THE SINS OF SISTER ANGELA comes to us from France of the 1600's, a period of plague and misuse of Church power, coupled with sexual repression on the part of the clergy. What is too little known of this period, though, is the sexual excesses of this same clergy which sought to repress its followers. Often the practices behind cloistered walls were more outrageous to common decency than any similar occurrences among the general populace. The author of THE SINS OF SISTER ANGELA has long since dropped into anonymity, but it is the editor's belief that this story was originally written with the aim of exposing corruption and licentiousness within the structure of the then omnipotent Church.
PROLOGUE
The moment I saw him striding into the rectory, I experienced a moment of total recall. The past was but a memory for those of us who chose to take the veil, yet my mind could not be brought under control quickly enough to prevent it. I would say a thousand culpas and do thousands of penances for that memory before it was over.
He had changed very little since he was sixteen, although he had since become a doctor of great renown. Nikos Elytis still wore a crown of onyx ringlets and his azure eyes still dominated his face, but his strong Grecian profile was now deeper set. In his manhood he had lost not one iota of the animal grace that had drawn me compulsively to him so many years past.
I was more or less a child when we chanced to meet, and a more un-likely pair could not be imagined, yet I ached for him from the very beginning. There was something about him that had stirred feelings in me that I had never known existed. His lean hips, the proud shoulders, the unmistakable protrusion carried so proudly at the groin . . . all were painfully apparent to me from the start.
We were both sailing, with our respective families, as passengers on an Italian ship in route from Egypt to Toulon, France. Had not the weather been unseasonably violent, we should never have been allowed to speak, since I was a well brought up young lady of the Roman Catholic faith. The other family, being Greek Orthodox, were totally unacceptable my father pointed out, even if I was old enough to speak with young gentlemen. I was shocked that such a fine-looking young man could be a heathen and destined for hellfire as my eyes were already so clouded with adoration that this news only tended to shroud the object of my affections in a heavy aura of mystery. Anything as exciting as he had to be evil, I reasoned. But like the moth attracted to the flame, I could not stay away.
Instead, I daydreamed that I was the instrument to bring him to the path of righteousness. Snaring him first with my own personal charms, then I would introduce him to my God. What a delightful fantasy!
He was most polite, and he spoke French fluently, so conversation was no problem except for his shyness. With so many passengers confined to their cabins with mal-de-mer, I worked diligently to overcome his shyness while he assumed the task of acting as my protector.
Louis XIV was the reigning monarch of France, and my father was to serve him as ambassador to Egypt for many years. Then, in the year 1660, he was recalled to our native country and it was to be my first visit to France. Although I had never seen a Greek before, I had had little occasion to observe my own countrymen, either. For me the unusual was usual, the commonplace uncommon. When I felt a restlessness of a most personal nature, I did not think to ask my nanna or my mother, for the feelings obviously came from the flesh and it was to the flesh I must turn for the answer.
It is unfortunate that Nikos, though some years my senior, had had little more experience than I. He was a studious boy, not given to any close personal contacts and my clumsy questions received only clumsy, embarrassed answers, if they were not repulsed altogether. The touch of my hand to his brow or wrist brought instant withdrawal. Although it made me feel terrible to have him push me away, I could not keep myself from trying to touch him again and again. The slightest contact left me weak with excitement
The opportunity to have him as I wanted would probably never have presented itself were it not for the dreadful storm that overtook us near the island of Sicily. I slipped unnoticed from our cabin and rushed topside rather than suffer the close, odoriferous confinement with my ailing parents and the other passengers. The smell of their illness was a contagion. I was afraid of the sea when it was so wild, but I could not force myself to return below, so I hid myself in a pile of rigging near the companionway and huddled there shivering with the dampness and cold. I was chilled to the bone when Nilos suddenly ducked into the same alcove.
The storm was lashing gallons of water across the entire deck and it sloshed back and forth as the ship rolled mightily. My heart was pounding with terror, and before Nikos could back out of the alcove, I wrapped my arms tightly about him and began to whimper.
"I must go!" he argued as he struggled to free himself.
He was, of course, far stronger than I but he had the disadvantage of deeply ingrained training on how to treat a woman. He could hardly fight me as he would have another boy and was, in fact, at a loss as to how to free himself from my grasp.
At first, I wanted only his warmth and his protection, or so I thought. Only when the fear of him communicated itself to me did I realize that we were actually in an embrace. It was what I wanted, and my heart swelled with happiness as I pressed my body in closer to him.
"Nikos," I pleaded, "do not let me freeze."
"You do not understand," he answered hoarsely. "It is wrong. We must go below this instant."
"No!" I whimpered hugging him tightly to me. "I shall die if I return to that stench. Please, Nikos. Please!"
I heard him groan and then I felt his hardness pressing against me. Instinctively, I knew that he liked the feeling of being next to me. I had heard the maids laugh about fornicating. I had even seen it in the streets of Alexandria where privacy is a luxury most cannot afford. Still, I had never had the slightest urge to experiment. As God is my witness, I really wanted no more than the feel of him next to me. I simply thought no further. The feel of his hard organ pulsing against me through his clothing satisfied me completely, for the moment at least. As I pressed hard against him, I was filled with an aching, delicious feeling of desire.
No longer was I the flat-chested, boxy young girl I saw reflected in the looking glass. With him pressing against me, I was an irresistible seductress. I did not hesitate to press my advantage.
"Nikos," I whispered and when he looked down at me, I ignored the pained look in his eyes and pressed my lips hard into his.
Then I moved with frantic speed. I pulled his hand to my flat little chest and ground my loins hard into him. It was a moment before he could gather his wits about him and for that moment, he was mine. Then he pushed me roughly away.
"Love me, Nikos," I pleaded and I clutched at him.
"Hussy!" he gasped. "You wanton harlot!"
I did not understand all of the words, but the tone of his voice was clear. His body stiffened, jerked free, and then he was gone. I felt thoroughly rejected and miserably unfulfilled, but I did not experience the full knowledge of my sinful conduct or realize the extent of my shame until much later. As I grew in wisdom, the horror of my past indiscretion increased, weighing heavily upon my heart until it seemed to overwhelm me. It was then that my decision to become a bride of our Lord was made. I would atone for my shameful indiscretion by dedicating my life to Christ.
This I did and did well until three years after I had taken my final vows. It was then that Nikos, now a doctor of great renown, came to Loudun to study the sisters of this Ursuline Convent.
He was sent by the Pope, since many convents have been attacked by servants of the Devil who rape and ravish the bodies of the sisters while possessing their minds with terrible visions. He explained that his Holiness wished to know how we had been able to avoid such an attack. But I am not at all certain that he is what his papers purported him to be. Even though he was with us but two days and two nights, the terrible turmoil he has left in my soul makes me wonder if he is not a messenger of the Devil himself.
One
I had said my prayers and done my penance with extra vigor, adding ten more lashes to the flagellation of my backside. That should more than take care of the vile memory, I decided. Retiring to my straw litter for the night, I felt the first serenity I had known in several days. The Lord had caused a man from my past to leave the convent. I could look forward to the future with confidence.
I believe I had fallen asleep when the attack came, but at the first touch of his icy fingers upon my body, I was immediately and totally awake.
"Who is there?" I cried in alarm and my heart seemed to stop. No one ever came to the cells after Vespers.
"It is I, your Lord," a deep voice answered.
I gasped, and my heart filled with exaltation as my hand moved joyously to the beads of my rosary.
The laughter I heard then was hard and cruel. It could never have come from the lips of the Saviour.
"God is not your master, Sister Angela, but I, Baalberith. As first in the rank of messengers of the Devil, I shall also be the first with you."
"Never!" I insisted.
"Always," he said confidently and I felt a hand of exquisite softness gently cup my breast
I jumped back, but it had no affect upon his touch. The hand stayed where it was. I shuddered as he lifted a finger to fondle my nipple.
"You like that, do you not, my dear?" he said with a sigh. "See the trail of gooseflesh wherever my hand touches. Here, let me lick that perky nipple. That will get that sweet little quim of yours hot, I dare say."
"Go away! Leave me alone!" I cried. "I am committed to God! This is sacrilege!" But he paid not the slightest heed to my pleas.
His fulsome, vulgar language pained my ears and my heart, but at that moment, beneath the thick flannel folds of my nightdress, I distinctly felt a tongue slither across my nipple. I was paralyzed with fear. Again and again came the vile, sensuous caress, his saliva dripping down the sides of my breast. A torture of wanton sensations was set upon me by his evil touch, and there seemed no way whatever to stop them.
"Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ, pray for me now and at the hour-" I began but he sealed my lips with a kiss.
Never had a man kissed me. My terror was absolute. He filled my body with unholy excitement, and I was powerless to fight him. I tried to push away from his devilish clutch, but he was a thousand times stronger and more powerful than I. Although I prayed with great diligence, the Lord did not see fit to come to my rescue. Was I to continue my penance for having wanted that kiss so many years ago?
My terror of the creature was now overwhelming. I feared him to the very core of my being. He raised powerful mysteries within me, terrible tinglings and fires that my Saviour would surely strike down. I could not see him in the darkness, but I felt certain my God could. In the pit of my shattered soul, I expected to die, crushed by the pure wrath of the Saviour.
His hand closed tightly over the warmth of my breast, and my heart threatened to explode. Although I sucked in huge gasps of air, I could scarcely breathe. That this was indeed the Devil, I was absolutely certain. For although his touch was upon my breast the fire had spread to my loins. My private flesh crawled with sensations, weeping with smoldering fires that were a hellish misery.
Where is my God? my heart cried out. Dearest Lord, do not desert me in my hour of trial!
I felt an exquisite pressure against my loins. His body moved down to hover just above me and was slowly settling until the pressure was hard and insistent against me.
I fought him but the rush of ecstasy that raced through me was impossible to subdue. It was the fulfillment of that promise made so long ago. I realized from the intensity of sensations engulfing me that this was to be my struggle against the hellish eternity.
The blood pounded through my every vein. Although I struggled valiantly, there was no defense he was not prepared for. It was as though he were playing a vile game with me, for when he tired of my struggling, he simply sent a wave of lethargy through me that was all-consuming. I fell back, too weak to struggle further. As I looked through my tears, I saw my abductor for the first time. He was a shiny, glowing black!
I gasped with shock. Not only was the color of him frightening but the size of him, also, for he was very large and masculinely proportioned. His face-as God is my witness-resembled Nikos Elytis! The-likeness was startling.
He had the same errant black onyx curl falling over his forehead though his hair was thicker and more luxuriant than the Greek's. He had the same monstrously large gray eyes that seemed so deep you could drown in them. The fringe of lashes surrounding those eyes was indecently thick for a man, and they curled in wide long arcs back into his lids and down onto his cheeks. His lips were fuller and more sensuous than Nikos'.
He was breathtakingly handsome, the shiny black complexion somehow making him far more irresistible than any mortal man. Were I some giddy girl rather than a devoted, dedicated bride of our Lord, my head could have been easily swayed by such a man as he. His teeth were very white and beautifully proportioned as his face opened into a confident grin.
"Why do you taunt me?" I asked. "I do not want to leave my Lord."
"You will leave him for me, Angela," he said easily.
"But why?" I asked desperately. "I have not sinned-not knowingly at least. I have tried very hard to keep my Covenant with the Lord."
"And you believe you arc above being tested with temptation?" he asked with a playful smirk.
"Of course not!" I answered impatiently. 'That is the will and the way of the Lord, but you have not tempted me, sir. You seduce me instead. I tell you no. I even fight you, yet you persist in having your way!"
"Granted," he laughed, "but should I offer gold to a fish or a harem to an eunuch? Temptation is impossible, Angela, until you know what you are resisting-what you are giving up for your precious Lord. What do you know of the temptations of the flesh? "
My cheeks were flushed, my face burning hotly as I tried to stop him. "But I do know of the flesh. My Lord knows of my transgression. I-"
The Devil burst into a hideous peal of laughter. He rolled off my body and down onto the floor. He lay there literally convulsed with his evil mirth. I jumped to my feet and tried to escape. Without seeming to pause to catch his breath, he came to his feet and pulled me into him as I scrambled toward the door of my cubicle.
"You kissed a boy when you were young!" he roared. "Why, you even rubbed against him through your dozen petticoats!"
"Stop it," I hissed, and, pressing my palms to my ears, I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and tried to block him completely from sight, sound and feeling.
"Virgin Mary, Mother of God, pray for-"
"You're as innocent as Eve was before she tasted the fruit of passion," he snorted.
"And was she not allowed her innocence until after she made her choice?" I demanded. "Yes! Explain that if you will!"
I was clutching at straws, arguing frantically, for I felt my weakness at the nearness of him pass through my body. He had the power to draw the strength from my limbs and my brain and my body simply by willing that it be so.
"Eve was not innocent," he answered in a low, cold voice. "I was that snake, Angela. My forked tongue awakened her just as I will awaken you. The apple was my seed, the seed of the Devil. Through Eve that seed was sown in all mankind."
His hot breath burned my ear as he spoke. I knew I should not listen to him. I had prepared since the beginning to resist his siren call should he ever appear to me. As he hovered against me, his hand squeezing my breast and his manhood heavy and hard against my groin, I steeled myself to his kisses, prayed for blessed numbness to help me fight off his fiery attack.
"Virgin Mary, Mother of God-" my fear-crazed brain began, my religious solace the only hope possible. "Pray for us sinners-"
And I was a sinner, for already in my heart the need for this evil being's touch was growing. As painful as it is to confess, my privates ached with a burning need so all-consuming that I am hard put to explain or describe it. While his nearness made me want to vomit, to spew out the vileness his touch aroused in my flesh, that very flesh was crying out its hunger for those loathsome caresses. That it was of his doing made little difference once the fire was in me. While my brain and heart and soul were tortured with the torment of my weakness, that weakness was spreading insidiously out across my body.
Don't let me slip into the pit of hell! my soul pleaded. Already I feel its fires burning into me!
His full and sensuous mouth nibbled my lips. So mesmerized was I by his kisses, I hardly noticed that he had pulled me down with him to the pallet and was caressing me, weakening me, fondling me. His hands roamed wantonly across me, exploring the most private and intimate parts of my body. I was defenseless.
Beads of perspiration blossomed across my brow from the fever he had aroused in me. My loins hungered with foreign carnal appetites in a shameful and debased manner. When he raised up and stood away from me, I lay at his feet, a shaking mass of smoldering flesh.
His cold, penetrating glare petrified me and when he ordered me to disrobe before him, I was too paralyzed by his directions to move.
"Off with that prudish vestment," he ordered again and when I still could not move, he raised his hand menacingly.
"Please," I whimpered piteously.
He reached down and ripped my garments from me. With one, easy movement, the cloth gave and parted and I was naked before him.
What a vulnerable thing it is to be naked! The terrible, exposed feeling washed over me and I was sick with shame. As I tried to cover myself with my arms and hands, his eyes took in every private part of my body, his tongue running back and forth between his lips, moistening them with feverish pleasure.
"Sister Angela," he whispered seductively, caressing my name with his voice, "you must look upon the instrument of your destruction. It is a very special weapon."
I covered my eyes and lowered my head. I could not look up. He gripped me by the hair and tilted my head toward him. The blackness dissolved, and I was staring out through my closed eyes and my hands and still I could see him-and he was naked!
His lean body towered above me. At a point directly in front of my face, was his weapon. It was terrible! Hideous!
"It is the perfect tool," he said proudly, arching out his groin to present it more grotesquely to me. "It is everything that any woman wants. It is all things to all women. Look at it, and then look into my eyes."
I did as he commanded. I could do nothing else.
"Ah," he said with a smile. "You see one large mace, weeping with a slimy mixture, like the tongue of a man or the private parts of a dog or goat. It's very red. The scrotum is in front, covered with the same scarlet flesh and tightly pressed around one very large testis. A huge, throbbing vein runs across the upper surface."
He looked down at it and twisted it about with his hand as he preened. "Yes, that is a good one," he said thoughtfully. Then he looked back at me. "You see, it is many-shaped and many-sized for the many women it has pleased. It can have one or two or three prongs, depending on what a woman needs poked. It can be slender as a bean to please ladies who wish to preserve their maidenhead or as wide as the tool of an ass, should that be the woman's desire. I can see that you want to feel my pulse throbbing against you in a gentle caress and yet you want to be rammed hard and wild as a dog would stab his bitch."
It was vile, repulsive, and yet my body burned to feel it slide down and nestle between my legs. I sat at his feet, shivering with desire.
He studied his organ again. "I do believe you have asked for more than you can handle, however. I'll let you feel it like this in that wet little trough of yours, but when I nuzzle into your tunnel, I think III just shrink it down to the size of a finger. We do want this to be all pleasure now, do we not?"
He leaned over and pressed the tip of it to my lips, and I was trembling too much to pull away.
"Is that how you'd like it?" he asked, taunting me, driving me wild with the feel of it as he nuzzled it against my nose and my lips.
Yes! Yes! Some vile, inner being screamed, but I gritted my teeth and would not let any sound escape.
Slowly, he began lowering himself to the pallet beside me, pausing to run the slimy point down over my breasts, up around my neck, behind my ear. Then he straightened and stood again, straddling my prostrate body. He again pressed his vile flesh to my lips.
It took every ounce of my will to keep my tongue from slipping out of my mouth to touch it. I prayed fervently that I would continue to resist him, but my body was becoming weaker and the desires he had placed in my heart were wanton and evil.
"Suck my flesh," he ordered and poked the weapon between my lips.
My flesh burned.
"Nooo!" I gasped, but as I opened my mouth to cry out my reply, he pushed that vile thing between my lips and teeth.
"You cannot say no to Baalberith," he reminded me grandly, and then he forced me to suck upon his flesh. I detested performing the act as I have never detested anything in my life.
The foul smell that penetrated even the brain, the taste and the feel of that disgusting flesh, drove a madness into my entire being. The slow, undulating movements of the Lord of blackness as he sawed slowly into my burning lips. It was vulgar, degrading.
How could my Lord have deserted me at such a time? He must have known how badly I needed him in my moment of trial. Was I being punished for some horrible transgression I had inadvertently committed? When, in a moment of weakness, I took bread and stuffed it into my mouth before asking the Lord's blesing, did the Devil's advocate then slip in? Surely such punishment must be for a sin more horrible!
Or perhaps I was to be tested, as Job was. Was I worthy of this special attention, and what would happen to me when I proved-as I obviously would-unworthy?
I was beside myself with such distressing thoughts until I realized that I had forgotten myself in my misery-ridden reverie and was chewing upon the loathsome thing. With a shudder of disgust I spat it out.
He only chuckled, and then he came and lay with me, taking me to him with great tenderness. I could fight him no longer. His body was nakedly warm next to mine, the flesh so silky that just to brush against it was to raise the fires to a dangerous level. His lips quivered tenderly against mine, and his tongue snaked into my mouth with lewd, erotic suggestiveness. His hands slid from region to region, his fingers cupping and molding my breast or kneading my bottom side. I was powerless to stop him. Although my heart wept with shame, my body jerked and spasmed with response.
He trailed kisses down my neck, pausing to sip imaginary nectar from the tip of my breast. All the while, his hand was sliding down further, exploring my belly, my thighs, and into the forest that guarded my womanhood.
I wanted to die! As God is my witness, I wanted it with helpless desperation. I could not fight him. I had lost the battle and my shame was most grievous. The tears streamed down my cheeks as he parted the mat of my fur and let a finger slide into my moist, shamed flesh.
The excitement was all-consuming, the devilish demands of my loins so insistent that my thighs raised up of their own accord and pressed against those exploring fingers. A thousand angels wailed out my shame.
"Nooo!" I cried miserably as the fire swelled up around me.
Then the fingers spread my quim's lips, and I screamed as I felt his staff descending. The touch of him was like molten fire, and my body quivered with sensations.
He let me feel him there for several moments of exquisite excitement, and then I felt his organ shrink, becoming hotter as it did as though compacting into a fiery ball. It probed my inner flesh and pierced my maiden tunnel. I shuddered as the hard, slimy ball of his scrotum pressed against my vibrating forward parts. The feel of his pounding heart throbbing against me soared through my entire body.
I felt no pain, only the searing heat. Then, as I lay weeping and filled with shame, I felt his organ swell until I was filled with his full, unholy staff.
Slowly, it began to punch into me like some tremendous fist. Showers of fire descended over me with every lunge, and I could scarcely breathe.
"You are mine, Angela," he whispered triumphantly.
"No," I whimpered.
"Do not jest," he snorted. "Your body is aflame with the Devil's fire."
"Virgin Mary, Mother of-"
"Be still!" he snapped. "Praying will not help the fever you are in!"
"Virgin Mary, Mother of-"
He rose up and slapped me, hard-across the face-and tears of self-pity welled up and brimmed, running down my cheeks in great torrents. Where was my God when I needed him so desperately?
"Virgin Mary, Mother of," I prayed silently, and, closing my eyes, I tried desperately to push the vile feeling from my body and embrace the spirit of the Holy Ghost.
He rammed me again and again and ground his sensuous message of lust into my weeping hot membranes and his tool snaked deeper and deeper. His flesh oozed of the slimy fluid, and a nauseating odor filled the air. I was faint with shame and disgust. I could do nothing but lie there while he desecrated my body. His forked tongue lapped at my breasts, and the hot panting of his breath was like fire.
To my horror I felt his penis begin to cool. Although it was pounding into me fiercely, it lost not one iota of its iron as it became clammy and cold as death. The chill turned to cold and finally to ice, although my own membranes cooled not the slightest.
"Ohh," I whimpered as the icy member slid in and out of my inflamed flesh.
The chill was voluptuous. Where I had fought and weakened at the feel of his hot organ pistoning within me, I was now totally lost to him.
"Now you are mine," he laughed coldly.
"Yes!" I wailed. "Oh, God, how could you have deserted me?"
The angels wept, and my own tears flowed copiously.
His hot, wet kisses descended upon my lips, and his cold shaft lay like some monstrous dagger within the hollow sacrament of my body. My ardor could no longer be contained, and I began jerking about in the odd, sensuous, possessed rhythm, my body completely possessed. His rod and his staff comforted me with a like response, although his motions seemed deliberate where mine were compulsive.
"Beg me," he whispered in my ear. "Beg me to ran my cock into you, deep and hard. Beg me for release."
"Please," I begged. "My shame is already more than I can bear."
"Beg me," he hissed, "or my prick shall swell to a size that will cause you to burst."
"Kill me," I whimpered. "Let me die, but do not humiliate me further."
"Very well," he answered coolly and his lips left my brow and his icy instrument slowly pulled out of my belly.
He lay there silently beside me for several moments, and I had no idea what he would try next. At first, I was greatly relieved that he had retreated a little and my hopes began to soar that I had, perhaps, managed to rid myself of this taint.
My respite lasted only a few moments, for my loins began to ache with terrible vengeance. Within seconds, I was rolling with devilish misery.
"Ohhh!" I wailed. "Why must you plague me so?"
"Are you ready to beg?" he demanded.
"No!" I whimpered. "I-oh, please!"
"Once more!" he gloated.
"Yes!" I cried. "Please!"
"Please what?" he demanded insolently.
"Please do it to me!"
"Do what, Angela?" he shouted wildly.
"Impale me," I whispered miserably.
"Louder, Sister!" he cried, his voice filled with excitement. "Let all the angels and the Lord himself hear your plea!"
"Impale me!" I screamed. "Oh, God, make him do it and get it over with!"
"Eiiyii!" cried the demon triumphantly, and then he called, "Watch me, Lord. This is your little bride who I must satisfy, as you cannot!"
His cold mace slid into my shivering tunnel, filling me with ecstasy. My shame was great for I felt an overwhelming relief to have him back where his appendage could press my aching privates. I knew that I could not have lived had he withheld his staff much longer. I was lost. There was no way of fighting his irresistible touch.
Perhaps later. Had he not said that I first had to learn of lust before I could make a choice? Was my present submission part of his plan, my body under a spell that kept me subdued? How I prayed that this was God's way, and I conceded that his way was often mysterious. I raised my loins in supplication to the fire that totally filled my body.
My breasts grew hard with the tingle of his touch. His fingers and lips worked them again and again as he taught me the ways of man. His hard, slimy rock burrowing into the folds of my womanhood pulsed out its fervor against my throbbing bud. At times, he crushed my nether lips with bruising force, yet the only hurt I felt was the want for more of him. My tunnel churned about the cold flesh of his organ as it moved in and out, frictioning fire into my belly and I could feel my inner muscles clawing at him. My flesh seemed to cling to him, wanting never to let him pull that taunting pole from my clutch. Yet, he slammed again into my depths, I was faint with the rush of sensations that threatened to drown me in ecstasy.
Could this be hell? Could this be the eternity of damnation, my sentence to lie here and rub against the body of another forever, with no will or way to stop? Would I not become raw or faint with exhaustion?
"How I shall love sucking the fires of lust from that sweet little box," he whispered and-God help me-I wanted him to do it!
My mind was in my aching loins, throbbing with that pounding pulse that seemed to consume me. I could no longer think or pray or mourn my shame.
Slap! Slap! I jerked against him as he slammed his evil rod into me. The Devil humped at me like a dog, and, like some bitch in heat, I met his every thrust. Then he grunted and I felt his burning seed squirt out of that icy fount. It shot me into another world.
"Oh, God!" I gasped. "Let me die! Now!" and I soared over my crest and floated into a blessed state of unconsciousness.
My shame was complete, my prayers for atonement, abject and penitent, were unheard in heaven; they fell upon deaf ears. This mockery of God's way was utter in its execrable foulness, yet my ultimate degradation had but just begun.
Two
The temptations of the flesh are many and varied. The good Mother St. Colome prayed with me, cautioning me not to falter in my resolve, for only the first encounter had been lost. This greatly relieved my heavy heart, for I had thought myself permanently lost.
In studying my confession later, however, she did not find fault, and scolded me sternly for not begging the Lord's forgiveness for the hate I held in my heart for my abductor.
"But the man was Baalberith!" I gasped, her accusation shocking me deeply. "He is the admitted messenger of the Devil, purposely sent to bring about my downfall."
"Ah," she answered gently, "but you must learn to love your enemy, Sister Angela, for is it not so written in the Scriptures? "
I buried my face in my hands. All arguments seemed to collapse before her logic and wisdom.
"The problem that so vexed me," I mumbled, "was loving the man too well, Mother, for he was surely the handsomest Devil ever to tread the earth."
Her gentle laughter strengthened me. Putting her hand on my shoulder, she patted me with motherly affection.
"Honesty, too, is a virtue," she sympathized. "As to the other, you must pray for the wisdom to know what kind of love God speaks of."
"I understand, Mother," I whispered. "And now that my abductor is not present, I can reflect and feel pity. I simply had not the time nor the strength to study the problem when he was present and vexing me so sorely."
"Well and good, but that was not your gravest sin," she warned, and by the stern look in her eye, I knew that I had even worse to face.
"Did you not cry out to the Lord for his mercy?" she asked, "and then taste of the cup of bitterness when he did not immediately come to your rescue?"
Now my shame overwhelmed me, for I had doubted and cried out his name many times during my ordeal, yet I had never once thought to ask for his forgiveness for such a grievous transgression in my written confession. In anguish, I fell to my knees and confessed my total shame and humility. We prayed diligently for several hours.
"I will send for an exorcist," she promised. "Amongst the clergy, there is a group of priests especially trained and entrusted with the task of exorcising the Devil from the bodies of men and women he has possessed. Have faith and courage, for you are not forsaken. Help will be with us soon. Until that help arrives, you will not be left alone, even for a moment. We will fight this together."
"Oh, thank you, Mother!" I cried for this news gave me an overwhelming sense of relief. My burden already seemed lighter.
Sister Madeline and Sister Claire were assigned to guard me, one remaining at my side at all times. Should both be called away at the same time, Sister Cecelia and Sister Adelaina took up their post. They were kind enough not to ask the details of my torment. Sister Madeline was particularly solicitous, worrying over my needs almost continuously.
In this manner, I got through the first day and night and midway through the second day with no further attacks. There were occasional incidents. Sometimes I could make out the faint outline of his body leaning against a doorway or smiling down at me from the choir loft. Once or twice, I felt him brush against me or heard his soft whisper.
"Come. Come lie with me, Angela," he would call.
He beckoned often, but with my will strengthened and with the help of those near and dear to me, I was able to turn away his seductive influence. His hand lingered almost continuously upon my breast, but I girded my loins and turned my thoughts to praise the Almighty! He helped me to resist the temptations of the flesh until, as I said, the afternoon of the second day . . .
Sister Madeline and I had walked to join the others at the pond where the big oaks spread their gnarled roots to the water and their stately arms to the sky. When we arrived, there were a goodly number of our sisters taking advantage of the balmy weather and lull in duties. Perhaps a dozen, all told, were chattering like magpies. Sister Madeline and I gaily joined their chatter.
We were laughing so merrily I did not feel that ethereal hand clutch my bosom until it was firmly snuggled against me. I froze, my laughter cut off, the wide smile sickening as it collapsed.
"Have you missed my caresses?" his voice whispered in my ear.
"What?" gasped Sister Madeline. "I cannot leave you
Sist-"
I reached for her hand and gripped it tightly.
"Help me," I whispered. "Don't leave me. He is here, and I desperately need your .strength and encouragement."
All laughter ceased. My sisters quickly discerned that I was again under attack, and they moved over and one silently took my other hand while the others knelt in prayer before me.
"You don't really think they can help you, do you?" he asked in a voice filled with mockery.
Falling to my knees, I took my rosary into my hands, and my fingers started down the beads as I whispered the words of solace. The prayers of my sisters surrounded and comforted me. For a time, I thought we had managed to drive his evil presence from my body. Then the hand cupping my breasts gave a squeeze and began playing with a nipple!
"You do have the most delightful nubbins," he whispered. "They're full without being cumbersome or gross. They're firm, but still tender and delicate. You were made for loving, Angela. You should never have come here. Your God can't pleasure you the way I can, my child, and you do need a good prodding more than most."
"No!" I cried and Sister Madeline and Sister Claire doubled the strength of their grip, but they could not reach me.
"He would have you spend your life here, away from all love, and when you'd had a bellyful of the ache, he'd have let you sneak off and frig yourself. All I am doing is rescuing you from your own private hell."
Mutely, I shook my head in frantic objection. He did not materialize before me, not tear my robes from my body, yet I could feel him kneeling behind me, his naked body pressed intimately close to mine. He ivas inside my habit!
Both hands cupped and toyed with my breasts now, my nipples hardening in spite of my frantic prayer. His organ slid down between my legs, leaving a trail of slime like a huge slug, yet his touch was so delicate, it felt like a tongue.
"You're shivering, Angela," he whispered. "Perspiration is beginning to bead across your brow. The sisters are beginning to notice. Soon they will watch you rolling on the ground, begging for me to fuck you."
"Never!" I gasped.
"Have you ever seen my prick when it was a true fork?" he asked. "Feel it. It has three prongs. Feel them sliding about? Now each one is going to kiss and nibble at your sweetmeats."
"Nooo!" I screamed, and my heart was pounding so rapidly that I was faint with excitement.
My chest heaved with the labor of my breathing. My parched lips strained for air for the sensations he was causing in the hot, moist tunnel of my private flesh was an awesome, terrible thing.
"Lay her down," Sister Madeline was saying, from far away in that world of reality where I had been such a short time before. I could hear her voice, even understand the meaning of her words, but there was no way to rejoin her.
I felt the gentle hands laying me back on the grass, and in a moment the feel of a freshly wetted handkerchief descended upon my brow. But the Devil was at work in my loins, and I was aflame with an unholy fire.
Those three prongs of male flesh felt exactly the size and texture of three tongues as they slithered down across my flesh. They laved my mat of fur and the sealed crack for some moments. The two outer tongues acted as lips, pulling the hairs until I was wet with their juices. Then, slowly, they slithered down the length of my slit, one quivering against each nether lip while the center one rode lightly along the inner rim of my crease. Back and forth they teased until my entire body was jerking with excitement.
'it is almost like a convulsion," a sister observed.
"No," another argued. "Look at the sweat and the clenched line of her jaw. She is fighting him with all the strength at her command."
"Then we must not cease our prayers!" another cried. Pray louder and more diligently. It is her only hope."
"I wonder," whispered Sister Madeline with a shiver, "what terrible tortures she is suffering this moment?"
The tortures were deliciously sensuous; it was all I could do to keep from screaming out my ardor. His two outer tongues pressed my furred lips together, and then the center tongue slowly bored into the very seat of my passion. The feel of it sliding, hot and wet, down into my tender membranes caused me to roll from side to side. Only the greatest effort kept me from crying out my excitement before my dear sisters.
My loins poured out their juices of need and as that tongue slowly explored every hill and valley of my hot flesh, I was carried into an erotic trance of smoldering sensations. The fire pounded through my veins, and the two outer tongues spread and became like lips as he began sucking my very life's strength from me.
"Ohhh!" I wailed. "Ohh, my God!"
"Poor child," I heard the Mother's voice this time and realized they had gone and fetched her.
My shame was great, but there was nothing I could do to hide myself from her. She was in that faraway other world, and I could not crawl up out of the pit to stand, clean and proud, beside her.
My loins were arched up in a spasm of ecstasy, and I tried desperately to pull myself together at the sound of her voice, but I could not. With the Devil's lips suctioning my flaming womanhood, I could not relax nor draw away from him. I could only push harder against my lover's invisible organ.
The cold compress upon my brow was changed, having turned warm from the heat of my flesh. It did little to help, for the fever was not in my brow but in my private parts, and there the heat was a raging inferno.
"This is the way you need to be kissed," he whispered. "That hot little cunt has needed a good mouth-frigging for a long time!"
Silently, I shook my head, my body twisting from side to side as I fought off the waves of passion. I was not disagreeing by this sign; I was only containing my excitement with compulsive, jerky movements as I waited anxiously for my time to come.
"Here," he suggested, "I haven't knocked it in yet, have I?"
I felt that tongue slide into my steaming tunnel and slowly it began the in-out, push-pull of the rhythmic finale. "Yesss!" I hissed and pushed my loins up to meet him. "She is losing again!" cried the Reverend Mother.
"Quick! We must remove her clothing and carry her to the pond."
"Beg for it, Angela," Baalberith demanded.
"No!" I wailed though my loins were ramming up at his stabbing tongue.
"No?" he asked icily, and as I slammed my womanhood up against him, all three tongues suddenly disappeared.
I was instantly in agony. My need for his tongue in my searing flesh was a compulsion of misery. Mother St. Colombe, however, had mistaken my wailing "No," as a sign that I was still fighting off his magical charms, and she doubled her efforts to rid me of my garments and hasten me into the cooling waters of the pond.
"Please!" I cried out to my lover. "Don't leave me now!"
"We will never leave you!" the good Mother cried.
I was too filled with my own tortured needs to think about Mother Superior's misunderstanding.
"Baalberith," I wailed, "do not torture me! I cannot bear it!"
"Pray vigorously girls!" the good Mother cried.
I could hear the loud Ave Marias rising around me, but no masculine voice came to answer my plea.
"Baalberith!" I whispered, but still no reply.
His smoky, ethereal being had moved away from me. I could feel him nowhere. Only the throbbing of my pulse, pounding its hot need from deep within me, attested to his ever having touched me. My womanhood ached at his desertion. Vhere I should have rejoiced that he had left me, I felt only wretchedness.
"BAALBERITH!"
"You don't have to shout," he taunted. "You just have to beg a little."
"Please," I groaned.
"Not that again," he said impatiently.
"Let-let me feel your sword in my belly," I whispered, sick over uttering such obscenities in front of the brides of God.
"Louder, my little trollop," he hissed. "Say it loud and plain for all to hear."
"Fuck me!" I screeched. "Oh, God forgive me, but I cannot live without it!"
His being slid back inside my habit, though the good sisters had most of it removed. As they worked the thick, bulky garment up over my head, Baalberith began kissing my nipples, sucking on them, drawing them out with his sensuous lips.
"Yesss," I sighed, and then I felt him settle down against me and I spread my legs to receive him. His big cudgel slowly sank into my belly and I was, for the moment, at peace.
The sun warmed my body as my habit was pulled away. With my lover's staff deeply embedded within me and his hard ball rubbing into my throbbing flesh, I was overcome with an urgency to ride to the wild brink of ecstasy.
"Harder," I urged. "Faster!"
"Hurry!" the good Mother cried as they pulled my garments off my arms.
I arched up my breasts and pressed them into my lover's lips.
"Suck me!" I begged. "Oh God, how hot I am!"
"Virgin Mary! Mother of Christ! Pray for-" Sister Madeline shouted the words into my ear as they pulled me toward the pond.
"Harder, Baalberith!"
My loins jerked upwards in a short, rhythm-less fury. My heels thudded along the ground where I fought to brace myself as the sisters pulled me across the grass toward the pond. Baalberith's hot, thick mace was filling my belly with wildfire.
His tongue sucked upon my tongue, his lips grinding against my mouth in a passionate embrace. His hands gripped and molded my breasts with a compulsive frenzy, and even the feel of his belly slapping and rubbing against me drove me ever closer to the abyss.
Then, for a brief, exquisite moment, I stood at the edge of the gulf and stared at my own smoldering sensations. With a sigh of relief, I plunged down in the cauldron and felt the fire wash up and around and over me, drowning me in its sea of passion.
I rode the wave of my crest for long, delicious moments as the warm afterglow flooded in around me. It was a long time before I returned to the real, passionless world. I found myself floating lazily in the pond, the sisters holding my head above water.
"She is saved!" one cried.
"At least it is over," the wiser Reverend Mother said. "I want to die," I whispered, and indeed my shame was great.
Yet I realized not how great my shame was to become, for Baalberith was still to take the full measure of my self-denied passions . . .
Three
Although I felt that my soul was surely lost, I determined to ask the Reverend Mother certain questions which deeply disturbed me. I had to find a reason for what was happening to me. It was now obvious that Baalberith was not simply showing me the ways of man that I might later be tested. Once would surely have sufficed for such a purpose since my body had responded shamefully from the beginning.
I took my heavy heart to the Reverend Mother. Together we explored every sin I had ever committed, groping in the dark for an answer that refused to reveal itself. In all respects, I had been raised with extreme innocence as girl-children should be. I came of good and proper parentage and was not allowed to attend even the Mass without a suitable chaperone. Although I was raised in foreign lands where certain sights were unavoidable, I was privately tutored, my teacher being a young lady beyond reproach. Even then, Tia was always present. Other than the one breach aboard ship when all were too seasick to watch over me, I never had occasion, nor did I particularly want to speak with any young men alone. When, in my fourteenth year, I begged my parents to be allowed to take the veil, there was great rejoicing and thanksgiving, for my family was very devout.
Other than the one transgression, I did not covet. I did not lust. I did not despise nor beleaguer my fellow novices or teachers. When, at eighteen, I took my final vows of poverty and chastity, I was completely sure and serene in the confidence that my decision had been the only possible one for me. Until now, I had never doubted that confidence.
I tell this with humility and not pride. Mother St. Colombe prayed for many hours, asking for divine guidance in my hour of trial. She spent some little time considering the fact that my attacker looked so much like her recent guest, and not wishing to hold anything back that might be of help, I admitted my unlady-like behavior of so many years before. After some study, she decided that it was probably no more than coincidence, or possibly the connivance of Baalberith.
The depths to which I carried my self-damnation were incredible. I detested my body and the reactions and feelings of that body. Could I have but plucked my loins out as one could an eye, I most surely would have accomplished it. Though the good Reverend Mother and I prayed long and persistently, my heart was very heavy as I left her quarters.
Sister Madeline was waiting outside the door for me.
"Will help come soon?" she asked.
"I do not know," I answered. "I cannot see how it could come fast enough to be of any help."
"We will stay with you, sister," she promised. "Whatever happens, we will be with you."
I thanked her and we retired to the library for study and contemplation. When she was called to her duties, Sister Gaire took her place and stayed with me through the Grand Silence, and through the Eventide and Vespers. She took her station beside the door of my cubicle, her pallet just outside the opening where I could easily see her. We kept a candle burning.
Sometime in the night, Sister Madeline came and relieved her, for when I next awoke Sister Madeline was bending over me, shaking my shoulders with gentle firmness.
"Please," she whimpered in such a plaintive voice that I came wide awake almost immediately. "What is the matter?" I asked.
"I must speak with you before I got to the Reverend Mother," she said, "for I, too, have been attacked by a demon."
"Oh, no!" I gasped and in spite of the no-touch rule, my arms went out to my poor, tortured sister.
"He seduced me," she whispered. "I could not resist him."
"Nor could I," I told her. "Nor could any woman, for he is truly irresistible."
It was with the deepest sorrow that I heard my sister stammer out the report of her ordeal. That she should be put through a similar torture of the damned was a tragedy for which I could gladly have forfeited my life to have averted. Still, when I heard her words, I could no longer feel that what was happening to me was purely a personal punishment. In my prayers with the Mother Superior, it had never occurred to either of us that it might be the convent itself and not one lowly individual which the devil had chose to torment.
"Put aside your shame, Madeline, for the devil did not tempt you," I scolded. "He forced his attentions on you, did he not?"
"Yes," she admitted. "But I wanted it. I wanted ail of it and more. I cannot lie. My heart and my brain were filled with lustful thoughts."
"He put not only the unholy fires in your loins, Sister Madeline," I argued, "but the wishes and will that bind you to him as his love-slave. It is he who made you feverish with need."
"Yes," she whispered huskily.
"What was his name?" I demanded, and in my heart I prayed that it would not be my lover, Baalberith, though I knew the thought was an evil one.
"I don't know," she said curiously. "He did not tell me, and I did not think to ask."
"Was he black?" I asked. "Shiny, highly-polished ebony?"
"Yes," she admitted. "Even his beard and mustache were like black, sculptured stone."
I felt an unreasonable relief flood through me, for Baalberith was without facial adornment. I cannot say why this news should make me happy, but it did, and I must give the full truth-no matter how greatly it shames me.
"He is not the same." I told her. 'The Devil has sent two advocates to plague us. I wonder why?"
"Are you certain he is not the same?" Sister Madeline asked, and when I looked into her eyes, she was ashamed and could not face me, just as I had felt the edge of shame but a moment before.
"I do understand," I told her as gently as I could. "It is a very difficult thing to face, even more difficult to speak of."
"He did unspeakable things to me," she whispered, and I could not tell whether it was a shudder or a shiver that passed through her.
"Yet you must speak of them, for not to confess would be an unpardonable sin," I warned her sternly.
"I cannot heap such vile reports upon the delicate ears of our Reverend Mother," she said with anguish. "Sister, you have no idea how terrible my confession will be if it must be given in itsOh, sister, I responded with animal ardor!"
"I do understand," I assured her, and I sat with her and prayed for her while her tears flowed freely.
After a time, she dried her eyes and said that she should not have burdened me with her troubles when I was already so sorely distressed. With difficulty, I made her understand that it helps to bear another's burden, and I offered to take down her confession and help her with it since I had twice undergone the same experience. She thanked me profusely, and repaired to a quiet corner of the library where there were fresh quills and ink.
Following are the things I wrote down from her account:
. . . I bedded myself early this night, taking the short form of the recital so that I should be fresh and ready to watch over Sister Angela when the first hour of morning presented itself. I washed carefully, anointing my body with oil, for I had been bothered with a rash of late. I was getting ready to slip into my nightdress when I felt his hands on my body. The first touch made me literally leap across my cell. Then was when I heard his laughter.
I felt him pat the forest which protects my womanhood, and his fingers shot lewd sensations into my flesh as his laughter continued to fill the air. I knew, for a certainty, who he was.
"Go away!" I cried, "or I shall call for the Reverend Mother."
He snorted. "And what will that get you? You saw what happened yesterday afternoon right in front of the Old Lady's eyes."
"Why can you not leave us alone?" I asked miserably.
Poking a finger right through my outer lips, he jabbed into my inner membranes and touched my pulse, quivering his finger against it.
"Because you want me, Sister Madeline," he whispered. "Because your juices cry to me in the night, and your aching sweetmeats whimper for my kisses."
"Ohh, nooo!" I gasped, for as God is my witness, I had never in my life thought of a man kissing a woman in such an intimate spot.
'Take your vile deeds and your vile tongue away from me. I want no part of you. I have never wanted any part of you!" I told him.
"Not in your brain. That much I will concede, since I know your every thought as well as I know your every need. Still, can you deny the vague, uneasy stirrings of your loins, the weeping misery of unfulfillment that has plagued you these many nights?"
He whispered this in a tone of sorrow, as though he felt pity for me, and I felt the warmth of his body surround me as he held me gently pressed to his chest.
"Poor child," he said soothingly. "Her sweet breasts and dear little body are gravely distressed with loneliness. Her lips have never been kissed, her body never cuddled nor soothed. What good is a marriage to your God if he never consummates it? How can--? "
The sacrilege of his statement shook me out of my trance, and as I strained to pull free of him, he slowly materialized before my eyes.
What malificence was in his face, what fathomless depravity in his piercing eyes. His thick, sensuous lips were curled into an evil grin, and I was faint with fear of him.
"Your body has awaited me since puberty," he told me. "It is now only a matter of awakening your mind."
Before I could brace myself against him, his mouth crushed my lips, and he smote me with raging fires. My loins were in a torment where he had poked me with that burning finger of his, and when his tongue slipped between my lips and slithered into my mouth, I was possessed!
What evil pictures that slithering tongue drew upon the window of my brain. Lewd invitations that shamed my soul and filled my heart with great distress. I tried to pull away, but he had paralyzed me with his magic. When his hand slipped up and cupped my breast, I could do nothing whatever to prevent it.
"Please," I whimpered. "Do not do this to me!" But my body was filled with his evil witchery, and it craved his touch with a burning intensity.
"You want me," he whispered huskily. "You need me. Your heart is pounding with ardor for my caresses, and your brain is filling with voluptuous thoughts of the things you want me to do to you."
"Nooo," I whimpered, but he leaned and trailed his tongue across my breast and then curled it about my nipple.
"like this," he said, and in truth I was aroused by his wet caress.
His hand moved between my legs, where a man's hand should never be, and I could not stop him. I could not even want to stop him, so filled was my body with his wickedness.
"Now you must learn," he told me. "You must learn to appreciate and delight in your own body and in the things I am going to do to you."
I looked up and marveled that one full wall of my cell reflected my image and his. For the first time, I really saw him. He caused the stone wall to turn into a mirror of the finest quality, and a low glow seemed to fill the tiny cubicle. I was naked.
I was shocked at first by the sight of his black body, though I had, of course, heard that all demons are of this evil color. However, my consternation at seeing my own bare form so blatantly displayed before me was of more concern. His slender onyx hand cupped and molded the whiteness of my breast before my eyes while the other hand worked down across my belly to toy with my womanhood.
"Virgin Mary, Mother of Christ, pr-" I began praying as I closed my eyes to the vileness of the scene before me.
"Please," he groaned with disgust. "How I wish I could find just one nun with an ounce of originality. Always that same prayer! Here, watch as I part your furry little cunt lips. Ahhh, now that is worthy of attention, I dare say!"
I know not how he managed to cause my eyes to open, but though I tried to close my lids, I could not blot out the vision before me. Further, I could not turn away but was mesmerized, and forced to watch everything from that moment on. As hard as I tried, I could not break his spell.
I had to look at him. I had to see those shining white teeth, that evil smile that sent chills running down my spine. I had to look into the terrible fathomless depths of his eyes and stare at the blatant maleness of his body.
His shoulders were broad and thick, his thighs so indecently narrow and supple that I shivered when he walked. His organ was black, with an almost purplish head, and the head throbbed as nothing I had ever seen throb in all my life. It was erect and very large, yet somehow it didn't frighten me. Terrible need was washing over my body, and suddenly I wanted that organ between my legs, pushing against the ache that he had caused in my feverish inner flesh.
"Now watch closely," he told me, "as I show you how a woman should be kissed."
Sliding slowly down my body, he let himself nibble at my flesh as he knelt before me. He was such a big man that his face was even with my groin as he pulled me to him. As I stared in horror at my own reflection and his, his hands cupped the cheeks of my behind and he pulled me into his outstretched, pursed lips.
His arm reached around and snubbed tightly in against my bottom as his other hand moved up to graze across my belly. The sight of a man's head buried into my private flesh filled me with unspeakable loathing, and, though my body responded in the most flagrant manner, my soul was distraught with grieving.
I tried to keep my legs tightly pinned together, but my flesh longed to open itself to his caress. When I did not do his bidding, he jerked my legs from under me and settled me upon his shoulders, my body straddling his mouth and I was open-vulnerable to his voluptuous attack.
He grunted like a pig rooting in a bog, and his mouth burrowed into my shivering membranes. All this I not only had to feel with my body but see with my eyes, watching the reflection of my shame in the mirror. I crossed my hands over my heart since my rosary was not within reach, but the touch of my fingers against my own breasts filled me with torment, and soon I jerked them away, giving up the attempt.
"I am lost," I whimpered as my fever rose higher and higher.
I shuddered violently as his tongue began to stab into some deep inner recess within my body. Oh, Lord, how his tongue tormented my flesh! How it made the fires churn within me and threaten to consume my entire being.
Yet, in another sense there was an unearthly exaltation, for was not the Devil himself bowed before me, worshipping my womanhood in the most intimate manner possible?
"You are mine!" I heard him chortle, though his lips never left my smoldering membranes.
"Nooo!" I whimpered, and my womanhood wept bitter tears.
He licked them from my flesh, lapping at me almost as a cat takes its milk by the fire.
"I am the only one who can satisfy you," he whispered. "I am the only one who can give you peace from the fires that torment you."
It was true. I could not deny that my body was racked with irresistible fires. My arms and legs twitched and jerked as though in a seizure, and in truth it was a seizure. I was powerless to stop the ravenous monster that was growing within me.
When his lips left my loins, I nearly cried for want of them. Then he reached over and pulled me up by my hair.
"Now you shall suck the cock of the Devil," he said, "to show me how desperate you are for my caresses."
I tried to resist him, but the smell of his organ as it slapped up against my lips and face was so masculine, so sensually sexual, that I cried out my outrage at the betrayal of my own body and my lips opened and I hungrily sucked him in.
I chewed. I groveled. I sucked at that organ with all the strength that was in me, but I could not get enough of it. I tried to swallow it-all of it-and nearly strangled. Still I could not leave it alone.
"Put your finger between your legs," he commanded, and my misery was such that I did as he commanded.
"Now frig yourself, girl!" he hissed and when I stared blankly into his face, he grew most exasperated and shouted, "Rub it, you foolish prig! Rub your sluttish cunt!"
I began rubbing my finger into my own searing flesh. Wave after wave of passion roared through me, and I sucked his cock and rubbed my aching ardor like a wanton bitch.
"Watch yourself in the mirror," he ordered, and my head turned in spite of my shame, and I was forced to watch my groveling, vulgar performance. It made me, if anything, even more wantonly passionate.
He began pushing his hips forward, ramming his organ deep into my throat. The more I worked my lips around his silken flesh, the more inflamed my demands became until my finger was frictioning back and forth within my slit with frenzied speed. Faster and faster I rubbed, yet I could not satisfy this insatiable demon. The sight of my degrading performance made tears roll down my cheeks and fire smolder hotly in my loins.
"Dear God!" I cried in my agony, and from somewhere I thought the Lord had finally heard and answered my plea, for my body exploded, my fire bursting forth in a shower of sensations.
Finally there was a peace, and I thanked my God. But the demon mocked me, telling me that I had not felt the hand of my Lord but the relief of my own vile manipulations. Then, grabbing me by the hair, he shot his vile liquid into my mouth, and my cup tasted bitter indeed.
This is my sin. I know not whether redemption is even possible. I am abject and desolate in my penitence.
Such were the words of my Sister Madeline. Together we presented her confession to the Reverend Mother.
Four
The good Mother immediately suggested the possibility that it was the convent under attack rather than either of us personally. My relief was overwhelming, and poor Sister Madeline, so recently set upon, cried like a foundling.
Most assuredly the danger was graver, the possibilities more frightening with more than a hundred souls-the purest in all of France-at stake. The Ursuline Convent of Loudun was an old and venerable one, and in my mind there could be no possibility that it had incurred the wrath of God and was being punished. Surely the Father was testing us. This could be the only reasonable explanation, and to this task we could all dedicate ourselves with praise and rejoicing.
None of us need bear the burden of guilt; this was the joyful news. We were fortunate among women, for the Lord has given us this chance to prove our worthiness. Now that Sister Madeline and I were relieved of this oppressive millstone, I felt certain we could face the vile temptations and triumph over our willful flesh.
What gave me all this enthusiastic optimism I cannot say, though I was greatly relieved not to have to bear my cross of guilt, for I had carried it badly from the beginning. Guilt was a new experience for me-one that I should never care to repeat.
With the lightest of hearts I left the good Mother's office and went about my duties, Sister Madeline going about hers in a like manner. No longer need I be watched so closely since Baalberith might attack me no matter who was about. We all agreed that simply crying out our warning should be sufficient.
I neither saw nor heard him throughout the day. By nightfall, my confidence was so sure that I even walked alone in the garden, talking with my God and musing upon his many wonders. I was not afraid, and when the Reverend Mother joined me, we walked along silently for some time before she spoke.
"I thought you should know," she said finally, "that the priest has been summoned to exorcise the demons. However, it is quite-likely that the Greek will also be notified and return to Loudun. Will this bother you, sister?"
I had not thought about it. The suddenness of the remark caught me unaware, and a shiver raced through my body before I could brace myself.
"Thank you, Mother," I told her. 'To be forewarned is to be forearmed. I do not think it should make any difference."
"No," she answered matter-of-factly. "But the Pope has asked that we give this man our full cooperation, and that might include reminding him of your past encounter."
"Oh, dear," I whispered, but, though the thought annoyed me, it did not fill me with any deep forebodings.
At Vespers I felt a closer communion and bond with my sisters than I had ever known since coming to Loudun. Our voices rose as one, our chant of praise and thanksgiving totally filling the night as well as my heart.
Back in my cell I spent several hours at prayer and then rested on my pallet, feeling totally cleansed of the Devil's touch. This respite lasted until the moon had moved far over in the heavens and was shining through the small aperture over my bed. Then I awoke with a shudder, and my heart was pounding with fear.
I stayed motionless, my eyes roving from side to side as I searched for the intruder. Nothing had touched me. I had heard nothing that I could remember, but something evil had most certainly awakened me, and it was, at this very moment, with me in my cell.
"Who is it? " I whispered.
"It is I, but it is not I," a voice whispered softly and looking toward the sound, I saw Sister Madeline huddled abjectly in the corner.
"What nonsense do you speak?" I asked. "Poor wretched friend, has he again attacked you?"
Her eyes were wild as she stared at me and she shook her head impatiently from side to side.
"He has not attacked as he did before," she moaned. "He has, instead, taken possession of my body."
I sat up on my pallet and stared at her.
"Whatever do you mean?" I asked, and I was totally perplexed.
"He is in me," she whimpered. "I have no will of my own."
"But he has not seduced you?" I asked incredulously.
She rose then, her eyes smoldered with the fire of fanaticism as she stared down at me. I knew then that she was Baalberith, and I was afraid. She unbuttoned her nightdress and stepped into the pale shaft of light.
"J am to seduce you," she whispered. "It has been commanded. Take off your nightdress and prepare for me."
"No!" I gasped. "Madeline, get hold of yourself. Do not let him use you like this."
I jumped to my feet, snatching up her gown, and I tried to cover her body with it. Every place I pressed the material to her, I raised flashes of gooseflesh, and she moaned with pleasure. For a moment she did not try to fight me, so filled was she with delight at my touch.
"Madeline," I whispered anxiously. "Do put on your nightdress. I will guide you to your cell, or we can go to the Reverend Mother if you like."
I gathered her nightdress up to help her slip it over her head. She seemed in a trance, simply standing there before me. I did not realize that she was stealthily unbuttoning my own gown. When her warm hand suddenly snaked out and pulled me to her, the feel of our bare bodies brought a surprised gasp from my lips.
"He wants us to kiss each other's breasts and rub our muffs together. Then we shall bang out the wild rhythm of his lust"
"Sister Madeline!" I cried. "Do not talk like that!" But she only laughed and whispered the words again and again in my ear.
"We will do as he commands, and we shall love it, every minute of it," she laughed. "Baalberith says such words, and you swoon with excitement Well, I am Baalberith, and I command you to girl-game with me."
She squeezed me to her and I felt the silky texture of her breasts sliding against my own.
"You are paralyzed," she told me. "You cannot resist me, Angela, nor do you want to, for I have filled your belly with needs too intense to resist. Feel me rubbing against you! You cannot resist."
There was no denying the excitement racing through my body. My womanhood was on fire. My heart was pounding frantically, and I could not catch my breath. Having entered the body of this woman, he was more real, more exciting than ever before.
"Lie down," she ordered, and I could do nothing but sink to the pallet as she had commanded.
She leaned over and slipped my arms from my gown, and soon I was as naked as she. Then she came to me, lying on her side and turning me onto mine to face her. She rested my head upon her arm, and her hand grazed over our breasts as they merged together. Taking one in her hand, she used it to caress her own flesh, and I shivered with sensuous fire. Taking my hand in hers, then, she lifted it to her breast and I was touching the private flesh of another woman! My loins burned and my juices began to flow.
Her hand grazed down my belly and brushed against my puffed nether lips. The hand pressed against me, ever so gently, as showers of lightning burst from my throbbing nubbin and coursed out through my veins to every part of my trembling body.
Again and again, and the seductive pressure left me weak as the Devil's flames seared through me, ravaging my entire being. I wanted desperately to cry out-to object to this debasement, yet he had taken my will just as he had weakened my flesh.
"Oh, God, can you not help us?" I moaned, for there was no power or will left in me to fight this thing. I could not stop this girl from massaging my body with evil intimacy. I had many times read of those who were thus tempted. This was not temptation. I was tied as irrevocably to my litter as though I had been lashed to the floor and every part of her feminine body became a voluptuous enticement.
When her hand left my groin, I ached for it to return. I scarcely breathed as I waited, and I massaged her breast in those moments with a hunger that was miserably acute. My anticipation became so intense that only the greatest effort on my part kept me from reaching for her hand and pushing it down against my need.
Still my mind persisted in playing games with me, for I kept telling myself that I would stop her in one more second. I was gathering my strength, I reasoned, and surely I would not allow such a thing to continue for long. It was unthinkable-but, unfortunately, irresistible as well.
My loins were burning so desperately for her touch that when her tender, gentle fingers again began to slide up the inside of my leg, it was like a balm, soothing the ache' of waiting. As her fingertips brushed against my fur mat, they caused such an exquisite burst of sensations that I literally jumped, my groin arching compulsively off the litter.
She bent over me then, her fingers lovingly entwined in the fur about my loins. Her lips fluttered against mine delicately, the touch of a hummingbird's tongue as it sips the nectar from the trumpet flower. I felt the fire overwhelm me until there was no hope left to retreat.
"Ohh,"I wailed. "Oh, my God!"
She trailed kisses about my face, my ears, my neck, and then her lips began to graze about the sensitive flesh of my breasts.
"Yours are the breasts of a goddess," she sighed. Even the Virgin Mother could not have had the delicious mumsies you have. How I wish mine were as exciting."
"Madeline, do not speak of-" I began and then realized that Baalberith could not have spoken, for he did not have such appendages.
"You are not Baalberith!" I accused.
"I am all things to all people," she reminded me. "I can be a man or another woman, or a dog if you'd care to be screwed by one."
I was electrified with erotic impulses and when her slender finger slipped through my fur and slid into the thick recesses of my slit, I bucked wildly. As I shuddered with excitement, a fingertip searched out my bud and tapped out a light staccato of pulsations against me.
"Ahh!" I gasped and every muscle in my body shivered with the strain.
Her hands again left me and she rolled over onto her back.
"You are too hot," she accused. "Come. Suck my nursies and I will let you cool a bit. Really, Angela, you should not waste so much effort worrying over who diddles you so long as they make it good for you."
"No," I whimpered but my body was possessed. I went to her, and I sucked her breast with a voracity that frightened me.
Her breasts were firm and full, with a silky texture much like my own. They were smaller, perhaps, but it was much more exciting to touch her flesh than to touch my own. As I worked her nipple hungrily about in my mouth, I was overcome by a boldness that seemed to carry me forward as I would never have done on my own. Compulsively, I worked my fingers across her belly and into her thick forest.
"Ohh!" she sighed as I nuzzled into the warm, slippery flesh.
Just touching her there fired my own loins just as kissing her breast made my own bunch, eagerly awaiting the return of her caresses. The feel of her, so hot and wet and intimate was a heady intoxicant. I explored up and down the little ridges and valleys, slipping boldly into her tunnel as I searched out her heavily throbbing bud with my thumb.
Her fingers returned to my intimate flesh then, and as she handled me so delicately so did I tease and toy with her earthy flesh. When she could bear no more, she squeezed her legs shut, trapping my hand against her.
"Sweet Jesus, but it is good!" she groaned.
"Yes," I gasped for she had left me truly breathless.
"How I would love to taste of your sweetmeat and kiss you until you went mad," she breathed. "I love it when my lover does that to me, but I am much too hot to begin such a game now."
"As am I," I admitted. "How could I have doubted you? Your touch could only be guided by my Baalberith, for it moves me more deeply than I have ever been."
She moved farther away, not only taking her sweet fingers from my weeping box but also pulling my hand away from her own wet flesh. We lay there, staring hotly into each other's eyes, and I knew that her loins were pulsing as wildly as my own for I was very close to the brink of ecstasy.
"The Devil came to me once before, many years ago," she whispered. "My nanna lay with me, her body possessed by the Devil. It was very evil and very exciting."
"No one ever touched me before," I whispered huskily. "I never knew that women could arouse such sensuous feeling, though of course it is Baalberith at work and not you, good sister."
"In my nanna's body, he did things to me that were terribly sensual. He has now commanded me to do these same things to you," she said apologetically. "Can you forgive me, sister? "
"It is not your doing," I assured her. "Any more than it is mine."
Relieved, she came to me then, her loins hovering above mine as she slowly settled her mound down on top of my own. I opened my legs to make room for her and then she was pressing down, her puffy lips meeting with my own.
The fire! The wildly throbbing intensity of her quim burned a brand of excitement into me that was incredible. Digging my heels into the ground, I lifted us both as my bottom lurched off the pallet.
"AHH!"Icried.
It strangled me. I was choked and panting for air, and my heart pounded so fiercely that it threatened to burst. She settled deeper against me, grinding her loins into me until our lips splayed open, throbbing out their need against each other's quivering bud. The hot, runaway rhythm ran through both of us as though from a common source.
"Screw it in, sister," she grunted. "Grind it in deep!"
I shuddered at the foul words she spoke, but the same fire was sweeping through my body and I could only strain to push deeper and deeper against her. She buried her face in the flesh of my breasts, wallowing her cheeks and lips about and moaning with ecstasy. My loins were so hotly inflamed that I could barely reach up and pull her hips down against mine.
"Rub me," I moaned. "Oh, dear Jesus, my cunny is so hot"
I heard myself saying the words, but it was not me. Some demon had possessed me, taking over even my words now as Baalberith had completely taken over my helpless sister. The words had a vileness to them, and the vileness further inflamed our brains. My body began shaking violently.
"I want to eat you," Madeline panted, and her loins were slamming down against me harder and harder until we both knew such an act was impossible. There was no time.
My nether lips were bruised with her crushing drives, yet I spread my legs and raised up for more. We crushed together, time after time, and what would have caused me pain at any other time only filled me with fire. Closer and closer I came to the abyss, and she came with me.
"AHH!" she cried at last, and her body stiffened in my arms.
With a wail of relief, I crashed over the brink with her, our torment of ecstasy ended.
After our cries had diminished and our fire ebbed, we were released from our possession and left to suffer the torment of our ordeal. Though we could in no way have prevented the attack, we still felt shame and degradation at having shared such an intimate ordeal. Turning from each other, we dressed as rapidly and as privately as possible under the circumstances. We hurriedly set out to awaken the Reverend Mother and advise her of the heinous attack.
Why I should have been singled out, as was Sister Madeline, for such cruel treatment is not for me to reason. I must trust in the Lord and know that he will watch over me and eventually make all things known unto me.
Five
The priest sent to help me has arrived; he will have a double chore with two of us now afflicted. I saw him from the library window when he arrived. The good Mother spent the better part of the afternoon in conference with him before summoning Sister Madeline and myself.
Repeating Ave Marias all the way to her office, I prayed that this man would bring relief from our suffering. I met Sister Madeline at the Mother Superior's door. She was scurrying from the kitchen, and between her dither and my prayer, we collided at the turn in the hallway.
"Ooo!" she gasped. "Forgive me!"
"Let us pray the priest can," I mumbled drearily.
"Do you think he really can help? " she wanted to know.
"Let us pray," I answered fervently. "I am told the pharmacography has become wondrous of late. They can actually drive our many demons with herbs and grasses."
"Here," she chided. "Your veil is all askeew. Let me do it right for you."
"Thank you," I mumbled, but my personal appearance was the very last thing on my mind.
"Really," she scolded. "You forget half your looks any more."
"They are waiting," I reminded her, for I was most anxious to enter and get this meeting over with.
And indeed they were waiting. As soon as I knocked, the good Mother's voice bade us enter. She and the priest and several of the elderly sisters who are often called upon for their great wisdom were seated around a long oak table. She motioned us to come forward and present ourselves. I did so with fear and trembling.
"Father, these are the two sisters the Devil has chosen to torment," Mother St. Colombe said in a kindly voice. "Sister Angela," she nodded to me, "and Sister Madeline," a similar motion toward my fellow sufferer.
"This is Father Louis, my children," she went on, directing her remarks to us. "He has come to bring relief for your suffering, and salvation not only for your souls but the spiritual future of this entire blessed order. We must trust him, put our faith in him as though he were the dear Saviour himself. The Lord has given him much wisdom and many potent weapons with which to fight our common enemy."
With the deepest humility, I bowed before him, acknowledging his total command of my unworthy soul. My heart was filled with doubt, however, for he was such a puny man compared to my Baalberith that I could not imagine them in mortal combat.
Father Louis was an old man, more than halfway through his allotted span. He did not look like a Knight of the Church, ready to do battle on our behalf. Indeed, he appeared drawn and frail, though this could have been from the ordeal of his journey, of course. His skin was transparent, his coloring a ghostly, cadaverous white. Only his eyes held the vigor of life, and here all his resources seemed centered, for the fire in his eyes was truly holy zeal.
I had expected the Lord's messenger to be at least as stalwart as his devilish opponent. Obviously, his strength was well hidden and his weapons miracles of great potency.
"Please stand straight and face me directly," he ordered. "Answer my questions with truthfulness and alacrity.
"Yes, sir," we echoed as we jerked to attention.
"Not both at once," he scolded.
"You, Sister Angela," he said, pointing a bony finger in my direction. "How often have you caressed your own body in private?"
"Never!" I gasped.
"On pain of death without absolution through our Lord Jesus Christ, answer the question fully and in truth!" he shouted.
There was nothing frail about his voice, though he could have whispered those same words and frightened me no less.
"I never, sir!" I cried frantically. "Until I was attacked, I never had such thoughts. Never! Such thoughts must precede such feelings-I had neither!"
"Have you ever-er.. . " he paused, glancing at the shocked faces of the older sisters and the good mother Si. Colombe, ". . . dallied with another woman perhaps?" he finished with a cold cruel smile.
"Never," I said icily, and, rising up to my full five feet and one inch, my chin jutted out defensively as I added, "I have never done such a thing to another or been done by them. My thoughts have been with God almost since birth!"
He sat back, drumming his fingers on the table for a moment, and then he turned his gnarled finger at Sister Madeline who quavered before him.
"And you?" he demanded.
"I-I was attacked as a ch-child," she whimpered. "When the Devil inhabited the body of my nanna and she laid with me. Otherwise, never! I have confessed before the Almighty many times. I have never touched myself or harbored lustful wishes."
"And you were the first attacked!" he cried triumphantly. "You were attacked before, and now you have been attacked again. You were the weak link through which he could enter these sanctified walls.
"No, Father," Mother St. Colombe corrected him. "It was Sister Angela who was first stricken."
His scowl was fierce as he sat back glowering at me. The only sound in the room was the drumming of his fingers and the beating of my own heart.
"And you did not just daydream such a notion while diddling yourself?" he demanded.
Such a gasp of shock rose from us that he turned to Mother St. Colombe with an attempt to explain. She interrupted before he could utter a word.
"The girl had her second attack while in the presence of a dozen other sisters and me!" she thundered. "She begged for our help and prayed fervently as she fought his advance. Father Louis, I am not some silly schoolgirl, nor have I turned senile with age. I know the difference between a lovesick foolish woman and a competent, pious sister."
Her righteous defense of my motives had been an explosive thing, giving no time for her to consider to whom her words had been directed. It was very un-like her.
Although she did not ask his pardon, her head was bowed when he spoke.
"I see," he said thoughtfully, and pressing his fingertips together, he brought his hands to his lips in supplication.
My heart carried a leaden weight above it, pressing heavily down upon me until I could scarcely breathe.
"You have told me the full truth," he said more than asked.
"As God is my witness!" I assured him.
"Then it will take powerful rituals and herbs to banish this attack," he opined, and pounding his fist upon the table he leaped to his feet crying, "We shall meet force with force! We shall fight fire with fire! He has evidently used the Dreck Apotheke in combination with unspeakable rituals to have forced his way into such a sacred sanctuary as this."
"What is that?" the Reverend Mother asked. "What is this Dreck Apotheke you speak of?"
He stared from one face to the next, his expression both amazed and annoyed that none of us knew of that which he spoke.
"The brew known as the Dreke Apotheke," he began as he paced back and forth, "is made up of the fluids stolen from the body of the victim. An invisible messenger slips into the private chambers of the victim, secretes himself, and then steals from that victim such noxious juices as the menstrual blood, the urine, the feces, the vomitus, pus and perspiration. These he will brew into the Dreck Apotheke forming a scatology of his prey. Once the scatology of the entire convent has been collected and made into a brew, the possession of the order is assured."
"How horrible!" Mother St. Colombe said with a shudder.
"He has attacked only two women so far," the priest observed. "I believe it is safe to say that he is still trying to collect the necessary ingredients from the others before he can attack you all."
"Thank God," the Reverend mother whispered. "Then there is time."
He nodded. "I will purify the two cells in which these girls were attacked. Then we will begin the rituals to call their bodies back to God. However, I will need rooms-rooms in order to save the others. We must make certain that no juice is emitted by any nun except in one of the exorcised rooms where the demon may not enter."
The sisters and the Reverend Mother nodded their agreement. Then he turned to me.
"I must know all there is to know about this demon," he said.
"There are two," I told him quickly.
"No!" he gasped, and after what he had put me through, I could not keep the feeling of pleasure away at the consternation this caused.
"Yes," I assured him. "Sister Madeline described the demon who attacked her, and he had a beard. The face of Baalberith is clean-shaven. Then, when he possessed the body of Sister Madeline and came to my room, I too became possessed, and I am certain it must have been by her demon, for mine was within her. I am sure of it."
"Then they were committing double blasphemy," he said coldly. "Setting woman against woman while they perform sodomy themselves. It seems more than-likely that you are right in this. Your observations are appreciated."
"He was black," Sister Madeline added.
"He is always black," he answered icily, as though she were an ignoramus. "Just as soon as I have set up my special room, I want each of you to come to me and give your entire confession. Reflect on this, for I want no detail-no matter how unimportant-withheld."
"We have both written our confessions," I told him bravely. "They were each written immediately after the attacks occurred, while everything was very fresh in our minds. No information we could give you now could hope to include as much detail."
The priest frowned, but when he turned to Mother St. Colombe, she nodded her agreement that my statement was true.
"Very well," he said. "I shall read the reports. You will then come for questioning as well as for confession, since no priest has been in residence for some time."
We nodded that we understood, and as soon as he excused us, we fairly fled from the room.
"He frightened me!" Madeline wailed. "Oh, he is terrible!"
"The Lord moves in mysterious ways at time," I admitted.
I was surprised when they woke me in the middle of the night saying Father Louis had sent for me. The choir room of the sanctuary had been given over to him and he had it brightly lit with at least a hundred candles. There were herbs smoking and grass tied in little bunches hanging over each door and window. Even the seeds of herbs were sprinkled liberally about the floor.
"You may enter," he said. "It is prepared. I sent for you immediately because, though the hour is late, there is no time to lose if you are to be saved."
'Thank you, Father," I said.
He motioned me to an altar, and after blessing me and praying for me, he had me begin my recital. He required the minutest detail, stopping me frequently to have me describe this or that. At the same time, he consulted my written confession frequently and invariably stopped me if I omitted one detail from the original confession. We continued in this manner-me confessing my ordeal and him questioning every detail-until I began describing how Baalberith had made me take his manhood into my mouth. Then he made me stop.
"Repeat that last again," he demanded.
I told him again the entire, vile episode.
"That is it!" he cried triumphantly. 'That is the key!" and he seemed greatly excited.
"Now," he directed. "You must remove your habit and every stitch of clothing on your body so that I may cleanse you of this taint."
I looked up at him and shivered with distaste, though I obeyed immediately. It had to be done, but it was surely the hardest task anyone had asked of me.
"I realize this is difficult for you," he said. "And it is not easy for me, either, since both of our garments must be laid on the altar if the taint is to be erased."
To my horror, he removed his own robe and when he stepped out in front of the altar, he was bare. His pale body was miserably ugly, but I scarcely noticed, for his organ was fully rigid!
"You know how the Lord suffered for all of us," he reminded me.
"Yes," I answered hesitantly for deep within me I was sorely afraid.
"You have paid lip service to the Devil," he said sternly. "And now the only way we can bring you back into the fold is for you to pay the same token to the messenger of God."
"You want me to--? " I gasped.
"Was not part of the Lord's suffering to allow women to wash his feet and anoint him with oils. They even wiped away the oils with their hair. This is a torture for me!"
"It is a sin!" I cried.
"You are causing me to suffer your shame and your sin with you. You are forcing me to carry your burden, but it must be done lest a child of God be lost. Come now! Get on with it!"
He spoke to me like I were an errant child who should hurry and finish eating my bowl of mush.
"Can this really be true?" I asked, my heart gravely troubled with doubts.
Reaching down, he stroked his organ and it seemed for a moment that a cold, evil grin spread across his lips.
"Yes," he said. "You are going to suck my cock just the way you did for him."
"What?" I cried.
"The Lord moves in mysterious ways," he reminded me, and when I looked closely there was only kindness and pain in his eyes. Could I have imagined those vile words and that loathsome smile?
"Now give me your hand, child, and let me place it upon my pikestaff. Ahhh! Remember, you are cleansing the past from your body and soul as you share your burden with the servant of God. Oh, my God!"
I recoiled as my hand touched his flesh. It was silky and hot as the staff of Baalberith himself, though surprisingly dry. Was this really a messenger of God, or my lover in an ugly disguise?
I did not take it immediately into my mouth as he had ordered. My curiosity, my doubts, my inner conflict held me back. Instead, I massaged it with both hands as I knelt down before him. What a marvelous instrument!
Though the man was old and shriveled, there was no sign of age in that part of him. The texture was deliciously smooth and satiny, the foreskin sliding like some silken glove back and forth over his hardness. Though he was not slimy as was my lover, there was a pleasant moistness to his flesh that was not at all unpleasant to the touch.
The head was ruddier in color, though every bit as delicately textured as the shaft and as I ran a finger around the wide lip of its outer rim, the eye throbbed and spasmed with pleasure. At the base of that lip, I met his pounding pulse. The need it had for my caress was urgent and, to me, touching, for is it not more god-like to serve than to be served?
The loose foreskin fascinated me. I had never gazed this close upon the organ of a mortal man. It seemed quite loose to the touch, and yet at no time did it bag away from the rest of him. As I pushed and pulled it experimentally, it always outlined the exact contour of the hardness beneath it.
His bag hung far beneath, dangling like some grotesque money pouch between his legs. It was wrinkled, like a dried prune, yet when I took it in my hands, the texture was velvet, the hard balls rolling sensuously between my fingers.
I felt of his organ until I was satisfied. I even explored his crack to the very muscle button that entered his bowel. Now I leaned close and let my tongue slide against the base.
Slowly I drew it up along the length of the shaft and, pausing to quiver against his throbbing vein, moved up to the head and the very eye where I rimmed the opening hungrily. If I was to do this, best I do it completely, reverently, with ardor.
Fire and excitement washed over my body, and I heard Father Louis moan with the misery of his own emotions. Poor man. He must hate having to endure such vile sensations, regardless of how voluptuous they might seem. I could understand, for I had suffered greatly, even during the highest peaks of excitement.
Again I ran my tongue up the length of him, starting at the base of his scrotum and sliding over every holy inch of his flesh. Again and again I licked him, until my appetite began to swell and I wished only to suck and root like some hideous animal.
I could not. Was this not the body of the servant of God? In a way, was I not administering unto the Lord himself? No carnal appetite could mar the perfection of this offering. No bestial craving could call me away from my sensual supplication.
Oh Lord, bless this offering! I prayed silently, and I let my need for sucking expend itself harmlessly upon his balls. The wiry hair, the velvety texture and the way his flesh relaxed and lost its puckered texture as I sucked it with long, greedy draws-all combined to make me frantic with ecstasy.
That such wrinkled flesh could hang so full as it did now! It needed Oh, God, even the flesh needed! I wondered if the Greek boy had needed as I had needed when he turned me away. Dear Lord! Where do such thoughts come from?
"My cock!" the priest groaned. "Dear God! Suck my cock as you have sucked my balls!"
Foolish man, I thought irrationally. Why ask the Lord when it is only the messenger of the Lord who can fill your need?
I stood then, bowing before him as I pursed my lips around his spasming eye. Then slowly I sucked him in. My lover, Baalberith, had imparted great wisdom to me in this art. He had taught me how to anoint the organ of man with irresistible fires, and I used this knowledge to excite the priest to near frenzy. Within moments, he was staggering backward, and then he fell against the altar. I helped him flatten his body on the floor, and then I bent down and anointed him with a fire that left him whimpering with ecstasy.
"Gently! Oh, Jesus Saviour!" he begged. "Let me rest. You will kill me. Oh, sister! For God's mercy, take it slower!"
His hands pressed against my shoulders, trying to push me away, but he was shaking so violently that they were ineffectual. As I rolled his organ around in my mouth, the good Father arched his bottom up off the floor and humped frantically into my mouth as he tried to pump off his passion.
I moved away, granting him the respite he begged for then, and he lay there shaking like a palsied beggar as he stared up at me.
"Speak the sinful words to me that you spoke to your Baalberith," he whispered.
"I do not know of many," I told him. "Although I did revel in every vile word he spoke unto me. It helps to ask for what you want. I can suck your seed from you or poke a finger up your bowel. Baalberith tells me this gives him great joy. I can do many things, but you must ask for I cannot read your thoughts, nor know I your desires. Ask for what you wish in the earthy language that excites us both, and I will bring you great joy."
"Wallow my cock around in your tits," he groaned. "Ram your finger or your tongue into my asshole. Then suck me. Never stop sucking, sister!"
I did as he commanded, pressing his organ between my breasts and then quickly swallowing it. As I siphoned, I felt of his asshole for a moment, and then I shoved my finger deep into his bowel.
He went crazy, pounding his cock deep into my throat, and I could feel his organ jerking about as though it had come alive, with a mind of its own. The hot, thick liquid burst into my mouth, and I was filled with exaltation. The sound of the man's high-pitched wail, the feel of his body jerking beneath me, the taste of the proof of his ecstasy-I was transformed.
I took him and all that he could give me. I sucked him until he was bone dry and shriveling to nothingness in my mouth.
"That will do," Father Louis at last said coolly. "You may return to your room now and pray."
"For what am I to pray? " I asked with surprise, since he had promised that this act would cleanse me and fully atone for all that had gone before.
"For all of us," he answered morosely, but quickly added, "There is much work left to do here at this convent. You should understand that, Sister Angela."
"Of course," I whispered and dressing myself with alacrity, I hastened to absent myself from the room.
What kind of work? I could not help wondering, for I was no longer fully convinced that this man was not my Baalberith in blasphemous disguise.
Six
Three more sisters have been attacked and all have succumbed to this dreadful infliction. Poor Mother St. Colombe carries a heavy burden.
"It is doubly difficult," she told me one afternoon when I answered her invitation to tea, "because the demons which have attacked us are evidently of a foreign nature."
"How is that, Mother?" I asked.
"They do not respond to the normal ritual. The crucifix, holy water, prayers to the Almighty-none have any effect whatever as you well know. They could only worship foreign gods to be unaffected by the ritual of our God.
"But there is only one-" I gasped.
"Of course," she interrupted earnestly. "Their God is a false God, but they believe."
"But the crucifix of the only true God should-"
I did not finish, for Mother St. Colombe had thrown up her hands in despair.
"I cannot answer you, child. I only know what the priest, Father Louis, has told me. It is most distressing!"
"I agree," I admitted. "He frightened me when I went before him and I was loath to follow his directions-yet, when I did as he bade me, the demon left me for it has been more than a full Sabbath since my antagonizer has vexed me."
The thought erased some of the pain from the Good Mother's brow.
"Yes," she whispered. "I am so glad. It is just such an unholy business. Father Louis told of one friar who was attacked repeatedly by a foreign succubus. No prayer would dissuade her, no sign nor holy relic-even the communion left her unmoved. Then, by the merest chance, he happened on an old Greek manuscript and, having familiarized himself with the names of the Greek Gods he began shouting out their names, one after the other, at his attacker when she next forced herself upon him. By accident, he called up the name of the particular God his tormentress worshipped. She leaped away from him and began screaming terrible curses as she vented her rage to the four winds. But. . . ! Do you know, child, that she never touched him again? Oh, she returned several times. She pleaded; she screamed, but he had only to call up the name of her God and she would vanish. Soon she lost interest in him altogether and evidently moved on to vex another. Now, is that not the strangest tale you ever heard?"
I nodded my complete and amazed agreement.
"I wonder if my attacker could be Greek," I mused. "What irony if he were. So many times when attacked, I would begin my Hail Marys instantly, but they had no effect. Of course, I said them for my own salvation, not as a weapon to fight off the aggressor. That, I confess, never occurred to me. I waited always God to come to my aid, never dreaming that the beads or the words could have any effect on their own."
The Reverend Mother shrugged. "And why should Brisbane grass and hemlock be of any value, and yet they are? The Lord moves in mysterious ways. It is not for us to question."
"Yet, if St. John's grass and vervain will keep him from our cells, why can we not hang a poultice of it around our necks and be safe wherever we might go?"
"He has all the remedies of the pharmacography, child, but it will take time to try them all," she warned. "We must be patient."
That answer did not truly satisfy me. I cannot say what there was about the priest that I distrusted, but distrust him I did. Though it pained me grievously, I had to add to the good Mother's problems by confessing my suspicions and telling her of the peculiar penance he had demanded of me on that first interview. She buried her face in her hands, and for a long time she did not answer.
"I am glad you have spoken with me," she said finally and I could tell that it took great effort for her to control her voice.
"I have not spoken of it," I told her, "because I could not bear to pain you any more. Since you could not take a confession concerning a penance to a priest, it seemed only cruel to speak of it, yet I must warn you of my feelings concerning this man."
"I understand," she said. "Unknowingly, it worked the other way around, since the others have all come to me with similar stories, and I was worried when you did not feel able to speak of it."
"Oh, Mother!" I cried.
"That is why I asked you in for this little tea," she confessed. "And it is such a blessing to know that you are not lost, but only wished to spare my feelings."
Her smile was radiant. Greatly relieved, I turned my attention to the cakes and tea.
"What is to be done about the priest? " I asked.
"I am not certain," she admitted. "I do not know whether or not this is a legitimate defense and counterattack to be used against the Black Satan. It has, after all, stopped his attacks against you, and for that we must all be grateful."
"Can you not make inquiries?" I asked.
She nodded. "That much I have already done," she assured me.
I was greatly relieved. We finished our wafers and cheese, washed them down with a delicate tea of barley, and the Reverend Mother suggested we take a stroll as the weather was unusually pleasant.
"I cannot tell you how happy your confidence has made me, child," she confided. "I have worried much about you since all of this started."
"It pains me to have caused you this suffering," I told her and only her gentle smile kept me from tears.
"There is much to learn from this man if he is the man of God he purports to be," she said. "I have a tract on exorcism from the Papacy itself which suggests many of the defenses that Father Louis has instituted. Of course, a demon would know of such defenses, too, but he may well be a man of God-how I dis-like questioning a man in my heart-some of the remedies suggested even by the Papacy must, of a necessity, be as evil as the original attack in order to overcome the possessor. The tract spoke of methods that made me shudder with shame! There is danger, too, for the exorciser since he can easily become the victim if he is not careful. This is the possibility that most concerns me."
"It is all so confusing," I complained. "A demon is a demon, and he should react like the Devil himself, should he not?"
"We do not know that, child," she said. "A demon may be an incubus or a vampire or a devil. There are a hundred other beings he could be, as well, though I must admit he usually acts like the Devil. It is difficult to accuse the priest of sacrilege when his cure, no matter how unorthodox, has in fact worked! Since you went to him and did what he asked of you, this Baalberith has left you alone. The same is true of Sister Madeline, and now of Sister Claire."
"How terrible that it should be the very ones set to guard me," I said mournfully. "I shall be greatly relieved if he saves us all, for I am heavily burdened with the guilt of having infected them with my affliction."
"It is not of your doing," she assured. "You must put that thought from your mind, child, and at chapel, I shall expect you to do a cupla for exaggerating your own importance."
"I did not mean-" I began to apologize, but she stopped me with a gently placed finger across my lips.
"We are all together in this," she whispered. "Remember that."
We talked and walked in this manner for a time as we strolled around the lily pond. The other sisters gathered about her and were greatly relieved to see her smiling face amongst them. She had been closeted long in prayer, and we all had been fearful for her well being. She sat upon a rock and, at our insistence, discussed some of the philters and potions she had read were effective against demons. As
Sister Marion said, the more of us who can test the different possibilities, the better our chances of being rid of this menace.
"If you should smell a particularly foul odor, most times it is a demon readying for attack. By detecting him before he attacks, you may be able to defend yourself with fervent prayer and a quick retreat to hallowed rooms which have been cleansed with the proper herbs.
"Remember, too, that a demon cannot hide himself completely in the body of another. He is apt to appear in any form, even as our own dearly beloved Christ, but the Lord our God will never allow him to assume the disguise completely. Always, there is a sign that you might know him for the foulness that he is. Did you not find some sign when Sister Madeline came to your cell, Sister Angela?"
"Yes," I admitted. "It was the eyes. There was an unholy light in them, and they mirrored the rot of the Devil's domain."
"Well put, Sister Angela," the Reverend Mother said. "And you would testify even on the cross that is was not Sister Madeline who attacked you?"
"I would," I said of certainty. "Just as I would swear that Baalberith was not Nikos Elytis the very first time I was attacked."
"Nikos Ely--? " questioned one of my sisters.
The Reverend Mother's frown left the question unfinished.
"All of you must remain alert," she told them. "For what treachery the Devil could have stirred for poor Sister Madeline had Sister Angela not been so observant? Suppose she had arose in righteous wrath and denounced her for the sin she thought she was committing? Suppose she had not looked close into the other's eyes? What agony it could have caused! What suffering!"
"No!" I cried. "Had it been a mortal, any of us could and would have fended off the attack. Only a demon has the power to paralyze our bodies and fill our hearts with an unholy fire."
The Reverend Mother conceded this to be true but cautioned us to be ever alert in both our observations and in our resolve to fend off any attack, regardless of how inevitable it might seem!
"We must not think of defeat as inevitable or he shall have won the battle. We will find the right philter. We will stumble onto the proper ritual to keep our attackers away, but in the meantime you must all search diligently for that philter and that ritual. If the Ave Marias do not work, try the Sacramental Confessions.
"From the beginning, all writers gave us hope. For every demon God sends to try the souls of men, there is a prayer or an antidote or a philter to eject him. This is the thought you must hold in your hearts during these trying days."
We prayed then, all of us together beneath the big-oak that sheltered the waters of the pond, and I thought of walking beside the waters of the Valley of Death and I feared no evil.
None of us wished to break the spell of our friendly communion that afternoon, and it was nearly an hour before we all regretfully turned back to the dark halls of the convent. It was nearly dusk and time for the evening meal by then, and I had not imagined how hungry I was until we began moving about. Then I was in a fit to get on with it, for my stomach was growling and angry.
With the sun down it was a bit brisk, and we hurried along the path that led to the dining hall. My heart was high and happy until we rounded the corner by the library. Then, with a sickening thud, it seemed to shatter. There on the path before us lay Sister Dominic, her skirts up to her belly, groveling in vile, sexual abandonment. Her finger was buried deep in her womanhood, and she was rubbing herself for all she was worth.
"Mother!" I cried. "Look away! Please! We shall take care of her."
"No," Mother St. Colombe insisted. "She is one of my flock, and she needs me." She went to the girl and tried to pull her hand from her crotch.
"Leave me alone!" the girl cried. "Can't you see I'm getting my cunny done? Oh, Jesus, is he good!"
"Sister Dominic!" the Reverend Mother cried in anguish. "Start your due Marias. Try to drive him away."
"Noo!" wailed the girl. "It is too late. I need him! Leviathan! Do me harder, lover. Bugger my cunt like you buggered my ass!"
The Reverend Mother shook her head, desperately trying to force herself to go on, but her hands had frozen and she could not move. Looking up at the startled audience around her, she shuddered violently.
"Go!" she cried. "I do not want you to see this. Send the priest. Sister Angela! Sister Madeline! Stay if you will. The rest of you, LEAVE!"
The sisters stood woodenly staring at her, each riveted to the ground so shocked were they by Sister Dominic's vile behavior. Sister Madeline and I pushed through the group and began shoving them away.
"It is a fit!" I snapped. "No need to gape at the poor girl!"
That brought them out of their trance, and they quickly scurried away.
"What can we do?" the Reverend Mother moaned.
"Water," I suggested. "Cold water might help."
"It did not help you," she reminded me.
"It was too late for me; nor was it cold enough," I retorted as I headed for the well. "Perhaps it will not be so for Sister Dominic. At least the well water is cold enough to give her a shock."
"Suck me!" the poor girl cried.
I raced to the well and dropped the heavy wooden bucket. It seemed to take forever before I heard it hit the water. The drought had been hard on us that year.
"Rub it in deeper," she hissed. "Yesss!"
I let the bucket sink and then started cranking up the windlass. Glancing back, I could see the poor Mother's horror as Dominic raised her rump off the sod and ground her loins about in a lewd circle. Her finger never stopped its frantic rhythm.
Sister Madeline held the good Mother by the shoulders.
"Pray for her," she whispered. "It is all we can do; her body is at this moment possessed. This is not of her own will. She could not do that with her finger of her own accord."
"Of course not!" the Reverend Mother nearly shouted. "My poor flock is being decimated, and my prayers are of no avail!"
"Suck me, Leviathan!" the girl screamed. "Oh, Sweet Mother, how frigging good you are!"
"It is not her voice!" I cried, the bucket seeming to take forever to reach the top of the well.
"I know! I know!" whimpered the Reverend Mother as she wrung her hands in a misery of torment.
Finally, I had the bucket high enough to grab for the rope handle. I unfastened it in a trice and raced for the contorted form of my poor, possessed sister, but it was too late.
"Eyyii!" she wailed and her body arched up in a paralysis of consummate agonized lust just as the water crashed over her.
"It is too late," I wailed.
The Reverend Mother shook her head.
"At least it is over," she whispered miserably.
Seven
Though I was greatly comforted by a nine-day respite from Baalberith's heinous attacks, my heart was heavy for the convent itself-historic, chaste Loudun seemed lost. Twenty-five souls had succumbed to the insidious attacks, and there seemed no end in sight.
Everywhere I turned I saw the sordid effects of the Devil's legions. Pure and godly women lay in the open, both singly and in pairs, lost in the vile rhythm of lust. Their wails and moans tore the ear, the stench of their juices befouling the air until one could scarcely breathe.
Father Louis looked like he would dry up and blow away at any moment, so worn was he from his labors. Though I still could not fully trust him, I must admit that he had given the utmost of his time and effort. I cannot say when he slept, for it seemed he was scurrying about at almost any hour.
None of us slept much. The noises that filled the night were miserably tortured, and I often lay sleepless in my cell wondering who else had succumbed. Painful as it is to confess, I wondered which one Baalberith had turned to since he no longer bothered with me.
I should not have allowed myself to think of him. God rid me of Baalberith's evil influence, yet a painful stab of nostalgia frequently washed over me, leaving me lonely and hollow somehow. And nostalgia, being what it is, would go further, and I would relive with a shudder my painfully forward behavior with Nikos so many years ago. Whatever could have possessed me to have so behaved?
At the same time there was a wonderful exhilaration in having overcome the evil tester, and I considered myself fortunate among women, for there were among us who had passed through the valley of temptation. Madeline was not as well favored as I. She was still often plagued by her demon. I wondered if this was because my will was stronger or because Baalberith gave up more easily than her demon.
I began working among the stricken, trying to help them through their trials, but it was a trying labor for they often tried to seduce me, and their pleadings were piteous. It was in connection with this work that I was one night called into the cell of Sister Jeanne.
She was in terrible condition, her clothing having been torn from her body and her skin scratched and bleeding. She threw her arms about my neck as I entered the room and clung to me desperately.
"Do not let him get me! Please!" she cried. "Go away! Go away, Baalberith!"
My mind froze and my heart stopped altogether. I stood there transfixed, and then I began backing slowly away.
"Do not leave me!" Sister Jeanne cried.
"No!" I whispered as the horror of being in the same room with him swept over me. "It can not be. NOV
My eyes were darting from corner to corner as I backed out of her cubicle.
"That is right! Run! That is your way," I heard his voice hiss every word with hateful clarity. "Go away, prude."
I stopped dead.
"NO!" was all I could answer.
"You will even suck a priest's cock to get rid of me!" he snorted. "Leave us alone, since you want no part of it."
His voice was filled with disdain, and I wanted to die, I hurt so desperately in my heart. I could not move, and he would speak no more.
"Please," I whimpered. "Why do you torment me? Why do you let me hear your voice at all when you know how it pains me? "
"You caused me pain," he said coldly. "Why should I not hurt you in return? Now go away. You can see I am busy."
"No!" I answered with unreasoning stubbornness. "I will not leave you alone with her."
"Very well," he laughed. "Supposing I materialize and let you watch me hump this lovely young morsel of womanhood."
"No," was all my poor numb brain could manage.
"Do not leave me," Sister Jeanne whimpered over and over, and I could see by her expression that our conversation had confused her completely.
"I do believe you are jealous," he said triumphantly, and I could not answer him for my cheeks were burning and I was filled with shame.
"You cannot have me back, you know," he said with unfeeling disdain.
"No," I whispered. "I did not know."
"Well, you could get me back, but it would be very difficult, especially here in the convent."
"How do you mean?" I asked and hated myself for wondering.
"You would have to lie with a non-priest to negate the ritual his lecherous holiness, Father Louis, performed."
"Another man?" I gasped.
"Most certainly," he answered. "It requires strong effort to counteract an error such as you committed. You should have told Father Louis to go frig himself. You are a foolish little baggage, but I can forgive you, Angela, because I feel that you still belong very much to me . . . although I shall probably never touch you again, I will be in your dreams forever."
"I do not belong to you!" I snapped.
"Oh, yes," he laughed. "No one else has ever brought you to the peak of ardor. You sucked that priest, but he neglected to satisfy you, and thereby he sealed his own miserable fate!"
"He drove you away!"
"No! I walked away in disgust. Who, in the name of Satan himself, wants a woman that can do no better than that?"
"I did not initiate the action," I maintained hotly.
"Nor did you have the backbone to stop it!" he shouted back. "I am losing my patience with you, Angela. If you want me then go out and fuck yourself a common man. That is the only way you will ever find your way back into my arms."
"I do not want you! I DO NOT WANT YOU!! "
I ran from the cell, deserting Sister Jeanne altogether. I ran through the night screaming the words over and over, and no one paid the slightest attention. They were all lost in their own private hells. Although it was very dark and quite cold, I was miserably feverish. I clawed at my throat, trying to get enough air to cool my parched neck and cheeks. Finally, as my steps slowed from exhaustion, I unbuttoned a portion of my habit and pulled back my veil. I stood panting for several minutes before my eyes focused and I saw that I had fled to the edge of the pond. Taking off my shoes, I slipped my feet into the cooling waters.
The fever persisted. I sprinkled water upon my face and that even did not help. In desperation, I lifted my skirts and waded in until the water swirled about my knees. How I wished I could sink my womanhood into that cooling balm, for it was aching with fire just from talking with Baalberith.
Now was the time to resist him. Now was the time he had spoken of at the beginning when, fully aware of his charms and the enticements his body had to offer, I was given the choice of resisting and losing him forever or succumbing to his magnetism.
Yet was the choice ever really mine, for even then I was in a spell cast by his evil hold over me. As the fire became too intense, I slipped from my habit and lowered myself into the dark waters. How I wished I could slide beneath the surface and be welcomed into the arms of my Lord with no more of this earthly purgatory.
I stayed in the water for some time, praying fervently, and the gentle liquid seemed to caress many of my cares away. My breathing slowed, my fever seemed to subside, and I was about to congratulate myself on a small but important victory when I heard a mad frenzied giggle that paralyzed me with fear.
Why had I not heard them? There were at least a dozen of my sisters, as naked as I, and all of them cavorting at the water's edge, splashing and frisking about like a brace of colts.
I dared not attempt an escape for my habit was in the midst, and they surely would have forced me into their merriment had I approached them. Instead I stood deathly still, watching them, and then they began edging closer as they moved into the water. I prayed they would not see me, but soon there was no way to avoid it. They were coming much too close. Turning, I moved slowly through the water toward the opposite bank.
I heard one cry out. "It is Sister Angela! Come play with us, sister!"
I kept pushing through the water, though I once turned back and stared at them, hoping I could dissuade them from following me. I did not have a chance to speak.
"After all, you have more experience than any of us," a chubby novice whined.
That brought a peal of laughter as they moved ever closer. They were possessed. There was no hope of dissuading them. I turned and worked my way toward the shallow water as fast as my legs would push me.
"She is trying to get away!" they cried.
As soon as I could manage, I broke into a run.
"Get her!" they cried.
Naked as I was, I raced through the darkness, but I did not run toward the convent. I could not face the Reverend Mother and have her see me in my nakedness. Though I had, with the help of the cooling water, been able to fight off the sensual attack, Mother St. Colombe had been deeply hurt too many times. Her only hope was that the others would eventually find the peace that I had supposedly attained. One look at me now, and she would lose that hope. I could not circle around the pond and hope to snatch up my habit, for that edge of the pond was lined with naked sisters rooting their waterborne friends on. I looked about frantically as I ran, discounting all these possibilities in half the time it takes to say it. Then I headed for the high, outer cloister wall.
"Do not let her get away!" someone cried, and I knew they were on my heels like a pack of wild dogs.
When I reached the gate, there was not a soul about. I dared not hesitate even for a moment. I pulled down the great bar and the gate slowly began to move. With so many nuns possessed, there was no one on guard to stop me.
I had not been outside the walls of the cloister in over five years, but whatever lurked out there in the darkness could be of no more danger than what was hard behind me. At the first crack in the great gate, I slipped through and out into the world beyond. I took no more than a dozen steps into the woods before I bumped into a poor lad with the fish. With a thud, I managed to knock us both down.
"Look where you are-AWK!" he screeched at the sight of me.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded foolishly.
He had turned his head away after the first glance, his hands shooting up to shield his eyes from the sight of my naked body. He began backing away, as though he would run in an instant. I reached out and took a firm grip on his shoulders.
"Answer me," I ordered.
"Please," he whined. "Let me go!"
"No! Look at the hour," I babbled. "I ask you what you are doing out at this hour?"
My brusque manner shook the boy awake.
"I was fishing," he answered. "My family is hungry.. . there is little enough food about these days . . . the fish bite only at night. Please, let me go."
"How old are you?" I asked as my belly began twisting into knots.
"Fourteen and a part," he whimpered. "Please, can I go now?"
It was as though I had been trying futilely to outrun my fate from the very beginning. Baalberith had said it would be nearly impossible, and yet he had made it possible. He had said it would have to be a man, yet he had send a boy-a boy the size and color of Nikos who I must humble myself before.
"Let me see your pikestaff," I demanded.
"No," he whimpered. "I got to get home."
"Take it out, or I shall go after it," I warned, and my fingers dug into his shoulders like talons.
Whimpering and shivering with fear, he lifted his tunic and took out the pathetically child-like cock. To me it was erotically beautiful, like a fat little worm. It nestled there awaiting my caress. I took it with my fingertips and shivered as the sensations swelled up around me. Never was there flesh so silky and enticing as this soft little peter. One roll of my fingers and it began to grow, hardening until it was a shivering little stick moving eagerly against me.
"You like that?" I asked.
"Not as good as my sister does it, but it will do," he answered indifferently, but his little prick jumped about frantically, and I knew he was only embarrassed.
I hated what had to be done, but I could fight my fate no longer. This poor innocent-seeming lad was really sent here by Baalberith (or was it my lover, himself?) to give me that chance to return to him. If I did not take it, I was doomed to a life of bland loneliness, and that seemed more than I could possibly bear. Even that was not the real issue of the moment, for already I was possessed. I had to take this organ, and I had to take it now!
"There she is, over there," I heard a sister cry.
"What has she there?" another screeched, and I knew the pack would be upon me in an instant
"You are mine, Baalberith!" I screamed. "You are nobody else's. Only mine!" and grabbing the lad by the ass, I pulled his hot little sausage into my mouth.
"Eekk! Look at them!" came the cry. "Let me in! I want him!"
I performed my ritual eagerly, sucking at the lad's sweet pikestaff until he was faint with the weakness of hot sensations. When the others reached us, they could not pull him from me and had to take other portions for their pleasure.
I clung to him as though life itself depended upon it. Within moments someone had grabbed up my ass and was licking at my cunny. I slipped into the fog of lust, my lips and my loins the center of my world. Several times I heard the boy cry out, and I could feel them trying to drag him away from me, but I clung to my right and my passion.
His little prick was so hard in my mouth. It jerked about in a fever of its own. I opened my lips more fully and took in his soft, silky sac, too. What a mouthful of treasures I polished. Then, as I chewed upon the whole of it, the little organ erupted, spurting out its fluid in long, thin spurts as the boy's body jerked about helplessly.
I kept sucking. I simply could not turn him loose, and when his little cock lost its starch and again became a flaccid button, I relished it even more. The mouth burrowing into my own searing flesh sent wildfire spreading across my body, but it was the screams and the grunts of the women that inflamed me most. They were craven beasts, and I with them!
In the pale, cold moonlight, their pallid bodies writhed and twisted together as they clawed their way after the youth. The boy's cries of terror mingled with their inhuman groveling noises until all that was missing was the fire of Satan's inferno.
And, even as they scrambled to get at the lad, they were rubbing out their passion against each other. Loins and loins; loins and lips, loins and breasts; every conceivable combination of flesh. When a battle became extra fierce, it would seem that the fire within the contestants would magnify and heighten until they would fight their death's struggle in slow motion. Their loins would grind hotly together, their breasts rolling as their arms strained each to pin the other to the ground. The conflict would become more lethal and yet, simultaneously, slower and more sensual.
I was dragged free of the boy finally, or he from me, for there was no way, really, to tell what was happening in such a melee. An older nun, her body covered with wrinkles, grabbed up the longer tresses of a novitiate and pulled the child's face into her wildly splayed cunt.
"Eat it, you bitch!" she cried. "Eat it all!"
I tried to cover my face and ears, to blot out the horror that surrounded me, but the leech still burrowing into my own searing flesh caused a fever to inflame my vision. Soon I wanted what they wanted. I lusted as they lusted. The vile, carnal appetite of one had become the appetite of all.
It was a contagion.
"He is mine," I growled. "He was sent to me. I saw him first."
No one paid me the slightest heed. They probably did not even hear me. I began rooting down through the pack of bodies, searching for that soft little prick. I had to have it in my mouth. I could feel women wrapping their legs about my thighs or pulling my arms tightly in between their legs and pinning me as they began their frictioning. I fought to dislodge them.
Breasts rolled and pushed against me and rubbed heavily against the tender flesh of my belly. Someone made water, the steaming urine searing across my flesh like a hot brand of excitement. A cunny pushed itself to my lips, and my nostrils flared with excitement. I sniffed, I tasted, I shuddered with excitement, but I turned back to my search for the little worm. Nothing else was enough.
"Screw me! Eat me!" they cried.
"Let me suck it!"
"Bite me. Oh, God, do something to me!"
Cries filled the air with vulturine pleas, and above it all rose the screams of the boy. They were pulling him in every direction all at one time and lying three and four deep over him at the same time. It was a wonder that he could breathe enough to scream.
I began digging in with my fingernails just as the others were doing, ripping flesh, pulling it and, when it would not give, tearing it. In this manner, I finally made my way down to the grass and could feel his leg beneath me. Ramming my arm in between his body and the woman on top of him, I felt for and found his nubbin jammed between a pair of siphoning lips.
I had the boy. I was certain of it now. I needed him with a desperation that was unfathomable. Baalberith had brought him to me. He was mine! As I shoved and scratched to get the other woman away from him, I began sucking on his knee, so ravenous was I to eat of his flesh.
I had dragged myself along, making my way down to him while the mouth working in my own cunt had clung to me through the whole of it. I didn't care. It filled the ache, but I wanted the boy. The touch of my lips upon his knee was more exciting to me at that moment than the tongue stabbing deep in to my tunnel and the lips suctioning against my throbbing flesh. Even the feel of my nails digging into the flesh of another woman as I clawed my way to him was somehow erotic.
I felt the pack of flesh slowly give as one after another moved away. The boy's screams were stilled and when the body next to mine moved I quickly jumped in and sucked in his little prick. It was hard.
"He is dead," someone said in almost a whisper, but the words echoed through me as though they had been shouted into my ear.
At that moment, I crested, my body shuddering with the convulsion as though I had succumbed to a seizure.
I know not what happened after that for I fainted, the world mercifully blacking out before me, and I did not awake until morning.
My sins seem to have multiplied. With a heavy heart, I realize that I am probably lost forever. Although I love my God dearly, the black demon called Baalberith has cast a spell over me that I can no longer resist. Pray for me. I can no longer pray for myself.
Eight
Baalberith did not come. I waited, alone in my cell, for three days and three nights but there was no sign of him. I was filled with fear and trembling lest he had found another that pleased him more. Although my heart was heavily weighted with shame, my body was enslaved to damning lust.
I was so in need of him my loins burned with desire. Lord, how desperate that need had become! Several of my sisters came and lay with me, but I looked deep into their eyes and knew they were not my lover. Their lips and loins comforted me for the moment, but it was Baalberith I needed . . .
On the fourth day, I dressed and walked amongst the others, and it pained me to see how far we had all been pulled into the pit. The great gate hung open-no one about with time or energy enough to close it. There were barely enough women left to put food on the table and keep water in the urns. I saw Mother St. Colombe, but I hid; I could not bear to face her in my disgrace.
Everywhere I looked there was debasement. Some of the women did not even dress any more but wandered about naked. I saw them kneeling in prayer, tears streaming down their faces while they worked a stick in and out of their groin with frenzied, compulsive stabs. It is a terrible thing and I feel with them, and for them-for I too am so possessed.
No one knows why the Greek had not returned, not how Father Louis could have gotten to us so fast while the other priests the good Mother sent for never arrived. There was never any word. I looked at Father Louis and I knew. He was the king of the devils, Satan himself. Perhaps, the whole world was lost by now, for surely this convent would have been one of the last to succumb. He, the master wrong-doer, had come to witness the final destruction of the earth himself.
How did I know this? It is hard to say. His eyes were milky, with an unholy gleam about them, and his fervor was too pronounced. He was often so intense in whatever he was doing that he would forget even to finish dressing himself. Once he rushed out without benefit of covering of any kind. I noted that his habit was frequently pushed out about the groin, indicating an almost continuel erection, and I believe the devil is known for being ever-ready.
What was in my own condition that I should even notice such a thing? This was the first time in several days, however, that I was not so tortured by erotic fevers as to remain bed-ridden. Somehow I could not bring myself to move out of my cell if there was any chance of having such a seizure. When he plagued me, I preferred it to be in private. I only wished he would come and claim me and have it over and done with!
It was, however, good to feel the freshness in the air, and although my heart was unbearably heavy, I forced myself to walk through the courtyards and down by the pond. Whenever I saw lewdness, I turned my head away, yet the more I saw the harder it was to keep my own loins silent. I saw one girl squatting naked by the big oak. She was ramming herself with a candle. Her moans were pitiful, and when I looked closer, I could see the blood caused by her bruising, battering jabs. Furiously, I pushed her over onto the grass and pulled the candle away from her. She rolled over on her back with a whimper and began rubbing her genitals with her fist.
There was no use trying to stop them. They were all possessed. I looked down at the candle, and it was smeared with bits of flesh and blood.
How it sickened me. I sat down by the water and carefully washed it Why I did not simply throw it away, I cannot say. My mind was so filled with pain at what I had seen and emptiness from my own lonely vigil for my lover that I could think of nothing else.
Why had Baalberith deserted me? Had I not fulfilled the task he set for me? If the Lord had decided to rescue me from such a fate, why had he not released my body from the terrible fires my lover created within me?
The ache in my loins even at the thought of him was so acute that I slipped my hand beneath my habit and brushed it unconsciously across my cunt lips. For the moment it appeased me, but soon I had to touch myself again and again, and soon my breasts needed the same treatment. I recalled how he had caressed my mumsies, and my mounds quivered and felt deliciously sensual against my fingertips.
Closing my eyes, I relived the exciting manipulations of his hands and fingers as they grazed over and under and around my great fleshy teats. My fingers replayed the memory of my lover's touch.
"Baalberith," I whispered, praying in rapturous torment that he would come to me soon. "I cannot beat it without you."
The more I taunted myself with his memory, the more agonized my flesh became. I rolled over on my belly in the soft grass and worked my groin over a small boulder that lay half embedded in the turf. Pressing against the stone, I tried to stem the growing current of fire, but the warm earth reminded me of the body of my lover, and the cool rock was the brute of his maleness. Pulling up my skirts, I let my loins rest directly on the chilled smooth stone. Showers of excitement rushed through my entire body.
Moaning softly, I bore down against it and felt my nether lips crush hard into my meat as the cool hardness set my bud to dancing! Slowly I rolled my loins about, probing the ball with my hot, sensitive flesh. The pressure, the cold, unyielding hardness was like my demon's icy staff, and I was in ecstasy. The pressure, as my puffy lips rolled about, created fresh showers of sensations.
"Ohhh!" I moaned. "My God, how good it is. Baalberith, come to me! Hurry! My brain is in a fever of obscene, delectable visions. I have need to do all of them to you. I shall explore your sweet ass. I shall make water on the silky tip of your pikestaff or into your lips if it pleases you. Oh, Baalberith! The things I wish to do to you-to have you do unto me-slimy, wonderful things that will drive us both mad with unholy ecstasy!"
I was rolling wantonly when, with a jolt, I realized where I was and rolled back over on the grass. I could not bear to have him see me like this. It had angered him that I had sucked the cock of the priest. I dared not anger him further. Jumping to my feet, I began pacing about, pressing my hand to my groin only when the ache became unbearable.
J must cool myself, I thought frantically. I cannot put off these fiery demands much longer.
Walking to the edge of the water, I squatted down and raised my skirts, patting cool water against my feverish cunt. I was staggered by the rush of sensations that chilled liquid sent through me.
"Ohh!" I gasped as a shock of passion raced through my entire body.
Again and again, I lifted the cooling waters up and pressed handfuls of water against me. Each time the sensations were more intense, and I knew there was no stopping the wildfire that raged within me.
"Oh, Baalberith, how can you leave me like this?" I wailed, and sinking to my knees, I spread open my legs and dashed more and more water into my throbbing cunt.
I needed his hard cock within me. I needed that fiery, slimy ball pressed up against my spasming nubbin. Water was not enough. Nothing but Baalberith would ever satisfy me now.
Twisting around until my legs were in the water, I lowered my loins into the pond, allowing the water to swirl up and into my searing flesh. I could scarcely breathe, so violent was the fire that raced through my veins. My cunt quivered and spasmed until I was frantic with need. Shivering with hellfire, I fell backward onto the cool turf, pulled my heels up to my rump and dug them into the mud. Then I spread my legs so wide that my muscles screamed under the strain and I raised my ass until my cunt was up high out of the water and open to the cool air. Awkwardly, I began dipping water up with my hand to let it trickle down into my tunnel as I pressed my hands into my searing flesh.
"Baalberith!" I whimpered as another great rush of passion flooded over me.
On and on, I worked in a frenzy, pouring the cool water over my burning flesh and feeling it trickle across my spasming meat as it flowed down the valley into my lust-filled tunnel.
My loins were raised in supplication! Why did my lover not come?
My brain was in a frenzy. I was grunting and groveling in the muck and mud like some rabid dog. I stretched out my hands, clenching my fists to contain the fire when my hand chanced to pass over the candle I had taken in disgust from another sister so recently. Grabbing it up, I slid it down my slit and rammed it quickly into my own inner depths.
I shook violently from the tremendous effort this labor cost me. Each muscle and tendon was strained to the utmost from maintaining the unholy position, yet I seemed locked into the grotesque stance and could do nothing to change it.
I rammed the candle into my cunt in a slow, sensuous rhythm and when I found I could no longer ladle the water into my slit with my hand, I paused frequently to dip the candle itself into the chilled waters. My chest spasmed with excitement and I gasped in great amounts of air as my heart pounded unmercifully.
"Ugh! Ugh! Ugh!" I grunted, frigging that candle into me like some imitation cock.
The strain was too much for my body. At last my knees buckled and I fell with a thud to the sodden turf. Kolling quickly to my side, where I would have only one leg to brace, I barely missed a stroke in my erotic rhythm. I could even return to trickling the water over my burning cuntlips, and I found that the water, even upon the over-sensitized flesh of my belly, was an erotic delight.
How hideous was the shame, for no amount of fire completely obliterates the conscience. Although I could no longer pray that the sensations would stop, tears of self-hate and shame flooded down my cheeks. I was powerless to stop the conflagration within me, helpless even to still the humiliating motions of lust.
I was jerking and writhing across the mud when I heard the dogs barking. At the first sound, I humped up against the candle, and my brain conjured up the picture of a dog, his long scarlet saber stabbing out of its furry sheath with frenzied turbulence.
I wanted that dog. My brain burned with the need for that slippery, pointed dirk, more like the prick of my lover than any human organ could be. I could almost feel it deep in my cunt, pounding its slippery juice into me.
I worked the candle into my churning flesh, gyrating it about to bring it to new areas of need. My mind focused on the hot stabbing penis of the dog and the combination of feeling and thought drove me to an insanity of passion.
"Baalberith," I whimpered miserably. "Please!"
The dog barked again, and this time the noise was clearer. Then another bark and another. Shaking the fire from my brain, I twisted around and saw that a whole pack of dogs had entered the open gates and were racing wildly about. Some of the sisters were chasing after them with frenzied abandon.
For a moment I just lay there, dumbly ramming that candle in and out of my cunt. Then my eyes focused on a large, short-haired animal, very black. He was trotting along, his tongue hanging out, seemingly with no purpose whatever, but he was heading directly toward me.
"Baalberith!" I screamed, and frantically I pulled the candle from my tunnel and threw it furiously into the pond. "I thought you would never come!"
I leaped to my feet and raced to meet him, but he veered away, toying with my over-eagerness. I became more cautious, but the thick wet folds of my habit were pulling me down, and I began unfastening my clothing as I stalked my wary lover. I was frantic to be free of the encumbrance when I reached the dog. Another sister had started after my animal, but I pulled my sodden garment off and threw it at her.
"It is my Baalberith," I warned. "He is mine."
"Go frig yourself!" she growled.
At that moment the animal caught the scent of my ardor, for my cunt was weeping copiously. I froze, arching my loins out to him in my nakedness, and though the other girl was similarly ungarbed, she had not as yet worked herself into a frenzy he could smell. I said a little prayer, though I know not to whom, for this would surely prove the identity of the black visitor. He paused and then turned and sidled up to me, straining his muzzle forward to sniff.
My entire being shook as I strained with body and mind to draw him to me. Each tiny inch he worked forward was a victory dearly paid, and my loins were pained with need for him.
"Baalberith," I whispered, "It is me-Angela. I performed the ritual you asked of me days ago. Where have you been, my lover?"
He did not need to answer. His cold nose slid against my swollen, feverish lips, and I felt his divine ointment. My loins throbbed as he nuzzled his icy, moist muzzle into me, and I was faint with excitement.
Fire raced through my body. Fire, lightning, an inferno of volcanic sensations ripped through me, and I was lost in the fog of his hypnotic caress. Wild, mad, insane, yet compulsively intoxicating.
I rose up on my toes, arching my knees out wide to the sides to open myself up to his touch. His nose moved deeper into my flesh. I could feel the quick, hot panting breath tickling against my seared membranes. Then came the tongue. Oh, God, what a feeling washed over me with the first touch of that rasping, quivering tongue!
"Eyyii!" I wailed as my knees gave way and I fell helplessly to the ground.
His muzzle followed me, burying itself deeply in my cunt, and I was mad with his touch. I scrambled about to open myself wider-wider, and then I watched him as he anointed my flesh. The look in his eye, the way his ass began humping into the air-if there were ever any doubt, it was now erased. He was my Baalberith. He had come finally . . . to claim me.
I twisted my head to the side where I could look down and see his slimy red prick stabbing into the air. With a shudder, I reached down to caress it.
At the first touch, I jumped back with surprise. It was feverishly hot! Where was the icy coldness of my lover? Again I touched, taking it into my hand and caressing it experimentally. The dog whined with delight. I decided he was simply teasing me with a new, fiery feel.
"You have put me through hell," I complained. "I have suffered for the want of you these many days."
His tongue slithered into my tunnel, and I shivered with delight.
"Why must you tease me so?" I whined.
He could not answer. He continued working steadily, lapping at my juices until I was wild with the passion he had aroused in me. I was a boiling cauldron, a veritable gusher of searing desire. I shook compulsively, my legs and arms jerking spasmodically, and I was convulsed with raging hungers.
"Stab me," I pleaded. "Dear Baalberith, do not make me suffer more!"
He paid no attention, but I could bear it no longer. Pulling his muzzle from my cunt, I dragged the resisting animal over my body until I could grip his hot saber in the palm of my hand. One touch and he no longer fought me; one touch and he began humping into my circling fist.
"Now impale me, you devil!" I screeched and, wrapping my legs up around him, guided his stabbing dirk into my feverish innermost flesh.
"Fuck me! Fuck me!" I cried as the animal humped his prick into my tunnel with a speed more furiously rapid than I had ever felt or dreamed of feeling. The frictioning of that slimy dirk into my weeping walls was so inflaming that my crest, very near before, now carried me into another world of excitation far more intense than was ever before possible. My churning meat clung to that saber, grasping him as though even my flesh could not let him go. As he drove into me, the hard knot, like my Baalberith's ball, slammed against my splayed meat, pulsing and throbbing against my turgid bud.
I cried out my ardor, again and again and then my insides were filled with his hot, burning foam. His come seared my flesh with his own brand of fire. The torture was intense. The pain of my need seemed to swell to terrible proportions before it finally exploded, crashing out through my body with shattering, throbbing jolts.
I was hurdled through the barricade and crushed against the sweet ecstasy of release. Oh, God, what hellish delight!
I wanted to cuddle his warm body to me, to cherish my moment of happiness at his return, but he would lay only for a moment with me.
"Baalberith," I moaned as his body stiffened and pulled away.
Without uttering a word to me, he got up, shook himself, and walked away.
Nine
I know not what compulsion forces me to continue setting down these confesions when I no longer have a case to set before my maker. That I am continually troubled and heavy of heart he must well know. That I am totally and irrevocably committed to my demon he must also see.
Baalberith has come to me frequently, and day and night I await him. Of the near hundred souls here at Loudun, there are now forty-two lost to his fellow demons. We are in a sad and sorry condition.
We wander about in a terrible state of disrepair, many not even bothering to clothe themselves at all. Seldom do my eyes see clear enough even to notice. When I do, I am greatly distressed. Those of the novitiate who still have their long tresses now wear mats of tangles hardly recognizable as hair. Those of us who had come to the last vows and shaved our heads have now neglected this task until most wear caps of filthy ringlets.
Many have already been branded with various marks of the devil, like the wedding band that once marked us as brides of the Lord. The milky eye adorns many a pupil and various rashes and other marks abound amongst the populace. Most peculiar, however, since so many of us look so very hideous, is the indescribable exaltation that frequently fills us with unholy exhilaration.
Many attest to this fact. Some even say that they have become the bride of Christ, having consummated the act of our Lord's own beckoning. Their descriptions of these trysts with the Gentle One are so beautiful, we marvel at their good fortune although Mother St. Colombe staunchly maintains they have all been duped by Satan himself and could never have been swived by the son of God.
I personally have learned to live with my cross, though my cup tastes often of bittervetch. Since I was the first, and since my own Baalberith himself told me he was Satan's first messenger, I know that my lot is above the rest. I am his chosen one. Even my shame is exalted.
The horrible truth of my circumstances has finally dawned on me. I kept waiting to be pulled down into the fires of hell, but I have realized that my hell is to be right here on earth for some time to come. That it will be an eternity of torture when I do leave this life I am of a certainty, but my hell here is to be prolonged as a fitting prelude to the misery that is to come. Further, being the chosen one, I can see deeper into their hellish hearts, and I know they are not after us as individuals, but after the Lord, our loving Father. In that they shall lost. Surely all humanity will not desert him as we have deserted him.
They were not long in showing their hand in this aim, however. Late one afternoon, near Vespers, Baalberith came to me, but he would not lie with me.
"Please," I begged. "I need you, my lover."
"No." he said. "We are called to present ourselves before the altar."
"Why?" I asked.
"It is time to dedicate ourselves," was the only answer he would give me. "Bring your rosary and your prayer book."
I got to my feet and picked up the long-untouched Missal and symbol of my past reverence. My fingers burned just to touch them, and in the dim distance I ached for the memories they aroused. But I followed him.
There was nothing left to do but follow him, for without his caresses I would burn and suffer a hellish damnation. He would not let me dress, but led me naked from my room just as the church bells began to peal out their call to Vespers. From the various halls I saw the others come, many of them bare and walking as though they were being led by their lovers, too, though all but mine were invisible to me.
"Can they see you?" I asked. "No," he whispered.
It was then that I first realized where he was leading me.
"No," I pleaded. "Not to the sanctuary!" But his cold smile would brook no nonsense, and I dared say no more.
My heart was sorely troubled for I knew that the other sisters would already be at prayer. As we lined up before the large front doors, I looked at the dozens of naked sisters and knew that our entering together would be the most terrible sacrilege possible. It would pain Mother St. Colombe beyond her endurance, truly a stab in the side of the Lord himself.
Yet I could not stop myself. Stepping to the head of the line, I slowly led that procession into the cathedral and down the aisle clear to the confession rail at the front of the church.
"Perch your little ass on the rail, face the good sisters and open your legs nice and wide," Baalberith commanded, and though it pained me deeply, I did exactly as he ordered.
The others were forced to do just as I had done, for I was now their high priestess.
"Now slip your prayer book between your legs and rub that hot little itch," he whispered huskily. "I will make it feel like my cock when it is icy, the way you love it best. Yesss! Is that not fine?"
"Sacrilege!"
I could hear the cries of the others, Mother St. Colombe with them, and I cried in my heart for them. There was little else I could do.
"Call Father Louis!"
The cry went up and echoed through the great hall. At that very moment, the priest entered from behind the altar. He wore the lace prayer shawl-nothing more. like us, his body cadaver-white body was bare.
"He is one of us!" my naked sister cried with fiendish glee.
"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" the others wailed, but the priest began the ritual as though no sound but his own voice filled the great hall.
He called for the holy water, and a naked maiden leaped to bring it forth. He pointed to a swarthy, plump novice and ordered that she be up-ended. Two other girls quickly complied, then slowly, as they pulled her legs apart, he poured the holy water into her privates.
"Slosh it about for a moment," he commanded and then he ordered that she be turned over slowly, allowing the water to flow back into the Euchar.
"Now," he said, after the girl had returned to her place. "Come forth, Sister Angela!"
I rose and went to him.
He took several small wafers of bread and placed them on his hardened penis, pressing them painfully into the eye until they were nearly invisible.
"Impale yourself upon the host," he ordered me.
I pulled his cock carefully forward so as not to dislodge the wafers and slowly pushed it into my tunnel. Working it in deeper and deeper, I had to spread my knees wide to pull him in to me. I gripped the slack cheeks of his ass tightly until, at last, I had him completely embedded within me.
When it was done, I moved back away from him just as carefully so that he next could perform the same ritual without dislodging the host I returned to my place before the altar.
To each he gave of himself and when he had finished the Sacramental Confession, he moved into the Eucharist itself as he swallowed the host and gulped down the holy water in place of wine. I felt the glow in my loins grow as I watched. It caused me to shake all over with erotic excitement.
"Take me," I whispered to Baalberith. "Impale me, lover."
"You will have to satisfy yourself with the Lord here," he told me. "Do a good job of it, Angela, or you shall never feel the delights of my prick again. I can no longer name the rituals for you to perform. They must come from your own body and your own brain. To be worthy of the Devil's first messenger, they must needs be monstrous, Angela."
"Please," I begged. "Do not leave me, my love!" But even as I pleaded, his body was dissolving before my eyes.
"Look at them!" he commanded. "They are all frigging themselves one way or another. You must outdo them, Angela. Remember that!"
I was filled with an unholy zeal and excitement, but as I stared around at the depravity that surrounded me, it seemed impossible that I could hope to surpass my sisters' display of sacrilege.
They lay upon the holy altar, two by two. They profaned the cross and the articles of veneration. Nothing escaped their mocking irreverence and wickedness. Through the horror that colored my vision, I could hear one of the sisters begin to chant. As I looked up, she had risen from her place at the railing and was walking forward to the high altar. She did not pause when she reached it but began to climb onto the Eucharist repository itself. She was working her way up to the niche that held the Holy Mother.
I loved the Good Virgin, and though I could never again hope to serve her, I turned my head when the girl moved up against the virgin.
"Blasphemy! Blasphemy!" Mother St. Colombe screeched, and before anyone could stop her, she raced down the aisle and made her way through the naked women to the altar.
"Cecilia!"' she screamed. "Come down. You are possessed! Come down at once! Do von hear fog?"
Cecilia turned around and a slow, lazy grin spread across her face as she continued with her lewd movements.
"Go frig yourself, Mother," she snorted. "Somebody show the poor bitch how."
They leaped upon her then, ripping the good Mother's skirts and diving into her privates with gleeful abandon.
"No! No!" she screamed, but they were too excited to let her pleas stop them.
"Well?" Baalberith hissed. "What is the matter with you? You are losing me, Angela. You are supposed to be leading the flock. Why do you stand there like a dolt, unable even to follow? "
"I cannot!" I cried. "Oh, God, I love you both too much."
"And what is that supposed to mean?" he demanded icily.
"I cannot do it to her," I whimpered.
I could feel him leaving me. I cried out, but he would not answer, and my loins began to weep copiously. Frantic with fear that I had lost him forever, I rushed forward and joined the others.
"That is better," he laughed as the girls moved away to let me lower my lips to the good Mother's flesh.
"Forgive me," I whispered miserably, and it seemed to me, at that instant, that the pit opened and I began my fall into the blackness of hell. Never was that fall to end. I just seemed to drop away and away through the void of nothingness to the end of ends, the infinity of hopelessness for the damned.
How I hated to defile her. Baalberith could read my thoughts and thought but little of them.
"What makes you think she has never frigged herself?" he snorted. "She does not even have her maidenhead. She probably uses her candle each night."
I do not know what a maidenhead even looks like! my mind answered, for we no longer needed to converse aloud.
"There, at the back of her hole, foolish one," he laughed. "You never saw a cavern like that on a virgin.
Why, as much as you have screwed around, you have not gotten one tenth that bit, yet!"
Baalberith! I pleaded silently, I do not want to know!
The others were keeping the old woman pinned down and as they pushed in around me, I moved away, glad to let someone else take a turn with her. Her screams filled me with terror, but the alternative to what I had done was worse for I could not live without my lover.
The nuns who had sat with her in the pews were too frightened to come forward and try to save her. Instead, they cowered in the corner saying their Ave Maria's in fear and trembling. A pox on them! Might their souls rot in hell along with mine!
The priest, in the meantime, was pacing back and forth sliding his hand up and down his cudgel. When he became too greatly inflamed, he pulled one girl away by the hair and rammed his cock into her mouth. Then he handed her a goblet to catch his come and began sawing himself into her suctioning lips.
He was very close to release when he caught sight of the Good Mother's privates and suddenly felt the need to impale her.
"It is time for her to receive the benediction," he said and hurrying down to her he squatted between her legs.
"You are now receiving the blessing," he intoned as he slipped his cock into her cove.
Lifting her bottom up onto his knees, he drove himself straight and true into her belly.
"From the Father," he said and slowly withdrew.
"From the Son," he groaned and he slammed into her again and forced himself to draw away.
"And the Holy Ghost," he wailed. "Ohh, my God!"
He fell over on top of her as his body jerked wildly about. Her own stance was stoic, her face pained. As he pulled quickly away from her and jumped to his feet, I could see relief flooding into her face.
The father now looked beyond his years as he paced nervously back and forth.
"A phallus!" he cried. "We need a phallus for our worship for I cannot continue to take it from forty women like this! Help me, O' Master of Darkness!"
As he spoke the words, I chanced to glance up at the altar and saw a thick white candle, mounted on a pedestal of the same size. It was as big around as a woman's fist and the word phallus awakened my eyes and my mind. Hurrying forward, I pulled the candle and holder down from the altar.
"It is too big!" someone cried.
"It is no bigger than my Baalberith!" I lied, and the eyes of the sisters were open wide with awe.
"It is perfect," the father decided. "Now first let us give the Reverend Mother her full measure of pleasure."
I grabbed up the candle and turned, but in the few seconds since the priest left her, she had managed to scramble to her feet and escape. She was not to be found. I sought her, but she had managed to lead all of her remaining flock to safety. There was not a robed nun left in the sanctuary.
"Let her suffer!" Father Louis cried. "It is more fitting!" And for Mother St. Colombe, I was glad.
With her and the unpossessed's departure, however, went the last shred of our inhibitions, though I doubt that any save I had suffered from the oppression of shame. Now that the unpossessed had quit the place, my body surged with fire, just as my brain filled with excitement at the atrocities we were committing against the Lord. To sin but a little brings shame and disgrace, to completely repel the Lord with such blasphemies as were performed this night caused the very blood to tingle with an unholy excitation. No more did I hold back. Now I wanted to rub my body against the sacred objects, to anoint this holy place with my unholy juices.
I stood there, grazing my fingers back and forth over my feverish nether lips, keeping the ache from becoming a pain while I awaited inspiration. I watched the other women and heard their screams as they impaled themselves upon the enormous candle. The priest stood before them, allowing them only to kiss his own phallus as each of them finished. His organ shivered violently with each touch.
Others rubbed themselves with holy relics or performed Lesbian acts upon the altar. I watched, but nothing they did was vile enough nor horrible enough to suit my purpose. Baalberith was here, I knew, waiting to see if I was worthy of him. I was frantic with indecision.
Taking the steep stairs three at a time, I raced to the balcony and the railing, from which I could see the Christ hanging far below. The loft was very high, and I was not certain I would have the courage to let myself over the side.
The fire in my loins and the fever in my brain made all things possible, I discovered, for soon I was over that railing with one foot resting down upon the shoulder of the Lord.
"I shall be worthy!" I promised Baalberith.
I let myself down slowly, clinging to the wall as best I could. I could hear the shouts of the others as they looked up and saw me preparing to perform such a sacrilege. I brought the second foot down to his shoulder and then I lowered myself until I was straddling him.
As I began the lewd movements, the women below began the chant of the Black Mass, and I closed my eyes and knew that I was pleasing my lover greatly.
I continued until the chant began to die, and then I realized I would have to go further with my desecration. Pulling away from his face, I lowered first one leg and then the other until I could slide down the length of his body to straddle him completely, my arms clinging to his neck. Slowly I worked to this end.
Again I began the lascivious rhythm, but my body filled with an awesome kind of ecstasy until, for a time, I felt that I was making love to the King of Kings. I clung to him, the tears of happiness rolling down my cheeks as I pressed my lips to his.
"Take me," I pleaded, and he looked down into my eyes with such compassion I could have cried.
The fire within my body began to swell and as I pressed hotly against the cool marble of his mercy, I felt my loins scream out their ardor, and then they burst into a million tiny bolts of lightning that shot out through every pore of my body.
At that instant, his dear sweet head-the head I clung to in my desperate need-cracked! As I scrambled to grasp the cross behind him, the head rolled off his shoulders and crashed to the floor far below. I had killed my Saviour!
Ten
I am told that I clung to the statue, my body paralyzed with fear and shock. The Reverend Mother and her assistants found me there some time later, and with much effort pulled me back up to the loft.
I should have died. How I wished it could have been the Lord's will to have let me go, for my life could have been spared only as further punishment for my terrible transgressions. I remembered none of it. I could not remember anything whatever for several days. Severe fevers tortured my body, and I raved like a mad woman for hours.
When the fog finally began to lift, things had changed considerably, for I found myself strapped to a cot in the infirmary. The pungent odors of freshly cut herbs greeted my nostrils. The linens were fresh and carefully arranged, and there were clean-shaven, neatly frocked priests scurrying in and out of the room.
I could move neither my arms nor my legs. I found I had been firmly lashed. I was, however, able to move my head about, and I quickly took advantage of this fact. I discovered that the room was lined with cots, each containing a nun or novitiate tied as I was. On the floor, between the cots, were urns containing hot coals and herbs that gave up their healing magic in clouds of white smoke.
Though I felt a fraility and feebleness of body, the change in my circumstance and the sight of the strange priests and stranger rituals all combined to tweak my curiosity. It was refreshing to be able to be curious again.
"Madeline," I called to my friend who was several cots away.
She turned her head listlessly and I called again. "Madeline!"
"Who calls?" she asked despondently. "It is I-Angela," I answered impatiently. "What is happening? "
Her head turned toward me but her eyes were vacant. Just looking at her face sent a stab of pain through me.
"I know not," she whispered listlessly, "nor do I care."
There was no reaching her. Teeth clenched together to force back the hurt, I turned my head away and stared up at the ceiling while I pondered her words and considered what to do next.
For the moment, at least, I was not possessed. My loins were not racked with unholy fires; my thoughts were totally lucid. In the past I would have risen from my litter and, rejoicing, helped to care for the others, for when those times came, we all believed that my trial had ended. Knowledge was no longer wanting. I knew I could not be forgiven my hideous crimes. I knew that the Devil's fire would return anew. I could only treasure the moments of respite that had been granted and ask no more.
While I brooded over this sorry state of affairs, a young deacon slipped quietly into the room and went about from bed to bed, searching for the ones whose voices had alerted him. I was not conscious of his presence, however, until he spoke.
"Who is it?" he asked finally, and his words jerked me from my reverie.
"I am awake," I told him. "I am Angela."
"To whom were you speaking?" he asked in a pleasant and gentle manner.
"To Madeline," I told him, nodding my head in her direction. "I tried, but I cannot arouse her enough to get any sense out of her. Who are you? What are you doing here?"
"We have come to help in your hour of trial," he answered. "You are fully conscious are you not?"
When I nodded that this was true, he became agitated with excitement.
"And were you not the first taken ill?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," I whispered meekly. "My shame is very great."
"Have hope, sister," he exclaimed. "Now I must call my Prior. He will wish to question you now that you are able."
He turned and hurried away but he was gone such a short time, I scarcely had a moment to consider what was to come, before the Prior, accompanied by Mother St. Colombe, hurried into the dispensary. I was too ashamed to face her. With a heavy heart, I turned my head away.
"You can see that the poor child still has memory and conscience," the good mother whispered gently. "What a pity you did not come at the beginning."
The Prior nodded thoughtfully.
"It is not too late. We may still have hope," he intoned. "The Lord knows all and can accomplish all if we but put ourselves in his hands. We shall pray diligently and apply to our pharmacopoeia our most persistent efforts. Do you wish to return to the grace of the Lord, my child?"
My head spun about to face him, my eyes brimming with tears.
"How could the Lord forgive the transgressions which I have committed against him? " I asked. "My soul is tortured with shame."
"How can he forgive any of the sins of mortal flesh since most are committed knowingly and with callous indifference?" he countered.
"Many miracles have been wrought here these past few days," the good mother said. "We may have real reason to be hopeful. I do not minimize the sins for which you must find atonement, Sister Angela, but your adversary was far stronger than any one mortal and too evil for you to have coped with alone. We are not meant to understand the reason. It is enough that we can hope for an end to it. When you are stronger, Father Belem can prescribe prayers and fasts and flagellations that shall bring you back into the fold."
Could it be true? Could there be any possible hope for me after the vile sins I had committed. I stared up into her compassion-filled eyes and I dared to hope. For the first time in many weeks, the heavy weight that had lain across my heart began to lift and my heart swelled with expectation.
My body responded to their promise, too. Within days I was up and about, more than anxious to begin the strict regimen they had spoken of. Though they warned me of possible relapses if I began before my strength had sufficiently returned, I was anxious to protect myself with the physic of their rituals before Baalberith could again strike me down. Alone, I was too weak to fight him. With them and with their secret powers, perhaps salvation was still possible.
On the sixth day after what I liked to think of as my reawakening, the Prior presented me with the little black bag containing my flagellant, a small whip of knotted ropes. At the same time, he handed me a nosegay of strong herbs to hang on the lintel of my room.
"First we will cleanse the room in which you must hide yourself," the Prior explained.
Calling up four priests to guard me, he led the way down the narrow maze of halls to the room that had been chosen for my private struggle. He sprinkled holy water as he walked before us. One priest guarded me on either side while one walked to the front and another to the rear. In this manner, they protected me on all sides as we walked, all reciting the long form of the Rosary in a slow, solemn chant.
When we reached the appointed place, the Prior took up his bag of pharmacopoeia and entered the room while the five of us continued with the chant. Strange smells and unusual sounds came from the room as he worked, and once I could have sworn I heard Baalberith curse aloud.
Finally, all was in readiness and I was called upon to enter and kneel before the crucifix. The smell of herbs was overpowering! My mind reeled with the heady, almost giddy feeling the odors raised in me.
I did not complain. Whatever the price, it was nothing to the hell I would suffer were we not successful in this endeavor. With the healing balm of my Saviour's grace in my heart, I began my prayers with fervor and determination.
"Whip yourself only as the last act of the night and the first act of the morning," he warned.
I nodded that I understood.
"Only the backside and never hard enough to draw blood," he went on.
Again I indicated my understanding.
"Bread and water will be left in the hall at sunup and sundown," he intoned mechanically.
I agreed.
"You will not reach for them until the last sound of your servant has disappeared, for you are neither to speak to nor to look at nor listen to anyone until you have returned to the fold of believers."
It was a small price to pay for atonement. Gladly I submitted to it and thanked him for the chance to prove myself.
"I will come for you in one week," he promised. "You have seven days and seven nights to find your way back through the Valley of the Shadow of Darkness."
"My rosary and my crucifix will guide me," I told him.
I was left alone. The utter and complete quiet was almost deafening. It had been a long time since Loudun had been a quiet, contemplative place. In fear and trembling, I began my vigil of humiliation.
For three days and three nights I continued in the ritual of prayer and fasting. Although I flagellated myself vigorously, I could not feel that my Lord was near. There was no spiritual communion, and I often despaired that I would ever again know the happiness of his love.
Then, on the fourth day, Baalberith began whispering vile suggestions to me through the small aperture at the top of the outer wall.
"Come lie with me," he called. "I shall kiss your sweetmeats and make your loins weep with joy!"
"Go away!" I cried. "I wish only to return to my Saviour."
His vile, sneering laughter filled the room. Then he repeated his lewd invitations again and again, each plea more sensual and wanton than the last.
"Let me tickle your cunny, Angela," he laughed merrily. "We shall run naked to the pond and frisk about in the water. You need a good fucking this day!"
"No," I whispered and tried to block the sound from my ears with the palms of my hands.
"You want my cock in you, Angela," he snorted. "Nobody ever enjoyed a good jigging like my Angela!"
"Never!" I screamed trying to drown out his voice with my own.
'Think before you cry out your disgust and loathing," he warned sharply. "Can you really live without my staff to comfort you? Can you exist without your lips molded tightly around the head of my prick while your mouth siphons off my juices?"
"Baalberith!" I moaned. "Please! For God's sake!"
"Already your loins are filled with the milk of desire," he hissed. "Your breasts are hard with need, your nipples bunched and waiting for my kisses."
"I want no part-" I whimperingly began.
"No part, no! All is what you want, Angela. You want all of me and all that I can give you."
"Oh, God! Save me!" I wailed, for I knew that never again would I be given the choice of rising up to meet my
Maker or sinking down into the pit of Hell.
My loins burned with need for my lover. My heart cried for the Lord, and my brain went numb and would take no part in the struggle.
"I want to be goodness and light," I whined.
"You want a dark hole and a black finger to frig you," he retorted.
Please, Lord, I prayed silently, give me some sign-some small sign that you are with me in this. Give me hope to strengthen my flagging resolve, faith to fight off the terrible fires that threaten to consume me! I beg thee, divine light, beseeching in the name of the Holy Mother.
I was ashamed for having to ask; yet, when the answer failed to materialize, I tasted the cup of bitterness. After a time, I knew my fate was sealed, my future doomed, for I was not big enough nor pure enough to fight the battle without His help. My sorrow was great.
"Come to me, Angela," Baalberith ordered.
"I come," I whispered with sickened resignation. "Do not foresake me, my lover. Do not desert me when I need you."
He only laughed. "Whoever heard of the Devil neglecting one of his children. Never, Angela. Never!"
All pretense vanished when hope dissolved. I lay in my cell titillating my flesh with my own fingers. Baalberith no longer came to me. I no longer cared. There was little that he could do that I could not do to myself with the help of my few meager belongings.
I did not rise from my litter either to make water or to relieve myself but lay where I was, groveling in my own filth. The sooner I could die, the sooner I would find release, and that was all I longed for.
Only rarely did I crest, for I rubbed at my privates so continually that they were very sore. If ever there was a lamb forsaken, it was I. Even my pride had deserted me.
Yet-and this was the most horrible part of it-my mind did not fully retreat but seemed to set on the ledge of my tiny window sill and stare mournfully down at me.
When, several days later, Mother St. Colombe stepped into my cell, I knew it was she. Even worse, I knew, after but a moment, that the man with her was Nikos Elytis.
My soul cried out with shame and embarrassment, but I could not stop my lewd rubbing even long enough to cover myself.
"She was the first attacked," Mother St. Colombe said. "They put her away for seven days of prayer and fasting so that she could atone for her sins. When they went back, she was like this."
"I see," his deeply compassionate voice answered, "and she is the one who spoke of knowing me as a young girl?" he asked.
"Yes," she answered. "She has suffered terribly. At least she is out of it and knows not what she does."
I turned my head away as a tear slid down my cheek.
Nikos caught that tear with his finger and flicked it from my flesh.
"She suffers deeply still, poor lass," he whispered. "You mean she knows what she is doing and still keeps--? "
"Madame," the Greek's voice interrupted gently, "she is a sick woman. Please. I must examine her now."
He did not remember me, perhaps, yet everywhere he touched me made me wild: with excitement. Although he remained gentle but impersonal, my flesh responded passionately.
"Ohhh!" I whimpered.
He opened my mouth but neither his lips nor his tongue caressed my hungering flesh. His hands molded my breasts until I moaned with ecstasy, yet he moved away as though he had touched nothing. When his palms settled against my inner thighs, spreading me open before him, I could bear no more, for I was rolling with desire.
"Impale me," I pleaded. "Drive your staff deep into my belly! Swive me to the core of my belly!"
His finger pressed against my nether lips causing a flood of wildfire to wash over me. Then he rolled them open and just stood there, peering into my cunt with an emotionless stare as I died with desire for him.
"Ram it in," I begged shamelessly. "For God's sake, at least frig me a little, you bastard!"
His eyes filled with pain at the coarseness of my words, and he turned loose of my cunny and moved away.
"I am sorry, Angela," he whispered. "I know how difficult it is for you to be touched. I shall try not to bother you any more than absolutely necessary."
"You frigid heathen!" I spat but the look of finality in his eye told me I was only further humiliating myself. I would get no relief from him.
In despair, I turned my head away from him. So beautiful! The man was exquisitely proportioned, yet he was like ice. How cruel God was to put such a tempter upon the earth if he could not give him a bit of fire along with the handsome face and god-like body.
His hand felt of my brow and the fever and dampness there told him of my need for him. His touch only intensified that need.
If I could get my hands and my lips upon his prick for but a moment, I could melt that mountain of ice! I thought.
"Can you help her?'" Mother St. Colombe asked the doctor as they stepped into the hall.
They walked away from my room so that I could not hear his reply. Rapidly, my mind sank back to my burning loins and soon I was lost in the miserably hellish world of sensation.
Eleven
For days, I lost all track of time. I dreamed-I embellished those dreams with my vile manipulations, and that was all there was to my world. The sensations were bland-even painful. Soon even the dreams all ran together.
Baalberith plagued me with sweet whispering, but he could no longer coax even a pallid crest from my body. Only the thought of the Greek doctor could carry me over the hump to release.
How I ravished his body with my mind! A dozen times each day or more I stripped him mentally and played sweet music upon his pipe. I dreamed of the good doctor doing things to me that he had probably never dreamed of doing to any woman, but finally I could crest only when he was physically present where I could look at him. I would lay in my humiliation and cry out for the sight of him hour after hour.
He came often. He was gentle and kind, even throwing a coverlet over me that I might hide beneath it, for I worked my flesh feverishly whenever he was about. I was grievously ashamed, but I could in no way stop myself.
Many days I could not even speak with him, and though the tears might flow I could but lay mute, answering none of his queries. On such days he was patient and understanding, and he always stayed with me for a time, even though I was unable to communicate.
Other days I was better, and we could speak of this thing that possessed me. Although I could hope for myself only rarely, I was always most anxious to help the doctor in any way since he promised that my answers might one day assist him in helping others. To have any part in something worthwhile seemed more than I could have hoped for. Yet at other times I not only hoped for the return to grace but even thought I knew the path.
"Baalberith has lost much of his hold over me," I told Nikos one afternoon.
"And how can you think this?" he wanted to know.
"I do not even think of him any more," I said. "It is only you that I dream of now, Nikos. You are the only one that can get-me-"
He closed his eyes for a moment as I spoke, and slowly he shook his head.
"Nikos," I blurted out the words. "If you would but lie with me once I could give him up forever."
"Stop it," he whispered without opening his eyes. "You are sick, Sister Angela. I cannot help you-not in the way that you ask."
His eyelids slowly raised then, and he stared down at me with pained compassion flooding over his face.
"I am sorry that I denied you love's first kiss so long ago. It is too late to undo it now, but I did think of you often and wish that I had not been afraid. I want you to know this, Sister Angela."
"Why did you push me away?" I whined.
He smiled. "It was no more than I have just told you," he said. "I was simply afraid. Everyone is afraid at some time. You were afraid of rejection, yet afraid you would miss life altogether if you did not rush out and catch it up when your chance came. I was afraid of experimenting with emotions so powerful. Everyone is afraid of something.
"But you are still afraid," I told him.
"No," he answered. "I must refuse you now because you are sick, Sister Angela. It would not be fair, for otherwise you would not ask it of me."
"I am not sick," I argued. "I am possessed, and I could rid myself of the Devil's brand if you would only help me."
"It would accomplish nothing but more evil," he told me.
I stared at him incredulously. "You are mad!" I snapped.
"I have given the Pope my word that I will never touch a servant of God except to examine and to treat," he said.
'Then treat me," I begged. "For as surely as I breathe, that is the treatment I need from you, Nikos."
While I fretted and fumed, Dr. Nikos Elytis called in an assistant and, in his presence, examined me.
"Your flesh has been cut," he said sternly.
"Baalberith has been cruel to me," I answered.
"Baalberith, balls!" he snapped. "You've been using that damnable flagellant on your genitals!"
I laughed at him. "You know full well that I am too weak to rise from my litter. How could I beat myself-and why? Am I not long since past salvation?
"You have whipped your membranes," he said with a shudder.
"Rub salve into them, Nikos. Frig me a little, please?" He got to his feet quickly then and backed toward the doorway.
"I shall look in upon you again this afternoon," he promised. "Try to rest if you can."
"Get out, you bastard!" I hissed. "Who needs you? Go frig yourself! Infidel! Pig! Unclean! Unclean!"
He fled from my tirade, and I rolled onto my belly and cried. How I hated the man! He was cold and unfeeling. He was not human. Oh, God, how beautiful he was to look upon and how hard it was not to feel the love those arms could give.
I lay there, heaping abuses upon him when, for the first time in weeks, I heard Baalberith call to me.
"Angela!" he said, speaking my name sharply, for I was quite vocal in the agony of my tears.
"What?" I snapped back. "What do you want after all this time?"
"What time?" he demanded. "You have not called me, or I would have answered."
"Answer, yes!" I grumbled. "And what help is that to me? You will not come and lie with me and make it good for me as it once was. You only speak to me and float about up there in the air. That is as good as deserting me, and I hate you for it!"
"And now you are going to let the Greek walk away, too?" he demanded.
"I do not care," I answered listlessly. "I really do not care what happens to me any longer."
"Make him suffer, Angela," he hissed.
"I have little control over him as you can see," I said. "It does not matter one way or the other."
"You have control if you will but use it," he told me. "You can make him suffer, and suffer he should! You have the right to call for a Sabbat, Angela. You can demand that he be made to suffer at a Sabbat."
"A Sabbat?" I asked for I knew only vaguely of what he spoke. "Is that not a gathering of witches?"
"Certainly," he said. "But what is a witch but a woman who has made a pact with the Devil. The pact is always sealed by the Devil's seed filling the woman's belly. You have sealed the bargain. You neglected only to make the bargain to begin with, for all you have ever asked for is that my staff fill you."
"I am a witch?" I asked incredulously.
"You are a witch for the asking," he told me.
"And I could conjure up men to diddle me and young women to kiss the fever from my loins?" I had to know.
"Certainly, Angela," he answered. "You have suffered for naught, only because you did not ask. It will mean only that you can no longer call me your lover, but this means little to you now."
"It means nothing," I agreed. "I could force the. Greek doctor to love me?"
"Even that."
"How?" I demanded.
"By ordering a Sabbat be held where you can show Lucifer himself how fully you are committed to his worship. If you make powerful enough magic, even the Greek can be yours.
"I call up a Sabbat!" I answered. "In the name of Satan, I demand my right to a Sabbat this very night!"
Baalberith nodded his approval, and then he began to dissolve.
"Tell the women," he called. "They will want to join you. Find Father Louis, who is locked in a cell in the dungeon. Release him that he may lead you."
I shall show the Greek! I thought triumphantly, and when I looked about the room, I saw my surroundings for the first time in many weeks. I had no idea of where I was, so little attention had I devoted to my environs these past weeks. As my head began to clear, I felt the painful ache in my loins begin to subside, and gradually I was freed from its all-consuming demands. I arose from my litter and moved to the bars that held me prisoner. I had not realized until now that I was a prisoner, and yet the clang of the shutting of those bars was a sound that had become most familiar to me.
"Help me!" I cried and a novitiate came quickly from down the hall.
"You are all right?" she asked, surprised that I no longer lay upon the floor performing my vile manipulations.
"Please," I whimpered, and before I could catch myself, I reeled back, faint from having been so long abed.
Quickly she unlocked the door and entered. She could not know of my great determination to be shed of this place. Though dazed, I sprang at her with such force that it caught both of us off guard. We staggered, and then I rolled away from her, and she tumbled to the floor. I threw myself through the open door and slammed it shut behind me. Leaning heavily against it for a moment, I caught my breath before I was able to go on.
It took a couple of moments reflection before I could even decide what I should do. I was in the lower chambers where I had never before ventured. There were no windows. The only air came through the tiny apertures of air shafts opening far above. The only light came from one torch on the wall and a lantern upon the landing. Was this, then, the dungeon which Baalberith had mentioned?
I moved stealthily from door to door seeing only the slack forms of emaciated women huddling in each cell. I must look much like them, I thought, for I had lost much weight and my arms seemed little more than the thinnest skin covering my bones.
"Father Louis," I whispered through one barred door when I could not be sure whether the huddled flesh in the corner belonged to man or woman.
"Who rails me?" his quavering voice answered and the flesh in the corner came alive.
"Angela, former woman of Baalberith," I whispered. "I am commanded to free you so that you may lead us to a Sabbat. I call for the Sabbat this night for it is my Satanic right!"
I thought I had whispered these words with the utmost caution, but my smallest voice carried to the far corners of every cell. The inmates came immediately alive clamoring for attention.
"Free us!" a woman cried. "We. too, must attend the Sabbat.'"
"The Sabbat!" cried another. "Lead us there quick." Each cell had a separate key dangling from a large iron ring that hung far to the side of the doorway. One by one I freed the lather and ail the women, for so I had been commanded by my lover.
The effort cost me dearly. It was accomplished only with much physical labor, and I was exceedingly weak.
When it was finished, we started up the dank, narrow stairway behind Father Louis. There were already a sizable number-at least ten or twelve.
"The infirmary," I called to the father. "Many more will be awaiting us there."
He nodded and turned right at the top of the stair. He must have known of the dungeon before; he knew his directions when he left that horrible place.
He was staggering with such exaggeration by now that I scarcely saw how he could hope to continue. As we neared the large double doors, two of us hurried on ahead to open them for him.
"You are called forth to a Sabbat!" he cried. "Shake off your torpor. Follow me and the Angel of Darkness will give you strength. We will go into the fields and worship the black Cod tonight!"
From bed after bed the women rose and the nurses and priests could do little to dissuade them. Their pallid faces were flushed with excitement, their eyes glowing with that very special, unholy light. Many were weak and shaken but they came.
When Nikos heard of it and rushed up to put a stop to the foolishness, even he was powerless to deter them as there were now some twenty to twenty-five women weaving precariously behind the mad priest as they marched down the hall. One woman had grabbed up a torch and she waved it about dangerously as the Greek doctor neared.
"Where do you think you are going'. '" he demanded of the priest.
"We go forth to worship our God, the black God of Sin," Father Louis answered.
"They are all possessed!" warned one of the priests. "The ties are too strong, Doctor Elytis. If we do not run, we will all be pulled into the pit with them."
"Nonsense!" the Greek cried back. "They are sick, the poor devils. Now help me get them back into their beds."
"No!" cried the deacons, "We must all pray for our own souls now!"
Pleading with the mad priest, Nikos was carried along in the surging sea of flesh as the processing flowed out of the convent and through the huge gates that had so long protected it.
Twelve
It was just after sundown when we flooded out onto the. dirt road. The women's cries and unearthly cackles filled me with an excitement and an almost superhuman strength. This night I was sure I could do anything asked of me.
"Sabbat! Sabbat!" they shouted as they milled about waiting for Father Louis to lead them forward.
We were dressed in flimsy night sacks, most of us, for that was all that was allowed in either the infirmary or the dungeon. Already, there was a sharpness in the air, a chilled hint of the cold that would come once the night had taken full command.
Father Louis looked one way and then the other, faltering only a moment before choosing the downward path into the forest east of the town of Loudun. It would mean passing through the village itself, but no one seemed to care. We met an old man staggering toward us and though he was very drunk, he turned and came along with us.
The bells of the chapel began to ring for the Vesper service but no heart among us was stirred by fte holy timbre this night. In saner days I had loved the Vespers call for it was always my favorite part of the day.
"'Sister Angela!" came an agitated cry, and I looked up and saw Nikos trotting alongside me. Peering into my eyes, he stopped, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me vigorously.
"Wake up, Sister Angela!" he pleaded. "Just this once more, come awake! I badly need your help."
"Help?" I asked incredulously. "You want ME to help you?"
"Yes!" he exclaimed. "You must get them hack inside the convent wall. They will follow you." I laughed at him.
"They are following me!" I boasted. "I would not help you even if I could, infidel. That is not the purpose, my Nikos. That is not the purpose at all!"
"They will only spread it. It will make things worse," he warned.
"Nothing could be worse than what has already been," I told him. "It shall be better, for I no longer have to beg for the attention I need."
His perplexed frown got no sympathy from me. I brushed him aside and ran forward to walk with Father Louis. Let the Greek see me at the very head of the crowd, helping to lead the others. It was my Sabbat. He would soon learn the purpose for which I had demanded it. I belong with Father Louis, directing and leading the others forward.
Even before we came to the village we added to our ranks all manner of human flotsom. Drunks, derelicts, midwives, harlots-all the dissatisfied and lost welcomed the diversions and were welcomed by us. All had heard of the lewd rituals of Sabbat. All were anxious to witness one.
As we passed through the town, many others joined our ranks. A gravedigger with a coffin on his cart turned and followed; a pimple-faced boy who had been peeking into a window while deep in his pants pocket he worked his flesh; two painted women walking the streets, and a man who had been talking to them when the procession came along. These and many, many more joined with us until there must have been nearly a hundred souls.
Already my feverish sisters were teasing all the available male flesh they could lay hands to. Housewives along the way screamed at the sight of women in nightdresses leading men along by their swollen dirks. Shutters slammed, and daughters were snatched in from the doorways.
A farmer with a cart loaded with wine joined in our merriment, even to making his entire stock of wine freely available to us.
Although I would have liked to have taunted the flesh of my beautiful Greek, I made no move to touch him. I would first earn the right to command him. Then I would order him punished, and when he had paid a sufficient price for having so long refused me, I would command him to make love to me for the rest of his life. When Father Louis began to whimper, I pleasured his flesh instead as we walked toward the deep forest.
Nikos Elytis did not leave us. I was certain he would not. He was totally committed to watching over us and protecting us from some imaginary ill. He was frantic over the growing size of the crowd. He moved from patient to patient trying to reason with each of us. He talked to the ones who had joined us. It was useless. It was not a time of reason.
Drunken fathers and mothers dragged their children along with them, and their childish cries rose up and mingled with the madness filling the night. It grew very dark. Torches were cut and lit, and when we came to a clearing that seemed to satisfy Father Louis, wood was quickly gathered and two huge bonfires ignited. Against the firelight, our bodies cast eerie shadows against the huge elms.
"I want to be a witch!" cried an old crone. "Look here, Father! I am a midwife. I have brought a stillborn infant which I snatched from a woman's belly less than an hour past. Make me a witch!"
"Go home!" I could hear Nikos' voice pleading. "It is madness!"
"Be that baby's corpse a male or a female?" Father Louis was asking.
"A male, and I suffocated it myself!" she screeched.
Father Louis had climbed up onto an old tree stump between the two fires and now he raised his arms high over his head.
"This is the altar to the black God of Sin!" he cried. "Lay your sins before him that he might judge your true worth!"
The stump was a large one with thick roots twisting out in all directions and the congregation scrambled up onto these roots to begin all manner of vile and loathsome demonstrations. They bared their bodies and manipulated their private flesh as openly and wantonly as possible. They united two by two and four by four in seas of surging, rolling flesh. Men filled the bellies of strange women; women made love to women and men to men. A young girl sobbed piteously as her father pumped his feverish flesh into her body.
And through it all, Nikos is raged, attempting vainly to end the nightmare that surrounded him. Finally I saw him stagger away from the firelight and sink by the trunk of an old elm.
"Soon, my love," I whispered, "you will be my lover, my property, my slave!"
I turned and made my way through the tight pack of flesh surrounding Father Louis, Climbing up onto tin-stump with him, I stood for a few moments watching tin-perversions of my fellow inmates. The sight of mouths slobbering feverishly over the private flesh of both men and women greatly fired my own desires. My loins burned as I watched the slow steady grinding of one woman's pudendum against the fur-lined flesh of her partner.
A painted trollop and a freshly shorn nun worked themselves together in just such a manner, their breasts rolling together as they stood outlined against the firelight. Their stance was grotesque, with their knees strained out and away and their loins arched abnormally forward. They clung with shaking frenzy to each other's rumps, the whore cursing with passion, the nun praying for release.
I watched them and I wanted my Greek! My weeping flesh burned for the touch of his fingers, his cock, his lips. Even the thought of the tongue slithering up the length of me brought a shower of sensation. Unconsciously, my hand sought out the hardened flesh of Father Louis, and I began working it with feverish fingers.
"Get on your knees," he groaned. "Worship the staff of Satan's emissary."
"Not unless you promise me the Greek," I said. "This Sabbat has been called for me. The object is to bind the
Greek to me with bonds of the strongest iron. Can you do this?"
"I can if you will first anoint my pikestaff," he groaned.
"It is as good as done," I whispered and falling to my knees, I pulled his small, partially erect organ to my lips and took it in.
I did not tease his flesh as Baalberith had taught me, for the man was old and needed much friction to reach the appointed plateau. Accordingly, I ground my teeth down upon his sponginess and began to suck immediately. He groaned with appreciation and stretched out his hands to the writhing congregation.
"Ahh!" he called in a quavering voice. "Satan's children. Worship him! Worship him!"
His words incited them, and I could hear their groans and moans increase in volume as the priest continued his incantations. My lips and my tongue inspired him, my frenzied ministrations filled him with excitement.
He began to ask aloud the evil blessing of Satan Himself:
"Father of darkness who lives within us all, give unto each of us our innermost desire. Fill our bodies will voluptua and our minds with triumph over our enemy. Release us from the bonds of decency and the ties of conscience for this world is hell enough without our adding our own condemnation. Free us from all the bonds other than our tie to you who gives us ecstasy. Let our lives be lived in that state of ecstasy, our triumphs the climaxes of that excitement. We are your children, your incubus and succubus, we are your slaves. We ask only that you keep our excitements ever fresh, putting your lewdest whims into our minds that we might carry out your desire. Life is this earth, this body, this excitement. May we try it all, pleasuring ourselves to the utmost for there is no more. Amen."
"Amen!" came the chorus of reply.
"Bite me," he groaned.
I clamped my teeth down upon him.
"Harder!" he cried, and I increased my grip until my jaw ached with the effort before I felt him stiffen and knew that his time had arrived.
"Eeii!" he wailed, and a thin stream of come shot into my mouth in short quick spurts.
I have earned the Greek! I thought, with such a tremendous surge of excitement that my own loins exploded and I had to grab at my crotch and hang on for dear life.
The crest that pounded through my body was all-encompassing and it throbbed out its passion from my fingers to my toes with almost the same wild spasming I felt in my loins. It left me so surprised and so weak that I fell forward and huddled there, panting heavily, for several minutes.
"Where is the one you want?" Father Louis was finally able to ask, and weakly I pointed to the handsome young man huddled beneath the tree at the edge of the clearing.
Father Louis lowered himself onto the stump beside me and called to two of his flock.
"Sisters. You over there. Come here," he commanded.
Two women, their bodies still loosely entwined, lay panting as they looked up at him.
"Us?" one asked finally.
"You," he answered sternly.
Still breathing heavily, they pulled themselves to their feet and came forward. They were both naked, one plump with pendulous breasts, while the other was older, more deeply wrinkled and very thin. She had no more than prunes for breasts but they had been sucked with such voracity that they were pointed grotesquely forward, their flesh still glistening with saliva.
"Bring me that man who sits over there!" he commanded and, pointing at the tree where Nikos sat, he added: "Do not let him get away, and you may both come afterward and lay with me."
"Yes, Father!" the fat one exclaimed. "I will!"
"You both will," he corrected.
"Yes, Father," the skinny one answered and, turning toward the Greek, she fairly preened as she bounded giddily forward. She looked like a jackass convinced she was a gazelle.
"And what is your desire with this young man?" he asked me while we waited.
"First he must be punished,"! said.
"Shall I have them cut off his pikestaff?"
"NO!" I gasped. "No, Father. I wish only to teach him a lesson. I have need of that staff of his. It would be enough if you were to poke his ass a bit."
Father Louis shivered at the suggestion. A frown furrowed his brow as he tried to weigh the erotic delights of all possibilities.
"I had promised the two women," he said, mulling his thoughts aloud more than arguing with me. "I am not a young man any more, but I should surely like to try on that Greek before I did."
"Then it is now or never, Father," I said. "For after he is punished properly, he is to be mine for the eternity. Baalberith himself promised him to me. There are men enough to bugger him if you do not have the stomach for it."
"It is only when done by many that it could possibly be a punishment, child," he cautioned. "There are few delights to compare with a stout prick pounding away in one's backside. To be a trial, it must be done roughly and so often that it causes great pain."
"That is the way it must be, then," I told him.
We watched the two women arguing and tugging at Nikos as they tried to pull him to his feet, but together they were no match for his stubbornness.
"Here, you!" the priest grumbled, and two stout lads jumped to attention.
He hastened them off to help bring back the resisting Greek.
"Handsome lads, eh?" he said with a twinkle.
"Sturdy peasant stock, I should gather," I answered, for though they were robust in frame and fair of face, they had not the polish nor the beauty of my Nikos.
In but a few moments, the farm lads had returned with the defiant young doctor and the two eager women.
"Leave me go, you fools!" Nikos cried as he struggled fiercely with the larger young man.
"What would you have?" asked the other of Father Louis.
"He is to be punished," the priest intoned. "He must feel the wrath of Satan's own club. You will hold him while I bugger him, lads. Then you must have a poke at him yourselves for he must be greatly humiliated."
"Ho!" cried the bigger lad. "I figger that a pretty game for other than the-likes of me, but punishment, now! That's a different tune! Think we could give him a hand, Billy Boy?"
The smaller boy's face was hotly flushed as he nodded in mute assent. He looked at the Greek for a moment as though he was seeing him for the first time. Then he and the larger boy grabbed the young doctor and with the help of the women, ripped the clothes from his body. For the first time, I saw his golden body. Surely there was never another so beautiful.
A look of distaste and revulsion filled Nikos' face as Father Louis rubbed his spongy poker up and down his crack. That look filled me with excitement. Nikos did not find pleasure in what the priest was about to do. He hated it! He loathed the very thought of what they were about to do to him, and his disgust seeped from every pore of his body. I knew then for certain that I had chosen right in naming this particular punishment.
Father Louis was becoming very excited, his pole hardening with youthful vigor, yet though he handled the young doctor's jewels with the most erotic caresses imaginable, he could not arouse the struggling Greek. Nikos' beautiful big dong hung loose and disinterested through all of the priest's foreplay.
"Bend him over," he ordered, and the peasant boys, who were wildly excited by this time, hastened to comply.
With a shaky groan of sensations Father Louis rammed his saber home.
"Ahh!" he sighed as his belly and thighs snubbed up tightly against the Greek's ass.
Nikos Elytis let out a scream of expletives, but his body stiffened and his struggles stilled. Once the priest pushed his pikestaff into the young man's bowel, any movement at all brought a flood of pain.
The priest began sawing in and out of his rectum, wheezing and panting for air between his moans of delight. The doctor's eyes were closed, his brow furrowed deeply with pain, but his jaw remained tightly clamped. His treasure showed not an ounce of excitement.
"Get him up!" the priest grunted and the smaller restrained by the two women.
While one held me tightly pinned to her, the other calmed me with caressing fingers and though my eyes hungered for the victim, my body responded passionately to their manipulations. Nikos was my stimulus, the women's fingers only pacifying my loins until I could claim him for my own.
His face was contorted with fear and disgust. His body strained to be free, and his taut, bulging muscles tensed so violently against them thrilled me to the very core. Yet, even the slurping, drooling mouth of the impassioned peasant could not arouse him.
Could he be impotent? I wondered.
Even the thought caused me much apprehension and pain. To what worse hell could my God sentence me than to a life of loving an impotent man? Could it be fright alone that kept his staff limp and useless? The intensity of his struggle was apparent in every line of his face and limb of his body. It was quite possible but how could I know for certain? If only he would look around him, surely the sights and sound-the wild wails of passion and smells of ecstasy would arouse him.
The congregation had worked itself into a frenzied pitch of erotic activity. Most had reached the easy orgasms quickly and were now having to go farther and deeper, and harder and wilder to reach the desired level of excitement. I was above them now, for I had floated over the one, unexpected crest, and had been riding the waves of excitation ever since. Frequently, I pushed the woman's hand from my groin, allowing myself to coast along in blissful ecstasy. This is what the sight of my love did for me. When the woman replaced her hand with burning, wet lips and a quivering tongue, my soul and my brain were still full with Nikos.
The old priest was pounding hotly into his backside with no sign that he would ever finish. One farm lad clung to his thighs, his lips wrapped around the huge limp muscle. The boy's cheeks were drawn sharply in as he siphoned frantically. Yet, in the dozen or so minutes he had been at it, he had raised not a tremor of excitement from the organ of my love.
"Let me!" I pleaded. "I can do it! Let me!"
I could scarcely hear my own voice. The wails and unearthly clamoring of the celebrants had become deafening in volume and wild in intent. I looked up and, against the thin sliver of moon, I saw the outline of a woman squatting over the open coffin perched high on the gravedigger's cart. Her pale, emaciated body was so cadaver-like in the cold moonlight, I could not guess whether she was using the body within the coffin or whether she might even be that body itself come back to life for the one night of madness.
The feeling of exhilaration swept over me once again, and my strength seemed as the strength of ten. With a quick jerk and a push, I freed myself of the two women commanded to hold me.
I rushed toward Nikos just as the old priest stiffened into an epileptic seizure of release.
The peasant waiting his turn was so anxious that when he pulled the old man away, his come was still spurting. With one long lunge, the peasant rammed his thick cudgel into the Greek's bowel. This time, Nikos could not remain silent. His cry of pain rose over the madness and bedlam of the night.
I tried to pull the second peasant away from my beloved's staff, but he cuffed me smartly and sent me sprawling. I rolled quickly onto my hands and knees and returned for more. Again and again he cuffed me, turning away as easily as though I were a small child. Only his brother's passionate wail of release could draw him away from the Greek's cock. Then, scrambling to his feet, he unplugged his brother from the young doctor's gut and poked in his own pikestaff.
Nikos' legs buckled, and only the peasant's grip about his belly kept him from toppling over. It didn't matter. The second his staff was free, I claimed it.
"Oh, beautiful organ," I whispered reverently.
I held the thick, limp organ adoringly in the palms of my hands, giving praise and loud thanksgiving to my black God. How I idolized that muscle, raining thousands of little nibbling kisses across his flesh. It glistened still with the peasant's saliva. Now I would add my own.
"Let the strength of Satan himself flow through his treasure!" I cried. "Impassion him! Impassion him!"
My kisses became slower and more ecstatic, my lips open and trailing my own juices. A shining river of ardor flowed down across his flesh. I massaged his bag, rolling his balls about compulsively between my fingers. His poker remained limp and useless.
One after another, they took him. His groans became more agonized and his balls were drenched with blood. His organ still could not be aroused.
I was frantic. My fingers worked deep and hard in the swollen membranes of my own aching flesh.
"Impassion him!" I pleaded over and over.
From the moment I first laid hand to him, my own ardor was on the very edge of release. I hung there for long, breathtaking moments, yet I could not make it over that last small hump. The longer I hung there, the more frantic I became.
Was this to be my eternal sentence? I wondered helplessly. To hand here a mere stroke from liberation, tied to him with no more than the bonds of my need. God, what a hideous prospect to contemplate.
The longer and more frantic I became, the more I was conscious of my surroundings. I knew that at least ten men had dumped their seed into his bowel by now. I could even hear shouting and screams in the background. I was losing the confident, delicious sense of voluptua.
"You promised," I whimpered. "Oh, Baalberith, you bastard!"
The shouts grew louder, nearer, more insistent. I opened my eyes and looked around. The clearing was filling with the King's men, their clubs swinging. Behind them came the black-robed nuns of Loudun and then much of the populace of the township. They were pulling the celebrants apart one by one. My last chance with Nikos Elytis was over. It was too late.
Jumping to my feet, I searched frantically this way and that. I knew not which way I should go or why. Then I saw the knife stuck in a peasant's waistband. Grabbing it away from him with one quick jerk, I turned back to my unwilling lover.
"It is useless!" I screeched. "I shall pluck it from you-cut the imperfection from your body. God, that I could take my own!"
