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PRAY FOR US SINNERS	By : KerwinLS Category: X-Men: (All Movies) > Slash - Male/Male > Logan/Kurt Views: 1757 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of this and I don’t make money from writing it, as if you didn’t know that already. I thank all those persons or entities that do own the X-Men for allowing us to play in their universe with their characters.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
PRAY FOR US SINNERS

Part 2

“It is a rather long story, and not a happy one, for the most part. You may recall that it vas early vinter vhen I escaped from Herr Grüber by teleporting for the first time. I did not know vhat had happened to get me avay from him, and I did not realize I could do it again. But I did know that I could not just valk up to the first house I saw and ask for help, as an ordinary child might have done.

“Fearful of pursuit, I ran as far as I could into the forest behind the village, fueled by fear and adrenaline, before I noticed that I vas stark naked, the sun vas setting, the temperature vas close to freezing, my gut vas aching badly vhere Herr Grüber had struck me, and I vas about to collapse from exhaustion. Taking advantage of the approaching darkness, I snuck into a barn on one of the many small farms in the area around Schönberg to take shelter for the night.”

I was lucky to find an old horse blanket, plus a rag pile containing a few usable articles of clothing. During the next couple of weeks, I continued to make my way further from the village, over the foothills and around the mountainside. I survived by hiding in barns or other outbuildings and stealing what I could to eat whenever possible, which was not very often. Once I came across a dead deer at the base of a steep hill. There was still some meat on the carcass, and I was beyond the point of being picky about food.

As the winter deepened, it became harder for me to survive. I had no way to light a fire, and the blankets and clothing I had managed to steal were not sufficient to withstand the freezing temperatures of the mountains. No matter what I did, I was always cold and miserable. It was not long before I became sick, coughing until my chest hurt, burning with fever one minute, then shivering with a cold even beyond that of my surroundings. Weak and exhausted, the day came when I knew I would die if I did not find some sort of permanent shelter soon, not to mention decent food. In my delirium, I started wandering around.

It was almost sunset when I realized I could see smoke rising from somewhere just over the next hill, which indicated the presence of a village, or at least a house, not too far away. Although I feared to go there, some part of my fevered brain knew that I no longer had a choice.

The building stood alone in a clearing, but there was a road running past, so I knew it could not be entirely by itself.   It seemed rather deserted, with lights only in the windows of a smaller building attached to the side of the larger one. I went to the door of the big building, hoping it might be empty.

The door opened when I pushed on it, and I staggered in to a large room that was not very warm but was surely warmer than outside. It had rows of benches and something that looked to my uneducated eyes like an altar. The only light came from a few candles burning in a rack in front of a statue of a woman.

Searching for a place to hide, I saw a small sort of a closet off to one side of the big room, with a curtain next to the door that led to another tiny closet.  With my last bit of strength, I tore down the curtain, wrapped it around me on top of my own ragged and filthy clothing, and went into the larger closet, closing the door behind me. It was hardly big enough for me to fit, but I curled into a tight ball on the floor and promptly passed out.

I awoke to the sound of someone moving around outside my hiding place. I was still exhausted and disoriented, but I forced myself to alertness, fearing danger. I propped myself unsteadily on one elbow, as the noises came nearer.

Suddenly, a strange creature opened the door of my closet. He was tall and rather heavyset, wearing a long brown robe with the hood pulled up around his head. The robe was tied around his waist with white rope, and a long string of beads hung from the rope. It looked like something out of a book I had once read about the Middle Ages, except that he was carrying a flashlight. As he shined the light upon me and leaned down, I pressed myself back as far as I could into the shadows, trying to make myself invisible to him.

Much to my surprise, the creature laughed, then pushed the hood back off of his head to reveal an entirely human face.

"Why, it’s nothing but a child," he said, staring down at me closely and then adding, “albeit a rather strange-looking one.”

I struggled to my feet, preparing to run away, but the world began spinning and I fainted. The last thing I felt was his arms catching me and lifting me up.

When I came to, I was lying on a pallet in front of a small coal-burning stove, wrapped in several wool blankets. My clothes were gone, but I seemed to be wearing a long flannel shirt, plus heavy socks on my feet. For the first time in ages, I was warm!

Carefully, I raised my head and looked around. Then I started coughing and could not stop for quite some time. The man in the brown robe squatted next to me and held me upright against his chest, until my coughing diminished.

"I have broth on the stove," he said. "Are you able to take some?"

I nodded, not trusting my voice, still wondering where I was and why I was being cared for so tenderly.

To make a long story shorter, as I later found out, I had stumbled into a small Catholic church and taken refuge in the confessional, where Father Josef Bauer, OFM, (Order of Friars Minor, commonly known as Franciscans) had discovered me that morning.

Even with food and shelter, it took time for me to recover from the pneumonia, so much of the first week or so that I was there was spent resting and sleeping. The priest told me I could stay with him as long as I needed to, but no one else must know about me. We had to hide my presence from the rest of the congregation, as they would not have understood that a blue demon was living in their church. It was relatively easy to do that, as he lived alone in the priest’s quarters attached to the church building and he had no housekeeper looking out for his needs. The church was located equidistant from the three small mountain villages that it served, so most of the time there were few people in the area, except on Sundays or Holy Days.

When I was finally feeling stronger, I did something that almost got me thrown out. I wanted only to show Fr. Bauer my gratitude for his taking me in, but it did not go as I had thought it would.

Late at night, I snuck into his bedroom and climbed into his bed stark naked, expecting from him the same reaction I was used to getting from other adult men. I snuggled up against him suggestively, and placed my hand on his pajamas over his penis. He woke up, totally surprised to find me there, and grabbed my wrist, pushing my hand violently away as he jumped out of bed, a thunderous scowl on his usually gentle face.

Expecting to be hit, I curled myself into a ball, covering my face with my hands and begging him not to beat me. Well, of course, he did not hit me, but instead asked me what I thought I was doing, which led to my explanation. At first, he found it very hard to believe.

After he had given me a stern lecture on Catholic priests and celibacy, and warned me that I must never do such a thing again if I wished to remain there, I was nearly hysterical with fear, sobbing uncontrollably and pleading with him to forgive me, even though I was still somewhat puzzled by his reaction.

He wrapped the blanket around me and drew me into his lap, trying to calm me down. I could tell he was aroused, of course, but that only confused me further.  Gently, he began questioning me, which led to my telling him about my previous experiences, much as I have told you. As may be expected, he was horrified by my answers.

I swore I would not tempt him again, and eventually he made me understand that it was all right, he would not cast me out into the night, but neither did he desire the use of my body. Or rather, even though he might desire it, he would not allow himself to do it.

For the entire time that I spent with him, he kept that promise, and so did I.

Once I had fully recovered from my pneumonia, I had little to do that winter. Seeing my boredom, Fr. Bauer took me down into the cellar that ran not only beneath his living quarters but also under most of the church building itself. At first, I was afraid, having fresh in my mind the image of that fearsome basement from my House of Pain. Once I finally admitted my reason, he explained to me that a real basement was very different from my imaginary one and assured me that I would find it quite interesting.

Then he stood up and held out his hand to me. “Come, my child. Be brave and trust me.”

A shiver of fear ran through me, but I did as he asked. It took all my courage to go down those cold stone steps for the first time. Together, we explored the basement.

“This church was built more than one hundred years ago, Kurt. Many priests have lived here before me. During all this time, this cellar has been used for storage. I’ve never explored it completely, and some of it doesn’t even have electricity. I mostly just use this first part.” He gestured towards a wall, where glass jars full of preserved fruits and vegetables lined the shelves. “When members of my congregation bring me gifts of food, I store them down here. Anything that doesn’t fit upstairs usually finds its way here also. I have boxes of old clothing, used for distribution to the poor when needed. Many other possibly-useful items can be found, if one looks.”

He led me around the room, pointing things out. “There are books in many places, all kinds of books. Over here, theology texts. There, a collection of the classic works of literature. In this corner, an encyclopedia. You do know how to read, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“So do you think you could find something that would catch your interest?”

I nodded enthusiastically, glancing over the titles.

“Good. When we’re ready to leave, I’ll stay here with you while you pick some out. Now, come along and I’ll show you the old part of the basement.”

As we approached the far wall, I clung still tighter to his hand, my eyes scanning the dim room for danger. There was a dilapidated wooden door, now closed. Surely, some terrible thing lurked behind it. But no, Fr. Bauer pulled it open with a casual gesture. There was nothing to be seen except darkness.   This was clearly the part without electricity.

“You can go in here also, if you like, but you’ll have to take a candle. There’s some on this shelf next to the door, along with matches. There are many more rooms with lots of boxes to look through and places to explore.”

“I do not vish to go in there just now, Father.”

“Maybe another time, then. Shall we look through the books?”

“Ja!”

By the time we went back upstairs, I had so many books that I had to use both hands to carry the stack I had picked out. As the weeks passed, my fear of the lighted part of the basement gave way to my desire for reading material. But I never ventured any further than those shelves of books.

I learned a lot about the outside world that winter. I had read many books over the course of my childhood lessons, but they had been books meant for a child’s mind. These books mostly spoke to adults. I especially loved the ones Fr. Bauer had called the classics.

You have probably guessed that I also learned about Catholicism from Fr. Bauer, although he never pushed it upon me. I was always the one who asked him questions. He merely answered, to the best of his knowledge. By his own admission, he was not an exceptionally learned man, but just a simple priest far out in the country. Nevertheless, with his unceasing care and consideration, he taught me more about real love than anyone else had ever done.

Very quickly, I decided I wished to become a Catholic, mostly in order to be like him. But he would not accept that as a sufficient reason. Before he would baptize me, I had much more to learn, so he set about teaching me the catechism, as he would for any prospective convert.

While I could not attend Mass on Sundays along with the rest of his congregation, I was able to sneak into the small sacristy at one side of the sanctuary where the vestments and other articles used during Mass were stored. Safely out of sight, I could observe through a peephole we had bored in the door of the sacristy. It seemed magical and entirely awesome that a small piece of unleavened bread could be transformed into the Body of Christ, and a bit of wine could become the Blood of Christ. I felt the presence of God on the altar, transforming the everyday world into a place of holiness, and longed to join the others in partaking of that Bread of Life.

Several times, Fr. Bauer said Mass in the wee hours of the night, with just the two of us there, in order that I might better understand what it was like.

By the time he was sure that I had a basic knowledge of Catholicism and knew what was involved well enough to make an informed choice, it was late spring.

In the candle-lit darkness of midnight, I stood before the marble basin full of holy water in its little alcove at the side of the church and was baptized. Then we went to the confessional and I knelt in the small closet-like room with the curtain I had torn down and used for a cover that first night I had stumbled into the church. Fr. Bauer slid open the grilled window at the side of my closet.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I began easily enough, but I did not know where to go from there. Now that I had learned a new perspective on sex, my sins seemed so many and so grievous that I had no idea where to begin. I thought about it in an uneasy silence. I could see Fr. Bauer’s silhouette through the grill. Seeing that familiar profile, I realized that I had already told him about most of my sexual experiences, and surely an omniscient God would know of them also. “I have sinned in thought, word, and deed far too many times to describe or to count. I beg forgiveness for all those things that I have done in my life that would merit the disapproval of Almighty God, and pray for the strength to resist them in the future.”

I bowed my head and listened as Fr. Bauer told me how many prayers to say for my penance. It seemed far too light a punishment for all that I had done, but when he said my sins had been forgiven, I actually felt a lightening in my heart. Perhaps since I had committed all those sins in ignorance, there was no need of an excessive amount of penance. In a sudden burst of enthusiasm, I swore I would never sin again.

That oath was all too quickly broken. I would never again be foolish enough to think I could live without sinning. For one thing, I was far too accustomed to sex to refrain from satisfying myself as best I could with my own hands. Although I strove mightily to follow Fr. Bauer’s example of celibacy, I found temptation impossible to resist. Seeing my guilty misery, he eventually confided to me that he had the same problem, and often fell victim to the same temptation I did. Yes, he was very ashamed, but he was able to reassure me that God understood the nature of man and would forgive us for our weakness in this area, but we must remember always to choose this solitary form of satisfaction as the lesser of the many sexual evils and never take it any further than this. I wanted so much more, but I was never to have it from my priest, despite my desire.

Be that as it may, after my confession, I knelt in a pew at the front of the church and said my assigned prayers. Then I simply remained there until Fr. Bauer came out of the sacristy and began to say Mass.

This was to be my First Communion. As I tasted the Wafer dissolve in my mouth, I felt for one short moment in time that I was filled with holiness. I knelt there, my head bowed down to touch my clasped hands, my eyes closed, as Fr. Bauer finished the Mass.

Around us were only a few candles, and the silence of the dark and empty church – and the presence of my newfound God.

Afterwards, Fr. Bauer offered me a simply-wrapped present to mark the occasion. When I tore away the paper, it was a rosary, the one I still have and use to this day.

Then, very diffidently, he asked me a question. “Kurt, your eyes – “

“Yes, Father?”

“Unless I have begun imagining things, they have been glowing from the moment I baptized you. Has such a thing ever happened to you before?”

“Yes, Father,” I mumbled, bowing my head and closing my eyes so that he could no longer see that shameful light. “It happens when – when I am aroused.”

“Remarkable! But surely you are not now --?”

I shook my head quickly, before he could even voice the question.

He put a hand on my shoulder. “Perhaps it also happens when you are very happy, or feel a strong emotion, or feel yourself in the presence of God. Is that possible?”

I had never thought of such a thing before. I nodded, grasping at the hope that he had evaluated me correctly, as indeed he had.

“Good. Then stop hiding your eyes like that, foolish boy, and accept it as a special blessing, not a curse.”

Even after that, the only time I could attend a service was still when he would say Mass very late at night, for me only, and offer me the Eucharist. At those times, I was even permitted to act as his altar boy. I very quickly learned how it all went, soon knowing the responses and what I should do.

As spring began to give way to summer, I noticed that I had recently begun to grow taller. Studying myself carefully in the mirror, I saw the way the shape of my little boy’s face was also changing subtly. I noticed hair growing in places it had never grown before. I started wondering what I would look like as a man. As a boy, I was rather a cute little demon. Would I be so cute when I grew up, or would my appearance instead become more terrifying, so that others would be afraid of me?

Along with the warming weather and the changes in my body came a sense of restlessness. Although I still read voraciously, I was thoroughly tired of remaining cooped up indoors. I felt the need to be outdoors, where I could move around and work off the new energies that were building up inside me.

Noticing my frustration, Fr. Bauer agreed that I could venture outside, if I took great care not to be observed.

I spent most of my time in the shadows of the nearby forest, in case anyone should come along the road. Even so, I took great pleasure in my new freedom, learning my way around the woods, watching the many animals, climbing the trees, and doing all the things a normal active boy might have done, in my situation. I could climb just about anything, and I never lost my balance.

I also practiced my circus acrobatics constantly, inventing new tricks, leaping from tree to tree, walking across slippery damp logs that had fallen over the creek running through the forest, racing against imaginary opponents over whatever obstacles I could contrive. Eventually I made up long adventures, acting out fierce battles and exciting escapes, basing them mostly on the adventure stories I had been reading.

When I had tired myself out with all this activity, I would sit in the shadows beneath a tree and read.

At night, I loved to crouch on the roof of the church and look up at the stars while saying my rosary, fancying myself a gargoyle that would protect the building from evil with my prayers and my presence. I should have known better.

By the time autumn arrived, I had grown quite a bit taller and I had begun to develop more muscle as a result of all my exercise.

The days I spent with Fr. Bauer were some of the happiest days of my life, but it could not last forever. In late autumn, it all came to an end.

I realized later that I must have been noticed despite my best efforts to remain out of sight.

One night I awoke amidst flames and suffocating smoke. Without thinking beyond the fact that I had to get away from the awful heat and pain, I teleported for the second time, suddenly finding myself not far outside the church. A mob of villagers surrounded the burning building, shouting about a demon, cursing Fr. Bauer for bringing it there. I looked around for my priest, but he was nowhere in sight.

I tried to run back inside to find him, but the people had gotten over their first shock at my appearance and attacked me. A few of them had guns, while others were armed only with knives or farm implements.

It was all I could do just to get away from them unscathed and escape into the shelter of the woods, swiftly climbing a tree and hiding myself in the darkness and shadows of its thick branches.

From there, I tried to teleport back into the building to rescue Fr. Bauer, but it did not work. Was it my fear of the fire that stopped me, or my ignorance of how to do it? I do not know.

Then the roof of the church collapsed, taking down the walls along with it. I knew there was no hope now of saving my protector and my dearest friend. Something snapped inside me. All the hatred and rage that I had had to keep locked away during my years with Herr Grüber burst suddenly upon me.

Screaming curses and howling like a wild beast, I leaped from the tree and attacked the villagers like the demon they thought I was, using every bit of the acrobatic skill I had honed so finely for the circus. I was crazed beyond caring about the wounds they inflicted on me, wanting only to get my teeth or fingernails into their hated bodies. I wrested a pitchfork away from one of them, and swung it furiously from side to side, keeping them from inflicting any serious injury on me.

“I fought like a madman, shrieking like a maniac the entire time. It vas probably that insane fury that saved my life, as it drove them all to run avay in terror.

“I – I – “

I am hardly aware that I have stopped speaking. I am more wrapped up in my story than I realize. My mind fills with the sight of the crowd surrounding me. I hear their curses and the sharp crackling of the flames, the smell of smoke is in my nostrils, the pain from my many small wounds tears at my body, the guilt rages in my heart for not saving Fr. Bauer.

All this and more assaults my mind, ripping it to shreds. My eyes stare wildly, but I am not seeing reality. It is as if it is all happening around me again. I see an image of Fr. Bauer standing inside the church as the roof caves in. He clasps something to his breast as he is crushed by the burning timbers falling upon him. I hear a drawn out high-pitched shriek of horror, and realize it is coming from my mouth.

Logan picks that moment to grab me by the shoulders. “Elf? What’s –“

I turn into a monster in his arms, a screaming hissing thing that struggles against his touch. I am ripping at his body with my fingernails, tearing at his flesh with my teeth. I feel my knee connect hard with his groin. I am fighting for my life, with the strength of a terrible hatred I have not truly felt since that night so very long ago.

My tail whips around, seeking a target. It wraps around the neck of my enemy, tightening as it wrenches his head back, in a way that would have snapped his neck, if he were a weaker man. I struggle to get my legs bent, in order to kick into his belly and rip him open with my toenails. My head darts at my struggling foe, my teeth taking a large chunk of flesh and muscle from his chest. His blood runs from my mouth, as I give him a vicious grin, my eyes a blaze of golden rage.

“Kurt, stop it! I don’t wanna hurt ya!”

“Hurt me?” I yell, spitting the mouthful of meat in his face. “You cannot hurt me. I am invincible. I am beyond pain, beyond feeling, beyond reason. I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I vill kill you all!!” From there, I disintegrate even further, screaming vile insults and imprecations in German that I did not even realize I knew.

His fist slams into the side of my jaw. Dazed, I fall back onto the bed. In that brief moment, my enemy is free of my grasp and on top of me. Before I can recover, my wrists are pinned above my head with one hand, while my tail is held fast at my side in a painful grip. He is lying on me, his legs wrapped around mine, his considerable weight concentrated on top of my thighs holding me still. Even so, I fight on, struggling vainly to get loose until I run out of breath and can do nothing but lie there gasping. I could have teleported, but the thought does not even occur to me. It is as if I do not know that I can do it.

The red rage dissipates slowly. I see where I am and the damage I have done. Logan looks down at me as I look up at him.

“Are ya finished now?” he asks. “Is it over?”

I nod my head, so ashamed that it is all I can do just to whisper “Ja.”

The blood from the place I tore at his chest still drips down onto me, but the wound is starting to close already.

“Don’t worry about it. Ya can’t hurt me, darlin’. Not really.”

“Even if it heals, the pain still hurts,” I say in a small voice.

“Sure. But I’m used to that. This is nothin’ compared to some of the stuff that happens to me. You know that.”

“I know. But I did this.” I can look at him no longer. “Have I gone insane?”

“Nah. That’s what they call a flashback, darlin’. Doesn’t mean you’re crazy. Just means you’ve been hijacked by somethin’ bad that happened in your past. I got a pretty good idea what is it, considerin’ what you were tellin’ me.”

He lets go and rolls off me. I lie there trembling and hugging myself. Now it is his turn to hold me while I cry.

Eventually, I am quiet in his arms, my head against his chest.

“Entschuldigung,” I say softly, begging his pardon.

“Don’t worry about it, darlin’. I figure it comes with the territory.” He kisses the top of my head. “Now, do ya feel up to going on with the story or would you rather we just go to sleep?”

I take a deep breath. “I vill go on. But first I must go vash my face and pull myself together.”

He wipes one hand over the dried blood that covers his chest, even though the wound it came from is almost healed now. “Yeah. Looks like I’ve already pulled myself together, but I could stand a little cleaning up anyway.”

I give him a small smile as we both stand up. “You know, having to clean ourselves up tvice in one night is a bit too often for my liking.”

“Mine too, Elf. And if ya drive your knee into my balls that hard again, ya just might put a permanent kink in my love life.”

“Mein Gott, did I –?”

“Nah. I’m fine now.”

Putting a hand on my shoulder, he propels me toward the bathroom, where we do what we need to do and then return to bed. This time, I remember to bring a glass of water back with me. My voice is hoarse from all the talking I have done, not to mention the screaming.

“OK, darlin’. Next chapter.”

“Ja. Vhere vere ve vhen I fell apart?”

“You just chased the crowd away with your awesome display of ferocity.”

“Ah! Yes.

“Finally, I vas the only one there, standing in front of the burning church. With nothing more left to fight, the rage slowly drained out of me. I started shaking. My knees refused to hold me upright any longer. I sat on the ground, vatching my blood run from my numerous small vounds, vondering if I vould bleed to death if I did nothing to stop it. Part of me vished I vould, so I could join Fr. Bauer in heaven. There vas nothing left for me on earth.

“I vas dressed only in the old pajama top that I used for a nightshirt, and it vas ragged, scorched, and splattered vith blood. I usually kept my rosary in the pajama pocket, but now it was hanging out of a rip in the bottom of the pocket. I remember a brief feeling of joy as I clasped the beads in my hands. Now there vas something I could do for Fr. Bauer, even though he vas certainly dead.”

Glassy-eyed with shock, I just sat there as the remains of the fire burned itself out, reciting prayers that came automatically to my mind as my fingers ran over the beads. With every Hail Mary, I sent a prayer for the soul of my beloved benefactor.

I have no idea how long I sat there. I must finally have given in to my own exhaustion and fallen asleep, since the next thing I knew, the sun was coming up. Smoke still rose from parts of the rubble, and there were blackened timbers lying every which way. I would have searched for Fr. Bauer’s body in the ruins, but the ground was so hot that it scorched my bare feet when I tried to approach.

I stumbled into the shelter of the woods. Hiding beneath a tangle of bushes, I dozed on and off throughout the rest of that awful day. Once or twice I was awakened, to see small groups of people standing and looking at what was left of the church. None of them dared venture into the smoldering ruins nor into the shadows of the forest.

After darkness fell, I crept out of my hiding place, determined to at least try to find Fr. Bauer’s body, if there was anything left of it. I thought perhaps that he had run into the church to save the consecrated Body of Christ, rather than directly outside when he discovered the fire, so I began in the area I remembered to be the sanctuary.

My entire body seemed a mass of aches and pains, as I picked my way carefully through the mess, sifting through piles of ashes, lifting up chunks of blackened wood, squeezing into openings in the wreckage of the collapsed roof, and peering closely into every nook and cranny I could find.

In this way, I discovered a small section of the floor that had collapsed into the part of the old basement underneath the church itself. If I could clear a way into the basement, perhaps I could find some very useful things. But for now I was looking for a body, not a hiding place, so I left it for future consideration.

In the end, I found nothing. Of course, that did not mean there was no body, but only that I could not locate it. There were many places where so much wreckage had piled up that I could not possibly search through it all. Finally, I had to admit defeat.

I went back to the possible entrance to the basement, squeezing through openings barely large enough for me to fit. At last, I reached an open space where I could stand up. Feeling my way with hands and tail through the darkest parts and using what little light could penetrate the wreckage above me, I discovered that much of the basement was essentially undamaged.

Remembering the food and other supplies that had been stored in the newer section, I searched until I found the door. That night, I feasted on preserved fruit and vegetables, and slept comfortably on piles of old clothing and moldy blankets.

With no idea where else to go and the weather getting colder with each passing day, I set about turning the basement into a secure and very habitable place in which to spend the winter. I enlarged the entrance I had found, but only enough to allow myself easier passage, concealing the top of the entry way with a flat chunk of half-burned roof that I could manage to slide sideways enough to come and go. Wherever I could, I opened up small places in the wreckage in order to allow some air to flow into my hideaway. Using some of the candles and matches I found on their shelf by the door from the new part of the cellar, I explored the entire basement for long-forgotten supplies of food or other useful items. Before I dared light a candle at night on a regular basis, I went outside and searched for any places from which the faint glow could be seen, eventually locating an area where I could burn candles down below and see no light above ground.

This time, I would be very careful about being seen out of doors, venturing out during the day only when absolutely necessary. I knew I would not be safe here forever, but I had nowhere else, so it would have to do, at least for the winter that was swiftly approaching, if not much longer.

Ever since Fr. Bauer’s death, I had been living in a state of shock; on the surface, I did all the practical things that I had to in order to survive, but underneath, my mind was boiling with a vile mixture of sorrow and rage. At first, I could hardly force myself to believe that my happy life with the priest was irretrievably gone. However, as that reality sank deeper into my numb brain, the sorrow and rage began to combine into one hateful gnawing compulsion that would soon boil over and take control of my mind. But for a short time, I had it under control, just bubbling away quietly in the background.

Once I had finished with the basement, it occurred to me to explore the extent of my ability to jump from place to place. I had never heard of teleporting, so I just called it jumping.

It took quite a few weeks before I managed to duplicate my previous experiences, and that was only because a deer bounded suddenly out of the bushes in my direction, momentarily scaring me enough to make me desperately want to be safe in my familiar basement. And there I was.

Replaying it over in my mind gave me the clue that it was somehow triggered by my intense desire to be elsewhere. Conjuring up imaginary dangers, I tried to rouse that same feeling while picturing a place to which I could go. It quickly became much easier. Soon enough all I had to do was wish to be there and I would jump. Of course, I berated myself for not having done all this sooner, in order that I might have been able to save Fr. Bauer from the fire. One more layer was added to the pile of guilt that burdened my heart.

Once I found out I could jump at will, I spent much of my time experimenting, figuring out as much as I could about what it was and what I could do. Night after night, I wore myself out with these efforts. I jumped from place to place, trying for longer distances. How far could I go? How many times in a row could I do it before I had to stop and rest? Could I go up? Down?

The most important consideration seemed to be that I had to be able to visualize in my mind the place where I intended to go in a fair amount of detail and to know the approximate orientation and distance that place was in relation to myself.

I did not then and I do not now have any true knowledge of where I go when I teleport. I can describe it, but I cannot in any way explain it.

Subjectively, it is a horrible place, if I can even call it a place at all. It is a darkness so deep that even the concept of light seems to be impossible. It is an emptiness so full that it feels tangible. A silence so profound that it can be heard. A dead coldness so hot that it sears your soul. There is no air to be breathed, yet it is not a vacuum.

It feels as if your mind and body have been turned inside out, but there is no pain, only an infinity of distance over which you are spread. The only thing that makes it endurable is that it takes only an instant. Before it can be truly felt in all its totality, it is already over. That is what saves the sanity of those who feel it for the first time. Unless you are used to it, it can leave you with a fierce feeling of vertigo, which is why some people vomit. Others are disoriented, weak, or confused. The exact reaction varies. Some are terrified and try to stop it while it is happening, but that is the worst possible reaction. The harder you try, the worse it feels; the sense of terror mounts and expands within you. I know this very well, as I panicked a couple of times early on in my experiments.

I also tried to slow the process down, in order to have more time to figure out what was happening. I discovered that I could do that, if I willed it hard enough, but not for any significant length of time. The harder I tried, the worse it felt, as if something there willed me to be gone. If emptiness could convey hostility, that would be a good description. I would also often miss my target area by varying distances whenever I tried that, which meant it was dangerous. Nevertheless, I pushed it as far as I could, seeking to find my limits even in this. Often I returned with a blinding headache, so weak that I could do nothing but collapse.

However, I was beyond the point of caring how devastating it was to jump. All I wanted was to learn to do it and end up where I wanted to go. I am frankly surprised that I did not accidentally kill myself. It was a minor miracle that I never ended up inside a tree, or under the ground. While I never found out what would happen if I actually did teleport into something solid, I am very sure it would not be pleasant.

Still, I went on trying until practice finally made perfect. Within a radius of approximately 4 kilometers, I could appear wherever I chose.

As soon as I was sure of my skill, I closed off my hidden entrance to the basement and jumped in and out instead.

I grew bold enough to use my strange ability in order to steal things that I deemed necessary for my survival, but I only did it if I had no other alternative, since I knew it was both risky and wrong.

During this time, of course, I was still growing up. I turned 13 that November. I knew full well about puberty and what to expect, but it still astonished me as it actually started to happen.

When the snow began, I felt both safer and more vulnerable at the same time. The snow would restrict travel considerably, but I was also in danger of being snowed in and trapped. Of course, I could get out, but if the cover of snow became too deep, I would eventually run out of air in my hideaway. As it turned out, the church had been located in a fairly windy area, which was mostly free of drifts, so that only became a real problem once or twice. When it did, I simply jumped out to the surface and cleared the snow away from my air vents.

As is often the case in life, my worst problem turned out to be something I had not foreseen.

As the winter closed in on me, I found myself with little else to do beyond sit in my safe basement and think. Having been raised in the presence of other people, the solitude started to get to me. I could not help thinking about how much I missed Fr. Bauer, but as I did that, my hatred of those who had caused his death grew ever more bitter. Yet I did not know who they were, other than residents of some of the nearby villages. I could not take vengeance on them even had I wanted to, but I could not stop thinking about it either. Prior to this, I had been busy preparing my hiding place and learning to jump . Now, I had time to allow the rage to surface, too much time.

After several weeks of mulling things over like this, the hatred burned brightly in my heart. And the guilt for that was mine, because I chose to let it burn. It got so that I could not pray, could not even hold my rosary in my hand without feeling guilty, as I knew somewhere down inside that I should not be dwelling on such thoughts. And still, I wished only to let the hatred consume me.

Hatred of a specific person or thing can easily be turned into violence, but hatred without a target can be equally dangerous. Since I could not take vengeance for this wrong, my mind sorted grimly through other wrongs that I had experienced during my brief span of years and quickly came up with a different target for my rage, one that I became convinced was fully justified.

I imagine you will not be surprised when I say that my new target was Herr Grüber. I raked grimly through the ashes of my youth, adding each uncovered memory of his cruelty to my list, until I finally convinced myself that it would be a good thing if I sought him out and killed him. That would also allow me to save poor Anna from his clutches. Surely, no one could question the rightness of that motive.

I knew where Herr Grüber would be at this time of year, of course. I convinced myself that it would not be too difficult to find my way back to Schönberg, despite the cold weather. After all, I had gotten from there to here on foot and unprepared, had I not? It should not take too long to retrace my steps now that I could jump so well.

For days, I contented myself with planning how I would take his life. A gun would be too easy, and I would have to learn to use it ahead of time. Too likely to attract unwanted attention. Besides, I could not easily obtain such a weapon anywhere nearby.

Methodically, I searched the basement for something I could use, eventually finding an old hunting knife in a leather sheath behind a box of outdoor clothing.

Ah, yes, this would do very well. It would give the whole thing a personal touch, as I felt his blood run over my hands each time I stabbed him. He would live long enough to know who had done this to him, I would make sure of that. I might not be a match for an adult physically, but it should not be too difficult to out-maneuver him, given my new talent for appearing and disappearing unexpectedly.

For too many nights, I stared into the underground darkness, imagining how it would feel as the blade cut through his flesh, picturing him begging for a mercy he would not receive, as I had sometimes been forced to do by him. His screams would bring relief to my tortured soul. I would wash away my sorrow in his blood.

Or so I told myself. Meanwhile, I sharpened the knife as best I could against a flat stone, my mouth stretched into a dreadful grin and my glowing eyes narrowed to slits as I contemplated his imminent death.

I had lost track of time, but it was probably somewhere after the new year began that I felt myself to be ready. Gathering together the supplies I had scrounged from various parts of the basement, I left my hideout and set out for Schönberg to take my revenge on the world, in the person of Herr Grüber.

This time, my trip through the forest was much easier and quicker. Not only did I have food and camping supplies and heavy clothing, but, as I had planned, I could cover much of the distance in a series of short jumps; so long as I could see ahead to where I wanted to go, I did not need to walk. What had taken me weeks of wandering through the woods last year now took me only a few days. I did not always know the exact way I had to go, but I remembered much of my flight from the village of Schönberg, so it was not too long before I was in relatively familiar territory and could cover more distance in my jumps. Of course, I had to stop and rest every so often, but it was still much faster than normal hiking.

I had to be more careful as I got close to the town, since the farms and houses became more numerous. I did not want to be seen, so I made the last part of the journey on foot, after hiding my things in the underbrush for retrieval after this was over.   Sometime around midnight I was finally at the edge of the town itself. Keeping to the shadows, I moved silently down the cold and empty streets until I stood outside Herr Grüber’s house. As I had hoped, there were no lights on.

I recall standing below his bedroom window, leaning back against the wall of the house, asking myself if I was really going to do this. It all seemed somehow unreal. Flakes of snow drifted down around me. Everything seemed so peaceful here. Everything except my own soul.

Deliberately, I stoked the fire of hatred that burned in my heart, recalling that final night I had spent inside these walls. How he had forced me to help him hurt Anna; how he had beaten me so cruelly with the riding crop. I tried to think only of that, but other thoughts intruded, thoughts of how he had trained me to service my customers, the remembrance of the feeling of his hands on my body, the pleasures I had learned to crave all somehow mixed up with the pain that had also been inflicted. He had made me the sinful, depraved creature that I had become. He had taught me to want this so badly that I could not even refrain from sin now, when I wanted desperately to please and obey my God. Surely this man deserved to die. He was evil, a predator on helpless children. He had not only destroyed my innocence, but he had made me complicit in that very destruction.

Maybe it was my fault that God had allowed Fr. Bauer to be killed, because of my many sins! Maybe it was to punish me. But I was only what Herr Grüber had made of me. Did that not mean Fr. Bauer’s death was also his fault?

Anyone outside of the situation could have seen that I was not thinking clearly, but I had no one else there to show me the way, so my fevered brain spun out its crazed logic, ultimately convincing me that I would be doing God’s Will by killing Herr Grüber. I was His avenging angel, even if I looked more like a demon than an angel.

I took the knife from its sheath and jumped into the bedroom, where I expected to find my victim helplessly asleep.

The noise of my entrance wakened him. He sat up, blinking and confused. I could have stabbed him right then and there, but I had made other plans. I wanted him to know why this was happening, and who had done it, so I simply stood there next to his bed, waiting while he realized the situation.

Much to my astonishment, his initial surprise turned immediately to joy.

“Kurt! You’ve come back to me! Where have you been? How did you do that trick with the smoke?”

Throwing off the covers, he stood up and switched on the light beside his bed. Then he noticed the expression on my face and the knife. “My dear boy, what’s wrong? I’m so glad to see you. And you’ve grown so tall!”

I had not realized until then that I was looking straight at him, rather than up to him. Herr Grüber was not a particularly tall man, but I was now at least as tall as he was.

“I am not here to be in your freak show,” I said coldly. “I am here to kill you.”

He backed up a few steps. “You can’t mean that, child. I took care of you. I raised you.”

“You used me for your own profit. Vhere is Anna?”

“Anna isn’t here.” He backed towards the door. I jumped behind him, blocking his exit and scaring him even more.

“Vhere did she go? Vhat happened?”

The guilt on his face made me suspect the worst even before he said it. “She’s dead. Last summer she – uh – she killed herself.” Without missing another beat, he went on. “If you hadn’t gone away, she would never have done that. She missed you so, and she was so lonely without you –“

I shook my head, cutting off his explanation. “How?”

“We were near Landsberg, at a small town on the Lech River. She snuck out of our trailer one night and must have thrown herself into the river. We searched everywhere. Two days later, her body was found downstream.”

Oh, Anna, Anna! Could you not have waited for me to rescue you?

No, of course not. How could she have known I would come back?

Then an even worse thought struck me.

“Are you telling the truth? Or did you simply kill her yourself and dump her body into the river?”

“Me? Oh no, Kurt, I swear it! Why would I do such a terrible thing?”

“Because she vas not very useful to you,” I went on mercilessly, “and you vanted to be rid of her.”

“No!! No! You’ve got to believe me!”

Much as I wanted to believe he was a murderer, I could not convince myself that my accusation was true. It had been a shot fired in the dark. He seemed honestly shocked when I said it.

He backed away from me, holding his hands out in front of him as if to protect himself from the knife I held. I think he must have seen me wavering, because a gleam of hope came into his eyes.

“If you want to blame someone, blame yourself,” he said. “If you had stayed, everything would have been fine. Between us, we would have taught her the skills I expected her to learn and Anna would never have taken her life.”

For a moment, I almost believed him. A wave of guilt flooded over me. The hand that held the knife trembled slightly.

Seeing my hesitation, Herr Grüber came towards me, his arms out as if he would draw me into a hug. “I know how upset you must be, dear child. Come. We’ll mourn together.”

I was tempted. Even then, it was such an ingrained habit for me to want his approval and love that I was almost willing to accept the guilt for deserting poor Anna. Then I remembered what had been happening that last night I had been here. Anna’s screams as she struggled against him, my pain and desperation.

“No,” I replied coldly, the knife once again steady. “If it is true that she killed herself, then it vas still your fault. The only guilt I vill accept is for obeying you and adding to her suffering.”

“Ah, but you did obey me, didn’t you? Come, boy, you don’t really want to do this. You want to be back here with me. We can make money together. I can arrange for you to perform in the circus. You wouldn’t have to entertain any customers, unless you wished to do so.” He gave me a conspiratorial smile. “You know you enjoyed some of the sex. Have you been getting that sort of thing where you are now? I don’t think so.”

Again, I was tempted. He spoke only the truth. I often craved the exotic sex I had been subjected to when I was with him. Not everything was pleasant, but many things had been. I could have that again, only now at my desire, not someone else’s. No more guilt-ridden nights trying to satisfy myself with nothing but my own inadequate hand. And I could be a performer. The trapeze, the high wire, the crowd cheering for me, applauding my skill and courage. All I ever wanted. And I could have it. I could –

Herr Grüber smiled more widely as he saw me taking the bait. In his eagerness to further convince me, he said exactly the wrong thing. “Here, let me introduce you to the two boys I’m training now. They’re very cute little freaks and already quite skilled at pleasing their customers. You can try them out yourself.”

That did it, and he knew it from the look on my face. He turned to run for the window, but I wrapped my arms around him and teleported us both out of the house, intending to take him to a deserted spot in the forest and kill him there, where no one would hear his cries for help.

In that eternal instant before we re-appeared, I felt his terror of the sensations he was experiencing. It pleased me to make him feel so. I drew it out a bit longer before pitching us both back into reality.

I was still clutching him around the waist from behind, the knife held upright in one hand with the point angled toward his breast. He sagged back against me, struggling for breath, the terror of nothingness still vivid in his mind.

“Did you enjoy that?” I whispered into his ear. Sudden inspiration struck me then. It might be that I would not need the knife after all. “I hope so, since I intend to do it again.”

“Nein!! O Gott nein! Kurt, bitte —“

I felt a dreadful grin spread my lips. This time, he was begging me, just as I had so often begged him. “Ja, mein Herr,” I replied sarcastically. “Oh Ja.”

I threw us back into that emptiness that I knew so well, and again held us there longer than was necessary. Of course, that meant I had to endure the horror also, but I was used to it, and I knew that I was in control. Herr Grüber had no such consolation. He struggled against me, but I held him fast, my arms strengthened by the exultant power of vengeance satisfied.

We re-appeared further up the mountainside. I was thoroughly enjoying this now, as a cat enjoys playing with a mouse. I released him, and he fell to the ground, gasping and vomiting. Sheathing my knife, I stood over him, watching until he had recovered enough to stand. Eyes wild, he stared at the trees surrounding us. He ran. I let him go just far enough to give him hope of escape, then jumped in front of him. He turned and raced to one side. I followed. We played this game for a short time. I could hear myself laughing insanely and screaming vile insults at him. I chased him through briers and thorns, pushed him into tree trunks, appeared in front of him with a kick to the face. When he finally collapsed from exhaustion, I knelt beside him. One hand reached for his crotch, my fingers closing hard around his genitals, getting a tight grip even through the fabric of his trousers. I pulled down hard as I squeezed, ignoring his shrieks of pain.

“This is your introduction to Hell, mein Herr, and I am the Devil that you have created,” I said viciously.

My other hand reached around his waist, pinning him against me as I threw us once again into the cold and echoing silence, determined to hold us there as long as I possibly could in order to prolong his suffering.

Enclosed by the hideous darkness, I could still see my victim as a ghostly outline. I could feel him struggling vainly against me, but he could do nothing to truly free himself. Here, he was at my mercy, and I had no mercy to give. It was bliss. His eyes widened as the intolerable instant stretched further into the future, as if it might last forever. His mouth opened in a silent scream that I could hear only within my mind. I savored his terror like a fine liqueur, holding the taste in my mouth and reveling in it. Satisfaction at his suffering swept through me with a physical pleasure that transcended any orgasm I had ever felt. I threw back my head and howled with laughter. His body went rigid against me, as if he were having a convulsion.

Exhausted by my efforts to keep us pinned where we were, I had to give up at last. We were catapulted into reality several meters above the ground and fell from there onto a rocky outcrop of the mountain, landing side by side not far from the edge. For a time, neither of us moved. I lay there trembling, breathing, trying to comprehend the fact that I was alive. Herr Grüber did not move at all, which eventually gave me the impetus to haul myself to my knees and lean over him.

He was lying on his face, so I rolled him over. If I never see such a grimace of horror again, it will be too soon. I checked for any sign of life, but there was nothing. Slowly, I smiled. I had set out to do murder, and murder I had done. My enemy had been defeated, and had died even more gruesomely than I had planned. I had quite literally scared him to death. I could not have asked for more, but it was then that I realized I had gotten it anyway.

My pants were wet on the inside. My first thought was that I had peed myself in the intensity of the moment, but my exploring hand discovered there was not enough moisture for that, and what was there was sticky and showed up white against the blue of my fingers.

I had had my first ejaculation when I felt the intense pleasure of my enemy dying in my arms. The irony of the situation was not lost on me. I had resisted Herr Grüber’s attempt to teach me to take sexual pleasure from hurting others, but killing him had resulted in my doing exactly that.

I rested for a while, trying to make sense of what had happened and what I should do next. I did the best I could to push my roiling emotions aside and think clearly. That imposed practicality bore fruit.

I pushed his body over the edge of the cliff and watched it hit the rocks below. If anyone ever found it, they would be likely to assume he had fallen to his death. I returned to his house in two long jumps. I knew he always kept a good amount of cash hidden in a secret compartment in his study, so I took it. I felt it was my due, as I had been the one responsible for a big part of his wealth. Seeing the little plaster model of the house he had given to me sitting on the corner of his desk, I took that also, telling myself that it had been put there to be given soon to one or both of the new freaks he had mentioned that he was training. Maybe I had at least arrived in time to keep them from having to learn the lessons of the House of Pain. If so, that would be of some consolation to me.

I went back to my hideout, returning as I had come, but faster now that I knew the way. Exhausted, I collapsed on my bed of blankets and slept for a day and most of the next night.

I had expected to feel some sort of relief after the murder of Herr Grüber, but that did not happen. Yes, the rage had been washed out of me, but now I felt guilty, hideously guilty. Yes, Herr Grüber perhaps deserved to die, but that did not automatically give me the right to kill him. I had thought of myself as God’s avenging angel, but God needs no avenging angels. I had done evil, fooling myself into believing it was good simply because I wanted it to be.

And how could I justify the crazy way I had taken his life? I had done it deliberately, and worse, I had enjoyed it. Not only enjoyed it, but actually got sexual pleasure from it! That served only to confirm my own depravity. I had turned myself into an abomination: not just a torturer and a murderer, but someone who actively enjoyed it in an obscene way.

Now, I see that violence and sex do have many things in common and are often intertwined, and I am no longer surprised at such a reaction. But then, I was a child, and all I had was my own confusion, with no adult to understand and help me cope with it. I thought I was the only one ever to have these feelings. To be sure, I had been raised to connect sex and pain, but I had resisted being the one who caused that pain. Now, it seemed that I had lost the battle, while Herr Grüber had won out in the end. He had made me into a monster, a vile thing offensive to God by its very existence.

When it occurred to me that Fr. Bauer would have been deeply ashamed of me if he knew what I had done, despair crashed down upon me on top of the guilt. It was almost a palpable thing, as if a curtain had fallen cutting me off from the light, destroying all my hope, despoiling every ideal I had lived for, damning me before my God, and turning my carefully-nurtured hatred of Herr Grüber back onto my own self. I lost something that day, something I can never get back again. Ironically, I might even be able to call it my innocence.

For several weeks, I could do nothing but lie in my makeshift bed and sink deeper into this hideous morass of worthlessness, barely able to bestir myself long enough to care for my basic needs. I could not care about anything anymore. It was all hopeless. My past had been a big mistake, and I had no future. My very existence was a disaster. I had no energy, no motivation to carry on. My life seemed nothing but a bad joke. Not only did I look like a devil, I had proven myself to be no better than a devil. And I had done it to myself, by giving in to my fury over the loss of Fr. Bauer.

During that dreadful time, I was literally obsessed with what I had done, turning it this way and that way in my frantic mind in an effort to understand why I had done it and what I should do now. I think I was closer then to being insane than I have ever been in my life.

At one point, I asked myself what Fr. Bauer would have said if he were here. Perhaps that repentance is the first step toward forgiveness? So was I sorry? I wanted to be sorry, but there was another voice in the back of my head, whispering to me. No, you are not sorry at all. You hated Herr Grüber, with good reason. You enjoyed what you did to him. You gloried in it. And you responded sexually to it. Oh, you may now try to say you are sorry, but your body knows differently.

All right, if I could perhaps not quite qualify as repentant, what could I do? Again, Fr. Bauer’s teachings came to me. The sinner must change his ways if he wishes forgiveness. It was possible I could do that. I surely had no further plans for murdering anyone, not even any of the villagers who had been involved with burning down the church.

Yet that was still not enough of an answer. It was somehow too easy; all I had to do was resolve not to do something I no longer felt like doing.

I tried meditating on the essence of my sin, dissecting it and studying it, in order that I might fully understand it. It had begun with rage at Herr Grüber. No, that was wrong. It had begun with the shock and sorrow of Fr. Bauer’s death and the destruction of the only real home I had ever known. Where had I lost track of that connection? Had the rage and hatred become my way of pushing that overwhelming sorrow aside? Was that even possible? Yes, I concluded, yes, it was. I had made a bad choice, even if I had not fully realized what I was doing at the time. I had taken the easy way out, being afraid to face and feel the sorrow and instead turning it into destructive and violent rage.

Another facet of my failure was the murder itself. But I had already thought much on that, and had concluded that vengeance was not mine to take. There were other things I could have done to prevent Herr Grüber from victimizing others, short of killing him.

That left my unexpected sexual reaction to the murder. True, there was no choice involved in that, and I could not have known it would happen. But I did know now, so it is not something to be forgotten. Considering the way I had been trained, the idea that causing pain to another person can be sexually arousing and pleasurable is something I must remember in order that I might avoid falling prey to just such a temptation in the future. To deliberately inflict agony and even death upon someone else in order to gain the sort of ecstasy I had felt could not be anything but a hideously selfish perversion of the essential joy inherent in our sexuality.

So what then had I been guilty of? Cowardice in not facing the pain of sorrow and loss directly. Weakness for giving in to rage and fury instead. Premeditated murder. Deriving pleasure from that murder, however unexpectedly. And finally, despair over the consequences.

Cowardice and weakness, while not desirable traits, could not accurately be classified as sins in and of themselves, so I ruled them out. That left the remaining three: Premeditated Murder, Illicit Sexual Pleasure, and Despair.

You may think that a child of my age could not possibly have analyzed his behavior so closely, but I was not an ordinary child. In many ways, I knew far too much for my own good, while in other ways, I understood far too little.

No sooner had I decided on the individual components that made up my sin, than I recalled an article I had read not long ago in an encyclopedia that described a strange sort of alphabet given to humankind by the Angel Gabriel. Did I honestly believe that literally? No. But the letters themselves had haunted me, seeming somehow fascinating in their odd unworldly shapes and flourishes. I wondered how it would look if I wrote out my sins using that script. For the sake of brevity, I reduced them to three words: Murder, Pleasure, and Despair.

Obviously, I used the German words: Mord, Vergnügen, and Verzweiflung, so the letters do not correspond to the English words. I also took a certain amount of liberty with the forms of the letters, since there are already several variations on this alphabet in existence.



I held the paper up in my hand in front of my eyes. As I stared at it, the sharp-edged spiky letters almost seemed to glow. And then they turned red and blood welled up from the lines, running down the paper and dripping onto the floor. They seemed to be showing me what I should do.

It felt somehow right. It would show my determination never to do it again. It was not penance so much as proof of my sincerity. Sometimes it is not enough just to say you are sorry.

Once I had made up my mind, I considered where on my body such a design belonged. My sexual response to killing played a large part in my collapse into guilt and hopelessness. At first, I rejected the obvious location that presented itself to me, but after more thought, I realized that the organ which took pleasure in killing would be the best place for a reminder, since it was also something I would see several times in the course of each day for the rest of my life whenever I had to urinate. And, as a more powerful reminder, whenever I had sex.

That presented me with a new problem: there was not enough space to fit all those letters, especially considering the elaborate detail of the angelic script.

I solved it by taking the first letter of each word. That resulted in a design that I could engrave length-wise along the top of my shaft, if the letters were done very small and carefully. I chose the order of the letters to be such that I could read them from top to bottom as I looked down upon my penis, since that was how I would normally be seeing them. Thus, the M is closest to the end, while the final V is closest to my body.

Of course, the cuts would have to be very shallow in order not to slice entirely through the layer of skin, since such a thing could easily cause more damage than I intended. Only three letters. It did not seem beyond my capacity to endure.

But I needed something sharper than the knife I had intended to use on Herr Grüber. I returned to Schönberg; specifically, I returned to the pharmacy in that town, jumping into the building late at night and searching for something suitable. I would have settled for a packet of razor blades, but as it happened I found something even better in one of the many drawers containing medical items: a collection of needles meant to be used with hypodermic syringes. They were conveniently marked by diameter and length, so I chose what I thought looked best for my intended use and took six of them, plus a bottle of alcohol and a box of gauze pads.

In an attempt to make up for the fact that I was technically stealing these things, I figured up the price and left some money on the counter. Let the pharmacist puzzle over it as he wished. I had at least paid for what I had taken.

The following day found me sitting in the brightest part of the basement, naked from the waist down, with numerous candles burning around me in order to give me the best view possible of what I planned to do.

I had thought it all out in advance. I should start my design well clear of my foreskin, as that could rip too easily if I cut too deeply. In order to have a surface firm enough to make the letters in sufficient detail, I would have to be fairly hard. That was not very difficult to accomplish, even knowing what I planned to do.

I had pubic hair now, dark black but sparse, and my penis had begun to grow larger in comparison to my body. Nevertheless, at thirteen years old, I was still more boy than man.

I rubbed some alcohol over the area I planned to decorate, then unwrapped and uncapped one of my needles. The end was delicately tapered off to one side, resulting in a razor-sharp point. I had tried cutting a small line on my thigh earlier, so I knew it would work.

I took a breath, then firmly drew the point over the top surface of my penis, not even daring to wince at the pain for fear I would move enough to mar the design. I do not think I need to tell you that it hurt. Pain is not something that can be easily described, in any case.

I tried to think of my skin as being just something on which I was marking a design, letting the pain fall away into my imagined basement to join everything else that was already there. The irony of the situation was not entirely lost on me: here I sat in a real basement, trying to escape from the results of something I willingly did to myself by dumping it into an imaginary basement.

Every so often, I had to stop and blot away the blood so that I could see what I was doing more clearly.

As I drew the equivalent of M, I forced myself to remember the look on Herr Grüber’s dead face.

Eventually, I completed the first letter and, taking a fresh needle, I began the second.

For this V, I first visualized Anna’s eyes, glazed with pain and hopelessness as I helped Herr Grüber with her “training”. Then I made myself recall the intense orgasm I had had at the time of his death: a hideous desecration of what should be a beautiful thing.

Often during this process, I wondered if I might have gone crazy, but something stronger compelled me to continue.

To an extent, I suppose I did welcome the pain, as it allowed me to feel that I might in some way be paying for what I had done, but I never felt that God had told me to do it as a condition of being forgiven. Maybe I just felt as if it was only right that I should suffer for what I had done, to somehow strengthen my resolve not to do it again.

Once I even pictured myself throwing all those memories and feelings down into the basement along with the pain, but I could not. They loomed so large and awkward in front of me that I was not able to push them through the door, much less down the steps. I decided that was just as well. What good is a reminder if you try to destroy the memory of what it is meant to remind you of?

At last, I began the second V, this one for Despair.

I imagined Fr. Bauer, falling beneath the flaming roof, burning to death. Compared to his suffering, my own was as nothing.

Almost finished now. The hand that held the needle was beginning to tremble. What if I do not have the strength to finish? I am a coward. I am a fool, thinking this silly bit of self-torture will accomplish anything. It is hopeless –

No! Never again must I give in to this feeling. It is the very same Despair this design is meant to warn me against. Never again must I give up hope. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Never must I even think of suicide. Never again must I give in to the darkness. Never must I listen to the voice that tells me all is worthless. Never must I listen to the voice that tells me I am worthless. Never must I give up hope. Never may I give up on the world. Never may I think of myself as beyond God’s mercy. Never again must I despair. For without hope, there can be no life, no love, no good, no happiness, no laughter, no way of getting through the inevitable sorrow.   No joy, no ecstasy, no beauty, no chance of better things to come. No light in my eyes.

Every time I look at these scars, I must remember. Every time I feel them when I hold my penis to urinate. Every time I step in front of a mirror naked, every time I look down at myself, I will remember. Every time my penis hardens in my hand as I seek pleasure by myself. Every time it swells with desire, I will feel the slight pulling of the scarred flesh and remember. Every time I feel it slide into someone’s body, I will remember. Every time someone touches me here, I will remember. Every time I open my eyes and watch as my seed spurts from me, I will remember all these things.

Despair is Death.

Nur nicht verzweifeln.

Above all else, thou shalt not Despair.

I finished. I laid the needle aside. I picked up the bottle of alcohol and poured it liberally over my gruesome work of art. I fainted, holding onto consciousness only long enough to make sure I fell onto my back, rather than the front of my body.

I fall silent. To cover the momentary awkwardness, I take a long drink from the water glass next to the bed. Stricken with a sudden attack of shyness, I pull up the covers around me. Logan’s hand covers mine before I can let them go.

“Don’t do that, darlin’. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

I turn my face away.

“What’s the matter? Me seeing you naked never bothered you before.”

“Before you did not know the meaning of what you saw. Now it is different.”

“No, it’s not.

Still holding my hand, he lowers the covers again, exposing my almost erect penis.

“Just telling me about it did that?”

All I can do is nod.

He frees my fingers from the fabric and sets my hand down beside me on the bed. “Lie still. I want to look at you.”

He takes the little LED flashlight from his nightstand and turns it on.

I cringe. “Nein. You can see well enough in the dark, you do not need –“

“It’s difficult enough to make out small details on a dark blue background in the daylight, much less at night.”

He shines the flashlight directly onto my crotch, leaning closer to examine the intricate tracery of the raised scars.

I have to stop myself from pulling away in shame. How could he so totally embarrass me like this? Can he not see how it is making me feel?

Of course he can. I can tell by the expression on his face. I look down at myself, trying to see the scar as he does. Is it a further disfigurement of my already unattractive blue skin, repulsive for what it represents? Or are all my scars only fascinating because of their connection to wounds and blood and pain? Or perhaps he is envious, as his body does not scar and so he can have no vivid reminders of the violence he has endured? Is that all I am to him: an obscene sort of fetish?

“Stop it, darlin’. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You don’t have to get all freaked out.” He leans down to kiss the scar. “Don’t start feelin’ ashamed of it. Shame,” he says, each word spaced out between a series of soft kisses, “--- ain’t --- sexy.”

Then he covers my penis with his hand, tenderly, reverently, but not particularly sexually. “I can see how it’s really three separate sections, not just one design. You did a good job. It must have hurt like hell.”

“Only because of vhere I did it,” I point out. “On a less sensitive part of the body, I am told such cutting is hardly more painful than getting a tattoo, and many people do that nowadays merely for decoration.”

“You don’t need any decoration, Elf. This is beautiful, because you are beautiful.”

My foolish imaginings evaporate, and I can finally meet his eyes and smile. Because he accepts what I am and what I have done, perhaps it will be possible for me to do the same.

Putting the flashlight away, he pulls the covers up around us both.

“So what happened to you next?”

“You really vant to know that now?”

“Uh – well – if you’ve got a short version, maybe –“

“Ja, I can do a short version.” I settle myself comfortably against him and begin.

”My life after that time vas better. As soon as the veather began to moderate, I left my basement behind and traveled across the countryside in search of a circus that vould hire me despite my youth. I had the money I had taken from Herr Grüber’s house, so I could pay for lodgings and anything else I needed along the vay. I knew vhere many of the local circuses spent the vinter, so I vas able to get to them before they began their new season.

“Vhenever I had to be around other people, I could manage to disguise myself fairly vell vith makeup and an overabundance of clothing. However, in order to show vhat I could do for a prospective employer, I had to reveal my true appearance, at least to a certain extent. To that end, I came up vith a costume that made me appear rather like a devil, vith a tight black bodysuit that had red detailing and falsely pointed red shoulder pieces. My tail had to appear to be part of the costume, so I could not use it for any of my tricks. Instead, I had to keep it still and out of the vay. That vas not too difficult, as I had learned to do it as a child.”

It was not long before I found a circus that was willing to hire me as a performer, once I showed what I could do. A kind woman who also worked there took me in to live with her and her two children, treating me as an adopted son. Of course, I had to reveal what I truly was to the circus folks, but everyone was all right with it once they got to know me and became used to my appearance. I have never been accepted so well by any other group of people in my life. Until I joined the X-Men, of course.

As I got better and better at my performances, I soon became a star in the show. My foster brother and sister joined me in a performance that covered acrobatics, the trapeze, and the high wire, with a scenario where I was a devil (What else?) who kidnapped the girl away from her lover. The lover then chased me around through various obstacles and up onto the trapeze, until I ended up trapped with the girl in the middle of the high wire. At the point where the lover was about to slay me with his sword, I would laugh demonically and jump from the wire, carrying the girl with me and falling into the net below, which was all lit up by red lights as if we were falling into the fires of hell. The audience loved it.

Although I was not too happy over having to play such an evil part, I eventually made my peace with it, telling myself that wearing the false costume of a devil was somehow a symbol of my own true appearance, which is really nothing more than a false costume for my soul.

Our act helped the circus to prosper and grow, and I was happy there for many years. Yes, there was sometimes sorrow and unhappiness, but that is only normal for human beings.

And then one day William Stryker captured me and took me to his base, to try to turn me into a weapon that he could use to start a war between mutants and humans. You know the rest of the story.”

“There. Vas that a short enough version?”

“Yeah, Elf. Pretty succinct, for you.”

“Vhat do you mean by that?” I reply, feigning insult. “Are you implying that I talk a lot?”

“You might say that, darlin”.”

“Hmph! In that case, I think I need more vater. My glass is empty.”

“Oh, and I suppose ya expect me to fill it up for ya, huh?”

“Vell, that vould be very kind of you, Liebling,” I say, giving him a saccharine-sweet smile. “After all, my shoulders are still very sore and I have just barely recovered from the vay you mistreated me the other night.”

“Awright, awright, I get the point. Gimme the damn glass. Ya sure ya don’t want more chocolate ice cream while I’m at it?”

“Vell, now that you mention it –“

He takes the empty glass. “Don’t push it, bub,” he says, mock-menacingly and then laughs.

“Ya know,” he begins when he returns with my water, “to my way of thinkin’, you didn’t need to get all that upset over killing Herr Grüber. I’d say he deserved it.”

“But it vas revenge, not self defense, by the time I did it. And it vas far too late to have prevented Anna’s death.”

“Yeah, but even so, you repented, Elf. I’d do everything all over again, if I had to.”

I think that over for a moment, covering up my hesitation by drinking several mouthfuls of water and replacing the glass on my nightstand before I answer. “I vish I vere sure that I vould not.”

“You wouldn’t. You’ve changed since then. You were young and confused.”

“Ja. But perhaps now I am only older and yet more confused.”

Logan shakes his head. “No, darlin’. It’s me. I made you dredge up all this shit from your past and got you questioning yourself.” He turns away, as if he’s ready to get up from the bed. “Leave me, Elf. I’m no damned good for you, and you know it.”

I lay the end of my tail over his shoulder before he can move any further. “Can you look me in the eyes and tell me you truly vish me to leave you? If you can, I vill do as you say.”

I am taking a desperate gamble saying that, but I can think of no other way to get past his present self-loathing.

Logan spins around and grabs my head, holding my face in front of his, meeting my eyes directly. I look at him with all the confidence and love that I can muster for several long seconds. When he opens his mouth to speak, I wonder if I have lost my bet.

Unable to force himself to say those words of dismissal, he releases me abruptly and turns aside, shaking his head and saying miserably, “Maybe I should just go away from here and leave you in peace.”

I grab his shoulder and turn him back to me. “I do not vant peace. I vant love, I vant sex, I vant to feel your body next to me and you inside me!” I stop, trying to calm myself enough to speak rationally. “And beyond that, you must not leave the X-Men. If anyone is to go, it vill be me.”

“Why?”

“You need to be here. It is your salvation.”

“Huh?”

“As an X-Man, your rage at least serves a good purpose. I do not mean that it is good, only that it may sometimes be necessary. Far better you should use vhat you are in this vay, than merely for your own survival and pleasure. I, on the other hand, can manage vithout being an X-Man, if I must. And they can manage vithout me.”

“That’s bullshit!”

“Is it, Logan? Is it truly?”

He cannot answer. Yet he looks so forlorn as he sits on the side of the bed, his usually square shoulders drooping in silent evidence of his sorrow and distress, his head angled downwards. I reach out to lay my palm against his face, but feel the bandage still wrapped around that hand. I use my left hand instead, placing it flat against his cheek, the familiar heavy stubble tickling my palm as I do so.

No more talking, no more weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. I resolve to turn his thoughts to more pleasant things before we go to sleep.

Slowly, I slide my palm down his face and onto the front of his body, beginning on his chest and following the centerline of hair down over his abdomen to the thick pubic hair at his groin. I take his penis into my hand. It is just starting to become hard and stiffens even more as my fingers slip into place around it. At first, all I do is hold him. Then I begin squeezing gently, alternating the pressure between my two fingers as I do so.

“Umm.”

I press lightly, almost lightly enough to tickle, only gradually increasing the pressure. It seems awkward to be using my left hand, but that merely causes me to pay closer attention to what I am doing.

He reaches down for me, but I push his hand away.

“Nein, not this time,” I tell him softly. “Just let me do you. You are so often buried inside me. This time I vant to see and feel and taste your orgasm.”

Gradually, the squeezing changes to a sliding motion, up and down. He is moving with me now, as I pull harder and tighter.

I slide off the bed and down onto my knees in front of him, switching the position of my hand as I do so in order to get a more comfortable grip.

Even in the darkness, I can see his penis quite well, the veins swollen and standing out, his foreskin sliding back and forth with my hand but entirely clear of the head by now. I would like to take him into my mouth, but I dare not. I do not think my jagged and very sharp teeth could avoid doing damage. But my tongue can do no damage, so I lean down and use it to lick the exposed glans, tasting the moisture that is gathering there at his slit. Each time he thrusts forward, I give him another quick lick.

I wish I could prolong this, but I know he will soon be ready to come and I do not wish to tease him now. Instead, I run my tongue hard against the underside of his glans, into that notch just below the slit where I know he is very sensitive.

My hand moves faster, harder, drawing him towards the mouth I must not use.

“O god, Elf! AAHH!”

As I feel his muscles begin to spasm, I cover the end of his glans with my lips, denying him any further entrance between my parted teeth, while sucking as hard as I can. His semen comes into my mouth in thick spurts. I swallow it greedily, wanting to take some small part of him inside me and make it my own, even if only like this. When it stops and he relaxes, I try something that does not always work, but can be well worth it when it does.

Starting at the base of his shaft, with my fingers curled firmly around the upper side and my thumb pressed against the lower side, I gently milk the small amount of cum that remains in the urethra up and out into my mouth. I feel him shudder as another brief spasm of unexpected pleasure runs through his groin.

“Jesus Fuckin’ Christ, Elf! Where’d you learn to do that?” he exclaims. “No, don’t tell me. I already know.”

When we break apart, we lie beside each other crosswise on the bed, trying to catch our breath. The night is almost over, and neither of us has slept. Logan has to be even more exhausted than I am, since he has been short on sleep for several days by now. I am wrung out, frazzled, sweat-soaked, and both physically and emotionally exhausted. Briefly, I consider getting up to take a shower, but I am just too weary.

“Elf, my brain is totally fried. No more talkin’, OK? Can we just go to sleep now?”

I struggle to push myself up on one arm, so I can look down at his face. “I have only one more thing I must say, Schatz. My heart and soul are yours. But you are not the keeper of my conscience, nor am I the keeper of yours. I do not have to agree with your ethics in order to love you.”

“Can you live like that?”

“I must, if the alternative is losing you.”

He does not answer, but he reaches up to me and I go into his arms. So what if we’re a mess, the bed is a mess, the room smells of sweat and sex? It does not matter.

We scrunch ourselves around until we are lying beneath the covers. I snuggle against him and lay my head on his shoulder, sighing with relief. My eyes close and my body begins to relax against his.

I think we have settled it, that we have agreed to disagree.

I could not have been more wrong if I had tried.

GERMAN TRANSLATION

Entschuldigung. Pardon me.

Mein Gott       My God

“Nein!! O Gott nein! Kurt, bitte —“

“No!! O God no! Kurt, please –“

mein Herr           Sir/Master

Mord, Vergnügen, and Verzweiflung

Murder, Pleasure, and Despair

Nur nicht verzweifeln.        Only do not despair.

Liebling                Darling/sweetheart
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