Fur

by Vanessa de Sade

  And, finally, when it was all done and the treaties signed, he went in search of her to honour a promise made to a dying man in a field of blood, tramping across a desolate landscape like nothing any man had ever seen before - trees, buildings, cattle all mashed into oblivion as though by a truculent giant’s hand, the mud oozing with a blaze of flaming red poppies, a memorial to the blood already shed.

  They had bequeathed him his tent and knapsack, plus a gold-coloured tin with a bar of chocolate inside which he hid like Silas Marner’s hoard, guarding it against the rabid beast of his own hunger and the stealthy population of thieves he encountered on the road each day. And he walked and walked, showing the Daguerreotype to old women he met at crossroads, going this way and that as the winter’s frosts slowly encroached and he shivered each night by his mean fire, eventually arriving at the village in November’s smoky gloom and finding definite word.

  Some men - boy’s really - were at work constructing an obelisk from slabs of old stone in the market square, building a memorial to the conflict which had just been, and one of them identified her as the mother of an old school friend, giving precise directions to a homestead in the valley close by, half a day’s tramp, no more, they assured him, their eyes gleaming. “You were there,” one of them breathed as he departed, and it took all he possessed not to laugh in the child’s face.

  ***

  It was a modest farm but he knew it immediately from the man’s stories of home as they lay in their tent together, smoking in the dark, their faces briefly fading into view like phantoms as one would inhale and make the tip glow red, features outlined in chiaroscuro for a brief second before lapsing back into darkness again. Ferme de Noyers a tattered sign read, confirming what he already knew in his heart, and he walked confidently down the slope past a shambling but well-stocked barn and into the kitchen of the old residence.

  Two small children sat on the floor absorbed in some game with a rag doll, a girl about thirteen years tended the stove, and there were older lads with a dray horse on the horizon, heading homewards, but he saw them not. For there, at the spotless scrubbed wood table, sat the woman whose likeness he had carried all these months now, so close to his heart that it had become a part of it, its battered edges shaped to his breast as though they had been fashioned to rest there for ever.

  “Madame, forgive my intrusion, I have come...” he began but she silenced him with an economical gesture of her pale white hand.

  “But of course you are Theo,” the girl at the stove said warmly. “Our father spoke of you constantly in his letters, and Maman knew that you would come one day. Come, sit, join us for dinner while we make up a bed for you, for you must have journeyed many miles to find us and we must show you hospitality.”

  And he was patted and cosseted and fed the best meal he had tasted in many a year, simple country fare excellently cooked and dished up with a glass of fine red wine, the children crowding around him as if he were Saint Nicholas come to visit, and he even brought out the golden tin he had hoarded for so long and shared its contraband amongst them, all the while aware of those impassive grey eyes watching, watching, the beautiful tall woman never speaking but one word.

  ***

  They were farmers and were all abed early, but he found the girls had heated water for him and filled a big brass tub by the dying fire in the kitchen, and he sat and soaked as he washed away the grime and the guilt of the last long years and breathed in the distinctive aroma of crude country soap, dressing finally in the clean nightshirt which had been laid out for him before climbing wearily between the crisp sheets of the welcoming bed. “Has some misfortune befallen your Maman?” he had asked the oldest girl. “Some tragedy to render her dumb like this?”

  But the child had merely laughed and shaken her head. “Maman is not dumb, she speaks only when she has something to say, and, so far, she has had nothing to say to you, Theo, pleasant dreams...”

  And he thought about that now as he lay watching the last gutterings of the single tallow candle they had left him, a feeling very near to contentment seeping over him. He had come from a farm such as this one, many years before when he could still feel. And there were jobs here that could be done, methods which could be improved upon by a man with a little money in his pocket and the strength of a good woman behind him. Yes, he would stay a few days, maybe even a week for propriety, and then propose to the widow. After all, he felt that he already knew her and she would surely not refuse such a reasonable offer.

  And, as if reading his thoughts from her own chamber, he heard the creak of an old board and a soft footfall, then felt the warmth of another body in the narrow box bed beside him, the faint aroma of a soap more delicate than the coarse red bar he had used to clean himself. Then hungry lips were on his own, a vampire’s kiss so powerful that it made his head swim, his cock going up so hard that he thought it would burst.

  And it was darker than a mineshaft at midnight, the fire dead, the candle a pool of warm wax, yet he knew without the shadow of a doubt who it was who hungered for him so, her silence even now speaking volumes as she tugged the nightshirt up over his head and ran her hands up and down his body as if committing his aroused nakedness to her memory and storing it up for the long winter nights to come.

  He kissed her back, just as vehemently, and found the hem of her nightgown and tore it from her, his need making him less gentle than he had dreamed of being, and he found himself trying to hold her down and mount her until she pushed him back and pinned him to the mattress, her knees on his shoulders as she pressed her cunt insistently into his face, still not making a sound as his tongue explored her and finally brought her to climax, her whole body shaking wordlessly as she though she were wracked with shuddering sobs for all that had gone before, the loss, the death and the blood. And, worst of all, the brutality.

  And he thought that she would permit him to fuck her now, now that they were as good as wed, but instead she kept him where he was and reached back in the darkness until she found his huge erect cock and milked him like a stud bull in a couple of brief but practiced strokes, his ejaculation tearing its way out of him in hot reverberating thrusts, his cries surely waking the whole household. But what did it matter. Soon the children would call him Papa and there would be surely now be no need to wait a week, he could propose to the widow in the morning and they could post the banns that Sunday.

  But when the sun rose and the family went about their toil he found his clothes washed and neatly folded at the foot of his bed, his knapsack skilfully packed for him. “But why?” he asked her, when he finally found her, serene, at the big kitchen table, shelling peas. “We could have such a wonderful future, you and I.”

  And her voice was like the love call of plump grey doves on a sunny Sabbath morning. “Ah, Monsieur, what is the future but a flimsy chimera of disappointments and broken promises, while the present is a dull but solid slice of reality, and I must admit that I like my reality just the way it is. Please keep the photograph my husband gave you, it will be warmer to you than I can ever be and bear me no malice for I would not seek to make you wretched and then bear the blame for the loss of that rosy future that you so crave but, I think, can never have...”

  And then, no matter how many times he has relived the moment and tried to read more into it, she was gone in a flurry of skirts and he never saw her again, though to his dying day he kept her likeness pressed tightly against his sad and broken heart.

  Fatso

  1

  Let’s face it, she had always been fat, even as a tiny little girl. My Little Pudding Face, that was what her daddy used to call her when he bounced her like a bonny babe on his protesting knees. She still remembered that, even though her daddy was long gone, over the hills and far away with a receptionist from Swanage, as it happened, and now it was just her and her mother, a vicious sliver of a woman, quite eaten away with her own bitterness, or so the gossips said. Sometimes she felt it was as if she was eating for the two of them.<
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  Anyway, her school years were the usual torture that they were for any teenager, and doubly so for her, because of the weight. Names like Fatso, Lardass, Jumbo and a hundred more unimaginative variations on the same theme yelled at her on a daily basis. Difficult to make friends, of course, even with the other fat girls, because no-one wanted to be lumped in with her level of abuse and they were all quite happy to leave her to it. So, no surprises that she was a loner, haunting the art rooms at lunch breaks and, of course, when she could forge notes to avoid the humiliation of gym class.

  And boys, of course, were right out. Though, even if she had managed to trap one she could never bring him home. Not to the interrogation by the psycho bitch from hell who was her mother, that was for sure. Though all of the boys she knew were pretty obnoxious anyway, mind you, so it wasn’t any real loss, except, of course, sometimes, late at night when the cravings became too much for her and she would touch herself, you know, down there. But she tried not to think about that.

  She had read an interview with her idol, Beth Ditto, once, where Beth was saying that the lure of the fat girl was all in her tits, and that made her cry, because, although she had plenty of ass and hips like the proverbial brick shit house - as the boys in her class so loved to remind her - she had no tits to speak of at all, and had to order online to get bras in a size 48a because the local drapers had never heard of them. And that alone was humiliating enough without having it rubbed in by the woman she adored most in all the world that she was even a failure as a fat girl.

  So she dressed in dark colours and dyed her hair jet streaked with cerise and wore black lipstick and nail varnish and generally kept herself to herself, locking the world out with her earbuds and the screaming rage of Marilyn Manson. And she painted. Oh hell, did she paint. Her tiny attic room a miniature Sistine Chapel with every inch of wall and ceiling space covered in her murals, the furniture a mass of post-punk graffiti frescos, even the curtains and bedcovers embroidered an appliquéd within an inch of their lives.

  So, the full scholarship to art school at nineteen came as no surprise, really, though she had half expected them to take it away again when they saw her and put her on the scales to make sure that their eyes weren’t deceiving them. But it didn’t happen and the schools even fought over her, with Falmouth, the Slade and Glasgow all trying to woo her to their portals. But she had always known what she wanted, and though she swithered for a brief moment over Glasgow, seduced by the lure of all that genuine Rene Mackintosh architecture, as soon as the St Martin’s school of fashion design made their bid she accepted by return post and sped down to her new flat in Long Acre that September, incredulous that her first term’s lecturers were to include Zandra Rhodes and Vivienne Westwood. Hell, she might not be getting fucked, but with arty stuff like this to occupy her days, who cared.

  ***

  Surprisingly, though - well, actually, amazingly - she made lots of friends quickly. The other girls were in awe of her skills and talents, and when she aced her first assignment - design a fantasy stage costume for Lady Gaga - with a confection of sequins hand-sewn onto a lace so transparent it was as if it wasn’t there, there was almost a rush to her studio bay and an excited chattering and admiration-fest that left her reeling and confused.

  And they actually seemed to really like her and nobody cared about her size. Not even the boys. Though most of the males on a fashion design course didn’t really go for girls, you know, that way, so she wasn’t sure if that counted. But then the impossible went and happened. The girls she worked alongside - the Gang of Four they called themselves and there were only three of them, so she guessed that she really must be the fourth - were planning costumes for the college Halloween Ball and it appeared that she was invited. In fact, not just invited but expected to turn up in costume with the rest of them.

  I know, let’s go as Parisian whores, y’know, Moulin Rouge stuff, someone suggested over cappuccinos in the refectory, and before she knew what had hit her she was sketching designs for basques and striped stockings, all their sewing machines whirring late into the night as they worked like a hive of chattering bees to create a series of replica dresses from Toulouse Lautrec posters, recycling vintage fabrics to make everything grungy and down-at heel, the necklines plunging and the skirts hitched up to high above thigh level. She had never felt so goddamned sexy in her whole life.

  And the ball was brilliant, too. As if the DJ had plugged into her own personal play list and they danced to an ear-splitting stream of indignant feminine spleen - Courtney Love, Amanda Palmer, Beth Ditto, Patti Smith - their bright satin costumes drenched in sweat, their gyrating bodies the sensation of the floor.

  And then did a boy not ask her to dance? Not one of the other three. Her. And she knew him. Vaguely. In his final year, she thought, on the fine art course. In fact, she’d seen some of his oils in the early submissions for that year’s degree show, and she would have willingly worshipped at his alter for his brushwork alone. The fact that he was also gorgeous was just an incidental. Tall, very tall, six foot three or more, and skinny. Dressed all in black with neatly cropped raven hair and a tiny beard. Like a fantasy beatnik. You know, a dirty fantasy beatnik in one of those one-handed books that they sold in that collector shop in Soho.

  And she thought that it would be just the one dance, you know, be nice to the talented fat girl in first year as part of the royal duties of a star pupil about to graduate and all that, but no, he came back again and again, bought her drinks and danced close, real close, with her for the last waltz. And then the dance was done and they were going home and her friends had mysteriously vanished and that seemed to be the perfect opening for him to invite her back to his place. Which he did. And she went. Though she was sure by now that he must be a serial killer.

  2

  His flat was an orgy of art, canvases everywhere, finished and half finished, and screeds of drawings pinned to every available surface, all of them nothing short of marvellous. So good, in fact, that she was too busy gawping to even think about sex. Well, until he kissed her, that is, and she could feel that rock-hard bulge in the worn nap of his vintage velvet jeans. Then she wasn’t quite so interested in his art.

  And as for the kiss, that kiss was so-oo amazing. Like being blasted off into space and sent into orbit, with every nerve-ending in her body screaming out fuck-me, fuck-me at the top of its - thankfully - non existent voice. Though she did let out a groan which he took for reticence.

  We can go slowly if you like, he whispered, all concerned-big-brotherly and she wanted to scream, Oh, just shut up and fuck me, you fool. But instead she kissed him hard and then unbuttoned his shirt and let her hands explore him. She had noticed his arms in the taxi coming home, tanned and wiry and covered in thick dark hair that she’d wanted to stroke like he was a kitten or a puppy or something, and when she got his top off she discovered that all of him was like that, his chest a thick matt of soft black curls, warm to the touch like cat fur against naked skin, and she thought that she’d died and gone to heaven.

  You like that? he smiled, undoing his belt and then sliding down the zipper on his jeans, stepping out of them seconds later, his long thin legs covered in fur like his top half, a tight strand of thicker hair on his belly leading down to the waist band of his - predictably - black underpants. And, oh yes, there was one fucker of bulge in there, standing out in front of him like a yardarm on a ship.

  Why stop there? she asked, astonishing herself at her own boldness, but he merely smiled and hooked his thumbs inside the elastic and then slowly unveiled himself for her like a forbidden sculpture, his huge cock bouncing out in front of him, all deep parchment browns and ochres, made even bigger against the dense dark forest of hair on his belly and crotch, balls on him like something equine. And was the boy stiff or what? Every vein bulging, the shaft huge and swollen, the head like a ripe plum peeping out of its soft leather hood. Fuck, she wanted to eat him.

  And, surprisingly for someone of her genera
tion, she had never experienced internet porn. For she had never bothered to buy a tablet or a smart phone - who did she have to text or message, after all? - and the only computer in the house sat downstairs in the lounge right next to her mother’s arm chair. So her knowledge of the aroused male organ was limited to the bundle of American magazines she had bought clandestinely from a small ad in Cosmopolitan, a strangely dated collection of moustachioed tanned men in Stetsons, deliciously naked and clit-lickingly stiff as they posed and primped and jerked each other off, thick come flowing all over the place as their huge cocks spurted and fountained.

  But they had all been snipped, their massive red and purple heads naked and bare, not half concealed like this beauty, and, though she had been wet since he’d danced that last slow dance with her, she felt herself getting even moister now as she reached out to a trembling hand to touch him. Not his cock straight away, although that’s where she really wanted to go, but down his sides and flanks, then his chest and belly with a detour to his thighs before she came up and slid her chubby hand under his balls and felt their weight and heat before coming slowly round and - finally - feeling the girth of his cock.

  I’ve never seen an uncircumcised cock before, she groaned as she finally took him in her whole hand. Can I bare your head, make you naked?

  And she couldn’t believe that she’s just said those words out loud, sure that he would call her a depraved bitch and put his clothes back on again, but instead he just took her hand gently and guided her up the length of him and up to the bulging head, and showed her how to slowly oil the foreskin down and expose him in all his glory. The big ripe-plum already wet, the little slit open and ready to come any moment.