1. Parallel lives


    Date: 10/20/2014, Categories: Love Stories, Author: Alexandra_A, Rating: 7, Source: LushStories

    allow me. A man. I want a man. A man to love me, care for me, to come to me in the night and bare me, enter me, and make me his. Make me whole. My heart aches for it. My broken body yearns for it. Gnarled fingers grasped the key and wound the spring. Hunched shoulders tightened. In the polished metal of the casing, my face - a study in deformation - glared back demonically, the physical effort twisting my mouth, baring my buckled teeth, my slobbering tongue. Bulging eyes completed the grotesque mask. In disgust, I turned away, screwed down my eyelids, while continuing to rhythmically empower the perfection I had created, transmuting ugliness into beauty, base chemical into pure mechanical. Well-oiled cogs turned and clicked. The massive coiled spring creaked its heightened disapproval. One more turn. Another. No! There is more! I rested. Breathed deeply. Stretched my aching limbs. I clutched the key once more. Sweaty fingers slipped. I dried them on my skirts and tried again. One more full turn. A half. A quarter. There. Ready. I staggered back, exhausted by the effort, excited yet daunted by the task ahead. Though naturally apprehensive, I was ready; for this moment I had waited my whole life. Sitting astride the saddle, I pulled up my skirts then hooked my feet into the swinging stirrups. A moment's adjustment and I achieved a degree of comfort rarely afforded me in everyday life. I fitted the machine perfectly; the measurements, the constant alterations, had been worth ...
    every painstaking moment, every grief-ridden hour. I closed my eyes, allowed myself the rarest smile while running my calloused hands over the wonder I had manufactured. Though he would naturally and rightfully decry its blatantly obscene function, how James would surely enjoy its brilliant simplicity, its pantographical mimicry. He rarely visits - the journey from Birmingham to this bleak Lowland city is both long and unpleasant - yet James writes weekly, sometimes twice weekly, and almost without fail. Problems that perplex him. Wonders that inspire him. He fills my monochrome existence with colour, my drab, draughty rooms with warmth and life. Beloved sister Within your uninterrupted (how I often envy you!) solitude, pray turn your clever mind and your skilled hand to this, my most pressing problem. As you know, the old Newcomen pumps use chains to transfer power via a rocking beam, but my new double-acting engines produce power on both the up and downstrokes, and thus a chain - being flexible on the reverse stroke - will no longer suffice. My conundrum is thus: to design a linkage to transfer power from piston to pump without causing sideways pressure on the piston. I know it can be done, though the solution currently avoids me, appears somewhat hazy and distant. Deadlines approach and potential investors grow apprehensive. As ever, I am in your hands, as you, dear Jane, are ever in my heart. Love, as always, James Twin desires drove me throughout. A desire to please my ...
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