The King in Yellow Chapter Sixteen

ZORA

“I’ve often wondered if I might have gone into the criminology side of the job myself” said Zora, lounging in Katya’s bed with a glass of tea. Katya rolled over onto her stomach, the cuts on her back leaving thin crimson smears on the sheet.

“It was very different when we were young” she replied. “Most of us in the department today have studied and worked abroad – apart from the youngsters”.

“I’m not proud of how we treated the prisoners back then,” Zora said, seriously “I resigned a long time ago, before dissent was fashionable”.

“You don’t have to tell me that” Katya assured her “I understand”. She smiled at Zora, a heavily built but well-proportioned woman of a certain age with pleasant, open features. Zora flashed a charming smile in return.

“The staff of the Special Prison used to torment the ‘deviant inmates’, it was an open secret, and the male guards were much worse than us. We were all crass and vulgar”. She relaxed and began to tell her story “They were kept behind bars in isolation cells and we would go down there between shifts to taunt them. I picked on a beautiful youth called Pierre who had been arrested and held without charge since the Carcosa Club was raided after the affaire Marie-Claude”. She hesitated. “Looking back, I know I became obsessed with him. It seems bizarre now to think that I once felt that way about such a man”.

“I don’t understand” Katya said, genuinely perplexed “If Pierre came into this room now, I would beg him to whip me to death, or skewer me alive”. A faraway look came across her face and for a moment she seemed to look right through Zora into a great void behind her.

“No, you don’t understand me” Zora confirmed, taking another sip of her tea and setting the glass down “or, at least, I didn’t understand me. I denied my true nature; I thought that I could fill the emptiness with cruelty and dominance of others. I think I tried to control the thoughts I had about Pierre’s history by trying to control him. Him! At first, I taunted him much as always. I stood near the bars, but beyond the reach of a prisoner’s arms, and whispered obscene suggestions. The whole country had read about what happened at the club, and I would use the details from the government newspapers to try to get a reaction”.

“You can imagine the kind of thing” she went on. “I said that I wanted to know how it feels to be whipped and cut; I said that I had once kissed two boys at a party and I was curious about the women who were passed around and shared at the club.