Cleopatra Brimstone
I had the pleasure or re-reading one of my favorite stories the other day, "Cleopatra Brimstone." I actually own two books in which it's anthologized, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 15, and a collection of speculate fiction called Redshift. The only other thing I've read by Hand is a novel, Waking the Moon, which I found fairly ridiculous. The story, though, is gripping.
It centers around a young woman, Jane Kendall, who has had a life-long attraction to insects. Her earliest memory is a butterfly mobile over her crib. She is a beautiful but studious girl, given to reading articles on entomology instead of going out on dates.
While attending college, she leaves the lab late one night and is raped. The rapist wants her to struggle--that is his turn on. It is a shattering enough experience that she leaves school. After a time, though, she agrees to go to London to house-sit for some family friends. She volunteers at the Regent Park Zoo's insect house, working for an entomologist who regards her with equal parts bemusement and a kind of hungry appraisal.
Something comes over Jane. She has always had strange hairs that grow out of her eyebrows and almost have sensory feeling to them. After attending a club populated by the pierced and freaky, and accidentally wandering into an S&M room, she is inspired to shave her head and dress herself in punk clothing. She makes some purchases of hand and anklecuffs at a sex shop. On her next visit, calling herself Cleopatra Brimstone (a species of butterfly) she picks up a boy and takes him back to her place. She cuffs him to the bed, implores him to "try to get away," and gives him a handjob. When he ejaculates, he transforms into a moth. She dutifully puts the insect into a killing jar and mounts him.
Surely that sounds bizarre, but Hand's writing is so straightforward and without filigree that it seems perfectly reasonable. Jane goes on a killing spree, taking boys to her bed (or to a car or an abandoned park) and at the moment of ecstasy they transmogrify. When her employer happens to see her collection, he grows suspicious, since she happens to have a Madagascan moon moth, which are rare and would never be found in London.
The story is a nifty, adult tale of dominance and the balance of power. It's by turns erotic, scary, and full of information about lepidoptera. I think it would make a good movie, too, though one with a very hard R-rating.
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| A cleopatra brimstone |
It centers around a young woman, Jane Kendall, who has had a life-long attraction to insects. Her earliest memory is a butterfly mobile over her crib. She is a beautiful but studious girl, given to reading articles on entomology instead of going out on dates.
While attending college, she leaves the lab late one night and is raped. The rapist wants her to struggle--that is his turn on. It is a shattering enough experience that she leaves school. After a time, though, she agrees to go to London to house-sit for some family friends. She volunteers at the Regent Park Zoo's insect house, working for an entomologist who regards her with equal parts bemusement and a kind of hungry appraisal.
Something comes over Jane. She has always had strange hairs that grow out of her eyebrows and almost have sensory feeling to them. After attending a club populated by the pierced and freaky, and accidentally wandering into an S&M room, she is inspired to shave her head and dress herself in punk clothing. She makes some purchases of hand and anklecuffs at a sex shop. On her next visit, calling herself Cleopatra Brimstone (a species of butterfly) she picks up a boy and takes him back to her place. She cuffs him to the bed, implores him to "try to get away," and gives him a handjob. When he ejaculates, he transforms into a moth. She dutifully puts the insect into a killing jar and mounts him.
Surely that sounds bizarre, but Hand's writing is so straightforward and without filigree that it seems perfectly reasonable. Jane goes on a killing spree, taking boys to her bed (or to a car or an abandoned park) and at the moment of ecstasy they transmogrify. When her employer happens to see her collection, he grows suspicious, since she happens to have a Madagascan moon moth, which are rare and would never be found in London.
The story is a nifty, adult tale of dominance and the balance of power. It's by turns erotic, scary, and full of information about lepidoptera. I think it would make a good movie, too, though one with a very hard R-rating.
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