A Small Voice

Chapter Eighteen

"For out of the heartproceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, falsewitness, blasphemies."Matthew 15:19

All I had to contend with now was just myself and time. Time kept moving, albeit slowly, and as if sensing Rachel's arms not around me, the loneliness quickly crept back in. We tried to stay close, but in the mandatory and arbitrary, non-physical way. The way the college dictated from the beginning. Religion had once again won. We talked on the phone every night, I'd see her at class, ate lunch together in the cafeteria, but it was all platonic. It was unnatural. Picture something you love more than anything, and you're forbidden to touch it, to hold it, devour it.

Did Adam really have a chance?

Rachel continued getting into the school sports programs and the college choir, which robbed even more of the limited time we had together. It would be an understatement to say it made me feel jealous. Why would she want to sing hymns with her classmates instead of being with me? To her credit, she constantly encouraged me to join in, but I hated sports, and had my fill of religious music. I chose instead to foray into non-religious tunes, learning rock and grunge. I was secretly playing modern music on my guitar alone in my dorm, instead of playing the religious songs from the college worship band—those same stupid songs I played growing up in the church band. I wanted to strum out the songs I used to hear at Charlie's. I made sure to wear headphones plugged into my amp, since we weren't t allowed to listen, let alone play, non-Christian music. If I turned up my amp and rocked out, I was pretty sure some keener in my dorm would rat me out. Nirvana, Peal Jam, and Metallica became my way of passing time, even though—no surprise—embracing the music also made me feel guilty.

To be honest, secular music was not my only stress relief; there were also the memories of Rachel's perfect body. Brief, subtle and fading montages of an angel. I justified my fleshly instinct by continuing to picture her in the purest way possible, recycling that same memory of her running away in the woods, her white dress dirtied. Unfortunately, my mind, tapping into something primal and satanic, would conjure up images more sinful...as if it was an uncontrollable reflex. I would become possessed by lust. Painting her lain down in the fall leaves, millions of shades of brown and green engulfing her like an autumn shawl, only her loose white dress illuminating from the forest floor. I would lie down beside her innocently, placing my large hand on her tiny ankle. I would push my fingers down the back of her calf and with a graceful swipe, take off her silly little sock—she loved little novelty socks, the ones with ironic images. Feeling her pronounced ankle, I would rub each dainty toe with my thumb and two fingers. My dick would become hard and enlarged. I'd move my mouth slowly to her foot and touch the tip of my tongue along each perfect digit, while I now clutched her heel in my palm. She would quietly moan. I would as well, and much more.

For a few weeks, that would be all I needed to climax. I few soft strokes of my hand and I would cover my boxers in passion, or hide my release in a shower's warm mist. I would feel bad, but not unpardonably. After all, my imagination did not go too far. Putting my hand in a drawer and firmly closing it or pulling a handful of my thick blond hair would expel the guilt quickly. I did not undress Rachel in my mind. I did not defile her now spiritually innocent body.

Yet, after time, my lust and my imagination evolved. The limits of morality stretched to the breaking point.

One night, when my loneliness became almost unbearable, I crossed the line. It seemed that only spiritual depravation could soothe my depression.

This time I licked the top of her small foot, while moving my hand up her inner thigh... Up, up, until I felt her moist cotton underwear stuck to her wet vagina. I pulled the bottom of the satin to the side with three fingers while inserting my index finger into her warm cavity. I pushed, she moaned, I added my middle finger and pushed again, harder. She moaned louder. I added two more and pushed aggressively. She said I should stop, begged for me to, but I kept thrusting my hand until her pleas of restraint turned into moans, loud and persistent. With my other hand I grasped her soft dark hair and pulled it tightly. She cried in pain, then in ecstasy, as I kept pushing my fingers in her. A rhythm of pain and lust was coming out of her audibly until her belly thrust upward and thighs clenched tight on my forearm. One last loud moan rang out and she came suddenly. She slapped my cheek hard with all the momentum her small body could generate. It hurt my face excruciatingly, like the sting of thirty bees.

Pushing me on my back, she dropped her soaked vagina on my face. I breathed her in as deep as my lungs would allow, then pushed my tongue into her. She unzipped my jeans and pulled out my dick. She sucked it hard, then took her mouth away and slapped it with her tiny hand. She sucked it again, and then slapped it again. It was now my turn to experience the rhythm of pain and ecstasy.

In the darkness, alone, my hand on my dick, my body vibrated with the powerful sensation of a massive organism. There, in my dank dorm room, time stopped. The loneliness was gone, my depression reversed, anxiety morphing into peace. It felt like Heaven.

Then, like the breaking of a dam holding back a whole ocean of water, all the issues that plagued my mind rushed to the surface. The remorseful feeling for defiling Rach was overwhelming, and the longing for that perfect but fleeting moment of peace was devastating.

Flooded by regret, I showed Christ my penance by way of my leather belt, beating myself until my arms gave way and my back was raw.

Over the next days and weeks, it became a regular ritual. Defile my girlfriend in my sinister imagination, revel in the few seconds of orgasmic peace, and then purge my deviant behavior with the leather, the inside suede stained with my own blood.

The growing guilt had a large enough impact on me psychologically that it became even more difficult to sleep. Even with the regular flogging, leaving me broken, tranquility avoided me. Every night was a blur of lust, pain, ecstasy, guilt, and finally penance, but never rest. The brutal self-harm that I relied on to dissipate the guilt, and provide tranquility, now robbed me of any benefits. I could empathize with a junkie; the thrill was gone.