Bacchanal Of Bones Chapter Six

While the design of the ossuary indicated and inspired respect for the nameless millions who’d been interred there, and reflected the tranquil kind of fatalism that the French seemed (at least to her) to be endowed with, it was also characterized by the occasional touch of whimsy. The beams of their LED lanterns revealed not only walls of artistically arranged bones, but sculptures, ornate iron gates, poems inscribed on stone slabs and archways, pillars built out of bones, oddly-shaped rooms, and even a fountain. And the creators of the catacombs weren’t the only members of the living who’d left their mark there– more than two hundred years’ worth of graffiti left by visitors could be seen in some of the caverns and corridors.

Intoxicated by this mix of the sacred and the profane, the Stygian and the sensual, the couple became more and more aroused by their surroundings, and by their own anticipation of the pleasures promised by the ancient book, which they were certain would soon be theirs.

When they came upon a passageway in which there was a group of skulls arranged in the shape of a heart, embedded in a wall of femurs, Rennie and Pete couldn’t contain themselves anymore.

They set their gear down against the opposite wall and left only one of the lanterns on.

He took her by the shoulders and slowly pushed her until her back was pressed up against the center of the heart of bones, kissing her all the while. Even through her clothes, she could feel the wall’s uneven, cold surface.

 

Neither of them wanted to take their boots off, so when the time came, they had to make do with simply getting their pants pushed as far down their legs as they could.

While it was not the most comfortable coupling they’d ever experienced together, it was one of the wildest of all their years, in terms of sheer intensity as well as of the circumstances surrounding it.

After the fourth time she came, he slowed the movement of his hips, and began gliding in and out of her in a series of excruciatingly slow thrusts that felt gloriously lewd, lingering for a few moments before withdrawing each time.

“Ohhh, that cock!” she moaned gutturally.

“Hope you don’t make any of our immediate neighbors jealous,” he quipped, obviously enjoying driving her crazy with his dick and her own insatiability.

She laughed, and he increased his pace again.

“Pete?”

“Yeah?”

“Pete, would you… tell me… ahh… tell me a story?” she panted.

His imagination never had ceased to astound her. She adored his “dirty” stories.

“Alright,” he answered, just as breathlessly. “There’s a… let me see… well… there’s this… Okay. There’s this eighteen-year-old girl. She and her mother are American, and her father is English.

“Years ago, the mom left the dad because she disliked how old-fashioned he was. Their daughter remained with her, while he went back to his home country.

“So the daughter… has had this lax upbringing. And the mom is now realizing… that she’s reaping what she’s sown. The girl has grown up to be this out-of-control brat, and the mom can’t handle her anymore. Recognizing the mistakes she’s made… but not knowing how to fix them herself, the mom… sends her overseas, to live with her father for awhile.

“The father… is a skilled horseman, and owns a ranch. When the daughter starts rebelling against him, he lets her know… in no uncertain terms… that he’s not going to put up with her behavior– by whipping her with his riding crop.”

At that point, Rennie asked, “Does he… take her into an empty stall in the stable to do that? Maybe… bending her over… and making her hold her skirt up?”

“I was thinking her… skirt would be… down.”

“You mean down… in a puddle around her ankles?”

“Yeah.”

“Ooh yeah… that’s hot, too!”

“The strict father ties her with rope,” he continued, “to keep her still while he’s punishing her… He uses a bridle and bit to silence her protests… He explains to her… that if she wants to act like a wild, coarse animal, he’s going to treat her like one… and break her and tame her like one.”

It was that last part that made Rennie come, crying out her bliss and clinging to him.

When the pulsations had subsided into fluttery, rippling little aftershocks, Pete pulled out just long enough to turn her so that she faced the wall.

She pushed back against him, moaning as he reentered her. This was the one thing she had never grown bored or weary of: his hard cock, stabbing and burrowing inside her with such savagery and such a strange, paradoxical sweetness.

When he came, he clasped her wrists and held them against the wall. She kissed him, kissed the skulls nearest her that comprised the edge of the grisly valentine, kissed him again. She was made to take every last drop, and even as he throbbed within her, he continued to pump in and out, slowly then, driving all his come deep into her body.

 

Making love in the catacombs, it seemed, had been a bigger risk than they’d realized at the time– as they continued along the passageways, they occasionally met others who, for various reasons, were on their own illicit journeys (that just made them even gladder that they’d done it, though).

These encounters became less and less frequent the further they traveled. After awhile, they stopped occurring altogether.

 

Their phones were the first things to stop working, but the couple had expected as much.

Then Pete’s wristwatch went dead, and within hours, so did Rennie’s. She hadn’t been expecting that one. She found it weird, and kind of disturbing.

He wasn’t quite as concerned. “Well, you remember what Ray said. Moisture, the roughness of the terrain, general exposure to the elements– electronics don’t tend to do well here.”

She wondered if that was really all there was to it. By now, they had cleared the catacombs proper and were in the abandoned mines. But the ossuary they had wandered through held the bones of thousands, upon thousands, upon thousands of people. And she knew a little bit about its history. All those lives, all those departed souls– who was to say that all of them would’ve been happy with knowing that their bones had been removed from their original resting places and consigned to what was essentially a mass grave? Who was to say…

She shook off the notion that had begun forming in her mind. She simply couldn’t let herself start thinking that way– not down here.

 

Ray hadn’t been kidding about the going being “pretty rough” at times. They frequently had to negotiate extremely narrow tunnels, move rocks and debris aside, and find their way past pipes and wires, and sometimes had to saw padlocks off of gates, and wade through caverns that were half-flooded.

There were moments that broke the monotony, though. Some past explorers of the mines had left graffiti (some of it crude, some of it surprisingly poetic and profound), and others had even painted murals.

They also noticed that some, though certainly not all, of the tunnels had plaques inscribed with the names of the streets that they ran beneath, and they found that interesting. It certainly added to the sense they had of walking through an inverted version of the metropolis above them.

 

Pete and Rennie had brought along plenty of extra batteries, but before they’d even had the chance to go through their full supply, their LED lamps stopped functioning. They had brought along two oil lamps just in case, though, so they lit those and pressed onward.

In the darkness and their state of isolation, without their phones and watches, they eventually lost track of the time and of what date it was. After that, it wasn’t long before they lost their sense of when it was day and when it was night.

 

It was when their provisions ran out that they finally started to panic. But even then, they didn’t feel afraid of death itself– they were only afraid of dying before they’d found the Sexus Divinus.

They talked about using the panic-button function on the Ninshubur Unit, but decided that would be a bad idea. They could retrace their steps and find their own way back out of the catacombs with the help of the Unit if they wanted to– and they didn’t want to. And they knew that if they had Ray rush down there to pull them out, then he would try his very hardest, afterward, to persuade them not to make a second attempt– and the very knowledge that they’d thrown in the towel once would leave them so disheartened that they just might actually listen to him.

This was a one-shot. To give up now would be to give up forever.

They kept going.