Second Circle

She let him up to serve her right breast, which he did with gusto and abandon. She held him against her naked skin with a vise-like grip, never wanting to let him go. Tears streamed down her face as she felt the vast emptiness lifted from her and the universe flowing into her.

Her body was on fire now, and her hands urged his head down her trembling torso to quench the the conflagration at its source. His forked tongue slithered down her tummy, over her pierced navel, and then to her clit. It lashed out at that source of evil, lapping it as she grabbed Sammy's head and forced it against the core of her being. She felt the velvet of his three-piece suit beneath her upper thighs as her legs were lifted and spread, and her body became defenseless against the demon's violation. His head ground down on her mound, and she pressed it against her, as the pleasure grew and grew. His split tongue found its way deeply into the passage from which all life flows, and she shuddered over and over again as she baptized his face with her essence. She held him against her for a few minutes, never wanting to let him go.

Then came the reawakening of the darkness, the emptiness. She knew she was evil, but could not remember why. She must be destroyed. She tore the good doctor's suit off him, just as he had ripped the dress off her own poor helpless body. He was going commando, as was the case for all properly attired citizens of the Second Circle. The demon kicked of his red stormtrooper boots and Lilith ripped off his socks, revealing his cloven hooves.

"Must be a bitch going shoe-shopping with you," Lilith told her now naked desensitization therapist.

He smiled at her with his now yellow snake-slitted eyes. "It's amazing, what you can make from human skin," he told her with a wink. "No need for a cobbler in the far reaches of hell, which is fortunate, as a shoemaker's life is far too boring to ever gain admission to this, my grandest of dreams."

Azazel now appeared to her in his true form, replete with ram's horns, Leviathan cock, shark's fangs, razor claws, three-foot barbed tail, and many other accoutrements too numerous to list here.

Lilith also dropped her disguise, as her demon past began to come back to her. She unfolded her leathery harpy wings and bared her snake's fangs. The gray skin of her chest erupted, as her huge succubus breasts revealed themselves. Her dark, haunted and sleepless feline eyes matched the demon Samael's serpentine stare, but her hunger was deeper. Far deeper.

She swirled her tail as she snaked her tongue over Azazel's eyes and then ran it across his needle-like teeth and down his torso. The demon shuddered as she plunged his massive goat's phallus into her hungry maw, raking it with her teeth, while her claws opened rivers of blood that flowed down his chest.

Spreading and beating her wings, she began to draw the demon's lifeblood into her lungs and straight into her pounding heart. She wanted to leave him empty, just a wrinkled sack of skin on the consulting parlor floor.

Azazel exploded in her mouth, and she eagerly drank the demon's half-spawn, pulling his very essence inside her. But the demon's cock somehow retained its power, forcing her to climb up his body and mount him, squeezing her torso against his, her demon milk mixing with the rivers of blood pouring down his chest. Azazel tried to withhold his core, but he could not hold out against the succubus's gigantic breasts and the frantic beating of her wings. Once again he exploded inside her. She went limp, reduced to a leathery blanket covering Crazy Sammy's limp body on the velvet consulting couch.

After a few minutes Lilith rose, baring her fangs and flapping her wings. "I am ready for your pathetic test, demon," she said, looking down at the sorry creature through her cleavage. She flew off his body and positioned her hands near the cuffs on the cinderblock wall. She spread her legs so that her ankles were near the shackles on the floor.

"Are you coming, Worm, or is your fear too strong?"

Crazy Sammy Azazel reluctantly rose from the comforting soft velvet of the consulting couch, trembling as he retrieved the keys from the pocket of his discarded vest. He walked over the Lilith and yanked her head back by her hair. "Are you ready to taste the power of Satan, you dirty little two-bit whore? When you feel his fire on your pathetic little body, you will cry out for death. But it will be not granted to you."

Azazel slammed her body against the concrete wall, her breasts squeezed into its coldness. He locked the cuffs on her wrists. He traced his way down her lithe naked back and over her buttocks with his talons until he reached the manacles on the floor. He spread her legs widely and locked the shackles around her ankles. He rose behind her. He teased her anus with his tongue and her clit with the fingers of his right hand, always careful to deny her when her gasps told him she was ready to climax.

She heard the creak of wood, as he opened the equipment box.

The first lash of the cat o' nine tails cut her clean to the muscle. The second followed almost immediately. The pain was exquisite, and she knew that she owned the demon now. Her legs buckled as the third lash opened her skin. She knew his desires were becoming uncontrollable.

She could not see the demon behind her, and jumped when his goat's cock slammed against her buttocks and tail. She felt his razor teeth as they scraped the skin over her carotid artery. With a single bite, the demon could end her life (at least this one). She shuddered at his total control over her body. He reached around and grabbed her gigantic primordial hooters, teasing her nipples with his sharp claws and sending shudders of delight up and down her spine. He rammed his goat's cock into her, burying it to the hilt, knocking the wind out of her, and he shoved his thrashing tail two feet up her ass.

He seized her right ear in his fangs and flicked his forked tongue in and out of her auditory canal. She went deaf as he punctured her eardrum, until his split tongue tasted her naked brain. She heard the foul concerto of the screaming damned as he played it directly on her cochlea and the delicious auditory cortex of her temporal lobe.

His strong goat's legs sprung over and over again as his furry cock pounded more furiously in and out of her birth canal and his acid tail scored the depths of her bowels. She thought her spine would surely break, but suddenly the goat's haunches stopped thrusting and his foul juices filled her womb. The inner heat over came her and she came and released her bladder at the same, shooting her waters all over the demon's lower body. They stood there motionless for a few minutes, until the demon spoke.

"I think you're ready for the main attraction," the fiend said. "Welcome to the Second Circle."

SECOND CIRCLE

He ushered her to a door with the standard yellow saw-horse wet floor sign in front of it. While the top warning was the usual "Caution: Wet Floor," the expected Spanish version "Cuidado: Piso Mojado" did not appear underneath it. In its place was the warning "Omnes relinquite spes, o vos intrantes." Although the warning was in Latin, Lilith was easily able to read it: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here." The warning above the gates of Hell. She ought to know. She wrote and painted the original, as a warning to herself.

She smiled. She was home. It all came back to her now.

The world beyond the gate was filled by the stench of sulphurous smoke and the screaming of the damned. She grabbed the quaking pseudo-demon Crazy Sammy Azazel by his oily hair, threw him into the clouds of brimstone, and listened to his screams as hungry demons slowly, so very slowly, tore his body apart.

She would have handed her coat to the hatcheck girl, but it was merely human skin (with a couple of demon wings thrown in) and thus worthless in this realm.

She felt the emptiness of that human skin, which longed to be wrapped in its kind, to be surrounded by a crushing womb of its own fabric. She was in a vast cave of skin, its stalactites and stalagmites gigantic throbbing phalluses longing to impale her, tortured by the emptiness of the air that surrounded them. The stalagmites futilely stretched for a kiss from their stalactite mothers. Together, they comprised the cave's teeth, poised for the terrible bite that would end the world.

Lilith walked over over Hell's tongue until she reached the Devil's master fangs. Her hands caressed the living giant stalagmite phallus that stood before her. She licked the underside of its hood and ran her hands up and down its length, throwing her arms and wings around it and squeezing it, trying to prime Hell's acid pump. One beat of her wings brought her nether mouth to the pinnacle of the Devil's rod. She briefly opened the shaft's single eye and peered down into the acid depths of the True Hell. Her cunt was wet and dripping and could be denied no longer. Lilith spread her legs and impaled herself on that monstrous organ, feeling it spread her apart as she bounced up and down on its cruel length. Even as the phallus tore through her diaphragm, spread her lungs, and filled her totally, she could still feel the emptiness of air on her skin, the blackness that consumed her from within, and the taunting vacancy of the Other, which remained forever unobtainable, just beyond the reach of her being.

She longed for more, and called down the stalagmite's mate. She opened her mouth to receive its communion and felt a stabbing pain as the upper phallic stalactite punctured her throat, sliding down her esophagus while its mate ascended her trachea, each grinding lasciviously against the other. Lilith came time and time again, and felt the boiling sperm that shot out of Hell's phallic teeth with each thrust inside her.

Still it was not enough, and she called all of the Master's fangs to fill her body, and they grew like serpents, snaking their way around her trembling torso, penetrating her ass, her ears, her eyes, and then tearing open new orifices that pulsed with hitherto unexperienced forms of pleasure. They fought each other to feed on her clit, and Lilith could feel them slithering through her brain and heart. Her body shuddered as she came over and over again, and she could feel the hot ocean of sperm rushing through her bloodstream.

Still the emptiness remained, and she yearned for more, something to heat her in this vast frozen vacancy that passed as the humans' pathetic universe. She was uncountably pierced, yet her spared skin cried out for comfort, to be wrapped completely against the cold empty air.

It was then that she saw the tranquil Sid Gautama floating before her. He was wearing the orange robe of a monk and his head was shaven, as always.

He smiled beatifically at her and whispered, "You must control your cravings. Life is suffering and the cause of suffering is unfulfilled desire. You must still your mind, become one with the emptiness. You must have no mind, no soul. Spread yourself on the wind. Then you will be everything and everything will be you.

"This is all just a dream and you are the dreamer. Spread your wings on the ether and awaken in samadhi, the peace that passeth all understanding.

"And just before you become perfection and the Godhead itself, consider leaving your unworthy illusory material possessions to the Temple of the Golden Pavilion, conveniently located at 77 Sunset Strip in the heart of southern California, the Shangri-La of spiritual perfection. We are featuring a double tax deduction on donations, but this blessing will only last until Labor Day, so get those donations now before it's too late. Remember, with a donation of $100 or more, you get a free laughing Buddha key ring and tote bag, and a donation of $1000 or more will get you one incarnation closer to paradise.

"Until then, this is Sid Gautama, Edd "Kookie Byrnes, and the late Don Cornelius bringing you love, peace, and OHMMMMMMMMMMMMM."

Sid had told her these things a million times before, she remembered. However, despite his utilitarian fund-raising tactics, she knew that Sid had truly laid the road to spiritual perfection and escape from suffering before her. In their past encounters, they had even explored the sexual techniques of tantric yoga together, and she would have to fight those tingly memories if she were ever to be released from the Wheel of Karma.

Again she sat in the lotus position, imagining a single flame before her. She needed to get it right this time. She practiced prana breathing, taking the air deeply inside her lungs, holding it and slowly releasing it. She stilled her mind completely, becoming both pure nothingness and the universe itself. The devouring mouth of Hell faded and was replaced by a vacancy even more impenetrable than the blackness that preceded it.

She was nothing now, no soul, no body, no mind. She held this state of perfection for what seemed like eternity as the Wheel of Samsara spun on and on.

But then perfect nothingness was broken by a pinprick of light, one last flaw to draw her back. She watched the blackness as it reformed around her, reflecting the duality of light and darkness. She supposed that the light was God, or perhaps just another iteration of the Big Bang. As it grew larger, so did her fear. She hoped that she was not in another birth canal and the light was not the beam of a head lamp worn by a spelunking obstetrician waiting to catch her as she was ejected from the womb like a screwball thrown by Fernando Valenzuela. Anything but that.

Of course with each death a world dies. And a new one is born.

FULL CIRCLE

A beeping signal blaring into her ears forced Lilith Lokisdotter to open her eyes, which blearily focused on some guy on TV delivering a middle of the night spiel. He wore a crimson three-piece suit over a black satin shirt and matching crimson tie, and sported a Van Dyke beard. His hair was slicked back and black as night.