"Marie, come view the fire." Sade started toward the bedroom.
Wil assumed that Sade was mad, with talk of vampires and setting a fire in midsummer. He watched as Sade carried Marie to the living room.
"Come, sit before the fire, Marie." Upon setting her down on the oval rug in front of the fire, Sade lifted an oil lamp in his hands.
"Better than lighter fluid, monsieur." He dumped the full contents of the lamp onto Marie's head, rubbing the oil into the fine fibers of her hair.
Marie twitched and wrinkled her face horribly. The oil seemed to run into her eyes and mouth. She attempted to spit the oil out, and Sade scooped the oil from her chin to press between her lips.
Wil's body felt tired. His arms ached, his legs wobbled unsteadily, and his heart beat so faintly that he couldn't be sure he still lived.
"I am sorry for the mess, monsieur, but there is a shortness of time." Sade reached for the ax that he had carried in with the wood. "I cannot tarry with you any longer, Marie. I have someone waiting to begin her new life, and she is eager." Sade swung back the ax and lowered the sharp edge quickly on Marie's neck. The head rolled away from the body, stopping short of the flagstones leading to the fireplace.
"She, too, is eager, monsieur." He smiled at Wil and shrugged when he received no response.
Blood soaked the oval rug and had splattered the old Barcalounger his father had used every night.
Wil looked down at his right hand and found that blood had marred his skin, round red dots blotching the blue and white of his veins and skin. The smell of his mistress' blood caused his breath to catch. By the time he noticed the odor of burning flesh, he found himself standing on the oval rug, lapping at his right hand.
"Feel free, monsieur. Don't be embarrassed. I will certainly not fight you for that crone's stale hostile blood." Sade made a magnanimous hand motion toward the headless body dripping its contents. "If you do not hurry, it will be wasted in the fibers of that disgusting cheap rug." Sade continued to poke at Marie's burning head, which melted in the fireplace.
The blackened flesh shrivelled and layered itself onto the burning wood.
"I will take the skull bones with me, monsieur, and dispose of them when I am sure that they are ground into unformable ashes. You, monsieur, are wasting time." Briefly he used the poker to indicate Marie's headless corpse. "You will need the nourishment. I suspect it will take you a while to understand certain aspects of your new life, but here, allow me to guide you this once." Sade walked over to Wil and pressed the hot poker on Wil's left shoulder, driving him down onto his knees directly in front of the spilling blood. Sade left Wil there to drink his full.
Wil realized he was alone when the stickiness of Marie's blood made him feel dirty. Blood no longer flowed from between the body's shoulders. The staleness of blood, wool, and dirt emitted by the oval rug turned his stomach, and he lifted himself to his feet and returned to his father's bedroom to curl up next to the cold body.
"Profit from the fairest period in your life; these golden years of our pleasure are only too few and too brief. If we are so fortunate as to have enjoyed them, delicious memories console and amuse us in our old age. These years lost... and we are racked by bitterest regrets, gnawing remorse conjoins with sufferings of age and the fatal onset of the grave is all tears and brambles... But have you the madness to hope for immortality?
Philosophy in the Bedroom
by the
Marquis de Sade
Excerpt from
Quenched
Book Two
Histoires de Le Vampire Marquis de Sade
* * *
Prologue
Fog dampened every surface, sinking into clothing and through flesh to chill the bones of the San Francisco inhabitants. Day bowed out to allow night’s darker citizens to walk the streets, moving freely in each others shadows. Homeless huddled under a freeway overpass setting up their bedrooms on cement sidewalks. One man swept the sidewalk with a flimsy broom, losing straw with every pass, but cleaning away the day’s trash, dumping it at the curb. Slices of cardboard rested atop mounds of blankets, clothes, and personal property that the man had collected into his Safeway cart. He had separated himself from the homeless crowd half a block away in order to retire for a decent night’s sleep.
“Lookit old Sam across the street. He’s going to wear himself out with all that tidying up. I can hear him huffing and puffing from here.” The black man spoke the words with a smile on his face. He liked Sam, but like the others on the block thought Sam to be an eccentric. “Cliff, how much dirt you think he manages to eliminate with all his effort?”
Cliff rubbed his red beard and thought a while. In the midst of his meditation, Cliff set his hands flat on the ground and lifted his behind, twisting his neck to the side, allowing himself to check the sidewalk on which he sat. Relieved, he plopped his rear back down on the ground. “I’d say he ain’t accomplishing much.”
The black man scratched his crotch and leaned back against the overpass wall.
“But he sure gives himself a workout each night, don’t he? Cliff, if you ever see me, myself, and I, Emory Lansing, doing something like that, call the police and have me locked up.”
“Shit, I couldn’t do that.”
“I know you’d miss me, but living with a nut is no life.”
“Shit. I ain’t got the change to call the police, and if I walked up to a cop to complain, he’d probably throw me into a cell.”
“Lucky for you that you’ll never have to face that tragedy. I mean having me put away in a loony bin. Jail you’ll manage on your own. But I come from good solid stock. Nobody in my family ever go bonkers. Had an old aunt that used to like to go down to the local bodega in Harlem topless on hot summer afternoons. Wasn’t nuts, though; just too lazy to get completely dressed for such a short trip.”
“Hell, man, when it hits the nineties in New York, I wouldn’t blame a nun for going topless.”
“You get to the shelter today?”
“Naw, managed to scrounge up some change and buy myself a burger down at the Mac’s.”
“Hell, you missed a great Jerry Springer Show. Eleven a. m. each weekday I’m down at the shelter, front seat, sniffing the beginnings of lunch preparation, goosing my appetite with some heavy repartee. I love that show. Best thing on the air. And I think it’s good for society. These people get to go down to a television studio and work out their grievances within the confines of a well-refereed setting. Those Springer bouncers are better than those refs over on the boxing shows. Nobody gets hurt. Occasionally some babe complains about a broken nail, or scratch, but on the whole, it’s a real safe way of airing your disagreements. A couple of times after a commercial I see a guest with a Band-aid stuck to his nose or forehead, but it don’t get any worse than that. Sometimes I get so excited I’m whooping and cheering ‘Jerry’ with the audience. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Cliff gave out with an uncomfortable chuckle.
“How many times you seen the show?”
Cliff shrugged and rubbed the side of his face against his camouflage jacket.
“No more than a handful, I bet. You gotta come down to the shelter with me and catch the action. I tell you, when they start swinging and the babes start ripping each others clothes off, I damn near piss my pants.”
A few cars still sped by, but otherwise the mood was quiet. Most of the homeless snuggled under rags and cardboard, replenishing the day’s lost energy. All except for sleepy-eyed Cliff and loquacious Emory.
“You know, I made a few dollars today myself,” said Emory. “Didn’t waste it on any Mac, though. Naw, I’m thinking more in terms of French cuisine.”
“They sell French fries at the Mac,” quipped Cliff.
“Hey, give me a break. I need to dream of something. Ever have those French snails?”
Cliff shook his head and adjusted his woollen cap further down on his forehead.
“Me neither, but I once read an art
icle about them in one of those food mags.”
“You read Gourmet?”
“Hell, I don’t remember the name of the mag. It was the first one I picked up when I got to the library. Hid behind it, hoping the librarian wouldn’t bust me. It was pissing cats and dogs that day, and I wanted to dry off a bit. The librarian let me hang out long enough for me to read about these bugs in a shell. Starve the shit out of them for a few days, then toss some garlic and butter over them in a hot saucepan, and you got a real French meal.”
“What about that long thing they eat?” asked Cliff.
“You got a dirty mind.”
“The bread. The bread.”
“Oh, yeah, you need some of that to dip into the sauce.”
At the end of the block a man in a wheelchair tried to maneuver onto the sidewalk. He kept slipping back onto the street, almost spinning out of control into the midst of traffic.
“What’s that?” asked Emory
“Some cripple.”
Emory slapped Cliff on the side of the head.
“Didn’t your mamma teach you to respect the disabled? He looks like he needs some help. Come on, let’s go down and help him onto the sidewalk before some car smashes into him.” Emory stood and looked over his shoulder at Cliff. “Come on, get your white ass up off the ground and do a good deed. It’ll make you feel better.”
“I don’t feel so bad now. All I need is some sleep.” Cliff slowly got to his feet, almost falling over half-way, except that Emory grabbed one of Cliff’s arms to give him balance.
The two men hunched their shoulders against the clammy cold fog and walked in the direction of the man in the wheelchair.
“Wait up, man. We’ll give you a hand,” yelled Emory.
The wheelchair came to a stop against the back end of an old Lincoln town car.
Emory checked the sloped sidewalk and couldn’t see any reason for the difficulty in maneuvering the wheelchair.
“Something wrong with your wheels?” Emory moved toward the seated man, and with one hand on the man’s knee, squatted down to check out the wheelchair.
“I don’t see any problem. Cliff, you used to run a bicycle shop. Come over and check out these wheels.”
“Bicycles and wheelchairs ain’t the same thing, Emory.” But he obliged his friend and also squatted next to the wheelchair.
“What am I supposed to be looking for, Emory?”
Suddenly Emory was swept backward into the arms of a dark hulk that gnashed its teeth before burying them deep in his friend’s neck.
Cliff never made it to his feet, because the man in the wheelchair dug his fingers into Cliffs voice box, exploding the fleshy cartilage.
Table of Contents
“Rich in imagery and sympathetic
This book is a work
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Excerpt from
Prologue
Sips of Blood Page 25
