spend our life with. If God decided to never let anything bad happen to people, he would have to take away their free will. He would become the dictator and they would be his puppets.” “Why are you talking about God? I want to talk about what you did to me!” And then I know. Saphira locking me in the house with Isaac, the man she believed was my safety and salvation, controlling the medicine, the food, what we saw, how we saw it—it was all her experimenting with free will. She became God. She’d said something once in one of our sessions: Picture yourself standing on a cliff where you not only fear falling, but dread the possibility of throwing yourself off. Nothing is holding you back, and you experience freedom. The cliff! Why hadn’t I seen it? “Do you know how many people there are just like you? I heard it every day; pain, sadness, regret. You wanted a second chance. So I gave it to you. I gave you not the person you wanted, but the person you needed.” I don’t know what to say. My ten minutes are almost over. “Don’t make out like you did this for me. You’re sick. You’re—” “You are sick, my dear,” she interrupts. “You were self destructing. Ready to die. I just gave you some perspective. Helped you to see the truth.” “What’s the truth?” “Isaac is your truth. You were too blinded by your past to see that.” I’m breathless. My mouth hangs open as I stare at her. “Isaac has a wife. He has a baby. You act like you care so much, but you did this to him, too. Made him suffer for no reason. He almost died!”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Three days later we run out of food. Our last meal is a handful of rice cooked over the fire in a pot that Isaac rigs with metal poles he found in the shed. It is barely soft enough to chew. Isaac gives me the larger portion, but I leave most of it on my plate. I don’t care if I die hungry. The only truth is that I’m going to die. When they finally find my body I don’t want them cutting me open and seeing half digested rice in my stomach. It feels insulting. Prisoners always get their choice of a last meal. Where is mine? I think of the potato skins I ate over the sink. It feels good now, to know that I didn’t waste them. We ate coffee grounds last week for breakfast. It was almost funny at first, like something out of a horror, survival story, but when they clogged up my throat with their bitterness I wanted to cry. I roll myself tighter into my blanket. It’s so cold, but we only burn two logs a day. If we can just get past that fence we can hack at the trees to our hearts’ content. Sometimes I see Isaac outside staring at it, his hands in his pockets and his head dipped back. He walks up and down with a screwdriver he found in the shed, holding it against the posts to see how far the spark jumps. I think he’s hoping for a day the zookeeper forgets. We’ve already chopped down anything that can burn, including the shed itself. The doors in the house are made of fiberglass or we would have used those too. We’ve burned furniture. Isaac sawed and hacked at the beds until only the metal frames were left. We’ve burned books. God—books! We burned the puzzles, we even pulled down the Oleg Shuplya prints, first for their wooden frames, and eventually we’d tossed in the paper as well. I could call this situation my own personal Hell, but Hell is warm. I’d love to be in Hell right now. Isaac comes into my room. I hear him near the fireplace. He’s lighting my log. My one, precious log. We were saving it. I guess the time for saving has come to an end. Usually he leaves when he’s done, goes to his own room, but the attic room is the warmest in the house and the only one left with a burning log. I feel the mattress shift under his weight as he sits next to my cocoon. “Do you have any of that chapstick left?” “Yes,” I say softly. “In the closet.” I hear him walk to the wooden armoire and move things around. We have one pink Zippo left. It’s on its last few drops of lighter fluid. We’ve been so careful, but no matter how careful you are, things eventually run out.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "'Tis I," says he to Severino, "'tis I who shall avenge you, Father, I shall correct this silly drab for having resisted your pleasures." He has no need of anyone else to hold me; with one arm he enlaces me and forces me, belly down, across his knees; what is going to serve his caprices is nicely discovered. At first, he tries a few blows, it seems they are merely intended as a prelude; soon inflamed by lust, the beast strikes with all his force; nothing is exempt from his ferocity; everything from the small of my back to the lower part of my thighs, the traitor lays cuts upon it all; daring to mix love with these moments of cruelty, he fastens his mouth to mine and wishes to inhale the sighs agony wrests from me... my tears flow, he laps them up, now he kisses, now he threatens, but the rain of blows continues; while he operates, one of the women excites him; kneeling before him, she works with each hand at diverse tasks; the greater her success, the more violent the strokes delivered me; I am nigh to being rent and nothing yet announces the end of my sufferings; he has exhausted every possibility, still he drives on; the end I await is to be the work of his delirium alone; a new cruelty stiffens him: my breasts are at the brute's mercy, he irritates them, uses his teeth upon them, the cannibal snaps, bites, this excess determines the Crisis, the incense escapes him. Frightful cries, terrifying blasphemies, shouts characterize its spurtings, and the monk, enervated, turns me over to Jerome. "I will be no more of a threat to your virtue than Clement was," said this libertine as he caressed the blood-spattered altar at which Clement had just sacrificed, "but I should indeed like to kiss the furrows where the plow passed; I too am worthy to open them, and should like to pay them my modest respects; but I should like even more," went on the old satyr, inserting a finger where Severino had lodged himself, "I should like to have the hen lay, and 'twould be most agreeable to devour its egg... does one exist? Why, yes indeed, by God!... Oh, my dear, dear little girl! how very soft..." His mouth takes the place of his finger... I am told what I have to do, full of disgust I do it. In my situation, alas, am I permitted to refuse? The infamous one is delighted... he swallows, then, forcing me to kneel before him, he glues himself to me in this position; his ignominious passion is appeased in a fashion that cannot justify any complaint on my part. While he acts thus, the fat woman flogs him, another puts herself directly above his mouth and acquits herself of the same task I have just been obliged to execute.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Immediately it is in my body I feel it enlarge and begin to burn; without heeding my complaints, I am lashed securely to this thorn-studded frame; Cardoville penetrates as he fastens himself to me: he presses my back, my flanks, my buttocks on the protuberances upon which they are suspended. Julien fits himself into Cardoville; obliged to bear the weight of these two bodies, and having nothing to support myself upon but these accursed knots and knurs which gouge into my flesh, you may easily conceive what I suffered; the more I thrust up against those who press down upon me, the more I am driven upon the irregularities which stab and lacerate me. Meanwhile the terrible globe has worked its way deep into my bowels and is cramping them, burning them, tearing them; I scream again and again: no words exist which can describe what I am undergoing; all the same and all the while, my murderer frolics joyfully, his mouth glued to mine, he seems to inhale my pain in order that it may magnify his pleasures: his intoxication is not to be rendered; but, as in his friend's instance, he feels his forces about to desert him, and like Saint-Florent wants to taste everything before they are gone entirely. I am turned over again, am made to eject the ardent sphere, and it is set to producing in the vagina itself, the same conflagration it ignited in the place whence it has just been flushed; the ball enters, sears, scorches the matrix to its depths; I am not spared, they fasten me belly-down upon the perfidious cross, and far more delicate parts of me are exposed to molestation by the thorny excrescences awaiting them. Cardoville penetrates into the forbidden passage; he perforates it while another enjoys him in similar wise: and at last delirium holds my persecutor in its grasp, his appalling shrieks announce the crime's completion; I am inundated, then untied. "Off you go, dear friends," Cardoville says to the pair of young men, "get your hands on this whore and amuse yourselves in whatever way your whims advise: she's yours, we're done with her." The two youthful libertines seize me. While one entertains himself with the front, the other buries himself in the rear; they change places and change again; I am more gravely torn by their prodigious thickness than I have been by Saint-Florent's artificial barricadings; both he and Cardoville toy with the young men while they occupy themselves with me.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Gentlemen," says he as we enter, "allow me to present you with one of the veritable wonders of the world, a Lucretia who simultaneously carries upon her shoulder the mark stigmatizing girls who are of evil repute, and, in her conscience, all the candor, all the naivete of a virgin.... One lone violation, friends, and that six years ago; hence, practically a vestal... indeed, I do give her to you as such... the most beautiful, moreover... Oh Clement! how that cheerless countenance of yours will light up when you fall to work on those handsome masses... what elasticity, my good fellow! what rosiness!" "Ah, fuck!" cried the half-intoxicated Clement, getting to his feet and lurching toward me: "we are pleasantly met, and let us verify the facts." I will leave you for the briefest possible time in suspense about my situation, Madame, said Therese, but the necessity to portray these other persons in whose midst I discovered myself obliges me to interrupt the thread of my story. You have been made acquainted with Dom Severino, you suspect what may be his predilections; alas, in these affairs his depravation was such he had never tasted other pleasures Ä and what an inconsistency in Nature's operations was here! for with the bizarre fantasy of choosing none but the straiter path, this monster was outfitted with faculties so gigantic that even the broadest thoroughfares would still have appeared too narrow for him. Chapter 21 However, Dom Severino orders the women to bring me food; but far from being quickened by these attentions, an access of furious grief assails my soul. I, who located all my glory, all my felicity in my virtue, I who thought that, provided I remained well-behaved at all times, I could be consoled for all fortune's ills, I cannot bear the horrible idea of seeing myself so cruelly sullied by those from whom I should have been able to expect the greatest comfort and aid: my tears flowed in abundance, my cries made the vault ring; I rolled upon the floor, I lacerated my breast, tore my hair, invoked my butchers, begged them to bestow death upon me... and, Madame, would you believe it? this terrible sight excited them all the more. "Ah!" said Severino, "I've never enjoyed a finer spectacle: behold, good friends, see the state it puts me in; it is really unbelievable, what feminine anguish obtains from me." "Let's go back to work," quoth Clement, "and in order to teach her to bellow at fate, let the bitch be more sharply handled in this second assault." The project is no sooner conceived than put into execution; up steps Severino, but his speeches notwithstanding, his desires require a further degree of irritation and it is only after having used Clement's cruel measures that he succeeds in marshaling the forces necessary to accomplish his newest crime. Great God!

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I did not suppose the Count would be unkind enough to refuse me what was so legitimately mine. Persuaded that, his first fury once passed, he would not wish to do me such an injustice, I wrote a letter calculated to touch him as deeply as possible. I was careful to conceal my address and I begged him to send back my old clothes together with the small sum that would be found in my chamber. A lively and spirited peasant girl of twenty-five undertook to deliver my letter and promised to do her best to bring me back all the information she could garner upon the various subjects about which I gave her to understand I needed to be enlightened. I insisted, that above all else, she hide the name of the place where I was, that she not breathe a word of me in whatever form or connection, and that she say she had taken the letter from a man who had brought it from somewhere fifteen leagues away. Jeannette left, and twenty-four hours later she came back with the reply; it still exists, I have it here, Madame, but before you read it, deign to learn what had transpired at the Count's chateau since I had been out of it. Having fallen seriously ill the very day I left, the Marquise de Bressac had been seized by frightful pains and convulsions, and had died the next morning; the family had rushed to the chateau and the nephew, seemingly gripped in the greatest desolation, had declared that his aunt had been poisoned by a chambermaid who had taken flight the same day. Inquiries were made, and they had the intention to put the wretch to death were she to be found; as for the rest, the Count discovered that the inheritance had made him much wealthier than he had ever anticipated he would be; the Marquise's strongbox, pocketbook, and gems, all of them objects of which no one had known anything, put the nephew, apart from his revenues, in possession of more than six hundred thousand francs in chattels or cash.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I drag myself to the wood. I have to make him warm. I have to bring him back. I’m not a doctor; I studied art history, for God’s sake, but I know that Isaac has one foot in this goddamn cabin and one foot in the fog beyond. There is a bag of rice that has split open. I rip at the hole and quickly turn the bag over, emptying the rice onto the floor. Then leaning against the wall, I drop one, two, three logs into the sack. I grab a can of creamed corn off a shelf—it’s the nearest thing to me—and toss that in, too. There is a steel ladder in the corner of room, propped against a wall. Despite the cold, I am sweating; sweating and shivering. The zookeeper left us everything we needed to survive another…what? Six months? Eight? It was sitting here all along while we starved, and we didn’t know. I pass a metal box with a big, red medical cross on it. I rip open the door. Inside there are bottles, so many bottles. I grab for the aspirin, popping off the lid, I tilt my head back and let half a dozen pills slide into my mouth. There is a roll of gauze. I rip the package open with my teeth until the material unravels in my fingers. I bend down and wrap it around the bone, flinching, feeling hot blood on my fingers. I want to look at the bottles, see what he left us. Isaac first. I scream when I open the ladder … it’s stiff with cold and time, and it jars my lower body, shooting pain everywhere. I climb backwards, keeping my leg extended and using my arms and good leg to lift myself up each rung. My arms burn, dragging the sack with me. When I reach the top of the ladder I have to lift my leg over the side of the well. There is no way to get to the floor gracefully and without pain. Your leg is already broken. What more can happen? I glance at the bone: nerve damage, tissue damage, I could bleed to death, die of an infection. A lot more, Senna. And then I drop my good leg to the floor with my sack clutched against my chest and my eyes closed. I stand there for a second, shivering and wanting to die. Another flight of stairs, another ladder, then I’ll be there. First, the can opener. This is nothing, I tell myself. There is a bone sticking out of your leg. It can’t kill you. But it can. Who knows what type of infection I might get after this? My pep talk doesn’t bring me comfort. If Isaac dies, his death will kill me. My leg is preventing me from getting to Isaac. Ignore the leg. Get to Isaac.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I became less guarded, then spoke; she assented; we settled upon a plan: it was to inform her mother, to expose the Count's infamies to her eyes. Madame de Gernande was certain that unfortunate lady would hasten with all expedition to sever her daughter's bonds; but how were we to approach her? for we were so securely imprisoned, so closely watched! Accustomed to coping with ramparts, I gauged those upon which the terrace was raised: their height was scarcely thirty feet; there was no other enclosure in sight; once at the foot of the wall I thought one would find oneself already on the road through the forest; but the Countess, having been brought to this apartment at night and never having left it since, was unable to confirm my ideas. I agreed to attempt the descent; the letter Madame de Gernande wrote to her mother could not have been better phrased to melt and persuade her to come to the rescue of her most unhappy daughter; I slipped the letter into my bosom, I embraced that dear and attractive woman, then, as soon as night had fallen, aided by our bed linen, I slid to the ground outside the fortress. What had become of me, O Heaven? I discovered that instead of being outside the enclosure I was simply in a park, and in a park girt by walls which the quantity and dense foliage of trees had camouflaged from sight: these battlements were more than forty feet high, all of them garnished at the top with broken glass, and of a prodigious thickness... what was to become of me? Dawn was not far off: what would they think when I was found in a place into which I could not have come without a certain plan of escape? Would I be able to keep the Count's fury at bay? Was it not very likely that ogre would drink my blood to punish such an offense? To return was out of the question, the Countess had drawn back the sheets; to knock at the door would be still more certainly to betray myself; a little more and I would have lost my head altogether and ceded to the violent effects of my despair. Had I been able to recognize some pity in the Count's soul, I might perhaps have been lulled into hopefulness, but a tyrant, a barbarian, a man who detested women and who, he said, had long been seeking the occasion to immolate one by draining away her blood drop by drop in order to find out how many hours she would be able to last... No doubt about it, he was going to put me to the test.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I let him pull me up. He doesn’t like me to walk on the leg, which means he’s making an exception, which means this is dirt serious. I use him as a crutch. When we reach the ladder he helps me sit on the floor. Then he climbs down first. He has me lower my injured leg through the hole first. It takes me ten minutes to get it right, to maneuver it while not falling over. But I am determined. I don’t want to be in the attic a second longer. When both legs are through, he reaches for my waist. I think we’re both going to fall, but he gets me down. Steady hands, I remind myself. A surgeon’s steady hands. He hands me something. It’s a tree branch—almost as tall as I am—shaped like a wishbone. A crutch. “Where did you get this?” “It’s part of our Christmas present.” He stares intently into my eyes, and motions for the stairs. A few weeks ago we were burning everything we could. There is no way this could have escaped our fire. I lean on my crutch as I hobble for the stairs. I want to scream at how long it takes to make it to the bottom. I look around. I haven’t seen this part of the house since I broke my leg. I have a need to walk around, touch things, but Isaac pushes me toward the door. It’s dark outside. So cold. I shiver. “I can’t see anything, Isaac.” My foot is about to sink into the snow when my cast hits something. [image file=image34.jpg] They never found the man who raped me. There was never another report of a rape in those woods, or any woods in Washington. The police said it was an isolated incident. With blithe nonchalance, they told me that he had probably been watching me for a while and possibly followed me into the woods. They used words like “intent” and “stalker”. I’d had those before: letters, e-mails, Facebook messages that went from high praise to intense anger when I didn’t respond. None of them were men. None threatening enough to concern me. None with the tone of a rapist, or a sadist, or a kidnapper. Just angry moms who wanted something from me—recognition maybe. But there was something I never told the police about the day I was raped. Even when they pressed me for more details. I couldn’t bring myself to say it. No, I didn’t see his face. No, he didn’t have tattoos or scars. No, he didn’t say anything to me…

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Roland retires without completing the sacrifice and hurts me almost as much by this precipitous withdrawal as he had upon inserting himself. He throws himself into Suzanne's arms, and joining sarcasm to outrage: "Amiable creature," he apostrophizes, "with such delight I remember the first instants of our union; never had woman given me such thrilling pleasures, never had I loved one as I did you... let us embrace, Suzanne, for we're going to part, perhaps the season of our separation will be long." "Monster!" my companion retorts, thrusting him away with horror, "begone; to the torments you inflict upon me, join not the despair of hearing your terrible remarks; sate your rage, tigerish one, but at least respect my sufferings." Roland laid hands on her, stretched her upon the couch, her legs widespread, and the workshop of generation ideally within range. "Temple of my ancient pleasures," the infamous creature intoned, "you who procured me delights so sweet when I plucked your first roses, I must indeed address to you my farewells...." The villain! he drove his fingernails into it and, rummaging about inside for a few minutes while screams burst from Suzanne's mouth, he did not withdraw them until they were covered with blood. Glutted and wearied by these horrors, and feeling, indeed, he could restrain himself no longer: "Come, Therese, come," he said, "let's conclude all this with a little scene of funambulism: it'll be cut-the-cord, dear girl." (This game, described above, was in great use amongst the Celts from whom we are descended (see Monsieur Peloutier's ‘Histoire d'u Celts’); virtually all these extravagances of debauchery, these extraordinary libertine passions some part of which are described in this book and which, - how ridiculously! today awaken the law's attention, were, in days bygone, either our ancestors' sports, games far superior to our contemporary amusement, or legalized customs, or again, religious ceremonies; currently, they are transformed into crimes. In how many pious rituals did not the pagans employ flagellation! Several people used these identical tortures, or passions, to initiate their warriors; this was known as huscanaver (viz., the religious ceremonies of every race on earth). These pleasantries, whose maximum inconvenience may be at the very most the death of a slut, are capital crimes at the moment. Three cheers for the progress of civilization!

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  In his study of the 9/11 terrorists and those who worked closely with them—five hundred people in all—the forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman found that only 25 percent had a traditional Islamic upbringing; that two-thirds were secularly minded until they encountered al-Qaeda; and the rest were recent converts. Their knowledge of Islam was therefore limited. Many were self-taught, and some would not study the Quran thoroughly until they were in prison. Perhaps, Sageman concludes, the problem was not Islam but ignorance of Islam.52 The Saudis who took part in the 9/11 operation had had a Wahhabi education, but they were not influenced chiefly by Wahhabism but by pan-Islamist ideals, which the Wahhabi ulema had often opposed. The martyr videos of Ahmed al-Haznawi, who died in the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, and Abdul-Aziz al-Omari, who was in the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, dwell intensely on Muslim suffering worldwide. Yet while the Quran certainly orders Muslims to come to the aid of their brothers, Shariah law forbids violence against civilians and the use of fire in warfare, and it prohibits any attack on a country where Muslims are allowed to practice their religion freely. Muhammad Ata, leader of the Hamburg Cell, was motivated by Azzam’s global vision, convinced that every able-bodied Muslim was obliged to defend his brothers and sisters in Chechnya or Tajikistan.53 But Azzam would have deplored the terrorist activity that this group would embrace. As moderate members fell away from the cell, they were replaced by others who shared Ata’s views. In such closed groups, isolated from any divergent opinion, Sageman believes, “the cause” becomes the milieu in which they live and breathe.54 Members became deeply attached to one another, shared apartments, ate and prayed together, and watched endless battlefield videos from Chechnya.55 Most important, they identified closely with these distant struggles. Modern media enables people in one part of the world to be influenced by events that happen far away—something that would have been impossible in premodern times—and to apply these foreign narratives to their own problems.56 It is a highly artificial state of consciousness. The story of the 9/11 terrorists is now well known. Years after this tragedy, the events of that day are still horrifying. Our task in this book is to assess the role of religion in this atrocity. In the West there was a widespread conviction that Islam, an inherently violent religion, was the chief culprit. A few weeks after September 11, in an article entitled “This Is a Religious War,” the American journalist Andrew Sullivan quoted from Bin Laden’s Declaration of War: The call to wage war against America was made because America spearheaded the Crusade against the Islamic nation, sending thousands of troops to the Land of the Two Holy Mosques, over and above its meddling in Saudi affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt, and tyrannical regime that is in control.57

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I stink. Not the way you smell on a hot day when the sun toasts your skin and you smell like bologna. I wish I smelled like that. It would mean there was sun. I smell musty, like an old doll that has been locked up in a closet for years. I smell like unwashed body and depression. Yes. I slowly consider my stink and the awful way my grey streak hangs lank in my face. I don’t bother to push it off my eyes. I stay curled under the blanket like a fetus. I don’t even know how long I’ve been like this—days? Weeks? Or maybe it just feels like weeks. I’m composed of weeks, and days of weeks, and hours of weeks and days and minutes and seconds and… I’m not even in the attic bed. It’s warmer in the attic, but a few nights ago I took too many shots of whiskey and stumbled into the carousel room, only half conscious and holding in my sick. I was too dizzy to light a fire, so I lay trembling under the feather blanket, trying not to look at the horses. Waking up there was like having a night of drinking and then finding yourself in your bed with your best friend’s boyfriend. At first I was too shocked to move, so I just lay there paralyzed by shame and nausea. Not sure who exactly I felt like I was betraying by being in there, but felt it nevertheless. Isaac never came to find me, but considering that we were passing the bottle back and forth all night, he was probably just as sick as I was. That’s what we do lately; we congregate in the living room after dinner to sip from a bottle that fits neatly in our hands. After dinner drinks. Except dinners are getting sparse: a handful of rice, a small pile of canned carrots. There is always more liquor in our bellies than food these days. I groan at the thought of food. I need to pee and maybe be sick. I run the tip of my finger back and forth, back and forth over the cotton sheets. Back and forth, back and forth until I fall asleep. Landscape is playing. It’s always playing. The zookeeper is cruel.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Six months? Eight? It was sitting here all along while we starved, and we didn’t know. I pass a metal box with a big, red medical cross on it. I rip open the door. Inside there are bottles, so many bottles. I grab for the aspirin, popping off the lid, I tilt my head back and let half a dozen pills slide into my mouth. There is a roll of gauze. I rip the package open with my teeth until the material unravels in my fingers. I bend down and wrap it around the bone, flinching, feeling hot blood on my fingers. I want to look at the bottles, see what he left us. Isaac first. I scream when I open the ladder … it’s stiff with cold and time, and it jars my lower body, shooting pain everywhere. I climb backwards, keeping my leg extended and using my arms and good leg to lift myself up each rung. My arms burn, dragging the sack with me. When I reach the top of the ladder I have to lift my leg over the side of the well. There is no way to get to the floor gracefully and without pain. Your leg is already broken. What more can happen? I glance at the bone: nerve damage, tissue damage, I could bleed to death, die of an infection. A lot more, Senna. And then I drop my good leg to the floor with my sack clutched against my chest and my eyes closed. I stand there for a second, shivering and wanting to die. Another flight of stairs, another ladder, then I’ll be there. First, the can opener. This is nothing, I tell myself. There is a bone sticking out of your leg. It can’t kill you. But it can. Who knows what type of infection I might get after this? My pep talk doesn’t bring me comfort. If Isaac dies, his death will kill me. My leg is preventing me from getting to Isaac. Ignore the leg. Get to Isaac. It’s easier to sit on the stairs and lift myself backward, sticking my injured leg straight out while I use my arms and good leg to lift myself. I toss my sack up ahead of me. I feel every bump, every movement. The pain is so intense I am beyond screaming. It is taking concentration not to pass out. I’m sweating. I can feel fat rivulets rolling down the sides of my face and the back of my neck. I use the railing to lift myself up on the top step, then I hop to the ladder. This is going to be the hard part. Unlike the ladder in the well, this one angles straight up. There is nothing to lean on and the rungs are narrow and slippery. I sob with my face pressed against the wall. Then I pull myself together and drag myself up Mt.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I lean down and touch my forehead to his. I want to lie on him and take his heat, but now is not the time for being cold. I pull my head up and stare down at him. I’m afraid to leave him and go look for medicine. We closed off the hole below the table weeks ago. But maybe he forgot something. Maybe there is still medicine down there: a pill in the dirt. A miracle in a dark corner. I know it’s a long shot, but I can’t just sit here and do nothing. I kiss him on the mouth and stand up. “Don’t die,” I warn him. “I’ll chase right behind you if you do.” If he can hear me, threatening him with my death will work. He will hold on just to keep me alive. I dart out of the room and head for the kitchen. The tabletop is easier to push aside this time. I’m stronger. I grab the flashlight and climb down the ladder he left in place. There are still grains of rice scattered across the floor from the day I knocked the bag over. They pierce my socks and make my toes curl up. The floors and shelves are bare. I run my hands along the back of them, feeling for any lucky leftover. I catch a splinter in my palm and pull it out. The metal box with the medical cross on it bolted to the wall is open. There is nothing on the shelves but dust. I grab the box and try to rip it off the wall, but the box is bolted down. My muscles are more inefficient than my anger. “I can’t even rip something off the wall right!” I yell at nothing. I stick my fingers in my hair and pull until it hurts. First, I feel helpless, then I feel hopeless, then I feel overwhelming grief. I can’t handle it. I don’t know what to do with myself. I fall to my knees and clutch my sides. I can’t do this. I can’t. I want to die. I want to kill. All of my feelings are coming at once. You’re selfish, I hear a voice say. Isaac is dying and you’re thinking about how you feel. The voice is right. I stand up and dust the rice off my knees. Then I climb back up the ladder; the only indication I’m on overload is the trembling of my hands. I go back to the room to check on Isaac. He’s still breathing. That’s when I remember the book I found in the chest, at the base of the carousel bed. It always struck me as strange that our captor would put that book in the same house with a doctor.