The Sin Eaters

I have received a few complaints about how I categorize stories. I have a great deal of sympathy with those complaints. I find the categories a bit restraining, though I understand the need for them.

This is foremost a tale of the supernatural. For that reason I put it in the "Erotic Horror" category. Given the glut of vampire shit in the world I was surprised as anyone to discover this story lurking inside my head. Of course, it's derivative, what isn't? There are echoes of Rice, King, Cronin, and others.

I am not in a rush to get to the erotica. There is erotica and if this unfolds as I hope, there will be more to come (pun definitely intended).

There is also graphic violence. And, of course, lots of blood. I absolutely do NOT want it to come off as some sort of sick snuff story. None of the primary characters are aroused by violence.

There is no sex between characters younger than 21.

There is non-consensual sex, including non-consensual gay sex. There will be hetero sex and bisex and more gay sex. I know, I know. I can see the comments already. "It should be under 'NonConset/Reluctance'." "It should be under 'Gay Male'." It will have aspect of all those categories but it is primarily a horror story with erotica. So, if none of the above gets your rocks off, go in peace.

Thanks to LarryInSeattle for his help with editing. Any errors that remain are my own.

I hope you enjoy. If you don't and you can tell me why in non-trollish fashion I'm all ears.

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It's funny in a way, that I, one who tried in life to shun meat, now live on rotten flesh. I do not mean the flesh itself. Also funny, in a fashion, since unlike in life, in death I eat no meat at all. What I mean when I say I eat only rotten flesh is that I only drink from the corrupted. The source of my existence springs from their corrupted flesh.

In life, I often had to eat meat. The Buddha was quite clear on this. As long as the meat was not killed specifically for me, and was not forbidden meat -snake, tiger, elephant, among others - meat placed in my alms bowl, was to be eaten with gratitude. We were to eat what was offered and do so humbly and with thanks in our hearts.

Once, a long time ago, I tried to determine the year of my birth but failed. I could not get the dates from the history texts to match my memory. I trust my memory more than the texts. I had left my wife and my children and set off to find enlightenment, and to, perhaps, help others to seek the path as well. I encountered many wonders and not a few horrors. The world has never ceased to be an ugly place. It was from that observation that my desire for enlightenment sprang. The only cure for this world is for it to cease to have meaning. I saw the roof of the world, stood at its foot and struggled to breathe the cold air that held no life. I saw mangroves, flat fields that extend beyond the limits of my vision, rains, heat that wrenched the rains from the earth, skies filled with stars, and skies filled with the smoke and ashes of human beings.

I made it to the ocean and began to walk north. The soldiers of Alexandros had no interest in enlightenment. They were content to gorge on the pleasures of the flesh, including my own. No, they were not cannibals, though I have since heard tales suggesting otherwise. They were strange men. Men who seemed as happy to rut with male as female. They pissed in my alms bowl, beat me, had their fill of my body, and left me to die.

I should have died. It would have been better, in all likelihood, if I had. I did not. She came as soon as the shadow of the sun's death draped itself over my broken body. I believe she simply meant to feed on what was left of me. She would never tell me, never answer whether it was mercy or cruelty she intended. She may not have known herself.

She did feed. I felt the little life left within me flow into her. Feeding is a most, perhaps the most, intimate act. The dying share the memories of the already dead. When she allowed my almost lifeless body to fall into the dust, I knew as much about her as she about me. She had no secrets. I had no secrets. Not even from myself.

And that, as is said nowadays, was the rub. I saw in myself all I had hidden from myself. Enlightenment? What enlightenment would demand abandoning those I was responsible for? I fled my life, my family because it was easier than staying. Her gift has provided me with two and a half millennia of guilt. Was it a cruel gift? Was it a kindness? Have I made any progress toward enlightenment? In all that time all I've learned is that I cannot answer those questions.

She had stared at me lying in the dust, neither smiling nor frowning. She stepped across my body, facing my feet, then lowered herself. I was naked. The soldiers had taken my worn robe telling me they would remember me by wiping their asses on it. She knelt. She wore no clothing. She took my linga in her mouth. You have so many words for linga - penis, cock, prick, dick, Johnson (that one I have never understood). As close to death as I was, as drained of blood as I was, there was something in her touch that woke my linga.

She pressed her yoni, her pussy, against my mouth. The Kama Sutra would not be penned for centuries but already in what would become India we were quite enlightened, if you'll pardon the blasphemy, when it came to the body. I knew what she wanted. I could see no good reason not to die in such a fashion. I summoned my dwindling strength and stretched out my tongue.

Her flesh moved aside and I found her essence. I did not have the strength to raise my head. She lowered herself and my lips were able to aid my tongue in its task. Around my linga she growled her pleasure. I had been trying to live up to the Buddha's teachings for almost two years, ignoring the pleasures of the body as well as those of the world. I could feel my eruption gathering force. I tried to force her away, warn her, my wife had made no secret of her dislike of having my seed anywhere other than inside her yoni. The dark woman was as immovable as stone. It was not my weakness, so much as her strength that mocked my efforts.

She reached between her legs. I felt her sharp nails along my cheek. She moved a single finger to her sex, to the full dark lips that guarded her entrance. With a jerk and a hiss, she stabbed herself with a single long nail. Darkness poured from the wound and into my mouth. I tried to spit but her blood flowed in too great a torrent. I swallowed. My body burned. My seed erupted from my manhood, scalding hot. The dark woman hissed again. She sucked and lapped.

She rose, long tongue licking her lips. My body was an agony to me. It burned. I could feel the broken bones in my hands and leg shifting, grinding, re-uniting. Pain seared my insides as what the soldiers had broken and pierced was made whole again.

"If you prefer death. Let the sun find you here," the dark woman spoke. It wasn't Hindi but I understood her words. "If you prefer to go on, rise, feed, and shelter. Pay attention. You'll feel the approach of the sun with adequate time to shelter, if that is what you desire. When you wake, if you wake, leave this place. This is my place. We don't willingly share. I will kill you if you're still here in two nights. I'm not going to say 'farewell' that would be too cruel a taunt even for me. So long."

And she was gone. Even lost in the agony of what was happening to my body, my new eyes were able to track her for a moment but no more than that. I had much to learn.

The contortions of my body continued. I screamed, begged for mercy, begged the dark woman to return and take my life. No one came. No one heard. If they did, they paid no heed. Death was too common and too easily found to excite much interest.

The pain ebbed, slowly, but it ebbed. I clambered to my hands and knees and vomited great gouts of black ichor. The dust around me turned to mud and my hands sunk to the wrists. Still I vomited. My bowels twisted and my shit equaled or exceeded the blood that spewed from my yawning jaws. When it stopped, I felt empty. I rose unsteadily to my feet. My legs held. I clenched my fists and blood soaked mud oozed from between my fingers. My hands worked. They were no longer twisted broken parodies of hands.

I was thirsty. I staggered to a stream, more a trickle than a stream, which lay a short walk from the hardpan road. The water reeked of animal dung and dead things. I plunged my face into the muck and slurped. I imagined the pain I had felt as my body repaired itself could not be exceeded. I was wrong. I do not know how long I screamed between retches but the first sensible thing I can recall is my ears ringing from the sound of my own screams. I crawled away from the stream, staggered to my feet, and ran.

I was too lost in pain and confusion to understand the speed at which I was traveling. My pace would have made the fastest horse appear to be standing still. I didn't know where I was running. I simply ran. I could see without difficulty. The moon had set but even by starlight, I could see as well as at midday. A village, a cluster of huts more than a true village, huddled beside the road. I ran toward the nearest mud and straw hut.

Grandmother, father, mother, two children, even the dog that attempted to protect them fell to my hunger. Still, I thirsted. Inside the windowless hut I felt warmth on my shoulders. The sun.

I fled the hut. Not far from the village the bank of the stream, a more respectable size now, had been quarried for clay. I dug and clawed and pulled myself deep into the earth, past the clay until I encountered rock. My eyes, mouth, nose were packed with mud. I didn't notice. I turned and collapsed the tunnel behind me.

I did not sleep nor did I dream. I remembered. I remembered the sound of the grandmother's neck as it snapped beneath my fingers. The father, her son, ran at me. I crushed his skull. Bone and hair and pinkish white globs squished between my fingers, just as the bloody mud had. The dog did its best to sink its teeth into my leg. I stamped on its head and blood and brains sprayed outward, an expanding cone of gore. The mother pushed the children behind her back, unable to even scream. The grandmother's body hung limply from one hand. I dropped her. I reached around the woman, found the two small heads, her fists batted, unfelt, at my chest and face. I twisted my wrists. Their necks were much quieter than the grandmother's. I let them fall to the dirt floor.

I ripped the linen shift from her body. Her breast were full, the youngest still suckled. An overwhelming hunger wracked my body. I lowered my head and drank. I fed on the other breast. I hoisted her in the air and shoved my mouth over her yoni. Again, I suckled. It had been her time of the month. As her woman's blood filled my mouth. She began to cry out. In the modern vernacular, she was cumming, over and over again as I sucked at her yoni. She died, arching backwards in my clutching hands, cumming, with her dead eyes gazing on the small bodies beneath us.

I was not sated. The father, grandmother, dog, I drank their still warm blood as well. Then the children.

Lying, encased in clay and sand and rock I tried to cry but failed. I tried to burrow my way out, out into the sun that would erase me from the world but though such thoughts formed in my mind, my body would not obey.

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I waited. I could hear the sounds of clay being scraped from the wooden blades that harvested the valuable mud. I was hungry. I did not fear the men laboring a few feet from my grave, for that is what it was, but I had no desire for confrontation. The dark woman's blood had instilled the need to remain hidden. Last night's indiscretion was greatly frowned upon. Talk of demons was not to be encouraged.

I emerged into the night air. I shook my body and the dirt and mud flew away. Even the gore beneath my fingers fell to the ground. I was as clean as if bathed by a hundred virgins. My body anyway, my soul was a different matter. I still imagined I had a soul back then, a soul that, if I could only learn to cast away earthly encumbrances, would find peace in Nirvana. Far from being able to discard the earth, I was learning it was now my true home.

I ignored my thirst. I could smell the blood of the villagers. I could hear it course through their veins, hear the thuds of their hearts. My manhood arched toward the moon as my mind touched a young man, only a few weeks married, his wife fondling his linga with her mouth. I fled to the east, toward the sun, toward my home.

I became aware of the dark woman following me. She was not close enough to see yet I knew she was there and I knew she was making sure I left her lands. If I fed here again she would destroy me. She was not pleased at the slaughter I had left behind. I sensed it was only her guilt at creating me, and perhaps my inexperience, that stayed her hand.

She fell behind and then was gone. I searched with my thoughts, probing for the presence of anyone else such as what I had become in the area. I felt no one. I would cover a quarter of the distance to my home that night, a quarter of the distance from one ocean to the next. I fed on a hog. It was covered in mud and shit and even that seemed too good for me. I held it by the neck and hips. Its feet flailed without effect as my thumbnail opened the artery that throbbed and called to me from its neck. Blood covered my face and chest. As it flowed over my manhood, my seed flew to defile the pig shit under my feet. Drained, I ripped the hog's throat open, and tore off great handfuls of meat and one of the haunches. The meat I threw into the jungle. I had no need of it. Tomorrow the village men would debate hunting for the tiger that preyed on their livestock. They would not debate hunting for a demon.

I burrowed under the shit and mud and slept.

The following night, long leagues from the sty, I killed a tiger. A glorious beast, I interrupted him as he finished a dinner of fresh ox. I held him at arm's length. His claws gouged my flesh, flesh that healed as soon as the claw moved on. The pain was exquisite. My manhood throbbed and ejaculated at every swipe. I no longer had any seed to offer a woman. What flew from my manhood was blood. What flowed from my eyes was blood. As with the pig, I opened his neck with a nail and bathed in hot animal blood. As I drank, I felt a bit of his spirit enter me, his pride, strength, and stealth became part of me. I did not drop the tiger. I buried him, as I had not done for the family. I knew where the tiger slept. I knew everything about him. I knew the scent of his mother. I knew how many times he mated. I did not know about his offspring. After mating he wandered away. I curled up in his den and pulled piles of brush and leaves over my body.

I arrived at my village the following night. I had played a dangerous game. The edge of the world was beginning to glow as I dug a grave in an abandoned field. It had been two years since I had left. I wondered what had become of my son, my daughters, my wife. I tried to dissuade myself from making myself known to them. In the star-lit pools of the river, my reflection seemed to be my own. Yes, I have a reflection, more about that later perhaps. But though I wore my wife's husband's face I was not truly her husband any longer. What good could come of this?

None. Life without a husband is difficult at best. My wife had found a new husband. He wanted his own family. He told my wife he had found my son an apprenticeship with his uncle. He had sent him to his uncle who sold him in the market. My daughters did not even rated a lie. They had been sold outright. This I learn as I drank his blood, his body in one hand, his head hanging from the other. My wife had been found for me by my parents. Even so, I had grown fond of her. She had done what she needed to do to survive. Her crimes did not approach my own. I could have let her live. I did not. I could see her hatred in her eyes. As I drank I understood her at last. She had never grown to love me. In life, she had found me moody, childish. Her hatred for me gave her blood a vigor the man's had lacked. She was a strong woman.

I found my children, probed them, the girls were as happy as girls in that age could be. Their master came to them in the night, of course, but he treated them with as much kindness as his did his pet monkey. They were content. I did not show myself to them.

My son burned with anger for me, for the man who had taken his place but most of all for the man who worked and beat him. I considered offering him my blood. The thought had no sooner formed in my mind than a chorus of "no's" knocked me to my feet. If I dared do such a thing, I'd be destroyed, as would my son. I freed him. I freed him and handed him a knife. I'm not sure if he recognized me. It does not matter. His master tried to defend himself. I allowed it for a while, luxuriating in the senselessness of his struggles. Tired of the silliness, I snatched the man's small sword away and crumpled it into a ball. I rendered him incapable of resisting. Doing so in a manner that would have horrified the living me. My son stared at the man for a moment, raised the blade. His hand shook. I could read the emotion in his eyes - hatred, vengance, pity, sorrow - all played in rapid succession over his face. Pity and sorrow triumphed. He drop the knife and ran out of his master's room. I had shat pity and sorrow into the mud. I tore open the throat of the man who had enslaved my son and drank my fill.

The night grew short. I found my son weeping near the wall of his now former master. Not knowing why, I put my hand over his face. He fell into a deep sleep. I picked him up, leapt over the wall and began to run through the night. As I ran, I sorted through his memories and discovered he was very much as I had wished myself to be. He was not childish, not moody. His heart was large. A bee's struggle to free itself from the doom of a spider's web would trouble him. A broken-winged bird would lead to tears. This, this gentleness, was what the man had robbed from my son. How I yearned to return life to the bastard's body and peel him alive with my fingernails.

As rage engulfed my mind, my son moaned. I was hurting him. My anger, my wish for violence, caused him physical pain. I stilled myself for him. I had little time. I could not hide my son with me. I did not trust myself to control my thirst. Besides, my son remained a creature of sun and air. He could not lie with me in the dirt. As I fled, I eased his mind. I ferreted out the worst that the man had done to him and let those memories fall from him. I left him with memories of his mother, who had loved him as much as she had hated me, and his sisters. I offered him the illusion that he had traveled, been set upon, recovered and sought shelter in the company of holy men.

I scaled the high wall of a monastery, easily cradling my son against my body with one arm. I swept my mind over the men who slept there. They were not saints. The Buddha did not dwell here, but he was known here. I impressed upon them the gentleness of my son. I made them aware of his potential to bring a small portion of, if not joy, then at least contentment to those he would meet. I also lodged in their minds the wrath I would visit upon them should they harm him.

I left him on the stones of the courtyard. I could not bring myself to kiss his cheek. I touched it with one finger, asked for his forgiveness, and disappeared into the night.

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I fled into the mountains and hid myself deep in the snow. I woke, if that is the right word, wracked with craving. My body twisted, as it had after the dark lady had fed me the first time. I dug deeper, pulled rocks over my body until it was too late to feed. Buried as I was, I felt the sun as it rose. It's cleansing light seeking a way through snow and rock to rid the world of my stain.