A Penitent Season: Prologue.

Note: This is the (publicly-posted) prologue to a series of writings that span a 14-day period of erotic penance. I will post one every day and it will only be available to Patreons who subscribe to my writing. You can access all the writing in this series at this tag. 

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Prologue

I have been following him around the house all evening. Each time he stands up, whether it is to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen or to go check on something, I go as well. I remain at a slight distance from him, I drag my feet because I am carrying the words I am unable to say with me. They're like load-bearing shackles attached to my ankles. He paces around the living room as he speaks into the phone and I vacillate in response to his path, consumed by this fugue state of need, like a zombie driven by a singular need. The last time I felt this way was the first time I felt this way, decades ago, before I understood why or how, I followed someone around the house, unaware as to why I wanted to beg them to beat me, but completely sure I had to ask because it was all that mattered in the world. I stop in my tracks as he disconnects the phone call and paces towards me.

"Why are you being my shadow?" He asks, gripping my chin in his hand.  

"I need..." I start to say, and trail off because I have inadvertently uttered a complete sentence.

"I know what you need," he says, squeezing face inside his palm, "You will wait."

It is so hard to exist in this anticipatory state, like being the human embodiment of a raw nerve that is constantly exposed to the elements. Everything feels like it is directed at me — the wind like harpies come to carry me away, the nightfall as if it exists to foreshadow my tragedy and mine alone, the distant howling like a warning sign from a banshee of my own — I am so reactive to the entire world. It's the vulnerability, it will do something magical and horrible to the most sane individual. I offer so much of myself to him, I put no mechanisms of protection in place and even when I know for certain that all he will do is hurt me, it doesn't spur me to hide. I want him to be able to hurt me, I want it to be so easy for him, like biting a soft mint with your teeth. I want to be so known to him, he could shatter me in an instant. I want to pose no difficulty for him to defeat, I want to be the easiest victory of his life.

But he makes me wait.

I wait.

Hours later, as I kneel at his feet while he punches my arms and face, the waiting-period, formerly so capacious, seems to disappear into nothingness. As if I never experienced it at all. I sit quietly and still, I make myself small, as he flings his fists into my body without any concern as to my sentience. Sometimes it feels like he forgets there is a human being inside this flesh, I tell him that from time-to-time, most recently as he sewed me with a needle with the nonchalance of sewing cloth. I asked him if he realised that I could *feel* what he was doing to me, he told me not every realisation has to impact behaviour. But I misrepresent myself as well, at least to a certain extent, I am way less helpless than meets the eyes. This cruelty he afflicts upon me, it wasn't crafted by him alone. This state in which I sit before him, tremulous and terrorised, I begged for him to take me here. As I whimper and feel sorry for myself, in response to his blows, I know I would rather break than be excuse. As I cry and snivel, I also lift my head right back up and place it exactly where he demands it be. I have to. I must. As he pulls his hands away from my body and rests them closer to his, I begin to panic.

"Please..." I whisper, the metallic taste in my mouth pouring over onto my lip.

"Please, what?" He asks, leaning so close to my face, it feels like I could say my words directly into his mouth.

There is something I have been trying to say all evening. A sentiment with which I have chased him around our household, hoping he would recognise it without the pressure to articulate it, but I know the moment has come. I cannot avoid the exposure of my truth anyway.

"Penance," I whisper.

This is the shameful, ugly truth of the suffering I want from him. Sometimes we do ourselves a favour and indulge in the explanation of a proximal cause. *Punish me because I forgot to stand up when you came into the room. Punish me because I broke a nail. Punish me because I came too close to pleasure. Punish me because I screamed when you demanded silence.* Some nights, though, the hifalutin constructs become impossible to keep up. The truth is some of us just need to be punished for who we are. There are no mistakes from which I need him to exonerate me, it is my original sin for which I must endlessly atone. I need to suffer because it is what I must believe I deserve. I will pretend to be sorry, so sorry, for every pedestrian lapse in meaningless adherence to arbitrary rules, but we know, we always know it isn't punishment I seek, I seek to repent. There is but one season our story, it is always lent.

I am a sinner.

And he, my deliverer.

"Penance," he whispers back into my skin, I can sense his arousal, a thing so private, it feels like even I should not bear witness.

He leads me off the floor. In silence, he takes off all my clothes, this act should tell of lust but instead it feels like being prepared for slaughter. He lays me on the bed and prepares to assault my insides, it's where all the unbearable pain lives and it is the only pain I will always try to stop. I will cry and beg and apologise, but there are no lessons to learn here. This is not an apologue. This is not catharsis. It isn't punishment.

Yet I make amends.

"I'm sorry," I tell him as his fingers prepare to penetrate me in the most gruesome act of violation I can imagine.

"I'm not not here to forgive you, I'm here to make an example of you," he says and he tightens the noose inside me, "I'm not your priest, my love, I'm your executioner."

He is.

I would fight for justice if this wasn't exactly what I deserve. His fingers reach inside me and I cry out as my legs reflexively snap together. He pries them open and assaults me harder. Faster. Until I feel my insides relent and accept my fate.

"Penance can hardly be accomplished in one night, you know," he says, "Maybe you need a season of repentance."

He wants me to have a lent. He wants to turn a fortnight of being around and off work into a penitent season for me. It makes sense.

Let it be lent, then.

Please.