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 Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  “Just more squirrel for me and you.” One Sunday, when Daddy was working days, I woke up late and found the old lady sitting in her wheelchair by herself in the kitchen. Breakfast dishes were scattered around, and she had a beer stuck between her thighs. I’d never been alone with her before and didn’t fancy it. She lifted her head like she’d been dozed off; then she jumped a little when she saw me. “Don’t shout!” I remember her saying. She gave me a walleyed stare. I told her I hadn’t made a peep. She said that Lecia had asked Mother to drive her to church, which idea made me want to dip snuff. Lecia’s religious ardors were at least as vague as mine. But her going to church had the desired effect on Grandma: she got a rapturous look telling me about it, as if that one piddling trip to the house of the Lord might hold Lecia a place in heaven. Then Grandma said she had something to show me in her room. I was grateful, at least, that she had her leg on that morning. She’d even covered it up with these thick support hose, Supp-Hose, they were called. They were orange and heavier than sausage casings. Anyway, she wore those and had wedged the black shoe back on the plastic foot. (There’s something overdressed about a shoe on a plastic foot, like it’s beside the point.) Once we were in her room, she closed the door and posted herself, wheelchair and all, right in front of it. Let me take a minute to tell you about the smell in that room. It stank of snake, specifically water moccasin. If you are walking in waders through a marsh, say, on a warm winter morning, scanning the sky for mallards riding their jagged V overhead, you can smell a moccasin slithering alongside you long before you see it. It has an odor like something dead just before the rot sets in and the worms in its belly skin get it to jiggling around unnaturally. Often the smell of some rotting carcass—armadillo or nutria rat or bird—has stopped me in my tracks and gotten me to turn my eyes expecting to find on the ground the triangular, near-black head of a cottonmouth, which is related to both cobra and pit viper and the most vicious snake on this continent. I could never smell one swimming in a bayou, but on land it gives off a musk easily as strong as skunk. (I knew a drug dealer once who collected them in glass tanks all over his trailer. He had a harelip that somehow protected him from the stink, but the rest of us became, when dickering over pharmaceuticals with him, the noisiest and most adenoidal mouth breathers.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “Are you sure?” my parents asked. “You could maybe wait until the semester break. Or until next year. Get a fresh start.” “No, if I don’t go now, I never will. I have to do it now.” “Okay,” they said. Yep, it was that easy with my parents. It was almost like they’d been waiting for me to ask them if I could go to Reardan, like they were psychics or something. I mean, they’ve always known that I’m weird and ambitious, so maybe they expect me to do the weirdest things possible. And going to Reardan is truly a strange idea. But it isn’t weird that my parents so quickly agreed with my plans. They want a better life for my sister and me. My sister is running away to get lost, but I am running away because I want to find something. And my parents love me so much that they want to help me. Yeah, Dad is a drunk and Mom is an ex-drunk, but they don’t want their kids to be drunks. “It’s going to be hard to get you to Reardan,” Dad said. “We can’t afford to move there. And there ain’t no school bus going to come out here.” “You’ll be the first one to ever leave the rez this way,” Mom said. “The Indians around here are going to be angry with you.” Shoot, I figure that my fellow tribal members are going to torture me. [image "A hand-drawn illustration depicts a person with glasses who is partially buried, surrounded by ants. A thought bubble reads ‘Hope?’" file=image_rsrc4S2.jpg] Rowdy Sings the Blues [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] So the day after I decided to transfer to Reardan, and after my parents agreed to make it happen, I walked over to the tribal school, and found Rowdy sitting in his usual place on the playground. He was alone, of course. Everybody was scared of him. “I thought you were on suspension, dickwad,” he said, which was Rowdy’s way of saying, “I’m happy you’re here.” “Kiss my ass,” I said. I wanted to tell him that he was my best friend and I loved him like crazy, but boys didn’t say such things to other boys, and nobody said such things to Rowdy. “Can I tell you a secret?” I asked. “It better not be girly,” he said. “It’s not.” “Okay, then, tell me.” “I’m transferring to Reardan.” Rowdy’s eyes narrowed. His eyes always narrowed right before he beat the crap out of someone. I started shaking. “That’s not funny,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be funny,” I said. “I’m transferring to Reardan. I want you to come with me.” “And when are you going on this imaginary journey?” “It’s not imaginary. It’s real. And I’m transferring now. I start school tomorrow at Reardan.” “You better quit saying that,” he said. “You’re getting me mad.”

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

  But the abominable crime was to be consummated; some inconceivable permission must have been granted by Heaven that virtue might be made to yield to villainy's oppressions: the animal upon which we had experimented revealed everything to the Count: he heard it howling; knowing of his aunt's fondness for the beast, he asked what had been done to it; those to whom he spoke knew nothing of the matter and made him no clear answer; from this moment, his suspicions began to take shape; he uttered not a word, but I saw that he was disquieted; I mentioned his state to the Marquise, she became further upset, but could think of nothing to do save urge the courier to make yet greater haste, and, if possible, still more carefully to hide the purpose of his mission. She advised her nephew that she was writing to Paris to beg the Duc de Sonzeval to waste not a moment to take up the matter of the recently deceased uncle's inheritance for if no one were to appear to claim it, there was litigation to be feared; she added that she had requested the Duke to come and give her a complete account of the affair, in order that she might learn whether or not she and her nephew would be obliged to make a journey to Paris. Too skillful a physiognomist to fail to notice the embarrassment in his aunt's face, to fail to observe, as well, some confusion written upon mine, the Count smiled at everything and was no less on his guard. Under the pretext of taking a promenade, he leaves the chateau; he lies in wait for the courier at a place the man must inevitably pass.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  She wore crisp fatigues and a short, tight leather jacket zipped up to her collarbones. On her forehead, dead center above the bridge of her pert little ski slope nose, was a stark tattoo: XX. Pussy certified all-natural by the Daughters of the Witches You Couldn’t Burn or whatever Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival bullshit the TERFocracy in Maryland bowed down to. Fuck. “We can wait them out,” Fran whispered, chin practically kissing the dirt, hair stuck to her neck with flop sweat. “Worst case is they take our bikes and we walk home. We have enough meds to get us there, I think. It should be fine. It’s probably going to be fine. Hey maybe get down a little more?” “Oh motherfuck me,” whispered Beth, not even pretending to listen. “That’s Queen TERF. That’s fucking Teach.” Fran’s eyes widened. She stared at the thin, long-haired woman currently sorting through the contents of Beth’s bike basket. They called her Teach, she’d heard, because she’d been a psychological consultant at Guantanamo before T-Day hit. She was a medical doctor too, according to the rumors at the Fort Fisher trading post up near Seabrook when they’d gone to find a buyer for their excess E. Whatever her deal, and wherever she’d come from, there was no doubting she was hardcore. She got her hands on them and they were fucked. Dead. Done. The tattooed woman said something that made her retinue laugh. Fran watched her lips move, watched the play of muscles under her smooth face as she smiled. A cold thrill went up her spine. God, you don’t need to have a wet dream about a fucking gender-essentialist neofascist. She squeezed her eyes shut, nipping in the bud her imagination’s little spurt of latex tight against pale skin and thighs divided into lickable quarters by garters edged in delicate black lace, of a hand on the back of her neck squeezing tighter and tighter until— She bit her lip, cutting through the haze, and the world swam back into normalcy. Well, except that Beth was standing up, and she had her bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. The broad-shouldered girl was squinting. It was past noon and the sunlight seemed to be aimed right at them. The shadows were getting long again. “What are you doing?” Fran hissed, spittle flying through her teeth. Her cock was hard, tenting the front of her stupid cargo shorts, and she was seized suddenly by the ridiculous fear that the pale woman could see it. “Beth, what the fuck are you doing?” “Making the world a kinder, gentler place,” said Beth, grinning like a fox with its head through the henhouse door as she nocked an arrow to the bowstring and drew it back level with the unscarred corner of her mouth. “I’m gonna put one through her fucking neck.”

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Her face must have been floating in that exact spot when she broke it. The broken place itself was like a cyclone with whirled shatterings in the center and longer spikes radiating out. She must have watched the planes of her own angular face come apart like a cubist portrait. I backed away from the brokenness of it, giving the sink and the smatterings of glass on the floor wide berth. I slammed outside and ran down the back steps, praying to God that the black spume of chimney smoke from the tin spout on the garage roof meant that I’d find Mother in her studio painting. If her car was missing, I knew I’d never see her again. I had no trouble picturing that car careening around a curve and then slamming into some concrete embankment. I could also see Mother slumped over the wheel with a picturesque trickle of blood coming from one ear. Surely she wanted to be stopped in her tracks that day. I prayed to find that car sitting in the garage, and I did; its headlights looked heavy-lidded and sleepy, like the car was some bored reptile squatting down over its own four tires. The door from the garage to Mother’s painting studio was open. The padlock was unlatched, and her silver key ring shaped like a longhorn steer and inlaid with turquoise still hung down from it. Mother sat in her mother’s old rocker with her back to me. She was laying papers on a fire in the cast-iron stove. The white edges charred black and curled in. I knew not to speak. Above her on the wall, that big portrait of Grandma looked down, her stiff arms at perfect right angles. Mother had moved that portrait from the living room after the funeral, leaving the wall blank. It scared me to see Grandma Moore there gazing down at her. There was a strange odor in the studio that day. On top of the regular head-opening sting of turpentine and oil paints, I made out either lighter fluid or the charcoal starter Daddy always used to fire up the Weber grill. In fact, after I hit the doorway, Mother reached down for a can next to the rocker and squirted clear fluid from it so there was a whoosh. Flames licked out the stove front before settling back into their low rumble. (Later on, I’d find a brown scorch spot on the vaulted ceiling. I also later figured that she was feeding the stove with all the mail that had come addressed to Grandma since her death—bank statements and seed catalogues and get-well cards from the Lubbock Methodist Church Ladies’ Auxiliary.) Anyway, Mother’s back to me in that rocker conjured that old Alfred Hitchcock movie Psycho she’d taken us to in 1960. In the end, the crazy killer was got up like his nutty old mother with a gray wig. He rocked in her personal chair.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  By the time the TERF gurgled her last bloody breath, Steph was already up on the truck’s rear running board and picking the lock on the gate. In the shadows under the truck he saw someone wriggling wormlike next to Chloe’s boots on the far side of the vehicle. Lock and chain slithered down to pavement. Women scrambled out, hair matted and tangled, the stink of piss and shit unfolding like a soiled flower into the night air. Some of them were crying. One, hair-thin scratches on her naked thighs, screamed at nothing before Steph got a hand over her mouth. Workers bound for whatever the TERFs were doing up north. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay. We’re not hurting you. Nothing’s going to hurt you.” Robbie stood there, knife in hand, breathing hard as he looked down into the dead woman’s face. There were seven of them. TERFs in dark fatigues, five with crossbows and two with compounds. One had a bait bag at her belt, blood soaking through the rough canvas to stain her pant leg. Sitting high up in the branches of a gnarled pine, Beth thumbed the transmit button on her walkie-talkie twice in quick succession. She had pine pitch in her hair and a splinter under her left thumbnail that was driving her insane. She’d been chewing the same plug of licorice root for so long that her mouth had gone a little numb and tingly. The construction worker’s harness securing her to the trunk had started to chafe her waist after four hours up the tree. The TERFs were right under her. The one in the lead was a chinless white woman with faintly jaundiced skin and a stupid smirk on her narrow face, like she was Kraven the Hunter out for Spider-Man’s ass and not a probably alcoholic divorcée doing what amounted to taking a big stick and going down to the basement to bash rats to death. One of the others had a little charm bracelet of finger bones and teeth she must have cut off dead men. The walkie, its speaker gutted, clicked faintly twice in answer to Beth’s signal. She clipped it to her belt and slowly, carefully retrieved her bow from the crotch of the nearest bough. Zia’s looters had grabbed it on a whim. The familiar worn grip felt good in her hand. Her mistake had been trading it for the Screw’s poisoned gift of safety and security, routine and convenience. Better to shit outside than be declawed. The real answer to her signal came a bare few seconds later when the distant whump of an explosion startled birds to flight. Below, the TERFs turned back toward the sound.

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

  As I uttered these words tears returned to my eyes, I sank to my knees before the Count; by all that is most holy I did implore him to let fade into oblivion an infamous aberration I swore to him all my life I would conceal.... But I did not know the man with whom I was dealing; I knew not to what point passions had enthroned crime in that perverse soul. The Count rose and spoke in a voice of ice. "I see very well I was mistaken, Therese," said he. "I regret it, perhaps as much on your account as on my own; no matter, I shall discover other means, and it will be much you shall have lost without your mistress gaining anything." The threat changed all my ideas; by not accepting the criminal role proposed to me, I was exposing myself to great personal risk and my protectress was infallibly to perish; by consenting to be his accomplice, I would shield myself from the Count's wrath and would assuredly save his aunt; an instant's reflection convinced me I should agree to everything. But as so rapid a reversal would have appeared suspicious, I strove to delay my capitulation; I obliged the Count to repeat his sophistries often; little by little I took on an air of not knowing what to reply: Bressac believed me vanquished; I justified my weakness by the potency of his art and in the end I surrendered. The Count sprang into my arms. Ah, how I should have been overjoyed had his movement been inspired by another motive.... What is it I am saying? The time had passed: his horrible conduct, his barbarous designs had annihilated all the feelings my weakling heart had dared conceive, and I saw in him nothing but a monster.... Chapter 14"You are the first woman I have ever held in my arms," said the Count, "and truly, it is with all my soul.... You are delicious, my child; a gleam of wisdom seems to have penetrated into your mind! That this charming mind has lain in darkness for so long! Incredible." Next, we came to facts. In two or three days, as soon, that is, as an opportunity presented itself, I was to drop a dose of poison Ä Bressac gave me the package that contained it Ä into the cup of chocolate Madame customarily took in the morning. The Count assured my immunity against all consequences and directly I consummated the deed, handed me a contract providing me with an annuity of two thousand crowns; he signed these promises without characterizing the state in which I was to enjoy their benefits; we separated. In the midst of all this, something most singular occurred, something all too able to reveal the atrocious soul of the monster with whom I had to deal; I must not interrupt myself for a moment for, no doubt, you are awaiting the denouement of the adventure in which I had become involved.

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

  "Ah, my dear Therese," he said that same evening, having run to my room, "how prosperity does rain down upon me! Often I have told you so: the idea of a crime or an execution is the surest means to attract good fortune; none exists save for villains." "What!" I responded, "this unhoped for bounty does not persuade you, Monsieur, patiently to await the death you wished to hasten?" "Wait?" the Count replied sharply, "I do not intend to wait two minutes, Therese; are you not aware I am twenty-eight? Well, it is hard to wait at my age.... No, let this affect our scheme not in the slightest, give me the comfort of seeing everything brought to an end before the time comes for us to return to Paris.... Tomorrow, at the very latest the day after tomorrow, I beseech you. There has been delay enough: the hour approaches for the payment of the first quarter of your annuity... for performing the act which guarantees you the money...." As best I could, I disguised the fright this desperate eagerness inspired in me, and I renewed my resolution of the day before, well persuaded that if I were not to execute the horrible crime I had engaged to commit, the Count would soon notice I was playing a trick upon him and that, if I were to warn Madame de Bressac, whatever would be her reaction to the project's disclosure, the young Count, observing himself deceived one way or another, would promptly resort to more certain methods which, causing his aunt equally to perish, would also expose me to all her nephew's vengeance. There remained the alternative of consulting the law, but nothing in the world could have induced me to adopt it; I decided to forewarn the Marquise; of all possible measures, that seemed the best, and I elected it. "Madame," I said to her on the morrow of my last interview with the Count, "Madame, I have something of the highest importance to reveal, but however vital its interest to you, I shall not broach it unless, beforehand, you give me your word of honor to bear no resentment against your nephew for what Monsieur has had the audacity to concert.... You will act, Madame, you will take the steps prudence enjoins, but you will say not a word. Deign to give me your promise; else I am silent." Madame de Bressac, who thought it was but a question of some of her nephew's everyday extravagances, bound herself by the oath I demanded, and I disclosed everything. The unhappy woman burst into tears upon learning of the infamy.... "The monster!" she cried, "have I ever done anything that was not for his good?

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

  "Notice, Therese," he says when all is ready, "that though you may miss your blow, I'll not miss mine; and so I am not mistaken when I say your life depends upon you." He excites himself; it is at his intoxication's critical moment he is to snatch away the stool which, removed, will leave me dangling from the beam; he does everything possible to pretend the instant has come; he would be beside himself were I to miss my cue; but do what he will, I divine the crisis, the violence of his ecstasy betrays him, I see him make the telltale movement, the stool flies away, I cut the rope and fall to the ground; there I am, completely detached, and although five yards divide us, would you believe it, Madame? I feel my entire body drenched with the evidence of his delirium and his frenzy. Anyone but I, taking advantage of the weapon she clutched in her hand, would doubtless have leapt upon that monster; but what might I have gained by this brave feat? for I did not have the keys to those subterranean passages, I was ignorant of their scheme, I should have perished before being able to emerge from them; Roland, furthermore, was armed; and so I got up, leaving the sickle on the ground so that he might not conceive the slightest suspicion of my intentions, and indeed he had none, for he had savored the full extent of pleasure and, far more content with my tractability, with my resignation, than with my agility, he signaled to me and we left.

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

  This she related to Mrs. Cole and me the same morning, not without the visible remains of the fear and confusion she had been in, still stamped on her countenance. Mrs. Cole’s remark was, that her indiscretion proceeding from a constitutional facility, there were little hopes of any thing curing her of it, but repeated severe experience. Mine was, that I could not conceive how it was possible for mankind to run into a taste, not only universally odious, but absurd, and impossible to gratify; since, according to the notions and experience I had of things, it was not in nature to force such immense disproportions. Mrs. Cole only smiled at my ignorance, and said nothing towards my undeception, which was not affected but by ocular demonstration, some months after, which a most singular accident furnished me, and which I will here set down, that I may not return again to so disagreeable a subject. I had, on a visit intended to Harriet, who had taken lodgings at Hampton-court, hired a chariot to go out thither, Mrs. Cole having, promised to accompany me; but some indispensable business intervening, to detain her, I was obliged to set out alone; and scarce had I got a third of my way, before the axle-tree broke down, and I was well off to get out, safe and unhurt, into a public-house, of a tolerable handsome appearance, on the road. Here the people told me that the stage would come by in a couple of hours at farthest, upon; which, determining to wait for it, sooner than lose the jaunt I had got so far forward on, I was carried into a very clean decent room, up one pair of stairs, which I took possession of for the time I had to stay, in right of calling for sufficient to do the house justice. Here, whilst I was amusing myself with looking out of the window, a single horse-chaise stopt at the door, out of which lightly leaped two young’ gentlemen, for so they seemed, who came in only as it were to bait and refresh a little, for they gave their horse to be held in readiness against they came out. And presently I heard the door of the next room, where they were let in, and called about them briskly; and as soon as they were served, I could just hear that they shut and fastened the door on the inside.

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

  “The family had not been down at that seat for years, so that it was neglected, and committed entirely to my aunt, and two old domestics to take care of it. Thus I had the full range of a spacious lonely house and gardens, situated at about half a mile distance from any other habitation, except, perhaps, a straggling cottage or so. “Here, in tranquillity and innocence, I grew up without any memorable accident, till one fatal day I had, as I had often done before, left my aunt asleep, and secure for some hours, after dinner; and resorting to a kind of ancient summer house, at some distance from the house, I carried my work with me, and sat over a rivulet, which its door and window faced upon. Here I fell into a gentle breathing slumber, which stole upon my senses, as they fainted under the excessive heat of the season at that hour; a cane couch, with my work basked for a pillow, were all the conveniences of my short repose; for I was soon awaked and alarmed by a flounce, and noise of splashing in the water. I got up to see what was the matter; and what indeed should it be but the son of a neighbouring gentleman, as I afterwards found (for I had never seen him before), who had strayed that way with his gun, and heated by his sport, and the sultriness of the day, had been tempted by the freshness of the clear stream; so that presently stripping, he jumped into it on the other side, which bordered on a wood, some trees whereof, inclined down to the water, formed a pleasing shady recess, commodious to undress and leave his clothes under. “My first emotions at the sight of this youth, naked in the water, were, with all imaginable respect to truth, those of surprise and fear; and, in course, I should immediately have run out, had not my modesty, fatally for itself, interposed the objection of the door and window being so situated, that it was scarce possible to get out, and make my way along the bank to the house, without his seeing me: which I could not bear the thought of, so much ashamed and confounded was I at having seen him. Condemned then to stay till his departure should release me, I was greatly embarrassed how to dispose of myself: I kept some time betwixt terror and modesty, even from looking through the window, which being an old fashioned casement, without any light behind me, could hardly betray any one’s being there to him from within; then the door was so secure, that without violence, or my own consent, there was no opening it from without.

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

  Woman’s character is characterlessness. The best woman will momentarily go down into the mire, and the worst unexpectedly rises to deeds of greatness and goodness and puts to shame those that despise her. No woman is so good or so bad, but that at any moment she is capable of the most diabolical as well as of the most divine, of the filthiest as well as of the purest, thoughts, emotions, and actions. In spite of all the advances of civilization, woman has remained as she came out of the hand of nature. She has the nature of a savage, who is faithful or faithless, magnanimous or cruel, according to the impulse that dominates at the moment. Throughout history it has always been a serious deep culture which has produced moral character. Man even when he is selfish or evil always follows principles, woman never follows anything but impulses. Don’t ever forget that, and never feel secure with the woman you love.” * * * * * Her friend has left. At last an evening alone with her again. It seems as if Wanda had saved up all the love, which had been kept from her, for this superlative evening; never had she been so kind, so near, so full of tenderness. What happiness to cling to her lips, and to die away in her arms! In a state of relaxation and wholly mine, her head rests against my breast, and with drunken rapture our eyes seek each other. I cannot yet believe, comprehend, that this woman is mine, wholly mine. “She is right on one point,” Wanda began, without moving, without opening her eyes, as if she were asleep. “Who?” She remained silent. “Your friend?” She nodded. “Yes, she is right, you are not a man, you are a dreamer, a charming cavalier, and you certainly would be a priceless slave, but I cannot imagine you as husband.” I was frightened. “What is the matter? You are trembling?” “I tremble at the thought of how easily I might lose you,” I replied. “Are you made less happy now, because of this?” she replied. “Does it rob you of any of your joys, that I have belonged to another before I did to you, that others after you will possess me, and would you enjoy less if another were made happy simultaneously with you?” “Wanda!” “You see,” she continued, “that would be a way out. You won’t ever lose me then. I care deeply for you and intellectually we are harmonious, and I should like to live with you always, if in addition to you I might have—” “What an idea,” I cried. “You fill me with a sort of horror.” “Do you love me any the less?” “On the contrary.” Wanda had raised herself on her left arm. “I believe,” she said, “that to hold a man permanently, it is vitally important not to be faithful to him.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  I say the sex that poisoned the planet, stripped the oceans bare, and raped every woman it could get its hands on is dead, and good riddance to it! I say this is our time, that no longer will we mutilate our bodies to conform to arbitrary beauty standards! No longer will we sell our flesh to feed the misogynistic machinery of the porn industry! No longer will we be forced into whoring ourselves out to feed our children!” She gripped the windowsill and pulled herself up, her ribs protesting, every breath bringing a fresh wave of sharp, stabbing pains. A crowd was gathering in the street, looking up at the broadcast towers and the disembodied voice that thundered from them, static-washed and overlapping. It was early. The light was pale and birds perched by the hundreds on the rotting telephone poles and the eaves of houses. Children held their mothers’ hands. Little girls, mostly, and a handful of boys born just before T-Day, no older than five or six now. In a few years they’d be castrated, or put on E, but their mothers still dutifully dressed them in blue and earth tones and junior fatigues. The last little kings of the world. “We will no longer be beaten, we will no longer be enslaved, we will no longer let the men who wear our identities and steal our history for their own sexual gratification dictate how we live and what we’re allowed to believe! We will no longer let them prey on our daughters! ” A frisson of terror slithered up Beth’s spine. She thought of every time a mother had stared sidelong at her on the commuter rail, every time someone had snatched their toddler away when she crouched down to say hello. She thought of her aunt’s email to her mother, explaining why her nephew was no longer welcome in her home or around her children. “This is our world now! This is our America! Welcome, sisters, to the New Womyn’s Commonwealth!” “Beth.” She turned, the scattered applause and cries of outrage and derision from outside ringing in her ears. Fran stood in the doorway. She had on one of her faded floral dresses, pale blue with a pink rose print, and she’d shaved her legs. She looked like a fifties housewife. “We have to go.” They went down the stairs as fast as Beth could manage, Fran going sidelong with Beth’s arm around her shoulders. She explained what was happening on the way, speaking tersely, her shoulder-length hair already lank with sweat. Beth couldn’t think of any questions. Her leg hurt. Her face. Her ribs. Her asshole.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  This ain’t nothing to do with you,” Daddy would say, or Mother would point at us and say, “Don’t talk to me like that in front of these kids!” Once I heard Daddy roar up out of sleep when Mother had apparently dumped a glass of vodka on him, after which she broke and ran for the back door. We got into the kitchen in time to see him dragging her back to the kitchen sink, where he systematically filled three glasses of water and emptied them on her head. That was one of the rare nights that ended with them laughing. In fact, it put them in such a good mood that they took us out to the drive-in to see The Night of the Iguana while they nuzzled in the front seat. When I stepped out the front door into sunlight after a night of their fighting, the activities of the neighbors who looked up from their trash cans or lawn mowers always seemed impossibly innocent. How could people fill their days with those kinds of chores? Sometimes I felt our house divided like Lee and Annie’s. Or I felt like the neighbors’ stares had bored so many imaginary holes in our walls that the whole house was rotten as wormy wood. I never quite got over thinking that folks looked at us funny on mornings after Mother and Daddy had fought. Whether this was prescient or paranoid on my part, I don’t know. If one of the ladies bumped into our grocery cart at the store, she might ask Mother over for coffee, almost as a reflex, before she’d had time to imagine such an ordeal. But a woman’s face always showed palpable relief when Mother declined. And I noticed that when somebody’s mom went knocking on doors for company, she never knocked on ours. The more devout families wouldn’t even let their kids come into our yard. This wasn’t all Mother’s fault, God knows. Daddy scared the hell out of people. Some days he was just spring-loaded on having a fight. For instance, once when we were standing in line to pay the gas bill, he socked a young Coca-Cola driver for saying we shouldn’t be in Vietnam. And Lecia and I both behaved like savages at any opportunity. When she was only twelve, Lecia could beat the dogshit out of any neighbor boy up to the age of fifteen. For my part, I can remember standing behind the drainage ditch in our yard cussing Carol Sharp for bloodying my nose. I had blood sprayed down the front of my new yellow sunsuit, one that tied at the shoulders and had elastic around the legs. I couldn’t have been more than six, but I was calling her an ignorant little bitch. Her momma stood on the porch step shaking her mop at me and saying there were snakes and lizards coming out of my mouth, to which I said I didn’t give a shit.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  One of Daniel’s jobs was to cut the “thumb notches” that mark the glossary and the appendix in these handsomely made books, like the notches one would find in an unabridged dictionary. A machine with a guillotine steel blade slices through the pages to produce the half-moon indentation. California law specifically forbids the operation of the machine by anyone under the age of eighteen. Daniel noted about twenty other minors working at the plant, all of them sleep deprived and working around heavy equipment. One night Daniel chopped off his right index finger on the notching machine. A security officer picked up his finger and put it in a plastic bag with ice, then took Daniel to the children’s hospital in Hollywood. He was instructed to tell the admitting nurse that he had injured himself in a skateboarding accident. The doctors were unable to reattach his finger. After that, Daniel was sent to the sales division of Bridge Publications. Sales had been declining since The Basics had first been published in 2007. The Basics included eighteen books and a number of Hubbard lectures on CD; the complete package cost $6,500. Sea Orgs all over the world had call centers set up to sell them. In Los Angeles, there were hourly quotas to be met, and those who failed suffered various punishments, such as having water dumped on their head or being made to do push-ups or run up and down the stairs. There were security guards on every floor. A salesperson had to get a slip verifying that he had made his quota before he was permitted to go to bed. Often it was simply impossible to make the quota legitimately, so people ran unauthorized credit cards. Members of the Sea Org sales force would break into the church’s financial records and pull up the credit card information of public members. Members who had money on account at the church for future courses would see it drained to pay for books they didn’t order. Parishioners who balked at making contributions or buying unwanted materials were told they were in violation of church ethics, and their progress in Scientology was blocked or threatened. Members who pledge more than they can afford can find themselves in a compromised situation. One Scientologist who was a bank teller says he was told to comply with a robbery in order to pay off his debt to the church; the robbers took four thousand dollars. In 2009, Nancy Cartwright’s fiancé, Stephen E. Brackett, a contractor, had taken a substantial construction advance to renovate a restaurant. The company that insured the project later sued Cartwright, claiming that she and Brackett had diverted the money to the Church of Scientology. Brackett, an OT V, had been featured in a church ad for the Super Power Building, identified as a “key contributor.” “Mankind needs your help,” Brackett was quoted as saying in the ad.

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

  We continue to walk, we enter obscure byways, I know not where I am, where I am going. I was advancing a pace ahead of Dom Severino; his breathing was labored, words flowed incoherently from his lips, one might have thought he was drunk; now and again he stopped me, twined his left arm about my waist while his right hand, sliding beneath my skirts from the rear, wandered impudently over that unseemly part of ourselves which, likening us to men, is the unique object of the homages of those who prefer that sex for their shameful pleasures. Several times the libertine even dared apply his mouth to these areas' most secluded lair; and then we recommenced our march. A stairway appears before us; we climb thirty steps or forty, a door opens, brightness dazzles my eyes, we emerge into a charmingly appointed, magnificently illuminated room; there, I see three monks and four girls grouped around a table served by four other women, completely naked. At the spectacle I recoil, trembling; Severino shoves me forward over the threshold and I am in the room with him. "Gentlemen," says he as we enter, "allow me to present you with one of the veritable wonders of the world, a Lucretia who simultaneously carries upon her shoulder the mark stigmatizing girls who are of evil repute, and, in her conscience, all the candor, all the naivete of a virgin.... One lone violation, friends, and that six years ago; hence, practically a vestal... indeed, I do give her to you as such... the most beautiful, moreover... Oh Clement! how that cheerless countenance of yours will light up when you fall to work on those handsome masses... what elasticity, my good fellow! what rosiness!" "Ah, fuck!" cried the half-intoxicated Clement, getting to his feet and lurching toward me: "we are pleasantly met, and let us verify the facts." I will leave you for the briefest possible time in suspense about my situation, Madame, said Therese, but the necessity to portray these other persons in whose midst I discovered myself obliges me to interrupt the thread of my story. You have been made acquainted with Dom Severino, you suspect what may be his predilections; alas, in these affairs his depravation was such he had never tasted other pleasures Ä and what an inconsistency in Nature's operations was here! for with the bizarre fantasy of choosing none but the straiter path, this monster was outfitted with faculties so gigantic that even the broadest thoroughfares would still have appeared too narrow for him.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  She looked up at him, breathing through her teeth, fighting the urge to shrink into a ball and go away until he’d finished what the thing between his legs wanted to do to her. I can take him. I can take this piece of shit. When he was a person I’d have whipped his ass at pool and gone home with his fucking girl. Warm drool dripped onto her upturned face. His nails broke skin. Her own breath hissed in her ears, thin and strangled, and she thought, for some reason, of Fran’s hesitant mouth on hers, not opening, and of the other woman’s soft, husky voice tickling her neck. You make me feel so delicate. He was going to kill her. She couldn’t hold him off. He was going to kill her, and if she was lucky he’d do it before he raped her. Her forearm trembled under his crushing weight. She could see his chin and his gnashing teeth and his spit ran into her eyes, stinging and vile. Spots formed and burst like blackheads in her vision. Then running footsteps. A dull, solid thwack of impact. The man rolled off of her with a gurgling moan. Beth lay gasping in the mud. Fran stood over her, breathing hard, a bloodstained brick clutched in her hands. “Are you okay?” Fran asked. Beth levered herself up onto her elbows, coughing. “I’m great,” she croaked. “I was about to focus my ki into the first two fingers of my right hand and liquefy his entire spine with a single strike, but you threw off my technique.” The man let out a kind of snarling whine. He was bent double, his wounded head resting against the ground, claws digging furrows in the dirt. In three somehow incredibly faggy steps—Beth had never met anyone else who minced like that—Fran was at his side. Her face screwed up in distaste, she brought the brick down on the back of his head. Skin split. Bone crunched. The brick came up, Fran’s arms trembling with its weight, then down again. Up and down, hammering his face into the mossy ground. Finally Fran stumbled away from his still form, the brick falling with a splash into the muddy water. She was shaking. Beth, still breathing hard, got up and hooked the toe of her boot under the dead man’s shoulder. She flipped him over onto his back. They both stared. With his cleft chin and relatively unmarred face—the worst of the split skin and scarring confined to just behind his ears and the soft flesh under his jaw—he seemed disconcertingly normal, like a stock image of a high school football player, or a Ken doll. Beth burst out laughing. “Oh my God,” Fran squeaked.

• From The Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  He came back about when the rain had started to blow sideways against all the windows with a sound like BB pellets. Grandma’s bath had wound up taking too long. Mother let him force the bathroom door with a screwdriver, and there Grandma sat unmoved from her chair, all her attention honed to that shuttle of hers manufacturing lace while bathwater poured over the edges of the tub and onto the floor. He did have to pick her up, finally. He swooped her up in his arms like she was a bride. Her good leg hung down normally enough, but her stump kept slipping down past his elbow and starting to dangle. Lecia and I had a giggle fit over this on the porch, because Grandma’s legs kept splaying open in a way she would have found unladylike. Outside, the wind had set the phone lines to swaying. It had already started to tear loose some shingles that were blowing up the street. Plus gusts somehow squirmed into the window cracks to make a high-pitched whistling that seemed to get louder by the second. Lecia and I ran for the car, a distance of ten yards, and got drenched to the skin. Getting in the car was like leaving the first big noise of the storm and sitting in a cold bubble. We could barely see the Guardsman through the water streaming off the windshield. He seemed somehow to be trying to move in a more gallant or stately way, what with Grandma’s leg slipping down every other step and all. Anyway, he was slower than we had been, which made us laugh. But we stopped giggling pretty quick when Mother slid behind the wheel. You could see by her eyes in the rearview that she wasn’t crying anymore. That had come to be a bad sign, the not crying. Her mouth turned into a neat little hyphen. I watched the Guardsman climb back in his jeep; then the gray and the rain sort of gobbled up everything but a big olive-drab smear that was moving out of our driveway behind us. I had this crazy urge to roll down my window and poke my head right out into the storm and holler to him to come back. But the wind would have eaten any words I yelled. So I watched the smear of his jeep get littler. Then it was gone, and there was just rain and sirens and Mother’s cold gray eyes set smack in the middle of that silver oblong mirror. The drive from Leechfield to Aunt Iris’s house in Kirbyville would normally have taken an hour. That’s in the best weather conditions. “Sixty minutes, door to door” was what Daddy always said climbing out of his truck cab or stepping up on their porch.

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

  "I have everything to fear," the poor thing added; "my father's conduct toward me since he put me here, his discourses, what preceded Rombeau's examination, everything, Therese, everything suggests that these monsters are going to use me in one of their experiments, and that your poor Rosalie is doomed." After copious tears had flowed from my eyes, I asked the unhappy girl whether she knew where the key to the cellar was kept; she did not; but she did not believe their custom was to take it with them. I sought for it everywhere; in vain; and by the time the hour arrived œor me to return upstairs I had been able to give the dear child no more by way of aid than consoling words, a few hopes, and many tears. She made me swear to come back the next day; I promised, even assuring her that if by that time I had discovered nothing satisfactory regarding her, I would leave the house directly, fetch the police and extricate her, at no matter what price, from the terrible fate threatening her. Chapter 18I went up; Rombeau was dining with Rodin that evening. Determined to stick at nothing to clarify my mistress' fate, I hid myself near the room where the two friends were at table, and their conversation was more than enough to convince me of the horror of the project wherewith both were occupied. It was Rodin who was speaking: "Anatomy will never reach its ultimate state of perfection until an examination has been performed upon the vaginal canal of a fourteen- or fifteen-yearold child who has expired from a cruel death; it is only from the contingent contraction we can obtain a complete analysis of a so highly interesting part." "The same holds true," Rombeau replied, "for the hymeneal membrane; we must, of course, find a young girl for the dissection. What the deuce is there to be seen after the age of puberty? nothing; the menstrual discharges rupture the hymen, and all research is necessarily inexact; your daughter is precisely what we need; although she is fifteen! she is not yet mature; the manner in which we have enjoyed her has done no damage to the membranous tissue, and we will be able to handle her with complete immunity from interference.

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

  Lock the door!” I obey. “Now go downstairs and make sure the door below is also locked.” I descended the winding stairs that lead from her bedroom to the bath; my feet gave way beneath me, and I had to support myself against the iron banister. After having ascertained that the door leading to the Loggia and the garden was locked, I returned. Wanda was now sitting on the bed with loosened hair, wrapped in her green velvet furs. When she made a rapid movement, I noticed that the furs were her only covering. It made me start terribly, I don’t know why? I was like one condemned to death, who knows he is on the way to the scaffold, and yet begins to tremble when he sees it. “Come, Gregor, take me on your arms.” “You mean, mistress?” “You are to carry me, don’t you understand?” I lifted her up, so that she rested in my arms, while she twined hers around my neck. Slowly, step by step, I went down the stairs with her and her hair beat from time to time against my cheek and her foot sought support against my knee. I trembled under the beautiful burden I was carrying, and every moment it seemed as if I had to break down beneath it. The bath consisted of a wide, high rotunda, which received a soft quiet light from a red glass cupola above. Two palms extended their broad leaves like a roof over a couch of velvet cushions. From here steps covered with Turkish rugs led to the white marble basin which occupied the center. “There is a green ribbon on my toilet-table upstairs,” said Wanda, as I let her down on the couch, “go get it, and also bring the whip.” I flew upstairs and back again, and kneeling put both in my mistress’s hands. She then had me twist her heavy electric hair into a large knot which I fastened with the green ribbon. Then I prepared the bath. I did this very awkwardly because my hands and feet refused to obey me. Again and again I had to look at the beautiful woman lying on the red velvet cushions, and from time to time her wonderful body gleamed here and there beneath the furs. Some magnetic power stronger than my will compelled me to look.