The Hidden Cost of Love by Francesca Quarto

You may be tempted to view this story as yet another of my works of imagination, rather than the cautionary tale it's meant to be.  I've exposed for you, the hidden cost of love, but your opinions or critiques will be of little concern to me.  Just as they were when I walked among your society I might add.  Of course, then you knew me only in the pale caricature of a human female, but I was a famous authoress, none-the-less.

 However, as I close on that distant horizon, that line between death and life, I need to unburden myself of a few of the ghostly chains I forged, as the illustrious Mr. Dickens would call these painful sins.

I entered woman-hood, blighted, as most females, by the all-male interpretations of every aspect of my life as a woman.  From procreating, to schooling, to attire and ruination by fornication, with  heavy emphasis on the latter.  

I was carefully indoctrinated in the beliefs of religious zealots and a myopic society of men, many having no understanding of the gender they so diligently squelched.  What they tried to convey in their dictates, seasoned like a thick stew, with the grave consequences of sin, was that my sex had no original thought, only Original Sin, brought on by our innate wickedness. 

Naturally, a man would have to beat the evil out of me, either physically or mentally and I'd be expected to endure in the process.

Instead, I took up the pen and began pouring out my female desires and fantasies upon the pure, blank pages.  I was like those clean sheets, unblemished by the twisted ideas of others, my pen was filled with the ink of freedom.  Freedom from the tyranny of a male-dominated society, through stories written clandestinely in the darkest hours.  

I discretely funneled these lurid tales of romance, and conquest, into the hands of a  publishing house under the pen name, 'Venus' and became an over-night sensation.  There was a hue and cry from  starched-up husbands, finding their wives and daughters, panting over the pages written by the mysterious Venus.  Society was rocked, when the Rector's own wife was discovered with one of my more daring stories about a pastor's wife and the joys she found in cultivating cucumbers in her garden.  I heard that particular book was a favorite topic for discussion at the Barrister's Club as well.

Have I have shocked you with my double identity as dutiful wife and Author of Erotic fantasy? No doubt.  But I hope  my stories reveal the hidden passion we all struggle to control, like tigers caged inside our bodies.

And now, I face the high cost of expressing those passionate feelings.  I sit in this jail cell, among other women, of lower pedigree, but no less female.  We all await our sentencing today by the Circuit Judge visiting our town on his rounds.  He shall decide my fate.  Yes, another man shall dictate the terms of my life.  

As I sit under the small window so that I may feel the weak sunlight on my arms, I wonder if the judge, in his dark robes, shall ever find his plump wife sighing over the pages of Venus before blowing turning down the flame.