A Fitting End
by (Hidden)
Horror Story: Halloween night in Chicago. A young lawyer, left for dead after an errand to a rare-book dealer, sits up on the coroner's table—alive—and tells how the hunt for the Marquis de Sade's lost, burned manuscript led her into a trap. She's the only witness left. She's been at her trick-or-treat coming-apart party!
Caution: This Horror Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Coercion Heterosexual Fiction Paranormal BDSM DomSub Rough Sadistic Snuff Interracial Black Female White Male Oral Sex .
Cover Design by Shiloh Young
If only the dead could talk
Chicago, October 31st
Things have been a white blur for some time, but I can see everything clearly. The dungeon, left behind. Being carried to the alley, laid down gently, the small smirk on the person’s face.
The detectives, the crime scene unit. The young medical examiner. The bag they put me in, and the ride. I suppose it’s my last ride. No, there will be the one to the mortuary, and the one to the cemetery. That one will be the last.
Death isn’t what I imagined it would be. There is the bright light, wanting to go with it. It tugs; I resist. The way I imagined it was in darkness, if there was conscience at all. Not a’tall, was I’d banked on.
Even in the damn bag, I had light, and, somehow, saw everything but me. Often, in life, I got flashes and realized this person is good or that person isn’t. My grandmother called it ‘second sight’ and explained it as seeing that which isn’t visible.
Oh, thank God, I’m out of the bag.
“Thomas,” a woman says, “did you collect evidence at the scene from her?”
“Nothing on the body to collect except some blood.”
“Child, don’t call her the body. We don’t know her name yet, but she’s a person, and you need to respect the dead as people.”
“Sorry, ma’am. Do you need me?”
“No, young man, you can run off to your trick-or-treat party.”
“Thanks, have a good night.”
“Well, aren’t you full of optimism.”
With that, he was gone, and we were alone, Ms. Coroner and me.
But he’s wrong, you know; there is one blonde strand in my black hair, hidden by blood, and a white one on my belly.
“Well, baby doll, you were sure treated unkindly,” the woman says to me. “While I work on you, why not tell me all about it? That way, lil’ darling, you can help us suss out what happened to you. Help me find who treated you so terribly.”
She’s expecting me to talk?
It’s at this point that I notice she’s an attractive, older lady with a kind face, as she brushes my hair off my forehead. Now I don’t feel that, mind you. Wait a tick, yes, I do. Fuck, my nipples just stiffened.
I’m alive!
Her pale green eyes are so sad, and her dark red hair has blondish streaks. I hear that redheads don’t get gray; they turn blonde or platinum. Hers are more platinum than yellow.
White folk are strange creatures and unpredictable for us blacks to get a handle on. Some are kind and considerate to us black folks; others belligerent or amused. Still others have a whole other mindset. Wishing we’re dead or helping us into our graves.
There’s more than that, but it doesn’t seem necessary to tell you that.
The concern as she washes my face and moves down my neck to the rest of my body is a comfort to me. But I know she’s missed one of his white albino hairs, sticking to my belly. The medical examiner wasn’t the only one at the scene to do so. The dickhead detectives and that lovely lady one are added to the list.
Mm, mm, is she scrumptious. Oh, sorry, no time for such thoughts.
Perhaps I’m the only one who can tell my story. Fucking white lights dragging my soul out in stages, and I jerk myself back inside me.
“Leave me alone, you bright white cunt. I’ve had enough of you Caucasian mofos, jerking my chain today.”
That’s when I beg God to give me a chance, a special dispensation to tell her what happened. My eyes stay shut the whole time, yet I see everything.
This is second sight.
In her hand, she’s got a tiny knife; a scalpel hovers between my shoulder and left breast. Oh, fuck NO!
“Go ahead, child, begin at the beginning; like my favorite song says, it’s the very best place to start. Get going now, we don’t have all night.”
I have to act, right now; that sweet lady is gonna hurt me. This is going to kill me for real, but what the hell!
Dragging air into my lungs, gasping, I pull myself to a sitting position. As she draws away from me, her eyes bug out; she lets out a snake-like hiss and says, “What the actual fuck.”
I turn to her, open my eyes, and rattle off the first attempt to tell my story to her. When I talk, the color drains from her face.
“Um, Ms. Coroner, do you need a minute?” The confused stare doesn’t change.
“No, go on,” she says.
The thing is, she’s in shock. Or else she’ll be on the phone and calling others down to see the wonderment before her. That’d be me, in all my resurrection beauty. Well, she might offer me cover of some kind. After all, my being dead, my nipples rigid, pointing straight at her bug-eyes, is some sight to see. Which, were I alive, the cold would stiffen naturally.
So is I, or isn’t I? This promising young woman yearns to know.
Am I warming up? Reanimating? Ready to dance? Fuck if I know. Then again, she fucking understands I’m as dead as Shakespeare. But I am buck-naked in a cold autopsy room, sitting up and talking. Daddy always says, “Dat’s ‘nough to shock anyone.”
Back to the telling of the telling. As she suggests, the beginning of my ending is where I start.
First, I hope you, Ms. Coroner, weren’t called away from a Halloween celebration on my account. In fact, I skipped one I was invited to for the task at hand. Not the coming back from the dead part. Missing the party because I am after a rare find indeed.
Rarer than an original Yesterday and Today, 1966 cover of the lads dressed in white butcher smocks and covered in pieces of raw meat and decapitated baby doll parts. Found one of those, and it was signed by Paul. Major find, and I took home a good payday with that one.
No, I was on the trail of a manuscript thought to have been burned in its entirety, way back right after the Marquis de Sade’s death. Thought’s the operative word. Since I’ve authenticated two pages of the work that shouldn’t exist. Which makes it a legend I’m chasing. The text was far more explicit than Justine or her sister’s tales of woe.
Little confession here: I enjoyed most of ole bastard’s work, despite his hatred of women. But the sections of the new one I authenticated were the grossest I’ve seen of these early libertine authors.
Innocence not lost, but destroyed with brutal masculine hatred of all that is woman. Taken by force against their will: a Jew, a nun, and a Negress plucked from Africa and gifted to a wealthy, depraved Frenchman. Negress was written with the same violence as his signature. I saw it with my own eyes.
The man embraced his hatred until it was a well-worn leather coat that drove him mad. But I’m racing ahead.
Have you heard the joke about the incorrectly spelled ‘M A R Q E E,’ as in Marquis de Sade? No, never mind; without seeing it, it isn’t funny. Look it up online sometime.
My search for Les Journées de Florbelle ou la nature dévoilée, or The Days of Florbelle or Nature Unveiled by Sade, began on the Deep Web and the Dark Web. Being a lawyer, I’m fully aware of them.
My employer — not the firm; a businessman who’s kept me on private retainer since my Stanford days — put me on it. So did my own student research, back when I was juggling two majors, pre-law and literary history. This would really set me up as one of the master document authenticators.
Move from the top 20 to the top 10 or five.
Historically speaking, this missing story was burned by Sade’s son to save the family any further embarrassment from their lunatic relation. I made de Sade’s work a cornerstone of my effort to establish myself as an authenticator of historical signatures. These efforts paid my way through the Stanford School of Law.
Most often, Sade is all he wrote, small, with quick, violent strokes angled across the paper at the right corner.
So, naturally, I have the law firm where I work and my side business, Emmerson’s Authentications, to provide me with more than a comfortable living.
I’ve climbed into the white stratosphere, or white*osphere as I call it, and some folks don’t appreciate it. Not you, of course; I’m gifted that way— I see goodness and evil at times. It’s a gift that fails me with this guy, as you shall see. Like the prophets of the Old Testament, my seeing inside and discerning motives are an on-again, off-again endeavor.
But don’t get sidetracked on this; there’s more than one villain in this tale.
But this preamble— the appetizer to the tale— is something you need to hear to find the man who murdered me. His name I do not know, but I’m certain, once I’m done, you’ll find the motherfucker. Because he’s about the queerest-looking man I’ve ever seen.
As clichéd as it is, ma’am, it was a cold, blustery night. Forgive, Ms. Coroner, I’ve always wanted to start a tale that way. In this case, it’s also true.
Lake Michigan’s roaring early this year. Lake Shore Drive’s almost being deluged by the waves. The apartments in the Lincoln Park neighborhoods have a solid layer of ice from the roof to the ground on the lakeside. I suppose it insulates the interiors.
Naw, that can’t be right. How can the air be so dry when there’s ice on the windows? Lake effect.
The damned wind blew the dry, powdered snow around. Its icy fingers cut through my clothing when I got out of the car. Slicing me to the marrow with violent cruelty, my nipples stiffened, and gooseflesh covered me. Pulling my coat around, trying to cover my body, I twisted the buttons into place as I walked through the empty parking lot.
Mercifully, I parked close to the shop entrance. An old, all but abandoned brick building with a sign, ’Rare Books’ and nothing more.
That notwithstanding, fucking cold invaded, driven up my dress by a gust; my crotch fell victim to winter’s frosty embrace. Either it kissed my cunt, or sliced it with an icicle knife.
Once I pulled the door and stepped into the overheated store, the warmth provided relief from the freezing outside. The owner started walking toward me. A cheerful grin on his old, road-mapped face.
So, as I rubbed my hands to warm them, I returned his smile. While I unbuttoned my coat, the tall man moved to help me take it off, jackrabbit fast.
“Why thank you, Mr. Blenkinsop.”
“Don’t mention it, young lady. I’ve been awaiting your arrival with anticipation. I thought you might show up in a sexy nurse or hooker outfit. But I see you’re going trick-or-treating dressed as a sexy, negro lawyer and document authenticator.”
I didn’t comment on his assumptions. Thank goodness, he didn’t continue to try to be cute. Nope, launched right back into his sales pitch.
“The book you requested awaits you in reading room eight.”
“I don’t think I’ve used room eight before.”
“You haven’t. It’s in the most secure part of the building. It is there for your personal inspection. Les Journées de Florbelle, ou la Nature Dévoilée, or in English, The Days of Florbelle, or Nature Unveiled by the Marquis de Sade himself.”
“Fair warning, ‘tisn’t signed the right way; we’re done before we start.”
“No, no, my dear Ms. Emmerson, it’s all the real deal, signed right, one word, on the right side of the paper at the right slant. Ten volumes of notebooks on every imaginable debauchery, racist rants and criminal acts against all of the ladies of each. Barbary pirates plundering the Aryan race, turning women and men into cum-dumps for African masters. Negroes, such as you, tortured, the women raped and degraded...”
“Sir, I’m well aware of the legends. The deal is, I must see and touch to authenticate, and if he’s to get a chance at the lottery, I must do so before he’ll spend a cent.”
“And to gain the opportunity to even bid on the lottery, you must pay the $5000. Without five-grande it stays under glass.”
“This, we’ve discussed, and I’ll pay it with a check tonight, out of my own pocket, to see it. Should what I can see through glass impress me, that is. If I’m satisfied, I’ll call my employer, and he’ll make an offer to avoid all that bidding and lottery shit. The so-called lottery is just another bidding war. He’ll buy it outright tonight or tomorrow with cash in your pocket.”
“Thirty million’s a lot of cash to keep in my pocket,” Blenkinsop said.
“You know what I mean. Your civility is slipping and your greed’s showing.”
“Hmm, yes, I see your point. Must be the British aristocracy running through my veins.”
“Ah-huh.” That statement’s grown old over the past three years. While he is likable, the vanity is what runs through Blenkinsop’s cholesterol-clogged blood.
With that, the rare books dealer extended his hand, and he shooed me along the way. While we walked to the reading room, he told me the backstory of the room.
“I must keep it under lock and key,” he said, placing his finger to his hooked nose; he gave a flick away. “Mum’s the word.” His grayish eyes had dimmed over the last few months. The twinkle that was once present was snuffing out.
Then he bent and shoved the key. With a twist, he unlocked the door, pushed it open, and, reaching inside and to the left, he flipped on the light.
“As always, my dear, when you’re finished, press the button, and I’ll hop to it and let you out.”
Once he shut the door, the key turned with a clack and click. On the desk under a Plexiglas cover was the book. The leather-clad book cover showed its two-hundred-thirty-plus-year trek from there to here.
Sade’s stories were a thinly disguised and exaggerated version of the debauchery of the Church and royal crimes. Libertinism fooled women into thinking that submitting to humiliation, degradation, and sexual abuse would bring about the collapse of the Church and the patriarchal society.
So, they became willing accomplices to their own tortures.
My fingers swayed on the protective cover. I yearned to touch it to dive into its sinful pages. Of course, I have read the books about Justine and her sister more than once. Fucking reprints, and in English. French editions in the original versions with dedications and that violet scrawl Sade with the flourish at the end. But not his original handwritten drafts.
This was as close to an original worth 30 million-plus as anyone might find who can afford. In French, handwritten, to boot, the Holy-fucking-Grail. An inscription by the Marquis, in his own hand: the Sade was exactly right. The whole ten-volume tale, written in an asylum.
If this was a forgery, it’s the best one I’ve found.
But to certify it, I had to see the handwriting, touch the indentations he made, and the paper. That was the fucking catch. Five grand worth of a Catch-22 ... was a foul thing to risk, if it was faked.
At the center of the notebook’s top page, scrawled in bold, careful strokes, Les Journées de Florbelle, ou la Nature Dévoilée; every tevil in place. Below that, a thick bar, which represents his various imprisonments. A whip-like slash down and move left, representing a crop or whip’s inflicted pain. And finally, the vertical base, a phallus, in all its male glorification, supporting the whole damn thing, to prevent it from sliding off the page. Because after all, the cock is perfection and cunt’s just a hole.
Volume fucking one! I’m getting out my checkbook, I think.
The air changed in the room as the heat left it. Which I put down to my excitement. Wanting to touch it, read from its pages, to breathe in its ancient scent, required money upfront. Mine! But wasn’t it wonderful the signature was so correct, the title too!
Protruding from the pile, a slip of paper from the trash. Possibly recovered by the man himself was a part he’d penned when they hadn’t provided him the linen he usually used.
Reading and translating at the same time, “The virgin Negress Queen shall be delivered to the Duke no later than—”
A creak of a floorboard, a massive hand wrapped around my throat while another grabbed my small breast. The crushing of my tit in a vice-like, bear-sized paw. A harsh clutching of my neck shut my throat.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t take a single breath. In a futile effort, I tried to scream. All the while, my heart raced, my knees wobbled. With one hand, I dug my fingernails deep into the hand of my assailant. While the other hand clawed at the case, trying to break the Plexi to get the book for a weapon. I turned my hand into a fist and hammered the case.
Perhaps...
Darkness took me. Darker than my ebony flesh, darker than the blackest soul.
“Lil’ girls shouldn’t piss dey selfs, tsk, tsk, raisin’ me a moron fer-sure.”
“No, Momma, don’t call Daddy.”
“Henry, take this miscreation of ours, and instruct her,” Momma said.
“Now girl, yo gots a understand this hurts me more than yo. Bends over, gal.” My father’s belt followed, blistering my skin.
There was my ninth-grade English teacher, “Miss Emmerson, you’re smart. So stop acting and talking ghetto nigger dumb. Ebonics is not a language.” “Graduating Stanford School of Law, summa cum laude, Ms. Tashaya Emmerson...”
The world turns gray, running in currents of pleasure and pain. A fight with a boy in grade school. Getting my ass kicked by white girls at the mall in middle school.
Making love in the stacks. He’s a skinny white boy with a quick release choad, and five shotglasses of semen. White legs wrapped around my head, red pussy hair, and hot gushes of her juice, as she drills for the black gold between my legs. That’s it, bitch, that’s what I’m talking about.
Sucking in air, I jerked upright, or tried to. My wrists and ankles were restrained, and I was buck-assed naked and afraid.
“Yes, Virginia Woolf, I’ve been terrified of you from day one.”
The cold, damp air held a thick, clammy stench. A nasty stagnation of backwaters or putrefied flesh.
How do I describe this, Ms. Coroner? Whomever my captor was, they ‘attached’ me to a rough wooden X-cross, angled to elevate my head above my feet, only a bit, and holding my legs apart. To top it off, nothing was under most of my ass.
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