The Illuminatus! Trilogy

What am I doing here? Joe thought frantically. Why don't 1 leave these lunatics and get back to the world I know, the world where all the horrors are, after all, merely human?

But he knew the answer.

He could not- literally could not -attempt to pass the Guardian until all those present gave their consent.

Padre Pederastia was speaking. "This part of the ceremony," he said, camping outrageously, "is very distasteful to me, as you all know. If only Our Father Below would allow us to substitute a boy on the altar when I'm officiating -but, alas, He is, as we all know, very rigid about such things. As usual, therefore, I will ask the newest member to take my place for this rite."

Joe knew, from the Malleus malificarum and other grimoires, what the rite was, and he was both excited and frightened.

He approached the altar nervously, noting the others forming a pentagon around the nude woman and himself. She had a lovely body with large breasts and fine nipples, but he was still too nervous to become aroused physically.

Padre Pederastia handed him the Host. "I stole this from the church myself," he whispered. "You can be sure it is fully consecrated and completely potent. You know what to do?"

Joe nodded, unable to meet the priest's lascivious eyes.

He took the Host and spat upon it quickly.

The greasiness and electrically charged quality of the air seemed to increase sharply. The light seemed harsher, like the glint of a sword, just as schizophrenics often described light as a hostile or destructive force.

He stepped forward and placed the Host upon the thighs of the Bride of Satan.

Immediately, she moaned softly, as if the simple touch were more erotic than one momentary contact could possibly be. Her legs spread voluptuously and the middle of the Host crumpled as it sunk slightly into her red pubic hair. The effect was, at once, powerful; her whole body shuddered and the Host was drawn farther into her obviously moist cunt. Using his ringer, Joe pushed it the rest of the way in, and she began breathing in a hoarse staccato rhythm.

Joe Malik knelt to complete the rite. He felt like a fool and a pervert; he had never performed oral sex, or any kind of sex, in front of an audience before. He wasn't even turned on erotically. He went ahead just to find out if there was any real magic in this revolting lunacy.

As soon as his tongue entered her, she began heaving and he knew her first orgasm would arrive rapidly. His penis finally began swelling; he began licking the Host caressingly. Inside his temple, a drum seemed to be beating hollowly; he hardly noticed it when she came. His senses spun and he licked more, aware only that she flowed more heavily and thickly than any woman he had known. He put his thumb in her anus, and his middle finger in her vagina, keeping his tongue in the clitoral area, doing it up right- this was the technique occultists call the Rite of Shiva. (Irreverently, he remembered that swingers call it the One-Man Band.) He felt an unusual electrical quality in her pubic hair and was aware of a heaviness and tension in his penis more powerful than he had ever known in his life, but all else was drowned out by the drumming in his head, the cunt-taste, cunt-smell, cunt-warmth… She was Ishtar, Aphrodite, Venus; the experience was so intense he began to feel a real religious dimension to it. Hadn't some nineteenth century anthropologist argued that cunt-worship was the earliest religion? He didn't even know this woman and yet he had an emotion beyond love: true reverence. Trippy, as Simon would say.

How many times she came, he never knew; he came himself, without once touching his penis, when the Host was finally dissolved.

He staggered back dizzily, and the air now seemed as resistant to motion as brackish water.

"Yogge Sothothe Neblod Zin," the priest began chanting. "By Ashtoreth, by Pan Pangenitor, by the Yellow Sign, by the gifts I have made and the powers I have purchased, by He Who Is Not to Be Named, by Rabban and by Azathoth, by Samma-El, by Amon and Ra, vente, vente, Lucifer, lux fiat!"

Joe never saw it: he felt it- and it was like chemical Mace, blinding and numbing him at once.

"Come not in that form!" the priest screamed. "By Jesu Elohim and the Powers that You fear, I command thee: come not in that form! Yod He Vah He-come not in that form."

One of the women began weeping in fear.

"Quiet, you fool," Simon shouted at her. "Don't give it more Power."

"Your tongue is bound, until I release it," the priest said to her- but the distraction of his attention had its cost; Joe felt It growing in potency again, and so did the others, judging from their sudden involuntary gasps.