• Sign up or login, and you'll have full access to opportunities of forum.

Notturno Veneziano

Go to CruxDreams.com
Friday night


Frau Helga accompanies me to the secret door that opens onto the canal, a gondola is waiting for me. The gondolier reaches out to help me get in the boat, I sit, wrapping myself in the mantle.

The gondolier turn right, then left, then right, left and I lose any sense of direction, peering at channels I’ve never seen, at the backs of houses where no windows open.

‘We’re there.’

A door opens, the water lapping on the threshold, the gondolier slings a rope on the chestnut pole that serves as a mooring.

‘Go in, my lovely, up to the Countess who’s expecting you.’

He helps me climb over the gunwale, not missing the chance to pinch my butt, he knows I can't protest.

The staircase is lit by dim light candlelight that glimmers from above. A Countess?

One click of the lock, and the door closes behind me. I'm trapped, there is no escape, I can't stay here, soon the tide will rise and the entrance will be flooded. I just have to go up and meet my fate. I feel a strange feeling of lassitude, almost in a mist ...

But if I’m to present myself to a Countess why did Frau Helga dose me with a contraceptive? What is there waiting for me here? What did I really swallow? I climb the stairs as if I were going up to the gallows. Two flights of stairs, and I find myself in a large hall bathed in half-light. The windows are masked by a polychrome arabesques in gothic style, one cannot see outside – in any case, it is dark, already nearly eleven o'clock at night.

The little light from two candelabras with three candles on each allows me to take in that around me are scattered furniture and objects. It is the ground floor of the house, the place where guests once loitered before going upstairs to meet the gentlemen. I stop here, looking around, I dare not ascend if there is no-one coming to introduce me to the Countess, I think it’s better to wait.

A desk cluttered with books and scattered with papers, an old inkwell with a quill, a shabby old armchair with worn-out padding, cushions on a couch, an old doll dressed in baroque costume looking at me with glazed eyes, one half-closed, it seems like she's winking at me, an old-style woman's hat with a wide brim.

These seem to be bric-a-brac, objects abandoned for years that never nobody has cared or dared to touch. Then something makes me shudder: it looks like an iron bed, lacking any mattress, with a tangle of coiled chains, and other items that I can't make out because they’re hidden in a cone of shadow where the feeble light from the candelabra fails to shine.

But the whole place worries me, I'm troubled. Seeking comfort, I look towards the gaze of the doll. My heart jumps into my throat, now the doll has no baroque clothes, she is naked, with long leather boots that go up over her knees, a bra without cups made of strips of black leather held together by metal studs. What's going on? I look around, bewildered - have I confused the doll I saw before with this new one? No! There's only one doll...

I'm scared, panicking, I want to run away, but where? I need to pee.
 
My heart jumps into my throat, now the doll has no baroque clothes, she is naked, with long leather boots that go up over her knees, a bra without cups made of strips of black leather held together by metal studs. What's going on? I look around, bewildered - have I confused the doll I saw before with this new one? No! There's only one doll...

I'm scared, panicking, I want to run away, but where? I need to pee.

Yipes! I can understand the need to p-p-p-panic! :eek:
 
Back
Top Bottom