Free Unlock Yourself (The Desires Unlocked Trilogy E-Short Part 0.5) by Evie Blake

She is lost in Berlin. It is Valentine’s Day 1928, and the snow flutters around her like a thousand icy moths drawn toward a light. Ludwika sticks out her tongue and catches a flake. It melts so fast, and the sudden chill inside her warm mouth makes her shiver with anticipation.
    She is lost and she wants to be. After her confinement, like a bird in a cage, her husband has unwittingly set her free. After all, he did bring her to Berlin.
    He is sleeping now, the deep slumber of the drunk. He will not wake until morning and by then she will have found a way back to their hotel. That part of being lost is easy. The problem is she doesn’t want to go back yet. Ludwika is searching for something – she doesn’t even know what. She needs some inspiration to keep her heart in motion, to stop herself from withering and fading away beneath her husband’s touch. For it is not a loving touch. No, he lays hands of possession upon her, pummels her into something that is his, longs to fill her with his progeny. She is a means for him to immortalize his name. Yet she fails him in this task. Lately she feels his disappointment in his roughness. She is there only as a vessel to be filled. She could be any woman.
    There has to be more.
    She doesn’t know where this voice speaks from. It is as if it comes from a place deep within her – like the whispers of an ancestor.
    Rapture,
the voice within her murmurs.
    She wants to feel the meaning of this word. Surely everyone does, at some stage in their life? Isn’t that what passion is? It is not necessarily the sexual act. For the celibate nun, it is passion for God, but Ludwika has never been religious. For the artist, the dancer, the writer or the musician it is passion for their craft but Ludwika does not consider herself to be creative. She wants to feel another kind of passion: a communion with a fellow soul. She is married and yet destitute. She never thought a wife could feel so alone.
    And so out into the glittering Berlin night Ludwika goes. It was easy once she had decided to do it. She refilled her husband’s wine glass after every sip he took, and plied him with brandy after dinner. He got drunk. There was a price to pay, for when he did he got mean. She places her gloved hand upon her stinging cheek. He had called her a barren bitch, not a real woman but a useless member of her gender, a creature unable to breed. She couldn’t give him a child. And all he did for her … the clothes, and the fine house in Venice, and now this lavish trip to Berlin, and yet she could not give him anything back. She was worthless. He had screamed this at her, his eyes black with loathing, bulging in his flaccid face as he reached out and slapped her. No remorse, no apology. To her relief he collapsed on the bed, and then to her joy she heard the low growling snore of deep sleep. Ludwika made her escape.
    In this city, you can be anyone you want. She has heard that Berlin is a place devoted to sensation; where men and women can love freely. Men can love other men, and women love each other too. The idea of the latter fills her with tingling delight. How scandalous that would be. Often when she is in the company of her husband, and his associates and their wives, it is the women she admires the most. Catching sight of a curl of hair tucked behind a delicate shell ear, or the porcelain nape of a neck, a flicking wrist or a tiny ankle can produce a shiver down her spine. She has heard that in Berlin some women are equal. Indeed they have their own money and professions, run clubs and cabaret theatres. Men and women can be independently in love in Berlin. None are enslaved to the other. They are free to sing and dance in the bars and the clubs, to watch lesbian cabaret, and to pair with whoever they wish, whichever gender. These people can make love all the night long.
    Yet now that she is walking along the icy streets of this city, her black wool cape billowing around her, her breath steaming the