Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 AUTHOR'S NOTE =============

   This has been sitting on my hard drive for a couple of years: a prologue
for the follow-up to a previous erotic novel.  I've done scads of work on
the body of the novel, but never been happy with the direction it took. 
One day I plan to revisit it, do major surgery, and finish the thing...in
the meantime I hope this will be a better home for the prologue than an
unvisited corner of my hard drive :-)

   =============

   (PROLOGUE TO AN UNFINISHED NOVEL)

   The priest turned the crystal skull in his hand, considering the sparks
that glittered in the artefact's rainbow depths.  "When I look into this
thing," he said, "it makes me wish I could go back and sacrifice her all
over again." He shook his head.  "If only I could have drunk the girl's
last moments myself, instead of sucking her into this machine."

   "It was worth it, my delight." The priestess offered him a jeweled
goblet and a smile.  "We have power, because we have her mind."

   The priest nodded graciously and accepted the libation.  "Only her mind,
though.  It hardly seems enough." He took a swallow of red wine.  It was
heavy and cloying, but he pointedly refrained from licking its sweet
residue from his lips.

   The priestess caressed the droplets away, then her tongue flicked out
and lapped the purple stain from her fingertips.  "The mind is enough for
now.  It would be simple enough to obtain a fresh body from the clone
tanks, if you feel the need."

   The Priest regarded her indulgently from under his cowl.  "Cloning makes
things so easy, doesn't it?  But it wouldn't be the same."

   "Not as much fun, you mean?"

   He smiled back at his dark-robed lover.  "Definitely not as much fun. 
And we uphold ancient traditions, winning our sacrifices by guile and
force. So much more satisfactory than simply having them delivered."

   "Still, the girl got too close for comfort last time.  The other way
would be safer."

   The priest scowled.  "We dealt with her though, didn't we?"

   "You dealt with her beautifully, my darling.  But the girl will be
snooping around, sooner or later.  Sooner, probably.  A whisper in the
right ear might delay her re-introduction, but not indefinitely."

   The priest shrugged.  "The sooner the better.  That's the whole point of
what we're doing."

   "But she discovered so much--"

   "She discovered nothing." He moved the crystalline skull in the
sunlight, admiring the glitter of electronics that came from its depths. 
"We have her memories.  Everything she found out is locked in here.  When
she comes back, I will take great pleasure in reminding her, in the most
intimate and forcible terms imaginable, of the rules of this game we play.
Of who takes the role of the cat, and who the mouse."

   He glanced over at the wooden cage in which they'd held the intruder
during her last few days, and then at the whipping post where she'd begged
so prettily, and writhed so pleasingly.  The memory brought a surge of
desire to his loins.  "Fetch the temple slave, would you, my precious
darling?"

   "Of course, my sweet delight."

   The priestess vanished in a swish of silken robes and a slapping of
sandals on stone.  Then came the music of a key turning in a well-oiled
lock, and the clanking of iron bolts, and then his lover returned, leading
the slave girl by a chain leashed to her collar.

   The captive had no name.  The priest avoided giving such things to such
chattels: to name them was to humanize them and his purpose was the
opposite of that.  The girl's only clothing was a ragged tunic that did
nothing to preserve her modesty or conceal the painful thinness of her
limbs.  Her dark hair was matted, and dark rings of fatigue encircled her
huge eyes.  She was unshod, as befitted her station, and the mark of
enslavement was stamped clearly across the tendons of one bare foot.

   The priest spent a few moments enjoying her with his eyes, and then
began the ritual.  "What are you?"

   The slave girl's eyes remained submissively downcast, fixed on the stone
flagstones.  Her voice was barely more than a whisper as she repeated the
accustomed responses.  "I am the temple slave, O Master."

   "And what is your purpose?"

   "To offer my body and my blood and my soul in the service of the
temple."

   "And in what manner shall this be done?"

   "In whatever manner the priesthood may choose, O Master."

   "Your offer of sacrifice is acceptable." The priest fell silent, pacing
around the girl.  No matter which aspect he chose for his examination, his
possession was equally lovely.  From the front, he could relish the defeat
in her downcast eyes, and the way the threadbare shift failed to conceal
her breasts or her sex.  Moving to her left, there was the sweetness of her
profile, and the way the fabric of her shift gathered at her waist,
cascading across her hips to end in a ragged silken waterfall above the
taut hollows of her thighs.  He took another step, to where he could
appreciate the plunging rear neckline, revealing the sculpted shoulder
blades challenging the smooth glory of her skin, the promise of her dimpled
ass cheeks and her long, slender legs.  The priest smirked to himself
because now he would prove himself holy indeed, by performing the miracle
of improving on perfection.

   "Remove your garment."

   Iron shackles clinked as the girl lifted her manacled wrists, shifting
the cold unyielding chains that ran to her steel collar.  Her fingers
trembled as they unlaced the cords that crossed her gaunt shoulders.  The
shift slid to the ground, a loosely woven wisp that barely concealed the
tattooed skin of her left foot.

   She stepped clear instantly, to be completely naked.  The Priest nodded
his approval.  He had trained his temple slave well.

   He turned away from the girl.  "Unleash her wrists, and place her on the
machine."

   The Priestess moved to obey, opening her robe to reveal the key that
hung between her luscious breasts.  The Priest flicked his attention
between woman and girl, enjoying the contrast between them: the Priestess's
sleek curves, obscured beneath her flowing robe, and the emaciated body of
the slave, bathed in the light of a pitiless sun.

   He watched as the Priestess unlocked the girl's manacles and jerked her
collar chain, urging her towards the instrument of torture.  It was a
device of the Priest's own design: a sturdy oaken post with a crossbeam
that could be raised and lowered.  The Priestess took the girls shoulders
and arranged her with her back against the upright, and then extended the
slave's arms outwards, chaining her wrists so that she was spread-eagled
across the beam.

   Then, she started to turn the complex gearing that worked the machine.

   The temple slave rose to her balls of her feet as the crosspiece
ascended, and the Priest admired the way the cord-like muscles of her
calves showed themselves as she strained to raise herself.  There wasn't so
much as an ounce of excess fat on he: nothing to hide the whipcord tendons
of her limbs.  The only succulence left to her was in her breasts,
preserved by genetic tweaking in the lab where she was made.  The beam rose
until the girl was scrabbling with her toes against the flagstones,
whimpering as she tried to find some purchase to ease the weight on her
arms and shoulders.

   To satisfy his curiosity, the priest had tried the device himself once.
He'd stretched his arms out and grasped the shackles and then lifted his
feet from the ground, as if crucified.  It had felt as if his shoulders
were being torn apart by hot pincers, as if his lungs were being squeezed
by iron claws.  He'd borne it for perhaps two seconds.

   He didn't have the advantages that the slave girl had, though.  He'd
been burdened with free will, and the ability to let himself loose.

   Watching her, he gave a secret smile.  It was always the same: this
desperate dance by which she sought to delay the shock of free suspension.
It was always hopeless.  The slave's arms were stretched tauter, now, and
her small, malnourished breasts were lifted clear of the bony ribcage and
into a paradoxically proud form that pleased him greatly.  His eyes scanned
back and forward, relishing the elegant compound curves formed by the
girl's breasts, armpits and triceps as the machine stretched and displayed
her naked flesh.

   The inevitable moment came, when the slave's toes no longer reached the
ground.  Instantly, she pushed her ankles back, forcing them against either
side of the upright in a vain attempt to support her weight.

   The Priest always made sure the oaken post was slick with oil, precisely
to thwart any such efforts.  The girl's heels almost caught for a moment,
but then they slid down, defeated by the polished timber.

   "We should increase her ration, perhaps," he said to the Priestess.

   "If you think it wise, my darling."

   "Yes.  I like them lean, of course, but a little more meat on this one's
breasts and hips wouldn't go amiss."

   "Then I shall do as you say.  Perhaps I should also work her in the
fields, to make sure the rest of her doesn't run to fat."

   "Small risk of that," the Priest said with a smile, thinking of the tiny
and infrequent food portion that was allowed the temple slave.  "But do as
you think best.  The nourishment of her body is in your hands, as the
acquisition of her soul is in mine."

   "Thank you, my sweetest delight," said the Priestess.

   By now, the air was whistling from the slave girl's lungs in short,
desperate wheezes, and the tendons of her shoulders and outstretched arms
were straining in sharp relief and writhing like snakes.

   She tried to grasp the oak with her heels again.  The Priest had little
patience with such tricks, and he went to the post and struck the fronts of
her thighs with his riding crop, adding a fresh red weal to the collection
of darker, faded welts that already adorned the girl.

   She barely yelped, which showed that the beam was doing its job: as well
as the torture of constriction and suspension, the victim's own weight made
it almost impossible for her to breath.

   Her limbs continued to tremble, but there was no further sign of
disobedience.  The closeness of the whip saw to that.  The slave kept her
heels motionless against the upright, with her knees slightly bent and her
toes pointed down, precisely as he'd trained her.

   The Priest reached down and brushed his fingers along the top of her
foot, tracing the lines of the character that was tattooed there, and
pressing his thumbnail into the point where the iron spike would go, if
this were a real crucifixion.

   His gaze traveled up from her feet to her face.  The whites of the
girl's eyes were fluttering inside her head, and her teeth were clenched
against the pain.  She was panting--or whimpering, more like--in a
desperate straining for air.  He thought back to his own experiment on the
cross and wondered how she felt: were her wrists hurting more, or her
shoulders?  Or would the chief agony come from the fire in her lungs?

   For a moment, he wished things were different, and there was some way
for him to truly know her suffering.

   But that was impossible.  Such an experience could only come to those
granted the honor of enslavement and abuse.  The girl was blessed beyond
the lot of mortal female, even if her own blindness kept her from
appreciating the privilege of pain.

   He summoned the Priestess and slipped her robe from her shoulders, and
they sank to the floor at the foot of the cross.  The Priest contrived
their descent so that he lay on his back, with his lover straddling him. 
His cock was stiff and throbbing from the blessed sight of the slave's
torment.  The Priestess had been watching avidly, too: she was already
willing and wet.  As his cock slid into the woman's warm, tight pussy, the
Priest turned his head so that he could see the suspended body of his
slave, outstretched against the sky like a sacrificed goddess.
   (c) 2007 Han Li Thorn www.hanlithorn.com