Free The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Lucy Taylor by Lucy Taylor

scented handkerchief tighter to her face. “What
what
feels like?”
    “The whip, of course.”
    “Pain beyond my ability to imagine it.”
    “At first, there’s terrible pain,” the young man said, “but still it seems bearable at first, or so you think. Then the lash keeps falling and the pain mounts. It fills your whole body, your whole being. At that moment, you’d sell your soul to make it stop. You think that you can’t possibly bear it another moment, that you’ll lose consciousness or die.
    “Then it’s as though the body becomes completely overwhelmed, and there’s a giddiness. You laugh, you scream, you weep. At that point, you’ve gone beyond the pain – it’s still there, but it’s not your body anymore, or you’re not in it. That’s when it begins to feel like a holy sacrament, like you’ve touched the face of God.”
    Gabrielle looked at the man’s hand where it still rested on her elbow – large and heavy-knuckled, covered with fine wheat-colored hair.
    “How would you know about such things?”
    “In the spring, I marched with the Brethren for thirty-three and a third days – to commemorate the life of Christ, as is the custom.”
    “And do you think your suffering will save you from the plague?”
    “No. Only luck and my own wits will do that. But I learned a great deal about pain – and what lies on the other side of it.”
    He turned and pulled his shirt up to reveal his back, a gouged and furrowed tapestry of scar tissue and half-healed wounds. Gabrielle ran her hand across the scars. “You must be insane. Who in their right mind would choose pain when there’s so much of it to be had without asking?”
    “The Flagellants believe it brings them closer to God.”
    “I don’t believe in such a God. No loving father would willingly send such misery on his children.”
    “Perhaps that’s how He wins their love – by sending misery and then, according to his whim, providing minor comforts.”
    Gabrielle laughed. “Then you aren’t talking about God. You’re talking about Satan.”
    “Maybe he’s the one in charge.”
    “That’s blasphemy.”
    “That doesn’t mean it’s not the truth.”
    His hand, which up to then had rested lightly on her elbow, moved slowly up her arm. Heat spread through her belly as his fingers curled around the back of her neck and collected a great fistful of copper-colored hair.
    “My name’s Gerard. You remind me of a woman I was once in love with.”
    “What happened to her?”
    “She died of plague. That’s when I joined the Flagellants. I thought the pain of the whip might take away the greater pain of losing her.”
    “And did it?”
    “For a while. And then it made it worse. Now I think that only death will truly cure me. But I’m not ready to die yet.” He released her hair, let it tumble in long glossy coils around her face. “I’m on my way now to the countryside. If I keep to myself, stay in abandoned houses, I figure there’s a chance I’ll survive. If you like, you could go with me.”
    She shook her head. “Nowhere is safe from plague.”
    “Perhaps not, but some places are better to die than others.”
    The crowd surged around them, pressing them close. So thick was the odor of blood, so sharp the cracking of the whips, that Gabrielle felt light-headed.
    “Good luck to you, then,” said Gerard, and began to elbow his way out of the mob.
    Gabrielle thought about her mother, the foul-smelling boils that swelled along her armpits and groin, the dark blue spots that blotched her skin. Before long, she thought, her father would be dying, too, and it would fall her lot to tend to him, to comfort him in his death throes, press cool cloths to his brow, wipe up the waste that would gush from him. She knew she couldn’t bear that.
    But on her own, she also knew, she would be prey to the roving bands of looters and marauders that, emboldened by the almost complete absence of the law, terrorized the towns and countryside.