Pictures to make your mind wander

In between bouts of writing, I've been binging on Cthulhu mythos stories - which in turn, got me rummaging around Deviant Art in search of Old Ones pictures and and whatever else happened to grab my attention. Here's a fraction of the result.

Some of the pictures below became part of the Call of Cthulhu game, and some just stuck in my head because they're hot. But I'm going to refrain, very intentionally, from giving you any context in this blog post. You can imagine whatever scenario fits your fetish; and if you want to know what the artist really intended, you can click the author links at the bottom of this post. The author above left is Dave Palumbo. In the middle, left-to-right, the artists are Jowie Lim, Felicia Cano, and Thaldir.

 I need to say a bit more about the painting at right, by Donato Giancola. He's not a fetishist (although he does like robots and all the other SF/F tropes most of us enjoy); he's just an excellent artist whom I follow because I love his work. I'm including this picture because it perfectly feeds my fetish without even trying. But in fact, Giancola says in his description of the piece that it was inspired by a George R. R. Martin short story called "The Glass Flower." That intrigued me enough to make me buy the e-book (It's just $1.99); and I'm happy report that the story is excellent, it involves possession (I know some of you are into that), and Giancola's picture really is just "inspired by" the story. It doesn't spoil the plot at all. But ohh, does it makes me think of other ways the story could have gone!

Follow these links to find the pictures on Deviant Art:
Dave Palumbo (picture at the top of this post)
Jowie Lim (first of the three pictures in a row)
Felicia Cano (second of the three pictures in a row)
Thaldir (third of the three pictures in a row)
Donato Giancola (final picture)

Vintage - but blazing hot - MC

painting by Zdzisław Beksiński

Before there was H.P. Lovecraft, there was Robert W. Chambers. I'm betting that you don't know who Chambers is, but that you'd recognize at least some of these names: The King in Yellow, the Yellow Sign, Hastur, and Carcosa. Lovecraft and Lovecraft's followers took them all and ran with them (Well, Chambers actually took Carcosa from Ambrose Bierce and ran with it, but then Lovecraft's gang took it too and ran even further).

Chambers is a much better writer than Lovecraft. In fact, Lovecraft once said, "Chambers is like Rupert Hughes and a few other fallen Titans – equipped with the right brains and education but wholly out of the habit of using them" - by which Lovecraft meant that Chambers was a fool to stop writing weird fiction and to shift instead to romance and adventure. I wish Chambers had written more weird fiction, myself, but at least he gave us five "King in Yellow" pieces and several other good spook stories, including one called "The Case of Mr. Helmer" in which you'd swear Neil Gaiman's own famous Death makes an appearance. Just for my own pleasure, I made an e-book of Chambers' "King in Yellow" stories and some of his other best work, and you're welcome to download a free copy if you like. All his work is in the public domain, so none of us will get in trouble for it. Here's the Dropbox link. And here's a hint: The very best "King in Yellow" story is "The Yellow Sign."

But all the above is just preface. After Chambers went mainstream, he wrote a handful of other supernatural novels, including one called The Slayer of Souls. It's about a young woman named Tressa who's captured by a devil-worshiping cult and escapes after learning all their magic. She then joins the US Secret Service in an attempt to track down and eliminate the cult leaders, who can control human minds and turn them to the worship of Erlik, the devil. It's a pretty cool concept, and especially cool when you realize that the novel was written just as women were beginning to get voting rights, yet Tressa is far more powerful than any man in the story. Then there's another powerful woman, one of the villains, who has this encounter with Tressa's so-called protector, Cleves:

---

Now, grasping his pistol but not drawing it, he began another stealthy tour of the apartment, exploring every nook and cranny. And, at the end, had discovered nothing new.

When at length he realised that, as far as he could discover, there was not a living thing in the place excepting himself, a very faint chill grew along his neck and shoulders, and he caught his breath suddenly, deeply.

He had come back to the bedroom, now. The perfume of the orchids saturated the still air.

And, as he stood staring at them, all of a sudden he saw, where their twisted stalks rested in the transparent bowl of water, something moving—something brilliant as a live ember gliding out from among the mass of submerged stems—a living fish glowing in scarlet hues and winnowing the water with grotesquely trailing fins as delicate as filaments of scarlet lace.

To and fro swam the fish among the maze of orchid stalks. Even its eyes were hot and red as molten rubies; and as its crimson gills swelled and relaxed and swelled, tints of cherry-fire waxed and waned over its fat and glowing body.

And vaguely, now, in the perfume saturated air, Cleves seemed to sense a subtle taint of evil,—something sinister in the intense stillness of the place—in the jewelled fish gliding so silently in and out among the pallid convolutions of the drowned stems.

As he stood staring at the fish, the drugged odour of the orchids heavy in his throat and lungs, something stirred very lightly in the room.

Chills crawling over every limb, he looked around across his shoulder.

There was a figure seated cross-legged in the middle of the bed!

Then, in the perfumed silence, the girl laughed.

For a full minute neither of them moved. No sound had echoed her low laughter save the deadened pulsations of his own heart. But now there grew a faint ripple of water in the bowl where the scarlet fish, suddenly restless, was swimming hither and thither as though pursued by an invisible hand.

With the slight noise of splashing water in his ears, Cleves stood staring at the figure on the bed. Under her chinchilla the girl seemed to be all a pale golden tint—hair, skin, eyes. The scant shred of an evening gown she wore, the jewels at her throat and breast, all were yellow and amber and saffron-gold.

And now, looking him in the eyes, she leisurely disengaged the robe of silver fur from her naked shoulders and let it fall around her on the bed. For a second the lithe, willowy golden thing gathered there as gracefully as a coiled snake filled him with swift loathing. Then, almost instantly, the beauty of the lissome creature fascinated him.

She leaned forward and set her elbows on her two knees, and rested her face between her hands—like a gold rose-bud between two ivory petals, he thought, dismayed by this young thing's beauty, shaken by the dull confusion of his own heart battering his breast like the blows of a rising tide.

"What do you wish?" she inquired in her soft young voice. "Why have you come secretly into my rooms to search—and clasping in your hand a loaded pistol deep within your pocket?"

"Why have you hidden yourself until now?" he retorted in a dull and laboured voice.

"I have been here."

"Where?"

"Here!... Looking at you.... And watching my scarlet fish. His name is Dzelim. He is nearly a thousand years old and as wise as a magician. Look upon him, my lord! See how rapidly he darts around his tiny crystal world!—like a comet through outer star-dust, running the eternal race with Time.... And—yonder is a chair. Will my lord be seated—at his new servant's feet?"

A strange, physical weariness seemed to weight his limbs and shoulders. He seated himself near the bed, never taking his heavy gaze from the smiling, golden thing which squatted there watching him so intently....

She lifted one hand and with her forefinger made signs from right to left and then downward as though writing in Turkish and in Chinese characters.

"It is written," she said in a low voice, "that we belong to God and we return to him. Look out what you are about, my lord!"

He drew his pistol from his overcoat and, holding it, rested his hand on his knee.

"Now," he said hoarsely, "while we await the coming of Togrul Kahn, you shall remain exactly where you are, and you shall tell me exactly who you are in order that I may decide whether to arrest you as an alien enemy inciting my countrymen to murder, or to let you go as a foreigner who is able to prove her honesty and innocence."

The girl laughed:

"Be careful," she said. "My danger lies in your youth and mine—somewhere between your lips and mine lies my only danger from you, my lord."

A dull flush mounted to his temples and burned there....

Look upon me, my lord!

There was a golden light in his eyes which seemed to stiffen the muscles and confuse his vision. He heard her voice again as though very far away:

"It is written that we shall love, my lord—thou and I—this night—this night. Listen attentively. I am thy slave. My lips shall touch thy feet. Look upon me, my lord!"

There was a dazzling blindness in his eyes and in his brain. He swayed a little still striving to fix her with his failing gaze. His pistol hand slipped sideways from his knee, fell limply, and the weapon dropped to the thick carpet. He could still see the glimmering golden shape of her, still hear her distant voice:

"It is written that we belong to God.... Tokhta!..."

Over his knees was settling a snow-white [shroud]; on it, in his lap, lay a naked knife. There was not a sound in the room save the rushing and splashing of the scarlet fish in its crystal bowl.

Bending nearer, the girl fixed her yellow eyes on the man who looked back at her with dying gaze, sitting upright and knee deep in his shroud.

Then, noiselessly she uncoiled her supple golden body, extending her right arm toward the knife.

"Look upon me attentively, my lord!

Her smooth little hand closed on the hilt; the scarlet fish splashed furiously in the bowl, dislodging a blossom or two which fell to the carpet and slowly faded into mist.

Now she grasped the knife, and she slipped from the bed to the floor and stood before the dazed man.

"This is the Namaz-Ga," she said in her silky voice. "Behold, this is the appointed Place of Prayer. Gaze around you, my lord. These are the shadows of mighty men who come here to see you die in the Place of Prayer."

Cleves's head had fallen back, but his eyes were open. The Baroulass girl took his head in both hands and turned it hither and thither. And his glazing eyes seemed to sweep a throng of shadowy white-robed men crowding the room. And ... his stiffening lips parted in an uttered cry, and sagged open, flaccid and soundless.

The Baroulass sorceress lifted the shroud from his knees and spread it on the carpet, moving with leisurely grace about her business and softly intoning the Prayers for the Dead.

Then, having made her arrangements, she took her knife into her right hand again and came back to the half-conscious man, and stood close in front of him, bending near and looking curiously into his dimmed eyes.

"Ayah!" she said smilingly. "This is the Place of Prayer. And you shall add your prayer to ours before I use my knife. So! I give you back your power of speech. Pronounce the name of Erlik!"

Very slowly his dry lips moved and his dry tongue trembled. The word they formed was,

"Tressa!"

---

Not bad at all for a novel published in 1920, eh? And you can find The Slayer of Souls for free too, since it's in the public domain. I forgot where I found my copy, but I'll be glad to put that in my Dropbox too if anyone asks for it. Just be warned that the rest of the novel isn't anywhere near as hot as this scene; it's all very, very Christian; and Chambers thinks socialism and "lamaism" (by which I think he means Buddhism) are tools of the devil. The best thing about it, IMO, is its secret feminism. I'm not sure Chambers himself knew what he was implying by making Tressa the most powerful character in the book.

Maneater

If you've been following this blog for a while, you already know I love Neil Gaiman beyond words. And if you've been following the news from Comic Con and/or any of the SF/supernatural fiction-related websites, you know that Gaiman's book American Gods is being filmed as a TV series for Starz. The first trailer dropped a couple of days ago, and it was everything I could have hoped for. Gah, Peter Stormare alone, holding that sledgehammer, is American Gods brought to life.

Of course, there's nothing sexy about Peter Stormare (at least not in this role). What is sexy is the goddess Bilquis. I wasn't sure, until I saw the trailer, how much we'd see of her most memorable scene; but it looks like we're going to get an R-rated version at least. Gaiman has confirmed this, and he says that all the best scenes and lines from the book are going to be in the series. That includes the goddess Media (played by Gillian Anderson!), manifesting as Lucy from I Love Lucy, asking our protagonist if he wants to "see Lucy's tits."

I'll embed the trailer at the bottom of this post, and I'll encourage you to watch it at least twice so you can take in every amazing little detail. Notice, especially, the look of glowing satisfaction in Bilquis' eyes after she does her thing. And just in case you need a reminder, this is her thing:

---

He unbuttons his blue jeans and removes his olive T-shirt. She massages his white shoulders with her brown fingers; then she turns him over and begins to make love to him with her hands, and her fingers, and her tongue.

It seems to him that the lights in the red room have been dimmed, and the sole illumination comes from the candle, which burns with a bright flame.

"What's your name?" he asks her.

"Bilquis," she tells him, raising her head. "With a Q."

"A what?"

"Never mind."

He is gasping now. "Let me fuck you," he says. "I have to fuck you."

"Okay, hon," she says. "We'll do it. But will you do something for me, while you're doing it?"

"Hey," he says, suddenly tetchy. "I'm paying you, you know."

She straddles him, in one smooth movement, whispering, "I know, honey. I know, you're paying me, and I mean, look at you. I should be paying you, I'm so lucky..."

He purses his lips, trying to show that her hooker talk is having no effect on him, he can't be taken; that she's a street whore, for Chrissakes, while he's practically a producer, and he knows all about last-minute ripoffs, but she doesn't ask for money. Instead she says, "Honey, while you're giving it to me, while you're pushing that big hard thing inside of me, will you worship me?"

"Will I what?"

She is rocking back and forth on him: the engorged head of his penis is being rubbed against the wet lips of her vulva.

"Will you call me goddess? Will you pray to me? Will you worship me with your body?"

He smiles. Its that all she wants? We've all got our kinks, at the end of the day. "Sure," he says. She reaches her hand between her legs and slips him inside her.

"Is that good, is it, goddess?" he asks, gasping.

"Worship me, honey," says Bilquis, the hooker.

"Yes," he says, "I worship your breasts and your hair and your cunt. I worship your thighs and your eyes and your cherry-red lips..."

"Yes..." she croons, riding him.

"I worship your nipples, from which the milk of life flows. Your kiss is honey and your touch scorches like fire, and I worship it." His words are becoming more rhythmic now, keeping pace with the thrust and roll of their bodies. "Bring me your lust in the morning, and bring me relief and your blessing in the evening. Let me walk in dark places unharmed and let me come to you once more and sleep beside you and make love with you again. I worship you with everything that is within me, and everything inside my mind, with everywhere I've been and my dreams and my..." he breaks off, panting for breath. "What are you doing? That feels amazing. So amazing..." and he looks down at his hips, at the place where the two of them conjoin, but her forefinger touches his chin and pushes his head back, so he is looking only at her face and at the ceiling once again.

"Keep talking, honey," she says. "Don't stop. Doesn't it feel good?"

"It feels better than anything has ever felt," he tells her, meaning it as he says it. "Your eyes are stars, burning in the, shit, the firmament, and your lips are gentle waves that lick the sand, and I worship them," and now he's thrusting deeper and deeper insider her; he feels electric, as if his whole lower body has become sexually charged: priapic, engorged, blissful.

"Bring me your gift," he mutters, no longer knowing what he is saying, "your one true gift, and make me always this...always so...I pray...I..."

And then the pleasure crests into orgasm, blasting his mind into void, his head and self and entire being a perfect blank as he thrusts deeper into her and deeper still...

Eyes closed, spasming, he luxuriates in the moment; and then he feels a lurch, and it seems to him that he is hanging, head down, although the pleasure continues.

He opens his eyes.

He thinks, grasping for thought and reason again, of birth, and wonders, without fear, in a moment of perfect postcoital clarity, whether what he sees is some kind of illusion.

This is what he sees:

He is inside her to the chest, and as he stares at this in disbelief and wonder she rests both hands upon his shoulders and puts gentle pressure on his body.

He slipslides further insider her.

"How are you doing this to me?" he asks, or he thinks he asks, but perhaps it is only in his head.

"You're doing it, honey," she whispers. He feels the lips of her vulva, tight around his upper chest and back, constricting and enveloping him. He wonders what this would look like to somebody watching them. He wonders why he is not scared. And then he knows.

"I worship you with my body," he whispers, as she pushes him inside her. Her labia pull slickly across his face, and his eyes slip into darkness.

She stretches on the bed, like a huge cat, and then she yawns. "Yes," she says. "You do."

It took a little longer to come than I thought

Must have been practicing tantra or something, but here it is at last, and I couldn't be prouder. :)

Here's the link, and here's the full description. Have fun!

If you have a fetish, chances are that you’ll find it in this book. At least 20 different naughty needs are bound up in these stories, including BDSM, latex, suspension, dark magic, heavy rubber, total enclosure, hypnosis, anonymous trysts, corsets, ballet boots, leather, pony girls, gimp suits, masturbation, collars, chains, and both damsels *and* their knights in shining armor in distress.

In “Solitaire,” the simplest of computer games draws a woman into the deepest levels of heavy rubber slavery.

In “Knights in White Bondage,” a fetish party is interrupted by a young man claiming that the slave of a self-proclaimed enchantress really *is* enslaved, and that he’s come to rescue her.

“Quick and Dirty” is just what it says: a filthy little tale about a tryst in a public bathroom.

In “Spellbound,” a supernatural researcher finds out that fairies are all too real – and all too seductive.

Finally, in “High Strung,” a powerful Queen comes to parley with a sorceress but finds herself in over her head – and over everybody else’s heads as well.

Slave-Bride of the Sidhe is now available for purchase!

I've just uploaded the book to Smashwords, and as a thanks to those of you who read my blog, here's your coupon code to get 25% off: ZL39Z. The code is only good for one week, so hurry if you want to use it. Here's the Amazon link if you'd like to buy from there.

Here's the synopsis:

There’s something different about Ethna. She’s fond of her husband but she doesn’t crave his touch, and what she does crave is so strange and powerful that she can’t explain it even to herself. She seems to find an answer when she’s kidnaped by a fairy king and plunged into a world of supernatural submission, but then her husband rescues her, and she realizes King Finvarra was nothing like her heart’s desire. But she still desires something, and her experience with Finvarra has somehow brought her closer to the truth. She’ll just have to patient, and to explore her innermost depths, before she can find her true calling. Then she’ll know exactly what – and whom – she really wants.

This story is a sexed-up retelling of an ancient Celtic folk tale with an all-new second act that’s twice as titillating as the first.

Enjoy!

hot sex

That's not just a click-bait title. I'm about to share with you a magma-hot sex scene, one of the best I've ever read - even though it doesn't involve any MC and the couple are hetero. But don't worry; this scene is in no way vanilla. The man, Boone, is dead. He's been resurrected as a monster and it sickens him; but his girlfriend isn't bothered by something as unimportant as the lack of a pulse, and she wants him off his mopey ass. You see, Boone's in jail, surrounded by a lynch mob, and he has to break out before the humans finish him. Then they have to save the necropolis of Midian that made Boone what he is. It seems like a tall order, but Boone has plenty of power. He just needs someone with power over him - the merely human Lori - to bring him back to pseudo-life.

This is an excerpt from the novella Cabal, by Clive Barker - for my money, the best erotica writer outside of the erotica genre.

---

"They have to finish me, Lori. Put me out of my misery."

"I don't want you out of your misery," she said.

"But I do!" he replied, looking up at her for the first time. Seeing his face, she remembered how many had doted on him, and understood why. Pain could have no more persuasive apologists than his bones, his eyes.

"I want out," he said. "Out of this body. Out of this life."

"You can't. Midian needs you. It's being destroyed, Boone."

"Let it go! Let it all go. Midian's just a hole in the ground, full of things that should lie down and be dead. They know that, all of 'em. They just haven't got the balls to do what's right."

"Nothing's right," she found herself saying (how far she'd come to this bleak relativity), "except what you feel and know."

His small fury abated. The sadness that replaced it was more profound than ever.

"I feel dead," he said. "I know nothing."

"That's not true," she replied, taking the first steps toward him she'd taken since entering the cell. He flinched as if he expected her to strike him.

"You know me. You feel me."

She took hold of his arm and pulled it up toward her. He didn't have time to make a fist. She laid his palm on her stomach.

"You think you disgust me, Boone? You think you horrify me? You don't."

She drew his hand up toward her breasts.

"I still want you, Boone. Midian wants you too, but I want you more. I want you cold, if that's the way you are. I want you dead, if that's the way you are. And I'll come to you if you won't come to me. I'll let them shoot me down."

"No," he said.

Her grip on his hand was light now. He could have slipped it, but he chose to leave his touch upon her, with only the thin fabric of her blouse intervening. She wished she could dissolve it at will, have his hand stroking the skin between her breasts.

"They're going to come for us sooner or later," she said.

Nor was she bluffing. There were voices from outside. A lynch mob gathering. Maybe the monsters were forever. But so were their persecutors.

"They'll destroy us both, Boone. You for what you are. Me for loving you. And I'll never hold you again. I don't want that, Boone. I don't want us dust in the same wind. I want us flesh."

Her tongue had outstripped her intention. She hadn't meant to say it so plainly. But it was said now, and true. She wasn't ashamed of it.

"I won't let you deny me, Boone," she told him. The words were their own engine. They drove her hand to Boone's cold scalp. She snatched a fist of his thick black hair.

He didn't resist her. Instead the hand on her chest closed on the blouse, and he went down onto his knees in front of her, pressing his face to her crotch, licking at it as if to tongue her clean of clothes and enter her with spit and spirit all in one.

She was wet beneath the fabric. He smelled her heat for him. Knew what she's said was no lie. He kissed her cunt, or the cloth that hid her cunt, over and over and over.

"Forgive yourself, Boone," she said. He nodded.

She took tighter hold on his hair, and pulled him away from the bliss of her scent.

"Say it," she told him. "Say you forgive yourself."

He looked up from his pleasure, and she could see before he spoke the weight of shame had gone from his face. Behind his sudden smile she met the monster's eyes, dark, and darkening still as he delved for it. The look made her ache.

"Please..." she murmured, "love me."

He pulled at her blouse. It tore. His hand went through the gap in one smooth motion, and beneath her bra to her breast. This was madness, of course. The mob would be upon them if they didn't get out quickly. But then madness had drawn her into this circle of dust and flies in the first place; why be surprised her journey had brought her round to this new insanity? Better this than life without him. Better this than practically anything.

He was getting to his feet, teasing her tit from hiding, putting his cold mouth to her hot nipple, flicking it, licking it, tongue and teeth in perfect play. Death had made a lover of him. Given him knowledge of flesh and how to rouse it, made him easy with the body's mysteries. He was everywhere about her, working his hips against hers in slow grinding circles - trailing his tongue from her breasts to the sweet bowl between her clavicles, and up along the ridge of her throat to her chin, thence to her mouth.

Only once in her life had there been such wrenching hunger in her. In New York, years before, she'd met and fucked with a man whose name she'd never known, but whose hands and lips seemed to know her better than herself.

"Have a drink with me?" she'd said, when they'd unglued themselves.

He'd told her no almost pityingly, as though someone so ignorant of the rules was bound for grief. So she'd watched him dress and leave, angry with herself for asking, and with him for such practiced detachment. But she'd dreamt of him a dozen times in the weeks after, revisiting their squalid moments together, hungry for them again.

She had them here. Boone was the lover of that dark corner, perfected. Cool and feverish, urgent and studied. She knew his name this time, but he was still strange to her. And in the fervor of his possession, and in her heat for him, she felt that other lover, and all the lovers who'd come and gone before him, burned up. It was only their ash in her now, where their tongues and necks and cocks had been, and she had power over them completely.

Boone was unzipping himself. She took his length in her hand. Now it was his turn to sigh as she ran her fingers along the underside of his erection, up from his balls to where the ring of his circumcision scar bore a nugget of tender flesh. She stroked him there, tiny movements to match the measure of his tongue back and forth between her lips. Then, on the same sudden impulse, the teasing time was over. He was lifting her skirt, tearing at her underwear, his fingers going where only hers had been for too long. She pushed him back against the wall, pulled his jeans down to midthigh. Then, one arm hooked around his shoulders, the other hand enjoying the silk of his cock before it was out of sight, she took him inside. He resisted her speed, a delicious war of want which had her at screaming pitch in seconds. She was never so open, nor had ever needed to be. He filled her to overflowing.

Then it really began. After the promises, the proof. Bracing his upper back against the wall he angled himself so as to throw his fuck up into her, her weight its own insistence. She licked his face. He grinned. She spat in it. He laughed and spat back.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Go on. Yes."

All she could manage was affirmatives. Yes to his spittle, yes to his cock, yes to this life in death, and joy in life and death forever and ever.

His answer was honey-hipped, wordless labor, teeth clenched, brow plowed. The expression on his face made her cunt spasm. To see him shut his eyes against her pleasure, to know that the sight of her bliss took him too close to be countenanced. They had such power each over each. She demanded his motion with motion of her own, one hand gripping the brick beside his head so she could raise herself along his length and then impale herself again. There was no finer hurt. She wished it could never stop.

But there was a voice at the door. She could hear it through her whining head.

"Quickly."

It was Narcisse.

"Quickly." Boone heard him too, and the din behind his voice as the lynchers gathered. He matched her new rhythm, up to meet her descent.

"Open your eyes," she said.

He obeyed, grinning at the command. It was too much for him, meeting her eyes. Too much for her, meeting his. The pact struck, they parted till her cunt only sucked at the head of his cock - so slicked it might slip from her - then closed on each other for one final stroke.

The joy of it made her cry out, but he choked her yell with his tongue, sealing their eruption inside their mouths. Not so below. Undammed after months, his come overflowed and ran down her legs, its course colder than his scalp or his kisses.

It was Narcisse who brought them back from their world of two into that of many. The door was now open. He was watching them without embarrassment.

"Finished?" he wanted to know.

Boone wiped his lips back and forth on Lori's, spreading their saliva from cheek to cheek.

"For now," he said, looking only at her.

"So can we get going?" Narcisse said.

"Whenever. Wherever."

"Midian," came the instant reply.

"Midian, then."

The perfect robotic slave

I've had golems on the brain for a few years, thinking about the mind control possibilities associated with an utterly will-less slave. In fact, if I ever get around to writing that Tenpack of Trixies sequel I once hinted about, it's going to feature a woman turned into a golem.

I guess most people know what golems are these days, although they were pretty esoteric "monsters" when I was a kid. I only knew about them because I was into horror stories and supernatural stuff in general. But if you don't know what they are, I'll tell you: they're basically robots made of clay that have been brought to life by rabbinic magic.

At the moment I'm reading a damn good book called The Golem and the Jinni. I'm telling you how good it is right up front because even if I weren't writing about it here to highlight the MC element, I'd still be talking about the book somewhere just to recommend that people read it. It's just a great story, period. But since this is a blog about mind control, I'll focus on that MC element like I know you want me to.

In this book the golem is female and looks completely human (both of which are unusual traits among her kind). She was created to be the wife of a man who dropped dead almost the moment he "woke" her, and since then she's been masterless...sort of. You'll see what I mean in a minute. The golem is living in 1899/1900 New York City, where she's become friends with a masterless jinni. The jinni was freed from a flask in which he'd been trapped for about 1000 years, and he has no memory of how he got in there. He just has an iron band around his wrist that limits his powers, and a vague memory of a wizard clamping it on him - which enslaved him. But the wizard is apparently long dead and the jinni is mostly free. He's not bound to anyone now, but he's stuck in human form and has other frustrating limitations.

Now here's a passage where the golem and the jinni talk about their pasts, the attraction and horror of being someone's mindless slave. I think you'll like it.

---

She shook her head. "You misunderstand me. Each golem is built to serve a master. When I woke, I was already bound to mine. To his will. I heard his every thought, and I obeyed with no hesitation."

"That's terrible," the Jinni said.

"To you, perhaps. To me it felt like the way things were meant to be. And when he died - when that connection left me - I no longer had a clear purpose. Now I'm bound to everyone, if only a little. I have to fight against it, I can't be solving everyone's wishes. But sometimes at the bakery where I work, I'll give someone a loaf of bread - and it answers a need. For a moment, that person is my master. And in that moment, I'm content. If I were as independent as you wish you were, I'd feel I had no purpose at all."

He frowned. "Were you so happy, to be ruled by another?"

"Happy is not the word," she said. "It felt right."

"All right, then let me ask you this. If by some chance or magic you could have your master back again, would you wish it?"

It was an obvious question, but one that she had never quite asked herself. She'd barely known Rotfeld, even to know what sort of man he was. But then, couldn't she guess? What sort of man would take a golem for a wife, the way a delivery man might purchase a new cart?

But oh, to be returned to that certainty! The memory of it rose up, sharp and beguiling. And she wouldn't feel as though she was being used. One choice, one decision - and then, nothing.

"I don't know," she said at last. "Maybe I would. Though in a way, I think it would be like dying. But perhaps it would be for the best. I make so many mistakes, on my own."

There was a noise from the Jinni, something not quite a laugh. His mouth was a hard line; he stared up beyond the trees, as though he couldn't bear to look at her.

"I said something to offend you," she said.

"Don't do that," he snapped. "Don't look into me."

"I didn't need to," she retorted. An unaccustomed defiance was rising in her. She'd given him an honest answer, and apparently it had repelled him. Well, so be it. If he didn't want her company, she could find her own way home. She was no child, whatever he thought.

She'd half decided to turn back toward Broadway, but then he said, "Do you remember what I told you before? That I was captured, but have no memory of it?"

"Yes, of course I remember."

"I have no idea," he said, "how long I was that man's servant. His slave. I don't know what he made me do. I might have done terrible things. Perhaps I killed for him. I might have killed my own kind." There was a tight edge in his voice, painful to hear. "But even worse would be if I did it gladly. If he robbed me of my will, and turned me against myself."

---

Now go buy the book. You know you want to.

Siren Songs

by Julie Dillon

This post was sparked by the image at right, "Space Sirens," by Julie Dillon. First I was intrigued by the picture, and then I was even more intrigued when I read the description the artist gave for it. There's just one single thing holding it back from making great EMC. See if you can guess what it is:

The last remaining astronaut watched helplessly as his comrades left the ship one by one and were carried away deeper into the nebula. He told himself that he would not succumb the way his shipmates had; he knew he would struggle. But the creatures, if they could even be called that, somehow seemed to know him, and when his turn came and the singing of the cosmos reached a crescendo in his ears, his mind emptied of all but the desire to join them in the void. Gazing into the creature’s face, he mused on how tender, how gentle its embrace seemed, and even as his oxygen supply dwindled he did not resist.

by EuchridEucrow

Right: the victims die (well, probably). My first thought, on deciding to blog about Sirens, was how annoying it was that they typically killed their victims. Annoying, and also pretty irrational. What do the Sirens get out of that, besides some evil cackling? On the other hand, lots of mermaid/siren pictures show the creatures dragging studly young sailors underwater with the implication that what the mermaids really hoped for was hot sex...or maybe even hot sex slaves. So why not hot MC'ed sex slaves?

Well, even as I pondered that idea, I stumbled across the picture at left ("Kiss of Life," by EuchridEucrow), which shows a mermaid reviving the victim she's just caught. Yes, she's saved his life, but I really doubt she plans to let him go. And I also doubt he really wants to go by now. After all, her kiss almost has to be drugged, right?

by cg_warrior

Then there's the picture at right, by cg_warrior. To me, it's the most intriguing of the first three because of the victim's eyes. I really don't think that's the glaze of death. I think it's the glaze of enchantment. The mermaids have this man in their clutches in more ways than one, and he's deeply enough enthralled that he's enjoying it. Why else would his arm be drifting to embrace his captor's tail? Also be sure to notice that he's adopting the mermaids' pallor, but he's not white all over yet. That means he's still falling, deeper and deeper, into their clutches. I wonder how it'll feel when he succumbs completely. It has to be mindless ecstasy, right? It just does.

Oh, and for the record, cg_warrior's gallery has a lot of this kind of stuff: creatures who may be innocent or malevolent and people who may be dead or just enspelled. I love it.

by Herbert James Draper

Now here's one more note, maybe the best of all. When I first asked myself what Sirens could get out of killing their prey (well, besides vicious pleasure), I immediately thought of Odysseus. When you get right down to it, isn't it pretty suggestive that he had his men tie him up before they reached the Sirens? It's like he was saying, "Look, ladies! Here's your next slave, already bound and waiting!"

And if you remember your mythology, you know that Odysseus stopped his sailors' ears with wax so they wouldn't hear the Sirens' song and could keep steering while he had all the fun. But come on, look at this picture! Not only have the mermaids come out in force, but they're actually climbing aboard the ship. If just one of them manages to unstop even one ear of one sailor, he'll be totally in her power. Then he'll turn on his mates and Odysseus and help the Sirens enslave them all. Can't you just picture it (Hmm, and hey, couldn't I just write it?)

Clearly, the version of The Odyssey that many of us read in high school was a just cover story. The truth is out there - and it's wallowing in brainwashed bliss.

 

credits for the final three pictures, left to right: Fred Appleyard, Edward Burne-Jones, and Frederic Leighton