Starved Beast

But this stranger wasn't my daughter. My Christine was dead, and as I moved towards her, this one retreated and my hands instantly withdrew from the past. She and I were poles apart in a place where I was King and France was no longer a Republic.

We were trapped in a claustrophobic underworld where there were no genteel ladies or polite tetes a tetes over tea. Here, my laws and decrees held sway, and women were whatever I wanted them to be: maids, gypsies, or nuns. Even aristocratic ladies were fit to be eaten. They would be befriended and conversed with. They could be charmed and seduced. They could be undressed and fucked, but in the end they'd be turned into meat.

What else is a dead woman fit for in a Kingdom such as mine? What else can be done when there's no food apart from the rats, a few lizards and a handful of spiders. If I were squeamish then my prized flowers would wither and dry and become something pitiful and wasted and covered in maggots. They would become ugly, gaunt