Book Excerpt: from TDP: Frankenstein
By Cecilia Tan. Filed in Fiction |
Excerpted from The Darker Passions: FRANKENSTEIN
by Nancy Kilpatrick, writing as Amarantha Knight, $14.95.
In 1993 Canadian writer Nancy Kilpatrick began taking classic tomes heavy with the repressed sexuality of the Victorian age and unrepressing them. The result was a series of seven erotic retellings of Victorian gothic novels, The Darker Passions series.
Time crawled by until finally a day and a night and another day had elapsed. At midnight, with the full moon high in the sky, I slipped out of the house and down the rose path to the gazebo. It was just midnight, but after what felt to be thirty minutes wait and no sign of Elizabeth, I began to worry that I had gotten the time wrong. Or worse, that she was not coming.
I was about to return to my bed and my moist dreams when I saw her form moving through the darkness like an alien being. As she approached, I saw she carried something in her hand, but did not know what. Even with the moonlight, it was too dim because of the trees.
The moment she stepped into the gazebo, I reached out my arms to embrace her, but she pulled away. “In due time,” she said, her voice sending a thrill through me. “Undress.”
“Completely?” I asked.
“Of course.”
Another feeling of excitement raced through my loins as I removed my clothing. I’d been so occupied by my task that I had not noticed until I finished that Elizabeth had removed her own clothes. Through the trees, bits of moon shown white and brilliant. It illuminated our forms as it penetrated the screened-in sides of the gazebo, creating slivers of shadow and light. Elizabeth handed me something and I took it.
“A branch?” My hand ran the length of a good thick tree branch, flexible, that narrowed. Now I was confused.
“A birch from the garden,” she said. “For teaching control in life, and bringing life to the dead.”
“Well, what…?” I was really thoroughly confused now.
“We shall take turns. You may start. Pick a number from one to ten and use the switch that many times on me. Then it’s my turn to whip you.”
Well, this game had possibilities. “Alright,” I said enthusiastically. “I choose the number three. Where shall I lay this.”
“Anywhere you like,” she said seductively.
A peculiar feeling I had not experience before seemed to be born in me that instant. The notion of being able to take the birch to her, to control her, filled me with a fantasy that was fresh. As a lad, I had escaped all forms of corporal punishment. Recently, though, I had accidently seen the bottom of my best friend, Henry Cherval, a fellow my own age, on the receiving end of a riding crop held by his family’s stable master. Despite my inner protestations, my excitement had inflated me wildly. And here I was being offered the delicious fair skin of Elizabeth, in just such an arrangement. Still, I did not lose all my wits.
“Have you been birched before?”
“Never,” she said.
I did not know if I believed her professed virginity in this area, yet it did not really matter. She had never felt my hand swinging a birch, which was the point.
“Alright. Lie over the table, then.”
“Did you want my bottom up or my front exposed?”
The idea had not occurred to me that there were other places to switch. Still, I had not yet gathered all the courage I would need and opted for a conservative approach. “Face down,” I ordered her, as though I did this every day.
She did as I requested. The moon illuminated two smooth round cheeks awaiting my attention. I longed to touch them, to run my hands over their soft warmth and to discover the treasures between them, yet I did not know if this was part of the game we were playing. Until I learned the rules, I did not want to break them and frighten my opponent away.
I took a position to her left. Without further ado, I raised the branch about chest high and brought it down smoothly onto her behind. The birch swayed and whistled as it cut the air, then snapped soundly against the waiting flesh.
I was astonished. Elizabeth did not even flinch. The moon showed me a streak across the middle of her bottom, though, which I found both encouraging and invigorating. I raised the switch again, this time shoulder high, and brought it down. Still no reaction on her part. Now there were two streaks, doubling my pleasure.
Suddenly I began to worry that she was in severe pain. Perhaps she had even fainted. After all, she was the fairer sex, gentler, less able to cope with pain. As a man, I was expected to endure. She might be enduring but I may have pushed her beyond her capacity.
“Elizabeth,” I stumbled, “are you alright? Have I wounded you too greatly?”
A silence ensued that unnerved me to the point where my erection began to dim. In the moonlight I noticed her body trembling as if she were sobbing silently. I was beside myself. I did not know what to do. Guilt plagued me. I felt on the verge of falling onto my knees and begging her forgiveness.
“Continue,” she said in a scathing tone. That’s when I realized that not only had I yet to near her capacity, I had failed to make a dent. Rather than crying, she was laughing at me.
In fury I raised the switch high above my head and brought it down hard across her ass. This time I got a reaction. Her bottom hopped into the air and a gasp escaped her lips. Then, “Much better.”
Even in the moonlight, it was clear my third stripe was more prominent than the first two by far. Once I had finished, Elizabeth was on her feet. The moon showed me an expression on her face far different than any I’d seen there before. I did not understand its meaning, but I knew I wanted to see more of it.
“My turn,” she said, holding out her hand for the switch.