My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen Read Free Book Online

under no circumstances should she mention his name in association with
the item she had bought.
    â€˜What happened to him, in your opinion?’ I asked finally.
    â€˜I have no idea. One day he was there, the next he had disappeared. But you can be sure that if Professor Krak is indeed dead,’
she finished, ‘Lord bless his soul, then it is thanks to his experimenting with ideas & practices that he should not have
meddled with.’
    So that was what I knew. Much and little, all at once – but if there was physical danger to be feared, I had protection at
least in the form of the stout Fru Schleswig, who could kill a man with a single blow of her hand, & still any machine with
a thunderous kick of her hoof, however out of control it may become: with such a physical force acting as one’s human shield,
& taking the brunt of whatever attack might be launched in one’s direction, what need I fear? That was my reasoning, as I
went with Fru Schleswig to work the next day, & the next, & furthered my forays into the heart of the building. But there
was something else too, that drew me deeper in, despite what I had heard: a rapacious greed to know more about the locked
basement room that Professor Krak used as his workshop & the dangerous mechanical device that might still lie, rusting & abandoned,
within. And to witness for myself what horrors or what marvels Professor Krak had created illicit access to –
    Yes, marvels. For surely there were marvels. Why else would all those people flock to the house in such a secretive & desperate
manner? Why else would I feel so burning an urge to see the contents of the basement workshop that Gudrun called the Oblivion
Room for myself? Yes: what drew me, magnetically, to discover more was the same impulse that had sucked others in. Adventure.
Danger. And escape. Looking back I realize that even then, I was like an opium eater, drawn to the source of woe, heedless
of its ill-effects, & mindful only of the brief ecstatic sweetness it might offer, whose boundaries were only those of my
imagination.
    Yes, O dear one: even then, Professor Krak’s demonic invention had exerted its pull.
    The Pastor, whom I met the second week, was a paunchy man in his middle to late years, with clattering false teeth that seemed
to roam his mouth like a tribe of nomads in search of land on which to pitch camp.
    â€˜Pleased to meet you, my dear,’ he said, eyeing my curves like a greasy old flesh-merchant, & somersaulting the contraption
in his mouth. ‘I hear that thanks to the good Fru Krak, you are in the process of reforming. I am glad to hear it. And I know
that Christ is too.’ (I was quickly to learn that Christ and Pastor Dahlberg were most loyally twinned, and always agreed
with one another, whatever the subject might be.)
    â€˜I beg your pardon, sir?’ I asked.
    â€˜Fru Krak informs me that she saved you from the streets. That you were a harlot, my dear young woman. But have since sought more appetizing work? Here with us? Praise be to God.’
    But I could see from the Pastor’s greedy porcine eyes that his thoughts were less with the Lord Almighty than with my breasts,
& at that moment I envisaged the possible transmogrification of my employment quite clearly.
    â€˜Ah yes,’ I said, cottoning on to the self-serving tale Fru Krak must have spun him, about her heroic role in my ‘redemption’.
‘I am so grateful to the good lady, indeed I am. Were it not for the bounty of your noble fiancee, I would be forced, through
sheer need, to unbutton the top of my dress thus, & reveal my lacework corset to strangers.’
    The Pastor gasped, went red in the face, & came close to choking on his oral prosthesis.
    â€˜And provoke the dirtiest & most shameful lusts,’ I continued, undressing further: ‘– & reveal the exquisite bosoms & pert girlish nipples that nestle beneath my intimate underclothing