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Sometimes, when her inspiration is dry and finances dictate that her quill must be wet, she reads them—her uncle's old books. Her books, although even now she can never think of them that way. She's read the majority before, of course, but that was a different time. Now there is no feigned academic interest. She does not pretend to be reading them for a larger good, for the sake of future generations' knowledge. She reads them for money, and nothing more.
This is what she tells herself. This is what she must tell herself.
She waits until dusk. Always dusk, for though she much prefers the room without its heavy curtains, there is something inherently queer about running her bare fingers over the books' pages as the morning sun streams cheerily through the windows. The brightness of it makes her feel exposed and darker in comparison. And so she waits until the light is low enough and then chooses a book at random, carefully mines its chapters for fresh euphemisms and settings (perhaps ladies do it on a bed, but she does not write of ladies. How could she, never having met one herself?).
This evening's book is one she has never touched before. She finds it in the corner of the shelf nearest the window, partially obscured by the trim on the bookcase. Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, and an early edition if its appearance is any indication. Its leather spine is covered with a thick coat of dust, and its pages are mottled and warped. Perhaps there was a damp draft from the window, for she cannot imagine her uncle purchasing a book in such condition.
The spine cracks when she moves to brush the dust off of it, and minute fibers from the leather cling to her fingers and sleeves. She should feel panicked, or saddened at its decrepit condition, she thinks, but she does not. She is still what her uncle made her, but she is not him. She does not value the books for their bindings or their typefaces or the grain and thickness of their pages. They are not things of beauty to her, and she cannot find it in herself to feel regret over poisons losing their potency.
Perhaps that is why she feels a perverse thrill course through her when she cracks the book open and watches the first pages of it crumble into dust when her fingertips skim along their edges. She can smell the decay, the pungent odor of mold and time, and it feels like an adventure to her then, a race to salvage ideas before their vessel dissolves before her eyes.
She chooses pages at random and runs her hand over the text, watching The driving forward with fury, its prodigious stiffness, thus impacted, wedgelike, breaks the union of those parts dissolve into sand under the pads of her fingers. The words are disappearing. She is destroying them. She would laugh were it not for the fact that she is already growing conscious a steady burning in her eyes and nostrils, a heavy feeling in her throat.
She is breathing them in, she realizes. Breathing in sandy grains of the text and the ideas they contain. She looks down to find her hands grimy with tiny bits of a paper, slivers of words that retain their meaning if not their context.
And then she does laugh, a short, bitter exhalation to let the watchful God she does not believe in know that the aptness of it is not lost on her. Few things are ever lost on her.
I am still what he made me.
She inhales sharply, pictures the words making their way into her. There is inky poison rushing from her lungs to the tips of her toes and up again, but her eyes continue to move across the pages, taking more in. She is not afraid of it, but not because she is immune. Sue tried to steal many things from her, but her immunity to the luridness of the words was the one she succeeded in taking. The poison courses through her hotly, making its way through her abdomen and chest. It quickens the beat of her heart and makes her breaths labored as it rushes along her veins and up to her head. She expects it and braces herself, but the force of it nearly blinds her to anything but the images that it tugs to the forefront of her mind. The heat I felt from joining our breasts, kindled another that I had hitherto never felt… I twisted my thighs, squeezed, and compressed the lips of that virgin slit…lips glew'd to mine, bore me, trembling, panting, dying, with soft fears and tender wishes…She struggles with these things, fights to keep them from taking her over. But before she can force them out of her mind, before she can summon resistance, it is too late. The poison has run its course, settling finally, heavily between her legs.
"Maud."
Her head snaps up before she can stop it, and she blushes out of a combination of guilt and embarrassment at the obviousness of her gesture.
Sue frowns and pauses at the door, a tray of food in her hands. "You're makin' a terrible mess of yourself," she says with disapproval as she approaches. Her eyes flit from Maud's filthy hands to the smudges of grimy dust on her face, and she sets the tray on the desk and takes up the napkin. Her intent is obvious when she kneels before Maud, but Maud cannot help the way her mind wanders. She can feel her face burning with shame at the thoughts that the gesture evokes in her, and wonders if it will give her away, if Sue will notice the heat in her cheeks when she reaches to brush the dirt away from them. She feels a sudden fear at the thought.
It is not entirely unfounded, for Sue does notice. Sue notices everything, though perhaps it was the sudden tensing of muscles that gave her away moreso than the blush. Whatever it was, Sue is looking up at her questioningly now, and the prospect of putting into words what she can scarcely admit to herself is sending a new current of anxiety through her. She feels as if she has just awoken from one of her dreams, and she has the urge—ridiculous because they are nowhere near—to reach for her drops.
Sue sees her alarm and murmurs a few words in a tone that sounds vaguely comforting, but Maud, in her panic, does not understand them immediately. "It's all right," Sue says again. There is a strange quality to her voice, an almost playful lilt, and Maud moves her eyes, which she had previously fixed on nothing in particular, to Sue's face. She is surprised to find there a smile—gentle, but with a hint of something Maud has recently come to recognize as slyness.
"I am not immune to them anymore," Maud blurts out before she can help herself.
"It's all right," Sue repeats again. There is no hint of surprise in her voice. Why was she not surprised?
"It's for the best, don't you think?" Sue prods, after a pause. She finishes her sentence on an odd cadence that makes Maud wonder if she'd almost slipped and called her "Miss." For some reason, the thought of that causes a dropping feeling in the pit of her stomach, though not necessarily an unpleasant one.
Maud does not know how to answer her. Thankfully, Sue does not wait for her reply, but instead sits back enough to grasp the hem of Maud's dress. Maud is so stunned at the exchange—at Sue's utter lack of horror—that she does not process Sue's movements until her skirts are raised to her waist.
"Up," Sue says gently as her fingers curve around the waistband of her drawers. It feels unreal to Maud, as if it is happening to a girl in a story she is reading instead of to herself, but her hips raise themselves of their own volition.
"That a girl," Sue tells her. She looks up, smiling, and Maud's breath catches. There is no revulsion in her face. Instead, her eyes dance with…mischief, perhaps?
Maud feels her own lips part. She knows she should say something, something to make Sue understand the seriousness of the situation, the power of the poison whose influence she can no longer resist, but her mouth feels suddenly dry.
"Shh, now," Sue whispers as she brings a hand up to caress Maud's cheek. "You just let me. Just let me."
A part of Maud—the part of her that knows her arousal, her succumbing to the poison, is wrong—wants to resist, yet she cannot bring herself to. The sight of Sue on her knees before her affects her too deeply for her desire to be overridden. When Sue lowers her head, runs the flat of her tongue tentatively between her legs, it is all Maud can do to thread book-soiled fingers through her hair and moan.
"You're so wet," Sue murmurs, and Maud freezes for a moment in embarrassment and not a small amount of terror. She replays the words in her head, searches for any hint of disgust in Sue's tone, but she finds none. Instead, she can almost convince herself that Sue sounds pleased at her state, that she can feel Sue's warm breath quickening against her. It is impossible, she thinks. It must be impossible.
But it is only a moment before Sue lowers her head again, uses her tongue to open Maud up, to expose her. It feels wonderful and strangely like freedom, and Maud cannot help herself. She tightens her grip in Sue's hair and brings her other hand down to stroke her face. The particles of leather and paper that cling to her skin smear across the pale skin of Sue's cheek, and, even as pleasure drives her to distraction, Maud is conscious that that, too, is apt. Perhaps is inevitable that her darkness, that the filth she knows she will never be free of, will spread to Sue as well.
It is a disturbing notion, but Maud cannot bring herself to regret it as deeply as she should. Her last thought as her hips begin to tremble and jump against Sue's tongue is that perhaps the poison is like the demons she has read about in some of her books. Perhaps they can contain it better if they both know its name.
She thinks she will tell herself that, in any case.