“It’s a cult classic!”

That’s how Harry sold me on the movie.  I’m pretty sure cult classics are supposed to be movies you’ve at least heard about, but Harry insisted that Neptune’s Harpies was a treasured Halloween staple that he saw every year.

“It’s like Rocky Horror Picture Show,” he explained as we walked across campus.

“I’ve heard of Rocky.  I’ve never heard of– what was it again?”

“Nepture’s Harpies!  Mike, you gotta come see it with me!  Normally me and my brothers go see it at a drive-in, but it’s playing at that little place down on Bundy St. at four, and it’s only six bucks.  Pleeeeeease?”  Harry shot me the puppy dog eyes.  I couldn’t say I was particularly interested in Neptune’s Harpies, but Harry was always a cool guy, and knowing this was a ritual he had with his brothers made me feel honored that he had asked me.

“Alright, let’s go,” I agreed.

Harry pumped his fist in the air.  “Yeah!!  We should ask your girlfriend, too.  It could be like a double date.”

I raised an eyebrow.  “Who’s your date?”

“…I’m pretty sure Geena can handle us both,” said Harry with a sly grin, elbowing me.  I laughed; he had no idea how true that was.

We walked to her apartment briskly, crunching the fall leaves under our shoes and huffing against the chilly air.  Harry promised to share a joint with me once we got there, and I found I was looking forward to Neptune’s Harpies even if it was terrible.  Getting stoned and spending some time with Harry in the afternoon, all of my classes done, sounded like a relaxing time.

We were both bundled up in sweaters; Harry was wearing a beanie over his mop of thick, curly hair.  He’d grown a small goatee, probably in an effort not to look like a girl; he had a thick mane of locks that would have turned most sorority girls green with envy.

I got out my key as we approached the steps to Geena’s apartment, knocking as I entered, but it was as silent as the grave. 

“Aww.  I was hoping she’d be in.  She’s cool,” said Harry, flopping down on her sofa, ripping off his hat, and pulling a clear plastic bag from his jacket.  There were three joints in it, like he’d been expecting her.  He probably had.  You couldn’t help but notice her; she carried herself like a queen on campus, full of poise and grace.  But she wasn’t stuck-up about it.  She smiled at everyone, and it was impossible not to smile back.  Plus, since the air had gotten chilly, even the thickest sweaters couldn’t quite contain the perk of her nipples, and lately I’d noticed a lot more glances her way whenever she shivered and the outlines appeared on her breasts.

Harry was a shorter guy, just the right size for ogling at that perfect pair of tits.  No wonder he wanted to invite Geena along; no wonder he was making himself comfortable in her apartment.

“Guess we’ll have to split hers,” I said, half-joking as I pointed to the joints.

“Sure, man.  Can you handle it?  This stuff’s pretty strong,” said Harry mildly.

I was surprised at the offer but grateful.  “Yeah, absolutely,” I said.  I fished a lighter from the pocket of my jeans and tossed it; Harry raised an arm almost lazily and caught it with ease.  Harry had a way of doing everything like that, as if he was trapped in a happy little slow-motion bubble.  In fact, the most excited I’d ever seen him was when he brought up Neptune’s Harpies.

I flopped onto the couch beside him and plucked a joint from his hand.  He lit me up, and I took a deep, heavy drag.  It was the dankest weed I’d ever tasted; one hit and I felt like I had joined Harry’s slow-motion, mellow bubble. 

I passed it to him, stifling a cough as the smoke settled in my lungs.  “Wow.  That is— that’s pretty good stuff, Harry.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty good,” he agreed.

“So what’s Neptune’s Harpies about?”

Harry sucked on the end of the joint before he answered, holding the smoke for a moment before sighing it out.  “Oh, man, it’s great.  Really gruesome horror!  There’s like, this cult of succubuses–”

“You mean succubi,” I interrupted.

“Suck-you-bye?  Maybe later, Mike,” said Harry, and both of us broke into laughter that got louder and louder every time we passed the joint back and forth.  I was surprised when Harry lit up the second; we were both stoned from the first, but it felt rude to refuse, and when I looked over at the clock I realized we had plenty of time before the movie.

Oh, shit, the movie!  I’d forgotten about the movie.  “So there’s a cult of succubi–” I began, and we both started giggling again.

“A cult of succubi, who, once a year at Halloween, have to perform a ritual sacrifice with two victims before November’s dawn, or they get turned into ash.  But their victims have to know who they are for the ritual to work, because the victims need to feel scared of them specifically.  And every year, the sacrifice needs to create even more terror for their victims, so every year it gets crazier and crazier.  And the twist ending is that they’re the ones who made the movie so that their future victims would know who they were when they came for them.  Oh, shit, sorry, I ruined the twist.  Anyway it’s mostly about the ritual.”

“So… it’s torture porn?” I asked skeptically.

“It’s art,” huffed Harry.  “And it’s based on a true story.”

“A true story that involves a demonic ritual sacrifice by a bunch of immortal succubi?” I repeated, hoping he’d hear how silly that sounded.

He shrugged his lanky shoulders, grinning, and reached over to poke me in the belly.  “I’m just telling you what’s on the poster.  Based on a true story: beware!”  He wiggled his fingers for emphasis.

I groaned and tilted my head over the back of Geena’s couch; my thoughts immediately began swimming.  It felt like I was on the deck of a gently rocking boat.  The weed was so rich that I didn’t see how I would be able to get up and drag myself to the movie; when I heard the soft snick of the lighter as Harry started on the third, I thought about stopping him, but decided against it.  It’s not every day you get offered three free joints, and I had no more classes to worry about that day.  I felt comfortable and floaty, occupying a headspace that normally only Geena could bring me to, and I groped for Harry’s hand to hold, seeking some physical connection as I dropped off on Geena’s sofa.

When I woke up my first confused, groggy thought was that I was at the movie theater, somehow.  It was loud and dark.

But I wasn’t sitting back in an upholstered recliner.  Instead, I was lying bent over, a sharp corner of wood pressing into my stomach.  My body was bare and the air was frigid; my hands were tied on either side of the table, so tightly that I couldn’t even feel them.  Across from me was a head of thick, long, curly dark hair, and a pair of closed eyes with long, doe-like lashes.  Harry!

“Harry… hey, Harry…” I whispered hoarsely, struggling.

All around us, an unfamiliar, eerie chant filled the air.  “Dostań się do mężczyzn! Dostań się do owiec! Zniszczymy ich; nakarmią nas!  Hu, hu, hu, hu!”  The voices were all young women, and it should have been beautiful, the way they all harmonized, but instead it was brittle and full of a sort of bitter resentment, like they were being made to sing together.

Surrounding the altar I was strapped to were dozens of them, cloaked in dark hooded robes.  A few held torches but I couldn’t see, by the fickle flames, any of their faces.

“One of them awakens!” said a clear female voice.  It was as hard and cold as black ice, crystal clear and full of vanity.

I struggled, then; they knew I was awake and I knew that they knew.  And I had nothing to lose.  “What the hell is going on?  …Where am I?  Who are you?  …If this is a joke or something, it’s not funny.  …Geena?  Geena, I’m serious,” I called.

A few soft, mean snickers arose from the cloaked circle that surrounded us.  I struggled a little harder.  These weren’t like Geena’s usual knots.  These were cutting off my circulation, badly; I was strapped to some kind of heavy wooden altar, and across from me, I could see Harry was in the same position as me.  His head lolled and he moaned a little; I spotted a heavy bruise on his temple, and fear flooded me.  That wasn’t Geena handiwork; she would never allow someone to get a bruise like that on his head.

Around us, the hooded figures circled like vultures, getting a good look at our exposed bodies.

“Geena?” I repeated, voice cracking.  Until then, I had never had to use our safe word.  I’d never felt the need to; I’d never even tested it, trusting, implicitly, that she knew my limits better than I did, somehow.  But this?  This was not okay. 

“…petunia,” I said.

Nothing happened.

A robed figure approached me and an arm emerged from the cloak, thin, nothing like Geena’s.  The nails were long; one of them raked down my arm, leaving a thin red line.

“Your incantations won’t help you here, boy.  This is our sacred ground.  Your only place here is to witness and despair at your own destruction,” hissed a high, reedy voice.

I yanked at my binds, no longer caring if they dug into my skin.  My arms were down, gripping the sturdy legs of the altar, and my legs were spread, my ankles tied.  A forced presentation.  A position that, with Geena, would have felt intimate, but here, felt only vulnerable.  The altar was rough, as if the wood had been hewn with a jagged saw, and I was thankful for the hair on my chest to offer me some degree of cushion, though it was still incredibly uncomfortable.

But it was nothing, nothing, compared to what happened next.

The woman at my side drew from her sleeve a long, thin cane and passed it between Harry and I.  His eyes opened, still not comprehending our position, and his gaze followed the stick.

She walked behind him and, with a flick of her wrist, brought the cane up between his legs.  Harry’s eyes snapped open and he yelped; the women all tittered, and the one with the cane walked slowly around to me.

A lump formed in my throat.  I braced, then thought better of tensing and tried to relax, but it didn’t matter.  I was helpless; she brought the cane up and it slapped against my balls, inducing a shock of pain and nausea up into my stomach.

“Sisters.  Behold our sacrifices.  Young and supple.  Full-bodied and fresh!”

“Who the hell are you?” I repeated angrily.

Harry’s eyes met mine; they were as wide as dinner plates.  “Mike… Mike, it’s them.”

“Who?”

“Neptune’s—”

“Silence, men!” barked one of the robed figures, stepping forward.  She flung out her arm, and from the deep, dark hole of her sleeve emerged a flogger.  I’d heard rumors of sororities on campus that were into this kind of thing. 

Maybe that was it, I thought.  Maybe they’d had too much to drink and they were simply carried away.  Maybe they were newbies who lacked Geena’s insight and experience, and thought this was all in good fun.  I’m not saying that it made any of this okay, but it calmed me to try to contextualize it.

And then the beating started.

The crack of the flogger against my back was skilled.  There was no denying that.  I had thought these women must be new, but the aim was precise, the snap of the leather filled with intent.  There was nothing experimental about this; this was a hand as practiced as Geena’s, but cruel and uncaring.

Across from me, another figure had positioned herself behind Harry and I could see the twirl of her wrist as she laid the leather tongue against his bare back.  He squealed, trying to get loose, but like me, he was tied down, and we could only stare at each other in horror as we watched the other take the floggings.

The robed figures were lining up.  The first stepped aside and the second approached, and what emerged from her sleeve was a bigger flogger, its tails longer and thinner.  I tensed, knowing the sting would be worse, and it was; Harry cried out as the second one began beating him.

There were five in total, and when the second moved aside for the third and she brought out a flogger, I realized the pattern.  Each one was crueler and more terrible than the last; and since we were still feeling the stings of the straps from the first, the next one hurt more, anyway.

By the fourth I was certain I could take no more, but the fourth had no leather instrument.  I watched as, behind Harry, across the table, one of the robed figures held up a small, silver bangle, with five metal chains dangling from it.  Then she reached down between Harry’s legs, and I felt the action mirrored between my own.  A pair of icy hands grabbed my sack, aggressively, like an abusive owner grabbing the collar of a misbehaving dog, and I whimpered as I felt the freezing-cold metal ring clasp around my balls.  The metal chains that dangled from it swayed between my legs, occasionally touching my thighs and calves, and I shivered uncontrollably at the violation.

The fifth in line stepped forward and drew out a whip.  Not a flogger, a whip, a single-tailed bullwhip with a small piece of metal where the fall should have been.

“No, no, no–” Harry began to protest, but his words were drowned by a scream as his torturer brought down the whip on his backside.  I felt it at the same time he did; they were in perfect harmony, these women, as if they had done this hundreds of times, and the bite of the whip into my ass was so sharp it made all of the flogging look laughable.

The pain of the bullwhip made my vision go cloudy, but I could still hear the chanting resume as the women all counted the blows.  “–eleven–twelve–thirteen!” they shouted, voices rising into a cheer.

I was soaked with sweat, my ass on fire; I felt a bead of liquid drip down my cheek and along the back of my thigh.

I looked across the altar; Harry’s eyes met mine.  His face was streaked with tears, his skin flushed from the torture.

“Is the meat ready?” asked the leader of the women, and the rest cheered again.  A line formed behind Harry, the same five as before, and for a moment I felt my throat close up with fear thinking they were about to do the same thing as before.

But they had other things in mind.

The first robed figure stepped forward and raised her hands; in them was what looked like a rock with a small metal hook embedded in it, a little smaller than a baseball.  Then she reached down.

I felt one of the chains attached to me being moved, and then, suddenly, the full weight of the rock.  They had attached it to the chain and it was hanging between my legs; I realized at that moment why there were five chains on the metal restraint on my balls.

A pair of hands grabbed my ass, evoking a cry of pain, and spread my cheeks.  I knew what was coming next; did Harry? 

…he must have, because like me, he could see everything happening to me in a mirror image.  I watched as the first woman attached the weight to his balls and threw off her robe before grabbing his buttocks and kneading them in expectation.  How can I describe her?  She was a woman, but like no woman I’d ever seen.  Tall, thin, and terrible, a creature of birdlike, ancient proportions, her movements jerky and birdlike, her face gaunt and haughty.  Her breasts were small and sat high on her chest; her jaw was sharp and cruel; and between her legs hung a thick cock.  She was like an anti-Geena, cold and angular.

She was human-like, but not human, that much was obvious.

The first two in line planted themselves behind us.  Harry’s eyes shone with pain and humiliation; he understood what was happening.  “It’s okay, Harry,” I managed to gasp out.  It wasn’t, but it was all I could offer him before they thrust their erections into us, lighting up every nerve inside of us, and not in a good way.

We cried out as they fucked us and begged for mercy, but they didn’t respond.  The faceless crowd jeered a little, but otherwise there was almost no reaction to our pleas.  The only thing I can say about the experience was that it was short; they finished within minutes, perhaps aware of the impatient line behind them.

The first pulled out of me, leaving my hole dripping and sore; the second stepped forward and held up a rock.  I groaned in weak protest; my balls were aching, burning, with the stretch, and when it was doubled I thought I would surely pass out.

The fucking made it worse, feeling the weights sway and stretch my balls, every thrust reminding me of the heaviness I wore and couldn’t escape from.

By the time the fifth and final rock was attached to the chain I was sure my balls would be ripped off completely; my body was a quivering, aching, supple mess, tenderized in the most literal sense, a repository for pain.  I was whimpering for Geena; Harry was crying softly; both of us couldn’t help but look to the other, seeing ourselves in him, unable to look away from what we were experiencing simultaneously.

And then the fifth and final creature had finished with us, and the one I thought of as the high priestess stepped forward.

My hole was so stretched, my balls straining with the weights, my binds biting into my skin.  Blood and semen dribbled down my spread legs.

“Sisters!  The time for renewal is near… which shall I take first?”  This one wasn’t like the rest, scrawny and sharp… she was a big, voluptuous thing.  A mother hen.  The indisputable leader, the best fed, the most experienced.  She threw back her hood first, revealing a huge pair of curved black horns, like a goat’s, a natural headdress that clearly indicated her superiority among these women.  Yes, she was beautiful, but her beauty was dangerous and uninviting.

And then, when let the rest of her robe slid from her shoulders, I saw it: the long, thick length, as big around as my wrist and hanging nearly to her knees, a king snake among cocks.

Harry took one look at it and burst into tears; immediately, the eager crowd began chanting, and she walked slowly around to Harry, whose cries of terror only intensified.

“This one first, then?” she asked, licking her lips and running her hands over his exposed body.  The crowd cheered louder, drowning out Harry’s pleas for mercy.  “Very well…”  She took a step back, and I could see her, her full, round hips and heavy breasts.  She reached down to pick up her shaft in both hands and she began to stroke it; it responded immediately, growing thicker and harder, the veins of it popping.  Even across the altar, even only by firelight, I could see every outline of the huge, pulsating length.

“Mike?  Mike?  What’s happening?” sobbed Harry.

“It’s— she’s— it’s nothing, Harry, she’s— she’s just getting some lube on it, it’s okay.”

“No, please, Mike!  It’s too big!  I can’t take it, please, I can’t—”

“You can, buddy.  You can take it.  It’s— it’s just like fisting, you’ll be okay, you’ll be fine,” I said frantically, but I couldn’t take my eyes away as the she-demon continued to pump her enormous cock, growing it inch by inch until it was impossibly thick and impossibly long, thicker than my arm, long enough to slap the ground, except that it was fully erect and pointing accusingly right toward Harry.

“Mike, please!” he begged, his eyes locking on mine as the crowd began chanting.

“…hey.  Hey.  It’s okay.  It’s okay, I think she’s gonna go slow, it’s okay, buddy!” I said, my voice rising as I watched her approach him.  She pulled apart her cheeks and thrust her cock into him with a single, powerful motion; he screamed and the crowd erupted into a cacophony of delight.

“Mi-i-ike!” garbled Harry, eyes bulging, and the demon behind him leaning forward, grabbing a fistful of hair, a long, serpent-like tongue coming out of her mouth to caress his cheeks, lick away his tears and sweat, taste his fear.  And then, she gave two more thrusts, and Harry’s mouth parted impossibly wide and the head of her penis, glistening with blood, sweat, and pre-cum, shot out of it. 

Harry’s eyes were glassy, his body suddenly unnaturally limp.  He was dead, a piece of meat: …nothing but a cocksleeve, and the demon’s laughter echoed as she rocked her hips, satiating her insatiable monster cock with his body.

She pulled out with a wet slurp and stalked around the altar, and it dawned on me that I was next.  I had already screamed myself hoarse but my strength rallied at the idea of that unnaturally girthy cock violating me.  The others I’d managed; this one, I could not.

She grabbed my hips, her hands inexplicably warm, and pulled herself toward me, lining herself up with my abused entrance… I felt the stretch as she began to thrust into me and my mouth opened, maybe to scream one last time or maybe to make way for the length that would soon fill it.

But nothing came out.  And nothing came in.

And the thing that filled me was not impossibly large, or painful.  In fact, I realized that it was soft and familiar.

I took a deep breath.  There was no smell of fire smoke or the tangy iron of blood.  It was the warm smell of Geena’s apartment.

I wasn’t bent over an altar; I was curled on the couch, a hand down my sweats.

I opened my eyes and looked over.  Harry’s limp body was beside me.  I gasped; a hand immediately clamped over my mouth.

“Shh!  You’ll wake him up!”

Harry grunted softly in his sleep, cuddling his arms a little close to his chest.  I looked up; Geena was sitting over me, her thick, dark hair cascading over her shoulders, the one of the lamps on her bookshelf creating a halo of light around her head.

Her hand was in my pants, her fingers gently stroking my hole, dipping into it teasingly.

I let out a breath of relief and she took her hand off my mouth so she could lean in to kiss me.

“You were having a bad dream.  I thought you might like to wake up to something nice,” she said, palming my balls softly, her expression soft with concern.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.  …I’m fine,” I said, feeling my penis stirring at her touches.  The dream was already fading, though the funk of my high was still buzzing around in my head.  “I think I just… uhh… I had the weirdest dream, with witch-demons and sacrifices and… uhh… I don’t remember, it was a whole ritual, though.  It was crazy.”

Geena giggled and leaned in to kiss me again.  “I love your crazy brain.  You should keep a dream journal.  I bet it would be a great read.”

I snorted.  “No way.  I never remember my dreams, anyway.”

“That’s a shame.  …do you want to fool around before Harry wakes up?”  She offered my cock a firm squeeze and I felt it harden in response to her touch, like a sunflower bending toward the light.

“Yes,” I said emphatically.  I couldn’t think of anything I wanted more than to curl up in her arms and lay my head on her breasts after that terrible dream.

“Great.  And maybe after, we could catch a movie?”

“…ma-a-aybe…” I said, uneasily, rising to peel away my clothes for her.  “Just as long as it’s not one of those ‘cult classics!’”