The revellers’ pace quickened, building to a furious crescendo. The liquids running down the walls now flowed much faster, filling the air with unpleasant and organic smells. She wrinkled her nose and tried not to inhale but the stenches were too ubiquitous to avoid. They made her gag. They made her sick. But worse, they… woke something in her, something she’d kept carefully controlled, being a good Christian girl. This foul substance running off from the Bacchanal made that secret part of her throb, ache, beg desperately to be touched by the wandering hand that that had once earned her a rebuke and a beating from her poor mother.
The demons she could ignore. Just about. But her own body turning traitor was much more difficult to bear. This Bacchanal was much worse than any she’d endured. Or, rather, the pleasure was stronger; it fired up her spine and along her arms, through her breasts to nipples that had never felt so tender. She moaned, both in disgust and in sinful rapture, and prayed so as to keep her sanity, her soul.
The unseen drummers beat their skins faster and the smells grew stronger somehow, sending small jolts of unholy pleasure through her body with each shallow breath. Penelope dug her hands into her hair and whispered prayers, tried to think of her disappointed father and her dying mother, anything. But it was in vain; nothing halted the pleasure.
Just when she felt something building, something wrong and large and… amazing, the drums stopped. An almighty series of grunts filled the silence above her, adult and child, human and inhuman. The flow down her cell walls momentarily became a flood and the coming… crescendo in her body threatened to overcome her senses.
“Jesus, help me!” she cried.
Then there was silence. And peace.
Penelope collapsed. She wept as the cold stone wall sapped her heat. Her body urged her to finish what the Bacchanal had started but she could ignore it. She had control, had somehow maintained her innocence and her purity. But each time the Bacchanals pushed her that little bit closer to losing her mind.
Oh Lord but she had never imagined temptation so strong; almost every part of her had wanted to give in, to relent. It was a fight with her very body, her form, to not do so.
“Was this how Christ had felt during His last temptation?” she wondered. “The overpowering sin and the physical desperation?”
Slowly, she stopped her weeping her treacherous body relaxed. She was left with an uncomfortable dampness in her secret place and a coldness running through her that had nothing to do with temperature. Her tears were close to freezing on her cheeks but they would dry.
Penelope got to her quivering legs and pushed herself away from the wall, each brush of skin against skin sending waves of rapturous pleasure through her body. From experience she knew she would be this sensitive for hours.
Whereas before she’d thought the Bacchanals were being held to convert her to the dark man’s faith, now she started questioning this; why would he convert her if she was being held to ransom? Why try so hard when she was fighting every step of the way? Was it arrogant and prideful to think she would be worth such attention? Perhaps her temptation was a by-product of these evil rituals and the dark man either wasn’t aware of the affect they had on her or didn’t care.
She didn’t know which option would have been worse.
Footsteps interrupted her thoughts. She turned, skin singing with joy, and saw an orange light in the corridor beyond her cell. It slowly brightened as she watched. Someone was coming. It must be breakfast time. Penelope frowned. Though she couldn’t really know how long she’d slept, it felt too early for food.
The footsteps stopped at her cell door, leaving their owner just out of sight. Penelope turned away. What good would seeing more of her captors do beside scaring her if they were of the… unsavoury variety or sickening her if they were just men? And what good would luxuriating in the light they carried do when she would likely see no more for dozens of hours? No, better to remain ignorant and safe.
Then her visitor unlocked the cell door with a heavy key. Iron bolts slid out of place as slowly as the rising of the sun, booming when they opened fully. Her heart quickened; normally her captors put food through a hatch in the door so this couldn’t be breakfast. Someone had come to see her. The dark man had worn her down, had toyed with her and fed her God only knew what, and now he had come to talk to her.
Penelope kept her attention away from the door but her heart rose in terror. Nothing good could come of this. Penelope wasn’t sinful enough yet to pray for death but she did pray for clemency, for some kindness.
Light spilled in behind her when the door creaked open. The flickering amber glow could only have come from an old-fashioned torch, some rag soaked in paraffin. It cast a large shadow that stood over Penelope and her hovel of a prison chamber like a disapproving parent.
This visitor let her see her cell properly for the first time and little about it surprised her; it was low and stone, as she’d already found out, and indeed looked like a natural formation misappropriated as a prison. The only new detail was the colouring of the rivulets of foul liquids that ran down the walls; it was thick and white, like quality cream, and it slopped down the wall before entering a dark chasm below.
The light also showed her the corner she had been fouling for days. Seeing her own manure piled up like an animal’s, seeing a floor soaked with her urine, made her mouth twist in disgust. It left her with a shame that she treasured; in spite of the dark man’s efforts, in spite of the demons and the Bacchanals, she was still the well-raised daughter of a Senator. Though his cultists may taunt her and tease her, turn even her body against her, they would not change who she was.
Though Penelope treasured this realisation and the strength it brought, she ensured there was no pride in it. The Lord had given her this new-found resolve and He could take it away if He wished if she took it for granted. To find it in such a… strange way was a sure sign that He was with her still, even in the darkness.
Even in the depths of sin.
“So you would be Penelope Chalmers,” a smooth voice said. It belonged to a woman.
Penelope breathed as calmly as she could but said nothing.
“It’s generally polite to respond to a person,” her visitor said. Her shadow shrank a little as she stepped into the room. “And I assure you that you don’t wish to be impolite to me.”
“Are you a person?” Penelope asked, buoyed by the strength the Lord had allowed her to find in herself.
A smile entered her visitor’s voice. “I am. Just a person. Born of a woman, sired of a man, just like Penelope Chalmers.”
Penelope took a slow breath in. “That would be where our similarities end.”
Her visitor took another step forward, now stood mere feet away. “How do you know, if you won’t look at me?”
Penelope balled her fists, felt her rough and untrimmed nails digging into her palm. There was no pleasure there; she had full control of herself once more.
