Gallows Nymph (Short): Enfer

The final bell tolled, spilling the opening day's fresh students into the droning halls. Jacques hunched dejectedly on the bench outside the headmaster's office, his fine new silk coat itched, the expensive fabric unfamiliar against his slumped frame. He had failed, he was certain of it. He stared at the polished floor, guilt gnawing at him for failing to earn his place at this esteemed institution. 

As if to punish himself, Jacques replayed the morning's events in his mind. Mamah had pecked him sweetly on the cheek before dropping him in the yard, her eyes sparkling wide with pride and hope, "you'll do splendidly, mon cher". Her full lips a balmy blossom on his cheek. But now, as the other students filtered out, laughing and chatting after a day that he was also supposed to had, Jacques felt like an abject nothing. Her phantom kiss already became clammy under his tracks of tears. 

In fact Robert was his first name, exactly like his father's, and exactly like his father and their old home, was now no longer part of his life. Jacques was his middle, but it was what Mamah and everyone she met in this city called him, and it was Jacques on the school's registrar. It was strange using that name, what's more...it was a name that always meant fresh new expectations. After all he was ever Mamah's "little man." 

The familiar click of her high heels on the entrance stairs made Jacques's heart sink. There was no mistaking that sharp, decisive stride. He watched as Mamah swept into the massive hall's door frame, her elegant features composed as she strode purposefully through the doorway. 

Their eyes met for a fleeting moment, and Jacques saw a faint reassuring smile on her lips before she was ushered inside.

"Madame, how good of you to come.” 

Then the heavy oak door shut and clicked behind her.

She had spent weeks meticulously preparing him - polishing his shoes, pressing his crisp uniform, rented out that ornate carriage just so he could be seen scamper off it in front of the school yard's other boys. Even pressed a soft kiss to his cheek that morning as she sent him off. 

INSIDE

"I don't understand, Monsieur." Madame du Crète's brow furrowed delicately. "We have paid the tuition full in advance." Her voice then dropped to a whisper, almost pleadingly. "Even with the...extra enrollment gratuities you suggested." 

The headmaster flashed back with an obsequious smile. "There has been a...slight complication with your son's enrollment."

"A...complication? Pray, do explain."

The headmaster cleared his throat, his beady eyes appraising the beautiful woman before him. "You see, our roster is quite full this term. As you know we strive to maintain the highest academic standards, and I'm afraid there simply isn't room for one more student, no matter how...generously you have compensated us." 

Hélène felt a flicker of panic, but she schooled her features into an expression of demure concern.

"This is the finest business school in all of Paris Madame. Enough to confound the most impudent of Holland's bankers and most miserly of Jews." he mused, spreading his arms over his desk, " - we must be selective. I have already known the sons of Monsieur Duchamp and Monsieur Chappelle for many years in our church~ they two were the picture of most promising boys." 

"But you Madame, you are new. Though we are indeed regretful about what you relate of your late husband and your circumstances in our capital. He nonetheless is not known to us. So even with your extra gratuities~ " then just for the slightest pause, "even with your deep connections with several married fathers of our students on your floors " then his face reformed back to an effortless neutral as it was before, as if he had said nothing special at all, "we must persist that those students whose families are known to us be welcomed first."

...and then she knew. He knew. She had raced so many suppositions on what this really was and then his several unmistakable words slithered through. He knew, he knew of her nights, her clients, and more than likely few versions of her trademark unspeakable acts and what she charges for them. He knew...but he did not threw her out, nor reject her application for Jacques out right. 

Oh. She groaned inside her skull. Oh you fucking worm.

He shook his head with feigned regret. 

"Perhaps next term, if a spot opens up..."

"Surely there must be something I can do," the velvet of her voice masked the steel beneath. Leaning forward slightly, Madame allowed the neckline of her gown to dip alluringly. 

"My son is so eager to learn, and I had so hoped this esteemed institution would mold him into a fine young man."

Leaning forward slightly, Madame du Crète let the neckline of her burgundy silk dress slip, revealing the alabaster swell of her bosom. 

"Monsieur, surely there must be some way you could... accommodate my dear boy?" Her voice was low and honeyed, her gaze flicking coyly from the headmaster's face to her exposed décolletage and back again. Her slender fingers traced the edge of the desk as she leaned in closer, her creamy perfume enveloping the lecherous man.

The headmaster's gaze dropped to her bosom, his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed hard. "Well, I...I suppose we could- " but he did not finish his sentence. His hands were already racing to grope what he long wanted. 

Jacques didn't understand many things. Above so many others he did not understand why he had to tell newly met people his father was dead even though father was probably not. Father's temper and kicking of Mamah was probably why, but he did not understand why he and Mamah cannot pick summer flowers and special snails from meadows as they so often did near their old home. 

He did not understand why they have to be at Paris, he did not like it here. He did not know why they came without even money. He did not understand why she looked so sad whenever he saw her by herself, when she did not know he was watching her, when she would stop being peppy in her usual cheerfulness. 

He did not know why she told him to not go to her other bed room where she met her gentlemen visitors each night. Or why sometimes if one of them came to leave by the door and saw him they told him Mamah was the best there is in Paris, or money well spent. Or why she told him she would so often practice kissing with them, even though she also said was not the same as when she kissed him. He does like whenever she warmly pecked him on his cheeks, so Mamah must be a very kind and generous person. But that still doesn't explain why she gets serious and tells his younger sisters to never come out of their rooms when she had visitors nor ever offer anyone kisses. Perhaps most of all, he did not understand why he had to be her "little man." Being called little man means he had to wear tiny suits and can't be playing with toys all day like his younger siblings.

INSIDE

The window panes shuddered under the force of their desperate coupling, the wooden frame creaked as if teetering in terror. The headmaster's thick fingers kneaded her supple flesh, his control slipping with each passing second as he neared his climax. His eyes were wild with lust, his hips bucking frantically as he neared his peak. With a guttural moan, his scalding seed spilled, coating the insides of her trembling thighs in slick, glistening wax. She rode out his climax, milking every last drop until the torrent of his release splattered across the plush school carpet.

Madame tsked softly, shaking her head in mock disappointment. "Now, now, Monsieur, we're not finished yet." Deftly surging forward, she sank to her knees before him, then instantly her nimble fingers encircled his still-twitching manhood, her tongue darting out and lapped at the soiled crown they had made inside her hips.

The headmaster's eyes rolled back in his head as she engulfed him, her throat convulsed around his pulsing flesh as fresh maelstrom of sensation threatened to overwhelm him once more. Her tongue flicked and probed his slippery flesh until the headmaster's eyes rolled back, a strangled unhinged cry tearing from his lips. Just as he teetered on the edge of oblivion, Madame withdrew and slid a question past her glistening lips.

"Monsieur,- there were no sons of Monsieur Duchamp and Chappelle was there? That you made them all up, just to have me here, writhing beneath you?"

The headmaster's face contorted with a tortured scrawl of pleasure and panic, his release momentarily limboed. He sputtered and stammered, but Madame's skilled ministrations soon reduced him to a quivering, incoherent mess. With a final, languorous pass of her tongue, she rimmed him across his flatulating exit. 

"Yes I~ I did~", he groaned as his world narrowed to the velvety flick of her tongue.

And when he finally reached that shattering climax, it was Madame's name on his lips, her face the last thing he saw before the world went white. And her face with his whiteness.

Madame smiled, a feline curl of her painted lips under his white webwork of mawkish cum. She licked her full lips, savoring the salty tang.

OUTSIDE

Jacques stated out aimlessly out of the fogged window of his wagon, watching as the last orange line of fire retreated beneath the skyline's horizon. It's been more than an hour since the porters of the school ferried him to Mamah's waiting carriage, the one she had rented just for his grand entrance today to impress his future classmates.

Then he heard her. Mamah's light, over- friendly laugh that she does so often in the company of her visitors and potential future visitors. With her laughter was the laughter of the headmaster. 

He was walking her out and they were giggling like old friends. After a few steps out of the door he politely stood on the entrance's stairway and waved her off, gesturing to the porters by the iron fenced gate to let her out. The son heard her smart heel clicks came close as she beamed and waved back with a feathery laugh. The door bursted open and Mamah's beaming smile poked in. Her voice light and reassuring as she slid into the plush seat beside him.

"You start tomorrow." She gave the driver a nod, and the carriage lurched into motion. "Your studies awaits, darling."

Then she smiled at him and wiggled her nose teasingly.

“Tonight we will go to the snail soup place you love so much.” and with an almost triumphal sigh, she rested on the side window overlooking the coming and passing buildings.

Jacques breathed a sigh of relief, his day's worth of knotted worries ebbing. Yet...as he watched his mother's tall sweaty shape slumped looking out, he couldn't help but notice a subtle...something in the setting of her shoulders. She smelled different, from the way she always smelled. 

Mamah always had this way with all sorts of perfumes, some smelled of butter, some of roses, other times dried sweets. But now it smelled of pungent green peaches and almond cream, the kind she often wore if she had to ran down to their rooms between her kissing with her guests. ...And now? He smelled the other smells too which he often did smell, but never told her that he smelled, that familiar, maddening fragrance. The faint smell of urinals beneath her dress bustle and her green peach. 

It must be him. She thought. He's smart, he's so smart. He will be so smart he will save himself. His eyes are so much like hers. His eyes are so much like her own Papah's. Eyes which so often made her feel better, who taught her to love God. That's why...she loved him best. And he will save himself from this hell. Even if she had to stay.

Her body seemed to tremble ever so slightly, though it did not look like she even noticed it. And for the first proper time, from her reflections he saw her eyes which she made only for herself on that glass. Mamah's eyes were hooded, her jaw set against the melting smile. Then she saw him looking at her.

Mamah caught his gaze and squeezed his hand, her smile snapped up warm as ever. "All will be well, mon cher." Then he saw it too, that her eyes were bloodshot and puffy. As if she had wrestled the world and won. 

"He knows." a line of wet tear rimmed around Jacque's wide eyes.

"???" Mamah stammered, did not seem to understand his reference.

"I always tell God you love me."

At this Mamah began to cry, and he began to cry on her like so often before.