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.

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• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Koroviev responded from somewhere, not in a rattling but in a very clear and resounding voice. And at once the accursed interpreter turned up in the front hall, dialled a number there, and for some reason began speaking very tearfully into the receiver: ‘Hello! I consider it my duty to inform you that the chairman of our tenants’ association at no. 302-bis on Sadovaya, Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, is speculating in foreign currency. 2 At the present moment, in his apartment no. 35, he has four hundred dollars wrapped up in newspaper in the ventilation of the privy. This is Timofei Kvastsov speaking, a tenant of the said house, apartment no. 11. But I adjure you to keep my name a secret. I fear the vengeance of the above-stated chairman.’ And he hung up, the scoundrel! What happened next in apartment no. 50 is not known, but it is known what happened at Nikanor Ivanovich’s. Having locked himself in the privy with the hook, he took from his briefcase the wad foisted on him by the interpreter and satisfied himself that it contained four hundred roubles. Nikanor Ivanovich wrapped this wad in a scrap of newspaper and put it into the ventilation duct. Five minutes later the chairman was sitting at the table in his small dining room. His wife brought pickled herring from the kitchen, neatly sliced and thickly sprinkled with green onion. Nikanor Ivanovich poured himself a dram of vodka, drank it, poured another, drank it, picked up three pieces of herring on his fork . . . and at that moment the doorbell rang. Pelageya Antonovna was just bringing in a steaming pot which, one could tell at once from a single glance, contained, amidst a fiery borscht, that than which there is nothing more delicious in the world—a marrow bone. Swallowing his saliva, Nikanor Ivanovich growled like a dog: ‘Damn them all! Won’t allow a man to eat . . . Don’t let anyone in, I’m not here, not here . . . If it’s about the apartment, tell them to stop blathering, there’ll be a meeting next week.’ His wife ran to the front hall, while Nikanor Ivanovich, using a ladle, drew from the fire-breathing lake—it, the bone, cracked length-wise. And at that moment two citizens entered the dining room, with Pelageya Antonovna following them, for some reason looking very pale. Seeing the citizens, Nikanor Ivanovich also turned white and stood up. ‘Where’s the john?’ the first one, in a white side-buttoned shirt, asked with a preoccupied air. Something thudded against the dining table (this was Nikanor Ivanovich dropping the ladle on to the oilcloth). ‘This way, this way,’ Pelageya Antonovna replied in a patter. And the visitors immediately hastened to the corridor. ‘What’s the matter?’

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Her face . . . Oh, her face! Her right ear was burning like shit and her cheek was being scorched, and Monique was powerless to get away as tears fell from her eyes and hit the hot coils, sending little puffs of steam back up toward her. She closed her eyes and gave up, unable to bear it as her face loomed closer and closer to the orange burner. And just when she was braced to feel her flesh sizzle and her skin stick to the glowing coils, that niggah let her up and flung her across the room. She crashed into the microwave cart, then yelped as she twisted her ankle, fell onto one knee, and then crumpled to the floor. “Ain’t gone be no fuckin’ Baltimore, you stupid-ass bitch,” Pluto growled as he picked up his plastic shopping bag and headed toward the door again. “Not for me or for you.” • • • My fuckin’ face! Monique snatched off her hot earring and jumped to her feet as soon as the door slammed. She kicked off her shoes and hobbled over to the freezer and took out a frozen can of grape juice. She held it to the right side of her face, then ran in the bathroom to check out the damage Pluto had done. Aside from being really red and tender, her cheek didn’t have any burn marks or blisters yet, but the ends of her weave had fried and so had some of the fine hair around the edges of her face. Her ear was straight burnt, and it hurt like hell as she splashed cold water all over her face, then caked a mixture of melted butter and Vaseline on her earlobe, and then spread it around on her cheek and eyebrow. Monique didn’t know what the fuck was going on that had set Pluto off bad enough for him to burn her, but she’d heard one thing loud and clear: no B-More. Whatever it was that not only had Pluto crying but had changed all their plans was too big for her to imagine. But she knew one thing. There was no way in hell she was just gonna sit up in that apartment and wait for him to come back and deep-fry the other half of her face. She was gonna get out there on the streets of Harlem and find her some fuckin’ answers. She changed into a pair of pants and a thick sweater, then grabbed her coat and her keys, and with Vaseline still caked up on half of her face, she jetted from the apartment and jumped in her whip.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Nikanor Ivanovich asked quietly, going after the visitors. ‘There can’t be anything like that in our apartment . . . And—your papers . . . begging your pardon . . .’ The first, without stopping, showed Nikanor Ivanovich a paper, and the second was at the same moment standing on a stool in the privy, his arm in the ventilation duct. Everything went dark in Nikanor Ivanovich’s eyes. The newspaper was removed, but in the wad there were not roubles but some unknown money, bluish-greenish, and with the portrait of some old man. However, Nikanor Ivanovich saw it all dimly, there were some sort of spots floating in front of his eyes. ‘Dollars in the ventilation . . .’ the first said pensively and asked Nikanor Ivanovich gently and courteously: ‘Your little wad?’ ‘No!’ Nikanor Ivanovich replied in a dreadful voice. ‘Enemies stuck me with it!’ ‘That happens,’ the first agreed and added, again gently: ‘Well, you’re going to have to turn in the rest.’ ‘I haven’t got any! I swear to God, I never laid a finger on it!’ the chairman cried out desperately. He dashed to the chest, pulled a drawer out with a clatter, and from it the briefcase, crying out incoherently: ‘Here’s the contract . . . that vermin of an interpreter stuck me with it . . . Koroviev . . . in a pince-nez! . . .’ He opened the briefcase, glanced into it, put a hand inside, went blue in the face, and dropped the briefcase into the borscht. There was nothing in the briefcase: no letter from Styopa, no contract, no foreigner’s passport, no money, no theatre pass. In short, nothing except a folding ruler. ‘Comrades!’ the chairman cried frenziedly. ‘Catch them! There are unclean powers in our house!’ It is not known what Pelageya Antonovna imagined here, only she clasped her hands and cried: ‘Repent, Ivanych! You’ll get off lighter.’ His eyes bloodshot, Nikanor Ivanovich raised his fists over his wife’s head, croaking: ‘Ohh, you damned fool!’ Here he went slack and sank down on a chair, evidently resolved to submit to the inevitable. During this time, Timofei Kondratievich Kvastsov stood on the landing, placing now his ear, now his eye to the keyhole of the door to the chairman’s apartment, melting with curiosity. Five minutes later the tenants of the house who were in the courtyard saw the chairman, accompanied by two other persons, proceed directly to the gates of the house.

• From The History of Christianity: From the Disciples to the Dawn of the Reformation (2012)

  50 noitucesreP—tluC ralupopnU ehT :7 erutceL • Christians put Roman rulers and administrators in a difficult situation. So long as Christianity flew under the flag of Judaism (as a o “sect” of Judaism), it would enjoy the same privileges accorded that ancestral tradition, but when relations with Jews were severed, as they were by the late 1st century, the subversive elements in Christianity could not be ignored. Unlike Jews, Christians had no temple where sacrifices could o be offered for the emperor, thus smoothing relations. In fact, Christians were aggressive in their attacks on Gentile idolatry: The gods of the nations were idols and demons. Aggressiveness was shown, as well, by intense proselytism. The separateness of the cult, above all its refusal to participate o in the “city of gods and men,” marked its members for the same attacks that had been made on Epicureans (and Jews): They were atheists and were guilty of misanthropy. The earliest Roman sources concerning Christians (Suetonius, o Tacitus, and Pliny the Younger) considered them superstitious and were impressed by their stubbornness. Historical Facts of Persecution • Constructing an adequate historical account of persecution from the 1st to the 4th centuries is difficult. The precise events are uncertain, and there are large gaps in the evidence. For the most part, evidence comes from Christian sources, o which understandably tend to maximize state opposition and oppression. Thus, in Christian lore, Marcus Aurelius is a notorious persecutor, but there is little evidence of this persecuting activity under him. It is difficult to distinguish the occurrence of local riots (as in o the Martyrdom of Polycarp) or even regional repression (as in Pliny the Younger) from systematic state persecution, or temporary spasms of persecution from sustained efforts.

• From The Girls (2016)

  It was shorter—Jessamine had cut it in the bathroom, squinting at a how-to article in a magazine. “You look happy to see me,” Suzanne said. Smiling. I smiled back, but it was hollow. That seemed, obliquely, to please Suzanne. My fear. I knew I should do something—we kept standing under the awning, increasing the chance someone would stop to ask me a question or introduce herself to my sister. But I couldn’t make myself move. Russell and the others couldn’t be very far away—were they watching me? The windows of the buildings seemed alive, my mind flashing to snipers and Russell’s long stare. “Show me your room,” Suzanne announced. “I want to see.” —The room was empty, Jessamine still at the Tuck Shop, and Suzanne pushed past me and through the doorway before I could stop her. “Just lovely,” she trilled in a fake English accent. She sat down on Jessamine’s bed. Bouncing up and down. Looking at the taped-up poster of a Hawaiian landscape, the unreal ocean and sky sandwiching a sugary rib of beach. A set of the World Book Jessamine had never opened, a gift from her father. Jessamine kept a stack of letters in a carved wooden box and Suzanne immediately lifted the lid, sifting through. “Jessamine Singer,” she read off an envelope. “Jessamine,” she repeated. She let the lid bang shut and got to her feet. “So this one’s your bed.” She stirred my blanket with a mocking hand. My stomach tilted, a picture of us in Mitch’s sheets. Hair sticking to her forehead and neck. “You like it here?” “It’s okay.” I was still in the doorway. “Okay,” Suzanne said, smiling. “Evie says the school is just okay.” I kept watching her hands. Wondering what they’d done exactly, as if the percentage mattered. She tracked my glance: she must have known what I was thinking. She got abruptly to her feet. “Now I get to show you something,” Suzanne said. —The bus was parked on a side street, just outside the school’s gate. I could see the jostle of figures inside the bus. Russell and whoever was still around—I assumed everyone. They’d painted over the hood. But everything else was the same. The bus beastly and indestructible. My sudden certainty: they would surround me. Back me into a corner. If anyone had seen us standing there on the slope, we would have looked like friends. Chatting in the Saturday air, my hands in my pockets, Suzanne shading her eyes. “We’re going to the desert for a while,” Suzanne announced, watching the flurry that must have been visible on my face. I felt the meager borders of my own life: a meeting that night for the French Club—Madame Guevel had promised butter tarts. The musty weed Jessamine wanted to smoke after curfew. Even knowing what I knew, did a part of me want to leave? Suzanne’s dank breath and her cool hands. Sleeping on the ground, chewing nettle leaves to moisten our throats.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  The boy shied. His street-boy face, torn with black scars of junk, retained a wild, broken innocence; shy animals peering out through grey arabesques of terror. "I don't dig you, Jack." The Sailor leapt into sharp, junky focus. He turned back his coat lapel, showing a brass hypo needle covered with mold and verdigris. "Retired for the good of the service.... Sit down and have a blueberry crumb pie on the expense account. Your monkey loves it.... Make his coat glossy." The boy felt a touch on his arm across eight feet of morning lunch room. He was suddenly siphoned into the booth, landing with an inaudible shlup. He looked into the Sailor's eyes, a green universe stirred by cold black currents. "You are agent, mister?" "I prefer the word... vector." His sounding laughter vibrated through the boy's substance. "You holding, man? I got the bread...." "I don't want your money, Honey: I want your Time." "I don't dig." "You want fix? You want straight? You wanta, nooood?" The Sailor cradled something pink and vibrated out of focus. "Yeah." "We'll take the Independent. Got their own special heat, don't carry guns only saps. I recall, me and the Fag fell once in Queen's Plaza. Stay away from Queen's Plaza, son... evil spot... fuzz haunted. Too many levels. Heat flares out from the broom closet high on ammonia like burning lions... fall on poor old lush worker, scare her veins right down to the bone. Her skin pop a week or do that five-twenty-nine kick handed out free and gratis by NYC to jostling junkies.... So Fag, Beagle, Irish, Sailor beware! Look down, look down along that line before you travel there...." The subway sweeps by with a black blast of iron. THE EXTERMINATOR DOES A GOOD JOB The Sailor touched the door gently, following patterns of painted oak in a slow twist, leaving faint, iridescent whorls of slime. His arm went through to the elbow. He pulled back an inside bolt and stood aside for the boy to enter. Heavy, colorless smell of death filled the empty room. "The trap hasn't been aired since the Exterminator fumigated for coke bugs," said the Sailor apologetically. The boy's peeled senses darted about in frenzied exploration. Tenement flat, railroad flat vibrating with silent motion. Along one wall of the kitchen a metal trough -- or was it metal, exactly? -- ran into a sort of aquarium or tank half-filled with translucent green fluid. Moldy objects, worn out in unknown service, littered the floor: a jock-strap designed to protect some delicate organ of flat, fan-shape; multi-levelled trusses, supports and bandages; a large U-shaped yoke of porous pink stone; little lead tubes cut open at one end. Currents of movement from the two bodies stirred stagnant odor pools; atrophied boy-smell of dusty locker rooms, swimming pool chlorine, dried semen.

• From The Girls (2016)

  How the mother must have begged, at the end. The man was bearing down on me. My hands were limp and wet. Please, I thought. Please. Who was I addressing? The man? God? Whoever handled these things. And then he was in front of me. Oh, I thought. Oh. Because he was just a normal man, harmless, nodding along to the white headphones nested in his ears. Just a man walking on the beach, enjoying the music, the weak sun through the fog. He smiled at me as he passed, and I smiled back, like you would smile at any stranger, any person you didn’t know. ACKNOWLEDGMENTSI would like to thank Kate Medina and Bill Clegg for invaluable guidance. Thank you also to Anna Pitoniak, Derrill Hagood, Peter Mendelsund, Fred and Nancy Cline, and my brothers and sisters: Ramsey, Hilary, Megan, Elsie, Mayme, and Henry. BY EMMA CLINE The Girls Daddy The Guest [image file=Image00006.jpg] PHOTO: MEGAN CLINE EMMA CLINE is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Girls and the short story collection Daddy . The winner of the Plimpton Prize, she has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the First Novel Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Sunday Times Story Award. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize and was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. [image "Part One" file=Image00007.jpg] 1THIS WAS AUGUST. The ocean was warm, and warmer every day. Alex waited for a set to finish before making her way into the water, slogging through until it was deep enough to dive. A bout of strong swimming and she was out, beyond the break. The surface was calm. From here, the sand was immaculate. The light— the famous light— made it all look honeyed and mild: the dark European green of the scrub trees, the dune grasses that moved in whispery unison. The cars in the parking lot. Even the seagulls swarming a trash can. On the shore, the towels were occupied by placid beachgoers. A man tanned to the color of expensive luggage let out a yawn, a young mother watched her children run back and forth to the waterline. What would they see if they looked at Alex? In the water, she was just like everyone else. Nothing strange about a young woman, swimming alone. No way to tell whether she belonged here or didn’t. —WHEN SIMON HAD FIRST taken her to the beach, he’d kicked off his shoes at the entrance. Everyone did, apparently: there were shoes and sandals piled up by the low wood railing. No one takes them? Alex asked. Simon raised his eyebrows. Who would take someone’s shoes? But that had been Alex’s immediate thought— how easy it would be to take things, out here. All sorts of things. The bikes leaning against the fence. The bags unattended on towels. The cars left unlocked, no one wanting to carry their keys on the beach.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He says that you wanted to fight him one day—that made me laugh awfully, it’s so like you, Stephen! He’s a good-looking person and rather a nice one. He tells me that his regiment’s stationed at Worcester, so I’ve asked him to come over to The Grange when he likes. It must be pretty dreary, I imagine, in Worcester. . . .’ Stephen finished the letter and sat staring at the sea for a moment, after which she got up abruptly. Slipping the letter into her pocket she buttoned her jacket; she was feeling cold. What she needed was a walk, a really long walk. She set out briskly in the direction of Newquay. 2 During those long, anxious weeks in Cornwall, it was borne in on Stephen as never before how wide was the gulf between her and her mother, how completely they two must always stand divided. Yet looking at Anna’s quiet ageing face, the girl would be struck afresh by its beauty, a beauty that seemed to have mollified the years, to have risen triumphant over time and grief. And now as in the days of her childhood, that beauty would fill her with a kind of wonder; so calm it was, so assured, so complete—then her mother’s deep eyes, blue like distant mountains, and now with that far-away look in their blueness, as though they were gazing into the distance. Stephen’s heart would suddenly tighten a little; a sense of great loss would descend upon her, together with the sense of not fully understanding just what she had lost or why she had lost it—she would stare at Anna as a thirsty traveller in the desert will stare at a mirage of water. And one evening there came a preposterous impulse—the impulse to confide in this woman within whose most gracious and perfect body her own anxious body had lain and quickened. She wanted to speak to that motherhood, to implore, nay, compel its understanding. To say: ‘Mother, I need you. I’ve lost my way—give me your hand to hold in the darkness.’ But good God, the folly, the madness of it! The base betrayal of such a confession! Angela delivered over, betrayed—the unthinkable folly, the madness of it. Yet sometimes as Anna and she sat together looking out at the misty Cornish coast-line, hearing the dull, heavy throb of the sea and the calling of sea-gulls the one to the other—as they sat there together it would seem to Stephen that her heart was so full of Angela Crossby, all the bitterness, all the sweetness of her, that the mother-heart beating close by her own must surely, in its turn, be stirred to beat faster, for had she not once sheltered under that heart?

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I freaked straight out, falling out of my chair, hitting my head on the desk, and making a loud thud as I landed on the floor. When I woke up again I was in my boo’s arms. My coworker Carol must have called him to come get me because Tears was looking down at me with big eyes. He had taken me home and put me in our bed. At first I thought everything had been one crazy dream, until I saw the gun in Tears’s hand. He gripped me by my neck and pushed the note Raheem had written me up in my face. “Bitch,” he said with the barrel pressed to my forehead. “You met a motherfucker in room 825 at the Sheraton Hotel? Ain’t no way you can fuckin’ explain this shit!” I opened my mouth to tell him it had only been a dream, but then I heard the trigger click, and just like Tears had promised, my life was over. LIFE OF SIN Joy “What’s your pleasure?” I purred into the phone. Being the sex kitten that I am, I knew I had the dog on the other end of the phone with his tail standing straight up. “Shit, you. You my pleasure, ma,” Papi said with his heavy Cuban accent. It was 12:01 A.M. Even before answering the phone I’d known it was Papi calling. He made sure that he was always the first man to call me upon the dawn of a new day. He loved being my first. “You know I hate sloppy seconds,” he always says. “I’m your pleasure, huh?” I asked. I wanted to hear him say it again. Well, actually, I wanted him to think that I wanted to hear him say it again. “Umm, you, puta. You’re my pleasure, you fuckin’ puta.” “I’m your puta, Papi. I’m your cunt,” I said, sticking my index finger in my mouth and sucking on it. I knew damn well he couldn’t see me, but he could hear my wet tongue slurping on it. The visual alone had his hands yankin’ off on his chilito by now. “What do you want to do to me, Papi? What do you want to do to this cunt of yours? Fuck it, huh? Is that what you want to do? Come on. Oooh, come on, Papi and just fuck it. Fuck it good for me, huh.” By now I had a smile a mile long on my face. I could hear Papi beating that stick like it was Rodney King and he was Five-O. It had been less than one minute and this nigga was ’bout to bust. This was a record-breaking time for me. I must say that I felt proud. But it was too premature to celebrate. So just to make sure that his call to me would be worth it, I decided to go hard in the paint.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  He was completely gutted, leaving an empty shell sitting there on the giraffe skin upholstery.... Even the eyes and brain went with a horrible schlupping sound. The Duc de Ventre says he will carry that ghastly schlup to his mausoleum." Since there is no sure way to detect a disguised replica (though every Divisionist has some method he considers infallible) the Divisionists are hysterically paranoid. If some citizen ventures to express a liberal opinion, another citizen invariably snarls: "What are you? Some stinking Nigger's bleached-out replica?" The casualties in barroom fights are staggering. In fact the fear of Negro replicas -- which may be blond and blue-eyed -- has depopulated whole regions. The Divisionists are all latent or overt homosexuals. Evil old queens tell the young boys: "If you go with a woman your replicas won't grow." And citizens are forever putting the hex on someone else's replica cultures. Cries of: "Hex my culture will you, Biddy Blair!" followed by sound effects of mayhem, continually ring through the quarter.... The Divisionists are much given to the practice of black magic in general, and they have innumerable formulas of varying efficacy for destroying the Mother Cell, also known as the Protoplasm Daddy, by torturing or killing a captured replica.... The authorities have finally given up the attempt to control, among the Divisionists, the crimes of murder and unlicensed production of replicas. But they do stage pre-election raids and destroy vast replica cultures in the mountainous regions of the Zone where replica moon-shiners hole up. Sex with a replica is strictly forbidden and almost universally practiced. There are queer bars where shameless citizens openly consort with their replicas. House detectives stick their heads into hotel rooms saying: "Have you got a replica in here?" Bars subject to be inundated by low class replica lovers put up signs in ditto marks: " " " "s Will Not Be Served Here.... It may be said that the average Divisionist lives in a continual crisis of fear and rage, unable to achieve either the self-righteous complacency of the Senders or the relaxed depravity of the Liquefactionists.... However the parties are not in practice separate but blend in all combinations. The Factualists are Anti-Liquefactionist, Anti-Divisionist, and above all Anti-Sender. Bulletin of the Coordinate Factualist on the subject of replicas: "We must reject the facile solution of flooding the planet with 'desirable replicas.' It is highly doubtful if there are any desirable replicas, such creatures constituting an attempt to circumvent process and change.

• From Naked Lunch (1959)

  Mark walks over to her and she looks up from Johnny's half-eaten genitals, her face covered with blood, eyes phosphorescent.... Mark puts his foot on her shoulder and kicks her over on her back.... He leaps on her, fucking her insanely... they roll from one end of the room to the other, pinwheel end-over-end and leap high in the air like great hooked fish. "Let me hang you, Mark.... Let me hang you.... Please, Mark, let me hang you!" "Sure baby." He pulls her brutally to her feet and pins her hands behind her. "No, Mark!! No! No! No," she screams, shitting and pissing in terror as he drags her to the platform. He leaves her tied on the platform in a pile of old used condoms, while he adjusts the rope across the room... and comes back carrying the noose on a silver tray. He jerks her to her feet and tightens the noose. He sticks his cock up her and waltzes around the platform and off into space swinging in a great arc.... "Wheeeeee!" he screams, turning into Johnny. Her neck snaps. A great fluid wave undulates through her body. Johnny drops to the floor and stands poised and alert like a young animal. He leaps about the room. With a scream of longing that shatters the glass wall he leaps out into space. Masturbating end-over-end, three thousand feet down, his sperm floating beside him, he screams all the way against the shattering blue of sky, the rising sun burning over his body like gasoline, down past great oaks and persimmons, swamp cypress and mahogany, to shatter in liquid relief in a ruined square paved with limestone. Weeds and vines grow between the stones, and rusty iron bolts three feet thick penetrate the white stone, stain it shit-brown of rust. Johnny dowses Mary with gasoline from an obscene Chimu jar of white jade.... He anoints his own body... They embrace, fall to the floor and roll under a great magnifying glass set in the roof... burst into flame with a cry that shatters the glass wall, roll into space, fucking and screaming through the air, burst in blood and flames and soot on brown. rocks under a desert sun. Johnny leaps about the room in agony. With a scream that shatters the glass wall he stands spread-eagle to the rising sun, blood spurting out his cock... a white marble god, he plummets through epileptic explosions into the old Medjoub writhe in shit and rubbish by a mud wall under a sun that scar and grab the flesh into goose-pimples.... He is a boy sleeping against the mosque wall, ejaculates wet dreaming into a thousand cunts pink and smooth as sea shells, feeling the delight of prickly pubic hairs slide up his cock. John and Mary in hotel room (music of East St. Louis Toodleoo). Warm spring wind blows faded pink curtains in through open window....

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Gestas, deprived of reason, cried out fearfully as soon as the executioner came near him, but when the sponge touched his lips, he growled something and seized it with his teeth. A few seconds later his body, too, slumped as much as the ropes would allow. The man in the hood followed the executioner and the centurion, and after him came the head of the temple guard. Stopping at the first post, the man in the hood examined the blood-covered Yeshua attentively, touched his foot with his white hand, and said to his companions: ‘Dead.’ The same was repeated at the other two posts. After that the tribune motioned to the centurion and, turning, started off the hilltop together with the head of the temple guard and the man in the hood. Semi-darkness set in, and lightning furrowed the black sky. Fire suddenly sprayed out of it, and the centurion’s shout: ‘Raise the cordon!’, was drowned in rumbling. The happy soldiers rushed headlong down the hill, putting on their helmets. Darkness covered Yershalaim. Torrents of rain poured down suddenly and caught the centuries halfway down the hill. The deluge fell so terribly that the soldiers were already pursued by raging streams as they ran downhill. Soldiers slipped and fell in the sodden clay, hurrying to get to the level road, along which—now barely visible through the sheet of water—the thoroughly drenched cavalry was heading for Yershalaim. A few minutes later only one man remained in the smoky brew of storm, water and fire on the hill. Shaking the not uselessly stolen knife, falling from slippery ledges, clutching at whatever was there, sometimes crawling on his knees, he strained towards the posts. He now vanished in total darkness, now was suddenly illumined by a tremulous light. Having made his way to the posts, already up to his ankles in water, he tore off his heavy water-soaked tallith, remaining just in his shirt, and clung to Yeshua’s feet. He cut the ropes on his shins, stepped up on the lower crossbar, embraced Yeshua and freed his arms from the upper bonds. The naked, wet body of Yeshua collapsed on Levi and brought him to the ground. Levi wanted to heave it on to his shoulders straight away, but some thought stopped him. He left the body with its thrown-back head and outspread arms on the ground in the water, and ran, his feet slithering apart in the clayey mire, to the other posts. He cut the ropes on them as well, and the two bodies collapsed on the ground. Several minutes passed, and all that remained on the top of the hill was these two bodies and the three empty posts. Water beat on the bodies and rolled them over.

• From The Girls (2016)

  I didn’t think of what that dark space might be capable of, only a doubling of my desire to be near it. Suzanne took the lipstick from Donna but hadn’t yet pressed the tip to the ivory wall when we heard a noise in the driveway. “Shit,” Suzanne said. Donna’s eyebrows were raised in mild curiosity: What would happen next? The front door opened. I tasted my own stale mouth, the rancid announcement of fear. Suzanne seemed scared, too, but her fear was distant and amused, like this was a game of sardines and we were just hiding until the others found us. I knew it was Mrs. Dutton when I heard high heels. “Teddy?” she called. “You home?” They’d parked the ranch car down the road, but still: I’m sure Mrs. Dutton took note of the unfamiliar car. Maybe she thought it was a friend of Teddy’s, some older neighborhood pal. Donna was giggling, her hand pressed over her mouth. Eyes bulged in mirth. Suzanne made an exaggerated shushing face. My pulse was loud in my ears. Tiki clattered through the rooms downstairs and I heard Mrs. Dutton cooing to him, the heaving sighs he made in response. “Hello?” she called. The wake of silence that followed seemed obviously uneasy. She’d come upstairs soon enough, and then what? “Come on,” Suzanne whispered. “Let’s sneak out the back.” Donna was laughing silently. “Shit,” she said, “shit.” Suzanne dropped the lipstick on the bureau, but Donna kept the slip on, hitching the straps. “You go first,” she said to Suzanne. —There was no way out but to pass Mrs. Dutton in the kitchen. She was probably wondering at the pink mess of watermelon in the sink, the sticky patches on the floor. Maybe just starting to pick up the disturbance in the air, the itch of strangers in the house. A nervous hand fluttering at her throat, a sudden wish for her husband at her side. Suzanne took off down the stairs, Donna and I hustling behind. The racket of our footsteps as we plowed past Mrs. Dutton, barreling at full speed through the kitchen. Donna and Suzanne were laughing their heads off, Mrs. Dutton shrieking in fright. Tiki came barking after us, quick and hectic, his nails skittering on the floor. Mrs. Dutton backed up, nakedly afraid. “Hey,” she said, “stop,” but her voice wavered. She bumped against a stool and lost her balance, sitting down hard on the tile. I looked back as we banged past—there was Mrs. Dutton splayed on the floor. Recognition tightened her face. “I see you,” she called from the floor, struggling to right herself, her breath going wild. “I see you, Evie Boyd.” [image "Part Three" file=Image00004.jpg] J ULIAN RETURNED FROM H UMBOLDT with a friend who wanted a ride to L.A. The friend’s name was Zav. It seemed vaguely Rastafarian, how he pronounced it, though Zav was fishy white with a bog of orange hair held back by a woman’s elastic.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  I couldn’t believe how ruthless Smooth was. The game made him as cold as Alaska—even with me, the person who had tried to be his best friend. I wanted to drift off to sleep, but I couldn’t. I prayed that Smooth stayed knocked out and didn’t pull out that glock again. The next morning I got up and made Smooth breakfast while wearing a long, black Victoria’s Secret negligee with netted sides that hinted at my dangerous curves. “You still love Smooth, baby?” Smooth asked as bacon cooked in a skillet. “Yes,” I lied while flipping the strips of meat. What the fuck did he expect me to say after the crazy stunt he pulled? He didn’t know it, but I was ready to start plotting my escape from his reign of terror. “Good. I’ll drive you to work,” he said. An hour later Smooth drove me up to the curb of the building where I worked and made me sit in the car while he told me again what he was gonna do to me if I ever stepped out on him. After threatening my life, he ordered me to kiss him goodbye. I felt like a prisoner in my own body. He wanted to control my every move, down to my motherfuckin’ lips! I was early, and when I walked into my office I saw a familiar face. “I came down here ’cause I had to see you.” “How did you know I worked here? You really shouldn’t be here, Life.” “I parked my car up the street from your crib. I stayed in it all night because I wanted to make sure you were okay. This morning I followed Smooth’s ride here and came inside while y’all sat there talking. I ain’t scared of that nigga, but I’m afraid of you being with him.” Life moved closer, softly kissing each of my eyelids. I could feel his hard dick poking at me through my skirt. He roped me in by unzipping his pants and showing me that big, delicious dick again. The minute I peeked at it, I felt like I was standing in quicksand—my ability to continue saying no was sinking fast. I pulled him in my boss’s office and shut the door. Life finally kissed my lips once. He moved close to my mouth again and tasted my lips for a second time. This kiss sizzled just as much as the first one. I finally began returning it. I pressed my body firmly against his, sucking his tongue, as we played in each other’s warm mouths. I met Life halfway by pulling my stockings down and my skirt off, letting them both fall on the floor. I noticed that his eyes were blazing, full of life, and I finally allowed myself to get lost in those dark pools.

• From Lower than the Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity (2024)

  Elders were likely to be prominent local men, but still they were likely to represent a wider section of the community than nobility or gentry who were frequently the cause of lawlessness or disruptive behaviour. The system would seem repressive to us; for people in Reformed Protestant territories, it might seem levelling and liberating. [90] We have noted how Catholic laity in France were persuaded into endorsing the new strictness of clerical celibacy ( this page ), and figures for illegitimate births and pre-nuptial pregnancies are likewise very low in France. Baptism registers appeared in both Catholic and Protestant regions in the sixteenth century, no doubt partly to keep an eye on Anabaptists who would not bring their babies to church for christening. The statistics that they reveal on illegitimacy are striking: in England between the 1540s and 1700s, rates are nearly always below 3 per cent of the total, less than half the rate in the Victorian period. [91] * There were encouragements to sexual discipline. In the 1590s serious economic stress and bad farming conditions across Europe disrupted many wedding plans; in this decade England was probably typical in registering the one noticeable spike in its bastardy rate (and consequent need for parishes to support illegitimate children), which probably frightened the tax-paying population. It was the beginning of a period of cooler weather in the northern hemisphere that lasted till the mid-nineteenth century, the ‘little Ice Age’, during which agricultural shortages always threatened social cohesion. A further background alarm had emerged a century before: an apparently brand-new disease that spread frighteningly quickly across Europe from south to north and which was soon observed as connected to sexual intercourse. The coincidence of Europe’s first contacts with the Caribbean and the Americas by the expeditions of Christopher Columbus after 1492 has suggested an origin, but we have experienced a recent example of a killer disease suddenly emerging from insignificance through some accidental change of behaviour; the origins of this fifteenth– sixteenth century epidemic remain controversial. Certainly it had not figured in the consciousness of Graeco-Roman doctors, so inconveniently it lacked a widely recognized name until taking the title of a Latin poem of 1531 by an Italian doctor, Girolamo Fracastoro: Syphilis . Syphilis caused distressingly visible symptoms and was no respecter of social boundaries, particularly not apparent celibacy in clergy (it may or may not be coincidental that Fracastoro was later official physician to the Council of Trent). [92] One reaction to the pandemic therefore was for social elites, both lay and clerical, to rally to help sufferers. Like the religious renewal movements of the period, syphilis was at its most intense in urban settings: the disease was one major stimulus for the emergence in various Italian cities of the devotional and charitable activism of Oratories and Confraternities that were such an important part of the prehistory of the Italian Counter-Reformation.

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  Margarita asked, pressing herself to Woland and shuddering, but now from curiosity. ‘Ah, no, that’s impossible,’ Woland replied seriously and waved his hand at Abaddon, and he was no more. ‘What do you wish to say, Azazello?’ ‘Messire,’ replied Azazello, ‘allow me to say—we’ve got two strangers here: a beauty who is whimpering and pleading to be allowed to stay with her lady, and with her, begging your pardon, there is also her hog.’ ‘Strange behaviour for a beauty!’ observed Woland. ‘It’s Natasha, Natasha!’ exclaimed Margarita. ‘Well, let her stay with her lady. And the hog—to the cooks.’ ‘To slaughter him?’ Margarita cried fearfully. ‘For pity’s sake, Messire, it’s Nikolai Ivanovich, the ground-floor tenant. It’s a misunderstanding, you see, she daubed him with the cream . . .’ ‘But wait,’ said Woland, ‘why the devil would anyone slaughter him? Let him stay with the cooks, that’s all. You must agree, I cannot let him into the ballroom.’ ‘No, really . . .’ Azazello added and announced: ‘Midnight is approaching, Messire.’ ‘Ah, very good.’ Woland turned to Margarita: ‘And so, if you please . . . I thank you beforehand. Don’t become flustered and don’t be afraid of anything. Drink nothing but water, otherwise you’ll get groggy and it will be hard for you. It’s time!’ Margarita got up from the rug, and then Koroviev appeared in the doorway. CHAPTER 23: The Great Ball at Satan’s, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA CHAPTER 23 The Great Ball at Satan’s Midnight was approaching; they had to hurry. Margarita dimly perceived her surroundings. Candles and a jewelled pool remained in her memory. As she stood in the bottom of this pool, Hella, with the assistance of Natasha, doused her with some hot, thick and red liquid. Margarita felt a salty taste on her lips and realized that she was being washed in blood. The bloody mantle was changed for another—thick, transparent, pinkish—and Margarita’s head began to spin from rose oil. Then Margarita was laid on a crystal couch and rubbed with some big green leaves until she shone. Here the cat burst in and started to help. He squatted down at Margarita’s feet and began rubbing up her soles with the air of someone shining shoes in the street. Margarita does not remember who stitched slippers for her from pale rose petals or how these slippers got fastened by themselves with golden clasps. Some force snatched Margarita up and put her before a mirror, and a royal diamond crown gleamed in her hair.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  16. Elizabeth Ann Seton: Convert and Caretaker It was clear to Elizabeth that her husband did not have a head for business, and by early 1800, the business was clearly going under. In the nick of time, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Act, allowing businessmen to organize and discharge their debts in a highly structured process overseen by committee. The family managed to limp along thanks to the kindness of friends. They moved into the first of a long series of rental homes. It’s at this point that Elizabeth was drawn to organized religion. She and her sister-in-law Rebecca became regular attendees at Trinity Church, the parish for New York’s wealthy Episcopalians. They were particularly enthralled by an assistant rector there, John Henry Hobart, whose impassioned sermons stirred the women to form a private prayer circle. Elizabeth’s faith seems especially linked to fear of death—she had seen a good friend die recently, and William was increasingly showing signs of consumption, or tuberculosis. As they could no longer afford their rental home, Elizabeth and the children spent a summer with her father, who lived now in an isolated house as the quarantine officer for the Port of New York. It was his responsibility to inspect ships coming in and quarantine the passengers and crew if they showed signs of communicable disease. The entire family contracted typhus at the end of the summer. The children recovered quickly, but Richard Bayley died of it, and Elizabeth tended him in his final days. In the fall of 1803, Elizabeth, William, and their eldest daughter, Anna Maria, sailed to Livorno to stay with William’s business associates, the Filicchis. Their four younger children were parceled out to various relatives to await their return. In Italy, William’s symptoms meant that they were sent into a 30-day quarantine—not a field hospital with medical treatment, as Richard Bayley had run, but a cold stone room with three pallets on the floor, a locked door, and apologetic but firm Italian jailers. Her beloved William died only a week after their release from quarantine, and in his final days, Elizabeth cared for him alone. 120

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  4. Perpetua and Felicity: Mothers and Martyrs court. Kate Cooper has suggested that the Passion was edited later to make Perpetua into a less subversive figure, inserting claims of good birth and marriage, but that the original text may have depicted a poor concubine struggling to provide for her child. This would explain some of these oddities we’ve seen in the text. The group returned to the prison, where one of them, Secundulus, died, perhaps at the hands of the guards. It is during this part of the Passion that we finally learn a little about Felicity: She was estimated to be in her eighth month of pregnancy during their imprisonment. Roman law did not allow a pregnant woman to be executed. However, Felicity went into early labor in prison. We know almost nothing of Felicity’s child, save that she was a girl and was given to “one of the sisters”—presumably a fellow Christian woman—to raise. This, too, is incongruous with Roman law, which said that the child, born enslaved, was the property of Perpetua’s father. If the account is accurate, it is possible that Felicity’s arrest and condemnation provided her daughter with greater freedom than she might have had otherwise. Perpetua’s father pitiably begged her to perform a public sacrifice and save herself, but she calmly refused, breaking the ties to her birth family to claim her Christian family. To Romans, this would have been deeply shocking; to the Christian readership of the Passion, it was inspirational. 29

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Power stood. Gave Slim a pound. “Tell him I said he has to use the bathroom. Real bad.” • • • Flame arrived at her and Richard’s fuck spot two hours before their lunchtime date and played maid. Searching dresser drawers, under the bed, behind furniture, she packed everything that could prove she’d ever been there, dumped it in the incinerator, then called the super and pretended like she’d lost something to make sure the trash was already burning. With bucket after bucket of bleach and water, she scrubbed down everything, practically Cloroxing the place to death. At noon, Richard’s key clicked in the lock. Flame posted up on the sofa wearing nothing but a smile and the little black nightie he’d bought her from Vickie’s Secret that said everything but “Hush.” “Hello, my chocolate kitten,” he said, dropping his briefcase. Flame’s nerves were rattled again, but she pushed them aside knowing this would be the last day she’d be his “chocolate” anything. “What up, Rich,” she replied, emotionless. No longer did she have to coo and pretend, roll over and fuck. The game was over, and Enrique and his crew were hiding in the back room. Richard walked over to her, confusion etched on his face. “Bad day?” “Could be worse,” she said, then stood and switched up her mood a little. “I just need to take a shower, relax a little.” She ran her fingers through her wild hair. “Can you meet me in the room when you get settled and help me undress? Please, Daddy?” “Sure, I’ll be there as soon as I leave my client a message.” Flame closed the door behind her, nodded okay to Enrique when he pointed toward the closet, tossing her clothes to her. Huddling, her body began to tremble as she thought about the fear Richard would soon face. She hated to do it to him, but when it came down to it, it was either him or her. Reflecting on all the “chocolate whores” he’d called her, she shook the feeling and decided that he deserved what was coming to him. She heard the door open, a short scuffle, then a burner cocked. Enrique called her name, and she knew the game was over. Quietly, she opened the door as if creeping would make her less accountable. Keeping her eyes on Enrique, she stood there waiting for instructions. “Tell ’im what’chu want, mami.” Flame looked at Richard, forced a scowl on her face. “I want the deed to your house. Not the place you and your family live in, your vacation house. The deed.” Richard laughed nervously. “You can’t be—” Enrique’s henchman, Crazy Lucky, gun-butted him. “Shut da fuck up. Let’er finish.”

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  Jumping out of the bubbly water, Monique let the stopper out of the tub and dried off real quick. Then she sprayed cleanser all around the bathroom, especially the nasty-ass toilet that Pluto couldn’t seem to aim his dick into, and cleaned it until the room was sparkling and smelled like roses and vanilla. She had already cursed the landlord out and told him they were leaving and not to look for another fuckin’penny in rent, so she hated to waste her energy cleaning an apartment she was about to vacate, but she had to. She had stepped her ass outta pocket with herman, and there had been a killer edge in Pluto’s voice when he set her straight that told her there was more to come. She knew that niggah had a temper, and she knew he had a memory too. If she wasn’t careful he could either ride downI-95andleave her ass stuck in Harlem, or walk through the door swinging his fists and punching her lights out. Unless she got his mood right. Monique spent the next few hours preparing for her man to get home. She was gonna butter his ass up like a piece of toast. No, like some corn on the cob. He’d walk in the door and find a clean house, a hot meal, and best of all, a docile bitch who knew her proper place and how to keep her fuckin’ mouth closed. But when Pluto shot through the door around three o’clock in the morning his mood was too crazy. Monique had planned on holding her nose and sucking the membranes out of his fat, nasty dick, but he wasn’t having it. She’d been lounging on the sofa in a lavender silk robe, makeup in place and smelling real nice, but when she looked up and saw the expression on her man’s face she lost all of her cool and jumped to her feet because what she was seeing was truly impossible. “What’s the matter, baby? Baby, what’s wrong?” Pluto’s eyes were red and swollen like he had just finished crying or something. He must have wiped some serious snot from his nose because crusty green streaks had dried up all across his cheeks. Monique couldn’t imagine what could have her man looking so bent, but whatever it was, she was gonna make it go away. “Don’t worry about nothing, baby,” she cooed as Pluto pushed past her. She followed him into their bedroom. “Monique got you, Big Papa. And I’m here to make you feel good.” Pluto stopped in the bedroom doorway and cursed, then rushed over to the dresser and began throwing shit out the top drawer. Monique beamed as she looked around the spotless room that just hours ago had looked like a hurricane hit it. She had folded every stitch in all of his dresser drawers too, so there wasn’t shit he could complain about. “I did a good job, baby. Didn’t I?”