PRINCE OF LUST

by Lucien Burr

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

Thirty-five dreary years—thirty-five wasteful years! It shouldn’t have mattered anymore. It didn’t matter anymore. I ignored the anxiety sent by God to deter me and gave up all hope of redemption. Let the Devil have me.

I lockpicked not for God but for myself. The thrill was a pleasure of its own. When the lock shuddered and gave way, opening to me with a full-bodied click, I saw stars. My heart was racing, and my mouth was in an impossible smile—I was doing something for myself.

I knew who had called to me. Who else could it have been? If I had been projecting my lust and my desire—decades worth of it bubbling inside me—then who else but the Prince of Lechery would reach for me? Asmodeus.

In order to summon him, you must be filled with true desire for him. Draw the symbol. Draw blood. With the same hand that drew blood, touch yourself as you wish to be touched.

I lay the scroll out in front of me, where Asmodeus was depicted in graphite that had faded long ago. I saw horns, the lick of a tail. I saw a broad, well-defined chest ghosting over the old paper.

God had been a detour, and pleasure was the only thing I wished to worship.

Something kissed me, though I could see nothing. This presence began to learn my body and acquainted itself with my lips and my teeth. A warm tongue filled up my mouth and flicked over my incisors. I moaned throatily. Something sharp tore at my lip—I screamed out as the wet metallic taste pooled under my tongue. I buckled. My body twitched, confused as the conflicting sensations sparked in my brain. The pain, the pleasure—claws teased my skin, which split open under the invisible press of a large hand.

Standing there, watching this thing materialise and knowing I wasn’t going to run, knowing instead I wanted to stay, I realised maybe Bishop Jonah had been right all along. There was something wrong with me. There was a terrible desire in me, and there had been all along. Maybe my entire life. And the other thing, the worst realisation of all: if this was a test from God, I was going to

“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 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.

Asmodeus dragged its clawed finger against my jaw. I breathed in. The scent of the demon was richly vile, sweet, and enticing, and I let it enter my lungs, almost grateful to breathe in its presence.

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.

Oliviero was mumbling a prayer, hands moving instinctively in the sign of the cross and blessing me in the same way. I did not feel blessed. I felt trapped.

After coming so close, after being so hard and so willing to let Asmodeus, Prince of Lust, have its way with me, there really was no going back. God’s collar lay abandoned on the floor. I did not kneel to pick it up. I wasn’t God’s anymore. Perhaps I had never been.

By sunrise, every priest in the place would know what kind of sick man I was. By that point, it wouldn’t matter. I’d belong to the demon, not to God.

I laid the head of its cock beneath my tongue like holy communion and let the precum seep there. I took it into my body spiritually, and I felt it. I felt then what my brethren had claimed to feel all along. God’s voice in their ears, God’s light, God’s love. I had this. I had Asmodeus, Prince of Lust. I had the ecstasy of sex and I worshipped it gladly.

“I could do whatever I want to you, couldn’t I?” it murmured. “My sweet little priest.”

“Masquerading as a priest all these years. I can’t think of a greater sin. Not when your hole is hungry.”

The urge to be filled was one that grew from the core of my belly and pulled like gravity. I’d take anything. I’d take its tail again. Its clawed fingers or my own hand. But, dear God, I wanted its cock.

Pain blistered across my cheek, but when I opened my mouth, I was smiling. Self-flagellation is not new to me, and this? This felt not like religious discipline but ecstasy.

I risked title and station and honour, my very life, my mortal soul, to summon it into existence. I haven’t been God’s for a while. “No,” I told it. “I’m yours.”

“I’ll never say another prayer to God in my life if you fuck me hard. I want you. I want all of you. Make me a fucking mess.”

I would worship it more keenly than I have worshipped God and with a feral need for it. I would walk gladly into Hell to taste it again. To be had by it again.