The Ritual Circle

When something happens, something really big, even life-changing, do you let it slip away without a word? Do you want to forget what you did, what was done to you, hoping it will fade into unscarred perfection? Or do you mull over that grain of memory and coat it and polish it until it shines like the lustrous pearl in a keepsake necklace?

Well, as you might guess, I'm the kind of person who likes to polish my memories so that I can rub them over my skin again and again. I want to re-ignite the fire of that first time, but caress the burning sharpness out it. And so I will record what has happened to me, or, really, what keeps happening to me, as long as I keep doing it. You see, I have a ritual, a ceremony of humiliation that I can't help but return to over and over. I have been a willing victim. I have given myself up into an elaborate, staged, confusing, erotic enthrallment. Close your eyes and you will see me: a pure virgin sacrifice, and yet so ripe, so wet, yearning for it. I have been formally inspected and then used, hurt, opened and forced to orgasm under the patterned hands of so many, men and women and others too. And for what? Why did I endure this? Well, because they needed it from me. And because I wanted it.

If you're a curious reader, you might wonder how I became a player in this strange world of erotic ritual. The answer is: chance. A message posted on a telephone pole. An exchange of glances with a pair of dark, brilliant eyes. An anonymous text message with precise instructions. Do the details really matter? No, not really, because if it happens to you, it will happen in a completely different way. Your summons will come to you and you alone, the way my summons came to me, through unpredictable happenstance. (Or at least, it appears that way at first.) So let's skip the details and enter deeply, intimately into memory.

Let's imagine that I have shown my interest and received my instructions. I am to go to a certain place--a tall, narrow townhouse with heritage architecture--and I am to knock twelve times, loudly enough to be heard throughout the building. It hurts my knuckles to knock so hard, but I persist, making each blow resounding and deliberate.

As soon as I come in from the street, even before the door is fully closed, I am met on each side by two figures all in white with veils over their faces. They are covered from head to toe, but I am very quickly exposed, as their milky hands strip me down to what I have been ordered to wear underneath my street clothes: a clinging black silk camisole, black panties, and nothing else. They take my shoes and stockings. My feet are cold on the stone floor, making the flesh of my arms and thighs prickle with goosebumps. The white-robed acolytes are blank as ice and just as slick in seizing and escorting me down the hall to a tall, black-varnished doorway.

I am brought down into an underground cathedral, a dark cavern that is as moist and hot as my own hollow space. The red light of torches ripples across pendulous rock walls: a cave of forgotten dreams. I am escorted by these slight figures in white --women, youths?-- whom I may not touch, though they may touch me from behind, and they do. All the way down the stairs, I am fondled and stroked in very patterned ways: first my neck, then my waist, then my ass. They pull down my spaghetti straps so that my shoulders are bared, and I clench my arms to hold the silken camisole over my breasts. I've volunteered for the ritual but I don't know what they will do to me. I only know that they need a woman like me: pure and responsive.

The cultists are archetypical in number and attire: twelve figures all in grey cloaks and hoods, standing in a circle. Their sexes are ambiguous, but I don't think they are all men. They are, however, all powerful, and they hold me pinned in their forcefield, the web of influence they generate. I am placed in the centre of the circle. Already I can feel them appraising my body until I blush hot with visible vulnerability.

"The candidate will take off her top," says one figure. It is a man's voice, a light tenor, somehow almost familiar, but coldly impersonal in asserting his authority over me.

I shiver even in the heat as I pull the camisole over my head. It slips from my fingers and vanishes, carried away. At his command I lower my arms to my sides and turn around slowly, displaying my firm, high breasts to the circle. I am embarrassed to realize that my nipples are already taut. I want to cover them up, but I can't make a move without permission. And the next order only exposes me further.

"The candidate will remove her panties." This voice is a woman's, rich and resonant with hunger. I am moving before I realize she has commanded me, as if my own desire anticipated what she asked. I pull down my panties and step out of them, baring my most intimate parts. I bend over to fetch my panties from the floor, an act almost more humiliating than stripping them off was. A white-robed acolyte steps forward to take them. To my dismay, they are not borne away discreetly like my camisole was, but are handed around so that everyone can see the slick patches of wetness staining the crotch. Several of them sniff or touch my wetness with bare hands. I feel like they're getting a taste of me through their fingertips. Oh gods, what have I got myself into?

Next comes the inspection proper. There are twelve of them in a circle that closes tight around me, and each one comes at me from a different angle, one at a time, while the others watch on. I am approached from behind first, so quietly I don't realize what will happen until a pair of hands roughly seize my ass. The hands run down my legs, the way one appraises a horse, lift my feet, then run back up my waist to feel my shoulders, the back of my neck. The hands run up through my long hair, ruffling and then smoothing it in a perversely intimate fashion. Finally, they return to spread my cheeks, one finger pushed against my asshole and another at the very base of my sex from behind. I tremble and moan, and receive a hard slap for my protest. The sound echoes, but this time I stifle my cry.

The second figure comes at me from behind but at a slightly different angle, focusing more on my right than my left cheek. And so they continue around the circle, leaving not part of me uninspected. From the front angle, at least four sets of serial hands squeeze and pinch my breasts and spread my lips, stimulating me until my wetness begins to leak down my thighs. On each side, the ticklish flesh on my ribcage and inner hips is brushed to live-wire sensitivity so that I can barely stand still. The circle completes behind me, with a final blow applied like a seal to my burning bottom.

"The verdict?" Says one voice. All together and unanimous, they answer,

"She is the victim."

And the lights all go out.

I honestly can't say whether I am relieve or terrified to be selected. There are rustling sounds in the dark, currents of air against my skin, and I want to cry out, 'What's happening? What will you do to me? Oh please, have mercy, be gentle with me!' But I am a victim and I have no voice.

When the lights come on again, there is a stone altar in the middle of the room. It is genuine, massive, rough granite, not a prop. I have no idea how they placed it there so silently. I could hear the rustling of robes being dropped, but not the sound of a monolith slotting into place? It's too strange. But I barely have time to think about it, because my thoughts are occupied by the transformation of the figures.

Each one has shed its robe, and now all the figures are attired in nothing but leather straps that emphasize their varied genitals and the stylized masks of animals. I think there are six men and six women at first, though a couple of the figures are ambiguously sexed. There are birds and beasts. One seems to be a fish. Some are highly symbolic power animals --an owl, a stag, a wolf, a bear-- but others are obscure, almost random: an okapi, an armadillo, a heron. They are of various races, but all are fit and strong in their way, be it the whippet strength of a runner or the stocky rhinoceros heft of a wrestler. I feel incredibly fragile before them. Any one of them could snap my slim wrists in their hands. I fall to my knees instinctively, in a posture of worship and supplication.

"I am the victim," I whisper. "Please take me. I am ready to die."

The figures, faceless as they are, seem both approving and amused.

"You will die many times, victim," says the stag. It's a woman's voice: an antlered female. "And you will beg for each little death. Now, onto the altar."

I stand up, but hesitate to get on. Aren't they going to make me, to lift me bodily and force me?

"We must see you do it yourself." Hisses the fish.

And so, awkwardly, I climb up. I am still shifting my weight and settling my bottom on the edge of the stone when all the animal-faced cultist surge forward as one. I am grabbed by the hair, by the throat, by the breasts, and pulled down. They grab my legs and stretch me out, thrashing and pulling me like a chew-toy between them. I scream despite myself as my wrists and ankles are bound to the corners of the altar in iron manacles. My legs are pulled wide apart to bare my sex, and my breasts too are completely exposed. A wild mood has taken over the group, a holy ecstasy. Every single thing that happens to me seems at once completely purposeful and utterly spontaneous. They take turns working on me, at first singly, then in twos, threes, fours. And before I know it I am begging for release, for orgasm, and eventually for a halt, a cease to my endless stimulation.

The quick, dark-skinned okapi lashes out first, striking me across my entire body with a crop made of some tough, springy wood, while the armadillo stands by laughing at my cries. He plays skillfully across each breast, hitting me several times in a row and then staying his hand just long enough for the pain to settle in before thrashing me again. It's as if he can feel what I feel and knows exactly how to make me hurt the most. He doesn't stint on my sensitive belly, my abdomen and inner thighs. I beg him not to strike between my opened legs, but when he does I find I'm saying "yes" as often as "no"; I feel so subjugated and yet so stimulated that I am almost out of my mind.

Once my flesh is softened up, the animals begin to take it in turns to degrade me and use my body for their pleasure. The woman in the mask of a fish has me lick her, eat her out, as she crouches over me searing me with a heated metal shaft. I am terrified that she will stick the shaft up inside my sex and burn me beyond repair, but though she gets to the top of my shaved mound, she knows others need to have their turn. She burns and burns me until I bring her to orgasm, her juices salty as the sea on my tongue. Tasting it, I almost come with her; my body spasms and my hips arch. The figures murmur in appreciation.

"A worthy victim," I hear a voice say. I am deliriously happy, though I suspect it will only make them use me harder. And I am right.

The man in the rhino mask is so big. His shaft is so thick and hard and long, and I, though a grown woman, am a virgin, still narrow and tight. When he takes me, it is like being torn in two. At the same time, the owl-woman and the cat-boy stand behind my head and grip my shoulders and breasts in their claws, pushing me down, keeping me from escaping. The cat-masked youth begins to kiss my face, to lick my tears away. Is it kindness or a very twisted, perverse cruelty? As the rhino thrusts into my screaming flesh, the cat's tongue on my face and throat stimulates me and again through all the pain I feel myself cresting, coming to the edge, almost---

But he explodes inside me before I can come myself, and when he withdraws I'm left gasping.

"Please, please!" I sob incoherently. "Oh let me! Oh make me! Please make me come!"

The tone changes. The intent focuses. I have said the words that bring us to the next stage of the ritual. The wolf approaches me, androgynous and beautiful, and produces three clips worked in elaborate gold metal. All the others stand back. The wolf places a clip on each of my nipples. Instantly, I feel a tingling pricking sensation. They are...electric? Magnetic? Resonant, in some way I have never experienced before. The wolf holds me in suspense for long moments before finally attaching the last clip to my clitoris. I arch instantly, my body flowing. It feels so intense I think I might black out. The sensation overwhelms me and I buck and thrash hysterically as I'm caught in an orgasm that begins in my clenching feet and spreads up, like a wave of fire through my entire body. I can barely scream, barely breathe; I gasp at my peak with tiny high-pitched noises.

But something is happening to me. The sensation isn't ending. I feel caught and held at an intense point of stimulation, and they are not taking the clips off of me. No, not at all. Instead, they are each taking the opportunity to violate me while I am completely helpless, one at a time, hungrily, as if seeking to capture and swallow some part of my grace. With each of their culminations my already ongoing orgasm spikes again, impossibly, unbearably. The men penetrate my body's every orifice, often touching each other or one of the women as they do it. The women suck and enter and manipulate me --and each other—with hands and lips and mouths and breasts in dizzying profusion, so that I can barely tell body from body, myself from them. I do know that the stag is the final one to take me, the hermaphrodite antlered female, mounting and riding me slow and hard with I know not what; a carved dildo, her own flesh, some organ entirely new and unseen in history, I can't see I can only feel it huge and hot inside me. Is this a hallucination? I am being torn apart, they're devouring me, and I'm begging for it, begging for an end to what I wanted and cannot stand, begging for ultimate consummation through ultimate sacrifice. 'Make me your victim,' I want to cry, or really do cry, I cannot tell. 'Make me your victim, and finish this! Now!'

After that, darkness.

Yes, I was sacrificed. But clearly I'm still alive. After all, I polished this memory up and posted it here for you to read. The major difference, the change that ended one life and brought another into being, is that I belong to them now. I am their favourite, their eternal victim. Because what makes a ritual is repetition. And so it must be done to me again and again. I always want it. I am always pure the next time. I always end this way. I would have it no other way. This is my ritual and it turns my world, season to season, life to death and back. And so I go now to complete once again what I've always begun and never yet ended: the ritual circle.