The Temptation of St. Anthony

Story by Zorha on SoFurry

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#3 of Hellraiser: Hellsent


Warning: Articles 188 and 189 of the Austrian penal code prohibits anyone from my ancestral homeland from reading this story. For those living in the United States: Enjoy your first amendment rights, and read this blasphemous little furry M/M smut story aloud to anyone but minors. Yesss ... Sprocket, welcome back. It's been a long wait, but we have an eternity to know each other's flesh. All characters, living, dead, possessed, or undead, are copyright Eldyran. Hellraiser and its intellectual properties are the rights of Clive Barker. Do not Profane HappyFunBall (tm) !!!

Hellraiser: Hellsent

3nd Piece - The Temptation of St. Anthony

2006 by Eldyran

England, Anno domini, 1384

As Wycliffe's paws fumbled over the etched surfaces of the gilded, golden box handed down from rector to rector throughout the ages, a sudden gust tore through his monastery chambers. The bitter gale extinguished the row of wax candles resting by some unfinished Latin transcriptions, the pages fluttering to Job 3:8. While the winter storm outside pelted ice against his stained glass window, the room descended into darkness, lit only with the embers of the brazier used to heat his frigid stone chamber.

The gaunt leopard's paws rearranged the facets of the verboten puzzle cube, said to have originated a century earlier with St. Albertus Magnus, with single minded, almost obsessive drive. As he unlocked its final configuration, a musical hymnal, accompanied with the calls of doves, rang out from the open cube, casting an eerie blueish back light along his chamber walls. As the skinned paw of a jaguar rested on the transcriber's shoulders, the wet, glistening musculature left a moist, bloody smudge on Wycliffe's robe.

"Deus misereatur," the sickly leopard whispered, closing his cataract clouded, slitted eyes. The gilded box of seductive promise tumbled from his shaking paws to the table, coming to rest by an English Bible, one of the first of its kind.

We know why you called for us ... the cenobite who would be named Xipe Totec a hundred years later in Mexico growled, his voice a deep seductive, yet deadpan rumble. Why do you insist on knowing if your faith is corrupt, when the hearts of beasts beat deep within the putrid confines of your brother's and sister's chests? Why tempt the spirit when the flesh is so much more .... tactile ...

The skinned jaguar leaned down and ran his rough tongue over the dull fur of the elderly, devout transcriber's ear. The leopard's diseased heart thundered for a moment, his paws grasping for the Latin pages in from of him.

"I must know ..." Wycliffe wheezed out, his cooling breath barely misting in the frigid air of his chambers, "... if God still loves me ... after all I have said about my fellow brother's and sisters ..." The flayed jaguar's claws buried themselves into the other feline's emaciated shoulders.

Come now Johnathon ... if God loved you ... would he have created this ... just for you? The gaping maw of Hell opened up in the great dark expanse in front of him, and behold he witnessed a great orgy of suffering, wailing, and gnashing of fangs. And within the blueish black, impassive glacier of the of the ninth layer, Yahweh laid with his brother Leviathan, his brother Behemoth, and his sister Ziz, and it was good.

Fire. Water. Earth. Air.

The leopard's broken heart burst from the blasphemous sight, and the feline's lifeless body slumped forward onto the desk, blood from his flat nose dribbling onto the words of the Latin pages. The cenobite relinquished his grasp on the translator's shoulders, and picked up the Mangus' puzzle box.

Est autem fides credere quod nondum vides; cuius fidei merces est videre quod credis the jaguar rumbled, before walking back through the baroque archways of home, clutching the gilded box of unequivocal knowledge in his feline paws. Curiosity killed the cat, Rector Wycliffe ...

Brazil 1974

As the uniformed Brazilian policeman shoved Joshua past the sanctified doorway of the church and slammed the heavy oak doors shut behind him, the heavy thud echoed around the cavernous expanse of the mission's interior. The eight year old black fox lumbered forward from the shove, his paws shooting out to steady himself against the back of the last row of pews, and he cringed a bit in the dimly lit house of God, looking around.

The young vulpine snuffed a bit in the dusty air, dried blood still encrusted on his recently broken nose. As Joshua Merchant took a few hesitant steps down the isle between the long wooden pews, a mosaic of pale yellow and red light from the stained glass windows danced across his ebony fur, painting him in vibrant facets of cubism.

His eyesight already waining, Joshua squinted a bit, the small particles of dust suspended in the rays of mosaic color that bathed him just out of focus. The disoriented fox turned in circles, sometimes walking backwards, his bushy tail dragging in the dust of the stone under his hind paws. Joshua seemed uncomfortable in the Lord's House of Usher, the crucible of Heaven's Musty Grace, and did not notice the equine priest step out from behind the curtain of the sanctuary and step behind the pulpit.

"Tell me child ... are you lost?" the priest in dark robes finally said, his braying voice echoing up high in the rafters. Joshua spun around and tripped, falling to the floor on his knees. The equine shook his long head and made his way over to the fallen boy, his hooves clumping on the stone floor. He knelt down and helped the fox up, his dull hoove nails lingering a bit on Joshua's arm. "God wishes us to kneel in worship, child, not in accident."

Joshua gave him a blank look.

"The villagers call me Saint Anthony, although I doubt the papacy would look fondly upon that. Tell me my child, what is your name?" The young black fox looked him dead in the eyes and stepped back, his own glances snatching back and forth at the multitude of shadows that blanketed the dark recesses of the ominous mission. "What is it my son, do you feel exposed to God's all knowing eyes?" Joshua stopped and shot a nasty look up at the gray colored horse in black robes.

"If you prefer somewhere more private place," Father Anthony began, his front hoove hands sweeping to a booth bathed in shadow, "sheltered from the prying ears of less divine natures, we will move to the confessional." The priest clomped over to the booth and slipped inside, leaving Joshua to shoot sideways glances to the lumps of shadows around him, some of which began to stir and congeal. The fox shot to the confessional and slid inside, moving his bushy tail to sit on the crimson pillow of his seat, and the claustrophobic dark recess swallowed the sable vulpine. Father Anthony leaned closer to the silk screen separating him from the young, sylphlike fox, and listened to his frightened pants.

"I understand why you are afraid, my son, whoever mutilated your father and kidnapped your friend's brother must surely be after you ..." The priest let his words sink in a bit. If the pressing judgment of divine wrath would not loose this fox's muzzle lips, then perhaps suggestion of a more ... corporeal ... means of intimidation would make him speak. The pants on the other side of the screen quieted, and the priest continued.

"I understand that your father was collecting several occult relics, also of interest to the the papacy." If that stirred the fox, it gave no overt sign to Father Anthony. The horse leaned back against the confessional wall. "It must have been horrible to watch, your father being hacked apart like a passover lamb, right in front of your eyes ...." The priest sniffed the air lightly, and the acrid sent of bitter tears drifted through the screen. "Tell me, my child, since you will not tell the police, tell God." There was a moment of silence. "Who murdered your father?" The reek of guilt filled the confessional box.

"I ... killed him ..." Joshua's words were little more than a remorseful, hoarse whisper. Meanwhile outside the confessional, the coalescing, deepening shadows around the booth churned and swallowed it. Neither of the two inside realized anything had changed.

The priest was stunned for a moment, before he realized the boy had gone mad. There was no way in Hell that that a eight year old boy could overtake, kill, and butcher a military officer in his physical prime. Although the local police had come to him with a bizarre disappearance and a horrific murder, Father Anthony doubted he could help them with their case. The fox's sobs deepened, and the priest felt a flush of compassion for the young boy. He slipped a hoove hand through a secret slit in the silk screen of the confessional booth, to rest on the vulpine's child sized thigh.

"There there my boy ... God loves you ... and will forgive you in time." The fox's paw rested on his hoove nails, and his sob lightened. Father Anthony's arm quivered slightly at the warm contact; the boy's touch so innocent, so pure. The horse ran his dull hoove nails through the soft fur of Joshua's thigh, and the priest closed his brown eyes. He wanted to show him how much God loved him. And the he was the material arm of God.

The priest shivered a bit as his nails groomed the soft exposed fur of Joshua's thigh, the repressed part of his carnal nature snatching the forbidden sensation. The equine's sheath swelled, stirring passions he had no business skirting in the first place. And yet, the horse could not stem the flood of need. When his hoove tips reached the hem of the black fox's shorts, the temptation of Father Anthony grew in multitudes, until the needs of the flesh overtook the whims of the spirit.

Joshua moaned softly as the hoove tips slid up the leg of his shorts.

As the dull hooves nails scraped gently along the eight year old's sheath, Joshua leaned back against the wall of the confessional and closed his green eyes. The black fox spread his legs a bit, giving more access to the exploring digits, the sensations now crawling through his prepubescent flesh just as intoxicating as they were when his best friend Phillipe touched him not two days ago. The somesthesia of another's touch on his tactual sex was an addiction that ensnared his rational mind.

And he wanted more.

Joshua groaned out as the horse's digits fondled his sheath and the slick flesh hidden within, before the priest gave the black fox a few, shallow, gentle strokes. As the wet tip of his tapered sex slid out of his protective sheath, Joshua's flesh demanded more, and his small, black, unscarred paws slid down to unbutton his shorts. With deliberate, methodical intent, Joshua unzipped himself, and pushed his shorts off to the floor of the confessional booth. It didn't take long before Father Anthony's nails stroked the glistening, emerging fox cock once more. The priest neighed slightly, his other hoove hand parting his robes to grasp at his enormous equine phallus. The dull nails raked the foot long, veined, flaccid length in long strokes.

It didn't take long for the inexperienced fox to cusp, and before he even realized it, his green eyes sealed shut, his muzzle gritted in a grimace of bliss as his hot vulpine spunk spurted all over his shirt and muzzle. The intensity of his orgasm sent a shudder through his prepubescent frame, his body locking up in the rigor of climax. A groan pealed out of his muzzle lips, now tight against his gums, and as thick strands of salty vulpine cream continued to shoot from the tip of his tapered foxcock, his small frame shuddered as it rode out its first orgasm. His eyes shot open.

The blackness contained within wanted more.

More. More. More.

Joshua' paw lunged out and snatched the horse's forearm just behind the wrist. The equine priest have a bray as the pressure built in diabolic multitude, until the two bones of his forearm gave with a sick snap. As Father Anthony's scream echoed about the high ceiling of the mission, the fox tore the broken appendage from its mooring, and a flood of dark crimson gushed from the ragged stump. The possessed vulpine wasted no time in shoving the twitching hoove hand down to his crotch, the digits grasping around his still swollen, bulbous knot. Barking in short exquisite yips, the young canid jerked himself off with it, blood dribbling down to ease the rake of the hoove nails on his hard cock.

The priest have another prolonged shriek, his other hoove hand flying through the screen to clutched at the squirting, ragged stump. With a brutal snap of his undersized jaws, the demon fox severed the other wrist, and the now useless lump of muscle, bone, and sinew hit the stone floor with a soft thud. Father Anthony screamed for the police outside the mission door, before falling out of the confessional booth on his back, gouts of gore pouring from his missing appendages.

The macabre world around him howled in torment.

Father Anthony stared around in horror at the pitted, scorched landscape before him. Pillars of fire twirled about the blasted terrain to lick the starless, shattered sky. Churning clouds of pulverized silicon, metal, and bone scraped the desolate hellscape before him. The chthonian scene before him rippled, wavered before his trembling eyes, as if distorted through heart of a sweltering furnace. The sheer force of the screeching, infernal gale distorted all; even the wails of those bound here for an eternity of excruciating delights beyond all imagination.

The black fox stepped out of the booth, now little more than a canid skeleton with chunks of scoured flesh clinging to its crimson bones. The cenobite known to the Aztec's as Xolotl still clutched the equine priest's hoove hand, using it to stroke what remained of his erection. As the skeletal grin bore down into him, the vast black expanse that hung in the eye sockets swallowed what little sanity Father Anthony still clung to. The dim shadowy outline of a jaguar with pins in his skull fell across the equine, and the Mangus' gilded puzzle box landed in the blood drenched silicon grit next to the dying, shrieking priest.

I am your Shepard ... the demonic feline's reverberating growl echoed ... and you ... shall ... WANT ...

Florida 1984

Joshua shot up naked on his mattress, his sable fur matted with sweat. The eighteen year old black fox's heavy pants filled the otherwise quiet room, and his green eyes closed for a moment, his paws shaking on the blood stained mattress. Echoes of a terrible memory still clung to the disorientation of the waking world; the line between bleak reality and grim fantasy a shady blur. He glanced about the peeling paint of the room's dingy walls, the thinning shadows in their corners withdrawing.

Joshua ... an ocelot's voice whispered out. Joshua's vulpine ears perked a bit, and he got off the bed, following the familiar feline's voice. The ebony fox followed the phantasmal siren out the door to his bedroom, and down the dusty hallway to the next room. His scarred paw gripped the rusty iron doorknob, but it refused to turn all the way, locked. A few minutes later he came back from his room with two small iron probes, each covered with flakes of crimson. The crafty fox picked the lock with diligent grace, but it was clear that the old locking mechanism had not been used in years.

When the door swung open with a creak of its corroded hinges, the Lovecraftian swarm of insectopods inside fled the encroach of dim light from the hallway. Joshua stepped inside, and his paws fumbled for the light switch on the wall. The bulb above gave a dull pop, the wiring filament inside flaring for just a moment. Undeterred, the black vulpine walked further inside the dank recess of the long forgotten attic storage room.

The door behind him closed, and the eldritch darkness swallowed him.

Joshua stalked forward, stumbling a bit on the edge of a cardboard box stuffed with all manner of discarded novelties. Something with a multitude of chitinous legs scrambled up the fur of his leg, but the fox gently cusped it in his paws, before turning the vermin free back into its Crete labyrinth of forgotten, grotesque memories. In the impenetrable void, a beacon of blueish black light illuminated a wooden crate. Joshua staggered and knelt next to it, his trembling paws moving aside the brass navigation trinkets and cartographer's maps of the bleak arctic mountains of madness.

Joshua ... the soft whispers of an old childhood friend beckoned to him; teased him with vocal seductions that only felines can produce. His paws dug deeper, till it found a blue leather book, and when he opened it, several hundred dollars worth of Franc's fell out. Squinting and adjusting the black horn rimmed glasses on his snout, Joshua peered at the passport's picture now held in his paws. His father grimaced back at him, his accusatory dark eyes brimming with a linage of hidden family secrets and arcana. The black fox gathered up the passport and its secret stash, before digging out the source of the hellish luminescence.

The warm, etched, metallic sides of the Lament Configuration hummed in his scarred paws, now locked in its second configuration. A chorus of Everglade's birds escaped its confines; chipping in maddening verse.

A few minutes later Joshua came downstairs to the kitchen, dressed for school, the puzzle box in his book bag. Adrien, his cousin, was already slumped over a bowl of soggy mush, chewing his muzzle full of breakfast cereal, his eyes dull. The other black fox said nothing to Joshua, who poured himself a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator, and pulled an apple out of a bowl, before sitting across the table.

Joshua's uncle came into the kitchen a few moments later, a newspaper tucked under his arm, his briefcase in one paw. The middle aged black fox gave his son a rub on the back, and Adrien cranked his neck around to peck his father goodbye on his furry cheek, wishing him a good day in the office. After his father left, Adrien shot Joshua a strange look from across the table, and slid the bowl of milk to the side.

"He still doesn't have a clue you know ..." Adrien said, biting his lower muzzle lip.

Joshua looked up from his meager breakfast, but said nothing to Adrien.

"The bus doesn't leave for another half hour ... if you wanted to slip upstairs ..." Adrien's leg slid underneath the table to rub across Joshua's thigh. Joshua growled at his cousin and shot up from the table, storming out of the house into the fine drizzle of the deary September morning.

* * * * *

As Joshua walked through the hallways of his high school after the final bell had rung, he watched the other students scramble past him, eager to be rid of this institution for another day. As the mad droves thinned, the black fox continued to plod to his locker, lost in his own, dark thoughts. Earlier that day in metal shop, several students commented about a certain lion's absenteeism, as well as his feline posse. Joshua paid no mind, but as he sawed off a piece of metal with the same jig saw he had used to decapitate the lion with, Joshua noticed Mr. Rhinehold, the cougar metal shop instructor, staring at him on the edges of his peripheral vision. Now, after rounding the final corner to get to his locker, a large feline paw clamped down on his shoulder.

"Ah Mr. Merchant. I wanted to have a discreet word with you ..." Joshua turned and looked up to the cougar, who pulled him into the empty biology classroom, taking a seat on one of the laboratory dissection tables. The black fox stood there, his sable ears twitching, waiting for the teacher to speak.

"I knew I saw good things in you," the large feline said, brushing out the metal dust from his nondescript red cotton shirt. He smiled down to the fox. "Thats quite a job you did on Mr. Refore's pride, I must say. It took Arbunkle, the janitor, all night to clean up the mess you left."

Joshua shrugged. Mr. Rhinehold laughed, unable to tell if the mentally unbalanced fox was unsympathetic over how long it took for the coon to mop up all the blood, or dismembering the feline trio and stitching the body parts into a macabre sculpture. He stood up and placed a paw on the vulpine's slim shoulders.

"Come by my house after you get done putting your books away." the cougar said, before leaving. "Three Fourteen King Street. I have some things to show you." Joshua watched the feline instructor go, his blue jeans creasing with each stride of his strong muscular thighs. The black fox took a slight breath and left the empty classroom, going back to his locker. After he put his books away, he sniffed at Raymond's varsity jersey, hanging just inside the locker. Although the reek of Refore's blood still lingered in the wet material, the muted, masculine scent of the running back made the fox's pants tent slightly.

On the way out of the school grounds, the introverted, unusually quiet fox walked past the football field, watching the varsity squad in the middle of practice. The white wolf running back waved at the ebony fox after completing a play, the shoulder pads adding even more impressive size to his already broad lupine shoulders. Joshua stopped, but did not wave back, and as the squad continued their motions, the dark vulpine stood in the thickening, dank, drizzle, imagining his paw running up Ray's stomach fur and those tight abs. A pair of female coyote paws latched onto the back of his shirt, and hauled him backwards underneath the shadows of the stands. Due to the already overcast sky, no one could see Jessica, Raymond's girlfriend, confront the fox.

"What the fuck is your problem fox?" the jealous 'yote stammered. Her paws shoved the shorter canid back against some of the stand's support beams, and Joshua's cruel green eyes narrowed. "You think you can just stalk him out in the open? Is that it? Someone broke into his locker yesterday, and stole his jersey."

The fox grinned a bit, and the shadows underneath the stands thickened. The coyote was too enraged to notice.

"I hate competition fox ... so let me give you a piece of friendly advice ..." she shoved herself up against the vulpine, her cheerleader's outfit crinkling against him. Her snarl was low, empathizing every word; their muzzles brushing against each other slightly. "... don't FUCK with me."

Jessica tried to stare down Joshua, but she didn't like how his green eyes didn't even flinch. Her aggravation grew, until her paws gripped the fox's arms. Joshua's muzzle lips split in a snarl, moments before the female 'yote shoved her own muzzle up against his, eyes closed. This time Joshua did flinch, another horrible memory clawing its way out of the dark recess of his maggot ridden psyche. One of her paws reached down and clamped itself on the crotch of his pants, trying to humiliate the gay fox, her dominating, undesired grope a sign of who was really in charge. Joshua blinked, now weak in the extremities, and his eyes drained of their vibrant green color, inky blackness spreading out from his corneas.

Tendrils of shadow reached for the female assaulter.

"Jessica ... what in the Hell are you doing?" Jessica spun around, the shadows thinning around her. Joshua dropped to his knees, suddenly weak, and the other cheerleader, a red vixen, gave a confused look to the female yote. What was the girlfriend of the varsity's star running wolf back doing making out with the school's only gay fox? The vixen's eyes widened and she ran off, excited about the delicious gossip she had sole possession of.

"Lisa! It's not what you think!" Jessica yelled, running off after the other female canid.

Joshua knelt in the dirt for a while, his heavy pants drowning out the sound of rainfall that started to pling off the aluminum stands above him. The darkness that hung in his eye sockets abated, and after a while the black fox shook his head, got up, and emerged out into the pouring rain. Small standing pools of water replaced the varsity squad on the football field. The cheerleaders also had vanished, most likely inside the gymnasium to continue their practice.

Joshua shouldered his book bag with the demonic puzzle box safely tucked inside and headed to Mr. Rhinehold's house, the heavens raining down its tears for the suffering of children.

* * * * *

When the drenched vulpine finally reached his destination, his rain soaked clothing hung loose and heavy on his matted down fur. He looked more like a interim at a concentration camp rather than a fox out and about after school. As Joshua plodded down the cement pathway leading up to the address his shop instructor gave him, he wiped his glasses free of huge rain droplets.

Aside from a lawn that needed to be mowed, since like a month ago, and some obvious signs of poor upkeep, the home in question could have passed for any number of others on the block. Joshua stepped up on the wooden porch, which seemed to feel warped under his hind paws, and stabbed the doorbell. The electronic chime died halfway through its suburban concerto, its sick, distorted tone grating on Joshua nerves like claws on chalkboard. The front door creaked open a few minutes later, and the cougar appeared in a bathrobe.

"Ahh Mr. Merchant! I am glad to see you finally arrived. Please! Come in out of that downpour." He helped the smaller fur inside, and the wooden door closed shut behind him, trapping the fox within the confines of the decrepit home.

"Josh isn't it?" the Florida cougar asked while taking the fox's dripping book bag. Joshua nodded back absently. "Ty!" The raccoon janitor shuffled up from somewhere in the recesses of the kitchen in the back, also dressed in a bathrobe. "Our guest here needs towels, and lets get him out of these wet clothes shall we?" Joshua watched the school's janitor disappear for a moment, before bringing back some dry towels from the bathroom. He never knew the metal shop teacher and the janitor lived together.

The curious vulpine wondered what other secrets they hid from the student body.

"You will have to forgive Ty, he doesn't talk much as a manner of course." The feline said as he pealed Joshua's wet shirt off. The raccoon undid his pants, jerking the heavy, soaked jeans to the floor. "And especially after witnessing your handiwork last night, expect him to be especially skiddish around you." The two hosts took towels and rubbed down Joshua's ebony fur, the fox shaking out what little rain remained.

"Isn't that better now, Josh?" the cougar said, smiling down at the black canid. He took off his bathrobe and hung it on the foyer coat rack, motioning for the raccoon to do the same. "We don't wear clothes here as a manner of convince. Blood stains refuse to come out in the normal wash. Come downstairs to the basement will you?"

The naked cougar's paw pushed Joshua along, more of suggestion than an actual shove. Joshua's paw snagged his book bag before being led down the darkness of the cellar stairs. The black fox's emotionless expression never faltered, the near constant look of emotional shell shock burned into his visage like a haunted mask. No one knew the dark secrets this aphotic vulpine or his linage hid. Was the fox's insanity a measure of some tragic and depraved event from his childhood, or was the sickness bred into his blood centuries earlier?

The answer would not escape this cellar.

As the three furs descended into darkness, the sharp scents of death and metal filled Joshua's keen nostrils. The clinking of wrought iron chain greeted the fox's ears, those one might in an industrial factory decorated in wind chimes. The fox's hind paws finally ran out of steps, and his foot pads met with damp concrete. With a flick of the switch, desecrated mobiles suddenly sprang to life in front of Joshua.

Bloody chunks of flesh and fur dangled before him, hints of limbs twirling about in grisly dance.

Phantasmal sheiks of the lion and his pride pierced the fox's broken mind, but if it bothered him, his stoic exterior gave no sign. From the fur patterns that swayed in the gentle draft from the cold basement up to the warm upstairs, there was more than just Mr. Refore and his gang here. A wolf pup's paw swung back and forth among its companions, hinting to the where abouts of the pup who's picture marked the side of the milk carton in the kitchen's refrigerator sitting above the three fur's heads.

A metal table sat in the center of the basement room; sickly yellow light from its only bulb bathing the dried crimson on it a stomach churning orange. Rusty hacksaws, dull picks, and other implements sat on old metal carts arranged around the table. A few dead flies lay in the caked gore, the frigid, damp cellar keeping the stench of outright rot from taking hold.

Joshua yawned a bit, fatigued from his long trek through the heavy downpour.

"There there Josh," Mr. Rhinehold growled, "you won't be on your feet for much longer." He pushed the naked, wet fox to the table, forcing him chest first onto it. The canid gave a soft bark and let his book bag fall to the floor, where the golden puzzle box tumbled out, just underneath one of the blood spattered carts, hidden from view. The cold steel of the table pressed hard into his warm, black fur.

"I'm impressed Mr. Merchant," the cougar purred out, holding the fox down while his raccoon cohort lashed down the black fox's limbs with leather cuffs, "most would have bolted after we turned on the light. Other's struggle when we tie them down, just like we're doing to you." The teacher looked down into his student's unfocused green eyes, which stared past him to the myriad of dancing shadow that the bulb cast on the far wall. "So you know what comes next, Josh?"

The fox nodded.

The burly feline grinned, and pushed his open paw toward the short raccoon. The janitor took one of the large iron hooks from the cart next to him and handed it off to his demented master. Mr. Rhinehold pulled back the loose bit of fur and flesh behind Joshua's right scapula, and ran the sharp tip of the hook through it. Joshua gave a gasp, before a soft moan of pleasure tore from his muzzle lips to flee to his teacher's keen feline ears.

From his lips to God's ears. The children suffer so.

Another hook made it home inside the fox's willing flesh, and another, until the hooks criss crossed his legs and arms, going up his back. The vulpine shuddered each time his body was pierced, his foxcock jutting hard from his sheath into the steel underneath his trembling body. The cougar ran a steel phallus across the blood matted fur of the fox's back, before slipping the blood slicked implement deep into his tight bowels.

As Mr. Arbunkle undid his restraints, Mr. Rhinehold picked up the young fox and began to hang him by the hooks in his back. The feline's slave maneuvered around and attached Joshua's extremities, before connecting four separate lengths of chain to the device deep inside him; two in front, two in back.

When the cougar finally left go of the sable vulpine, his limbs splayed apart like a perverted mockery of Leonardo's Vitruvian, the stiff rod pressing into his prostrate supporting most of the vupline's own weight. Joshua flayed about, grunting as his movements pressed the unforgiving steel even harder into his pleasure zone. The fox almost came right then and there, small dribbles of pre leaking from his tapered canine shaft, to drip to the cement floor.

"I knew you would approve, Josh," the cougar said, his rough feline paw pads running over the vulpine's scarred sex. Extracted feline claws raked over the sensitive, slick organ, and the fox's body shuddered, the fleshy marionette jerking about on iron strings. The tapered length bobbed a bit after the feline let it drop from his paw pads, and watched the struggling fox for a few minutes like a fish at the end of an invisible line, flopping and twisting about. When his erection had abated a bit, the cougar picked up a Hegar sound from one of the carts, and took hold of the semi-flaccid length.

"Have you ever done this, Josh?" The instructor looked up into the glazed eyes of his student, whose head shook back and forth on a loose neck. "Then, its beyond anything you have ever felt before." The feline placed the curved, stainless steel tip of the sound at the fox's piss slit, then slipped it inside his urethra. Joshua gasped out at the bizarre feeling, and as the rod slid down his pre slicked, narrow cum hole, the ebony fox's eyes rolled back into his skull.

Deeper, deeper the dilator dived, more and more of the steel length disappearing down into Joshua's foxcock, until the until the tip angled itself up inside Joshua's prostrate. Mr Rhinehold grinned as the fox tensed when the tip slipped inside his most sensitive area, the flat, spoon like end spreading apart his slit. The raccoon pulled out a TENS unit from a pile of devices from a crate in a corner of the room, before placing alligator clips on the exposed portions of the sound and the metal but plug. The cougar took the device and flipped on the electrical unit, turning up the intensity until pulses of direct current shot through the fox's spasming prostrate.

"More fox?" Mr Rhinehold growled, grinning, the cruel glint in his gray eyes turning into hard steel. The fox bucked in the air, exquisite pain and unbelievable sensations racking through his lithe body, suspended with his very flesh. Joshua's groans and whimpers filled the museum of grisly décor as the sadistic feline turned the knob to max setting, his prostrate clenching in electric dance. Joshua yelped and tensed, chains straining with the his climax, and thick gobs of hot vulpine cum welled up around his spread slit, before falling to the cement floor with a quiet splat. For the next several minutes, the cougar and raccoon voyeurs watched as orgasm after endless orgasm rocked the young black fox, till his twitching prostrate could pull no more cream from his virile furry sacs.

"I think thats quite sufficient, don't you think Ty?" the cougar said, turning off the unit. With a clink of chain, Joshua slumped into unconsciousness, the skin of his limbs and backside straining with the weight of his slack body. The metal shop instructor carefully pulled out the sound, another gout of cum spilling to the sizable pool beneath the fox's dangling hind paws. After the softening length retracted back into its protective sheath, the cougar stepped up close to the fox's body, and took his own exposed pick feline cock tip, slipping it inside the opening to Joshua's canid sheath.

Mr. Rhinehold grunted a bit, adjusting his stance as he used his strong hips to push into the canid's unconscious body. Inch after inch of his thick feline meat slipped into the fox's warm confines, until the tip of the cougar's hardening sex slipped past Joshua own soft fox cock. When he felt his tip meet the fox's base, Mr. Rhine growled, a good inch of his barbed flesh still exposed between the two sheathes.

It would have to do.

Gripping the fox's stretched sheath skin in his paw pads, the cougar bucked his hips, driving himself in and out of the suspended canid in short thrusts. Joshua's body swayed a bit, and his eyelids fluttered open, the green, watering eyes unfocused, caught in the web of half consciousness. The fox's black muzzle lips trembled, before sounding out one questioning word.

Father?

Memories flooded into the vulpine's broken mind, the growing heat from the cougars close body tight up against him sent Joshua into a pleasant daze. All the sensations pouring into his awakening mind and body, pain, pleasure, hot, cold, hearkened something deep within the fox, and he wrapped his arms around the bucking feline, muzzle pressed deep into his instructor's neck. Unsatisfied and desperate, the large cat jacked off himself with the fox's body, his own form pressed hard into Joshua. The cougar yowled and thrust one final time into the fox, before filling his sheath with sizzling feline spunk, the excess spilling to the floor to mix with the growing pool underneath both of them.

Joshua's eyes darkened, like a thunderstorm rolling over open plains.

The eldritch puzzle cube hidden underneath the cart rearranged; parts folding within while others spun and locked into its third configuration. The single bulb above flared with an deep electric hum, before exploding in a shower of glass shards. Erie, blueish black light from underneath one of the carts kept the sudden encroachment of darkness at bay, and the master / slave duo turned to the source of the eerie sonata overlaid with the frantic chipping of Everglades birds. After the cougar master pulled out of the fox's limp body, his shaft covered in mingled canid and feline seed, he motioned for his slave to investigate. The raccoon knelt down, and pulled the strange, mishapped polyhedron from its hiding place, the demonic portal device humming in his crafty paws.

"Mr. Arbunkle, what do you have there?" Mr. Rhinehold asked, moving a bit closer to what the procyonid held.

"I ... I don't know Master," the janitor said, before setting the strange item down on the blood encrusted table, "but I know how to find out."

The raccoon went back upstairs for a few minutes, leaving the cougar to stare at the box, the gleam of undeniable feline curiosity taking hold of his cold, gray eyes. When he looked back to Joshua, the fox stared back with dull, green eyes. The raccoon soon reappeared with several large tomes, and sat them down on a wooden workbench, along with some candles, which he promptly lit for reading light. He sent a few silent minutes flipping through some pages, and the cougar drummed his extended claws on the steel cart next to the source of his impatience.

"Mr. Arbunkle, what is this thing?"

"Patience, Master ..."

"I will NOT sit here idle while this THING chirps at me!" the agitated cougar roared, slamming his meaty paws down into the cart, the puzzle jumping a bit. The more intelligent occultist looked up for a moment at his master, and sighed, before turning a few more pages.

"There," the masked slave said, thrusting a claw to the open pages of the curling, yellowing paper, "It's called the Lament Configuration, Master."

"The what?" the cougar said, shuffling next to the shorter fur to read over his shoulder.

"According to 'Tucker's Encyclopedia of Mass Murderers'," the raccoon began, "it's the French toymaker, LeMarchand's, first and arguably most classic, puzzle construct, created two hundred years ago to this very year, in 1784. Its complexity was managed by expanding on the design of a similar box designed and constructed by Albertus Magnus in the thirteenth century. When operated properly, a pleasing melody issues from within which belies its true nature."

"A puzzle box? What is it used for?" the feline asked, eyes flickering back to the humming construct, his feline tail twitching back and forth behind him.

"The boxes, known in some circles as LeMarchand Boxes," the raccoon continued, "were each one of a kind puzzle creations, with the answer to one's ultimate hearts desire as their solution."

"Then what is Mr. Merchant ...." the shop instructor trailed off as he turned back to the dangling fox.

LeMarchand ... Merchant ...

"Could this boy be the descendant of this ... toymaker?"

"I think so, Master."

"Are you sure that this 'Tucker's Encyclopedia of Mass Murderers' book is accurate? It sounds like a hoax someone cooked up to capitalize on another popular work of fiction," the cougar remarked, grinning down to the raccoon.

"Hey," the raccoon grinned back; his tongue in his cheek, "It worked for paperback sales of the 'Necronomicon', didn't it?" Mr. Rhinehold snatched up the demonic puzzle box and thrust it into the fox's chest.

"Open it, fox." the cougar growled, his eyes narrowing.

Joshua shook his head, back and forth, memories of what happened last time sending pangs of guilt shooting through him. Neither Phillipe nor himself had spoken since that horrifying ordeal. A few brief words to priests, psych doctors, maybe. Those who he had spoke to, for some insidious reason, died in heinous, unimaginable ways. The sheiks of his father, the splash of his hot blood across Joshua's muzzle, never went away in his mind.

"You'll pay for your lack of vision, fox," the robust feline growled, his canines bared slightly. He thrust the puzzle box out to his slave, who shook his head.

"Master, it says here that the box unlocks in different ways for different seekers." the occultist said, shaking his head. "If you want what your heart coverts, only you can solve the puzzle."

His master's eyes narrowed, the slitted pupils contained within smoldering. The large feline's paws worked over the complex puzzle for several minutes, his frustration mounting with each incorrect move of the puzzle. With a roar, he slammed the misshapen box down into the wooden table again and again.

"Open! Damn it!" The enraged feline slammed his bawled fist into the demonic construct. "I want answers, and I want them NOW. I want what's coming to ... ME!" He bit the metallic puzzle, before flinging it hard against the far wall. The Lament Configuration bounced off and rolled to a stop on the hard concrete floor, the violence hearkening the guardian that stood before the gates to Leviathan's Paradise. The daemon known only as the Engineer contemplated for a moment, and decided its master plan could stay for a moment.

It could not ignore such a eager, iniquitous soul.

The Lament Configuration refolded, reset to its initial cubic configuration, and reconfigured itself to match the whims of the psychotic, wicked cougar, solving itself in four separate steps. Shrieks of flamingo's echoed off the basement walls, the Gates of Hell springing forth from the bright blueish black confine of the puzzle box. The master and his slave threw a paw up to shield their eyes from the blinding light, and a set of horse hooves stepped out from the abysmal portal.

Their terrified gazes walked up impossibly long, spindly legs to the trunk of the naked equine beast. Gilded obelisks ran through the sliced skin where its sheath should have been, jutting outward. The nose rings from golden calves pierced his bleeding nipples. Instead of hoove hands, scissor like metallic gold digits twitched and snipped, their mechanizations jutting out from the ragged stumps of its forearms.

Its sheath dangled down in front of the horse's muzzle, suspended by another obelisk, jutting perpendicular from its forehead, just out of tongues reach. With its eyelids stitched open to its bleeding skull, it was unable to hide from the tantalizing, unobtainable sight before them. Failing to reach the prize with its muscular, curling equine tongue, it tried to touch the flaccid, monstrous length, only to leave slashes on the vulnerable flesh from its razor hands.

Do not lead me into temptation, my sons ... Father Anthony began, his tongue slithering out between his lips again, to try and taste the forbidden just out of reach. ... for I already know the way ...

The dangling limbs around them came to life, claws digging deep into their naked fur. As the surprised duo's screams echoed off the concrete basement walls, more and more of the ghastly, severed extremities latched on to their flesh. The demon lumbered forward, its thin horse legs making awkward lurches in its unsteady gait. Held in the grasps of those they had butchered, the two furs watched the oncoming monstrosity and shrieked till their voices broke. The cenobite stopped just in front of the dangling cougar, his mechanized digits snipped, sliced at the feline's chest fur.

Fulcrums and razor blades pierced fur and skin, before pealing off the covering to Mr. Rhinehold's bony sternum. The cougar roared, his tail whipping about in a frenzy of anguish and shock as the pair of blade assemblies clipped about in his ribcage, severing bone and cartilage with ease. As larger and larger drops of blood spattered beneath the psychopathic feline's kicking hind paws, his squalls of torment made the coon's mind tear from the moorings of reality, and the former masked slave cackled, a light froth forming around his muzzle lips.

Three days later, the police investigating the disappearance of the shop instructor and janitor would find this naked, crazed serial killer humping away at the lacerated, vivisected remains of his roommate, gibbering away like the Mad Arab of legend's eld. Although the police had found their suspect they had secretly kept from media attention for several months, it sure as Hell came a bit late for the fifteen furs that had gone missing in that time.

With a final snippet, Mr. Rhienhold's sternum fell forward, the bone breaking apart on the concrete floor with a wet crack. As the cougar's eyes swam, shock stealing the blood from his face, his exposed heart went into fibulations, the muscular sac pulsing erratically. His muzzle opened, head falling backwards. The cenobite wrapped its golden embrace around the suspended, dying feline, before thrusting its dangling, flaccid length down the cougars slack maw. Too large for the jaw hinge to accommodate, the monstrous cock broke the lower jaw off, before the long, equine shaft plowed its down his throat, which split, spewing blood everywhere.

The skin of Mr. Rhinehold's muzzle and neck stretched tight over the enormous phallus, like some furry feline / snake hybrid. Still more of the gargantuan length plowed its way down through vital organs, till the equine tip slammed into the cougar's still beating heart, which burst like a overripe tomato. The demon horse whinnied in climax, and a few pints of cold, equine cum splashed out of the hole in the dead, twitching cougar's chest. The cenobite let the wayward soul go, and the shop instructor's body dropped to the floor with a dull splat in the lake of blood and cum beneath him.

Just before Father Anthony stepped through the pool of fresh crimson on the floor and back through the gates of Hell, he smiled at Joshua, then disappeared. The Lament Configuration reset once more, and for the first time in his life, the fox understood. With deliberate intent, he allowed the darkness to claim his eyes, the proverbial windows to his soul.

Using Xolotl's supernatural gifts, the possessed vulpine broke the chains holding him up, and he landed on his paws and knees into the pool of blood and cum below him. Joshua stood up, and with an outstretched paw, his ancestor's intricately crafted puzzle box flew to him. While the gibbering raccoon worked his way free of the tangle of dismembered, furry limbs and started to fuck the hole in the cougar's chest, the black fox held the blood slicked, humming box of ultimate heart's desire between his trembling paws.

It would bring him what his black heart wanted most.

Someone who would love him.

Or die trying.

Again, he thought of Raymond ...

~ Fin Part III ~

Tell me my Sprocket, did I cross the line of decency? Has this brain sick coyote finally disturbed you? Superbia is one of the seven mortal sins. And I so savor them all. Many muzzle licks to Lykos Bane for his horror critique. Noses to Gazban for his feedback during the early development of this chapter, and discusions on the nature of religion. Many thanks to Hawk for the suggestion on how to deal with a problematic cougar. Finally, to all the deranged furs who enjoy this sort of series, thanks for the comments!