Hellbound Hearts

by Paul Kane

  “You sure this is the place, mate?”

  “If this is the address I asked for, then yes,” Elliott replied peevishly.

  “But there’s nothing here, though, innit?” said the driver. “It’s all just warehouses and factories and that.”

  Elliott scowled. “How much do I owe you?”

  The driver shrugged. “Eleven eighty.”

  Elliott paid him and the cab drove away. Elliott watched its lights bleed red as it turned the corner, and then it was gone, leaving him alone.

  He looked around. This was indeed an area of factories and warehouses, most of which seemed abandoned. The walls of the silent buildings towered high on either side of him, black and scabrous. Hundreds of windows, opaque with grime, peered blindly down at him. The road was scattered with broken stone, rotting timber, and rusting machinery that looked as though it had been left out for the garbagemen and never collected. Elliott huffed out a breath that hung like a wraith in the chilly air, and stumped toward a black door that the cabdriver had pointed out to him. The door was ajar. Elliott pushed it and stepped warily into the building.

  A black corridor, barely wider or higher than the door itself, stretched ahead into darkness. Elliott allowed himself a moment’s doubt, and then he started down it. He could hear nothing but his own stertorous breathing and heavy footsteps. He had the impression that the corridor was sloping downward, but he couldn’t be sure. Eventually he came to another black door.

  This one was locked. Elliott’s fleshy fist hovered in the air in front of him, and then he knocked. Almost immediately the door sighed open. Elliott stepped into blackness. The door closed behind him. There was a smell, an abattoir reek of hot blood mingled with the heady, salty tang of sex. Elliott’s cock reacted to it, filling with blood. A voice beside his ear purred, “How far do you want to go?”

  Elliott tried not to flinch. “All the way,” he said.

  The throaty chuckle of the unseen speaker seemed to echo around him. “Are you quite certain of that?”

  Sweat dribbled into Elliott’s eye, stinging, making him blink. “Yes,” he said hoarsely.

  “Well, then,” said the voice, and a light came on.

  It was a stark white spotlight beam, lancing down from somewhere above. Illuminated by the spotlight was a woman, naked but for a black hood and a multitude of bodily piercings. She was shaved and oiled; tattoos of battling serpents swarmed over her breasts and stomach and twined around her heavily muscled thighs. In each hand she held a secateurlike blade.

  “Step into the light,” instructed the voice behind him.

  Elliott stumbled forward, as though led by his straining cock. He was wheezing and sweating, his heart pounding with terror and lust. As soon as the light touched him, the hooded woman stepped forward, her hands moving with lightning speed. She cut off his clothes, deliberately slicing and nicking the flesh beneath as she did so. Elliott cried out as blood welled from the neat, symmetrical wounds on his arms and shoulders and back, on his belly and thighs and buttocks.

  Bleeding and gasping, Elliott’s journey into darkness began. When he was naked, the hooded woman looped a chain around his neck and strode away, yanking him behind her. Elliott had to half run to keep up, and had no breath left to scream when the woman led him barefoot across a carpet of upstanding razor blades. As the slivers of metal shredded the soles of his feet, tears poured from his eyes as freely as the blood that formed a slick trail behind him.

  He had never known such agony. It was already too much. He wanted it to stop—and yet a part of him craved to go further. His cock was still pointing the way, still engorged and aching. Almost fainting with pain, he stumbled behind the woman until he felt the chain slacken around his neck, whereupon he stumbled and fell to his knees. Instantly the woman strode forward and kicked him hard in the belly. As Elliott opened his mouth to whoop in air, the woman grabbed his hair and thrust her shaven vulva into his face. Instinctively Elliott stuck out his tongue and began to lap at her—and then white-hot pain exploded into his mouth and ripped through his head.

  The woman had stepped back, taking half his tongue with her. Elliott heard the gristly ripping sound as the sluglike flesh parted. He tasted metal as blood flooded his mouth and spilled down his chin.

  Vagina dentata. The woman plucked the clots of bloody tongue from the serrated metal teeth that lined the inside of her cunt and flicked them disdainfully away.

  Elliott’s head was spinning. The woman yanked on the chain, tightening it. Elliott wanted to plead for respite, for time to recover, or perhaps reconsider, but his mutilated tongue was a mass of throbbing, useless rubber in his mouth, and the cold steel around his throat was crushing his windpipe, giving him no option but to rise to his feet and stumble onward.

  He passed through a series of rooms, in each of which he was forced to experience agony upon agony, humiliation upon humiliation. As he slipped to ever greater depths, he felt the essence of himself diminishing, retreating further and further into the increasingly tormented prison of his lacerated flesh. The pain was excruciating, unendurable—and yet somehow he endured. After a while his ordeal became a blur, like a series of terrible, half-remembered nightmares, a parade of photographlike images. He was fellated by the woman with the pincushion tongue; he was forced to fuck a girl who wore a girdle of metal spikes which pierced his flesh each time he thrust forward; he was strapped down while a thin, heated blade was inserted into his anus.

  Finally, burned and cut, pierced and pummeled, bitten and bruised, he was dragged into a candlelit room. The floor was dominated by an intricate series of esoteric symbols enclosed within a circular frame, which was constructed of hundreds of rusty, upstanding nails. Elliott was laid atop the circle and strapped down, the nails piercing his back. He whimpered as a series of women rode his now flaccid and bloodied cock, bearing down on him with their weight, driving the nails in deeper. Eventually he was released and hauled to his feet, only to be strapped, spread-eagled, to a wall. He hung there, legs buckling, for what seemed like hours, the images on the website that had led him to this place reeling endlessly through his shattered mind. He recalled the final image, the hanging man, and hoped it was an indication that his endless night would soon be over. But what would come next? Death? Freedom? Either of those alternatives would be a blessed release.

  When they finally took him down, Elliott was more dead than alive. His arms were purple and swollen where the bones and muscles, placed under too much strain, had dislocated and snapped. He crumpled onto his face, now praying for death to take him.

  The women—his attendants and tormentors—refused to allow him that luxury, however. They hauled and shoved at his corpulent bulk, like abattoir workers manipulating the carcass of a bull. When they had heaved him onto his back, the hooded woman grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head up. Elliott stared blearily at the section of wall to which he had been strapped, and saw that blood from his punctured back had created a messy but accurate impression of the circular construction on the floor. What appeared to be a red smoky light was rising from the bloodied symbols, coagulating in the air in front of the wall. Elliott thought he must be hallucinating when the light seemed suddenly to harden and thicken, to form the shape of a figure.

  Then there was a crack and a rush of cold air that smelled of sour milk. A flare of light made Elliott flinch, and when his vision cleared he found himself looking into the dispassionate eyes of a monster.

  She—for Elliott had no doubt that the creature was female—was fully eight feet tall and had skin the color of ivory. She was naked, and endowed with six pendulous breasts, at each of which suckled a shapeless sac of thickly-veined flesh. She was heavily pregnant, but even as Elliott watched, her cunt gaped open and another “baby” was born, splatting to the floor in a muck of blood and black slime. The creature mewled piteously from a puckered aperture, but its mother ignored it. Indeed, her belly began to swell again almost immediately as another of the hideous infants ge
stated inside her.

  The creature regarded Elliott, her expression serene, but her eyes utterly without pity. When she spoke, her voice was both gentle and terrifying.

  “So,” she said, “you succumbed to temptation. I knew that you would.”

  Elliott’s lips parted. “Who . . .” he tried to say through the mangled mess of his tongue.

  “I am the Matriarch,” murmured the creature. “I collect children. And tonight, Elliott, I am here to collect you.”

  “But I’m not . . . not . . .” Elliott thought more than said.

  “Not a child? Oh, but you are. Everyone is someone’s child. Even you. Poor, lonely Elliott. And here are your parents to prove it.”

  For the first time, Elliott saw that the Matriarch was holding two thin chains in her right hand. Attached to the chains, cowering in the shadows at her heels, were creatures that were little more than mangled scraps of flesh. One was simply a few randomly linked body parts—a sliver of brain, an eye, a withered limb, a thin sac of skin containing a feebly beating heart—but the other was complete enough to identify as something that had once been human.

  This second creature stared at Elliott with a combination of sorrow, rage, and regret, which seemed somehow familiar. Then he gasped. Of course. The woman in the library.

  “I see you recognize them,” the Matriarch said. “They visited you today. It was part of our pact. They were there to offer you temptation.”

  “I don’t . . .” Elliott tried to say.

  “Understand? Of course not. But I’m afraid that won’t save you. I’ve already been more than generous. I’ve given you forty years of life.” She smiled sweetly. A mother’s smile. “I’m just sentimental at heart. When your parents summoned me, your mother pleaded so prettily for your life that I simply couldn’t refuse her. And so I offered her a deal. I would grant you forty years of life if, at the end of it, she and your father would return to this realm to place temptation in your path. If you resisted, you would become free of my influence forever, but if not . . .” A tinkling laugh. “Your suffering, combined with their knowledge that they have become the architects of your destruction, will be so sweet, Elliott. Sssooooo sweet.”

  Squatting, she gave birth to another mewling infant. Almost instantly, her belly began to swell once again.

  She came forward, dragging what was left of Elliott’s parents behind her, the suckling creatures clinging to her swinging breasts. Elliott tried to scramble away as she leaned over, lowering her face toward his, but his wrecked body was a mass of unresponsive agony. She opened her mouth and he smelled the rancid sweetness of sour milk and motherly love.

  “You’ve been such a disappointment to them, Elliott,” she murmured, “but now you have all eternity to make amends.” She reached out and stroked his hair, oh, so gently. “From now on we’ll be one big happy family.”

  Sister Cilice

  Barbie Wilde

  For many years, Sister Nikoletta was in the service of a higher power. She prayed nine times a day. Her life was work, prayer, a few fitful hours of sleep, then more work, more prayer. Thousands of her pious words floated up to the ether, but no answer was forthcoming; only a cruel, empty silence. When her depraved dreams became too overwhelming, mortification of the flesh was the only answer. She remembered the sainted Father Escrivá’s maxim on suffering: “Loved be pain. Sanctified be pain. Glorified be pain!” . . . and so she used the whip with greater vengeance, but although she assaulted her flesh, nothing could chase the demons from her mind, those familiars that had tormented her all her life.

  Throughout her childhood, entering an order was the only option available to her—the one way to cleanse her heart of the many sins her parents were convinced she had committed. “Every sin, no matter how inconsequential, is a blemish on your soul and will lead you to eternal damnation,” her mother used to say. According to her parents, her every thought, word, and deed was sinful. There was no relief from the guilt. No relief from the remorseless burden of her countless transgressions. And no relief from her rage, which she hid from the world along with her dark fantasies of revenge and pain.

  Sexual thoughts and acts were forbidden, of course, but that didn’t mean these evils left her alone. Perhaps celibacy made it worse, although how was she to know? She’d been sent straight to the nunnery at the age of seventeen, without even kissing a boy, let alone knowing what it was like to be with a real man in the real world, flesh to flesh. And she would never know.

  During her early days in the convent, in an attempt to save her rotten soul, Sister Nikoletta made the appearance of perfect devotion, to prove to the other Sisters that she had a vocation. Her every act was irreproachable, and every word she spoke was blameless. The strain of such unrelenting good behavior, of maintaining such a mask of utter innocence and sanity, was almost unbearable, but her parents—who suffered from an overdose of scrupulosity—had brainwashed her into believing that this was her only way to salvation.

  Her predicament got worse when Father Xavier was appointed to celebrate Mass every morning. He was so handsome, so virile, so different from the dried-up old men that had previously seen to the nuns’ spiritual needs. Sister Nikoletta was convinced that many of the other Sisters felt as she did about him. She could sense their spirits rise when Father Xavier came into the room. Feel the heat from their bodies as they knelt before him and he tenderly ministered the sacraments to them. The occasional accidental touch of Father Xavier’s hand on her mouth when he gave her the Host sent little electric shocks through her body. Sister Nikoletta lived for that random physical contact, even though she knew it was meaningless to him.

  Every night, after the others had gone to bed, she would mortify her bare flesh until she bled, but that didn’t chase the thoughts of the good Father away; it just made her suffering more sensual. She imagined that Father Xavier was the one with the lash, beating her senseless. She’d fall to the ground exhausted, bleeding, eyes shut, body completely open and vulnerable, imagining his presence standing over her. Still with eyes clenched shut, she would use the leather handle of the whip, pretending it was him—thrusting inside of her, hurting her. His pain was loved, his pain was sanctified, his pain was glorified. She’d stuff a rag in her mouth to stifle her cries. Sister Nikoletta came for the first time like that: bloody, naked, sweatsoaked, lying on the cold, stone floor. Momentarily sated, yet forever unsatisfied.

  After a while, she refined her technique. To heighten her pleasure, she’d take the end of the whip and wrap it around her neck, pushing the handle deep inside her at the same time; each thrust tightening the lash and ever so slightly cutting off the oxygen to her brain to make her orgasms more intense. She would come again and again, shuddering like an old car dieseling on a frosty winter morning. But the taste in her mouth was bitter, because when she opened her eyes, she was alone. Sister Nikoletta would always be alone. No man would ever come and fill the dry, empty well of her passion.

  So she would get up, clean herself, wipe away the tears of anger and frustration, kneel on the cold floor and flog herself again and again for her despicable thoughts and acts.

  During the day, Sister Nikoletta would wear a cilice—a small metal chain with inwardly pointing spikes—around her thigh. She would pull the cilice as tight as she could without cutting off the circulation. It was supposed to remind her of Christ’s suffering, but all it did was bring back memories of her private moments with the phantom Father Xavier. Her sexual fantasies were now beginning to torment her during the day. The irony was she could not make penance and cleanse her soul, because the only person she was allowed to confess to was Father Xavier. So the sins just piled up, one on top of the other, multiplying and becoming more putrefied with time.

  Then a new scenario began to fester in Sister Nikoletta’s mind. She would confess all her sins to Father Xavier. He would be horrified and drag her out of the confessional to the altar, rip her robes off and scourge her using a whip with metal tips, degrading her flesh
until she begged him to stop. Her cast-off blood would stain the fair linen altar cloth and splatter the faces of the saints’ statues. Then Father Xavier would take her, right there on the marble floor in front of the altar, underneath the enormous suspended golden crucifix. His cassock would fall away from him and reveal the wonders of his flawless body and his sex. She could only imagine what it would look like: ivory in color, hard, and shaped like a Knight Templar’s sword perhaps. In her fantasies, Father Xavier used not only his saintly member to impale her but any other implement at hand—the holier the better—to sanctify and cleanse her polluted body and diseased mind.

  Sister Nikoletta felt her sanity slipping away, fueled by her feverish, obsessive thoughts. Haunted by her desires, she continued to torment her wretched body until it was laced with scars. She asked to be assigned to the library archives in the convent’s catacomblike cellar as a way of calming and cooling off her mind. There were thousands of books down there, ancient papers, letters and epistles, missives from popes and cardinals. Perhaps she could immerse herself in history to distract herself from her miserably empty present.

  It was there, late one night, that Sister Nikoletta found an ancient manuscript in an old leaden box whose lock had long since rusted away. It was hidden in an alcove far from the entrance, forgotten for centuries. The box was littered with crunchy, long-dead black beetles, a few bloodred dried roses, and a dusty mummified crow; beak open and tongue lolling out as if in accusation.

  The book was called the Grimorium Enochia and it was written in the fifteenth century by Raphael Athanasius. Sister Nikoletta spent weeks trying to translate the Latin text. For the first time in years, something was taking her mind away from the bloody world of her profane imaginings. She soon realized that she had discovered something far more engrossing than her fantasies. Athanasius was an alchemist, necromancer, and cryptographer, and was a friend of the notorious serial killer, dabbler in the black arts, and brother-inarms to Jeanne d’Arc, Maréchal Gilles de Rais. At first glance, Athanasius’s book appeared to be about his accounts of summoning forth and speaking with angels and demons. However, it soon became obvious to Sister Nikoletta that his manuscript was more than a few incantations and stories.