Chapter 3

Three

I woke with my soul on fire.

There is no other way to describe that feeling, except a complete internal scalding. I jolted up with a scream and went to tear off my cassock—except I already had, and was now in only breeches, smeared with my own blood and that of Bishop Fazio.

I sat on my knees and blinked away the pain, which came in ebbs and flows and never quite went away. The heat burned intensely in my stomach, pulled taut behind my belly button, almost like a cramp—but the pain was not wholly unwelcome.

Around me, the world burned. Smoky fog shielded most things from my view, and the ground was little more than the cave dirt I'd previously been lying in. But everything was cast in an orange haze, and everything smelled of burning. A cacophony of cries sounded, though distance made them made soft and faint like an ambient rustling. I inhaled deeply and felt my ribs expand, lungs inflating with air and sulphur and brimstone and smoke.

For all intents and purposes, I felt alive. I was alive—the wound still stung at my neck. I could feel pain, I needed to breathe. The only indication that anything at all had happened was the scenery, and the more I looked, the more I could see very little but the red haze, the more thrill I felt.

Inside me, a war started up between the anxiety and the excitement. I had so thoroughly forsaken my old life that I was now stranded in this place. With no guide, and no direction, I stood unmoored. Ridiculous and lost.

I thought: You felt a pull to Asmodeus. You knew what you had to do . Surely you can feel that again.

But when I closed my eyes and tried to feel that guiding feeling to the demon, nothing happened. I wondered if it ever had—if that calling I had been so sure was urging me here had simply been my own desire, so hot and fierce it allowed me to overcome my fear and shame.

My stomach throbbed. I groaned and bent over it, and since there seemed nothing else to be done, I started to walk, trying my best to ignore the overwhelming sense of guilt, regret, and embarrassment. For a seemingly endless stretch of time, I did nothing but wander through that red haze. No landmarks emerged. The sounds did not shift around me, so no matter how long I walked, the distant cries of screaming sounded neither closer nor further.

An ambient limbo, a liminal moment, a walking purgatory—the new fear in me burned as hotly as the pain in my stomach, as hot as the latent arousal I felt building inside my core. I worried inherently that this would be my punishment for all I had done to get here, and that I had been tricked so thoroughly that I had willingly condemned myself to and endless walk towards nothing. Sweat pooled at the back of head and wetted my hair. Would this be it?

I don't know how long I walked. I managed to push the fear and the upset away, convincing myself that moving forward was better than giving up and standing still. No thoughts went through my mind, no prayers or hopes. I kept myself an empty vessel.

Until I heard the voice.

"What on earth have you done now?"

Deep, familiar, frightening. Not Asmodeus. Yet it still resonated with me, booming through my body, and an old fear was pricked to life by it. The voice belonged to someone who had been in my early life, whom I hadn't seen in years. I stopped in my tracks and spun. The mists parted as a figure moved through them, a shrouded shape resolving into a man.

It was Bishop Jonah.

It wasn't the first time I'd heard his voice in so many years. Asmodeus had spoken with his inflection, too; had worn that man's vocal chords like a costume to pluck at my sensitivities, so that I would become pliable to the demon's wishes. Obedient. When I had been younger, Bishop Jonah had trained me like a dog to expect scolding and punishments—and he had apparently trained me so well that now my body fell into old habits. Anxiety sparked in me, and I turned rigidly to face the man.

But with the trick having already been played on me once, I hesitated.

"Nothing to say?" he stepped through the fog fully. He looked at once how I remembered him over the years, oscillating from the man of thirty-something who had taken me into his flock, knowing I was a thief, and over time growing to suspect I was a sodomist in the making, to the man in his early fifties, the age he'd been when he died.

He stood taller than me, his tanned skin thick like leather and well-lined. White hair sat cropped close to his skull, and his face stretched in a permanent scowl, resembling Bishop Fazio's eternal disgust. Without the softness leant by fat to Bishop Fazio's face and body, Bishop Jonah's expression tilted closer to pure hatred than disappointment. Years of anger and callousness had sculpted this permanent expression. I hadn't recalled it to be quite so severe and wondered if Hell had managed to age him; if he was, every so slowly, getting older and more decrepit. The oscillating image of him settled to the ageing man, still spritely enough to stand and walk, though this version of him leaned upon a cane, which he had just begun to use in life. Now his gnarled hand gripped his support and his knuckles popped, veins framing them, arthritic fingers shaking from the force. I thought: What a true and persistent Hell . Old age drawn out across eternity.

In his gaze sat a fury enhanced by the flames of Hell, which danced in the gossamer-thin whites of his eyes. I fought not to flinch away—for in that expression was years upon years of discipline—and I failed. My body feared him. I stepped back in the dirt.

Bishop Jonah's face twitched unkindly. Was he a demon in disguise? I flinched away from him once more. What game was being played?

But even as my mind worked to unstitch the fetid fear unspooling in my body— you are beyond this man, now. He has no control over you! You belong to Asmodeus, Prince of Lust! —I found myself responding like a child. My jaw clenched and my stomach twisted. Beneath his holy gaze, I felt sinful. An infernal, abominable mess.

He will see what you've done to get here, just as he saw what you are from the start.

I never knew exactly what it was he saw in me that other holy men didn't. I never knew how he had been so sure. Had God whispered the truth in his ears? Was Bishop Jonah so pure, so close to God, that he could spy the corruption knitted into my soul, or the way my skin would writhe with desire when the right man glanced at me?

"Filthy Alessandro," he spat over his shoulder now. His saliva met the earth and the dust darkened immediately around the wetness. "It surprises me not at all to find you here."

Bishop Jonah. It was… truly him?

I swallowed heavily. "You're in Hell."

"Astute as always," he growled, real vitriol coating his words like venom. He flashed me a look, a once over with a gaze that lingered a little too long on my naked chest. He glanced away to say, "Tell me. I was right, wasn't I? That you are. . ."

He didn't finish the question. He didn't have to.

I recalled the seconds after I finished my confessions, special times where Bishop Jonah himself had been the one to hear all the priesthood's sins. These were times where I never exposed all my thoughts, where I knew I had to keep things to myself. Memories of the tense silence returned to me now, the waiting seconds that stretched after my concluding Amen. The way the booth creaked as Bishop Jonah shifted inside.

" Is that all, Alessandro?"

Again, now, years and entire states of being removed, my body panicked with remembered shame. I breathed through it, biting my tongue. I heard Asmodeus instead, like the bells of a church drowning out the dead bishop's venom. I heard the voice as it had called to me that day with holy vigour, asking me, "What had God's love given you except shame? What had God ever done for you?"

"Am I a sodomist?" I murmured. "Only very recently."

Which was true. I was Asmodeus' bitch—and, so far, its alone.

The bishop narrowed his eyes. "You smell different to everything else here. Sweet, like life. Everything here smells and tastes. . .wrong. Like the flavour is on the tip of my tongue, but not quite there. A distant memory."

He stared at me, expecting an answer. I gave him nothing .

Bishop Jonah's face imploded. "You are not dead, are you, Alessandro?"

I decided to walk past him. This man was only a distraction to me, whether he was real or not. It was Asmodeus I wanted. Asmodeus I craved. I walked?—

--and fell crashing to my knees as the bishop's cane knocked my legs out from under me.

The ground rushed up to meet my face. Dust burst into my open mouth and made me choke.

I rolled as I heard him approach. The bishop's cruel smile shone down on me like the sun. "Little priest. Lamb to the slaughter. You opened the gates so willingly."

I coughed and tried to sit up, but Bishop Jonah used the end of his cane to shove me back into the dust. Heat pulsed in my spine where the warm earth met my skin, and the force of the bishop's cane made my breathing shallow.

"You opened the gates."

"Yes," I spat. My voice came out weak and wheezing, but I summoned the anger I held deep in my chest; years of repression! Years of self-hating and shame and anger! How much of that could be attributed to this man? How much of it had festered because of the way he looked at me?

"I am here for Asmodeus. I am here to embrace what you have condemned me for. Let me go: you are not a holy man any longer. Hell has claimed you too!"

Surprisingly, his cane moved aside. I rolled out and pushed up to stand, but the Bishop called out:

"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you? That Asmodeus, Prince of Lust, a King of Hell, would be waiting for you so eagerly? You are just another sack of meat for it to pleasure itself with—surely you can understand that?"

I understood it and felt at once a confusing mix of arousal and hurt. That I was nothing more than something for the demon's pleasure stirred that low heat in me. But I was human, and even with logic and reasoning and an intrinsic understanding that I meant nothing to the demon, my gut roiled in protest.

I wanted Asmodeus to want me the same.

"Stop running from me, Alessandro," the bishop said. And his tone dropped somewhere strange and inviting.

I turned around. "What?"

"You want to find the path to Asmodeus. Without my help, you will be cursed to wander this land forever. You will get nowhere. You will never find him. You will never have that pink hole of yours stretched to gaping again."

My heart thudded. Heat rushed to me cheeks; I couldn't meet his eye without seeing a decade of history play out before me. I hated that he could see me and know what I wanted. I hated that he could say those words and my body would react with both fear and a jolting twitch in my cock. I hated—I hated that it was Bishop Jonah saying this to me.

I asked, "Are you really him? Or are you some demon?"

He did not answer right away. Seconds passed as the soft clop of the cane sounded in the dirt. I trembled. The bishop's fingers brushed over my cheek. Wrinkled and coarse, he pulled me to face him. His breath curled warm over my face; confusion bloomed in me. How—how could that —affect me?

"Oh, Alessandro," Bishop Jonah purred. "Does it matter?"

My throat closed up and went thick with my fear. What could I say to that? Whether this Bishop Jonah was truly him or not, I had the fear and the cautious respect for him that I'd fostered my entire young adult life. My organs reacted to him the same. My breathing felt erratic. Sweat pricked at my skin. And somehow, caught in the limbo of my fear and my desire, I felt a shudder that dipped low and deep inside me.

Bishop Jonah's hand moved fast from my cheek to my chin. He gripped me hard, hard enough I could feel the bones being crushed and the meat of my lower cheeks aching.

"Do what I say, and I will tell you how to find the Prince of Lust."

Tell me why a fierce loyalty illuminated my insides then. I shoved back, slapping the bishop's hand away. "No," I said. "I made a promise. I am—I am Asmodeus' pet."

"You are warm flesh to fuck into. It would fuck your corpse if it wanted to; you, as a person, cannot mean a thing to it."

And I remembered Asmodeus telling me, " Plenty of demons in Hell, my pathetic little priest ."

Suddenly I felt like I possessed a sacred duty.

Perhaps lust overrode my defiance, or perhaps I believed entirely in this new religious purpose. And it was religious; Asmodeus and the experiences I had with it felt religious to me. I had this understanding that bloomed in my chest that however this played it, it was a test—and I was expected to play a part.

Bishop Jonah—or the demon wearing his face, I still couldn't be sure—saw the shift in my gaze. His face lifted fractionally, and then a smile burst through that ugly, furious expression. He laughed and laughed and let go of my chin, which ached from the pressure of his grip. Then, before he said anything, before I had a chance to follow any of his instructions, he whacked the cane over both my thighs and sent me dropping onto my knees.

Pain shuddered through my kneecaps and up my thigh, and at the look on my face—defiant, rageful—the bishop struck me across the face with that wooden cane again.

I yelped. My vision blurred with tears and a whited-out shock. The pain felt blistering. My teeth throbbed and went biting down into my tongue. The cheek itself screamed with pain. The bishop leaned down and grabbed my face again. Unkindly, he spat. I closed my eyes but felt the spray of saliva dribbling over the curve of my face. My body shivered, confused with its arousal.

He smiled at me. That smile, I will tell you, shocked me. I realised I had never seen such a look of joy contort the bishop's face. That it was aimed at me—that it was aimed at me when I was like this ?

The bishop nodded his head. "You already know your place," he said. He brought his foot forward and ground his shoe over my cock.

I groaned and rocked forward, splaying both hands on the ground. Already painfully hard—and shameful about it, so shameful, so bitingly concerned I felt nauseous—the bishop's touch sent both pleasure and pain sparking through my body.

"St-stop this," I grunted, but even to myself, my voice sounded airy and faint. Distant with pleasure.

The bishop tutted. Using his cane, he shifted my chin up to look at him.

"Alessandro, you have always wanted to be treated like this. I knew it when I was alive, and I know it now. The only difference here is that you have proven it so willingly. You have killed to get here. Your body smells of blood, and life, and desire—you want this. Whether I am a lesser demon, or whether I am your Bishop Jonah, doesn't really matter to you. In the end, what your body sees, what your body reacts to, is a desire for the depraved." He stepped forward. I swallowed intrinsically. My heart raced. Conflicted, sitting somewhere between pleasure and fear, want and distress, I struggled to keep his gaze. "You may have never wandered about sucking my cock before now, but you are pathetic, and wanting, and if I tell you to open your mouth, I know you will do it."

I didn't do it. Not right away. I focused on slowing my breathing, which was rapid fire and inconsistent. I struggled to think—was he right? Had I ever wanted the bishop? Or had I wanted his respect? His trust? His love? Were those such clear distinctions to me?

If I could have none of that, but I could still be of use to him, would I do it? Would I allow my throat to be fucked here, on my knees in this hellish limbo?

Would I do it for myself? Or for Asmodeus?

This part of me still clung to reasoning and logic. I still wanted to be a human man, bound up in morality, bargaining with oneself to avoid the guilt and shame so familiar to me. But now, after what I had done to Bishop Fazio, and the complete rejection of a life dedicated to God, why did I still feel this way?

I hadn't replied to the bishop. He tutted and cocked his head and said, "Take the rest of your clothes off, Alessandro."

I quivered. I felt my cock straining. Without touch, it felt warm and firm and twitching. The skin of the glands felt dotted with pleasure, vibrating with it. I wanted to touch myself. I wanted—something more.

I looked up at Bishop Jonah, who was not a pretty man by any stretch of the imagination, but he was familiar. A man who had commanded my respect and my fear for years now had me on my knees. . .

I could pretend I was doing this for the demon Asmodeus. If I wanted to be split open on its cock again, I would have to find it, somewhere in amongst this place. But Hell was large, ever expanding, and full of its demonic brethren—it was an unknowable place for mortals. If I couldn't exchange my body for the help of demons, then what could I offer them? Why else would beasts of evil choose to aid in my cause?

Perhaps I. . .had to do this.

The bishop laughed. I jolted in place, pulled back from my anxious reasoning to this reality, where my knees ached, and dust covered me. Bishop Jonah bared his teeth. I felt like I had at thirteen, fourteen. Terrified of him. Terrified of the feelings that kept growing in my gut. The bishop leaned forward and tapped my chin again. The touch—warm, calloused, unkind—made me gasp.

"Oh, I know that look. You are trying to convince yourself that, if you truly think about it, there is a moral need for you to open your mouth and let me slide inside."

I blinked at him. If my face could get any hotter, I'm sure it happened then.

"After everything," the bishop continued, "I have to wonder. Do you still need to convince yourself to do things, Alessandro? Or will you just do what you wish and bear the consequences?"

My heart thudded in my chest. The nausea in me gave way to a giddy release, because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that he was right. What consequence would there be for this action except Hell, a place I had already welcomed? I had killed a holy man and forsaken God so thoroughly and publicly that there could be no redemption.

Stop fighting it , my gut said, my heart pleaded, my mind cooed. It didn't matter who touched me. It didn't matter what they looked like. I wanted to be had and used and wanted; I wanted this vessel to be made useful.

Bishop Jonah saw me relax and stopped laughing, though that all-knowing smile could not be so easily dislodged. With a fervour, he shifted his cassock aside, and pulled himself free.

The layers of the priestly cloth had obscured it, but he was excited, as hard I was. My mind went blank momentarily. I forgot who he was, his age, his appearance—I forgot everything except that I was on my knees and that someone had their cock out for me to suck. Another part of my mind, long tethered and controlled, slipped forward the way it had with Asmodeus. I found it easy to let go and did nothing to stop him as he walked forward .

He smelled of sweat. He gripped his cock, flushed pink at the tip, averagely long but with ample girth, and he pressed it against my face. I closed my eyes with my heart racing, inhaling the smell of the underside of his cock, and sucked a ball into my mouth. It had flavour—sweat and unwash, not unwholly unpleasant—and in fact, the added degradation of having the bishop drag his unclean self over my face only made me shiver more.

"Pathetic," the bishop said, and I groaned as I sucked. He hissed and wrapped his fingers into my hair, pulling hard, and then he wrenched me off. His ball left my mouth with a pop, and I only had time to say, "Ah!" before he shoved my mouth over his twitching cock.

The moan that left me was guttural, smothered by the blockage slowly pushing down my throat. Without care or ease, the bishop thrust hungrily into my mouth. I lasted five thrusts before I gagged, before the rapid motion in and out of my throat made my body convulse around the girth. The bishop groaned, rocking forward as the sides of my wet pharynx closed around him.

He pulled out calling the Lord's name. "God, oh Holy God," he said. I looked up at him and he slapped me hard across the face.

"You love this," he said, stepping his foot once more against my straining cock. "You disgrace the church with how much you love this. Tell me, Alessandro. Confess."

I didn't, not right away. I was still catching my breath. He used the moment of open-mouthed panting to press himself once more inside. Then he gripped a fistful of my hair and thrust. I tried to stay calm, to breathe around the blockage, to not gag, but he was so deep, and my throat was so full that tears gathered at the edges of my eyes. He stuffed himself into me, cock ramming down as deep as it would go, and a flood of saliva and bile pooled in my mouth. When the bishop dragged himself free, the wet mix dripped from my mouth and splattered into the dirt.

I moaned. I smelled of sex and want and sweat. My cock ached with desire; I could see it twitching through the breeches. Bishop Jonah's eyes glided down my chest and stomach hungrily, and he made a soft noise when his eyes saw my cock, but somehow his expression remained slightly close to disgust. Like all of this was a chore, like he enjoyed none of it. Like it was his duty to do this to me. To put me in my place.

"Take them off," he said.

I hesitated. He did not. The bishop's cane whacked across my chest, sending the skin aflame. My nipples throbbed but pushed up hard and obvious with want, and the bishop struck me again so hard I screamed. The sound of my voice echoed back, returned by the wall of fog that boxed us in, and the bishop shoved his cane beneath my chin, pressing the end into my jugular so firmly it became difficult to breathe.

"Do what I tell you, you pathetic excuse for a man."

Which made me move. I pushed up onto my knees and unlaced the black breeches, slipping them over my hips quickly and gracelessly. When I went to stand to push them over my ankles, the bishop laughed and struck me—across the ass.

I cried out and fell face first into the dirt, cock out and pressing against the warm dust, and pants tangled around my legs. The skin stung, but my whimper only seemed to embolden him, and he struck me again and again until I was writhing, pushing away uselessly towards nothing, and non-committal as I went. It hurt—it hurt, but I didn't want it to end. My mind spun somewhere happy and half-blank, and every strike against my flesh sent my soul stirring. It felt like he was beating against the shackles of my shame, like every strike weakened a link and pushed me ever closer to unabashed freedom .

As I lay there, precum weeping out of me and skin stinging, the bishop came and wrenched me up by my head.

"We aren't done, whore," he grunted. His cock twitched in my line of sight, and I pushed myself up greedily, mouth searching; pathetic, I knew I was, I knew how I must have looked with the dust around me stained and wet and congealing with my saliva. I felt desperate.

Then—perhaps I wanted to do this.

He pushed into my throat again and I groaned, licked, sucked. I went to touch myself, to rut against the palm of my hand, but he brough his booted foot down and crushed against my aching cock. Shamefully, I bucked up against the pressure, excited and eager for any kind of release. The edges of his black cassock ghosted across the skin of my forearms, and incense had long ago settled into the fabric, which was now forever scented by the old, stale sandalwood and frankincense. It sent me back to church and holy ceremonies, so that somehow now I felt close to divinity when I had never been further away. My eyes rolled to the back of my head as he thrust inside, his foot crushing down harder on my groin.

Abruptly, he pulled away. Stringy saliva and precum connected us. His cock rested on my face, the warm tip kissing my cheek, and with it the bishop lightly slapped my face, tried to call me back to the moment, and said, "Confess to me, little priest."

I swallowed hard, still trying to regulate my breathing, and looked up at him. On my knees like that, dog-like and eager, I felt so wonderfully apart of myself. There was none of that side of praying, where your soul began to feel distant, or where you yearned to be outside of your body and far beyond it, floating up above with God. I felt, right now, so particularly human that it made me joyous. I yearned not for heaven, but for this moment dragged out and extended and relived, where my body could offer pleasure, and where it could be degraded; where I could be depraved and love it.

I opened my mouth and whispered, "I have sinned."

"You have," came the reply, and three taps to my cheek had my mouth open and searching for him again. I chased after his cock with my lips, but he pulled away. "Stupid little slut that you are. You have betrayed God, haven't you?"

"Yes," I whispered. "Yes, I have. Willingly. Happily."

"Tell me."

"I opened the gate to Hell. I murdered a man. I did it. . .for Asmodeus."

The bishop tilted at his hips and slapped me hard across the face. He caught my ear, made it ring, and dull pain echoed through my skull. "You did it for cock."

"For cock," I repeated, nodding my head. My voice came out tinny and strangled. I breathed through the pain and nodded. Tears streaked my face. "For cock. I did it because I want cock."

"That's it," the bishop said. He had a fistful of my hair and, tugging it firmly, he made me nod. Up and down, as pliable as a doll, I nodded to him over and over. "You love this," he said, still making me nod. But the physical affirmation wasn't enough. "Say it!"

"I love it!" I gasped. "I love it! I love being used like this!"

"Used like what?"

"Like an animal!" I cried out. My cock throbbed as I said it. My cheeks were aflame, shame and pleasure mixing. "Like I was made only for this. To pleasure others."

He let go of me and stepped back, expression appraising, edging away from mindless disgust to something thoughtful. He cocked his head. I saw the visage slip momentarily, and he was Bishop Jonah ten years younger, the expression identical to how I remembered.

The memory that came to me then was odd, perverse in its own way, and haunting in another. I was twenty-five, and I hadn't seen Bishop Jonah in years. I had not yet returned to the abbey of my village, and was worshipping elsewhere, a few towns over. The bishop came and saw me; saw right through me like he didn't remember me. He hadn't greeted me. He hadn't said a thing. My stomach had fallen far as his eyes passed over me. I recall thinking: what?

I couldn't reconcile it then, but I felt abandoned. I wanted him to remember me and know me; I wanted him to scold me for the creases in my cassock, I wanted to be seen. It didn't matter if he hated me.

I sought him out that night after mass, under the pretence of thanking him, when in reality I wanted to be remembered. I didn't find him that night. I didn't find him until he took confession for us, a great honour, and I had to confess that I felt jealous of the attention he was awarding other priests. That I felt upset he wasn't focusing on me.

"We are servants of God, before we are His children," the bishop had told me. And then, with a pained sigh, "Alessandro, you are one of many young men I have mentored in my time. Surely you knew that before now?"

I remember breathing heavily, not understanding the twist in my gut. He disliked me, and he had made my life a living hell, and here I was all desperate and wanting. Why? Why did I care? Why did I care so much that I felt hot in my cheeks, and fire in my gut? Looking back, I wonder if it was the knowledge he had of me, that deep down he knew what I was in truth, and perhaps with the right words or the right prayers, I thought he might be able to make me pure.

I was not attracted to him. Not physically. But the authority. . .the power he wielded. God's man on earth.

He might as well have been God to me.

Then, in Hell, blinking up at him through my eyelashes, with saliva dripping from my mouth, I shivered with expectation and understanding. His authority had followed me even here, and I was a slave to it once more. His eyes slid over me as I quivered before him on my knees. A smile pricked his sour expression apart.

"Touch yourself," he ordered. His tone took on that commanding cadence, reminding me of his sermons, which always sat halfway between moralising and worshipping, an attempt to impart both the wisdom of the holy text's teachings and God's love. I felt compelled to move and rocked back onto my haunches. Exposed like that, with my ankles straining against the breaches gathered at my ankles, my whole body shivered.

But I was too slow for the bishop. His face twisted and he slapped forward with his cane, slicing its blunt edge across my chest diagonally. Fire seared down my body and I cried out. Pain had me whimpering, and still my cock wept with precum. The bishop's cane lowered, the wooden bottom grazing over my skin until it dropped low enough that he could lightly slap the underside of my cock. It jumped with each touch of the cane, and I balled my hands into the dust by my shins, trying in vain to find purchase in the loose and shifting particles; trying to ground myself so I wasn't aroused so terribly by my own bishop.

You know as well as I do that I was never going to succeed.

I grunted. Suddenly, the light and the heat burned overwhelmingly, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut. Vulnerability crept over my skin like a shiver.

"Ah, ah," the bishop said. "Open your eyes."

I hesitated. Everything felt hot and upsetting and—too much for me. The feeling wasn't quite regret, but latent embarrassment still clung to me, heavy and tar-like, impossible to shake away. What I wanted butting up against my old-ingrained fear. . .it felt somehow easier to embrace Asmodeus, inhuman in its appearance and so utterly opposite of the church's values, than to do this before Bishop Jonah—or something that looked like him. This felt like a complete admission, a confession before the church, and something that would follow me. I could not excuse pleasuring myself before a man who had chastised me my whole life.

Bishop Jonah's voice cooed, "Give in to this, Alessandro. You are already here, in Hell. You have already given up your immortal soul. You cannot pretend to fear God's wrath now, and shame will hardly save you from the lustful creatures in this realm. So. . ."

He paused, long enough for the tension to spark in my stomach. Expectation tugged me forward.

"Why don't you just give in?"

I exhaled heavily. Erratic breathing. A heart rate so loud and fast I could hear it echo inside my ribcage. I fought to open my eyes, and in that time, the bishop moved so close I could feel his warm breath curl over my neck.

He whispered, "Open your eyes, Alessandro. Look at your bishop and do what you are told."

The throbbing at my crotch became so much to bear that I thrust up towards nothing, hoping to make friction with only the air. The bishop chuckled and that voice lulled me. I opened my eyes.

Blinking away my bleariness, I was greeted with the sight of the bishop pleasuring himself, hand moving up and down over the cock that peeked through his cassock. The blushed tip blinked at me between forefinger and thumb and the movement was hypnotic. My groin pulsed and with my gaze locked on his movements, on that cock of his straining and weeping and the little shivers of pleasure that kept jolting through his body, I moved my own hand and squeezed the base of my cock.

"Oh, fuck," I muttered.

I squeezed. The blood that had gathered there, and the long stretch of time without touch, meant this simple action sent stars spinning behind my eyes. The bishop walked forward and spat—not on my face, but onto my cock, wetting it with his saliva. Each touch pushed the shame and fear further out of my mind, and I could thrust up into the palm of my hand, gliding against the skin as precum and saliva commingled.

"Ah, that's it," the bishop murmured. He stepped back and took in the sight of me fully. Meeting his eyes was difficult. I kept shuddering, closing my eyes for seconds at a time to regain some semblance of control, but at some point when the shock of the exposure and the vulnerability ebbed away, I could look more wholly. At that point, the expression on his face compelled me to stare. I watched the way he watched me; the way the speeds of his hand increased to match mine, the way his eyes clouded with distant pleasure, lust pushing him to look everywhere, to watch me fuck into my own hand with interest. And suddenly, we were staring at each other's eyes.

My cheeks burned. The feeling in my chest was an amalgamation, rolling between pleasure and fear; this vicious feeling that called forth all the shades of my youth. Every time he had yelled at me. Every time he had called me impure.

You stupid boy. . .a thief at heart. And here you are, thieving my time. My good will! The church's!

Or the voice of him, in confession, asking, Alessandro, is that all you have to tell me?

No. It wasn't. We both knew it back then and we both knew it in that moment.

I grunted and twitched, leaning back on one hand to thrust up with a renewed desperation. "I am a slut," I whispered.

"Louder," came the resounding command.

"I am a slut!"

My voice echoed back to me .

"A sodomist. I want it. . .crave it. . ."

"Crave what? "

"To be used."

My hand moved faster. Heat pooled and the pressure built, a coalescing of my body and its desires and its pleasure, until each touch felt clarifying: every stroke pushed me closer to the edge.

"Filthy," he said. "A disgrace."

"Yes."

"Then repent, Alessandro. Ask to be saved."

I jolted. I looked up at him in shock. What he asked of me felt like a greater sin than what I was doing now. He wanted me to speak to him like we were in confession. To ask God to forgive a sin I was in the middle of committing.

I glanced away—he moved quickly, knocking his cane against my face to drag me back to him.

"Do you need help remembering how to begin?"

I hesitated, swallowed, and shook my head. Against my cock, my movement slowed. Shame and fear threatened my erection—or so I expected. In truth, I only seemed to get harder. The humiliation made me dizzy.

I cleared my throat. "Contrition," I said, and nothing else. I didn't have to; the word carried a weight to it. To confess truly and be absolved, I had to be overcome by remorse for my sins. I looked up at the bishop. I recalled how I felt before Asmodeus. Very slowly, I shook my head. "I don't. . ."

I don't regret a thing.

"Ah, but you must," the bishop said. "Or I cannot absolve you of this sin, Alessandro."

I swallowed. I added the lie to the ever-growing list of my sins. I was lying to myself, to this bishop, to God by omission. Emboldened, further aroused somehow by the deception, my cock twitched in my hand. I squeezed it again, grunting.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," I said. I tried to close my eyes, but the bishop's cane tapped beneath my chin. Flushing, I opened and stared up at him. "It has been months since my last confession. I accuse myself of the following sins. I have had lustful thoughts too many times to count."

"Mm."

My breath shuddered as a whisper of pleasure shot through me. "I have. . .summoned the demon Asmodeus. Twice. I have let it sodomise me. I have welcomed it. I enjoyed it. I have murdered your holy servant Bishop Fazio. I have let the promise of mortal pleasure lead me. I have let Bishop Jonah do this to me?—"

"Fucking tart!" The bishop spat at my face and I flinched away. "You're the one who has tempted me."

Christ. Fuck. It shouldn't—I should not have been so affected, and yet, there I was, grinding up into my hand with increasing fervour, near delirious with how fast my heart was racing and the sweat that was beading at my forehead and dripping down into my eyes. "Yes, yes, I'm sorry. I have tempted Bishop Jonah and led him to sin!"

"Good boy," the bishop barked out a laugh and touched himself in earnest, eyes never straying from me.

With my pride dissolved, I arched my back and let the bishop see all of me in my naked glory.

"For these I ask pardon of God. I ask for penance and absolution."

"I will give you penance," the bishop said. "Act of Contrition. Say it now."

In stilted Latin, each word punctured by my rapid breath, I said it:

Deus meus, ex toto corde p?nitet me omnium meorum peccatorum,

eaque detestor, quia peccando,

non solum p?nas a te iuste statutas promeritus sum ,

sed pr?sertim quia offendi te,

summum bonum, ac dignum qui super omnia diligaris.

Ideo firmiter propono,

adiuvante gratia tua,

de cetero me non peccaturum peccandique occasiones proximas fugiturum.

Amen.

O My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee,

and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell,

but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love.

I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace,

to confess my sins,

to do penance

and to amend my life.

Amen

And then, because I was beginning to enjoy this, because my body was edging ever closer, I slowed my movements, pulling down the foreskin to expose the glands to the warm air, staring at the precum leaking from the top. "Absolve me, Bishop Jonah," I said pleadingly. "Let me come."

The bishop was close, too. I saw it in his eyes, in the way his lids drooped and that faraway gaze gaining lucidity as the pleasure made him focus

"If I am a holy man, then so, too, is my seed holy. I will spill it on you. Bless your mortal form. Do you want that, Alessandro?" His voice sounded low and heavy and I flushed thinking about his cum, thinking about him spilling it over my face. How degraded I would be—he was my bishop. I had seen him worship so thoroughly, so full of grace. Now, he wanted to come on me—now he was calling it a holy act.

God . And then, correcting myself: Asmodeus. I want ? —

"Yes," I breathed out. "Yes, please, I want it. I want you to?—"

He grunted loudly, until the only sounds around us were of our wet panting and the slick noises of our cocks in our hands.

"Close," he muttered, face again contorting, and then he dropped his cane and stumbled forward, left hand wrenching back my head so hard I made an involuntary noise of pain, and something about my expression pushed him over the edge. "God, Holy Father?—"

He came in warm stripes onto me. I closed my eyes just as the first splatter of cum hit my cheek. I kept my mouth open and panting like a dog to take his holy water onto my tongue, to take that absolution into me, and in this divine way I came, too.

Shuddering forward, I let myself go in the dirt. Holy ecstasy blinded me, and the bishop was on his knees suddenly, gripping my cheek. I waited for him to say the words that would conclude our confession. In nomine Patris, et filli et spiritus sancti. . . I waited for the Amen.

He did not give it to me.

"Whore," he spat. And then he laughed, and in laughing the fa?ade stripped away. Bishop Jonah was no longer before me, but some other demonic creature. Distended limbs, skin mottled between red and green hues, and with horns so long and heavy they curled like old toenails, weighted in such a way they pulled and extended the width of its face; it was nothing like Asmodeus. Patchy, thick white hair sprung from its chin and mottled body, and its thin tail whipped at me. Still giggling, the foggy clouds around us parted. I could taste its semen—thick, coagulated—dripping in my mouth, but even that couldn't make me gag. Its cock hung spent and dripping between its legs, thick and ridged.

"Go on, you whore," it cried out. Its voice was scratchy and high, and every word was interspersed with a giggle. "Begin your pilgrimage. Go! Go!"

I rolled in the dust, cheeks flushed with renewed shame. My breeches were still gathered at my legs and I had to shimmy out of them with it staring over me, laughing. I tried to stand, but its tail struck the back of my legs, and I sprawled forward again. Bruises and cuts stung over my knees.

"Crawl," it laughed. "Or you'll never find your way to Asmodeus."

I looked back at it over my shoulder. It watched me with a wild smile, shameless in its lust, and I imagined how I must have looked, cock hanging between my legs, balls rolling over one another with every heavy twist to my hip as each leg scraped over the sand. Helpless and pathetic, just like how Asmodeus had made me. But this creature, wearing the face of an old mentor. . .How could I have fallen for. . .how could I have thought Bishop Jonah was in Hell?

Because he made your life one.

Would I have still done all that for a creature as fetid and ugly as this?

You did do it. You had that cock in your mouth.

I wanted the answer to be no. That I had some line I wouldn't cross. I could excuse losing my sacred virginity to the Prince of Lust, lying about the summoning of Asmodeus, and the murder of Bishop Fazio, but to whore myself out to even a lesser demon? Some putrid creature with no name, and no mention in human texts?

"Bottom of the barrel filth," it called out, like it could read my mind. "That's right. Even I had my way with you. What are you now, dear little priest, except meat to be fucked and filled?"

I turned away and started crawling. A heaviness sat in my chest, something close to guilt, and something else: a bloom of private pleasure that was becoming impossible to maintain. Why was I so desperate to hold onto a shred of my dignity, even now, after all that?

The demon whipped forward with its tail and struck against my exposed ass cheeks. That cane-like whack had pain rippling over me, and I arched back with a groan.

"What are you stopping for?" it said. "You have a prince to see. Go on! Hurry!"

It struck me again, and then again when I didn't move quick enough. Rolls of skin bunched at my hips but sweat had made my body slick; the movement lubricated became easier, but it was my knees that held me back. Every motion had grit digging into the skin around the kneecap. After a handful of minutes, a tenderness throbbed in the nerves clustering the bone of my kneecap.

It was then that I finally stopped.