G2-Story-031-Publish and be Damned

For someone with a Master's degree in 20th century erotica, she had surprisingly little personal experience of the more unusual and sometimes-outlandish interests of the minority groups and individuals who fell outside the scope of what society considered to be normal and acceptable sexual behaviour.

It was not that she found such activities abhorrent or immoral, for she had studied a vast range of literature from many different countries and social groupings and found that what was viewed as taboo and even illegal in some areas, was often looked on as harmless and indeed desirable in others.
Standards, conventions, practices, historical precedents and laws all varied so widely that she considered it impossible to come to a view of what should and should not be the limits beyond which consenting adults be permitted to go when exploring their own desires and sexual natures. In what was a narrow field, she was an acknowledged expert and her opinions and insights were often called on by other academics, writers and the media who wished to use her reputation to support and endorse their work.

Greatly respected and in a small way, even famous, she was excited to receive an invitation to catalogue one of the largest private collections of erotica in the world; that of the French aristocrat, the Vicomte de Sade; the great-great-great grandson of the infamous Marquis. It was an invitation she could not refuse and when she travelled to the Vicomte’s beautiful chateau and began work on the huge task, she was in Heaven, for not only were the Marquis’s original manuscripts intact, but buried in the archives, where they had lain untouched and forgotten for two hundred years, were others that she knew had never been published. It was a veritable treasure-trove of his work and enough to ensure her immortality in the world of literature. Sadly for her it was an immortality she would never achieve ...

When she hurried to the Vicomte with the news of her incredible discovery, far from being pleased, he was angry and upset; reminding her forcefully that his family had suffered two hundred years of unwanted notoriety and vilification because of his ancestor’s sexual perversions and now, because of her efforts, that shame and disgrace would be renewed and visited on his line for a second time when the new writings were revealed.

He could not and would not permit such a thing to happen, he declared and stated that the manuscripts must be destroyed. She was shocked and tried to persuade him that the documents were a valuable historical resource that had the potential to cast a whole new light on 18th century French society. She said that the manuscripts must be preserved and made available for modern researchers like herself then used every argument she could think of, but he would not be swayed. He insisted that the works were his to dispose of as he wished and he was determined to protect what remained of his family’s name at all costs.

It was then, in her desperation to save the documents, that she pushed him too far, branding him a “literary barbarian” and threatening to expose him and his family to the ferocious, world-wide public criticism that would inevitably be the outcome when all right-thinking, educated and civilised intellectuals heard what he had done. She immediately regretted her outburst, but the Vicomte took it well, remaining calmly polite and merely requesting that she let him consider the matter overnight. She agreed at once, assuming that he was having second thoughts and, having won the argument, or so it appeared, it would have been extremely bad mannered not to accept his invitation to share a bottle of his own vineyard’s finest champagne.

Fetched from the cellar and served by him, the wine was delicious and as she savoured the crisp, fragrant dryness of its superb quality, her inexperienced palate never detected the slight bitterness of a mild sedative he’d slipped into her glass. Only when she awoke from her unnaturally deep sleep did she learn that he had not changed his mind and realise that he would stop at nothing to defend his family’s honour ... and that anyone who stood in the way of that goal, must accept the consequences ...

Deep beneath the chateau, accessible only by a concealed stairway known to the Vicomte, the cell had last been used by the Marqis deSade himself for his erotic and sadistic debaucheries, and it was in this gloomy dungeon that she had been imprisoned to ensure that her discoveries would remain secret. Two centuries before, it might well have been possible for a woman to disappear and be held captive forever in such a place, but the Vicomte was well aware that his prisoner was too well-known for that, and if she did not re-appear when expected, questions would be asked and an investigation made that would certainly uncover the truth.

He could not hold her for long, but he time would be long enough to complete the plan he had conceived to ensure that she would never tell anyone what she had found. He didn’t believe that either bribery or persuasion would work, and he certainly wouldn’t hurt her, so he had concluded that the only way to achieve his aim of her permanent silence, was to use her own ambition and jealously-guarded reputation against her, by blackmailing her in such a way that she would never dare oppose his wishes.

To that end, he had carried her unconscious body down to the cellar, stripped her naked, bound her wrists and elbows behind her back, her wide-spread thighs to her ankles, her knees to ringbolts in the floor, then sealed her mouth with a hard rubber ball. A rope was tied into her hair, run around a pulley and she had then been winched upright. As a final touch, he’d inserted an extremely large, heavily-veined vibrator into her sex, and, satisfied that she would be unable to free herself from her bonds, he fetched a pair of photographer’s floodlights and positioned them to illuminate her body. A video camera had been set up along with two still cameras on tripods in front of her, then he stood back and waited for her to awaken.

Her eyelids flickered and she frowned, her eyes half-closed against the bright glare of the lights ... then opened wide when she felt the tight ropes confining her limbs and the massive ball stretching her jaws. For several seconds, she froze while her brain tried to come to terms with the unthinkable reality of her plight, then she shuddered and jerked madly at her bonds, a muffled wail of horrified understanding leaking past her gag.

As soon as she tried to struggle, the rope knotted into her hair and the vibrator impaling her sex made their presence felt and her eyes bulged in shocked disbelief to the realisation of just how helpless she was. Knowing that she was unable to see past the lights, the Vicomte remained silent, letting her shame intensify while she was forced to wait with her naked body pitilessly exposed and vulnerable for whatever was to come.

Her squeals of anguish echoed through the cell while she was subjected to its devastating pulses, but there was no escape and as her body writhed and twisted with arousal and vain efforts to alleviate the horrendous stimulation, he switched on the video camera and spoke from the concealing darkness.

He fully understood her views regarding the importance of his ancestor’s manuscripts, he informed her, and had considerable respect for her opinions and intellectual honesty in wishing to make them public, but, unfortunately, the ensuing damage to his family name was completely unacceptable to him and he had therefore decided that she could never be allowed to reveal what she knew. So, he had taken what he considered were the necessary steps to ensure her silence. With the photographs and video films he intended to make of her in sexual bondage, he felt confident that she would agree to say nothing about her findings, and, in return, he would guarantee that the images would never leave his possession.

Should she fail to carry out her side of the bargain, however, he would regretfully have to retaliate by distributing copies to her colleagues, the media and the many Internet web sites that he was sure she knew were devoted to bondage enthusiasts. Of course, the effects on her reputation and academic credibility might well be catastrophic ... but perhaps no more so than those to his family name if the manuscripts were made public.

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