Thursday 27 May 2010

T.E.N. by Alex Severn

Alex Severn sent me this great story, about female submission -- Enjoy!






“So let me get this straight then. Your top, number one fantasy is to be the sex slave of a man, to be his possession, to let him chain you up, whip you, and then throw him to his mates so they can enjoy you as well?”


“That’s not how it is and you know it.”


“Well tell me where I’m wrong then."


“Look. I do get turned on by the submissive bit, I want a man who is so gorgeous and so dominant that I want him to take me and I do fancy being in his power. He might seem to be in control but I want to feel that he is so obsessed with me that he has to have me and…well okay, he’s so crazy about me that he wants to share me with other men, to let them see what he’s got and how sexy I can be. I’m tired of the sex games we all play, all the conventions and routines. I want raw physical pleasure, I want to drive a man wild with lust and feel that lust myself. And yes, I have a thing about pain, if a man excites me enough, I want him to get a bit rough, the pain and the pleasure…they mingle somehow, oh God Dawn I don’t know why you got me started on this…”


“Because we’ve been friends for 20 years, and because we’re both pissed. Look, if you want this to happen, you can use one of those sex mags,with the adverts they have you can get anything. Ask for a dominant man who wants to chain you up, put the details in, they’ll be queuing up for you. Or better still, look through some ads yourself..."


The advert had been simple enough but something about the directness of it had made her choose his box number. So he wanted a woman to trust him enough to obey his desires, to explore her own fantasies. Nothing would happen unless it was what they both wanted..."

When she met him, he was physically attractive, sounded a bit posh...


She felt no fear agreeing to go to his home, which he described as ‘the middle of nowhere, been in my family for generations'. With most men it would have sounded flashy, arrogant even but it seemed natural with him, with his oh so cultured, relaxed voice.


The drinks poured, the small chat was beginning to drag when he came straight to the point, and it was almost as if he had decided on a specific time to start the real evening off.


“Would you like to see my room now. My fantasy room, I mean?”


Well she hadn’t come here to drink wine and talk about the weather, had she?


Aside from the huge size of what she had assumed would be a little living room, Vanessa was disappointed with what met her gaze. Bare brick walls, a couple of solid oak beams a few inches from the ceiling, no actual furniture just a sort of alcove which, as she peered round the side of it contained a small table. Oliver gently took her hand and led her to examine the items on the top of it.


He picked up what looked like a wide leather belt with silver studs indented the length of it. Vanessa saw a long thick linked chain with an ugly looking hook at one end and her heart started to beat a little faster when she saw the handcuffs and watched as he put down the chain and picked up the cuffs.


“I told you I wanted to dominate a woman, that I wanted my own willing slave but that’s the key to all of this. Nothing happens unless you want it to. Nothing without it being in your wish list as well. I want to make sure we both enjoy this, but at any time, and I mean any time you want this to stop, it stops. And so you’re absolutely clear on this, we’ll have a password. If you say it, we stop whatever we’re doing and you can leave, never to see me again. The password is, This Ends Now, or, T.E.N. for short. Ten, what could be simpler, one syllable to give you full control over everything. You happy with that, Vanessa?”


He’d obviously thought it all out and the thought that he must have played these games with other women gave her, to her astonishment, a pang of jealousy but he was waiting for her answer, and her silent nod was all he needed.


“Undress for me please”.


Her black dress was short enough and light enough to discard easily and as it revealed her matching underwear she felt a wave of pleasure to see his eyes hungrily take her body in. She slipped off her bra and watched him enjoy how hard her nipples had already become and as she pulled off her knickers she was thrilled to see him almost lick his lips at the sigh of her freshly shaved pussy. It was good to see the bulge in his trousers too.


“You’re perfect, fabulous, let me take your hands please."


Vanessa held out her hands and let Oliver raise them above her head. He was a good six inches taller than her and she felt him click the cuffs shut around her wrists but it took a few seconds longer to realise that he had cuffed her to one of the oak beams that she had noticed before. As she realised that she was now helpless, another shiver went through her body. Would he take any notice of the password, but then, did she want to use it?


Oliver inched closer to her body and he took her left nipple in his fingers and squeezed it, gently at first and then applied more pressure. Vanessa became more aroused and both nipples stiffened even more.


“Close your eyes please, just for a second."

It was more like thirty seconds before anything happened but then she felt the hard shaft of a man press against her bum. She heard Oliver’s voice again and knew he was in front of her.


“You can open your eyes now."

She saw Oliver had stripped for her and she was very impressed with what met her eyes. She had imagined this darkly handsome man naked when she first saw him and she wasn’t disappointed. He didn’t have the bulging, unnatural looking look of a body builder but his stomach was flat and taut. As he came nearer the beads of sweat starting to form on the impressive, almost completely hairless chest her heart began to beat faster, even though she knew she could still be in real danger.


She wished she could take his already impressive erection in her hands and make him even bigger but she was still helplessly cuffed, arms above her head. As she admired his powerful leg muscles he turned away from her. As he turned back to face her, he held in his hands a long, willowy but strong looking cane.


He moved closer to her again until his cock was inches away from her and ran the tip of the cane over both of her nipples in turn. There was no way of preventing them responding to the touch, being stimulated in that area had always turned her on quickly and the unreal situation made no difference to that. A slight movement on her left made her turn her head and she realised she had almost forgotten that there was a man behind her as well.


Oliver was tasty but this man, also naked and fully aroused was the sort to give any woman fantasies. Thick blonde hair, pale blue eyes, powerful muscular torso, he was so well endowed she was almost glad of the support of the handcuffs or she would have buckled under the pressure of her excited body.


Whoever blondie was he seemed to know his part in all his without any prompting from Oliver. Moving around until he was directly in front of her, he began to stroke her between her thighs. Vanessa could feel a pulse of pleasure running through her and when her fantasy man took her head in his huge hands, surprisingly gently and kissed her full on her lips, it was as if nothing else mattered but what was going to happen between them. As he broke away from her, she felt his fingers play around the edge of her increasingly damp lips, almost but not quite parting them. Her mouth fell open again and just as she began to writhe with excitement, desperately wishing she had her hands free so she could touch him, she felt a sharp, biting pain as the cane flailed against her back.


Vanessa gasped as the pain intensified briefly and then began to subside. Oliver was standing a little to the blonde’s left, looking delighted at her reactions. He was tapping the cane against his palm, with a smile full of charm. Blondie’s probing fingers were starting to explore her more urgently, but it was the sight of his cock, only inches away from entering her that was driving Vanessa wild. She was imagining only too vividly the way he might feel inside her, the way she would explode with desire and break into a thousand fragments, each one a tiny slice of pleasure. Then Oliver hit her again, harder this time and she did a double movement, a shiver of excitement thanks to the blonde man and a tensing of her muscles because of the burning sensation on her back.


Oliver moved very close to her and whispered in her right ear.


“You haven’t been introduced, Vanessa. This is Alan. A very good friend of mine and he seems to be getting to know you quite well. He isn’t much of a talker, but he has other attributes. Nothing will happen unless you choose it, Vanessa. Alan is very anxious to give you what you want most of all but so am I. The pain and the pleasure are the same emotion you see."


He shot a glance at the other man who took his ever hardening shaft in his hand and brought the tip of it to rest, so very gently against Vanessa’s now wide open lips.

“Was there something you wanted to say perhaps? A word, a syllable?”


The look of total confidence, arrogance almost made her spit the word at him just to see his disappointment but Alan easing his huge cock around her wet opening and the thought that he would take it away was too much to bear. Silently, she shook her head.


“Alan just needs to be asked, begged perhaps before he will please you. But if you beg him to take you, you must beg me to carry on too. Or of course, you can put your clothes on, let me call you a taxi and think about what you have missed out on."

Right on cue, Alan inched forward and, as the tip of his cock explored more of the wetness of her bloated, swollen pussy, he bent his head forward and began biting, none too gently on her nipples which were now as brittle and sensitive as glass. Vanessa had never felt so aroused, she felt she would melt if he carried on but then, presumably at a signal from Oliver, his ‘friend’ stopped biting and moved his cock just out of reach of her lips. Any rules, any logical thought processes vanished instantly. Vanessa was on fire and she had to have him inside her, had to feel that thick, wide rod driving into her and just then, nothing else mattered.


She was starving and only he could satisfy her appetite. She was a desert, dry and searing hot, only he could cool her, could make the rain of her own body sweep over her.


“No, no, don’t stop, take me now, I want to feel you inside me."


It was as if she heard someone else’s voice speak out, she was losing control rapidly. She felt the slightest touch of the cane on her back and as she saw the lustful look in the pale eyes of the man she felt more physically attracted to him than any man she had ever been near she shouted, screamed out;


“Hit me, beat me, anything you want to do, do it, just let me feel him again."


Needing no second invitation, Alan moved his hands so he could cup her buttocks in them and then, proving his physique wasn’t just for show, lifted Vanessa off the floor as he drove into her saturated lips. The pain of being beaten seemed to be simultaneous to the undiluted ecstasy of his thrusting driving shaft and Vanessa, almost as a reflex now, began shouting, begging for more. The angle at which he had driven inside her made her feel light headed, delirious with joy, she clamped her lips around his girth and threw herself backwards as far as the position of her body and the restraint of her arms would allow. As she arched backwards, Oliver changed his area of attack and Vanessa felt two stinging blows across her bum but this only heightened her pleasure, it was as if this forced her to bury herself deeper into her fantasy . The pain and the pleasure merged together, Vanessa felt every inch of her body was on fire, she was as desperate to feel the sting of the cane as she was to feel his primitive thrusts opening and probing her deeper and deeper.


Nothing this good could last forever and Vanessa knew even this man would reach his climax soon but she had to come when he did, the thought of feeling him soften and wither whilst he was still inside her, whilst she was still sliding her lips up and down the length of him was too terrible to contemplate. She needn’t have worried as she felt her orgasm shudder through every bit of her body when Alan drove deeper inside her, deeper than any man had ever reached. As the electric current sizzled from her breasts to her crotch, she saw herself, as if in a dream, look back at Oliver and silently plead with him to thrash her even more. She was desperate to feel the stinging agony of the cane on her flesh which felt as it were on fire now. Not even his look of victory could change how good it had felt to have Alan inside her and she almost came to another orgasm as he thrashed down with the cane three, maybe four times. Her skin burned and ached with pleasure before Vanessa felt her legs being released and she slumped, almost drunkenly, only held up by the handcuffs above her head.


It was something she hardly dare admit even to herself. The pain of the cane on her back and her bum had felt almost exquisite, she had been, by the end, ready to do anything to feel the burning tingle on her skin. Giving over control of her body like that to a man, well, maybe, but to two men was something she had never experienced before and she knew the feelings aroused in her were very complex. She belonged to Oliver, her body was his to use and share with any other man he wanted to. She had never fantasised about a threesome before let alone this but the conversation she had had with Dawn came back to her. She had wanted to be a man’s slave, a plaything, to be helpless but in control, to win and lose. And this was what this evening had been all about.


But then she realised, the night was still young.


Oliver was speaking again.


“Remember, anytime you say, any time you want, this stops and you get dressed and go home. This is your night as well as ours."


She knew her silence was agreement, all three of them did, and she had no intention of breaking that silence. The word she could use to go back to a civilised world was a million miles away from her mouth.


Alan reached up and uncuffed her and she flexed her arms gingerly, allowing some feeling to flow back into them.


“On your knees, now and open your mouth."


As Vanessa did so, Oliver fed his hard length into it and Vanessa clamped her lips shut, taking him in as deep as she could, licking and sucking. She felt his pleasure and then she felt him reach down and take her hand in his and guide it onto the still erect cock of Alan giving Vanessa the chance to close her fingers around it, and start to massage him, hard and relentlessly. She had never felt a man as hard or as big as he was. His cock tasted strong and musky but clean and fresh too.


“ Alan wants to take you now, from behind”, Oliver said smoothly and Vanessa wasn’t about to complain as she was spun round so that he was behind her whilst she was still on all fours. She tilted herself forward, opened her legs wider with her bum pointing upwards and she felt his huge rock hard length pushing into the lips that were waiting just for that. As he thrust deeper into her gaping opening, she became aware of voices and began to realise she had an audience now. She half turned her head in alarm but Oliver grabbed her long black hair and in that smooth polished accent said;


“Surely you don’t mind a few other friends joining us for the evening?” and somehow, terrified Alan would stop pumping into her, she stayed silent. She was his property now after all.


Becoming more aware of the audience and their excitement which was now very audible, Vanessa’s face was burning scarlet at the thought of the porn show she was starring in but no negative feelings could overcome the pleasure she was getting as Alan thrust deeper inside her, his rhythm taking him almost out of her every second thrust which only heightened her lust for him. Vanessa’s weeping hot wet lips circled his hardness, clinging to him as if nothing else mattered. And then, it hit her that, great though being used like this was, having a live audience, knowing that every man in that room would have screwed her if she snapped her fingers made it so much better, made her so much hornier. She eased herself further backwards and made her body fit in with the thrusts which were ever more powerful. Still pushing into her, he abruptly sat back and pulled her with him. Vanessa was initially furious that he should disturb the fabulous position they had found together but it was only momentary as she stretched out her legs and, still with her back to him, straddled him and began to almost bounce up an down on his cock, giving him the chance to take her tits in both hands and fondle and manipulate them as she did so. Wondering how much more energy she had got left Vanessa felt on the point of collapse. Then, she found she had Oliver’s deliciously tempting swollen cock in front of her and no power on earth could have stopped her taking it inside her mouth and sucking, licking, almost biting him, enjoying his groans of pleasure. It was a scene from a thousand porn films but Vanessa was intoxicated by everything she felt, she was being explored from behind by a man who made the ‘size doesn’t matter’ mantra a joke whilst a man who had orchestrated all of this was bursting inside her mouth, it was satisfaction beyond her wildest fantasies. As they all collapsed, Vanessa almost fell over the splayed out legs of the other two as her juices cascaded from between her thighs.


The crowd of watchers cheered and began to chatter excitedly A sensation of power swept over Vanessa. Who was the slave, was she, the star of the filthiest show in town? Or were these men, panting with desire and lust, they would be dreaming about her body tonight, praying they had been with her, feeling her, letting her touch them? Although the mixture of voices were coming to her from the other side of the room and she couldn’t see anybody, she just knew she was the only woman there and that heightened her sense of being special in this theatre of pleasure.


Vanessa was so weakened and her muscles were still twitching that she barely registered that Oliver was fastening the chain around her waist. Then, as she was jerked violently towards the crowd, she looked down at it, even as her mind was spinning, Vanessa saw clearly that the belt was effectively a dog collar and as he led her, dragged her, on tottering feet towards the audience, the symbolic enslavement, the clear message that she was Oliver’s creature swept over her.


“Anything you want to say to me, Vanessa? Any little word?”


For once she found her voice.


“Don’t stop, this is my show too. You haven’t fucked me yet, you can take me any way you want...”

Oliver grinned at her and, grabbing her long black hair, whispered in her ear;


“On all fours, facing your adoring public, Alan wants to punish you now."

The words sent a pulse of electricity coursing right through her, the thought of the silent dream man using her for his own pleasure, making her beg for mercy was almost too exciting to contemplate. As she dropped onto her kneeling position, she risked a glance over her shoulder and was rewarded by the sight of Alan advancing towards her and as he did so he was flexing a black, savage looking whip. Vanessa gulped hard. The cane was painful but arousing, but that whip…. A man as powerful as Alan could really use that, she could be bruised and sore all over her body, she could be flinching and writhing by the time he had finished with her. One word, that was all it would take to top him, all she had to do to get dressed and go home.


She found her voice.


“Hit me properly, please , please whip me. I want to feel it now."


Almost in slow motion she saw the instrument flail across her bum cheeks, and as she gasped in pain, she turned again to see his cock jutting skywards, he seemed even more aroused than before.


“Turn and face the other way, woman."


Oliver’s voice was a command and she obeyed instantly, praying for the sharp pain and thrill of Alan’s whip again and she wasn’t disappointed. Her mind was whirling. She was aching with the stinging sensation of the blows as they rained down, now on her back, once, twice and even harder the third time. Her skin was throbbing violently as she heard the cheers of the men assembled in front of her. Alan paused and, leaning over, began to fondle her nipple gently with his left hand, stroking, coaxing, but Vanessa wanted more.


“Don’t be so bloody gentle, squeeze me, I want to feel your hands on me.”


And Alan got the message, she almost winced as he twisted and pulled on her diamond hard nipple, but as he eased his body forward so he could grip her nipples even harder, she felt his rock hard length knock against her leg and Vanessa gasped with the sensation of how good it felt for her. Then, as if he could read her mind he brought his right hand between her legs and as her velvet slit was so open and wet, was able to put three fingers inside her massaging her soaking mound of pleasure. Her clit was hugely bloated and Vanessa’s head was spinning even faster, as so many emotions surged through her but she heard herself say to her master;

“Don’t be so easy on me, whip me more, please more.”


He didn’t disappoint her, as, with another couple of thrashes with the whip from one hand, he manipulated and roughly played with her saturated lips from behind her, and she reached out her own hand push his fingers deeper inside making her feel she had no more juice to surrender to him.


Stopping the beating abruptly, he gestured to her to rise but she was so wet between her legs by now she could hardly walk so he had to almost drag her to the front group of the men, a couple of whom began to run their hands all over her tits usually shouting out something filthy as they did so. Alan handed the chain to the man nearest to him and Vanessa found herself falling helplessly as he yanked her further into the group of cheering men. She was on her knees again now and when the nearest man undid his trousers and beckoned her to give him what he wanted, she didn’t even look at Alan or Oliver but just knelt before this stranger and took him fully into her mouth, massaging his tight balls between her fingers. He may not have been Alan’s size but her head was still on fire and her whole body was seething with the most primitive, unrestrained thrill she could ever have imagined. She wouldn’t be stopped now, she wanted the taste, the sensation of a man’s excitement in her throat and only when she felt him surging, exploding, did she let him go, licking her lips as she did so. Vanessa felt the touch of fingers probing between her legs again and knew they belonged to Oliver. She had never been so wide open and soaked in her life and, still feeling light headed with a power and a pain she had never thought possible, she lifted her head and surveyed her audience. She grabbed the nearest man, no longer caring what he was like or how he aroused her and kissed him on the lips, wrapping both her arms around his neck. Still revelling in the roars of the men, Vanessa beckoned him onto his knees, she knew nobody in the room would disobey her now, and then she pushed him as roughly as she could, onto his back. Squatting beside him, she tore off his trousers and shorts, revealing his increasingly swollen dick. Then, pausing only to glance at the excited faces all around her, she threw her body onto him, clamping his cock between her open moist lips. Placing her hands on his chest, Vanessa rocked backwards and forwards, taking him further inside her and arching her back further away from him, drawing him deeper, demanding with her body that he grow bigger and firmer. To her acute disappointment, he came quickly, so she writhed a little more and then as she slid off him, she put her foot on his chest and with an almost contemptuous gesture, turned away from him. She felt the pressure of the chain being yanked before she saw Oliver had control of her again, and although she couldn’t catch what he had said it was met with boos and disappointment by the crowd.


Clearly, her show was over and the final physical stimulus for her was two vicious slaps, one across her face, the other across her bum delivered by her captor with the cane.


Oliver dragged her, still reeling and exhausted until she was in front of a full length mirror she hadn’t noticed before and as he pulled her around full circle like a puppet, she saw the red wheals and marks all over her back and her bum, and the beginnings of huge bruises start to form. Crazily, this only turned her on all the more, what was happening to her?


As she sat back, exhausted but still sizzling with arousal she heard a familiar voice just behind her.


“Well, you can’t say this was a boring evening, can you, Vanessa?”


Dawn was smiling wickedly at her.


“What the hell...”


“Sorry to deceive you like this but what are friends for? Oliver and I have been friends for ages and I just knew he’d be right for you. I knew the way we worded the advert would work. Mind you, I haven’t seen Alan before, you are a lucky girl, aren’t you?”


It's difficult being furious with someone when you‘ve just had the best night of your life, and Dawn’s instincts really had been perfect after all.


THE END

Friday 21 May 2010

VAMPIRES




Slowly, slowly, the beacon fire smouldered. In 1897, Bram Stoker struck the first spark when he published his horror novel “Dracula”. The kindling had been stacked up for centuries, in the form of mythologies, rumours and stories; those creepy tales whispered about Vampires. Creatures of the night; the undead, seeking you out, to sink their fangs into your tender jugular and drink your blood; draining you. The stories go back thousands of years. Now, in 2010, the beacons have crossed oceans; the fires flame fiercely, proclaiming that the old stories are still being told and new tales are being written.



Stoker could have had no idea, that his short novel would precipitate a whole genre of writing that would hold sway on our collective imagination for decades.


Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical, film and television interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.


From the beginning of history, vampire-like spirits and beings have been recorded. The Akhkharu were blood-sucking demons, written about back in the time of Sumer. We’re talking about 5,000 years BC. The ancient Chinese wrote about "hopping corpses" which would go around and consume a victim’s life essence (commonly known as chi). Even ancient Egyptian lore had a story where the goddess Sakhmet was consumed with bloodlust. From the earliest of times, vampire like beings have been prominent in folklore from several different cultures.


The most well-known versions of vampire myth are those of the Slavic and Romanian cultures, which, due to their proximity, are similar. And it is from Eastern Europe, that Stoker’s Count Dracula originates.

There are several reasons that a person may become a vampire, such as unnatural death, birth defects, or conception on certain days. Romanian legend gave rise to the belief that being bitten by a vampire would doom one to become a vampire after death. Both Slavic and Romanian myths hold the belief that, with the advent of a vampire, there would be deaths of livestock and family members of the vampire. The favoured way to kill a vampire in these two myths is by driving a stake through the heart, decapitation, and if necessary, dismemberment. Slavic and Romanian vampire myths have given rise to the most popular world-view of vampires.


But what’s the fascination? Why the endless retelling of this old story? Are we playing with danger from the safety of fiction? The horror of vampires is very real; I should know. I spent my adolescence terrified of them; especially Dracula. I invented bizarre little rituals to ward him off and keep me safe. Positioning on my left side as I lay in my bed, was paramount -- as was a convoluted prayer; a mantra that I would recite over and over again. Sleep would be a long time coming.


The success of “Dracula” spawned a distinctive vampire genre. The vampire is such a dominant figure in the horror genre that literary historian Susan Sellers places the current vampire myth in the "comparative safety of nightmare fantasy".


We relinquish control to the vampire. He swirls his cloak around his victim and bites. His teeth penetrate us. It’s a reconstructed image of the sexual act; in fact actual copulation seems tame, compared with what the vampire can do. The victim has no control over his ghastly lover. The victim flirts with death.


But it’s not just the Count we have to fear. He is scary, but his entourage of female vampires more so. Female vampires are predatory and take their pleasure where they will. Women who take control of the sex act itself. Victorian men -- beware! The ideal Victorian woman was chaste, innocent, a good mother. She definitely wasn’t sexually aggressive; a huntress.


The three beautiful vampires, Jonathan Harker, Stoker’s narrator, encounters in Dracula’s castle, are both his dream and his nightmare—indeed, they embody both the dream and the nightmare of the Victorian male imagination in general. The sisters represent what the Victorian ideal stipulates women should not be—voluptuous and sexually aggressive—thus making their beauty both a promise of sexual fulfilment and a curse. These women offer Harker more sexual gratification in two paragraphs than his fiancée Mina does during the course of the entire novel. However, this sexual proficiency threatens to undermine the foundations of a male-dominated society by compromising men’s ability to reason and maintain control. For this reason, the sexually aggressive women in the novel must be destroyed.


In a passage highly charged with erotic symbolism, Jonathan Harker, writes in his journal;


“I was afraid to raise my eyelids, but looked out and saw perfectly under the lashes. The girl went on her knees, and bent over me, simply gloating. There was a deliberate voluptuousness which was both thrilling and repulsive, and as she arched her neck -- she actually licked her lips like an animal, till I could see in the moonlight, the moisture shining on the scarlet lips and on the red tongue as it lapped the white sharp teeth. Lower and lower went her head as the lips went below the range of my mouth and chin and seemed to fasten on my throat. Then she paused, and I could hear the churning sound of her tongue as it licked her teeth and lips, and I could feel the hot breath on my neck. Then the skin of my throat began to tingle as one's flesh does when the hand that is to tickle it approaches nearer, nearer. I could feel the soft, shivering touch of the lips on the super sensitive skin of my throat, and the hard dents of two sharp teeth, just touching and pausing there. I closed my eyes in languorous ecstasy and waited, waited with beating heart.”


The vampire lover is erotica personified. You relinquish control; you do nothing, other than give yourself up to the seduction.

Janine Ashbless suggests; “We don't fantasise about controlling vampires - we fantasise about how we have NO control over them. They are stand-ins for Death itself.”

Stoker’s narrator, flirts with the promise of an intercourse so erotic, that he will give up his life.


Later in the novel, Count Dracula has made his way to England, and sets about possessing the upper-middle class Lucy.


Once infected by Dracula, Lucy becomes sexually overt and aggressive, and is portrayed as a monster and a social outcast. She feeds on children making her the maternal antithesis as well as a child molester. In order to rectify Lucy’s condition she is sexually overpowered by her fiancée, Holmwood; the scene is witnessed by Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing. Holmwood penetrates her to death with a stake through the chest, a staking which is openly sexual in interpretation;


“the thing in the coffin writhed; and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions; the sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam.........He (Holmwood) looked like a figure of Thor as his untrembling arm rose and fell, driving deeper and deeper”


The killing of Lucy is a sort of legitimised gang rape, legitimised because the Victorian balance of sexual penetration from the female domain is back in its accepted station within the male domain.


The reasons for our fear of, and fascination with vampires change with the times we live in. To Stoker’s contemporaries, Count Dracula posed many threats to Victorian social, moral and political values: he changes virtuous women into beasts with ravenous sexual appetites; he is a foreigner who invades England and threatens English superiority; he is the embodiment of evil that can only be destroyed by reasserting the beliefs of traditional Christianity in an increasingly sceptical and secular age; he represents the fear of regression, a reversal of evolution, a return to our more primal animal state.


Think of the wealth of literature, film and television dramas that we wouldn’t have, if Bram Stoker hadn’t written “Dracula.”


Perhaps they leave you cold -- I love them! I’m over my teenage angst about them. There’d be no exotic Lestat, from Ann Rice. No Hammer house of Horror. No vampires with a conscience; M.Christian wouldn’t have written his vampire novel; “Running Dry.” Neither would Janine Ashbless have written; "The Blood of the Martyrs" All wonderful stuff; my favourite writers digging around in my agonised psyche.


And then there’s those TV shows; “Buffy,” “True Blood,” “The Vampire Diaries.” A blood letting, tinged with magic. I lose myself in a world, of exotic, erotic fantasy. A strange world of death and immortality. Stories that speak to us once again of an ancient, horrid rite and fear.

Thursday 13 May 2010

THE EXHIBITIONIST AND THE VOYEUR




Janie didn’t walk; she flitted. Down the street, she flitted, her rounded little bottom, bouncing from side to side. She could have swayed or glided on her red, high heeled shoes, but on this day, in London town, she flitted. It was springtime and the early spring sunshine had dressed her in a tiny floral dress, cut low at the front and high on the hem line.

Her full, ample breasts swayed freely. She hadn’t worn a bra today. The cheesecloth fabric of her dress, grazed at her erect nipples.

Janie flitted past the building site, her skirt flying up in a gusty dust of springtime breeze. She grinned at the faces of the builders, half naked in the sunshine, as her bouncy little bottom was exposed to them. She laughed at their whistles and applause. She pretended to be shocked at their lewd gestures. A guy with the body of a Greek god; his muscular arm bent at the elbow. His fist. The hand of the other arm gripping his bicep. His mates cheered.

She felt no shame at inciting such a crude gesture. She simply giggled and grinned at the builder. He grinned back. Why should she feel shame? She was young and pretty in a curly, auburn, Pre-Raphaelite sort of way. Her inner thighs, right at the top, were wet with springtime longing and she wanted to be looked at.

Janie was in her element. The centre of attention.

A well dressed, elderly lady sniffed at her in disgust. “No knickers,” she muttered, disparagingly, to her male companion.

Janie grinned at the man to spite his lady friend. He hadn’t looked at all disapproving. Well he wouldn’t would he? She gave him an extra little wiggle and flipped up the hem of her dress, showing him her rounded cheeks, thanking him for his appreciation; his footsteps faltered. He stumbled to regain his balance.

Crabby old woman. Besides, she was wearing knickers; sure, only a tiny thong, which barely covered anything, but they were still knickers. Or panties, as she preferred to call them.

She flitted her way down the leafy, London street. A taxi driver wound down his window, blasted his horn and shouted something at her. She wasn’t sure if it was an obscenity, or an invitation, but she waved at him anyway.

Janie didn’t even have the grace to blush. She was so wet, so turned on by the male attention, she would have happily allowed herself to be gang raped. A frown crossed her pretty face. If she was allowing herself to be raped, it wouldn’t be rape at all, would it?

Who cares? She felt so gloriously female, so in her element, Janie wasn’t going to let such thoughts worry her.

She thought of her flat mate, Harold. Harold looked at her too; in a leering, lecherous kind of way. Janie enjoyed winding him up, just a little. She would stand in his way in the small kitchen, that they shared. Making him squeeze his tall skinny body up behind her, so that she could feel his impressive erection pressing against her bottom. Janie loved to make Harold blush. She knew that her obvious sexuality embarrassed him. Besides, it served him right. She knew that Harold spied on her. Their rooms were next to each other and Janie had realised very quickly that Harold had drilled a hole in the thin plasterboard wall. He watched her undressing; she always put on a good show for him.

Janie also knew that Harold was planning to put a hidden camera in her room. Harold was incredibly intelligent. He was in some sort of genius category. He was writing a thesis on applied mathematics, or some such nonsense. But for a bright, geeky guy, he was incredibly stupid. Janie had seen the discarded packaging for the camera, in the waste bin. She wondered where he was going to put the secret gadget. He’d probably hide it in the smoke detector, in the ceiling. That would give him a good all round perspective of the room.

Janie had felt almost sorry for him the night before. Even though she’d pulled a chair up as close as she could to his hole in the wall, Harold’s view must have been restricted. She’d sat in the chair, spread her legs and masturbated her tiny, virgin hole. Her previous displays had involved an erotic striptease, her performance turning her on. Masturbating for him, she’d felt incredibly powerful. The idea of his eyes goggling; as she’d brought herself to an uncontrollable orgasm, had made her giggle. The thought of him on the other side of the wall, pumping his cock, made her wet. The muffled groan she’d heard, coming from Harold’s room, made her wetter. A surge of juices.


Harold watched through the grubby flat window, as Janie flounced down the street. Dirty whore; she practically exposed herself to every male she came into contact with. Harold pumped and played with his erection as he watched her. Harold was proud of his cock. For a skinny guy, his cock was big and heavy. Ten inches; he’d measured it when he was fully erect. He imagined Janie’s mouth around it as he fucked her face. Her full lips stretched around his thickness; like the women on the porn sites he liked to look at. The thought made him almost orgasm. His cock pulsed; the blue veins standing out like a road map. But he held himself together; he’d have to clean up afterwards. Doing that just made him feel dejected and jaded.

He’d masturbated himself to a grunting frenzy, the previous night, splattering his seed over the wall. He’d watched, helplessly aroused, his thick cock in one hand, his clenched fist in his mouth, as Janie had fingered herself to what Harold assumed was a female orgasm. She’d made a lot of noises, her pelvis jerking, her feet clenched as if in a spasm. She’d only been able to get one finger in her cunt. Harold wondered if she was a virgin. He had no way of knowing; unless he asked her, or fucked her.

Asking her was out of the question. So was fucking her. Harold had never had a woman; he wouldn’t know where to start.

He went to his room, picked up the secret camera, and a bag of tools.


Janie climbed up the step ladder and got as close as she could to the smoke detector. She squinted inside. She couldn’t see anything, there wasn’t even any tell tale sign that the grill had been removed. She climbed down a couple of steps, stretching her neck. She’d got a cramp from the unnatural position. She’d forgotten the flashlight. The web site -- “Is there a spy in your house?” had said, “shine a flashlight onto the grill of your smoke detector.” She hadn’t got one. But she knew where she’d find one. She’d seen Harold with a small torch a couple of days ago. It would be in his room.

It was the second time she’d been in Harold’s room. The first time had been a few days ago; she’d wanted to prove to herself that Harold had been spying on her. And she’d been proved right. The hole in the wall was much larger from Harold’s side. If he stood on the bed, it would be exactly at eye level for him. He must have had a great view; much better than she’d at first thought.

Harold was exceptionally tidy. Janie had been struck on her first visit, how orderly everything was. This time, she could see that Harold wasn’t just tidy; he was obsessive. She felt that if she so much as breathed on his collection of colour graded pencils, all sharpened to the same length, he would know.


There was a neat pile of Porn magazines on a chest of drawers. All carefully straightened and tidily turned to the front cover uppermost. Janie stole one, from halfway down the pile. She’d look at it later; Harold would never miss it. She couldn’t find the damned flashlight though.


She stamped out of her flatmate’s room, carrying her Porn mag. She sat on her bed and flicked through the magazine, gulping at the size of the women’s breasts and one particular woman’s proudly displayed clitoris. It was the size of a large ball bearing; the clitoris, in fact, the woman’s wet, swollen genitalia, made Janie feel inadequate. She’d never actually looked at her own clitoris; but she was damn sure it didn’t compare with that monster. Perhaps there was a product available that would make a clitoris expand and grow; she would investigate.

She lay on her bed, and flicked over the pages of Pornography; despite her irritation Janie felt herself getting wet. She thought about masturbating; but there was still the problem of the hidden camera.

She knew there was one, and she knew that she had to find it. She could go to the shops and buy a flashlight, but she wanted to get thing done quickly. And there was always the danger of Harold coming home. Sometimes he just turned up unexpectedly, having said he’d be out for the day. A lecture would be cancelled, or one of his students hadn’t turned up.

Irritated with Pornography and monster clitorises giving her unrealistic expectations, she stood up. Her foot caught on something. She glanced down; it was only Harold’s fucking flashlight. God in heaven above and all His fucking angels. Harold must have dropped it earlier. She thanked the god she didn’t really believe in, except at Christmas time, and mounted the step ladder.

Janie shone the light directly onto the grill of the smoke detector; just like the instructions on the web site had said. Sure enough, there, looking back at her, was a tiny, tiny glass lens. She had found Harold’s secret camera. Janie felt triumphant. Now she had to think what to do about it.

She didn’t try to remove it; if he wanted to look, let him. But she wanted to know what Harold intended to do with the films he made. Were they just for himself, or was he going to show them to his friends? Did Harold even have friends? She didn’t have a problem confronting Harold; he would just crumble like worm eaten wood if she challenged him. There had to be a way of turning the situation to her advantage. Janie yearned to be on display. But that wasn’t enough for her. She was sure that there was money to be made.



Harold knew that Janie had been in his room. He didn’t know how he knew; he just knew. He checked everything. He couldn’t find any evidence; just that disconcerting feeling that his space had been invaded.

He looked at the big pile of Pornography; it looked undisturbed. Perhaps she’d had a look at some of it. But why would she? Surely women didn’t want to look at pictures of other women? He went through the pile, counting the issue dates carefully. Sure enough, one was missing. August 2009, issue 8. Harold could remember the image of a woman with impossibly big tits. And the headline; BIG BOOBS ON TRIAL! Harold never forgot anything.

But what was he going to do? He knew that Janie had stolen his magazine, but he could hardly ask her for it back; could he? He rehearsed the scenario.

“Um, did you happen to go into my room…”
No that wouldn’t do.
“Um, did you borrow a magazine…”
That was better; but he mustn’t start every question with “um”. It made him sound juvenile; indecisive. In the world of Academia he was someone of note. Almost a Professor. He should conduct the interview like someone used to authority. When he lectured to his students, Harold never said “um.”

“I don’t mind you borrowing a magazine from my room, but um…”

Dammit. Harold cursed out loud. She would laugh at him. A woman who could flit down the street exposing herself to every man she met, would just burst into uncontrollable laughter. It wasn’t fair, Harold thought angrily. He may have a brain the size of a planet, but what good was it if he couldn’t hold an ordinary conversation? He did have a particularly enormous cock though. That would impress her, he thought smugly. He unzipped his jeans and stroked his huge erection.

Janie didn’t bother to knock. She strode into Harold’s room, waving the Pornography in one hand and Harold’s flashlight in the other.

Harold stood, blushing and trembling, as far away from her as he could get. His zipper was undone, his jeans were halfway down his legs. He stumbled, caught off balance and fell to his knees. His carefree erection bobbed and bounced, happy to be on show.

Janie didn’t appear to notice. Either his humiliating fall, or his equally humiliating erection.

What Harold noticed was that she was furious.

“Don’t try and deny it,” Janie snapped, throwing the magazine down on Harold’s bed.

“Um, deny what?” Harold made a bold attempt at confrontation. He also made a brave effort at standing upright. He fumbled and tried to pull up his jeans. His erection faded enough to be forced back inside his jeans.

“The bloody, sneaky camera in my room, that’s what. What were you going to do with the films? Put them on Youtube? Show your friends?”

“S…something like that.”
“If we’re going to do this, we do it properly; my way. Okay?”

Harold stopped trembling and looked interested. Perhaps she was going to suggest he fucked her and they filmed themselves, all tangled limbs. He wondered what soundtrack he could put on it. Harold was always optimistic when it came to losing his virginity. His recalcitrant cock started to show interest too.

“You can set up a website? One of those pay to view places?”

Harold nodded. It didn’t look like he was going to get to fuck her. But he was intrigued to know where her thoughts were going.

“You get to do the filming. With a proper camera, not that pissy little thing you’ve set up. You like to watch; so that keeps you happy. I like to perform; so I’m happy too. The money we get, and there’s going to be a lot of it, keeps us both happy. Oh and here’s your flashlight, you dropped it by my bed. Now come and help me set up my room. I want a proper dancer’s pole to display myself. We need some coloured lighting gels. If we’re going to do this, we make a professional job of it.”

Janie was already striding back to her room. Her sheer bossiness and her bouncing bottom was turning him on again. Harold’s erection followed her. Harold followed his erection.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

THE NIGHTMARE. 1781. Henry Fuseli




We’re all familiar with Henry Fuseli’s painting, “The Nightmare”. The feelings of stress and suffocating anxiety that the image evokes. Freud would consider this work as an example of “the uncanny.” The “unheimlich,” the unfriendly world of the shrieking horror of our unconscious. In our unconscious dwells the taboo; those dark secret yearnings of our worst nightmares. “The hag ridden realm of the unconscious.”

I’m still learning about Jung, but I think he would say that this painting is an example of an ancient story; a mythology. A piece of our collective unconscious. A story that is whispered, by candlelight, while snow falls softly outside. Jung would also talk about “the shadow.” For our emotional sanity, we must acknowledge the shadow. Recognise that we do have indecencies, the taboo, in our psyche. Only then can we live healthy, sane lives. We shun the taboo, yet are drawn to it. It fascinates us, in the same way that we cannot turn away from Fuseli’s “Nightmare.”

Fuseli painted the picture in 1781. He produced at least three other versions of “The Nightmare.”

But what is our place in this painting? We are the voyeur, gazing in horror at the potential violation of this beautiful young woman. We anticipate the violation hungrily, at the same time screaming our denial. There is the stench of sulphur, the ghastly shriek of tortured demons. Why does Fuseli want to show us this depravity? Is he telling us that he knows our darkest, deepest secrets? Is he telling us about his own contaminated desires? Why does Fuseli want us here?

Whatever Fuseli’s reason, his painting is an image to haunt our waking hours. To make us afraid of sleep. To dread our dreams. The sinister creak on the stairs, the screams of hell, echoing down through eternity. It is Fuseli’s “Nightmare.”

Contemporary critics found the work scandalous due to its sexual themes. A few years before he painted “The Nightmare,” Fuseli had fallen passionately in love with a woman named Anna Landholdt in Zürich. Landholdt was the niece of his friend, the Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater. Fuseli wrote of his fantasies to Lavater in 1779:

“Last night I had her in bed with me—tossed my bedclothes hugger-mugger—wound my hot and tight-clasped hands about her—fused her body and soul together with my own—poured into her my spirit, breath and strength. Anyone who touches her now commits adultery and incest! She is mine, and I am hers. And have her I will.…”


Fuseli’s painting, influenced Mary Shelley. Shelley would have been familiar with the painting; her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, knew Fuseli well. In a scene from her Gothic novel Frankenstein, (1818), where the creature has murdered Victor’s wife, Shelley seems to draw from Fuseli’s canvas:

"She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by hair."

The novel and Fuseli's biography share a parallel theme: just as Fuseli's incubus is infused with the artist's emotions in seeing Landholdt marry another man, Shelley's monster promises to get revenge on Victor on the night of his wedding. Like Frankenstein's monster, Fuseli's demon symbolically seeks to forestall a marriage.


Fuseli is often quoted as saying, "One of the most unexplored regions of art are dreams".


Tom Lubbock, writing in The Independent, Friday, 7th April 2006, gives us a 21st century reading of Fuseli’s painting.

Can a picture be scary, like a film? You might think not, for a simple reason. What makes a movie scary is not the subject alone, but the timing. You need sequence, you need editing, to create suspense and shock, the horrible realisation, the sudden jolt. And this a picture cannot do - because a picture (so one old theory goes) is all taken in at a glance, in a single blink.

Of course, this is sort of true. Looking at a picture is not like watching a film or turning the pages of a book. You grasp what's going on quite quickly (well, depending on what you notice). A whodunit in paint would be hard to do. But in another way, the glance theory is quite wrong. The eye sees a picture, not in a blink, but in a series of fixations that dart and scatter across its surface.

But the "timing" of a picture - that's something else again. Even though the scene is all before you, a picture can pace and direct your attention. Though it lacks the syntax of a strip cartoon, it can create episodes and sequence and surprises. The sequence may not correspond to literal eye-fixations. (Words on a page have an order, after all, but the eye darts all over the page as it reads). It's a matter of managing the viewer's interest.

To see a pictorial edit at work, take that classic scary picture, Henry Fuseli's “The Nightmare.” The voluptuously flopped sleeping woman is visited in her dreams by a revolting incubus and a frightening horse. All very Gothic, Freudian etc. But put psychology to one side, and look at stage-management.

Look at the picture, and watch how you look at it. It may seem upfront enough, with its three prominent characters, a woman and a couple of creatures. And it's true that these elements are clear(ish) in your field of vision. But you don't attend to them all at once. Fuseli controls your involvement.

“The Nightmare,” is not a fluent, unfolding composition, where one thing leads smoothly to another. It's made up of separate incidents, each requiring a distinct act of attention. Move between them, and attention jumps. What's more, these incidents have an order. The picture arranges things so that you move and jump in sequence. This still image is cunningly and abruptly edited.

The brightest patch is the woman's bust, her breasts, shoulder, throat, cheek, closed eyes, the unconscious mind in the helpless and exposed body. This is the first "shot" in the edit. It is not simply eroticism. It uses eroticism to manage the viewer's attention, and it won't just be the eyes of the male viewer that are immediately drawn to this area. Sexy female vulnerability, with a spotlight on it, is a general hot grab. That's where Fuseli begins his sequence. Though far from the centre, it is the picture's hub, the point from which everything else is paced.

This hub, you notice, is not the whole woman, just a part. The woman's body is itself delivered in shots. The bust is one incident. The left forearm and the flaccid hand, trailing its fingers on the floor, are another. (There's a clear jump of attention as you look between them: this - that.) And the rest of her, the tapering mermaid's tail curve, ending in a single toe-point, is a third shot, another jump. This fragmenting of the passive figure is not only fetishism. It's editing. You the viewer have to put this distrait body together from its parts. It makes it all the more passive, less in control of itself.

And then, the monster! - the devilish hunched incubus, that squats on the woman's belly. The jump juxtaposition is obvious here: compact brown lump set upon stretched-out, languid white curve. There's an extra scari-ness in the way this figure lurks. Its lower half is shadowy and formless, blending into the gloom behind, not really anything. Its hideous shape and nature only come to light, materialise, as you go up, with a gradual realisation.

What adds to the fear, when you see what the creature is, is that it isn't actually doing anything to her. It's just sitting on her, inert, like a monkey-ornament. It's not performing a horrible act. It has some calm and horrible purpose, which is worse. And it turns its bulging eyes to meet the viewer's in a way that shows a mind at work, and may invite complicity.

But as this horror is sinking in, the scene's big shock effect strikes: on the far left the crazy nightmare horse, flash-lit, eyes burning, hair standing on end, barges into the picture out of the darkness, out of nowhere, out of control. It enters suddenly, and Fuseli depicts it like something that is seen suddenly, its form not fully grasped. He paints a Francis Bacon creature, in elusive, flickering highlights and blurs that don't integrate into a single solid. It is hysteria and suddenness embodied. Without its white-hot eyeballs, the horse would hardly read as "head" at all.

The scene carefully paces its horrors. It is made of shots and jumps, gradual realisations, sudden shocks. It is thoroughly and dramatically timed. True, the editing of a picture is always more flexible than the frame-sequence of a cartoon strip or the cuts of a film. You can always go back, you can move between things in other sequences, every part can be related to every other.

You can do your own edit. But still, a scene such as The Nightmare, emphatically divided into its distinct and horrid incidents, puts a potential scare into your every move.