Summoning

The rest of the night, her eyes rarely left Ramon, though he almost never looked at her. His disinterest, the way he had used her, and the skill he had exhibited…I had seen the look in her before, when she had opened the lid on a box sent to her by a friend in Toronto. The smell of pot assailed us both, and for a moment she looked she would do anything just for a toke, even though she promised me she had not touched the stuff in at least a year.

When she looked at Ramon, I saw the same hunger in her eyes.

Within the week, she had him over to her room and had him play with her again.

Within two, she happily declared herself his, our relationship was over.

And the ring sat in its box, on the top shelf of my closet, unremembered.

The living room of the house was arranged exactly as it had been for every gathering I had ever been to…the little table behind the couch with the legal pad where everyone signed in; the small wooden box with the slit in its top for everyone to drop their dues and monthly meeting fees into; and the various chairs and cushions arranged in a circle for demonstrations or discussions of the various techniques and implements of pain.

Gerry’s wife was standing at the sign-in table frowning as I opened the door; pressing into her mind, I found she was simply annoyed that her husband, despite his promises, continued to sneak outside to smoke. She looked up and saw me, and made to say something…then, came over and gave me a big hug and kiss. Joy shone from her eyes as she said “Oh, Daniel, it’s so good to see you!”

Of course, she felt that way because I had told her brain to do so, but then a hug and kiss from Leslie was never an unwelcome experience. Though she was married to the loathsome Gerry, she was generally extremely friendly, and as a hostess she had few equals. In other words, she was 70% of the reason most of the people still came to the monthlies.

Leaning down to return her hug, I whispered in her ear “Les, Gerry’s out on the porch and he’s got a surprise for you. Why don’t you go and give him a hand?” Even as I was saying it, I was placing small blocks and commands here and there in her mind. She stood stock still for a moment; then a feral grin lit up her face. She turned back to the table, finding the crop, spurs, and stiletto heels that only just materialized. Taking them in hand, she shouted over her shoulder “Don’t have too much fun!” before running out onto the screen porch to play with her new toy.

Until April, Sara had lived in a small room inside a house owned by a college student. Annoyed with his demands that she not bring her Lord Ramon home, she finally moved into a garage loft offered by a small elderly woman who needed help meeting her mortgage payment. Not owning that much, she had loaded it all in two cars and left without saying a word to her old landlord, leaving no forwarding address or telephone.

Which I suppose is why he called me. Which is why I suppose I drove the two hours from my apartment to her old place to pick up a box of discarded items that she apparently felt she had no use for…most of which were mine anyway.

They were books, mostly. Used books we had picked up here and there, both because we admired the author and wanted to read more, or because we laughed at the titles and wanted to laugh at the contents. There were pictures of the two of us, laughing, kissing, cuddling…just being friends and lovers. Down near the bottom, there was the blue flogger I had enjoyed using on her so much.

I don’t remember starting the fire in the fireplace. But the books made a soul satisfying crackle as I tossed them one by one into the flames. The pictures curled and shriveled in the heat, the emulsion melting onto the logs. The flogger took longer, but eventually shriveled to ash and rivets in the dregs of the flames.

Last but not least, I found a book simply labeled “Journal.” ‘This ought to be good,’ I thought to myself, turning to the first page.

She apparently had begun keeping a journal when she moved back to the US from Canada. The entries were occasional at first, full of angst at her failed marriage, her battles with avoiding relapses into addiction, her hope of finding someone to fulfill her need for domination.

Then my name popped for the first time. The journal entries became more regular, a chronicle of where we had gone and what we had done…of how our exploration of pain and passion was giving her new hope for the future.

One passage jumped out from the page at me: “He tells me that he loves me, but I won’t say it back to him. But I do love him, I do!”

I kept reading, hoping to find what had happened, what had changed. But with each page I turned, it seemed to add up to one thing: she wanted to be hit harder, taken farther, hurt more. She wanted to be used more, loved less. She wanted to be property, to be owned and treated like a toy, a pet, a servant…a slave.

She was becoming more and more convinced that I could not take her to that place.

The next to last entry seared me like a blowtorch on bare skin: “I love Daniel, but he cannot do what I need to feel fulfilled. I know he loves me too, but he is not totally into treating me like the pain slut I need to be. I don’t think we have a future together.”

But the last entry…I wasn’t sure what it could mean: “I went to the bookstore today, and the old lady at the counter said she had the book that could make my wishes come true. I don’t know if I really believe in magic, but could it really hurt to try to get exactly what I want for once in my life? The spell isn’t difficult, and if it really works, than I’ll probably be happier than I’ve ever been…but at what price?”

A spell? Magic? The old lady at the bookstore? The one that had given him the…?

There was something written on the very last page of the journal, something which I might have mistaken for a doodle if it hadn’t tickled my memory. It was some sort of glyph…a rune of sorts…

‘On the ring!’ I thought. ‘It’s one of the symbols on the ring!’

As there was no one else in the living room, and I didn’t want to go into the dungeon too quickly, I made my way through the rest of the house, starting in Gerry’s little office.

During the monthlies, Gerry dragged a small padded table into the room and let people experiment with wax. I felt a small pang when I remembered how Sara had led me into that room one night, had me tie her down, and bade me to pour wax onto her nipples and breasts. She nearly came when I dripped a line of wax down her abdomen and into her belly button, trailing off just before the wax could drip onto her clit.

Tonight, Jennifer and Margaret were in the room. Jenni (with an “i”, as she always added) was strapped to the table tonight, as her lover Marg (never Maggie) poured wax over her torso. I had never understood the attraction between them - Jenni, so lovely and lively, Marg, so dour and plump – but they were here each month, exploring some new aspect of pain play.

I reached into their minds and made them ignore me as I walked into the room, observing how Jenni was reacting to the wax on her breasts and nipples. Slowly, I increased the amount of wax flowing onto Jenni’s body, making both women oblivious to how much was coming from the small red candle. I guided Marg’s hands, so that the wax flowed evenly until it covered Jenni’s torso from neck to waist. And the wax continued to flow, and Marg poured it over Jenni’s legs and feet, then directly on her crotch. Jenni was so lost in the erotic haze of the wax flowing over her that she never noticed her body disappearing into the wax. Marg continued to pour wax over Jenni’s hands and arms, and, when nothing was left but Jenni’s head, she poured wax over that too.

Marg unfastened the straps and helped Jenni from the table. With a little push from me, the candle wax flowed and molded itself over Jenni’s back, down her buttocks, and over the rest of her legs. Moments later, a perfect wax statue of Jenni was standing where before there had been but a human girl.

I let myself become visible then, touching the wax that had formed over her body, marveling at how beautiful Jenni looked in her new waxen sheath. When I turned to Marg, she was on her knees, madly frigging herself with one hand. She held out the candle to me like a supplicant, saying only one word.

“Please?”

I smiled as I took the candle from her hand, and then reconsidered.

‘Purple,’ I thought, and the candle I wanted flew into my hand from the shelf above the padded bench.

Marg moaned as the first drippings of wax struck her on the forehead and began sliding down her body.

The ring had not left the top of my closet since the day I bought it. After Sara and I broke up, if I had even thought about it I might have thrown it in the garbage. As it was, it simply sat ignored and unremembered among other stray objects with no other home.

I removed the box from the shelf and made my way back into the living room. The fire flickered and crackled as I opened the lid and stared down into the black stone, which had been given to me with so few explanations. ‘Keep it safe, Daniel,’ the old lady had said. How had she known my name?

I picked it up out of its silken bed and let it rest on my palm. The flickering firelight seemed to dim as the black stone sucked up the light, reflecting nothing, not even a gleam on its surface. I turned the ring from side to side, checking each marking on its surface, looking for the one I knew was there. And, as the markings started to thin out on the left side, there it was. The bottommost marking on that side of the ring, it matched exactly with the drawing on the last page of Sara’s journal. ‘But what does it mean?’

I twiddled my fingers, feeling the ring bounce up and down on top of them. ‘Magic, spells, rings…none of this makes any sense!’ I had caught the ring on the edge of one finger, and was twirling it around like a miniature Hula-Hoop. Not being left handed, and not accustomed to the weight of the ring, I almost dropped it onto the floor. Pulling my hand back quickly, I felt the ring tick the nail on my index finger…then slide its way down to the base of the digit.

Almost immediately, I felt the ring constrict around my finger. Holding my hand up, I could see that the oversized ring was no longer too big for me, but instead circled my finger like it was custom made. ‘That is just totally weird!’

I ran my fingers over the fine raised markings that circled the ring and its stone. Bringing the journal closer to my hand, I twisted the ring to have a closer look at the symbol near the bottom of the left side. With the index finger of my right hand I began to trace the symbol on the ring, even as my left index finger was touching the symbol on the page.

I felt what was happening before I saw it. The ring started to vibrate as my fingers joined the two symbols. Suddenly, light exploded from the ring, blinding me with its intensity as it bathed in room in pure white brilliance. I was still seeing stars when I felt the vibration from the ring falter and then cease.

When I could see clearly again, light was still coming from the ring, forming a cone in the air in front of the fireplace. Inside the cone, a hideous mass of lumpy, misshapen flesh writhed and slithered, yet seemed strangely insubstantial. I sat up straight on the sofa, wondering what the hell I’d stumbled onto.

“What the fuck are you?” I shouted at the ghostly mass hovering in the air before me.

With the sibilance of a talking snake, the creature hissed back “I am Ornias, demon of mischief and murder. Who are you, pitiful worm, and why have you summoned me with the ring of King Solomon?”

Stunned, I said the first thing that came to mind.

“Uhhhh…what?” The demon and his cage waved in the air as I shook my hand, trying to figure out what was happening.

“Idiot! Imbecile! You have summoned a power you cannot comprehend! Let me go, now, and I may yet let you live!”

“I…I don’t know how. Tell me what to do, how to use this thing!”

The demon glared at me from behind the wall of light, flexing his claws. He obviously wished he could use them on me.

“Drooling dolt! I don’t know how you came by the ring, but I will not help you use it!” And with that he turned his back to me.

Stunned, and more than a bit pissed off, I screamed in frustration. It took me a few minutes of deep breathing before I could open my eyes and look again at the apparition projected from the stone of the ring. But as the demon continued to show me his back, I felt an icy determination settle inside me. I didn’t know what was happening, but I’d be damned if I gave up before I had some answers.

“Demon or not, it looks like you and I are stuck with each other for a while, Ornias. As for whether or not you’ll help me, I remember of the words of my father, whom I once in a great while tried to defy when he told me to do something. He always uttered the same four words to me, and I’ll offer them to you now.

“We’ll see about that.”

The demon’s only answer was a derisive snort.

END PART ONE

PART TWO

“Ornias (trans. “pesky”), the first demon mentioned in the book of Solomon…”

I had tried getting the demon to tell me about itself, about the ring, about why its symbol had been drawn on the last page of Sara’s journal. However, despite being unable to break the ring’s hold, it refused to utter anything but threats concerning what it would do to me when the ring no longer stayed its hand. So I decided to employ the tool most often by writers when they are sniffing for just enough facts to make the impossible plausible.

I started surfing the Internet.

“Solomon…began to pray to God to that He would hand him authority over the demon. His prayers were answered, as God sent the archangel Michael to deliver a ring to Solomon with the seal of God, so that he could imprison demons and force them to help construct the temple.”

A ring given from God to Solomon to imprison demons and bend them to his will? Holy shit!!

“Solomon than sealed the demon with his ring and ordered him to cut stone for the temple.”

Sealed! The demon Ornias must be connected somehow to the ring, and subject to its commands. But…why won’t it do what I say?

“Solomon then commanded Ornias to bring him the Beelzeboul, the Prince of Demons. Ornias was able to throw the ring at Beelzeboul, who winced in pain, and then returned with Ornias to Solomon.”

The other symbols on the ring must stand for demons that have been trapped and forced to do the will of Solomon! From the number of symbols on the sides of the ring, that must be dozens!

The cone of force emanating from the ring held steady with Ornias in its grip. He had lost interest in my search on the computer, and had turned his back to me inside the light coming from the stone. I stood up, thinking that what I was about to do needed the formality of being on my feet. Then I sucked in a deep breath and said in a loud voice:

“Demon Ornias, I command thee with the power of the ring of Solomon to do my bidding!”

The demon turned toward me, hissing in what I mistakenly thought was pain.

“Impudent whelp! Nothing you can say can make surrender my powers to your will!”

As it continued hissing, I realized that it was not in pain…unless laughing itself silly constituted pain for a demon.

I left my two newly sculpted wax beauties immobile in the small office and returned to my prowl around the house, knowing that my next stop would yield at least a few of the regulars. I again touched my power source mentally, and made myself invisible to those I might come into contact with.

The small back bedroom was known as the “encounter” room. A small futon sat on one side behind a wood and glass coffee table, and folding chairs were set up in a semi-circle facing it. Arrayed on the walls were various implements of S/M Gerry had collected…actually, that he had bought with the group’s money and hung on the walls of his house. Floggers, single-tails, cuffs, chains, clamps…here used for decoration, but within easy reach should they be needed. Still, the area was mostly used for conversation and cooling off after intense sessions either in the living room or in the dungeon.

Surprisingly, only three people were in the room. One was someone for whom I felt great affection, if only because of how nice a person he was, even if his sexuality was a bit confused. Everybody called him Sam, if only because it made it easier to treat him in a more gender-neutral fashion. His birth name was Samuel, but if he could, he would rather have been born Samantha. Sam was a pre-op transsexual, taking the hormones and hoping for the day when he could afford the cost of the actual operation that would completely transform him. In the meantime, he lived his life as normally as most of the rest of us, saving his true passions for nights like this, when he dressed in full drag.

Having seen drag queens before, the sight of a man dressed as a woman would generally not startle me. However, given that Sam was 6’ 7” if an inch, it was hard to think of him as feminine in nearly any way. Still, he worked at it, wearing clothes that complemented his body’s lack of curves, wearing tasteful makeup instead of gaudy drag-queen pancake. More than that, he was truly a submissive at heart, liking to sit on the floor at the demonstrations, to volunteer for anything that required a modicum of pain or humiliation. One time, apparently out of need and longing, he asked if he could worship my feet. I was about to say no when Sara gripped my hand and shook her head slightly. So I accepted, and Sam gratefully bent over my feet, removing my shoes with care and ceremony, and then rolling my socks carefully down, kissing each inch of skin lovingly as it was exposed. It was a curious experience to say the least, made more so by the fact that he knew what he was doing, and it felt fantastic. Afterward, the three of us sat in the encounter room and talked about it, with Sam offering to do it anytime I wanted. I thanked him for his offer, then nodded at Sara and whispered, “But it might make her jealous!” and we all broke up in laughter.

On this night, though, Sam was in a lather. Even as I was trying to walk in, he blew past me, whizzing across the hall into the master bedroom and slamming the door behind him. Inside the encounter room, the two men left behind laughed uproariously at his departure.

In my mind I knew them as Frick and Frack, though their real names could have been Smith and Jones for all I knew. They were a couple, but both were submissive, and loved to come to the monthlies so that a male or female dominant could treat them to the masochism that they couldn’t physically inflict on themselves. Most often I would see one of them running from the dungeon, either clad in a pink thong or nothing at all, displaying the angry red welts of a thorough beating and grinning at the discomfort some felt at their fleshy exhibitionism. Then, after the rough stuff was over, they’d wind up in this room on the futon, wrapped around each other, occasionally kissing, reliving their night with anyone who would care to listen. None of it would have bothered me, except for their unconscionable teasing of Sam, who they thought aberrant because he wanted to be a woman and submit to a man, while they wanted to be men and submit to anyone. It irritated me that they could be so condescending, so completely without sympathy, while they pranced and paraded around the house like they owned the place. In my thoughts, they were pigs, snuffling and oinking in someone else’s pigsty.