Carnal Machines

by D. L. King

  “Mr. Tulliver, I do believe you are becoming an expert on the mysteries of the female undergarment,” Mrs. Petherton teased him gently from the sofa, as he pulled out the crossed laces of the Housemaid’s corset and wriggled the boned garment down to her porcelain hips.

  In the glass over the mantle, Eliza’s perfectly formed lips seemed to smile at him. Her ceramic breasts were pert and unyielding under her chemise.

  “I assure you, madam,” he answered jocularly, feeling the heat rise behind his tight collar, “that after the complexities of such apparel, the mere workings of a thousand interlocking clockwork cogs is as nothing.”

  In point of fact Mrs. Petherton’s requirements of Eliza were exacting and particular, and the new maid had to be implanted with the precise techniques for several new chores. The beating of carpets, for example, seemed to be a task not to be undertaken with brute force but with measured blows and a particular upward flick of the wrist that Mrs. Petherton insisted was superior for driving out dust; not having personal experience of domestic chores, Mr. Tulliver could only assume that this was derived from the store of feminine wisdom. The polishing of champagne flutes (two fingers inside and a twisting motion of the wrist) caused him some small trouble with the minute adjustments to Eliza’s mechanism, but Mrs. Petherton pronounced herself very pleased with the results. Then there was the occasion he was summoned to improve the housemaid’s technique with the dolly-tub. Mr. Tulliver considered that anything that took the backbreaking work of pounding laundry out of human hands must be an improvement, but apparently that too had its particular techniques that he had not foreseen. To optimize efficiency, according to Mrs. Petherton, Eliza must employ a back and forth motion of the hips whilst working the dolly-stick.

  It was, though he would not let on, all valuable information to Mr. Tulliver. He had assumed that housework would be quite simple, and upon discovering otherwise he was grateful to be able to refine his automatons’ routines.

  So he was neither terribly surprised nor particularly put out when, one afternoon, a telegram was delivered asking him to come to the Petherton residence at his earliest convenience, as Eliza needed yet more adjustment. Mr. Tulliver donned his hat and caught a hansom without delay; he was pulling the bell chain within a quarter of an hour. A middle-aged housemaid—a human one, for Eliza was not capable of complex social interactions—opened the door and admitted him.

  “Good afternoon, Charlotte. Is Mrs. Petherton at home?”

  “Ma’am said you were to go right through to the drawing room, sir,” she told him, indicating the passageway. He was a little surprised that she didn’t precede him to announce his arrival, and after a few steps he half turned and glanced back. The maid was staring after him with the most peculiar expression on her face, lips tightly pursed and eyebrows arched. Mr. Tulliver hurried away, feeling a little flustered. He was aware that the servant class resented his work, which they saw—quite rightly—as having the potential to drive down their wages and put them out of employment. He could only interpret that face as expressing a marked disapproval.

  Just what it was that she disapproved of, however, was something that was to take him by surprise. When he tapped upon the drawing room door and let himself in, he was confronted by a sight that seemed to have stepped from the most fevered of imaginations. For a moment he wondered if he were dreaming.

  “Oh, Mr. Tulliver!” gasped Mrs. Petherton. “Thank Heaven you are here!”

  The Angel of the House was arranged upon hands and knees upon the chaise lounge in a state of some dishabille, for her dress seemed to have been discarded on the hearthrug and she was clad only in her drawers, chemise and corset—and indeed seemed to be spilling voluptuously out of all three. The rosy globes of her behind were peeking through the split in her drawers. Directly behind her stood Eliza, also stripped down to her undergarments, although in the case of the automaton the porcelain flesh revealed was neither flushed nor damp with sweat nor wobbling wildly. Secured about Eliza’s hips was an arrangement of black leather straps, and from them protruded the jutting shape of a huge ebony phallus with which she was plundering the hole of her mistress, moving with a steady, forceful—and yes, Tireless—rocking motion of her jointed hips.

  “Madam!” said Mr. Tulliver faintly, as all the blood deserted his head.

  Eliza smiled serenely, as her hips thrust back and forth and her hands jerked an invisible dolly-stick.

  “Oh, Mr. Tulliver, you must aid me,” Mrs. Petherton groaned. “She has been at work for some time, as you can see, but her technique is sadly ineffective!”

  “Ineffective?” Mr. Tulliver tugged at his collar with something like desperation: it seemed to be constricting his throat. That would account for the blankness of his normally swift mind.

  Mrs. Petherton stamped her knuckles into the fabric of the chaise longue, pushing back onto the phallus and wriggling her hips. Her face was most fetchingly pink, he noted, and her hair was escaping from its careful chignon. “I cannot reach the climactic state I desire!” she wailed.

  Mr. Tulliver cleared his throat. “I see,” he managed to say. “Well, perhaps…”

  “Please, Mr. Tulliver! You cannot imagine my frustration. Act swiftly, I implore you!”

  “Ahem. Yes.” He shut the door and approached across the Persian carpet, fumbling at his bag of tools, feeling his own heart hammering like a steam pump. From a little to the rear he had a very fine view indeed of the straps cinched about Eliza’s thighs and bottom, their dark leather contrasting beautifully with the snowy white linen of her undergarments; of the thick, contoured phallus, lacquered and shiny with Mrs. Petherton’s feminine juices, plunging in and out of her tight hole; of the soft brown intimate hair and the stretched, pink flesh, riven by the invader. He could smell the hot bouquet of her excitement and it seemed to him more invigorating than the sweetest engine oil.

  “I see.” His voice was gravelly, but—he hoped—confident. Beneath his own clothes his prick was stiff and throbbing with an ardent urgency, bidding to rival the artificial limb so hard at work before him, but his professional instinct mastered the carnal one. “Pray tell, madam: is the…ahem…piston of sufficient girth?”

  “It fits very well, Mr. Tulliver.”

  “And is the, um, penetration deep enough?”

  “It is, Mr. Tulliver.”

  He nodded. “There seems to be effective lubrication of the intersecting parts. Then perhaps her motions are somehow insufficiently diverse. Let me see what I can do.” As quickly as he could he loosened Eliza’s stays and tugged open her garments to reveal her back panel. His hands were trembling as he struggled with the clothes, but as soon as he had a screwdriver between his fingers they grew steady. He flipped the panel open and surveyed the whirring mechanism within. “She is currently performing a linear thrusting motion. Perhaps if we try this…”

  A tiny but expert adjustment of the mechanism induced a shift in Eliza’s hips. Mrs. Petherton cried out, conveying that the sensations in her nether parts were now recognizably different.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes! Get her to do that again!”

  “Hmm. A simple to-and-fro motion does not seem adequate. Yet in combination with…” His fingers danced upon the brass work, making minute changes to the clockwork motion.

  “Oh, yes, oh, yes!” cried Mrs. Petherton, most gratifyingly.

  “Splendid. I think a figure-eight roll of the hips seems to work well.”

  Mrs. Petherton concurred, calling upon the Almighty to bear witness to the improvement in her lot. She seemed even more pleased when he got Eliza to grip her hip with one hand and slap her generously proportioned bottom with the other. Her flesh bounced and jiggled as inanimate matter pounded her with unfailing vigor. Mr. Tulliver slipped his screwdrivers back into their pouch and stood back, surveying the scene critically. He was an artisan, never able to resist tinkering: now that his expertise had been brought into play he wanted to explore all the parameters. Hi
s fingers, trained in the finest engineering workshops of England, were well used to greasing nipples and tightening nuts. Now, with an absorbed frown, he reached underneath Mrs. Petherton to flick the little button of feminine flesh that so effectively acts as ignition to a woman’s inner fires.

  Mrs. Petherton panted and groaned, her eyes closed, her face red, her teeth bared.

  Mr. Tulliver was pleased with his experiment and repeated it just to be sure, while Eliza pumped and ground into her mistress from behind. But his professional curiosity extended further. Moving down her body he scooped out her glorious breasts from her corset, letting their prodigious weight fall into his hands. The silk of her chemise was plastered to her skin with the sweat of her exertions. Her nipples were big and rosy and it turned out—when he pinched and tugged them—exquisitely sensitive.

  “Oh, yes!” gasped Mrs. Petherton. She was quite magnificent in her beauty and her ardor, he thought—and almost as tireless as Eliza. But he sensed she would not be able to hold out for much longer. His own agitation was rising to a peak too; one that demanded decisive action.

  “Madam,” he said, unbuttoning his trousers and manhandling his stiff prick out into view. “If you would be so kind…” So saying, he made bold to insert it between her open lips. Mrs. Petherton’s raised eyebrows signaled her surprise but any protests at his forwardness were muffled and inaudible. Indeed, within moments she was sucking upon it obligingly, her hot wet mouth slurping upon him as he ground her teats between his knuckles, her gasps escaping now around his thick shaft. So primed was the engine of her desire by the previous labors of the Tireless Housemaid that, in very short order, she yielded to both nature and artifice and spent ecstatically, her shuddering paroxysms testifying to her transport as her throat engulfed him to the root.

  Without warning she pulled away from Mr. Tulliver’s prick. Its rubicund head popped from between her lips, slicked with her saliva. “Eliza, rest!” she gasped, and the mannequin froze.

  “Mrs. Petherton,” he stammered, gripping his shaft, trying desperately to master himself as a gentleman should. “Madam, I am overcome—ah! My most sincere apologies.” But it was too late: he was beyond recall, unable to stop himself. With a stroke of his wrist he let fly his tribute upon her enormous quivering breasts, his climax racked from him in electric spasms.

  “Oh, my goodness, Mr. Tulliver!”

  Mr. Tulliver watched, mesmerized, as his spend oozed down the snowy slopes of her bosom. He had never, he thought faintly, seen anything more wondrous.

  “Mr. Tulliver!”

  He shook himself. “Madam?”

  Mrs. Petherton disengaged herself from Eliza and knelt upright on the seat. “I regret to tell you that I am not entirely satisfied with the Tulliver Tireless Housemaid.”

  “Oh…I, uh…”

  “She has made a thorough mess down here.” She thrust her fingers into the silky fleece of her intimate parts and spread them, revealing coral-colored lips that glistened with her juices. “And as yet you have not provided her with the apparatus to clean it up. Until she has a tongue in her head…”

  “Madam,” he said, sinking to his knees before her, “I am entirely at your disposal.”

  SLEIGHT OF HAND

  Renee Michaels

  A prickle skittered over Cassie’s skin, setting her a little on edge. It wasn’t fear; it was anticipation. She loved the “seat of your pants” feeling rife with the possibility of getting caught.

  The glint of the wide gold band through her tatted mitten caught her attention, and her loneliness surfaced. She really missed having a lover. Even platonic relationships proved to be restrictive in her line of work. She was an excellent thief but a dreadful liar. People tended to ask questions about her inexplicable absences, and besides, she despised having to explain herself.

  Reaching up, Cassie checked to make sure the veil masking her face was in place, as were the shroud and the voluminous yards of bombazine and padding disguising her body. Who’d pay any attention to a widow when so many others bustled along the platform like a flock of black pouter pigeons?

  Hand firmly gripping the valise that carried her tools, Cassie casually took her position by the private railway car in which the item she’d been commissioned to acquire was secured. She ran an experienced eye over the crowd, gauging the demeanor of the porters who kept an eye out for petty thieves who might be tempted to dip their sticky fingers into the pockets and reticules of the distracted passengers.

  All the players were in place waiting for their cue.

  Right on time, five minutes before departure, the whistle of the 10:35 train leaving Victoria Station for Bath issued a raucous blare, sending its passengers into a flurry of motion. The signal would set her plan in motion.

  Kit, her accomplice, stepped out from behind a column a few feet from his target. With his sunny blond hair dulled by coal dust, face smeared with smut and his clothes with the requisite holes burnt into the cloth, he looked like a chimney sweep, as was their intention.

  He darted through the crowd, grinning cheekily at the women who pulled back their full skirts to save them from the trail of black soot he left in his wake.

  Nimbly, Kit clambered up the side of the steam engine and tossed several metal balls of varying thicknesses down the smoke stack. Some contained precisely measured amounts of gunpowder for loudness, others magnesium for bright flashes of light to erroneously magnify the danger of the explosions.

  A short bleat from a whistle told her Kit had caught the porters’ attention. He scampered down and, wily as a fox, evaded his pursuers and disappeared into the crowd, luring the authorities away.

  Cassie began her countdown. The balls would melt at carefully calculated intervals and set off a series of explosions, giving her what she needed.

  Chaos.

  At the first blast, the crowd froze, then galvanized into action. They streamed from the trains like ants, screaming, clutching their children or the hands of a spouse. People dragged apart in the melee added to the hysteria. Shouts and screams, the pounding of shoe leather on brick added to the cacophony. A door behind her flew open and a well-dressed couple joined the panicked throng stampeding to the exits.

  Cassandra waited exactly five heartbeats before she scampered up the short flight of stairs. The hourglass in her head began to mark time. She had twenty minutes between the first blast and the last, adding ten for the smoke to clear. That gave her exactly half an hour at the most to complete her task.

  Having memorized the layout of the club car, she walked swiftly through the opulent sitting area to the rear compartment used as a study.

  Always cautious, she pressed her ear to the door and listened: no sounds of movement from within the room. Wonderful. Turning the lever on the door, she grinned with satisfaction when it opened easily; three minutes saved because she wouldn’t have to pick the lock. She almost did a jig in her glee.

  Her objective dominated the snug room. Made of mahogany, the desk gleamed richly in the dim light. Not wasting any time, she dropped to her knees to study the locks on the safe box built into the side of the desk. Her exuberance died a swift death.

  “Well, bollocks,” Cassandra gritted out the vulgar bit of cant.

  Stymied by a Fitzgibbon triple-slip lock, again. The dratted man’s inventions were really getting to be an annoyance. However, if she were honest with herself, his work wasn’t the root of her irritation with him. How was an enterprising fingersmith like herself supposed to make a living if he persisted in creating unpickable locks?

  Two of the bolts secured the safe; if you picked one lock, a third latch slid into place. At all times a duo of steel bolts stood between the thief and his booty.

  She’d encountered this lock with increasing frequency. That being the case, it was a good thing she was a resourceful woman. Everything had a weakness, and she exploited it.

  Reaching into her valise, she took out an embossed nickel case and unlatched it to reveal several small glass amp
oules nestled in indentations carved into the velvet padded wooden rack to prevent them from jostling. The transparent balls glistened iridescently in the dim room. They looked innocuous.

  She hated using them; the glass was as thin as a soap bubble. One small miscalculation and their contents would eat through your flesh like leprosy. However, the fee for this enterprise would keep her family fed and housed for the rest of the year. Cassie used her thumbnail to ease out three of the lethal pellets.

  Don’t break, don’t break, she prayed silently.

  Careful not to touch the metal plate on the lock, she slipped them through the circular lower part of the keyhole. Cassie released the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding and scrambled back when she heard the soft tinkle of the globules shattering. The acrid fumes wafted over to sting her eyes and nostrils as the sulfuric acid ate away at the inner workings of the lock. Blinking back her tears, she started to mark time again. A minute and a half was all the corrosive fluid needed.

  Soft clapping from the far corner of the room sent her confidence plummeting into her stomach. She was caught like a mouse in a trap.

  “I wondered if I’d find the clever bastard who found a way to dismantle my work.” The deep bass of the familiar voice made her predicament even more dire. “I never imagined it’d be a shady lady.”