Chapter 1

The monastery sat in a small village in Italy, a stone’s throw from where I grew up. When I was a child, I was unruly. An unkept thief! Both my parents were alive in my youth, though my father was often away, and because we were a good Catholic family, my parents had seven children. All six of my siblings miraculously survived childhood, but nine mouths to feed proved unsustainable for my poor parents.

I liked to think of my exploits as holy in their own way, or at least, I came to think of them like this to avoid the shame of my thievery. By seven, I had been caught over a dozen times and beaten badly for at least half of those instances. But by ten, I had learned the skills necessary to lockpick, to move silently, to take only what wouldn’t be noticed right away. Most of the time, all I was stealing was food.

My parents said nothing about how I came about the extra—until the mayor came knocking with a priest in tow.

I didn’t have much choice. They wanted to exile me. Or kill me.

I said, “Let me repent,” and the mayor looked at me and replied, “You will be repenting for the rest of your life.”

I remember being almost thrilled. Thieving distracted me from what my young body was doing or thinking. I could avoid the feelings that arose when I saw strong men hauling crates or working fields. I could pretend I wasn’t affected by the beautiful sights of them.

But as that monk priest leaned down and blessed me, accepted me into his fold, I remember crying with joy. I felt for the first time that I had hope. With the abbey and its brethren at my back, I could be protected from the Devil’s influence. I remember my mother crying, too. On her knees as if in worship, saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. This boy is touched by Satan. He resists, but I do not know for how long. . .”

It was the last I saw of them.

As a monk priest, I spent my youth travelling through the rocky terrain, remote village to remote village, serving God as best I could in the chapels built to house Him. Worship Him. My days were spent leading services and taking confessions, and my nights were spent reading the Bible, praying, confessing, and inevitably dreaming.

When I returned to my village, I was thirty. Six years ago.

By the point of my return, I had been moulded into the image of a good, celibate man. I prayed daily. I was charitable. I improved. But as each day passed, I learned more and more that nothing really was going to change me.

Do you know the horror of that realisation? To see the Devil reaching for you every night, to realise that you live for the moments Satan gifted me: dreams of men’s lips, their kisses, their touches, their cocks. To wake in shame, sweat-covered, seed spilt on the sheets, and to leave my chamber with a false mantra ringing in my ears: holy, holy, holy.

I tried. For decades, I tried.

Inevitability came for me anyway.

I made the decision when, one night, I was on my knees and deep in prayer, rolling a rosary over my fingers, praying to have those desires flayed from me once and for all, and I heard a voice.

I had perked up, for God had never visited me before. I thought: now it all pays off. Now you have proven yourself. Years of resistance and self-flagellation have brought God to your very doorstep. Praise it all.

Except, of course, it wasn’t. It was the Devil himself, tip-toeing around my skull.

He said, “You came here thinking it would change you. You came here hoping it would. Choral singing and stained glass and the fetor of clogging incense—you wanted it to cleanse your insides. Destroy the infection in you with sacred light. And instead, two decades of it has made you this: barely contained, feral, furious. What has God’s love given you except shame? What has God ever done for you?”

I stood and shouted this great cry of fear that called one of my brethren to my door.

“Alessandro!” he had called. Flushing and horrified, I opened the door to him.

Oliviero stood there. Twenty, barely a man, and with the innocence of a child. He was all blond hair, lanky limbs, and angular features. The roundest part of him were his large doe eyes. More than once, I had thought of kissing him—and more than once, I had cursed myself for it.

He was perhaps one of the purest people I have ever met, and without a doubt, I could tell he had been touched by the Lord, made good by him. Proximity to him had always unnerved me. Something innate in me rejected him. Even as part of me wished to touch him, a larger part of me understood that this desire was a result of my resistance. Desire had become cloying—almost anybody could relieve it. Almost anything.

“What happened?” he asked. He grabbed my shoulders and squeezed, asking again, “Were you alright? A bad dream?”

“Yes,” I lied, and then I tried to be as honest as I could be. “The Devil telling me things.”

Oliviero’s face grew pale and worried. His hands slackened on my shoulders, and he nodded thoughtfully, with all the true concern of someone too good to be around a man like me.

What would he do if he knew me? If he knew the kind of man I was?

Would God call upon him to smite me? To remove my corruption from our church?

“To think the Devil would attempt to corrupt you, of all our brothers,” Oliviero had said with a true and genuine smile. My gut roiled. “My advice: remember Bishop Jonah. Remember his teachings. If you do this, then we will be fine.”

‘We’, he had said, like it was his battle too. How beautiful a man for his kindness. But he had invoked the name of Bishop Jonah, the old bishop who had ordained me—who had made me frightened. Though he passed years ago, I felt haunted by him. I had been taught. I had been trained. I had been beaten by him.

Even he had been unable to unstitch the Devil’s handiwork.

“I will,” I had told Oliviero. The lie tasted bitter in my mouth. “I will.”

I had closed the door and gone back to prayer, only to hear the Devil’s laugh.

My sleep that night had given me little rest. I dreamed extensively. Something called to me and showed me what could be.

I couldn’t describe it. I saw my life as if I had chosen myself over God. I saw all the men I might have tasted, the cocks I could have had inside me, the passion and the lust and the happiness I would have achieved if I hadn’t concerned myself with Hell.

With this vision came the knowledge that my eternal life wouldn’t grant me peace either. I would forever be a preserved bit of celibacy, suspended forever, having been untouched. Only my own hands had ever given me a taste.

“Summon me,” the voice had said. “Summon me. I will give you what you want. I will touch you, I will desire you, I will show you years’ worth of missed pleasure in a single night.”

I woke. I lay there. I touched myself alone.

What was my soul worth? I had thought about it for hours. What was it worth, all of this? What was the point of Heaven if it would be eternal suffering?

Not this bland Hell.