Lucifer's Lottery

“I ask you once more, Mr. Hudson. Do you wish to proceed?”

Hudson could feel the sweat pouring out of him. He wanted to say no, and he wanted to leave, but instead?

“Yes.”

“I thought you would.” And now she had the plastic bag again, and reached in. Hudson grimaced before she even extracted the contents: the rotten head of a baby.

The small face had dried to a rictus. But then Hudson noticed something even worse. The top of the head was missing.

The deaconess threw the head through the hole in the wall, where it landed, bouncing, in the scrub-laden backyard.

“But I thought—”

“That I needed it for a ritual of some sort?” the gleaming woman finished. The nipples on the high breasts stood out as if she were sexually frantic. “Not the head itself. This. The skullcap.” And from the bag she produced just that: the top of the infant’s skull, which had obviously been sawn off. At once Hudson recalled the smudged coping saw at the church.

She’s really been busy.

“The brain had already putrefied.” She showed him the inside of the empty dome. Then she raised her brow at the prostitute. “I’m afraid the newborn of our friend here wouldn’t do. It hadn’t lived long enough to be touched by Original Sin. It had to be this baby, from this house.”

“And what did you call this house, earlier?” Hudson asked.

“A Bleed-Point,” she said, her bare, flat stomach glistening. Droplets of sweat beaded in her pubic mound like clear little jewels. “Think of it as a sieve.”

“A hole between here and Hell?” Hudson figured but couldn’t believe what he’d said so convincingly and with such nonchalance.

“Yes, but only a semidimensional hole. A viewport, so to speak.”

So if I look through this hole, I see Hell? But when he did it was still just the mangy backyard in view. He paused and narrowed his eyes, to glimpse a raccoon waddling away with what was left of the baby head.

Good Lord . . .

“Come on, I gotta crack it up,” griped the prostitute, scratching at imaginary bugs on her stomach. “When can I go?”

“Be patient,” the deaconess assured; then her eyes returned to Hudson’s. “You’re still under no obligation. You can still leave.”

Hudson churned in place. Haven’t I seen enough? Now he was genuinely beginning to want to get away from all this.

“But why not continue? You can even say no after you’ve taken the tour.”

The tour . . .

She smiled thinly over the exorbitant breasts. “And I can assure you, it’s quite a tour.”

“Let’s continue,” the words clicked in his throat.

“A venturous man, and a wise one . . .”

Really? Hudson wondered. I’m standing naked in a ghetto house with a deaconess and a crack whore for some—some Satanic purpose. What, though? A tour? What could that mean? Foremost, Hudson thought of himself as a Christian. He believed in the power of God, and in his own salvation. So why would he want to go on a tour of Hell?

Maybe . . . seeing Hell will make me a better priest . . . After all, Christ descended into Hell after his Crucifixion, only to reascend on the Third Day, the resurrected Son of God.

The house creaked. The veil of candlelight wavering on the attic walls seemed to darken . . .

“Over here now, my dear,” the deaconess said, positioning the prostitute behind Hudson.

“What the fuck’s this all about?” she protested.

The deaconess touched her shoulder. “It’s about you earning your money, just as Judas earned his.” And then onto Hudson’s bare back she squirted a liberal amount of baby oil from a small bottle. “Rub your hands around, dear, his back, his buttocks, his legs, but in motions like this . . .” The deaconess then put a hand on Hudson’s back, and through the oil made motions that were invariably like sixes.

“Like sixes,” she said. “You do the back, I’ll do the front.”

The prostitute frowned, then proceeded.

More warm oil was applied to Hudson’s chest, and then Deaconess Wilson’s adroit hands began to massage it in. She smiled, rubbing six after six after six over his gleaming skin.

Hudson stood petrified, arms and legs rigid at the luxuriant sensations that seemed to envelop him. Never in his life had he been touched so directly, so intimately by women. This is the ultimate tease, he thought, gritting his teeth. The prostitute’s hands swept slowly about his clenched buttocks, while those of the deaconess smoothed over his nipples, then down across his stomach, then—painstakingly— around his groin and over his inner thighs. The sensations began to crush him, and when he looked down, his arousal was plain.

“He needs to be stimulated till he can’t see straight.” Now the deaconess’s grin looked vulpine, her hands stoking him. “He needs to be titillated till he’s fit to burst. He needs to be bursting with sperm.”

Madness, Hudson thought. Each sixlike motion over his slick skin made Hudson feel as though he were standing on a high wire. Now the deaconess urged herself right up against him. He cringed in place as the large, slippery breasts slid over his skin. The confusion blankened his mind until all he could contemplate was lust even as he strained to resist it. She bowed his head down, placed a nipple in his mouth, and whispered, “Suck . . .”

Hudson did so, uncomprehending. The nipple swelled in his mouth to the size of a bonbon; meanwhile, her hand played over his stomach, then slid to his genitals, which caused him to lurch. Fingers teased him, not overtly, but only traceably.

All right, I can’t let this go on anymore, he determined, but then the woman’s fingers seemed to sense the thought, and began to fondle him more pointedly.

“Harder now,” she told him, and switched nipples.

It seemed the harder he sucked the nipple, the more of his will drifted away. Suddenly, Hudson was lost, lost in unreckonable sensations, lost in this brazen sin of flesh. His erection throbbed against her hot belly as the fingers played further. He was sucking the nipple so obsessively that sometimes he forgot to breathe, which caused him to break, gasp, and then begin sucking again. One of her hands played with the back of his head, as a mother’s might. Hudson had to wrap his arms around her to keep from falling.

The deaconess chuckled in his ear. “They were definitely right when they told me you’d like this.”

They, Hudson thought, but kept sucking.

This went on for minutes and minutes; Hudson was cross-eyed when she pulled her breasts away and then actually looked at her watch.

“You’re . . . timing this?” came the nearly delirious query.

“Oh, yes.”

He managed a frown, even as the voracious sensations rose. “Let me guess. Sixty-six minutes?”

“Of course,” she whispered. “Only thirty-four to go now. Try to enjoy every one of them. The more excited you are, and the more seed you produce, the more positive the conduction.”

“The conduction,” he groaned. His penis felt strained. It felt like a spring about to break.

The desire to climax was excruciating, and his desire for that to happen wiped his mind, even as his unheard thoughts stretched like rubber bands: I can’t-I can’t-I can’t let this happen . . .