Hypnotised, she felt a force animating her hands to molest her body roughly. Had she felt the compulsion to resist she would have been unable; but she didn’t. She closed her eyes and abandoned herself to Pleasure.
‘This body is the vehicle of this soul, both of which are dedicated to thee.’ Leah replied. ‘May the utter prostitution of both teach those who follow!’
Immediately she felt hundreds of hands clamouring for space and the privilege of groping her naked body.
‘All ecstasies end in this!’ the voice shouted suddenly. She opened her eyes and beheld the Great Sphinx, about four hundred metres in front of her, and the majestic Giza pyramids looming behind. Looking down she saw she was clothed in luxurious red and gold robes; her arms and neck, adorned with sumptuous cobalt blue jewellery. She felt no disorientation, and knew what to do. She began to walk and with each step the ground rushed under her feet, speeding her towards the Sphinx which essayed resplendent full facial features quite different to the worn image which graces the photos of history books. She floated between the paws and turned to face the blazing Sun, flanked by priests who had appeared from nowhere. She raised her hands in worship and began the supplicatory chants those at the Abbey performed every sunrise. A warm breeze began to blow and, alarmed, she watched as her hands began to blow away like ash…
She awoke anxiously and after a moment of disorientation realised that Aleister had begun penetrating her while she slept. Savouring her confusion she immediately clasped his waist and aided him in his furious thrusting. She closed her eyes again and threw her head back as she felt great pulsations of pleasure shoot around her body from her root chakra, but Aleister forcefully grabbed her by the chin and jerked her face back around to look at him. She saw the Giza sun of her dreams in place of his eyes, burning the knowledge she desired into her, and felt the presence of the others in room who began to chant.
A knock at the door jolted Leah from her memory.
‘Ms. Hirsig?’ It was Fran, the house Madam.
‘Yes?’
‘We have a client. Are you ready?’
She was naked. She usually wore lingerie to greet a client, but her mind was still under both the Giza and Cefalu suns, which the petty routines of a Parisian brothel refused to acknowledge. ‘Send him in.’
The door opened and a young man, not older than twenty five, tall, and relatively good looking shuffled in.
‘A spiritual worm’ Leah thought. ‘From gods to worms… what a devalued cunt I possess’
‘Virgin?’ She asked curtly.
The young man convulsed suddenly as if to remonstrate, but a look in Leah’s eyes punctured the vanity of his protest and he conceded, deflated, to her wisdom.
She walked over to him. Her face barely came up to his chest and he could easily have overpowered her diminutive frame and yet she seemed to tower above him. She grabbed his penis through his trousers and squeezed it. He winced, but didn’t resist. She yanked and he instinctively laid his hands on her as if to push her away but exerted no force. She yanked again, harder and watched his face crease from pain and no sooner did she see this than she released her grip and began to slowly undress him till he was naked.
‘Money, worm’ she ordered.
Immediately the young man scrambled around searching the pockets of his clothes which lay littered around him. Eventually he collected the right amount. Leah gestured with her head to a silver dish on a table behind him. He shuffled over to the table obediently, deposited the money, and then shuffled back.
‘Lay on the bed, worm’ was her next order.
He sat on the bed, shuffled back and lay down. Leah crawled on the bed after him and took his erect penis in her hand. She scrutinised it, smirked, and likened it to an Egyptian obelisk, the shaft of Osiris. She bowed her head in respect and then straddled the worm and eased herself onto him. He whimpered in a way that struck her as pathetic. She mechanically worked her hips, eliciting more whimpers and grunts from the worm as she idly looked round the room till her eyes fell on the Parisian sun beaming benignly through the French windows of her room. To Leah the light felt spent, bereft of the potency it had had in Cefalu or the Giza of her dream, and the emptiness brought tears to Leah’s eyes which she suppressed as the worm came.
…the warm breeze continued to disintegrate Leah’s body into ash and disperse it through the plains until her body had been blown away completely and the rich robes, necklaces, and bracelets lay gathered on the ground. Disembodied, her consciousness remained, perceiving the scene from every angle. The procession of priests completed the rites to the Sun, collected the mound of redundant apparel, and then proceeded into the pyramid. The consciousness then expanded to encompass the earth, and then transcended time. Leah was resurrected standing inside a stone room which she intuitively knew to be the King’s chamber in the pyramid of Cheops. It was lit by four torches in each of the corners of the room and she saw that she wore one continuous robe which ran up one side of her body, around her head, and down the other side, occluding her breasts but brandishing her vagina…
As soon as the worm left the Madam poked her head through the door.
‘We have another one. Get ready.’
Leah nodded. From the other side of the door she heard Fran reassure the client that Leah would only be a minute. She glanced at the clock and saw that the worm had been the beginning of the lunch-time rush and the flow of clients would be almost constant for at least an hour. She sighed and walked over to her wardrobe. She opened the door, took out a purple satin negligee and sat on the bed.
Over the next two hours Leah accepted a constant stream of men. With the exit of each, a piercing regret of increasing intensity shot through her, and at every gentle rap at the door which signalled that she should ready herself again, she returned to the memory of arriving in Paris three months previously, deeply shaken from the humiliation and shock of her group’s expulsion from Sicily, the effects of drug withdrawal, and, most devastatingly, her break from Aleister. They had founded the Abbey together to establish a sexual and spiritual utopia which would facilitate the Great Work, and for some time this vision seemed to be tangible and the during the morning worship of the Sun each day she felt cleansed of the petty chores of the illusion others call “life.” Upon her arrival in Paris she came to the brothel, feeling no shame in whoring her body, as during her time at the Abbey she had accepted the title of Whore of Babalon, which Aleister had conferred on her; and felt it to be a divine undertaking. Looking back now, she cursed the threads of fate which had presented her before Aleister. She thought back in agony at the acts she had committed on others and permitted upon herself. She thought about the Ritual of the Crossing of the Abyss, how she sat in the circle, naked, feet tucked under her buttocks, with her back straight, like a disciple of peaceful Yogic rites. Aleister stood before her, dressed in a black and olive robe, with one arm held aloft and the other softly swinging a lamp of incense which filled the room which a claustrophobic fragrance. The others stood, hooded, against the walls.
‘Soror Alostrael! Sacred whore! Art thou willing to witness the rites of those that wish to pass the Abyss and become Masters of the Temple?’
‘There is no “I” which can resist.’
‘The Whore of Babalon speaks! That which resides across the great Abyss in the Sphere of Understanding. May the first initiate come forward.’
++89
The door opened and the Madam stuck her head through.
‘You okay? We got another one here. Busy today, isn’t it?’
Leah offered a passive smile. ‘Uh huh…’ she grunted. ‘“There is no ‘I’ which can resist”’ she had said, ‘…well, let’s get the next one in here.’
‘At-a-girl!’
…in the King’s chamber an altar appeared. She laid herself upon it and immediately the walls of the room disappeared and the congregation was under a bright mass of stars which bore their light down onto her with a force she had never known, with a clarity which whispered encouragement and wisdom to her of the unearthly rebirth awaiting in the arms of Orion…
At just after half past three, a client left and no knock immediately followed. She rubbed the inside of her legs and heaved a sigh. In the past two hours she had pleasured more men than most women pleasure in a lifetime. Some of them had asked to be ridden by her, some had asked to take her on top… a lot had asked to take her from behind, while a couple had paid more to penetrate her anally… while others were content to be brought to orgasm orally. She touched her lips and thought of the millions upon millions of sperm she had tasted. She usually spat the sperm out into a handkerchief but one of the men, immediately after coming had grabbed the back of her head with one hand and held her nose with another, the shock of the movement caused her to involuntarily swallow. She had slapped him and yelled for the madam who quickly burst in accompanied by a burly man with a knife. Fear shook the client, who immediately began to apologise feverishly, emptied his wallet onto the bed, and was then kicked out. Looking back at the incident Leah thought it comical, and smiled. She thought of the sperm being ingested by her body, broken down by her stomach's acids for any nutritional worth. It was now part of her.
A soft knock at the door and the madam poked her head in again. ‘We got one more… tell you what, after this one, why don’t you have a break for a bit. I’ll tell anyone that comes to come back in thirty minutes.’
‘Yes please, Fran! I’d appreciate that.’
‘No problem, doll. Okay, you ready?’
‘There is no “I” to resist’ she had said, ‘Sure, let’s have him… he'd better be an Adonis!’
…one of the priests struck a gong several times. The air throbbed with anticipation. Another priest came upto her, solemnly bestowed a ring upon her left hand, and kissed it. She sat up and yet another priest approached her, offered her a cup filled with a pungent liquid the fumes of which made her head reel. She took a deep breath and gulped down the liquid. The priest then drew a symbol on her forehead with his thumb. Memories of her childhood washed through her mind…
No sooner had Leah slipped into her negligee a short, fat, bald man, probably in his late forties bounded in.
‘Good afternoon! My name’s Randy. I’m an American.’
He was by far the ugliest client of the day. She immediately imagined his fat, naked body, replete with puny erect penis jabbing away at her vagina. He smelt too, and a few seconds after he closed the door she felt herself chocking on his odour of sweat and cigars.
‘From New York?’
‘Yeah, how’d you know?’ He walked over to the window and peered out, ‘Sun’s gone in. Shame. It was nice earlier.’
‘I grew up in New York. I recognise your accent.’ She looked over at the window and sure enough the sunbeams which had graced the floor through the window earlier had disappeared.
‘Oh yeah? I’m going back later this evening. I’m just in Paris on business. I come a few times a year. How long’ve you been in Paris?’ He asked jovially, undressing himself casually as he spoke.
Leah sighed and looked at him.
‘You okay, sexy? Randy asked.
‘Yes!’ Leah affirmed, ‘…I’ve only been in Paris for a few months. I was in Sicily before that.’
‘I love Sicily. Say, can I start by sucking your breasts?’
‘If you want.’ Leah walked upto him, held the back of his head and allowed him to suckle her like a babe as his hands roamed over her back and buttocks. After a few minutes he ordered her to suck him.
She lowered herself onto her knees and started sucking him, slowly and softly at first… and then more aggressively. Her disgust of him inspired the fiercest disgust in herself, which in turn inspired fantasies of biting his penis off and spitting it in his face, his blood spurting onto the floor.
‘Whoa! Whoa! Calm down honey! I want to use that soon, y’know.’
‘You want to fuck now?’ Leah asked sharply.
‘Yeah, I really do… y’know, you’re a real fox. You gotta real sweet face, but you’re a wild one.’
She thought back to the first hooded figure that stepped solemnly into the circle.
‘There will be no more knowledge. There will be no more bliss.’ The figure announced. It was a female voice.
‘There will be no more power. There will be no more beauty.’ Leah replied.
The figure raised the hood to show lips, bent in slowly, and softly kissed Leah on her mouth. Then a black hood was placed over her head, blotting out the material world but opening her inner eye to infinite vistas she beheld with the same wonder which she had beheld the communication of the stars that lit the skies of her dream.
‘There will be no more knowledge’ The others in the room chanted, ‘There will be no more power. There will be no more beauty. For this is the Palace of Understanding.’
She then felt two tongues circling each of her nipples and another tongue which sought out her clitoris.
‘You have no idea’ She replied to Randy, smirking. ‘Anyway… what position do you want?’
‘On top.’
…a gong sounded and she was outside the pyramid again, lying atop the head of the sphinx, the smell of incense hung heavy in the atmosphere. She watched as the pure sky blue peeled away and a presence emerged. Her body quivered in anticipation and through the eyes of the figure that descended she recalled the shame she would feel in a Parisian brothel… in another reality… in another time. For the future incarnation of herself wracked with shame and covered in fig leaves, she felt tremendous pity…
‘This is the palace of understanding’, the robed figure announced with an eerie finality. A moment later Leah felt a warm liquid running down her head… and knew that the first blood of the ritual had been shed. Hands rubbed the blood over her naked torso as she felt another initiate approach her, announce ‘This is the palace of understanding’, and a new tributary of blood pour upon her.
Randy slowly inserted himself into her fully and pushed his body onto hers. The smell was nearly unbearable and she felt like she would vomit.
After all the members of the group had shed blood upon her, her hood was removed revealing the congregation standing naked around the circumference of the circle. Aleister stood before her, dominant, his majestic penis fiercely erect.
‘So the blood has been spilled upon the Whore of Babalon’ he proclaimed, ‘Those assembled have shed with their blood their attachment to illusion and entered into the City of Pyramids beyond the Abyss… without names.’ He reached a bloody hand between Leah’s legs, felt her ripe wetness, spread her legs and was the first to enter her.
…the presence coalesced into a form of infinite beauty, a celestial hermaphrodite with two Suns for eyes, long black hair speckled with stars, and holding a sceptre which as it approached closer to her, she saw was a giant snake. The being rested the snake between her legs. It slithered up her body until it reached her head whereupon her consciousness left her body again, only this time beckoned by the being which she somehow recognised as herself and not-herself…
Randy grunted furiously, poking at her ineptly. Suddenly she recognised the degradation she had suffered since her arrival in Paris and celebrated in the wisdom that had led her there. Her shame was the door through which she travelled back in time to the ritual enacted that glorious day when after Aleister came inside her she took the semen of all the other men present, as did all the other women present in a glorious interminable orgy which in itself was the means which to step into a realm of eternal knowledge in the City of the Pyramids… and as Randy grunted his final triumphant grunt the room grew bright from sunbeams of the Giza sun.
Roman James Hoffman is a poet and novelist born under the sign of Sagittarius in a small industrial town in the Black Country, England, which he spent most of his life hating. Since then he has lived in London, Beijing, Tokyo, and currently resides once more in London. His writing explores identity, consciousness, sexuality, and morality in a challenging and confrontational way, often employing brutality and beauty in equal measure. He can be contacted at rjhoffman@hotmail.co.uk, and has been known to blog at romanjameshoffman.wordpress.com.
