"A Toy for Juliette" is a short story by Robert Bloch from Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, about Jack the Ripper, being pulled into a dystopic future by a sadistic femme fatale and her mysterious grandfather. There, she attempts to seduce him, only for Jack to find a knife underneath a pillow in her bed. The rest is left to the reader's imagination.
Bloch incorporates themes of dystopic libertarianism--the title character, Juliette, is named after the Marquis de Sade's Juliette. Sade was the man for whom "sadism" is named, and Bloch often uses his works in connection with the mentally unstable, such as his character Norman Bates in Psycho.
Famous quotes containing the word toy:
“To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is,
Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss.
So full of artless jealousy is guilt,
It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)