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 Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  taught polygamy for the right reasons,” says one of the new prophet’s older siblings. “Warren has no love for the people. His method for controlling them is to inspire fear and dread. My brother preaches that you must be perfect in your obedience. You must have the spirit twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, or you’ll be cut off and go to hell. Warren’s a fanatic. Everything is black and white to him.” A great many First Warders had hoped that an admired, ninety-five-year-old patriarch named Fred Jessop—known as Uncle Fred—would succeed Uncle Rulon. When Warren was ordained as prophet instead, there was considerable speculation that Uncle Fred’s followers would be sufficiently disenchanted to secede from the First Ward and form yet another sect of their own. But the brother of Warren quoted above speculates that this faction may bide their time for a while before deciding to make the break, because they don’t think Warren is going to be sitting in the prophet’s chair for long: “They’re holding on. They believe that it’s just a matter of time before God takes this evil man from their midst, leaving the First Ward intact, with one of their own in power. And I agree with them. I think Warren’s going to get his comeuppance. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, or when, but I think he’s going to suffer an untimely death. I feel this in my bones.” In the meantime, Warren is still very much in the company of the living, and he has been taking steps to consolidate his power. Up in Bountiful, British Columbia, he has stripped Winston Blackmore (whom he has long resented and distrusted) of his leadership position and has threatened to banish him from the religion altogether. Warren installed a compliant man named Jimmy Oler (the half brother of Debbie Palmer, the woman who burned her house down to escape Bountiful) as the new bishop of the Canadian branch of the church, but at least half of the Bountiful community has remained loyal to Blackmore. Should he decide to establish an independent sect of his own, many Canadian fundamentalists would probably sever their ties with Warren’s church in Colorado City to follow Blackmore. But schisms of this sort are hardly a new phenomenon. A look backward at the history of Mormon Fundamentalism shows that its adherents have been splintering into rival sects ever since the first group of die-hard polygamists themselves broke away from the main Mormon Church a century ago.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Thanks to a revelation Ron had received back on February 28, the story of Nephi slaying Laban was imbued with special significance for Dan. In this revelation, God had commanded: Thus saith the Lord unto My servant Dan. . . . Thou art like unto Nephi of old for never since the beginning of time have I had a more obedient son. And for this I will greatly bless thee and multiply thy seed, for have I not said if ye do what I say I am bound[?] Continue in My word for I have great responsibility and great blessings in store for thee. That is all for now. Even so Amen. This revelation had a tremendous impact on Dan: after God had declared that he was like Nephi, according to Mark Lafferty, Dan “was willing to do anything that the Lord commanded him.” In the fundamentalist worldview, a sharp dividing line runs through all of creation, demarcating good from evil, and everybody falls on one side of that line or the other. After much praying, Ron and Dan decided that the four individuals God had commanded them to remove must, a priori, be wicked— they were “children of perdition,” as Dan phrased it—and therefore deserved to be murdered. Having determined that the so-called removal revelation was true and valid, the Lafferty brothers further concluded that “it would be wise to act on the things it suggested.” Whenever a member of the School of the Prophets received a revelation, it was standard procedure for the commandment to be presented to the other members for evaluation. On March 22, just before the school’s weekly meeting at Claudine Lafferty’s home, Ron took Bernard Brady into a side room and handed him the removal revelation. “He asked me to look it over,” says Brady, “and then he left the room. As I read it, my hands began to shake. I got cold all over. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.” When Ron returned a few minutes later, Brady told him, “This scares me to death. I don’t want to have anything to do with anything like that. I think it is wrong.” When the meeting commenced a

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  But all of a sudden Bluebeard’s countenance darkened and, becoming very grim, he pointed to a tiny, odd-looking key that was attached to the ring. Showing this key to his wife, Bluebeard explained that it opened the door to a small room at the end of the corridor on the very bottom floor of the castle. Without offering further explanation, Bluebeard rigorously forbade his wife to use the key and enter the room, warning her that she would suffer greatly if she disobeyed him. Though she made one attempt after another to gain a reason for this injunction, none was forthcoming. Bluebeard’s wife stared at the odd little key as her husband bade her a tender farewell. Now you may think that Bluebeard’s wife was eager to send for her friends and throw a great party but, in fact, as she stood at the window and watched her husband’s coach ride out of sight, she was overcome with curiosity to know what was in the little room at the end of the corridor on the bottom floor of the castle. Indeed, the poor lady could think of nothing else, so that she was utterly incapable of finding any pleasure in the many luxuries that lay before her. Clutching the little key to the forbidden room, she wandered up and down the long, winding hallways of Bluebeard’s castle, brooding over the warning issued by her husband. At length, she found herself standing at the very doorway of the room she had been banned from entering. “I must have a glimpse inside or I shall have no peace,” she reasoned. Without pondering further over the matter, she carefully fit the tiny key into the keyhole and turned the latch. As soon as the latch was released, the door popped open, but the room was pitch-dark inside, as shutters were closed up tightly over the windows. She rummaged through her pockets in search of a match and, finding one, quickly lit it and held it out before her. She took a step forward as her eyes, adjusting to the darkness, fell upon a large table. There were shackles attached to the table, evidently for the purpose of restraining someone. Her eyes widened. In another part of the room she saw a heavy rope hanging from the ceiling. About halfway down on the rope there was a manacle, and directly below that the rope split into two parts, with each connecting to a shackle that was fastened to the floor. On a nearby wall there hung long leather strips of varied lengths and widths. As she stared at these objects in horror, Bluebeard’s wife suddenly recalled the many rumors she had heard about her husband’s previous wives, all of which were presumed dead. Suddenly it occurred to her that he must have killed them in this very room, for, to her inexperienced eyes, the objects she saw there could serve no other purpose.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Presently, Egano returned from fowling and being weary, betook himself to bed, as soon as he had supper, and after him the lady, who left the chamber-door open, as she had promised. Thither, at the appointed hour, came Anichino and softly entering the chamber, shut the door again from within; then, going up to the bed on the side where the lady lay, he put his hand to her breast and found her awake. As soon as she felt him come, she took his hand in both her own and held it fast; then, turning herself about in the bed, she did on such wise that Egano, who was asleep, awoke; whereupon quoth she to him, 'I would not say aught to thee yestereve, for that meseemed thou was weary; but tell me, Egano, so God save thee, whom holdest thou thy best and trustiest servant and him who most loveth thee of those whom thou hast in the house?' 'Wife,' answered Egano, 'what is this whereof thou askest me? Knowest thou it not? I have not nor had aye any in whom I so trusted and whom I loved as I love and trust in Anichino. But why dost thou ask me thereof?' Anichino, seeing Egano awake and hearing talk of himself, was sore afraid lest the lady had a mind to cozen him and offered again and again to draw his hand away, so he might begone; but she held it so fast that he could not win free. Then said she to Egano, 'I will tell thee. I also believed till to-day that he was even such as thou sayest and that he was more loyal to thee than any other, but he hath undeceived me; for that, what while thou wentest a-fowling to-day, he abode here, and whenas it seemed to him time, he was not ashamed to solicit me to yield myself to his pleasures, and I, so I might make thee touch and see this thing and that it might not behove me certify thee thereof with too many proofs, replied that I would well and that this very night, after midnight, I would go into our garden and there await him at the foot of the pine. Now for my part I mean not to go thither; but thou, an thou have a mind to know thy servant's fidelity, thou mayst lightly do it by donning a gown and a veil of mine and going down yonder to wait and see if he will come thither, as I am assured he will.' Egano hearing this, answered, 'Certes, needs must I go see,' and rising, donned one of the lady's gowns, as best he knew in the dark; then, covering his head with a veil, he betook himself to the garden and proceeded to await Anichino at the foot of the pine.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Mojave Desert. Given the hundreds of miles of hot, hard country that stretched ahead of them, the emigrants must have been grateful for the opportunity to rest and graze their stock in such a verdant setting. The temperature dipped into the forties when the sun went down. At daybreak, after rousing themselves from their bedrolls, the group huddled around campfires to warm their hands and to cook. The crisp morning air smelled of sagebrush and juniper smoke. No one suspected they were about to be attacked; the Arkansans hadn’t even bothered to circle their wagons the night before, as they customarily did on the trail. “Our party was just sitting down to a breakfast of quail and cottontail rabbits when a shot rang out from a nearby gully,” Sarah Frances Baker Mitchell recalled eighty-two years after the event, “and one of the children toppled over, hit by the bullet.” That first gunshot was the beginning of a furious surprise assault that would fatally wound seven Arkansans before the day was out. Although Mitchell was only three years old at the time, the horrors of that morning—and the even greater horrors of the week to come—were seared into her memory. The emigrants quickly circled their wagons into a defensive corral, dug in as best they could, and returned fire, repelling the first wave of assailants. They assumed they were being ambushed by Indians, a conjecture that seemed to be confirmed by glimpses of dark-skinned men in war paint shooting at them. As it happened, most of the attackers on that initial morning of what would become a five-day siege were indeed Paiutes, but others were Mormons from nearby settlements who had simply painted their faces to look like Indians. And commanding the assault was a well-known Latter-day Saint: forty-four-year-old John D. Lee, a battle-tested veteran of the troubles in Missouri and Illinois, as devoted to the church and its leaders as any Mormon alive. Although Lee was a blustery, brown-nosing martinet beloved by few of his peers, Brigham Young felt genuine affection for him and valued his unfaltering obedience. Back in Nauvoo, shortly after assuming leadership of the church, Brigham had adopted him in an esoteric Mormon ritual, making Lee his symbolic son, and in 1856 he’d appointed Lee “Farmer to the Indians,” the prophet’s personal ambassador to the Southern Paiute tribe.

• From The Story of My Experiments with Truth (An Autobiography) (1927)

  As soon as we landed, some youngsters recognized me and shouted ‘Gandhi, Gandhi.’ About half a dozen men rushed to the spot and joined in the shouting. Mr. Laughton feared that the crowd might swell and hailed a rickshaw. I had never liked the idea of being in a rickshaw. This was to be my first experience. But the youngsters would not let me get into it. They frightened the rickshaw boy out of his life, and he took to his heels. As we went ahead, the crowd continued to swell, until it became impossible to proceed further. They first caught hold of Mr. Laughton and separated us. Then they pelted me with stones, brickbats and rotten eggs. Someone snatched away my turban, whilst others began to batter and kick me. I fainted and caught hold of the front railings of a house and stood there to get my breath. But it was impossible. They came upon me boxing and battering. The wife of the Police Superintendent, who knew me, happened to be passing by. The brave lady came up, opened her parasol though there was no sun then, and stood between the crowd and me. This checked the fury of the mob, as it was difficult for them to deliver blows on me without harming Mrs. Alexander. Meanwhile an Indian youth who witnessed the incident had run to the police station. The Police Superintendent Mr. Alexander sent a posse of men to ring me round and escort me safely to my destination. They arrived in time. The police station lay on our way. As we reached there, the Superintendent asked me to take refuge in the station, but I gratefully declined the offer, ‘They are sure to quiet down when they realize their mistake,’ I said. ‘I have trust in their sense of fairness.’ Escorted by the police, I arrived without further harm at Mr. Rustomji’s place. I had bruises all over, but no abrasions except in one place. Dr. Dadibarjor, the ship’s doctor, who was on the spot, rendered the best possible help. There was quiet inside, but outside the whites surrounded the house. Night was coming on, and the yelling crowd was shouting, ‘We must have Gandhi.’ The quick-sighted Police Superintendent was already there trying to keep the crowds under control, not by threats, but by humouring them. But he was not entirely free from anxiety. He sent me a message to this effect: ‘If you would save your friend’s house and property and also your family, you should escape from the house in disguise, as I suggest.’ Thus on one and the same day I was faced with two contradictory positions. When danger to life had been no more than imaginary, Mr. Laughton advised me to launch forth openly. I accepted the advice. When the danger was quite real, another friend gave me the contrary advice, and I accepted that too.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  Now the mental excitement had worn itself out and collapsed, and she was aware only of the physical aversion. It rose up in her from her depths: and she realised how it had been eating her life away. She felt weak and utterly forlorn. She wished some help would come from outside. But in the whole world there was no help. Society was terrible because it was insane. Civilised society is insane. Money and so-called love are its two great manias; money a long way first. The individual asserts himself in his disconnected insanity in these two modes: money and love. Look at Michaelis! His life and activity were just insanity. His love was a sort of insanity. And Clifford the same. All that talk! All that writing! All that wild struggling to push himself forward! It was just insanity. And it was getting worse, really maniacal. Connie felt washed-out with fear. But at least, Clifford was shifting his grip from her on to Mrs. Bolton. He did not know it. Like many insane people, his insanity might be measured by the things he was _not_ aware of; the great desert tracts in his consciousness. Mrs. Bolton was admirable in many ways. But she had that queer sort of bossiness, endless assertion of her own will, which is one of the signs of insanity in modern woman. She _thought_ she was utterly subservient and living for others. Clifford fascinated her because he always, or so often, frustrated her will, as if by a finer instinct. He had a finer, subtler will of self-assertion than herself. This was his charm for her. Perhaps that had been his charm, too, for Connie. "It's a lovely day, today!" Mrs. Bolton would say in her caressive, persuasive voice. "I should think you'd enjoy a little run in your chair today, the sun's just lovely." "Yes? Will you give me that book--there, that yellow one. And I think I'll have those hyacinths taken out." "Why, they're so beautiful!" She pronounced it with the "y" sound: be-yutiful! "And the scent is simply gorgeous." "The scent is what I object to," he said. "It's a little funereal." "Do you think so!" she exclaimed in surprise, just a little offended, but impressed. And she carried the hyacinths out of the room, impressed by his higher fastidiousness. "Shall I shave you this morning, or would you rather do it yourself?" Always the same soft, caressive, subservient, yet managing voice. "I don't know. Do you mind waiting a while. I'll ring when I'm ready." "Very good, Sir Clifford!" she replied, so soft and submissive, withdrawing quietly. But every rebuff stored up new energy of will in her. When he rang, after a time, she would appear at once. And then he would say: "I think I'd rather you shaved me this morning." Her heart gave a little thrill, and she replied with extra softness: "Very good, Sir Clifford!"

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  The man’s family hovered about the room gaping at the peculiar visitor, anxious to know what business had brought him to their humble cottage. “I have come for your firstborn daughter,” the bear announced without preamble. “If she will come away with me, she will have everything she wishes for, and, what’s more, I will make you and the rest of your family as rich as you are now poor.” Beguiled by the words of the white bear, the eldest daughter pleaded with her mother and father to let her go—for her parents were against it, insisting that it would bring bad luck on them to give up their daughter for wealth. But at last they relented, as the young woman would not be denied the adventure. Packing took no amount of time, since the poor girl owned nearly nothing in the world, and bravely she kissed each member of her family goodbye and climbed onto the back of the huge white bear. She barely had time for one last backward glance at her family before she was abruptly whisked away, with extraordinary speed, to a large white castle. There, servants rushed to and fro to attend to her arrival. Everything happened so quickly that she could scarcely take in her extravagant surroundings, and all of a sudden she felt terribly afraid. What was to become of her? Perceiving her anxiety, the bear instructed a kindly old servant woman to take the girl to her bedchamber. But before she left him he advised her not to be afraid, assuring her that the castle was indeed enchanted and that, for as long as she remained there, all of her innermost desires would be immediately brought about. He handed her a little golden bell, adding that if, in fact, the castle failed in this tall order, all she had to do was to ring the bell while wishing for anything within the castle walls, and it would be immediately done for her. Then, with a polite bow, the bear left her with the old servant woman, who chattered away amicably as she led the girl to her bedchamber. What the servant spoke about she could not have said, so preoccupied was she, but the old lady’s sociable manner had the effect of calming her nerves. Inside her bedchamber, she first noticed the bed, a massive furnishing of elaborately carved mahogany dressed in lavish silks. Next she spied a dressing table, as splendidly adorned as the bed and laid out with solid-gold utensils for her to use.

• From Enchanted: Erotic Bedtime Stories for Women (Erotic Fiction) (2006)

  The high-pitched tone of this last remark startled Goldilocks awake. You can imagine her shock to see the three barons towering over her! She immediately jumped up, with the intention of making her escape through an open window, but the baron whose bed she had been sleeping in held her fast. “Who are you, and why are you sleeping in my bed?” he asked her in an imperious tone. “I’m Goldilocks,” she replied. But of course she had no explanation for being in the baron’s bed. “You’ve eaten my porridge, broken my chair and messed up the blankets on my bed,” continued the baron, looking her up and down with an expression of utter disdain. He held her with two fingers, while the remaining three fingers stood up at an angle as if to avoid contamination. “Hold still while I contact the authorities!” “Oh, no!” cried Goldilocks. “You cannot do that.” She was still trying to work her way out of the last legal dispute that had developed over her disreputable journalistic ethics. Even her editor would not be able to help her out of this one! The baron seemed genuinely perplexed by her outburst. “Cannot I?” he asked. “But why ever not?” He looked at his friends quizzically, but they only returned his puzzled stare, unable to provide a logical reason why he could not call the authorities. “Because I have been expressly assigned to come here!” lied Goldilocks hastily, struggling frantically to come up with a plausible excuse for her actions, preferably one that would keep her from being sued again. “Expressly assigned?” repeated the baron, more confused than ever. It never occurred to him that he was being bamboozled. “Under whose employ were you expressly assigned to come here, and for what reason?” “Well…um,” Goldilocks tried to think of a quick answer. “I bet it was Count Wallingford!” spoke up one of the other barons suddenly. “Don’t you remember the hoax we played on him last winter?” They all looked at Goldilocks in wonder. She smiled, attempting to look like she had been found out, grasping at the baron’s suggestion without understanding his meaning. “He did vow that he would return the favor,” recalled the first. “Oh, my, what a perfectly scandalous idea!” exclaimed the third baron. But he said this with such glee that one could not really believe he was terribly scandalized. “Indeed,” remarked the baron who had threatened to call the authorities only moments before. He now lightened his grip on Goldilocks and smiled broadly as he contemplated the situation. “But where on earth do you suppose he managed to find such a trollop?”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  But now that Clifford was drifting off to this other weirdness of industrial activity, becoming almost a _creature_, with a hard, efficient shell of an exterior and a pulpy interior, one of the amazing crabs and lobsters of the modern, industrial and financial world, invertebrates of the crustacean order, with shells of steel, like machines, and inner bodies of soft pulp, Connie herself was really completely stranded. She was not even free, for Clifford must have her there. He seemed to have a nervous terror that she should leave him. The curious pulpy part of him, the emotional and humanly-individual part, depended on her with terror, like a child, almost like an idiot. She must be there, there at Wragby, a Lady Chatterley, his wife. Otherwise he would be lost like an idiot on a moor. This amazing dependence Connie realised with a sort of horror. She heard him with his pit managers, with the members of his Board, with young scientists, and she was amazed at his shrewd insight into things, his power, his uncanny material power over what is called practical men. He had become a practical man himself, and an amazingly astute and powerful one, a master. Connie attributed it to Mrs. Bolton's influence upon him, just at the crisis in his life. But this astute and practical man was almost an idiot when left alone to his own emotional life. He worshipped Connie, she was his wife, a higher being, and he worshipped her with a queer, craven idolatry, like a savage, a worship based on enormous fear, and even hate of the power of the idol, the dread idol. All he wanted was for Connie to swear, to swear not to leave him, not to give him away. "Clifford," she said to him--but this was after she had the key to the hut--"Would you really like me to have a child one day?" He looked at her with a furtive apprehension in his rather prominent pale eyes. "I shouldn't mind, if it made no difference between us," he said. "No difference to what?" she asked. "To you and me; to our love for one another. If it's going to affect that, then I'm all against it. Why, I might even one day have a child of my own!" She looked at him in amazement. "I mean, it might come back to me one of these days." She still stared in amazement, and he was uncomfortable. "So you would not like it if I had a child?" she said. "I tell you," he replied quickly, like a cornered dog, "I am quite willing, provided it doesn't touch your love for me. If it would touch that, I am dead against it." Connie could only be silent in cold fear and contempt. Such talk was really the gabbling of an idiot. He no longer knew what he was talking about. "Oh, it wouldn't make any difference to my feeling for you," she said, with a certain sarcasm.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  And dimly she realised one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of the re-assumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst. So it was with Clifford. Once he was "well," once he was back at Wragby, and writing his stories, and feeling sure of life, in spite of all, he seemed to forget, and to have recovered all his equanimity. But now, as the years went by, slowly, slowly, Connie felt the bruise of fear and horror coming up, and spreading in him. For a time it had been so deep as to be numb, as it were non-existent. Now slowly it began to assert itself in a spread of fear, almost paralysis. Mentally he still was alert. But the paralysis, the bruise of the too great shock, was gradually spreading in his affective self. And as it spread in him, Connie felt it spread in her. An inward dread, an emptiness, an indifference to everything gradually spread in her soul. When Clifford was roused, he could still talk brilliantly, and as it were, command the future: as when, in the wood, he talked about her having a child, and giving an heir to Wragby. But the day after, all the brilliant words seemed like dead leaves, crumpling up and turning to powder, meaning really nothing, blown away on any gust of wind. They were not the leafy words of an effective life, young with energy and belonging to the tree. They were the hosts of fallen leaves of a life that is ineffectual. So it seemed to her everywhere. The colliers at Tevershall were talking again of a strike, and it seemed to Connie there again it was not a manifestation of energy, it was the bruise of the war that had been in abeyance, slowly rising to the surface and creating the great ache of unrest, and stupor of discontent. The bruise was deep, deep, deep ... the bruise of the false inhuman war. It would take many years for the living blood of the generations to dissolve the vast black clot of bruised blood, deep inside their souls and bodies. And it would need a new hope.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 90: _i.e._ make her a solemn promise of marriage, formally plight her his troth. The ceremony of betrothal was formerly (and still is in certain countries) the most essential part of the marriage rite.] When the day came, after they had taken order together concerning their affairs, Alessandro arose and departed the chamber by the way he had entered, without any knowing where he had passed the night. Then, glad beyond measure, he took to the road again with the abbot and his company and came after many days to Rome. There they abode some days, after which the abbot, with the two knights and Alessandro and no more, went in to the Pope and having done him due reverence, bespoke him thus, 'Holy Father, as you should know better than any other, whoso is minded to live well and honestly should, inasmuch as he may, eschew every occasion that may lead him to do otherwise; the which that I, who would fain live honestly, may throughly do, having fled privily with a great part of the treasures of the King of England my father, (who would have given me to wife to the King of Scotland, a very old prince, I being, as you see, a young maid), I set out, habited as you see me, to come hither, so your Holiness might marry me. Nor was it so much the age of the King of Scotland that made me flee as the fear, if I were married to him, lest I should, for the frailty of my youth, be led to do aught that might be contrary to the Divine laws and the honour of the royal blood of my father. As I came, thus disposed, God, who alone knoweth aright that which behoveth unto every one, set before mine eyes (as I believe, of His mercy) him whom it pleased Him should be my husband, to wit, this young man,' showing Alessandro, 'whom you see here beside me and whose fashions and desert are worthy of however great a lady, although belike the nobility of his blood is not so illustrious as the blood-royal. Him, then, have I taken and him I desire, nor will I ever have any other than he, however it may seem to my father or to other folk. Thus, the principal occasion of my coming is done away; but it pleased me to make an end of my journey, at once that I might visit the holy and reverential places, whereof this city is full, and your Holiness and that through you I might make manifest, in your presence and consequently in that of the rest of mankind, the marriage contracted between Alessandro and myself in the presence of God alone. Wherefore I humbly pray you that this which hath pleased God and me may find favour with you and that you will vouchsafe us your benison, in order that with this, as with more assurance of His approof whose Vicar you are, we may live and ultimately die together.'

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  And it did in fact possess religious grandeur, even to the way the priestly directors fattened their own stomachs. From time to time the sirens of the air-raid signals would announce the hour for this perverted religion to celebrate its black mass. Then the office would begin to stir. There was no radio in the room, so we had no way of knowing what was happening. Someone, speaking in a broad country accent, would say: "Wonder what's up?" About this time a young girl from the reception desk in the superintendent's office would come with some such report as: "Several formations of enemy planes sighted." Before long the strident voices of loud-speakers would order the girl students and the grade-school children to take shelter. Persons in charge of rescue work would walk about distributing red tags bearing the legend "Bleeding stopped: hour minute ." In case someone was wounded, one of these tags was to be filled in and hung about his neck, showing the time at which a tourniquet had been applied. About ten minutes after the sirens had sounded the loud-speakers would announce: "All employees take shelter." Grasping files of important papers in their arms, the office workers would hurry to deposit them in the underground vault where essential records were stored. Then they would rush outdoors and join the swarm of laborers running across the square, all wearing air-raid helmets or padded hoods. The crowd would be streaming toward the main gate. Outside the gate there was a desolate, bare, yellow field. Some seven or eight hundred meters beyond it, numerous shelters had been excavated in a pine grove on a gentle slope. Heading for these shelters, two separate streams of the silent, impatient, blind mob would rush through the dust—rushing toward what at any rate was not Death, no matter if it was only a small cave of easily collapsible red earth, at any rate it was not Death.I went home on my occasional off days, and there one night at eleven o'clock I received my draft notice. It was a telegram ordering me to report to a certain unit on February the fifteenth. At my father's suggestion, I had taken my physical examination, not at Tokyo, but at the headquarters of the regiment located near the place where my family maintained its legal residence, in H Prefecture of the Osaka-Kyoto region. My father's theory was that my weak physique would attract more attention in a rural area than in the city, where such weakness was no rarity, and that as a result I would probably not be drafted. As a matter of fact, I had provided the examining officials with cause for an outbreak of laughter when I could not lift—not even as far as my chest—the bale of rice that the farm boys were easily lifting above their heads ten times.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It chanced one day, he being come thus well nigh to the beginning of May and the weather being very fair, that, having entered into thought of his cruel mistress, he bade all his servants leave him to himself, so he might muse more at his leisure, and wandered on, step by step, lost in melancholy thought, till he came [unwillingly] into the pine-wood. The fifth hour of the day was well nigh past and he had gone a good half mile into the wood, remembering him neither of eating nor of aught else, when himseemed of a sudden he heard a terrible great wailing and loud cries uttered by a woman; whereupon, his dulcet meditation being broken, he raised his head to see what was to do and marvelled to find himself among the pines; then, looking before him, he saw a very fair damsel come running, naked through a thicket all thronged with underwood and briers, towards the place where he was, weeping and crying sore for mercy and all dishevelled and torn by the bushes and the brambles. At her heels ran two huge and fierce mastiffs, which followed hard upon her and ofttimes bit her cruelly, whenas they overtook her; and after them he saw come riding upon a black courser a knight arrayed in sad-coloured armour, with a very wrathful aspect and a tuck in his hand, threatening her with death in foul and fearsome words. This sight filled Nastagio's mind at once with terror and amazement and after stirred him to compassion of the ill-fortuned lady, wherefrom arose a desire to deliver her, an but he might, from such anguish and death. Finding himself without arms, he ran to take the branch of a tree for a club, armed wherewith, he advanced to meet the dogs and the knight. When the latter saw this, he cried out to him from afar off, saying, 'Nastagio, meddle not; suffer the dogs and myself to do that which this wicked woman hath merited.' As he spoke, the dogs, laying fast hold of the damsel by the flanks, brought her to a stand and the knight, coming up, lighted down from his horse; whereupon Nastagio drew near unto him and said, 'I know not who thou mayst be, that knowest me so well; but this much I say to see that it is a great felony for an armed knight to seek to slay a naked woman and to set the dogs on her, as she were a wild beast; certes, I will defend her as most I may.'

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  had come to Utah intending to enrich themselves on graft) faced such unrelenting harassment that all but two of them eventually fled Utah altogether, fearing that if they stayed they would receive an unannounced visit from Porter Rockwell and turn up dead—which, in fact, happened to an undocumented number of federal agents. A rising chorus of non-Mormon voices declared Brigham to be a dangerous tyrant who wielded absolute power over his followers. One Gentile visitor warned that “on the face of the whole earth there is not another people to be found, so completely under the control of one man.” Brigham was unmoved. As far back as 1851 he had blustered that “any President of the United States who lifts his finger against this people shall die an untimely death and go to hell!” Five years later he was no less ornery, declaring that he intended to make Utah “a sovereign State in the Union, or an independent nation by ourselves, and let them drive us from this place if they can; they cannot do it.” Such rhetoric, on top of ever more numerous reports of Mormon belligerence, alarmed the rest of the nation. The more Washington tried to rein Brigham in, however, the more brazen his insubordination became. In March 1857, shortly after James Buchanan was inaugurated as president, the Utah Territorial Legislature sent a truculent missive to Washington announcing that the Saints would ignore any and all federal statutes they determined to be unjust and would expel from their midst any federal officers who didn’t meet the rigorous moral standards of the Mormon Church. It proved to be bad timing on the part of the Saints. Utah Territory was an annoying problem for the new leader of the nation, but compared to other national problems then looming it was a relatively small one, which President Buchanan thought he could handle quickly and easily. And in the Mormon insurrection he saw a means to distract Americans from much larger, much less tractable issues—the increasingly divisive rancor over slavery, for instance, which was threatening to tear the country to tatters. As a pro-slavery Democrat, Buchanan figured that by coming down hard on pro-slavery Utah, * he could gain favor with abolitionists without having to sacrifice much political capital, because the Mormons were so widely reviled. So he followed the counsel of lawyer Robert Tyler—the son of former president John Tyler and an influential

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  She was watching a brown spaniel that had run out of a side-path, and was looking toward them with lifted nose, making a soft, fluffy bark. A man with a gun strode swiftly, softly out after the dog, facing their way as if about to attack them; then stopped instead, saluted, and was turning down hill. It was only the new gamekeeper, but he had frightened Connie, he seemed to emerge with such a swift menace. That was how she had seen him, like the sudden rush of a threat out of nowhere. He was a man in dark-green velveteens and gaiters ... the old style, with a red face and red moustache and distant eyes. He was going quickly down hill. "Mellors!" called Clifford. The man faced lightly round, and saluted with a quick little gesture, a soldier! "Will you turn the chair round and get it started? That makes it easier," said Clifford. The man at once slung his gun over his shoulder, and came forward with the same curious swift, yet soft movements, as if keeping invisible. He was moderately tall and lean, and was silent. He did not look at Connie at all, only at the chair. "Connie, this is the new gamekeeper, Mellors. You haven't spoken to her ladyship yet, Mellors?" "No, Sir!" came the ready, neutral words. The man lifted his hat as he stood, showing his thick, almost fair hair. He stared straight into Connie's eyes, with a perfect, fearless, impersonal look, as if he wanted to see what she was like. He made her feel shy. She bent her head to him shyly, and he changed his hat to his left hand and made her a slight bow, like a gentleman; but he said nothing at all. He remained for a moment still, with his hat in his hand. "But you've been here some time, haven't you?" Connie said to him. "Eight months, Madam ... your Ladyship!" he corrected himself calmly. "And do you like it?" She looked him in the eyes. His eyes narrowed a little, with irony, perhaps with impudence. "Why, yes, thank you, your Ladyship! I was reared here...." He gave another slight bow, turned, put his hat on, and strode to take hold of the chair. His voice on the last words had fallen into the heavy broad drag of the dialect ... perhaps also in mockery, because there had been no trace of dialect before. He might almost be a gentleman. Anyhow, he was a curious, quick, separate fellow, alone, but sure of himself. Clifford started the little engine, the man carefully turned the chair, and set it nose-forwards to the incline that curved gently to the dark hazel thicket. "Is that all then, Sir Clifford?" asked the man.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As they were thus engaged, it befell, altogether out of the lady's expectation, that her husband returned, whom when the maid saw near the house, she ran in haste to the lady's chamber and said, 'Madam, here is my lord come back; methinketh he is already below in the courtyard.' When the lady heard this, bethinking her that she had two men in the house and knowing that there was no hiding Messer Lambertuccio, by reason of his palfrey which was in the courtyard, she gave herself up for lost. Nevertheless, taking a sudden resolution, she sprang hastily down from the bed and said to Messer Lambertuccio, 'Sir, an you wish me anywise well and would save me from death, do that which I shall bid you. Take your hanger naked in your hand and go down the stair with an angry air and all disordered and begone, saying, "I vow to God that I will take him elsewhere." And should my husband offer to detain you or question you of aught, do you say no otherwhat than that which I have told you, but take horse and look you abide not with him on any account.' The gentleman answered that he would well, and accordingly, drawing his hanger, he did as she had enjoined him, with a face all afire what with the swink he had furnished and with anger at the husband's return. The latter was by this dismounted in the courtyard and marvelled to see the palfrey there; then, offering to go up into the house, he saw Messer Lambertuccio come down and wondering both at his words and his air, said, 'What is this, sir?' Messer Lambertuccio putting his foot in the stirrup and mounting to horse, said nought but, 'Cock's body, I shall find him again otherwhere,' and made off.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  “All you have to do is take that much one more time. Then the ring fits on the end of the needle, just like when Tyre did your ears, and we draw it right through. Now?” Roxanne shook her head. “No, please, not yet. I’m not ready. I’m too scared.” Tyre snapped her fingers. “Medic! Who has the poppers?” The amyl appeared under Roxanne’s nose, and she took the biggest hit she had ever taken in her life. It exploded before she finished inhaling, and Alex shoved the needle all the way through her tit. The grating, tearing noise was louder, and the ring seemed to be much bigger than the needle. Tiny bolts of pain followed its progress through her nipple. Then Alex took a pair of needle-nosed pliers, and squeezed the jewelry shut. It was almost done. Alex massaged her breast, milking blood out of the piercing, exclaiming as it ran down Roxanne’s chest. Roxanne shivered and cried out, fearfully aroused. For a few crazy seconds, she wished Alex were going to put a hundred rings in her body, then her owner began to tweak the second nipple, and that wish vanished in a riptide of panic. “No-no-no-no,” she moaned. “Idiot, you’ll hyperventilate,” Tyre told her, and shoved more poppers under her nose. “Hold still, or she’ll take this one out and all you’ll have is a pair of kinky earrings.” Alex went to the other side of the table and repeated the process of marking the piercing, positioning the forceps, and forcing the needle through the tough nipple tissue. Roxanne could feel blood cooling on her other breast. The gold felt hot, as if it had gone straight from the forge into her body. The ring was not quite in. “Daddy, hold still, I have to scream,” she said. Alex froze. Roxanne screamed, and all the fear left her with it. “Please put it in,” she begged, and Alex pushed the ring through to the other side and set its end in the bead. She was bleeding from both breasts now, and her nipples were swelling. They were the size of walnuts, and felt like they were on fire. Tyre was giving instructions about turning and cleansing the rings, and Roxanne hoped Alex was listening, because she could not. She was wearing Alex’s rings now. Permanently. Forever. “Done,” Alex said. She poured antiseptic onto her breasts, and Roxanne yipped when it hit the piercings. “Just a few more,” Alex said. “Do it now,” Roxanne told her. “If I come down, I’ll freak out. Do it now, please hurry.” “Relax, you impatient little bitch. I’m not going to rush myself. You think you want to look at a bad piece of work? You’ll get it soon enough. Put your foot back up in those stirrups. Anne-Marie, can you lower the table? Slide your ass down. That’s right. Dr Feelgood is in town.”

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  "Why should they know?" she said. "Folks always does," he said fatally. Her lip quivered a little. "Well I can't help it," she faltered. "Nay," he said. "You can help it by not comin'--if yer want to," he added, in a lower tone. "But I don't want to," she murmured. He looked away into the wood, and was silent. "But what when folks find out?" he asked at last. "Think about it! Think how lowered you'll feel, one of your husband's servants." She looked up at his averted face. "Is it," she stammered, "is it that you don't want me?" "Think!" he said. "Think what if folks finds out--Sir Clifford an' a'--an' everybody talkin'--" "Well, I can go away." "Where to?" "Anywhere! I've got money of my own. My mother left me twenty thousand pounds in trust, and I know Clifford can't touch it. I can go away." "But 'appen you don't want to go away." "Yes, yes! I don't care what happens to me." "Ay, you think that! But you'll care! You'll have to care, everybody has. You've got to remember your Ladyship is carrying on with a gamekeeper. It's not as if I was a gentleman. Yes, you'd care. You'd care." "I shouldn't. What do I care about my ladyship! I hate it really. I feel people are jeering every time they say it. And they are, they are! Even you jeer when you say it." "Me!" For the first time he looked straight at her, and into her eyes. "I don't jeer at you," he said. As he looked into her eyes she saw his own eyes go dark, quite dark, the pupil dilating. "Don't you care about a' the risk?" he asked in a husky voice. "You should care. Don't care when it's too late!" There was a curious warning pleading in his voice. "But I've nothing to lose," she said fretfully. "If you knew what it is, you'd think I'd be glad to lose it. But are you afraid for yourself?" "Ay!" he said briefly. "I am. I'm afraid. I'm afraid. I'm afraid o' things." "What things?" she asked. He gave a curious backward jerk of his head, indicating the outer world. "Things! Everybody! The lot of 'em." Then he bent down and suddenly kissed her unhappy face. "Nay, I don't care," he said. "Let's have it, an' damn the rest. But if you was to feel sorry you'd ever done it!" "Don't put me off," she pleaded. He put his fingers to her cheek and kissed her again suddenly. "Let me come in then," he said softly. "An' take off your mackintosh." He hung up his gun, slipped out of his wet leather jacket, and reached for the blankets. "I brought another blanket," he said, "so we can put one over us if we like." "I can't stay long," she said. "Dinner is half-past seven." He looked at her swiftly, then at his watch. "All right," he said.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  She quivered again at the potent inexorable entry inside her, so strange and terrible. It might come with the thrust of a sword in her softly-opened body, and that would be death. She clung in a sudden anguish of terror. But it came with a strange slow thrust of peace, the dark thrust of peace and a ponderous, primordial tenderness, such as made the world in the beginning. And her terror subsided in her breast, her breast dared to be gone in peace, she held nothing. She dared to let go everything, all herself, and be gone in the flood. And it seemed she was like the sea, nothing but dark waves rising and heaving, heaving with a great swell, so that slowly her whole darkness was in motion, and she was ocean rolling its dark, dumb mass. Oh, and far down inside her the deeps parted and rolled asunder, in long, far-travelling billows, and ever, at the quick of her, the depths parted and rolled asunder, from the centre of soft plunging, as the plunger went deeper and deeper, touching lower, and she was deeper and deeper and deeper disclosed, and heavier the billows of her rolled away to some shore, uncovering her, and closer and closer plunged the palpable unknown, and further and further rolled the waves of herself away from herself, leaving her, till suddenly, in a soft, shuddering convulsion, the quick of all her plasm was touched, she knew herself touched, the consummation was upon her, and she was gone. She was gone, she was not, and she was born: a woman. Ah, too lovely, too lovely! In the ebbing she realised all the loveliness. Now all her body clung with tender love to the unknown man, and blinding to the wilting penis, as it so tenderly, frailly, unknowingly withdrew, after the fierce thrust of its potency. As it drew out and left her body, the secret, sensitive thing, she gave an unconscious cry of pure loss, and she tried to put it back. It had been so perfect! And she loved it so! And only now she became aware of the small, bud-like reticence and tenderness of the penis, and a little cry of wonder and poignancy escaped her again, her woman's heart crying out over the tender frailty of that which had been the power. "It was so lovely!" she moaned. "It was so lovely!" But he said nothing, only softly kissed her, lying still above her. And she moaned with a sort of bliss, as a sacrifice, and a new-born thing.