Succumbing (Sinful Submissions Book 3) Page 10

  The peculiar charms of the recently deceased were a source of great satisfaction to him. And he was fortunate enough in his position to be given ample chances to indulge his less conventional appetites.

  It had been during the studies to earn his doctorate that he had first learned of the pleasure that he could gain through time spent with the dead. It was only natural when learning anatomy that he and his classmates spent a lot of time dissecting corpses in order that they might better understand the mechanisms of life in their future patients. Many of his fellow students found the work unpleasant, though this was a necessary aspect of them learning to cope with all that can happen to a human body. There could be no place for squeamishness and those that did not learn to deal with close contact with decaying flesh had their studies terminated rapidly.

  It was also accepted that such close exposure to mortality could have an effect on the mental well-being of the students, strands of morbidity and grim humour were often a very necessary outlet for people in their profession. Some level of mental callousness was healthy if they were to be able to function as doctors when under pressure and faced with difficult choices.

  The bodies of anatomical subjects were kept in the catacombs beneath the university. The tunnels and chambers were cold and sparsely lit. Fragrant herbs hung in fat bundles from the walls but it could never be enough to cover the smells of death and decay.

  The subjects that the class was supplied with to work on were diverse in age, gender and physique but they were invariably from the poorest classes, those with no-one who would be inclined or able to pay for them to receive a decent burial. LeConte’s first subject was a young woman who had died of some contagion that had left her flesh relatively unmarked as it killed her. He found himself wondering about her, what had she been like in life? He created an image of her in his mind, an idealised picture that no woman could have lived up to.

  Even while working on his subject in his necessary tasks LeConte found the contact with dead flesh peculiarly exciting, its cold but yielding nature seemed to excite him more than the warmth of life and willing flesh could.

  The time they spent amongst the dead in the catacombs beneath the university was a very important aspect of the study of anatomy. It was not unusual for the students to have to study until late in the night so there was nothing immediately suspicious about his nocturnal visits.

  Though it had been noticed by his superiors that LeConte was spending perhaps a bit too much time studying anatomy, his competency was undeniable and he wasn’t the first medical student to behave oddly.

  When he joined his fellow students on their trips to a bordello he found himself initially disappointed by the ladies there. As the whore massaged his cock with her hands to increase his readiness to penetrate her, he found himself thinking wistfully of how the touch would feel if it were the skin of his subject that were wrapped around him.

  There was little that she could do to satisfy him with her conventional skills. He had always preferred his lovers to be still and obedient, moving only as he willed it. Whores would do what they were told if they were paid enough. He could find arousal in a crying whore taking her punishment, but somehow it was a pale mimic of what he could feel when with a girl that wasn’t just holding still, but was truly pliant. He hadn’t meant to hurt her so very much, but it was enough that few of the whores were willing to bed him the next time he went there.

  In due course he completed his studies and was awarded his doctorate. He gained employment in a major hospital.

  Plagues had proved a recurring problem in recent years and the imperial government had concluded that it was best for everybody that the public purse should provide for its treatment.

  Plague hospitals were appalling places but isolation at least served to minimise its spread. The intensity of disease that gathered in them made it extremely unlikely that any who were sent to them would recover. If what they were already suffering from didn’t kill them, what they were exposed to by its care would.

  The work was hard and the wages were low. He spent his days attempting to use his skills to cure the dying, but more often than not, he knew within moments of meeting a patient what their likely fate would be. A small few could be treated, the rest were just specimens for him to observe as they were consumed by their afflictions. Attempting treatment would have been a waste of meagre resources.

  He became fascinated by the processes of decay and decomposition as they consumed a body. The changes that death brought to flesh held more interest than life had ever been able to. Should he be blamed that the time spent studying, working for the betterment of all, led to situations where he was compelled to transgress the dead?

  In due course his transgressions caught the attention of his supervisors. His competence as a physician was never questioned but his crimes were unforgivable. Had LeConte’s deeds become public they would have done a great deal of harm to the institution so it preferred to deal with them privately. He was called to appear before a senior delegation of the hospital staff. When the perilous nature of his situation was made known to him, LeConte fled. That LeConte chose to flee rather than face a hearing was accepted as evidence of his guilt. There were many who were glad of the opportunity to deal with the situation quietly. As long as LeConte had the sense to stay far away they were happy to let the matter drop.

  With a few clothes, the little money he had saved, his notebooks and surgical tools, he travelled light. He had collected few possessions and that which he could not easily carry was abandoned. He left the city on a coach at dawn. He had no clear plan but knew he must travel far from the city.

  A few weeks later, with his money almost gone, he judged that he was far enough from the city to be safe in using his skills to earn some coin. There were many he passed in his travels with maladies that needed treating, but working to heal the sick seemed increasingly like a distraction from his purpose.

  There was so much more for him to learn from the dead than the living and work as a travelling surgeon offered little opportunity for him to further his studies. Draining boils and resetting bones was trivial work.

  He stopped in the charnel houses that he passed, if only to fill his lungs with the redolence that they had missed. The sweetness of dead rot had been replaced by the effluvia of the living for too long.

  Fate led him to Lord Arthur’s castle, where he discovered that the previous physician had succumbed to a tumour some months before and his apprentice had proved unable to cope in his absence with some of the more onerous duties that were required of him.

  Rather than being repelled by the onerous duties, Dr. LeConte showed curiosity at the novelty of the acts. He’d never had call to castrate a human before in his career.

  In Dr. LeConte, they had found an individual that shared something that they could understand, the sure knowledge that the countless lives of the peasants that surrounded them were of previous little value.

  The physician kept a collection of the pieces that he had been required to remove from people during his service here. They were all in his room. He tested different methods of preservation on them, different mixtures of embalming fluids and drying methods.

  Many of them were unsuccessful and his collection rotted slowly. The stench of decay and pungent chemicals that emanated from his quarters was sufficient to deter any from intruding upon them, which was exactly as he wanted it. People knew better than to enter the doctor’s infirmary unannounced.

  The preservation of corpses had been a personal mission for him for decades. The idea that flesh could be maintained in a state that would resist decay appealed to him greatly.

  Over the years that he had practised medicine and indulged his urges Dr. LeConte was able to develop an understanding of post-mortem decay and the techniques for staving it off that was far in advance of his contemporaries. He had always kept thorough notes on his work and discoveries and his notebooks represented a compendious knowledge of anatomy and surgical technique. />
  To someone concerned only with science, it could be seen as a crime that it was not possible for him to release the compendious research notes that he had collected to his peers, lest he be persecuted for those crimes that he had committed while gaining his knowledge.

  At the conclusion of young Emily’s tale, when the new born future Lord was being presented to the people, her corpse was cooling rapidly in a pool of drying blood. To Dr. LeConte the situation he was now presented with was one that made him feel uncomfortably excited.

  He had been instructed to do all he could to aid in the birth, regardless of the cost to the mother and so had discretely assisted the passage of the baby’s head with nicks of his scalpel into the tender flesh of her sex. These nicks had spread and become rips through her poor flesh leaving her skin a torn and distorted mess.

  Only months ago he had thrilled at the chance to touch this young woman and would have surely taken advantage of her even more than he had, had not the prohibitions against such from Lady Annabel been so vehemently emphasised. Now, surely she could have no reason to object to him doing whatever he liked. Unlike Lord Arthur, he was very fond of the pleasures that could be drawn from a suitably opened and moistened pussy, but even his normally steel resolve was given pause by the sight of Emily’s bloodied and ravaged loins.

  He satisfied himself with his own hand as he stared at her abused form. Had she been alive she would have seen him looming over her, his cock casting flickering shadows on her body in the uncertain candle light.

  When he was done, pleasure gave way to science and he focussed on his labour.

  He carefully excised the skin around Emily’s breasts, tracing a line with his scalper under them and around to the top of her shoulders. With knife-skills he had earned through his many years of labour he severed the connecting tissues from her chest and removed them complete from her. They were swollen with the milk that had filled them in readiness of her baby’s hunger.

  Over the next few months he would spend many hours labouring over them, ensuring that their perfect form would be preserved, the accidental splendour would be maintained far after the rest of her body would be gone.

  His skills had now advanced to a point where he was able to preserve parts of bodies indefinitely, but so far he was only able to treat small pieces. The techniques required full immersion of the subject in a perfect glass container, that was filled with the liquid preservatives.

  His ultimate goal was to be able to preserve a complete body in this way but this was so far beyond his capabilities. All he could do was select pieces that were of a particular quality and preserve them individually. He had already managed to preserve an entire arm in this way, the pieces treated individually, then once they were fully embalmed he had reconnected a hand, a wrist and an upper arm so that despite the visible stitches across their surface they were able to resist decay and had remained the same dark colour and soft pliable texture for more than a year. The necessary severing to disconnect the joints meant that they lacked natural motion now, and were liable to flap when allowed to move freely, but he still considered it a successful experiment. Given enough time and adequate materials he was confident that success was within his grasp.

  And what became of the doctor, did he ever find himself suitably punished for the crimes he perpetrated against the living and the dead, all under the guise of a healer? For that we will have to wait for another time.

  Eleven: The adventures of Teasel, the cat

  Teasel was a cat. She had soft grey fur that covered her body and a long expressive tail. She was anthropomorphised enough to stand upright on two legs and her face was a blend of species, her pointed ears protruded from either side of her head through long blue hair. She had whiskers but her eyes were mostly human and her mouth had a shape that was somewhere between cat and human.

  Teasel’s feet were more like paws but her hands had opposable thumbs and long fingers. She often painted her claws in bright colours. The claws on her fingers were normally retracted, but she could extend them when she wanted and they were very sharp.

  Teasel had breasts that were covered in fur but beneath it had an outline that would have been deemed acceptable for a human woman who made her career out of exposing such assets to cameras.

  Teasel also had a long, furry tail that had just a bit more control than that of the average cat’s. It wasn’t quite prehensile but it was dexterous enough that Teasel could actively touch things with it, an invariably pleasant sensation owing to the light grip and soft fur. Teasel knew that she was a very pretty cat. All of her friends told her.

  Teasel liked to spend time in lots of interesting places making new friends and having fun. She also liked helping people. Teasel often went off on adventures and fought monsters. There were lots of bad things in the world and it felt good knowing that she was trying to stop some of them. Sometimes Teasel would travel with her friends. Sometimes she would travel alone.

  When on adventures Teasel carried a long slender sword or a pistol that fired bolts of green light that could burn holes through anything. Sometimes Teasel would wear armour as well. She didn’t like to feel too restricted but it could be dangerous and it was better to know that she was protected. She found a lot of treasure on her adventures, but she didn’t really need it. She had everything that she needed already.

  When relaxing with friends Teasel was happiest not wearing anything, other than her collar. It had been given to her a long time ago by a very special friend of hers called Scruff. They had spent a lot of time together back then.

  The collar was made of the softest leather and had pretty gemstones set into it. Teasel loved wearing it but it had been almost a year since Scruff and Teasel had spoken. Scruff left Teasel when he got married to a woman that was all human. She wasn’t furry at all. Of course, Teasel had felt rejected and hurt. Their love had been something special. It was supposed to be important. Apparently it hadn’t meant enough to stop Scruff from wanting to find someone else. Teasel had cried, then gone out to try and find new friends.

  Now Teasel preferred to just try and forget about Scruff, but she didn’t want to take off the collar. Teasel found it hard to want to have another serious relationship like that. It had all been too upsetting to want to face it again soon. It was nicer to just have lots of good friends that Teasel could have some fun with without having to risk all the pain that love seemed to bring with it. Teasel had loved Scruff more than anyone else. She didn’t want to think about loving anyone else. Now Teasel was happy just making friends.

  Some of Teasel’s friends were also cats, but Teasel had lots of friends and didn’t mind if they weren’t like her. Why would anyone only want to be friends with people who were exactly the same as them? Teasel had friends who were all kinds of different animals, cats, dogs, rabbits, foxes, even birds. It didn’t really matter, just as long as they wanted to be nice and have fun. What Teasel most enjoyed doing with friends was having sex. Some friends Teasel had sex with lots of times, sometimes it was just a one off, a lovely special moment shared between two people who met by chance and found something that they were each looking for.

  One day Teasel met a fox called Harry. He was one of the handsomest foxes that Teasel had ever met and she told him so.

  Teasel and Harry talked for a while but things soon became more intimate. Teasel knew that some people could be shy so always liked to be the one to make the move, just to save time. Anyway, if somebody wasn’t interested, it was better to just find out and get it over with. Teasel loved knowing that people were turned on by being with her. With Harry Teasel made the move by getting down on all fours and nuzzling into his crotch. The fur on Teasel’s cheek rubbed against Harry and his cock started to grow. He had been naked throughout their conversation and had already stroked himself a few times, excited by Teasel’s presence.

  Harry smiled happily and gently stroked behind Teasel’s ear, eliciting soft purrs that were only stifled when Teasel’s mouth started to encircle
his cock and slide down over it’s length. Unlike the rest of him, Harry’s cock was smooth and hairless. Teasel didn’t mind. Variety and diversity were good things. You wouldn’t want to only have sex with the exact same type and person over and over again, would you? It would be boring that way.

  Teasel had sharp canines that protruded enough to be visible at all times, but they were set far enough apart and Teasel was skilled and careful enough that they didn’t stop her from giving oral pleasure to her new friend.

  He wanted to fuck Teasel. Teasel loved being fucked. She bent over and raised her tail, letting him see her and showing her willingness. Harry wasn’t very gentle but Teasel loved feeling new friends inside her.

  When it was over Harry was quiet. The conversation that had flowed so easily before was now a struggle. It was almost as if he was embarrassed. She was glad when he muttered his goodbyes and left her alone. It didn’t bother Teasel. Some people were like that after sex. It wasn’t anything personal.

  Teasel had lots of friends and was very sociable.

  Douglas spent a lot of time on his computer.

  Twelve: Why Antoine stopped using paint

  The artist Antoine justifiably earned his reputation as one of the greats of the modern age, first through the paintings of his dead lover Adrienne, later through his work using dead flesh itself, finding his art in corpses. So, why did Antoine stop using paint?

  He drew a lot as a child and was undeniably talented, if not remarkably so. As a teenager, he started working with proper materials, artist quality paints and large canvasses. Over the next decade, painting became the primary focus of his life. He was productive, often having multiple canvasses on the go that he would work on in stints, giving the paint on each time to dry while working on another. He sold a few paintings for small amounts of money, but owed much to his wealthy uncle Claude and the stipends that he paid him with increasing reluctance. His later fame and modest fortune was owed to Adrienne’s death and paintings he had painted of her corpse.