Carrie Cuinn - Cthulhurotica

Soon enough I was bored with my brother’s diversions, and was again craving some more active form of entertainment. The immaculate, well-appointed home was a lovely prison, and a self-imposed one, but after my more accustomed freedom I found it confining nonetheless. I could not divert myself with physical pleasures, as was my inclination. I could not contrive a trip to market as an excuse to get out on my own for a bit, since the household staff took care of the shopping. I had run out of boring, book-filled rooms to explore, and even the thrill of stealing spirits from the bar in the library grew quickly old to me.

It had been kind of him to attempt to turn me into a lady of society, and within a matter of days I had learned enough of the protocol to put on an eager show of it when I was in his presence — it would have been ungrateful to do otherwise — but in truth I was not taking naturally to it. Needlepoint and music were tiresome to me, and the tutors he had called upon to educate me in the domestic arts were as dull and sour as old milk. I had been too long on my own, or perhaps I had simply seen too much of the lively underbelly of the world to be content sitting still. I entertained the notion that one of his companions might be lured away from the page and into livelier pursuits of the flesh.

But my brother made a point of not introducing me to his callers. At first, I thought perhaps he was taking me at my word — I had promised to be inconspicuous. Then I wondered if he might be ashamed of me, concerned that his association with me might mar his standing with his peers. That made me only more determined to meet them.

I should not have bothered. They were stuffy, distracted men, sallow of skin and nervous of disposition in that particular way that marks a scholar. They spoke to each other in low tones, in some archaic language whose syllables sounded as though they damaged the throat to produce. Where I had looked upon their introduction to the evening routine in hopes that it might signal at least a bit of excitement, to my disappointment, they were too lost in their own heads to even notice the charms my low neckline put on display. Whatever it was that they retreated to study, it lured them more convincingly than I could. And the servants were on their guard; when I lingered outside the door to listen, I was quickly shooed away.

I’d heard nothing of much import, anyway. “Soon,” and “sacrifice,” and “summoning” amidst more of that pretentious guttural grunting, the dry turning of pages, and heavy, anxious footfalls.

It was my fifth day of residence and I was pacing yet another despondent circuit through my brother’s richly-appointed halls. So it was that I happened to be passing the cellar door just as a curiously plaintive cry issued from beyond it, quiet enough that had I not been just there, just then, the tread of feet upon the wooden floors or the constant bustle of sounds from the kitchen would have obscured it from my notice entirely. I paused and strained my ears, and in short order it came again. Human it was, without question.

It was quite conceivable that a maid had locked herself in while fetching some stores or other for the kitchen. And while it struck me as strange that the others might not have missed her if she had been trapped in the quiet gloom since breakfast time, I should not have been surprised that her cries had dropped to the desperate, weak wails of one who has lost all hope of being heard. If the others thought her to be on some errand, I thought, they might think her simply delayed in town, not trapped below their feet.

I had not thought to investigate the lower level of the house, but now I hastened to the door, loosening from my up-swept hair two of the slender pins that had been the hallmark of my former trade. “I’m coming,” I called through the keyhole, “hold fast!” Thus saying, I turned my full attention to the lock. Like a proper maiden, it resisted for a token moment. But, upon further adept agitation of its slender hole, it relinquished its charms with smooth, willing finesse.

“Good girl,” I murmured to it. Pausing just long enough to give a fold to the doormat inside the top landing — and thus prevent the door from closing again and delaying the liberation of my panicked charge — I squinted my eyes and descended into the dim cellar, lifting my skirts to avoid a graceless fall down the unforgiving stone stairs. Candlelight flickered from around the corner, but the unseen lass had gone silent.

“Hello?” I called out. “You can come out now, darling. The door’s open.” Self-conscious for a moment at the thought of my brother’s response if he heard me address his maid in such a way, I squared my shoulders. I had never been of a standing to keep domestic servants; in fact, I felt something of a rapport with the frightened girl. I myself was nearer to her station than to my brother’s.

Only a desperate whimper answered me, echoing off the stone from around the bend. Carefully guarding my footing against the unseen, I started toward the cellar’s only light and sound. “Oh, you needn’t worry about bringing it all up in one go. I’m here now, to watch the door for—”

For truly, I had found the source of the pleading voice, and the sight before me surged a tight flush of heat through my bosom and a lightheaded tingle behind my disbelieving eyes.

The room was too large for the few flickering candles to reveal to me the true scope of it, but at its center was a massive stone table drawn about by a thick chalky circle on the floor. And on that table, limbs bound at the four corner points, the gentle creature I had assumed — which assumption might still be correct, I reminded myself — a scullery maid.

Blond, pale, and exquisitely curved with the roundness of a youth spent sampling a fine larder’s wares, she wore not a stitch. Her soft belly and ripe breasts gleamed in the light as if the whole of her body had been painstakingly brushed with oil. She glowed golden, such a beacon of beauty in the dark that for a stunned moment my eyes were blind to the features of her confinement: the thick iron manacles pulling at each dainty wrist and ankle, and the thicker, imposing leather-bound tome propped open as if to a particular gilded page between her parted thighs.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, shaking myself from my reverie with an embarrassed fluster. “Oh, my darling, hold fast. I will free you! Oh, what has my brother done?” Picks still at the ready, I approached her nearest wrist with all haste.

But no sooner did my fingers close over her fluttering pulse than her slippery arm lurched under my grasp, the clanking of her chain resounding loudly through the darkened stone chamber.

“No!” she cried. “You mustn’t!” Her body writhed like a pale, sinuous serpent and a flush of blood darkened her cheeks. “Please, miss,” she whispered, and I had never heard a voice so urgent or so sincere. “Please, that isn’t the release I need from you.”

So stunned at her words that I could barely hear them over the pulse pounding in my own ears, I took a bewildered step back, surveying the lass and her condition. “What, then?” I stammered.

She arched her back, elongating her torso and the twin gleaming globes of her bosom — ruby-capped and quite stiffened in the cool cellar air, I had to note. And as she relaxed her upper half with a tormented sigh, her lower quarters shifted with their own will, pleading with me in slow, firm circles I could not explain away as anything but wanton. The book, thicker than any stiff-backed tome I had seen in the upstairs libraries, was positioned just so between her wide-parted thighs. The raised texture of its embossed spine barely brushed the crux of her womanly center as she writhed. It was clearly the source of her torment, yet not sufficient to occasion her relief.