The Church without a God

His back burned with pain as he drew the scourge back and whipped it up over his right shoulder, grunting out loud as the thongs tore into his flesh. He didn't pause, but whipped over his left again, and his right, the whip whistling in the cold air of the sacristy. The skin rose in welts on his black and although he tried to suppress his cries of pain, he couldn't keep from groaning out loud as the leather cut into the welts and they started to bleed, the blood seeping down his back in a way that caused a maddening tickle between the hot flashes of jagged pain.

Walking by the church outside, Malo saw the light coming from the sacristy window and came over and peered inside, saw Father Cyryl on his knees by candlelight, his body shining with sweat, his head bowed and brows furrowed in terrible concentration against the pain as he brought the whip up over his shoulders and whistling down to flay the naked flesh of his own innocent back. She stared at the priest as he whipped himself and knew instinctively that he was doing it because of her, because of his need for her, because of the way he'd fallen and transgressed for her, and she watched him with fire in her eyes, her breasts rising and falling as her breathing accelerated, studying every detail of him, feeling every lash of the whip herself. Her eyes locked on his groin, where his cock was erect. Father Cyryl, martyring his body before God, whipping himself till the blood ran, had an enormous erection, such was his zeal for the glory of the Son of Man and his desire to erase the sin he felt for her.

She hurried around to the front of the church and found the south door closed and bolted. The north door was open, though, and she let herself in and ran through the church beneath the gaze of the night-darkened stained glass windows and blind saints. There was a howling from outside, a hungry wailing from out in the woods as she ran across the transept and past the altar and the sanctuary. She could hear the angry lashing of the scourge even through the door of the sacristy as she stood outside and pounded upon the door with the flat of her hand.

"Father Cyryl! Father Cyryl! It's Malo! Please open the door! I must speak to you! Please!"

The whipping sound stopped. At last came his voice from behind the door. "What is it Malo? Can't it wait?"

"Father, it's important! It's about the leszys I came up her to tell you. It's about getting rid of them. There might be a way."

There was a long silence. He must be in terrible pain. His voice when it came sounded beaten and exhausted. "Yes? Then wait. Wait, my child. I'll be with you in a moment. Just give me a moment."

The door opened and Father Cyryl stood there disheveled, his surplice on crooked from donning it so hurriedly, his eyes and lips puffy as if he'd been sleeping or making love.

"Yes, yes? What is it, Malo? What can you tell me?"

"Father," she said rushing in and putting her hands against his chest. "Father forgive me, I didn't mean to spy but I couldn't help but see what you were doing. You were chastising yourself." She spoke hurriedly, pushing him back, not giving him time to reply. "You were using a scourge, and seeing that reminded me, it made me remember—they're attracted to that. They're attracted to human suffering, to anguish and grief and pain. It calls then and they can't resist. We can call them, father. We can call them the same way, with the scourge, and archers can kill them. They're just as mortal as normal animals, father. Archers can kill them and we'll be done with them, father. Archers and men with spears. We'll kill them and be free of them, father. It's as easy as that. Give me your scourge."

"What?" He looked at her.

"Give me your scourge, father. I want to show you. I want to demonstrate. Give it to me!"

He reached into his sleeve and put the whip into her hand.

"Lift up your robe and lean across the table."

"Malo—!"

"Father! I saw what you were doing. This is a chastisement of the flesh, is it not? Lift up your robe!"

She pushed him down and gathered up his robe to reveal his red and striped back and Father Cyryl leaned across the rough boards of the sacristy table.

"Malo, this isn't right!"

"Father, I can do this! And do it better than you!"

She put her small white hand against his skin as he leaned on his arms and raised the scourge and brought it down with a sizzling hiss across his back and Cyryl cried out, the stripes landing at right angles to the others. She raised his robe higher and gave him another stroke, this time the fall from the scourge wrapped around his ribs and the ends of the thongs reached as far as his nipple and the Priest gasped in pain. She reared back and gave him another, and another, and with each one he froze as if the pain temporarily paralyzed him, or was so good it had to be savored without moving.

"Yes, father? Yes?" she asked him, grabbing his hair and pulling his head up to whisper hotly in his ear.

"Oh yes, Malo! Yes! More! In the name of the Father, the Son, the—"

"Holy Ghost!" she completed, bringing the scourge down with a vicious snap across his back.

Cyryl arched, the muscles in his shoulders tightening as his shadow danced against the stone walls from the flickering candles, and Malo leaned forward, pressing her breasts against the welts on his back.

"Malo," he moaned, panting for breath. "Malo, my God!"

She ripped open the ties on the bodice of her dress and opened it, and her breasts spilled out in the candlelit chamber. She leaned forward, rubbing her nipples in the blood that was oozing from the cuts on his back as Cyryl leaned on his arms beneath her, shuddering with the chill of uncontrollable lust, then she reared back, the blood on her breasts looked black in the candle light and she whipped him again, her face grim and beautiful—two three, four times, back and forth, whipping him as if he were nothing more than a plow horse, a stud beast for her pleasure, and Cyryl arched beneath her blows like a cat, offering the muscles of his back to her whip.

The pain bit into him and made him free, purged him of his sin and spoke directly to the nerves of his body. Under her lash he hand nothing with which to refuse her. Her will replaced his own, her lust became his God, and his search for light was replaced by her darkness, a darkness he could embrace as her passion filled him like a chalice.

There was again the howl from the forest but much closer this time, as if the beasts could smell the scent of blood, and it was answered by another, from the other side of the church. Malo had a grip on his tonsured hair, pulling his head up, her breasts were pressed against his back.

"You see?" she whispered. ":You see how they come? How they love your pain, father? Pain and lust, they love any strong emotion. It attracts them like honey attracts flies! Let me show you. Let me show you how they come! How they come, how they love to come!"

She reached down to his breeches and found his cock, big, swollen and hard. Cyryl groaned, his hips thrusting forward in automatic reflex. His balls were heavy and aching and Malo's fingers slid inside his breeches and scratched along the bottoms of his gravid testicles, teasing and arousing them, then closed on his thick and massive tool and squeezed. Cyryl's eyes closed heavily and his mouth fell open as he moaned like a beast. He felt the ejaculatory spasms in his prostate and his anus and he thought he was finished right there, but she quickly let him go, stepped back and, untying the sash of her dress, let it slide from her body. She stepped out of it and as she did the moon suddenly came out from behind the clouds and moonlight spilled in through the window, splashing down into the room and painting her naked body in silvery gold—her breasts, the tight flare of her hips and the shaped columns of her thighs.

"No," Father Cyryl said, staring at her open-mouthed. "Malo. I'm a priest. You mustn't do this. It means my immortal soul! Please!"

She pushed him back so his bottom was resting against the split-log table and she climbed up onto it like a cat. Squatting down over him, she took his cock in her hand and used it to part her wet and glistening folds, then, holding onto him with one hand behind his neck and pulling his resisting head to her breast, she lowered herself onto his prick, his hard shaft parting and stretching her tight and greedy little sheath.

"Ah! Jesu!" she moaned. He felt like a hot sword spearing into her. She was all snug, muscled and slick, dripping like honey down the column of his dick.

"God, no!" He murmured around the tit he was sucking, his fingers clawing into the table. His cock didn't care what he thought, though, and jerked with excitement as it was swallowed in the crease of her cunt, her labia folding in as it penetrated her and her clit following in blind obeisance to the crude invasion of his master shaft.

She grunted, piglike, satisfied, then began to move up and down on him, bouncing her pussy as if she were on a horse, riding him, rude and hard, squeezing, twisting, and Cyryl's head fell back, the sweat steaming on his body in the chill air, his balls rolling in their sac. He quickly surrendered, surrendered his cock, his body, and his immortal soul if that's what she wanted. He fell back on the table and reached up for her rich tits, grabbed them and filled his hands with them.

"Oh!" she moaned. "Oh, yes! Oh!" Her cunt came down on him again and again, her skin sticking to him and pumping him, drawing the seed out of him.

She spread her hands out on the broad muscles of his chest and rode him, rode him fast and hard, a greedy mistress, demanding he give her what she wanted, everything that she wanted. She took his hand and showed him where to touch her. Showed him just where to put his thumb, and then she rode him like the devil and his army from hell was after her, she rode him and cried out as she came and Cyryl cried out too as his body jerked in its shameful, sinful release, spewing his hot seed deep into her, deep into the Widow Turek's womb, corruption to corruption and sin to sin.

In the forest, the howling reached a fever pitch, loud enough to wake the devil. Claws scratched at the doors of the church.

**+**

There were only seven people the next night at Compline. Malo came in with a shawl over her head but Father Cyryl paid her no special attention. Jesus knew what he'd done. Jesus knew what he would do. Everything was in the hands of Jesus. If Jesus couldn't reach this far to help Father Cyryl or answer his prayers for aid, then what was Father Cyryl supposed to do? The monsters were on the roof of the church during the service. The people heard them walking about with impunity on the roof of the Lord's house. Roof tiles began to fall. A winged shadow passed between the moon and a stained glass window and those who looked at it felt ill, then all the monsters launched themselves into the air and they heard the beating of many heavy wings as they flew away.

They heard much howling in the forest. The earth was being given back to devils, the forest was closing in. One day they'd awaken to darkness and Borewit would be king over their village. Bats would fill the air and wolves and leszys would pad through the streets with human children in their mouths. What could they do?

The people all left in a group except for Malo, who Father Cyryl asked to stay.

He sent Toja and Niedan out and locked the church. He took Malo in his arms and kissed her and crushed her breasts in his hands. "Come with me," he said to her.

He led her to the altar in the front of the church where he snuffed out all but one candelabrum and took off his stole and surplice and handed her the scourge.

"What is this, father?" she asked.

"You know what it is."

"This is the church, father Cyryl."

"This is no place. It's an empty shell. Do what you did to me last night." He lay down on his stomach on the altar

"But Father..."

"I'm the priest here and my word is law. You don't know anything.. Wasn't that the way it was when Father Jerek was here?"

"I don't know, Father."

"My word is law. Do what I say. Do what you did last night."

"Father, your back—"

"Whip my ass, then. Go ahead. Whip it." He got up on his knees and stripped down his breeches to expose his backside. His cock was already beginning to rise. "Do as I say, Malo. Now we'll see who suffers for whom or if He cares at all."

She looked around inside the darkened church. The shadows were thick and black and she couldn't see into the corners. The stained glass windows gleamed dully, the agony of the saints was invisible in the gloom. Father Cyryl's cock was standing out erect.

She drew the scourge back and slashed him across the buttocks, the whip sounding harsh and cruel as the thongs raised welts in the tender skin of his ass. Malo's fear had translated into more strength than she'd intended and Father Cyryl cried out.

"I'm sorry!" she said quickly.

"Again!"

[I]Whissshhh!![/I] Slappp!!!

"Hunh!!!"

He tightened his buttocks and grimaced as the thongs burned his flesh and the lead weights cut him and made him bleed. He looked like he'd been struck with a bunch of red-hot wires across his bottom, yet even as he was reflexively thrusting his hips forward his cock was so hard it was arching its back like a leaping fish, a drop of pre-cum already drooling from the tip belying his excitement.

"More," he gasped.

Kneeling on the altar, his ass was almost at chest level, so Malo took up a position directly behind him and began to lash him back and forth, forehand and backhand, holding the scourge with two hands, the wicked swoop and slash of the thongs along with Father Cyryl's grunts and moans of pain and pleasure filling the deserted church.

From the woods came the sudden cry of the leszys, close by and seemingly howling for blood. Cyryl ignored them, swept up in an ecstasy of pain and contrition, bleeding now, his cock jerking with every lash, his face transfigured into a mask of rapture and suffering, his blood spattered upon the altar. He reached back behind him and grabbed Malo by the hair and pulled her around in front of him, plunged both hands into her thick gold hair, and pulling her face to him, thrust his hips forward and rammed his prick into her mouth, impaling her.

"Oh! Jesus God! Take it! Take it!"

She sputtered at first, choking on the massive mouthful of meat, but quickly regained her poise and began to breathe through her nose and suck hard at his cock. Father Cyryl reacted as though the pleasure of her mouth had punched him in the stomach, his body folding almost in half, then he began to fuck her mouth with savage intensity, rocking up ferociously from his knees, thrusting the whole of his cock into her face, his lazy balls rolling with sinister intent in their sac, the thick shaft emerging from her mouth shining with saliva like an evil snake. Malo gasped and choked and the saliva spilled from her mouth. Outside, the creatures howled.

"Come here," he said, pulling her head off his cock. "Come here!"

"What? What, Father? What?" She was delirious for him, her lips bruised and thick, swollen with lust.

He grabbed at her dress and pulled it up over her head , that rag that hid such a magnificent treasure. He jumped down from the altar, wincing as he put weight on his legs, then took her and pushed her and arranged her till she was standing up, her chest lying across the altar and he entered her from behind, his cock gliding into the tight clutch of her pussy with a thick, viscous sound as Malo arched for him, his face twisted into an insidious mask of lust. He grabbed her hair and started fucking her, hard, hard, pumping into her with complete abandon, his loins slapping against her ass with a thick, wet sound. The howling came again, so close as to come through the hole in the transept.

"Oh God, they're close! They're close!"

"You can call them, Malo, can't you? You can!"

"No! They obey no one!"

"Your husband is one. He knows you!"

"Father! They're monsters. They're monsters of the forest!"

"You're lying, Malo! You're a witch! You're a witch and you call them, don't you? They always come when you're around! They follow you when you're around. You fuck them, don't you? At night, you fuck them and do unspeakable things with them! You suck their cocks and they tell you their infernal secrets and then you come here and you beat a Father of the Church, you whore! You slut! You cocksucker!"

"No, Father! No!"

"Don't lie to me Malo! Because I don't care anymore! Now tell me the truth! You're a witch, aren't you?"

"Yes! Yes! I'm a witch! I'm a witch but so what? Fuck me! Fuck me you bastard! Fuck me with your holy prick! I'm a witch! I worship the devil, you son of a bitch because he's the only one who cares! Your Jesus doesn't care. Your God doesn't care, so what should I do? Now fuck me and shoot your holy come inside me, you fucking hypocrite because you don't care either! Shoot it in me before those things tear you to pieces! Your Father Jerek is one of them and soon you'll be too!"

He grabbed her hair and pulled so that she arched her back and cried out in pain and he fucked into her with all his strength, trying to kill her with his cock, trying to rip her and make her bleed. He grabbed her and threw her down onto her knees on the flagstones and jumped on her again and stabbed her with his prick and began to batter her, biting her shoulders and squeezing her tits, a wild man, filled with the violent empty hatred of a man who has nothing left, not God, not love, not even hope. The howling of the beasts was loud now, so loud they might have stepped through the hole in the transept and torn him from her back and devoured him, hard cock and all. Malo was weeping out loud as orgasm took Father Cyryl, orgasm took him and rushed over him like a wall of fire and he felt like he was shooting acid into her, like his balls were filled with death, hatred and ruin, the silence of God, the disgust of Jesus and his refusal to even listen or look at him.

Father Cyryl pulled out of her. He pulled out of her and staggered away and sat down heavily on the floor of the church, his back against the confessional. There were more of the leszys howling now. The seemed to have picked up on his despair and were mocking him, howling and wailing, and Father Cyryl grabbed his cock in his hand and squeezed out the last drops of come and began to howl too. He put back his head and began to wail. Malo got to her knees and crawled to the shadows of a near corner, frightened witless, and Father Cyryl sat on the floor on and howled with the monsters of the woods, alone, bereft, surrounded by death and doom.

**+**

Borslaw arranged for Father Cyryl to buy honey mead from Ninorad Liska, which required Father Cyryl to empty out the collection box of the few coins there were in there and take the money he'd received to say masses for the dead. He didn't mind. They wouldn't need it, and if he were to say masses, it was more important he stay drunk. In the dim light of day there was the sound of snuffling from the woods and he saw things slithering in the forest. In the morning through his glass window he saw great red chicken feet lifting off from a tree and he wondered now if these things were the people from the village who changed their shape, come to harass him and do him evil. The earth was corrupt and there was nothing he could do about it. God had abandoned him and left him prey to whores and monsters that it was not in his power to deflect or refuse. He was no St. Anthony to pull his penis off with his own hands in the wilderness to foil the Tempter and bleed to death in Glory for Christ. There was nothing he could do but fight for no good reason, for no reward, a pitiful, doomed, laughable figure.