Depravity can be women’s work too

Can you hear the sound of jingling chains and hooks, starlight soft? Inhale the smell of flesh and sex? You see her, floating towards you from an endless tunnel of sterile blue light. Your eyes trail over her shiny leather attire, the pinprick sharp rod through her nose, the obscene gash splitting open her throat, reminiscent of..something. She parts her lips and you notice they are the hue of a waterlogged corpse. Voice high and low all at once, impossibly layered, she says “Perhaps you’re teasing us. Are you teasing us?”

I saw her for the first time on my glowing laptop screen, a tiny fan whirring in the background. Clad in shiny leather she stood: the Female Cenobite from Hellraiser. The blue spectre lingered in the shadows, rarely coming to the forefront of the screen and only meant to compliment the movie’s true beast; Pinhead. Despite his booming voice, he blurred out of my line of sight. My eyes, instead, tracked her every move. She exuded pure sexuality in a way the other three vaguely male Cenobites did not. Or maybe they did, and I just didn’t care. She was absolutely dripping with eroticism, the scary kind I only allowed to occupy my thoughts but never dared to whisper aloud , not even under cover of darkness. I was transfixed by her flirtatious threats; her utility belt decorated with glittering implements of torture (or pleasure depending on who you asked.) It felt like I had just seen an apparition of my own perverse Virgin Mary. I grinned at my laptop and thought to myself “she’s just like me”.

The Female Cenobite is shrouded in mystery, at least as far as the Hellraiser films are concerned. Aside from her unofficial nickname “deepthroat”– a title I find tasteless– “Female” is her only canonical namesake provided. She is named after the sex she embodied in her human life though she is now practically sexless. But, who was she, what did her life entail?

In 1988 when Hellraiser 2: Hellbound released, it opened with a teaser of sorts. We were given a glimpse of Pinhead’s former life as a human. This was further expanded upon in Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth. But the lives and transformations of the remaining three members of “The Order of the Gash” are not elaborated on. Thankfully we do not have to toss and turn and wonder, because Barbie Wilde who played the Female Cenobite in Hellbound has given us a small but lush collection of writings and backstory.

In the first Hellraiser movie, the Female Cenobite was played by Clive Barker’s cousin Grace Kirby. Unfortunately the role did not suit her as the costuming and makeup caused body dysmorphia. She was replaced with Barbie Wilde for the sequel, who not only embraced the character but seemed to fall in love with her, as I have. She in turn gifted us with two stories “Sister Cilice” from the 2009 collection of Hellraiser inspired short stories titled “Hellbound Hearts”, and “The Cilicium Pandoric” which she posted in 2012¹.

In these works we learn that the Female Cenobite was once fully intact, a holy and purified flesh of bone and sinew. She was a nun, Sister Nikoletta to be specific. Fervently devoted, Nikoletta prayed nine times a day. However, no amount of sacred whispers could rid her of her depraved and plagueful dreams. Try as she might to purge herself of her perversions by way of the whip and the cilice belt, depravity was a part of her nature. She began to enjoy her self flagellation, open cuts and wounds meant to mimic the suffering of Christ.

The words of her devout parents echoed in her brain “every sin, no matter how inconsequential, is a blemish on your soul and will lead you to eternal damnation.” She was born wrong, she was born with the sickness of sin and it went down to her marrow.

Sent to the convent at seventeen, she did not know what it meant to merge bodies with another and, in retrospect, perhaps that made it worse. The not knowing... the wondering. For years she was the outward picture of perfect devotion, abstaining from all. That is, until the young and handsome Father Xavier came along and began to lead daily Mass. She fixated on every gaze, every accidental brush of his saintly finger on her lip when she opened her mouth for him to take the body of Christ. She tried with all her might to fend off the insistent call of her loins. She beat herself bloody, but she was different. It didn’t help; it only made her suffering more delicious.

What was meant to purify her body and mind became her sick and private game. Whipping herself raw, imagining it by Father Xavier’s hand—hurting her, taking her, wanting her. She strangles herself, hurts herself in her most sensitive regions with the leather handle of her beloved whip. It is not enough. Her pain is love, her pain is glorified. Perversely she recalls the words of St. Josemaría Escrivá “Blessed be suffering, loved be suffering, sanctified be suffering, glorified be suffering”.

Now, I voraciously consume any morsel of art that presents a depraved woman to me. I chew the fatty buttery flesh with glee. There is a jolt of electricity that runs through me when I find a rotten woman on paper or screen, a sense that I have been here before. I know you, I have seen you. Sister Cilice with arms outstretched, reaches for something I always felt I was not meant to have, this penchant for corruption. If she can graze the unsightly gnarled parts of herself with tender fingertips, marvel at their beauty without recoil or shame, maybe I can as well.

Banishing herself to the basement library as a means to soothe her filthy mind and hide her scarred vessel, she discovers something amidst the holy texts..the something: a fifteenth century latin grimoire written by an alchemist and necromancer. Through this discovery, she finds her gateway to The Cenobite’s realm, a dimension perfectly suited for her tastes. To aid in the tearing of the thin veil that separates our world from theirs, Sister Nikoletta prepares offerings: a pint of blood from a sick child mixed with her own menstrual blood and the cilice belt to which her flesh still likely clung.

Bemused by the sister’s earnest admiration where instead there should be fear, the lead Cenobite asks her if she really knows what she is asking of them, what they will do to her. In a kneeled pose of worship she insists she wants to be like them, that they already own her mind, her body and her soul. What transpires next, is maybe one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read on paper.

The lead Cenobite with scalpel in hand straddles Sister Nikoletta and creates a “new orifice” for her, a throat gash he then fucks. With each thrust of his deformed and glorious member, he removes the last shred of her humanity. To Sister Nikoletta’s relief, there is no coming back from horrific sensuality such as this. She is forever changed. The story closes with her, now named Sister Cilice after her favorite belt, detailing the exquisite nothingness she feels as she carries out her putrid tasks in “Hell”.

“The Cilicium Pandoric” picks up some eternity later. With a pet crow feasting on wine soaked eyeballs as her companion, Sister Cilice is bored with the usual fare in Hell. She fancies a little trip through time– eighteenth century France–to visit the toymaker “LeMarchand” who created the famed lament configuration puzzle box. She sneaks into the lead Cenobite’s domain and steals the “Ianua Mechanism” (a device that does not canonically existed within the Hellraiser universe, invented by Barbie Wilde). This mysterious trinket made of cool-weighted platinum and obsidian is the only way for Cenobites to reverse their conjuring practice and enter the realm of humans of their own accord.

The version of the toymaker in this story is a far cry from the iteration we see in Hellraiser 4: Bloodline. While in Bloodline Lemarchand is portrayed as innocent, creating the portal to hell naively at the request of a libertine, in Barbie’s version he is a depraved and enthusiastic participant in his blasphemous creations. Freezing time upon her arrival, the Cenobite catches Lemarchand in the act of strangling a prostitute, a practice she says is routine for him, as he likes to boil their bones and use the fatty grease to polish the puzzle boxes. She steals his thunder and kisses the dying woman herself, stealing her delicious last breath right out from under him.

Resuming time, she demands the startled toymaker show her his collection of little boxes. Unimpressed, a devious idea pops into Sister Cilice’s head: it’s such a drag to be a lower ranking servant under the “Lead Cenobite”. What if she could lead her own “Order of the Gash”? An order of only women, creating her own fleet of female Cenobites. She’s already thought of a name; “The Sisterhood of the Cilice”. She demands that Lemarchand create her a special box, a box that will only attract “needy females seeking the ultimate in sensuality” in the same way the lament configuration’s siren call only falls on the ears of hedonists seeking sensations from “the further regions of experience”.

Sister Cilice wants the box to fit her exact style, taste and specifications: A “Pandoric” decorated with images of blood red roses, vermillion eyed crows, silver cilices, and a Venus symbol stamped on each box. She thinks to herself “Yes, Hell could certainly use some glamor”.

To test the new product, Lemarchand lures the perfect candidate to his basement; a Duchess with a sick, sadistic brain and erotic fascination for the darker side of sexuality. Idolizing women such as the Hungarian Blood Queen, who was rumored to have murdered 600 young girls to bathe in their blood. Leaving the Duchess beside the altar of blood and roses and the new silver box, he departs. She is immediately drawn to the cube, entranced by its glittering ruby and ebony surfaces. As she holds the weighted box in her two hands her fingers begin solving the puzzle, moving faster than her brain can catch up. It’s like second nature– divine intuition. She was always meant to be here, her entire life leading her to the call of the box. She ceases her fiddling as an overwhelming wave of heat and nausea overtakes her. Ripping off her clothes she crawls onto the altar and continues solving the puzzle. Slippery fingertips yearning for some resolution, a reprieve from the mind-numbing drone of aristocracy.

At long last the mechanisms of the box begin to move and shift and change. With glee, the Duchess realizes her box has taken on a rather phallic shape and begun to vibrate. In the throes of inexplicable ecstasy–body covered in heated sweat– she places it between her legs. Spending herself quickly and in post orgasm afterglow, she finds that the device cannot be removed. Tiny hooks reveal themselves from within and embed themselves in the tender tissue of her insides. Again and again the infernal box forces release from her until she fears her heart will stop beating.

Finally when she is able to pull the bloodied smooth metal out, she sees something strange in the corner of her eye. It is Sister Cilice, both delighted and pleased with what she has witnessed, of the extremes the Duchess can endure. She offers the exhausted woman a place in her rank of female Cenobites. She can be the first, and she will come to know pleasures beyond human comprehension. The Duchess objects, struggles, and suffers the firm hand of the Cenobite as all do once the box comes to collect its end of the bargain. But nonetheless Sister Cilice takes her precious Pandoric and the bleeding woman back to Hell with her, excited for “The Cicilium Rebellion of the Female Cenobites” that is to come.

There is something unexplainable about the allure of Sister Cilice, at least for me. She speaks perhaps a dozen clipped sentences in the entirety of the Hellraiser film franchise. Still, stinging disappointment would wash over me when the credits rolled and no new morsel of information about who she was or where she came from was given to me. I recognized her power, admired how she shamelessly delighted in her debauchery. When I looked at her, she glittered; it may have been my own tiny reflection, half formed glaring back at me. I too was born sinful and sick, but I dared not speak my private grotesque prayers out loud. I wanted her shamelessness, her devotion to the pursuit of her own corruption.

I bought a figurine of her from 2004 on eBay for the pretty penny price of $122.50 to quell the overwhelming urge to hold her in my sweaty palms, my own rubbery rosary. I would cringe anytime I saw her being christened with the nickname “Deepthroat” when scrolling reddit threads and comments sections. I don’t know why, she just felt like mine. The nickname felt dismissive of how powerful she really was. Her story wasn’t like the dark romance novels wrapped in unattractive cover art. There was no cliche backstory detailing childhood abuse, something to explain the way her soul reached towards what lingered in the dark. She just was that way. It was important to me—vital that she wanted it, that she was allowed to want it. Her sadism was beautiful and pure, not something she was subjected to. Depravity can be women’s work too.

All the wisdom I have imparted upon you about her life is in books and on websites, anyone can find it. Almost all of it comes from the beautiful brain of Barbie Wilde, save for one or two comic book offshoots that I believe are still based on her expansion of the character. But it feels personal to me, like lifting the veil to show a crowd of strangers my imaginary friend. Hold her gingerly, like I do.

1. Read Barbie Wilde’s story “The Cilicium Pandoric” here on her website.