The 120 Days of Sodom (66 page)

    142. Martaine's of the 16th of January, whose joy was to prick asses, attaches a girl to a machine studded with sharp iron points; he fucks her as she lies upon that bed, with every blow of his loins he drives her upon the nails, then he turns her over and fucks her asswise, that she may also be punctured on the other side. When he has finished that phase of the operation, he lays a second plank above her, and it is likewise provided with nails; the planks are brought together by means of bolts, thus dies the patient, crushed and stabbed in a multitude of places. The pressing is carried out gradually, she is given ample opportunity to savor her pain.

    143. A fustigator stretches a pregnant woman out upon a table; he nails her thereto, first driving a fiery nail into each eye, one into her mouth, another into either breast, then he burns her clitoris and nipples with a taper, and slowly saws her knees halfway through, breaks her legs, and ends by hammering a red-hot spike, of enormous size, into her navel: it undoes both mother and child. He likes to have her ready to give birth.

    Messieurs whip Julie and Duclos that evening, but from amusement, since they are both amongst the inhabitants of Silling who shall transfer their residence to Paris: nevertheless, Julie's thighs are burned in two places, and she is depilated.

    Sentenced to die the next day but unaware of her impending fate, Constance appears; her nipples are scorched, molten wax is allowed to trickle down over her belly, she yields four teeth, Messieurs prick the white of her eyes with needles.

    Narcisse, also due to be immolated on the 28th of February, enters upon the stage; he loses an eye and four teeth.

    Giton, Michette, and Rosette, destined to accompany Constance to the grave, each surrenders an eye and four teeth, Rosette her two nipples to the knife and six chunks of flesh, some of them carved from her arms, some from her thighs; all her fingers are neatly severed, and hot irons are introduced into her cunt and bum. Both Curval and the Duc discharge twice.

    Up steps Louison; she weathers a storm of one hundred blows of the bull's pizzle; Messieurs pluck out one of her eyes and, most cynically, bid her swallow it. Down it goes.

    THE 28TH. 144. A bugger: has two girls brought to him, they are fast friends, he ties them mouth to mouth, and by their side sits an excellent meal; but they cannot get to it, and he watches them bite and eat each other when hunger begins to exert its influence upon them.

    145. A man who as a boy was wont to flog pregnant women, now shuts six of this sort into a round cage formed by large iron hoops: they are all facing one another. Little by little, the hoops contract, little by little they are brought together, slowly they are flattened, gradually all six are crushed, their fruit crushed too. But prior to this he has cut a buttock and a breast from each and fashioned six collars therefrom; each woman wears one as you might a fur tippet.

    146. Another pregnant-woman beater binds two of these objects each to the end of a long tilting pole; a clever machine, into which the other ends of the poles are inserted, bumps and bangs the women against each other. These repeated collisions are their mutual undoing, and he discharges. He makes every effort to procure himself a mother and daughter, or two sisters.

    147. That Comte of whom Duclos spoke at length, and to whom Desgranges alluded once before on the 26th, he who purchased Lucile, Lucile's mother, and Lucile's little sister, of whom Martaine also spoke in her fourth tale on the 1st of January, this Comte, I say, has another passion still: 'tis to suspend three women over three holes. The first woman hangs by her tongue, beneath her is a very deep well; the second hangs from her breasts, underneath her lies a charcoal brazier; the scalp of the third has been loosened, she hangs by her hair over a pit studded with pointed iron rods. When the weight of their bodies causes these women to fall free - when the scalp is torn from the head of the third, when the breasts of the second tear loose from her torso, when the tongue of the first is torn from her mouth - they only escape one difficulty in order to encounter a new one. Whenever possible, he suspends three pregnant women, or three women from the same family; such was his unkind use of Lucile, her sister, and her mother.

    148. The last passion.

    (But why the last? Where are the other two? They were all there in the original outline.)

    Desgranges recounts the last passion:

    The nobleman who indulges in this final passion we shall designate as the infernal caprice or, more simply, as the hell passion, has been cited four times: by Duclos in the last story she told on the 29th of November; by Champville, when referring to a personage who depucelates nine-year-olds only; by Martaine, as he who depucelates three-year-olds in the bum; by Desgranges who mentioned him in an early connection (establish that connection more precisely). He is a man of some forty years, enormous in stature and furnished with the member of a stallion: his prick is very near to nine inches in circumference and a foot in overall length; he is exceedingly wealthy, a very powerful lord, very harsh, very cruel, his heart is of stone. He has a house on the outskirts of Paris which he uses for no purposes other than the gratification of this passion.

    The surroundings wherein he savors his delight is a spacious room, simply decked, but padded everywhere, the floor covered with mattresses; upon entering the room one sees a single long casement window, the room has no other opening save for the door; that window looks down upon an underground cellar, twenty feet below the salon where he busies himself, and looking out, one sees the mattresses which break the fall of the girls as he flings down into the cellar, a description whereof we shall give shortly. He requires fifteen girls for this party; their ages must be between fifteen and seventeen, neither more, nor less; he employs six procuresses in Paris, as well as twelve in the provinces, and they are to spare no efforts, no expense to find him everything of the most charming that may possibly be found of that age, and as it is collected, the material is sent to a country convent over which he has absolute control, and there, in that nursery, the girls ripen, and from it he selects the fifteen objects for his debauch, which is regularly executed every fortnight.

    That evening before the ceremony begins, he personally examines the said material, the least defect in which warrants its rejection; he insists that his creatures be perfect models of beauty. Escorted by a procuress, they arrive at the house and are lodged in a room adjacent to the pleasuresalon. They are first exhibited to him in this adjoining chamber, all fifteen are naked. He touches, feels, fondles, experiments with them, he scrutinizes them, sucks their mouths, and one after the other has them all shit into his mouth. But he does not swallow.

    This initial operation performed with dreadful seriousness, he brands each upon the shoulder, imprinting a number in her flesh; it is to indicate the order in which he will receive them. That done, he goes alone into the salon, where he remains for a brief space: no one knows what he does in this moment of solitude. Then he knocks. Girl Number 1 is cast into his lair. And she is properly cast into it: the procuress flings her toward him, he catches her in his arms, she is naked. He shuts the door, takes up switches and begins to flail her ass; after that he sodomizes her with his gigantic prick. Never does he need any help. He does not discharge. His prick retires, still rock-hard; he seizes the switches again and returns to lashing the girl's back, the front and back of her thighs, then he lays her down again and deflowers her cunt; next, he goes back to beating her, now upon the breasts, both of which he seizes and grinds and kneads with all his strength, and he is a strong man. And now he picks up an awl and six times stabs her body, driving his point once into each bruised breast.

    After all that has been done, he opens the casement window, places the girl in the middle of the room, standing erect, at attention, facing the window; he stands behind her and, when all is ready, gives her a kick in the ass of such startling violence that she flies across the room, crashes against the windowsill, topples over it, and vanishes into the cellar. But before launching her, he slips a ribbon around her neck, thereby to signify which torture, according to his best belief, will be most suitable for that particular patient, which torture will prove most voluptuous to inflict upon her, and his acuity and judgment in these matters, his tact and discrimination are truly wonderful.

    And thus the girls pass one by one through his hands, the identical ceremony awaits them all, and thus he makes away with thirty maidenheads in a given day, and performs those heroic feats unscathed: not a drop of fuck does he lose. The subterranean apartment into which the girl tumble is furnished with fifteen different assortments of frightful torture machines, and an executioner, wearing the mask and emblems of a demon, wearing also the colors of his specialty, presides over each apparatus. The ribbon placed about the girl's neck corresponds in color with the torture to which she has been condemned, and directly she falls into the pit, the appropriate executioner steps forward, having recognized his victim, and drags her to the machine of which he has charge, but the tortures do not begin until the fifteenth has entered the gallery and been claimed by her demon. As soon as the entire complement has descended, our man, by now in a furious state after having depucelated thirty orifices without discharging, I say, makes his entrance into the infernal repair; he is practically naked, his prick glued against his belly. Everything is ready, all the tortures are in motion, and they proceed simultaneously, amidst much noise.

    The first torture engine is a wheel upon which the girl is strapped and which, rotating uninterruptedly, bears against an outer circle studded with razors which everywhere scratch and tear and slice the unfortunate victim, but as the blades do not bite deep, only superficially, she turns for at least two hours before dying.

    The second: the girl lies two inches above a red-hot iron plate which slowly melts her.

    Third: she is attached by the waist to a piece of burning iron, and all her limbs are twisted and frightfully dislocated.

    Fourth: the four limbs attached each to a spring which slowly moves away, gradually stretching her arms and legs until they are detached and the trunk falls into a brazier.

    Fifth: a red-hot cast-iron bell is place over her head, but the bonnet is several sizes too large, the iron does not touch her, but her brain slowly melts, her head is slowly grilled.

    Sixth: she is chained inside an iron tub of boiling oil.

    Seventh: she is held standing before a machine which, six times a minute, shoots a small dart into her body, and each time into a different place; the machine does not stop until she is entirely feathered.

    Eighth: her feet anchored in a furnace, a mass of lead very gradually descends upon her head, thrusting her further into the oven.

    Ninth: her executioner continually pricks her with a red-hot iron goad; she is bound before him, he thus meticulously works over every inch of her body.

    Tenth: she is chained to a pillar underneath a large glass dome, twenty famished reptiles devour her alive.

    Eleventh: a cannon ball attached to each foot, she is suspended by one hand, and if she falls, 'tis into a furnace.

    Twelfth: a hook is driven through her mouth; thus she hangs, a deluge of burning pitch incessantly pouring over her body.

    Thirteenth: the nerves are pulled from her flesh and tied to cords which draw them further, and meanwhile burning nails are driven into her body.

    Fourteenth: alternately torn with tongs and whipped upon her cunt and ass with martinets whose steel tips are heated red hot, and from time to time scratched with burning iron rakes.

    Fifteenth: she is poisoned by a drug which burns and rends her entrails, which hurls her into frightful convulsions, causes her to utter hideous screams, and insures her death; but it is slow, and she is the last to succumb. This is one of the most terrible of the ordeals.

    The villain walks about the torture chamber as soon as he arrives there, spends fifteen minutes contemplating each operation while swearing like of the damned and overwhelming the patient with unmentionable invectives. When toward the end he can bear no more of it and his fuck, captive for so long, is ready to escape him, he falls into a comfortable armchair whence he can observe the entire spectacle, two of the demons approach him, display their asses and frig him, and he squirts his seed while pronouncing shouts so stentorian that they rise above and totally blot out the din his fifteen patients are producing. And now he gets to his feet and leaves the gallery, the coup de grвce is given the girls who are not yet dead, their bodies are buried, and there's an end to it until the next fortnight comes round.

    Wherewith Desgranges terminates her contribution; she is congratulated, toasted, acclaimed, etc…

    Upon the morning of that day there had been the most ominous preparations for the great holiday Messieurs were meditating. Curval, detesting Constance as he does, had been cunt-fucking her at a very early hour and while fucking her had imparted grave news to her. Coffee was served by the five victims, to wit: Constance, Narcisse, Giton, Michette, and Rosette. Horrid things were perpetrated in the salon; during the recitations the reader has just perused, the quatrains Messieurs had been able to arrange had been composed of naked children. And as soon as Desgranges had brought her narrations to a term, Fanny had been marched to the fore: her remaining fingers and toes had been hacked off, and Curval had embuggered her without pomade, so had the Duc, so had the four firstrank fuckers.

    Sophie was led into the center of the stage; Celadon, her lover, had been obliged to burn the interior of her cunt, all her fingers had been severed, her four limbs bled, her right ear had been torn away, her left eye gouged out. Celadon had been constrained to lend his assistance in all these operations, and his least frown or lowest murmur was rewarded by a flogging with an iron-tipped martinet. Supper had come next, the meal had been voluptuous, Messieurs drank naught but sparkling champagne and liqueurs.