My Hideous Lovely

Doctor Broeger studied and idolized the finest minds of his time, especially Victor Frankenstein. But his creation, altho fairer than Frankenstein’s, was no less troubled....

(fM, MF, exh, MF, nc, MF, snuff) caution

By: Punchinello for Pulp Erotica

Bremen, Germany, 1884

The Body floated heavily in the glass tank, the liquid a glowing greenish fog that half-obscured it. It was smooth—that was what always struck Werner: how marvelously smooth the flesh was. He liked to stare at it when he was alone, but only when he was alone. He didn’t like for Doctor Broeger to think that he was staring merely for the lascivious pleasure of the sight of a nude woman.

But Werner had stared at her many times, from the first day that the doctor had begun the experiment with a tiny sample of human tissue—tissue stolen from a stillborn infant and subjected to the doctor’s strange combination of chemicals.

Werner did not pretend to understand it all; the science was obscure, speculative even, and the student only wanted to be a part of something grand in his final years at the university. And this was grand.

She was a woman now, altho she had only been growing in the gestation tank for fourteen months—a long gestation for a human infant, but it was astounding what the rapid growth serum the doctor had concocted could do...perhaps even terrifying.

But she was not terrifying. She was lovely. A beautiful girl of seventeen or so, by human standards, slender and long-limbed, she was a wonder of nature. Her body had grown and developed before his eyes: grown arms and legs, hair and nails; matured into a woman with wonderful, full breasts and lips and a noble brow. Her hair was long and wavy and floated all around her in the incubation liquid. The tuft between her legs was thick and curly, and as black as the hair on her head. Werner wondered sometimes what that tuft looked like between the legs of his sweetheart Margaretta, whom he planned to marry after his graduation from the university.

She moved sometimes. Werner had seen her move her legs and arms, twisting about and one time nearly getting tangled in the thick umbilical cord that tethered her to the machinery of the tank. He and Doctor Broeger had been as proud as parents to see it the first time. Now it was routine. It wouldn’t be long now before it was time for her birth.

Werner put his hands on the tank as he sometimes did. He stared up thru the murky, dull glow of the greenish waters to gaze at her face: placid, serene. Then she frowned; she scowled. Perhaps she was dreaming—if infants dreamed.

Then she began to convulse.

“Doctor Broeger! Doctor Broeger!” Werner called.

Doctor Broeger had made the preparations some time before. The instruments, the towels, breathing apparatus, and many other tools and supplies had all sat by silently for weeks, waiting to be called upon. Werner and the doctor extracted the subject from the glass vat with the wooden gibbet they had built for just that purpose. It was a frightening thrill to finally hear the hiss of the black rubber seal breaking on the top of the tank, see the girl rise from the oily liquid, pale, limp, and slick.

She began to cough almost immediately, gasping for her first precious breaths of air in the dank dungeon-like laboratory of the Broeger mansion, lighted by gaslight and the new electric lamps. The air was crackling with excitement as the two scientists laid her out on the table on her side, heaving, gasping. She even cried, tho not like an infant, nor quite like a woman, but a desperate, plaintive cry like an animal. Doctor Broeger was pleased, tho, and slapped her smartly on the naked bottom as any doctor would a newborn. But this newborn stiffened suddenly and opened her eyes wide and astonished, staring Werner full in the face, and then doubled up in a thick, wailing sob. The doctor only chuckled and attended to his instruments.

Werner busied himself with the towels, wiping her down, drying her body. It was stunning. She would be tall, for certain, and not at all plump or soft like a baby. She was thin and firm, almost muscular. Her skin was gray and flat, tho flushed pink with effort in the face. Her legs, her bottom, her flat belly, her breasts, were everything a male could desire in a fully-grown woman; a picture of perfection; a masterpiece of natural science. Werner rubbed her all over, marveling at her smooth, firm flesh and trying at once to comfort her as well as clean her. But the doctor hacked the umbilical cord with a hatchet and tied it off like a butcher might, and the girl collapsed into pitiful sobs and wails.

In the days that followed, the girl, whom the doctor named Ava, began to develop in her mind as well as her body. Altho her physique was something like that of a newborn foal at first, frail and wobbly, it developed quickly. Her complexion barely gained any more of a natural pinkness, but her body filled out to a more natural womanly proportion in less than a month, particularly after she began to eat solid food.

Ava learned to speak with even more startling rapidity. It was no surprise to Doctor Broeger; he understood the astounding human capacity for language as well as any linguist and reasoned that a child must first develop in its ears and throat before it is properly prepared to learn speech, but Ava sprang fully-grown from the gestation tank and so could learn her first word within days: “milk.”

Tall and lean Ava possessed a strange and otherworldly grace of movement. They dressed her by necessity in such flimsy garments as a simple cotton shift and leather slippers. But these revealed, and sometimes even exposed to view, the sort of womanly assets that corsets and bustles were designed to conceal even as they accentuated. She was truly a lovely creature walking barefoot in the grass, hem carelessly raised up well over her thighs, full breasts swaying beneath the fabric. It was, to the female servants of the household, utterly indecent.

In fact, the girl was so lovely that the doctor and Werner agreed that she should not be exposed to the male servants of the estate for a time. The housekeeper and cook would help her somewhat in learning the ways of a woman’s body, but even their contact would be minimal, since they were rather frightened of her and struck her when she soiled herself. Indeed, the housekeeper fled in panic, never to return, when the girl shoved her firmly against a wall after such a physical reprimand. From then on, it was mainly Werner who schooled her.

Werner took much time away from his sweetheart Margaretta to spend with Ava. One day, while they sat under a tree on the hill that overlooked the lake, Ava showed her true development. She played with Werner’s cap and jacket, even trying them on herself for a moment and mocking him. It was very endearing, and caused some distress when his manhood took notice of her girlish figure.

Then she tried to take off his shirt. “No, Ava, leave it,” he told her firmly. Failing that, she rose up on her knees and pulled off her own dress; it instantly took his breath away. Her breasts were firm, with long, hard nipples; her pubic thatch was trimmed a little from its natural wildness. “Ava, put your frock back on,” he said.

“Take yours off,” she said playfully. Then she pointed to his chin. “This is your chin,” she said.

“Yes. Now put on your frock.”

“This is your heart,” she went on, rocking slightly on her heels. He reached for her little dress, and she pointed to his groin. “This,” she gravely, “this is your pintle.” She pressed a groping hand into his groin and felt the bulge of his manhood there.

“Ava!” he exclaimed. “Where did you hear that? Who taught you?” Her touch was electrifying, and his body responded quite involuntarily.

“Show me your pintle,” she said, and suddenly pulled open his trousers, exposing his undershorts, which seemed to puzzle her. “Where is it?”

“Ava, stop!” the young man demanded. But the girl reached thru his fly and took hold of the flesh of his half-stiff member with a delighted gasp.

“Ah! It’s like a sausage!” she gushed. Werner pushed her hand away and tried to pull her dress back down over her head. But even as he did, the curious girl pulled his meaty penis out again and fondled it eagerly. “Ahh! That’s what boys have,” she murmured. Werner was shocked, but unmistakably aroused. The naked girl was pulling at his hardening manhood and causing him great distress.

“Please put this on, Ava. You must!” he commanded. At last, he got the dress over her head and down her shoulders, but the girl would have none of it. She brushed the flimsy shift off with a wave of her hand and pushed Werner down in the grass.

“Show me what boys do,” she pleaded. Then she pulled Werner’s trousers down firmly. She was astonishingly strong, he realized, and could easily push his hands away, but she was clumsy about her desire and witless about how exactly to satisfy it. Werner’s prick stood out hard and red against his belly, and the nude girl rubbed its length, but more as a curiosity than as a sexual favor.

“Stop,” Werner commanded, and shoved her firmly away. She tumbled back on her bottom and slumped against a tree, black tresses in disarray, bosom heaving, legs spread shamelessly. “You mustn’t ever do that,” he scolded, pulling up his trousers. She sat there silently and covered her womanhood with one hand. “You must not push people and tear at their clothes, Ava. It isn’t polite.”

The naked girl sat there, sucking her bottom lip, and gently stroked her moist little slit. “I only want to learn,” she said bitterly.

“That isn’t for you to learn. Not yet,” he said. He tossed her shift at her and walked away over the hill, toward the house.

Ava scowled angrily and glared after him. A pigeon scurried around the base of the tree, hungry for a seed or tender sprig. With uncanny quickness, Ava snatched the fat bird up and held it for a moment tightly in her fist.

Then, with absolute deliberation, she twisted its small head full around and wrung its neck.

Several weeks later, Werner graduated from the university with a scientific degree that would allow him to take a job as a chemist, making and dispensing pills. He made plans also to marry his sweetheart Margaretta Ulmstodt, a kindly girl of twenty and the daughter of a cabinet-maker.

As a matter of course, Werner introduced her to Ava, as they sometimes did to “outsiders,” as the doctor’s mentally deficient niece. Ava had made progress—indeed, she often seemed quite grown up—but now she was as giddy as a schoolgirl. She was not invited to the wedding for fear of misbehavior, but she was desperate for information about weddings and marriages and parties. To placate her, the doctor, Werner, Margaretta, and the cook held a party for Ava, in which she got a cake and gifts: stockings (which she did not like), an entire reel of yellow ribbon (for which she was ecstatic), and a picture book of travel (which made her demand a ride on a train).

Afterward, in a secluded spot by the lake, Margaretta remarked how awfully strange it was to meet a girl who, by all appearances, was nearly the same age as she and yet who’s behavior and knowledge clearly made her a child. Werner replied casually that she was showing improvement under the doctor’s care. He was less casual when his fiancee noted the particular beauty of the girl—despite the unhealthy gray cast to her skin. Werner pulled her close and kissed her gently. “You are the only woman I have eyes for,” he said.

“Thank you, darling,” she said, “but that’s not at all what I meant.” She picked at the summer grass beside their blanket. “I’m not jealous of her,” she teased.

“Of course not,” Werner said. He played with the ribbons on the front of her dress. “You have nothing to be jealous of. You are the most beautiful and the most intelligent and the most genuine woman in the world.”

She leaned over him, very close. “Werner, you are a darling.” She kissed him softly. Her lips were soft and moist. “This is a very romantic spot,” she said. “I think you’ve brought me here to seduce me.”

He brushed back her hair and kissed her neck. “If only I could,” he said. “But you are far too clever and virtuous to be seduced.” She closed her eyes to savor his warm lips on her bare skin; she sighed softly and ran her fingers thru his close-cropped hair.

“But I am not so clever as you, I think, and awfully girlish about romantic things.” He pulled the ribbons of her bodice and spread the fabric back. She caught her breath and held him close.

“I love you with all my heart, Margaretta. I never want us to be apart.”

“Oh, darling!” she breathed. And there was no more to be said. She lay back and took his kiss even as he unlaced her dress completely and opened it to free her breasts, a delicious creamy pink.

His shirt came off and fell away in the summer grass. For the first time, Margaretta felt his young and manly chest, sprinkled with dark curly hairs. Werner helped her shuffle out of her dress and roll her stockings down over her soft, womanly thighs and calves. He let them flutter in the breeze for a moment and let them go to catch in the taller grass. Margaretta pulled him down to her and covered him with kisses. It was cool, and her nipples stood out hard and ripe. Werner suckled them like a baby and marveled at the suppleness of her breasts.

He removed his shoes and stockings and laid them aside, then returned to kissing and fondling his bare-breasted lover, warming her with passion and bold caresses of her thighs. She breathed heavily and returned the gesture, groping his hardened manhood thru his trousers.

At last, together, they pushed his trousers and undershorts down and left him naked and exposed beside her. Margaretta shamelessly explored him, feeling his flat stomach, his muscled buttocks, and—at last—massaging his aching stem. Werner removed his sweetheart’s garter belt and pulled down her silk and lace drawers down laid them aside, at last gazing upon her in her absolute natural state, naked and pale pink from nose to toes. Her thick bush invited his exploring hand, her heaving bosom his lips. They embraced as lovers and came together as one.

Margaretta spread her thighs and urged Werner to mount her, which he did with a natural grace. Altho both lacked experience, their enthusiasm showed the way to bliss. He pressed his hard, red prick against her cunny lips and pushed gently, invading the moist channel slowly and easily. She held him back, pushing on his chest, desperate for a moment’s breath, and then pulled him slowly into her tearing her hymen with an eager groan. Werner pulled back and pushed again, desperate for release but intent on pleasing Margaretta also. She took him all the way in, her cunny tight and wet, squeezing him and releasing him over and over.

After only a few slow strokes, he groaned and lost control, squirting hotly inside her. But so eager was he to have her that he pressed on, unflagging, rigid and resolute. “Oh!” cried Margaretta, and squeezed his buttocks, pulled him harder into her. Werner thrust heavily, inspired by her groans, which became gradually more urgent. “Yes! Oh! Oh, yes! It’s long and thick inside me, darling! Oh, it’s wonderful!”

Werner pounded against her, scrotum slapping, arms aching from holding himself above her. At last she have a heavy gasp and sighed, “Oh! Oh, Werner! It’s— It’s wonderful!” And she pulled him down to her and held him tightly, clutching his back and buttocks with all her might.

Above them on the hill, in the shadow of the majestic firs that overlooked the lake, sat Ava, glaring from under her eyebrows, clawing at her delicate frock in frustration, bare legs spread in lewd imitation of the girl taking Werner’s love inside her.

That night, Broeger called Werner to the laboratory. The tables and equipment were in disarray, and a large flask lay shattered on the stone floor. “I am concerned about my experiment,” Broeger said confidentially. “Ava has been very troubled lately, and withdrawn. I thought it was a lack of attention; you know how she craves it.” The student nodded gravely. “But the party seemed to help—until now.” He looked around. “I was afraid she might become violent, and now she has.”

“What happened?” Werner asked.

“Ava returned from a walk in the garden distracted. She wouldn’t answer questions and refused even to respond except to ask what happens when a person dies.” Werner gasped. “I tried to question her further, but she lashed out and knocked over these things and smashed equipment. I am afraid she exhibits the classic symptoms of insanity: the disconnectedness, the fixations, the tendency toward violence.”

Werner thought of the great strength the girl had displayed before, when she groped him. “What can we do?”

“I am afraid that nothing will help,” Broeger said, “but there is a chance....” Werner leaned close. “I have seen the application of electricity to the temples of a patient—electricity, you know, can be very therapeutic. If we apply this electroshock, it may enable her brain to function more normally.”

Werner turned away, speechless. The great glass vat where Ava was grown loomed over them, silent and dark.

“Ava, my beautiful girl! There you are!” She looked up at Werner from the floor of the shattered ruins of a chamber she sat in. She had torn it to pieces. Her hair was disheveled; her little frock torn and revealing. “But you have broken some of your things! Look at you. Are you unhappy my dear?” The gray-skinned girl said nothing, but only glared at him from under her brow like a wolf. “What is it? Come, come.” His stomach turned in knots.

When still she said nothing, Werner left her, intending to return after a moment, but found that she was following him. His heart suddenly pounded as he felt her presence behind him, stalking him. He went quickly toward the stairs to the laboratory underground. “Ah,” he said, turning suddenly with an artificial smile, “I...have something for you.” And he went down the stairs.

Evening had fallen, and no light filtered thru the small windows to the lab, but the great room was nevertheless lighted by the eerie glow of gaslight and electric lamps. Broeger had finished setting the table up. Electrodes were attached to wooden paddles that he could hold, adapted from some other purpose. The electrodes stretched by coils of insulated wire to the generating machinery, which even now hummed ominously and lighted the room with glowing gauges and stray sparks.

Ava saw immediately that there would be no party and no gifts. She did not often venture into the laboratory of her birth, and tonight it was no more inviting. But it did not matter. As soon as she stepped off the last stair, the doctor rushed her with a broad leather strap. “Help me get her to the table!” he shouted.

Werner leaped to aid him. “No!” the girl screamed. “No! What are you doing?!” But it was too late. The two men wrapped the strap around her arms, pinning them to her side. They wrestled her onto the wooden table and held her there, tearing her ragged clothes further as they lashed the strap in place. Ava kicked with her legs and gnashed her teeth, but Werner held firm. She was immensely strong, he found—even more than he had noted before—and it took all of his strength and weight—and part of the doctor’s—to confine her.

“Hold her legs; I don’t have another strap here,” Broeger said. And Werner did. But he had to apply his full weight to keep them from kicking him off. She squealed and howled, but the two men were grim in their work. The doctor jammed a cloth in her mouth to keep her from biting her tongue. Werner prepared to step away to avoid a shock himself.

ZZZAT! ZAT! The heavy electrodes pressed against her temples sent a storm of electrical energy thru the girl’s brain. Her half-naked body lurched and kicked, shuddering involuntarily in rhythm with the generator’s throbbing whirl. The doctor stepped away and waited for the convulsions to subside. Ava’s eyes snapped open suddenly, and she thrashed to and fro in her bonds. “Hold her!” the doctor commanded.

Werner threw himself on the girl, dragged her toward him so that her legs dangled, and held her down firmly. As the doctor applied the electrodes again, the student was suddenly acutely aware that his bulging groin was pinned against Ava’s exposed pelvis. The electricity coursed thru her body, into his arms and groin, and instantly raised his penis to a full and throbbing erection.

Ava groaned heavily and flopped upon the table, eyes rolled back, tongue lolling, but then—slowly—she came out of it. Her eyes focused on him, her bosom heaved with breath, her dress torn, her breasts exposed. The doctor stepped away to watch the reaction, but Ava locked her legs around Werner’s and held him firm against her, sex to sex. She ground her hips against him lewdly and breathed, “Oh, darling.... Oh, yes....”

“Hold her if you can!” The doctor stepped forward then applied another heavy dose of raw energy to the girl’s brain. The room dimmed as she convulsed and stiffened. The shock passed to Werner and wracked his balls with spasm after spasm. His prick throbbed heavily in his trousers and spurted jism all over himself. Ava convulsed again, and howled out in orgiastic rapture, “It’s wonderful!”

Later, Doctor Broeger went to check on Ava, strapped heavily to a bed in a little side chamber off the lab. He found the door open and the bed, to his astonishment, half disassembled and in ruins on the floor. He called out for Werner immediately.

They searched the house and grounds, calling the cook, the gardener, coachmen, and other servants out of their beds, but found nothing. Ava had escaped into the night. Near dawn, Werner returned to the lab, bleary-eyed and worn. The doctor was not about. But Ava was here, sitting on the heavy table.

“Werner, darling,” she said thickly. She was still half naked in her tattered shift, her big breasts and lean thighs exposed.

“Ava? Where have you been? We have been very worried. The doctor— The doctor says you must rest. Your treatment was... very tiring.”

Ava smirked. “I am not tired, darling. I have been busy... preparing for our wedding.”

Werner stopped. “What are you talking about?”

“We are lovers now, Werner darling,” the girl said. “We will get married and go away on a train for a honeymoon.”

Werner set his jaw. “Don’t be ridiculous. I am marrying Margaretta, Ava. You know that.”

“I have taken care of her.” With a languid flick of her wrist, Ava activated the equipment, and the huge glass tank that had been her womb lit up with its hellish green glow. Floating in it, head first, was the pale and lifeless body of Margaretta Ulmstodt.

“No! NO!” screamed Werner. He slapped the tank in disbelief and anger. Those lovely eyes bulged morbidly; the tongue protruded between the teeth. Werner turned and found a metal pipe on the floor and wielded it like a club. “You fool! You mindless little fool! Look what you’ve done!” He smashed the table where she had sat; he smashed the beakers and equipment that sat nearby. Shattered glass showered her, but Ava dodged and leaped behind the gestation tank.

“Stop!” she cried. “You must love me now!”

Werner found her brandishing a chair to fend him off. He struck and struck again, thwarted by the heavy wooden chair. Ava jabbed it at him as easily as if it were a stick of wood. They fought for only a moment before footsteps rang out from the stairs. “Werner! My God!”

“I have her!” the young man shouted. “Come help me!” But Ava shoved the chair at him and knocked him to the floor. She rushed past and out the far door that led up to the carriage house. But Werner only lay on the floor, holding his cheek and suddenly bursting out in a pitiful sob. “Doctor, she is dead! Margaretta is dead! That hideous little monster has murdered her!”

That day, without sleep and with barely a bite to eat, the two men tracked Broeger’s monster along the road toward the ruins of Ostworm Castle. They found her near dusk, climbing the slope toward the broken curtain wall. “Ava!” Werner called angrily, still brandishing his length of metal pipe.

She shot a look down on them, a twisted mask of fear and anger, and went back to climbing. She was lithe and strong, climbing like an animal. In a moment, she was on the top of the wall, even as Broeger started up the slope himself. But Ava lifted a fallen stone and heaved it over the side at them. “Look out!” Werner called. The heavy chunk of rock narrowly missed the doctor and bounced off the rocky slope toward the younger man.

Broeger gestured to him. “Go around the side. There is another way up. I will keep her distracted.”

Werner found a place around the side where more stones had fallen away and left a pathway up thru the breach. There, Werner circled around behind the woman and found her heaving another stone down upon the doctor. Her dress was nearly torn away, exposing both her shapely breasts and the curve of her naked thigh down to her bare feet. “Ava!” he cried. She turned and snatched up a small stone to throw at him. It came dangerously close to his head, but the young man threw himself against the wall to avoid it.

“Werner!” he heard the doctor call out from below. “I am injured! My leg!” The young man advanced on Ava with his cudgel held high.

“Stop!” the girl cried. “You cannot kill me! You must love me!”

“Never!” Werner growled. “You are an experiment. And you have failed.” He struck at her solidly, but she took the blow on her forearm. She hit him in the collarbone with a stone and shoved him back. Then she turned to the loose masonry of the merlon next to her.

“Don’t move!” she said to Werner. He weighed the danger in his mind and opted for the risk. He rushed her, but already she was shoving hard at the weak stones. The battlement gave only a little before Ava dashed back and let Werner’s blow crash against it harmlessly.

But then the tall young woman rushed him and shoved Werner hard against the merlon. He felt it give way and called out, “Doctor! Run!” But it was too late. The only reply was the scientist’s chilling scream as the rocks came raining down on him like Hell’s own hail. “You wicked beast!” Werner spat, and lunged at Ava with the length of pipe. She took the blow again and grabbed the pipe firmly, struggling, wrestling with him, falling to the ground with him.

Werner tried to wrench the club away from her, but Ava heaved at the same time, and the pipe went clattering into the rubble. Instantly, his hands fell upon her throat, and they fought hand to hand. She was immensely strong, but she could not break his enraged grasp. Her breasts heaved, nipples hard and erect, her lithe legs twisted and flailed. The young man kept the pressure, even as her strong fingers pried at his grip. Her gray face went red to match his.

Feeling the hot flesh of this nearly-naked Amazon under him, Werner found his penis stiffening in his trousers. She writhed and bucked, her groin grinding against his as it had before, during the shock therapy. It unnerved him so that his grip failed, and Ava threw him off, into the gravel.

“I’ll murder you,” she fumed. “I’ll scratch out your eyes!” And she pounced on him, straddling him like a lover but clutching at his throat. Werner fought back, barely holding her off, wild-eyed and terrified. His erection was a thick prod, rubbing against her exposed sex thru his pants. He was confounded by the terrifying thrill.

Werner rolled her off him and against a rock, but Ava leaped away and went back to the wall, where loose stones could be found. Werner rushed her without thinking, and nearly paid for it by pitching to the rocky slope below. But he caught himself and grabbed at her, fired by the thrill now, and mounted her roughly. The beautiful double murderess struggled, scratched, and kicked, but his hands found her throat again.

There, half-leaning over the wall, battered and bruised, Ava fought for her final breaths. Werner’s thick manhood throbbed heavily as he strangled her. She reached down with one hand and pulled open his trousers, snapping off the buttons, and exposing his thrusting cock immediately thru the fly of his shorts. "Do you want my love, little Ava?" he growled. "I shall show you what a man does with a woman."

Her legs wrapped around his, her pelvis arching to meet his, her sex wet and eager, even in the grip of danger. They struggled at her throat even as his prick entered her. An eerie grin contorted her face, a wicked leer of lust and zeal. But the same leer contorted the face of Werner, the wild-eyed stare of an animal, and he pounded Ava’s tender cunt and watched her big breasts shake.

Her eyes rolled back into her head as they had on the shock table, her body arched over the jagged stone wall, bucking against him in orgasmic pleasure even as she breathed her last. Werner thrust against her, shoving his meaty prick deep inside her struggling frame. “Take it!” he growled. “This is what you wanted! Now take it!”

Ava groaned and gurgled, red and sweating. Her eyes popped; her tongue protruded, and still Werner strangled her, the tortured look of his true love’s cadaver fresh in his mind’s eye. His blood boiled, and his balls constricted, pumping hot semen thru his cock and into her womb as the girl under him shuddered and writhed. And still he pressed, until at last, her struggles and her death throes both subsided, and her body fell limp and lifeless against the stony ruins.

Utterly spent, Werner rose up and backed away; he stood over Ava’s twisted corpse for a moment and crashed against the upright remainder of the battlement, panting and coughing and wiping his forehead.

“Oh! Preserve us!” A peasant woman pointed a long, bony finger toward him from the road below. “Murderer! That man is a murderer! He’s murdered a girl!” The men behind her with the cart rushed for a better look. Werner stood stunned—disheveled and wild, trousers torn and dirty—over the lifeless body of Ava, naked and despoiled.

They chased Werner and beat him. The men dragged him to a tree, where they bound his hands behind his back and slipped a knotted rope around his neck. They pulled it tight and raised him off the ground with their own hands. Werner stared bug-eyed at the castle wall where Ava’s corpse still lay exposed in the last light of the setting sun. His throat constricted, white spots popping in his vision, his lungs burning for air, and felt the darkness roll over him like a funeral shroud.

All models are 18 years or older, regardless of the text.