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Blessed are the Crucified

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FINAL PART OF FINAL CHAPTER--

(Chapter 12, continued...)

One day, after receiving and reading one of the anonymous messages, Jennifer felt some degree of panic. Her confidence, so firm as it had been in recent years, now seemed to falter. Within a few days she had ended her sessions with the young women in the back room. She had also bid farewell to her beloved Jessica, who cried sorrowfully at being sent away without explanation.


At the same time, Alexander made a point of showing up at her frequent public appearances, his dark eyes boring into her and searching for signs of a soul. She would tremble a little when she saw him, but she was quick to start up a conversation with someone nearby in an effort to ignore him. She would try hard not to glance back at him, but she always would, much to his satisfaction.


He also befriended a few of Jennifer's maids and learned of the recent activities with young women in the back room. They had heard screams and laughs, the former coming from the girls, the latter from Jennifer. The maids had been entrusted with cleaning and bandaging the young women after a session. They described whip marks, cuts, bruises and terrible dark welts. They told him how Jennifer had suddenly ended that activity recently, much to their surprise and gratification. They said she seemed to have lost much of her previous confidence, bordering on arrogance, and had grown somewhat melancholy.

But Jennifer continued her social life to a great extent and often came to parties in the finest clothes, looking every bit as elegant and charming as she always had. In her most recent appearances at soirees, she looked about for the persistent monk, but did not see him. Finally, she thought, he had tired of his vigilance and would leave her in peace.


Then, one night in the garden of a large house where a party was being held, Jennifer heard a voice whisper to her. She had come for a breath of fresh air and was alone, so the voice startled her. She let out a little yelp, but no one seemed to have heard her. Then a large hand reached out of the shrubbery and pulled her by the throat further into the darkness.


She felt the rub of a beard against her bejeweled neck and felt the hot breath of a demon in her ear. Part of her was enjoying this experience, but another part was crying out in panic.


“You will never be rid of me and the ghosts of those women, nor the specter of your old friend Jack.; They will haunt you forever,” Alexander said, holding her tight.


“This is rather disgraceful behavior for a holy man,” she whispered as he relaxed his grip on her throat. “You are the one now violating the law and I suppose you intend to violate me to satisfy the lust you have always had for me but tried to suppress under your cloak of holiness.”


“Hah,” he replied while squeezing her neck tighter again,”you should not flatter yourself so. I won't harm you, but I will relate to you some details of what was found at your friend's play room down by the harbor.”


Her eyes rolled about trying to see some avenue of escape or some possibility of rescue, but they were too deep into the foliage to be easily detected by anyone. Her husband, she knew, would be gathered with some of his male friends, laughing and telling stories. They would not look for their women until much later.


“You remember them, don't you?” he asked, “Jane and Madeleine?”


“Of course.”


“I wonder if you heard much about how they died and what happened to them before they died,” he said. “I went there with my detective friend and he brought me in to see the ghastly room. I saw where one of them had suffered on a cross, one similar to the one used to torture and kill Jesus. Like Jesus, she had been fixed to the device with nails, through both hands and both feet. I saw the blood stains all around the post where the detective supposed they had been whipped mercilessly. I saw the tunnel used to dispose of the bodies and the cauldron used to burn off their lovely faces. If not for that I might have been able to relegate the memory of these women to a murky past, but I can never forget what horrors were visited on them. So, perhaps I have gone a little mad now. Perhaps I will seek revenge for them, rather than wait for the law or the judgment of God above. You will know when it happens. I want you to know of my design. I want you to be waiting for it and thinking about it for some time. I want you to die thinking of me and those beautiful flowers you helped crush.”


With that, he gave her a shove and she ended up sprawled on the dirt in front of the shrubs. She heard some rustling within, but in the darkness she could not see him. Her throat was now recovering and she was breathing in deep breaths. After awhile she managed to rise and brush off her dress. When she emerged into the light by the outdoor pavilion behind the manor house, she stumbled a bit and then grabbed a chair for support. Another woman came to her assistance. She said she was ill and asked for her husband.


On the ride home, her husband burned inside with frustration. He had been looking forward to another wild, hot night of fierce sex with her, but now he figured that plan was ruined. She sat quietly, hiding her neck, where she assumed there might be bruises. From that night on, her husband, as well as some friends and servants, noticed that she had lost even more of her former spunk. She seemed ill at ease and sorrowful much of the time and began to develop some odd habits. She would often go to the French doors that led to the garden and stare out for long periods as if in a trance. Yet she rarely stepped into that garden anymore.

In the evenings, she would go to the second floor and stand in front of a window that faced a nearby hill. There, she would stare out at the scenery until sunset or until she fainted and lay spreadeagled on the floor. The servant girls would then rush to help her. Her husband sometimes came up to see what it was she was looking at, but when he glanced out he saw only a hill with long grass waving in the breeze and a few stark trees huddled together near the top. Neither he nor anyone else could see the figure standing there. The figure Jennifer saw was that of a bearded man in a long dark frock, his eyes staring intently at her from the hill and reminding her that one day she might die at his hand. She feared him mostly because he was the only person who had been able to peer into her cold, dark soul and fully comprehend the sickness there. He was also the only man she had desired, but failed to conquer.

She did not believe Alexander's threat to kill her, for he was still a devoted Christian, an unlikely murderer. But she knew that one day she would die, as everyone does, and then she might feel hot flames licking her still glorious body. She thought of a fire that would never stop, pain that would never stop. And she imagined the monk with his dark eyes, staring down at her and smiling. As much as that lurid image terrified her, it also aroused her.


The End

 
That story was my first attempt at a work of erotic fiction. Some readers may have wanted more lurid descriptions and more lurid scenes, but I wanted to have some degree of character development and a story arc. It was written pretty fast, without much revision and only some quick proofreading before posting to correct minor errors. I am sure s few slipped through anyway. But I hope you enjoyed the story and that the writing had some appeal. I thank all of you who read it.
 
That story was my first attempt at a work of erotic fiction. Some readers may have wanted more lurid descriptions and more lurid scenes, but I wanted to have some degree of character development and a story arc. It was written pretty fast, without much revision and only some quick proofreading before posting to correct minor errors. I am sure s few slipped through anyway. But I hope you enjoyed the story and that the writing had some appeal. I thank all of you who read it.
...and a fine job...

Though next time do not rush to post so many chapters at once...

Almost an overwhelming read...
 
Mark, I can't help worrying that Chapter 9 may be missing?

W
 
Final part of Chapter Eight. Limit on words in posts vexes me, but you should be able to follow the story this way.


He then went to Madeleine and took her down from the post. He held her with an arm wrapped round her waist to help her walk. She was unable to walk of her own volition and she was sticky with blood everywhere he touched. He had placed the large wooden cross on the floor with a heavy chain attached to the top of the stipe. The other end of the chain was attached to a thick metal cable that wrapped around a winch some distance away. He would use this to lift the cross into place once he had her on it.

Madeleine was sitting on the floor next to the cross looking exhausted from the beating her body had taken. She looked at the rough wooden beam and said nothing. Jack then went over to check on Jane, who was still moaning, but otherwise seemed to be handling her agony well. He then stepped over to some boxes and pulled out a few items including some of the rose branches from Jennifer’s garden that he had obtained on one of his visits. They were thin and flexible and full of sharp, but small thorns. He wasn’t able to acquire any of the long twig-like thorns so often shown on the head of the suffering Jesus. But he figured these would do and that they would provide a bit of wicked irony for Madeleine, who would surely perceive their origin in the garden she once tended and appreciate his gesture.

After he had used pliers and some wire to form the thorny branches into a crown and made sure it would not come apart, he brought it over to Madeleine and showed it to her. Her eyes were dull and seemed to have lost some of their previous luster. He wondered if her devotion remained intact. So, he put a finger under he chin and brought her eyes up to his.

“Are you still committed to this journey, Madeleine?” he asked. “We don’t have to go on if you have decided that your devotion was a mistake. All you have to do is renounce Jesus and swear that you will leave religion behind. You will then embark on a new life, totally absent of prayer and devoted only to carnal pleasures.”

Through the haze that clouded her mind she heard his words. She was weary and only barely able to endure the pain she felt from almost every square inch of her skin. Some of the worst pain came from areas of her back where the skin had actually been torn away. But deep inside her came the desire to continue. Partly it was her stubbornness and her commitment to her savior that gave her the courage to carry on and partly it was a strange desire to suffer these cruelties. Even as she sat there overwhelmed with pain she could feel a warmness in her crotch that she relished, yet did not understand. She was still a virgin and had little knowledge of sex, but the impulse to explore this desire moved her to accept the final torment.

Jack then placed the crown of thorns on her head and used his tools to grasp it and pull it down tight over the top of her head. He could see that the small thorns were not going to achieve the desired effect, so he pushed the crown into her forehead and moved it back and forth a little. This produced a few scratches, but not enough in his opinion. So he pulled out a knife and used it to make a few small punctures in the skin of her forehead just behind where the crown rested. To his satisfaction three streams of blood flowed down over her her face. It dribbled down her nose and reddened her lips. It dripped from her chin onto her breast. There, it mingled with the blood and gore that had resulted from the brutal whipping.

He then pulled her down on the cross, stretched out her arms and tied her hands to the crossbeam. Next, he tied her arms to the beam, looping rope around the upper arm just short of the elbow. He thought this might help hold her weight as she hung on the diabolically simple torture device. Then he brought out a hammer and two long, thin nails. He had obtained these from a carpenter who had worked on his inner sanctum. He was anxious to see how they would work. He went to her left hand and pushed the sharp point of the nail into the middle of her hand. This is how it had been depicted in all the paintings he had seen and this is how he wanted it to be. He then brought the hammer down on the nail and drove it through her tender flesh. She screamed as he did it and kept screaming as he pounded it further in to the wood. He then repeated the action with her other hand, but she was now so exhausted from screaming that she could only cry and kick her feet.

He looked down at her feet and said, “Don’t worry, my lovelies, I am coming to you now.”

As he got up to retrieve two more nails he looked down at her heaving chest and her anguished face. His tableau was coming together nicely, he thought. Now he moved to her feet, which were still moving about in an expression of unsupportable pain. He grabbed the left one by the ankle and brought it up so that the knee was slightly bent. He calculated the distance and figured this would be a position that would allow her to raise herself now and then to inhale more air. She would rise and then drop down again, over and over. He would be able to sit in front of the cross and watch this go on and on. He had some trouble holding her foot still, but he managed to keep it in place as he punched a nail into the middle between the second and third bones. That particular place looked right to him. Above all, he relished symmetry.

Lost in a fog of pain, Madeleine felt the nail in her foot as just one of many points of crisis. Her nervous system was almost overloaded. She grew somewhat faint and stopped moving. Seizing his chance, Jack made sure the foot was in the proper position and then struck the nail with the hammer to carry it through. But it did not take hold in the wood and her leg now came up and swung about, almost kicking him. He grabbed it again, noticing where the sharp point protruded from the instep, about an inch down from the sole. He brought it down again, checked the position and then quickly hammered the nail into the wood.

The next foot was easier as she had again gone faint. He managed to get the nail through the same place as the other foot, maintaining the symmetry. When all was set, he went back to the winch and brought the cross up almost to a standing position and there it stopped. He couldn’t seem to get it higher, so he walked around to see if something was stuck. With only the glow of the lantern and the candles he could not detect what the problem was.

Then he looked at Madeleine stretched out on the cross, bleeding from hands and feet. Her whole body was torn and bleeding, including her face, now almost totally covered with blood. He didn’t really like the look of that, so he went and fetched a rag. He used the ladder to go up and wipe some of the blood away. Her eyes rolled over to look at him. Her expression was calm and he felt a frisson go through him. It would have been better if she were still wincing in pain, he thought. There was something ethereal about this girl’s endurance and her commitment to this act of devotion, or what he had convinced her was an act of devotion.

It annoyed him to think of Jennifer’s warning about the monk and the police. There was sudden small noise from the other side of the inner wall and he raced to the entrance, his pistol in his hand. He couldn’t quite explain it, but thought he saw movements in the shadows. He thought he heard whispers outside the main door. His nerves were causing him to lose control of himself. Finally he came back in and dropped down on the floor in front of the cross. It was only a few degrees from being totally vertical and it was probably better this way since she would be less likely to fall forward. He imagined that possibility with horror— the flesh of the hands ripping apart as they pulled away from the nails, the rope failing to hold her and her body slipping down and then falling forward, the feet tearing away from the nails with a ghastly rip. The thought made him shiver.

After observing Madeleine’s passion on the cross for several minutes he remembered Jane and went over to check on her. She had swooned. He slapped her face and pried open her eyes, which stared up blankly. He ran over to the basin and filled the cup with water. He splashed it in her face and she awakened with wide eyes and gasping for air.

Realizing that the wounds he had inflicted on them were too extensive to allow them to return home for a matter of weeks, he faced a grim decision. They would have to die. This complicated everything, he thought. How was he to dispose of the bodies? There were people who had seen them together, like the servants at Jennifer’s house and there was the carriage driver who had brought both women to his building earlier in the evening. How would he handle interrogation by the police? Would the wild-eyed monk be there to torment him as well?

Just then, he heard Madeleine moan more loudly. He wanted her to stay alive as long as possible. He brought a cup of water to her lips and she drank a few gulps. Her eyes followed him as he stepped down and stood in front of the cross. He felt weirdly uncomfortable as her gaze remained fixed on him. Then she spoke to him.

“I am dying for your sins,” she said.

He stepped back, startled by the clearness of her statement. Although he did not believe in the supernatural, he was spooked nonetheless. He thought he heard something move behind him and rushed over into the darkness holding the hammer. But there was nothing there. He then heard her wriggle on the cross and gasp. Her eyes were now wild and wide open. Her suffering now was splendid, he thought.
I miss chapter nine?
 
Not sure what happened to Chapter Nine and the rest-- I am attaching Chapters Nine-Twelve here. Probably should have been attaching the files to begin with since the posts have a word limit. Learning as I go.
 

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