She was a flame, divine
My pathic call of duty, irrefutable
Her eyes they paralyzed me, froze the flow of time
A glimpse so achingly beautiful
Verse from Achingly Beautiful from the album “Cryptorania” by Cradle of Filth
I’ve seen and done a lot in my short life. More than most people will see and do in a lifetime. But none of the happiness or sadness, joy, pain, or suffering I’ve experienced could have prepared me for this moment.
When I’d received the featherlight touch of her fingers – sheathed in black lace – on my shoulder… choosing me… I’d thought I was ready. But now, here, in the muted light of her candlelit crypt, I understand the enormity of my own arrogance.
I am not ready for Libertina.
But she is ready for me.
So, I will prepare myself. I will allow her to take whatever she wants from me because, of all the men sitting in the pews upstairs, I’m the one she chose.
The chain the priest gave me before I descended the stone steps to the crypt weighs heavy in my hand. It clinks as I shuffle my feet and an image of a rusty ball and chain flashes behind my eyes. I try not to look at the piles of skulls that border the floor as Libertina leads me further in. Try so hard not to notice the inverted crosses on the walls or the Madonna weeping blood that rests against a low stone altar.
Candles flicker as Libertina passes by them, and she reaches out, taunting the flames with her fingertips. I wonder when she shed her gloves. Her cruelly sharp nails, painted obsidian, stand stark against the paleness of her long, bony fingers. As much as the thought terrifies me I can’t stop myself from imagining how it would feel to have them dragged, slowly and deeply, down my bare chest.
Libertina stops and, without turning to look at me, points at a low table. Somehow, I know what she wants me to do. So, I do it. Piece by piece, I remove my clothes. Fold each garment carefully and place them in a neat stack on the table. Gut instinct tells me that she wouldn’t like it if I just dropped them in a haphazard pile. It also tells me that dropping the chain would be a bad idea too, so I make sure I keep hold of it even though the clanging sounds it makes have my teeth on edge.
She looks over her shoulder, right at the table, and I see the corner of her mouth twitch. Then she’s moving again, the roll of her hips so wide I have to sway to stop myself from feeling seasick.
I follow her, still shuffling my feet and wincing at the chill of the hard, stone floor, but quickly come to a halt when someone emerges from the shadows. He walks toward me, his black cassock swallowing up the light until I’m shrouded in his darkness. He shows me what he has in his hand before reaching up and securing it around my neck. A collar, all black apart from the small white rectangle in the centre. Wearing it feels wrong. Like I’m impersonating something I shouldn’t be. But I can’t worry about that now. I’m too busy watching the man who collared me dissolve back into the shadows as another cassocked man emerges.
This one is carrying a metal pole that glows orange at the end. Libertina takes it, walks toward me with a feral smile on her blood red lips. I can’t see her eyes, but I know they’re black. And I know her smile reaches them.
I’d heard she did this as an initiation, but I’ve never believed it. I didn’t think she was this wicked. No, I’m definitely not ready for Libertina.
Once she’s mere inches away from me she drops to her knees. I can barely stay upright as she flicks the tip of my semi-hard cock with her tongue, not stopping until it’s rigid and ready. Without using her hands, she guides it into her mouth, her lips not touching it until her nose presses into my skin. Then she clamps her mouth around it and pulls her head back, leaving a smear of red lipstick along my entire shaft.
When my cock slaps against my skin she laughs then shoves the glowing pole forward. A searing pain robs me of sight, makes me choke on a scream. I hold onto the chain as if it’s only thing in the world that can save me. When my sight returns I see what she’s done. She branded me with her beloved inverted cross.
Nothing can save me.
“Sanctify.”
She hadn’t raised her voice above a whisper, but the sound still makes my knees weak.
Burning eyes fixed on the chain that hangs limp by my side she says, “Mortify the flesh.”
I want to refuse. To run from this place of sin and never return. But I won’t, because she chose me. I’m testing the weight of the chain in my hands. Holding her eyes – which are as black as I expected – I shift my palms over it then whip the heavy metal over my shoulder.
I feel the impact in my chest and the breath explodes from my lungs. Again and again I flagellate myself, spurred on by the look of absolute delight on the achingly beautiful face before me. I know that there’s blood. I know there’ll be bruising. But I don’t care. She wants this, so I want this.
The chain falls from my weak hands and I’m staggering toward what I thought was an altar. I was wrong. It’s a sarcophagus. Libertina unfastens her belt and her skirts drift to her feet. To my shock – my horror – a wooden phallus stands proud at the apex of her thighs. She dips her fingers into a ruined font then strokes her thick black cock with an oily substance until it glistens.
Will she have me on my knees? Make me pray at her altar of perversion? Or will she take me on my back, squeeze my jaw in her fingers and call me her pitiful little bitch?
I watch her climb onto the stone coffin in confusion. Feel my forehead wrinkle as she lies back, her gleaming cock pointing at the cracked ceiling. What am I supposed to do now? I know what I’m supposed to do now, I just don’t know how to do it.
Yes, I do.
I’m shaking so much it takes me two attempts to lift my bulk up onto the coffin. I plant my feet either side of her hips, clinging to my own knees to stop myself from tumbling forward. I’ve never done this before. I’ve never wanted to do it and I still don’t want to. I feel my own blood trickling down my back, down the cleft between the cheeks of my ass, and I know I’m going to do it anyway.
Libertina removes one of the chains from around her neck and strikes me with the pendant. It’s a spiked cross that brings tiny beads of blood to the surface of my skin. She does it again and I drop lower, feeling the tip of her cock probing me. Again, and I sink lower still, feeling my body resisting. Once more and I cry out, closing my eyes against the dreadful, delightful pain that shoots up my spine. I can’t move, I’m too afraid. Whether I’m afraid that I’ll like it or I won’t I can’t tell. I’m not sure I want to know.
A minute passes and I’m still frozen. Dolourous bells ring out above me, calling her followers to worship. Shadows peel away from the walls and I wonder how I hadn’t noticed that there were a dozen other people in the room.
They crowd around us, touching, pawing, one stroking my head to soothe me while another lifts me then coaxes me back down. Libertina keeps purring, keeps bleeding me with her cross. Someone dips their fingers into the font and smears black oil between my legs.
When their hands fall away I realise I’m still moving. Still fucking myself on the cold hard cock of this cold-hearted woman. She lets me see a nipple. Reaches down to hold my balls, squeezing the pendant into my wrinkled sack until I start to cry.
I decide that I won’t come for her. I will not give her what she craves. All she wants is to be covered in semen and she didn’t need to perform such cruelties to get it. I’d have given it freely.
No, I won’t come for her. Not even now that she’s thrusting up with her hips, grinding into me, pressing the pendant into her round tits until they’re dotted with droplets of blood that look like tiny hearts against her pale flesh. She isn’t getting what she wants from me.
Jets of ejaculate begin spurting over her from the men at the sides of the coffin and I come to see that, even if I don’t give her mine, she has what she wants anyway. She knows that I understand now, and she starts to laugh. Maniacally, maliciously, getting louder because, in anger, I’m fucking myself harder.
I give in to her. My cock pulses, pouring my newborn hatred, my adoration, my adulation, all over her belly. The others continue to shower her with praise and, as I watch her eyes roll back into her head and feel her body quake with orgasm beneath me, I accept that I’m one of them now. I am one of hers. I am home.
