PRINCE OF LUST

by Lucien Burr

Which is why I want to ruin my life, you see. I am older. I am jaded. And I no longer think God is merciful.

I knew what I was. I knew what I wanted. I knew, in the eyes of the institution I had dedicated myself to, I was worth very little. I had been touched by the wrong force—that the Devil himself had corrupted me. Perhaps that was true. Perhaps he had. And perhaps I had been combating that influence for most of my life.

But where had shame gotten me? I knew where it had sent me. Shame drove me to the church—sent me running like I was fleeing God’s wrath itself. I knew if I were to linger in the world, then I would do the unthinkable. I would fall in love with a man. I would touch him. I would love it.

Let Hell take me. Let my soul burn forever. Let me be disgraced in the eyes of men and God. I knew what I wanted. The only thing that remained for me to do was take it.

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.

I tried. For decades, I tried.

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?”

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.

Growling, it spoke. “You have summoned me with desire. With the open wet gore of your own body, you have pleasured yourself. You have thought of me and manifested me, and I can see what you want. You’ve been wanting it for years. Someone to open up your body. To take it. To make you take it. To hold you down as they ruin you.”

I exhaled. That sigh—it had a weight to it. I wanted to move without words or to have things done to me, partly because I felt inexperience hovering like a guillotine above my neck and partly because I wanted absolution. I wanted to touch it and be touched. I wanted it to fuck me, stretch me, gape me, to render every waking moment I spent in the worship of God worthless. Make me an object. Make me yours. Compare me to something to be discarded, something useless at best, a body to be fucked. Make me forget everything but the feel of your cock.

Everything I had done that night had been in a haze of lust. And the demon knew it. With one hand, it reached out to my clerical collar. All it needed was one sharp claw. Just like that, it sliced through the white collar, tearing it from my neck and throwing it to the ground. My eyes flew wide. Naked, suddenly—or exposed in God’s house. I opened my mouth, voice coming out in a cry of protest, but Asmodeus grabbed my face, slicing new wounds into the meat of my cheeks. “If you’re going to be my bitch,” it growled, “you won’t be wearing God’s dog collar.”

It spoke slowly and clearly, like I was stupid and needed to be told exactly what to do. And I did. I wanted the demon to order me around. I wanted to be absolved of free will, of misusing my free will for this.

Once again, it asked me, “What do you want?” I knew what to say this time. I bit my lip and rolled my eyes as far back into my skull as I could, hoping to see the prince’s eyes. Like that, straining and shaking, I spoke. “You.” The demon smiled. “Good.”

God, I come to you as your pathetic child. Please have this demon touch me. Please let it fill me. Fuck me. Use me. Use me. Use me.

“Little priest, you are the most willing piece of meat I’ve ever fucked.”