Kukeri

I didn't want to leave Iceland. Armin was right that I had needed a break from the classroom and worrying about what had happened to my colleagues in the Yucatan. After a week of helping him with his field research on the Icelandic Hand, as well as doing a lot of research in bed with the creature he had snuck into my room, I decided it was time to continue my sabbatical and see what the rest of Europe had to offer in the way of anthropological studies.

I told Armin that I would be back to see him before I returned to work at the university. He shook my hand and wished me safe travels but before he let me go he put his free arm around my shoulder, pulled me close, and whispered that when he saw me again he would have an even bigger surprise for me and that it might not be so easy for me to leave the hotel room next time. I was hoping the Hand that I would find in my room upon my return would not make a liar out of my old friend.

Having spent a lot of time reading through the research papers my colleagues in the anthropologic community had sent my way while I was cooped up on campus gave me a lot of options to explore while I was on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. One such paper from a Russian I had met at a conference in Arizona was about the Kukeri in Bularia.

The tradition goes back about four thousand years and consists of men dressing up in handmade costumes, made of either goat or sheep fur, and scary masks, going through their town clanging copper bells all in the hopes of scaring away evil spirits and ushering in a bountiful harvest for the coming season.

After a relatively short flight and a longer-than-expected car ride, I was in the southwest of Bulgaria and without too much difficulty I found a room for rent for a few days. With the help of the translation app on my phone and some broken English on the part of the innkeeper, I was told where to go in town for the Kukeri parade as well as what to see before the majority of the festivities started the next evening. After grabbing an early dinner at a nice little restaurant around the corner from the inn, I called it a night and quickly fell asleep.

The following day proved to be very different than what I expected. The seemingly quiet street I was on when I first arrived was now filled with people getting into the spirit of the celebration, and judging by their clothing the majority of them were locals. I pulled my camera out of my bag and made my way into the crowd and started taking pictures of whatever caught my eye. I didn't have to worry about getting disoriented in the unfamiliar town as the flow of revelers basically dragged me along.

I quickly lost track of how many shots I had taken as well as the time and soon the Kukeri were dancing around and through the crowds, waving their arms and shaking their bells. Each costume, although unique thanks to the personality of the maker, was made to give the wearer the appearance of being much larger than he actually was. The length of the goat fur made the costumes sway and weave with very little effort, and it covered each of the Kukeri from head-to-toe – in some cases even more than head-to-toe.

While some of the dancers had wooden masks to cover their faces and fur to cover the backs of their heads, there were those that had fur heads that went about three to four feet above their shoulders. I wondered how they could see with their heads completely encased in the long fur columns but as I was taking some close-ups I noticed that there were openings in the front of each furry mask that was big enough for their faces but covered enough by the goat hair that they weren't easily visible.

I had understood enough of what people were telling me about the Kukeri to know that the tradition had strayed a little bit from its origins as the dancers were supposed to come out at night so the sun would not see them. The Kukeri were supposed to come out at night and go from home-to-home to ward off evil spirits. I guess the tourist dollars don't come in if no one can see the parade, and perhaps some people just have better things to do with their evenings. As it was, the sun was going down and the January day that had once been festive, crowded, and extremely loud had begun to return to what I assumed was normal in Bulgaria so I started to make my way back to the inn.

It wasn't long before I realized that I had made a couple of wrong turns and had no idea where I was. Following the crowd blindly through town on my way to the main parade route was apparently not the best idea I had ever had. I was pretty sure the inn was higher up from the centre of town so I turned left at the next road that looked like it was an uphill climb. That didn't help either. Throwing the roaming fees to the wind, I pulled out my phone and tried to find myself on a map of the area.

I had almost figured out which way I was supposed to go when I heard the clanging of Kukeri bells coming up the road. As I was closing the map app and opening up the one for translation I looked at the group of six Kukeri and shouted "Hi."

They waved back and soon they were standing in front of me like they were posing for a picture.

"Sorry," I said, "I was actually going to ask you for directions."

They all started waving their arms and clanging their bells.

"If you could just help me find my way ... ."

Their bells easily drowned me out. Before I could say anything else they stopped shaking their bells and one of the Kukeri spoke.

"Natisnete go v Laneway."

"I don't speak Bularian ..." was all I could get out when they started clanging their bells and walking towards me, forcing me into the laneway. I stumbled backwards and tried to turn around and run but two of the taller Kukeri with the high fur heads had already gotten behind me blocked my exit.

"Nego dürzhat vse oshte!"

I didn't need to understand Bulgarian by then as two of the Kukeri with wooden masks were holding my arms and the two taller ones that had blocked my way were now standing right in front of me. The other two tall Kukeri were pressed up behind me. I tried yelling but they immediately started clanging their bells again and swaying back-and-forth. To anyone passing by us in the street they would have looked like any other Kukeri dancing and making noise well into the night.

The tall Kuker behind me spoke again but I think by then everyone knew what their roles were.

"Poluchite si svali drekhite!"

I watched as my camera slipped from around and next, and in spite of my struggling I could only stare at my clothes as they were pulled off of me and disappeared behind the mass of fur and limbs in front of me.

I felt tiny surrounded by the oversized fur costumes; the tops of some of the goat fur clad outfits seemed like they were another five feet above my head. I was a small and powerless man surrounded by huge columns of fur, unable to shake free of the Kukeri, and unable to prevent whatever it was they were going to do to me.

There was a lull in the clanging of the cowbells so I tried one last time to speak to them.

"Why are you doing this? Please, let me go!"

One of the Kuker with the tall heads in front of me moved forward and was soon pressed right up against me, so much so that I had to turn my head and close my eyes so that the thick, shaggy fur of his costume didn't poke me in the face. The soft goat pelts spread over my skin; across my chest, my neck, and swelled into my crotch. I hadn't noticed until that point but my penis had firmed up just a little during the struggle, and as the Kuker leaned into me, I could feel my cock find reluctant succor in the deep pile of the man's traditional dress.

He rocked side-to-side on his feet almost imperceptibly, swiping the fur over me, mopping my bare torso, coaching my penis further into the soft folds of his outfit. I kept my eyes closed, not sure of what he was going to do next.

I had almost lost myself in the swaying column of fur in front of my when I suddenly felt the dancer's hands grab the cheeks of my ass and pull them apart.

I only hesitated slightly before I blurted out "Wait, ... no, wait!"

It was too late. The Kuker behind me had already slipped his cock into my ass and had put his hands around my waist, holding me firmly as the fur of his costume pressed up against my back and down the sides of my torso where his arms flexed around me, and puffing over the back of my legs and flooding into the ticklish space in behind my knee caps.

He slid himself in and out of me slowly several times to make sure the lubricant was all over him and well as inside of me before what I could only imagine would turn into a serious fucking. The Kuker who had been holding my cheeks open released his grip, and while I still felt the thick fur of his costume inching methodically over my bare, exposed flesh, I hadn't noticed that he was now kneeling in front of me because the top of his costume was still tall enough to reach over my head by several inches.

With precise timing, the Kuker behind me plunged his cock into me as far as he could at the exact same moment the one kneeling in front of me engulfed my penis in his mouth. I screamed as loud as I could but the other Kukeri were rattling their bells and shouting so as to drown me out. The shock of being penetrated and swallowed up was too much and my knees buckled. The Kukeri on either side of me made sure I didn't fall down too far, and as the Kuker giving me the blowjob continued to masterfully tease my cock, rocking its head in the back of his throat and creating a relentless amount of suction as he moved his mouth, lips, and firm tongue up and down the shaft of my penis in what felt like contrary motions, I was unable to stop by ass from squeezing around the one filling me from behind.

"Mislya, che toi ya obicha."

I had no idea what the Kuker said but it seemed to make the two who were fucking me speed up a little.

"Te vinagi go kharesva." That made a couple of them laugh.

If I hadn't been such a bookworm and had gone to the gym more often than the library then I might have been able to put up more of a struggle and not felt so helpless surrounded by the Kukeri in their immensely oversized costumes. The fact that I couldn't even come close to shaking myself free from them was a testament to how much time they spent in the gym compared to the library.

I wasn't sure when but I had involuntarily relaxed my muscles and stopped struggling at some point – my body had resigned itself to the pleasure that I was feeling both from the monstrous amounts of fur that was wrapped around and pressed up against me from every angle and the arousal of being sucked and fucked by two men who were bent on making me have the biggest orgasms of my life.

The Kuker who was kneeling in front of me must have sensed my tacit acquiescence because he changed his approach from forceful, break-down-my-barriers sucking to playful and tender – he was giving me the kind of head that your lover would give you if they wanted you to get as much pleasure out of the experience while making you last for as long as possible. I don't know if his mouth was filled with too much saliva or too much of my pre-cum but I could feel a tiny trickle of liquid make its way down the outside of my balls.

His tongue danced down the shaft of my cock and into the crease of my scrotum, toying with me, wiggling its wet, fleshy tip between my balls, lightly jostling them, making my penis feel like it was floating inside a cavernous mouth. I could feel the skin tighten in response to the teasing, to the coy and devilish manipulation of my sex. I was totally lost in the open, loose flesh of his mouth and was caught entirely off guard when he closed his lips around me and sucked on me again with the same vigour, the same aggressiveness as when he first started, when the six of them first started raping me. I screamed with delight but my voice was drowned out again by the clanging of bells.

The Kuker behind me had also begun to speed up, plunging in and out of my ass in short, steady, rapid thrusts. His grip around my waist tightened and without any instruction the other Kukeri held my arms firmer, leaving me to feel like I was in a massive, furry, muscle-filled straight jacket, lifting me slightly off the ground.

I came. I came so hard – the tip of my cock almost splitting as the cum shot from my plump flesh into the Kuker's mouth, the suction behind his lips stretching the flesh of my penis, his tongue swirling around the circumference of my cock, washing me in his saliva and my own ejaculate, all the while my ass clenched and unclenched with each twitch of my prostate. The thin skin of my anus absorbed each pulse of the Kuker's orgasm as he held his ground and let me do the work, dragging the condom up and down his shaft as my own orgasm slowed and my strength left me. As my body went limp, spent, destroyed, the Kukeri surrounded me and lowered me to the ground.

It may sound strange but as they released me and eased me down onto a clear spot in behind some crates in the alleyway, I was almost squished by the amount of fur of their oversized costumes and I felt comforted. Gone was the clanging of the cowbells, the slow grunting of the Kuker who raped me (or was that my grunting?) – all I was aware of was the long fur that seemed to swarm around me, wash over me, and all I wanted to do was to lie down on the ground and be nestled by the six costumed men. I guess that was what Stockholm Syndrome feels like, although I doubt many kidnappers have held anyone hostage using fur as a weapon before.

The Kukeri started putting their costumes back in order – smoothing out the fur, getting their cowbells organized, closing up flaps – when one of them looked over at me and said "Mislite li , che vse oshte iska da vzeme nashiya kartina?" A few of the men let out a groan while a few laughed and slapped each other on the back.

The Kuker who had been kneeling before me walked over and laid my clothes over me and went back to the rest of the group who were doing a last-minute check of the street to make sure the coast was clear.

"Nadyavam se, che toi se vr shta na sledvashtata godina. Mislya, che toi naistina go kharesva."

They all looked back and me, and then at each other and nodded. As they filed out of the laneway and up the street away from the town square, their cowbells and howls echoed through the buildings and seemed to spread unrelentingly across the cobblestones like the immense piles of fur of their costumes spread across me.