ten
The Merciful
The sheep scatter, and I’m knocked to my knees, my legs trapped by the restricting nightgown and my bound hands unable to break my fall. The girls all run for the three doors around the room, and I struggle to my feet and take off into one of the tunnels after them, panic stabbing through me with each footstep. I got a late start. It will all be over in seconds.
I run smack into a dirt wall and bounce off, nearly falling before I hit the wall on the other side. There’s no way out, no way to win. The game is completely stacked against us. We’re wearing white, the tunnels are unlit, and the Hellhounds have night-vision goggles.
I bite down on the beads, relishing the pain as they dig into the roof of my mouth. I need to get myself together, stop panicking.
I’m okay. No one has touched me. A man will want to marry me someday, and I’ll have plenty to give him. Which means I can’t let them take it.
I may not know where I’m going, or how to get out with a special phrase, but I don’t need any favors. I’m too smart to act the way I have been, buffeted like a seagull in a storm by the conflicting winds of lust and fear.
I still have my mind—a mind I’m going to use to find out what happened to Eternity. If she was here, she wouldn’t freak out. She’d fight.
I still have my hands and feet, but I know I have no chance against all those men at once. I reach up, silently thanking Heath for tying my hands in front of me instead of behind.
Ridiculous, yes, but the priests always encourage gratitude.
They probably didn’t have these sinful games in mind when they were preaching their sermons on being thankful for what you have, but I’m adaptable.
Running my hands along the wall, I make my way along until I reach a bend. Behind me, I hear a distant countdown echoing. I know what’s back there—the main room, and off it, the crypt. When we were kids and snuck down into the underbelly of the church, we found it—with a body waiting for burial. That was the first and last time we snuck down. Before that, it was enough to play in the graveyard behind the chapel, to peer in the windows of the priest’s little house out back, to run in terror into the woods behind it if he was inside. There was no shame in us then, not even when we were being naughty kids who spied on a priest. We were free, wild, fully and unselfconsciously ourselves.
The very opposite of now.
My heart twists with a sense of loss—a loss I didn’t even notice among the others. Maybe I don’t need to worry about what they’ll do to me if they catch me now. Our innocence is already gone, washed down the river with my best friend or rubbed away on my stomach well before that.
They’re already at seconds, though, and my heart thrums with a heady burst of adrenaline. I hurry my steps, moving my hands up and down the wall as I go.
And then I get my first break—a ledge. It’s higher than I’d like, so I’m barely able to feel it at all. When I stand on tiptoes, though, I can get my fingers onto it. It would help if I could spread my hands wider to get better purchase, but I don’t have that luxury. I lift myself, digging my toes into the gritty dirt wall. Somewhere behind, another burst of howls rises, each more feral than the last.
A shiver wracks my body, and I glance back into the darkness, knowing I’ll never see them coming. My feet slip from the wall, my toenail tearing.
Pain volleys up my leg, and I hold back a curse, biting down on the beads to keep it in. Tears swim in my eyes, but I have no vision, so they’re not hurting anything. I start again, dragging my nightgown up around my hips so it won’t bind my legs.
Footfalls echo in the tunnel, and my heart stops. I hang suspended by my hands, my feet braced on the wall and my skirt hiked up.
The footsteps charge past the end of the turn I took, and I let out a breath as they echo further on.
Just as I start to relax, I hear the quiet pad of more footsteps, these one’s stalking instead of charging in. No howls accompany this Hellhound. There’s only the scuff of shoes on dirt, and quiet breathing.
My heart explodes into a frantic, irregular rhythm, and I scramble on the wall, knowing my time is nearly up. Just when I think it’s over, my toe digs into a soft spot in the dirt, and I heave myself up with all the power in my thighs. I land badly, my huge sheep head bouncing off the dirt, my body belly down on top of my hands. My wrist twists funny, and I suck in a breath, almost choking on the beads. There’s no time to nurse the pain. I swing my legs up and twist around, so I’m lying flat on the dirt ledge. I can feel the ceiling looming only inches above me, the presence of it hovering like a trap.
I try not to imagine the tunnels caving in, crushing us all to death.
And then I’m too scared to imagine anything, because the footsteps slow, and I can hear the breathing so close I could reach out and touch him. I’m sure that if I turned my giant sheep head, I’d be staring right into the soulless, savage eyes of a Hellhound.
I don’t turn my head. I don’t even breathe. I hold the beads clenched between my aching jaws, praying like the rosary is wrapped around my fingers instead of my tongue. And I pray harder than I’ve ever prayed in my life that he won’t see me. I’m probably seven feet off the ground, and most men aren’t that tall. He’ll be looking ahead, not up.
Then I remember Bain from the group they called the Sinners, his grey eyes piercing into mine when he stood over me.
Can a Sinner be a Hellhound?
Please don’t let him be a Hellhound.
Then I hear the footsteps slowly making their way further along, and my body melts into a puddle of pure relief, shaking with terror and adrenaline from the close call. When I can’t hear his footsteps anymore, I slowly ease my weight off my aching hands. Feeling my way, I edge back until I meet the wall, wedging myself into the space as far as I can. Just as I’ve decided I can’t be seen, a howl sounds again, then an ear-piercing shriek. It echoes along the corridor so close I can almost feel the soundwaves racing along my skin.
Every hair on my body stands on end when feral snarling and growling fills the air, the sound coming from directly below me. There’s a thud of bodies, and then hysterical giggling and the sound of a struggle, gasping cries and tearing fabric. The growling turns into grunts and the giggling is cut off by a soft, mewling cry. Then the entire hallways is filled with carnal sounds, as if a predator really is devouring its prey. Animal groans and snarls tear through the air, along with whimpering and moaning and a wet sound like a lion devouring its catch.
My cheeks burn with so much heat I’m sure they’ll glow like coals, drawing the attion of the players below. I squeeze my eyes closed and pray they’ll go away, that the throbbing heat between my thighs will ease. With a few final shrieks and a bellowing roar, the noises dissipate, and there’s only ragged, rapid breathing below.
Then the quiet footsteps scuff from the other direction, where the silent predator went hunting. There’s another sudden shriek, and then the sounds of a quiet, rough binge fill the tunnel again.
I squeeze my eyes closed, wishing I could block out the sounds instead of the darkness that my sightless eyes can’t pierce anyway. But I’m not brave enough to raise my hands and risk rustling sounds, let alone the giant head is probably so big I couldn’t even squeeze it around my ears. As soon as they’re gone, I’ll pull off the stupid thing to make moving around and hiding easier.
Until then, I will the girl being used so roughly to say the words, the phrase that ends her game—and mine. All I need is for one person to say it, and then if anyone catches me, I’ll immediately spit out the beads and blurt it out.
Heath doesn’t have to know the rosary ever left my mouth. I’ll be safely in my room by the time the game ends and he realizes I’m gone.
Unless he’s the one who catches me…
I decide not to remove the sheep head after all. Maybe by some miracle he won’t know it’s me, despite the nightgown. I could tear that shorter to make running easier if I need to make a getaway, tear the sleeves off to make it unrecognizable. Then I’ll just have to risk being caught by Heath. If I hear the word, I’m using it.
There are thirteen Hellhounds. The chances of being caught by Heath are slim.
But what then? He said he’d release the confession to the public if I didn’t play. I’ve played. Even if I quit early, I entered the game and showed up on HAVOC night.
His words earlier creep into my mind though.
I’ll come for you even harder…
I shiver as the feasting below me ends. Several pairs of footsteps leave, but I can still hear breathing below for a while. I know if I can hear her, she can hear me, so I take long, slow breaths through my nose, making myself as silent as humanly possible. My hands are completely numb now.
Finally, she gets up and leaves.
For the next few hours, I lis to howls coming and going. I hear mating again, this time further away, thankfully. Footsteps race by several times, but I’ve found a good hiding place, and no one disturbs me. I’m even able to roll over onto my back and let the feeling return to my hands.
To my deepest shame, after a while, I start to wonder what it’s like to be down there. To be hunted, touched, claimed by a stranger in the dark. To be filled with that animal, raw part of Heath I’ve seen twice now.
A shiver of terror runs through me, but my skin flushes with heat at the same time, and the dull throb between my thighs becomes an unbearable ache. When I hear another lamb being caught and devoured, I have to stifle a sob. I pray for my soul as I lay there in the dark, considering slipping off the shelf and joining the game, running free and wild, living my most sinful, carnal desires like even God can’t see me here.
No one will know it’s you.
The thought nags at me like the pulsing need eating me alive.
I shove it away, locking it tight like I’ve locked these sinful urges for so long.
God, wash me clean of this sin…
He’s so quiet I don’t even hear him until his breath is practically in my ear. I got too comfortable, let myself relax.
A soft chuckle ripples over my body in the dark, making my nipples instantly harden to diamonds. “Gotcha.”
The voice sends cold terror spiking through me. I’m trapped. I can’t roll away, as I’m already at the back of the ledge. All I can do is go towards him.
Hoping to surprise him, I brace my feet and shove off, rolling toward him and launching myself off the ledge. I twist around in the air and land on my feet, but I stumble into the far wall of the tunnel. He curses in the dark. Fingers rake down my arm, wrapping around my elbow in a steel grip. I can’t see his face, but I’d know his unhinged laughter anywhere.
I yank to free myself, but Heath jerks me back. “Should I fuck you right here, or bring you back to the crypt and do it in a coffin? Would that get you off, you freaky little slut?”
I let him pull my body against his so I’ll know his position. I’m weak with fear, but I adjust my stance as he reaches both arms around me, grabbing my backside with both hands and grinding into my center.
“I might even let you spit out the beads. I want to hear you whimper and scream. It gets me so hard.”
I gulp, feeling the truth of his words between my legs as he continues rubbing against me in the most shocking way, a way that has my knees trembling even harder than they are. For a second, I give in to my baser desires, my head spinning with how good it feels to be touched there. I never let myself do it. Now I can feel the ridge of his shaft digging into me, hard enough to make a dull ache build along with the delicious hunger. He drags his length along me, until I can feel the steel ball of his piercing against the bundle of nerves that makes me throb deep inside. I whimper behind the rosary, and Heath growls, his face angling to find my throat.
“You’re fucking soaked, little lamb,” he whispers, his voice husky with desire. “You want it too, don’t you?”
He rakes my skirt up halfway, above my knees, fumbling in the dark to get a hand under it. “I’ve been dreaming of this day since I was fourteen fucking years old. God, I can’t wait to be inside you.”
I step back on my left foot, bracing my heel on the floor, and raise my other foot. He instantly drops my skirt, but my knee keeps it from falling and restricting my movement. I’m sure he’s flinching back, probably covering himself so I can’t slam my knee between his legs. But my aim is lower.
Grabbing my skirt to keep it up around my thighs before my foot lands, I bring my foot down, stomping directly onto his. Then I turn and bolt.
His cry echoes behind me in the dark, but I don’t slow. I aim for the turn, and once I’m around it, the faint rectangle of light beckoning from the room we entered. If I can make it up the stairs, I’ll be in the church itself.
Heath’s curse is followed by rapid footsteps, and adrenaline explodes through my veins, shooting me forward. He’s wearing boots, which means I didn’t hurt him as much as I wanted. But it also means he’s slower, while my bare feet give me both speed and silence. I race for the door as if my life, my soul, depends on it.
I’m only a few steps away when a shadow moves from the wall, stepping straight in front of me. I slam into him before I can stop. The breath is knocked from me, and I go flying backwards, but his hands catch mine, snagging the cord tying my wrists. He heaves me upright, and I crash into his chest for the second time, my giant mask bouncing off the granite surface of his muscles. I have no time to register anything else before he darts around a corner, into another tunnel. All I can do is stumble after him while he grips the cincture.
“Quiet,” he growls.
He flats his back against the wall, dragging my body flush against his, with my back to his chest and his arm gripped around my middle. I can feel his heart hammering against my back, his hard body crushing against mine as I struggle to draw a breath.
Heath goes charging past, snarling curses meant for my ears alone. I wince, hating that the person holding me hears him referring to me as a whore.
And then I realize I don’t know this stranger at all. I only know that he saved me from a very angry, vengeful boy who wants to hurt me as much as he wants to ruin me.
I start to step away, but the man holding me only tighs his grip around my middle. His chin nudges aside the unwieldy head of the costume, and rough stubble rasps against my sensitive skin. A shiver rolls through me, and I drop my head back, breathing hard for a second, trying to get my wits about me. God, his body feels like it’s made of pure, carved marble.
Before I succeed in getting my brain back in working order, he grips my skirt, starting to draw it up. He pauses as heavy footfalls come back the other way.
“You fucking slut,” Heath bellows. “I’m going to find you, and I’m going to make you really pay this time!”
My savior’s fingers tigh in the nightgown, drawing it higher, even as I feel his breath catch and hold. He doesn’t want to be found. He’s not even breathing. But he eases his hand beneath the nightgown.
I know if I struggle, we’ll make enough noises scuffling to draw the attion of my pursuer, if not others as well. So close to the big room, there are probably others lurking like my captor was. I remember the noises in the tunnel below me, how loud that girl was, and how it drew a second hellhound to ravage her only seconds after the first one finished.
A shudder wracks my body when cold fingertips skim the silky skin of my inner thigh. He squeezes my middle, as if reminding me to stay silent, then slips his fingers even higher. Goosebumps race over my skin when his fingers meet the hot, wet fabric between my thighs. He sucks in a breath, and a tremor goes through him. At the same moment, he sinks his teeth into the juncture between my neck and shoulder.
I cry out in shock, the beads spilling from my mouth and rolling into the inside of the mask with an echoing rattle that sounds deafening in the silence. I can still taste them, the soapy flavor mingling with the bitter sting of blood. My captor’s tongue lathes across my bit skin. It’s obscenely hot and wet, and a thrill of the darkest sin bores down deep into me. He drags his hand up, kneading between my thighs. I whimper as he squeezes my swollen, aching flesh. The sensation is too much. My knees give, my thighs pliant for him.
He growls against my throat, biting down on the don on the side of my neck this time. I writhe in his grip, my back arching, which grinds my bottom into his groin. I can feel him stiffening as he holds me pinned with the hand lodged between my thighs.
“Please,” I gasp as he sinks his teeth in again, biting down so hard I’m sure he’s going to draw blood. He drags my skin between his teeth, sucking greedily and sending waves of pleasure and spikes of pain through me in rapid succession as his lips, tongue, and teeth abuse my flesh.
At the same time, he eases his fingers under the edge of my panties. Tears of shame burn my eyes at the low rumble of approval that rolls through his chest, vibrating into my quaking body. His fingers skim my sensitive, tingling skin, teasing until I’m squirming and panting, not sure if I’m trying to escape or find relief. I don’t even know what relief I need, just that I feel like I’m going to shatter into a thousand pieces if he doesn’t do something.
His teeth sink into my shoulder in an especially fierce bite, and I shriek and buck against him, my back bowing and my head falling against his shoulder.
“Please,” I beg. “Please—”
His fingers slip deeper under the fabric, their coldness sending a shiver all the way to my toes when they sink into the wetness between my lips.
“Oh God,” I whimper, frantic for something I can’t name.
A groan builds inside him, the sound low and primal, like it’s being dragged from the depths of his soul, and he’s as powerless to stop it as I am to stop the need consuming me.
His fingers move up, slowly circling the bundle of nerve endings that makes me see stars when he touches it. I’ve never even touched it myself, except in the shower. I don’t even know who this person is, the first person to touch me in the place of shame. Somehow, that makes me feel both soul-rending humiliation and excitement that bathes his fingers in a fresh wave of wetness.
I hear a rustle in the darkness, and suddenly, I’m sure we’re not alone. I feel a presence, even in the blind darkness with the smell of dirt and the masculine scent of my captor filling my nostrils. The hair on my neck prickles, and I open my eyes wide, blinking into the pitch darkness, searching for someone who made a noise. “Wait,” I gasp.
My knees clench together, the urge to hide my shame too deeply ingrained to ignore. I shove my hips against the Hellhound’s hand, trying to push it away. I grab onto his wrist, tugging at it with my bound hands. In response, he jerks his hand from between my thighs. I have one moment of relief before he grabs my hands and pulls them up over my head, then behind me, dragging them down over his head.
I cry out, trying to twist away and raise my arms back in front of me. They’re the only protection I have, the only thing that keeps me from being exposed.
But he yanks the ends of the cincture down behind him, and I feel him move for a minute as he secures it to his belt. The front of my body is exposed and helpless. If he takes off my clothes the way Heath did, I have no way to cover myself.
When I’m secured in the position, he dives back into my neck, this time on the other side. He bites down, rolling my skin between his teeth before he drags my nightgown up again. This time, he pulls it all the way up above my hips, shoving the fabric into the hand that’s still holding me secured to him by my waist. Then he dips his fingers down the front of my panties.
A shudder of helpless desire quakes through me as he spreads me open and finds that nub again, circling his finger around it. Then he clamps his finger and thumb down, squeezing it so hard my whole body seizes with pain. I shriek, convulsing against him. His teeth scrape over my skin as his mouth is torn free by my sudden movement. I can hear his ragged breathing over the echo of my scream.
“Please,” I cry yet again. “I’m a virgin. Don’t defile me!”
He chuckles, the sound even more dark and sinful than the feelings gripping my body. He pinches down again, the pain electrifying my body. Suddenly the pressure is gone, and he slides his finger down my slit, burying it in my folds, violating me in a new way. I can hear the sloppy sounds as he opens me, sweeping his finger back and forth, back and forth, gathering the arousal that’s clinging to my flesh, threaing to drip down my thighs.
“Please,” I beg. “I’m not supposed to be here. It’s a mistake. Please let me go.”
His fingers close, and he squeezes my lips together. Wetness dribbles down my thigh, dripping from my pinched flesh. He begins to massage, then slips his finger inside again. A dangerous heat builds low in my belly as the tip of his finger settles over the entrance to by body.
A choked sob escapes me, and a tear tracks down my cheek. I shudder violently, terrified as he taps his finger, the wet sound making me cry harder. Then he slowly circles the tip of his finger around the rim, eliciting a helpless moan of pleasure from my lips even as fear grips my body in paralysis. My knees give way completely, and he holds me up easily with his other hand while I begin to rock my hips, desperate for… More.
All I can think about is him pushing that long, strong finger inside me, and how something will happen that will change my life. The thought is both terrifying and so erotic that the wetness trickling down my thighs comes faster, bathing his fingers in my need.
“Oh God, oh God,” I chant, but I know I’m not praying to God anymore, but to him.
I want to scream when he slips his finger away from the hunger raging inside me, sucking like a vortex, the craving eating me alive from the inside out. I want—need—him inside me.
Instead, he clamps back onto that torturous bud, rolling it between his thumb and finger, tugging gently at it until he loses his grip on the slippery nub. Then he gets it again, squeezing until another shriek echoes down the corridor, the cries falling from my lips in rhythm with his tormenting fingers.
My thighs spasm each time he plucks at it again, biting along my shoulder at the same time. His stubble is rubbing my skin raw, but I can’t help the mewling cries and panting breaths leaving my lips. He pulls mercilessly, stretching my flesh, the bud swollen and throbbing with pain even as pleasure pulses deep inside me with each stroke.
Suddenly, a glare of light pierces the darkness, so bright I have to squeeze my eyes closed even inside the mask. The Hellhound clamps down on my nub, holding it between his first and middle finger now. I cry out in shock at the new sensation, my eyes flying open.
In front of me kneels the Ghostface mask, tilting his head in a disconcerting way, his blank scream mocking mine. He’s holding a cellphone, the flashlight aimed straight at my sex as the man holding me gives me a reassuring squeeze, his grip comforting somehow in the face of this new horror. As my eyes adjust, soul-destroying shame settles into my bones. The Ghostface mask isn’t the only one with us. A crowd of a half dozen Hellhounds and a handful of the sheep all crowd into the hall, watching me give in to this most unholy temptation.
The hellhound mask with glowing eyes and fearsome fangs shoves through the group, kneeling next to Ghostface. He reaches out, and a squeak slips from my throat as he grips my white cotton panties, now drenched, and lowers them, letting the whole group see the hand forcing this torturous pleasure upon me.
A murmur goes up, and the one holding me rolls his fingers slightly, pinching my inflamed, angry bud for the admiration of the crowd. The humiliation makes me crumple in on myself, but he supports my weight, spreading my lips for all to see the most shameful, intimate part of me as the hellhound pulls my panties over my bare feet and tucks them into his pocket. Sobs choke my throat, and I try to pull my arms down, but they’re still bound behind my tormentor’s head as he displays me for the others.
“Please,” I beg. “Let me go!”
The Hellhound in the wolf mask kneels, taking my knee and lifting it to one side.
“No,” I scream, trying to fight with my shaking legs.
But they’re too strong. The one who took my underwear and stripped them over my feet does the same on the other side, and they hold my knees wide, exposing me even further. I shriek and plead, but they stay silent. The crowd of faceless, masked men, most of them in goggles, and dead-eyed sheep stare at me like hellish statues as the man holding me brings me into a hell of his own design.
He possesses my body like a demon of depravity, his fingers stroking through my folds, tugging at them, spreading my lips wide and then pinching them together. His hot, experienced touch makes me quake and whimper, distracting me from the crowd. Arousal courses down my slit, and my core clenches greedily, wanting to be filled so badly I can’t think of anything else. And finally, I know that this is why I didn’t run. I knew what Heath would do if he found me, and though this is worse than having that virile part of him stabbing into me in the darkness, I can’t deny the truth any longer.
He thought he would ruin me tonight, but the truth is, I’m already steeped in sin. I’m already as depraved as they are. I can’t beat them at their own game because I’m no different than they are. No matter what I do, even if I never touched myself in my life, I’m already condemned. If I wasn’t, the heat pulsing inside me, the cries echoing in the dirt tunnel of this dark hell, wouldn’t be from pleasure as much as pain.
I beg for mercy, but just as Heath promised, they show me none. They stare at my open sex, watching it dripping with helpless need, watching my shame grow as a stranger defiles me in this horrifying way, watching my flesh swell with blood and arousal even as I plead for him to stop with every pulling stroke of my mangled flesh.
Finally, I’m shaking so hard they can hardly hold me, and the only sound is the rapid breathing of the crowd and my own sobs for them to stop. Suddenly, the man holding me clamps his two fingers around my clit, but this time he doesn’t pull. He begins to stroke beside it with this thumb. The new sensation makes the sobs tearing from me rise to a crescendo that’s half scream, half helpless plea.
Then his mouth presses to the side of my mask, and he speaks, the single word he’s said since telling me to be quiet before he touched me.
“Come,” he commands in my ear.
I don’t know where we’re going, but his voice is deep and soft, like hot velvet, and it rushes through my body in a flood of sin-soaked, dark heat. It pours into my abused, throbbing flesh, and suddenly, I can’t fight it anymore. He gives a vicious squeeze, and the last thread of control snaps.
Pleasure slams into me, and I throw back my head and scream, my hips jerking against his hand in helpless gyrations. A spray of hot liquid shoots from my sex and splatters over the back of the kneeling man’s phone and over his hand.
I want to die of shame and shock. Everything goes still. The only sound is my frantic cries as my body shakes wildly, as if gripped in the throes of some violent, erotic seizure.
My savior’s fingers slip over my slick bud, clamping down on it again. I shriek and writhe, my hips jerking forward as he holds my clit pinned so tightly the pain overtakes the pleasure. I think he’s warning me to stop, but I can’t. I scream and buck, but he only holds me tighter, his hand moving up from my middle and clamping around my throat, tighing on the sides and cutting off my blood flow until my vision goes black.
Still, my body won’t stop. Spasms roll through me like shockwaves, and I wonder distantly if I’m dying, the punishment for giving in to the sin of pleasure from a dark stranger’s damning touch. It lasts so long, for minutes on end, that I think it’ll never end. Tears pour down my face, wordless sobs tearing from me over and over, but still my body convulses and shakes.
At last, after minutes and minutes pass, the sounds fade in my throat and my body is left hanging limply in his arms.
For a moment, there’s only my ragged, sobbing breaths, and his hot ones in my ear, and the smell of my own sin, and dirt, and sweat.
At last I take in the rest of the group, all of them silently witnessing this unholy act, the ungodly heights of pleasure I have descended from, like demons waiting at the mouth of hell to welcome me to their midst.
“You have been baptized in the holy waters of her sacred cunt,” says the smooth, rich voice behind me.
“As have I,” says the man on the left of the one with the light. He holds out his arms, where splatters of wetness mark the dark fabric from whatever squirted out of me.
My shame burns like a thousand fires of hell. I don’t know how it hasn’t incinerated my body, how it’s satisfied with rending my soul to shreds.
“I as well,” says the man on the right, in the hellhound mask.
This time, horror rolls through me when I recognize the familiar rough edge of my brother’s voice. He wipes his mask and holds out his hand to show droplets of my release glising on his skin. My soul dies a little inside me when a pulse grips the ache still throbbing deep inside me.
“This lamb has been delivered,” says the man holding me, and he reaches up, pulling his mask back over his face before he undoes the cincture from his belt and lowers my arms from around his neck, dropping my nightgown over the desecrated flesh of my cheapened, craven sex.
“Blessed be the lamb of god,” comes a chorus of voices from the masked, soulless crowd.
“You three have been anointed, chosen by god to take the first taste of the sacred flesh of our virgin,” says the one holding me. “Let us honor her sacrifice on the altar.”