The Church without a God

"The spirits, Father. Their servants are in the forest, the monsters, but the gods speak to you in your mind. It's not as though they jump out of the trees at you. The gods aren't like that. They're not a game for children. They begin to whisper to you under the cover of your own voice. Like this..."

She came over to him and took his arm and pulled him so he had to lean his ear down. Her breasts pressed against his shoulder, warm and full and firm.

"They whisper to you," she said in his ear. "They tell you things you think are your own thoughts, but they're unusual, they're not what you usually think. They're lustful thoughts, Father, shameful and impure thoughts, and they consume you, and slowly they take over your mind."

Her whisper was soft yet very distinct. He could feel her breath on his ear and hear her tongue moving against her teeth and dipping like a delicate bird into the little pool of saliva in her mouth, so very intimately. The feel of her breasts against his shoulder made him weak and his heart felt like it was going much too fast.

She released him and he looked quickly into her face in time to see her long lashes closing over those sly cat eyes. She didn't look like she was teasing. She was either entirely innocent or far more dangerous than he'd thought. She let go of his arm and backed away and her breasts rose and fell with her rapid breathing. She had a charming mole on the inside of her left breast.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That was rude of me. I don't know why I did that. Perhaps I'd better go. Yes, I really must get back. I can tell you more of Father Jerek another time."

He was speechless and could only watch as she threw her shawl around her shoulders and quickly left the church and hurried down the dusty path back to the village beneath the dead and twisted trees. She seemed to glide, she moved so perfectly, a black shape upon the dry, lemon yellow landscape. He stood there stunned, the light from the windows falling in multicolored shafts on the floor behind him, showing the saints in their agonies of martyrdom, and he felt himself growing erect again, his cock raising its head like some monster from the woods.

As if in a dream he staggered to the door in the back of the church and went outside into the warm autumn sun. The woods almost swept up to the back end of the church here, the east end, and Cyryl stopped and looked into the welcoming shadows and darkness of the forest, seeing the mossy beds beneath the trees, the glades filled with soft growths of fern and cowslip. There was motion farther back in the shadows between the trees—something moving, something the size of a man or a bit smaller and thicker. It stopped his heart. It was fast and dark and didn't move like a person. It was much too fast to be a human, running on its toes with a funny, shaking, palsied gait. It was too large to be an animal. It might be a leper, but how could a leper move so fast? And why would he be naked?

He tried to cry out but his voice wouldn't work and his feet wouldn't move. Not till he saw it dash away and saw the muzzle and the slanted eyes, the ears pressed flat against the lupine head, the long teeth made for slashing and its trailing forked tail did he turn and run back into the church. He threw himself down on the altar and began to pray with feverish urgency. As he prayed he prayed as well for an answer to his prayer.

*****

The next day Father Cyryl confessed his parishioners. Only a handful came, but he was shocked. They had told him at seminary to take what he was told in confession with a grain of salt, for people liked to exaggerate their sins, and he recognized that these people hadn't been confessed for seven years, but still, the stories of lust and depravity, of attempted murder and theft and blasphemy coming from the toothless mouths of grandmothers as well as the ripe lips of young virgins were just shocking. This was indeed a godless place to judge from what he was hearing, and confession took much longer than he'd anticipated. He'd missed his breakfast and his stomach was growling when a woman stepped into the booth and he heard Malo's voice.

"Bless me Father for I have sinned."

"Proceed, my child."

"It's been seven years since I've been to confession, father."

"I understand and that's not your fault. You're not responsible for that."

"But in that time I've done terrible things, Father. I hardly know where to begin."

"Start with the worst. The worst will encompass the least, my child."

"It's my thoughts, Father. Evil, lustful thoughts that don't let me rest. Thoughts that I hardly dare describe to you."

"Then you don't have to, my child. Ten hail Mary's and—"

"But it's only by telling you that I can rid myself of them, Father. They're very personal, Father. They involve you in a way."

Cyryl was quiet. He noticed now her scent. Had he noticed it before? Something like flowers, like attar of roses. Was she guilty of the sin of bathing? Of the vanity of perfumery like a whore? Her scent was delicious, not so thick as to be cloying, just enough to soften his imagination and to remind him of the feel of her breasts against his shoulder, how soft yet firm they'd been, how filled to bursting with that female [I]something[/I] that just made him want to grab her and squeeze and crush her against him.

He cleared his throat. "Yes?"

She moved her head closer to the screen. She was covered with her shawl so he couldn't see her face but he could hear the urgency in her voice.

"I'm a lustful woman, Father. A man's body attracts me, the spread of his shoulders, his hands, the strength of his thighs and buttocks. I'm having visions of a man now and he tempts me. This vision tempts me. It makes me weak. I want to be his slave."

"My child—"

"Hear me, Father. If I don't confess it, I'll repeat it. It will haunt me and I'll go to hell! Would you have me go to hell, Father? In my visions I fall down on my knees before this man. I can't help myself. I bite his thighs. I lick him, Father. I'm an animal, I can't help it. I pull my dress down."

"Really, I—"

"Father, hear me! I can't help myself and I pull my dress down and I rub my breasts against his legs. I'm his slave. He can do anything with me he wishes, that's how much I want him. Do you understand, Father? Have you ever needed anyone like that? Do you know what that's like? Does a priest have any idea what that's like to want someone that much? To feel this kind of sin?"

Father Cyryl shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He couldn't possibly deny the erection that now sprung painfully from his lap. "God in Heaven!" he murmured

She grabbed the wooden screen with her hand, her fingers clawing through to his side in her urgency.

"Yes! I call on Him but He doesn't help. I'm a slave for this man and I can't help myself. On my knees before him I open my mouth, Father. I suck his cock inside! That's what I do, like an animal! How good he feels in my mouth! So hard, so firm, so alive between my lips! Throbbing with male strength, pulsing with virility. I could faint, Father. I could swoon from the pleasure of having him in my mouth! And I know what he must think of me, what a slut he must think I am, but I can't help myself. The feel of his cock in my mouth is more than I can bear!"

Cyryl groaned and pressed his fingers into his eyes as if to erase the vision. He couldn't bear it either. His cock was twitching, actually jerking beneath his robes, getting ready to spit just from this hussy's words. He had to stop her or he'd ejaculate just sitting there, but he couldn't stop a confession. He pulled his robe up lest he come and soil his one clean garment, and the sight of his cock straining in the air, shining like a salmon leaping in a stream only made him more aroused. If she were looking she would see. She'd see what effect her words were having on him, this poor excuse for a priest!

"If my vision stopped there it would be bad enough, Father, but it doesn't. It doesn't!"

"Oh my God!" he groaned.

"I know," she answered. "Just when I feel I can't take any more, he lifts me up—my lover lifts me up and bends me over, Father. He throws my skirts up over my back and he enters me from behind like I'm a mare or a heifer in the fields. Lord Jesus, why do I dream of being taken like an animal, Father? Why?"

Father Cyryl couldn't control himself anymore. He simply couldn't. He was biting his knuckle but to no avail. He cock was dripping, the big drop of pre-cum that had gathered glistening at the tip in the dim light of the confessional had spilled over and run down the crown and now he grabbed the shaft of his dick and squeezed it in agony and began to pump it up and down grudgingly, moaning, tightening his ass and fucking his hips up in counterpoint to his pumping hand, intentionally making a spectacle of himself, giving himself over to his shameful disgrace. He had his eyes closed, as if by not looking he could deny what he was doing, but he knew, he knew. He knew the shame and degradation his was giving himself over to. And meanwhile his ears were open and he was listening, listening to every word Malo was saying, and she was hanging on the screen now, staring at him like an animal in a cage as he beat off for her, a slave to her words, transported by what she was saying, caught up and caressed by the vision she was painting for him with her words and the sounds of her tongue in the sinful richness of her mouth.

"He fucks me, he's fucking me, Father, holding my hips and pulling me back hard onto his thrusting cock, and oh God! it's good! and oh God! he's deep! and oh my God! he's going to make me come, Father! He's got my tits in his hands and he's squeezing them and twisting my nipples and I'm screaming, Father, and my juice is dripping from me because I'm just a whore for this man! I'll do anything he wants, Father! Anything! Anything at all! Anything! Oh God, Father! Oh God, yes! Yes Father! Yes!"

"Ugh! Ugh! Ah! Ahhh! Ahhhhh!" Father Cyryl's eyes sprang open and his balls drew up tight. He seemed to be trying to climb right up out of the confessional and then his back arched and his hips lifted off the seat and jerked forward in a series of hot, hard thrusts and he began to come, shooting hard spits of semen against the wall opposite as he grunted and moaned like a primitive man, the white seed torn from his body, flung splattering against the wooden wall of the confessional by his shame, his raw animal need.

Malo watched him ejaculate, her face pressed up against the screen, her eyes under the darkness of her shawl wide and on fire, her breasts heaving, wet tongue licking her lower lip as if she'd lick the come as it shot from his spurting prick if she could only reach it—she watched him in the throes of his shameful, lonely release, jerking, spasming like a monkey in a cage as he hissed and moaned. She watched him squeeze it all out, the first strong shots to the final dribbling stream that coursed over his fingers, then she got up and quickly exited the confessional without a word and he sat and collapsed back onto his seat, too embarrassed to move, panting like a frightened dog, watching his come drip down the wall with the stink of male musk strong in his nose. It was the smell of sin, of lust, of his bestiality of his blemished soul. He heard the door close as she left the church, and then there was a howl from the woods, the sound of a wolf, but lower, deeper, rougher and more violent. It was answered by a call from farther away. It raised the hair on the back of his neck. He felt dirty inside, debased and degraded and fouled with sin.

He ran from the confessional, ran to the door he'd heard her use. He could see her walking away in the mist. There was no other creature outside that he could see. He watched her as the mists blew in from the woods and alternately hid and revealed her form until she entered the town at the foot of the hill and he felt the come dripping from his penis and running down his thighs, and then he turned and went inside. He found a rag and cleaned himself off, then he cleaned off the confessional. He prayed and cursed himself as he washed down the walls of his own human pollution, of his sin and his need for her, of the thrill he'd felt for her flesh and her body.

There were the sound of wings, great fleshy wings flapping in the air above his head, like some horrid giant bird, and then there was a sound on the roof. Something was walking about up there on two legs, slowly, walking back in forth. Cyryl stopped and listened. The thing walked, then stopped. It began working a slate tile loose.

He looked up. Another set of wings frantically flapping as something came in for a landing, and then there were two sets of feet up there. He heard them, walking about, investigating, and then wiggling the slates back and forth, their hoofs grating on the tiles. Another slate tile slid off and he saw its shadow fall by the stained glass window and heard it thump as it landed in the tall grass. He could hear breathing, loud, stentorian breathing. Father Cyryl fell to his knees in the confessional.

"Oh Lord, bless this your house, and your servants within it—"

Another tile skidded down the sharp slope of the roof and plunged off the edge, tumbling end over end till it landed in the deep grass. He heard the sound of water hitting the roof in a stream, like urine. One of the things was urinating, urinating on the roof of the Church.

Father Cyryl got up and ran to the rectory where Toja was standing frozen in terror with her mouth open, Niedan not far from her.

"They're on the roof!" she said. "I've never heard them in the day time!"

"Are they coming in?" Niedan asked.

"Jesus will protect us, won't he father?"

Father Cyryl still realized he was holding the semen-soaked rag in his hand. He hid it behind his back. "I don't know," he said. "I don't know."

**+**

That night it rained and there was terrible thunder and lightning. The water came in the hole in the transept and dripped down the inside wall from the hole caused by the missing tiles in the roof, leaving a trail of chalky residue on one of the stained glass windows that showed Saint Sebastian martyred by one hundred arrows. The morning was thick and cloudy and the mists were oozing from the forest like dragon's breath flowing from between his teeth. Father Cyryl had left Toja to clean the window and had Niedan lead him through the puddle-strewn village to the crooked fence of Malodor Turek's cottage. He found Malo sitting outside washing the roots of foxglove plants in a leather bucket and tying them into bundles. He sent Niedan on his way.

"Father!" she said with apparent good cheer. "Come inside. I'll make you some chamomile tea."

Father Cyryl knew that the law of the confessional prevented him from saying anything about what had happened yesterday, but he almost hoped Malo would. He was not a shy man and the priest's robes felt constraining in talking to a woman. He knew he desired her and she was forbidden, but he didn't know whether he should just deny his impulse, or admit to himself his weakness and pray for strength. When she led him inside he was aware of the closeness of the cottage, of her empty bed of rushes and of the fact that no one would enter a house in which a priest was visiting a parishioner. Malo stood by the smoky fireplace, feeding it sticks, and made her back straight the way she did, bringing her breasts into prominence. When she gestured for him to sit at the rough-hewn table, she smiled a knowing smile.

"Sit, Father."

"Malo, I wanted to ask about the creatures we hear at night. They are wolves, I suppose?"

"You know what they are, father. Everyone knows what they are."

"I don't, Malo. Tell me."

She crumbled up chamomile flowers and dropped them into an earthenware mug. "They're leszys, father. Forest spirits. The bodies of men and the legs of goats and the heads of wolves or bears. They have the faces of the men they killed on their chests. One of them might be Father Jerek. One of them might be my husband Drogram, but now they're just slaves of Borewit, the Goat-legged god of the forest—"

"Hush now, Malo! You mustn't say such things! Those are pagan gods you're speaking of, savage gods! Devils! We live in the light of Jesus Christ the Son of God. That's who our church is for!"

She looked at him in surprise, as if he might be mad. "Well of course we do, father. But Jesus Christ can't keep those things off the roof of his own house."

"There are some animals that get up there. That's all, Malo."

"Father, I've seen them. They're not animals. They're leszys." She used her skirt as a potholder to take the pot from the fire and calmly poured the boiling water into the mugs. Stray smoke from the fire had gathered in the rafters of the low ceiling where it was already black from soot.

"You did not see them!" Father Cyryl exclaimed.

"Father, I did. And so did Czebor Hodak and Pim Dizinksi. Father, everyone in the village has seen these things. Many times. And you're not going to make them go away by telling us they're animals. They're the servants of Borewit, and he rules the forest."

"They're devils!" he shouted.

"Maybe they are, but they still rule the forest and they rule our lives here."

"How can I get rid of them, Malo? What must I do?"

"Father, I don't know. They're monsters."

"Will you help me, Malo? Will you help me drive them out?"

"Father, they're not the only ones. The woods are full of all sorts of monsters. These don't hurt too many people if we don't go out at night. There are others that are worse, far worse, things that live in the earth and the air. I don't know that we should interfere..."

"That's why people don't come to church then? Because they're afraid of the monsters?"

She tried to smile. "Father, people can see the monsters. They look for Jesus in heaven. All they see is clouds."

Father Cyryl stood up and Malo pushed his tea towards him. He shook his head.

"Father Jerek had the same problem," she said. "He had to make the people work to build his church like slaves. The Baron had guards force them. Everyone hated him. They hate the church, Father. They still remember."

"Then I'm just wasting my time."

Malo didn't say anything. She toyed with the tie on her dress.

"My confession helped me more than I can say, father. For the first time in years I feel at peace. Could we arrange for another?"

He stood and bowed his head. Even standing across the table he could smell her scent—fresh, like grass and wild roses crushed under the wheels of an oxcart. His body remembered the feeling of release, of ejaculation, the feeling of flinging off an enormous, crippling weight.

"Of course," he whispered.

*****

[I]You are a sinner,[/I] he told himself. [I]Your flesh is weak and corrupt. You long to spill your seed in the hole of a woman and give birth to more corruption. Go ahead, admit it. Dwell in it, you sinner! Dwell in it and seethe in the stew of damnation! You seek to plunge your cock into the sheath of a woman, into the tight, pink, vagina of a woman and move it back and forth and let her flesh grip you, let her wet, slick flesh cling to you, don't you, you disgusting son of Adam? You want to work your skin up and back as she pumps her hips against you in her own wild lust and hunger. Look at you! Naked as sin, your ass exposed between her knees, rising and falling as you drive your dick into her cunt, moaning and gasping like an animal! You're disgusting, contemptible, odious, revolting! [/I]

"Oh Father, forgive me my venal thoughts, forgive me for my sins and for the weakness of my flesh. Chastise my spirit as I chastise my body. Teach me remorse and contrition and set my feet on the narrow path of purity..."

Kneeling in the cold stone sacristy clad only in his breeches, illuminated by the feeble light of a pair of candle stubs, Father Cyryl weighed the scourge in his hand—nine long leather lashes with sharp lead weights on the ends attached to a wooden handle. It felt good, solid, capable. He held his breath and closed his eyes and squeezed it tight, holding on to it as if it could save him, then sucked in a quick breath through his nose and whipped it up hard over his left shoulder, gritting his teeth as the thongs bit into his flesh and the weights struck his spine with bruising force. It hurt more than he remembered, or maybe he was stronger now, or his ardor more intense, or maybe it was colder now with the window screen removed and his skin prickled with goose bumps. But he wanted it to hurt more now. Never had he been so sinful—not only masturbating in the woods, but in the confessional itself, polluting a sacrament of the Holy Mother Church. He was out of control, no better than a monster himself, and he needed to be scourged till he was bloody.