Relief

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)

  * * * * * My first impulse after this, the most cruel catastrophe of my life, was to seek laborious tasks, dangers, and privations. I wanted to become a soldier and go to Asia or Algiers, but my father was old and ill and wanted me. So I quietly returned home and for two years helped him bear his burdens, and learned how to look after the estate which I had never done before. To labor and to do my duty was comforting like a drink of fresh water. Then my father died, and I inherited the estate, but it meant no change. I had put on my own Spanish boots and went on living just as rationally as if the old man were standing behind me, looking over my shoulder with his large wise eyes. One day a box arrived, accompanied by a letter. I recognized Wanda’s writing. Curiously moved, I opened it, and read. “Sir.— Now that over three years have passed since that night in Florence, I suppose, I may confess to you that I loved you deeply. You yourself, however, stifled my love by your fantastic devotion and your insane passion. From the moment that you became my slave, I knew it would be impossible for you ever to become my husband. However, I found it interesting to have you realize your ideal in my own person, and, while I gloriously amused myself, perhaps, to cure you. I found the strong man for whom I felt a need, and I was as happy with him as, I suppose, it is possible for any one to be on this funny ball of clay. But my happiness, like all things mortal, was of short duration. About a year ago he fell in a duel, and since then I have been living in Paris, like an Aspasia— And you?—Your life surely is not without its sunshine, if you have gained control of your imagination, and those qualities in you have materialized, which at first so attracted me to you—your clarity of intellect, kindness of heart, and, above all else, your—moral seriousness. I hope you have been cured under my whip; the cure was cruel, but radical. In memory of that time and of a woman who loved you passionately, I am sending you the portrait by the poor German. Venus in Furs.” I had to smile, and as I fell to musing the beautiful woman suddenly stood before me in her velvet jacket trimmed with ermine, with the whip in her hand. And I continued to smile at the woman I had once loved so insanely, at the fur-jacket that had once so entranced me, at the whip, and ended by smiling at myself and saying: The cure was cruel, but radical; but the main point is, I have been cured. * * * * * “And the moral of the story?” I said to Severin when I put the manuscript down on the table.

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

  And one after the other the two women embraced the knees of a so generous friend, and upon him they did shed their tears. A few hours later they arrived at the chateau; once there, Monsieur de Corville and Madame de Lorsange both strove with might and main to raise Therese from the ultimate deeps of unhappiness to the pure sunshine of contentment and well-being. They took greatest joy in giving her to eat of the most succulent foods, they laid her to sleep in the finest of beds, they did urge her to command and they made her will to be done, and into their hospitable proceedings they introduced all the gentility and understanding it were possible to expect from two sensitive souls. She was given medicines for several days, she was bathed, dressed, arrayed in elegant attire, embellished, the two lovers worshiped her, each labored at nothing but to make her forget her sorrows as quickly as might be. An excellent surgeon was fetched; he undertook to make the ignominious mark disappear, and soon the cruel result of Rodin's villainy was effectively gone; and everything responded to the cares her benefactors lavished upon Therese: the shadowed memories of misery were already effaced from that amiable girl's brow; already the Graces had re-established their empire thereupon. For the livid tints on her cheeks of alabaster were substituted the rosy hue appropriate to her years; what had been withered by such a multitude of griefs was called back to fresh new life. Laughter, for so many years banished from her lips, reappeared again under the wings of Pleasure. The very best news came from the Court; Monsieur de Corville had put all of France in action, he had reanimated the zeal of Monsieur S* * *, who collaborated with him to publicize Therese's illtreatment and to restore her to a tranquillity to which she was so heavily entitled. At length letters came from the King, they nullified all the legal proceedings unjustly initiated against her, they gave her back the name of an honest citizen, imposed silence upon all the realm's tribunals before which efforts had been made to defame her, and accorded her a thousand crowns a year, interest realized upon the gold seized in the counterfeiters' Dauphine workshop. They wished to make Cardoville and Saint-Florent answer for their misdeeds but, in accordance with the fatality of the star intending upon all of Therese's persecutors, one of them, Cardoville, had just, before his crimes were made known, been named to the administration of the Province of * * *, and the other to general supervision of Colonial Trade; each had already reached his destination, the edicts affected no one but the powerful families who soon found means to quiet the storm and, pacifically installed in Fortune's sanctuary, those monsters' depredations were quickly forgotten. (As for the monks of Saint Mary-in-the-Wood, suppression of the religious orders will expose the atrocious crimes of that horrible crew.)

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

  Jews and Monophysite Christians were sick of harassment from Constantinople, and the Persians were still reeling from the political upheaval that had followed Khosrow II’s assassination. Within a remarkably short period, the Arabs forced the Roman army to retreat from Syria (636) and crushed the depleted Persian army (637). In 641 they conquered Egypt, and though they had to fight some fifteen years to pacify the whole of Iran, they were eventually victorious in 652. Only Byzantium, now a rump state shorn of its southern provinces, held out. Thus, twenty years after the Battle of Badr, the Muslims found themselves masters of Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. When they finally subdued Iran, they fulfilled the dream that had eluded both the Persians and Byzantines and re-created Cyrus’s empire. 45 It is hard to explain their success. The Arabs were accomplished raiders but had little experience of protracted warfare and had no superior weapons or technology. 46 In fact, like the Prophet, in the early years of the conquest period, they gained more territory by diplomacy than by fighting: Damascus and Alexandria both surrendered because they were offered generous terms. 47 The Arabs had no experience of state building and just adopted Persian and Byzantine systems of land tenure, taxation, and government. There was no attempt to impose Islam on the subject peoples. The people of the book—Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians—became dhimmis (“protected subjects”). Critics of Islam often denounce this arrangement as evidence of Islamic intolerance, but Umar had simply adapted Khosrow I’s Persian system: Islam would be the religion of the Arab conquerors—just as Zoroastrianism had been the exclusive faith of the Persian aristocracy—and the dhimmis would manage their own affairs as they had in Iran and pay the jizya, a poll tax, in return for military protection. After centuries of forcible attempts by the Christian Roman Empire to impose religious consensus, the traditional agrarian system reasserted itself, and many of the dhimmis found this Muslim polity a relief. When Umar conquered Jerusalem from the Byzantines in 638, he immediately signed a charter to ensure that the Christian shrines were undisturbed and cleared the site of the Jewish temple, which had been left in ruins since its destruction in 70 and was used as the city’s garbage dump. Henceforth this holy site would be called the Haram al-Sharif, the “Most Noble Sanctuary,” and become the third-holiest place in the Muslim world, after Mecca and Medina.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  of the bird making her long journey home alone, wondering how she had managed to reach her destination over the steep terrain, circumventing numerous obstacles, and that question, said Austerlitz, a question which still exercises my mind today when I see a pigeon in flight, is one that, against all reason, seems to me connected with the way Gerald finally lost his life-——I believe, Austerlitz went on after some considerable time, it was on the second or third parents’ visiting day that Gerald, proud of his privileged relationship with me, introduced me to his mother, Adela. She can hardly have been thirty at the time, and she was very glad that after his initial difficulties her young son had found a protector in me. Gerald had already told me about his father, Aldous, shot down over the Ardennes in the last winter of the war, and I had also heard how his mother was now living with only an old uncle and an even older great-uncle in a country house just outside the small seaside town of Barmouth. Gerald claimed that its position was the finest anywhere along the entire Welsh coast. Once Adela had discovered from Gerald that I had no parents or any family at all, I was invited to their house repeatedly, indeed constantly, even when I was doing my national service and when I was up at Oxford, and I could wish now, said Austerlitz, to have vanished without trace in the peace that always reigned there. At the very beginning of the school holidays, when we traveled westward up the Dee valley in the little steam train from Wrexham, I would feel my heart begin to lift. Bend after bend, our train followed the winding of the river, the green meadows looked in through the open carriage window, and so did the houses, stony gray or whitewashed, the gleaming slate roofs, the silver shades of the willows, the darker alder woods, the sheep pastures climbing up beyond the trees, and higher still the mountains, sometimes tinged with blue, and the sky where the clouds, coming in from the sea, always drove eastwards. Scraps of steam vapor flew past outside; you could hear the engine whistling and feel the air cool on your forehead. Never have I traveled better, said Austerlitz, than on this journey of seventy miles at the most, which took us three and a half hours. When we stopped at Bala, the halfway station, of course I could not help thinking back to my time in the manse, visible up there on its hill, yet it always seemed to me inconceivable that I had really been among its unhappy inhabitants for almost the whole of my life. And every time I set eyes on Lake Bala, particularly when its surface was churned up by the wind in winter, I remembered the story Evan the cobbler had told me, about the two headstreams of Dwy Fawr and Dwy Fach which are said to flow right through the lake, far down in its dark depths, never mingling their waters with its own. The two rivers, according to Evan, said Austerlitz, were called after the only human beings not drowned but saved from the biblical deluge in the distant past. At the

• From My People (2022)

  But at that moment I was too sick to care. The girls were all quiet now. They were huddled together in the lobby as I came by. A few of them started to hiss, but they were immediately shushed into silence by the others. The state troopers had finally arrived. As we came out into the chilly night air I saw the gray patrol cars parked at the curb. The husky, red-faced troopers in their gray uniforms and broad-brimmed hats were impassive and coolly official in speech and manner. We stopped to pick up the dean of women at her residence. I remember saying something about being sorry to inconvenience her at that hour, to which she answered that she couldn’t sleep from worrying about what was going on. When we arrived at the home at which Hamp was living, he was on the telephone, talking to Attorney Hollowell in Atlanta. Hamp wanted to drive his car home. I realized how near hysteria I was when I found myself insisting almost wildly that he leave his car and ride back with me in the patrol car. As we sped along the often bumpy highway toward home, Hamp and I had little to say. Neither of us could get used to the idea that we had been “suspended.” Yet what could we say or do about it? I remember almost nothing of the trip itself. Before I knew it we were in Atlanta, turning into my block and pulling up in front of the porch where the man had stood so many long months ago telling me that I should give up the idea of trying to go to the University of Georgia. The news of our coming had preceded us and a few close friends had gathered at the house. Most reassuring of all, my mother, her hair done up in braids, came out with open arms to welcome both Hamp and me and to take some of the sting out of our forced homecoming. That night is behind me now, no more troublesome than any other bad dream remembered once in a while. What I prefer remembering now are the court rulings that readmitted us, the decision not to close the university, the legislature’s dropping of the state’s segregation laws. But most of all I appreciate the courage of those faculty members, students, and citizens of Georgia who spoke out against mob rule and stood up for our right to attend classes in peace. It was because of all these things that there was no disturbance when I went into the cafeteria with three classmates the other day for my first meal in a university dining room. Today as I walked from class, I met many students who nodded, or smiled, or greeted me in one way or another. I had watched one student as she approached from quite a distance. We smiled—and so did the little kitten she was carrying in the pocket of her sweater.

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

  Rodin, as this artist was called, examined me with the greatest attention, found nothing dangerous about my injuries; had I come to him directly, he said, he would have been able to guarantee that in the space of a fortnight he would have me as fresh and whole as I had been before my adventure; however, the night passed in the open and my worry had infected my wounds, and I could not expect to be well in less than a month. Rodin found space in his own house to lodge me, took all possible care of me, and on the thirtieth day there no longer existed upon my body a single vestige of Monsieur de Bressac's cruelties. As soon as I was fit to take a little air, my first concern was to find in the town some girl sufficiently adroit and intelligent to go to the Marquise's chateau and find out what had taken place there since my departure. This apparently very dangerous inquisitiveness would without the slightest doubt have been exceedingly misplaced; but here it was not a question of mere Curiosity. What I had earned while with the Marquise remained in my room; I had scarcely six louis about me, and I possessed above forty at the chateau. I did not suppose the Count would be unkind enough to refuse me what was so legitimately mine. Persuaded that, his first fury once passed, he would not wish to do me such an injustice, I wrote a letter calculated to touch him as deeply as possible. I was careful to conceal my address and I begged him to send back my old clothes together with the small sum that would be found in my chamber. A lively and spirited peasant girl of twenty-five undertook to deliver my letter and promised to do her best to bring me back all the information she could garner upon the various subjects about which I gave her to understand I needed to be enlightened. I insisted, that above all else, she hide the name of the place where I was, that she not breathe a word of me in whatever form or connection, and that she say she had taken the letter from a man who had brought it from somewhere fifteen leagues away. Jeannette left, and twenty-four hours later she came back with the reply; it still exists, I have it here, Madame, but before you read it, deign to learn what had transpired at the Count's chateau since I had been out of it. Having fallen seriously ill the very day I left, the Marquise de Bressac had been seized by frightful pains and convulsions, and had died the next morning; the family had rushed to the chateau and the nephew, seemingly gripped in the greatest desolation, had declared that his aunt had been poisoned by a chambermaid who had taken flight the same day.

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

  "It is to you I owe my life and fortune, Therese," he added, kissing my hands, "I can do no better than to lay them both at your feet; receive them, I beseech you, and permit the God of marriage to tighten the knots of friendship." I know not whether it was from intuition or chilliness of temper, but I was so far from believing that what I had done for the young man could motivate such sentiments as these he expressed for me, that I allowed him to read in my countenance the refusal I dared not articulate; he understood, insisted no further, and limited himself to asking what he could do for me. "Monsieur," said I, "if my behavior is really not without merit in your view, for my entire recompense I ask nothing more than to proceed to Lyon with you and to have you find me a place in some correct household, where my modesty will have no more to suffer." "You could do nothing better," said Saint-Florent, "and no one is in a better position than I to render this service; I have twenty relatives in the city," and the young trader then besought me to divulge my reasons for having left Paris where I had mentioned to him I was born. I told my story with equal amounts of confidence and ingenuousness. "Oh, if it is but that," said the young man, "I will be of use to you before we reach Lyon; fear not, Therese, your troubles are over; the affair will be hushed; you will not be sought after and, certainly, less in the asylum where I wish to leave you than in any other. A member of my family dwells near Bondy, a charming region not far from here; I am sure it will be a pleasure for her to have you with her; I will introduce you tomorrow."

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

  At this so delicate, and eloquent harangue, the gentleman, who saw I looked frighted and amazed, and, indeed, incapable of answering, took her up for breaking things in so abrupt a manner, as rather to shock than incline me to an acceptance of the good he intended me then, addressing himself to me, told me “he was perfectly acquainted with my whole story, and every circumstance of my distress which he owned was a cruel plunge for one of my youth and beauty to fall into.... that he had long taken a liking to my person, for which he appealed to Mrs. Jones, there present; but finding me so deeply engaged to another, he had lost all hopes of succeeding, till he had heard the sudden reverse of fortune that had happened to me, on which he had given particular orders to my landlady to see that I should want for nothing; and that, had he not been forced abroad to the Hague, on affairs he could not refuse himself to, he would himself have attended me during my sickness;... that on his return, which was the day before, he had, on learning my recovery, desired my landlady’s good offices to introduce him to me, and was as angry, at least, as I was shocked, at the manner in which she had conducted herself towards obtaining him that happiness; but, that to show me how much he disdained her procedure, and how far he was from taking any ungenerous advantage of my situation, and from exacting any security for my gratitude, he would before my face, that instant, discharge my debt entirely to my landlady, and give me her receipt in full; after which I should be at liberty either to reject or grant his suit, as he was much above putting any force upon my inclinations.” Whilst he was exposing his sentiments to me, I ventured just to look up to him, and observed his figure, which was that of a very well-looking gentleman, well made, of about forty, dressed in a suit of plain clothes, with a large diamond ring on one of his fingers, the lustre of which played in my eyes as he waved his hand in talking, and raised my notions of his importance. In short, he might pass for what is commonly called a comely black man, with an air of distinction natural to his birth and condition. To all his speeches, however, I answered only in tears that flower plentifully to my relief, and choking up my voice, excused me from speaking, very luckily, for I should not have known what to say.

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

  The few times I’d seen Daddy heave up a coffin with other men, he always toted more than his share of weight, doing so with that slow-paced, sweating dignity a funeral requires. That was the bearing Daddy brought to handling my stepfather that day. He helped Mother fold him into the seat with utmost gentleness. When he turned to climb up on the porch, his face was blank and sweaty. There was a fan-shaped pattern of blood sprayed across his chambray shirt. “Y’all get on in the house,” he said, but his voice lacked any edge. He brushed past me. I watched the Karmann Ghia head down the street—a streak of canary yellow against the gray tract houses that acted as backdrop. Then I heard the pipes groan in the kitchen when Daddy cranked on the faucet to wash up. Mother never said that she was coming back to us that evening. Per usual, nobody said spit. But I sensed that she would come back, eventually at least. She had a soft spot for Daddy whipping up on a man who’d spoken to her in disrespect. And back then, heat still passed between my parents. You could practically warm your hands on it. That evening she dumped Hector at the nearest emergency room, checked out of the room they’d just checked into, and headed straight back to us on Garfield Road. She’d spent or been cheated out of every cent of her inheritance. So she came back not just broke but deep in debt. And she stayed. She stayed with Daddy till his death, stayed well into her own dotage. The neighbors were folding up their lawn chairs, closing their umbrellas to head back indoors. I shoved into my own house, into the cool dark of its wax-papered windows, feeling something like peace. Daddy’s public ass-whipping of Hector proved to me that my stepfather was a bad man. Our time with him had been a bad time. That was over now, Daddy had ended it. He’d drawn a big line in our lives between that bad time and our future. He was shirtless when Mother came back, and they slow-danced into the bedroom laughing. When the sheriff stopped by after dark, Mother went to the door naked under her black silk kimono. Daddy wasn’t home just then, she told him. Anyways, there’d just been a domestic disruption—that was the phrase she’d used. She was a terrible flirt, and her eyes while she talked to the sheriff were amused. He took his Stetson off and stood there on the porch while june bugs pelleted the screen and neighbors behind their windows drew back their Priscilla curtains. Lecia and I hung over the sofa back, still gleeful from the triumph of Hector’s exile and Mother’s coming back. I’d never seen her eyes so green, deep green, green as the sea past the farthest sandbar where the waves start to head out away from the beach to all the unnamed archipelagoes.

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

  I wept and wept and wept because I knew that I was never going to drink and because I was never going to kill myself and because I was going to have a better life out in the white world. I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in my loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream. I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms. And the tribe of cartoonists. And the tribe of chronic masturbators. And the tribe of teenage boys. And the tribe of small-town kids. And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners. And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers. And the tribe of poverty. And the tribe of funeral-goers. And the tribe of beloved sons. And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends. It was a huge realization. And that’s when I knew that I was going to be okay. But it also reminded me of the people who were not going to be okay. It made me think of Rowdy. I missed him so much. I wanted to find him and hug him and beg him to forgive me for leaving. [image "An illustration of two boys holding hands while jumping into a body of water. Text reads, ‘Boys can hold hands until they turn nine. Rowdy and me in third grade, jumping into Turtle Lake.’" file=image_rsrc4TE.jpg] Talking About Turtles [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] The reservation is beautiful. I mean it. Take a look. There are pine trees everywhere. Thousands of ponderosa pine trees. Millions. I guess maybe you can take pine trees for granted. They’re just pine trees. But they’re tall and thin and green and brown and big. Some of the pines are ninety feet tall and more than three hundred years old. Older than the United States. Some of them were alive when Abraham Lincoln was president. Some of them were alive when George Washington was president. Some of them were alive when Benjamin Franklin was born. I’m talking old. I’ve probably climbed, like, one hundred different trees in my lifetime. There are twelve in my backyard. Another fifty or sixty in the small stand of woods across the field. And another twenty or thirty around our little town. And a few way out in the deep woods. And that tall monster that sits beside the highway to West End, past Turtle Lake. That one is way over one hundred feet tall. It might be one hundred and fifty feet tall. You could build a house using just the wood from that tree. When we were little, like ten years old, Rowdy and I climbed that sucker.

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

  I gave him the reasons which had prevented me from doing so and, without replying, Clement went to report to the superior. Several minutes later the church was opened, Don Severino himself approached me, and invited me to enter the temple with him. Dom Severino, of whom it would be best to give you an idea at once, was, as I had been told, a man of fifty-five, but endowed with handsome features, a still youthful quality, a vigorous physique, herculean limbs, and all that without harshness; a certain elegance and pliancy reigned over the whole and suggested that in his young years he must have possessed all the traits which constitute a splendid man. There were in all the world no finer eyes than his; nobility shone in his features, and the most genteel, the most courteous tone was there throughout. An agreeable accent which colored every one of his words enabled one to identify his Italian origin and, I admit it, this monk's outward graces did much to dispel the alarm the other had caused me. "My dear girl," said he very graciously, "although the hour is unseasonable and though it is not our usage to receive so late, I will however hear your confession, and afterward we will confer upon the means whereby you may pass the night in decency; tomorrow you will be able to bow down before the sacred image which brings you here." We enter the church; the doors are closed; a lamp is lit near the confessional. Severino bids me assume my place, he sits down and requests me to tell him everything with complete confidence. I was perfectly at ease with a man who seemed so mild-mannered, so full of gentle sympathy. I disguised nothing from him: I confessed all my sins; I related all my miseries; I even uncovered the shameful mark wherewith the barbaric Rodin had branded me. Severino listened to everything with keenest attention, he even had me repeat several details, wearing always a look of pity and of interest; but a few movements, a few words betrayed him nevertheless Ä alas! it was only afterward I pondered them thoroughly. Later, when able to reflect calmly upon this interview, it was impossible not to remember that the monk had several times permitted himself certain gestures which dramatized the emotion that had heavy entrance into many of the questions he put to me, and those inquiries not only halted complacently and lingered lovingly over obscene details, but had borne with noticeable insistence upon the following five points: 1 Whether it were really so that I were an orphan and had been born in Paris. 2 Whether it were a certainty I were bereft of kin and had neither friends, nor protection, nor, in a word, anyone to whom I could write.

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

  Shark attacks were not unheard-of, though nobody had been completely toted off by one in decades. The undertow could drag your ass to Cuba before you even knew you’d been sucked down. And it was on this wretched strip of shore at McFadden Beach that we took a family day trip once Mother came back. We’d no idea she was coming home that day. She had just walked in the back door one morning without so much as a howdy. Daddy said, Hello, Joe, can I get you some coffee? She just waggled her head in a loose way, like one of those dogs you see on a dashboard with a long spring for a neck. Lecia and I must have flung ourselves on her right off, because I remember Daddy telling us not to bird-dog her the minute she hit the door. She sat down on a kitchen stool, and we plopped down on the linoleum at her feet. She was in her stocking feet, which was no surprise since she always said that driving would ruin a good pair of heels like nothing else. Anyway, there were little runs in the stockings, narrow black ladders starting up over her toes. I got to fiddling with one of these right off. I pulled it a little bit so the run got longer and skittered up her shin. Then I pulled a little more to make it creep up over her knee where it got wide. I said did that tickle, and she just patted my hand in an idle way. She still hadn’t said word one. She was massaging her temples with her eyes closed. Lecia started rubbing Mother’s feet, which were as twisted up as any dancer’s, knotty and callused from decades of high heels. (Lecia became an adult devotee of such heels. Once at a party in Boston, a loafer-wearing debutante suggested jokingly to her that if God had wanted women to wear heels, He wouldn’t have designed our feet as He did. Lecia replied that if God hadn’t intended us to wear heels, She wouldn’t have made our legs look so great in them.) Lecia’s rubbing put me in mind of somebody from the Bible. Then Daddy came over and started digging his thumbs deep into Mother’s shoulder muscles. This made her head flop back. She must have felt like Gulliver being swarmed on by the little people. And, looking up from the floor, I thought she was way taller than I’d remembered. (Silence can make somebody bigger, I’ve come to believe. Grief can, too. A big sad silence emanating from someone can cause you to invest that person with all manner of gravitas.) There were pouches under her eyes that hadn’t been there before, and streaks dried in her rouge from where she’d been crying on the drive home. But her lipstick was fresh and shiny and the color of a dark plum.

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

  Ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes went by. I was freezing. My hands and feet were big blocks of ice. Snot ran down my face. My ears were burning cold. “Oh, Daddy, please, oh, Daddy, please, oh, Daddy, please.” Oh, man, I was absolutely convinced that my father was dead, too. It had been too long. He’d driven his car off a cliff and had drowned in the Spokane River. Or he’d lost control, slid across the centerline, and spun right into the path of a logging truck. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.” And just when I thought I’d start screaming, and run around like a crazy man, my father drove up. I started laughing. I was so relieved, so happy, that I LAUGHED. And I couldn’t stop laughing. I ran down the hill, jumped into the car, and hugged my dad. I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. “Junior,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?” “You’re alive!” I shouted. “You’re alive!” “But your sister—,” he said. “I know, I know,” I said. “She’s dead. But you’re alive. You’re still alive.” I laughed and laughed. I couldn’t stop laughing. I felt like I might die of laughing. [image "A cartoon illustration shows a person driving a car with a character in the passenger seat laughing. The passenger is wearing glasses and has a humorous expression. The driver appears concerned." file=image_rsrc4TB.jpg] I couldn’t figure out why I was laughing. But I kept laughing as my dad drove out of Reardan and headed through the storm back to the reservation. And then, finally, as we crossed the reservation border, I stopped laughing. “How did she die?” I asked. “There was a big party at her house, her trailer in Montana—,” he said. Yep, my sister and her husband lived in some old silver trailer that was more like a TV dinner tray than a home. “They had a big party—,” my father said. OF COURSE THEY HAD A BIG PARTY! OF COURSE THEY WERE DRUNK! THEY’RE INDIANS! “They had a big party,” my father said. “And your sister and her husband passed out in the back bedroom. And somebody tried to cook some soup on a hot plate. And they forgot about it and left. And a curtain drifted in on the wind and caught the hot plate, and the trailer burned down quick.” I swear to you that I could hear my sister screaming. “The police say your sister never even woke up,” my father said. “She was way too drunk.” My dad was trying to comfort me. But it’s not too comforting to learn that your sister was TOO FREAKING DRUNK to feel any pain when she BURNED TO DEATH!

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Overshadowing this debate was an incident that renewed the public concern about the dangerousness of totalistic movements. In February 1993, agents for the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms tried to execute a search warrant on a religious commune a few miles east of Waco, Texas, that was run by a Christian apocalyptic group calling themselves the Branch Davidians. The leader, David Koresh, was stockpiling weapons, practicing polygamy, committing statutory rape, and was said to be physically abusing children, although that last charge was never proved. Following a shoot-out that caused the deaths of four government agents and six Branch Davidians, the FBI began a siege lasting nearly two months and culminating in a catastrophic blaze—broadcast all over the world—that consumed the entire compound. Seventy-five members of the sect died in the final assault, including twenty-five children. The Waco siege threatened to create a backlash against all new religious movements. On the other hand, the government’s handling of the siege, and the disastrous finale, provoked an international uproar. The hazards of unorthodox belief were clearly displayed, as were the limitations of police forces to understand and deal with fanatical movements. On October 8, around ten thousand Scientologists stood and cheered in the Los Angeles Sports Arena as Miscavige announced, “The war is over!” The IRS had settled with the church. Although the terms were secret, they were later leaked to the Wall Street Journal . Instead of the $1 billion bill for back taxes and penalties that the church owed, Scientology agreed to pay just $12.5 million to resolve outstanding disputes; the church also agreed to stop the cascade of lawsuits against the agency. In return, the IRS dropped its investigations. “The magnitude of this is greater than you can imagine,” Miscavige said that night at the Sports Arena. He held up a thick folder of the letters of exemption for every one of the church’s 150 American entities. The victory over the IRS was total, he explained. It gave Scientology financial advantages that were unusual, perhaps unique, among religions in the United States. For instance, schools using Hubbard educational methods received tax exemption. Eighty percent of individual auditing on the part of members was now a tax-deductible expense. Two Scientology publishing houses that were solely dedicated to turning out Hubbard’s books, including his commercial fiction, also gained the tax exemption. The church even gained the power to extend its tax exemption to any of its future branches—“They will no longer need to apply to the IRS,” Miscavige marveled. From now on, the church could make its own decisions about which of its activities were exempt. “And what about all those battles and wars still being fought overseas?” Miscavige continued. “Well, there’s good news on that front, too.” In the past, he observed, foreign governments would say, “You are an American religion.

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

  But from some quarter the report got abroad that Beza had yielded. This was added to as it passed along until it was confidently asserted that Beza and many other former Genevan Protestants were on their way to Rome to enter the papal fold. Their very route was told, and on an evening in the middle of September, 1597, the faithful people of Siena waited by the gate of their city to receive the great leader! But for some reason he did not come. Then it was said that he was dead; but that ere he died he had made his peace with the Church and had received extreme unction. When the friends of Beza heard these idle tales, they merely smiled. But Beza concluded to give convincing proof of two facts: first, that he was not dead, and second, that he was still a Protestant of the straitest Calvinistic school; and so quite in the old manner he nailed the lie by a biting epigram. When in 1600 François would hold a public discussion with the Genevans, Beza, knowing how unprofitable such discussions were, forbade it. Whereupon it was given out that the Reformers were afraid to meet their opponents! Another flare of the old flame of poetry was occasioned by the visit from King Henry IV., already alluded to. It was a poem of six stanzas, Ad inclytum Franciae et Navarrae regem Henricum IV. ("to the renowned King of France and Navarre, Henry IV.") "It was his last, his swan song."1308 Wearied by the vigils of a perilous and exciting time, Beza had long anxiously looked for his final rest. He had fought a good fight and had kept the faith and was ready to receive his crown. On Sunday, Oct. 13, 1605, he died. In his will1309 Beza ordered his burial to be in the common cemetery of Plain Palais, where Calvin was buried, and near the remains of his wife. But in consequence of a Savoyard threat to carry off his body to Rome, by order of the magistrates, he was buried in the cloister of the cathedral of St. Peter, in the city of Geneva. Of the six great Continental Reformers,—Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Bullinger, Calvin, and Beza,—Beza was the most finished gentleman, according to the highest standard of his time. He was not lacking in energy, nor was he always mild. But he was able to hold court with courtiers, be a wit with wits, and show classical learning equal to that of the best scholars of his age. Yet with him the means were only valued because they reached an end, and the great end he had ever in mind was the conservation of the Reformed Church of Geneva and France.

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

  I have, perhaps, offended Heaven with impure recitals, I have laid open my old wounds, I have disturbed your ease and rest; farewell, Madame, Godspeed; the Star rises above the horizon, I hear my guards summon me to come, let me run on to meet my destiny, I fear it no more, 'twill abridge my torment: this last mortal instant is dreaded only by the favored being whose days have passed unclouded; but the wretched creature who has breathed naught but the venomous effluvia of reptiles, whose tottering feet have trod only upon nettles, who has never beheld the torch of dawn save with feelings like unto those of the lost traveler who, trembling, perceives the thunderbolt's forked track; she from whom cruel accident has snatched away parents, all kin, friends, fortune, protection, aid; she who in all this world has nothing more than tears to quench her thirst and for sustenance her tribulations; she, I say, undismayed sees death advance, she even yearns for it as for a safe haven, a port wherein tranquillity will be born again unto her when she is clasped to the breast of a God too just to permit that innocence, defiled and ground under the heel on earth, may not find recompense for so many evils in another world. The honest Monsieur de Corville had not heard this tale without profound emotion; as for Madame de Lorsange in whom, as we have said, the monstrous errors of her youth had not by any means extinguished sensibility, as for Madame de Lorsange, she was ready to swoon. "Mademoiselle," said she to Justine, "it is difficult to listen to you without taking the keenest interest in you; but, and I must avow it! an inexplicable sentiment, one far more tender than this I describe, draws me invincibly toward you and does make of your ills my very own. You have disguised your name, you have concealed your birth, I beg you to disclose your secret to me; think not that it is a vain curiosity which bids me speak thus to you... Great God! may what I suspect be true?... O Therese! were you Justine?... were it that you would be my sister !" "Justine ! Madame !

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Ray Mithoff, Pat Broeker, and Hubbard’s personal physician, Eugene Denk, were at his side, along with a handful of acolytes and employees. His body had suffered the usual insults of old age, along with the consequences of obesity and a lifetime of heavy smoking. Dr. Denk had given him injections of Vistaril, a tranquilizer, usually prescribed for anxiety. Whatever powers Scientology was supposed to bestow were no more evident in the death of its founder than they had been in his life. Late that night, a handful of senior executives and a couple of private investigators drove to a restaurant in Paso Robles, where they were met by Pat Broeker, who guided them to the Creston ranch. The site was so secret that none of the executives, including Miscavige, had ever actually been there. They arrived around four in the morning. Earle Cooley, a church attorney, took charge of the body. At seven thirty that morning, about twelve hours after Hubbard’s death, the mortuary in San Luis Obispo was notified. Cooley demanded an immediate cremation, but when the owner of the mortuary saw the name on the death certificate, she called the coroner. After learning that Hubbard had signed a new will the day before his death, the coroner ordered an autopsy, but Cooley was able to produce a document signed by Hubbard stating that an autopsy would violate his religious beliefs. The lawyer did permit the coroner to take a blood sample and fingerprints to verify that the corpse was actually Hubbard. Many questions would be asked, since Hubbard hadn’t been seen in public for nearly six years. There was another problem that had to be dealt with quickly: how to explain Hubbard’s death to Scientologists. Broeker and Miscavige came up with a plan: Hubbard didn’t die, he had intentionally “ dropped his body” in order to move on to a higher level of existence. Miscavige told one of the other executives he didn’t want to see “ any grief bullshit.” Sinar Parman, Hubbard’s former chef, arrived that morning, to help with cooking and logistics. He found Annie Broeker sitting on the floor of the cabin, with Miscavige’s wife, Shelly. Annie had obviously been crying. Meanwhile, he noticed Miscavige and Broeker in another room. “They were joking,” he recalled. “They were ecstatic. They’d never been so happy.” That Sunday, Hubbard’s ashes were scattered in the Pacific. The next day, more than two thousand Scientologists gathered in the Hollywood Palladium for a special announcement. The news had been kept quiet until then. Miscavige stepped onto the stage. He was twenty-five years old, wearing his double-breasted Sea Org uniform with a black tie and a gold lanyard over his right shoulder. For most Scientologists, this was their first introduction to the man who would dominate the religion in the decades after the founder’s death.

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

  Life for him had only one aim—that of making endless additions. "Feeling rather sick, I sent the office boy for a bottle of dry sherry and a box of vanilla-wafers. When the lad returned I told him he could go. "I poured out a glass of wine for the bookkeeper, and handed him the box of biscuits. The old man took up the glass with his parchment-coloured hand, and held it up to the light as if he were calculating its chemical properties or its specific weight. Then he sipped it slowly with evident gusto. "As for the wafer he looked at it carefully, just as if it had been a draft he was going to register. "Then we both set to work again, and at about ten, all the letters and dispatches having been answered, I heaved a deep sigh of relief. "'If my manager comes to-morrow, as he said he would, he'll be satisfied with me.' "I smiled as this thought flitted through my brain. What was I working for? Lucre, to please my clerk, or for the work itself? I am sure I hardly knew. I think I laboured for the feverish excitement the work gave me, just as men play at chess to keep their brains active with other thoughts than those that oppress them; or, perhaps, because I was born with working propensities like bees or ants. "Not wanting to keep the poor book-keeper on his stool any longer, I admitted the fact to him that it was time to shut up the office. He got up slowly, with a crepitating sound, took off his spectacles like an automaton, wiped them leisurely, put them in their case, quietly took out another pair—for he had glasses for every occasion—put them on his nose, then looked at me. "'You have gone through a vast amount of work. If your grandfather and your father could have seen you, they surely would have been pleased with you.' "I again poured out two glasses of wine, one of which I handed to him. He quaffed the wine, pleased, not with the wine itself, but for my kindness in offering it to him. Then I shook hands with him, and we parted. "Where was I to go now—home? "I wished my mother had come back. I had got a letter from her that very afternoon; in it she said that, instead of returning in a day or two, as she had intended doing, she might, perhaps, go off to Italy for a short time.

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

  I cried out in despair, go no further; stay there; 'tis a warning sent from Heaven; God does not want me to go on: perhaps I am deceived in my ideas, perhaps evil is useful on earth, and when God's hand desires it, perhaps it is a sin to resist it! But, soon revolted by that doctrine, the too wretched fruit of the corruption which had surrounded me, I extricated myself from the pile of rubble on top of me and finding it easier to climb by the breach I had just made, for now there were new holes, I try once again, I take courage, a moment later I find myself at the crest. Because of all this I had strayed away from the path I had seen, but having taken careful note of its position, I found it again, and began to run. Before day-break I reached the forest's edge and was soon upon that little hill from which, six long months before, I had, to my sorrow, espied that frightful monastery; I rest a few minutes, I am bathed in perspiration; my first thought is to fall upon my knees and beg God to forgive the sins I unwillingly committed in that odious asylum of crime and impurity; tears of regret soon flowed from my eyes. Alas! I said, I was far less a criminal when last year I left this same road, guided by a devout principle so fatally deceived! O God! In what state may I now behold myself! These lugubrious reflections were in some wise mitigated by the pleasure of discovering I was free; I continued along the road toward Dijon, supposing it would only be in that capital my complaints could be legitimately lodged.... At this point Madame de Lorsange persuaded Therese to catch her breath for a few minutes at least; she needed the rest; the emotion she put into her narrative, the wounds these dreadful recitals reopened in her soul, everything, in short, obliged her to resort to a brief respite. Monsieur de Corville had refreshments brought in, and after collecting her forces, our heroine set out again to pursue her deplorable adventures in great detail, as you shall see. By the second day all my initial fears of pursuit had dissipated; the weather was extremely warm and, following my thrifty habit, I left the road to find a sheltered place where I could eat a light meal that would fortify me till evening.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  A few minutes’ walk up the thread, the murmur and rustle of women changing, showering, toweling off in the locker room, and here she was at the pool’s edge, watching slender figures glide over the depth markers stenciled on the tiled bottom. Curls of vapor swirled over the surface. They recoiled from her toes as she dipped a foot into the water. Warm. Fran sat and eased herself over the edge. When was the last time I went swimming? The water closed over her head. She exhaled a stream of bubbles from her nose and floated, weightless, her ponytail bobbing as she rolled onto her back and kicked off of the wall. The low tile ceiling shimmered. Fran kicked lazily, letting herself rise until she surfaced with a sharp inhale. The backstroke came easily, worked into her muscles by years of swim meets and practice at the Concord YMCA. Locker rooms full of shoving, giggling boys. Speedo tight around her cold-shrunken scrotum and the shriveled root of her adolescent cock. She nearly stopped to check her tuck, still haunted by the feeling of climbing up onto that plastic diving block while parents cheered from the bleachers, their collective gaze scraping her wet skin, the chafed lines where tight nylon clung to her hips and crushed her junk against her pelvis. The memory passed. She reached the far end of her lane and managed a clumsy flip, tile and water blurring together, and kicked off again. Her legs and shoulders had begun to burn by the time she hit tile at the shallow end. She slumped against the pool’s edge to catch her breath, chin resting on her folded arms. Other women walked to and from the lockers, passing wet and dry, stopping to exchange a little pleasantry, a touch. A kiss. Fran’s breathing steadied. I could do this every day, she thought, turning to look back out over the pool at the bobbing blue and white segmented buoys, the soaked fiber cords, the timing board over the deep end, and the lifeguard sitting on a bench with a battered paperback and an iced coffee. Is it finally over? She drew a deep, shaky breath. I don’t ever have to run again. It was monotonous work, disinfecting the lab. Running microfiber cloth over glass slides. The stink of solvents burning her nostrils as she transferred disorganized jumbles of instruments—she’d found an engraved nutcracker mixed in with a mismatched set of antique scalpels—from tray to tray, leaving bits of dirt and grime to float in the solutions.