A Priestess of Isis Ch. 04

This story talks about sex and religion. There will be some rough sex and elements of BDSM, so if you are looking for romance, this is not the story for you. Also, if you harbor any thoughts about the sanctity of religion, then please move along because I will surely offend you. Otherwise, I present to you Chapter 4 of A Priestess of Isis.

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Our story so far: Divinity student Wil Goodwin has done everything his minister father expects of him, including preparing for a career in the ministry. He doesn't question his path. One night he meets a seductress, Mary, who demonstrates the Christian idea of submission by performing a blow job on a stranger, who then gives her money. After she gives Wil a blow job in an alley, she shares the money with Wil, which stirs his feelings of shame. In class the next day, Wil says something disrespectful about Jesus that Mary said, which sends him tumbling out of class, wondering what was wrong with him. When he goes to the professor's office to apologize, he finds the professor in a compromising position with Mary. Disgusted with his professor, Wil tries unsuccessfully to drop the class. Later Professor Humbolt offers him another assignment instead of attending class. The assignment was impossibly huge, but Wil was confident he could pull it off even though he was told that each student that attempted it failed. Mary waited for him at the library entrance and offered to buy dinner. She takes him to a pizza restaurant and introduces him to David, a man who was once a divinity student but found, through Mary, the meaning of living with passion. For David making pizzas is his passion. Mary gives Wil a rim job, then jacks him off in the bathroom of the pizza place. But instead of returning him to his apartment, she takes him to a mansion at the edge of the town. There she tells Will a story about her time with Herod Antipas, which Wil dismisses as fiction. Mary then seduces him, then stops in the middle of the act. Wil mysteriously finds himself tied up, and she performs fellatio on him.

What will it profit a man if he gains the entire world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Matthew 16:26

I woke shivering. A dull gray light seeped into the room from the shuttered windows. My cheek lay on cold marble, and the room was freezing.

Moving my sore and aching body into an upright position was a study in pain. What happened last night? Slowly, the memories of Mary tying my arms together, mocking me, then sucking my dick came back to me. I was embarrassed and ashamed at the things she said to me, and then, what? When she put my dick in her mouth, everything centered on the one unholy organ, and nothing else mattered. The intense orgasm she gave shattered me, and I fell to my knees on the oriental carpet.

I scrubbed my hands against my morning stubble and realized no carpet lay underneath me. Gone were the drapes or couches on either side. The room was empty, with dust and neglect of years. I stood shakily and glanced around. One part of my brain recognized the room I spent the lust-filled night, but the other couldn't believe that this was the place.

"Mary," I called out. But my call rang around the empty room, mocking me with hollow echoes.

"Mary!"

Nothing.

Christ! I had no idea where I was. I paid little attention to the car ride last night. We drove from the school, which I should be at right now, according to the rising sun. It dawned on me then that Mary abandoned me here.

My anger rising, I moved to the closed double doors of the room's entrance and pushed them as they creaked open. The atrium was just as barren as the room I had left. Gone was the center table decorated with the tasteful vase of flowers and the letters that sat next to it. The front door was open, allowing dried leaves and the chill of autumn to spill into it.

Curiously, my jacket was crumpled by the door, and I retrieved it to cover my naked chest. I remembered then that Mary tore my shirt to shreds when she pulled it off me. The jacket was cold to the touch but warmer than standing here in this huge empty hallway without something covering my chest.

I shivered. Where the hell was I? Plaster was missing in chunks on the walls. The railing of the long stairway to the second floor was broken, hanging off in irregular pieces. The stairs didn't look safe to climb.

There was no sense in staying here. I turned toward the door, and then something caught my eye. The stiff corner of an envelope was wedged under the baseboard in the right-hand wall by the door. I bent and tugged at it, struggling to yank the thing from its hiding place in the baseboard. As it flew free, I fell backward and landed on my backside. I looked over the envelope in wonder because it looked like the letter Mary had picked up, then discarded on the entryway table last night.

The paper was yellow with age, and the ink faded, but I made out the return address on the back, H. Humbolt, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT. The envelope's address was: Mary, Humbolt Estate, Sudbury, Ohio. The postmark was equally faded and reported an improbable date of 1977.

Curious, I pulled at the back flap, which because of its age, pulled away easily from the back, and drew out the single sheet of notepaper.

Dearest Mary,

I know I've placed you in an impossible position by sending you to stay with my parents while I untangle the mess here at school. Forgive me, but it shouldn't be long. I should be here another couple of weeks for the disciplinary hearing, and then, because the outcome is inevitable, I should be home shortly after, and we can get on with our lives. Trust me. I do not blame you at all. Things are as they are, and I'm forever grateful for how you've opened my eyes to the lies that run rampant throughout our world. Yes, I know my parents don't understand. They will most likely disown me. But I don't care. You've taught me that the universe provides, and in this and you, I trust.

All my love,

H-

My blood ran cold, and my ears roared with a constant ringing. The universe provides? Mary's signature phrase? Humbolt wrote this letter to Mary forty years ago, yet there was no way Mary was more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. She couldn't be over sixty. No freaking way.

My fingers were turning blue from the cold, and my teeth chattered. I flung open the door only to be greeted by an icy winter blast. Snow lay on the ground as far as I could see.

A winter storm this time of the fall was nearly impossible, but other things in my life have been weirder. Shivering, I stepped out in the winter landscape and trudged to the road clutching my blazer to my shirtless chest. The walkway was not clear, and I stepped in snow that rose past my ankles. I could only hope a car would drive by and pick me up to take me to town because I couldn't walk that far in the weather and my state of dress.

As I stepped out on the plowed road and a car barreled down the road. It stopped fifty feet ahead of me, and I ran, feet slipping on the ice as I ran toward refuge. At this point, I didn't care if an axe murderer drove the car. I needed to get out of the cold.

The driver was a chatty elderly man, Eddie, who happily obliged my request to drop me off at my campus apartment.

When I got out, I mumbled about not having money to give him.

"Just pay it forward, son," he said. "And good luck to you."

"Thanks," I mumbled in humiliation since I must have looked like a demented homeless person. No wonder he wished me luck.

I climbed the stairs to my third-floor apartment to find the door locked. My keys, curiously, were missing from my pocket. I pounded on the door, but there was no answer.

Jerking my cell phone from my pocket, I discovered the battery was dead. Wonderful. Then I heard the front door downstairs open and shut and the familiar sounds of my roommate's steps on the stairs. Only that wasn't possible. The last I saw him, Orson's leg was in a cast, and he shouldn't be trying to walk.

"Wil? Oh my God, Wil!"

Orson ran up the steps and stared into my face while grabbing my shoulders.

"Where have you been?"

"I," I started as my words came out of cracked lips, "I don't know."

"Don't know? My God, Wil? What happened?"

"Can we get inside? It's fucking freezing here." I shivered involuntarily, punctuating my point.

"God, yes." Orson keyed open the door and swept me inside. The warmth of the apartment hit me like a blast furnace which brought another round of shudders. Orson disappeared into his room and returned with a comforter, which he threw around my shoulders. Then he was on his phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling the paramedics."

"Why?"

"Why? Look at you."

"I'm fine."

"Yes? It's my roommate, or should I say, former roommate. He's been missing for two months and showed up here, freezing and disoriented. Seems to have no memory of the time he's been missing. "Yes." He gave whoever was on the line our address and then hung up.

"They'll be here in a few minutes."

"What the hell are you talking about, missing for two months? I was only gone for the night."

Orson put his hand to his mouth. "You really don't know, do you? Wil, you disappeared two months ago from the library. It was a huge thing, even your father came here to help in the search."

"Yeah, right," I said. "I don't need your pranking on top of everything else, Orson."

"Wil, I'm not pranking you. Look, see?" He yanked a sheath of newsprint from under a stack of books on the end table and handed it to me. The paper was yellow, and the date was a week from yesterday. The headline read, "Divinity Student Missing."

"That's pretty good, Orson," I said. "I like how you aged the paper. What did you do? Bake it on warm in the oven?"

"Damn it, Wil. See, look." He whipped out his cell phone and stuck it in my face. The date read December 10.

Orson was smart but not clever enough to change the date on a device hooked up to the phone service that regulated that information on the screen. A profound feeling of confusion washed over me as I looked up at his very concerned face.

"December? Not September?"

"Not September," he said firmly.

And then there was no more time to discuss that since the paramedics arrived and rushed me to the hospital.

They peppered me with questions on the ride to the hospital, which I protested until I realized they took my complaints as a sign of a mental condition. Then there were more questions at the hospital, an MRI of my brain, blood tests, and general poking and prodding. I was sick of it. Tired, hungry, and at the limits of my patience, I wanted to explode at everyone.

Only I couldn't. That would make me look more deranged than the fact I was wearing only my slacks and shoes in the middle of winter.

At least while waiting on the doctor's verdict, they gave me a sandwich. A nurse had drawn the curtain, so I had a modicum of privacy from the prying eyes of people who walked past the door, so I didn't see who entered the room.

But it wasn't a nurse. I could tell that right away from the clomping sound on the linoleum. Maybe it was someone from billing? No one from that department had arrived yet.

The curtain flew open, and wide red lips smiled at me. I dropped my sandwich in surprise.

"Ah, there you are, Wil," said Mary as if she had misplaced me like a set of lost keys.

"What the fuck are doing here?" I said angrily.

She slid her ass sensuously only the corner of my hospital bed while I scrambled to recover my sandwich.

"Can a girl check up on her boyfriend?" she cooed.

I snorted. "Boyfriend?" I said derisively.

"Okay," she admitted while patting and straightening the blanket with her hands, "that is a bit of a stretch."

"You think?"

"Wil, I always think. Unlike you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"They want to know where you've been for the past two months. And if you give them a nonsensical answer, you're in for a very bad time. Psych evaluations, medications, therapy, the whole nine yards as they say. You can forget your aspirations towards becoming a pastor. After all, who wants an unstable man of the leader of their flock?"

"Fuck you," I said vehemently.

"Oh, there you go, talking about fucking again. Did I not show you the meaning of respect?"

"You've shown me shit. And I don't know what was in that wine you gave me, but it must have had a powerful hallucinogen."

Her mouth formed a sexy little "o," which was far more distracting than it should have been. My cock inconveniently responded to a mental image of those red lips around it, much like the previous night. Of Mary taking it all despite the improbability of that small mouth stretching over my cock.

Which, apparently, happened two months ago.

She raised her eyebrows and scoffed.

"Is that what you think, Wil? That I drugged you?"

"There is no other explanation."

She laughed. It was high and clear, like a mountain stream roaring over rocks.

"How limited is your imagination, Wil. You've been lied to for so long, you can't see the truth before your eyes. It's not probable for you to have been with me last night, and then awaken two months later, so you fabricate a lie which you know in your heart is not true."

I bit into my sandwich almost defiantly, letting the bread and turkey fill my mouth so I wouldn't say anything stupid. I wished she would go away, or stop speaking to refrain from ripping the reality that cocooned me from insane people like her.

Finally, I swallowed that bit of sandwich after deciding what to say.

"You should go."

"Really?" she said as if she didn't believe me. "You want me to leave you with this mess? Of doctors asking questions that you can't possibly answer because whatever you said would sound crazy?"

"Yes. Leave. Please." I said the words coldly and flatly. Whatever insane thing happened to me happened, and I couldn't change it. But I could get on course with my life if Mary would just leave me alone.

She sighed. "Okay, lover," she said with a smirk. "If that is what you want."

Mary stood, pulled the curtain around my bed, and then quickly poked her head back in.

"Give me a little kiss," she said.

"Get out," I said irritably.

"Still, you lack respect. You do need to be taught." She leaned in and kissed me, taking my mouth like the madwoman she was, breathing fire that roused my cock. But what was worse, it roused a beast in me I had not yet met. And it seemed, in that kiss, we were too great beasts intertwined, soaring in a misty place where there was no sound, only fiery need.

She pulled away abruptly, and the loss was more than I could comprehend.

And then, improbably, I was no longer in the hospital.

I stood at a podium, rows of faces, their bodies seated on folding chairs, staring at me. I looked to my left and spied a young man lying in a coffin. Fuck. I stood in a funeral home. In the front row sat his family with tear-lined faces. They were average Americans. A little heavier than they should be, clothes not the newest. This son was their pride, their wealth in the world, and now he was gone. I looked over again. So young.

My hands shook as I scanned the sermon. Lined with elderly blue veins they trembled over the pages. Was I old? I didn't think I was old. Last I remembered, I lay on a bed in the hospital emergency room.

To my right, a gray-haired woman sat at an organ.

"Reverend," she hissed. "They are waiting."

I cleared his throat.

"We'll start with the first two verses of Amazing Grace."

It was a disaster. Almost no one knew the words. The woman at the organ did her best to help me carry the tune. Who were these people? They couldn't be part of my flock.

"For what will it profit a man, if he gains the world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness For, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord."

People shifted uncomfortably at this cobbled selection of New Testament verses.

"God shows his love for us in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us. By grace, you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God--not because of works, lest any man should boast. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my word and believes Him who sent me has eternal life; he will not come into judgment but has passed from death to life. For God, because he loved us, sent his only begotten son to die for our sins so that we will not know the wages of sins, which is death. On that day that Jesus rose in his grave, he purchased new life for us. He told his disciples, 'In my Father's house are many rooms. I go there to prepare a place for you there." It is through Jesus Christ, as we accept him as our savior that we know the Father. Jesus said, "I am the Way, The Truth, and The Life. No man cometh to the Father, but through me. Therefore, if we want to gain the Kingdom of Heaven, we should take Jesus Christ into our hearts."

Someone coughed loudly. And then another. People looked restless. A couple of people looked angry. What was I doing here? Giving a funeral service. Then why wasn't I in my church? Or did I have a church? Of course, I had a church. I'm Wil Goodwin, the son of a pastor from a long line of pastors. It's the family business. Who else would know better how to do this?

The rest of the sermon went just as badly. I began to ramble, and my thoughts didn't even make sense. Finally, I wrapped up the sermon and led the last two verses of Amazing Grace.

I turned and walked out the funeral home door. I didn't recognize this place. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement, a flash of red. I pivoted and faced Mary.

She was dressed in a sleek black dress with a plunging neckline and one of those pillbox hats that had a film hanging from it to cover her eyes. Her shoes, of course, were red and indecently spiked. Mary tottered on them as she leaned over to me.

"Do you see?" she said. "You are spectacularly bad at this. Instead of offering comfort, you managed to anger several of the mourners."

"Ridiculous," I said.

She shook her head slowly. "There is the funeral director. Ask him if he has anything else lined up for you."

With a defiant glance at Mary, I walked over to the funeral director, who stood waiting for the mourners to file out of the home before proceeding to the cemetery.

"Ah, excuse me," I said, not knowing what to call the man.

"Pastor," he said stiffly.

"I was wondering, is here any other--"

He looked uncomfortable.

"I'm sorry, no."

"I see," I said. For some reason, I was disappointed.

"Come by tomorrow so I can give you the payment for today."

"And then?" I pressed.

"I'm sorry. We'll discuss it tomorrow."

I gave him a nod of my head. Mary stood immediately behind me in her stealthy manner that infuriated me.

"See," she hissed. "This is how you end up, begging for funeral services to make enough money for your bills. All because you insisted on living a life that was not yours."

"Get thee gone," I said to her.

"Satan? You are comparing me to Satan?" She laughed heartily. People turned around and stared at her. "You would be lucky to only battle Satan. No, Wil, your real battle is with yourself. And you are losing."

I woke up gasping in the hospital bed, alone with a half-eaten sandwich on a plate on my lap. I picked it up.