Pandora's Box

"See ya later Spencer," Lynn sighed blissfully before bringing the Pandora to her lips for another luscious puff.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As Spencer headed home, Stephanie lay snuggled between the silk sheets of her mother's four-post bed, fast asleep until she felt several fingers softly caressing her forehead. When she opened her eyes, she noticed the room was bathed in candlelight; and sitting next to her like a big sister comforting her sibling was Jezzie looking down at her with a wide smile.

"Hey girl friend," Jezzie said softly as she held a long cigarette in one hand and caressed Stephanie's forehead with the other. "Having fun?"

"Yes," Stephanie replied with a yawn. And then with a wicked smile she said softly, "I made him a smoker." She reached for the cigarette in Jezzie's hand as she added, "He's one of us now." She put the pearl filter between her lips and softly puffed before slowly inhaling the smoky contents the Pandora deposited into her mouth.

"He's not quite one of us, yet," Jezzie said before lighting another cigarette for herself.

"Oh, yeah," Stephanie said as she remembered the Pandora's Box. "When can I show it to him?" she asked eagerly.

"Soon, girl friend, very soon. Spencer had to make a quick trip home, but he should be back in a little while."

Stephanie brought the cigarette up to her lips, but then paused before talking a puff. "Jezzie? I want Spencer and me to always be together." She smiled at that thought as she took a slow-burning puff which she French inhaled up into her nostrils. "Like Romeo and Juliette," she added in a cloud of smoke.

"You do everything I tell you to do, girlfriend, and I promise you'll be together for aneternity. In the meantime," Jezzie reached over and grabbed an ashtray, dumped its contents on the rug, and put it on the bed next to Stephanie, "it's time for you to move on to the next stage."

Stephanie looked at her quizzically. "Next stage?"

"Lynn and Lisa are already there, waiting for you," and Jezzie pointed her cigarette at Lisa who continued to sit with eyes closed and her arms wrapped around her legs, rhythmically smoking her Pandora. "They've fully embraced the evil pleasure these Pandoras can give."

Evil pleasure. Stephanie liked the sound of that, and she looked at Lisa with a longing to join her in that state. "What's it feel like?"

"Remember how it felt in the café after you looked into Pandora's box?" Jezzie asked as she slowly moved Stephanie's right hand and put it between the young woman's legs. "Well," she continued as she softly pushed Stephanie's fingers into the fleshy center, "it's even better than that." Stephanie continued to finger herself without Jezzie's assistance, and combined with the powerful smoke of the cigarette between her lips found herself flying high very quickly. "All you need to do," Jezzie said in an evil whisper, "is breathe in deeply, and surrender to the power of the Pandora."

Stephanie greedily sucked on the Pandora and inhaled its contents into her lungs. She could already feel she was embarking on a new journey when immediately her body responded with a rolling orgasm; and she wanted more. "I surrender completely to it," she said as she exhaled a long stream of smoke towards the mirror above her.

"Somehow I knew you would," Jezzie replied with a smile.

PART 10 - "a perfect and upright man"

Spencer found it more than a little difficult to stay focused as he was driving home. He wasn't sure how many beers he consumed at Stephanie's, but his hangover told him it was more than a few. He was also dying for a cigarette but managed to make the 30 minute drive from Stephanie's house without lighting up. Just knowing that they were in his coat pocket gave him comfort.

Perhaps it was this comfort that kept him calm on the drive over. He had a lot to be ashamed of. So why wasn't he, he wondered?

Spencer parked the car down the long driveway behind the church in front of the parish residence, but he could see from the lights in the church that his father was still in his office. And then the son's fear of the father began to swell in him once again. He had taken a breath mint but his clothes still reeked of smoke. He would just have to wing it and hope his father didn't get a good whiff of him.

"Spencer," Carol said with relief as she watched the young man she had helped raise walk into the office lobby. Spencer saw his father through the open office door sitting at his desk reading the Bible. "Thank God you're home," Carol said in almost a whisper as she stood up to greet him. "He's calmer now, but I really think you need to..."

"Carol!" said the booming voice of the minister in his office as he continued to read his Bible. "You may go home now."

Carol knew it would be pointless to argue and so picked up her purse, softly patted Spencer on the cheek, and wished him "Good luck" before walking out of the lobby.

"Come in, Spencer," Father Greg said sternly, "and close the door."

Spencer did as he was told and took a seat in front of the desk as he watched his father put the Bible down and take both hands to rub his face. Never before had he known this man to be at a loss for words, but it was clear that the priest was struggling as to what he should say. And then Father Greg began to speak in low, measured tones.

"For the last few hours," he began "I have been sitting here trying to understand how..." He paused. "...why you have failed me."

Spencer began to tremble as all the boyhood fears he had of his father began to swell up in him.

"I have taught you, have I not," the priest continued, the volume of his voice slowing rising, "the dangers of evil women? Of the harm they can do to your immortal soul?"

"Yes, father," Spencer answered meekly. Could his father know what he has been doing at Stephanie's house? No, Spencer said to himself, it's impossible.

"God hates sin, my son." Father Greg was in full sermon mode now. "He detests it. He loathes it! And yet you - my own flesh and blood - bring sin into this house! You curse this entire congregation with your vile and lascivious behavior!" The priest then shouted: "Do you deny it?!"

"Father," Spencer pleaded in desperation, "what are you talking about?"

"God sees all, Spencer." Father Greg reached into his desk and pulled out a large manila envelope. "This was delivered to me this morning," he said holding up the envelope. "I warned you, my son, that this woman would lead to your ruin, and this is exactly what she is doing: pulling you into the pit of hell." He pulled out a stack of 8x10 color photographs and threw them on the desk in front of Spencer who picked them up with shaking hands.

What he saw turned his face white: photographs of him and Stephanie making love in the back of her car. And these weren't pictures from afar. It was as if someone were in the car with them taking close up shots of Stephanie sucking him off and he puffing away on a cigarette. Spencer felt as though he were having an out of body experience as he watched himself rifle through the photos quickly, growing more panicky by the second, and whispering over and over, "No...no...it's not possible. We were alone." The last picture was a head shot of Stephanie with her eyes closed and cum dripping from her lips.

Spencer watched himself stand up quickly, pushing the chair backwards onto the floor in the process, and continued to shake his head. "No," he continued to mumble, "this can't be. This is a nightmare." But the fury in his father's voice told him it was all too real.

"You have violated my trust, Spencer. But more important, you have violated God's trust. You will therefore sever all ties with this harlot, this Jezebel!"

"This can't be happening," Spencer continued to mumble absent mindedly, and he began to pace the floor in front of his father's desk like a mad man.

"You will...Spencer, listen to me!!" the priest shouted, and Spencer stood still and looked with a horror stricken expression at his father. "You will sever all ties with her. You will withdraw from the university and live here at home full time, where we will embark on round-the-clock prayer vigils as you seek God's mercy and beg for redemption!"

It was these last few commands from his father that suddenly brought Spencer back to his senses. "Withdraw from the university? Live here full time...with you?Are you out of your fucking mind?!"

"What did you just say to me?" the priest replied more in shock than in anger.

"No, father, there is no fucking way that I'm moving back here full time." Spencer reached into his pocket and pulled out the Pandora pack, quickly removing a cigarette and lighting it despite his father's furious protests. The smoke gave him a new found strength to fight his father.

"How dare you light a cigarette in this house of God. Have you no shame? Have you ignored everything I've taught you these last 19 years?!"

"Oh, I've learned a lot, Father," Spencer said after taking a powerful puff on his Pandora. "I've learned that there is no way I can live up to your expectations, so why should I even try any longer?" Spencer took another puff, the power of the smoke coursing through his veins now, and exhaled a powerful blast out of the left of his mouth. "You wanna know what I've been doing the last 24 hours?"

"I can see what you've been doing!" the priest replied in a thunderous tone as he pointed down at the photos.

"Oh, father, these only tell the beginning of the story." An erotic sensation began to build inside of him as he eagerly sought to detail his wicked activities since yesterday. He took another powerful puff and said, "In the last 24 hours I've fucked two beautiful women until their pussies were raw. I got drunk and watched my girl friend masturbate with a beer bottle." He then held up the half-smoked cigarette in front of him, showing it to his father as he said, "and I've become a smoker!" He took a deep puff and powerfully exhaled it. "I've lived more in the last day than I have in the last 19 years in this hell-hole you call a home."

Father Greg's fury was at such a peak that he struggled to get the words out of his mouth."Then you will take this wickedness out of my house!" he screamed. "Go back to your whore. Let her destroy your chance of EVER entering the Kingdom of God. But when you are broken; when your soul is stained and tattered and beyond redemption, do NOT come back here for forgiveness, for none will be forthcoming!"

Spencer stared silently at his father and then said, "I would never expect something so Christian as forgiveness from you, Father." He took one final puff, exhaled it out of the corner of his mouth as he crushed his cigarette on the desk, and turned to walk out of the office.

But as he put his hand on the doorknob, he heard his father say in an anguished voice, "Spencer...don't go." Spencer wanted to turn around, just to see if the anguished tone of the voice was actually reflected on his father's face; but he had made his choice to leave. He opened the door and walked out.

For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the clicking of a clock. The priest continued to look at the door, knowing that his son would return to ask for forgiveness. But the teen did not return; and after a few minutes, the father heard the sound of an automobile speeding out of the church driveway which heralded Spencer's departure.

Tears began to form in his eyes. His son had left him. He was alone. Father Greg picked up his Bible and held it close to his chest. He stood up from the desk and staggered across the room, and sat down in a reading chair.

"Oh Lord, give me the strength to go on. I'm so tired," he said with his moist eyes closed tightly, "so, so tired." If only he could sleep. Yes, that was what he needed, sleep. Then he could think with a clear mind.

As the priest slowed his breathing, he heard a soft feminine voice ask,"What has become of Spencer?"

"Mary," Father Greg answered his wife softly with his eyes still closed. "He's become rebellious; uncontrollable. I don't know what to do."

"He's his father's son," the voice replied sympathetically.

"Mary, you were my rock in this turbulent sea. Without you I've nothing to hold onto. I miss you so much."

"I miss you, too, Greg," echoed the voice tenderly."Do you remember how you used to touch me?"

"Oh, Mary," Father Greg whispered in a hushed tone as he found himself embracing his wife under satin sheets. Her body was cool and smooth.

"Do you remember how passionate you were?" Mary asked, and the priest let out a groan as he felt his penis being inserted deep into the woman's vagina. It had been so long since he had made love....so long.

"Mary," Father Greg groaned on the point of orgasm, "I need you so badly."

"Oh, Greg," the woman whispered in ecstasy in a voice that no longer sounded like Mary's. "Do you remember how you broke her heart?"

The priest instantly recognized the voice and in disgust pushed himself away from the woman he was making love to. Back now in his study and sitting in his recliner chair with his Bible in his lap, he saw across the room, leaning against the front of his desk, Jezzie with a freshly lit 120 between her thin fingers.

"Jezebel" the priest uttered in horrified astonishment.

"How are you, Father?" she asked as she brought the Pandora up to the side of her mouth. She took a small puff and French inhaled the creamy contents. "You're looking fit," she said with smoke punctuating each syllable. She then reached down between her legs and with a rubbing motion added in a seductive giggle, "and still feeling fit, I must say."

"Out of my sight,she-devil!" the priest commanded as he sought to stand up, but he remained frozen in his chair.

"It's a shame about what happened to Mary," Jezzie said with mock concern as she shook her head from side to side. "Of course, I didn't stick around after she found us in the sanctuary. Suicide, wasn't it?" She paused so that the word could hang in the air. "Suicide can be such a selfish act," she said with a feigned sympathetic tone. She brought the cigarette up to her lips as if she were in deep thought, took a deliberate puff and let half the cloud float slowly out of her mouth before recapturing it all in a quick ghost inhale which she held in her lungs. Then as if having a revelation, she said, "I guess she never got over the sight of seeing my lips wrapped around your cock." Jezzie cackled as she once again brought her 120 up to her lips and made the tip burn orange. "And on the altar, no less!" She was laughing uncontrollably now as smoke poured out of her mouth.

"Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death," the priest began to recite out loud with his eyes shut tightly, "I shall fear no evil."

"Oh, save your breath, Father," Jezzie replied nonchalantly as she flicked some ash onto the carpet. "Believe me, He stopped listening toyour prayers long ago." She then smiled wickedly as she slowly walked towards the now silent priest. "You wouldn't believe this, but Hell is nothing like what Dante portrayed for those who reject God's most cherished gift," she said with a wave of her cigarette. "There are no woods composed of the souls of the damned where Harpies torment them." She paused to take a puff out of the side of her mouth, then added as an afterthought, "At least in Dante's world you'd have someone to be miserable with, eh?" She chuckled, smoke cascading down through her nostrils. "No...actually, God has devised something much, much crueler." Jezzie paused once again for affect, taking a drag on her 120 and slowly exhaled it in a creamy stream into Father Greg's face.

"Do you know what Mary does every hour...every second...of her existence in the afterlife? She sits alone and thinks only about the joys of the life she threw away when she put that noose around her neck." Every word was a dagger tearing at Father Greg's soul. "The sorrow is as deep as an abyss; the feeling of regret more painful than any eternal hellfire. It...is...absolute...agony."

"What do you want with me, Jezebel?!!"

"With you?" Jezzie giggled. "You give yourself too much credit. It's the boy I'm after." She then picked up a framed picture of Spencer sitting on a side table, took a deep puff on her 120, and gently exhaled a creamy stream of smoke into the boy's face.

"No!" Greg cried as he struggled to get out of his chair, "You WILL NOT take Spencer!"

"I don't have to TAKE him, Greg. You're driving him right into my arms."

Near despair, Father Greg began to recite a passage fromLuke: "And Jesus said, 'I have observed Satan fall like lightening from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power 'to tread upon serpents' and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you."

"Blah, blah, blah," Jezzie said mockingly as she once again flicked ash onto the carpeted floor. "You can keep calling, but no one is going to answer." She sucked once again on the pearl filter of the never shrinking Pandora, despite her many puffs, and snapped back a thick cloud floating in her mouth.

She tossed the frame on the floor and picked up the Bible sitting on the helpless man's lap. "You know what my favorite book is, Father?"

"Revelations," the priest spit, "where Christ throws you into the abyss of hell!"

She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. "Come on, Greg. You went to Divinity School. You know that the anti-Christ is just a metaphor for Emperor Nero and his persecution of Christians in Rome." She took a rich puff and French inhaled it as she again leaned against the desk. "No," she said after hissing out an exhale, "the Old Testament is where the action is." She opened the book precisely to the page she wanted. "And for your information, my favorite book isJob." She cleared her throat."And the Lord said unto Satan," - she paused and said with a dose of immodesty, "Moi" -"Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil. And then Satan answered.... Well," Jezzie said closing the book, "you know the rest. Job lost it all: his possessions, his family, his health. Tell me, father, what kind of loving and merciful God would allow me to take that all away, killing his innocent family in the process?" She slowly brought her cigarette up to the side of her mouth for a slow-burning puff, waiting for an answer from the priest.

"You're omitting the most important part," the priest said with a chuckle. "By refusing to curse the Lord, he regained all that he had lost. You were defeated."

"True," she said as began to pace back and forth like a professor in a divinity class, "but I had a helluva time imposing that misery on a righteous man; and all, I should add, with God's approval." She paused to take a puff and French inhale it. "But you see, there is something that the Bible doesn't mention," she added in a smoky exhale. "An addendum, you could say. God was so confident with the virtue even of Job's descendants, that hedared me to try and turn them against Him. Of course, I was happy to accept the challenge, but only on one condition: that the fate of humanity be held in the balance. If I could convinceeven one of Job's descendants to curse the Lord, I told Him, wouldn't that prove that humanity was not worth saving? After all, if the most virtuous of the flock could be turned, certainly it showed the depravity of the rest of humanity. And do you know what he said?" She was getting excited."Do you know what he actually said??? 'Go for it.'" She shook her head in astonishment. "Needless to say, I've been pretty busy the last few thousand years."