Southern Heat : a civil war story By The Masked Writer

[maskedwriter]

Southern Heat : a civil war story
By The Masked Writer

he August heat hung over the Georgia plantation like a wet, suffocating wool blanket. The grand ballroom, once a glittering expanse of swirling silks and candlelight, was now silent. The fields outside the tall, arched windows were empty, the cotton overripe and bursting, abandoned when the distant thunder of Sherman's cannons gave the enslaved people the signal they had prayed for... and their masters the signal they had prayed would never come.

Clara stood in the center of the vast, polished, empty, ballroom floor, beneath a dusty  crystal chandelier. Her husband's portrait stared down at her from the far wall. He had died at Gettysburg, leaving her to manage an estate that was now all but deserted. She was still in her nightgown--a whisper of diaphanous white cotton, so thin and evanescent it barely seemed to exist. The oppressive humidity had already molded the flimsy, sheer fabric to her damp skin, making it cling tight to the soft, ample curves of her body.
She was a vision of 19th-century porcelain beauty--blonde hair matted with sweat, wide blue eyes clouded with grief, and a figure that was fashionable in its plumpness. Her bosom was ample, her hips and buttocks round and heavy, and her arms, which had never known a day's toil, were soft and white. In this heat, the nightgown was nearly translucent, rendering her pale skin and rounded form visible in a way that would have scandalized the county.
Except for Delia.
The heavy mahogany doors of the ballroom creaked open. Delia stood in the threshold. She wasn't wearing the stiff, formal uniform of a house slave. Instead, she wore the dress of her recent past--a coarse, scratchy homespun cotton shift, the color of dry earth. It was a rugged, garment, hemmed practically at the calves. It was cut loose and tough, the armor of the sun-baked fields. She carried a small bundle tied in a cloth.
"I'm leaving now, Miss Clara," Delia said. Her voice was steady, lacking the usual deferential cadence. "The army ain't but ten miles east. I'm going."

Clara stared at her, the words taking a moment to penetrate the sweltering heat. When they did, a hot, venomous spike of entitlement pierced her chest.

"You are going nowhere," Clara hissed, her blue eyes flashing. "I brought you into my home. I took you out of that dirt. You ungrateful wretch--after everything I've done for you, you dare speak to me like this?"
"You took nothing but my sweat and my life," Delia replied, her eyes narrowing. "I'm taking the rest of it back."
Delia turned toward the door. The sheer audacity of it shattered the last remnants of the young widow's composure. On a mahogany side table lay a riding crop, a vicious length of braided leather.
With a scream of pure fury, Clara snatched the whip. She lunged across the ballroom, raising her arm high. "Stop ! You are my property!"

The whip came down with a sharp crack, biting into Delia's shoulder through the thick fabric. Delia hissed, more a low growl than a cry of pain. She had been whipped before; her skin was a map of survival, her nerves cauterized by years of labor and the occasional lash of the overseer. She was tough, all muscle and grit.
Clara raised her arm to strike again, her ample bosom heaving beneath the clinging wet cotton, still believing she could break this woman's spirit. But when Delia turned around, there was no fear in her dark eyes. Just a terrifying, volcanic rage.

As the whip descended a second time, Delia did something unheard of for a slave : she reached out with lightning reflexes and caught the leather in her bare, calloused hand.
Clara yanked, trying to tear it free, her face turning a blotchy red as she strained. "Let go! You... let go!" she grunted, her flabby, pale arms shaking violently with the effort. Delia didn't move. She held the whip with ease. With a sharp, violent pull, she yanked the crop away, and Clara's momentum carried her right into the other woman.

Enraged and terrified, Clara began to swing. She threw a punch at Delia's face, but it was a clumsy, imprecise thing, her hand soft and unformed for violence. It glanced harmlessly off Delia's cheek. Clara swung again, her movements frantic and wasteful, her small fists hitting Delia's solid shoulders without doing any arm. To Clara, the sensation of her own knuckles hitting solid bone was a shocking, foreign agony. She had never felt the sting of a bruise or the burn of physical exertion. Every impact sent a jolt of alarm through her nervous system.
"I'll kill you! I'll have you hanged!" Clara shrieked, but her voice was thinning. The stagnant air was like lead. After only a minute, her pampered, rounded arms felt like jelly, burning with fatigue. Her punches became slow and even less precise as sweat blurred her blue eyes. She was gasping, the white nightgown clinging to her heaving, soft chest, the fabric so wet she might as well have been naked.
Delia stood her ground, easily absorbing the weak blows. She watched as the rage in Clara's eyes was replaced by a wide, staring fear. Clara realized she was doing no damage; the strength of Delia was a shock for her
As Clara slowed, her breath coming in ragged, pathetic hitches, Delia  moved. She stepped into Clara's space, the scent of earth and sweat clashing with the faint, expensive lavender that clung to the widow's skin. Before Clara could bring her trembling, white hands up, Delia drew back a heavy fist and drove it straight into Clara's soft, unprotected belly.

For Clara, who had lived her life wrapped in cotton and silk, the pain was an existential shock. All the air vanished from her lungs in a silent explosion. Her blue eyes bulged, her mouth working wordlessly. She had never known the sensation of being struck, the way the world seems to fold inward on a point of impact. She doubled over, clutching her stomach, her round, heavy body hitting the hardwood floor with a dull, heavy thud.
Clara lay curled on her side, unable to draw a breath, her diaphanous nightgown molding to her trembling, plump form. Every nerve in her body was screaming in a language she didn't understand.
"You look so tired, Miss Clara," Delia mocked, looming over her. "All that fussing and you're already spent? You're soft. You don't know what it is to ache, do you?"
Delia grabbed Clara by her blonde hair, forcing the gasping woman to look up. "Twenty years," Delia growled, sweat falling onto the mistress's pale cheek. "Twenty years of my mother's back breaking so you could have soft hands and a lazy body. Look at all you, Clara. All that cream and cake turned to flab. You're doughy. Round and weak."

Clara tried to push away, but her arms had no strength left. The very sensation of Delia's rough hands against her skin felt like sandpaper against silk.

"I'm hurting you?" Delia laughed. "You're pathetic. A pampered, squishy little thing is what your are. You scream because you've never had to endure anything."
Delia shifted her weight, the sheer disgust radiating from her. Driven by animalistic terror, Clara scrambled onto her hands and knees, trying to crawl away.

The frantic movement was the final undoing of her gossamer gown. The sweat-soaked fabric caught beneath her scrambling knees and split completely. A violent, tearing sound echoed as the thin cotton shredded from the neckline to her waist, and the skirt ripped high over her round, pale,  buttocks.
Raised in a world of strict propriety, Clara was suddenly laid bare. The shredded remnants of her nightgown fell away, revealing the pale softness of her body. Her white shoulders, the gentle curve of her back, and the pale, doughy softness of her round thighs were exposed to the humid air, which felt cold on her damp, exposed skin, a sensory intrusion that added to her panic.
A hot flush of profound shame washed over Clara, mingling with her terror. Her blonde hair fell in disarray over her exposed, soft back. "Just please--!"

"Look at the Great Lady now!" Delia mocked. "Crawling in the dirt. You're just a shivering, naked thing. Look at how you shake! All that soft, white flab jiggling because you're scared."
Delia lunged forward. She caught Clara by the ankle, her fingers digging into the soft flesh, and dragged the sobbing widow backward. The friction of the floor against Clara's soft belly and breast was a new, stinging torture. Clara screamed as Delia flipped her over, pinning her plump form down.
"To think I ever bowed to something as you," Delia whispered. "You can't even stand."

Delia raised her heavy, bare hand and brought it down hard across Clara's exposed, soft buttock.

The smack echoed like a gunshot. Clara convulsed with a shrieking gasp, her body arching in pure, unadulterated shock. She had never even been swatted as a child. The pain was a blinding white light. A fierce, angry red handprint bloomed instantly against her pale skin.

Smack. Another heavy blow fell upon Clara's exposed, round behind. Clara sobbed hysterically, the physical intimacy of the beating stripping away the last of her mental defenses. "Oh God! Stop! Please stop!"

"Beg for me," Delia commanded, delivering another stinging blow. "You want mercy? From the 'dirt' you took me out of? Beg for it, you soft, useless thing! Your skin is so thin, Clara. It's almost too easy to mark."

Delia's hand rose and fell in a merciless rhythm. She unleashed years of rage onto the soft, flabby flesh. Slap after devastating slap landed on Clara's rounded rear, her hips, and her back. The room smelled of sweat and desperation. Every blow was an assault Clara had no armor for.

"All that fine living," Smack. "It didn't make you strong, Clara. It just made you soft and flabby."
Finally, her chest heaving, Delia stopped. Clara lay sobbing uncontrollably, a huddled, trembling mass of exposed, bruised pale flesh and shredded white cotton. Her body was a map of red marks, her skin humming with a heat and pain she had never imagined possible.
Delia stood up slowly. "You stay there," she said, her voice cold. "You stay in your dirt. The world is changing, and there's no room in it for things as soft as you."

She turned away, picked up her bundle, and walked out. She stepped off the porch and into the blinding sun. Behind her, the house remained silent, save for the ragged, shameful weeping of a woman who had finally learned that without the system that protected her, she was nothing at all.

Days later, Union troops found Clara. She had lost her mind. Doctors blamed it on the loss of her husband. Only Delia, now a free woman, could have guessed the real cause of it. But she never knew. And she never cared.

The end

[maskedwriter]