Woman of His Dreams - Epilogue
I want to thank all of you for joining me on this dark, erotic journey. I hope you've enjoyed "Woman of His Dreams".
If you're new to my Lovecraftian fable (which I'm pretty sure would have horrified and scandalized Mr. Lovecraft), you can find Episode I here.
Stay sexy and dream grand dreams - even if they bite!
~AC
"Woman of His Dreams"
Epilogue
by Angela Caperton
Copyright 2011
Epilogue
by Angela Caperton
Copyright 2011
“ But in her web she still delightsTo weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, came from Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead
Came two young lovers lately wed;
`I am half sick of shadows,' said
The Lady of Shalott.”
Professor St. Clair recited Tennyson’s words, savoring the taste of hope and despair. He looked out at his students, forty-some semi-interested college kids scattered over the tiered seating in the old classroom. Waterhouse’s painting filled the screen at the front of the room, the beautiful Pre-Raphaelite model holding onto her boat, floating toward doom. Why did the colors seem so true today?
He focused on one young woman in the third row. Bastia, a porcelain Baltic doll and third year graduate student, had become the most recent candidate for a position as his assistant. They had not talked much outside the classroom, but she had shown herself quick-witted, with a good grasp of Victorian literature and art. It didn’t hurt that she was beautiful, looking more than a little like a Rossetti model herself, and each time she spoke, her controlled accent stroked some primal aural nerve that nipped his cock enough to make it ache most pleasantly. He imagined how pleased Cynthia would be if he brought the young woman home. He smiled at the thought of the two of them initiating this young woman into new realms of sensation as they explored the intricacies of intimacy and the sharing of three souls’ secrets.
Professor St. Clair didn’t even glance at undergraduates, no matter how tempting, but he had learned in his ten years of teaching that, by the time a woman was in graduate school, she had plenty of experience and saw the world with open eyes. He and his beloved Cynthia had shared several wonderful relationships with young women who also counted him as teacher at some point in their academic careers. He usually kept away from his own students or aides, but this time he would make an exception. He didn’t look at her with predatory or sordid intentions – though he knew the administration wouldn’t see it his way. No. he ached with sincere desire to share with her the pure joy of mutual joy, exploration, not exploitation.
He called on Phillip, a quiet boy who sat at the back. “Tell me the story of the Lady of Shalott,” he said.
“She’s like a cursed sorceress,” the boy said in his shy voice. “She can’t look at the world; only a reflection of it in a magic mirror, or she’ll die. One day, she sees Sir Lancelot in her mirror and falls in love with him and she can’t live without him, so she climbs in a boat, paints her name on it, and sails to Camelot. She dies, but Lancelot sees her body and thinks she’s beautiful.”
“Very good. Many scholars have interpreted The Lady of Shalott as being a parable on the place of women in 19th Century British society and it’s possible Tennyson had that in mind, but my own take on the poem is a little different. How about you?” He addressed the class. “Any ideas?”
Bastia raised her hand.
He smiled. Of course she would. He nodded and waved at her, inviting her almost as he would a peer, as sure of her intelligence as the raven-eyed nymph was herself. Her lilt made his cock jump.
“I think the poem is about the role of an artist,” she said. “I think most artists, or writers, or sculptors – anyone creative – sees the world in a mirror and weaves the tapestry the best way she can. When we reach out beyond the tapestry, we risk everything. Tennyson gave the Lady love for a motivation, but that’s just one possibility. If she craved vengeance, what a different story – full of shadows and blood. Or what if she desired wickedness? What would the colors of her tapestry be?” She gazed at Anthony with eyes full as moons, as chromed as a surface of thin ice over a depthless pool. She locked his gaze and her lips curved in a seeking smile. “Some people might risk everything just for … new experience.”
Anthony nodded, impressed, his cock knocking against his thigh, ready, eager, even as something unsettling tugged at his mind. He switched the slide on the screen from Waterhouse’s masterpiece to Holman-Hunt’s hallucinatory vision of the wild-haired Lady weaving a near-psychedelic tapestry. Something was off. The icon of a king on the wall, Arthur most likely, was different, the face inhuman. Beyond the window he saw an ankh in the fields, Lancelot riding toward it. The longer he looked, the more it seemed inhuman shapes and colors swam in dizzying hues, reaching out of the digital image to lick at his cheeks and wrists, tendrils reached out from the image wrapped around his ankles and inched toward his anus. I am dreaming…
Bastia continued her explication. “Moreover, I think Tennyson understood something of the real nature of the world, how it’s bounded by experience but fragile and undependable as a reflection.”
…dreaming deep in depthless seas, twined by the will and whim of ancient gods, slippery tendrils like interwoven wines, up his leg in unspeakable caress, tying him to Bastia, the scent of cardamom imprinting on his brain, and to Cynthia and fragrant jasmine, then to the gods whose names and scents remained ever unspoken.
Anthony collected himself, struggling against half remembered stories of Pre-Raphaelite orgies (he’d been there, oiled, fucked and fucking. He’d been there. Hadn’t he?) Regency intrigues, Jane Austen’s lost erotica. His breath caught in his throat. Was this insanity?
“That’s… that’s a very romantic interpretation, Miss Soleska.” He couldn’t tear his gaze away from her, all the other students melted into furniture and walls.
“I’m a very romantic woman, Professor.” She smiled, showing perfect, white teeth. “And I hear romance is all the fashion now.”
Copyright 2011 Angela Caperton. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.
Posted by Angela Caperton at 5/21/2011 9:08 AM 
Categories: dark erotica, Lovecraft, Angela Caperton, Woman of His Dreams
Tags: Woman of His Dreams Angela Caperton dark erotica Lovecraft
Categories: dark erotica, Lovecraft, Angela Caperton, Woman of His Dreams
Tags: Woman of His Dreams Angela Caperton dark erotica Lovecraft
Bravo!
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