Part 1
Lucifer's Lover

Lucifer

***

I have a secret. And I have to tell someone. But I cannot tell the demonic legions. Well, I could, but the amount of time I would spend punishing them for snickering would greatly reduce my relief at unburdening myself.

So that leaves you. Now, some of you might laugh. I know humans too well to believe otherwise. But before you do, just remember, my dears, that just like Santa Claus. . . I know when you are sleeping . . .and I know when you've been bad.

Oh, yes! I am more or less omniscient. Not like the Big Guy but, still, doesn't that just send chills up your spine? Wonderful spasms of sheer terror? Good, my darlings, good. I like to establish the playing field before I start the game.

And now for my secret.

I have taken a lover.

But that doesn't do my predicament justice now, does it?

Let me explain. Ah, where do I begin?

I met her at a club in Los Angeles. Very fitting, I thought. It was a fetish club and my favorite den of sexual iniquity. Not surprising since one of my favorite pastimes, when I'm not promoting hate and sparking violence, is spending a little time toying with your sexual hang ups. I used to teach you, but man-o-man, now I go to you for lessons, baby. And I take those lessons and I find some repressed, self-conscious victim and I teach them to love the dark and twisted perversion that waits for them deep in their soul. Of course, they begin to hate themselves so much for loving it that the guilt eats them up inside. And then they really become capable of some sick stuff. It's beautiful! But I digress . . .

So, I met my lover at this club. The kind of place where a bound man being lashed with a whip or a woman prancing around outfitted like a pony are merely playful appetizers. The real kinky stuff is going on in dozens of rooms behind tasteful red velvet curtains. And you part those curtains at your own risk.

My lover's best friend had brought her there for a laugh. And this friend had thought that she needed one because it was the anniversary of a nasty break up with a guy she'd never quite gotten over. Her friend dragged her here and there, peeking behind curtains, giggling, and generally acting like an idiot. I would have enjoyed awakening that one to her inner most deviant desires. I would have enjoyed her degradation and the plaintive sounds of her begging for more would have been music to my ears.

Ah, there I go again.

Digression is my middle name. They say that behind my back, you know. Yes, they do. I'm like a kid in a candy store. So much evil to do and so on.

Now back to my girl, the relatively unremarkable young woman who intrigued me so much. She blushed at some of the things she saw but she didn't giggle. She understood something about these people even though she was not one of them -- not exactly.

Everyone always looks at the -- well -- the receiver, don't they? They look at the poor shmucks who like it how they like it and they don't even notice the person giving them exactly what they paid for.

But the fine female specimen who had caught my eye, deep down she was one of those that administered the sensations and drank up the resulting response. She was a priestess who could take what supplicants offered and love them for their sacrifice...she just didn't know it yet.

And, so quite unlike myself, I sauntered over to her, introduced myself, and let her take me home.

I know what you're going to say. There are lots of people who like to dominate, who have a taste for the sadistic.

Yes, I know! I taught them everything they know. I unleashed them on you people. And I never before had the inclination to offer myself as their training ground!

I am the tormenter, I am the accuser, I am the tempter of mankind!

Of course, not for the reasons that you think, but I'll get to that later.

The truth is that I have absolutely no clue why I went with her that night. I would like to say that it was devilish mischievousness, but I think it was something closer to boredom, desperation . . . insanity. You can take your pick.

Whatever it was, I found myself, in her room, naked, and oh so fascinated with what she might do with me.

It was awkward that first time. She knew what she wanted but couldn't know what I would like. Of course, I couldn't help her there because I had no idea either. Oh, I've had sex, oodles and oodles of sex, but I'm the guy that screws and leaves unless I'm playing your twisted sexuality like a musical instrument. On this night, I was at a disadvantage.

And, yes by the way, angels have bodies. Or more correctly, we have the potential for a physical form, when we want one, for the purposes of communicating with you monkeys. I can make myself as firm as you are, he he! I can appear however I like but I have true form both in the spiritual realm and in the physical one. My spiritual form is as horrific as you imagine that it would be. It is the direct opposite of the angelic glory that I once possessed. But my corporal form . . .Damn I'm hot!

Where was I?

Ah yes, the first time was awkward and she didn't have the necessary, uh, equipment. But we managed. And now the woman has a toy box that shames the depths of Hell, boys and girls. It has only been a three months but . . . .

The smell of leather turns me on now, the jingle of chains makes my mouth dry, the crack of a whip makes my little heart race.

The noises I make for her alone are enough to make Caligula blush.

And I keep going back. I keep finding myself at her doorstep. I know when she is home, obviously, and I go to her before I know what I'm doing. She opens the door, lets me in, and sends me to her room. And I go.

I go and do for her what I refused to do so long ago.

My little disappearing acts are making the natives restless but the fallen host is far too scared of me to do anything about it. At least not yet.

And why do I go back, you ask? Why would I let her do such naughty things to me?

Where do I start?

In the beginning. . .in the beginning I was a servant of the Most High, just like you've all been taught, I was his most devoted servant, the closest to His throne, but after that the story deviates. It wasn't until after you were created that the trouble started. I hadn't even noticed you, by the way, I hadn't even turned around and said "Oh, look at that." I had my adoring eyes fixed exactly where they should have been and then He turned to us and said that we must bow to His new creation. A creation that was superior to our angelic selves because He had put Himself into you.

Did I get jealous? Did I act pridefully and refuse? No! And yes.

I loved Him, ladies and gentlemen, I loved Him. He had formed me out of nothing and made me His perfect servant. He had whispered in my ear that I was for Him alone and that I was to bow to no other.

And then He threw me away, boys and girls, He found a new plaything and He tossed me aside. But I did nothing more than question this strange order. I hesitated and others with me and we were summarily removed from His presence. I didn't understand. I still don't.

Where we exist now there is nothing. Infinite nothingness upon unending nothingness. A Hell of emptiness when we used to be surrounded by and filled with His love. And in that hole, there is agony. Imagine being heartbroken, in mourning, and lonely at the same time. Imagine having a headache, toothache, and earache all at the same time.

Now do you see why we are drawn to your little planet? Now do you see why your corruption is so thrilling? It distracts from the aching. It's really that simple. Nothing dastardly about it. You are the interactive reality show that keeps us from wallowing in our anguish.

Okay, you say, so what does this have to do with the fact that yours truly has started to take his coffee with a dash of pain?

Well, you might start by asking yourselves what His presence must really be like? Hmm?

It is . . .intense, to put it simply. It was an all-encompassing experience of love and joy and. . .

I was a flaming orgasm, basically. Not the alcoholic beverage, obviously. A literal incorporeal orb of burning ecstasy where pleasure and pain were one and the same and I sang out in rapturous worship. Neat, huh?

So when my lover, mmmm, my mistress decides to use my body as the scapegoat for wrongs done to her by other people . . .

Firstly, I cannot be permanently damaged and so I have no fear. And secondly, your kind of pain is nothing to angelic pain. The searing sting of a lash is more akin to the burning rapture of Heaven than to what I feel when I am alone in my Hell. She gives me a taste of Heaven and she doesn't even realize it.

And when she is done with me, she always takes me to her bed. To comfort me . . .To reward me. I am always hard before she has untied the last knot and she thinks that it's because the pain turns me on. That I anticipate the pleasure I know will follow. But I am already satisfied.

I have suffered what she has asked me to just as I used to endure His presence and love Him for allowing me to. So my poor, confused body offers her pleasure for what she has done to me and I am always strangely surprised when I find myself shaking with my own.

And more often now when I go to her I find myself lying with my head in her lap instead of bound and at her mercy. She pets me, running her hands over me like I am a skiddish horse that needs to be calmed. And I just lie there and let her stroke me like an obedient lap dog.

She has discovered more subtle forms of submission and that she only has to open her hand to have me eating out of it. I have become her ardent and compliant lover. And making love to her is its own kind of Heaven.

There is one rule in her bed however. One doesn't climax before she does. I learned that lesson the hard way only once. I'd never bothered with such niceties before but it seems wise to humor her.

She doesn't know what I am, of course. I'm just a man to her. She calls me Luke and I call her Mistress.

And she possesses me. I go there to be possessed. To remember what it feels like to belong to someone.

It is to these depths that I have fallen. That I go to a woman and I kneel and I give myself over.

And I think I'm falling in love with her.

It terrifies me. But not for the reasons you probably suspect.

I may be ruined but I remember what love feels like. What my love feels like. My love is selfless devotion. My love is absolute trust and worshipful adoration.

What I have to give, she would never understand. She only sees a man turned on by pain, a man who likes a woman to dominate him. She could never comprehend the angel who transcends what she understands as pain and humiliation, who feels at home in her possession, who actually yearns to do nothing but obey. There is no sacrifice I wouldn't give for the one I love.

Sometimes I think I was a sacrifice. One that was needed to bring you into existence. But that doesn't stop me from hating you.

You are why I have hurt for so long. I no longer have a divine purpose. I have been spent and what's left of me lingers without direction. He doesn't even bother to stop me from corrupting you. He simply ignores me. He turns his attention to you.

Don't you know how much I long for him to stop me? To exact a punishment and take me home or just destroy me?

But there has been no absolution because there has been no one to forgive me. No one for me to belong to.

Until now.

Oh! You're going to love this! Until now! Until precisely a week ago, and again last night mid-. . . well, let's just say mid-grand finale, I said some things. Well, more accurately, I sang some things.

Ha! I sang words from the Gloria! Just a few mind you, but I haven't been able to so much as think about that little ditty in millennia. I told her it was Icelandic.

But the best part, oh, the best part is that a twisted place inside me isn't sure if I sang to Him or to her. Don't you just love it when you find new and inventive ways of blaspheming? I know I do!