Long dark shadows dance listlessly against the chamber walls.  Stones stacked in geometric
 absence of precision, forming an incarcerative circle around me.  They emit a cool, heavy, 
humidity that pricks my naked flesh with slow, thick needles of sensation.  I pull my 
ebony hair around my bare feet then wrap it completely around my trembling thighs and 
gather it up and across my breasts.  This blanket of excess calcium soothes me.  It does 
not effectively keep the cold from my body, but it is “of me”.  Although at times it 
feels like a separate entity, and I desire to wretch it from it’s roots, it grows and thrives, 
collecting, from “me”.  It dies rooted to my scalp unerringly.  The length repulses me at 
times; at times it is my one sense of pride. 

I have been here under lock and key all of my fifteen years and my keeper revels in its 
growth.  Twice a fortnight he sends his patrons to care for it, caressing the curling serpents 
with wild tinctures of foreign berries, and stripping away the collected filth of time.  His 
patrons’ care for nothing more than long, enduring opportunities to gaze upon my 
humiliated nudity.  Ferociously dragging crude brushes through it, moving it aside, 
exposing my young breasts and soiling their ivory perfection with fantasies of acquisition.  
Misplaced hands and wandering fingers drink in and consume every forbidden cell and 
vomit it out in masturbatory futility.  I shudder at their weakness and dream of flesh 
that would move my soul to such embarrassing acts of desperation.  

I am kept.  That is my function and I know nothing else.  I sit alone and I grow furious at 
their intrusions but in the end it is I who controls them.  Not “I” but the rapidly regenerating 
and decaying cells scantily clinging to my bones.  My feet stretch out into the silent 
comfort of my hair, twisting it between my toes and I imagine it a morbid train to a 
fleshy bridal veil.  Silly, spastic giggles push through my numb lips and I hear a distant voice 
calling.  My mind springs forth entangling itself in the warmth of a strange, distant voice.  
The sensations drifting through this stifling dampness on a magic carpet of warm vocal 
bliss prove futile.  I know my place here engulfed in darkness.  

It beckons again, “fair mistress, dost thou receive my calamitous cries with pleasure or contempt?”  
I do not answer, pray, that is answer enough.  The cry is repeated, desperate and intense.  
What disillusioned menace asks more of me than my silence?  I rise slowly to my feet, 
carefully draping my hair behind me, and walk on atrophied calves to the opening in the 
chamber wall.  As I approach, the night grows larger, lit by intoxicating moonlight.  This 
grey illumination cuts hard angles across the stone floor and guides me.  

“MISTRESS!”  Far below the castle’s turret stands a young beast calling me from 
cupped hands.  The enticing, curving, cuts in this boy’s arms speak nothing of the 
men who attend me.  The indistinguishable sensuality of his aesthetic strength quickens 
my pulse.  He is virile and ignorant.  My master, dead and wearily wise.  
I call down to the young man, “get thee from here hastily, lest my master’s wrath visit 
thee in the blade of a guillotine.”  

“Mistress, I am here for thee.  I shall not go lest I hold thee to my breast this very night.”  
His eyes, though obscured by distance, climb the stone walls and grace my blushing cheek 
with a tender kiss.  What is this spark?  What is this strength of purpose in this young man?  
So unlike my jaded captor.  Hopeful, stumbling over desire, registering only completion of 
goal and cessation of want?  

The chamber has become warm with lust and I pull my hair to my back pressing my tiny 
breasts against the window’s sill.  The passionate one ceases to speak, perhaps taken by 
my tawdry display.  “If it is my flesh you seek, gentle caller, have what you will of it, but I 
cannot be yours.”  

“My mistress, your flesh is, no doubt, a high concern, but I remain solid in my position.  
This night you will be freed.  Let the magnificent locks of your fame fall to the earth my 
sweet!  Supply me, your suitor, with ample means to reach your blushing countenance
so that my lips may rest upon it, and our bodies may be joined.”  

So forward, so dangerously certain, what force may I exert to disobey his commands?  
What force may I apply to disobey the commands of my body?  Heat collects under my 
belly and blood swells the intimate flesh connecting thigh to thigh.  Slowly I run my 
fingers through my hair, watching the boy staring up at me, earnestly devouring me 
with his lustful gaze.  The chamber becomes filled with musty heat.  

“I’ll entertain thee this eve’, but fail me not youthful suitor, or it shall be both our heads 
kissing death in an executioner’s basket.”  I begin pulling my hair from the coil it has 
created around my tiny feet and feed it through the small chamber window.  The 
boy’s body begins rocking in anticipation as it snakes down the turret wall and finally 
into his anxious hands.  

“Steady thyself maiden, I will be with thee hence.”  My arms form a bridge across the 
opening and I angle my head, keeping the boy in view.  

“Hurry, my savior, waste not a moment.”  The boy clutches my hair and pulls himself 
from the earth.  The dead cells dance around his body playing in the wind as he grunts 
against gravity’s resistance.  A tight sensation moves through my scalp and he begins his ascent.  

The tiny pinpricks of pain are bearable, and suprisingly increase the heat growing between 
my supple hips.  As this athlete clumsily scales the wall, each hand over hand reach 
increases the strain on my scalp.  Every mistaken, faltering slip tears at the muscles in my back.  
My body bends to the boy’s will and my head dips pulling the strain from my back to my 
tensed neck.  This momentary shift of weight soothes my pain.  

“Hasten your ascent lad, my body grows weary of this blind support.”  

“Fear not, my mistress, this pain, if endured, will unlock the pleasures of centuries.  
I will give to you the finest of human sensations, waste not a morsel of your pleasure, 
and drink of your innocence as a lush milks a grape’s essence.”    

His gallant words soothe me once again. Though I tremble under his weight, the fine hairs 
tearing from my scalp fail to break this lustful drunkenness.  What is this elixir of pain that 
brings weeping pleasure to my eyes?  His weight is again becoming unbearable.  I feel 
the fleshy roots of my hair ripping in tiny pinprick agony from my flesh.  

“I beg thee, hurry!” 

“Patience my child, I climb to my love with all due haste.  Silence your bickering tone and 
leave me to my task.”  

His words slice through me.  I don’t feel pain or shame at his tone.  I have never been 
addressed as anything other than cattle but in this brief courtship my boy has created 
in me an appreciation for gentle worship and I resent him for withdrawing it now. 

 “Good sir, dost thou speak to me?  I pray thou speaks to the earth for separating our lips 
with its jealous grip.”  

“Faith, my precious, I will be upon you soon, and there will be no need for words.”  The muscles
 in my tiny neck pull tenuously and my grip begins to loosen on the window. 

 “Kind sir, let go, lest ye drop, I can hold you no longer, the pain I cannot endure.”  

“I am almost there silly wench, be still your crimson lips.  They serve no purpose now 
but to revel in my affections.”  His grunt is vulgar.  He believes he possesses me now 
because I reach out to him.  Folly follows the man who asserts reception where none 
is given. 

“Release me, beastly man, do as I say, or this night shall be your last.”  He answers not and 
continues his ascent.  I am blind to his expression.  My neck is bent, and my body is 
prostrate under his weight, my face grinds into the stone as I weep. 

“RELEASE ME!!!”  …No answer, only continued agony of strain. 

My hands find the shining silver shears, brought to my eyes by reflection of glimmering 
moonlight.  I wrap my fingers around the blades and ask my absent Master silently for 
his forgiveness.  The blades separate me from the hair slowly, strand by tensed strand.  

I hear the boy sliding, “What are you doing wench?  What wickedness are you performing?  
Cease at once or your thrashing will be legendary in this kingdom.  Do you hear me?  
DO YOU HEAR……..” 

His last word stretches, spaghetti like through the inky night air and dissolves in a dull thud.  
I lift my head to see his ruptured beauty lain broken, smothered by dense English mud.  
My once proud mane frames his madness against the cold earth.