How the Mighty Have Fallen

Author's Note: My stories are usually based on real-life events and tend to have religious themes. They are more about the process of corruption or good-girl-gone-bad, than about overt sex. If that doesn't appeal to you, then you probably won't want to waste your time reading what I write. On the other hand, what I write tends to be real-life events that have happened to people I know if not in the same context to the same person. It has been eight years since I finished my first story on this site. This story is tied to that one but written to stand alone. I do suggest you read my Backsliding series if you want to know a little about the characters I allude to here, Marilyn Baker especially. Sindi Lynne does exist in another form. She did come from a similar religious background and went down a very similar path of sin and self-discovery. So, before you say that's too odd to be true, think again. It is true and it did happen. Mostly at least.

Honest feedback is welcomed. Just leaving negative feedback for the sake of being petty is ignored. I hope you enjoy.

***

"Maybe if you were in that bar right now with your husband, he wouldn't be fucking Stephanie Barnes!"

Although it had been years since her former church member had said those words to her, they still rung clear and true as if they were said yesterday. So much, God, so very much, had happened since then and she was still amazed at the chain of events that one sentence had set into motion. Ah, to be able to push back the hands of time. There was so much she would have changed and so much she would have done sooner. But everything happens for a reason and she couldn't begin to guess that the woman she had been back then could have ever transformed into the woman she had become. As ironic as it seems, she was so much happier now.

"Oh well, no time to think about that shit now, I've got a set to do," she whispered out loud, finishing the final touches to her dark eyeliner. "My public awaits," she said with a smile, grabbing the shot of expensive tequila sitting on her desk and downing it. She then stood up and walked toward the curtain toward the main stage. She could get a glimpse from the side of the oval stage, the tall brass pole in the center, and the large-mostly male crowd just beyond, drinks and bills stacked in front of them.

She heard the music change to her favorite 80s heavy metal rock song as she reached for the curtain. Overhead, she could hear the announcer say, "Ladies and gentlemen, please make welcome, SINDI LYNNE!"

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," were the words, her own words, that flooded into her mind as she strutted out on stage one more time.

***

Marilyn Cynthia Johnson-Baker hadn't always been Sindi Lynne. That was the stage name she invented for herself when she fully committed to this journey of debauchery and self-discovery that she lived now. No, the demure, insecure, and dedicated church mouse that had been Marilyn Baker was long gone now, dead like her late husband. She knew that if most of her customers knew her story, they'd feel sorry for her, and she knew exactly what she'd tell them. Fuck you. She willingly chose this life of "sin" that she was living now, not that she believed in sin anymore anyway, or a god for that matter.

Mari's story was a long one, but not overly complicated. She was raised in a typical northern-California white-bread household. Her dad and mom both worked hard to send her and her two sisters to a private Christian school and hopefully on to college. They were a religious family who never missed Mass on Sundays.

But Marilyn had always been inquisitive and at a pretty early age, she began to question what she saw as the hypocrisy of the Catholic church. The history and traditions of her church reminded her of the paganism they worked so hard to abolish if her history books were to be believed. As she grew older, she became less convinced that Catholicism was the one true church. Naturally, that led her to start researching other religions and denominations. Sometime about the time she graduated high school, Mari (as she was called then), discovered the Pentecostal church when she was invited to attend a service with a friend of her boyfriend.

The charismatic worship of the Pentecostal church was so different from anything she had known! She quickly thought she had finally found what she had been looking for. Not only was she in love with the friendly people, exciting worship, loud music and energetic youth group, Mari especially loved the rules. She saw the teachings of that church as penance for Eve's sins. Women wore long dresses, no jewelry, no makeup, and didn't cut their hair. Their men had fewer rules, but still looked like a rerun episode of some 50s TV show. When her boyfriend quickly bored of the strict rules and legalistic devotion, Mari did just the opposite. She dismissed her boyfriend, cut most ties with her family that she now believed were truly deceived by the cult of the Catholic church, and wrapped herself in the glories of the Pentecostal movement. She attended church several times a week, traveled all over America to Youth Congresses and conventions and enrolled in a prestigious bible college back east. Within less than a year, anyone who saw Marilyn Johnson would have sworn she was born and bred into that church. Her naturally mousy-brown hair now reached down to her mid-back in soft curls. She never wore any kind of makeup and literally didn't own anything that resembled pants or jeans.

Looking back now, Sindi realized that Marilyn had an addictive personality and a penchant for being overzealous. She understood that now and knew how to manage it, but Marilyn hadn't figured that out yet. Hell, even the name Marilyn had been a nod to that overzealousness. She had been called Mari her entire life, but when she got so immersed in the rules of the church, she started going by the more-formal Marilyn. To her, it sounded more proper when people called her "Sister Marilyn".

For Sister Marilyn Johnson, church was all about the rules. She worked hard to dress holy enough. If other sisters in her church were cutting corners and wearing skirts to the knee, Marilyn thought she had to do better by wearing skits to her calves. While other girls may have slipped around and trimmed the dead ends from their hair, or wore clear mascara or nail polish, Marilyn Johnson did none of those things and had an honest disdain for those who did. Sindi laughed out loud when she thought about how vain Marilyn was in trying to wipe out vanity.

The road that currently found Sindi Lynne working in a gentleman's club in north Florida started her second semester of bible college. It was there that she met John Baker, an upper classman who was quite popular and played electric guitar in the school's traveling praise band. Marilyn had auditioned as a singer in the band her first semester and was selected, so she got to spend lots of time with the handsome John, who everyone agreed was headed places in the church. It wasn't long before one thing led to another and they were an item. Just before he graduated, he proposed to her. Afterall, a young, energetic, going-places preacher in this church organization needed a beautiful young wife by his side. The trouble was Marilyn wasn't especially beautiful. She was just normal by anyone's standards. Cute, for sure, and she would mature into a beautiful woman, but back then she was jut okay.

But John Baker didn't seem to mind all of that. In the early years, he and Marilyn had a good life. He was quickly asked to be associate pastor at his uncle's church in Gainesville, Florida. Marilyn moved south and quickly settled into the lifestyle of a pastor's wife. As his popularity grew, so did the Baker family. Marilyn gave birth to a sone, Lane, three years after their marriage. They moved into a nice house in a nice neighborhood and life seemed to be great.

Things took a turn when John announced one night at dinner that he was giving up his position in the church and becoming a traveling evangelist. There was more money to be made, more name recognition to be gained and more people to minister to. Marilyn was hesitant and didn't want to start living the live of a wandering gypsy, which led to the first of a regular series of fights that would plague her the rest of her marriage. They began to drift apart at that point, slowly but surely. However, Marilyn was taught that man was the head of the woman and if God called her husband into a traveling ministry, who was she to argue? They sold their nice house, invested in an expensive RV and hit the road. When the time came, she homeschooled Lane and raised him on the road. They never stayed in one location more than a week, which was a downer for Marilyn, but looking back, Sindi saw it as a godsend. Because they were constantly on the move, John didn't have time to develop a relationship with the pastor's wives and church ladies that always seemed to follow him around at each new church they visited. Marilyn worked hard to hide the tinge of jealousy she felt when John was lauded with praise, but she remained the dutiful wife and mother.

Eventually, John felt that Lane was at the age that he needed a stable home and school. Eventually, much to Marilyn's relief, John once again found an associate pastor's job in a large Pentecostal church in the deep south. The Bakers bought another house, parked the RV, and settled into a more stable lifestyle, though John continued to travel to preach from time to time for extra income. Marilyn was happy to stay at home with Lane, who was now entering his adolescence, and let John travel. As the rumors began to make their way home about John's penchant for the ladies, Marilyn ignored them. She had read all the Pentecostal books on the magic of following church rules and she knew that God would protect her if she just followed the rules of the church.

Bowing to her overzealous tendencies, Marilyn began to get more and more involved in her home church. She soon found herself at odds with another up-and-coming young couple in the church, Brother James and Sister Sarah. Sarah was everything Marilyn was not. She had actually graduated from bible college, not dropped out to follow her husband, and she was unbelievably beautiful. People just naturally gravitated to Sarah. She was very shy, humble and modest to a fault. She also had a charismatic smile that naturally drew people to her. When the pastor offered her a job at the church day care, business grew almost overnight. When she took over as director of the Sunday School mission at church, along with her husband, Sunday school attendance rose. Marilyn had taught Sunday School for years and saw attendance decline.

No matter how hard she tried, Marilyn found a growing resentment towards Sister Sarah. She suspected Sarah didn't take the holiness standards of the church serious enough and would eventually lead others astray. She voiced her concerns to anyone in the church who would listen, but few took her seriously. Her own husband seemed to be much too preoccupied with other business to care about one rising star of the church. Things just continued as they were going with no one bothering to listen to the dire warnings of Sister Marilyn Baker. No one, that is, until Brother James resigned as Youth Pastor and backslid from the church. He grew his hair, grew a beard and started riding motorcycles. Many in the church were devastated that he'd choose such a sinful path after all the Lord had done for him, but he did. As for Sister Sarah, she chose to remain in the only lifestyle she had ever known and just pray that her husband would eventually return to the fold.

Ah, but he didn't return to the fold. Not only did he not return, he opened a chain of events that eventually led Sarah astray, who would influence several more to follow, and leave the once thriving and largest Pentecostal church in the county a hollow shell of it's former glory. It became an inter-linked chain of events that seemed far removed from the original antagonists, yet still had unintended consequences. Consequences and chains of events that Marilyn Baker herself helped set into motion.

***

Sindi Lynne walked into the living room of her high-rise apartment and opened the blinds to the double glass doors leading out onto her balcony. She liked looking out over the ocean at night. There was something peaceful and serene about it that you just couldn't get in the daytime. Something about how the moon and stars reflected on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the flickering lights of distant ships and offshore oil rigs let you know that there were others out there. Others with their own stories to tell and their own demons to slay.

This was Sindi's favorite time of the night, just after midnight when she'd just finished an early shift at the club. She walked across the soft carpet barefoot, wearing just a sheer vest over her breasts and her thong panties. She held a cocktail in her hand. She sat down on the sofa and sipped the strong drink. She giggled to herself at how she must look to the old Marilyn, sitting on the sofa, drinking alcohol in the near nude. She picked up the remote and turned on her Smart TV, going to a saved file she had downloaded months before from a porn site. The old Marilyn would have passed out at the mere thought of watching porn, much less sitting here watching it while drinking alcohol and inhaling nicotine through a small vape pod.

When the credits started to open the video, Sindi smiled to see the title of the video pop up. The title, in a sort of macabre script with an erotic horror score playing in the background, read simply, Fallen Angels starring Sindi Lynne. Other names appeared in the credits but Sindi didn't care. It was her own name that appeared on the screen that got her wet. Sindi reached for the small vibrator laying beside her on the couch, next to her vape pod. She clicked the switch and smiled when it buzzed to life. She rubbed it through the outer fabric of her satin thong, feeling the soft vibrations on he hidden lips of her vagina. She always liked to start off with the lower settings on her toys. The soft hum soothed her and built her up slowly, finally necessitating an increase in vibration until she exploded in blissful ecstasy.

As she watched the video and saw herself on TV, her hair covered by a nun's habit with just a hint of platinum bangs hanging in the front, she shuddered. As she watched the nun in the video fall pray to the evils of sin, eventually renouncing her calling and willingly engaging in every sexual sin imaginable, Sindi shuddered and turned up the vibrator a notch. The toy jumped to life, bringing a moan to Sindi's lips. She shuddered again and glanced at a small 5 x 7 photo underneath her coffee table, almost hidden from view. She reached down and picked it up. It was a faded photo of John, Marilyn and Lane Baker, taken at church many years ago. Sindi looked at Marilyn, her vision slightly blurred from the three cocktails she had enjoyed since she got home from work. Marilyn smiled back at her; her brown hair piled on top of her head in soft curls in the classic Pentecostal style. Unadorned brown eyes stared back at her through her black rimmed glasses, her drab green dress reaching almost to her ankles. Sindi smirked at the fake smile and the pain behind the eyes. She wondered how Marilyn would react to the person she had become. What would she say if she could see this wannabe porn start sitting on the couch drinking, smoking and pleasuring herself to a sacrilegious porn video she herself had starred in? Would she even recognize the platinum haired MILF that now sat before her? Her large breasts adorned with rings, her heavily made up face and her numerous tattoos and piercings?

And that hair, yeah, that fucking hair, Sindi thought sheepishly, finishing off her cocktail. That fucking hair that was supposed to protect you from infidelity. That fucking glory of yours that you wouldn't dare touch scissors to because it held some kind of power from the angels to protect you from sin. Well, babe, it didn't protect you from shit. Because now you sit here reveling in the sin of your own choosing, living the lifestyle you secretly always wanted.

Sindi reached up and rubbed her hands along the shaved sides of her head, the stubble brushing against her hands. For someone who preached so hard against even trimming your hair, she now reveled just how erotic her head felt as she rubbed her hands along the stubble. She kept her hair cut short now, the top bleached a platinum blonde and hanging over her forehead and working to keep the undercut sides and back covered except when she wanted it out and visible for the world to see.

She tossed the old photo to the family she could barely recognize on the floor and turned the vibrator up to the last notch. She leaned back on the couch, enjoying the buzz in her brain from the alcohol and the buzz in her pussy from the vibrator. She glanced down at the smiling Marilyn Cynthia Baker looking up at her from the floor one last time.

"Fuckin' bitch," she hissed out loud. "I fuckin' hate you. You wasted the best part of my years trying to be somebody you weren't. The whole fuckin' time you were condemning others to a hell that doesn't exist, you were living in the hell of an existence you created. I'm glad that fucking bitch is gone. Fuck you, Marilyn Baker. Fuck you and all you stood for!".

As her eyes rolled back in her heard in orgasmic bliss, Sindi Lynne rode the wave of ecstasy. If you listened softly, you could hear her whisper, "Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Karma's a bitch!"