R Geis - A donkey named Peter

"She was lying on her bed, the bedclothes kicked aside – it was warm, even hot, in the room because the doctor wanted her to sweat, to keep warm, so I always kept the oil furnace set high for her room during the day. She had rucked up her nightie, to her waist, and her nakedness was obscenely revealed, so stark in the cold white light from the window, and her legs were flung wide and her heels were dug into the mattress and she was hunched over and her right hand was working something in and out of herself. Not her finger – something terribly long and round and thick."

"I screamed, and she – her head turned like lightning to me and she had that wild-eyed look – that shameless glare in her eyes for an instant. Then she flung herself flat on her stomach on the bed and the thing she had been using was shown me clutched in her hand."

"It was a dried ear of corn. She must have gotten it from the silo – God knows when – and in her warped need, in her tormented mind, she had conceived the idea of using it for that filthy purpose."

"I flew across the room and seized it from her hand. For one awful moment I inspected it – she had trimmed it on the end and made it smooth. And she had taken one of her father's rubber things I insisted he use when he needed to do his dirty business with me – one of those skin things – and she had rolled it onto that ear of corn… and had used it on herself. It was slimy wet from her body."

"My heart was pounding like thunder in my ears. Barby lay there crying. I threw that thing from me to the floor."

"I hit her. I beat her. She howled and wept and I kept hitting her until my arms were tired."

"And then I was empty. I was drained of all rage and shock."

"I crept onto the bed and held her again and tried to understand her and to know why she had behaved – why she had done that to herself."

"She sobbed against me and said she was always ticklish with lust. She needed it… she needed relief… she had to do it… it drove her crazy if she didn't…"

"I didn't know how to answer her. It was Devil talk but I couldn't counter it. She had arguments that baffled me. I tried this and she countered me with that; I tried another way and she turned it back upon me… my own words, to make it seem right that she do things to herself."

"She kept after me, begging me: 'Let me have it back, mother. Please, please, please. I need it.' I should have thrown it away, into the garbage, out into the snow as far as I could throw it… or I should have burned it, that Devil's implement! The device of Satan!"

"But she kept arguing and pleading. She writhed and howled and kept using her hands every moment that I wasn't with her. She broke the cord when I tied her hands away from her body. She was supernaturally strong!"

"She seduced me with her telling how good it felt to use the thing. How satisfying it was to her, how it filled her aching body with joy and glory."

"I could not defeat her. In my deepest heart of hearts – I did not want to deny her. I see now, I know now – I wanted it, too. I wanted to use that terrible, big, imitation man thing on myself."

"How one terrible thing led to another. How easy it became. One perversion became right and so another degenerate practice became permissible, and another, and another, until… until…"

"I resisted her for three days. I prayed day and night for her and for myself. I asked for a sign, for a sign… to prove to me I was right."

"But the Devil prevailed. He created a sign in the sky that brought a cry of joy and triumph from Barby. She called me to look… and there was a cloud obscenely shaped in the form of a man's organ, sailing overhead, shaped so perfectly… so detailed… that it brought a blush to my face."

"I could not fight after that. I believed somehow what Barby wanted was what she needed to become well."

"I gave in. I took the thing from the drawer and I washed it and I placed it in her hands."

"I had seen the sign. They said in the hospital where they sent me after I went crazy after Barby died, they said the cloud was a hallucination – we imagined it. No. No. It was there, floating white and perfectly formed. We saw it."

"The doctor – the psychiatrist – said we were both extremely neurotic that winter and that her long illness and our being snowed in so long… I forgot all he said."

"That doctor wanted me to think that putting down the flesh and exalting the spirit is bad. He told me that splitting the body off from the mind was wrong. But they are separate! There must be mind over matter – spirit over flesh – or we are nothing but animals! That is what makes us God-like. That is what raises us above the beasts."

"He said the body and the mind were one I He said science and psychology show that we cannot deny our sexual nature. He said to keep down lust too far only resulted in its coming up stronger than ever, and coming up twisted. He said sex was a basic need. Like eating. But for thousands of years we have known that we must be pure! For thousands of years we have been uplifted by denying the fleshly desires."

"He said Barby went insane trying to be impossibly pure of mind and body. He said I had taught her to be too good and too clean."

"But it was only weakness. We were imperfect vessels for God's love. We let the Devil enter us."

"The doctors and scientists don't believe anymore. They're all so sure of themselves. They think they are all-powerful. But they still die. They all still die. Then they find out."

"I'll tell you, yes, everything you want. It can't hurt Barby. It can't hurt me."

"Did I tell you my husband cast me away? He put me aside. I get money from him now, but he does not want me. I do not want me, either."

"I don't know! How big it was? It was an ear of corn a big ear of corn… yes, thick and long. At least – yes, like that. We never measured it. That's disgusting. Only a man would want to know the inches…"

(At this point Louisa went into a kind of drunken trance. Her voice became intense and low and she seemed to forget I was present. She seemed to be speaking aloud to herself, and to be reliving in her mind what she described. She twisted and tensed in her chair. Her fingers intertwined in her lap and remained locked tight. Her eyes were vague and unfocused.)

"She took it – there in the living room in broad daylight – and was shameless. She took off all her clothes. She stood naked and she fondled herself. She wanted me to touch her. She wanted me to use it on her."

"But I couldn't. Later… later I did. But then I could only sit and watch my child abuse her body with that thing."

"She stood by the heater and rubbed it over her breasts and teats. It was covered by that thin rubber skin, but the hard, dry kernels of corn made it bumpy and like a cobblestone surface."

"Barby was flushed and crazy-eyed. She rubbed that thing between her legs and then bent over slightly and put the end of it in her."

"It was horrible to watch her face as she twisted and turned it and pulled it up into herself. I was shaking as I watched."

"She pushed and pulled and got almost all of it up into herself. It came out wet and slippery. She sat on the rug and did it faster and faster. She made those sounds of pleasure. She forgot I was there at all. She squished it in and out of herself, so far in that she held only a bit of the thick end. She used one hand and then the other, then both hands. On and on and on."

"She was like an animal, sweating and grunting, that thing making awful wet sounds, and with her face not the face of my pure little Barby… a different creature I didn't recognize."

"She reached her pleasure. She was breathing so fast and so hard – her legs were thrashing, and she rolled onto her back on the carpet and her voice came out of her throat – horrible moans – like a pig wallowing in a mud sty. And her arms were steel, jerking that awful, big thing into herself – making it go in go terribly deep, taking it into herself so fast, so violently fast. So brutally."