WARNING: ADULT CONTENT, INTENDED FOR READERS 18 AND OLDER
Previously only available to beta readers, this was my first attempt at steampunk erotica. “The Little Death Machine” came about as a bit of friendly author competition, something I wrote just to see if I could do it. When the reception from my beta readers turned out to be overwhelmingly enthusiastic, I decided to submit it to Best Lesbian Erotica 2012. Sadly, it didn’t make the cut. So here it is for free.
The Little Death Machine
a petite mort short
by Jane Kindred
“Once more, and then I promise we’ll be done with it.” Paulina propped her heel on the end of the bedframe, lacing up the white kidskin boot with her petticoat hitched up around her thighs. The seam in her calf needed tightening.
“You always say it’s the last time.”
Paulina looked up as she straightened and wriggled her petticoat down. “I just need one last payout to finish my project. This one will work. Trust me, Margot.” She crawled over my half-covered limbs, the joints in her false leg ratcheting into place with the sound of a wind-up doll. “Besides, there are only so many times I can come back from the dead.” Paulina planted a reassuring kiss on my lips before moving down to one of my exposed breasts. She kissed the peak with a feathery touch and a flick of her tongue, coaxing a smile from me. I turned my head, trying not to let her see it.
Ebony waves draped the coverlet as she prowled over me like a sleek, exotic cat. With skin the color of a Burmese pelt and eyes of feline green, Paulina was as extraordinary as I was common. She’d never had the option of being anything less; she was simply incapable of it. As for myself, plain and homespun with an unassuming porcelain complexion and dull copper-penny hair, I was the perfect lure.
I took Paulina’s left hand in mine and entwined my fingers between the cool tin. Dead or alive, I loved every piece of her.
She gave me a devious look. “You’re far too wound up. I think you may need a treatment for hysteria.”
“Don’t you dare.”
My protests were useless. She pulled her hand from mine and threw off the coverlet, slipping the tin digits beneath the sheet and between my thighs. I heard the hum of the mechanism as she switched it on and then her thumb was vibrating against my over-sensitized clit. She had taken me twice already this morning with her nimble tongue.
“This isn’t fair,” I gasped, pushing up against her hand.
“It’s a medically proven therapy, love. Just lie back and stop troubling Dr. Edgar.”
I laughed at the alias she adopted after I’d given her the nickname “Poe,” but my laughter cut short on a squeal as one of her cold fingers slipped inside me. From experience, I knew it would warm soon enough.
She positioned her hand like a make-believe pistol, thumb pressed against me and her index finger probing deep. With a moan, I twined my fingers in her hair, sliding forward to stroke myself along her finger when she teased by pulling back.
“Please.” I tried to pull her wrist to me, but Paulina wagged the index finger of her other hand with disapproval.
“Now, now. You seem to be getting overworked.” An unexpected second digit pushed in beside the first. “I think it may be a two-barrel morning,” she said with a wicked grin.
Stifling a groan, I let go of her and dug my fists into the sheets, helpless beneath her unfair advantage. Vibrations pulsed against me inside and out and her fingers moved within my livid cunt with a dexterity and speed with which mere flesh and bone could not compete. Possessed of more joints than ordinary fingers, they curved in directions such manual models could not.
My hips rocked up to meet her with each thrust, and my moans kept time with her increasing tempo, rising in intonation and in decibels as she drove me closer and closer to the edge. I tried to throw off the sheet as the flush of arousal reached full flower, with twofold purpose: to see her beautiful fingers working and to get the damn heat off me.
With an expert motion, Paulina snatched up both my wrists in her free hand while lifting her thumb from my clit. “Ah-ah. Modesty, my dear. We must maintain at least a modicum of propriety, else what can a woman of our age claim?”
I groaned in frustration, nearly weeping as she held back until I settled and surrendered. And then with an inhuman twist of the fingers engulfed by my sodden cunt and a merciless application of what she called her “independent perpetual motion” thumb, she brought me to a resounding climax.
I cried out, bucking my hips in the air and shuddering like one of her engines springing to life and Paulina let go of my wrists and clamped her hand down on my mouth.
“Modesty,” she cautioned, and I howled into her palm, throwing my freed arms around her, and came like the dickens.
Paulina had promised one last rook, but I feared it would be one too many. It was the only way to fund her work. No venture capitalists were lining up to give money to a female entrepreneur. Women of our station worked the factories until we dropped of exhaustion, or the brothels ere we died of disease. But Paulina’s devices were revolutionary. If just one could make it to patent, she insisted—and if she could manage not to blow off another limb—we would be set for life.
Cutter’s Deep was the last outpost along the Gold Road, and the gold was long since gone, but hopeful miners still passed through, and some lingered on in denial. There was no better place to find a suitable mark, and I had found one in Lionel Elliott. Posing as a young widow seeking a safe vehicle in which to invest my sizeable legacy, I had arrived in Cutter’s Deep a fortnight ago. Elliott had happily stepped forward. He owned the mine—and the town—and was eager to offer the naïve Widow Cunningham a profitable stake in his holdings. When I demurred, he turned on the charm and prepared to seduce the money out of me.
And so I had him. Blushing under his attentions and feigning an appropriate awe of his financial acumen, little by little, I induced him to brag about his wealth until he had given away the location of his private cache. His personal safe at home was where he kept his most valuable assets.
All that remained was killing Paulina.
Hidden from view by a cluster of flowering dogwood, I parked the motorcar half a mile from the Elliott mansion and let the engine idle.
“I hate this,” I said. “You know I hate this.”
Paulina opened her pocketbook. One such as any other woman might carry, this contained an assortment of sealed glass vials and a leather case that held a slender brass syringe and a ponderous hypodermic needle.
“I’ll be fine. We’ve done it half a dozen times. I’m always fine.” She cracked the seal on one of the vials, a cocktail of her own concoction in a base of potassium chloride. With reluctance, I assembled the syringe and let her fill it. She gave me a kiss and opened her blouse. “Do it, love. I’ll be back before you know it.”
I placed the needle beneath her breast over the intercostal space between the ribs that caged her heart. Paulina took a deep breath and nodded. I thrust and twisted the screw, and stopped her heart.
Now time was of the essence. After putting her clothes right, I put the motorcar in gear and tore up Elliott’s drive at a frantic pace. The butler’s eyes bulged when he opened the door.
“Help me! I’ve killed her!”
Elliott heard the commotion and came at once. “Mrs. Cunningham! Good Heavens!” He grabbed Paulina’s body, limp against me, before I dropped her. Her clothes were appropriately filthy and torn from my efforts to drag her up the stairs.
“I didn’t see her. She came out of nowhere. Oh, help her, Mr. Elliott!” I burst into tears. It wasn’t difficult.
Elliott pressed his fingers to her carotid pulse and then looked up at me. “I’m afraid she’s dead, Mrs. Cunningham.”
“Heaven help me!” I clutched my breast and collapsed in a faint in the butler’s arms.
The startled man held me awkwardly. “What should I do, sir?”
“Pick her up! Bring her, quickly!”
As I’d hoped, he brought us to his private den, terrified of the impropriety of a dead woman and an unconscious one in his parlor. The butler draped me on the couch, and I moaned and stirred as he placed the valise I had hauled from the motorcar beside me. In my pocket, the stopwatch was ticking.
Elliott laid Paulina on the carpet and took my hand as I roused. “Tell me what happened.”
“I struck her,” I sobbed. “I don’t know where she came from. One minute the road was clear, and the next—oh, what have I done?”
“But what made you bring her here?”
I sat up and pulled the valise onto my lap. “I was bringing you this,” I sniffled. I took out the box of gold coins into which I’d solidified my legacy. “I decided you were right, Mr. Elliott. It won’t be safe in a bank. I want you to keep it here.”
True to form, Elliott crossed to his safe and tucked the box away before dealing with the corpse on his carpet. I suppressed a roll of my eyes when I saw he kept it covered by a portrait of his wife.
When he turned back, I had my hand over my mouth, staring at Paulina’s lifeless form. “Oh, Mr. Elliott. Are you sure she’s dead?”
He knelt on one knee beside her and lifted her wrist, pressed his fingers once more against her throat, then bent his cheek toward her to feel for the slightest breath. “Very, I’m afraid.”
“Poor thing.” I wiped my eyes with the pocket kerchief he handed me. The stopwatch was ticking. “You must fetch the sheriff and the coroner, Mr. Elliott,” I said valiantly. “And a priest, for last rites. We mustn’t move her until she’s had last rites.”
Elliott hesitated before turning to his butler. “Smythe, do as the lady says.”
“Mr. Elliott,” I protested. “Please, you must go yourself. Otherwise I’m afraid they won’t bring the priest. You have to convince them.”
Elliott glanced at Paulina’s body with a dismissive frown. “I’m sure her soul can’t be helped at this late stage.”
“Everyone deserves God’s forgiveness, Mr. Elliott.” Tick, tick, tick. Damn him, why didn’t he get the hell out of here? “I beg of you. Do this for me. I don’t know what’s to become of me, but I shall help this poor soul if I can.”
Elliott sighed. “As you wish, Mrs. Cunningham.” He offered his arm, but I shook my head.
“I’ll stay with the poor dear. It may be a comfort if her soul still lingers.”
Elliott gave me a reluctant bow and went his way, but Smythe hovered.
It was an effort not to shove him through the door. “Will you leave us? I’d like to pray for her.”
At last the room was empty. I yanked the stopwatch from my pocket. Four and a half minutes. It was too damned long. I unpacked the mahogany box from the valise, snapping open the clasps as I went to Paulina’s side. The artificial pacemaker was by far her most useful invention, but she had been unable to find an investor, labeled a crackpot by bankers and scientists alike. We had tested it repeatedly. It restarted the heart without fail. But we had never gone this long.
I reset the pocket watch and put the hollow wooden bore of Paulina’s stethoscope into my ear. My hands shook as I screwed the needle into the electrode wand and inserted the crank into the shaft at the side of the case. Ten rapid revolutions were necessary to wind the spring motor and activate the magneto-generator that would deliver the voltage to the heart.
I tore open my lover’s clothes and thrust the needle into her breast and began to turn the crank. The light flickered in the little glass globe as the pulse of electricity began to flow. I adjusted the voltage and tightened the thumbscrew to increase the impulse rate. The needle on the meter rose to the appropriate voltage. The pacemaker was ready.
Holding the brass bell of the stethoscope to her chest, I depressed the impulse button. Once. Twice. Thrice. Paulina lay still and lifeless.
“Dammit, Poe. You come back to me, do you hear me?”
Four. I held it down hard this time, as if being firm with the button would bring her back. Five.
“Please, Paulina!”
Six. Seven. Tears were running down my cheeks. She wasn’t coming back. I had known it would happen. We had tempted fate too many times. Eight.
There was a flutter of sound at the tube in my ear. I dialed up the voltage. Nine.
Thump-thump.
I was weeping in earnest from sheer relief. Her chest rose and fell. Ten.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The beat was steady. She was breathing. I grabbed Paulina’s face between my hands and kissed her though she was still unconscious, reveling in the velvet of her warming lips, tasting the salt of my tears against them. But time was ticking on.
I went back to work, administering the dose of stimulant through the intracardiac line, and then hit the stopwatch: seven minutes. I bit my lip. It was too long. I rubbed her hands between my palms and massaged her arms through her sleeves, encouraging her sluggish circulation. Slowly, slowly, she came back to me.
Her eyes fluttered open as I massaged her thigh above the clockwork leg. “Oh, my God.”
“Poe!” I leaned close. “What is it? Are you all right? Are you in pain?”
She shook her head and gave me a mock frown. “I can’t believe you’d take advantage of a dead woman.”
The sound of my slap was loud in the spacious den.
“Ow! What the hell are you doing? That’s not an approved method of resuscitation!” Paulina sat up weakly as my own heart pounded in delayed fright and fury.
“How can you joke? I almost lost you, damn you!”
“But you didn’t. I told you I’d be fine.” Paulina pulled the needle from her chest and took the stethoscope from me. “It’s time to get to work. Where’s the safe?”
“No, it’s too soon. You need to rest longer.”
“It’s what, ten miles into town? Round trip, including picking up the sheriff and the coroner, that gives us less than an hour.”
“And the priest. That should give us at least another twenty minutes.”
Paulina gave me her breathtaking smile. “The priest? Good one, love.” She rose onto her knees and pulled me close with a gloved hand at the back of my neck, giving me a kiss that turned my bones to gelatin. “I’m fine, you see? You brought me back. You always do.”
“Sometimes I just hate you, Poe.” My lip quivered as I looked at the trickle of blood on her breast, and I couldn’t help it, I burst into tears. I had thrown myself into the role of the delicate Widow Cunningham.
“Margot, don’t cry. Please. I’m sorry I scared you.” She pulled me down among the scattered supplies and wrapped her arms around me, and I was acutely aware of her bare breasts pressed against me. “Margot. Sweetheart. Everything’s going to be fine. I won’t make you do it again, I promise.”
“You were dead seven minutes,” I choked out against her shoulder.
“Seven minutes?” Paulina was silent a moment. Even she was shocked for once—and not by one of her gadgets. “Well, there’s only one thing to do. We need to bring my heart rate up. But mostly we need to bring up yours.” Before I knew what she was up to, she had shimmied down to my ankles and was lifting my skirt.
“Paulina!”
“Lie back and relax, Mrs. Cunningham. Doctor’s orders.”
I tried to thrust the skirt down, but she was determined, working to unseat my drawers from beneath my corset. Before I could scoot away from her, she had pulled them down just far enough for her pleasure, and I gasped at the touch of her tongue.
“Poe.” I moaned as she coaxed me open and burrowed in, her lips and teeth teasing at the apex of my sex. “We don’t have time for this.”
Paulina paused a moment to raise her head, her lips glistening with my arousal. “The priest. Really, it was inspired, darling.” She stripped off her gloves and went back to work, her tin fingers holding me open and her tongue exploring me with the precision of a scientist.
She buried one flesh-and-blood finger to the knuckle, sucking above it as she worked it with a slow and steady hand, and I pressed into her mouth, squirming in delighted acquiescence. This was completely mad, but it was useless to fight Paulina. And in truth I was loath to stop her. She brought me to a fevered pitch with her slow strokes, my thighs shaking beneath her. I was close, so close. I tried to hurry her along, bobbing against her, and she pulled out.
“Oh, God, Poe, don’t!”
She ran her tongue up my center, sucking up the excess wetness, and murmured against my damp heat. “You really must leave this up to me, Mrs. Cunningham. I’m a licensed expert.” The finger she’d withheld, still dripping with me, she now thrust up my bum. I had to muffle my cry with my own hand. Shaking as she worked me from both ends with her tongue lapping around her fingers, I began to moan softly, unable to keep silent. She hummed her approval into my cunt, her teeth vibrating against my clit, and the finger in my bum twisting and slick.
I threw my arm across my mouth and panted into my sleeve, nearly hyperventilating. In the fore of my mind the worry we would be caught heightened my arousal. I moved my arm away, whispering her name, “Poe, Poe, oh, God, Poe!” and then arched back as if in the grip of one of her voltage devices and let the orgasm ride me in an oscillating wave. I trembled as one in a mystic frenzy, helpless beneath her, my lovely, devastating, and utterly mad inventrix, until she had drawn every last pulse through the charged electrode of my clit and left me whimpering and wet, modeling putty in her hands.
“There now.” She licked her lips as she put me back together. “Where were we?”
“You’re mad.” I rolled over onto my hands and knees and staggered to my feet. On wobbling limbs, I showed her the safe behind Mrs. Elliott’s unhappy visage.
Paulina fixed the earpiece of the stethoscope in place and flexed her tin fingers as she pressed the bell of the instrument to the lock. With patient precision, she turned the dial by degrees and listened to the delicate sounds of the tumblers as they fell into place. As always, she cracked the safe in mere minutes. I was still trying to steady my head while she rifled through Elliott’s prized possessions to determine what could be of value to us.
The jackpot was a case full of jewels, gaudy diamonds and emeralds in garish gold settings—useless but priceless loot only the nouveau riche would hoard. It would be easy to pawn at the nearest dusty town.
She handed it out for me to empty into the valise but carefully set aside the items in the top layer of the box to replace them in their compartments so that at a cursory glance it would appear undisturbed. Everything else—his deeds to the mine and half the town, a banker’s box of promissory notes, his pistol—was useless to us. Paulina carefully arranged them as they’d been, pocketing half a clip of large bills but leaving the rest, and replaced my box of counterfeit coin. Mrs. Elliott looked on in disapproval as Paulina closed the safe and reseated her precisely.
I had packed up the empty bottles and sealed the needles away in their glass tubes and was closing the clasps of the pacemaker’s case when we heard the front door.
I whirled to face Paulina, my heart in my throat. “What do we do?”
She listened as footsteps advanced through the hall, then dipped her hand into her pocketbook and pulled out the case.
“No!” I hissed the word through my teeth.
Paulina was already assembling the syringe and cracking open a vial.
I folded my arms and backed away from her. “I won’t do it. You promised I would never have to do it again.”
“This is a depressant. It won’t kill me, only slow things down a bit. He’ll think he made a mistake. They’ll cart me off to the hospital and I’ll have a miraculous recovery.”
“It’s too dangerous. You were dead seven minutes! I’m not doing it.”
“You don’t have to.” She plunged the syringe into her own heart, through the wound where I had already killed her once today.
“No!” I grabbed her and pulled the syringe away, but I was too late.
“My gloves,” she murmured before she lost consciousness.
I had only an instant to lay her back on the carpet and pocket the evidence of her deceit. I was still kneeling over her, shoving the glove back over her tin hand, when the door opened, Elliott’s dark silhouette painted against the daylight. The sheriff and coroner flanked him.
I looked up to meet Elliott’s stony countenance. “You didn’t bring the priest.” I held Paulina’s hand. “But it’s alright. I think she’s breathing after all, thank the Lord.”
Elliott reached down and tore my hand from Paulina’s. “I had a very interesting conversation with the sheriff on the way back.” He yanked me to my feet
“Mr. Elliott!” I gave him a scandalized look. “Whatever is the matter with you?”
“It seems a pair of scheming trollops have been defrauding honest men of their hard-earned money throughout the county.”
The coroner crouched down to examine Paulina. “Heartbeat’s faint, but she’s by no means dead.”
Elliott shoved me against the wall and took down Mrs. Elliott. With his hand about my throat, he unlocked the safe, but let go of me in surprise as he saw my “gold” was still there. He went through his papers and checked the box with the gun, lifting the lid of the jewel case last and staring at it in confusion.
I had to distract him before he thought to look deeper.
“Mr. Elliott!” When he turned at my outraged tone, I took a step back as if frightened of his mad behavior. “Would you care to explain why you’ve accosted and assaulted me?”
His face turned red as he shoved the case back into the safe and closed the door. “There’s been a misunderstanding,” he stammered. He looked accusingly to the sheriff. “A case of mistaken identity.”
Paulina stirred on the carpet and I clutched my throat, trying to keep my relief under control. I had feared the drug would keep her under for hours. The coroner pulled up one of her eyelids and she moaned.
I stepped closer. “Will she be alright?”
“Looks like she’s coming ’round. But we should get her to the hospital. Nearest one’s in St. Jerome.”
“I can take her,” I offered hurriedly. “It’s my fault. I want to see that she’s taken care of. I’ll see to her expenses.”
The coroner reluctantly agreed as Paulina became more alert. Cautioning she might have broken bones or internal injuries, he consented to deliver her to my motorcar on a stretcher and laid her in the back seat. Had she been a lady of substance, they might have had more concern for her and insisted on proper procedures, but they clearly thought her a doxy, and I, after all, was the lady of substance.
Elliott himself carried my valise to the motorcar, profuse in his apologies. So mortified was he at how he’d mistreated me, he never thought to wonder why the valise was so heavy.
Not until we were safely away did allow myself to breathe. I stopped at the women’s boarding house where we were rooming near the Crib District—out of the public eye of decent society—and packed up our things. We couldn’t linger in Cutter’s Deep; Elliott might check his safe more carefully at any moment. With Paulina half-conscious beside me, I drove out of the gold valley in the direction opposite St. Jerome. I was tired of miners and dying boomtowns and all the dust and noise of “civilization.” Off the Gold Road, I headed north, not stopping until dusk, and found lodging for us in rooms an older couple rented out at their farmstead—too weary of living on the edge of survival to ask us questions and too hungry to turn our money away.
It was days before Paulina was fully back to herself. I cursed her and cried and swore I would leave her. I didn’t. Couldn’t. And in due course, she returned to her experiments. I was not allowed to see what she was working on in the little closet she called her laboratory in the attic of the old farmhouse, but we had more than enough money from Mrs. Elliott’s jewels to secure everything she needed. I brought her what she asked for, made sure she paused from time to time to eat, and left her alone. Let her build her machines, I thought. She would never sell one, but there was no harm in keeping her happy.
On an afternoon in early autumn while I sat reading on the bed, she emerged from the laboratory with a grin of triumph on her face.
“I’ve done it,” she said. “I’ve come up with something men will pay me for.”
She raised her skirt and petticoat, and I gaped at her. Strapped in front of her dusky bush in a harness of leather and buckles was what could only be called a counterfeit appendage.
“Paulina! What on earth?”
She pulled the book from my hand and began to undress me. “It’s a clockwork cock. I want to try it out on you.”
“You’ve lost your mind.”
“It’s the ultimate gadget for the man who has trouble maintaining his stamina in his waning years. I bet the farmer will want one.”
“Poe.” I tried to swat her away, but her enthusiasm was infectious, and soon I was spread before her in nothing but my chemise. I eyed her member dubiously.
“They’ll definitely want them in brothels,” she said. “Turn about, Margot. On your hands and knees.”
“Oh my God.” I obeyed despite my better judgment.
“It’s encased in a washable leather pouch.” She spread my legs apart and nudged between my thighs, just barely tickling my curious cunt. “The harness is fully adjustable.”
Paulina leaned over me and turned my head to kiss me, dipping her tin hand beneath my chemise to tease my left breast. I was so distracted by these twin delights that she took me off guard. I jolted and let out a low moan as she pushed into me.
She continued to talk throughout her demonstration. “It’s quite flexible.” Thrust. “It was the hand that gave me the idea.” I heard the hum of something mechanical, and then the clockwork cock began to twist about inside me.
“Sweet Jesus.” I fell forward against the pillows and bit one.
Paulina scooted closer on her knees, starting a slow and steady rhythm of forward and back. “It has three speeds.” She had apparently switched it up to the second; the twisting and writhing of the tin joints inside the leather pouch increased.
I groaned into the pillow while Paulina continued to chatter, no longer understanding a word she said. Something about upstanding men, and secret desires, and having their bottoms penetrated, and money, and I just didn’t care.
I couldn’t keep quiet. Paulina seemed content to let me moan and wail as she jabbered on while keeping meticulous time, pumping my soaking cunt with her mechanical appendage, turning dials, and rendering me virtually insensible. I wondered if she was keeping count as I jolted against her, howling happily, but then she went quiet at last after my third or fourth climax peaked.
“Paulina?” I gasped, writhing in time with the ratcheting joints.
She was breathing heavily. “Hush. This part’s still in testing.” She rocked into me, driving the dildo against my engorged clitoris, her tempo increasing, her breathing heavier.
I squealed as another climax began to build, and Paulina made a similar sound.
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Oh, yes.”
“Wha—? Ohhhhh my God.” I couldn’t be bothered with whatever she was on about. I thrust myself back on her, greedy and transported and shaking like a boiler about to burst.
“The test part,” Paulina sputtered out. “Oh God, Margot. Keep going. Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! Ohhhh yes! It works! It works! Yesss!”
I thought for a moment she was having a fit as she shuddered behind me, thighs bucking wildly, pushing deep into me and drawing one last screaming climax from my exhausted loins before we both collapsed panting and sweating, entangled in each other’s arms. She switched off the motor, and the coiling motion inside me stopped, and I swear I heard her purr.
“What was that?” I panted. “What happened?”
“The test part. I fitted the harness with a second branch that faces the other way.” Paulina sighed and snuggled close to me, kissing my breasts. “I’m not sure that bit will sell. We’ll have to keep this one as a prototype for further testing.”