I touched his cheek, warmth at long last flowing through both our bodies. “One must kill the progenitor to restore the followers; and we, Nathan, have been restored, followers no longer.”
Again he nodded. “And will you leave me now, Eric? Leave me as he has left us?”
I held his hand, leading him out of the forest. “No, Nathan, I will not. You are all I have left of him.” I turned to face him, the smile returning yet again. “But when I dream, and oh how I long for that moment, I will see his face, see the endless abyss in his eyes, his insatiable desire for me, and I will remember him, forever and always.”
Though forever, of course, had been obliterated for the three of us. It was a forever we were never to have.
Insula sacra!”
The monk’s voice filled the hollow oratory.
“My holy island! Protect me from the heathens invading your shores!”
Brother Dónal remained inside the stone oratory that evening, fasting and illuminating a sacred manuscript. The shadows against the stone walls attended him and a damp draught penetrated his flesh. He fastened the rope around his habit in a restraining knot and listened to the crash of the sea against the rugged coastline outside. For hundreds of years the embattled cliffs along the West Coast had defended the island from barbarians. But tonight, the Normans were drawing near. They came by sea, as the Celts had come long ago, in the hopes of sacking Ireland.
Quickly, Brother Dónal composed a letter to the Bishop in Dublin. His pen quivered. The short, lean strokes trembled across the parchment. He was brief, outlining the situation and no further, afraid an elaborate letter would disturb the Bishop. In the stone oratory, Brother Dónal worshiped without supervision and his unorthodox practices were tolerated from afar. The Monastery knew of his proclivities; word had spread among the Brothers. His intimate knowledge of the pagan population was evidenced on the manuscript page by obscure Celtic symbols which were forbidden by the Church.
“Inishmore and the Aran Islands are conquered!” he wrote without breathing. “The barbarous Normans travel in fishing boats, surprising and attacking the mainland. Forget about me! I am already captured, enslaved by the primitive rites of these heathens! Your Grace, heed this warning. Protect Dublin!”
The pyramid-shaped oratory, which three generations of monks had built on the isolated coastline, now crumbled stone by stone with every lashing of the wind. Brother Dónal prayed for deliverance. He prayed for protection. The demonic world was strong this evening; he could sense the rapport it shared with Satan. Depraved souls and the Devil’s tireless legions were occupying the land, bringing with them all manifestation of evil. In his anxiety, he thought he heard the sound of copper helmets in the distance and the clank of iron swords marching towards his chamber.
The Normans are coming!
But it was only the rain striking the iron crosses in the cemetery…
For a moment, his heart weakened and Dónal felt his soul slip by. He closed his eyes and begged for mercy from the pagan gods. In betrayal of his true faith, he implored the vulgar servants to watch over him. Surely they knew the countryside better than the Saints; surely they had means to quell the oncoming storm. Alone and in their dark company, Dónal entertained a host of tragic endings for Ireland, such as enslavement by the Norman lords or blood sacrifices in nearby villages. The offences to Irish body and soul would only be the start of the Devil’s perdition!
Suddenly, the cemetery gate opened and a fist assaulted his door.
A trembling voice shouted, loud and hysterical, calling his name.
“Dónal! Dónal!”
Brother Dónal recognized it not. Quickly, he covered his manuscript, fearing it might be a Norman invader seeking to pillage his sanctuary, or worse, another cleric who wouldn’t approve of his obscene illustrations. In his manuscript, Dónal had generously populated the borders with stout Celtic characters instead of the Saints. The hairy male figures danced amidst the Gaelic letters with erect phalluses and red buttocks. If the beacons of the Church saw his lewd artistry, they’d strip him of his habit and cast him into the dungeon with the unconverted knaves, rapists and rogues who would gladly defile a renegade monk through the night!
Dónal pondered this torture and he rather fancied it, so he opened the door wide.
“Brother Dónal, help me!”
Young Fionn, a village farmer, glowed in the moonlight like a Celtic deity. His long hair draped his forehead and his luminous eyes gazed at Dónal with a pleading expression. Brother Dónal stood back, alarmed at the sudden appearance of the youth. Many farmers visited the monk during the day, bearing crops for his meal or performing small repairs outside the oratory. But never had one appeared this late, at the very hour the sun fell down.
“What purpose brings you here, my son?”
In the youth’s frightened face, Brother Dónal perceived a millennium of rural Irishmen, rugged and homely but loyal to their country. For ten generations, Fionn’s clan had struggled to protect the West Coast of Ireland from hostile invaders, and many had died for the cause. Tonight, in the footsteps of Fionn, their steadfast spirits marched towards the present to seek Brother Dónal and warn him of the impending attack.
“Do you have word of the Normans?” Dónal asked in a pressing breath. His eyes glanced at Fionn’s bulging pockets, which concealed some rural elements: a squash and two potatoes, modest sustenance for the monk’s dinner. “What do you hide in your trousers, boy?”
“Brother Dónal, I’ve sinned!”
The farm youth opened his palms and bowed his head. A whimper escaped his lips. Under quick inspection, Dónal saw the stains upon Fionn’s hands. It wasn’t blood or dirt or splintered wood from a farmer’s tool; instead, thick streaks of robust semen lined his hands, slowly drying. The fluid stuck to his palms and bore the impression of a virile erection. Fionn dripped more beads of cum from his fingertips and they speckled the black stones at his feet, mocking the house of prayer. Shame covered Fionn’s face and he turned from the Brother.
Dónal shook his head. He prayed silently for salvation while eyeing the farm boy’s sweaty buttocks. They were moist and firm, partially exposed from the recent charge up the hill. Dónal knew what had occurred as clearly as if he had witnessed it himself. The impending night had frightened poor Fionn. A multitude of temptations had visited him in the field. Serpents, sinners, and probably a Succubus! The dark enticements menaced the boy with charms and kisses until he was forced to obey their sorcery. Unveiling his manhood above the virgin soil, they rushed through his body and boiled the semen in his loins to such a steamy ingredient that it fired from his member in creamy heaps.
“Come in here!” Dónal ordered, glancing into the night. “Let’s clean that up.”
This wasn’t the first time young Fionn had fallen from grace. The traps set by the pagan spirits often found him a willing prey. On many a stormy midnight, Fionn’s farm in the lowlands was besieged by the souls of unburied chieftains, warriors, and blood-spirits. They elicited mischief in the sheep, uprooted vegetables in the garden, and whispered libidinous thoughts into young ears. Weekly Fionn sought the sanctuary, bearing filthy hands or clutching an incorrigibly erect penis; and Brother Dónal would summon original ways to forgive Fionn’s sins, like a sponge bath around his loins or a towel dipped in goat’s milk and applied tightly to the offensive member.
He forgave Fionn, for in his heart Dónal knew that the boy was as innocent as the earth upon which he labored. It was the other villagers, those unrepentant Elders, who were at fault. Every winter, the Elders performed heretical ceremonies intended to conjure the ancient spirits and expurgate Ireland of barbarians. The superstitious sacraments by the old-timers only roused the Celtic spirits to wander the desolate lowlands, hungry for a sacrifice. And when invaders were in want and the spirits grew bored, they persuaded chaste youths like Fionn that his manseed was theirs, by ancestral law, and demanded proof of his filial loyalty. As sunlight beat upon his face and warmed his round flanks, they induced him to litter the broken ground with his Irish cum. Fionn obeyed, masturbating upon the stones day and night until he was weary and withered. He ignored Brother Dónal’s warning about sensual temptation and once more spoiled the earth with the seeds of his race.
Dónal bolted the door and sat the young man on his stool. He kneeled into Fionn’s lap, shaking his head solemnly, and scrubbed the coarse hands with an unused rag. Farmer cum dries thick, so it was very hard to peel off. But the monk assumed his duty with humility, rubbing each finger, curling them to the palm and massaging the knuckles. Fionn’s hands grew bright red like the figures in Dónal’s manuscript. And his cheeks blushed like polished apples when Dónal found more cum starching his cuff.
“When will you learn to distinguish cum from communion?” Dónal asked.
“I don’t know, Brother,” Fionn confessed. “But when it starts growing, I need to pick it up like a plough and work it until it breaks!”
Rolling up a sleeve, Dónal eyed Fionn’s forearm. Blond hairs covered his limb and sprouted from his armpit. Dónal frowned and kept his thoughts private. Irish youths rarely inherit such soft, light fur. Fionn was clearly a bastard child, his mother the victim of a Nordic raid twenty years prior. There were many such bastards farming the land, begotten by aroused Norsemen who traveled as troubadours in disguise or pretended to be lost in this infertile land while they secretly scouted villages in anticipation of attack. They played their tin whistles in the ear and bosom of any farmer’s wife and planted their oppressive seed too deep to uproot. Dónal could hear Fionn’s mother cry out and her clit twitch as the fake troubadour startled her with the size of his jangling flute!
“Brother Dónal!” Fionn cried. “It’s growing again!”
Fionn exhibited no self-control. He let his woollen trousers drop to his boots and spread his thighs. Between them, his swollen cock rose from a flurry of blond hairs and dominated his waist like a flesh-pink altar.
“Put that away, Satan!”
“I can’t! It’s too late!”
By the size of the member, Dónal understood at once what afflicted Fionn. A field fiend! The malevolent spirit of a peasant or vagabond who had died by the impaling kick of a donkey or ass! It had locked itself inside Fionn’s body, probably when the boy was pissing or squatting too low to the earth. It possessed him through that rear orifice and encouraged wild, animal cravings in his gut. Fionn’s manhood grew engorged, filling with all the unruly lusts of the fallen spirit. His wide thighs extended farther, supporting a boner that loomed in the air, claiming the center of the oratory and mocking the sacred vessels that Dónal so highly revered.
Fionn clutched his cock.
His face grew red.
He began jerking wildly.
“Let go of that abomination!” Dónal warned.
Fionn clasped his hands behind his back, wrenching and squirming on the edge of the stool. The hand job in the field was not enough. Fionn’s cock perched on his lap like a billowy gargoyle and demanded deliverance of its own device, in a sanctified hole that secretly desired damnation. The sacred oratory was inimical to the phallus as it slithered about Fionn’s lap, seething with cursed juices, and sensing the penitent Brother.
“Insula sacra!”
Brother Dónal gasped.
The possessed penis hissed.
“Fiendish spectre abiding in this boy, I cast you out!”
The sneering serpent fluttered its golden scales burning irreverently in the candlelight. When it saw Dónal, it shrieked. Its pink head pierced the atmosphere. It began blandishing scorching ejaculations at the Brother, contaminating his robe.
Dónal hid behind his hood as he was assaulted with cum. He reached for a weapon, his manuscript pen or book of prayers. But these instruments had not prepared him for the lewd testament. How do you observe prayer with a provoked peter?
Rocking upon his knees and chanting a verse, Dónal recalled his novitiate days at the Monastery, where he was routinely chastened for being too radical a monk. He once solicited the Abbot for extracurricular favors, such as inviting celebrity clergymen to the cloister or hosting Gaelic saga readings in the cellar. His attempted worldliness may have perturbed his Order, but they never conceived he would one day hear the confessions of a man’s loins or presumed he would endure such a carnal covenant. There were no passages in
The Book of Kells
instructing a shepherd on taming this sort of sheep. Perhaps in the Egyptian
Book of the Dead
?
At once, the repressed energies in the oratory convulsed. The diabolical dick sought a virgin to impregnate. With each fiery discharge, Fionn’s seed perverted the century of prayer that protected the oratory. Following the path of a thousand martyrs, Dónal stood alone; no sermon could shield him. Dodging the dick-eye but covered in cum, Dónal’s own unspeakable cravings awoke from the prison of his vows.
Not long ago, in Dublin, he had seen the cock of a cleric slip out of hiding in broad daylight to fuck a whore in the alley beside the chapel. Dónal had witnessed the accursed assault firsthand and secretly desired it for himself. He wished he had been that insatiable harlot, wearing her cheap amulets and receiving the cleric’s charity in his own gaping asshole. The forbidden vision haunted him, preying upon his days, until he begged the Bishop to be sent away, far away, to the barren cliffs of the West Coast where he could purify his soul from all temptation.