by Ed Bemand
"I don't know what you mean."
"It's a simple question. I thought I'd made it clear that I need you to do what you're told. Is that a problem for you?"
"No... I want to do what I'm told."
"Good boy. If you're a virgin, you must be used to playing with yourself. Why don't you do it now?" Embarrassed, he closed his hand over his cock and started to move it back and forth. She smiled and raised the hem a little further, giving a glimpse of the apex of her thighs and the soft curls nestling there. "Now tell me, what would you do for me?"
"Anything you wanted."
"Good boy. Don't stop touching yourself." She raised the hem higher, and rested it on her stomach, letting him look at the neat patch of hair and the lips of her pussy. "Now, any boy in your position would know to say anything. Should I believe you mean it or should I accept that you are just eager to please?"
"I mean it."
"Then what would you do for me... would you steal if I told you to? Don't stop what you're doing."
"I... yes, I would."
"Good. What else... would you hurt someone for me?"
"Yes."
"Hmmm... would you kill someone for me?" Her fingers lightly brushed through her hair, then traced down the join of her lips. He had no choice and she knew it.
"Yes."
"Really, you promise?" She parted her lips, letting him see the wetness gathered in her folds.
"I do."
"Stop touching yourself. Look at me. This is your last chance to change your mind. Would you do it for me?" It was very hard for him to stop. He was so close now, all he needed was a few more moments and he would cum. He needed to say whatever it would take to get what he wanted.
"I would."
"Good boy. I've got a little job for you. If you go and do it quickly, you can come back and get your reward." She punctuated her words by stroking herself, her finger-tip dipping inside.
"What do you want me to do?"
"I need you to go and kill someone. Then come back here and we can make a man of you. Do you understand?"
He nodded uncertainly.
"Get dressed. He's in room 413. Go quickly and come back." He started to pull on his clothes, dazed and confused by what was happening. Christine didn't give him a chance to ask questions. She guided him towards the door. "Remember, room 413. Kill the man there." She pushed him through the door and shut it behind him.
Robert was left standing in the corridor outside the room. His cock was still hard and pressing against his clothes. He wanted her. He needed to do whatever she wanted.
He found the room easily enough. The door was locked. What should he do? There was a heavy fire extinguisher on the wall close by. He lifted it off its bracket and hefted it. He knocked on the door three times. It was opened by a man in his late sixties. He had very sparse grey hair and was wearing a dressing gown. Robert knew what he had to do. Before the man could react, he hefted the fire extinguisher and drove it into the man's face. He collapsed back into the room, blood starting to stream from his mouth and nose. Robert entered the room and shut the door behind him. The man was trying to crawl away from him but was too stunned to defend himself. Robert brought the fire extinguisher down on his head again and again. His face caved in on itself and blood and broken chunks of flesh and bone scattered over the carpet. He was dead. Robert dropped the fire extinguisher onto the carpet next to the body and left the room. The man hadn't cried out, the only sound had been a few wet thumps of impacts.
Robert went back to Christine's room, realising as he walked that there were splashes of blood on his hands and clothes. He hadn't noticed them before. Her door was locked. He knocked on it gently, then harder, crying out her name. He was still sat there, knocking desperately when the Police found him an hour later. He never saw Christine again. He was taken into custody and charged with murder. His confusion and inability to properly explain what had led him to commit the crime led to his defence appealing for mental incompetence because of temporary insanity. This plea was rejected and he was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. His vulnerable demeanour was rapidly perceived and taken advantage of by some of the other inmates. After countless cruel violations, he was driven to form a crude noose from his sheets and was found dead one morning.
While in his fashion Robert did think that he truly loved Christine for that short space of time, for Christine, Robert was just a means to an end; a way of solving a particular problem in an easy way for herself. With the matter resolved, she spared it no more thought and returned eagerly to the embrace of her lover. Always a confident and devious man, it was him that had suggested finding some easily influenced young man to do the deed and enable them to continue their affair free of the shadow of her husband and amply supplied with his finances. When, in time her lover’s ardour faded and he sought the companionship of someone younger and prettier, he in turn relieved her of a substantial portion of her fortune, but isn’t that just part of the natural cycle of life?
Five: How Antoine found his muse
It may seem that the preceding story was hardly a fair representation of the virtues of love, which can be a virtue pure and transcendent, something that defies mortality and can last for an eternity, becoming something truly sacred and wonderful, driving those that it inhabits to greatness.
To consider this, it is perhaps best to return to the subject of Antoine, whose passions were seen manifested in the after-life of young Sally. She was not the first of his experiments in art through preserving mortal remains, though it was never the focus that he had intended his art to have. As a young man he had great passion for art. He wanted the celebration of the beauty in life to be his life's work. He took great pleasure in the beauty and sexuality of the feminine, painting and sculpting all that was best in life.
His muse was called Adrienne, she was a wonderfully attractive girl, scarcely twenty when he met her. Her brown hair was thick and smooth and trickled in lustrous waves down over her shoulders and back. Her eyes were a rich mahogany and her complexion creamy and smooth. He spent hours admiring her form, recording the details of it in countless sketches, devoting months to each of her firm, pert breasts with their little nipples that seemed to point at him insolently as he worked. She was slender with a figure that was almost boyish, but she still had breasts and hips. He could see in her body the potential to become more womanly with age and it was that air of transition that fascinated him. She was a girl still on the cusp, in time she would be the fertile god-mother, for now she was the maiden. She seemed to remain pure no matter how many times he fucked her. He loved her taste and smell, the feel of her moistened pussy against his lips or circling his cock. He loved the ecstatic movements of her as she was driven to climax. He loved the way that she would capture the eyes of every man in the room with the slightest motions of her head, flicking her hair away from her eyes, or the little movements to adjust the line of her skirt, he loved having his attention caught by the teasing hint of cleavage revealed by her clothes. The darkened valley between her breasts seemed an abyss fit to fall into for all eternity. He would lie motionless with her for hours when they had made love, his cock softening slowly inside her as his juices dripped deeper into her. Her hands would hold him close, brushing over him tenderly, loving stroking his body, glancing over the scratches on his flesh left by her more fevered touch in the passion that they had just shared.
She had no obvious occupation, but she had that ability shared with some beautiful girls to not need one. Her being was enough to justify her existence and ensure that she always had what she needed. When he met her, Antoine was still young and unknown in his field, taking the early steps towards establishing his reputation for greatness. He couldn't even afford to pay her for the time she spent posing in his studio. She didn't seem to mind this flaw in their otherwise so successful relationship. Inevitably, this meant she was forced to spend time with other more financially equipped men to be able to support herself, and there were many wil
ling and available. Antoine knew this but found himself able to accept that it was the consequence of his own failing. It was his poverty that forced her to do it more than her lust. He hoped that in time his work would be recognised and suitably rewarded and he would be able to look after her enough to be able to keep her for himself.
When in time fate expressed its opinions on the result of their lust Antoine was forced to improvise to have his heart's desire. Adrienne was never given the chance to flourish into the full womanhood that Antoine had imagined for her. She died. Her life was cut short by cruel whimsy. One of her lovers had taken her for a late night drive in the country, seeking to find a secluded place to fuck her. They had both been drinking heavily and she was pleasuring him as he drove. His surge of emotions got the better of him and the car ended up in a river. They both drowned. The event was deemed death by misadventure, and the judiciary's interest in the situation waned.
Antoine was grief-stricken when he heard what had happened. He felt like his art had failed her. If only he had been better, more successful, then she would not have been forced to be with other men and then she would never have gone for that fateful moonlit drive and ended up the pallid corpse that haunted his imagination. He sat on the floor, his face dripping tears onto the drawings of her that he had surrounded himself with. Everywhere he looked he could see her. All he could do was try and replace the haunting images of her death with his recorded moments of her beautiful form as it had been. He had to try and keep her alive, memorialise her as she had been, that best and most beautiful of women. He could not let her rot.
To steal her body and try to preserve it for art and love's sake seemed only natural. Since interest in her had been lost with the rapid conclusion of the inquest, she was just another of the unburied dead. In due course she would have been cremated, but Antoine interrupted the process. He brought her home with him and laid her cold body on the bed where she had spent so much time acting as his inspiration. She had been spared the cruel treatment of an autopsy, there had seemed little point in inflicting further damage to her poor body. Antoine had no experience of working in the medium of flesh then. He had to learn fast. He bought books, tools and the chemicals he thought would aid him in his trial. He could not afford to make mistakes. Already she was decaying.
Should he be blamed for succumbing to his desire to be with her again? The flesh he had loved so dearly was still arrayed on his bed, he had worked to position her as she had been in life, the beautiful temptress that had driven his work to new heights. At first, his caresses were simply those of the forlorn, wishing to redress the hurts that she had sustained in the ending of her young life. Her cold flesh remained pliant and yielding to his touch. Part of him wished that he could enter her and die inside her, that their bodies would be joined together in blissful eternal union.
He moved her body to the bath and began his work, using the tools and skills he had learned in such haste. He wished he could practise them on someone that did not matter to him as much as Adrienne. He could afford no mistakes in this work.
He washed her carefully and diligently and followed as best he could the guidelines set out in the book on embalming that he had acquired. He massaged her body tenderly, returning flexibility to her frame, then gently caressed her face, trying to regain the set of her features that had been lost. His touch lent a trace of warmth to her. He could almost fool himself that she was sleeping but her lividity and the growing smell of decay would not allow it. He worked for many hours, taking no breaks for respite. Every moment he delayed was another moment in which decay would consume his love. His tools were primitive and his skills limited, but he drained her of dead fluids and replaced them with preservatives. He kept her clean and strove to not damage her with his tender ministrations.
When he had done all that he could to her, he washed her again and tenderly dried her with a towel. He used such cosmetics and perfume as she had left with him to try to replicate closely her appearance as it had been. He arranged her on the bed once more, working to position her hands in the posture she had adopted so often to tempt him, reaching back behind her head with the wrists loosely crossing. Her legs were open, but he could not make them stay raised and bent at the knee as had been her habit. The limpness of her limbs caused them to flop down no matter what he tried.
He fetched his tools and tried to record her as she was now, a beauty in defiance of death's traces upon her. He filled the pages of his sketchpad with her, documenting every angle, every part of her. He still loved her, even as she was now. He needed to do everything that he could to demonstrate this to her, desperately hoping that the intensity of his desire and emotion would continue to delay the corruption of her once-so beautiful flesh. If only he could love her deeply enough and convince her of that, then maybe her heart would be stirred by it to beat once again and return life to her body.
Days passed. He could not leave his home for fear that she would decay in his absence. He barely ate. He did not wash. His smell was almost as rank as her's was becoming. The fluids he had drained from her had blocked the pipes from his bath and were mouldering there. His neighbours, ever aware of the eccentricities of his behaviour, started to complain. When his landlord tried to visit, he spoke to him through a crack in the door but refused him admittance.
The Police were summoned. When Antoine refused to open the door they broke it open. They found him, naked but for the lingering filth and blood that encrusted his skin. He was clasped in the arms of his dead love, hiding from the world in her embrace. His pictures of her were everywhere, piled thick upon the floor, recording moments of her beauty in life and death.
Antoine was taken into custody and Adrienne was taken away. He cried constantly, knowing that without his love to sustain her she would be truly dead, consumed by inevitable decay. She was cremated. He was detained until the trial. Without the money or inclination to hire his own defence, the state was left to speak on his behalf, telling of the love that had driven him to madness and desperation. Yes, he had committed travesties, but in love's name and the court should show him lenience and compassion. Such compassion as was shown was not sufficient to spare him retribution for his actions, but of the derangement of his mind little suspicion could be made. He spent several years in an institution, where he continued to mourn the loss of his Adrienne, but in time it was concluded that he was no threat to society.
An agent with an eye for his potential was allowed through the judicious use of funds to take possession of the works that had been found in Antoine's home and had been taken as evidence that was used in his trial. These paintings and sketches that documented his love were the start of his first exhibition that was held in his absence. The poignancy of his art and the tragedy of his love were such that those who looked through the journey shown in his work could not help but be touched by it.
When in time he was released from the institution, he found that he had been able to offer Adrienne a little of the beautiful immortality that he had hoped for her and that she in turn had been able to offer him the success and recognition of his work that he had craved. He was alone now, but he had the money that he would not be forced to allow his love to rely on others for their survival. If it caused concern that his art continued now to be fixated so much on the mortality of our condition and its inevitable decay, it was also accepted that for one with so tragic a past it was surely natural that he thought so much of it. In time, he was able to discover those who had made developing more advanced methods for preserving mortal remains their own art, and through collaboration with them he was able to create those works for which he would eventually become most famous for, of which young Sally was generally regarded as being his finest work. His new works were said to display a new, profound level of sadness and maturity. They possessed an emotive edge that stirred the souls of those that experienced it. He had acquired that which he needed to be truly great, something that the critics concluded had been missing from his earlier more naive work
s.
Sadly though, he was never able to feel again the love that he had felt for Adrienne in life. His passion for the living was forever lost to him with her, taken with her to be consumed in the fires along with her body. For him now there was only the dead.
Of course Antoine’s tale is tragic, but in the end, was he the worse for what happened to him? He lost much, but he was able to find a new way to become the great artist that he had always wanted to be. If he had been offered the chance to choose between a life with tragedy and his art or domesticity and his love, which would he have chosen? Anyway, without his art, he would probably never have even met Adrienne and she would still have died, but without having anyone to be affected enough by her demise to make such a poignant record of it. Love has its price that it enacts upon us all. None may hope to live or love without the risk of pain and loss.
Six: What John and Beatrice found they really wanted
Perhaps we have lingered too much upon the combining of death and love. Is it time to find a tale that tells us of the power that love can manifest in life, one that is free of the taint of reminded mortality?
Then let us think of John and Beatrice. A couple, happily married, who have been so for several years now. They only desire for each other, even if they have desires that can be somewhat... unorthodox in their enaction. You see, John was not gay and Beatrice was not a lesbian, and this fact should be emphasised, for if most outsiders were given the chance to look upon the relationship that they had and treasured so much, they might have been inclined to question it.
In much of his life and disposition, John was what many would consider to be a typical man. He liked sports. He occasionally drank too much. He was happy swapping lewd anecdotes with his friends. When he was with Beatrice, he was most comfortable embracing the more feminine aspects of his personality, to the point of being able to happily exclude the masculine.