Harlotsville II: Altar Ego

"Ah, another degenerate theologan!" the scout guffawed, twisting the pike. "Seems to be a trend. If you want more pain, keep talking. Otherwise, shut your trap."

Still resisting the urge to scream, Moses gave him a look that said a thousand words, and then lowered his head back to the floor.

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"Pass it along, quick. Sister Arse-bach is coming," Grace whispered to the brunette left of her, who whispered the same thing to the blonde to the left of her. On down the line, each girl in the row was made aware that the Tommy Nun was about to make an appearance, and of course they all agreed to resist her sapphic sorcery.

Betty's mood was upbeat. Her enthusiasm for the lesson at hand was again quite obvious to the students, and now they felt they knew exactly why. When the subject of rectal hydrotherapy crossed Betty's lips, all the girls now noticed how her eyes gleamed.

And they couldn't help but notice another detail now. Even with her habit, Betty's rear end was abnormally large, as if it had an appetite all its own. It was as if the devil were sending them a clear visual message: beware, for there is a voracious sodomite in your midst.

When one girl was singled out by Betty to be called forth for a demonstration, there was resistance. When asked her name it was withheld from Betty at first, then unsuccessfully lied about, and finally revealed in a low murmur that had to be repeated several times.

"Alright. Clarice is it? Why, that's a pretty name, you know. I don't know why you were so shy about telling me it," Betty said to the pudgy young redhead.

The student squirmed and privately curled her toes, finding the word "pretty" to be a queer thing to say. It would have been fine to say it was a nice name, or an interesting name. But pretty? No, only the sin of lesbianism could inspire another woman to say that.

Concluding this, Clarice backed away slightly.

"Don't be shy, come on now and help me set up the nozzle," Betty said with light impatience.

"B-but miss..." the girl named Clarice started, and then she bit her tongue.

"Yes, dear?"

The girl could not think of what to say, so she simply stared at the floor, her toes so tightly crimped in her shoes that they sizzled.

After a a pause, Betty, decided she'd simply selected the wrong girl for the job, and so she dismissed Clarice and turned her attention to a girl whose name she had managed to retain.

"Grace? I hear you're one of our star pupils, why don't you come up and assist me in--"

"I can't," Grace mumbled solemnly. "I'm sick."

"Sick?" Betty replied. "If you're sick, you should go to the infirmary down the hall--"

"No, I mean, I'm the other kind of sick," she said, hoping Betty would both understand the line and buy it. "Y'know. Time of the month," she added for clarity's sake when her looming instructor failed to immediately comprehend what was being said.

"Oh. I see," Betty said with a confused expression. "Well, how about you, Janice?"

"I'm sorry, Miss. I think I have the time of the month, too."

"Me too, Miss."

Soon nearly all the girls were parroting the same line. Betty furrowed her brow and thought for a moment before concluding what the next step should be.

"Okay!" she started with an animated clap of the hands. "I think the problem here is shyness. Trust me, girls, I know this is quite foreign to you. It's not common we expose ourselves in this way, and do private things like this around others. But learning in a moderately-sized group such as this one has been proven by many academics to be the most effective--"

"Miss," Grace bravely interjected, though she could not bring herself to make eye contact with the uncommonly voluptuous nun before her.

"Yes?"

"It's just, um, because me and the others are all bunkmates, we share the same, uh, time of the month...I think that is normal, right?"

"Well, yes," Betty said unsurely, finding the entire detour increasingly frustrating. "But you mustn't neglect your studies. You cannot take days off of work in the real world simply because of your time of the month. Nobody respects that. So--"

"The real world, you mean like what you do?" Grace asked. She kept her head down, eyes covered by bangs, but there was more than a little defiance growing in her voice.

"The...world outside, I mean. The working world, where...I mean, of course working for the clergy is honest work, and we do interact with..." Betty paused, unable to even convince herself that her words were true.

She always told herself she wouldn't let the culture of this place infect her thinking; she was just serving time until she could get out, that's all. Right?

Finally, after a glacial silence, Betty gesticulated in a defeated, exasperated manner, eventually waving the girls away. "Very well, girls. I will speak to Mother Haywood about accommodating those who require, um, 'time of the month' assistance in order to study. Let's adjourn for now. You may wait in the vestibule until next period. Just don't get too loud."

"Yes, Miss Arbach," the girls all said in unison, the victorious looks on their faces telling Betty everything she needed to know.

They suspected something. And what was worse, she feared, was that what they suspected was not far away enough from the truth. Her eyes stayed focused on Grace's tiny, retreating form until it disappeared behind the front arch of the bathroom.

She frustratedly placed the enema equipment back in the lockers, vowing to revisit them soon, whether it was under the pretense of education or not. Grażyna understood. At least she had one friend here who did.

Just as the busty Slavic woman's face entered her mind, she remembered that she was to see her at 10 am. Unfortunately, not for their usual clandestine recreation. Instead, assistance was requested in the infirmary. A new inpatient had reportedly come in around early dawn, with the appearance of a vagabond, unconscious and sporting some awful wounds.

There had been a half dozen like this already this month. Most of them bums. Betty had heard faint rumors of a spike in local crime, and attributed it to this.

Being so deeply cloistered away in this ostensibly sacred place, she now struggled to recall those strong sympathies--tinged even with a faint feeling of kinship--that she once held for the homeless of Hooville. With a quick reflection, she was dismayed to find that their presence in her current existence just amounted to a nuisance.

Still, given she was now the designated head of the Wellness Program, it would be unconscionable for her not to go. She breathed deeply and tried to mentally prepare herself for what might be a gory scene--she'd seen a few by now, and they always left a bit of a mental scrape. By the time the bell rang, enemas were the last thing on her mind.

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Under cold white tarpaulin twitched a warm dark body.

Warm enough, in fact, that the first touch suggested a possible fever; the thin tawny fingers, bedecked with exotic-looking ivory rings, gave off a perspiration.

As the tarp was pulled back, the wounds fell into plain view. Deep black puncture wounds riddled the ribs in rows, suggesting the work of a forked instrument.

Donning her prophylactic gloves, Betty leaned into inspect the injuries closer. Gently she felt around the parameters of the lesions, assessing that although they were significant in depth, their positions did not indicate organ damage, and so general sepsis was to be the primary concern. She ordered Grażyna to fetch her the Sulfanilamide tonic, some gauze, and and some grape husks for poulticing.

As she worked, Grażyna checked the man's vitals. His heartbeat appeared normal, if slightly accelerated; his temperature, while higher than normal, did not suggest viral infection; his joints reacted to the small prods of the mallet they were given, though at no point did his consciousness appear to be agitated by the investigation.

When the wet cloth was lifted from his forehead, his full face came into view. Both women saw what they at first believed to be a pure negro, although his hair texture, being flowing and shiny, suggested a Hindoo or Arab admixture to her. He had not the scent the women would expect of any of those groups, however; despite his bedraggled presentation, he had an aromatic aura, perhaps a cologne, that was unexpectedly pleasant. Betty could not help but notice it smelled a bit like something from a spice-rack, like crushed cardamom perhaps. Strange.

Though she did not at first want to admit it, she also found the sleeping man unconventionally handsome. Despite sporting an unruly woolen beard, a youthful, almost boyish face sat beneath it, and she could not exactly tell his age.

She had never thought of the possibility that a mulatto, or whatever he was, could capture her eye in such a fashion--the handful of darker men she'd encountered back in her Easy Hole days were simply informants, not clients, and though she'd had an easy rapport with one or two, she never let their ogling eyes and cautious flirtations penetrate her psyche. It was too risky. For both involved.

This man, however, seemed different. Perhaps being unidentified, unconscious and stripped of his possessions, she realized he posed her no immediate harm. The way he slept was almost charming; despite his injuries, his facial expression was fixed in something of a subtle smile, as if he were experiencing a pleasant dream.

His thick lips would occasionally make small movements, as if he were having a conversation within this dreamworld. Betty for a moment wondered what that conversation might be, but she then considered it might be something nonsensical or foreign to her, and she went back to the simple task of dressing the man's wounds.

With the job done, Betty looked at Grażyna and sighed.

"Well, what do you suppose happened to this one?" she said, hoping to get a sense of whether her peer caught a glimmer of the man's strange appeal or not.

"Probably did something dumb," Grażyna said thoughtlessly. "These types, they get into trouble, yes? It is lucky for them that we take them in, feed them..."

Betty was not sure how to respond. She did not particularly like this response, but she understood it. After all, what was she expecting? It was unlikely this man was innocent. Probably tried to rob a store or something, and got worked over a bit too harshly by an owner.

That was just the story that came to her head, of course. She had no clue where the man in actuality came from or who he was, and she knew that finding out would mean asking Mother Haywood. So great was the displeasure of that woman's presence that a voluntary conversation was not in the cards for Betty. She knew that, eventually, the gossip would trickle down to the common nuns anyway. And, after all, the man would likely be discharged in a day or two...so there was no real need to think about him much further.

That was what she thought, until Grażyna gasped.

It was an accidental discovery. His legs had been checked, finding no harm done, but at the knee something unexpected was found hanging there.

It was spongy, tubelike, and from the outline visible from under the tarp, quite sizable.

"Mój Boże..." Betty's assistant said, retracting her gloved fingers as if she had touched a hotplate.

"What is it?" Betty said with concern.

"I..." Grażyna started, then fell silent. They looked at one another. Betty could see that the woman's already rosy face had quickly turned bright pink. From inference, she now strongly suspected that this bulge from beneath the blanket might just be.

"Oh..."

Her mouth hung open as the blanket was fully removed.

There it sat. An absolute megalith of a human penis. By far the largest Betty had ever seen, which given her history, was saying something.

And suddenly it clicked. Betty's mind raced back to that description she'd heard, back when she worked the streets.

Of the insatiable libertine.

A man who, she recalled, was of a strikingly similar description to this one. He could not possibly be just a derelict, after all, with jewelry like that glued to his fingers. One of those rings alone could be worth a house, she figured.

"He's come..." she found herself mouthing unconsciously, to which Grażyna's eyes widened.

"You know this...creature?"

"He is a man," Betty said, her sudden annoyance with Grażyna's presence building quickly. Yet her eyes could not detach themselves from that massive black treasure hanging there on the medical table, attached to such a good looking man no less--those rumors of his deficiency of beauty she now knew were simply the residue of prejudice--and the longer she looked, the more dearly wished to be alone with it.

"I suppose..." Grażyna said, looking at Betty suspiciously. Betty managed to pull her eyes away from the entrancing sight beneath her to confront her fellow lady of the habit.

"You suppose?"

Sensing she had misspoken, Grażyna quickly glanced at the noisily ticking clock on the wall, then gathered her things. "He is stable yes? I can go. You finish, yes?"

Betty paused and looked the woman over. Her mind was clouded by thoughts of what she'd do if given just a moment alone with this man she knew so little about, and whom could not at the moment even consent to her designs. But she perceived strongly that Grażyna was even more disturbed by that eager glimmer in her eye than of the man's physicality itself. And that meant trouble.

"Grażyna," Betty warned preemptively. "Do not forget what we did together..." Although she said this calmly, implicit was the threat of enmeshment, however weak it was. "We both have our skeletons. You don't open my closet, I won't open yours."

"What are you saying?" Grażyna said, defensively as she backed away, heading towards the door.

"I'm saying. Don't ruin this," Betty said. There was a tinge of a plea in her voice. She searched Grażyna's small pale eyes for some kind of sisterly understanding. Hadn't they transgressed together? Why would this be different?

"I-it is not right..." Grażyna mumbled nervously, opening the door.

"Don't be a hypocrite!" Betty whispered loudly. "You know we could've--"

The door slammed. Betty's blood began to boil first with fear, then with a more powerful lust. She knew Grażyna was rushing now to sell her out--those hurried footsteps beyond the door, reverberating down the long hallway, would deliver Mother Haywood's judgmental eye in but a few moments.

Sure, the easiest thing for her to do would be to play innocent. After all, if she simply pulled the tarp down and stood aside, it would be Grażyna's word against her own. She'd done nothing truly circumstantially incriminating...yet. Between that and the gossip about her that those students are probably bandying about the lunchroom, she'd certainly have some cleaning up to do. But she could weather it. If she played innocent.

The big if.

Her eyes again fell on the object of her desires, taking in its vascular brilliance. The gonads casual and fuzzy, like ripe coconuts; the shaft long as a viper even in its flaccid state, and significantly fatter, with surface-flesh healthy and moist. At its epic end, resting like an orb in a scepter, was a massive taupe mushroom head. Betty's inner harlot unleashed, she felt saliva well up behind her gums.

With that, it was decided. Carpe diem.

She took only one precaution. She pulled both latches down upon the door, so as to afford her a sliver of more time in heaven before her inevitable descent. With that, she turned to the medical table and advanced towards it in a hurry.

Her fingers clasped the monstrous prick, raising it up to meet her face. Even with both hands around it, her fingertips did not meet; the pure heft of the sleeping man's tool made it almost cumbersome to wield in Betty's trembling grasp, but this fact only aroused her further.

As the foreign flesh reached her hungry lips, she could not help but recall a passage of scripture that had been bore into her head during her time in this wretched place:

"Each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." - James 1:14-15

The first few screeches of pious authority now echoed back from that temporarily sealed space. Conjuring up her old self, to this she replied "If this gives birth to death, then call me the Reaper's mistress!" before her head dived down to meet the oversized bulb, her jaw contorting to allow its corona to finally slip past her teeth's barrier and into the slippery confines of her gluttonous mouth.

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"You're lucky you're here," the voice behind the iron panel informed her. She did not believe the voice. She'd seen the face attached to it, only once, but it was enough.

It was just a man. Not a wise man, just a man employed by the state to work in this ward, and say the things that Freud and Adler prescribed to anyone deemed "deviant."

She did not think believe the voice sought to deceive with this bit of information. For if her goal was to stay alive, then it would have a point. Under normal circumstances, the papal brotherhood would have decided execution for an act so depraved as hers. But she was an Arbach. Her father's legacy protected her even now, unworthy as she felt to receive it.

Her goal was not to do what the voice presumed. The reaper's mistress she was to be. She would keep her word.

"You understand that, right Betty? People were very worried about you. But you're safe here now."

Her head drifted numbly to the cardboard box laying at her bedside. It contained a few "souvenirs" from her previous place of residency. A copy of the King James, a strange brick-shaped edition. Its text was too tiny for her weakening eyes to read without glasses. Given that she neither wished to ever open that book again, nor had the means to read it until her glasses arrived, it was a moot point.

Her silver crucifix was there was well. She briefly considered that it might, with some gradual craftsmanship, be fashioned into something sharp enough to slit a wrist.

Lastly there sat a stack of wrapped parcels. Mostly old documents from her estate, the last connection to the outside world she'd be afforded.

A day without the straitjacket was yet another aspect of this "luck" she was compelled to be grateful for. This was the reward for her compliance. The fits she'd had days earlier had been addressed. Now she was tame, they believed.

She looked tame. She acted tame. Perhaps a bit of the old Arbach still left in her. Perhaps, in time, she could regain some dignity, and reenter the waking world. That was what they told her, but in a tone so bloodlessly agnostic that she knew that day would likely never come.

That was just as well. The only world she cared to revisit would be swept away soon, anyhow. Mayor Haden would make sure of that.

The voice vanished. She felt no more alone.

Keep up the good behavior.

The crucifix.

She's tossed her last down the drain ages ago, but it keeps coming back, doesn't it?

Jesus always promises to return. He never comes, but he's always returning, somehow.

Good Betty.

The captor must be content.

She can hear his relaxed breathing as he shuffles down the hall, farther and farther away from her, on to the next room, to advise the next soul that they, too, are lucky to be here.

Good Betty.

They'll let you have a cosmetics kit eventually. They promise it to all the good, God-fearing girls.

Every kit has a nail file. Good girls like to take care of their nails.

Nails and crosses, Betty.

Nails and crosses...