by John Everson
“You are brought to Equinox by Regina, but you do not belong to Regina. You belong to us. All of us. We will use you as is our wont.”
She stepped away from him then, and Austin was embarrassed to realize he had an erection. Luckily, his jeans mostly hid the evidence. At least, that was his thought until the Irreverent Mother’s next words.
“Remove his impediments.”
At that, three nuns in black hoods and see-through vestments stepped forward from where they had stood silently behind the altar. Two flanked him on either side; the third took a position directly before him. The two grabbed him beneath the arms and drew him up to his feet. The one before him lifted his black T-shirt over his head, as the other two moved his arms to accommodate.
The shirt disappeared, and suddenly cool fingers worked at his belt. Austin didn’t know what to do. There was a ring of spectators now gathered around the altar, and he could see Regina standing off to one side watching. Her face betrayed no emotion. What was she thinking as other women disrobed him?
He couldn’t imagine. If Angie had been there, she either would have marched up and slapped the nuns out of the way, or strode angrily out of the club alone, cursing all men as pigs. Maybe both. But he had not initiated this strange attention; Regina had. He shrugged mentally. If this was what she wanted….
His jeans fell to the floor, and the nuns ran probing fingers down his bare legs. If he hadn’t been aroused before, he couldn’t help but be now. And just as he thought that, two fingers slipped between his skin and the waistband on his briefs and yanked them down.
His cock sprung out for all to see, and Austin closed his eyes for a moment, refusing to acknowledge that he stood naked and hard before his girlfriend and a room of voyeurs.
The Irreverent Mother said something. He wasn’t sure what until he opened his eyes and realized the nun before him was now kneeling. And the warmth of her mouth now engulfed him. He understood the syllables suddenly.
“Kneel and eat,” had been the words.
“Jesus,” he whispered.
“Not here,” the Irreverent Mother answered him. With two quick slaps, she hit his face on either side as the nun on her knees continued to give him a blow job.
The shock of the slaps actually made him even harder; he could feel the tip of his cock pressing against the back of the girl’s throat and the pleasure as she moved her mouth and tongue around him was more intense than almost any he’d ever known. He was naked and getting head before an audience and it was the strangest, most perverse and intense thing he’d ever experienced. Austin wasn’t sure what to do. Did he let go? Did he pull back and run for the doors?
His body answered for him.
As he began to come, his head tilted back and he moaned without thinking. And as he did, the woman behind it all chastised him.
“Did you have permission?” she asked.
He couldn’t answer, so intense was his orgasm. He could not even open his eyes.
Again the hands met his cheeks, and then he couldn’t help but meet her gaze.
She shook her head in sadness. “You will come only with our permission. Or be punished.”
The Irreverent Mother reached down and pulled at the collar of the fellating nun. She rose, and as she did, her cowl fell back, exposing a mess of blond curls.
Austin gasped. The ice-blue eyes of Brandy stared back at him. Her lips were moist, and he saw the glisten of pearl in one corner of her mouth.
His stomach contracted. He’d just gotten head from his babysitter.
She smiled faintly, and stepped back, as the Irreverent Mother stepped forward in her place. “With every pleasure, comes pain,” she announced, as much to the group as to him. “Take him to the Hall of Suffering,” she said. And at that, hands gripped his arms and the two nuns who had flanked him before pulled him forward, past the altar, and down a small stairwell on its side. They pressed him forward until he reached the last stair, and then walked into a hidden room at the bottom. Hands on his waist propelled him forward until he stood in the center of a space no larger than his bedroom. The wall before him held a giant mounted sculptured head. It was a man’s face, with pointed beard and heavy eyebrows. And protruding from its thick dark curls of hair were two ram’s horns.
He understood what the figure represented instantly. It was a giant bust of Lucifer.
“Kneel,” a voice from behind him commanded.
Someone kicked at the back of his knees, and he couldn’t help but comply.
Chapter Fifteen
“Will you accept the pleasures of Equinox?” the Irreverent Mother asked. “Say ‘I will.’”
“I will,” Austin said. His eyes could not leave the detailed carving of the Devil’s horns. How had he come to be in a situation like this? His mind reeled.
“Will you accept the punishments of Equinox?” the Irreverent Mother asked.
Austin hesitated, and a hand clenched harder on his arm.
“I will,” he said finally.
“Then your initiation begins now,” she said. The head nun stepped around those who held him to block his view of the statue. She was nearly nude now, her habit gone, leaving only chains, a shimmering black veil that hung over her shoulder to cross her hip and a headdress of black and white.
At her words, the two nuns who had held him for Brandy’s attentions gripped his shoulders and pushed him forward to a wooden cross to the left of the Devil. They made him face the cross, pressing his cheek to the center and lifting his arms until his fingers touched the wood. Then they fastened leather straps around his wrists before stepping back.
“There is only one way to understand pleasure,” the Irreverent Mother said. “And that is to feel pain.”
Something snapped behind him, and Austin struggled to turn his head to see what. But all he could see was the crowd. A mob of people had gathered behind him, forming a semicircle of bodies anxious to view whatever punishment he was about to undergo. He struggled to find Regina’s legs amid the crowd, but to no avail.
A face appeared on the other side of the cross from him. A blond girl with big blue eyes and full lips. Brandy leaned over the bar his arms were fastened to, and pressed his lips with a soft, warm, wet kiss. She was naked, her breasts smashing against the cross, and the honey-colored hair of her crotch shifting just inches away from his own.
Austin had to admit that he wanted to fuck his sometime babysitter in that moment.
That’s when the pain began.
The crack of a whip echoed through the air as a white-hot strip of pain suddenly shot down his back.
“Give…and take,” Brandy whispered on the other side of the cross, and puckered her lips into the semblance of a kiss as she stepped back. A moment later, another snap, and the whip racked his back again.
And again.
Austin jumped as it hit a fourth time. It felt as if his skin was splitting.
The whip snapped again, and he shifted, trying to avoid it, but that only meant that the leather hit his shoulder blade instead of the middle of his back. Teeth bit into the top of his ass as the leather pulled away.
“That’s enough,” he cried.
But he was instantly answered by the Irreverent Mother.
“Enough is when we say so,” she said. “How much is the ecstasy of a blow job worth in pain?”
The whip cracked again on his back. He could feel his skin burning.
“It’s a price that’s hard to quantify,” she continued. “But you will learn that even the pain can bring pleasure.”
A hand reached between his legs from behind as she said it, and fingernails trailed along the underside of his cock. He realized that even though he was being whipped, he was still half-erect. And the hand toyed with him, urging him on to more.
“Is it good?” the nun asked from somewhere behind.
The
hand slipped away, as he gasped and nodded yes.
And then the whip cracked again and drove away the pleasure of her touch with fire.
“There is not one without the other,” the Irreverent Mother said. “This is your lesson.”
And the whip cracked again, this time catching him more on the ass than the back. He jumped to the side.
“There’s no escape, only acceptance and…eventually…enjoyment.”
Austin got the kink factor but could not imagine truly enjoying being whipped.
Another crack took him in the lower back and upper thigh. And then suddenly, the two nuns who had held his arms before were there, pressing the warmth of their chests against his ribs, as they reached up to undo his bindings.
He pulled his arms out of the restraints and turned to see Brandy standing there now holding the whip. She moved her hand up and down slightly, as if getting ready for another blow. Then she laughed and leaned forward to kiss him on the lips.
As soon as her heat left his face, she dropped the leather to the floor, and disappeared into the crowd.
Austin saw Regina then, finally, standing just a few feet away next to the head nun.
“Come forward,” the nun commanded, and he moved toward Regina.
“You have taken the first step into Equinox,” the Irreverent Mother said. “But only the first. Your sponsor will take you to the next. And if you pass, we will see you again. And you will learn more of the mysteries of pleasure and pain. Only on the blade of hell can you find the heaven you seek. Only in the fall from heaven can you find the beauty of hell.”
The Irreverent Mother lifted her arms to the sky and the thin black veil slid from her shoulder so that she stood naked in the center of the mass of watchers. All of them pressed shoulder to shoulder, forming a human wall behind her.
“If you let go, you can find everything you have ever desired. But you must surrender to find the truth in flesh.”
She brought her arms down and gripped at the small chains that wreathed her body. When she pulled them, they yanked her skin up in tiny tents. The chains were hooked to her flesh with curved barbs. They cut into the skin of her belly and thighs and even her nipples and breasts, which stretched as she gripped and tortured herself with her own chains.
“We are all prisoners,” she said. “And in our chains, we find freedom.”
PART TWO
Bewitched
Chapter Sixteen
Austin couldn’t sleep. Regina lay next to him, one arm over her head, clutching at the pillow. Her mouth hung half open and let out the faintest snore. The blue LED clock said 1:17 and Austin had looked at it at least five times since they’d gone to bed an hour before.
He carefully slipped his feet out from the sheets and pushed himself out of the bed, trying not to make the mattress creak. Regina’s gentle rhythmic breathing caught for a moment and he stopped moving. But then she settled back into whatever dreamscape her mind walked through.
He tiptoed out of the room and down the hall to the stairs. Sometimes when he couldn’t sleep, he found a big glass of milk somehow worked to make him drowsy. It was worth trying, because he had to get up for work in five hours, and he really didn’t relish going in after a night of no sleep. Work was stressful enough without being wiped out at the start of the day.
Austin pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it with milk. Then he walked into the family room to sit on the couch. He clicked on the end table lamp and took a couple gulps of the cool liquid before leaning his head back on the couch cushion. There was no reason for him to be awake right now. It had been a decent day. Ceili had gone to bed around nine and hadn’t woken up since. And Regina and he had had sex, which usually sent him into a deep sleep pretty quickly. She wore him out with her energy.
Still, his mind wouldn’t shut down tonight. He tried to push thoughts of work back with memories of their last trip to Equinox over the weekend. After the shock of his first initiation night, the erotic actions of their next visit had been much easier to absorb…and enjoy. The images in his mind were scandalous, but they weren’t relaxing whatever anxiety was keeping his thoughts jumping.
Austin set the milk down after another swig. Regina’s journal was on the table next to his coaster. It was a small black book with a silver half moon stamped into the cover. He’d never really looked at it, but he saw her writing in it almost daily. She’d actually written in it tonight after Ceili had gone to bed, while he’d been sitting in the recliner reading the newspaper.
He’d asked about the book a couple weeks ago as she’d been writing and she’d only shrugged.
“I call it my Book of Shadows,” she said. “I use it to keep track of my thoughts and wishes and dreams.”
“Is there anything about me in there?”
She smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe. I do think about you.”
“But do you dream about me?” he countered.
She shut the cover of the book and set it to the side. “You are the answer to my dreams,” she pronounced. She’d gotten up then and come over to lean provocatively over his chest. She’d kissed his chin and then his lips before taking his face in her hands. “You should come upstairs,” she’d teased, and then slipped away to walk into the kitchen, turning off the lights before walking up the stairs herself.
Austin was left alone with one light on and the faint scent of lavender. He’d grinned and turned off the last light in short order to follow her up to the bedroom.
The memory made him smile, and he reached out to pick up the black book. He didn’t intend to snoop, but he did crack the book open to look at the pages. He riffled through them, noting the dense lines of script inside. Regina wrote very neatly, with all of her letters aligned in narrowly slanted loops and hooks. The words all hugged the faint guidelines on the paper, neatly staying just within the lines. Now and then he saw that she’d sketched some kind of diagram or drawing. He didn’t mean to read the script, just to leaf through the pages to get a glimpse of the contents. But then he landed on a page right at the end of the used section of the journal and stopped when a word caught his eye.
Ceili.
He didn’t want to snoop, he didn’t. He’d just wanted to sneak a peek at the pages and how much writing Regina had done, not the actual words. But once he saw his daughter’s name, he had to know. Austin held his finger on the page and opened the small book all the way. In the center of the page, with space above and below, Regina had written:
Ceili = 3 days plus Moon in Hades
There was a half moon drawn at the end of the words, and three underlines beneath his daughter’s name.
What the hell?
The text above and below didn’t help him understand the meaning any further. Just before Ceili’s name, she’d written a paragraph that sounded a lot like nonsense.
Two expand the magnitude. But one will do if needed. The seed could be snuffed by the flower, but that is a lot to hope for. There is precedent – the Sisters of Carrillon were successful with a similar attempt thirty years ago. But was their flower weaker, more easily controlled, or innately evil? The innocence of the mission is also important. We surely have that in our favor. The ceremony must be held on the equinox for complete success.
And then came the equation that included his daughter’s name.
The words that followed seemed to have been written on another day. There was a gap and Regina had written about her morning, celebrating the smell of dawn and the heavy light that slipped through the cracks in the hedge at the back of the yard.
He flipped back a page and found a series of odd symbols, and words that might have been Latin. Or Russian for all he knew. All he could confirm was that he couldn’t read them. The symbols were interesting, a mix of triangles and what looked like an eyeball shaded in with a blue pen, whereas the writing itself had been done in black. There were small number
s etched to the right of strangely shaped multi-angle boxes so that it almost looked like a high school student’s geometry homework. But the insertion of a witch’s circle suggested that this was certainly not the kind of homework you could turn in.
He leafed back and forth a few pages and shook his head. The journal was a maze of disconnected thoughts and text. In some places, Regina wrote in a poetic flow about the highlights of her day; he found a reference to him that made him smile – she had had a faint rash from his stubble that she said made her feel warm still after he’d left for work.
But then in other spots she wrote recipes that looked like a magical spell, or scribed a mix of strange words and symbols that he couldn’t decipher. On some pages, she’d written all the way around the margins as if it were important to keep all of the triangles and circles and devil’s horns and foreign words encased by one page.
He’d known that she considered herself a ‘witch’ but for the most part, he’d ignored it. He didn’t believe in witchcraft, and if she wanted to think that putting leaves and blood and chanting words over a jar accomplished some strange magical feat…let her. He’d stopped arguing with people over their religious beliefs years ago, and this felt no different. It was a little weird; Angie hadn’t had any interest in the occult or Wiccan religion. But…Angie hadn’t had sex with him every night either. Or taken him to bohemian, gothy BDSM clubs. So…comparing Regina to his late wife was kind of foolish.
He shook his head. If Regina wanted to make potions and spells, he didn’t care. Though he’d like to understand why Ceili had something to do with “a moon in Hades.”
Austin leafed backward in the journal a few pages. Many, though not all, of the entries were dated. He found one that was longer than the rest; Regina had written several paragraphs that ran over two pages, dated last month. In fact, the date was the week Angie had died.
