0 comments/ 1626 views/ 4 favorites Bless and Keep Us All Hallow's Eve By: ClodiaP Anyone who has read the essential 1926 "History of Witchcraft and Demonology," by the brilliant and tormented Augustus Montague Summers, educated at Trinity College, Oxford (a "fourth," in theology-but Oxford!), ordained a deacon and curate in 1908, but never after promoted because of accusations of Satanism-and improprieties with young boys (for which he was tried and acquitted)-will realize that if we are unaware of the presence of witches in our midst, and of their ever-present rituals, it is because our souls have not the courage to admit the truth. As a boy reared among the goodly farmers and staunch townsmen of a southern New England rural paradise, whose white steeples were sentinels above an elm-shaded village, I had no inkling of the dark inheritance of centuries that lay upon these woods, meadows, quiet homes, and barns. Ah, Holden, nestled as in the navel of our state, far—I would have insisted, then-from Salem, where, some 200 years ago—for me, it might as well have been Biblical Jerusalem-old Robert Calef recorded these proceedings: "And now Nineteen persons having been hang'd, and one prest to death, and Eight more condemned, in all Twenty and Eight, of which above a third part were Members of some of the Churches of N. England, and more than half of them of a good Conversation in general, and not one clear'd; about Fifty having confest themselves to be Witches, of which not one Executed; above an Hundred and Fifty in Prison, and Two Hundred more accused; the Special Commision of Oyer and Terminer comes to a period." If once there was a New England where on the Sabbath the preacher warned of evil, dark powers, even as he exalted virtue and salvation, well—I heard none of that at our good Congregational Church in Chaffins. Our minister was not one to alarm and awaken small boys, for I recall not one thing he said in any sermon, and, by my eighteenth year, when my story begins, I deemed him an adviser on family affairs and current events in Washington. In no case will I inform the reader of the precise year during which my soul awoke from innocence to know things scarcely imaginable. (Ah, but how well imagined by our forebears.) To but hint at given time would expose to who-knows-what-retribution some still living in our midst. And names used here are part of that discretion. It is at the end of October, when Nature festooned our town in reds, oranges, and yellows—colors no carnival might match—and the bounty of the hard-earned harvest filled every field—that this story begins. Conducting our final class of the day, Miss Clovis, the Civics teacher at our senior high school, had worked herself into a fine rapture, discoursing upon the "toleration" that characterizes New England in our day. I recall still that she said, taking a deep breath,"and so we are free! Free to worship as we wish! Live our truth! Day and night!" I confessed that I grinned. Miss Clovis was earning her nickname, "Goody Clovis," but I deemed it a fine sentiment nonetheless. I gazed as the pretty face grew radiant with passion, the full breasts in the snug yellow sweater swelled, as the young widow consecrated herself to our enlightenment. She came from a very old New England family, the Boston Clovises, and attended our fine Episcopal Church. I was nodding my approval when Paul, leaning toward me from the next desk, whispered, "Yeah, Goody better hope they tolerate her day and night!" Paul was almost 20 and so "old" and "big" for the class; except for his lessons, he knew it all—and never spoke without a certain smirk on his face. I glanced first to the front of the room, where Miss Clovis was writing on the blackboard, and muttered, "Tell me later, okay?" As I said, Paul had not passed through our Holden school system on schedule; he was about three years too old for this class. Puberty had kicked in long ago, so he was tall, with broad shoulders, a deep voice, and a mop of black hair with an oily sheen. His mouth was wide and loose and he flashed teeth over-sized and extraordinarily white. Naturally, he took neither orders nor suggestions from me, so he went on whispering: "Where do you think she'll be tonight?" "Who knows," I whispered, annoyed. "It's Halloween. Who cares?" "You want to see her tits?" We had ridden our bikes to Chaffins Pond. If my parents had known I was going to ride my bike at night-and that at 11:00 p.m. I would still be out-I could not have left the house. But "a party on Mt View Drive" and "maybe some trick-of-treating" passed muster. Tomorrow, and in days to come, I would pay the price. Just beyond the old railroad bridge, to the right, was the yellow house of the old guy who rented rowboats at Chaffin's Pond. But he did not rent them at 11:00 in the evening. I was discovering that Paul, if he didn't do so well in English and Algebra, knew a few things. We ditched our bikes in heavy shadow near the bridge. The half-dozen rowboats, pulled onto the grass beside the pond, each had a chain fastened to a stake in the ground. "What are we doing?" I asked, panicked, as I followed Paul toward the boats. I glanced up to notice one lighted window on the second floor of the little cottage. "We need a boat." "Steal it?" "Borrow it." "They're locked," I whispered hoarsely, too loudly, but with hope and relief. Alas, Paul had bent over, big shoulders hunched, both hands on the stake, and was straining. He made a slight noise, not moving, then almost fell back, holding the stake in his hands. He turned, grinned, shrugged. Then he said, softly, "Get in the boat. And shut up! Here on, shut up, Walter!" I crept back and sat in the boat's stern, he shoved off, scurrying to the middle seat, and grabbed the oars. He began to row, noiselessly, and I glanced up again at that lighted window. All quiet; couldn't be easier. I was a thief. I whispered, "Paul, I got to get home." He glanced over his shoulder once, only once, and in the shadows, his big, loose-muscled face was menacing. "Am I coming back there to shut your mouth?" "No." It was her damned chest that had gotten me into this. Miss Clovis's pretty, rounded bosom. I never, ever, had seen a "real girl" without her clothes, even her top, but there was nothing on earth, I say to you, solemnly, that I wanted more to see. The sound of the oars, pulled by Paul's powerful arms, as he bent forward and strained backward, barely reached me, but the boat shot across the pond. Once, I turned and saw, not far ahead, the black stumps of trees dotting the water. I leaned forward and whispered, "We can't get through!" "Yeah, we can. Part. Then we slog it to land." We actually were curving around behind the spit of land on which the cottage—the one we just robbed—sat. "Paul...where are we going?" I sounded reasonable, merely interested. Paul glanced up. "Just where she's going," he said. What? As he spoke, he was looking at the sky, the full moon turning his upraised face the color of milk. I tilted my head, staring up, my arms braced on the seat beside me. That...was...WHAT? It shot past, across the moon, a silhouette, and to me seemed a paper cutout zipped across the moon's face by an elastic band. I stared, seeing now only the low white disc of an autumn moon, what we called, in New England, a "Coon Moon." And then it happened again! "Shit!" I whispered, and heard my voice quiver. "What was that?" I had the urge to dive into the bottom of the boat. "What did it look like?" "Look like? A woman riding a goat! But what was it?" I saw the big shoulders shrug. "You saw it." For a few moments, the boat had been bumping against tree trunks, navigating a channel away from the pond into the dark, stagnant water, oily and whitish beneath the moon. Paul whispered, "Shove us off those stumps, if you can." With a job to do, I leaned from the stern, gripping my seat with one hand, and tussled with the slimy black trunks. Ahead, they grew thicker; now I was darting from side to side, sometimes deflecting us, sometimes not. At last, Paul shipped the oars, stepped like a dark cat to the bow, and tied the hawser round a stump. "We leave it here. Try to keep one hand on a stump. Usually the mud isn't deep, but there are holes." My whole body spoke protest, but, before I said a word, Paul said. "Shut up and stay here. I'll be back. I'm going to have a look at naked girls, really nice ones, dancing—and doing things you've never seen. Miss Clovis and girls you know. Then, I'll be back. See you." He swung a leg over and then was beside the boat, holding the gunwale, waist-deep in the autumn-chilled, slimy water. Already, he had seized a stump and was churning the still surface, moving away. He meant it! Did you ever hear, "I would do anything to see her naked?" You didn't know what it meant. I called, in a whisper, "I'm coming, wait!" I half rolled on my belly, half slid, catching myself on the side of the boat as I slipped into the water, and called in a panicked whisper, "Wait!" It was that way until shore. Paul was ahead, gaining on me; just a head, big shoulders, a back silhouetted against a moon-bright purple sky over serene Chaffins. Then, he seemed to rise, so I saw his waist, his butt. I was gasping, hauling myself through the clinging mud by my grip on the slippery trunks, terrified to be left. The loudest sound was my rasping breath. Then, the stump-pierced, dark water ahead became a rising backdrop of trees beneath a moon-bathed sky, and Paul's massive form was heaving up out of the water. A moment later, he stood, a hulking black shape, legs spread, arms crossed, waiting. "Okay," I gasped. "Okay," and my hands clutched dry grass, real land, and I was heaving on my elbows, then rolling my hips onto shore. No more questions. I was initiated. I was "in." I stood up, still breathing hard, looked at Paul. He nodded, turned, and trotted off toward the pitch-black trees. Just where we passed into the woods, he turned, said, "No more talking. No more noise. You know what happens if they catch us?" My voice, even to me, sounded small, submissive, awed: "No." "You'll be naked with'em all, and nothing you can do. Nothing." Young Goodman Brown would have prayed to his God; Augustus Summers would have prayed. I was born in a different world; we wished on falling stars and said, "Now I lay me down to sleep..." But when it came to the crunch, we knew we were on our own. No petitions to heavenly saviors. "Okay, then." And he was gone, almost vanished, among the trees. I sprinted ahead and in a moment was fending off brush, whipping branches that threatened my eyes. Ahead, I heard, "Quiet. You know what I told you?" For Halloween, it was warm; we have some chilly October nights, in Holden—frost on the pumpkin-but this was mild as a warm breath. It's a good thing, too; I was soaked, so that my dungarees squished as I walked, just keeping in sight the hunkering darkness that seemed to travel so swiftly ahead. First, I only heard. We were perhaps a quarter-mile deep in those abandoned woods, and just a mile—but a world away-from friendly Zottolli's Garage, Swenson's market, Hilda's little variety store. As though, within Holden, we had passed from the 1953 to 1792, from the good Congregational Church to that stern, oak-paneled courtroom in Salem, where grave men looked upon shivering half-stripped girls and saw only the handiwork of Satan. Voices chanting somewhere ahead, a song in words unknown, a mocking lute, lute of a satyr, urging the dance, faster, wilder... Now, Paul waited. When I came up, he looked at me, but I could not see his face in the deep shadows. Only fingers, I felt, which closed on the back of my neck, firmly—and so we moved ahead together. And now I saw, between the black boles of the trees, the glow of fire rising out of the blackness, as though some preternatural light washed the trees trunks high above us. It was silly, really, but to me so thrilling. I saw them hanging on branches; they were only white brassieres, a dozen or more, cast over limbs, one cup swinging, or panties draped on the fork of a branch. The night woods seemed decorated with lingerie. I was so young! I don't know how dumb Paul actually was, outside school, because he turned right then and grinned at me, knowing exactly what I felt and thought! The pressure was on my neck, again, and I yielded. We went down on our hands and knees, now, moving ahead. Beneath us rustled and stirred the dry leaves, with that nutty odor of autumn, but the sound of our movement was drowned out but the throbbing frenzy just ahead. Another shove, I was lying flat, belly in the warm leaves, elbows bent, my head raised a few inches. Ahead, as though I gazed across my lighted living room, I saw the scene. Surely, now, they would turn, alerted and outraged, and charge toward us, because the sound of my heart in my chest, my ears, was a roar. My face in the warm night burned. My cheeks felt stiff with the expression that jacked wide my eyes, my mouth, and dropped my chin. And beneath me, in the leaves, where my muddy dungarees pressed the earth, I felt an intolerable swelling urgency. I might have been hypnotized, I stared so. This was Halloween! I had only imagined, dreamed, and then but vaguely, the ways bare limbs, and backs, and swelling loins could move in sinuous, swaying time to the music. How what was beneath that snug yellow sweater of Miss Clovis could seem, stripped bare, so indescribably tantalizing in their full, perfect contours even as she moved here, then there, and they altered the profile of their loveliness. For a moment, I saw only her. But there were others, for now she seized their hands, whirled about them, frenzied, twisting herself to smile over a shoulder, beneath a raised arm, at their brazen beauty. And there was good gentle, shy Miss Lester-the librarian who scarcely lifted her brown eyes above her busy desk when we stamped in from the cold—who now flung back her arms, her head, and thrust forward her body as though to the mercy of the fire. In that brilliant light, her hips seemed determined to push toward that fire, until it burst into flame that curling place on her belly... And suddenly she darted almost into the flames, thrust out her belly, and gave a hoarse yell of pain, leaping back, one hand darting down to the triangle at the apex of her thighs. At the center, the fire at his back, sat a great horned apparition, the obscene goat, about whom they whirled. And yet, as I stared at him, his big hands spread on his knees, I saw, in the firelight, that the third finger of his right hand was missing. The hands moved rhythmically, in time with the hypnotic music, but the stub remained. I could think only of...of the minister of our own church, that hand... It could not be, of course, not the long legs, white and bare, the fire illuminating them up to his very belly and its huge and obscene projection...And now and then, a frenzied dancer would swoop close and deliver a slap that set the rigid reddened thing quivering. In that orgiastic glow of Satan's bonfire, each body seemed to me more madly desirable than I could have imagined Eve in the sedate Garden of Eden. When, at last, I saw "her"-not a "grown-up," once remote, now on display-but her, my older sister's shy girlfriend, pure blonde and proudly erect—not yet 20-I could bear no more. I reached out, blindly, found Paul's arm, seized it and tugged, whispering: "I'm going. I have to, Paul. I have to leave." He looked at me for a moment, as though reading a warning, and nodded. We turned in the rustling leaves, not rising, and began to move, like soldiers beneath the whining, famished shot, crawling off into the shadows. It was then I heard a shrill woman's cry of alarm, a cry that I hear now and never will cease to hear: "Look! In the woods!" We were up, then, running, Paul ahead so branches he tore past came slapping my face. I felt nothing. I had run only a few steps, but I was panting, my heart like sprinter's. Terrified to glance back, terrified not to see... I think I began sobbing... Then, in the same instant, I shot a glance at Paul, gaining distance, leaving me, and started to cry out to him. At that instant, a flying weight hit my back, clung there, and I was falling forward—shrieking in horror. The soft leaves seemed to fly up from the earth, hit my face, smothering me as would a pillow. My mind dissolved, then, in a whirlpool called horror, horror ghastly, yet without content. Only thing only penetrated my consciousness: that swift hands were tearing at my belt, ripping down my zipper, and I felt hands—how many hands?-dragging off my dungarees. I reached back frantically grabbing for them and babbling into the leaves, "No! No! Please! Oh, please!" But already fingernails raked my skin just before I felt my underwear hooked by fingers on either side, jerked down, and then my hips were heaved up as hands hauled everything off my legs and I fell back into the leaves, stark naked. I wildly sought to squirm away, working my elbows, but again the weight landed on me. I felt smooth hot skin against my own bare skin, and near my ear I heard a voice that jolted me, a shock of familiarity, the eager voice I had heard just that afternoon, saying: "Free to live! Day and night!" But now the voice was hoarse, lustful, gloating as it murmured in my ear: "Walter! I've got you, now! How you love to stare at me in class! Dirty little Walter! Look what you've got NOW!" And a hand clenched fiercely around that helplessly stiff and swollen thing that none but I ever had touched so that I shrieked into the moldy leaves. My straining arms and back gave me just enough strength to lift my face above the smothering leaves, to gasp for breath again. And I heard the other laughter, too, that crude laughter of Paul's, the dirty laughter, from somewhere away in the autumn woods. Chapter 2 In the humid, enclosing autumn woods I stood shivering. Not because I was naked and cold—the Indian summer night was mild—but with a tumult of horror and desire. Miss Clovis gripped my upper arm; I sensed another body just behind me, blocking my escape; but in any case I could not have broken free. Inches from my bare arm were Miss Clover's bare breasts that I had tried to imagine a thousand times, now pale, smooth, so full, lush-yet aloft, lifted and thrusting so that her forward red nipples might brush my arm. Barely daring to glance at her face, I yet perceived no transported, licentiousness as when she whirl round the fire; instead, her eyes seemed only preternaturally large, reflecting in their blue hints of the fire. So pale and perfect the oval of that face, framed as though virginal by the blond hair: But I had witnessed the abandoned dance round the coven's flaming pyre, the obscene thrust of her loins toward the inferno. I had to look. I could not help it. I glanced downward along her pale and rounded body and, for a moment, saw the rich patch of blondish hair at her belly's base. I jerked my gaze away, only to meet her abandoned grin. "So now you see it all, little Walter! Staring in class, day after day, devouring me with your eyes! So look! Look at it all!" With that, she fiercely gripped my hair, pushing down my face, and, at the same time, thrust out her flat belly to push forward her mound of Venus. She seized one of my hands, and clapped it flat on her fluffy bush. I jerked at my hand and whined—sobbed, I think—in denial, apology—and my whole body bent as though in retreat. Even in my agony of fear at what was to come, I felt my dreadful arousal, somewhere "down there," and could not control it, could not hide it. Her nakedness so near to me was like a narcotic, and, as she held my hand over her warm and curly belly, I lost all control. "So!" she cried, and her hand seized me, encircled me, and gave my stiff penis a fierce squeeze. For a few moments, the wanton hand rudely, roughly rode up and down me, rolling the skin over my swollen prick, jerking me. "Oh, please don't!" I begged, pulling back, even reaching down to tear away her hand. But even as I wailed, "No," I prayed for nothing more than for those pulses of thrilling pleasure to keep buiilding. Bless and Keep Us All Hallow's Eve "Go ahead!" she ordered, as on any day in class; but instinctively, now, I knew what she meant; she had divined my desire. When I hesitated, her hand seized mine and pressed it the rounded gourd of her breast. She slowly rubbed my palm round and round over her wiggling nipple. I realized that less than a minute or two had passed when she broke the trance. She shoved both my hands away and demanded, "Put on your trousers, Walter, dress yourself, now. Hurry! There, in the leaves, pick them up! Hurry, now!" I barely kept my balance as I stepped into my underwear, then my trousers; Miss Clover had to help my shaking hands get my underwear over the stiff protruding penis and fasten my belt. Hands seized my upper arms, again, and I was roughly pushed forward toward the illuminating blaze that defined the clearing against the night forest. Even as I stumbled toward it, I saw ahead that the frenzied dance of whirled on. "I can't! Miss Clovis, please! Please, no!" Now, I bent almost double in a kind of cramp of denial, hauling back against their grip. Strong hands seized both my arms, but I resisted with the strength of desperation. Abruptly something from behind me, I don't know what, swept up between my legs and slammed full force into my balls. I shrieked like a girl, wilted, and was literally dragged forward, collapsed in agony, each gasp of sobbing protest. I think I kept repeated, "My nut! Oh, my nuts!" Ahead was the clearing, the obscene goat-headed figure with his Priapus, the twisting desirable bodies. I cried out, one last time, "No!" but the hands rushed me the final steps and with a contemptuous final heave sent me sprawling into the fire-lit arena, to land flat on my face, naked above the waist. Even in my terror, I felt the heat of the fire on my bare skin. My hands, freed, shot down to cup my throbbing nuts. When hands again seized me, perhaps I fainted, or nearly so—or perhaps memory in mercy draws a curtain—but my next recollection is of standing with my wrists bound and my arms drawn up by ropes toward some frame of logs from which I hung. The fire's heat touched my back, for I faced outward to the dark wood. Before me the crazed shapes cavorted, every shape of naked womanhood: Miss Clovis, Miss Lester, my sister's friend, Geraldine... and Jane, the plump copper-haired girl we cruelly nicknamed "basketball books," shooting me a wild leer as she passed, turning for a moment to reveal her spreading, pendulous breasts with nipples three inches across, and the riot of copper-colored hair sprouted from belly glinting in the firelight...and Barbara, the quiet Swedish girl with the white-blond hair, so beautiful I failed even at fantasies about her, but naked here, her slender figure with the compact tender breasts and dots of nipples that scarcely shook as she danced, and at her belly hair so pale it disappeared against her white skin...and what others? If I wept or cried out, or if my terror was simply insupportable, it did not matter. Because it did not matter to them. I stood, lifted almost on my toes, able once again to recognize what I was seeing, to re-acquaint myself with nightmare images of what might happen to me. And yet, nothing would lessen the rigid bulge in my trousers or quell the ache the radiated from my balls up into my belly, my back. And nothing, nothing could prevent these fevered revelers from having their will of me. But..Miss Clovis had allowed me to cover myself! I, who rushed through showers after gym classes, keeping turned away from the others. Not for same as my inadequacy, but because my single striking physical attribute—noticed instantly, always, by other guys—was the hefty, outsized apparatus Nature had hung between my legs—my "junk" as we sometimes called it. It dangled like a weight, a grotesque advertisement of lust, and a target of jibes, a circle of guys pointing and making cracks, whispers to giggling girl in class, and, occasionally, sneak attack. I blush at memory of the first time that Jack, the class bully, caught me with a brisk snap of his towel, its end whipping my balls with vicious crack, so I collapsed with a clunk to my knees, grabbing at myself, then rolled over and over on the concrete floor, my face burning bright red, unable to breathe past the pain, tears flowing but not sobs. Those who surrounded me were for the most part silent, scrutinizing my face for tears. I heard someone say, "Jeez, Jack, you killed him!" And the answer: "Nah, they're okay. He's hung like a donkey." Another voice: "Let's see, Walt! Take your hands away!" I was getting to my knees, my teeth grinding at each movement. I felt mortified that I was holding myself, but mortified to let my audience see "it." My face was scrunched up against the pain. Finally, I took my hands away, not looking at the others, but terrified of another attack. A flash exploded from somewhere in the circle, and, too late, I realized that the image of my nakedness now would be public property. I whirled to seek the culprit. Another flash. My hands flying back to cover myself—and a flash to capture that. I bolted through the surrounding bodies—they let me go—ran to the bathroom and locked myself in. For months afterward, I saw those images of myself many times, emailed to me, printed and slipped into my locker, once on telephone pole near school. No a single person every mentioned them, but there was a distinctive glance of guys, and another kind of look by girls, that told me what was on their mind. Apparently, the school remained unaware, or unable to act; and I never mentioned it my parents. My friends never mentioned it to me. Gym classes concluded that year. It was over, I thought. But why had Miss Clovis first dragged off my trousers, seized me, and then permitted me to dress? It was a baffling kindness, but I thanked her—let's face it, thanked God—a dozen times, hanging helpless there, imaging what they would see—all of them—in the blaze of light—if it were not for my trousers. At that time, I did not use such words, but I will do so: At least, for all my mortifications at school, no one had seen my stiff prick, standing erect and beyond erect, arching so the swollen red head did a touchback an inch higher my navel. What would they have done then, in their jealousy or derision or cruelty? "And so have you come to witness our worship, those things never to be seen by eyes of anyone outside of the holy covenant, never to be soiled in the uncleansed mind..." I jerked my head to see. The stentorian declaration came from the head of a goat, but the voice was that of Parson Thibault—or of his stolen soul! I could have kicked myself (yes, even there) because involuntarily my glance dropped to his belly. It had not gone anywhere—the arrogant bole that rose from the spreading black undergrowth where his legs and belly joined. The goat looked down at himself, then at me. "And so you come to spy on our nakedness..." I wildly shook my head. "And the nakedness of these others..." For the first time, I noticed that it had stopped. The maddened arousing circling of the fire had stopped. It was almost silent, now, but for the snap and cackle of the fire, nights noise of the autumn woods, my own ragged breath. "No," I moaned, "No," addressing the goat but also my own terrified realization that they had gathered, all of them, the bodies of the women molded by bright and shadow, their curves and shapes stark. They watched me, those faces I had seen every day, but from which I could glance away, feign indifference-faces solemn listening to the voice. I squirmed with nervous agony, with pain that hung like weights in my scrotum, and with the tension of my swollen prick. And the goat was saying, "You were brought here this evening by one who serves the Master. Your lust is known. Each and every one of these women—his hand with the missing finger indicating the assembly—you longed have lusted for..." "No!" I cried. "I didn't know... Paul did this!" "But you lust for these..." The audience of women and girls observed in silence. "No..." The goat's voice sounded like a gong. "NO?" He turned to the women. "Who will show us what is true?" After a moment, "I will," said Barbara demurely, her eyes down cast as she spoke. Her girlish white body and golden hair, golden even the eyebrows above her wide blue eyes, her precisely closed pink lips, seemed to shelter a purity untouched by this debauched scene. "Then do so, Novice Barbara," said the solemn voice, and she stepped toward me. "No! No! No!" I repeated, hopeless, disbelieving. How could I die? Ah, but the captive hanging helpless at the fire never has the sweet choice to die, to end his pain. And nor had I. My neighbor since childhood, Barbara I still watched in awe as she merely walked the corridors of school, arm load of books gentle denting her bosom, eyes straight ahead, profile sweetly perfect. Now, she stopped before me and looked directly into my eyes. "You have lusted for me," she said evenly. She seemed to wait. Then she asked, just as calmly, "Do you lust for me? Or for any, here?" Had I said, "Yes," might I have been spared? I often have wondered. But to say even "I like you, Barb," to this goddess had been to me unthinkable all my life. Like an insult thrown at a queen. It was inevitable. I murmured, head hanging, "No, honestly. No, Barbara! Please!" Her gaze never moved from my face as her slender white hands efficiently undid my belt. Pulled open my trousers. Hooked her fingers over their top, and drew them down. If I told you what I said, I would fabricating it. My mind had dissolved, no island of solidity to retain a memory or initiate a sentence. I believe I began to weep. Perhaps I pleaded. It happened in moments. I glanced in panic as I felt my trousers pulled away, the fire's heat on the back of my legs, and saw my scrap of underwear covering the unthinkable bulge shape of my prick stretching the material. I caught Barbara's gaze, momentarily, before my eyes darted away. I caught the face of Miss Clovis, watching me intently. And I glimpsed Jane, statuesque in flames that cast deep shadows under her shelf-life breasts, each as big as a half a soccer ball against her chest. Now, her nipples were as though crumpled, squeezed and bunched so that two stiff, craggy stumps popped upward. It all took half an instant, then Barbara's fingernails were sliding on my hips, slipping inside the band of my underwear. I stared at her with eyes clouded with tears, and her beautiful eyes gazed back, rounded now, her pupils dilated to fill her eyes, her precise lips parted, chest with the sculpted marble breasts rising and falling. Her dots of nipples had become two pink pencil erasers. They slid, hooked my erect cock, flipped over it, went whisking lower and I felt my freed dick vibrate in its sudden release, the huge swollen head reared so my audience saw the contours of it dark flesh, my very slit, the achingly straining foreskin. For the first time in my young life, I hung naked for inspection by women, women naked, women free to stare, judge, laugh, do to me literally anything. I hated my lust that through the agony of embarrassment kept my ridiculously long, thick penis standing at attention. I felt no lust?!! Chapter 3 "Thank you, Novice Barbara. Kneel." She did and I saw the delicate bones of her shoulders, the head of flaxen hair bowed, the little nipples assertive still, the small hands folded as though in prayer. With abrupt violence, Pastor Thibault's big hand gripped the silken blonde hair and jerked back Barbara's head. Her lovely small face looked up at his calmly. He commanded, "Speak the truth!" She looked up at my awful, animalistic cock just above her, and said clearly: "I lust for it. I wish it. I wish it between my legs, in my mouth, my hands, thrust into me from behind. I lust for it." The goat, though now I thought of him as our minister, Parson Thibault, stood not before me, but beside me. It was the faces, the eyes, of the women that told me why. He and I, side by side, our arrant male parts compared, there, so that mine, again, was the aching object of attention, my preposterous Herculean cock. How I hated it! The parson said, holding the gaze of our audience, speaking now with solemn calm: "I confess, before the Master, that I lust and that before all, I shall serve my lust. I confess, before the Master, that my soul is forfeit. I confess, before the Master, that this price I will pay for my lust." He turned to me, standing very close, to that his manhood nearly brushed mine, and my hips jerked back in horror. He said, "And so! Even now, he renounces the body! He cringes away!" Now, he deliberately stepped toward me and the burning tip of his arousal pressed against mine. "No!" I yelled, in panic. Again, violently twisting my body to escape. "Who will serve my lust, which I confess, before the master, and to the forfeit of my eternal soul?" "I will serve." And Miss Clovis, the teacher we called "Goody Clovis," stepped from the rank of women. In the firelight, her face was proud, her body erect so that her breasts rode high, her rounded thighs thrust a little, so...and now, I use this word—her cunt was on offer. No sex of a girl, here, I could see the thick, sinuous dark lips assertive against their bed of brown hair. I craved her madly, but she was not to be mine. "Prepare her, then" ordered the goat head. And into the circle of firelight was rolled a great dark barrel on its side, a barrel dark-stained, with staves rough-edged. Quick hands of Miss Lester, Jane, obedient naked serving women, wedged it between logs. Miss Clovis walked toward it, posture proud, turned herself, and laid her body over the barrel, her back arched sharply, head and arms hanging, thighs parted, the highest parts of her body, now, her smooth belly, her sedate breasts, and her cunt. It was Miss Lester, our timid librarian, her body in the light shockingly sensual, who approach Miss Clovis, now. She bent, and, as though preparing a table, spread Miss Clovis's lips so that the curling hair hid nothing. My mind whirled. I had seen none of it, ever. I simply stared. On offer to all was Miss Clovis's pink flesh, nearly white in the firelight, and I saw the dark gap, but above and around it mysterious swollen shapes of which I knew little. As I watched, I ached bitterly at what I would not have. As though divining my unspoken desire, the parson demanded: "Who will torment the unbeliever? He watches, but will not confess lust. Who will mock his passion?" "I will." It was Barbara's soft voice. "And I!" cried Jane, loudly, petulantly, from her swelling chest. "Then Novice Barbara must yield," pronounced the goat head. "And Sister Witch Jane shall torment the unbeliever." I saw Barbara step back a pace or two, head bowed. And the egregious naked body of Jane stalked up to me. Her breasts, as unthinkable for a girl as my own grotesque cock, were a jutting shelf carried proudly, pendulous but bulging, and her fully rounded belly crisped to the very navel with that coppery curly hair. Once swift glance into my eyes, and I knew she savored revenge against mankind for making of her body a mockery. Then, she fell to her knees before me, head bowed reverently, meaty shoulders freckled, big hands folded before her. Now, the parson strode toward the motionless body offered over the barrel. Desirable to me beyond any words, that martyred flesh, even its poor drapery of hair drawn back, so Miss Clovis was as though slit open in her most tender place for anything that lust might demand. The parson stood there, between her wantonly splayed thighs, and seemed to mediate, perhaps he prayed. Then, with little ceremony, his hand took his rigid dick—at attention for how many hours, now!—and positioned its fat head at the opening of Miss Clovis's cunt. How could my maddened mind focus on that unimaginable moment? My being cried against it. And yet, kneeling before me was the naked Jane, as if in prayer. Where to look? A soft touch seemed to explode through me; I looked down in disbelief at my body. Jane's lips had closed over my hot, wanton cock. I saw her eyes raised to mine as though in reverence. My loins shook with terrible pleasure. All unconsciously, I jerked my hips to drive myself deeper into the source of ecstasy. Jane seemed merely to open her throat so that half the length of my dick slid down. A low moan made my head jerk up. First, I saw only the parson's clenched-tight buttocks. Then, I perceived that his shagged belly was pressed against Miss Clovis's pale splayed thighs. I never had witnessed penetration. Nor had a woman taken me in her mouth. It was more than I could process. I swung like meat in my bonds. I stared at the sudden rude violation of Miss Clovis as the parson cruelly thrust himself, faster and faster, into the seemingly inert body laid over the barrel. I squirmed, mind reeled round, as thrill after thrill shot through my cock. Jane, now, was dragging the ends of her protruding breasts against my legs, so the nipples tickled outrageously. But the more I thrust myself toward pleasure, the more it receded from me. I looked down, maddened, because the head of coppery curls had become still. I jerked my loins, demanding resumption of the pleasure, but the pressure of her, her tongue, were gone. I could touch nothing that would let me ascend the ladder of pleasure. I cried out in frustration, almost weeping. Yet, I could not shut out the scene before me. At last, the rough thrusts of the parson's hips stirred the lush body arched over the barrel. At first merely jolted by the parson's hammering, it began to stir, moan, and the full hips thrust. Jolting, jolting, a soft cry at every assault, the belly reluctantly adopting the rhythm of violation. I heard Miss Clovis's cry from the thrown-back beautiful face, a kind of whimpering plea from those lips. "Yes!" I heard. "Yes! Fuck me! Fuck me!" I scarcely could believe what I heard, but it was her. In a moment, the stretched hips, the passive mound, became electric, heaving to meet the soulless penetrations. "Do me! Yes! Do me!" And in a kind of madness at the arrested pleasure in my yearning prick, I, too, cried, "Do me!" Ah, but my tormentor knew her craft. The luscious, curvaceous body at my knees no longer moved. The craved mouth and lips were withdrawn. And so, I watched Miss Clovis and the brutal satyr's form of the parson pumping toward ecstasy together until, at the last moment, he withdrew himself and the gouts flew and flew to spatter Miss Clovis's perfect torso. With every hot splatter, she drew a whistling breath of satisfaction. And, as though unconsciously, her soft hands came up to spread the burning sperm over her breasts, belly. I longer saw her face. But my own wanton thrusting, in the same climaxing rhythm, caused my futile cock to jab only night air. My now almost insane craving found no release. My volunteer tormenting witch had teased me to my peak. My silly cock, grotesquely enlarged and questing, a sightless worm in the autumn night, was left erected as a parody of lust. Chapter 4 I stared as Miss Clovis slowly came upright on the weird altar of the stained barrel, drawing closed her thighs, pausing for a moment as her hands cupped her breasts, as though to reassure herself. Her face turned to me then, took in my condition; but her gaze seemed remote, as though she returned from a great distance. She lifted her pale, pure face to the sky, frowning at the inflated white October moon slipping now to the tree line. I returned her gaze with a world of yearning, hanging stupidly exposed, like a freak on show. But she seemed not to see. I heard the reverberating voice of the goat head, commanding, "Resume the dance! Torment the intruder!" Bless and Keep Us All Hallow's Eve I glanced around in panic, but the reanimated pale bodies set off without a glance at me. Only Miss Clovis approached, her gaze on me, but as in a trance. She stood before me a moment as though uncertain. Then, she drew back her hand and slapped my rigid prick, setting it to briefly wagging, like a dog's tail. But that touch, more playful than painful, sent a thrill up its whole length and deep into my belly, so I groaned with aroused desire. And then she had turned, hips in motion, back arched to thrust out her breasts, joining the dance. Her back turned, my body's excrescence seemed to lengthen after her and my arousal was unbearable. I did not hear as much as sense the slow approach of Barbara, moving now as though drugged, eyes unfocused. Her perfectly spaced breasts with the little thumbs upraised moved not at all as she walked. My eyes sought hers, but the wide blue irises seemed to see nothing. And then her small hand went back, I gasped, and it slapped me like an electric kiss, then swept back, setting the poor dumb mast of flesh wagging again, and the forward—each time with an engulfing pleasure so that my eyes rolled back. And she was gone, leaving me to stare aghast at her pale buttocks, swaying, and to know this was to be my "torment." It went on as they came one by one, the shocking sensual fullness of Miss Lester, the little librarian, then Jane's egregious exposure of rounded breasts and belly, and others I did not know, but each with a deliberate slap that was enough to grip tight my balls in a striving for release—but no release could come. At last, I hung like one dead, dangling all my weight like a carcass, eyes glazed, and wept in mere despair. Once, feeling myself at the trigger point, which one more touch might release and end my agony, I saw the parson rise from his rude throne and approached me. The goat head looked down at my condition. The parson stepped closer, his arrant hard-on touching me. Utterly without warning, his knee swept up into my fork, not with vicious force, but a controlled blow that drove my big dangling balls up into my body with a spasm of pain. My knees jerked up to protect myself, like some creature curling upon its vulnerable underside. I yelped, then wept, again. The hope for release into pleasure was gone. My hanging helpless manhood seemed an alien thing of pain. What did not change was that no choice of mine, no need, was relevant; what I had hung there utterly at the whim of others. "It is time!" echoed the voice over the autumn forest. "He has given himself unto us for he lusts! His shall be the mark of the Master and you shall be his servants!" And then: "Prepare him." I cried out in fear. It was Barbara who approached me. She held a knife, its long silver blade waving as the flames wavered. "Barbara, no!" I whined. "No, no..." But she knelt before me. Again, the fragile shoulders, the golden helmet of straight hair, the intent small face were all I saw. Now would be the end. Paul had led through the night of the dark powers and delivered me, here, to manhood's end. And had laughed his soulless laugh as he left me. Nothing I had said, not one word, had deterred my captors. Now, this alien thing that hung from me would be excised from my body, and with it all my desire and my torment. In a moment of pain I could not imagine, I would cease to be a man. I wondered, in my swirl of despair, when my naked, mutilated body would be found—if ever it was... She raised her slender hands, the knife lifted above my penis, her gaze intent. I felt the blade on belly skin and chafing as it scraped my skin. But what fell away was the curling brown hair, with each stroke, less of it, until the knife blade reached the very root of my penis. But then it lifted away and Barbara's slender hand brushed me, so that the shaved patch just above my penis was clean. I had lost, now, all arousal. Certain that I would be unmanned, desire had fled down the path of terror. It hung limp, still egregiously long and thick, that ridiculous prank of Nature between my legs. Barbara rose, bowed low to me, and backed away. Now our pastor, the ludicrous goat head atop the naked body, his prick still miraculously erect, came toward me. What had he in his hand? I never had seen such a thing. He knelt before me. "Come," he commanded. "Hold his legs very tight, he will need help to bear his pain." Miss Clovis, Miss Lester, came forward, kneeling, wrapping their arms around me thighs, parting them, their breasts brushing me. "The sign of the Master be upon him." And I felt the touch of the tip of the instrument that the parson held as it came in contact with my newly bared skin, close to where my prick emerged out of my belly. And then I shrieked. If the two women had not held me, I would be jerked my legs to my very chest in a desperate response to the electric sizzling that fiercely searing my belly. So close was it to the root of my penis that I cried out in terror as well as pain. There was no mercy. The arms on either side held me fast. The parson's studious face was inches from my limp prick, the fiery point made my belly a cauldron of unbearable torment. "Stop!" I squealed into the deaf night. "I can't stand it!" Held the by two women, I could only jerk my belly, again and again, so what I had wagged uselessly, banging my legs. I don't think that I fainted. Sometimes sensation overloads the senses, so that no coherent sum reaches the mind. What reached my mind were only unanswerable signals of the unbearable. Later, and I do no recall, to this day, how much later, I became aware again, first of the mere ground I saw beneath me, then my agonized shoulders, then of the length of my naked body below me. Seeing I had awakened, Miss Clovis came to me. Her eyes seemed not unkind. I took in her naked body almost without feeling. Silently, she reached around my hanging body with her arm, and pulled forward, so that my pubis was pushed out. Holding me, she reached down and her finger lightly traced along the root of belly. "Here," she said. I bent my head, frowning. Again, her fingernail tickled across me and I focused my eyes. There, on the newly shaved, pale skin I saw the string of purple figures. I read, slowly, "Nine, nine, nine." Her voice was soft, even gentle as she looked into my face. She said, "It is not what we see, standing before you, Walter." She added, "This is the sign of the Master and no human hand can removed it, now." Her slender hand took my heavy prick, gently now, holding it as one holds a dove, and she gently stroked it. "Do you see?" she asked. I focused again on the bare pale flesh at the root of the penis that was awakening to her touch. "What is the sign?" I asked. "Here, at your manhood's root. It is 666." "The Devil?" "Our Master." Her slim white hand continued to stroke the whole length of my prick. "What will happen?" I asked, bewildered. She answered with the humility of a child: "Now, I am yours, Walter, yours to take, to use as you wish." She stepped back from me. Her hands slid down to her own blond patch of fur, and her fingers parted it. Then, she thrust forward her loins, so I saw, dark on her pale belly: 666. She half turned to where the women, no longer dancing, subdued now, had gathered to watch me. "All these before you, and all womankind marked by the Master on their sex, are yours. When you wish, for whatever you wish." She looked up into my eyes. "What do you wish, now, Walter? As though involuntarily, I looked down at my belly where the burning of the tattoo still pricked like needle. She asked: "To take it in my mouth?" I nodded, mute, and she dropped to her knees. I felt her long fingers take me, the whole weight of me, gently, and her lovely face came forward and lips parted widely to take the huge swollen head of my cock, and a slyly tickling tongue darted here and there and each touch was almost more than I could bear. As I began to moan softly and jerked my hips to move in her mouth, she withdrew. "No..." I murmured. "No, please." She rose and stepped aside. "Bring her," she commanded. They came forward, big naked Jane and Miss Lester, carrying the slim form of Barbara. She rode toward me as in a chair, each woman holding her beneath one thigh, another arm around her back, so she advanced as though seated, with her long thighs spread—served wide open to me. But I never had had a woman. But how was I to take this one, offered, now, as I hung from the frame? Still, I began to tremble. Then I understood. The two women carried Barbara till her thighs forked my hips, her breasts pressed me, and her face was inches from mine. I peered the narrow space between our bodies and saw her golden mound pressed against me." "I will insert it," said Miss Clovis. I saw her reach beneath our two bodies and felt her fingers take my upright, achingly arched prick and move it. Then, its big swollen head brushed something indescribably soft, wet, that sent a shock up and down my body, a thrill I never had known or imagined. "Impale her, now," said Miss Clovis. Barbara's blue eyes, inches from mine, never flickered, but seemed to open impossibly wide. I felt my length slip into the warm clutch of flesh and Barbara caught her breath. Her lips moved. "Your prick is deep in my body," she whispered. "I lust for you, Walter." And then: "Say it, now. Say it." "I lust for you," I said, and then gasped. On either side, the women were lifting and lowering Barbara's slim body, up almost off my impaling prick, then down, down till I felt myself stopped, filling her cunt to the end, and she exclaimed, "Oh!" Her pink perfect lips passed the inch or two between us and pressed mine, softly at first, nibbling, and then I felt her entering tongue, and her lips harder, pressed frantically, and her hands behind my head drew my own lips against hers. Now, her little body seemed almost to bounce, again and again, jolting desperate little breaths from her. I had begun to heave my own lips, jacking up on my toes to meet her downward impalement with my brutal reply that jolted her, and I was crying out brokenly, but in no words I knew. My whole frame stiffened against pleasure I could not bear and Barbara dragged my face tight against her little breasts, pressing it there. And then they lifted her away. I scarcely could stand, I hung from my aching arms, my head fallen forward, night air slightly chill along my limp wet prick. I heard: "See her." I raised my head. They still held Barbara, but had wrenched wide her legs and lifted her body higher, so now I stared at what the modest blond lips, stretched aside, exposed. Her inmost pink seemed swollen, streaked with red as though inflamed, and from her soft, jagged gap dripped my cloudy cum. Then they carried her, still on display, around the circle of women and, at last, to the dark-eyed goat head. The head nodded and they lowered her to the ground so she lay, legs forked, as firelight flickered over her white body. Chapter 5 I thought I was blacking out. Yet, I felt ground at my feet, the fiery ache in my shoulders blades, a breeze touch my back. But the world had gone dark. Then I remembered, just a moment ago, the bonfire snuffed as though by a huge breath, the bright ball of moon passing behind clouds... But everything was so still! As my eyes adjusted to the night, I saw no one! I hung there, alone, naked, darkness and woods all around me. They had left me! Like this! I almost cried out for them, in terror; but it was no use; they were gone. "You got to hurry, now." "Paul?" "Yeah." And I saw him, dimly, coming toward me. "You came?" I felt relief a like sob. But in a moment: "You left me! You ran! You laughed!" "I laughed my ass off," the voice was off-hand, no attempt to explain, no apology. He said, "We got to get out of here, fast." But he reached out and his big hand enclosed my balls, my cock, like package and lifted them. A ray of light sprung from his hand as he clicked on a flashlight directed right at my belly. He said, "They tattooed you, huh? They've got you, buddy. How was it?" But already his hands were at my wrists, working the knots. When my arms collapsed, freed, I fell to my knees. Paul stepped away in the darkness and suddenly something smacked into my face, my chest. "Put'em on, fast. It's almost midnight. They're coming. We can't be here." "Who?" I asked in panic. "Coming back?" "Shut up, Walter, and get'em on. Or I leave you." "No!" I staggered uncertainly to my feet, almost fell again, so Paul caught my arm. I swayed, unbalanced, as I pulled on my trousers. I jerked my shirt down over my head. Inside out didn't matter. I bent for my shoes. "Take'em! And run!" I stumbled after him, my legs gimpy, so that I ran like a drunk, my shoes clutched to my chest. Into the woods, keeping Paul's back in sight, catching lashing limbs that whipped at my face. The leaves soft underfoot, but every once in a while a sharp stick that made me gasp in pain. At last, I saw the openings between the tree trunks and the shimmer of moonlight streaking black water. "I got the boat in close," said Paul ahead of me, breathing hard. "Climb in!" I fell more than climbed, crawled toward the stern, flopped over the middle seat, continuing to the back. In a moment, Paul was on the center seat, oars in the locks, and we were moving. I dared to whisper. "Who, Paul?" "The real ones. Hallow's Eve, midnight." "Midnight!" It all had happened in an hour! Impossible! "They had you one hour. Seemed longer." It was not a question. "Witches coming?" I asked, my voice low. "Real witches?" "Salem. The dead ones. Drowned, hung, pressed to death under stones. Some of 'em raped in the lock-up the night before by the Puritan divines. Gang raped. Didn't matter. They were witches. Next day they'd be dead." "Here! Tonight?" "Some, yeah. Goody Clovis and all them, they're just confessors of lust. Like you." "But you...?" "Yeah. What, you gotta see it stamped above my dick? I was 18, like you. Lucky. I'm real thick and black, down there. But who sees anyway. You're pretty well hung. I saw that." Now, Paul! I never escaped it! "Take a while to grow back the hair back around your dick. Who'd they give you?" I hated to say it. It sounded dirty, a betrayal. "Barbara," I answered. Paul gave a snort of laughter. "Crazy. No one in school even dare's ask her out." "She beautiful," I said quietly. Then I was silent. The oars squeaked in their oarlocks, the water barely splashed at our passage. I busied myself putting on my shoes. "But what will happen now?" I asked, after a while, as though of myself. Perhaps Paul only shrugged in the dark. Or said nothing. I spoke a little louder. "What will it mean?" "Nothin'," he said. "You'll be home when you said. Any trouble from your folks, tell'em Clovis was at the Halloween party over Linda's. Tell'em call Clovis, if they want." "But what do I have to do?" "You do nothin'—for now. Later, I couldn't tell you. You ever want one of those women, any time, you just lay a hand on her, touch her just natural. Look in her eyes. She does the rest. She's got to." Did you ever wake (usually in the middle of night) from a vicious evening of drinking, panicked at what you had done, hung over, asking yourself WHY the Christ you had done it? I had not drunk, but when I awoke, in my own bed, just at dawn, it was as though from a nightmare. The pillow was soaked with sweat, cold; I flipped it over. If only it all had been a sweaty dream! I flung over the covers and looked down. The irregular shaved patch at my crotch, the damning numbers just over the root of my cock. Fuck! I dragged the covers over me, slammed my head on the pillow, and ordered myself: Sleep! I had done it. Done it all. And the tattoo still stinging at my belly could not be wished away. Thank...dare I still call upon him? Perhaps not. I didn't want to find out. So, let us say, thank heaven it was Saturday. What if I had to rise, now, go to school, sit in Miss Clovis's class? I jammed my head into the pillow and commanded, "More sleep!" Had I forfeited my soul last night? Become a confessor of lust? What crap! I had been lured by Paul, that slack-jawed, over-sized class dummy into the clutches of crazy people. It meant nothing! Our town's sex maniacs. And even Pastor Thibault! That goat! I would not hide under the covers. Beneath the spitting warm water shower, I soaped myself. Yes, the sign was there on my bare belly, 666, just where my prick protruded. Nothing deniable about that. What had drawn them to this wanton life: Miss Clovis, Jane, Miss Lester, aloof Barbara, even the pastor hiding beneath his absurd goat head? Yet, even as recalled the wild night, I felt myself aroused, and my hand soaping my penis lingered there, teased it. Disgusted, I shoved open the door of the shower stall. I would not slip into masturbation fantasies! Was I a confessor lust? Let us see what that meant! An interlude in the kitchen. My mother, never turning from the stove, said: "You were late. Was it fun?" "Sure." "Girls?" "Why do you ask that, Mom?" "I know what you think about." It was a matter-of-fact statement, but it irritated me. "Not that much," I muttered. "All right, Walter. But I actually had hope you might get interested in someone." My defense was to parse words. I said, ""Interested,' Mom? What does that mean?" "Nothing, I guess." And then, "Did you kiss?" My face must have gone scarlet. I raged inside. Yeah, Mom! Barbara Anderson was carried to me, naked, and jounced up and down on stiff dick, okay? But all I said was "no spin the bottle." The stolid back refused to acknowledge my irritation. She never turned. At last, she said, "Can I fry you bacon and an egg easy-over? That's what you like." "Sure," I said, subdued. "Thanks, Mom." For what seemed an eternity, I watched the busy back and heard the sizzle of bacon, the abrupt hiss of the dropped eggs. And then: "So was it good?" "What! Was WHAT good?" "I'll have your breakfast in just a moment, dear." I ate in silence, greedily, the perfect eggs, crisp bacon, soft buttered whole-wheat toast." And Mom waited on me. "Could she tell something? How?" I finished and had the graciousness to say, "Thanks, Mom. That hit the spot." I pushed back from the table, slowly, thinking—trying to think. Then, I knew what I would do. "Gorgeous day, I'm getting out." Did I get enough last night? My first-ever sex? And with the one girl I thought truly unattainable-even in fantasy? Time to give it a rest? Come on! I thought I knew where she might be on a beautiful Saturday morning. Willowy, energetic, athletic, always looking as fresh in mornings as I looked shagged. That was Barbara. I was walking down the long hill to the elementary school. Behind it, in a corner of the playground, were a couple rundown tennis courts. Before I rounded the corner of the school building, I heard monotonous thwacking. Across the sunny playground, I saw the straight blond hair, almost white in the sun, skimpy tennis shorts, and pale perfect-shaped athletic legs with ankle-high white socks. She was moving! Darting, swinging, and then twisting for a backhand. I approached slowly. She seemed almost to radiate her own sunlight, a virginal spotless white. I never had known her to date and neither had anyone else. She was unattainable. At the high wire fence enclosing the court, I stopped, watching. I had a sudden, panicked thought that if all this was just Paul's stupid storytelling, then what would I look like, standing here watching Barbara? I already had seen that her partner on the court was Jane, her heavy body stretching her baggy red shorts and jumbo loose-fitting sweatshirt—both tending to minimize her jumbo hourglass figure. Even a heavy sports bra could not prevent her boobs from banging back and forth like a swinging sack as she dived to return Barbara's serves. Jane was trying hard; her clothes were pasted to her, soaked in sweat, and her big pretty face was shiny. Bless and Keep Us All Hallow's Eve Apparently, Jane had seen me first. She had stopped abruptly, racket hanging at her side; Barbara's ball shot past her, unheeded. And then, Barbara, too, turned. What did it mean that these two, so outwardly different—Barbara the Swedish beauty, Jane with the short-cut coppery-red hair crudely nicknamed "basketball boobs"—were together this morning? As they were in that distant, unimaginable dimension that was last night? Without a word, with what seemed scarcely a glance, both girls walked toward the gate where I stood. It was Jane who swung open the gate, holding it. Both stood looking at me, making no move to come closer. Then, Barbara frowned, her blue eyes cold under the pale eyebrows, here perfect pink mouth pressed shut. She said, "What are you doing, here, Walter?" The voice had the effect of shattering crystal, the sudden alarming sound of things...well...crashing. Here, in bright daylight, Paul's pathetic fantasies had trapped me again! What could I possibly say? Oh, Barbara, I love to watch your body, your strength, your animal energy—the energy of a fleet gazelle? "Oh!" I muttered. "I just..." Barbara's expression did not change, but she stepped toward me. Very close. And I could see through the clinging shape of her sweat-soaked white blouse that she wore no bra. The perfect, firm shapes came to a point, now, under the cloth. I could not help myself, I stared at them. And she stood so close, now! I could have muttered an apology and fled. I could have mouthed some pathetic excuse and back away, liked a humbled servant. But suddenly I felt it, the burning, the fiery brand inscribed above my cock; I had become accustomed to it—a burn is easier to ignore than an itch—but now I thought, again, of the reality inscribed in my the flesh of my belly that could not be a fantasy. I raised my eyes to Barbara's, to the sweetness of those few freckles on her perfect skin, freckles dancing over the straight nose and high cheeks—freckles like laughter on a magically perfect evening. My hand came up slowly, paused an instant, and then cupped her right breast, the assertive, summoning hillock and its pressing tit. As I did it, my mind seemed to succumb to some whirling centrifugal force, a scrambling of my ability to think. I felt it as fear. But my gaze never wavered from the sky-blue stare in the pretty face. The racquet dropped. Simply dropped. Her gaze did not flinch. But her fingers came up and one by one, as in trance, they opened the buttons of her blouse. Finished that task, she merely pulled aside her wet blouse. They were cones of firm flesh, except that the cones toward their tips were upswept, as though to lift the little nipple onto a throne. She simply looked at me, waiting. Both of my hands closed over her breasts and I could feel their coolness as the air dried the sweat. I glanced at Jane, who watched, expressionless. When our eyes met, she smiled once, briefly. But I looked back, now, to Barbara. Wordless, racquet hanging at her side, Jane walked away across the schoolyard. Barbara's small hands came up, now, to cover each of mine, press them into her own flesh. "Not here," she said, softly. "Come." Her hand sought out mine, took it. She stooped for her tennis racquet, then turned and tug my hand. She walked erect, back straight, head proud, her hips slightly swaying, toward the woods at the rear of the playground. The racquet swung at her side. She had made no move to button her blouse. The stony dirt path led to a hickory grove. I wondered if it were deliberate because the dry, crisp bed of leaves was a sunlit yellow, the leaves a golden bed. And so, as she gracefully lowered herself to them, her golden hair spread on against the golden forest floor. She gazed up at me now, light-blue eyes intent. She raised her eyebrow, but when I did not speak, she jacked up her hips and her two quick hands pushed down the tennis shorts, and her black thong, right over her knees. At the apex of her girlish legs, at the base of her pale belly, was the brushed furze of curly blond. In a moment, her agile feet had slid down and kicked aside her shorts. Finally she spoke, whispering, her gaze never slipping from mine. "What should I do, Walter? What do you desire of me? Will you come to my bed of gold?" It was so wrong! What power forced her to do this? She, so pure and beautiful, offered like a dish of exquisite delicacies! I could have dropped to my knees, then, and pressed my face into the fallen leaves for shame. To look on her offered innocence was obscene! I must not! I did not realize that I closed my eyes. I only heard her voice. "Will you let me see it, now? I ask this, Walter. So often, they whispered about it, and they giggled, and I did not believe them. But last night, I saw and it excited me. It hurt me. It frightened me. She added: "The woman may only ask. Will you show me?" I pushed down my dungarees, mechanically. Dropped them to my ankles and kicked them aside. I closed my eyes, though, as I worked my underwear over the rigidity of my stiff prick. So long a thing that meant mere embarrassment and mockery! But now, this golden goddess stared up at me, without apology, as though hungering. "How may I have it?" I dropped to my knees in the warm leaves. The sunlight shattered by branches above made a pattern of wavering shadow on her thighs, her belly, even on her patch womanhood. "No," I said, staring at her, staring rudely, helpless to rein-in my desire. "No, tell me how to do it...for you..." I had lowered myself to lie between her spread legs. I saw only that womanly mount of yearning, framed in gold. My lips were pressed to it, now, but what should I do? "Tell me," I said. "Then part me, if you want. Open me. Do you see the little pink head of my clit? It's hard to see until it's stiff. If you wish, you may take it in your lips, run your tongue over it. But gently, as if the swollen head of your dick were in my mouth... Do you understand?" And I lost myself, there, making tender love to her most sensitive and vulnerable flesh, and learned that but to pass my tongue across it made her thrust up her belly and cry out. "I want that," she murmured. "I want that in my cunt. I belong to men, only to men, but my cunt still longs." And so I ate her, gently ate her, ate and licked her until she cried out for me to stop, please to stop, oh, God! Stop! But I did not. Suddenly her slender thighs closed convulsively and her small hands were in my hair dragging away my head, and she was crying, "I cannot! I cannot! Oh, mercy, master, I cannot!" And in the end, I rested my cheek on the modest patch of soft hair, not wanting to be far from her sex and its smell, and my hand rested on her warm and rounded thigh. But when my tongue darted once across her peaceful clit, her thighs clenched convulsively, and she gasped, "No! No! No more!" "And what if I held you spread and did it and did it?" "No, darling, no. I could not bear it." And then began the weirdest conversation of my life to that moment, my cheek still resting on her exquisite mound. "Other men do this to you?" "Yes. Any of them. Does it trouble you?" "Yes," I admitted. Absurd! My petty ego! "They command me as do you. They just brush my cunt in the hallway or touch my ass, and I must go with them." "Do you like it?" "I crave it. Every day. As often as I am wanted." "And it is like this?" I asked, overcome with despair. "Always different. And always I want it." "I wish you were mine." "I belong to the Beast of the Apocalypse." I lifted my head. I felt anger, a desire to humiliate. My fingers reached for her and parted her, roughly, jealous and resentful. Her voice was serene. "You are looking at it, now? My cunt? My clitoris?" "Yes, all of it!" "Do you like it, Walter?" "I want it to be only mine! No other man's." "But why?" "I think that I love you. For a very long time, but I was afraid to say it. I think that I love you." "I am the concubine of the Beast, nothing more. He shall devour the flesh, in the end, and he shall claim the soul." "No!" I said. And then, grinding my lips into her belly, "No." "You have not consummated." "No!" "May I have it, then?" Softer, now, muttering. "No, don't think so..." "Very well, I am only a woman." "Do you want it, Barbara?" I demanded. "In me, yes." "And if I don't?" "I am but a woman." "Take it then!" I was wild with desire, my long penis stiff to bursting, arched back so its thick red head touched by belly. "Take it!" I cried, "Take it!" And I placed its nuzzling head against her delicate little slit, and I drove it in with a desire to punish her, to punish the concubine that I had craved, sought out, and enslaved—and wished only to be my love. "Oh!" she gasped, eyes shut, exquisite pink lips parted, now. I gave it to her again, needing her, loving her, hating her, so that my brutal thrust jerked back her whole body in the soft bed of leaves. "You'll get it!" I cried. But then, of course, I was coming, after only two thrusts, coming and crying out, my eyes rolling in my head... After I moment, she asked, "Are you done, then?" "I'm...I'm sorry..." "It's all right, Walter." "But you..." "I am a woman for your pleasure." Again, my face pressed in her soft, pale belly, pressed there as though I never wanted more. My hands seizing her warm hips, drawing her to me. "No," I murmured. "No, please," although what I felt was a drained contentment like a drug, so I wanted only to sleep. "I want it," she said. "What, Barbara?" I asked sleepily. I rolled over now, onto my back, and the warm, yellow, nut-odorous leaves were a bed. I closed my eyes and lay still. I jerked as I felt her lips close over my prick, gently licking it clean—but more! The tickling tongue circled it's the swollen head, again and again, and paused to tease the tab of meat at the base of my throbbing glans penis, so I could not suppress my low moan nor keep my hips from undulating, thrusting myself up toward the ecstatic sensation.