Chapter 3

But this stranger wasn't my daughter. My Christine was dead, and as I moved towards her, this one retreated and my hands instantly withdrew from the past. She and I were poles apart in a place where I was King and France was no longer a Republic.

We were trapped in a claustrophobic underworld where there were no genteel ladies or polite tetes a tetes over tea. Here, my laws and decrees held sway, and women were whatever I wanted them to be: maids, gypsies, or nuns. Even aristocratic ladies were fit to be eaten. They would be befriended and conversed with. They could be charmed and seduced. They could be undressed and fucked, but in the end they'd be turned into meat.

What else is a dead woman fit for in a Kingdom such as mine? What else can be done when there's no food apart from the rats, a few lizards and a handful of spiders. If I were squeamish then my prized flowers would wither and dry and become something pitiful and wasted and covered in maggots. They would become ugly, gaunt and unsightly - dirty and a stench - and finally they would fade into dust; and this would be done slowly without any trace of feminine dignity.

They would rot and where would be the benefit in that?

As for Christine, my thoughts had turned in a diametrically different direction because I have a man's needs and desires and affections.

I have emotions.

With her, I'd ask her to be nice. I'd ask politely. I'd provide her with every courtesy. I'd be suave, and then, if she dared to said no I'd remind her that I am King and Lord and Monarch of my Kingdom, and she must obey my laws as others have obeyed them.

She must fuck me.

Surely, she'll have no problem with that. She'll be sensible because she knows that I'm a Gentleman and I'm honorable and law abiding and compared with what I usually do, fucking is gentle and kind.

And if she objects, then I'll use force. Once I would have been squeamish about that. I'd have said no, out of the question - but a diet of female flesh is corrupting. Once you've eaten your first woman, you no longer look at them in the same way. It's sad, but how can it be otherwise when you've ripped their soft flesh with your teeth? After that, the fairer sex ceases to be precious, and once delicate beings become something quite ordinary.

It's an obnoxious appetite and I despise it, but that's where I am, and perversely, I like having rich ladies groveling and begging me to help ease their pain. It gives me purpose and value. I like walking through the catacombs and tipping my ear and listening to their moans, perhaps to this one or to that one. I hold their hand and give comfort and explain that if they'll let me take off their clothes and allow me to fuck them, then I'll eat them with dignity, and if not, the rats await.

I'm a fiend. It's hopeless. Everything is done for. Those ladies agree to let me fuck them because the alternative is worse. They have a need for their bodies to be respected even in death, while as for me, I do what I have to because my life was stolen from me - taken - and speaking honestly, I don't know whether it was real or just the delusion of an old schizophrenic mind. Maybe I've always lived in these caverns. Maybe all my troubling memories are lies. All I know is that I can spear a dead woman's cunt and crack it in two.

How did I learn that?

And as for Christine...

My cock hardened. I picked up a rock and angled it at her head for it was time to persuade her out of her clothes. Time. I saw that her brightly dyed dress had small cloth buttons decorating the front. It hugged her breasts, pinching and fondling them. It cloyed to her shape and flowed across her hips to the ground.

Nice.

I stepped forward. I could smell her. The scent of a rich lady's flesh is bracing and sensuous and I could already sense it and smell it: pungent, with the whiff of sandalwood stirred with slow burning sulfur.

"Take off your clothes," I hissed through gaps in my teeth, leaning forward and speaking with the weight of authority and not as an ogre, and she rose awkwardly to her feet and limped hastily away, retreating from me again, and then she turned despairingly, her eyes widening, knowing that the door was locked and that she couldn't escape.

"No! Please no!"

"I want you naked. I want to look at you, and when you are, I'm going to fuck you."

"Oh God! Please no!"

Her arms tucked up defensively in front of her chest, folded and angled into the shape of a cross.