Fear

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 147 of 529 · 20 per page

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  You know that.” “Okay, let’s forget how this … this … person knows. Let’s assume he does. Maybe it’s a clue.” “A clue?” I say in disbelief. “To what? Our freedom? Like this is a game?” Isaac nods. I study his face, look for a joke. But, there are no jokes in this house. There are just two stolen people, clutching knives as they sleep. “And they call me the fiction writer,” I say it to make him angry, because I know he’s right. I make to stand up, but he grabs my wrist and gently pulls me back down. His eyes travel across the span of my nose and my cheeks. He’s looking at my freckles. He always did that, like they were works of art rather than screwed up pigment. Isaac doesn’t have freckles. He has soft eyes that dip down at the outer corners and two front teeth that overlap slightly. He’s average looking and beautiful at the same time. If you look close enough, you see how intense his features are. Each one speaks to you in a different way. Or maybe I’m just a writer. “We are not here for ransom,” he insists. “They want something from us.” “Like what?” I sound like a petulant child. I lift the back of my hand to my lips and bite the skin on my knuckles. “No one wants anything from me—except more stories, maybe.” Isaac raises his eyebrows. I think of Annie Wilkes and her rooty-patooties. No way . “They didn’t leave me a typewriter,” I point out. “Or even a pen and paper. This isn’t about my writing.” He doesn’t look convinced. I’d rather steer him toward the carousel, especially if it mean he’ll stops looking at me like I have the magical key to get out of here. “The carousel is creepy,” I say. That’s all it takes to get his theory fuel going. I half listen to his surmisings—no, I don’t listen at all. I pretend to listen and count the knots in the wood walls instead. Eventually, I hear my name. “Tell me how you remember it,” he urges me. I shake my head. “No. What good will that do?” I am not in the mood to revisit those instances of my life. They trudge up the other stuff. The stuff that landed me in the plushy couch of a therapist. “Fine.” He stands up this time. “I’m going to make dinner. If you’re staying up here, lock the trapdoor.” This time he doesn’t stay to check if I do. He’s all over the place. I hate him. We eat in silence. He defrosted hamburgers and opened a can of green beans. He’s rationing our food. I can tell. I push the beans around and eat hamburger by using the side of my fork to cut it into pieces. Isaac eats with a knife and a fork, slicing with one, spearing with the other.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I had to push the couch aside to reach the door. When I looked through the peep hole, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the knife. What I saw was Doctor Asterholder, in different clothes. I opened the deadbolt and swung the door wide. Wider than a woman who’d experienced my day should have. I wouldn’t have even done that before what happened today. We stared at each other for a good thirty seconds, before his eyes found the dishtowel and my fresh blood. “What did you do?” I stared at him blankly. I couldn’t seem to speak; it was like I’d forgotten how. He grabbed my arm and ripped the cloth from the wound. It was then I realized he thought I was trying to kill myself. “It’s not—it’s not in the right spot,” I said. “It’s not like that.” He was blinking rapidly when he looked up from the cut. “Come,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” I followed him into the kitchen and slid onto a barstool, not quite sure what was happening. He took my arm, more gently this time, and turned it over, peeling back the dishrag. “Bandages? Antiseptic?” “Upstairs bathroom, under the sink.” He left to retrieve my little first-aid kit and came back with it about two minutes later. I only realized I was still clutching the knife when he gently pried it from my fingers and set it on the counter. He didn’t speak as he cleaned and bandaged my wound. I watched his hands work. His fingers were deft and agile. “It won’t need stitches,” he said. “Flesh wound. But, keep it clean.” His eyes traced the rawness on my exposed skin, left from the Brillo pad. “Senna,” he said. “There are people, support groups—” I cut him off. “No.” “Okay.” He nodded. It reminded me of the way my shrink used to say okay , like it was a word you swallowed and digested instead of one you spoke. Somehow, from him, it seemed less condescending. “Why are you here?” He hesitated briefly then said, “Because you are.” I didn’t understand what he meant. My thoughts were so contorted, choppy. I couldn’t seem to… “Go to bed. I’ll sleep right there.” He pointed to the couch, still angled across the front door. I nodded. You’re in shock, I told myself again. You’re letting a stranger sleep on your couch. I was too tired to over think it. I went upstairs and locked the door to my bedroom. It still didn’t feel safe. Picking up my pillow and blanket, I carried them to my bathroom, locked that door, too, and lay down on the mat. My sleep was that of a woman who had just been raped. I hear the beating of helicopter blades.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Heart pain and physical pain are only comparable in that neither relinquish their hold on you once they get rolling. The heart releases a dull ache when it is broken; the pain in my leg so acute and sharp it’s hard to breathe. I wrestle with the pain for a minute … two, before I discard it. I broke my body and there is no way to fix it. I don’t care. I need to find Isaac. And that’s when I think it: Oh God. What if the zookeeper came while I was passed out and did something to him? I roll slightly onto my side until I have some leverage, and try to drag myself up using my good leg. That’s when I see my leg. The lower half of my pants has been cut away. The place where the bone was sticking out has been wrapped in thin gauze. I feel liquid running down to my foot as I move. I hold my hand over my mouth and breathe through my nose. Who was here? Who did this? The fire is burning. The fire I built would have given up the ghost by now. Someone had built it back up, fed it new logs. I wobble where I’m standing. I need light. I need to— “Sit down.” I start, jarred by the voice. I twist my neck around as far as it can go. “Isaac,” I cry out. I start to teeter, but he darts over and catches me. Darts is a strong word , I think. For a minute it looks like he is going to fall with me. I lift my hand up, touch his face. He looks terrible. But he’s alive and walking. He lowers me gently to the ground. “Are you okay?” He shakes his head. “Alive’s not enough for you?” “You shouldn’t be,” I hiss. “I thought you were going to die.” He doesn’t acknowledge me. Instead he walks over to a pile of something I can’t see in the dark. “Look who’s talking,” he says, softly. “Isaac,” I say again. “The table…” All of a sudden I’m feeling hot … weak. The adrenaline, which carried me up the well, up the stairs, up the ladder, has run out. He walks over to me, his arms full. “I know,” he says, dryly. “I saw.” He’s looking at my leg as he sets things down next to me. He’s lining them up, double-checking everything. But every few seconds he looks at my leg again like he doesn’t know how to fix it. “Is that how this happened?” “I jumped down the table,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking. The asthma—” The corners of his mouth pull tight. “You had an asthma attack?

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

  And were I to remain, of what could I be certain? Of death. And successful flight would save me; there could be no hesitation for there was no alternative; but it were necessary that, before I launched my enterprise, fatal examples of vice rewarded be yet again reproduced before my eyes; it was inscribed in the great book of fate, in that obscure tome whereof no mortal has intelligence, 'twas set down there, I say, that upon all those who had tormented me, humiliated me, bound me in iron chains, there were to be heaped unceasing bounties and rewards for what they had done with regard to me, as if Providence had assumed the task of demonstrating to me the inutility of virtue.... Baleful lessons which however did not correct me, no, I wavered not; lessons which, should I once again escape from the blade poised above my head, will not prevent me from forever remaining the slave of my heart's Divinity. Chapter 25 These frightful theories soon led me to think of Omphale's doubts upon the manner in which we left the terrible house we were in. And it was then I conceived the plans you will see me execute in the sequel. However, to complete my enlightenment I could not prevent myself from putting yet a few more questions to Father Clement. "But surely," I said, "you do not keep your passions' unhappy victims forever; you surely send them away when you are wearied of them?" "Certainly, Therese," the monk replied; "you only entered this establishment in order to leave it when the four of us agree to grant your retirement. Which will most certainly be granted." "But do you not fear," I continued, "lest the younger and less discreet girls sometimes go and reveal what is done here?" "'Tis impossible." "Impossible ?" "Absolutely." "Could you explain..." "No, that's our secret, but I can assure you of this much: that whether you are discreet or indiscreet, you will find it perfectly impossible ever to say a word about what is done here when you are here no longer. And thus you see, Therese, I recommend no discretion to you, just as my own desires are governed by no restraining policy...." And, having utter'd these words, the monk fell asleep. From that moment onward, I could no longer avoid realizing that the most violent measures were used with those unhappy ones of us who were retrenched and that this terrible security they boasted of was only the fruit of our death. I was only the more confirmed in my resolve; we will soon see its effect.

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

  I am afraid, it will be impossible for me to be so.” “I am not afraid,” I replied smiling, “where are the papers?’” “So that you may know what it means to be absolutely in my power, I have drafted a second agreement in which you declare that you have decided to kill yourself. In that way I can even kill you, if I so desire.” “Give them to me.” While I was unfolding the documents and reading them, Wanda got pen and ink. She then sat down beside me with her arm about my neck, and looked over my shoulder at the paper. The first one read: AGREEMENT BETWEEN MME. VON DUNAJEW AND SEVERIN VON KUSIEMSKI “Severin von Kusiemski ceases with the present day being the affianced of Mme. Wanda von Dunajew, and renounces all the rights appertaining thereunto; he on the contrary binds himself on his word of honor as a man and nobleman, that hereafter he will be her slave until such time that she herself sets him at liberty again. “As the slave of Mme. von Dunajew he is to bear the name Gregor, and he is unconditionally to comply with every one of her wishes, and to obey every one of her commands; he is always to be submissive to his mistress, and is to consider her every sign of favor as an extraordinary mercy. “Mme. von Dunajew is entitled not only to punish her slave as she deems best, even for the slightest inadvertence or fault, but also is herewith given the right to torture him as the mood may seize her or merely for the sake of whiling away the time. Should she so desire, she may kill him whenever she wishes; in short, he is her unrestricted property. “Should Mme. von Dunajew ever set her slave at liberty, Severin von Kusiemski agrees to forget everything that he has experienced or suffered as her slave, and promises never under any circumstances and in no wise to think of vengeance or retaliation . “Mme. von Dunajew on her behalf agrees as his mistress to appear as often as possible in her furs, especially when she purposes some cruelty toward her slave.” Appended at the bottom of the agreement was the date of the present day. The second document contained only a few words. “Having since many years become weary of existence and its illusions, I have of my own free will put an end to my worthless life.” I was seized with a deep horror when I had finished. There was still time, I could still withdraw, but the madness of passion and the sight of the beautiful woman that lay all relaxed against my shoulder carried me away. “This one you will have to copy, Severin,” said Wanda, indicating the second document. “It has to be entirely in your own handwriting; this, of course, isn’t necessary in the case of the agreement.”

• From Between Us

  Adult Minangkabau cite malu as source of normative behavior, saying, “Malu makes us behave carefully so that we don’t do something bad or wrong.” And similarly, the Taiwanese mothers want to teach their children propriety by helping them to feel shame. Across cultures, caregivers want what is best for their child: among the Minangkabau and among Taiwanese families, “knowing shame” best prepares children to be valued members of their society. Raising a Child Who Knows Fear A central goal of socialization among the Bara in the southern part of Madagascar is to be docile. Bara society is segmented and hierarchical: the basic segment of the Bara social organization consists of three or four generations of living descendants from a single ancestral spirit. The ideal behavior for Bara children is to be docile, submissive, and compliant with anything their elders want them to do: Bara children are made to follow the directives of their elders without protest. To that end, they should “know tahotsy, that is, they should readily fear their elder relatives.” Fear, according to anthropologist Birgitt Röttger-Rössler and developmental psychologist Manfred Holodynski, is the socializing emotion. During their first year, Bara infants are in very close proximity to their mother: there is a lot of body contact, and the baby’s physical needs are met and often anticipated. Slight corporal punishment starts when the mother weans the baby during the second year. Mothers enforce bodily distance and administer mild corporal punishment such as pinching their children when the latter do not behave as called for. During this time, older siblings and peers become more important to the toddler. At around four years of age, children are thought to understand both social norms and the sanctions associated with violating them. This is the time when corporal punishments start, and strong experiences of fear (tahotsy) are instilled. Beating is the most common form of corporal punishment, but food deprivation (in this context, inducing a fear of starving) occurs as well. Beating is always done by the same person, usually the father. The Bara believe that shaming or public humiliation is harmful for children, and they make sure the beating is done out of sight. In an effort to ensure that the child feels accepted after the beating, the Bara go to great lengths to comfort a child who received a beating. This role is often taken up by the mother; “[t]he child is petted, advised how to avoid the beating in the future, and assured that the beating was due only to her or his misconduct.” The Bara punish to induce strong fear for the rule of authority, but unlike the Taiwanese mothers and the Minangkabau, they counteract any feelings of devaluation and they actively avoid threatening their children with social exclusion.

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

  Those who did not feel badgered by them respected the monks for expressing the values of Christianity in an absolute way. For them, Alexander’s virulent intolerance of paganism showed that he really believed that Christianity was the one true faith. After Julian, some Christians increasingly defined themselves as a beleaguered community. They gathered around the tombs of local martyrs, listened avidly to the stories of their suffering, and piously preserved the memory of Julian’s persecution, keeping alive their sense of injury. Many had no time for the courteous tolerance of the more aristocratic bishops.78 The pagan temples, which had symbolized the brief pagan revival, now seemed a standing threat that became increasingly intolerable. To add fuel to these flames, the emperors were now ready to exploit the monks’ popularity and let these zealots loose on the pagan world. They would enforce the Pax Christiana as aggressively as they had previously imposed the Pax Romana. Theodosius I (r. 346–95) was a recent convert and a man of humble Spanish origins. A brilliant soldier, he had pacified the Danube region and arrived in Constantinople in 380 determined to implement his bellicose form of Christianity in the East. It was he who summoned the Council of Constantinople that made Nicene orthodoxy the official religion of the empire in 381. He patronized the Roman aristocracy when it suited him, but his sympathies really lay with the man in the street, and he decided to create a power base by wooing the disaffected townsfolk through their beloved monks. He could see the point of destroying the pagan temples; his empress, Aelia Flacilla, had already distinguished herself in Rome by leading a crowd of noblewomen to attack pagan shrines. In 388 Theodosius gave the monks the go-ahead, and they fell on the village shrines of Syria like a plague; with the connivance of the local bishop, they also destroyed a synagogue at Callinicum on the Euphrates. The pagan orator Libanius urged the emperor to prosecute this “black-robed tribe” who were guilty of latrocinium (“robbery and violence”), describing the “utter desolation” that followed their vicious attacks on the temples “with sticks and stones and bars of iron, and in some cases, disdaining these, with hands and feet.” The pagan priests had no option but to “keep quiet or die.”79 The monks became the symbolic vanguard of violent Christianization. The mere sound of their chanting was enough to make the governor of Antioch adjourn his court and flee the city. Even though there were no boskoi on Minorca, the leader of the Jewish community there dreamed in 418 that his synagogue was in ruins and its site occupied by psalm-singing monks. A few weeks later the synagogue was in fact destroyed—though not by monks but by fanatic local Christians.80

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  To the ordeals belongs also the judicial duel or battle ordeal. It was based on the old superstition that God always gives victory to the innocent.358 It was usually allowed only to freemen. Aged and sick persons, women, children, and ecclesiastics could furnish substitutes, but not always. Mediaeval panegyrists trace the judicial duel back to Cain and Abel. It prevailed among the ancient Danes, Irish, Burgundians, Franks, and Lombards, but was unknown among the Anglo-Saxons before William the Conqueror, who introduced it into England. It was used also in international litigation. The custom died out in the sixteenth century.359 The mediaeval church, with her strong belief in the miraculous, could not and did not generally oppose the ordeal, but she baptized it and made it a powerful means to enforce her authority over the ignorant and superstitious people she had to deal with. Several councils at Mainz in 880, at Tribur on the Rhine in 895, at Tours in 925, at Mainz in 1065, at Auch in 1068, at Grau in 1099, recognized and recommended it; the clergy, bishops, and archbishops, as Hincmar of Rheims, and Burckhardt of Worms, and even popes like Gregory VII. and Calixtus II. lent it their influence. St. Bernard approved of the cold-water process for the conviction of heretics, and St. Ivo of Chartres admitted that the incredulity of mankind sometimes required an appeal to the verdict of Heaven, though such appeals were not commanded by, the law of God. As late as 1215 the ferocious inquisitor Conrad of Marburg freely used the hot iron against eighty persons in Strassburg alone who were suspected of the Albigensian heresy. The clergy prepared the combatants by fasting and prayer, and special liturgical formula; they presided over the trial and pronounced the sentence. Sometimes fraud was practiced, and bribes offered and taken to divert the course of justice. Gregory of Tours mentions the case of a deacon who, in a conflict with an Arian priest, anointed his arm before he stretched it into the boiling caldron; the Arian discovered the trick, charged him with using magic arts, and declared the trial null and void; but a Catholic priest, Jacintus from Ravenna, stepped forward, and by catching the ring from the bubbling caldron, triumphantly vindicated the orthodox faith to the admiring multitude, declaring that the water felt cold at the bottom and agreeably warm at the top. When the Arian boldly repeated the experiment, his flesh was boiled off the bones up to the elbow.360 The Church even invented and substituted new ordeals, which were less painful and cruel than the old heathen forms, but shockingly profane according to our notions. Profanity and superstition are closely allied. These new methods are the ordeal of the cross, and the ordeal of the eucharist. They were especially used by ecclesiastics.

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

  "Monseigneur," said Dubois, presenting me to him, "here is the young lady you wanted, she in whom all Grenoble has become interested... the celebrated Therese, to be brief, condemned to hang with the counterfeiters, then delivered thanks to her innocence and her virtue. Acknowledge that I serve you with skill, Monseigneur; not four days ago you evinced your extreme desire to immolate her to your passions; and today I put her into your hands; you will perhaps prefer her to that pretty little pensionnaire from the Benedictine convent at Lyon you also desired and who should be arriving any minute: the latter has her physical and moral integrity this one here has nothing but a sentimental chastity; but it is deep-grained in her being and nowhere will you find a creature more heavily ballasted with candor and honesty. They are both at your disposition, Monseigneur: you'll either dispatch each this evening, or one today and the other tomorrow. As for myself, I am leaving you: your kindnesses in my regard engaged me to make you privy to my Grenoble adventure. One man dead, Monseigneur, one dead man; I must fly Ä" "Ah no, no, charming woman!" cried the master of the place; "no, stay, and fear nothing while you have my protection! You are as a soul unto my pleasures; you alone possess the art of exciting and satisfying them, and the more you multiply your crimes, the more the thought of you inflames my mind.... But this Therese is a pretty thing...." and addressing himself to me: "what is your age, my child?" "Twenty-six, Monseigneur," I replied, "and much grief." "Ha, yes, grief indeed, lots of distress, excellent, I'm familiar with all that, hugely amusing, just what I like; we're going to straighten everything out, we'll put a stop to these tumbles; I guarantee you that in twenty-four hours you'll be unhappy no longer, ha!..." and, with that, dreadful flights of laughter... " 'tis true, eh, Dubois? I've a sure method for ending a young girl's misfortunes, haven't I?" "Indeed you do," the odious creature replied; "and if Therese weren't a friend of mine, I'd never have brought her to you; but it is only fair I reward her for what she did for me.

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

  Let her not be struck down... let us advance: it is essential that the universe be ridded of villains as dangerous as these. Ought I fear causing the doom of three or four men in order to save the millions of individuals their policy or their ferocity sacrifice? And therewith I pierce the next hedge; this one was thicker than the first: the further I progressed, the stouter they became. The hole was made, however, but there was firm ground beyond... nothing more betrayed the same horrors I had just encountered; and thus I arrived at the brink of the moat without having met with the wall Omphale had spoken of; indeed, there turned out to be none at all, and it is likely that the monks mentioned it merely to add to our fear. Less shut in when beyond the sextuple enclosure, I was better able to distinguish objects: my eyes at once beheld the church and the bulk of the adjacent building; the moat bordered each of them; I was careful not to attempt to cross it at this point; I moved along the edge and finally discovering myself opposite one of the forest roads, I resolved to make my crossing there and to dash down that road as soon as I had climbed up the other side of the ditch; it was very deep but, to my good fortune, dry and lined with brick, which eliminated all possibilities of slipping; then leapt: a little dazed by my fall, it was a few moments before I got to my feet... I went ahead, got to the further side without meeting any obstacle, but how was I to climb it! I spent some time seeking a means and at last found one where several broken bricks at once gave me the opportunity to use the others as steps and to dig foot-holds in order to mount; I had almost reached the top.when something gave way beneath my weight and I fell back into the moat under the debris I dragged with me; I thought myself dead; this involuntary fall had been more severe than the other; I was, as well, entirely covered with the material which had followed me; some had struck my head... it was cut and bleeding. O God!

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

  'Twas agreed by both parties. As soon as I was alone with this holy man I cast myself at his knees, rained tears upon them and besought him to save me from my cruel situation; I proved my innocence to him; I did not conceal that the culpable proposals he had made me some days before had provoked my young companion's enmity, and presently, said I, she accused me out of spite. The monk listened attentively. "Therese," said he when I was done, "don't lose control of yourself as you customarily do when someone contradicts your damnable prejudices; you notice to what a pass they've brought you, and you can at present readily convince yourself that it's a hundred times better to be a rascal and happy than well-behaved and unprosperous; your case is as bad as it possibly could be, dear girl, there's nothing to be gained by hiding the fact from you: this Dubois you speak of, having the largest benefits to reap from your doom, will unquestionably labor behind the scene to ruin you: Bertrand will accuse you, all appearances stand against you, and, these days, appearances are sufficient grounds for decreeing the death sentence: you are, hence, lost, 'tis plain: one single means might save you: I get on well with the bailiff, he has considerable influence with this city's magistrature; I'm going to tell him you are my niece, and that by this title I am claiming you: he'll dismiss the entire business: I'll ask to send you back to my family; I'll have you taken away, but 'twill be to our monastery and incarceration there, whence you'll never emerge... and there, why conceal it? you, Therese, will be the bounden slave of my caprices, you'll sate them all without a murmur; as well, you will submit yourself to my colleagues: in a word, you will be as utterly mine as the most subordinated of victims... you heed me: the task is hard; you know what are the passions of libertines of our variety; so make up your mind, and make me prompt answer." "Begone, Father," I replied, horror-struck, "begone, you are a monster to dare so cruelly take advantage of my circumstances in order to force upon me the alternatives of death or infamy; I shall know how to die, if die I must, but 'twill be to die sinless." "As you like," quoth the cruel man as he prepared to withdraw; "I have never been one to impose happiness upon reluctant people.... Virtue has so handsomely served you until the present, Therese, you are quite right to worship at its altar... good-bye: above all, let it not occur to you to ask for me again." He was leaving; an unconquerable impulse drew me to his knees yet another time.

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

  Whereupon Saint-Florent spoke up: "Therese," said he, presenting me to Cardoville, "here is your judge, this is the man upon whom your fate depends; we have discussed your problem; but it appears to me that your crimes are of such a nature we will have much to do to come to terms about them." "She has exactly forty-two witnesses against her," remarks Cardoville, who takes a seat upon Julien's knees, who kisses him upon the lips, and who permits his fingers to stray over the young man's body in the most immodest fashion; "it's a perfect age since we condemned anyone to die for crimes more conclusively established." "I? Conclusively established crimes?" "Conclusively established or inconclusively established," quoth Cardoville, getting to his feet and coming up to shout, with much effrontery, at my very nose, "you're going to burn pissing if you do not, with an entire resignation and the blindest obedience, instantly lend yourself to everything we are going to require of you." "Yet further horrors!" I cried; "ah indeed! 'tis then only by yielding to infamies innocence can escape the snares set for it by the wicked!" "That's it; 'tis ordained," Saint-Florent broke in; "you know, my dear: the weak yield to the strong's desires, or fall victims to their wickedness: that's all: that's your whole story, Therese, therefore obey." And while he spoke the libertine nimbly pulled up my skirts. I recoiled, fended him off, horrified, but, having reeled backward into Cardoville's arms, the latter grasped my hands and thereupon exposed me, defenseless, to his colleague's assaults. The ribbons holding up my skirts were cut, my bodice torn away, my kerchief, my blouse, all were removed, and in no time I found myself before those monsters' eyes as naked as the day I came into the world. "Resistance..." said one. "Resistance," chimed in the other, both proceeding to despoil me, "the whore fancies she can resist us...." and not a garment was ripped from my body without my receiving a few blows. When I was in the state they wished, they drew up their chairs, which were provided with protruding armrests; thus a narrow space between the chairs was left and into it I was deposited; and thus they were able to study me at their leisure: while one regarded my fore end, the other mused upon my behind; then they turned me round, and turned me again. In this way I was stared at, handled, kissed for thirty minutes and more; during this examination not one lubricious episode was neglected, and I thought it safe to conjecture, upon the basis of those preliminaries, that each had roughly the same Idiosyncrasies.

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

  Was he not my master? Furthermore, it seemed to me the evil I was going to do him would be immediately offset by the extreme care I would take to save his life: I was going to be mistress of that life, but whatever might be his intentions with respect to me, it would certainly only be in order to restore it to him. We take our stations; Roland is stimulated by a few of his usual caresses; he climbs upon the stool, I put the halter round his neck; he tells me he wants me to curse him during the process, I am to reproach him with all his life's horrors, I do so; his dart soon rises to menace Heaven, he himself gives me the sign to remove the stool, I obey; would you believe it, Madame? nothing more true than what Roland had conjectured: nothing but symptoms of pleasure ornament his countenance and at practically the same instant rapid jets of semen spring nigh to the vault. When 'tis all shot out without any assistance whatsoever from me, I rush to cut him down, he falls, unconscious, but thanks to my ministrations he quickly recovers his senses. "Oh Therese !" he exclaims upon opening his eyes, "oh, those sensations are not to be described; they transcend all one can possibly say: let them now do what they wish with me, I stand unflinching before Themis' sword! "You're going to find me guilty yet another time, Therese," Roland went on, tying my hands behind my back, "no thanks for you, but, dear girl, what can one expect? a man doesn't correct himself at my age.... Beloved creature, you have just saved my life and never have I so powerfully conspired against yours; you lamented Suzanne's fate; ah well, I'll arrange for you to meet again; I'm going to plunge you alive into the dungeon where she expired." I will not describe my state of mind, Madame, you fancy what it was; in vain did I weep, groan, I was not heeded. Roland opened the fatal dungeon, he hangs out a lamp so that I can still better discern the multitude of corpses wherewith it is filled; next, he passes a cord under my arms which, as you know, are bound behind my back, and by means of this cord he lowers me thirty feet: I am twenty more from the bottom of the pit: in this position I suffer hideously, it is as if my arms are being torn from their sockets. With what terror was I not seized I what a prospect confronted my eyes! Heaps of bodies in the midst of which I was going to finish my life and whose stench was already infecting me. Roland cinches the rope about a stick fitted above the hole then, brandishing a knife, I hear him exciting himself.

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

  Is it not high time that lofty pride be humbled? and may one still expect to be nearly a virgin at twenty- two? You see about you companions who, upon entering here, like yourself thought to resist and who, as prudence will bid you to do, ended by submitting when they noticed that stubbornness could lead them to incur penalties; for I might just as well declare to you, Therese," the superior continued, showing me scourges, ferules, withes, cords, and a thousand other instruments of torture, "yes, you might just as well know it: there you see what we use upon unmanageable girls; decide whether you wish to be convinced. What do you expect to find here? Mercy? we know it not; humaneness? our sole pleasure is the violation of its laws. Religion? 'tis as naught to us, our contempt for it grows the better acquainted with it we become; allies... kin... friends... judges? there's none of that in this place, dear girl, you will discover nothing but cruelty, egoism, and the most sustained debauchery and impiety. The completest submissiveness is your lot, and that is all; cast a glance about the impenetrable asylum which shelters you: never has an outsider invaded these premises: the monastery could be taken, searched, sacked, and burned, and this retreat would still be perfectly safe from discovery: we are in an isolated outbuilding, as good as buried within the six walls of incredible thickness surrounding us entirely, and here you are, my child, in the midst of four libertines who surely have no inclination to spare you and whom your entreaties, your tears, your speeches, your genuflections, and your outcries will only further inflame. To whom then will you have recourse? to what?

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Sara’s memory was that she and Ron were on their way to California, when they were caught in a hurricane in the Panama Canal. The ship was too damaged to continue the voyage. Parsons gained a judgment against the couple, but declined to press criminal charges, possibly because his sexual relationship with Sara had begun while she was still below the age of consent, and she threatened to retaliate. Hubbard’s friends were alarmed, both about his business dealings with Parsons and his romance with Sara. “Keep him at arm’s length,” Robert Heinlein warned a mutual friend. His wife, Virginia, regarded Ron as “a very sad case of post-war breakdown,” and Sara as Hubbard’s “latest Man-Eating Tigress.” Sara repeatedly refused Ron’s entreaties to marry him, but he threatened to kill himself unless she relented. She still saw him as a broken war hero whom she could mend. Finally, she said, “All right, I’ll marry you, if that’s going to save you.” They awakened a minister in Chestertown, Maryland, on August 10, 1946. The minister’s wife and housekeeper served as witnesses to the wedding. The news ricocheted among Hubbard’s science-fiction colleagues. “I suppose Polly was tiresome about not giving him his divorce so he could marry six other gals who were all hot & moist over him,” one of Hubbard’s writer friends, L. Sprague de Camp, wrote to the Heinleins. (In fact, Polly didn’t learn of the marriage till the following year, when she read about it in the newspapers.) “How many girls is a man entitled to in one lifetime, anyway?” de Camp fumed. “Maybe he should be reincarnated as a rabbit.” The Church of Scientology admits that Hubbard was involved with Parsons and the OTO, characterizing it, however, as a secret mission for naval intelligence. The church claims that the government had been worried about top American scientists—including some from Los Alamos, where the atom bomb was developed—who made a habit of staying with Parsons when they visited California. Hubbard’s mission was to penetrate and subvert the organization. “Mr. Hubbard accomplished the assignment,” the church maintains. “He engineered a business investment that tied up the money Parsons used to fund the group’s activities, thus making it unavailable to Parsons for his occult pursuits.” Hubbard, the church claims, “broke up black magic in America.” EVEN IF HUBBARD WAS a government spy, as the church claims, the available records show him at what must have been his lowest point in the years just after the war. His physical examination at the Veterans Administration in Los Angeles in September 1946 notes, “No work since discharge. Lives on his savings.” (The VA eventually increased his disability to 40 percent.) Sara noticed that he was having nightmares. That winter, they moved into a lighthouse on a frozen lake in the Poconos near Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. It was an unsettling time for Sara; they were isolated, and Ron had a .45 pistol that he would fire randomly.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  28, 1997. Garry Scarff, a former Scientologist, told me (and has testified) that he was instructed to learn how to sever the brake line on Cynthia Kisser’s car; he says that if the resulting accident failed to kill her, he was to pretend to be a good Samaritan, then reach into the car and strangle her. The plan was never put into action, however. 14 a $3 million campaign: David Miscavige on Nightline, Nov. 18, 2006; Hawkins, Counterfeit Dreams, pp. 208–9. 15 annual litigation budget of $20 million: J. P. Kumar, “ ‘Fair Game’: Leveling the Playing Field in Scientology Litigation,” Review of Litigation, Summer 1997, vol. 16, pp. 747–72. 16 it cost Time more money: John Huey, personal communication. 17 “to harass and discourage”: Hubbard, “The Scientologist, A Manual on the Dissemination of Material,” Ability, ca. 1955. 18 “If attacked on some”: Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, “Dept of Govt Affairs,” Aug. 15, 1960. 19 “NEVER agree to an”: Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, “Attacks on Scientology,” Feb. 25, 1966. 20 “virtually incomprehensible”:” Douglas Frantz, “The Shadowy Story behind Scientology’s Tax-Exempt Status,” New York Times, Mar. 9, 1997. 21 $1 billion in arrears: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. 22 Miscavige accused the: David Miscavige, Speech to the International Association of Scientologists, Oct. 8, 1993, http://www.xenu.net/archive/oca/speech.html. 23 the church upped the ante: Reitman, Inside Scientology, p. 163. 24 “They didn’t even have money”: David Miscavige, Speech to the International Association of Scientologists, Oct. 8, 1993, www.xenu.net/archive/oca/speech.html. 25 “All of America Loved Lucy”: Ibid. 26 A ten-thousand-dollar reward: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun; Reitman, Inside Scientology, p. 165. 27 phony news bureau: Douglas Frantz, “The Shadowy Story behind Scientology’s Tax- Exempt Status,” New York Times, Mar. 9, 1997. 28 Some government workers: Reitman, Inside Scientology, p. 166. 29 religious cloaking: Interview with Denise (Larry) Brennan. 30 “A truly Suppressive Person”: Hubbard, HCOPL, “Cancellation of Fair Game,” Oct. 21, 1968. 31 “I was an Irishman”: Interview with Frank Flinn. 32 “Marty and I are just going to bypass”: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. 33 “Is he expecting you?”: David Miscavige, Speech to the International Association of Scientologists, Oct. 8, 1993, http://www.xenu.net/archive/oca/speech.html. 34 The level of distrust: Garrison, Playing Dirty, p. 101. 35 “Am I lying?”: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. 36 Final Solution document: David Miscavige, Speech to the International Association of Scientologists, Oct. 8, 1993, http://www.xenu.net/archive/oca/speech.html. 37 Two hundred Scientologists: Reitman, Inside Scientology, pp. 167–88. 38 Instead of the $1 billion bill: Elizabeth MacDonald, “Scientologists and IRS Settled for $12.5 Million,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30, 1997. 39 “I’m only doing this”: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. 40 began to strangle him: Interview with Stefan Castle. “He did not hurt me physically,” Castle told me. “More psychological.” Rathbun witnessed the incident. 41 “You just want to get rid”: Interview with Amy Scobee. 42 “You know the kind of pressure”: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. 43 “cease acting like a madman”: markrathbun.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/the-joe-howard- paradigm-tech-outside-the-wall/.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "During the winter of 1858, while in Venice, I had the somewhat peculiar illusion which you request me to relate. I remember the circumstances very accurately because I have often repeated the story, and have made an effort to keep all the attendant circumstances clear of exaggeration. I was travelling with my mother, and we had taken rooms at a hotel which had been located in an old palace. The room in which I went to bed was large and lofty. The moon was shining brightly, and I remember standing before a draped window, thinking of the romantic nature of the surroundings, remnants of old stories of knights and ladies, and the possibility that even in that room itself love-scenes and sanguinary tragedies might have taken place. The night was so lovely that many of the people were strolling through the narrow lanes or so-called streets, singing as they went, and I laid awake for some time listening to these patrols of serenaders, and of course finally fell asleep. I became aware that some one was leaning over me closely, and that my own breathing was being interfered with; a decided feeling of an unwelcome presence of some sort awakened me. As I opened my eyes I saw, as distinctly as I ever saw any living person, a draped head about a foot or eighteen inches to the right, and just above my bed. The horror which took possession of my young fancy was beyond anything I have ever experienced. The head was covered by a long black veil which floated out into the moonlight, the face itself was pale and beautiful, and the lower part swathed in the white band commonly worn by the nuns of Catholic orders. My hair seemed to rise up, and a profuse perspiration attested the genuineness of the terror which I felt. For a time I lay in this way, and then gradually gaining more command over my superstitious terrors, concluded to try to grapple with the apparition. It remained perfectly distinct until I reached at it sharply with my hand, and then disappeared, to return again, however, as soon as: I sank back into the pillow. The second or third grasp which I made at the head was not followed by a reappearance, and I then saw that the ghost was not a real presence, but depended upon the position of my head. If I moved my eyes either to the left or right of the original position occupied by my head when I awakened, the ghost disappeared, and by returning to about the same position, I could make it reappear with nearly the same intensity as at first. I presently satisfied myself by these experiments that the illusion arose from the effect of the imagination, aided by the actual figure made by a visual section of the moonbeams shining through the lace curtains of the window. If I had given way to the first terror of the situation and covered up my head, I should probably have believed in the reality of the apparition, since I have not by the slightest word, so far as I know, exaggerated the vividness of my feelings."

• From Going Clear (2013)

  6 PAULETTE COOPER WAS studying comparative religion for a summer at Harvard in the late 1960s when she became interested in Scientology, which was gaining attention. “A friend came to me and said he had joined Scientology and discovered he was Jesus Christ,” she recalled. She decided to go undercover to see what the church was about. “I didn’t like what I saw,” she said. The Scientologists she encountered seemed to be in a kind of trance. When she looked into the claims that the church was making, she found many of them false or impossible to substantiate. “I lost my parents in Auschwitz,” Cooper said, explaining her motivation in deciding to write about Scientology at a time when there had been very little published and those who criticized the church came under concentrated legal and personal attacks. A slender, soft-spoken woman, Cooper published her first article in Queen, a British magazine, in 1970. “I got death threats,” she said. The church filed suit against her. She refused to be silent. “I thought if, in the nineteen-thirties people had been more outspoken, maybe my parents would have lived.” The following year, Cooper published a book, The Scandal of Scientology, that broadly attacked the teachings of Hubbard, revealing among other things that Hubbard had misrepresented his credentials and that defectors claimed to have been financially ripped off and harassed if they tried to speak out. Soon after her book came out, Cooper received a visit from Ron and Sara Hubbard’s daughter, Alexis, who was then studying at Smith College. Cooper had demanded that Alexis bring substantial identification to prove who she was, but when she opened the door, she drew a breath. It was as if Hubbard had been reincarnated as a freckled, twenty-two-year-old woman. Alexis asked Cooper whether or not she was legitimate. In her social circle, illegitimacy was a terrible stigma. Cooper was able to show her Ron and Sara’s marriage certificate. Alexis had been to Hawaii over the Christmas holidays to visit her mother. When she returned to college, she learned that there was a man who had been waiting to see her for four days. He identified himself as an FBI agent and said he had several pages of a letter he was required to read aloud to her. The letter said that Alexis was illegitimate. It was clearly written by Hubbard. “Your mother was with me as a secretary in Savannah in late 1948,” the letter stated. He said he had to fire Sara because she was a “street-walker” and a Nazi spy. “In July 1949 I was in Elizabeth, New Jersey, writing a movie,” the letter continues. “She turned up destitute and pregnant.” Out of the goodness of his heart, Hubbard said, he had taken Sara in, to see her “through her trouble.” Weirdly, the letter was signed, “Your good friend, J. Edgar Hoover.” After The Scandal of Scientology, Cooper’s life turned into a nightmare.

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

  Slavic nationalism had a strongly Christian flavor—Serbs were Orthodox and Croatians Roman Catholic—but Bosnia, with a Muslim majority and Serbian, Croatian, Jewish, and Gypsy communities, opted for a secular state that respected all religions. Lacking the military capacity to defend themselves, Bosnian Muslims knew they would be persecuted if they remained part of Serbia, and so in April 1992 they declared independence. The United States and the European Union recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina as a sovereign state. Milosevic depicted Serbia as “a fortress, defending European culture and religion” from the Islamic world, and Serbian clerics and academics similarly described their nation as a bulwark against the Asiatic hordes. Another radical Serbian nationalist, Radovan Karadzic, had warned the Bosnian Assembly that if it declared independence, it would lead their nation “into hell” and “make the Muslim people disappear.” But this latent hatred of Islam dated only to the nineteenth century, when Serbian nationalists had created a myth that blended Christianity with a national sentiment based on ethnicity: it cast Prince Lazlo, defeated by the Ottomans in 1389, as a Christ figure; the Turkish sultan as a Christ slayer; and the Slavs who converted to Islam as “Turkified” (isturciti). By adopting a non-Christian religion, they had renounced their Slavic ethnicity and become Orientals; the Serbian nation would not rise again until these aliens were exterminated. Yet so deep-rooted were the habits of coexistence that it took Milosevic three years of relentless propaganda to persuade the Serbs to revive this lethal blend of secular nationalism, religion, and racism. Significantly, the war began with a frantic attempt to expunge the documentary evidence that for centuries Jews, Christians, and Muslims had enjoyed a rich coexistence. A month after the Bosnian declaration of independence, Serbian militias destroyed the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, which housed the largest collection of Islamic and Jewish manuscripts in the Balkans, burned down the National Library and National Museum, and targeted all such manuscript collections for destruction. Between them, Serbian and Croat nationalists also destroyed some fourteen hundred mosques, turning the sites into parks and parking lots to erase all memory of the inconvenient past. 23 While they were burning the museums, Serbian militias and the heavily armed Yugoslav National Army overran Bosnia, and in the autumn of 1992 the process that Karadzic called “ethnic cleansing” began. 24 Milosevic had opened the prisons and recruited petty gangsters into the militias, letting them pillage, rape, burn, and kill with impunity. 25 No Muslim was to be spared, and any Bosnian Serb who refused to cooperate must also die. Muslims were herded into concentration camps, and without toilets or other sanitation, filthy, emaciated, and traumatized, they seemed scarcely human either to themselves or to their tormentors. Militia leaders dulled the inhibitions of their troops with alcohol, forcing them to gang-rape, murder, and torture.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I took the knife with me. I had to push the couch aside to reach the door. When I looked through the peep hole, my hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the knife. What I saw was Doctor Asterholder, in different clothes. I opened the deadbolt and swung the door wide. Wider than a woman who’d experienced my day should have. I wouldn’t have even done that before what happened today. We stared at each other for a good thirty seconds, before his eyes found the dishtowel and my fresh blood. “What did you do?” I stared at him blankly. I couldn’t seem to speak; it was like I’d forgotten how. He grabbed my arm and ripped the cloth from the wound. It was then I realized he thought I was trying to kill myself. “It’s not—it’s not in the right spot,” I said. “It’s not like that.” He was blinking rapidly when he looked up from the cut. “Come,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” I followed him into the kitchen and slid onto a barstool, not quite sure what was happening. He took my arm, more gently this time, and turned it over, peeling back the dishrag. “Bandages? Antiseptic?” “Upstairs bathroom, under the sink.” He left to retrieve my little first-aid kit and came back with it about two minutes later. I only realized I was still clutching the knife when he gently pried it from my fingers and set it on the counter. He didn’t speak as he cleaned and bandaged my wound. I watched his hands work. His fingers were deft and agile. “It won’t need stitches,” he said. “Flesh wound. But, keep it clean.” His eyes traced the rawness on my exposed skin, left from the Brillo pad. “Senna,” he said. “There are people, support groups—” I cut him off. “No.” “Okay.” He nodded. It reminded me of the way my shrink used to say okay , like it was a word you swallowed and digested instead of one you spoke. Somehow, from him, it seemed less condescending. “Why are you here?” He hesitated briefly then said, “Because you are.” I didn’t understand what he meant. My thoughts were so contorted, choppy. I couldn’t seem to… “Go to bed. I’ll sleep right there.” He pointed to the couch, still angled across the front door. I nodded. You’re in shock, I told myself again. You’re letting a stranger sleep on your couch. I was too tired to over think it. I went upstairs and locked the door to my bedroom. It still didn’t feel safe. Picking up my pillow and blanket, I carried them to my bathroom, locked that door, too, and lay down on the mat. My sleep was that of a woman who had just been raped.