(NSFW) Profane Comics: "Puckadoodle" (Page 6)

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Puck wanders into the Queen's chambers. But the Sprites are after him.
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Profane Comics: quickie- "rut"

comic quickies: Puck snagged the Queen's whip... Click to ENLARGE.

More coming soon! Exams/Projects taking up much time but we are in for some fun soon.

short story- (2/2) Hallow's Eve

In the days of swing sets and monkey bars, Amelia hadn’t minded when Sarah snooped into her diaries. Those were the days when Amelia had been proud of Sarah, her prodigy kid-sister, the one who read at four levels above her classmates. It was before the pride gave way to lurking envy, and Amelia resented both her older and younger siblings for having the academic brains she did not. Perhaps, if Sarah had not insisted on correcting silly things Amelia uttered, if Derrick had been more gaurdian-like than brotherly, then perhaps Amelia would not have joined this parody of a “family.” A “family,” another name for a harem of cast-off girls and one very manipulative man.

Sarah could hardly absorb a word of her sister’s diary, as her mind raced. She would need to escape somehow. She turned to the window and then back at the latest entry of Amelia’s writings.

October 13- want to move back home. Hate to think about it. No privacy in this place and I miss school. Never thought I would feel that way. But we go for days without food. Yesterday Lili and I had to dig in the garbage for something to eat. Whenever I crash like this, it feels like the fall is longer and harder each time, and instead of growing up I burn out. What the hell is wrong with me?

October 14-he means well. It’s the tough period. Things will get better.

“Stupid,” Sarah mumbled to herself again.

What had she expected to read in the diary?

She imagined Willy, in the center of a dimly lit orgy on the bed before her. She envisioned her sister there, the center of Willy’s attention, and she could not help but bite her lip against the anger that arose.

If she was quiet, perhaps she could tiptoe out of the house, still in the guise of Yoda, and slip unseen into the night with Amelia’s diary in hand. Derrick had been right. Calling the cops would have been wiser, but what was Sarah supposed to have done in the meantime? Knit by Amelia’s bedside, waiting until the doctor’s declared she was legally a vegetable. Only the doctors would never declare such a thing, since Amelia, being only 20, wouldn’t have a living will.

A living will.

The knock on the door was light and even polite. But it startled Sarah nonetheless.

“Anyone in there?” A man’s soft voice called.

Sarah retreated behind the Yoda mask, as though it would shield her in any way.

“Come on, sweetheart. We just want to see who you are,” he called in a smooth northern accent. “We didn’t know we had a special guest.”

Her hand shaking, Sarah slipped her mask off and called out. Her first words to him were a lie, as she slipped the diary back beneath the bed mattress.

“I’m sorry,” she called out, this time feminizing her voice with ease. “I got lost.”

“It’s alright. Open the door and we’ll see what we can do,” Willy assured. The voice was like autumn wind, neither cold nor warm, simply a pleasant medium.

“You promise you won’t hurt me?” she spoke, simply the fill the silence, as she dug into her baggy jean pocket for the brass knuckles.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you, sweetheart. What’s your name?”

“Mimi,” she lied again. “I’m scared.”

A female whispered something on the other side of the door, and Willy spoke again, “Listen, Mimi. It’s okay. Why don’t you just open the door and we’ll see what we can do, okay?”

Here was a moment where decision is nearly void. There was no way of running, and no other option available, so she slipped behind her mask again and unwound the door lock.

Willy stood there, three unkempt women at his side. Lili’s pale countenance was not among them. Two unfamiliar brunettes and one vaguely familiar blonde.

Willy was nearing Sarah before she realized it. Effortlessly, he backed her into a corner with no aggression, and pulled the mask from her face.

“Mimi, is it?” he smiled soothingly. His hand smoothed hair from her face. “How old are you, darling?”

“Thirteen,” Sarah wove one more lie, knowing she could pass as younger. “Please, my cell phone is dead. Can I call home?”

“Sure, in a minute,” his thumb barely touched her lips. The smell of sweat was all about him, and a gentle expression in his gleaming eyes. “How’d you end up here?”

“My friends and I were camping.”

“Yeah?” He turned, almost sassy, to the women in the doorway, “Dawny, I know why you thought she sounded like Amelia.”

Dawny, the busty beauty giggled.

“This is Amelia’s little sister. Sarah Hardgood, right?” he smiled back at her. “You’re a pretty one, aren’t you? Even prettier than Amelia.”

Mind-bendingly, Sarah’s eyes somehow were distracted from Willy’s, now focused on the blonde girl’s face.

“Kayla?” Sarah let her missing classmate’s name slip. So this is where 14-year-old Kayla Bender had disappeared to?

“You girls know each other?” Willy inquired, still gentle.

“She was in a grade above me,” Kayla answered.

“Hey, girls. Can I talk to Sarah alone for a minute?”

“Maybe she knows where Amelia ran away to!” Dawny smiled.

With brutal urgency, Willy shot this hopeful quip dead. “Go downstairs, Dawn.”

Sarah felt her own body trembling in protest, as the three witnesses left the scene. Willy smoothed Sarah’s bangs again. “Why are you here, Sarah? I mean, really.”

“I was curious to talk to you guys. I thought maybe…you’d…know who did this to her.”

“Right, okay. “ He nodded.

The blow that sent Sarah to the floor nearly blinded the left side of her face. For a moment, the world was nothing but lights. However, quickly the images reappeared to reveal a snarling visage of frustration and lust. Willy shook Sarah with violence. He was talking nonsense, blabbering as he shook her with his superior strength. With her right hand she struck out blindly, but the iron knuckles were useless in blank air. Then, before Willy could recognize the object Sarah jabbed him in the left eye so that, for a moment, she was loosed of his grip.

Fleeing downstairs, she collected her robes all around her, nearly tripping.

“Grab her! Don’t LET HER LEAVE!” Willy commanded.

It was Dawny who grabbed Sarah, with surprising strength for such a willowy girl. Soon the others joined in restraining Sarah. She kicked, for her hands were restrained.

“The little bitch split my eye open!” Willy growled, in the distance, getting too close.

“Let me go you, fuckheads!” Sarah yelled. “He’s a psycho! God!”

“Slut!” Willy’s fingers dug into the flesh of Sarah’s face. “Tie her up! There’s cable in the utility room! Tie her up!”

In retaliation, Willy poked Sarah in the eye, and in turn she snapped at his finger with her teeth, and succeeded in drawing blood.

“Shit! Bitch! That’s my fuckin’ FINGER!”

“Got the cable!” Lili’s voice sang. “Sit right here, sweetheart.” She patted a kitchen chair playfully. “It won’t hurt if you don’t struggle.”

“Fuck you! You do it, then! You twisted bitch!” Sarah was quickly silenced with another slap.

“Take this fucking thing from her!” Willy ripped the iron knuckles from Sarah’s small hands. As he stared down at it, and back at Sarah, she closed her eyes on instinct. But the heavy blow of metal never came.

“Just tie her up, Lili. Girls, come upstairs with me. I need to tell you why this bitch needs to go.”

“But isn’t she Amelia’s sister?” One of them asked.

“Yeah, she’s the reason Amelia left us.”

Sarah marveled, even as she was roughly bound to the kitchen chair. She marveled at these women and their apparent stupidity. She knew that a mind was an easy thing to lose, especially with the aid of drugs, but to this extent she had never suspected ever to witness.

Suddenly Willy stood before her, as she sat all too vulnerable before him. He knelt down and pried her legs open, and instinctually she kicked.

“I have a gun! I’ll shoot you in the spine, bitch! If you hit or kick or bite me one more time, I will snap your neck.” He turned to Lili, “You may want to gag her.”

He pulled from his pocket an elegant but fat knife, which he twirled before her eyes. His right eye leered at her, angry beside its swollen right sibling.

“Tie her legs like this!” Willy commanded, a glazed look in his eye.

Then it dawned on Sarah sharply, like a shattering chandelier on the crown of her head. “NO! Please!” she eyed the knife. “God, No!”

“Like I said,” Willy repeated, “Gag her. When I come back downstairs, we’ll finish this. It’ll be the big one, Lili. This one will be important.”

Sarah felt her breathing become shallow, and her heart race faster than its running limits would have allowed. The knife slipped gracefully back in his pocket and she begged again, “Please, Willy. Don’t. I’m begging you! I’ll do anything!” This was degradation, she thought. Being forced to say such things.

“He already explained things to me,” Lili chattered as Willy led the girls upstairs. “So I get the honor of playing bondage.”

“This isn’t bondage you batshit bitch! Please, let me go!” Sarah began to scream, in the pitch she knew to be her loudest. It was a pitch that demanded things in the past, and worked as a tactic. But today, a gag prevented that.

“Damn. I bet you’re a good singer, girl.”

Lili had already de-shrouded Sarah, leaving her exposed in her undershirt and jeans. She stood behind the chair, her forceful and feminine hands suddenly massaging Sarah’s shoulders. She ran her hands down Sarah’s side and slipped them into her pockets. The feel of nails against her thighs was oddly soothing and horribly unnerving. Lili was going for the phone. She pulled the box-shaped thing from the left pocket.

“Hello,,” Lili joked.

Sarah would have spit on her if she were not gagged with a dirty sock. The sock’s taste did not hint at hygienic use.

“Be right back, doll,” Lili leaned down, the resemblance to Amelia uncanny. She gently whispered in Sarah’s ear, “I’m gonna tell you a secret later, after all of this.”

Before leaving, Lili placed a chaste kiss on Sarah’s forehead and left the room, disappearing into the darkness of the hall.

For the longest period of her life, Sarah toiled to find a weakness in the bindings. Lili had not tied the chair exceedingly tight. If I could just close my legs! Just my legs. God.

She wished she had heeded Derryl’s cruel but true words. She wished she was goofing off with her boyfriend Julian, throwing tennis shoes over power lines and scaring cats with fireworks. She wished even that she was seated beside Amelia’s hospital bed, waiting in vain for her sister to open her blackened eyes.

As Willy and the girls reentered Sarah’s vision, it was apparent that they had recharged on whatever drug it was they were using. Willy managed a smile. Sarah closed her eyes and thought of strange things. That some ocean creatures could spill their insides. That birds find their way back to their flock. That Mary Magdalene was probably not a whore.

The minute Willy’s hand touched her thigh, Sarah could not remain aloof. She began squirming, cursing beneath her gag. Her rage grew with her fear, even as Willy unzipped her jeans.

“Willy, I don’t want you to go to jail,” Lili’s voice came from the den.

“Nobody will chase us for it, Lili. Don’t worry.”

“Actually, they will.”

The silence expanded from Lili to the whole house. Her green eyes were bloodshot, her eye shadow running. “The police are on their way. So, if you’re going to rape her you’d better be ready to fight in court.”

Willy placed his knife on the ground. He stood and stepped over to Lili. Fear was there in her face, but it was not the predominate expression. What was there, Sarah could not place.

Willy hit her with a ton of brute force and she went down. But she made no noise as she scrambled to her knees and peered up at him. “Can’t change it now. They’re on their way. They’ve been on their way for the past 15 minutes.”

The brute violence that Willy inflicted on Lili then was mind-numbing. Sarah cried out from behind her gag. Even one of the on looking girls yelled for him to stop kicking Lili in the stomach.

Lili rolled unto her back in defeat. She nearly laughed, but not quite. “I’m the one your friend saw at the police station the other day, not Amelia. You killed the wrong girl. Amelia still loved you.”

Willy brought his foot down on Lili’s face, spilling crimson down the porcelain white flesh.

“Are we in trouble, Willy?” Dawn asked.

Willy gave no answer, he simply drew out Sarah’s iron knuckles and brought them down on Lili’s face. Sarah could not see the details, but she could hear the damages, the repeated rhythmic blows to Lili’s face. However endless it seemed, it must have stopped, because now Willy’s hands were on her own face.

“Dawn, slit her throat!” he handed the knife over. “You need to stay here and finish the job! We’ll get you out of jail.”

“No! No! Willy, please!” Dawn took the handle obediently, but she was trembling. “Please don’t leave me! Do we really have to kill them!”

“You do, Dawn. Be a good girl and do it.” Willy seized the other two girl’s by their wrists and with that they were gone.

His sway over Dawn was eerie. She stood as though chained to the spot, knife in hand, staring at Sarah. She was weeping as she stepped forward, with a fatigued expression in her eye.

She’s done this kind of thing for him before, Sarah surmised.

She began to let her own tears fall, hoping to elicit pity from the female accomplice. The bleary-eyed girl wavered again.

“No!” she dropped the knife, “Willy! I don’t wanna go to jail!”

Of course, Willy had left, abandoning her here. She cried, fleeing the scene.

What had broken his sway over her, Sarah would not have time to contemplate. Now she sat bound to the kitchen chair, staring on the house’s other last inhabitant. Lili lay sprawled on the floor, her face turned mercilessly away from Sarah. They were the worst moments of her 15-year-old life.

Sarah trembled, but at least it was in the safety of a police car. The left door sat open, where the female officer stood to offer Sarah reassurance. She kept repeating that Sarah was going to be alright.

“Will Lili be alright?” she kept asking.

The only answer she ever received from the tired-looking cop was “She’s alive, honey.”

She had told them that everything in the house, from the bed sheets to Sarah’s sock gag would be drenched with Willy’s DNA. Furthermore, he most certainly had minors with him, whom he had sex with regularly.

“Sarah!” a harsh tone cried out through the mummer of the police force.

Derrick came staggering through the trees, frenzied and angry as always. Only this time he had his arms outstretched. Sarah ran to him, and buried her face in his shirt, to hide her deep sobs.

She could not speak for many hours after the police interview. As Derrick shook her leg, early November 2, she rolled over in bed. She didn’t ask why he was waking her at the crack of dawn, on a school day. She merely went to the restroom and stared for a long while at a candle she’d bought in early October. That had been so long ago.

She didn’t ask why Derrick took a turn into New Orleans, to navigate the cracking streets. She cared, but she hadn’t the energy to inquire. She merely watched the street trees go by until she felt nauseous.

Derrick parked near the hospital, took Sarah’s hand and led her to the garage elevators. She felt eleven years old again, walking with a teacher in a zoo. Only the zoo was a place where people went to die in relative comfort.

As they crossed a hallway, Nurse Bebone smiled their way. She complimented Sarah, “You look pretty today.”

She led Derrick and Sarah into the hospital room. “How are the peas, miss Hardgood.”

“Pretty good actually,” the patient answered in a monotone.

It took a moment for Sarah’s eyes to adjust to the image, of her sister’s battered face seeing her once again. One eye was swollen shut, perhaps permanently, but there was the large, healthy green one still moving, registering, living.

Neither spoke. Sarah embraced her sister so tightly that Amelia gasped. Amelia embraced her back, with a healthy amount of strength. The embrace was another of the longest moments in Sarah’s life.

“I thought you were dead,” Sarah sobbed.

“So did we,” the nurse chimed in.

Sarah clung tightly to her sister, refusing to let her go.
©2009-2011 Luz Briar.

short story- (1/2) Hallow's Eve

“Yeah, well, if you get any wild ideas in your head, you better not go running off like an idiot to solve things all alone,” Derrick had commanded, slurring loudly even over Amelia’s vegetating body. “You call the cops, pronto!”

“Derrick, keep your voice down!” Sarah had commanded him.

“She can’t hear us!” Derrick had nearly laughed, but not quite.

The half-laugh lingered in Sarah’s ears, along with the image of Amelia’s shattered face, propped uselessly with breathing devices and equipment. Those labored, rattling breaths stayed with her as well.

At nightfall, the two-story residence in the woods surprised her. She wasn’t normally skittish, but in this view, where branches opened sublimely for her to see Willy’s house, Sarah shuttered. Toilet paper littered the roof, swaying in the autumn breeze like ghost decorations. It was only timing, Sarah reminded herself. American culture had made October 31 the token “scary” night. There was nothing to fear but fear itself. And being discovered.

Sarah took in the setting, stifling the natural urges that compelled her to leave this place. Amelia’s little skull-and-cross bone diary was in there. Tonight was the safest time to permeate Willy’s “club” without detection.

She parked her aunt’s ancient beetle car on the outskirts of the forest, near a pick-up truck and a ratty smaller vehicle. When her cell phone vibrated against her thigh, she shuddered, “Shit! Derrick!”

Sure enough, her older brother’s name read across the brightening screen. In the lack of urban lights, the cell phone’s glow suddenly irked her. But she answered, her own tiny voice doing nothing to calm her. “What?”

“You better be at your little boyfriend’s house and not playing Nancy Drew or some shit!”

“Will you get off my ass! I’m just trick or treating.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Okay, I’m smoking pot!” She offered a more realistic, 15-year-old lie. “You happy?”

“I don’t care if you’re snorting crack off a dead bum’s ass, but you better not visit Amelia’s friends. They’re a bunch of stoners. And that Will guy is”

“I don’t even know where they are,” she lied, Amelia’s stolen phonebook on the passenger seat. “Besides, you don’t care if I’m doing lines of coke but you do care if I’m hanging out with coke heads?”

“Don’t be a stupid bitch, Sarah. Look what it did to Amelia.”

“Fuck yourself, Derrick!” she fought her urge to throw the phone and simply hung up.

She was refueled to disobey him. By the car’s dim light, she found her robe and Star Wars Yoda mask. She pulled out of her schoolbag one pair of iron knuckles. “Stupid,” she mumbled to herself. Equipped with a flashlight and guised in her costume, she cautiously took to the forest.

The night noises again warned that Sarah turn around, pick up her cell phone, and voice her suspicions to the police. But what would the authorities do? Rattle Willy and his cronies up enough to make them realize every possession Amelia had left in the camp house needed to be disposed of. No, only two days later they wouldn’t have realized this yet. Now was the best time.

Though reaching the house in the itchy, hot costume was taking longer than Sarah had expected. Following the sound of stereo music on high aided her through the white noise to the source of human-made harmony.

A couple now lay on the porch swing. Two teenagers around Amelia’s age, separated only by their clothing. To Sarah’s relief, she saw that the boy was in a poor guise of some Star Trek character. Star Wars and Star Trek, they were all the same to Sarah.

“Is that Gaven!” the girl declared, her glassy eyes suddenly on Sarah. “Hey, Gaven!”

“Yoda’s so overdone!” the trekkie rolled his eyes.

Sarah kept her silence, but even through the mask caught the scent of smoke. Both pot and tobacco, salting the air. Last year, it had been an open-house party, but what if things had changed?

On the doorbell, a smashed mosquito had spilled its juices across the yellow neon light. It was then, as Sarah pushed the button, that she realized she may have overcompensated for the holiday. She had cut her nails for the occasion, but the house was free of any Halloween decorations, saved for the toilet paper that ran from the roof.

The girl who answered Sarah’s ring peered down at her from eyes as green as her own, or as Derrick’s, or even as Amelia’s. For a moment, Sarah felt a surreal relief, which sank all too quickly. This girl could be Amelia’s twin.

“Yoda, huh?” the raven-haired beauty gave a wide, white smile. “Come on in.”

This must be the Lili of Amelia’s stories. The girl with the nose rings and the unbecoming dark style, but the face of a porcelain doll.

“Hey, everyone! Yoda’s here!” Lili exclaimed, and Sarah’s heart sank.

She began immediately to count the reasons why Derrick’s advise had been wise.

But eyes did not scrutinize her. On the contrary, most eyes in the room were busily rolled back into the heads of their owners. If there had been pot on the premises, or even cocaine, Sarah could see no more of it. The party guests, mostly female, were caught in the sway of each other, and every now and then of the things they placed on one another’s tongues.

Sarah crossed the room nearly on tiptoe. Her attention was drawn to the chaos on the nearby coach. A man, fully dressed save for the necessary area, was atop a woman, fully nude where she lay, nonchalant as he noted Sarah’s presence. Willy did not cease thrusting even as he nodded to acknowledge the new guest, and Sarah was startled by the energy of his vacant eyes.

Sarah gasped for breath, immerging from the mask safely behind the bathroom’s locked door. She quietly rummaged through the medicine cabinet. It wouldn’t be the type of place for Amelia to hide a diary. But the two lived-in bedrooms of the first floor had turned up no diary. Granted, the search was a sticky, migraine-inducing task behind the Yoda mask. The speed of Sarah’s heartbeat was not helping either. The sound of rampant footfalls outside the bathroom door signaled a drunken chase, high giggles and noise included. The toilet had rings within it.

My god. It’s not just a party house anymore, Sarah realized, noting a grungy hairbrush by the sink. I think these kids live here.

She sat on the toilet lid for a moment, mentally tracing her next steps through the house.

She was leaving, and that was for sure. This had been a suicidal idea, snooping into the lair of a group she had always known would plummet into madness. She at last checked the blank screen of her cell phone. She pressed down on the power button until the screen relit. The phone had hardly any battery power left, so she pressed down again on the power button. Better to save the last of the energy for later.

Willy’s eyes had replaced the image of Amelia’s ravaged face in Sarah’s memory. His mud brown eyes, she recalled were in more than one of her memories. As she examined her own watering green eyes in the mirror, she recalled this day a year ago, when she had in fact met Willy in this house. She had stood alongside her sister Amelia at a costume party, before Amelia had begun to disappear sporadically for months. Willy had towered guru-like over Amelia, just as he did with the others tonight. Only then, the living room had looked hotel-worthy, and this bathroom like one in a styled brochure. Even then, the energy in his eyes had been too much for Sarah to accept as pure. Something else charged it, just as something vacant charged the energy of this sloppy party. Outside the yellowing bathroom, the living room had taken on the appearance of a classic frat house. And Willy’s eyes had been all the more charged.

Leaving the smarmy heat of the bathroom, whose vent was left running for no apparent reason, Sarah met again with the ventilated air of the hallway. Only then, as the hallway stretched out before her, did she fathom how long a drive it was back to the city. Only as one of the many high girls ran past her giggling did she begin to recollect how she had seen only two other cars on the outskirts of the forest.

Slash his tires, she thought to herself. If push comes to shove…

Willy was standing in the doorway, dominating the space like an actor on stage. The girls around him were attentive, wide-eyed, some still swaying. He was conversing, with grand sweeping gestures, to the only other male in sight. Bidding him farewell, casually.

Sarah turned, her narrowed vision running up the white walls and down to the red, stained carpet. A glimpse of ugly, kitchen-looking tile appeared at the other end of the hall. Sarah gambled to find the back door.

But the couple from outside had relocated, directly in Sarah’s path to that door. She could not bring herself to step over the naked teenagers, because she could not stand to get close to the noisy act. The boy’s rhythmic breaths troubled her. For the first time that night, the stairway appealed to her, with its peeling, stained red carpet.

She took her ascent patiently; step-by-step as though the modern stairs would creak beneath her tiny weight. When a form’s warm mass pushed against her from behind, her shriek was so high that it was inaudible. Long, feminine nails ran down her robbed frame and cupped her buttocks.

“You’re not Gaven,” Lili whispered, winking. “You’re a girl.”

The maddeningly bright smile and crinkled nose left Sarah speechless. She collected the trailing part of Yoda’s robe and hurried upstairs. Lili did not follow, at least not immediately. Sarah darted into a darkened bedroom and eased the door shut. After locking it, she switched on the lights.

This time her gasp was quite audible.

A girl lay in the king-sized bed, her straight black hair fanning out across white sheets. She opened her dark, disoriented eyes and smiled, giggling. The young girl sat up straight, “Where’s Willy, Yoda?”

“Downstairs,” Sarah heard herself answer.

She would be caught. There was no doubt in her mind. The question now was how would she fight.

This disoriented teen sat straight up in her long white t-shirt. Perhaps she was the girl Willy was with earlier. She seemed highly sexed, the nipples beneath her t-shirt jutting out.

“Can you tell him to come up here, girl?” the stranger stretched out, her large breasts nearly tumbling from the shirt. When she stood, Sarah saw that this girl was fully naked save for the t-shirt.

“I think he’s busy,” Sarah deepened her voice as best she could. It probably sounded closer to Yoda than a person.

“I guess I’ll go get him. You wanna come, Amelia?”

Sarah surprised herself when she did not faint at the sound of the name. “No thanks.”

With that the stranger fluttered from the room, leaving Sarah to its security alone. She locked the door, and choked back deep sobs. What had she been expecting to retrieve here tonight? Amelia’s life force? If Willy had raped and beaten her into a coma, what difference would it make who caught him for it?

She dragged herself to the sweat-stained bed where she reached her wit’s end. Her weeping made the bed creak, a sound that triggered more than memories of this dizzy night. Among the strangest memory was hearing Derrick’s voice chide Amelia in a yell, “Geez! Will you keep it down with that in there! The rest of us like to sleep sometimes!”

“Oh, shut up!” Amelia had yelled back, making Sarah smile where she lay in her own room. She knew that Amelia was only moving her mattress to retrieve her hidden diary beneath it.

Before Sarah could collect her thoughts, her own hands were fishing beneath the heavy king-sized mattress of this bed. When her fingers scanted the binding of a cheap notebook, with skull-and-cross bone cover, her heart skipped several beats again.

©2009-2011 Luz Briar. Stealing is morally repugnant.

Draining the Humor (6)- forbidden

6-forbidden

Orion was able to forgive Brigid for her unruliness at the opera. He also forgave Charles, who had not apologized formally, but whom he knew was like a leech for emotions. He had merely discovered a pet peeve of Bri’s and sought to exploit it for the emotional satisfaction of it. It was nothing personal.

But for Bri’s birthday, Charles, Lucy and their friend Amadeus were invited to tea. Orion felt his energy drain when he saw the couple in the parlor, chatting with his wife.

He stepped forward and kissed Lucy’s hand before he shook Charles’. The man’s grip was firm. He was recalling after the opera how Charles had insinuated Orion should visit him some time. His way was still seductive, even in his forties these days. He recalled years ago, at the tender age of eighteen, when he had fallen prey to the seduction. He knew better now.

Behind the couple, Amadeus was looking on like a guard. Orion smiled to him, despite his intimidating air and the German smiled back. He and the man had not spoken much during the opera, but at intermission they had a short exchange about Charles. He recalled Amadeus being straight-forward, but consoling in an odd way.

He means nothing by it, Amadeus assured Orion. He is an emotional leech. I know him well.

Amadeus was the godfather of Lucy and Charles’ daughter after all. The daughter…who had gone missing.

He shook the man’s hand, pushing the depression down. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Frunberg.”

“Pleasure, my lord.”

He noticed Amadeus’ package, tucked under a powerful arm.

“What have you got there? Is it for me…or my wife?”

The man’s blue eyes followed Orion’s gaze and he responded, “We have a gift for Brigid.”

“May I open it now!” she exclaimed.

The party moved to the drawing room where a pleasant conversation was led by Lucy. She took the reins socially, as usual. It was not quite evening yet, but it was Brigid’s celebration, so the wine was brought out early. The Arteberrys did not seem to mind, and that was likely light drinking for Charles. The sailor downed his glass in one gulp.

Orion noted a quiet change in Charles. Though he had always been sulky in moments of silence, there was now a true hint of melancholy.

When they moved on to board games and idle chitchat, Orion became more curious about Amadeus. He was a man of few words. He was a commoner, but his dignity spoke for itself. There seemed a laconic understanding between the two men. He even nodded to Orion when the conversation ran dry.

Brigid finally retrieved her gift from its package and pulled out a large porcelain doll. It was breathtaking.

“Oh…” she stared. “Where did you…?”

“It was a group effort,” Lucy cooed.

Before Bri could ask how, Charles jumped in, “Lucy caught it, I killed it and Amadeus stuffed it.”

“It looks hand-made,” Orion whispered, smiling at Charles’ joke.

“Amadeus makes dolls,” Charles spoke in earnest. “That’s his profession. Lucy sewed the clothes and I bought the materials. It was group effort.”

Bri embraced Lucy and thanked the two men.

“How long have you made dolls?” Orion asked Amadeus, almost whispering again.

“Say, since I was fifteen perhaps.”

***

By sundown, it seemed the three were going to disperse soon. Bri was still giddy with the idea of a real birthday party, Orion could tell. She had admitted to him last year that she was without a real her whole life. She scraped her way from the dirt in Indian to a dislocated British nurse, and raising herself a waif from orphanage to orphanage, Bri had never fit into upper society.

But the Arteberrys were delightfully offbeat and she was clearly fond of them. Even Charles.

Bri insisted they stay the night, rather than ride back to their estate in darkness. It worried Orion, as he met with Charles’ eyes shyly and he looked away. There was much he remembered about their mistake many years ago, that he did not wish to drag back into the light. There was much he admired about Charles; his bluntness, his bravery, his intelligence. But to dwell on them would mean he would succumb again. His heart was far too vulnerable.

As he walked the halls to his bedroom late that night, he and Charles’ paths crossed. It was inevitable, their shadows tangled. They eyed one another and Orion went to circle Charles but the older man caught his arm. When he was pressed against the wall by the sailor, he allowed it, savoring the force.

“Orion,” Charles whispered, “Does your wife need you in bed? Are you trying to procreate every week night? Because it is a Saturday, I’ll have you note.”

“We are doing what we can…she cannot begrudge me a night off I suppose…” Orion returned his playful tone.

“I think I know what you need, my lord.”

“What is that, Charles?” he asked, having forgotten how nice his aggression was.

Charles leaned in and whispered lewd things in Orion’s ear. He gulped and wrapped his arms around the man’s waist. He scooted against the wall, feeling for the nearest door. Bri was right, he needed some kind of satisfaction. The tension was weighing on his physical form.

As Orion nearly fell back into the unlit guest room, with Charles still on him, he tried to catch his breath. Charles pushed him onto the nearest coach and began to seize control.

“How long has it been?”

“Years, Charles…” Orion spoke in between a kiss. “…since you and I…”

“Fucked. Say the word, love.”

But he could not bring himself to say the word. His mind kept racing to other things, as pleasant as the touching was, as enthralled with the idea he felt…he could not stop thinking about it.

The urgency seized them and they began to shed their clothing, bound toward the forbidden.

But Orion’s mind ran back to Lawrence and his promises. It ran back to his very first lover, the doctor who he refused to even speak with today. The broken vows, the false sense of security. The actual, physical pain when Orion was struck down. At fifteen years old, he had not been much of a match for a full grown man. Today, he could easily overcome someone. But he was still a child in those days…

“Orion,” Charles shook him beneath him. “Hello? Are you lost?”

He realized that Charles had been indulging but that he was far off, lost in the past. The memory of being slammed against the wall with strong hands around his throat.

Bloody, stupid spoiled sodomite!

He pushed Charles off, more roughly than he had intended. “I have to go…”

He closed his shirt and buttoned it, looking around frantically for any other clothing that had been tossed aside. The scant sunlight that peaked through the half-drawn curtain left things dark. Orion knelt on the floor, feeling.

“I see you have not changed much, my lord,” Charles quipped.

Orion seized his shoes and then looked at Charles’ in the half-light. “What are you implying?”

“You are as predictable as the weather in the year you were born,” Charles spat. His voice sounded metallic and distant. Charles was not rejected often, most likely. He was infamous for his sexual prowess.

He referred to 1816, the highlight of chaotic seasons. Very well. “Perhaps then you should find a lover who is more your temperament. For now I have to be alone…”

Running away again, Rion.

He groped for the bedroom door and flung it open. But before he left, he added, “By the way I was born in 1817, Charles.”

He rushed to his private chamber and threw his shoes aside. Where he sat, the very last of the daylight fell on him as he shielded his face in his hands. The warmth was retreating into the night. He tried with all his might to push the memories down. Shame, lies, his mother’s death, the madhouse.

The madhouse; he could not even reflect on that without screaming.

The bedroom door creaked open and small, shuffling footsteps introduced Brigid.

“Muffin…you hold too much in.”

“Brigid, I want to be alone right now.”

“What are you trying to prove, Orion? There’s nothing wrong with the way you are.”

“I did not say there was.”

“Then why not do what makes you feel good?” her voice was getting shrill, he could feel her prickling. He could also feel her assumptions and it pushed him.

“Brigid, you do not understand…”

He met her eyes so that she could see he was weeping. Perhaps then she would understand. When the woman saw his tears she frowned. It was hard to detect in the dark, but her eyes may be watering with his. Not even Brigid knew about the madhouse. Only the men who had thrown Orion there, in hopes that he would rot, knew he was a former Bedlamite.

“Talk to me, Orion…” she begged, her voice small.

“Later…” he promised.

He would tell her in time. But not tonight. Tonight he wanted all eyes off of him. He wanted to stay in the dark.

If there was a sound for resignation, he would have heard it when Bri hung her head and left her husband to dwell, battling the past.

© Luz Briar. All Rights Reserved.

story- The Earl Swan (2)

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part 2 of 6
-2-
THE 3^rd Earl of Constance had traveled a good distance to visit his fiancé Lady Parade. They had planning to do, for their wedding was in a month’s time. For propriety’s sake, of course, Orion was given his own room.
But Bri could not find him there. She had knocked but received no answer.
She thought then of all the book-related conversations they had had in private and in letters. Orion read constantly, and he was an expert on archeology, perhaps he would be in the study doing what he did best.
Sure enough, there was a light beneath the door.
She rapped on the door gently. She smiled when a soft baritone called out, “Come in.”
She stepped in and closed the door behind her. The fading sunlight illuminated the desk and the slender earl turned in his chair.
“Ms. Salud, why hello…” he gave his wide smile. “Do have a seat.”
“My lord, I’ve just come down from talking to Lady Parade.”
“Oh? How was it?”
He had a ruler, which he was using to sketch out some kind of floor plan. Bri had seen him make many things, musically and artistically. He was, in a word, ‘brilliant.’
“She…well, sir. Permission to be frank?”
He looked up through his glasses. He took them off and reclined in his chair. “What’s wrong, dear?”
She caught herself gazing again and shook herself. “Oh… nothing. She just…I feel like I would be a bad friend if I didn’t tell you. And yet…she is my mistress. I cannot betray her confidence…she…called you a ‘sodomite!’”
“Oh?” he looked off in the distance. “She used that word?”
“Yes, and for once, I think she used a word correctly. And she’s…I’m afraid she’s not being faithful, my lord…”
Orion’s green eyes dropped to the floor. He nodded, “I know, Ms. Bri. I’ve known for some time.”
“What? But, my lord! She is doing it as revenge for something that is not even true! She thinks you slight her for the same sex! That is not fair…”
“Well, you are right. It is not, I have been faithful,” he sighed. “But…she is not…entirely wrong. Do not tell anyone, please.”
He turned to the librarian then, and she stiffened when she realized he was crying.
“Orion, eh, my lord, please…” she stood from her seat and threw her arms around him. “Do not cry…I won’t tell anyone…but is it true?”
“I’m afraid so…I am…a deviant.”
“Don’t cry, Orion. Oh, don’t cry,” she stroked his hair.
The thought was strange, she must admit to herself. Thinking of the man with other men was surreal. But then again, he was so gentle and elegant…perhaps he needed someone masculine to compliment him. Bri had never been one to dismiss unconventional things just because they were uncommon.
“So…you do not love Lady Parade?”
“Oh, I love her…why else would I be faithful when I do not want her…?” he asked, pulling away.
She had always perceived Orion as a strong individual, even somewhat icy. To see him weep was making her afraid.
Desdemona was Bri’s least favorite person in that moment. She kissed Orion’s forehead before she realized what she was doing.
He looked up at her, wide-eyed. “What should I do?”
“Confront her. She is being unfaithful. That is grounds for a split.”
“I promised my mother I would wed Lady Parade. I hope to uphold that promise.”
“But she is causing you pain, my lord. Would your mother want that?”
“No…no, she wouldn’t.”
Bri was astonished by how quickly the man was following her lead. She realized she was stroking his hair and she stopped. He frowned when she did.
“I am sorry, Bri,” he said, reaching into his pocket for a small handkerchief. He cleaned his face and whispered, “I am a wreck thinking about it…there is much expected of me…that I do not know if I will be able to do.”
Bri knew exactly what he was referring to and she nodded. “Perhaps a physician would have advice.”
He looked up at her, his eyes like harvest moons. “What? No, no! telling a doctor would be scandalous.”
“You would not have to tell him why, muffin. All you would have to say is that you cannot perform.”
Orion absorbed this advice and looked at the ceiling, “Yes…yes, I suppose that would work. It is embarrassing but not scandalous…you are a clever woman, Brigid Salud.”
“Thank you, sir. I learned to be swift when I was an orphan.”
“It’s most admirable.”
“So is being so virtuous while being engaged to an alligator,” she stopped herself, her laugh bursting forth again. “Forget I said that!”
Orion stared and then laughed easily. “It will be quite difficult to forget…I only hope the physician would not ask too many questions…”
“Perhaps if you…close your eyes and imagine it were a man…”
Orion blushed and looked out the window. He scratched his neck and mumbled, “No, no, Bri. T-t-that would not work. I’m…I don’t, well, you know, I don’t do that…”
Bri cocked her head like a cat. Then her nervous laugh returned. She put her hands to her face as she blushed painfully. Had she really just mentioned something so private? And had he really just offered her such intimate detail? So, he was not the leader in bed…
Bri was not an ignorant woman. She had read many things that most men in England would blush over. She knew of the Kuma Sutra, for example, that book which everyone seemed to fear and cherish all at once. She knew the secrets of manly love.
“Well…I’ve read before…of a way…for…”
She bit her lip and inched forehead. Orion did not pull away and she whispered in his ear. When she pulled away, his face was red again.
“Good heavens! Ms. Salud! Where did you read that?” he laughed. “I know you were married, but…”
She smiled at how shy he became. Her last husband, the awful viscount who had gone all the way to Parliament to divorce her, had nothing to do with the knowledge she had gleaned from reading.
“I’m not afraid I understand entirely…” His eyebrow cocked and she felt nervous but had to press on. It seemed he was being playful. She could not stop herself from whispering more in his ear.
To her sudden delight, he had his hand on her back then and he whispered another question in her ear.
She giggled and answered in kind.
They seemed to exchange these intimate details for an entire night, which ended with Bri on his lap, kissing him. Her hands were in his hair and he held her in place. He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen and she was not going to let the moment pass by as if it were nothing. She was going to seize this opportunity.
Then, there in the office, she gave him a demonstration of what she had been talking about.
Earl Swan is © 2010-2011 Luz Briar. ALL rights Reserved.