Forsaking the faith

[Brist]

The Outsider

It started with a poem and a vague idea, but it's unraveling. Here we go:


I have met the devil. She is currently resting in my barn, or so she has told me, but I dare not check. She came into town on a steed; black wealthy looking skirts elegantly draped over the barrel of the beast. Clearly, finance was in her favor at some point, or a widowed marriage had left her beauty. But she pounded on my door in the evening, pointed to me as a hospitable man.

The laws of marriage forbade me from letting her into my own house for the night, but I had a loft in the barn and she said it would do very well, for she would rather stay near her horse. Such is the way of nomads, or so I hear, but her appearance was far from nomadic. Dark hair pulled back into a knot at the base of her skull only contrasted against radiant porcelain skin. But now I regret even noticing that unblemished flesh, slightly flushed from the journey.

Showing her the way to the barn, I was uncertain why my heart raced in my chest when I offered her a sheep's hide for cover in the night. Polite and soft-spoken, she accepted graciously and I pitied her. Ha! I pitied her, for what poor circumstances would bring such a beautiful woman to our poor village? I even offered her warm milk and bread that my wife had left out for me. So politely yet again, she shook her head and claimed she would just like rest.

The night played hard on my nerves. I tossed and turned and woke and prayed, but nothing rested my heart. The morning came with a chill, rousing me before my wife and drawing me to check on the guest. In the barn I came across her nest, but it was otherwise empty, save for her sheepskin. But footsteps lined a path in the frosted grass, and naturally I followed. The steed's scent reached me before the fog revealed him to my sights. He stood beneath the apple tree, feet from the creek, powerful head lifted up into the branches to browse on the early fruits, sweetened with late frost.

A splash sounded and I jumped behind the bush like boy caught thieving, and it was then I saw her. Standing waist-high in the water, goosepimpled flesh aroused by the icy chill of the creek. It was then I should have announced myself. Made my apologies and turned back, headed for the church. But I stood in silence, mesmerized by a body of the likes I had never seen.

The sharp edge of hips met soft white flesh, unmarred by scars and signs of the hard life so often seen on the women I had known. And breasts made to be suckled, full and puckered as she washed, but never flinching at the bite of the water.

Dark hair graced shoulders, and her eyes... She turned to me and stole my breath. Her gaze found me and a most unladylike smirk crossed her features. Those midnight eyes, nearing black, flickered with amusement as I straightened and did my best to hide the flush from my own visage. But her expression, so strange and daring, brought something to the surface I had never felt. In that moment I knew, this was not a woman, despite curves and a sweet face. I had met the Devil, and allowed her not only into my barn, but into my mind.

 

[Brist]

Leaving the creek, I made my way back to the house with just enough time to eat a quiet meal and headed to the church. The dusty pews omitted the scent of cool wood, and the silence weighed down heavily. I wiped an untimely perspiration from my forehead and stood at the pulpit, bowing my head for a moment of my own prayer.

Speaking the words so often rehearsed in my sermons, they stopped at the rafters. They carried none of gusto I spoke to the townsfolk with, none of the Spirit laced into the tones and articulation. Feeling a presence, I looked up and saw my guest seated in the back, watching me as I flushed again. This time she was clothed, with the appropriate bonnet to match her dark skirts. I nodded to her once.

"Good Morning. It will be some time yet before the service behind, but you are welcome to sit and meditate as the Spirit moves you. May I at least have your name?"

She didn't answer immediately, only looked upon me with the same smile that had met me at the creek. Until she bowed her head with a woman's respect.

"Father, my name and my steed are all I own. I share neither lightly and would rather I kept it to myself this morning."

A scream cut through the walls, interrupting our private gaze and had me running from the church. It was the scream of a child that would have chilled any soul to the bone. The screams continued, directing me and I noticed a few others, to a house not far from that of the Lord.
The mothering voice of a nursemaid hurried a young one not far off from three years of she from the front door and to the outside.

And when I entered, I nearly hit my knees. The first thing I perceived was the rope. Tied to the rafters, hanging down with the weight of bodies. A husband and wife, so commonly named John and Marie, hung lifeless and pale-faces in the middle of the sitting room while hushed voices around the home gawked and cried.

 

[Brist]

A surreal moment indeed, never had I seen such tragedy. The morning spent consoling and praying for the poor souls tested by the death of family and community. At some point we found the church once more, but the guest had gone, and an impromtu eulogy begun.

The day was dark and filled with busywork. I lent my services to help dig the grave, to speak over the bodies, to pray over the children. My wife agreed to go assist the nurse with the traumatized and the hysterics, and I heated my own dinner. Shocked and exhausted, I didn't trust my legs to carry me to the barn, and I found my bed softer than ever remembered.

Dreams came and went, featuring God and death and an empty house, but even the creaking of night walls couldn't pull me from my sleep. The bad grew warm with slumber and I startled into another dream.

The heaviness of a knee sunk the mattress, and another warmth covered me. Opening my eyes groggily, a nightmare gripped me. The heated palm of a slight hand covered my mouth and the damp of a whisper reached my ear.

"Don't yell, don't fight it, this will be the sweetest sin, and you, Reverend, are already mine."

 

[Brist]

The scalding heat of a naked body sealed the space above me and my breath hitched. I knew that voice even if I had only heard it a time or two. Even as her words aroused a black part of my soul so shrouded from the daylight, those fingers fought their way downward, to peel cloth from my swelling flesh.

There was no need to her order, except to elicit my heart to race in a strange fear. My faith was on the line in this seduction, and I passed it over freely in this dream so real, I imagined I felt the dripping squeeze of an innocent cunny wrap around me.

She slid down and an unwitting snarl of a groan erupted from my throat. My mouth freed, but I couldn't speak, only wrap my arms around the back of this demon and hold her down flush to my hips. She ground down against me and I joined her motion, succumbing to the need of a man to claim, to fill, the sinful need to take.

She shifted upward, gripping to keep me held tight inside her and pushed her breasts into my face.

"Bite!"

I obeyed, albeit confused, and marveled as she pulled her flesh from my teeth, bringing a sharp crack of hand to my cheek.

"And you call yourself a man. Harder!"

Enraged at her gall, I bit harder, growling around an erect nipple, sinking my teeth in until I tasted the salty tang of oozing blood on my tongue. Righteous anger singed my vision, knowing her purpose to possess me when it was so far from her place.

I pushed and squeezed, my arms plastering her body to mine as I lifted her, forcing her beneath me, only letting my bite release when her whimpers threatened to escalated into screams. I shoved into her, taking mine that she had climbed into my bed to offer, and looked down satisfied as her eyelids fluttered and she gasped in pleasure.

But a flash of a vision struck my mind, of the slow swing of death as it hung from the ceiling, to the solitary woman seated in the back of a church. And I knew, it only made sense.

Whether by hand or by evil, she had strung up the marital bond and displayed it for the horror. She had come to this town on the quest to conquer, to extinguish the light of a god-fearing village. To challenge the soul of a god-fearing man. This devil needed destroyed, no matter her pleasing visage, no matter how she felt milking my every thrust building for her own rapture while I swelled fit to burst with my own.

I couldn't stop, feverish as the tempo increased and desperate for the bust, but my hands found her throat. A thumb on each side, my arms ached as my own weight pressed down, my grip clenching to cut off breath and sound and blood. Death for a death and evil had to die. A croak of a scream escaped as she thrashed through her orgasm, but my thrusting continued, my own breaths becoming hastened and even with my pounding rhythm.

 

[Brist]

Flashes of understanding, knowing the need to strangle the devil that milked me with every convulsion. Only as her body went limp did I find my own and spill as deep as I could push inside, snarling out the primal cry of a fresh kill.

And I fell. Collapsed upon sweat-soaked and chilling flesh. Falling back into a torrent of dreams to strip sinew from bone and boil blood till it curdled.

 

[Brist]

...................
I woke to my wife's voice and sat up straight in my bed.

"My dear husband, we must speak."

Frantically I looked around me, remembering the terror of the night before, breaking into a cold sweat at the memory.

"Sit down. You look like death."

I regretted my words the moment they were spoken, but she obeyed, and wrung her hands in her lap. My statement was right on truth, however. Her face was pale, eyes drawn and faraway, yet wide with the terror of a sinner who fears unforgiveness.

"Speak, so I may pray."

Her lips parted once or twice before she managed to speak.

"We have been visited by the Devil."

"Did he have his book?"

Her eyes glassed over as she shook her head slightly recounting her tale.

"No. It was-- she was-- it was a woman. She carried the book. Her eyes were dark as pitch, and she told us to follow. She knocked on the door and told us to follow or--"

It was a struggle to hide my horror. The stench of sweat and sex suddenly reached my nose and immediately I retched in my throat, standing and pacing, dressing to mask what I already knew. I feigned well a husband's comfort, and a Parson's need to know.

"Or what?"

"Or our skin would be peeled from our flesh, maggots would crawl from our eye sockets, and we would rot by the day's end. We rebuked the demon and closed the door, but I wish that had been the end of her."

Her face buried in her hands and I walked up close, pulling them from her head and looking into her unseeing eyes.

"What happened? You must tell me. We must know this demon's name. My services have taught you as much."

"We slept, and woke to children's song. But none of it came from within the house. We looked through the windows and saw her again. Upon a black steed, that heavy tome under-arm, and the children--all the children!---marched behind, singing a chorus of the most grotesque rhymes, led into the woods. We tried the door, to take them back, but it wouldn't move. And they sang her name."

Her voice escalated, threatening to scream, and I grabbed her shoulders in an attempt to shake her back into reality.

"What was her name?!"

She exploded into motion, clawing and hitting and thrashing, fighting me away from her but I held firm. Pushing her back to the bed and pinning her to keep from injury to her and myself. But she screamed a shriek I had never heard.

"Her eyes! I cannot speak it! I cannot see! Her eyes!"

My wife's once green eyes flashed white, and I knew she was blind. I held her till her flailing settled. But white faded to black and her breathing settled with a few gasps into something more calm, and all the more wretched.

"Follow me. Tonight, as the moon rises, or you will rot with the rest."

But it was not the voice I had sworn to love and protect. It was the bell-tones of that woman in black. And once again my hand found her throat. Squeezing and praying for salvation, praying for my wife's heartbeat. The other hand swung and slapped. Watching as dark eyes struck white then black again, staring at me with a nightmare's malice, until they lightened to a corpse's grey, and the body under mine slumped and lost it's fight. Until I no longer felt the pulse with my fingers, until the light of a preacher's bride dimmed and succumbed to mortality.

 

[Brist]

I couldn't look to my wife again, but continued to dress for the autumn chill. Straightening my shirts and headed for the door. Speaking to ears that were deaf to my voice, I announced my departure.

"God help us, I will see this Devil to the stake."

God never heard my words. Assaulted by the memory of my dreams of the night, my spine stiffened as my body recalled how I had laid with the beast. My dead wife strewn across our bed, and I knew I had forsaken the unholy. The salt of remaining sweat stung on my skin, a certain stickiness around my cock that told it was not only my spill that had stained the linens. As much as my mind had resolved to believe the debauchery had been limited to subconscious desires for Sin, my heart glassed with the ice of knowing that I had turned from God and sealed my deal with the Devil the moment my hands gripped too tighter and I burst inside her.

I knew the book was just a prop. No ink or blood needed to sign, my name was written in white when she whispered to me that I belonged to her and I let her take me.

The town was in chaos, apparent as my feet broke the threshold and the cries of hysterics again reached my ears.

A small crowd gathered around the square, consisting of the women of our village, looking up at the scaffold. Some shouted, some covered their eyes and cries, and it took all too long for me to understand why.

Standing up on the platform was the mayor, speaking of the tragedy that had fallen upon us. His words spoke of the children gone and the horror wives had women to find their husband's hung in their houses. Somehow, maybe shock, caused me to feel nothing. Granted, I was horrified, but I felt none of the sadness that should have pulled me. More pressing was how the mayor stood, for the ladder had been kicked from the scaffold, and a noose rested at his throat. His boots stepped towards the edge. Ignoring the looks shifted towards me in terror, I pushed through the crowd to stand below,for this man was clearly possessed with that which had claimed our people.

His eyes looked down at me, but unseeing all the same. And he raised a hand, pointing in my direction.

"And the Devil walks among us! He is there, disguised in the cloth of the Lord!"

He stepped from the scaffold, falling too quickly, rope too short to grant me to catch, to save his life. The snap of his neck seemed louder than the screams, for they had become naught more than background noise as legs kicked and a swinging body twitched in the nervous motions of a dying body.

The shrieks came back to me as the corpse stilled, and panic struck. I ran, as fast as my legs would carry me, to the church. Hope lost, I barred the door, and raced to the front, where I found the Holy book decoriously placed at the foot of a large cross. I found ink and a quill and knelt, desecrating the sacred text.

I am writing this now. My knees ache from this feverish desperation. My final prayer. The screams are dying. My town has been ripped into fear of death and evil, and as a shepherd I have failed my flock.

The day is gone, Father, and I have found the scent of smoke in my nostrils for hours' time. The light is dimming save for the glow of fire filtering through the windows. I have fasted this day, I have not even sipped water, I have prayed this day. And yet she comes.

No longer can I see the script I scrawl, and the world must be faced. So I stand and turn and her face glows with the pale porcelain of a beautiful woman. She stands in the aisle, glowing with the tinge of hellfire she brings down on me. But I must go, and I approach her as a fearful child. She smiles, the sweet promise of sex and sin and I am led from this holy place. The door is opened and her nightmare awaits, snorting through the smoke of a burning town and I mount behind her.

Forsaking the faith, the forest awaits, and the high moon illuminates our descent into darkness.