The Three Rites of Eugenie Hastings

The sight of her took my breath away, and I pulled back, pressing myself against Arshinov's waiting, pressing form.

"Do you like her, my dear?" he whispered. "Do you enjoy what you see in our own sweet Sophie?"

What I saw was the marks of a deep and lasting depravity visited upon the body of a young woman, the signs of which would never fade. What I saw was a woman branded for the duration of her years by the debauchery of men, men who had marked and branded her flesh and who had taken her voice away. What I saw terrified me, as I saw in the body of Sophie the prelude to my own fate.

She stood in the doorway to the parlor. When Arshinov told her that all was ready and to proceed, the woman nodded. She stepped back out of sight into the hall. From the darkness there I heard hurried whispers and the jangling of a bell, and one voice that spoke in haste. She emerged once again. Now there was a leather halter in her hand. At the other end trailed a woman veiled and in a fine white wedding dress, led by a collar affixed to her pale throat.

This bride walked with small and uncertain steps, led on by Sophie's tugging of the leash. She held in her gloved hands a bouquet of white flowers, yet I could see that both of her wrists were tied together with thin rope, tied tight. I imagined how painful that must be. I could not see her face through the lace of her veil, but I imagined the fear upon it, the tears that must be in her eyes. As the woman moved I could hear the ringing of a small bell. Yet I could not see one about her person, and there was none present upon Sophie's form.

Arshinov stepped away from me then, his nude form crossing before me. The man thrusting into Leah on the floor of a sudden pulled back and let her fall, exhausted. Arshinov spread his arms wide and spoke again to the waiting crowd.

"My friends, the time has come for the second rite. Sister Sophie has prepared her charge. The door has been opened, the Lurker stands upon the threshold. It is time for the rite of union and the revelation of the secrets to one who would join our ranks. Rise up brothers! The rite will now begin."

All around the parlor the sprawling men began to rise wearily to their feet. There was something hungry in their eyes. I saw lips pulled back to reveal yellowed teeth, savage grins or the snarl of an animal readying itself to strike and to tear the flesh from off the bone. I saw Leah crawling across the floor, a milky trail of spent ejaculate trailing behind her across the boards. She reached the wall and sat below the lantern in the window, her legs spread wide and leaking. Her gaze alternated between me and the woman in the wedding dress. She was smiling.

The men pressed close around the woman in white. Their hands reached out to stroke the finery of her nuptial garments, which even through my fear I noted were of the most expensive cut and the highest of fashion. I am embarrassed to admit that at the time there was still a small part of me that recoiled at the sight of the marks left by grubby fingers upon the flawless white silk and the well-cut lace, as though such impropriety could contend with the sights that I had already taken in on that awful evening.

Arshinov turned to face me, a wide smile on his face, and he swept his arm outward to gesture toward the bride that Sophie had brought.

"Behold the bride of Azeroth, my dear Eugenie. Behold the feast that has been prepared."

He turned again and stepped forward towards the woman dressed in white. I saw her shiver at his approach and make a muffled sound beyond the veil, not unlike the breathless rasp of Sophie. I imagined that this poor woman had suffered a similar fate. She drew back a tiny step, and then another, before Sophie silently snarled and yanked the leather halter forward, dragging the woman back into place. The men around her pressed closer still, their hands and bodies urging her forward, uttering the most shocking of profanities as though language itself was both lash and whip.

Arshinov stopped his advance with only a few paces between them. I saw him reach out with his left hand and run his fingers across the veil that hid the woman's face. Though his back was to me I knew that his right still wrapped itself around the heat of his erection, stroked and kept at readiness as he whispered to the woman words I could only strain to hear. I heard once more the low moan of the woman in white, and then Arshinov raised his voice again and announced that it was agreed, that it was decided.

At the utterance of these words the crowd of men began to cheer. They pressed closer still around the woman when Arshinov called out that the time had come for the groomsmen to prepare the bride. I watched as the filthy hands of the unwashed crowd fell upon the finery in earnest, not to stroke or caress, but to rip and tear, each hand thrusting forward and then jerking back to pull away fistfuls of the fine brocaded silk and lace. The laughter of the men mingled with the faint jingle of an unseen bell and strange noises from the bride beset. Flashes of flesh became exposed as the woman in vain attempted to escape the grasping of their hands, her own bound before her, the leash taut upon her veiled throat.

The ringing of the bell...that bell....

Arshinov looked back over his shoulder to where I still stood, alone and naked, too frightened even to attempt to flee. He grinned at me and stepped aside so that I could see her plainly, even as Sophie stepped closer to the woman's side.

It did not at first register with me what I was seeing. I saw the exposure of her pale white flesh, the dress ripped cruelly from her body to fly in tatters through the air and fall slowly to the floor behind. I saw the movements of the woman as in vain she sought to hide herself from the crowd. I followed her struggle with sympathy mixed in with the horror.

Yet I am honest there was again a small part of me that was relieved that it was her and not I who was obliged to feel those hands, who was the victim. There was a part of me that thought a moment would come when the crowd lost itself in the throes of its hideous passion, when I could flee from Richmond Court, when I could escape the dreadful night and all the horrors it had offered.

There was nearly nothing covering her when suddenly it struck me.

The body was wrong, that it was not what I had believed it to be. Beneath the silk and the lace the form that was exposed was not at all the one which I had expected. The breasts were too small, and I saw light hairs upon the belly. And though the veil remained in place, the dress did not.

When did I know?

When was the moment?

I would say that part of me had known all along. Part of me had known in the first moment, when Sophie had led her into the parlor. Even now it is difficult to describe it, that moment when I knew that she was not a she at all.

I beheld the long thin member, red in erection, and the taut skin below the swollen angry head pierced through, and hanging there the little bell affixed to the swollen and straining skin.

The nipples were pierced and adorned with same rings of thick gold which hung from Sophie's pink flesh, yet in the case of the bride the rings were connected together by a long thin chain, which itself was connected to a silver ring in the collar upon the throat, and another chain that ran below, affixed to the base of the copper bell that rang upon the poor bride's cock.

I would say that a part of me had known in the moment that Sophie led the figure into the parlor. For had Arshinov not already told me as much? Had the host of that function not already explained that my dear fiancé was being prepared?

Still I gasped at the final revelation, when Sophie leant down and raised the veil from his face. As the group of men tore the dress from his body Timothy Hansen whimpered and drooled around the knotted cloth that gagged his mouth.

He must have seen me upon his entry into the parlor, nude before the fire, removed from all the rest, and when the veil was lifted I could see that his eyes were fixed upon me, wide and frightened.

Perhaps you think I should have rushed to him, shielded him from the hands of those men. It is certainly something I have questioned in myself ever since. For I did not take a step towards where he stood. I did not even scream. I only stood, rooted in my place as though held fast by chains.

For although I could see the alarm in my intended's eyes, and though I could see his straining against the bonds upon his wrist and the leather halter cinched tight upon his throat, I could also see the swollen state of his manhood, engorged and throbbing, plain as day between his legs. If there was alarm in his gaze then there was something else to behold as well, some tense excitement in his look that belied the sense of his victimhood and revealed him as something else--an accessory to his own humiliation.

If he strained against the tight constraints of his bondage, he did not fight hard to avoid the rough hands that fell eagerly upon his skin to tear away the dress. Nor did he shy away when those same rough hands lingered upon his skin.

Timothy's muffled cry was less a scream than it was a mewling whine of anticipation, and it grew only more pronounced when there was nothing left to tear from his skin, and the men around him pressed close against his nudity, skin upon skin and heat upon heat. I watched as the distinction between each one faded, and they became one writhing mass of arms and legs and stiffened sexes.

I watched as teeth began to nibble Tim's exposed and youthful flesh, the base of his throat, the curve of his bicep, the gentle swell of his soft white belly. As tongues left their soft trails upon his flesh, probing softly to taste him, as his ears were nuzzled and heard the secret whispers of a dozen voices and his pale form colored into a heavy blush.

Sophie stepped forward, and she handed the end of the leather leash to one of the men. She took Timothy's face in both of her hands, and she pulled the thick knotted gag from between his lips, pressed her own lips tightly to his mouth and inhaled the first word he might have uttered, and when she pulled away once more another set of hands was quick to turn his face, to turn his body and press hard into the eager wetness of his mouth.

There was no question then that Timothy was among these revelers, that the actions which he now found himself a part of were a match to his desires. He must have kissed them all, passionately. Never once did his prick lose a sliver of its rigidity, only changed in hue into an expectant and angry purple until I was certain that it would soon burst with want and need.

The crowd laughed uproariously as they began to fondle him there, hard and calloused hands wrapping lightly around the length of my fiancé's prick, amusing themselves by making the bell affixed to his skin jingle more and more, to tug upon the slim chains and to make dear Tim yelp each time in heady anguish.

I simply stood there and watched in a stupor, seemingly forgotten in the excitement that the revelers felt in toying with my intended.

But I was not forgotten. Suddenly I felt a hand upon my ankle, and I looked down to see that Leah had crawled her way to my feet. She was using my body for support to try to rise.

Instinct took over and I reached down and took Leah's hands in my own, pulling her to her feet. Her legs must have been like jelly from the force with which the men had rutted her. She leaned heavily upon me, body pressed to mine and her head upon my shoulder. At once I was covered with the filth that stained her, forced to turn away from the smell of semen and prick so thick upon her breath.

She laughed to see my discomfort and wrapped her arms around my body tightly, squeezing me tight as though wishing to meld her own flesh into mine.

"He wanted this," she said. "They all did once. Every one of us for different reasons but united now. One by one we have found ourselves here and at last together. He is lucky. He has joined us now through a special rite. You too are fortunate. The lurker at the threshold has long set his eyes upon you."

As Leah spoke to me, as I watched the humiliation of my captured, tumescent fiancé, i felt her begin to move her hips against me, slowly thrusting forward, her slippery and wet sex grazing my own.

"You want this too." Leah told me, as she slid her breasts heavily across mine, causing me to gasp as her skin rubbed across the sensitive tips of my nipples.

"Maybe you do not yet know it, but every fiber of your soul is crying out to be taken, to be used, to be given over to the Creeping Chaos which tonight reveals itself. It is all right, Ginny. It's all right. Tonight there is no shame."

The sound of that name did something to me, I will confess. It was the girlhood nickname always used by the closest of my confederates, the one which I had always worn like a desperado with a bandanna tied across his face. It was the name that I knew myself by through girlhood scrapes and stumbles, through the riotous adventures of youth. I was safe in its anonymity, knowing that it saved the face and reputation of my prim and proper self: dear, spoiled, lovely Eugenie, who would one day wed and raise a family, whose lily-white hands had known no sin, whose virginal eyes had always been kept firmly locked, one step ahead of her upon the path.

It was Ginny that my friends had known on the day I spied upon Miss Smith and her common lover, and it was Ginny I called myself that night alone in the sticky shelter of my lonely bed. To hear it whispered that night through Leah's lips sent a shiver up my spine. Suddenly within her grip I felt myself shudder, and something within myself began to tear and to break.

Leah must have felt it too, for she held me tighter, pressed her hot thighs more firmly against mine, and slid her hands up and down my back, finally dropping them to grasp me tightly by the globes of my ass and pull me more firmly to her. I looked into her eyes, but Leah shook her head, telling me that I must keep watching my intended, that it was important that I see.

Pulling myself away from her gaze I looked back to Timothy.

It could only have been a moment or less that I had been distracted, yet in that moment the scene before me had warped and twisted. I saw that Timothy had been pushed down upon his knees, that a brute held his young face firmly in two dirty hands, and was poking at Tim's sweet lips with the head of his engorged prick. The breath caught in my throat as I saw Tim part his lips, as I saw him tentatively flick out his tongue to press it upon the head of the penis offered before it.

I heard him moan in the moment of contact, tongue upon foreign flesh. I saw his eyes lower as his mouth widened and the swollen glans of the brute thrust inward and filled him. The man threw his own head back upon his broad and hairy shoulders, and his sigh was like the end of the world, like a great stone breaking in a forest silence, the sound of a man having found a part of himself at last, a circle long rent at last coming closed.

Somehow, I found myself sighing too, and in that moment was aware that I wished that were me down there upon the floor. I was becoming excited by the horror of the night. Some part of me wished to know what it was that my fiancé was feeling, to be forced onto my knees and to hold and taste a prick upon my own hot tongue. It was frustration that smoldered within me that I should be so close at last to knowledge, to true understanding of the most secret mysteries, only to find them reserved for another.

In that moment I was jealous.

It pains me now to admit to such an awful thing, yet there it was. I was jealous of Tim with that prick thrusting in and out of his eager mouth. I wished that it were me.

A low moan escaped my throat, mirroring the gagging wet whine that issued from Tim's. Somehow, over the murmurs of the crowd and the excitement of the men who pressed close with cocks in hand, Timothy must have heard me.

His eyes flashed to where I stood and locked with mine, and for an instant we held each other's gaze across the space. Then I saw a heavy movement in my beloved's jaw and throat. His eyes began to roll back in his head as he pressed himself deeper onto the cock already in his mouth and swallowed the heavy thing to the root. The heavy fingers of the man who held him curled tightly into Tim's blond hair and he began to curse in earnest as he slid downwards, his prick sliding over the carpet of my true love's tongue into the bottom of Timothy's throat.

I began to squirm in Leah's embrace, and felt her grip on me soften and relax, her right arm falling away from me, but only for an instant as she maneuvered her limb between us. Her palm slid down between my thighs and pressed firmly into the moistness of my virgin lips.

"You see, Ginny?" I heard her purr. "It's all right. Shall I help you, Ginny? Would you like me to guide you to where it is you wish to go?"

I could not speak, and I could not pull my gaze from the sight of Timothy Hansen swallowing that prick to its very base, his pink lips pressed wetly to the hilt of his lover's groin. It seemed that I did not need to speak, that the feel of my wet sex spoke enough, for Leah's fingers began to slide along the length of my tender folds, softly pressing here and there.

"You do not need to speak," Leah advised me. "You must keep watch upon what is before you... but I will help you if you wish me to. All you need to do is offer me a kiss, sweetheart. Just a single kiss and I will guide you to the place you have always longed to be."

I did not speak a word but my lips parted. In an instant her mouth was pressed to mine, and I opened my jaws to receive her probing tongue into my mouth. I tasted salt and the sea as her tongue slid over mine and muffled my gasp of pleasure as I felt a long finger begin to slide up inside me, probing gently towards my soft core.

My head swam with the sights before my eyes and with a rush of memories, tumbling out of order like I'd had too much wine. Long nights at the academy, us girls in our cotton night clothes, daring each other to go further in a world that longed for men. The feel of Louisa Atkin's lips pressed to mine, feeling her tremble as I forced her mouth wide to take my tongue all the way down into her throat where I longed to taste her, myself forever taking the role of a man, the man I longed for, to kiss my confederates as savagely and with as much wanton abandon as I myself longed to be kissed.

Or the flush on Julie Morgan's cheeks when I gazed up at her, my teeth clamped playfully on her long brown nipple. My hand slid lightly over her trembling clit until she spurted forth in embarrassed delight, slapped me for want of knowing what else to do, and ran nude down the halls of the dormitory while I laughed in cruel satisfaction and lapped the taste of her forbidden joy off my fingers thick with her scent.

I suddenly realized that I myself, forced always to play the instigator, my own desire stronger than any of theirs, had never known the penetrating touch of another. If my fingers had probed the depths of a bevy of women, if I had sought in their submission to my touch some reflection of the caresses I longed for, the role I had taken had never allowed for my own satisfaction. I had never provoked a similar daring in any of my companions to probe my own sweet depths.

The depths of my desire had caused some of my chums to recoil from me in the long spring and summer nights, to label me as a bully and as something far worse. I did not mind, had never minded, thrilled in the desire I could induce in their bodies, drunk on their fear and the secret cloying desire that they exuded like perfume.