“Come closer,” he said for the third time, his voice dropping again, soft and dark as soot. “Touch me.”
“Why?”
“Because you want to.”
The anger twisted in her entrails once more. “You presume a great deal.”
“Have you ever touched a man’s bare flesh before?” There was a glitter in his eye. “I thought not. So naturally you wish to know what it is like.”
She wanted to slap him for his rudeness.
“After all,” he added, jerking his wrists to demonstrate his constraint; “it’s not as if I can hurt you.”
Plot: Non-supernatural.
Historical, set in fin-de-siecle France. A naive convent-educated young
woman, Zephine, is staying at the villa of her rich aunt since her
mother's death. As preparations are made for a decadent part in the
villa's grounds, Zephine is horrified to see a man tied to a crucifix
in the rose garden. She goes to investigate, and finds she has a lot to
learn - about her aunt, herself, and above all about "victims" who look
helpless but are far from harmless.Sexual Themes: BDSM
Notes: This
one was triggered by this cartoon strip at Oglaf.com.
Piotr, my bound man, looks just like that short-lived prisoner. (There's no actual similarity in the plot!)I wanted to write a story for the Best Bondage Erotica 2011 call, but felt myself a bit stumped - I like bondage but consider it a visual medium or something you experience. Like orgasms, I find it relatively hard to describe in prose: I mean - all those knots and ropes and stuff... But finding that comic strip inspired me to write not about the technicalities but about power, and how it shifts from one person to another. Also, I like my tied-up men to be rebellious. It's so much more fun that way ;-)
The visual seed - a crucifixion - meant it really had to be a historical (and in fact it's the only non-contemporary story in this anthology), because I wanted it to have overtones of blasphemy which the characters would regard as shocking. I toyed with the idea of Catherine the Great's Russia, but fin-de-siecle France seemed in the end to be the perfect setting: decadent, voluptous, Catholic, and a minefield of class and gender inequalities and power struggles which I could exploit for the story.
This is a story where the cruelest and most dangerous weapons wielded are ideas. Piotr is (voluntarily) bound to the cross and at the mercy of the rich and decadent elite at the party. But he's a political anarchist. He wants to destroy the hierarchy of society. He sets out to undermine all Zephine's preconceptions - her innocence, if you like, though I don't hold that innocence has much to do with which parts of a body you happen to have touched . The Ingenue is all about corruption. As he exposes the girl's latent sexual-sadistic streak, he gets a hold on her mind she'll probably never shake off. The last line of the story is "but she could not erase the stain."
This story does hark back to classic old-school erotica - de Sade et al - which always seemed to be set at bizarre orgiastic parties thrown by the incredibly rich and jaded.
My favourite line: "After all, it's not as if I can hurt you." It's soooo disingenuous. And Zephine hears the threat, but can't resist...
Zephine's name came from a minor character in Les Miserables. I thought it sounded nicely sweet and innocent.
Cui-cui is what French sparrows say instead of "cheep cheep." I was so delighted to find that on the internet! I did my French exam at age 16 but haven't used it since and have no talent for languages, so there's a good chance I've littered this story with horrible mistakes. Heh.
"Her aunt's parrot, the one that lived in a gilt cage in the conservatory and quoted Rousseau" - that quote, of course, would be Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Zephine's aunt is a big fan of irony.
