Feature Writer: Unknown /
Feature Title: Sacrament /
Story Codes: this story contains sadism, masochism, Religious imagery and connotations. It refers to child abuse and abortion. The queasy may wish to look elsewhere for their erotica. /
Sacrament
She was young, and slight. Green eyes, amber hair in a tight bun. Pale skin. A body shaped by famine and cheap food. She liked the sameness of the maid’s uniform she wore, didn’t mind wearing clothing with its shapeless, formless lines. She thought it would hide her from those who had temptations of the flesh.
She knew that its thick polyester would never inspire sensuality in her own skin, she knew she would be safe from that inside the uncomfortable confines of her utilitarian uniform. She had three that she wore in rotation, each week another would come back from the uniform service having been scrubbed clean of the wine stains, bouillabaisse, cherry tart sauce that would baptize her on her nightly rounds.
She often wished that she could include herself in the plastic bag, get sent to the cleaners, and returned so free of blemish. She knew, though, that she was more stained than that. That nothing could free her from her sin, except constant vigilance. She did not want to slip into the dark abyss which she felt waiting for her. She thought about it nearly all the time – every step of lonely labor was another reminder of the fight she had to conduct each night.=
“Angelina?” came a voice from behind her. She looked up, clearing out of her eyes a single curl of amber locks that had escaped her tight bun. It was Hathaway, the service manager. She felt cold fear seize her throat.
The matronly woman was holding a nearly full trashcan.
“You didn’t empty this. Room 213.”
Her eyes cast down to the wastebasket.
She couldn’t remember even seeing it. It was filled with various plastic wrap printed in different colors, each one showing lurid graphics. There were a few used condom wrappers visible on top, and their discarded skins filled with pearlescent fluid also visible. She visibly shuddered, but did not let her voice show her fear. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry. I’ll empty it right now.”
Like an automaton she took the trash bin and upended it into her own, larger basket. The rubbish fell out in several loud clumps, the fluttering sound of a magazine coming out last. Her eyes were drawn to the pictures held open by the discarded beer cans.
There was a porn magazine, laying open in the trash, clearly showing a young woman tied to a bed, being beaten by another woman and a man with a black mask and something black strapped onto his penis to make it stand out straight.
She shuddered to herself in that moment, but wordlessly kept moving down the hallway. She didn’t acknowledge the burning eyes of her matronly supervisor, whose frown bespoke volumes – almost as much as her silence.
She reached up and absently touched the ring on a chain around her neck.
She still wore the engagement ring that Charles had given her. She still wore the little silver heart, locked into place on a necklace she always wore, which was the first gift he had ever given her. She wore them less for fond memories and more as an acknowledged badge of failure – of sin.
Inside the heart were all the memories of Charles from the first day he kissed her until the day she came back from the abortion clinic and he left her. She did not allow herself to long for him. She knew that it was sinful to do so. Still, there were times alone in her room at night she would find herself thinking of him, of when he would take her so forcefully, without regard to her pleas that it wasn’t right. She knew it was evil of her to want that again, and she knew that God had taken Charles away because she hadn’t shown the strength she should have with him and his desires.
Still, those images crept back to her brain, and she found herself wondering things like whether the ropes tying the woman to the bed would hurt. Whether that poor, nameless woman could breathe with a man’s penis thrust into her mouth. Whether she was being forced to do those things, or had done them willingly. She squeezed her key-bearing hand, and put her hand to the gold cross her mother had given her, the one that hung next to the little heart-lock.
She went mechanically through her work, until she saw a man walking down the hallway, passing her, looking at her with a kind of curious smile on his face. His face was beautiful, saintly. For a second she found herself wondering if it were God looking at her through him.
And then he was passed, and she noticed a ring on his finger, a ring with a cross, a ring just like the ring of a priest. Her eyes followed him down the hall until he got to a doorway farther down the hall.
He went in and closed the door, then opened the door once again and hung something on the handle, a “do not disturb” sign she thought.
As she cleaned the next room, she found herself wondering about this man who wore a priest’s ring. She shivered to herself as she wondered whether this man was a priest. Perhaps he would talk to her, comfort her in her inner struggle, if he only knew.
She moved mechanically through the next room to clean, just doing her job. When she walked back to the trashcan, the magazine was still there. She found her hands moving of their own accord, moving to pick up the magazine, to look at it more closely. She thumbed through the pictures, watching the scenes change, in each a woman of a different body style, or skin color was being tied up in various positions and used roughly.
She gasped when she came to the layout when a woman dressed as a nun (surely not a Sister for real) was kneeling in front of a man dressed as a priest, receiving hits from a many-tailed whip. She shuddered and threw the magazine away from her as if it had suddenly caught fire. She turned to rush back into the corridor, slamming the door, forgetting to vacuum the room, just wanting to get away from herself.
She had to lean against the wall, feeling tears rushing to her eyes. She moved down the hall, looking for Hathaway, who had obviously gone on to other floors looking for other maids. She moved to the door that the priest had gone through, knocking on it without thinking. She noticed the sign on the door was “Need Maid Service Immediately.”
It was just when that door opened that she realized the number of the room – 213.
Then the priest was there, his smile there, God smiling to her through him. All of her fear and sadness washed away in the man’s gaze. “Oh good, you’re here. I was hoping you’d knock.” The man said softly.
“Forgive me for disturbing you Father, but…” She felt fear seize her heart. Surely that magazine was not his magazine, the condoms not his? Surely not.
He smiled. “No disturbance. I needed some more towels. But I’m a little concerned about you! You look like a ghost. Please come in.”
She walked in and sat on the bed, looking at him, unsure. He sat down next to her, taking her hand in his. “I’m no longer a priest, my dear. I left the priesthood a few years ago. I’m a counselor, however, if you need to talk.”
She nodded slowly. “Father, I…” His voice was calm, solicitous. “Call me Brian.” She nodded again. “Brian, I feel like… maybe you’ll think this silly, but…I feel as though I’m surrounded by demons.”
He listened, his face unchanging. “Why do you feel this way?” She spoke quietly. “Because I have very impure thoughts. Because I know what is sinful, and yet I do it anyway.”
She looked around the room. She had seen the large leather briefcase before, it had been locked when she’d cleaned the room before. Maybe she missed the wastebasket the day before? Surely that filthy, sinful trash was not his?
Brian nodded, softly. “You don’t feel you can share these feelings with your priest?”
She shook her head ‘no.’ “I try to tell him in confession, but I don’t – I can’t seem to even speak of it in the house of God.”
His face was full of compassion. “I understand. There are some things, which are terrible burdens, so terrible that we think even God doesn’t wish to have them. If I were still a priest, I would offer you confession right here, right now…but…”
Her face changed, her eyes becoming pleading, her mouth open a little. “But?” she asked quietly.
“But I can’t. I’m not even sure it would be efficacious.”
She looked at him. “Why did you leave the priesthood, Fath…Brian?”
He sighed deeply. He turned his head and stared out the window into the endless night.
“I lost my faith, basically. I was a counselor for the local hospital emergency room. I found so many who had been badly used, who had been cut, beaten, wounded. I found so many who were lost, and no one wanted to hear that God could help them. My faith left me when a young woman I was counseling ended up dead in an alleyway, after all my prayers and help. I feel like God is no longer watching us in this world, that we must call out to him, and even then he doesn’t hear.”
She couldn’t help but shudder in fear, hearing those words. “I – I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You are like a ray of sunshine to me. You hold out hope that there are others who have the faith that I lost.”
His arms embraced her softly, she fell to him, found that her tears were already streaming down her cheeks, feeling a terrible weight on her shoulders. And a revulsion as she felt her body responding to his warm, strong touch.
She started to stand. “I think I need to go.”
“No confession for you then?” He asked quietly.
She looked at him. “I thought you said…”
He shrugged. “I’m not a priest, but I’m still Catholic. If you wanted to confess to me, I don’t see the harm. It’s the least I can do.”
She nodded. “Wh-what do I do?”
He smiled. “In absence of a confessional, in the old days they used to kneel. But you don’t…”
She sank to her knees in front of him.
“Bless me… Brian, for I have sinned. It’s been three weeks since my last confession.”
He nodded softly. “Do you have something you want to get off your chest?”
She turned away from him, even though he had taken her hand again. “I have impure thoughts. I want to do things. I want what was once before.”
“What thoughts? what things?” His voice was soft, eliciting her calm.
She took a deep breath, let it out, then said “My old fiancée…Charles…used to use me sexually.”
Brian nodded. “How?”
“He would tie me to the bed and… rape me.” She stifled a sob in her voice.
“Rape you?” He murmured.
“I promise you, I knew it was evil. I didn’t let him. He did it even though I hated it.” Her words were spilling out now.
“And you find yourself wanting this now?” He asked quietly.
She paused, swallowed. “I want it now. I find myself thinking about it. And Father?”
“Yes, child?”
“I found myself looking at a pornographic magazine just a little while ago. You may have seen it in the trash here.”
“What were you thinking when you were looking at the magazine?” Her face burned, but she knew she had to confess to all that she had done.
“I was thinking that I would like to be her, Father.”
“Who?”
“The woman in the pictures.”
“The one who was restrained and used sexually?”
“Yes.”
“What is your name, child?”
“Angelina, Father.”
“Angelina, you are beautiful to me. I do not think you are sinful.”
“You don’t?”
“I think you can overcome your sin.”
“How, Father?”
“I will be glad to administer your penance. But I want your assurance that it is what you want.”
She hung her head low. She breathed in deeply. Then she turned to him, looking up into his eyes, his beautiful saintly, beatific eyes.
“I will submit to whatever you prescribe, Father.”
He stepped over to the briefcase, unlatched it, and put it down on the bed. “Even if I use these to administer it?”
Her eyes found what he was showing her. She looked at the heavy leather paddle, the scourge, the leather cuffs there. She knew what he would do with them. She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes. She hung her head low.
“Yes, Father.”
“Very well. Return to me after your chores are done. If you truly wish to be cleansed, you will be here then. Depart in peace and pray for your soul.”
Still looking at the briefcase, she nodded, stood up, stifled a “Thank you” and rushed out.
xxxxx
He couldn’t bring himself to pray anymore, and the only feelings he could feel were under very extreme circumstances. He knew where to get that – a woman named Olivia he’d counseled at the emergency room had wanted to repay him for his kindness after he had interceded for a lover of hers – a young girl afraid, having broken her arm in extremely strange circumstances.
He still remembered what it was like to go to this woman’s apartment, the long conversations with Olivia that led to him willingly shedding his clothes and submitting to her whips and paddles.
At first he was ashamed at his response to the treatment, but then realized that somewhere in all of the ritual, of being bound and forced to submit to the lash, to the paddle, to the indignity of anal penetration that somewhere in all of that there was a sacrament of sorts – an outward sign of an inward grace. From Olivia’s tutelage he had come to know a kind of peace, even if his faith was utterly crushed. Perhaps God would forgive him if he gave this peace to another.
xxxxx
It was late when she was done, close to midnight. She had pulled laundry duty and was running thousands of white tablecloths through the massive washers and dryers in the basement of the hotel. She almost just went home, as she did every night, but she could not find her way around the thoughts of what awaited her behind the door of room 213.
And yet she just carried on as if nothing was different, as if she weren’t going to do anything out of the ordinary that evening. When she was finally off work, she just let her legs carry her to the room. Off-duty now, her overcoat over her maid’s uniform, she didn’t even pause as she knocked.
Brian opened the door, let her into the room. She caught immediately the scent of holy incense, the sound of Gregorian chants coming from a CD-player, the glow of a hundred white candles under glass making an altar of light on the desk.
“Kneel for me, please, Angelina.” He said.
Although he wore no priest’s collar, he was clothed in a dark cassock which very clearly made his role plausible. He whispered a prayer in Latin over her, dousing her in smoke from a censer.
“Remove your clothes for your penance.” She closed her eyes.
Shaking, she stood and unzipped the heavy polyester. She clawed her way out of the confining clothes and cast them down. She stood before him in just her dirty white bra (slowly falling apart from months of everyday use) and plain white cotton panties. She felt his hands pulling at the bun on her head and felt a blush of embarrassment as her amber strands fell down her back, covering her like a veil.
“The underwear too, Angelina. You must be as you will be in Heaven, before God.”
She shuddered, unable to move her fingers to the bra clasp. He reached around and twisted the clasp open, pulling her bra off. She clasped her breasts as if she were ashamed of their very existence. She felt his fingers pulling at the waistband of her panties and sliding them down to her ankles, where she unconsciously stepped out of them. Her breathing was labored, her skin flushed, her breath ragged.
She shook her head unconsciously as erotic feelings washed over her, denying herself. She felt her nipples hardening against her palms. She knelt for him and felt water splashing her as he purified her naked skin, hearing his blessing in Latin.
“Go and prostrate yourself before God on the bed, there.”
She nodded and half-walked, half-crawled to the bed, throwing herself on her stomach there, burying her head in the pillow, feeling tremendous embarrassment at her condition and shame that her body was rebelling against her and bringing out wetness between her thighs. Her young body was ripe with the scent of her work all day, her arousal. It mixed well with the incense.
xxxxx
Somehow he had known she would come to him. Somehow he knew it would be this simple. His hands did not shake, for he had done this many times with women of less faith than this one. He had worked for Olivia for many years before leaving her service, punishing debutantes whose mothers paid for their discipline, beating horny older women who could no longer find pleasure in their husband’s now-wilting penises.
But never had someone so willingly, with such grace, come to him and give herself over to his ministration. Everything about her reminded him of why he entered the priesthood. He saw that she had entered a kind of trance as she had entered the room, a holy kind of veil had fallen across her. And his movements seemed as pre-ordained as the passage of the spheres through the heavens. He let the sacrament take him, move through him.
xxxxx
She felt as if everything was happening to someone else – someone else’s arms were being affixed to leather manacles by the wrist, bound to the bed by leather cords. Someone else’s ankles were being similarly attached. She felt as if someone else was hearing the sounds of preparation, of the whoosh of a whip moving through the air near her.
The fact that she could barely move her limbs and her body only a little was more from the hypnotic effect of the chants in her ear and the smell of the incense than from the bonds themselves. She found herself wanting to cry, but clearly unable to. She just waited in silence for her penance to begin.
The first strike of the scourge was happening to someone else. The second, however, hit *her*, squarely, across her buttocks. She tensed them, feeling the sting as it brought up blood to the skin. She fought the need to cry out in pain. She knew Christ never cried out from his scourging, she must do as He did.
Another strike. Harder this time. She felt her tears brimming to the edge of her eyes. She found that she was welcoming each blow, despite the fact that she felt no less sinful than before. If anything, the recognition that the pain was making her young body react even more with wetness and sinful need made her feel like she was falling over into the blackest part of the Pit.
He was praying over her, asking God to cleanse her. He wielded the scourge with an expertise that bespoke practice. He hit her again and again. He covered her back in red mottled color, working down to just above the small of her back, and then again picking up to her buttocks and down to her thighs, where her screams began as he continued to whelm her. The stinging cords of the scourge wrapped around the delicate skin of her thighs, reaching around to her inner thighs and biting with glass-like sharpness.
Her cries brought her tears. “I’m so foul, Father. I’m so wicked. I’m so sorry…” she whimpered through each strike. Above the chanting, above the call of the whip, above her cries as he hit her, she heard him saying, “Bless you, may you find peace.” over and over again.
She couldn’t even began to ask for peace. She remembered the last time she submitted to such penance – when she was 16, and had been caught with
Charles in the living room, kissing. Her mother had beaten her with a hairbrush, naked across her lap, calling her a whore. It was only after her mother had broken the hairbrush, after she had sobbed and begged forgiveness, only after she had cuddled naked next to her loving mother’s breast did she feel redeemed, and the welts that she sat on for weeks afterward kept her on the straight and narrow.
She felt something welling up in her soul as Brian took out the large black leather-covered paddle, and began to beat her with it across her already-hurting bottom. She felt her thighs were absolutely soaked, she hoped it was from sweat and not from sinful arousal.
The third stroke of the paddle brought out a cry of “Mother!” from her lips; Brian startled, pausing, quietly. She was sobbing over and over, crying out “I’m so sorry” over and over again, twisting on the bed, a wet spot welling out on the hotel bed sheets from between her legs.
She felt something sliding between her legs. Fingers, dipping into her wetness. They were ruthless and without shame. They touched her in the way she touched herself when she was being sinful, and they brought out all the rest of her sinful memories and longings. She wept and felt her shame grow along with the evil pleasure from between her legs.
She thrashed against the pillow, fighting the inevitability of where the pleasure was taking her, feeling her sin become pleasure and pleasure become sin in a loop of repeated iterations. The fingers were relentless, and they seemed to know exactly how her body would respond.
She pulled against her bonds. Suddenly she began to push against the fingers, not caring anymore that it was evil. She wanted what they offered. Maybe peace lay on the other side of the pleasure that was building within her. Peace – or death.
She shook, and shuddered, and screamed. The chants were momentarily drowned out in her orgasm-cry. She felt her womb contracting, like she was giving birth. The cuffs felt like the restraints they had used in the clinic, she felt the ghost of stabbing pain inside of her as she had before. She wept for her aborted fetus. She wept for the pain of the pleasure she had received. She *was* a slut, not fit for Charles, not fit for anyone. She had sinned the sin of selfishness and had killed her own baby. She was going to Hell.
“P-please, Father. Please, more. Please hurt me inside.”
She wanted to hurt as much inside her sinful womb as she did in her hurt heart. She heard him slide on a rubber glove. She felt three fingers entering her…roughly, stretching her out. She felt how they were much more lubricious than they should have been, felt how more lubricant, cool and very slick, was being poured over them. She felt a fourth finger – and stabbing pain inside as she felt herself brutally entered. His priest’s ring was still on, inside the glove, scratching her.
She cried out as she felt his thumb moving into his palm, and entering her, and his whole fist pushing slowly, steadily inside her, entering her completely, filling her up. She felt the hard metal ring inside her threatening to pierce her womb. She cried out as white fire rushed through her, and pain screamed out from her unholy sex.
He twisted the fist within her. She sobbed, over and over feeling years of pain leaving her, feeling her sin finally flowing out of her, not from her tears, but from the hard cleansing fire in her loins, lifting up out of her, released into the universe.
She loved the hurt, because it was bringing her ecstasy and she felt the pure cleansing fire of God’s hate burning the sin out of her. She felt as though that fire lasted for hours, but it was in reality not very long before the gentle hand of Brian touched her neck and he told her to push him out.
She bore down, and he felt her powerful muscles moving his hand slowly out, pushing out, re-birthing herself as she did. No more tears now, just sweat and snot and pussy slime. She lay, drained now, until she felt something warm spilling onto her back, warm rain that seemed to be just like the holy water, but somehow different. Where it fell, she felt renewed and pure.
She lay, empty, still bound.
“Take, drink….this is my blood.” Brian whispered to her, and she licked his fingers clean, tasting some of the blood from her womb.
She shivered as she felt pure light fill her up. She felt blessed.
“Take, eat, for this is my body.” Brian said, and she licked his fingers clean once again, tasting his salty seed from his second baptism.
Released from her bonds, she curled into a fetal ball, and he held her against his rough wool cassock. For the first time in so long, she slept, in peace.
xxxxx
In the morning, her nakedness no longer a source of shame but now a true holy garment, she heard his voice talking to someone.
“Yes, I know it’s a change – but Episcopalian isn’t that far from Catholic. I know. Yes…I feel it true. I know that it’s not the same. Yes. But I have found something that I thought I had forever missed. John, I don’t care what I have to do. I want to be a priest.” He said quietly, his eyes smiling back at her.
She felt sanctified as he touched her now after the phone call, now, what was once unholy was now rapturous. They made love now, not as Father and supplicant, but as two lovers, reborn.
xxxxx
Many days later, he walked up the steps of the chapel at the seminary, towards the office. In the palm of his hand was a little silver heart, unlocked – a sign that he would see his sweet Angelina again. Father John asked why he had decided to seek out his vocation once more. “I was touched by an angel, I believe, Father,” he said.
THE END