Black Body

by H C Turk

  Having walked too far along this street without discovering anything to lead me home, I found instead a despicable reversal, found certain aspects of the wilderness present but perverted. This region also held a populace whose members remained in shadows. Intruders here, however, were not strangers to them, but victims.

  Three persons met me individually, separate illnesses but the same disease. Though I formed no incisive descriptions of them—as though one were tall with long limbs and neck, another agile and hirsute, the third bulky with a greyish cast—they were akin to the giraffe, the monkey, and the elephant in being alien. But whereas the exotic beasts of the animal faire were honest and unviolent, the three new creatures were human in those respects, having the humanity of sinners, not witches.

  “Aye, good lady, I’m taking the gift you brought me now,” a sinning male professed as he blocked my path, startling me as he stepped from the shadow because he seemed a shadow, manifesting his form from the darkness.

  I halted to avoid walking against him, whereupon another building’s niche exuded a second man to confront us two.

  “You’ll not be bothering the miss, blackguard. She’s mine in that I’ve followed her wanderings for hours.”

  As these males turned to each other, a third sinner appeared as though such emergings were characteristic of the area, another hole decanting a cretin to confront those three persons (in broad terms) heretofore assembled.

  “Ignorant bleeding slime you are to be discussing what I own,” the latest scowled, snatching the clock from me with such certainty that I had no opportunity to resist. I became so intimidated by his forcefulness that I could form neither sound nor deed.

  “Take the bleeding clock, cur,” Giraffe snarled at Elephant, “but be watching I don’t take it from you as you sleep, along with your eyeballs.”

  These two then positioned themselves as though animals prepared to battle, as though a child’s nightmare of flesh-tearing monsters about to come true. Before my fear could increase enough to choke me breathless, the remaining monster had his own and least pleasant say.

  “The pair of you fools fight over the useless clock, while I do what is sensible and fuck this wench until my pecker drops away.”

  Though having good notion of his meaning, I lacked knowledge of all these criminal terms. The latest speaker, however—this Monkey—began actions I was overtly familiar with, for at once he had his hands on me. Immediately this cretinous entity much larger than I displayed his expertise, for he seemed proficient at molesting girls, so assured were his moves as he grabbed my body, squeezing my breasts as though pests to be squashed lifeless.

  With extreme speed in his words and moves, Giraffe was inspired by Monkey to proceed with a shared immorality.

  “I’m fucking her rear hole standing,” he squealed as though surprised by his satisfying imagination, stepping behind me to lift my skirts and have at my flesh with both hands, his touch and breath more desperate than the elephant trainer’s, this man more excited, more criminal.

  At once I was leaping and flailing, but uselessly. The sinners grasped me with such forceful economy that I could not believe their ease in controlling a person. And though this ravaging was not my first, every new assault promised to be more frightening, more painful, and more obliterating to my spirit than the previous.

  “What a cold bitch—I’m reaming her fuckable arse,” Giraffe sighed grotesquely from behind, moaning as he slobbered roughly into my ear, both hands pulling on my naked buttocks as though to pull them apart. My apparel pressed between us in a bundle offered the animal no impediment, not enough fabric in England to prevent his sex smell from rising to violate my senses.

  “Stuff her cunt full with my prick I am,” Monkey earnestly groaned as he dug against my baby portions.

  “Off of it, half-man, I’m lapping her cunt and arse hole dry only to fill them with my prick snot,” Elephant moaned, and attempted to force the other animals aside. Before he could substitute for his satanic friends, this last beast found himself so conservative as to run from a noise: the clomping of horses’ hooves, a man loudly urging his team onward, a whip snicked through the air, first above the horses heads, then against the hides of monsters.

  He could say nothing. All of us looked to the coachman who had refused me, his face so clenched that no words could exit. But his activity came easily, the man whipping at Monkey, who had retreated from his victim—then immediately returned to grasp and turn me so that I shielded him, he and Giraffe having no place to run, for the coach had forced us against the nearby building. Since the driver would not be whipping the girl, he jerked his reins so the horses stepped to the side, stepped near us entangled three all of whom fell, the horses stumbling but remaining upright, a hoof like a sharpened stone thrust down by a brown, beautiful leg beside my ribs and nearly striking me, but only soiling my skirt loose all around my torso and those sinister men. Well trained and peaceable in nature, the horses—neighing as though terrified—avoided us, necks thrown down, then back, straining to move away with small, erratic steps likely to break and bloody us. But with fortuity or God’s guidance, no contact came.

  The horses and their kinetic smell so filled my senses as to define the world. As complex and real as God’s greater world, that tiny, entire universe now holding me included active objects, those refashioned and alive. The coachman on his timber cab directed the horses with stretched straps, the steel-shod wheels rolling past me to deliver only fear, for I remained unharmed as did the men who were up and gone and more secure than they deserved.

  The nervous horses settled as the coach wheels rolled inches farther, then stopped. So near me was the vehicle as I lay on my backside that the driver could not exit downward. After looking toward me, the man moved to the cab’s far side, knowing not how to aid the fallen girl while retaining control of those horses too near her. Then I arose, surprised at not being ravaged by the men, crushed by the horses, nor rolled upon by the coach. Since the vehicle was static, I retrieved my clock where it had fallen to the dirt. Continuing to the cab’s rear and around, I pulled together the ripped ends of my apparel, brushing the soil from my skirt and my timepiece. Covered and cleaned acceptably in my social modesty, I moved to the coach’s door, the driver nearly reclining on his seat to stretch and reach down for the handle; for if nothing else, he had to open the door for the lady. Breathless, lips parted and trembling, my entire body limp, I entered without a word, not needing to ask the sinner to take me home.

  Chapter 16

  The Fragrance Of Witches

  “Sir! You will cease this fleeing!”

  A young lady in the street’s center shouting at a coachman was most unseemly, especially since she held a clock. Because the driver had looked toward her, stared—reeking of disbelief—then ordered his horses away, what could the girl do but rush out and stop him? Was she not so selfish as to hold this sinner partially responsible for her previous day’s distress?

  “Miss Rathel, you cannot mean to proceed with your intent of yesterday,” he declared. “How is it you are even let out this morning?”

  “Sir, I suggest that you do not care to be privy to the workings of my household, or my life. The pitiful scene you failed to prevent yesterday is a pittance in the greater sum of my suffering, and you are no banker. You are a coachman whom I beg to perform according to his occupation.”

  “But I am most unbelieving that you would choose my hire again.”

  “Your selection, sir, is due to the understanding we have formed between us, since I would have never suffered distress had you not forced me to walk. Yet again today I find you abandoning me to my feet.”

  Unmoving in the street, the driver and I received epithets due to blocking London’s way. Since my initial act had been maddening to the coachman, who looked painfully to his loud, passing fellows, my following blameful words only increased his stress.

  “Yesterday, miss, it was I to be aware of your harmful situation, and I to thereupon
come seeking you.”

  “For which I thank you gratefully, sir, and applaud you equally for not describing the situation to Lady Amanda.”

  “I retained my silence for my own purposes, miss, in that I feared to be seen as not preventing enough of your woes.”

  “Thereby you agree with the notion of culpability I first presented. And since we have arrived circuitously where I began, let us fulfill this compatible concept and continue to the pawnshop as we should have upon my first request. Our travel might encourage us to forget yesterday’s discomfort.”

  With no further word, I entered the coach, receiving no aid with the hinging, the only assistance from the driver acquiescence. And we drove.

  The journey was brief. So simple was the travel that yesterday’s expedition seemed impossible, a painful experience attacking as a dream. Perhaps maddened by the nightmare, I found the coachman at fault again, now for my memory, for no warmth had I for the sinner as I exited the coach. If only due to my temporal burden, the driver stepped down to open my door and offer his hand, which I left him, nearly forcing myself to say, “I will thank you to wait,” in my coldness and needless imputing certainly more of the English lady than ever before. Such were the lessons of London.

  Within the shop, I waited for prior business to be resolved. This interval allowed me to study finance as I listened to a nervous customer attempting to sell a ludicrous firearm with a terrible metal smell and a flared end as though a funnel for decanting flour. I thus received a lesson in hocking from this man seeking a fair sum for his “blunderbuss.”

  The sinner would have ten guineas for this weapon used by King James himself to fend off burglars when yet a prince. The proprietor offered him tuppence for a weapon whose only usage was as a rusty truncheon. This valued addition to any lord’s arsenal the man would virtually provide gratis for only five quid. The pawnbroker offered four pounds for the heap he would melt down for fishing weights.

  “Three quid,” the customer either pleaded or moaned.

  “Done,” the proprietor agreed; and this was finance?

  He was asking my business. With the previous bargain completed, my time had come, the proprietor’s speaking snatching me from an innocent numbness again into the fiscal world.

  “I would sell this, sir, if in your generosity you’d be willing.”

  His opening and closing one hand meant to approach. I thus stepped forward and set the clock on his counter. After the pawnbroker examined the mechanism, I received his perusal, for both items were significant in such business.

  “I would ask you, miss, if you are the owner here, for you seem too young to be possessing such an article.”

  Though unsurprising, his implication affronted me, and I was not a lady receptive to insults.

  “Am I the only person in London so disrespectfully queried?” I returned from true offense. “The former customer you in no way embarrassed by implying him a thief.”

  “No discourtesy meant, miss, but that man lives in a home he owns. As a merchant licensed by city justices, I am liable for the receiving of unowned goods. What you have here is from a mantel, likely belonging to the house’s owner—your parents, perhaps, if you’ll forgive my need to ask.”

  “I forgive you for being unaware that my parents are dead.”

  “You, then, are the heir of this particular heirloom?”

  “Sir, you might now forgive me, for that last term used remains unfamiliar.”

  “Then likely you know not enough to be selling this article, miss.”

  “I tell you, sir, that whereas I have never received a firearm, even ladies in their youth have requirements of time, and families so generous as to provide them with fine, unneeded items on their birthdays.”

  “I thought young ladies were required to know of time, yet to you this clock is not needed.”

  Having stumbled over my mouth again, I had to quickly reestablish my thinking. Soon I found a most sensible reply for the acute proprietor.

  “I’ll take three quid.”

  “Now you’ve a deal,” the sinner replied, and reached into his money drawer for coins, which he placed on the countertop before me, and the clock was his. With scant satisfaction, I reached for my funds—but they were stolen by the woman behind.

  “You will keep your miserable price, thieving merchant,” the Rathel snarled past my shoulder, “and I will take my timepiece.” And she flung the coins at the man’s face, then seized the clock from him. “And I defy you, dishonest sir, to make the first query as to my ownership of this item or this girl.” Then she snatched the latter as though another heirloom, pulling me toward the door. There she halted, calling out loudly past me.

  “Never deal with my daughter again, or Magistrate Naylor I’ll have look into your questionable business.”

  The remaining customers in the shop with their guilty or well-owned merchandise looked at us three and wondered. But Rathel, in having no embarrassment at being involved in public theater, seemed even less the lady than I.

  Once on the walk with her objects, Rathel confronted my driver, a person of public business now punished as though family.

  “You, sir, shall find yourself this day with no employ,” she vowed, proving herself a lady equal to me, blaming the coachman for his cooperation as though it were cause.

  The mistress had another coach for our conveyance. As we entered the cab, Rathel released my arm and calmed. A moment of travel passed before her next speaking, her odor and sound lacking anger.

  “I will ask of your seeking money. If you’ve some desire, you have only to request it. You would likely be surprised at the wealth I would expend to satisfy you, Alba. Not lately have I been so pleased as upon seeing you and Eric become friends.”

  “Being an average person with some attempted kindness, I can be friend to those people not plotting to harm me. As for your wealth, a small portion would be required to send me home to Man’s Isle.”

  “For this reason, then, you sell the timepiece?”

  “In utter truth, I have no exact purpose for the price I would have gained. I only know that ready cash is required in London for acquiring things other folk would disallow, but I have no notion as to the price of my liberty.”

  “Your freedom is being purchased now,” the Rathel informed me. “Continue as you are with Eric and you shall be free to live a long life in any remote area you choose. Since I will pay for your transit then, Alba, you need not collect funds in advance when you know not how to spend them. To discourage you further, allow me to explain your criminality. Even if my legal daughter, you have no right in English law to steal my property and sell it. The punishment is a flogging and fine and perhaps incarceration.”

  “How mild you are, Amanda, not to threaten revelation of my true witch’s self and thereby subject your daughter to burning. How kindly you become to offer me only prison and a legal beating.”

  “I do not threaten you with prison, Alba, for your confinement there would aid no person. My vow is that your accomplice will long live in jail if ever you attempt such thievery again. And I assure you, Alba, that Elsie will suffer terribly in Montclaire Prison.”

  • • •

  “So, I’m understanding you’ll be not be traipsing about so often, lass. Even so, there’s no need for your pouting like a baby who’s lost her toy.”

  Thus Elsie greeted me the following morn upon finding me awake in bed yet in nightclothes, as though I lacked sufficient purpose to rise.

  “I would beg your pardon, Miss Elsie, but your greater meaning fails to penetrate.”

  “Ah, and you’re coming from such a simple land as to be without playthings? When children are losing their toys, they’re oft—”

  “The uncomprehended part of your speech, miss, was that initial phrase about ‘traipsing.’”

  “And what I’m meaning, Miss Runabout, is that the mistress catching you out last noon was not her first learning of it. You’re being away too long and too often for her n
ot to be knowing. We’ve servants here, lass, telling all of what they’re seeing of you instead of part, like me. Ah, but I’m telling less because I wished to see less, for I would have you in no straits outside nor in. I was hoping instead you’d cease before being caught, but I’m seeing my wait was too late and too poorly.”

  “Fear no pouting on my part, miss, especially the type leading to retribution wherein one blames whoever is near. In this house, I have but one friend, and she remains you. Therefore, I ask my friend how she knows of my being discovered beyond doors?”

  “What I’m knowing, lass, is what the mistress is telling me. And gracious she was not to be demanding what I knew on me own of your absconding, for it’s plentiful and I’d as soon be keeping it mine. So she’s only saying of finding you out, and though I’m to be keeping a weather eye on you, not likely am I seeing anything untoward again. Aye, and the mistress is telling of her bargain with you, lass, telling that you’ll be remaining home because of it, and this I am pleased and blessed to hear.”

  Rathel of course had not threatened Elsie with prison. I would thus inform her. True, my silence afforded emotional protection to sensitive Elsie, but her considering Rathel the saint and me the wanton creature was improper. What part of God’s realm is so sublime that ignorance would benefit its thinking members?

  “Forgive me, Elsie, but I must describe my latest journey’s most significant legal aspects. Without shame, I appropriated the lady’s clock and made to sell it for hard currency.”

  “Oh, no, child,” the pained servant replied as though dying, “and who could have made you the thief?”