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The Ruined Abbe	By : pip Category: M through R > Quills Views: 2536 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Quills, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 9
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- 11
Author’s Note: First of all, sorry for the long wait. This is a fairly lengthy but important author’s note, especially to those of you who don’t know the Quills film, since it is now that this story will rejoin canon briefly before leaving it again.
As we know, historically the Marquis de Sade was never mutilated by his jailers at Charenton, neither was his death overly dramatic, and likely the point he’d want to be stressed here is that he did in fact have a four-year relationship with a laundry lass who worked at Charenton.
But this is a film, so they took a life that was truly fascinating and tragic, and rewrote it to be even more tragic (and slightly less fascinating). If you haven’t seen it, in Quills Madeleine makes a pass at Coulmier, and he rejects her.
Later, she begins to transcribe a story from Sade that is passed to her using the ‘chinese whispers’ of the asylum inmates via windows and gaps in the walls. She is then killed by one of the inmates in a lustful rage. Simultaneously, another inmate sets fire to the asylum.
Afterwards, Sade is punished by having his tongue cut out, a procedure for which, believe it not, Coulmier denies him pain relief (!). After this, Sade makes paint out of his own spit and excrement, and writes his final story on the walls of the dungeon he is chained up in.
When Coulmier is woken from a nightmare of violating Madeleine’s dead body, he finds Sade almost dead, and attempts to give him his last rites, but Sade swallows the rosary Coulmier wants him to kiss, and expires. The next thing we see is Coulmier, now an inmate himself, begging for a quill and ink with which to write. The Marquis’ voiceover tells us that Coulmier found freedom: “at the bottom of an ink well, on the tip of a quill.”
Our story will rejoin canon up until Sade’s death, weaving in those events as they relate to the Sade and Coulmier I have written here.
It’s an important place to stress that I do not own Quills or the events/characters from it. I refer to the film’s events below purely out of respect for the canon.
Extra Warning: Canon character death, horror, bad language, and a hint of necrophilia. Sorry about that.

Chapter Ten
When at last Coulmier appeared again, he was rather more composed than how he had left the last time, and yet there was something at odds with him. Something about him was flustered, and it occurred to the Marquis that despite all of their previous encounters, he’d never managed to make Coulmier appear that way. Wanton, frightened, conflicted and incoherent, yes, but flustered? Never. The realisation bothered him a bit.
Then, when he simply stood at the door, his eyes darting around the empty cell, as if expecting something other than the bare walls, Sade decided to ask the obvious question.
“What has happened?” He wondered if Coulmier had been forced out of his position at Charenton by the doctor so soon. The Abbé’s eyes alighted on him, but he made no move to bring out the key and release him.
“It’s Madeleine… she…” He was hesitant to begin with, but then just stopped and gave up trying to explain, a delicate kind of blush on his cheeks that was quite interesting.
“Well?” Sade prompted impatiently, afraid for her for a breathless moment, then he got it. “Oh… she chose you?” There wasn’t a well deep enough to contain Sade’s disappointment, but then he was chained up in here, and it was possible that even his seductive influence could be contained if the jailers were diligent enough. “She is young,” he said, as if that explained it, and couldn’t help sounding unimpressed.
“I must send her away,” Coulmier said suddenly, cutting short Sade’s thoughts, and the Marquis shook his head at the wrongness of it. Hadn’t he learned anything?
“Oh, really! So she broke the invisible bonds of virtue and propriety that you and your ilk placed her in, had the courage to approach, and you… punish her for it?” Coulmier looked uncomfortable, looked anywhere but at him, as if he had been caught stealing biscuits from the pantry. He obviously knew he was wrong, and he didn’t need an exasperated Sade to tell him.
“But you’re a free man! I made you free. Take her!” Really, what was the point? Coulmier was being deliberately obstinate, and for what? So that she could take her virginity and waste it on some idiot who didn’t have a clue what he was doing? After all, there was still time to tutor Coulmier in how it should best be done, and that way, he could get a report. He rattled the chains to demand his freedom.
“Then, later, come tell me about it. In detail.”
Coulmier seemed not to be listening. The self-pity and self-indulgent shame were in every look and gesture. “My vows are pointless and broken, true. But you’ve soiled me, and she is so pure. She has to go.”
“Rubbish! No, worse – lies!” Sade became truly angry for perhaps the first time. “Don’t blame me for your fear of her cunt, Abbé. If your resolve and devotion is so weak that you can’t even welcome her advances, what pleasure would she get from you anyway?” Just in case his words didn’t hit home, he raised a hand to accentuate his next sentence with a series of suggestive gestures.
“You’d probably apologise with every lacklustre prod.”
Something flashed in Coulmier’s eyes, and his face hardened. “Where is it?”
“What?” Sade was all innocence, not a term he tended to apply to himself all that often.
“The knife you made me forget about.”
Sade ignored his question. “You’ve learned nothing,” he complained bitterly, thinking of Madeleine. For her sake Coulmier had better come around – and quickly. “And after all the effort I put in…”
“That’s enough!” And here they were again, arguing, as if Coulmier ever won any of them. As if he ever could.
“What, are you angry now that I didn’t write my words on your skin?” He saw the truth of that question by the way Coulmier’s cheeks coloured slightly. “We still can, you know…” It was so easy. He was so easy. Just a deepening of the voice and a suggestive lilt could make him consent to anything. Why on earth couldn’t he be easy for Madeleine? “You want to be hurt, and I want to hurt you. Allow me.” Coulmier’s tongue darted out to moisten lips suddenly dry with obvious desire, and Sade knew he was going to win again. The twisted things religion did to the mind were nothing if not predictable. Coulmier would do it, if he insisted, and bear it willingly, even if it should mean carrying the scars for the rest of his life.
Given time, in another place, Sade was cruel enough to indulge him fully in that regard, so in that sense perhaps Coulmier was lucky that he was in fact a priest. They were destined to meet in circumstances that precluded such a lengthy and absolute dedication.
Coulmier looked at him, his eyes dark, and Sade sighed as the key came out. About time! He watched and waited as the Abbé walked towards him, and then, uncharacteristically, he did something wrong. “Fuck the girl,” he added quietly as an afterthought, as advice, and the Abbé faltered, his gaze clearing of lust to be replaced by a strange kind of relief. Coulmier’s smile was shaky, but the key went away again into one of the sleeves of his robe.
Instead of freeing him, Coulmier began to diligently study the stones that were within Sade’s reach, looking for the one that concealed his hiding place. His eyes narrowed, and there was a fury in him at his loss. Coulmier’s submission was his to take, how dare he try to deny it?
“So I take it you won’t be using me today?” he muttered sarcastically.
For a moment, Coulmier stopped and stared at him blankly. His laugh was short and mirthless. “Me…? Using you?” He looked away again when Sade declined to answer. Then, at last the stone was discovered, and the grating noise as it was moved aside made Sade panic.
“Don’t…” Coulmier withdrew his stash of papers and quills. “Please, I need the space to keep my thoughts.” He took out the ink, the oil, and then the knife, some kind of victorious smirk on his face. “You of all people know I do. Abbé!”
“You stole that title from me forever, remember?” Sade shook his head, for once truly worried. That wasn’t what any of this had been about and they both knew it. Still, Coulmier persisted with the lie. “This is your God, is it not?” He stood there, all powerful, brandishing the papers and quills that meant everything, that let him have a voice, that contained his dreams, and which were his freedom even when he was imprisoned. Sade made no reply. “So. It’s like justice.”
“No,” Sade argued, too late, “you’ll come around. You’ll see.” His panic only escalated when he saw Coulmier really did mean to take them away, that he wasn’t teasing or tormenting at all. “No! I’ll tell people what I’ve done with you!”
“The ravings of a lunatic?” Coulmier laughed, the sound of it harsh and stilted. “No one will believe you over me.”
It was true, but that didn’t mean Sade would be backing down. As Coulmier strode away to take those things with him out of the door, de Sade shouted after him. “I’ll tell them all! I keep no secrets for you, Coulmier, do you hear me? None!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Time passed as it did in all asylums, agonising and slow, and before too much of it had gone by, Sade had found a new way of getting his words out to the world, with the help of the inmates and the devoted Madeleine. She hadn’t been sent away, after all, at least – not yet. And, while she was here, at least one of them should take the time to entertain her.
There were always words. All the day, and more at night. Words were like people. If you put them in the right order, you could defile and corrupt them, make them do things their makers never intended. There were words for everything, except for that night when in the midst of his dictated story the fire started, when he screamed from his cell about Madeleine as the whole place seemed to come tumbling down.
No one told him. He was moved to a pit underground – a real dungeon he might have appreciated in other circumstances. Eventually, Coulmier came to tell him. Not that Madeleine was dead – no – that he had guessed, but that she died a virgin. She died before she could know what it was all for, what it was all about. Before she could truly know even why she found his stories arousing. Could there be anything more wretched? Coulmier had denied her that out of fear, and now he blamed Sade for her death as if the tragedy itself wasn’t enough. Perhaps it was Coulmier who came to see him, but it was with the doctor’s words, and with thoughts in his head the doctor had put there.
They were at last enemies then, and when Coulmier stood over him before that terrible mutilation, insisted on it without relief from the pain and suffering, it was akin to seeing his words spring into life. They were never meant to be anywhere apart from the page, but then Coulmier’s motivation ran deeper than any of the characters in his works. They were merely nature’s actors, man (and woman) reduced to the most basic, primal lusts, while the Abbé was afraid. Afraid of being found out to be just as depraved as those characters, the same as everyone was afraid. And so Sade he said the thing that needed to be said, the last thing he would ever say out loud.
“Would that I were so easily silenced.”
And after that, it seemed Coulmier didn’t have the courage of conviction to watch. A final insult.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was the way of dreams to show you what you wanted most of all, to give you what in waking was lost. Coulmier dreamed of Madeleine, as if his capitulation to desire could save her. In his dreams he let her in, when it was too late, and she was revived by his kisses and caresses as if she had never been gone.
Though he still knew little about a woman, his experiences with Sade were such that the pleasure of the act itself was real, and she welcomed him. Her arms closed around him to pull him closer. Her legs wrapped around him in invitation and he sank into her warmth and let himself be soothed by it, even as his body was kindled.
It must have been a terrible dream – to have lost her! And his joy at finding that it wasn’t too late to follow Sade’s advice was so complete, so profound, that this couldn’t ever be wrong. What a sin it would have been to deny this.
Someone called his name.
In his arms, beneath him, Madeleine sighed. She had called his name, surely, even if he didn’t see it in her eyes. She wanted him, and he sought entry into her, feeling himself sliding deep into that mystery, forgetting to breathe when he felt how she surrounded him, how she imprisoned and consumed him. He didn’t want her to ever let him go.
There was someone at the door.
She didn’t know, couldn’t hear it, so why should he answer? Except that the door, it sounded so important. So harsh and real. She sighed and he looked back at her, a smile on his face, willing to ignore whoever was trying to disturb them, but it was much too late. Madeleine was dead.
It was all there in front of him, the extent of his crime, the pallor of the marbled skin, the glassy eyes. She rested in his arms limp like a doll, jolting suggestively with his movements, and her body was cool. Before that coldness reached the place where they were still joined, he moved inside her, and for a fleeting instant he couldn’t regret, and couldn’t take it back, whether she lived or not.
There was a horrified scream on his lips when he awoke alone in his bed, and the nightmare was not worse than the loss that accompanied him into wakefulness. Madeleine was gone forever, her body buried deep underground, and he couldn’t stop himself from checking his fingernails for dirt, but his hands were clean.
The banging on the door was very loud, and somehow, as he looked back down at his clean hands, he knew it was all about the Marquis. It was time, and before the hour was out, Coulmier screamed again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When his breath ran out, the scream finally ended. Now it was all over. Everything. Except for this last, desperately scrawled message that defied reason, as with everything else the Marquis had written. Grieving, Coulmier sat in the middle of the floor with Sade in his arms and looked. He let his eyes rove over the walls, wishing he could cover his mouth with the handkerchief again, his eyes watering from the stench so that all the words were swimming. And then he saw his own name.
Gasping, he blinked furiously, his eyes anxiously scanning the sentences that surrounded his name, seeing in them an account, not a story, nor even a fantasy. The parts he did see were not exaggerated or false. The descriptions were indulgent but not embellished. His body, his reactions, his fall and his ruin. It would be such a perfect revenge, if it had been meant that way. But instead of revenge, it was a final lesson. It was truth, and it defied reason, exactly like everything else the Marquis had written.
There were voices outside, and soon these things would all be known. There was no denying this, and there wasn’t time to remove it before it was seen, read, disseminated. So, Coulmier did the only reasonable thing under the circumstances, before the questions could begin – he fled back to his cell and locked the door against it all. Against everything but the nightmares he still couldn’t shake, that seemed to get worse with every passing day. Against everyone but the dead.

Author’s Note: Comments and/or constructive criticism welcome and encouraged. Thank you to my previous reviewer, SBX!
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The Ruined Abbe