Three Times a Lady

Chapter 6

Annabeth Preston had performed her rudimentary version of a castration on Nicholas the day he’d turned thirteen – the same day she’d started giving him the testosterone shots to ensure his continued physical development. After all, she certainly wouldn’t want to arouse anybody’s suspicions, now would she? Of course she wouldn’t. Wouldn’t want anyone to suspect that the devil’s soul lurked just beneath the façade of that gorgeous angel’s face of hers. And apparently she’d grown weary of arousing other things on Nicholas, too. Unholy things.

Even though they weren’t Jewish – they were Catholic – Nicholas had received a horrifying bris when other boys his age who actually were Jewish were busy celebrating their bar mitzvahs. Not that the Catholics had anything to puff out their chests and crow about when it came to the ghastly practice, though. In medieval times in Europe – back in the days when women weren’t permitted to perform in choirs during religious services due to their lowly social standing – the Roman Catholic Church had often castrated boys in order to prevent their voices from breaking at puberty, allowing the lads to develop especially high vocal ranges. Italian church records dating all the way back to the 1550s mentioned castrati, and it wasn’t until the late-1880s that the church had finally condemned the practice officially. A hundred years later – when Catholic priests would fill in their time by molesting untold numbers of altar boys behind the locked doors of vestibules, the church would turn the same blind eye to the sickening abuse, led by none other than cover-up master Pope Benedict the Sixteenth himself.

Early-onset puberty had allowed Annabeth Preston to dismiss the concerns of Nicholas’s voice not developing properly. His adult voice was already there. Even at thirteen years old, he possessed a deep baritone that people often mistook for an adult’s whenever he spoke with them on the phone, often leading them to think that his cadence and pitch belonged to his deceased father. ‘You sound exactly like him,’ they’d say with amazement in their own voices. ‘It’s uncanny.’

So, Jewish or not, Annabeth Preston had absolutely no qualms whatsoever about going forward with the extremely dangerous procedure. And why in the hell would she have any qualms about it? What did she have to lose at this point? Another child? Probably not one of her biggest concerns, considering her history. Only Nicholas’s special bris – which translated to ‘covenant of circumcision’ from the Hebrew – had gone quite a bit further than simple removal of his foreskin. Quite a bit further, indeed.

In some early cultures, castration was performed on soldiers who’d lost in battle. The winners did it to symbolise their complete victory over their defeated foes. To take away their very manhood and ensure they could never retrieve it again.

For her part, Annabeth Preston had symbolised her victory over Nicholas with a sharp scalpel, no anesthesia and with a delighted smile planted firmly on her pretty lips.

After strapping Nicholas down by his wrists and ankles with thick leather restraints to the huge wooden table in the middle of their kitchen, she’d stood over him with the sharp surgical instrument balanced unsteadily in her delicate hand. ‘Try not to move, son,’ she’d said. ‘If you move, I might mess it up. And if you scream, I’ll make sure I mess it up on purpose.’

Nicholas had tried his very best to keep silent – had tried with every last ounce of energy he’d possessed – but when the sharp metal blade had sliced into the tender skin at the top of his genitalia he had no choice but to scream. He screamed loud and long and hard, screamed until his throat felt like it had been crammed full of razor blades, screamed until he had no voice left with which to scream.

But Annabeth Preston had only watched him silently the entire time, not even the slightest trace of emotion crossing her beautiful face. Not even the slightest indication that his animalistic howls had affected her eardrums in the least little bit.

When Nicholas had finally stopped his screaming – much too exhausted to make another sound and feeling a pain in his penis like none he’d ever experienced before – his mother tutted. ‘Now, now, son,’ she’d said soothingly. ‘I warned you, didn’t I? I was just going to take your foreskin and testicles, but now I suppose I’ll have to take off the whole sinful thing. I wish you hadn’t made me do this. But you did.’

With that, she discarded the scalpel in favour of a wickedly sharp meat cleaver that was hanging over their kitchen table along with a variety of other knives. As the longtime wife of a butcher, she knew exactly what to do.

Undoing the leather restraints on Nicholas’s ankles, she turned his limp body over on one side before pulling the shaft of his penis taut against the wooden surface of the table. In one swift movement, she lifted up her right arm before bringing down her gloved hand again in a blindingly fast chopping motion. It took less than a second for the meat cleaver to slice effortlessly through flesh and veins and arteries and make resounding contact with wood.

Nicholas didn’t remember screaming again at that point. Everything had gone pitch-black. He supposed the trauma of the entire ordeal must have signaled his brain to flood with endorphins, nature’s very own painkillers: a way for his body to deny the horrific trauma to which it had just been subjected.

Total removal of the male genitalia didn’t come without its inherent risks, though. Far from it. The danger of death due to bleeding or infection was much greater than with simple removal of the testicles. But like everything else in her extremely well planned-out life, Annabeth Preston had prepared for that possibility too.

Blood spurting forth like an exploding geyser from between Nicholas’s quivering thighs and every last cell in his body screaming out in agony, Annabeth Preston had moved to the stove and held the flat side of the meat cleaver against a burner glowing bright red. The world around Nicholas blurred, swimming in and out of focus until everything appeared to him as though he were viewing it through a thick sheet of rain-spattered opaque glass.

Returning to the table, Annabeth Preston had then pressed the hot metal against her son’s wound to cauterise it. The sound of sizzling flesh had filled Nicholas’s ears. The smell of cooking meat had wafted up into his nostrils, mixing in with the scent of his mother’s expensive perfume. Chanel No. 5, of course. Nothing but the very best for her.

‘What do you say, son?’ she’d asked.

Somehow – despite the unspeakable horror to which he’d just been subjected – Nicholas had managed to mumble his reply right before he’d passed out for good.

‘Thank you, Mother,’ he’d said.

And once again – strange as it might have sounded to any of the so-called normal people out there in the world – the really sick thing about the whole thing was that he’d actually meant it.