Guilt

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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I was still erect, waiting, and not believing myself in what had happened. But at that moment, from under her corset, the blood gushed forth. Then only did I understand that all reparation was impossible, and promptly I decided that it was not even necessary, that all had happened in accordance with my wish, and that I had fulfilled my desire. I waited until she fell, and until the nurse, exclaiming, ‘Oh, my God!’ ran to her; then only I threw away the dagger and went out of the room. “‘I must not be agitated. I must be conscious of what I am doing,’ I said to myself, looking neither at her nor at the old nurse. The latter cried and called the maid. I passed through the hall, and, after having sent the maid, started for my study. “‘What shall I do now?’ I asked myself. “And immediately I understood what I should do. Directly after entering the study, I went straight to the wall, took down the revolver, and examined it attentively. It was loaded. Then I placed it on the table. Next I picked up the sheath of the dagger, which had dropped down behind the sofa, and then I sat down. I remained thus for a long time. I thought of nothing, I did not try to remember anything. I heard a stifled noise of steps, a movement of objects and of tapestries, then the arrival of a person, and then the arrival of another person. Then I saw Gregor bring into my room the baggage from the railway; as if any one needed it! “‘Have you heard what has happened?’ I asked him. ‘Have you told the dvornik to inform the police?’ “He made no answer, and went out. I rose, closed the door, took the cigarettes and the matches, and began to smoke. I had not finished one cigarette, when a drowsy feeling came over me and sent me into a deep sleep. I surely slept two hours. I remember having dreamed that I was on good terms with her, that after a quarrel we were in the act of making up, that something prevented us, but that we were friends all the same. “A knock at the door awoke me. “‘It is the police,’ thought I, as I opened my eyes. ‘I have killed, I believe. But perhaps it is she; perhaps nothing has happened.’ “Another knock. I did not answer. I was solving the question: ‘Has it happened or not?

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

  CHAPTER VI "THIS shocking suicide of our maid absorbed all my thoughts for a few days, and gave me no slight amount of trouble and worry for some time afterwards. "Besides, as I was no casuist, I asked myself whether I had not had some share in prompting her to commit such a rash act; I therefore tried to make amends to the coachman, at least, by helping him as much as I could out of his trouble. Moreover, if I had not been fond of the girl, I had really tried to love her, so that I was greatly upset by her death. "My manager, who was far more my master than I was his, seeing the shattered state of my nerves, persuaded me to undertake a short business journey, which otherwise he would have had to make himself. "All these circumstances obliged me to keep my thoughts away from Teleny, who had lately engrossed them so entirely. I therefore tried to come to the conclusion that I had quite forgotten him; and I was already congratulating myself on having mastered a passion that had rendered me contemptible in my own eyes. "On my return home I not only shunned him, but I even avoided reading his name in the papers—nay, whenever I saw it on the bills in the street, I turned my head away from it, notwithstanding all the attraction it had for me; such was the fear I had of falling under his magic spell. And yet, was it possible for me to continue avoiding him? Would not the slightest accident bring us together again? And then—? "I tried to believe that the power he had over me had vanished, and that it was not possible for him to acquire it again. Then, to make assurance doubly sure, I resolved to cut him dead the first time we met. Moreover I was in hopes he would leave the town—for some time at least, if not for ever. "Not long after my return, I was with my mother in a box at the theatre, when all at once the door opened and Teleny appeared in the doorway. "On seeing him I felt myself grow pale and then red, my knees seemed to be giving way, my heart began to beat with such mighty thumps that my breast was ready to burst. For a moment, I felt all my good resolutions give way; then, loathing myself for being so weak, I snatched up my hat, and—scarcely bowing to the young man—I rushed out of the box like a madman, leaving my mother to apologize for my strange behaviour.

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

  Had any one, but a few instants before, told me that I should have ever known any man but Charles, I would have spit in his face or had I been offered infinitely a greater sum of money than that I saw paid for me, I had spurned the proposal in cold blood. But our virtues and our vices depend too much on our circumstances; unexpectedly beset as I was, betrayed by a mind weakened by a long severe affliction, and stunned with the terrors of a goal, my defeat will appear the more excusable, since I certainly was not present at, or a party in any sense to it. However, as the first enjoyment is decisive, and he was now over the bar, I thought I had no longer a right to refuse the caresses of one that had got that advantage over me, no matter how obtained; conforming myself then to this maxim, I considered myself as so much in his power, that I endured his kisses and embraces without affecting struggles or anger; not that he, as yet, gave me any pleasure, or prevailed over the aversion of my soul, to give myself up to any sensation of that sort; what I suffered, I suffered out of a kind of gratitude, and as a matter of course what had passed. He was, however, so regardful as not to attempt the renewal of those extremities which had thrown me, just before, into such violent agitations; but, now secure of possession, contented himself with bringing me to temper by degrees, and waiting at the hand of time for those fruits of generosity and courtship, which he since often reproached himself with having gathered much too green, when, yielding to the inability to resist him, and overborne by desires, he had wreaked his passion on a mere lifeless, spiritless body, dead to all purpose of joy, since taking none, it ought to be supposed incapable of giving any. This is, however, certain; my heart never thoroughly forgave him the manner in which I had fallen to him, although, in point of interest, I had fallen to him, I had reason to be pleased that he found, in my person, wherewithal to keep him from leaving me as easily as he had had me. The evening was, in the mean time, so far advanced, that the maid came in to lay the cloth for supper, when I understood, with joy, that my landlady, whose sight was present poison to me, was not to be with us. Presently a neat and elegant supper was introduced, and a bottle of Burgundy, with the other necessaries, were set on a dumb-waiter. The maid quitting the room, the gentleman insisted, with a tender warmth, that I should sit up in the elbow chair by the fire, and see him eat, if I could not be prevailed on to eat myself.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Scientology preaches that if you repeatedly touch a fresh wound to the object that caused the injury and silently concentrate, the pain lessens and the sense of trauma fades. If a Scientologist sees a person close his hand in a door, for instance, a church manual instructs the Scientologist to “have him go back and, with his injured hand, touch the exact spot on the same door, duplicating the same motions that occurred at the time of the injury.” There are other kinds of assists that will awaken an unconscious person, eliminate boils, reduce earaches and back pain, and make a drunk sober. Instead of crying when she hurt herself, Alissa would quietly redo the action over and over, until she had drained it of its sting. She noticed that non-Scientologists had no idea what she was doing. She was also surprised when she went to a friend’s house for dinner and the family said grace before the meal. It took her a second to realize what they were doing. In her opinion, God plays a negligible role in Scientology. “I mean, there’s a spot for it, but it’s sort of a blank spot.” So whenever her friends began to pray, “I would bow my head and let them have their ceremony.” Paul was also scarred by the divorce—although, as would often be the case for him, he would mine the experience for his work. He created a television series, Family Law, that was based to some extent on his divorce from Diane. He always found more solace and meaning in his work than he did in his family. Each year he grew more successful, but the gap between him and his daughters grew wider. They knew him better as a writer than as a father, and they would puzzle over the fact that he was so cool to them, when his scripts were often full of emotion. Paul felt guilty about not spending time with the girls, so he would arrange to bring them to the set and assign them some small task. Alissa got to do nearly every job in the industry, from wardrobe to production assistant; she received a Directors Guild card in Canada by the time she was fifteen. In 1991, Haggis went to a Fourth of July party at the home of some Scientologist friends. He met a striking actress there named Deborah Rennard. She had grown up in Scientology. In her early twenties she had studied acting at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and had fallen under the influence of Milton Katselas, the legendary acting teacher and Hubbard’s former collaborator. They became lovers. Milton was spellbinding, but he was twenty-seven years older than Deborah, and their relationship was an exhausting roller-coaster ride. They stayed together for six years. When Paul met her, Deborah and Milton had recently broken up.

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

  It seems unlikely that Innocent agonized unduly about this dilemma, though his neurotically exaggerated anti-Cathar rhetoric may express some dis-ease with his position. Far more poignant was the stance of Dominic de Guzmán (c. 1170–1221), founder of the Order of Preachers; like the Franciscans, his friars had adopted a poverty that was so extreme that they could own no property and begged for a living. The mendicant Dominicans traveled throughout Languedoc in pairs trying to bring the “heretics” back to orthodoxy peacefully, reminding them of Saint Paul’s insistence that Christians obey the political authorities. But they were inevitably tainted by their association with the anti-Cathar Crusade, especially after Dominic attended the Lateran Council of 1215 to seek Innocent’s approval of his order. Those Christians who remained loyal to the Church but could see how the intrinsic violence of Christendom violated the gospel teaching were inevitably conflicted. Unable to admit that the “heretics” had a point, yet furious with them for drawing attention to their dilemma, they projected these sentiments outward, in forms monstrous and inhuman. There were paranoid fantasies of a highly organized, clandestine Catharist Church determined to destroy the human race and restore Satan’s kingdom. 102 We shall see that similar conspiracy fears would later erupt in other societies that were going through a traumatic modernization process and would also result in violence. The Council of Rheims (1157) described the Cathars “hiding among the poor and under the veil of religion ... moving from place to place and undermining the faith of simple people.” 103 Soon Jews would be said to belong to a similar international conspiracy. 104 Even a fair-minded man like Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, who claimed to be reaching out to the Muslim world with love rather than force, described Islam as a “heresy and diabolical sect” addicted to “bestial cruelty.” 105 At the outset of the Second Crusade he wrote to King Louis VII of France that he hoped he would kill as many Muslims as Moses and Joshua had killed Amorites and Canaanites. 106 During this period Satan, often pictured as a monstrous human being with horns and a tail, became a far more menacing figure in Western Christianity than in either Judaism or Islam. As they made their stressful transition from a political backwater to a major world power, Europeans were terrified of an unseen “common enemy,” representing what they could not accept in themselves and associated with absolute evil. 107 Innocent III had achieved a virtual papal monarchy in Europe, but no other pope would match his power.

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

  His respect for the clergy culminated in his veneration for the bishop of Rome as the successor of St. Peter. "He cherished the church of St. Peter the apostle at Rome above all other holy and sacred places, and filled its treasury with a vast wealth of gold, silver, and precious stones. He sent great and countless gifts to the popes; and throughout his whole reign the wish he had nearest at heart was to re-establish the ancient authority of the city of Rome under his care and by his influence, and to defend and protect the church of St. Peter, and to beautify and enrich it out of his own store above all other churches."245 His Vices. Notwithstanding his many and great virtues, Charles was by, no means so pure as the poetry and piety of the church represented him, and far from deserving canonization. He sacrificed thousands of human beings to his towering ambition and passion for conquest. He converted the Saxons by force of arms; he waged for thirty years a war of extermination against them; he wasted their territory with fire and sword; he crushed out their independence; he beheaded in cold blood four thousand five hundred prisoners in one day at Verden on the Aller (782), and when these proud and faithless savages finally surrendered, he removed 10000 of their families from their homes on the banks of the Elbe to different parts of Germany and Gaul to prevent a future revolt. It was indeed a war of religion for the annihilation of heathenism, but conducted on the Mohammedan principle: submission to the faith, or death. This is contrary to the spirit of Christianity which recognizes only the moral means of persuasion and conviction.246 The most serious defect in his private character was his incontinence and disregard of the sanctity of the marriage tie. In this respect he was little better than an Oriental despot or a Mohammedan Caliph. He married several wives and divorced them at his pleasure. He dismissed his first wife (unknown by name) to marry a Lombard princess, and he repudiated her within a year. After the death of his fifth wife he contented himself with three or four concubines. He is said even to have encouraged his own daughters in dissolute habits rather than give them in marriage to princes who might become competitors for a share in the kingdom, but he had them carefully educated. It is not to the credit of the popes that they never rebuked him for this vice, while with weaker and less devoted monarchs they displayed such uncompromising zeal for the sanctity of marriage.247 His Death and Burial.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Three weeks of sabotage and ambushes had left her worn down to her last fraying thread. Three weeks of fucking the shit out of Fran at least gave her something to distract herself with when her officers brought her news of a patrol slaughtered in the woods, a cargo truck blown apart on Route 93, all of it because she was blabbing her sisterhood’s secrets to the first pretty girl who’d made eyes at her. You must not really be a person at all , she thought as she and Jules cut through trampled undergrowth and a ragged wall of saplings into the overgrown lumber yard. People believe in things. They have morals. Principles. They passed two older Legion women standing picket by what was left of the yard’s offices and skirted a heap of decaying sheets of particle board to where Karin knelt gagged and handcuffed in the dirt, one eye swollen shut, another guard standing behind her with a crossbow in her arms. If I were smart, thought Ramona, crouching down to look Karin in the eye, I could make up some reason to keep her alive. I could convince Jules we could use her as a double agent, get her out of here. She never had the stomach for it. If, if, if. A dozen lies crawled to the tip of her tongue before scrambling back down her throat, too convinced of their own inadequacy to emerge. “All right.” Ramona’s mouth was dry. She straightened up and put a hand on the butt of her pistol. She licked her dry, chapped lips. From a shed not far off came a muffled cry and the sound of leather striking flesh. A flat, sinuous crack like the sound Jules made when she snapped her gum. They were torturing a woman in there. A woman? Yeah? Better make up your mind about that, dipshit. Better make it up real soon. Karin looked up at her without emotion. Blood had dried to a scabby crust on her upper lip. Another strangled cry came from the shed. “I knew there was something wrong with you,” Ramona heard herself say, her voice echoing and distorted in her ears, as though heard from a long way off. She kicked the other woman in the stomach, knocking her sprawling in the dirt. Karin gasped like a landed fish. “Fucking tranny-lover.” She stepped back, knees weak, her face stiff as a mask. “Get what you can out of her. Shoot her with the other one tomorrow.” Jules curled her tongue and spat her gum into Karin’s hair, where it stuck like a wrinkled little barnacle. “You got it, chief.” She smiled. “I know how to treat a girl right.” It was low tide and Robbie was digging for clams on the mud flats when he saw Steph come pedaling along the coast from the south road.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I was sorry to hear about Fillmore. He had been damned good to me. When I left Van Norden I jumped a bus and went straight to the hospital. They hadn’t decided yet whether he was completely off his base or not, I suppose, for I found him upstairs in a private room, enjoying all the liberties of the regular patients. He had just come from the bath when I arrived. When he caught sight of me he burst into tears. “It’s all over,” he says immediately. “They say I’m crazy—and I may have syphilis too. They say I have delusions of grandeur.” He fell over onto the bed and wept quietly. After he had wept a while he lifted his head up and smiled—just like a bird coming out of a snooze. “Why do they put me in such an expensive room?” he said. “Why don’t they put me in the ward—or in the bughouse? I can’t afford to pay for this. I’m down to my last five hundred dollars.” “That’s why they’re keeping you here,” I said. “They’ll transfer you quickly enough when your money runs out. Don’t worry.” My words must have impressed him, for I had no sooner finished than he handed me his watch and chain, his wallet, his fraternity pin, etc. “Hold on to them,” he said. “These bastards’ll rob me of everything I’ve got.” And then suddenly he began to laugh, one of those weird, mirthless laughs which makes you believe a guy’s goofy whether he is or not. “I know you’ll think I’m crazy,” he said, “but I want to atone for what I did. I want to get married. You see, I didn’t know I had the clap. I gave her the clap and then I knocked her up. I told the doctor I don’t care what happens to me, but I want him to let me get married first. He keeps telling me to wait until I get better—but I know I’m never going to get better. This is the end.” I couldn’t help laughing myself, hearing him talk that way. I couldn’t understand what had come over him. Anyway, I had to promise him to see the girl and explain things to her. He wanted me to stick by her, comfort her. Said he could trust me, etc. I said yes to everything in order to soothe him. He didn’t seem exactly nuts to me—just caved-in like. Typical Anglo-Saxon crisis. An eruption of morals. I was rather curious to see the girl, to get the lowdown on the whole thing. The next day I looked her up. She was living in the Latin Quarter. As soon as she realized who I was she became exceedingly cordial. Ginette she called herself. Rather big, rawboned, healthy, peasant type with a front tooth half eaten away. Full of vitality and a kind of crazy fire in her eyes. The first thing she did was to weep.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  [image file=image36.jpg] We finish our project—the page project, as we call it. In the end we have four piles and only three books: Mine, Nick’s, and the nameless book. The fourth pile is the thickest and the most confusing. I stack each one with care that is mostly habit, lining up the corners until none of the pages poke past each other. The problem is, there is nothing on the pages. Each one is bone white. I have the fleeting thought that the zookeeper wants me to write a new book, then Yul Brenner reminds me that my personal Annie Wilkes didn’t leave me a pen. Can’t write a book without a pen. I wonder if I can resuscitate the old Bic we used when we first woke up here. It must be symbolic, like the pictures hung all over the house—pictures of hollow sparrows, and bearers of death. I stare at the piles of paper while Isaac makes us tea. I can hear the tinkle of the spoon as it hits the sides of the ceramic cup. I murmur something to the books spread out around me, my lips moving in incantation. We may have separated them, but without page numbers they are still out of order. How do you bring order to a book you’ve never read? Or maybe that’s point of this little exercise. Maybe I’m supposed to bring my own personal order to the two books I’ve never read. Either way, I’m telling them to sort themselves out and speak to me. Voices have been, and always will be, too afraid to speak with as much volume as a book. That’s why writers write—to say things loudly with ink. To give feet to thoughts; to make quiet, still feelings loudly heard. In these pages are thoughts that the zookeeper wants me to hear. I don’t know why, and I don’t care except to get out of here. To get Isaac out of here. “Do you want to have children?” he asks me when he carries our tea into the room. I am startled by the randomness of his question. We don’t talk about normal things. Our conversations are about survival. My hand trembles when I take the cup. Who could think about children at a time like this? Two pals just sitting around, chatting about their life expectations? I want to rip open my shirt and remind him that he cut off my breasts. Remind him that we are prisoners. People in our predicament didn’t talk about the possibility of children. But still … because it is Isaac who asks me, and because he has given so much, I let my mind rove over what he’s saying.

• From Between Us

  I had to sweep up the hair and go home. Now I can only run around with a baseball cap on, but wearing caps is not allowed in class.” When the situation requires it, people are expected to show malu, or else helped to recognize the situation as one of malu. The direction of the emotion is outside-in. A final reflection on the terms emotional expression and emotional suppression is that they may themselves be suggestive of a MINE model of emotions. They imply that there is a deep inner feeling that wants to come out, or alternatively, has to be actively suppressed. Expression and suppression privilege a view of emotions as inside the person, and naturally wanting to come out. When emotions are conceived of as acts between people, rather than feelings within, then no “expression” is naturally privileged over another. There is no essence to be expressed. There is no reason to assume that any emotional act is more authentic, or to the contrary, less. There is also no reason to think it is unnatural to meet social expectations. If emotions live between people, then why would yelling in anger be any more natural than Hiroto and Chiemi’s accommodation to the expectations of their environments? Why would silently mourning by yourself be any more natural than wailing with the professional mourners? Why would managing your emotions to accommodate the expectations of the social environment be any more phony than asserting your frustrations? Emotions: Mine and Ours? Emotions are not solely feelings deep inside us. The way they have been portrayed in the Pixar movie Inside Out is a MINE model of emotions. Many cultures have an OURS model of emotions, which understands emotions primarily as acts happening between people: acts that are being adjusted to the situation at hand. Emotions in MINE and OURS cultures look different. Individuals in cultures that emphasize MINE emotions identify their own emotions based on their own bodily changes, but individuals in cultures with OURS models infer emotions from what is going on in the relationship between people. Where MINE models prevail, individuals are more inclined to judge emotions from the facial configuration of a single person; where OURS models prevail, they are more likely to judge them from a combination of the faces of all people present. Where OURS models prevail, individuals are more likely to infer behavior from facial configurations than in places where MINE models prevail. Where MINE models are foregrounded, feeling good is healthy; where OURS models are first, positive activities are more important for health. Where MINE is the received model, emotions are seen to seek expression and take charge of the situation; where OURS models are accepted, emotional acts seek to meet given situational needs.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  This is my fault. Isaac shouldn’t be here. I’ve ruined his life. I never read Nick’s book. Just those few chapters that Isaac read to me while sitting on the edge of my hospital bed. I didn’t want to see how the story ended. That’s why I swallowed it. But, now I do. I suddenly have the urge to know how Nick ended our story. What he had to say about the way things between us dissolved. It was his story that compelled me to write an answer, and get myself imprisoned in the middle of the fucking South Pole. With my doctor. Who shouldn’t be here. I make dinner. It’s difficult to focus on anything other than the gift that the zookeeper left for me, but Isaac’s hurt outweighs my obsession. I open three cans of vegetables, and boil pasta shaped like bow ties. I mix them together, adding a little canned chicken broth. I carry the plates to the living room. We can’t eat at the table anymore, so we eat here. I call up to Isaac. He comes down a minute later, but he only pushes the food around on his plate, stabbing a different vegetable on each prong of his fork. Is this what he felt when he watched me slip into darkness? I want to open his mouth and pour the food down his throat. Make him live. Eat, Isaac. I mentally plead. But he doesn’t. I save his plate of food, setting it in the fridge, which doesn’t quite work since he stripped off the rubber sealant to make a pedal for his drums. I hobble up to the carousel room using my new crutch. The room smells musty and there is a faint sweet smell of piss. I eye the black horse. The one who shares my pierced heart. He looks meaner today. I lean into him, resting my head against his neck. I touch his mane lightly. Then my hand goes to the arrow. I grip it in a fist, wishing I could break it off and end both of our suffering. More than that—wishing I could end Isaac’s. My eyelids flutter as my brain trills. When did I decide that the zookeeper was a man? It doesn’t fit. My publishing company has done research on my reader base, and it consists mostly of women in their thirties and forties. I have male readers. I get e-mails from them, but to go this far … I should see a woman. But I don’t. I see a man. Either way, I’m in his head. He’s just a character to me; someone I can’t really see, but I can see how his mind works by the way he’s playing games with me. And the longer I’m here, the more he’s taking form. This is my job; this is what I’m good at. If I can figure out his plot, I can outsmart him. Get Isaac out of here. He needs to meet his baby.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Isaac finds me lying on my back on the floor. He stands over me with a leg on each side of my body, and hauls me to my feet. His eyes briefly explore the puddle of vomit beside me before he reaches up and feels my forehead. When he finds it cool, he asks me, “What did you read?” I turn my face away. “Nick’s book?” I shake my head. He looks at the pile closest to where I was lying. “Do you know who wrote it?” I can’t look at him, so I close my eyes and nod. “My mother,” I say. I hear his breath catch. “How do you know?” “I know.” I hobble into the kitchen. I need water to wash out my mouth. Isaac follows behind me. “How do I know it wasn’t you who did this?” He takes a threatening step toward me. I back into a bag of rice. It falls over. I watch, horrified, as the grains spill across the floor, flowing around my bare foot. “I brought you here? You think I brought us here to starve and freeze? For what?” “It was convenient that you were the one to cut me free. Why weren’t you the one tied up and gagged?” “Listen to yourself,” I say. “It wasn’t me who did this!” “How do I know that?” His words are sharp, but he says them slowly. I shift my feet and rice fills the spaces between my toes. My chin trembles. I can feel my bottom lip shaking with it. I clutch it between my teeth. “I guess you have to trust me.” He points to the living room where the chest is, where the books lay in piles. “Your book, Nick’s book, and now your mother’s book? Why?” “I don’t know. I didn’t even know my mother wrote a book. I haven’t seen her since I was a kid!” “You know who did this,” he says. “Deep down, you know.” I shake my head. How can he possibly believe that? I have searched—wracked—my brain for answers. He backs up, covering his eyes with his palms. His back hits the wall and he bends at the waist with his hands on his knees. It looks like he can’t breathe. I reach a hand out to him, and then drop it to my side. It’s no use. No matter what I say, I took his wife and baby away. I birthed this psycho’s obsession.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It’s easier to sit on the stairs and lift myself backward, sticking my injured leg straight out while I use my arms and good leg to lift myself. I toss my sack up ahead of me. I feel every bump, every movement. The pain is so intense I am beyond screaming. It is taking concentration not to pass out. I’m sweating. I can feel fat rivulets rolling down the sides of my face and the back of my neck. I use the railing to lift myself up on the top step, then I hop to the ladder. This is going to be the hard part. Unlike the ladder in the well, this one angles straight up. There is nothing to lean on and the rungs are narrow and slippery. I sob with my face pressed against the wall. Then I pull myself together and drag myself up Mt. Everest. I lay the logs. I light them. Just one at first, then I add a second. I put his head in my lap and rub his chest. I’ve done so much research as a writer; I know that when someone has hypothermia you’re supposed to focus on building heat in the chest, head and neck. Rubbing their limbs will push cold blood back toward the heart, lungs and brain, making things worse. I know I’m supposed to give him the heat from my body, but I can’t get my pants off, and even if I could I wouldn’t know how and where to put my body with a bone sticking out of it. I feel so much guilt. So much. Isaac was right. I knew the zookeeper was playing a game with me. I knew it when I saw the lighters and the carousel room. But I shut down and refused to help him figure things out. I shut down. Why? God. If I’d put two and two together, we could have found that well weeks ago. If he dies it’s my fault. He’s here and it’s my fault. I don’t even know why. But I want to. This is a game, and if I want to get out, I have to find the truth. The CarouselThere is a carousel in Mukilteo. It sits in a copse of evergreens at the bottom of a hill called The Devil’s Backbone. The animals impaled on that ride are angry, their eyes rolling, heads kicked back like something has spooked them. It’s what you would expect from a ride that sits on the devil’s tailbone. Isaac took me there for my thirtieth birthday, on the last day of winter. I remember being surprised that he knew it was my birthday, and that he knew where to take me. Not to a pretentious dinner, but to a clearing in the woods where a little bit of dark magic still lived.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  They were angry, unpredictable, emotional ambulance-sirens with pigtails, grubby hands and food-crusted mouths that twisted from smiles to frowns and back again as quick as a breath. No, thank you very much. If I wanted a three-foot warlord as my master, I’d hire a rabid monkey to do the job. “No,” I say. He takes a long sip. Nods. “I didn’t think so.” I wait for him to tell me why he asked, but he doesn’t. After a few minutes it clicks together— snap, snap, snap —and I feel sick. Isaac hasn’t been eating. He hasn’t been sleeping. He hasn’t been speaking much. I’ve watched him deteriorate slowly over the last week, coming alive only for the delivery of the white box. I suddenly feel less angry about his out-of-place question. More concerned. “How long have we been here?” I ask. “Nine months.” My Rubik’s cube brain twists. More of my anger dissipates. When we first woke up here he told me that Daphne was eight weeks pregnant. “She carried to term,” I say, firmly. I search my brain for something else he needs to hear. “You have a healthy baby and it comforts her to have a part of you with her.” I don’t know if this comforts him, but it’s all I know how to say. He doesn’t move or acknowledge my words. He’s suffering. I stand up wobbling slightly. I have to do something. I have to feed him. Like he fed me when I was suffering. I linger in the doorway, watching the slight rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes. This is my fault. Isaac shouldn’t be here. I’ve ruined his life. I never read Nick’s book. Just those few chapters that Isaac read to me while sitting on the edge of my hospital bed. I didn’t want to see how the story ended. That’s why I swallowed it. But, now I do. I suddenly have the urge to know how Nick ended our story. What he had to say about the way things between us dissolved. It was his story that compelled me to write an answer, and get myself imprisoned in the middle of the fucking South Pole. With my doctor. Who shouldn’t be here. I make dinner. It’s difficult to focus on anything other than the gift that the zookeeper left for me, but Isaac’s hurt outweighs my obsession. I open three cans of vegetables, and boil pasta shaped like bow ties. I mix them together, adding a little canned chicken broth. I carry the plates to the living room. We can’t eat at the table anymore, so we eat here. I call up to Isaac. He comes down a minute later, but he only pushes the food around on his plate, stabbing a different vegetable on each prong of his fork. Is this what he felt when he watched me slip into darkness?

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

  The act, to my inner sense, had an extraordinary clearness. I perceived the resistance of the corset and then something else, and then the sinking of the knife into a soft substance. She clutched at the dagger with her hands, and cut herself with it, but could not restrain the blow. “Long afterward, in prison when the moral revolution had been effected within me, I thought of that minute, I remembered it as far as I could, and I co-ordinated all the sudden changes. I remembered the terrible consciousness which I felt,—that I was killing a wife, my wife. “I well remember the horror of that consciousness and I know vaguely that, having plunged in the dagger, I drew it out again immediately, wishing to repair and arrest my action. She straightened up and cried: “‘Nurse, he has killed me!’ “The old nurse, who had heard the noise, was standing in the doorway. I was still erect, waiting, and not believing myself in what had happened. But at that moment, from under her corset, the blood gushed forth. Then only did I understand that all reparation was impossible, and promptly I decided that it was not even necessary, that all had happened in accordance with my wish, and that I had fulfilled my desire. I waited until she fell, and until the nurse, exclaiming, ‘Oh, my God!’ ran to her; then only I threw away the dagger and went out of the room. “‘I must not be agitated. I must be conscious of what I am doing,’ I said to myself, looking neither at her nor at the old nurse. The latter cried and called the maid. I passed through the hall, and, after having sent the maid, started for my study. “‘What shall I do now?’ I asked myself. “And immediately I understood what I should do. Directly after entering the study, I went straight to the wall, took down the revolver, and examined it attentively. It was loaded. Then I placed it on the table. Next I picked up the sheath of the dagger, which had dropped down behind the sofa, and then I sat down. I remained thus for a long time. I thought of nothing, I did not try to remember anything. I heard a stifled noise of steps, a movement of objects and of tapestries, then the arrival of a person, and then the arrival of another person. Then I saw Gregor bring into my room the baggage from the railway; as if any one needed it! “‘Have you heard what has happened?’ I asked him. ‘Have you told the dvornik to inform the police?’ “He made no answer, and went out. I rose, closed the door, took the cigarettes and the matches, and began to smoke. I had not finished one cigarette, when a drowsy feeling came over me and sent me into a deep sleep.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  “We’re in trouble now,” Sonny confided, as he fed Joaquin a peanut butter cookie, his favorite. But he couldn’t help feeling relieved as he watched Joaquin gambol off and take possession of his pasture. The place where he belonged. Joaquin represented the future, if there was a future to be had. Vistas in this part of the country are so immense you can see the storms a hundred miles away. The norther was bringing heavy weather—lowering clouds and lightning over the mountains, thunder grumbling like timpani and the wind whipping up dust devils on the parched prairie. Over dinner, Sonny bet Lola five dollars it would finally rain. “You’ve lost enough money already today,” she observed. Sonny looked into his bowl of chili as if it might contain a reply to that observation, but there was none. Lola of course was well acquainted with Sonny’s shortcomings. Had she been at the auction she could have sized it up before he unloaded the trailer. He certainly knew how much they were counting on that money. There wasn’t much left to sell, except the ranch itself, which had belonged to her mother. All they really had in the world. It wouldn’t do any good to make him feel worse than he already did, but she couldn’t stop herself. “Ten thousand dollars!” Lola said for about the twentieth time. “It’s not like I had to pay all that,” he said. “It was just the auction fee, like two hundred bucks.” “Ten thousand we would have had if you’d just kept your hands in your lap.” “I know. It’s all my fault. I’m really sorry.” Lola wasn’t finished but she could see that nothing she said was going to make the money magically reappear. “Oh, don’t go so hangdog,” she said. “It’s just, I’m so sick of pinching pennies. I know you’re working hard, but we’re on the brink of disaster here.” And then, under her breath, one last time, “Ten thousand dollars!” There was nothing soft about Lola’s life. Compared to city girls she was sparely constructed, with long, ropy muscles. She didn’t consider herself attractive, but she was certainly arresting, with unflinching blue eyes and a scar on her right cheek that came from a tumble in her barrel-racing days. Except for one ill-considered tattoo she was flawless. She often wore her honey-colored hair in a ponytail to keep from having to fuss with it, braiding it through the back of a trucker hat, where it bobbed about like the tail of a palomino. Anyone with experience in the West would instantly recognize her as a cowgirl. Lola loved the land but also felt chained to it. She subscribed to certain magazines—The New Yorker, National Geographic, Architectural Digest —that kept her up to date while at the same time feeding her shyness about stepping out of her zone. Her accent confined her like an invisible fence to this vast, unpeopled region.

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

  But the odor of the drugs, iodoform and phenic acid, brought me back to a sense of reality. “‘No, everything has happened.’ “In passing through the hall, beside the children’s chamber, I saw little Lise. She was looking at me, with eyes that were full of fear. I even thought that all the children were looking at me. As I approached the door of our sleeping-room, a servant opened it from within, and came out. The first thing that I noticed was her light gray dress upon a chair, all dark with blood. On our common bed she was stretched, with knees drawn up. “She lay very high, upon pillows, with her chemise half open. Linen had been placed upon the wound. A heavy smell of iodoform filled the room. Before, and more than anything else, I was astonished at her face, which was swollen and bruised under the eyes and over a part of the nose. This was the result of the blow that I had struck her with my elbow, when she had tried to hold me back. Of beauty there was no trace left. I saw something hideous in her. I stopped upon the threshold. “‘Approach, approach her,’ said her sister. “‘Yes, probably she repents,’ thought I; ‘shall I forgive her? Yes, she is dying, I must forgive her,’ I added, trying to be generous. “I approached the bedside. With difficulty she raised her eyes, one of which was swollen, and uttered these words haltingly: “‘You have accomplished what you desired. You have killed me.’ “And in her face, through the physical sufferings, in spite of the approach of death, was expressed the same old hatred, so familiar to me. “‘The children . . . I will not give them to you . . . all the same. . . . She (her sister) shall take them.’ . . . “But of that which I considered essential, of her fault, of her treason, one would have said that she did not think it necessary to say even a word. “‘Yes, revel in what you have done.’ “And she sobbed. “At the door stood her sister with the children. “‘Yes, see what you have done!’ “I cast a glance at the children, and then at her bruised and swollen face, and for the first time I forgot myself (my rights, my pride), and for the first time I saw in her a human being, a sister. “And all that which a moment before had been so offensive to me now seemed to me so petty,—all this jealousy,—and, on the contrary, what I had done seemed to me so important that I felt like bending over, approaching my face to her hand, and saying: “‘Forgive me!’ “But I did not dare. She was silent, with eyelids lowered, evidently having no strength to speak further. Then her deformed face began to tremble and shrivel, and she feebly pushed me back. “‘Why has all this happened?

• From Manhunt (2022)

  The head of her penis split open against her palm, and between its weeping lips— It was near dark. She lay on her back under a spreading tree, her head propped up on something soft, and every breath she took felt as though it put a fresh crack in her ribs. Her thoughts were slow and sticky, clinging to each other like hard candies in a jar left in the sun. Not far off, Fran sat on a rock knocking dirt and pebbles out of her ratty sneakers. A trans guy stood beside her, short and slim with a shaggy mullet under his sun-faded Red Sox cap. He had a faint mustache and a deep tan, or else maybe he was black, or kind of black, or whatever. Little crow’s feet branched from the corners of his dark eyes. He and Fran were talking in low voices. Beth wet her dry, cracked lips. “Oh shit,” she croaked, the taste of blood thick at the back of her throat. “It’s the last man on earth. How’s it hangin’, pal?” They both turned toward her. The stranger looked caught between amusement and annoyance. Fran just looked tired. “You’re awake.” She offered a watery smile. “How do you feel?” Bodies on top of her. Fingers in her hair. Beth’s asshole hurt like someone had bitten a chunk out of it, and for a moment her throat closed and tears welled in her eyes. “Shitty,” she choked out. “I’m sorry, Fran. I’m sorry I fell.” She sobbed suddenly and then bit back a cry as the convulsion of her diaphragm sent shooting pains through cracked and bruised ribs. Her right leg felt like a bag of meat and needles. “I d-didn’t mean to.” Fran came to kneel beside her. She took Beth’s hand in hers. Beth squeezed her eyes tight shut so that she wouldn’t see the awful look of pity on Fran’s face. “It’s not your fault.” Beth whimpered and wished at once that she could put that silly, nasal sound back in her throat. “Robbie saved us. He picked them right off of you.” Fran squeezed her hand. “And hey, I got a bunch of disgusting smelly balls from the men he killed. We’re way up on the hunt.” I saved you, you cunt. She bit the inside of her cheek until it hurt before she trusted herself to meet Fran’s eyes again. The first stars glittered through the branches of the tree. The moon was waning. “I’m sorry,” she said flatly. “I just feel like garbage.” “Try to get some sleep,” said Fran, her hand slipping from Beth’s as she straightened up from her squat. “We’ll get to Indi’s tomorrow morning. You can rest there for a while, until you’re feeling better.

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

  Whatever be the temple at which one sacrifices, immediately she allows incense to be burned there, one can be sure the homage offends her in no wise; refusals to produce, waste of the semen employed in production, the obliteration of that seed when it has germinated, the annihilation of that germ even long after its formation, all those, Therese, are imaginary crimes which are of no interest to Nature and at which she scoffs as she does at all the rest of our institutions which offend more often than they serve her." Coeur-de-fer waxed warm while expounding his perfidious maxims, and I soon beheld him again in the state which had so terrified me the night before; in order to give his lesson additional impact, he wished instantly to join practice to precept; and, my resistances notwithstanding, his hands strayed toward the altar into which the traitor wanted to penetrate.... Must I declare, Madame, that, blinded by the wicked man's seductions; content, by yielding a little, to save what seemed the more essential; reflecting neither upon his casuistries' illogicalities nor upon what I was myself about to risk since the dishonest fellow, possessing gigantic proportions, had not even the possibility to see a woman in the most permissible place and since, urged on by his native perversity, he most assuredly had no object but to maim me; my eyes as I say, perfectly blind to all that, I was going to abandon myself and become criminal through virtue; my opposition was weakening; already master of the throne, the insolent conqueror concentrated all his energies in order to establish himself upon it; and then there was heard the sound of a carriage moving along the highway. Upon the instant, Coeur-de-fer forsakes his pleasures for his duties; he assembles his followers and flies to new crimes. Not long afterward, we hear cries, and those bandits, all bloodied over, return triumphant and laden with spoils. "Let's decamp smartly," says Coeur-de-fer, "we've killed three men, the corpses are on the road, we're safe no longer." The booty is divided, Coeur-de-fer wants me to have my share; it comes to twenty louis, which I am compelled to accept. I tremble at the obligation to take such money; however, we are in a hurry, everyone snatches up his belongings and off we go.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Not locked up like a prisoner with you. I don’t want to be with you.” His words hurt so bad. My pride keeps my knees stiff, otherwise I would have buckled from the pain. I watch him walk up the stairs, my heart pounding to the beat of his anger. I guess I was wrong about him. I was wrong about so many things with regard to him. I am wrapped in my cocoon again when Isaac comes up with dinner. He brings two plates and sets them on the floor by the fire before unwrapping me. “Food,” he says. I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling for a minute, before throwing my legs off the side of the bed and slowly walking to his picnic. He’s already eating, staring at the flames while he chews. I sit on my knees as far away from him as I can—on the corner of the rug—and pick up my plate. The plate is square. There are squares around its edge. It’s the first time I’m noticing. I’ve been eating off these dishes for weeks, but I’m just now observing things like color and pattern and shape. They are familiar to me. I touch one of the squares with my pinkie. “Isaac, these plates…” “I know,” he says. “You’re in a fog, Senna. I wish you’d wake up and help me get out of here.” I set my plate on the floor. He’s right. “The fence. How far does it run around the house?” “About a mile in every direction. With the cliff on one side of us.” “Why did he give us that much room?” “Food,” Isaac says. “Wood?” “So he means for us to take care of ourselves when the food runs out?” “Yes.” “But the fence will keep the animals out, and there are only so many trees to cut down.” Isaac shrugs. “Maybe he intended for us to make it ‘til summer. We’d see some animals then.” “There is a summer here?” I say it sarcastically, but Isaac nods. “There is a short summer in Alaska, yes. But depending on where we are, there might not be one. If we are in the mountains it will be winter year round.” I don’t long for the sun. I never have. But I don’t like being told it has to be winter all year either. It makes me want to claw at the walls. I fidget with the hem of my sweater. “How much food do we have left?” “Couple months’ worth if we ration it.” “I wish this song would stop playing.” I pick up my plate and start eating. These are Isaac’s plates. Or were his plates. I only ate at his house once. He probably has the type of china now that married people have. I think about his wife. Small and pretty, eating off her china alone because her husband is missing.