literature

Clockwork Whore

Deviation Actions

Dominion-of-Cain's avatar
Published:
924 Views

Literature Text

A gentle ticking was the only sound that night.

Paris is not as beautiful as they say – for the most part the city is dirty, dishevelled and infected. The tourists are constricted to the beautiful sections, the sections where the rich and powerful live and the money gets spent. Walk less than a mile from this small circle of wealth and you encounter the forgotten Parisians – the prostitutes and the beggars, the hungry and the homeless, the true citizens of Paris.

But on that night, it is through these back streets and alleyways that we must venture. Walking between two dilapidated buildings that sag dangerously is the Vicomte de Chagny - a gentleman well known to those in the backstreets, especially by the working girls. His presence here is not unusual, though many of the girls would agree that he is several hours past his time of usual visitation. But tonight he is not looking for a girl – if anything, he aims to be rid of one.

The Vicomte de Chagny walks slowly, and as the glow of a distant streetlight illuminates him, his face is thrown into shadow as he shifts the rolled up carpet segment from one shoulder to the other. He mutters something to himself, and the sheen of sweat on his head is clearly noticeable even from a distance. He continues to walk. He never stops and is always looking over his shoulder; as if afraid a demon might be chasing him. He continues to mutter, ugly words.

Eventually the Vicomte reaches his destination – the edge of the river bank. The flood walls rise a meter above the water level and form the edge of the walkway. The Vicomte stops and sits, allowing the carpet to fall with a gentle thwump. He wipes his forehead with his sleeve, and breathes deeply. Here the light is better, and we see the madness raging feverishly behind his eyes. It has not been a good night.

Rising wearily, the Vicomte begins to unroll the carpet and then thinks better of it. Instead he pushes the whole thing in, where it hits the water and begins to sink. Wiping his hands of the dust and sweat, the Vicomte stands and walks away, disappearing into the blackness of the night.

Beneath the surface, the motion of the water has already begun proceedings to unfold the carpet. Slowly, the body of a young woman – no older than twenty – is separated from the mass of carpet that she was wrapped in. The cuts in her dress continue to leak blood from her broken body – a victim of her profession. The carpet falls to the river-bed whilst the woman, her body barely kept afloat due to the small amount of air still in her lungs, bobs in the current. She is dragged by the tides, barely alive, to some shore where the tide pushes her broken body into the sand and wedges her there. Her breath comes in fits and starts, and the water dribbles slowly from the side of her mouth.

She will live to see the sun touch her face, but a few minutes later she will be gone, her soul slipping with every passing second.

The grains of sand dwindle to their final few, and the clock that counts down the life of every human being takes its last tick and its last tock, and the hands simply stop.
Another piece which started out life as an idea for a film idea I had, and then I changed it into a Vignette. This one follows the life a Parisian prostitute in the 19th century who is killed by one of her clients. In my head she ends up being brought back to life by a clockmaker obsessed with making a clockwork woman, but in this one she just ends up dying. It's kinda steampunk, but in the film version (if I ever write it) that would me much more apparent. Enjoy.
© 2013 - 2024 Dominion-of-Cain
Comments19
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Meggie272's avatar
Nice! Brilliant atmosphere, very vivid and elegant prose.