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Subject: {ASSM} Tales From The Teeth {Stereograph} (caution) An Elder Gods Story
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The Caution code is there because the story codes won't fit on a subject
 line. See the table of contents below.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  This is a work of fiction. No person, place, or situation depicted
exists outside the mind of the Author.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Tales From The Teeth {Stereograph} (caution) An Elder Gods Story

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  i.                         Contents                               |
|                                                                    |
| ii. Prologue (F story setup nosex)                                 |
|                                                                    |
|  I. First Bite-The Teeth get broken in (mg ff rape snuff vor bd)   |
|      A young woman is the first to use the Penitential system.     |
|      Her story almost causes the whole crew to give up before      |
|      they start.                                                   |
|                                                                    |
| II. Confusion Reigns (mmf bb bg Trans oral anal voy reluc bd)      |
|      A transsexual who was given no choice as a child struggles    |
|      to find his/her true way.                                     |
|                                                                    |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

ii.                           Prologue

  My name is Edith Stanwick, and I'm a Valkyrie at the Stormgod's
temple near Chillicothe, Ohio. That means my job is to guide penitents
through Sacred punishment and purification. It's not an easy job. The
people we handle have committed major violations of Divine Law.
Sometimes that is also a major violation of State law as well, often
not. The people we see believe they cannot be forgiven and will be
punished forever in this world and the next. We give them severe
ritual punishment by strapping them to stone blocks, known as the
Teeth, and flogging them with birch switches. We give them counseling
as well. It's a bloody, frightening business. A few years ago, I
wouldn't have had the stomach for it.

  These are not my stories, but I'll be telling them and appearing as a
secondary character, so some background is in order.

  Once, not long ago, I was a schoolteacher. I spent fifteen years
teaching fifth or sixth grade in a small-town in central Ohio. I was
fully on-board with the progressive education program. I truly
believed my job was to indoctrinate children with the values I'd
learned in collage. I truly believed that my job was to undermine any
backward looking values they might learn from parents, grandparents,
or most especially churches. This was all the more relevant in
conservative, rural central Ohio.

  The odd thing was though I taught those values, I didn't live them
in my personal life. My husband and I were completely faithful to one
another. We didn't worry over much about our carbon footprint. Our
family used water generously. We lived in a big Victorian farmhouse
with no insulation to speak of. We needed to, I joyfully bore four
children. I taught children to accept contraception and abortion, but
I could never have used either nor have any of my children do so.

  Then the Gods interfered with the daily world. I rebelled against
their message. I went as far as to come to the Temple to vandalize it.
Thunder talked me out of it. A God speaking to you in a voice that
could flatten a Mack truck does wake you up. I volunteered to work for
the Temple a few days later.

  My job is to whip butt, listen to horrible life stories, and give
ritual purification baths just prior to the Forgiveness Ritual.

  In these pages I relate some of the stories of people who've passed
through our program.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

I.             The First Bite-The Teeth get broken in.

  On the third Wednesday evening in November, we held our weekly
prayer and study meeting as usual. Because our "low hanging fruit"
converts are churchgoing Christians, and many congregations hold
Wednesday Bible study, Thundermouth and Jack Strawhouse--our
"Pastor"--decided to do the meetings on the same night. The former
Christians already kept the night open for this sort of thing, the
rest considered it normal, even though they had never participated.
Of course, we have no Bible. We choose a Virtue and use relevant quotes
from the Eddas and modern Heathen writings to create a presentation for
discussion. We split everyone into age-appropriate subgroups. The
evenings started with a prayer to Woden and a short homily on the
subject for the evening, then a potluck dinner. The weather was a
howling snowstorm, and the prayer is held in the Temple ring, so the
homily was about three minutes long.

  After dinner, we sent the children's and junior's groups off to
their activities. The adults and youth were asked to stay. Three
chairs were set on the dais. 'Mouth, Jack, and Sheriff Hahn sat down on
them. We were about to start our first major ritual for Forgiveness.
It almost proved to be our last too.

  Her name was Angela Müller and she didn't look like she would
survive the night, let alone an extended flogging. She was led before
the men who would act as her judges by me, acting as Senior Valkyrie.
She was emaciated and ragged in dress and grooming. She wouldn't look
up at the judges. I couldn't help but reflect that the selection of
judges represented a "Patriarchy". The radical feminist ideas of my
past almost took over and I almost railed against them--almost. They
did represent a Patriarchy, the trio of Woden, Thue (or Tyr), and
Thunder, senior Gods of the Heathen Pantheon.

  "Why do you come before Us?" said Jack.

  "I have committed horrible crimes against man and God. I wish to be
purified and forgiven," said the poor woman.

  "Do you realize what will be required of you?" asked the Sheriff.

  "I must confess before these witnesses. I must take a token
punishment in place of divine punishment. I must be washed of my sins
and presented for readmission to divine favor."

  "Correct," said Thundermouth. "Are you prepared to go through with all
this? I warn you the punishment will be severe."

  "I deserve worse than what you described to me beforehand. I deserve
to be dead and suffering eternally. I have almost killed myself
several times. This must end! I must be redeemed or die. I cannot
stand anymore of the life I've led."

  "Very well. Confess," said Jack.

  "I have engaged in unnatural sex. I have killed a man in cold blood
and eaten his flesh. I have killed my own child." She was trembling
and sobbing at this point. I wanted to fold her in my arms and comfort
her. The men made no show of compassion.

  They talked between themselves, briefly. That was a bit of
showmanship. We had worked out her punishment ahead of time, and she
knew what they would say.

  "You will be given two hundred and sixty six lashes," said Sheriff
Hahn.

  "You may not receive more than thirty three in a session and you
must take time to heal between sessions," said 'Mouth.

  "Each flogging will be held on Wednesday afternoon. It will be given
by the Valkyries and overseen by one of us. You will be cared for and
counseled by the Valkyries between sessions," said Jack. "So let it be
done!"

  "So let it be done!" echoed the other judges in unison.

  I had to nudge the young woman to respond. She was busy weeping. "So
let it be done."

                        *         *         *

  Everyone was dismissed to their small groups. Jack and the Sheriff
went to theirs. Angela, 'Mouth, and I went to the office. 'Mouth does
everything he can to avoid being just a charismatic cult leader. He
delegates everything possible and avoids leadership positions,
including in small groups. His only task is to be a prophet.

  "You gave a brief summery of your life to us, and a briefer one just
now. If we are truly going to help you we need the whole story of your
life," said 'Mouth.

  Miss Müller was prepared for this part. We'd told her ahead of time
it would be needed. "I grew up in Youngstown, in the 'White Trash'
section of town. It was about five square blocks of dilapidated
houses, many sub-divided into apartments. We were bordered on three
sides by working class neighborhoods. On the fourth side was the
roughest black neighborhood. There was some overlap in the
neighborhoods of course. I lived in the overlap area between the poor
whites and poor blacks. My mama was a seldom employed welfare queen,
my father just a name on my birth certificate. Mama said I should be
glad I never met him."

  "When I was in the fourth grade, I made friends with a black girl,
Shawanda Jones. We lived a couple of blocks apart and visited back and
forth. One day I was at her house. Her mama wasn't home that day and
her big brother was sort of watching us. DaJon was fourteen and he
was scary and I didn't like being around him. He was a member of the
Rippers, a nasty youth gang responsible for a lot of the crime in the
area. Shawanda and I were playing in the living room. DaJon came in
and started staring at me. Shawanda and I were both nervous because of
that, but we tried to keep playing. It wasn't working, so I decided to
go home. I told DaJon I was leaving, but he said, 'You ain't goin'
nowhere, bitch.' He grabbed me and said, 'We goin' to have some fun,
you come here to have fun, didn't you, bitch?' He started putting his
hands under my clothes. I struggled to get free, but he was too
strong. 'You a ripe one, White Girl. You gonna suck on this or I slap
you into next year, you hear?' He opened his pants and flopped out
his...what should I call it?'

  "Call it whatever you wish. Neither Mrs. Stanwick, nor I, have lived
a sheltered life."

  "He whipped out his dick. It was big, and it was black, and it was
ugly. I later learned he wasn't really oversized, but my exposure to
male organs before that was limited to seeing my cousins' diapers
changed. He ordered me to open my mouth. Instead, I clamped my jaws
shut. I kept hoping Shawanda would run for help, but she just watched
it all happen. DaJon squeezed the hinge of my jaw and it opened
against my will. He shoved the head of his dick in my mouth and
started to...well, fuck it." Angela colored a bright red. "He used his
fingers to keep my jaw propped open and fucked my mouth until he shot
off. 'If you tell anyone, I kill you, white bitch. You hear me? Don't
think I'm joking!' I didn't. I couldn't tell anyone, I was too
embarrassed. I hadn't lived so insulated from the world around me. I
knew what had happened to me, and that it happened to others sometimes.
I never spoke to Shawanda again. I started to avoid contact with blacks
as much as possible. It wasn't easy in a mixed neighborhood and a black
majority school."

  The time had slipped away. The meetings were breaking up and it was
time to wrap up for the night. 'Mouth warned her that if she didn't
eat a healthy portion of food at every meal, and keep it down, we
would suspend her punishments. We already knew she was starving
herself on purpose.

  Mr. and Mrs. Hahn took her home to stay in their guest room.

                        *         *         *

  The Teeth were three undressed columns of quarried stone. They were
five feet tall, and half sunk into the ground. 'Mouth and Jack had set
them up as the very first items when constructing the Temple. They had
mistakenly thought there would be a quick demand for Forgiveness. The
two of them had chipped away the sharp edges at the tops of the
stones, freely admitting that they didn't know what they were doing
and were learning on the fly. Well, you know how men are. They used
something called a star drill to make holes in the stones then
threaded eye bolts into the holes. They used me, draped over the
stones, to figure out where to put the holes. It was undignified. They
didn't care, they were having a blast.

  On Thursday we gave Miss Müller her first birching. It was the first
time for all of us too. Prior to this we'd practiced on stuffed
dummies. Dummies don't bleed. Or scream.

  Mrs. Hahn brought the girl to us and stayed to witness the
punishment.

  We started with a prayer to all the Gods and Goddesses. Then we
strapped her down. Angela was about twenty, or so, and about average
hight. She was a brunette. I've already said she was bedraggled, her
hair was roughly chopped and her bones had no meat on them at all. You
couldn't see all that that afternoon. The temperature was well below
freezing, so she was dressed in an old snowsuit. We pulled the pants
down to mid thigh, we left the rest of her covered.

  Her hams had no fat, only thin muscle. We each took a few practice
strokes without making contact. There was Mrs. Frazer, who worked at a
grocery, Mrs. Pennock, a nurse, and myself. Jack oversaw the
punishment. The Sheriff was working and the 'Mouth was at an
abortionary in Parkersburg. "Count out the strokes," I said. It was a
foolish request, and it was the last time I made it. I took the first
hard swing, and Angela jerked.

  "One," she croaked out.

  Mrs. Pennock took the next. "Two!"

  We took our strokes in turn. By the ninth, Angela was screaming. By
the fourteenth, she was bleeding. She stopped counting early, and we
didn't correct her. We were too sick to our stomachs. By the time we
reached thirty three, she was a mess.

  We took her into the Hall and laid her face down on a cot. Jane,
that is Mrs. Pennock, cleaned her up and slathered a red liquid on the
wounds. Angela finally got over crying. We all sat down on chairs
around her cot. Jack said, "We've all been briefed on your story to
the point of your being raped at ten. Go ahead and pick up where you
left off last night."

  "I was still nine, my birthday was soon after that," said Angela.
"He raped me a second time in early Spring. He grabbed me on the way
home from school and took me to the park. The place was empty. He took
me into the boy's bathroom and tied my hands to the urinal piping. He
yanked my jeans down and took me from behind. He raped me in my vagina
and my butt hole. No one heard my screams, or no one came to my
rescue. When he was done, he left me tied, with my pants down, and ran
off. I worked my hands free and went home. I thought about committing
suicide, but I didn't know how."

  "So far," said Jane, "you haven't told us anything you've done to
deserve this treatment. You're not responsible for what's been done to
you."

  "That comes later. Years later. DaJon kidnapped me and raped me
about twice a year, sometimes three times a year, for the next five
years. No one ever stopped him, and I never worked up the courage to
tell on him. Every time after the second, he shared me with other gang
members."

  "When I went through puberty I had a dilemma. I was attracted to
boys, but I didn't trust boys. I hadn't willingly spoken to one since
the day of my first rape. I wasn't about to start then. I knew there
was such a thing as good boys. I didn't have much of a model of what a
good boy might be like, and I didn't need another bad one. My uncles
are good men, I suppose, but mom doesn't hang around our relatives
much when my uncles are home. If any of mama's boyfriends qualify as
good men, I'd never know it. They rarely lasted long enough for me to
study them."

  "I was starved for love. Any love at all. Mama showed me little
enough. I'd avoided such a large swath of the people around me that
there wasn't too many chances for friendship, let alone love of any
sort. That was where Tiffany came into my life."

  "I was fifteen when Tiffany took me under her wing. She was a year
ahead of me in school. She was kind of pretty. She had friends. At
first she was just friendly. I had no idea that she was attracted to
girls. I just knew relief at having someone to hang around with. Over
time she revealed that she liked girls. The teachers kept telling us
it was OK to be like that. Then Tiffany revealed that she wanted to be
my girlfriend. I was so attached to her by then I decided to try. What
could it hurt?"

  "We started making out, when we could find the privacy. We
progressed to heavy petting. The only way I could get off, when I did,
was to close my eyes and pretend the person I was doing things with
was some boy I was creating in my head. I felt like a heel betraying
Tiffany that way. I was sure I wasn't even creating very realistic
boys. How was I to know?"

  "Tiffany had a mean streak. It seldom showed, but when it did she
was mean as a constipated rattlesnake."

  Dorothy, Mrs. Frazer, interrupted. "You ever seen a rattlesnake?"

  "Well...no."

  "Keep your eyes open come warmer weather. You will. They aren't so
mean long as you keep your distance."

  "Sounds like what I should have done with Tiffany. Every now and
again, when she was pissed off about something, she'd take it out on
me. She'd say the meanest things. Once she slapped me. Each time it
happened, I wanted to commit suicide again. I was better able to do it
then, too. I never quite went through with it."

  At that point Jack called a break for the day. Thursday evening was
our weekly prayer service. We had a dinner made from leftovers from
the potluck the night before. We had to remind Angela to eat her whole
plate, plus a dessert. We added a prayer for her healing, in mind and
body, to the service.

                        *         *         *

  The next Wednesday we looked and figured Angela was ready for
another round. We whipped her and brought her in to her cot. 'Mouth was
there that day, along with Jack and the rest of us. We treated her
wounds. We were all feeling a little green around the gills.

  "You were saying your girlfriend was mean," said Jane. "You've said
you killed someone and your child, we haven't gotten there yet."

  "We're not there yet," said Angela. "We're getting close now
though."

  "Tiffany didn't know about the times I'd been raped. I couldn't tell
her anymore than anyone else. DaJon grabbed me to take me off for
another rape. Tiffany was on her way over to walk me home from school
and saw. She knew I stayed away from black people, and DaJon was all
grown up by then. She followed and figured out what was happening. She
didn't call the cops though. When DaJon pushed me out, hours later,
beaten and raped by five black boys, Tiffany scooped me up. She was at
her sweetest. She gave me all the comfort anyone could under the
circumstances."

  "I had to tell her everything the next time we were together. She
asked me how I could have put up with it for so long. I told her I had
trouble doing that. That I wanted to die every time. Including this
time. I begged her to help me die. She had another idea."

  "We had to wait for a while before we could put her plan into
effect. Tiffany started making contact with DaJon, claiming interest
in him. He took the bait. She offered to have sex with him, next time
she had the house to herself, with mom safely off somewhere. He wanted
to push the time up, using somewhere of his choosing. She turned him
down. She kept leading him on though. In the mean time, we found an empty
home, with furniture left behind by renters who skipped out without
paying the landlord."

  "Is Sheriff Hahn going to turn me in to Youngstown?"

  "Not that I know," said 'Mouth. "If a warrant is served, he'll have
to turn you in. Divine Forgiveness won't count for criminal charges."

  "Screw it! I can't keep this to myself anymore."

  "You'll have to wait, we have to get ready for tonight."

  Jane slathered analgesic cream on her butt and we broke up.

                        *         *         *

  The next week we birched Angela again and brought her to the cot.

  "You guys ready for more of my story?" she said.

  We indicated that we were.

  "Tiffany lured DaJon to the house. She was wrapped up making out
with him, mostly naked, when I snuck in and poked DaJon with a hypo of
drugs. I don't know what she put in the hypo, but it made him sluggish
and we were able tie him down to the bed. I doubt we were good at tying,
but the drugs helped keep him from getting free."

  "We started cutting him right off. I felt so happy to get revenge on
him. The drugs didn't dull his pain so that I could tell. Tiffany said
it wouldn't. They made his muscles too weak to do much. His mind and
nerves were supposed to be unaffected. We didn't want him to die too
soon, so we didn't cut deep or near major blood vessels. We'd looked
at an anatomy book to know where they were. We kept taking turns
cutting, and we made out in front of him after each cut, just to rub
it in that we were in love."

  "We kept going for a while, but we couldn't go on forever. We were
kids, and even with slack moms, we had to be home sooner or later. We
shaved a slice off the outside of his thigh and fried it while he was
still alive. We ate it in front of him. Then we cut his wrists and
inner thighs and left him to die. The cops never came after us, I
don't know how we avoided being caught immediately."

  "Tiffany started blackmailing me. She made me do things I'd avoided.
I had to start eating her out and be fingered by her. I'd traded one
rapist for another. To make matters worse, I was pregnant. Who knows
which of the boys was the father? Whoever it was, was no one I wanted
to have anything to do with. Tiffany was thrilled. Not because she
wanted to deal with a child, it was something else to hold over me."

  "She abused me for weeks, until I started to show. She finally decided
to help me abort the child. She handed me a big hat pin, I don't know
where she found that. She made me jab it into my womb by myself. She
kept telling me to stab again and again. In the meantime, she was
rubbing herself and fingering herself. Finally, I snapped. I clubbed her
with a lamp again and again. When she stopped moving, I left her in a
pool of her blood, with her fingers shoved up her cunt and pinned in
place through her clit. She didn't die, she's so brain damaged she'll be
institutionalized for life. I had to run then. There was no hiding who
attacked her. I've been on the run for six years now. My baby died, of
course."

  She'd broken down completely by then. There was no way she could
stay for the meeting that night. Jane and I took her home. We had to
force feed her.

                        *         *         *

  We had her whole story, the next steps were to counsel her and find
out how much danger from law enforcement she, and we, might be in for.

  The law enforcement part was easy enough to find out. All the
information we needed is public. The Sheriff looked it up. Having a
specially tailored browser and search engine helped, even though it
isn't necessary. The software he used filters out anything not related
to law enforcement.

  There were no warrants out on her. Part of that came from the fact
that she was listed as a missing person, suspected of being the victim
of sex trafficking. She wasn't a suspect in Tiffany's assault because
she was already listed as missing before that happened. Either she'd
left something out of her story, or the cops had made a mistake. Tiffany
was listed as an un-indicted conspirator in a trafficking ring once run
by a now convicted man. Her attacker was listed as "Person or Persons
Unknown". Tiffany and "Person or Persons Unknown" were listed as
DaJon's killers. As long as the Youngstown Prosecutor didn't get
ahold of Angela's DNA, and check it against the samples from those
crimes, she was safe. Sheriff Hahn decided his ethics would stretch to
not saying anything to alert Youngstown of Angela's whereabouts. I had
trouble deciding whether to be comfortable with that; or not.

  Counseling was another matter, and we were flying blind on it. None
of us had much training in counseling, certainly not in such grave
matters.

  One thing that did seem to be helping her was being around manly men.
Heathens are not short of manly men, and our group was no exception.
First there were the judges. All three are middle aged and were raised
before feminist "sissified" males were fashionable. The same was true
of my husband. Despite my efforts to feminize boys in school, my
husband was a manly guy and I liked him that way. He's a Geologist for
a gas drilling company and works with all male crews. Being around
these men seemed to draw Angela's interest to no end. She seemed to
revel in any attention they showed her. She looked on them as fathers,
which was good since none of them was available.

  Thundermouth started taking her on long walks on the trails whenever
he had time. What he said to her, I don't know. She lapped up every
word. Not surprising, the man has the gift of gab.

  The Sheriff played board games with her and talked on the Virtues
while they played. She asked all sorts of questions, and he always
seemed to have the answers handy. Dry stuff, but it held her interest.
I suppose growing up in a loose society and having committed horrible
acts left her hungry for guidance.

  Jack, and the operation he runs, were her greatest inspiration, if
you ask me. The Temple was less than a year old, though we were
coming up on the first anniversary. We were coming up on Yule too. The
first Yule for any of us except 'Mouth. There was plenty of work left
to do getting the Hall ready.

  Jack had had an artist mark out a traditional pattern of decorative
carvings in certain parts of the Hall. He had the boy's youth group
carving out the wood marked by the artist. There was no way they'd be
finished before Yule, but some hope they'd be done by the anniversary.
Jack walked around checking work, clapping backs, and offering praise.
The boys ate it up, and so did Angela.

  He'd also commissioned another artist to line out a long piece of
linen with panels depicting the return of the Gods and foundation of
the Temple. That was to become an embroidered hanging. The girls,
supervised and instructed by some women who know embroidery, were
rendering the panels in wool yarn. That was an ambitious project, main
panels plus upper and lower borders. Jack checked up on them too,
squeezing shoulders and praising. He talked Angela into joining them,
when her butt was up to sitting.

  Jack also handled every other aspect of running the Temple complex,
and ran it with ease. Angela was seeing a male leader at his best and
liked what she saw. These guys were a far cry from the losers she'd
seen growing up, though heaven knows who and what she saw while on the
run.

  A quick aside. You will have noticed that the tasks were segregated
by sex. No boy was sewing, and no girl carving. If you're like me
before my conversion you're ready to scream, "You can't do that!".
This is the way the Gods, and most especially Frigga, want things
organized. She said that sexual dimorphism was created for a reason
and we ought to celebrate it, not rebel. She said it out loud too. All
of us had been Heathens for less than a year, so we were still getting
used to this. Some of us wanted to rebel. I'd gotten to the point
accepting, but not celebrating. A lot of the Old Line Heathens were
having the same problem.

                        *         *         *

  We whipped Angela the next Wednesday and ran into a new problem. She
got infected. Her butt swelled up and was leaking pus and serum. Jane
tried antibiotics, but they didn't seem up to the task. By Friday she
was in seriously bad shape and the infection was spreading.

  "We're going to have to take her to a doctor," said Jane.

  "That could be a real problem for her," said 'Mouth. "She's likely
to be arrested and sent to Youngstown. She could spend the rest of her
life in prison."

  "She won't be alive if we don't do something!" said Dorothy.

  "There is that," said 'Mouth. "I'm going to try something, well more
than one thing. Jane, can you call around an see if you can find a
doctor who will treat her on the sly? I don't want her in jail. In the
mean time, I'm going to try a faith healing."

  "Faith healing? What good will that do?" I said.

  "Depends on whether I succeed or not. Woden's a healer. I suppose
any of the Gods or Goddesses can heal, but I'm calling on Woden. If I
succeed, she's healed. If not, nothing's changed. We're no worse off."

  "I thought we weren't a flaky religion," said Dorothy.

  "Praying for healing isn't flaky by any standard. You never did it
as a Baptist? I'm just going to pray, but I'm going to push for
immediate results. Woden's talked to me before, though he might not
now."

  "This poor girl needs medical help," I said. "Praying might help,
but I don't think that's our first priority."

  Angela piped up, "I'm not here? You're all just going to talk over
me? Let Thundermouth heal me, I believe he can!"

  With that we were decided. Angela started muttering a prayer to
Woden herself. 'Mouth raised his hands into a prayer gesture. And he
stood lost in thought, as If he were having trouble finding words.

  "Get a bowl," he said. "A large bowl. Place it between her knees."

  Dorothy went to the kitchen and came back with a serving bowl. No
sooner had she placed it than Thundermouth started tapping his foot.
He started chanting in a voice that was hard to hear and a tongue I'd
never heard before. Then he went up on his toes and started to dance!
His dance was odd. It had an element of step dance. It had some
relation to clogging. 'Mouth has been known to clog when he's in his
cups, but not like this. It had some of the movement of folk social
dances, and he's good at that too, but he had no visible partner.

  While 'Mouth danced, Angela thrust a fist between her legs and
humped it, thrashing and moaning.

  "What the hell is going on?" cried Dorothy.

  "Your guess is as good as mine," said Jane. "I'm going to call a
doctor I think can keep his mouth shut and get him here. This is too
weird."

  I tried pulling Angela's arm out from under her. No luck. She'd put
on a little meat over the last few weeks, but not that much. She
shouldn't have been a match for me.

  'Mouth, who was doing an eight point turn in place, said, "Leave.
Her. Alone. She's. Fine," in time with his steps.

  "I'm getting out of here!" said Dorothy.

  "Don't! Don't leave me alone!" I said. "This feels strange, but it
doesn't feel evil. Just really, really...odd."

'Mouth circled the table, and us with it, doing a skip step with his
hands up in prayer position. Angela was moaning louder, her neck taunt
and strained. 'Mouth finished his circle and went into a high stepping
turn in place. He was kicking his own butt! The sight of a middle aged
man in overalls and work boots dancing was bad enough, but that
kicking himself was just too...funny. At that moment Angela howled!
'Mouth stopped dancing, his feet clopping to the floor one after the
other. Angela slumped into a boneless heap.

  'Mouth said, "That was strange," and collapsed to the floor, heaving
for breath.

  "I think she's stopped breathing!" yelled Dorothy.

  Jane came running over and felt Angela's free wrist. "She has no
pulse! Shit! I'm starting CPR."

  "Give her a second," said 'Mouth. "Woden has her soul. He'll return
it in a second. Give us a minute or two to recover. I want to hear her
story, mine is strange enough."

  Sure enough, Angela started breathing again while 'Mouth was
talking.

  "Her pulse is back!" said Jane.

  "That's not all," said Dorothy. "Look at the bowl. Look at her
rear."

  Angela's hams were healed. The swelling was gone, the weeping wounds
were gone. It wasn't a pristine healing. Her butt was criss-crossed
with scars and pink new flesh. The bowl held globs of pus, scabs, and a
blue-black gel that must have been congealed blood from the bruises.

  'Mouth said, "I danced with Woden and a pack of wolves. I don't know
what you saw here, but I became a wolf prancing on my hind legs."

  "We didn't see that!" said Jane.

  "If we had, we wouldn't be here. You can bet on that," said Dorothy.

  "We saw a silly old man who ought to give up dancing," I said.

  "Hardy har har. See if anyone asks you to join the set next time we
hold a Contra."

  Angela spoke then. "A hooded man took me on a walk though a dead
forest. It was night, the trees bare. There were no leaves. Not on the
trees; not on the ground. We came to a cave and he led me in. After a
long walk, we came to a room with roots growing down through it."

  "You were humping your hand," said Dorothy.

  Angela colored and jerked her hand out from under her. "Not in my
dream. I didn't do anything like that! I saw DaJon. He was being
chewed on. What are those fish with the oversized heads and jaws full
of sharp teeth? Something like that chewed him, but he never
disappeared. The wounds healed in moments and were inflicted again. He
screamed, and screamed, and screamed! His screaming scared me."

  "Sounds gruesome," said Jane.

  "The worst part was the hooded guy said that I will be like that if
I die now. I'll be right next to DaJon and we'll watch each other. He
said if I go through with the ritual, my fate will be different. He
took DaJon's meat out of my body and fed it to the...things with
teeth. Then he struck me between the eyes. I woke up here with you all
panicking."

  "Angela, you and I need a good feeding. We've used up a lot of
energy and other stuff doing this healing. The rest of you are invited
to join us. I've got a new wife and a pantry full of homegrown, home
canned, vegetables. We'll throw in some ham and pie, and be good as
new. If someone will get me my stick, I'll get off the floor and we
can go. The wife's still learning to cook, but she welcomes a chance
to practice and get some tips."

                        *         *         *

  I've stretched out this story longer than I meant to, but I don't
see were I could have condensed it.

  At 'Mouth's farm we had that meal. He had a house guest staying for
Yule. He was one of the bikers from Tennessee that were friends with
his new wife. His new young wife. She was just sixteen, barely a year
older than my oldest. If I hadn't been there when the Gods told him to
marry her, I'd have tried filing charges against him. Angela and the
guest hit it off instantly. He was ten years older than her and I
wanted to warn her against him. I didn't manage to find a private
moment for days.

  Yule is a Season, not a night. There were special events on every
night for a week. The pair of them spent a lot of time together at
those events. The next Wednesday was the day before the Winter
Solstice, Yule proper, and the most important and involved feast of
the season. When we were preparing to birch her I started to lay into
her about avoiding lousy examples of men. Frigga told me to shut up!
Well, if the Goddess of married love approves a match, who am I to
oppose it, though it did grate on me.

  Angela couldn't sit for the Yule feast. We had offered to spare her
that week and make it up later, she wanted to finish on time. Some
more of the bikers were there. The aunt and uncle of Cathy, 'Mouth's
wife, were at the head table because her uncle is head of the biker's
grove and ordained. Angela ate standing. The man staying at 'Mouth's
farm kept her company. They danced every couple dance of the night,
though neither of them even knew the proper steps for a waltz or
polka.

  When the anniversary of the founding of the Temple came around,
Angela had completed her punishment. We Valkyries gave her her
Purification Bath early in the morning. A Heathen woman who's a
hairdresser had trimmed up her hair so it looked pretty good. She'd
put on weight, just enough. The last birching had been a week earlier,
so her butt was in decent shape. We'd put off the Forgiveness so she
could have it in front of the Anniversary crowd. The weather was
sub-zero. She was dressed in a white quilted, ankle length, coat.
Who cared what was underneath? What she wore there was a Penitent's
robe.

  There were Heathens from all over. The biker club had come up, they
were technically a daughter group of our Temple. They'd come in trucks
and SUVs, bikes were impossible to ride in the winter up here even
when the weather was normal. A contingent had flown in from
California. Local folks who were not Heathens came out to celebrate
with us. The place was packed and the Hall was not going to hold
everyone after the service.

  We led Angela up to the Thunderstone. Jack, 'Mouth, and the biker
headman waited for her. When they laid hands on her head, pronounced
her forgiven, and ended by intoning, "So Let it Be Done," the response
from the crowd could have drowned out even Old Thunder. Perhaps it
did.

                        *         *         *

Postscript. Angela left with the bikers, though how she managed to sit
for the drive, I don't know. Later in the spring she married her
biker. Now, with the big decision from the Divine Court looming, she's
still happy with him and looking forward to the birth of their third
child.

May the Gods have mercy on us all.

+--------------------------------------------------------------------+

II.                        Confusion Reigns

  On a Sunday afternoon in May, three and a half years after the Gods
placed man under judgement, I faced every mother's nightmare. My
youngest son, eleven years old, stood in a line of men with an ax in
his hand. That in itself was bad enough. My husband approved. That was
worse.

  The men who mentored our youth programs, and my husband was one of
them, had ripped off a program from the Boy Scouts. It was called the
"Totin' Chip". It is a rigorous certification program for handling
knives and axes. Our youth leaders push every boy to earn it at ten,
or if they are over ten when the family converts, as soon as possible.
Every boy, they don't offer it to girls--no, end of discussion. The
Chip, once a boy earns it, entitles the boy to use sharp tools in any
Temple activity. He gets to wear a two by two square chip of wood with
a special symbol burned into it. If he breaks a rule, they hack off a
corner. If he loses all the corners, he has to retake the program from
scratch, and he has to wait through a penalty period before he may do
that.

  Throwing sharp objects at targets is a common male activity among our
Heathens. A boy who's earned his chip may participate. The leaders can
stop him, but they won't unless he breaks a rule. Being unable to throw
hard enough to reach the target is not breaking a rule it seems.

  Hence my little boy in the ax line on a sunny Sunday afternoon. His
dad had given him a thumbs up when he joined the line. A double bit ax
requires nineteen and a fraction feet to make a complete turn once
thrown. You can't cheat the distance, I asked. Hatchets require about
half that, give or take based on the size. My boy was getting good
with hatchets.  The ax was about half as long as he is tall. It's many
times the weight of a hatchet. He can't even throw a baseball that far.
And he might cut himself trying! His almost fourteen year old brother
had just made his first successful ax throw a week before and he'd
been trying for a while. Nobody was going to listen to my objections
so I held them in.

  The man in front of my son was a recent convert, a young Oral
Surgeon, and hadn't made any throws I know of. He raised the ax, flung
it, and it hit the edge of the target knocking off some chips before
sailing off into the dirt. The men watching gave him some good natured
grief, and he gave back as good as he got. He walked out to retrieve
the ax. My son went along to do an aiming thing the good throwers insist
on everyone using until they get good enough to throw well without it.
He swung the ax at the center of the target several times, looked at the
Surgeon, nodded, and the two of them returned to the line.

  Sam, my little son, raised the ax over his head. You could see him
straining to hold it up. He put his whole body into the throw. The ax
flew. It landed, head down, in the turf about halfway to the target.
Sam slumped in dejection.

  "Eat more spinach, boy!" called one of the watching men.

  Sam perked up a bit. Several men called out advice, most of it
silly, from the sidelines. Sam perked up all the way. He called back a
couple of bragging replies about what he'd do in the future. Then he
retrieved the ax and handed it to a waiting man.

  I expect you"re wondering what all this has to do with the stories I
promised. I believe you'll understand soon.

                        *         *         *

  The first year of judgement we had only one person come for Penance.
The second, we had an ever increasing trickle. By the third we had
two, and sometimes three, in process at all times. Not all of their
stories would be all that interesting, and a lot of them were repeats
of each other. Only a few stand out.

  It was a cool summer day in June, not long after the incident I
describe above, that Jack called my team in. We had a new Penitent to
interview.

  Bob Hahn, Sheriff no longer, was the judge we'd be working with.
Jack would be another, but he couldn't sit in on the interview. Summer
is a busy time for him with grounds maintenance and everyone trying to
fit in outdoor events while the weather is good. We didn't know who
the third would be at that point. 'Mouth was in Denmark trying to buck
up a pro-family movement that had blossomed and then faltered under
persecution.

  The person we were to interview had a man's haircut. They were
dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The hair said male. The clothes were
ambiguous. The body said female, but with hints that were off.

  "My name is Kelly Alred," the person said in a voice that didn't
clearly tell us the sex. "I've been confused about my sex all my life.
I've been promiscuous with both sexes for longer than anyone should be
active. I'm twenty six. I want to be whole."

  "So, are you male of female?" said Jane Pennock.

  They gave us a sardonic grin, "My mother would never give anyone a
straight answer to that question, and I was trained not to answer it.
I was born a boy. I've never really been one though. Sometimes she
dressed me girlie. Sometimes androgynous, never male."

  "What did your father think of all that?" Bob asked.

  "Father was a turkey baster. I don't know who the sperm came from.
That line says Donor on my birth certificate. My name was chosen
because it might be a girl's or boy's. I don't know when Mom started
me on female hormones, I think I was seven or eight. Until I got this
haircut last month, my hair was long and worn in a ponytail."

  "What do you expect from us?" I said.

  "I said I've been promiscuous. I know the Gods don't like that, and
I want to be forgiven. I've had sex with girls and boys. I know they
really don't like that! I want forgiven. If you can help me, I want to
be a man. I could live with being a woman. I don't want to be an 'it'
anymore." He, I'll refer to Kelly as he from now on, broke down and
wept.

                        *         *         *

  We really didn't know what to do with this case. We're not trained
therapists and we don't want to be. When I was a hardcore progressive,
I'd have cheered his mother's program on. Now, I'd never reexamined my
ideas on something like this. That was going to have to happen. For
the sins he'd mentioned, we could assign punishment. For the rest we
were out of our depth.

  We needed Thundermouth. Strange is his department.

  The interview had been on Tuesday, on Wednesday we called him to
judgement. We'd added Ralph Hoffer as the third judge. He was an old
farmer who'd owned the Temple mound before Thunder planted his stone
on it. We held the judgement before that stone. The weather was nice
and we didn't want to be indoors.

  We assigned him one hundred and thirty three strokes. We'd start in
the morning.

  'Mouth had rooms set up above his stables for Penitents. We had
permission to house people there in his absence. Cat and the kids were
visiting family in Tennessee, in part to keep them safe while he was
away, so we'd have to make other arrangements to feed him.

  "Nice bike!" Kelly said as we passed through the stable.

  "That's Thundermouth's. Shame its going to waste this year. You like
bikes?" said Jack.

  "I was never allowed to when I was under mother's thumb. I had a
boyfriend who was a biker. He always treated me as his bitch. I rode
the pillion, but never have learned to ride. If I can be a man, I'd
like to try."

  "I'll talk to my son-in-law. He's a biker, he might teach you." said
Jack.

  Thursday afternoon we had our first session on the Teeth with Kelly.
Since Thursday is Thunder's day, we hold a service in the morning and
a prayer meeting in the evening. Working folks can't be at the
service, but we have a healthy crop of housewives, retirees, and
the self-employed. Some of them were staying to witness Kelly's
birching. We had him strip. In warm weather, and we don't have much of
that, we do birchings naked. The humiliation is supposed to be part of
the punishment. I have to admit, he turned out to be a strange sight.
He had breasts, small ones, but definite breasts. His waist was
pinched, like a girl's. His genitals were underdeveloped, but male and
hairy. His butt was male too. I've learned to tell the difference.

  "Should I count out the strokes?" he asked.

  "We haven't told anyone to do that since the first whipping we did.
It doesn't work out well," said Dorothy.

  "I understood from watching BDSM porn that you're supposed to count
the strokes."

  "You can try if you want. We won't count it against you if you
don't," said Jane.

  We strapped him down. The teeth are kind of rough. With girls, we
put down a blanket. With guys we usually don't unless they ask. We
decided to treat him as a guy. Jane wound up and swung the first
stroke.

  "One! Thank you, Ma'am!"

  We all broke down laughing. We couldn't help it. "Is that really how
they count strokes in porn?" I asked.

  "Yes, in some of it. The really hard stuff, with whips and chains,
they just shout the number. In both, you get extra strokes if you forget
the count."

  "If you have to count, just the number will be fine. We know the
count. You'll likely be screaming and crying before we're done," said
Jane.

  To Kelly's credit, he didn't cry. He did yelp. He did lose count
too.

                        *         *         *

  We keep roll away cots in the store room with the folding tables and
chairs. We set one up and placed Kelly face down on it. "Damn! That
really hurt," he said.

  "You thought it wouldn't?" said Dorothy.

  "I had a friend as a kid, a girl of course, we played house.
Whichever of us was mommy spanked the other. Those were just little
love pats compared to the switches."

  "I'm not surprised. How much force can a little girl work up? The
pants took a lot of that, I'm sure," Ralph said.

  Ralph's no stranger to little girls. He has a big family, seven or
eight children and I don't know how many grandchildren. I'm not sure
he has an accurate count of his grandchildren. I think he even has a
great grandchild or two.

  "Oh, we pulled each other's pants down. If we forgot to, mom would
remind us."

  "Your mother sounds a little sick," Ralph said. People as old as him
can get away with saying things like that.

  "You don't know the half of it," said Kelly.

  "Mom's a columnist for an artsy magazine, none of you looks like a
target reader. It's urban and urbane. It comes out of Chicago. The
magazine, and mom personally, fully support the normalization of the
full alphabet soup of 'sexually different'. I think mom had me just so
she could have gender neutral childrearing stories to pepper her
columns with. As I said last night, she made sure I had no father that
anyone can identify. She never referred to me by a gendered pronoun. I
was always a thing pronoun, in writing and in person at home. I was,
and am to her, an 'it'. She never cut my hair until it was shoulder
length, and she kept it that long ever after. I wore it in a ponytail
most of the time, loose sometimes. I always wore ambiguous clothing,
never masculine, seldom feminine. She never gave a straight answer
when asked my sex. She never, ever, gave me a straight answer about my
sex. I was an it, end of story."

  "I was never allowed to play with boys. I could play in mixed
groups. I could play with girls, as a girl. I could never play as a
boy with anyone. I could not associate with males outside of mixed
groups of children. That prohibition extended to grandpa. Mom seems to
love her father. She visits him, but I was left with a sitter when she
did."

  "I had to use women's bathrooms, unless I was on my own. Then I
could choose. She kept me in girl's panties so I had to pull them down
to pee. I wasn't allowed to stand and pee, I had to sit. As you might
expect, I didn't use urinals when I did use men's rooms. Someone might
see the panties."

  "In general, she kept me as ambiguous as possible and girlie, not
masculine, when ambiguity was not possible."

  "Yup. Sounds kinda sick. Typical city slicker," said Ralph. "Look,
you said you wanna learn to be a man. We have to break this up so
folks can get ready for the prayer meeting. Some of us more useless
guys are gonna throw the ax while they do. Keeps us out of the way.
You wanna give it a try?"

  "Not right now, no."

                        *         *         *

  Sunday had come around again. Sunday doesn't mean anything special
to us as Heathens. It's just another day. A lot of Heathens don't hold
weekly worship at all. There are the eight feasts of the year that are
obligatory and some civil holidays we give our own spin to, keeping to
the spirit of the day. We have a God given Temple, so we hold daily
prayers. Our major weekly service is on Thursday in honor of Thunder,
our God. As residents of a churchgoing rural community we use Sunday
as a family day. The normal daily prayer has a homily added to it and
the rest of the day is given over to meals and family activities. It
works for us and our Christian neighbors respect us for it.

  We are back at the ax throwing line. This time it's not my son in
line. This time Kelly is there. He's wearing slacks and a tie, a lot
of the men are. He's really trying to fit in. I'm worried that one of
the men will step out of line and undo what male confidence he's
managed to build up. The guys can get a little rough. I understand it's
a guy thing, male bonding and all. Kelly understands it intellectually.
The question is can he deal with it live without prior practice.

  His turn came up. He walked out to do the aiming thing. He returned
to the spot. So far, so good. No one seems to be paying much
attention, but that is deceptive. How can they not be closely watching
a guy with tits and a waistline? How can they be unaware that he has
an underdeveloped manhood? Enough people saw and the rumor mill has
had days to operate. He raised the ax, and his tits stuck out, swung
it forward and the ax flew toward the target. It stuck to the far left
side, just barely on the log.

  "Who taught you to throw like that? Karl Marx?"

  This was the test, how would Kelly take it? He didn't say anything
for a moment. He didn't seem to know how.

  "Lead with the left foot, just like a waltz!"

  Kelly didn't say anything. He just went out to retrieve the ax. He
didn't seem offended though. He didn't pass the test, he passed on it.

                        *         *         *

  Wednesday came around again. We were all there as Kelly stripped.
His butt was still chewed up from the week before. We strapped him
down and switched him. There was a woman on the next Tooth going
through the same routine. Kelly tried in vain to keep from crying out.
The poor woman was screaming fairly quickly. We finished with him and
he dressed in shirt and shoes for the walk into the hall.

  "I wish I could get rid of the tits," he said. "I wish I could grow
the dick too."

  "Ya, how did that happen?" Ralph asked.

  "Mother fed me female hormones. I had breasts by the time I was
nine. They were bigger in relation to my body when I was a kid. The
breasts stopped growing before the rest of my body did. When I went
through puberty the penis stayed child proportioned. It works, I've
proved it often enough, it just never developed adult proportions."

  "Damn, your mother sounds sicker every time we talk."

  You don't know the half of it. She had my lower ribs removed by a
surgeon who does sex change operations when I was ten. I had more
shape than a pubescent twelve year old girl. I suppose I can have the
tits reduced to flat, if I can find the funds. Maybe I can take male
hormones to grow the penis. I can never get the ribs back."

  "I can never get my innocence back either. Mom and her socially
liberal friends were trying to create perfect reflections on the
alphabet soup. We were all supposed to be everything in it, as much as
possible. They started us real early too. Mom played at being bi. I
don't know what her true orientation was. She played with some of her
friends sometimes, but not all that often. Mostly she lived sex out
through me."

  "She had a girlfriend, a flute player with the symphony, who had a
daughter. The daughter was sometimes dressed as a boy. Until she passed
through puberty, everyone thought she was a boy. I learned differently
when we were eleven. I always thought it was strange that I was
allowed to play with her. I wasn't allowed to play with any other boy.
When we were eleven our moms encouraged us to play doctor. Every week
for months we were egged on to touch and examine every bit of each
other, especially the naughty ones. We were encouraged to fondle one
another. We were mighty confused kids. She had been raised as a boy,
a feminized boy. She had no boy parts. I'd been raised as an it, I had
boy parts and tits. Our moms kept extending the amount of fondling we
were encouraged to do. I had my first orgasm with her playing with my
tits with one hand and stroking my dick with the other. She had hers
by my hand. Our mothers were so thrilled. Once we each had a first
orgasm, we weren't brought together anymore for a couple years. Our
moms had other things in store for us."

  "Whoa. Your story has got to be the strangest we've heard, and we've
heard some doozies," Dorothy said.

  "We have to cut it short now," Jack said.

  "Speaking of money," said Ralph, "I could use a farmhand. Don't pay
much, but it pays better than nothing. Only so much weeding I can
manage on my own these days."

  Kelly took Ralph's job. The next time I saw him, his butt wasn't the
only raw part of him.

                        *         *         *

  Kelly was back on the cot, well whipped and sunburnt. His hands were
raw and bandaged. He wasn't complaining about his present state.

  'Where were we last week?" he asked. "Sam had just left. I did
mention the girl's name is Sam?"

  "You don't have to tell us all this if you don't want to," said Jack.

  At the very same time I was saying, "My younger son is named Sam."

  "I'm very sorry, I wish I could change her name for you." He
switched to answering Jack, "I do have to tell you. I've never had the
opportunity to tell anyone else. Can you imagine having a life you
can't talk to anyone about?"

  "Sam was gone, but not forever. My next playmate was Terry. Terry
switched sexes nearly every time I saw him. Or her. Terry had two
dads. Not always the same two. I think Terry switched dads twice over
the years, but I might be wrong. Terry's real dad, or the one who
didn't change, was a writer. Terry was being raised, like me, to be an
everything. Terry got to have a sex though. It just switched a couple
times a year. Sometimes he was a boy. Sometimes she was a girl. Terry
was never an it."

  "I was still eleven, though very close to twelve, and Terry about the
same, when our parents decided to make us best buds. We'd always known
one another casually. Now we were to be inseparable. Terry was dropped
at our apartment, or I at their house, every day. Unlike with Sam, our
parents didn't watch and encourage us to do naughty things. The parent
who's home we were in paid us little attention, in fact. We were
expected to get up to naughty things, oh yes. Porn was suddenly to be
found, barely hidden, all over both homes. I don't know about Terry's
dads, but mom never had any around before this. Weekends were
sleepover time, without fail. We shared a double bed at either home."

  "I've been cagey about Terry's sex because Terry was cagey about
Terry's sex. I was cagey about mine. Every kid I was ever allowed to
befriend was being raised ambiguous. 'Girl or Boy?' was not a question
we were allowed to ask. Eventually the lure of porn caught us. The
activity that accompanies porn viewing caught us out. Terry was a boy.
A boy on female hormones. Terry had breasts, but pancakes that were
easy to hide under clothing. We'd both been introduced to playing with
another kid. It was only a matter of time before we played with each
other. By then, Terry was staying with us while his dads had an
extended Caribbean vacation."

  "We're out of time again," Jane said. "The suspense is killing me.
Can't we get together and finish the story all at once? Tomorrow?'

  "Boy's got work to do," Ralph said. "He's too slow and I'm too old.
The weeds are gittin ahead of us."

  "What about Sunday?" Dorothy said.

  "We don't want to spoil Sunday," Jane said.

  "Guess we're back to next week at this time," Kelly said.

                        *         *         *

  "Where were we last week? Terry's stay-over, that was it. It ended
when his dads returned after three weeks."

  "The next July, Terry's dads, Sam's mom, and mine rented a lodge in
a Laural Highlands resort. It was a deluxe setup. It had access to a
lake for boats and swimming. It had a full pool and workout facility.
It had a clubhouse and a live band on Saturday nights. For a bunch of
fourteen year olds, it should have been heaven. The truth was a little
different."

  "Terry, Sam, and I shared a double bed. That wasn't so bad. We'd all
been raised to be sexually ambiguous, neither male nor female. We were
kids the same age. The problem was we were being pressured into behave
sexually together. We would have rather just enjoyed being kids
together."

  "We'd been raised to be an experiment, you see. We were to be a
model for a new form of child rearing. We didn't know it, but we were
being documented at every step of the way. That documentation included
being secretly photographed remotely."

  "We did give in and behave sexually. We were pubescent, with raging
hormones. We were crowded into a bed too small for three of us to
manage any separation. We'd already been sexualized with each other.
Our first tentative tries were concerned with figuring out how to
coordinate three of us all giving and receiving stimulation at the
same time. We were just using hands then, the only things we done to
date.

  "As you might expect, our first attempts were giggly failures. We
didn't want to leave one hanging out while the other two did things,
but the mechanics of including three eluded us. The porn our parents
left lying didn't help much. It all featured threesomes now, but the
acts were more advanced than we cared for and they frequently left one
hanging on the sideline. We finally settled on forming a triangle,
on our knees, left arm around one person and right hand caressing the
other. It worked well. We varied the mix. It was only one position and
we wanted more variation."

  "Time to wrap up for this week," Jack said.

  "I'm hoping we'll figure out how to council you before too long,"
Jane said.

  "I seem to be making progress myself," said Kelly. "I feel more
manly these days."

  Indeed, he seemed more manly. I couldn't put my finger on why. I was
trained in things like body language and other non-verbal cues, but I
was out of practice. He still had breasts and lacked facial hair, yet
he seemed more masculine none the less.

                        *         *         *

  The 'Mouth came back on Saturday. He was introduced to Kelly, who
after all was living on his property. Kelly told him of his wish to
learn to ride a motorcycle.

  "I'd love to teach you, or let someone else teach you on my bike.
Can't be done now," 'Mouth said. "I have to use it myself. The wife
has the car and I need to disappear. I'm wanted by both the Danes and
the Dutch. Their extradition requests will fail in court, almost
certainly, but our wonderful Government would love an excuse to jail
me until the courts rule on the cases."

  "How did you manage to piss off both governments? I thought you only
went to Denmark and kept a low profile," I said.

  "I managed to put fire back in their pro-family organizations. They
launched a massive protest that included occupying a square in front
of Parliament calling for reform of a whole host of family and
marriage laws. Neither the King, nor any MPs, would meet with them.
A Dutch politician offered to mediate. Woden fried him with
lightening, and demanded the King comply with the protesters' demands
or he's next to get fried and replaced. No one can touch Woden, but
they can take it out on me if they can catch me."

  "Can the King really do anything?" Kelly said.

  "By their constitution, he's a figurehead. If Woden says otherwise,
I expect he can suspend Parliament and take up active rule. All
depends on whether the people and the military will follow him. Their
military is the laughingstock of Europe, so maybe they don't count."

  "Can they get to you? Maybe a kidnapping?" I said.

  "Nope. Their domestic law enforcement is good enough. Foreign
intelligence? Bad as their military, so I've heard."

  "What if you've heard wrong?" said Kelly.

  "That's why I'm taking a little road trip."

  'Mouth stayed through Sunday. A biker couple had come up to visit,
and Kelly was introduced to them. They weren't staying long enough to
teach him to ride. Jack's daughter and her husband were there too. He
would teach Kelly to ride once Kelly finished his whippings and had a
chance to heal. Then the men went to the throwing line. Kelly's throw
was way to the left again. 'Mouth held up the line and talked Kelly
through adjusting his stance to compensate. The next throw wasn't
perfect, but it was a lot closer to center. The guys gave a little
cheer and Kelly did an arm pump, smiling fit to split his head.

                        *         *         *

  The next Wednesday was Kelly's last whipping. He took the whole
thing without a whimper, first time I ever saw anyone do that. This
one included the extra stroke to make up for the fractions in
splitting up the hundred strokes too.

  We were back to the cot. Jane slathered the red liquid on Kelly's
rear and we settled in to listen to him. We still hadn't figured out
how to council him.

  "I think I had us up to the three of us kids in bed together? We
wanted to try something different than just hands. We decided to try
using our mouths. We made a triangle laying on our sides, mouth to
genitals. It worked, and we all liked the receiving part. The truth be
told, none of us liked the giving part much. I keep hearing about how
much people love doing oral, I think it's all author's moonshine. Sam
and Terry said the same. Maybe it's different when you have a strong
sexual preference to satisfy. We didn't. Dick and pussy taste lousy.
I've had a lot of practice with both since then, and it's never
improved."

  "We finally found what we were looking for in one of the magazines.
A train. Sam at the head, that was obvious, and one us boys in the
middle. We spent half the last night in the lodge trying to work out
the mechanics. We tried every combination of hips moving before
learning that having the 'caboose' drive it all was the only workable
option. I was the middle. It didn't help that this was the first time
for any of us trying penetration. It didn't help me that we didn't
know anything about lubrication either."

  "After that night, the three of us didn't do much together anymore.
We stayed friends, but we started branching out, hooking up with other
people we found interesting. Our parents started steering us to kids
who were somewhere on the alphabet scale. Confused kids like us. I
can't say I ever fell in love with any of them. I'm not sure any of us
could fall in love. We just did things, hook-ups. No emotion needed or
wanted."

  "That's been my life up 'til now. Lots of sex, but not much
satisfaction. The guys all seemed abusive. The girls were either
harpies or zombies. Always with someone, yet always lonely. I know
that's not normal. I haven't lived in a cave. I want normal!"

  He put his head down on the mattress then. He didn't seem to be
crying, but he was just about alone in that. Ralph gave his shoulder a
couple of friendly pats. We left him alone with his thoughts and
started setting up for the evening then.

                        *         *         *

  Kelly was finished with his punishment, yet we felt guilty because
we still hadn't found a way to council him. "Don't worry about it," he
said. "I feel better about myself these days. I don't know how or why,
but I feel I can go on myself. I can find manliness. I can be
something besides an it."

  Ralph said, "You were never an 'it'. You were a person, a confused
person. No one is a thing. Only a confused person can mix up foxglove
and tomatoes."

  I though that last bit was out of line, but Kelly laughed. Not
giggled. Not tittered. Laughed. I don't know how he got there, but he
was getting more manly every time I saw him.

  "Let's finish this and I'll just get on with life," he said.

  Our Purification bath is an odd thing. I don't know where 'Mouth and
Jack got their ideas from. It's a tunnel dug into the hillside beneath
the temple. The tunnel is three and a half or four feet high. You have
to squat to get to the bathing chamber. The chamber is just big enough
for the tub and the three servers. The tub is more of the quarried
stone that they used for the Teeth and the standing stones. The hollow
was hacked out, though by someone more skilled than our leaders. It
wasn't smooth like you'd have in your house. There was no running
water. Kids brought in hot water by bucket brigade. I would have
thought the Native Americans would object to digging into the mound.
The local Shawnee, who aren't recognized by the Government and don't
have a reservation, not only didn't object, but a crew of them helped
dig it out. They kept the artifacts unearthed.

  We don't touch the subjects bathing, they wash themselves. We pray
over the water before they enter it. We pass them soap and rinse them
with pans of clean water. We anoint them with blessed oil and pray
some more. Then we give them a robe to wear to the Forgiveness.

  Kelly stood tall for his Forgiveness. Even in the dress-like robe he
looked like a man. I was proud of him.

  Ralph passed on a couple of weeks later. He left instructions that
Kelly was to be one of his bearers.

  Kelly stayed on the farm to the end of the harvest. He worked his
butt off to keep everything going. The rest of Ralph's family helped
with the harvest, canning, and storage of the crop. Then Kelly said
good bye to Mrs. Hoffer and moved into town.

                        *         *         *

Postscript: Kelly fulfilled his want to learn to ride a motorcycle.
He took a job at a bike garage. My older son, who broke his mother's
heart by taking up bikes, says he's decent at turning a wrench, but
his real value is doing custom paint jobs. He is every inch the man
now. The breasts seem to be gone, but the pinched waist isn't. No one
seems to notice anymore. He's a real anchor to our road trip missions.
His friend Sam came to us in the next winter. I'm not telling her story
because it's basically a repeat of his. They remain close friends, but
just friends if my spies are correct. They both seem happy to just be
themselves.

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