A/N: hey hey hey, who's in the mood for repressed Victorian erotics? *raises hand* I have to say I did miss writing for this story because disturbing 19th century shenanigans are pretty much my obsession. Thank you for reviewing so far and indulging in my weird kinks. In terms of this chapter, I do have to give out a big warning so:
Please Read: as you may have noticed from the title, this chapter contains scenes of a sensitive nature which, given the historical context may put some of you off. There is little actual violence involved and I do think the framing is erotic and exploratory, but if you feel this is too much for you, please don't go any further.
quick reminder of last chapter: Nik convinced Bonnie to steal her mother's priceless needle case so that she'll be seen as a bad seed and not sent to school. Children have convoluted logic, okay?
Anyway, enjoy!
4: whip
"I did it. It was me."
The needles clattered softly on the threadbare carpet as she released them from her fist. The model was too faint to see now, but Bonnie knew it had once been the Tree of Paradise. A series of triangles all pointing up from a thick brown trunk. Martha had told her that every young girl who hoped to be married knew that model and sewed it on quilts and counterpanes.
Her mother was staring at the model too. She was fighting the instinct to kneel and gather her possessions.
"Where is the case?" she asked, burying one fist into her dress, scratching at her own thigh.
Bonnie bowed her head low. "I threw it away."
Niklaus smiled as he hunched on the stairs. The red case was in the attic, stashed safely in his pillow case.
"You threw it away," Abby echoed without expression. There was no rage in her voice. Mikael must have drunk it all from her. He sat with his back to the fireplace, watching the little play unfold.
Bonnie worried her lower lip with her teeth. She just wanted to be punished and get it over with. She wanted to hear she won't be sent to school. She hoped she would not have to do many other bad things.
"I should whip you naked for what you've done," her mother finally said with a sour mouth.
Bonnie felt a pang between her ribs, like a second heart that pumped cold river water in her veins and froze her limbs.
Abby took a step forward. "You will learn your lesson that way."
"Now, now," Mikael murmured from a distance. "Let's not get carried away. You should not have to whip the girl. I will take care of her discipline."
Her mother pushed a loose curl from her face and pinned it back in her chignon. "Will you?"
Bonnie wanted to scream, although it was not so much terror that clawed at her throat as a sense of complete perdition. She was certain she would not survive the night. Mikael would kill her. She did not know how, but something about his posture, his very smell announced it. If her power lay in telling the truth, there was no clearer truth than this.
She was about to cling to her mother's skirt and beg forgiveness when she saw her stepbrother step into the room. He must have waited in the shadows.
"Let me do it, Father."
Mikael turned on his heels with a ferocious glare. He disliked being interrupted. The line of his nose reminded Bonnie of a sickle abandoned in a wheat field.
"Why should I do that, boy?" he scoffed.
Niklaus stared at his half-sister and his lips perked up into an impish smile. "Because it would be more humiliating if it was me."
Abby wrinkled her nose. "Why does your son eavesdrop on our discussion?"
Mikael's thumb traced the wax droppings of a candlestick. Bonnie wondered if he meant to seize it and throw it at her mother's head. But he smiled.
"He is your son too now, dearest. You must learn to tolerate him. And I think it a fine idea, Niklaus. Show your sister how it's done."
"Yes, Father. You've taught me well in that regard," the boy replied and the muscles underneath his woolen shirt rippled like a small earthquake.
Her fingers on the banister were throbbing, as if pressing the same piano clap. Her stomach was hard as stone and she felt it a great effort to climb the stairs. Still, she asked him quietly, "What do you mean he taught you well?"
Her brother didn't answer but simply stuck a thumb in the hollow of her back.
Bonnie decided he was rotten, after all.
They climbed up to her room which seemed so small now and swollen with the elements. Moths had eaten at the green wallpaper and rain water had left grey smears on the ceiling. The bed was not made; Astrid had not had time to air the sheets.
They were supposed to do it here, with the door slightly ajar so Mikael and Abby could hear.
His father had given him his beloved cat o' nine tails for the task. Niklaus knew it well. It looked black but it was actually a carmine color which had slowly dimmed with use. The thongs were unusually thick and speckled. It was meant to be crocodile skin, but Niklaus had his doubts. The popper was painted white, and it had oddly remained so despite the sweat and blood that had baptized it. He had felt the whip on his back many a times. He almost missed its midnight caress.
Bonnie looked at the window above her bed, where the noon sun was peacefully slipping over the world, while she could hear the blood rushing in her ears.
She brought her hands to the back of her dress and untied the buttons running down her spine. She wasn't wearing her petticoat. Abby had told Astrid to punish her if she neglected her under-garments. Suppose this was good punishment, either way.
Bonnie pressed the front of the dress to her chest as she exposed her back to him. She was still too young for nakedness to mean damnation, but Abby had told her not to reveal too much. I could reveal nothing. I could be spared, she thought moodily. You don't have to whip me. But she didn't know who was the recipient of this thought; her mother, her stepfather…the boy standing behind her.
Niklaus noted that the skin of her back was without blemish. That did not mean it was smooth. There were invisible marks there; the marks of a child left to her own devices. But someone like Mikael would see nothing but untrammeled softness.
She already had the shadow of a slope at the waist, the hint of a girlish figure. He screwed up his lips in annoyance. All bodies went the same way. You could see the future in the joints and sinews. Elijah had told him once, when he was feeling particularly sacerdotal, that "there can be little good about the coming days, for we will have committed more sins than we have now". So the future was always an amalgamation of more mistakes. Niklaus would have liked to whip the future out of her.
Bonnie did not shiver or shake. She stood with her eyes to the window, straight as an arrow.
He came forward with the cat' o nine gripped in his fist.
"You should try and whimper. Not too loud, though. But make it echo."
She did not understand him. Was he playing a game? He seemed fond of them. She pressed her dress to her throat.
"I won't."
His breath was tickling her hair. He was a head taller than her. His thumb was suddenly at the base of her nape.
"Don't you want to be on the stage? I hear all girls dream of that." And he pressed the hilt of the whip into the curve of her spine. She felt its warm weight and the strength of its bearers, two generations before them. She remembered that her grandmother had sung songs about prostration, about falling on your knees with your face in the red dust, waiting for the cruelty to end. She remembered the psalm that said "by the river of Babylon, I sat down and wept…" , but all of these entwining shadows never felt real to her and this did not feel real either.
He ran the popper gently up and down the furrow of her spine. It was ticklish. The nerves under her skin were like ants, running back and forth from the touch.
She started to cry out softly as he continued to caress her back.
He lightly flicked the whip against her shoulder blades and it almost made her laugh but she cried out again, a languorous sad moan.
"That's good," he whispered.
He flicked the whip again and again, letting the popper brush her dimples of Venus. It was a maddening sensation, like insects biting you or fingers kneading you or mouths kissing you. She had to wriggle her toes to keep from giggling.
And then he cracked the whip hard at the wooden board at her feet. Bonnie felt a pleasant vibration at the threatening sound. She issued a long whimper. He cracked it again harder, making dust come out of the old rug, and she locked her ankles to the side and bit her lip. He cracked it at the wall next, making some of the masonry quiver. Bonnie felt a coal-like warmth in her belly and she moaned and begged him to please stop. But he lashed it at her bed and the heavy old mattress creaked while Bonnie wrung her fingers and made little sounds of pain. He looked like a dancer mid-step, thrashing the very air around his body. He whipped her little brass trunk that served as wardrobe, making the metal sing. He flogged her scant dresses. Dainty straps and bits of lace sprinkled on the floor like a powder. He flogged them too. She whimpered.
Everything in her room was whipped, and every time, she felt the twin thrum of it in her blood. She wanted to squeeze something between her legs.
At length, he stopped and stared out the window. "Father said to give you ten lashes, which is generous of him."
Bonnie turned to him slightly, still holding her dress. "What if they look at my back and find no marks?"
Niklaus slipped the cat' o nine tails in his trousers. He walked up to her.
"Ten lashes don't leave a deep mark. But…"
Before she had any way of protesting, he ran both his hands down her back, nails digging into her flesh like splinters. It was like being picked up by an eagle - a bird of prey with curling talons. It was painful and scouring and she sighed deeply, because a tension in her stomach was released and she could breathe again.
"Thank you," she murmured sluggishly, as the sun was setting.
Niklaus' face crumpled. "I did you no favors."
Bonnie started buttoning up her dress, though the flesh still throbbed painfully. "But you didn't listen to your father."
Suddenly her jaw was yanked forward and she was staring into a pair of angry cobalt eyes. "I don't, as a rule. I'll hurt you when I want to. Not when he says."
Bonnie gripped his wrist. "When will you hurt me?"
Niklaus pulled her closer. "In the dead of the night…at the crack of dawn…when you feel happy and safe. You'll never know."
They moved away from each other at the same time, like phantoms leaving two bodies behind.
"I still don't want to go to school," she whispered as he stood at the slightly parted door. She wondered if Abby and Mikael had been satisfied with her sounds.
Her brother nodded gravely. "You won't."
And she believed him.
In her dream, she asked him better questions. She asked him how many times his father had whipped him and how many lashes there had been. In the dream, they were sitting on her bed and she asked him to pull up his shirt so she could see. She asked him why his father trusted him to do his bidding. She asked him why he had not killed his father. And she cried, because that was a terrible thing to ask a son, but she had done it either way. Parents died anyway, and the children remained.
She woke up just the same, alone in her room in the middle of the night, with a hankering for knowledge. She realized that in a week's time she would turn ten.
She saw fireflies in the dark, wisps of light from the crack of a whip. She rubbed her eyes and got up to use her chamber pot.
A quarter of a moon slipped by her window, and by its light she saw that the liquid in the pot was not clear. There was something muddy about it, like the water of the lake. She didn't want to touch it, but it smelled like wormy fruit, the kind that Martha used for marmalade.
She wanted to cry for Astrid, but the poor girl was probably asleep in the servants' quarters and she couldn't climb all the way up there to wake her.
Bonnie feared all of a sudden that it was her brother, exacting his promise. He had said In the dead of the night…at the crack of dawn…
"He came into the room and cut me up," she whispered in her fist. But even she didn't believe that.
When she turned back towards the bed, she saw a great big stain on the sheet. She couldn't discern its color. She was not afraid to touch it, however. It smeared her finger, leaving a gelatinous trail behind.
Was she dying? She did not feel sick. Maybe it was a short season's illness, like hay fever.
But if I'm bleeding, they can't send me away to school.
The thought cheered her. She lay down in bed and hoped she would bleed some more.
Niklaus stared at the cadaverous sheet and it seemed to stare back at him. There was a red eye in the middle.
It looked as if a small animal had bled to death. He wondered if Bonnie slept with little mice and birds tucked in her chest.
The laundry room was very hot as the water had been set to boil. Martha was mixing the lye for the soap. When she saw him raking through the wash baskets she yelled at him to get out.
"Is that her blood?" he asked the servant boldly.
Martha shook her fist at him and he thought he saw her blackened nail. "I'll have your blood if you don't run off."
But as he climbed down the stairs with a heavy foot, he thought he heard her mutter in his wake, "we have a little lady now."
He did not like the sound of that.
