Heart of Brass and Other Fantasies

Once promised so ripe a fruit, Dashiell was aching to get on with it, but for the Lady's sake, he allowed her to descend the basement staircase slowly and stand at its foot in hesitant wonder. The Long Hall stood before her: an oak-paneled passage flanked by doors upon doors, turning to the right at the far end.

The wave of familiar heat rose to meet them.

"Why is it so hot down here?" she whispered.

In a distant corner of The Chastarium, pipes began to clang. Lady Gallantine cocked her head. Answering clangs arose from within a few of the rooms, ringing a prelude to release.

"The fires in the sub-basement beneath us," said Dashiell. "Most of my treatments are steam-powered."

"Steam-powered?"

Dashiell moved past her, their thighs just barely brushing. In his hand, the notebook he held grew sweaty, and not thanks to the heat of the fires. "Don't be afraid. Come."

She stepped beside him, her hand wandering to his arm. From within a room to their left came an animal moan, low and near-delirious. The Lady opened her mouth to ask, and a distant steam valve whistled in emergency release. Somewhere unseen, a boy shouted instructions: "Stoke up 3. And ease up on 8, you lot, or the 10:00'll get split wide open. Jus' keep 'er purrin'."

Lady Gallantine pressed herself against Dashiell's side.

They reached the bend and kept going. The hallway now went past a bank of street-level windows on the left, covered in black cloth. Dashiell stopped beside a door on their right and took a ring of keys from his belt.

"What shall happen to me?" asked the Lady, timidly.

Dashiell smiled.

He unlocked the door. Within the treatment room, crouching with the menace of a great mechanical panther, sat The Chastarium's primary claim to fame and infamy. The Machine was a thing of darkness and raw strength, made of durable iron and steel, indestructible as a cannon. Pipes pierced its belly and back, tethering it to the room below and a complex network of pipes above. A mat lay on the floor before it, like a low altar, and above the mat stretched a long steel rod, tipped with the key to her release.

Gauges waited at zero, and the pipes around it hissed in readiness.

"Madam," said Dashiell. "May I present The Locomotive."

Lady Gallantine exhaled. She entered the room in awe. "Why... it's so curious."

"Can you guess how it works?"

She shook her head.

Dashiell swallowed. He entered after her, the room's heat rolling over him, coaxing sweat from his brow and neck. "Lie on the mat on your back, with your feet toward the Machine. Arrange yourself such that the therapeutic end—this piece here—is just touching the doorway to your places."

"My places?"

Dashiell inhaled. "Yes. Your entrance."

Lady Gallantine frowned at him in incomprehension.

Dashiell closed his eyes. The heat was rising quickly in here. He knelt by the mat, removing his jacket and pushing up his shirtsleeves. "I'll show you. Sit down and lift up your skirts."

She obeyed.

A drop of sweat rolled down Dashiell's temple. The sight of such luscious, virgin thighs near so ruthless a Machine was enough to make a man insensible. Dashiell coughed; he could barely speak. "You have an entrance within your folds. Did you know that?"

"Yes," she said shyly. "But I don't know where, exactly. Oh—is this supposed to go inside of me?"