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.

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• From Going Clear (2013)

  The book arrived at a moment when the aftershocks of the world war were still being felt. Behind the exhilaration of victory, there was immense trauma. Religious certainties were shaken by the development of bombs so powerful that civilization, if not life itself, became a wager in the Cold War contest. Loss, grief, and despair were cloaked by the stoicism of the age, but patients being treated in mental hospitals were already on the verge of outnumbering those being treated for any other cause. Psychoanalysis was suspiciously viewed in much of America as a European—mainly Jewish—import, which was time-consuming and fantastically expensive. Hubbard promised results “in less than twenty hours of work” that would be “superior to any produced by several years of psycho-analysis.” The profession of psychiatry, meantime, had entered a period of brutal experimentation, characterized by the widespread practice of lobotomies and electroshock therapy. The prospect of consulting a psychiatrist was accompanied by a justified sense of dread. That may have played a role in Hubbard’s decision not to follow up on his own request for psychiatric treatment. The appearance of a do-it-yourself manual that claimed to demystify the secrets of the human mind and produce guaranteed results —for free—was bound to attract an audience. “It was sweepingly, catastrophically successful,” Hubbard marveled. The scientific community, stupefied by the book’s popularity, reacted with hostility and ridicule. It seemed to them little more than psychological folk art. “This volume probably contains more promises and less evidence per page than has any publication since the invention of printing,” the Nobel physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi wrote in his review of Dianetics for Scientific American. “The huge sale of the book to date is distressing evidence of the frustrated ambitions, hopes, ideals, anxieties and worries of the many persons who through it have sought succor.” Erich Fromm, one of the predominant thinkers of the psychoanalytic movement, denounced the book as being “expressive of a spirit that is exactly the opposite of Freud’s teachings.” Hubbard’s method, he complains, “has no respect for and no understanding of the complexities of personality.” He derisively quotes Hubbard: “In an engineering science like Dianetics we can work on a push-button basis.” But, of course, that was part of the theory’s immense appeal. One of the most painful reviews of Dianetics, no doubt, was by Korzybski’s most notable intellectual heir (and later, US senator from California), S. I. Hayakawa. He not only dismissed the book, he also criticized what he saw as the spurious craft of writing science fiction. “The art consists in concealing from the reader, for novelistic purposes, the distinctions between established scientific facts, almost-established scientific hypotheses, scientific conjectures, and imaginative extrapolations far beyond what has even been conjectured,” he wrote.

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

  Whatever the enormous disproportion between the conquest and the assailant, the latter is not the less in a sweat to give fight; a piercing cry announces victory, but nothing mollifies the enemy's chilly heart; the more the captive implores mercy, the less quarter is granted her, the more vigorously she is pressed; the ill-starred one fences in vain: she is soon transpierced. "Never was laurel with greater difficulty won," says Severino, retreating, "I thought indeed that for the first time in my life I would fall before the gate... ah! 'twas never so narrow, that way, nor so hot; 'tis the God's own Ganymede." "I had better bring her round to the sex you have just soiled," cries Antonin, seizing Octavie where she is, and not wishing to let her stand up; "there's more than one breach to a rampart," says he, and proudly, boldly marching up, he carries the day and is within the sanctuary in no time at all. Further screams are heard. "Praise be to God," quoth the indecent man, "I thought I was alone; and would have doubted of my success without a groan or two from the victim; but my triumph is sealed. Do you observe? Blood and tears." "In truth," says Clement, who steps up with whip in hand, "I'll not disturb her sweet posture either, it is too favorable to my desires." Jerome's Girl of the Watch and the twenty-year-old girl hold Octavie: Clement considers, fingers; terrified, the little girl beseeches him, and is not listened to. "Ah, my friends!" says the exalted monk, "how are we to avoid flogging a schoolgirl who exhibits an ass of such splendor !" The air immediately resounds to the whistle of lashes and the thud of stripes sinking into lovely flesh; Octavie's screams mingle with the sounds of leather, the monk's curses reply: what a scene for these libertines surrendering themselves to a thousand obscenities in the midst of us all I They applaud him, they cheer him on; however, Octavie's skin changes color, the brightest tints incarnadine join the lily sparkle; but what might perhaps divert Love for an instant, were moderation to have direction of the sacrifice, becomes, thanks to severity, a frightful crime against Love's laws; nothing stops or slows the perfidious monk, the more the young student complains, the more the professor's harshness explodes; from the back to the knee, everything is treated in the same way, and it is at last upon his barbaric pleasures' blooddrenched vestiges the savage quenches his flames. "I shall be less impolite, I think," says Jerome, laying hands upon the lovely thing and adjusting himself between her coral lips; "where is the temple where I would sacrifice? Why, in this enchanting mouth...." I fall silent.... 'Tis the impure reptile withering the rose Ä my figure of speech relates it all.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I waved him off. “I have to. I can’t live every day in fear, knowing it might come back. This is the only way.” He searched my face, and I knew then that he was the type of man who always considered what someone else was feeling. After a while the tension left his shoulders. He lifted his hands from where they’d been resting on the table, and placed them over mine. I could see the crumbs sticking to his skin. I focused on them so I wouldn’t pull away. He nodded. “I can recommend—” I cut him off for the third time, jerking my hands out from beneath his. “I want you to do the surgery.” He leaned back, put both hands behind his head and stared at me. “You’re an oncologic surgeon. I Googled you.” “Why didn’t you just ask?” “Because I don’t do that. Asking questions is at the forefront of developing relationships.” He cocked his head. “What’s wrong with developing relationships?” “When you get raped, and when you get breast cancer, you have to tell people about it. And then they look at you with sad eyes. Except they’re not really seeing you, they’re seeing your rape or your breast cancer. And I’d rather not be looked at if all people are seeing are the things I do, or the things that happen to me instead of who I am.” He was quiet for a long time. “What about before those things happened to you?” I stared at him. Maybe a little too fiercely, but I didn’t care. If this man wanted to show up in my life, and put his hands over mine, and ask why I didn’t have a best friend—he was going to get it. The full version. “If there was a God,” I said, “I’d say with confidence that he hates me. Because my life is the sum of bad things. The more people you let in, the more bad you let in.” “Well, there you have it,” Isaac said. His eyes weren’t wide; there was no more shock. He was a cucumber. It was the most I’d ever said to him. It was probably the most I’d said to any person in a long time. I pulled my cup up to my mouth and closed my eyes. “All right,” he said, finally. “I’ll do the surgery on one condition.” “What’s that?” “You see a counselor.” I started shaking my head before the words were out of his mouth. “I’ve seen a psychiatrist before. I’m not into it.” “I’m not talking about medicating yourself,” he said. “You need to talk about what happened. A therapist—it’s very different.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  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. Back and forth, back and forth. There is wallpaper to the left of the bed, of tiny carousel horses floating untethered through a creamy backdrop. Except they aren’t angry like the horses attached to the bed. There are no flared nostrils and you cannot see the whites of their eyes. They have furling ribbons tied to their forelocks and cranberry colored jewels decorating their saddles. To the right of the bed is a baby blue wall and centered in the middle of it, a brick fireplace. Sometimes I look at the blue wall, other times I like to count the little carousel horses on the wallpaper. And then there are times I squeeze my eyes shut so tight and pretend I’m at home in my own bed. My sheets are different, and the weight of the blanket, but if I lie very still… That’s when things get a little crazy. I’m not even sure I want to be in my own bed. It was figuratively just as cold as this one. There is nowhere I want to be. I should embrace the cold and the snow and the prison.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I should be like Corrie Ten Boom and try to find purpose in suffering. I get catatonic at that point. My thoughts, having run in circles for most of the day, shut down. I just stare until Isaac eventually carries in a plate of food and sets it on the table next to the bed. I don’t touch anything. Not for days, until he pleads with me to eat. To move. To talk to him. I stare at one of the two walls and see how long I can go without feeling. I pee in the bed. The first time it’s an accident; my bladder, stretched like a water balloon, reaches its limit. There’s another time. In my sleep I roll away from it, find a new spot. I wake up closer to the fireplace, my clothes barely damp. It doesn’t bother me. I’m finally in the place where nothing bothers me. Spalsh I squirm under hot water, writhing in shock. I come up gasping, trying to claw my way out of the tub. He dropped me in like a human bath bead. Water sloshes over the side of the tub and soaks into his pant legs and socks. I fight for a few more seconds, his hands holding me in the water. I don’t have the energy to fight. I let myself sink. The bath is so full that I can submerge myself completely. I sink, sink, sink into the ocean. But there is no rest, because he grabs me under my arms and pulls me up to a sitting position. I gasp and grab the sides of the tub. I’m naked except for a sports bra and panties. He pours shampoo on my head; I bat at his hands like a child until his fingers find my scalp. Then I let him. My body, rigid a second ago, slouches as he rubs the fight out of my head. He washes me, using his hands and a sponge that looks like it came straight from a coral reef. Surgeon’s hands rub across my muscles and my skin until I’m so relaxed I can barely move. I close my eyes when he rinses my hair. Both of his hands are holding my head up, cradling it so I don’t sink beneath the water’s surface. When they suddenly stop moving I open my eyes. Isaac is staring at me from above. His eyebrows are almost touching, so deep is his consternation. I reach up without thinking and cradle his cheek with my hand. I would be worried that he could see through my thin, white sports bra, but there is nothing to see. I’m practically a boy. I take my hand away and then I start to chortle. It sounds like a burst of madness. Why do I even wear a sports bra?

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I shake my head. “It hasn’t been that long…” I mentally do the calculations. We’ve been here for … fourteen days. He’s right. Fourteen. My God. Where are the search parties? Where are the police? Where are we? But, most importantly, where is the person who brought us here? I yield my wood. Isaac half smiles at me. I follow him up the stairs and climb the ladder to the attic room so he can hand me the logs. “Night, Senna.” I look at the bright sun streaming into the window behind me. “Morning, Isaac.” [image file=image8.jpg] We are nowhere. Isaac is losing it. Most days he paces in front of the kitchen window for hours, his eyes on the snow like it’s speaking to him. It looks like he’s seeing something, but there is nothing to see—only mounds of white in the middle of white, spread out over white, covered in white. We are nowhere and snow doesn’t speak. I hide from him up in my attic bedroom, and sometimes when I’m tired of that I lie on the floor in the carousel room and stare at the horses. He doesn’t come in here, says it creeps him out. I try to hum songs, because that’s what one of my characters would do, but it makes me feel nutty. No matter where I am, I can feel him pulsing through the walls. He’s always been intense. That’s what makes him a good doctor. He’s trying to figure out why we are here, why no one has come. I should, too, I guess, but I can’t focus. Every time I start wondering why someone would do this my head starts throbbing. If I press at my thoughts I will implode. Like a grapefruit in the microwave, I think. When we are in the same room his eyes press on me. They press like fingers into my flesh—harder and harder until I pull away, run to my trapdoor and hide. He doesn’t come up to my room anymore. He started sleeping in the room where I found him tied up, instead of on the couch. It happened after the six-week mark. He just moved in there one night and stopped guarding the door. “What are you doing?” I said, following him to the bed. He pulled off his shirt and I quickly averted my eyes. “Going to bed.” I watched in bewilderment as he tossed his shirt aside. “What if … what about…?” “No one is coming,” he said, ripping the sheets aside and climbing in. He wouldn’t look at me. I wondered what he didn’t want me to see in his eyes.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I get catatonic at that point. My thoughts, having run in circles for most of the day, shut down. I just stare until Isaac eventually carries in a plate of food and sets it on the table next to the bed. I don’t touch anything. Not for days, until he pleads with me to eat. To move. To talk to him. I stare at one of the two walls and see how long I can go without feeling. I pee in the bed. The first time it’s an accident; my bladder, stretched like a water balloon, reaches its limit. There’s another time. In my sleep I roll away from it, find a new spot. I wake up closer to the fireplace, my clothes barely damp. It doesn’t bother me. I’m finally in the place where nothing bothers me. Spalsh I squirm under hot water, writhing in shock. I come up gasping, trying to claw my way out of the tub. He dropped me in like a human bath bead. Water sloshes over the side of the tub and soaks into his pant legs and socks. I fight for a few more seconds, his hands holding me in the water. I don’t have the energy to fight. I let myself sink. The bath is so full that I can submerge myself completely. I sink, sink, sink into the ocean. But there is no rest, because he grabs me under my arms and pulls me up to a sitting position. I gasp and grab the sides of the tub. I’m naked except for a sports bra and panties. He pours shampoo on my head; I bat at his hands like a child until his fingers find my scalp. Then I let him. My body, rigid a second ago, slouches as he rubs the fight out of my head. He washes me, using his hands and a sponge that looks like it came straight from a coral reef. Surgeon’s hands rub across my muscles and my skin until I’m so relaxed I can barely move. I close my eyes when he rinses my hair. Both of his hands are holding my head up, cradling it so I don’t sink beneath the water’s surface. When they suddenly stop moving I open my eyes. Isaac is staring at me from above. His eyebrows are almost touching, so deep is his consternation. I reach up without thinking and cradle his cheek with my hand. I would be worried that he could see through my thin, white sports bra, but there is nothing to see. I’m practically a boy. I take my hand away and then I start to chortle. It sounds like a burst of madness. Why do I even wear a sports bra? It’s so stupid. I should just walk around topless. I laugh harder, swallowing a mouthful of water as my body rolls to the side. I am choking—choking and laughing. Isaac pulls me up.

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

  What is the good of letting those creatures live who, no longer able to count upon their parents' aid either because they are without parents or because they are not wanted or recognized by them, henceforth are useful for nothing and simply weigh upon the State: that much surplus commodity, you see, and the market is glutted already; bastards, orphans, malformed infants should be condemned to death immediately they are pupped: the first and the second because, no longer having anyone who wishes or who is able to take care of them, they are mere dregs which one day can have nothing but an undesirable effect upon the society they contaminate; the others because they cannot be of any usefulness to it; the one and the other of these categories are to society what are excrescences to the flesh, battening upon the healthy members' sap, degrading them, enfeebling them; or, if you prefer, they are like those vegetable parasites which, attaching themselves to sound plants, cause them to deteriorate by sucking up their nutritive juices. It's a shocking outrage, these alms destined to feed scum, these most luxuriously appointed houses they have the madness to construct quite as if the human species were so rare, so precious one had to preserve it down to its last vile portion! But enough of politics whereof, my child, you are not likely to understand anything; why lament your fate? for it is in your power, and yours only, to remedy it." "Great Heavens! at the price of what!" "At the price of an illusion, of something that has none but the value wherewith your pride invests it. Well," continued this barbarian, getting to his feet and opening the door, "that is all I can do for you; consent to it, or deliver me from your presence; I have no fondness for beggars...." My tears flowed fast, I was unable to check them; would you believe it, Madame? they irritated rather than melted this man. He shut the door and, seizing my dress at the shoulder, he said most brutally he was going to force from me what I would not accord him voluntarily.

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

  "Why, it's you!" said he, casting scornful eyes upon me, "I was deceived by the letter; I thought it written by a woman more honest than you and whom I would have helped with all my heart; but what would you have me do for an imbecile of your breed? What! you're guilty of a hundred crimes one more shocking than the other, and when someone suggests a way for you to earn your livelihood you stubbornly reject the proposal? Never has stupidity been carried to these lengths." "Oh, Monsieur I" I cried, "I am not in the least guilty." "Then what the devil must one do in order to be?" the harsh creature sharply rejoined. "The first time in my life I clapped eyes on you, there you were, in the thick of a pack of bandits who wanted to assassinate me; and now it is in the municipal prison I discover you, accused of three or four new crimes and wearing, so they tell me, a mark on your shoulder which proclaims your former misdeeds. If that is what you designate by the word honest, do inform me of what it would require not to be." "Just Heaven, Monsieur!" I replied, "can you excoriate that period in my life when I knew you, and should it not rather be for me to make you blush at the memory of what passed then? You know very well, Monsieur, the bandits who captured you, and amongst whom you found me, kept me with them by force; they wanted to kill you, I saved your life by facilitating your escape while making mine; and what, cruel man, did you do to thank me for my aid? is it possible you can recall your actions without horror? You yourself wanted to murder me; you dazed me by terrible blows and, profiting from my half-unconscious state, you snatched from me what I prized most highly; through an unexampled refinement of cruelty, you plundered me of the little money I possessed quite as if you had desired to summon humiliation and misery to complete your victim's obliteration! And great was your success, barbaric one! indeed, it has been entire; 'tis you who precipitated me into desolation; 'tis you who made the abyss to yawn, and 'tis thanks to you I fell into it and have not ceased to fall since that accursed moment.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  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?” “Yes, Senna. For the generator.” I don’t understand the edge in his voice. Why he’s speaking to me like he is. I crouch down beside him and reach for the logs, loading my arms. We walk back together and stock the wood closet in the cabin. I am about to follow him outside for more when he stops me. “Stay here,” he says, touching my arm. “I’ll do the rest.” If he hadn’t touched my arm, I would have insisted on helping. But there is something to his touch. Something he is telling me. I crouch in front of the fire he’s built until my shivering stops. Isaac makes a dozen more trips before our wood closet is full, then he starts piling logs in the corners of the room. In case we get locked in again, I think. “Could we leave the door open? Wedge something in between the door jamb so it can’t close?” Isaac runs a hand along the back of his neck. His clothes are filthy and covered in a thousand flecks of wood. “Would we be guarding it, too? In case someone closes it in the middle of the night?” I shake my head. “There is no one here, Isaac. They dropped us off and left us here.” He seems to be torn about telling me something. This pisses me off. He’s always had the tendency to treat me like I’m fragile. “What, Isaac?” I snap. “Just say it.” “The generator,” he says. “I’ve seen them before. They have underground tanks with a hose system attached.” I don’t get it at first. A generator … no windows on the back of the house … a hose system to refill the diesel. “Oh my God.” I collapse on the couch and stick my head between my knees. I can feel myself gasping for air. I hear Isaac’s footsteps on the wood floor. He grabs me by the shoulders and drags me to my feet. “Look at me, Senna.” I do. “Calm down. Breathe. I can’t afford to have anything happen to you, okay?” I nod. He shakes me until my head snaps back. “Okay?” he says again. “Okay,” I mimic. He lets me go, but doesn’t step away. He pulls me into a hug and my face buries itself in the crook of his neck. “He’s been filling that tank hasn’t he? That’s why there are no windows on the back of the house.” Isaac’s silence is confirmation enough. “Will he come back? Now that we have the door open and can fill it ourselves?”

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

  I haven’t a strong imagination, and like you I am weak in execution. But when I make up my mind to do something, I carry it through, and the more certainly, the more opposition I meet. Leave me alone!” She pushed me away, and got up. “Wanda!” I likewise rose, and stood facing her. “Now you know what I am,” she continued. “Once more I warn you. You still have the choice. I am not compelling you to be my slave.” “Wanda,” I replied with emotion and tears filling my eyes, “don’t you know how I love you?” Her lips quivered contemptuously. “You are mistaken, you make yourself out worse than you are; you are good and noble by nature—” “What do you know about my nature,” she interrupted vehemently, “you will get to know me as I am.” “Wanda!” “Decide, will you submit, unconditionally?” “And if I say no.” “Then—” She stepped close up to me, cold and contemptuous. As she stood before me now, the arms folded across her breast, with an evil smile about her lips, she was in fact the despotic woman of my dreams. Her expression seemed hard, and nothing lay in her eyes that promised kindness or mercy. “Well—” she said at last. “You are angry,” I cried, “you will punish me.” “Oh no!” she replied, “I shall let you go. You are free. I am not holding you.” “Wanda—I, who love you so—” “Yes, you, my dear sir, you who adore me,” she exclaimed contemptuously, “but who are a coward, a liar, and a breaker of promises. Leave me instantly—” “Wanda I—” “Wretch!” My blood rose in my heart. I threw myself down at her feet and began to cry. “Tears, too!” She began to laugh. Oh, this laughter was frightful. “Leave me—I don’t want to see you again.” “Oh my God!” I cried, beside myself. “I will do whatever you command, be your slave, a mere object with which you can do what you will—only don’t send me away—I can’t bear it—I cannot live without you.” I embraced her knees, and covered her hand with kisses. “Yes, you must be a slave, and feel the lash, for you are not a man,” she said calmly. She said this to me with perfect composure, not angrily, not even excitedly, and it was what hurt most. “Now I know you, your dog-like nature, that adores where it is kicked, and the more, the more it is maltreated. Now I know you, and now you shall come to know me.” She walked up and down with long strides, while I remained crushed on my knees; my head was hanging supine, tears flowed from my eyes. “Come here,” Wanda commanded harshly, sitting down on the ottoman. I obeyed her command, and sat down beside her. She looked at me sombrely, and then a light suddenly seemed to illuminate the interior of her eye.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I asked him about it once, and he said, “There are tools for everything. I am a doctor. I use the right tool for the right purpose .” He is aggravated with me. I shoot him a look every few bites, but his eyes are on his food. When I am finished, I stand up and take my plate to the sink. I wash and dry it. Put it back in the cabinet. I stand behind him as he finishes up his meal, and watch the back of his head. I can see grey in his hair, it’s mostly at his temples. Just a little bit. The last time I saw him there had been no grey. Maybe in vitro put it there. Or his wife. Or surgery. I was born with mine, so who knows? When he pushes back from the table, I turn around quickly and busy myself with wiping the counter. Three wipes in and the chore seems foolish. I’m cleaning my captor’s house. It feels a little like betrayal: live in filth or clean your prison. I should burn it to the ground. I finish wiping, rinse the rag, fold it neatly and hang it over the faucet. Before I go back upstairs, I grab an armful of wood from the wood closet. We all but collide at the foot of the stairs. “Let me carry it for you.” I cling to my wood. “Don’t you have to stay to guard the door?” “No one is coming, Senna.” He looks almost sad. He tries to take the wood from me. I yank my arms out of reach. “You don’t know that,” I retort. He looks at my freckles. “Hush,” he says, softly. “They would have come by now. It’s been fourteen days.” I shake my head. “It hasn’t been that long…” I mentally do the calculations. We’ve been here for … fourteen days. He’s right. Fourteen. My God. Where are the search parties? Where are the police? Where are we? But, most importantly, where is the person who brought us here? I yield my wood. Isaac half smiles at me. I follow him up the stairs and climb the ladder to the attic room so he can hand me the logs. “Night, Senna.” I look at the bright sun streaming into the window behind me. “Morning, Isaac.” We are nowhere. Isaac is losing it. Most days he paces in front of the kitchen window for hours, his eyes on the snow like it’s speaking to him. It looks like he’s seeing something, but there is nothing to see—only mounds of white in the middle of white, spread out over white, covered in white. We are nowhere and snow doesn’t speak.

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

  The Count assured my immunity against all consequences and directly I consummated the deed, handed me a contract providing me with an annuity of two thousand crowns; he signed these promises without characterizing the state in which I was to enjoy their benefits; we separated. In the midst of all this, something most singular occurred, something all too able to reveal the atrocious soul of the monster with whom I had to deal; I must not interrupt myself for a moment for, no doubt, you are awaiting the denouement of the adventure in which I had become involved. Two days following the conclusion of our criminal pact, the Count learned that an uncle, upon whose succession he had not in the least counted, had just left him an income of eighty thousand pounds.... "O Heaven!" I said to myself upon hearing the news, "is it then in thuswise celestial justice punishes the basest conspiracy!" And straightway repenting this blasphemy spoken against Providence, I cast myself upon my knees and implored the Almighty's forgiveness, and happily supposed that this unexpected development should at least change the Count's plans.... What was my error! "Ah, my dear Therese," he said that same evening, having run to my room, "how prosperity does rain down upon me! Often I have told you so: the idea of a crime or an execution is the surest means to attract good fortune; none exists save for villains." "What!" I responded, "this unhoped for bounty does not persuade you, Monsieur, patiently to await the death you wished to hasten?" "Wait?" the Count replied sharply, "I do not intend to wait two minutes, Therese; are you not aware I am twenty-eight? Well, it is hard to wait at my age.... No, let this affect our scheme not in the slightest, give me the comfort of seeing everything brought to an end before the time comes for us to return to Paris.... Tomorrow, at the very latest the day after tomorrow, I beseech you. There has been delay enough: the hour approaches for the payment of the first quarter of your annuity... for performing the act which guarantees you the money...."

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I say I don’t, but I do. I’m willing to never blame him again if he just saves Isaac. I think he’s heard me when Isaac’s shaking suddenly stops. But when I lower my head to his mouth his breathing is shallow. I pray directly to the God with the holes in his hands. He seems like the one to talk to. A God that understands pain. “That’s Isaac,” I tell him. “He helped me, and now he’s here. He didn’t do anything to deserve this. And he shouldn’t have to die because of me.” Then I appeal directly to Isaac. “You can’t do this again,” I tell Isaac. “This is the second time. It’s not fair. It’s my turn to almost die.” 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.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I hear the beating of helicopter blades. Whump-Whump Whump-Whump Whump-Whump I force my eyes open. I have to use my fingers to pry them apart, and even then I can’t get them to stay cracked. Whump-Whump It sounds like it’s getting closer. I have to get up, get outside. I am already outside. I feel the snow beneath my fingertips. I raise my head. There is a lot of pain. From my head? Yes, I fell . Climbing over the fence. Whump-Whump Whump-Whump You have to get to a clearing. Somewhere they can see you. But all around me there are trees. I’ve walked so far. I am in the thickest of thickets. I can reach out and touch the nearest tree trunk with my pinkie. Did I stop here because I thought it would be warmer? Did I just collapse? I can’t remember. But I hear a helicopter whipping the air, and I have to make them see me. I utilize the nearest tree trunk and pull myself to my feet. I stumble forward, heading in the direction I came from. I can see my prints in the snow. I think I remember a thicket just ahead. One where I could see the sky. It’s farther than I thought, and by the time I reach it and tilt my head back, I can’t hear the Whump-Whump quite as clearly as before. Not enough time to build a fire. I picture myself crouched in the snow whittling away at a pile of wood, and laugh. Too late to go back to the house, how long have I been out her? I’ve lost all concept of time. Two days? Three? Then I think it. Isaac is alive! He sent them. There is nothing to do but to stand in the clearing, head tilted up, and wait. I am airlifted to the nearest hospital in Anchorage. There are already news trucks outside. I see flashes and hear slamming doors and voices before I am wheeled on the gurney through the back door and into a private room. Nurses and doctors in salmon-colored scrubs come rushing toward me. I am compelled to roll off the gurney and hide. There are too many people. I want to tell them that I’m fine. I’m a death escapist. There is no need for this many medical professionals or this many tests. Their faces are serious; they are concentrating on saving me. There’s nothing really left for them to save. Nevertheless, needles slide into my arms over and over until I can’t even feel them anymore. They make me comfortable in a private room, with only an IV to keep me company. The nurses ask how I feel, but I don’t know what to tell them. I know that my heart is beating and that I am not cold anymore. They tell me that I’m dehydrated, undernourished. I want to say, “No shit” but I can’t form words yet. After a few hours they feed me.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  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. I shove open the lid to the chest and see the book lying at the bottom. There is a single puzzle piece resting on its cover. I dust it away. This was the only book I saved when we burned everything to keep warm. It makes no sense why I’d save it. I had Isaac to answer my medical questions. Isaac to stitch me up. I saved it for myself. Because on some level I knew the zookeeper put it here for me. My stomach clenches. I flip through the index. Page 546. Fever. The part I am looking for is highlighted. In pink. It’s a coincidence, I think. An old textbook bought at a yard sale or something. This person couldn’t possibly have known that Isaac would spike a fever that could kill him. Could he? I suddenly get chills. I look up, and when I do, I’m eye-to- eye with the black horse. I drop the book. This is a game. This move is mine. I go to the wood closet. There is no more shed; Isaac started storing the tools in the Chapter Nine wood closet. I pull the axe from where it is propped, ignoring the glossy pages that run up and down the inner walls. I touch the tip of my finger to the blade. Isaac kept it sharpened. Just in case.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Maybe a person could only deal with one dose of mental atrophy at a time. I slid into the passenger seat. He’d changed the radio station, but he switched it back to the classical one before he put the car in reverse. He didn’t look at me. Not until we arrived at my house and he opened the front door with my keys. Then he looked at me, and I wanted to disappear into the cracks between my brick driveway. I didn’t know what color his eyes were; I didn’t want to know. I pushed past him into the foyer and stopped dead. I didn’t know where to go—the kitchen? The bedroom? My office? Everywhere seemed stupid. Pointless. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted to die. I didn’t want to die. I went to my barstool, the one positioned to get the perfect view of the lake, and I sat. Isaac moved into the kitchen. He started to make coffee and then stopped, turning to look at me. “Do you mind if I put on some music? With words?” I shook my head. His eyes were grey. He set his phone on top of the breadbox while he spooned grinds into the filter. This time he played something more upbeat. A man’s voice. The beats were so strange I stopped my incessant ability to not feel and listened. “Alt-J,” he said, when he saw that I was listening. “The song is called Breezeblocks.” He glanced at my face. “It’s different, right? I used to be in a band. So I get a kick out of their beats.” “But, you’re a doctor.” I realized how stupid that sounded when it was already out. I pulled an inch-wide chunk of grey hair free, and wound it around my finger twice, right by the roots. I left it there, with my elbow resting on the counter. My security blanket. “I wasn’t always a doctor,” he said, grabbing two mugs out of my cabinet. “But when I became one, my love of music remained … and the tattoos remained.” I glanced at his forearms where they peeked out of his shirtsleeves. I was still looking when he brought me my coffee. I caught the tips of the words that faced me. After he handed me the coffee, he started making food. I didn’t have an appetite, but I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. I didn’t want to, but I listened to the words of the song he was playing. The last time I listened to this type of music the boy bands had just taken the world by storm and filled every radio with their cliché-licked songs. I wanted to ask him who was singing, but he beat me to it. “Florence and the Machine. Do you like it?” “You’re fixated on death.” “I’m a surgeon,” he said, not looking up from where he was dicing vegetables.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  What was the point of that? I hate her so. I want to tell her that her sick game didn’t work, that I’m just the same as I’ve always been: broken, bitter and self-destructive. Something comes to me then, a quote by Martin Luther King, Jr. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. “Fuck you, Saphira!” I call out. Then I reach out in defiance and grab the fence. I cry out because of what I think is coming. But nothing comes. It’s then that I acknowledge that there is no humming. The fence used to hum. My vocal chords are frozen, my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. I unstick my tongue and try to lick my lips. But my mouth is so dry there is nothing to wet them with. I let go of the chain link and look over my shoulder at the house. I left the front door open, it’s swung wide, the one dark spot beneath the veils of snow. I don’t want to go back. The smart thing would be to go get more layers. More socks. I threw on one of Isaac’s sweatshirts before I left, over the one I was already wearing. But the air cuts through both like they’re made of tissue. I head back for the house, my leg aching. I throw on more clothes, stuff food in my pockets. Before I leave I climb the stairs to the carousel room. Kneeling in front of the chest, I search for the single puzzle piece that escaped the fire. It’s there, in the corner, overlaid with dust. I place it in my pocket, and then I walk through my prison for the last time. The fence. I lace my fingers through the wire and pull up. In Saphira’s exit with Isaac, she might have overlooked turning the fence back on. If she comes back I don’t want to be here. I’d sooner die free, cold and in the woods than locked up behind an electrical fence, turning into a human ice cube in that house. Isaac’s boots are big. I can’t fit the toes into the octagons that make up the pattern of the fence. I slip twice and my chin bumps down the metal like something out of a Looney-Tunes cartoon. I feel blood running down my neck. I don’t even bother to wipe it up. I am desperate … manic. I want out. I claw at the fence. My gloves snag on twisted pieces of steel. When I rip them away the metal catches the skin on my palm, ripping into the tender flesh. I keep going. There is barbed wire along the top of the fence, running in loops as far as I can see.

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

  I sought to free myself. “What is the matter?” asked Wanda. “I am suffering agonies.” “You are suffering—” she broke out into a loud amused laughter. “You laugh!” I moaned, “have you no idea—” She was serious all of a sudden. She raised my head in her hands, and with a violent gesture drew me to her breast. “Wanda,” I stammered. “Of course, you enjoy suffering,” she said, and laughed again, “but wait, I’ll bring you to your senses.” “No, I will no longer ask,” I exclaimed, “whether you want to belong to me for always or for only a brief moment of intoxication. I want to drain my happiness to the full. You are mine now, and I would rather lose you than never to have had you.” “Now you are sensible,” she said. She kissed me again with her murderous lips. I tore the ermine apart and the covering of lace and her naked breast surged against mine. Then my senses left me— The first thing I remember is the moment when I saw blood dripping from my hand, and she asked apathetically: “Did you scratch me?” “No, I believe, I have bitten you.” * * * * * It is strange how every relation in life assumes a different face as soon as a new person enters. We spent marvellous days together; we visited the mountains and lakes, we read together, and I completed Wanda’s portrait. And how we loved one another, how beautiful her smiling face was! Then a friend of hers arrived, a divorced woman somewhat older, more experienced, and less scrupulous than Wanda. Her influence is already making itself felt in every direction. Wanda wrinkles her brows, and displays a certain impatience with me. Has she ceased loving me? * * * * * For almost a fortnight this unbearable restraint has lain upon us. Her friend lives with her, and we are never alone. A circle of men surrounds the young women. With my seriousness and melancholy I am playing an absurd role as lover. Wanda treats me like a stranger. To-day, while out walking, she staid behind with me. I saw that this was done intentionally, and I rejoiced. But what did she tell me? “My friend doesn’t understand how I can love you. She doesn’t think you either handsome or particularly attractive otherwise. She is telling me from morning till night about the glamour of the frivolous life in the capital, hinting at the advantages to which I could lay claim, the large parties which I would find there, and the distinguished and handsome admirers which I would attract. But of what use is all this, since it happens that I love you.” For a moment I lost my breath, then I said: “I have no wish to stand in the way of your happiness, Wanda. Do not consider me.” Then I raised my hat, and let her go ahead. She looked at me surprised, but did not answer a syllable.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  We use a bucket to relieve ourselves, and it’s his job to empty that too. He goes carefully. I can hear his steps creaking across the floorboards until he reaches the landing, and then the clomp, clomp, clomp on the stairs. I lose his sound once he’s down the well, but he’s never there for more than five minutes, except when he’s doing laundry or throwing our trash over the side of the cliff. Laundry consists of filling the bathtub with snow and soap and swishing the clothes around until you think they’re clean. We never had a shortage of soap, there are stacks of white bars, wrapped in a filmy white paper on the bottom shelf of the pantry. They smell like butter, and on more than one occasion when I was bent over with hunger I thought about eating them. Isaac takes the smaller of the two flashlights—the one I found when I fucked up my leg. He leaves me the big one. He leaves it right next to my bed and tells me not to use it. But as soon as I hear his socked feet on the stairs, my fingers reach down to find the switch that turns it on. I let the light flow. Sometimes I reach over and pass my hand across it, playing with the shadows. It’s a sad, sad thing when the highlight of your day becomes five minutes with a flashlight. One day when Isaac comes back, I ask him why he doesn’t just bring everything up at once. “I need the exercise,” he says. After a week, he comes up the stairs with a handful of green bandages. “There’s no infection that I can see around the wound. It’s healing.” I notice that he didn’t say, Healing well . “The bone could still become infected, but we can hope the penicillin will take care of that.” “What’s that?” I ask, nodding toward his hands. “I’m going to put your leg in a cast. Then I can move you to the bed.” “What if the bone doesn’t fuse together properly?” I ask. He’s quiet for a long time as he works with the supplies. “It’s not going to heal properly,” he says. “You’ll most likely walk with a limp for the rest of your life. On most days, you’ll have pain.” I close my eyes. Of course. Of course. Of course. When I look up again, he’s cutting the toes off of a white sock. He fits it over my foot as gently as he can and pulls it up my leg. I force breath from my nostrils to keep from wailing. It must be one of his. The sock.