The Cherry Orchard Read online

  The Cherry Orchard

  Story 4 of Forbidden Fruit

  Vanessa de Sade

  “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.”

  –Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

  Sweetmeats Press

  A Sweetmeats Book

  First published by Sweetmeats Press 2015

  Copyright © Sweetmeats Press 2015

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing from Sweetmeats Press. Nor may it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-909181-64-9

  Typeset by Sweetmeats Press

  Sweetmeats Press

  27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3XX, England, U. K.

  www.sweetmeatspress.com

  Sweetmeats

  We all lust after what we cannot have, from forbidden sweets as a child to forbidden pleasures as an adult. The most dangerous and extraordinary temptations are often the most exciting, the most alluring. What we are forbidden to touch is always what we yearn to feel. The fruit we are forbidden to taste is always sure to be the juiciest. And the higher up that fruit grows, the farther it is out of our reach, the sweeter, riper, and more delicious it is destined to be.

  This story is part of the collection Forbidden Fruits. In this collection, four of our favorite authors have provided us with a bountiful collection of stories bursting with desire, lust, and fruity themes. Forbidden Fruit offers up a platter of erotic tales for your delectation. Peel back the layers, savor the sweetness, and sate your senses until the juices run down your chin!

  The Cherry Orchard

  A Steampunk Fairy Tale

  Vanessa de Sade

  “We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruit,

  Who knows upon what soil they fed, their hungry, thirsty root.”

  –Christina Rossetti (Goblin Market)

  Chapter One – Magda and Victor

  Though all the trees have perished, in her dream she is still surrounded by cherries, bunch after bunch of rich garnet-black orbs, clusters of them glistening-wet like luscious just-licked lips waiting breathlessly to be kissed, a plethora of erotic wishes desperate to be fulfilled, or, perhaps, a million shattered promises just waiting to be broken and lie in jagged fragments like discarded mirror shards at her bleeding bloody feet. Who could tell?

  And even when she wakes—naked, sweat-drenched and panting, her heart pounding like an overcharged defibrillator—she can still taste them sweet and sickly in her mouth, their purple-black sap pungent, almost bittersweet, on her own dry lips.

  And, strange though it might seem, her future seems to lie before her in that magical forest, all her expectations contained in the waxy, glossy fruit, just waiting to burst open anew and awaken the forgotten sensations that she feels have atrophied centuries before …

  No one remembers the old Paris. The iron tower remains, of course, or what’s left of it, at any rate. Though Magda doesn’t much like it. It reminds her of her dreams, she says, with its mangled metal arms reaching vainly into the white cloudless sky like a mad woman writhing in a gray bed, or the sea when the storm winds come to gobble up more and more chunks of the fragile coastline, whole cliff faces and even cities crumbling into the boiling cauldron that is now the ocean.

  The Party denies it all of course, saying that reports of The Erosion are greatly exaggerated, but Magda, a State Cartographer and no dumb bunny to boot, knows better, though she keeps her seditious opinions quietly to herself. Her position has given her access to some of the New Republic’s oldest atlases in the restricted rooms of the great windowless library on the Rue de Celeste, hefty leather-bound volumes that smell of salt spray and dried grasses, heavy as a sleeping child and bigger than her straining arms; yet she pores lovingly over them daily and reads them like adventure stories, seeing not tables of crop allocations or pestilence barriers, but the living contours of the great mountain ranges of the north, their snowy peaks immense like great white breasts arising from the fertile body of the old earth; or the vast immeasurable oceans, mighty like speckled mares pawing angrily against their landlocked halters.

  Today, though, it is Saturday and she heads not to her allocated place of employment but to the Automation House of Madame Augustine. An old nineteenth century mansion which slumps sleepily on the steep slope on what is left of the Rue Montmarte, tucked neatly into the shadow of the shattered black tower of the now derelict Ministry of Aviation building, and invisible to the prying eyes of patrol ships as they sail majestically by above, great ocean liners of the sky with their long observation decks and glinting brass telescopes silently observing an annotating.

  Magda especially likes this particular Automaton House because Madame does not charge in credits, preferring instead the soft warmth of the antique copper Centimes of the Old Order which can still be bartered for Food Tokens from the Carpet Baggers on the Boulevards, hasty exchanges made in the cat-pee-scented shadows of the dry bridges in the wake of the Patrols, everyone still alert for silent whales creeping menacingly across the polished platinum of the noonday skies.

  Sun goggles are issued with glass that is a bright ocher-orange verging on red nowadays, making the blistering pavements look like pock-marked kiln-fired terracotta, but they hurt Magda’s eyes and she still prefers her ancient set of ex-military issue in a cool green, turning the stifling noonday streets into soft undersea cycloramas, the passing Damsels in their summer frocks and high-piled hair ornaments like fecund mermaids beckoning her into their coral-flower bowers.

  And a Patrol Ship passes soundlessly by now as she strides boldly along the Rue Montmarte, momentarily blotting out the burning sun with its lumbering bulk, a huge verdigrised behemoth in tarnished copper, myriads of dials and levers swirling in a perpetual symphony of brass cogs and steel rivets, a humming analogue beehive unceasingly cataloging everyone’s every move, the blank-eyed faces of the Observers on the viewing decks expressionless as they identify her and record her locale, the thin spidery masts at the rear of the ship beaming all their data soundlessly back to the whirring calculation units in Party Central.

  Not that visiting Automation Houses is technically illegal, of course, and with the shortage of fertile men after the Second Great Pestilence, even the Party Stalwarts have been forced to turn a blind eye to their existence, acknowledging in secret memorandums that they do, in fact, form an integral part of maintaining discipline in the Republic. But it is still not good to have too many visits to them recorded on your files, and many a Citizen has been transported to the Mutant Zones on the strength of an Excessive Decadence charge, an attached record of credits cashed at establishments of ill repute being sufficient evidence to uphold the order.

  So, breathing like a lonely deep sea diver in her private subterranean world, Magda, resplendent in her best Dandy suit, stops and quickly stoops on one knee, ostensibly taking care of an unlaced boot, until the great air vessel sails by above her and then counts to sixty, as she has been taught, clearing the range of the viewing deck’s data sweep, and then, rising, darts like a quicksilver fish into the softly curtained vestibule of Madame’s domain.

  And, at first, she can see nothing in the womb-like gloom, her flinty blue eyes sun-blinded despite the green goggles and
the visor of her neat brown derby. But then, gradually, as she unfastens her ocular protection, her vision become accustomed to the gloom, and she discerns the padded doorway to her place of enchantment behind the thick and all-enveloping red velvet drapes.

  Madame has her usual room ready, a modest chamber on the third floor with carpet on the floor and old sepia photographs of naked women on the walls. And though many of the ladies who patronize this house question the very existence of all the female pornography on its walls, Magda finds a quiet pleasure in studying these softly arousing images while she’s being fucked. Not for erotic stimulation, per se, or even for the body comparison that some of her friends indulge in, weighing up the heavy udder-like bosoms of those long-dead courtesans against their own little bubs as the Automatons tirelessly service their aching cunts. No, Magda finds no stimulation in competition, but there is, nevertheless, a hunger in her for the stories that these concupiscent images have to tell.

  Today, for example, she regards a heavy-hipped voluptuary who stands preening into the camera, naked save for her new ostrich feather hat and gleaming leather lace-up ankle boots, a luxuriant fur wrap draped casually over a chair in the background and expensive clothing strewn upon the freshly polished floor. Her breasts are pert and pointy, stomach and thighs rounded and nubile, and her cunt shaved smooth and her slit obvious. Ah, men’s cocks must have risen like the morning tide, Magda muses, following the curves and contours of all that exposed labia as though it were a map in her place of work, visualizing the eager tongues which would have flicked and teased at the almost certainly large clit that nestled just out of sight of the camera’s probing lens. No wonder clients lavished furs and velvets upon this Victorian Venus, sucking on her pointy little tits like hungry piglets at the teat, impatient to push their big slippery cocks up inside her, coming like tropical geysers within seconds of being admitted to that most holy of valleys, vying amongst each other for her hand and her heart, all of them rich with promises of bonbons and apartments on the Champs Élysée where they would keep her, secret and hidden, a brightly-colored butterfly fluttering on the pin of their outward respectability. No wonder she mocked them with her laughing eyes and elfish grin.

  And Magda has come many times, visualizing herself as that fulsome woman, long gone yet not forgotten.

  Today, though, she has little time for daydreaming, for the urge is strong upon her and she selects the biggest and most robust of the Automations for her purpose. Madame smiles knowingly when Magda makes her choice and quietly whispers a sum in her ear, and, though there is a momentary hesitation, Magda nods and delves into her pocket for the requisite Centimes, passing the warm copper coins to Madame in a seamless fluid movement, as if they were both still out in the street with the Patrol Ships hovering overhead.

  “Your usual room, Chérie?” the older woman asks in an accent that bears no resemblance to French, but Magda nods and plays her part. And thus we find her, on this stiflingly hot Saturday afternoon, in that little airless chamber on the third floor, impatient and already naked, waiting for her paramour.

  And, though some say that Madame’s Automations lack the rough masculinity of those of other houses, with their Marcel-waved hair, fine features and soft latex skin, Magda finds them long-running and insistent, their jerky clockwork cocks molded exquisitely into a permanent state of arousal and fitted with small vibrational units that rub oh so softly on your clit; plus, beneath the surface, there are intricate Swiss watch-maker’s mechanisms that skilfully delay ejaculation until they feel the tight clench of pussy muscles well absorbed in the throes of climaxing.

  But now a Maid brings the machine that has been ordered and she looks approvingly at Magda’s denuded body, while straightening imaginary creases in the bedding. “This is Victor,” she says by way of introduction. “He has been fully wound and will be everything you have ordered, Miss, possibly even more. Enjoy!” And she trails a soft hand imperceptibly over the curve of Magda’s alabaster behind as she leaves, a wistful look in her eyes.

  “Good day, Magda,” Victor sing-songs in his slightly too-high voice, like an antique clockwork nightingale trilling in its golden cage, and there is only a tiny—almost indiscernible—pause between his stock greeting and her name, a tiny click as the delicate jeweled gears in his voice box seamlessly select the correct identifier disc. “Which position do you require for satisfaction today?”

  And Magda smiles at his directness. She has heard tales of a machine in the brothels of Buenos Aries which can actually hold a conversation and seduce its users, but none of Madame’s robots are capable of such subtlety.

  “I think, from behind, today, Victor, dear. Hard but not fast,” she says without blushing and the Automation nods, his chest almost girlish in its smoothness but his cock huge and lubricated, making Magda swallow with desire and experience a shiver all over her naked body.

  She had tried to suck the stiff prick of one of the love machines once, many years ago, filled with a romantic desire to swallow all its thick, tapioca-starch semen, but, though it had looked real, the substantial blue-veined member had tasted only of lubricant, and she had sunk back onto the softness of the bed, pouting and unsatisfied, opening her legs wide in invitation and clawing at his cold body as he pounded steadily into her hot pussy, splitting her open like a soft peach in summer.

  Today, though, with the urge strong in her, she has no fanciful needs and quickly bends over on all fours on the narrow bed for Victor’s purpose. She is a tall girl of around twenty-nine years in the conventional calendar, with long and athletic legs and a firm well-sculpted bottom—peachy someone once called it in some other life— and her cunt is an Aladdin’s cave of pleasure which yawns like an open secret, all her sugar pink and ruby red petals on show to the Machine’s appraising eye.

  “Do you require manual stimulation?” Victor asks with a slight catch in his voice as his hand traces the damp folds of her pussy, and runs a finger slowly up her ass crack, circling her little pinky-brown starfish, but Magda shakes her head.

  “Not today, Victor, I’m too horny, just fuck me,” she whispers through gritted teeth and the machine immediately obliges, his big cock expertly nosing its way into her wet and slippery crack until the huge plum-like head is submerged, pausing only momentarily until he feels her vaginal muscles grip him, then he gives a gentle push and slides right in up to the hilt, his large firm hands gripping her hips as he begins to build a slow, insistent rhythm.

  “That’s right, fuck me like that,” Magda pants, grinding her sleek ass up into him to anticipate his thrusts. “Now harder, but don’t speed up, just keep that same pace but really push your cock into me and make my pussy yearn for you. Yes, that’s it, that’s it … Yes, harder, harder, harder. Yes, yes, yes …”

  There are several thousand finely-crafted brass cogs inside the machine that is Victor, and a hundred million glittering gem stones ensure that each tiny twirling wheel is perfectly balanced, all of his several hundred flawlessly articulated joints moving in syncopated rhythm as he hard-fucks Magda to orgasm, his light, bird-like voice whispering her name again and again as he pounds and thrusts, a tiny heat unit inside him warming his artificial seminal fluid to just the right pitch before he speeds up and hammers into her, the hot jism shooting out of the tiny gaping hole in his pulsing member like a burst hydrant and filling her up just like a good boy should.

  And she feels him coming just as her own orgasm begins to abate, then feels the familiar dry itch inside her tighten up and convulse again, and before she knows what has hit her she being tossed on a tidal wave of pleasure once more, this second helping of sensations even more earth-shattering than the first, Victor’s firm hands still holding her thrusting hips in check like a wild piebald mare he’s breaking, matching her frantic pace in a way no living man could do and still pushing into her, harder, harder, harder until he utters a strange half mangled shout and comes again, a first for a machine, all his d
elicate clockwork joints grinding with effort as he pounds his huge prick mercilessly into her slit, saying her name over and over again until he finally runs out of wind and slumps down beside her as she lies back, sweat-drenched, thrilling to the sound of her own iron heart pounding in her ears.

  Chapter Two – Cynthia and Grandmamma

  One dreamy day, at the end of childhood, Grandmamma takes Magda to the theatre.

  She has just turned eighteen and has celebrated her coming-of-age by having all her luxuriant golden hair bobbed into a neat razor-sharp fringe.

  And though her birthday gifts that morning have included three new rainbow-hued flapper frocks in fashionably short lengths; a string of clickety-clack amber beads that glow with a phosphorescent fire when you hold them to your eye; and a gramophone with a big brass horn and pearlescent teak-wood cabinet to hold her records, it was the trip to the West End which still stuck in her mind all these years later. The journey in the taxi cab through the rain-slaked streets; London, learning to sing again, stretching its arms like a sleeper awakened after the long drab years of the Great War; the bustling department stores laden with treasures; the crowds surging along Oxford Street; the shouting newsboys on all the corners; and the lights, oh the lights, of Piccadilly Circus.

  They had all had supper at Simpsons on the Strand and then taken up their box at the Empire, a big gold-encrusted bower which nestled among the old theater’s giant crystal chandeliers, high above the rest of the audience who scurried around in the stalls below them like ermined ants, their furs and jewels winking in the klieg lights reflected glow.

  Crowned heads of countries long-forgotten had sat where they now sat, and famed thespians from Garrick to Irving had taken their bows and then smiled up in their direction. And tonight they had come to see The Cherry Orchard, the first real play that Magda had ever been invited to attend. She had been to the circus and the pantomime many times before, of course, but these flimsies were mere vaudevilles for children and tonight was different; tonight was theatre and here she was resplendent in shimmering silk and in the best box in the house, the entire audience peering up at her through their gleaming brass and mother-of-pearl opera glasses, conjecturing on what daughter of what crowned head this little debutant was with her neatly cut hair and scintillating amber necklace.