Is the price worth the cure?
This is my first attempt at Erotic Horror, so please bear with me. I appreciate critical reviews, however, the reviews should be of a nature that will allow me to build on my creative writing ability, vice just being hurtful. If you want to rant, then write your own stories. I will happily critic them (though never in a hurtful manner...)
Like many of my stories, this starts out slow, setting the mood. But when the action starts, it does so with a dramatic bang. This tory leaves things open, un-ended. If there is enough interest, I will provide a second finishing chapter. Enjoy.
Ian Miller had carried his wife Heather down the long curved tunnel some three miles into the darkness from the entrance of the cave. Flanked by chanting men and women holding guttering torches, he trudged tirelessly onwards to their final destination.
His wife weighed almost nothing, a mere 80lbs. At 28 she should have been in the prime of her life, instead of days away from death. Semi-conscious, she occasionally opened her eyes and smiled at him, aware only that he held her, and not where she was.
A much older, but far wealthier woman was being carried by a group of four men on a litter nearer the front of the line of men and women, an older man that Ian presumed to be her husband trudging along beside the litter.
Another much younger couple walked not far ahead of the older couple.
Ian's escort, a self-proclaimed acolyte, walked silently beside him. He had met her earlier in the week in the little town's church, far above where he now walked. Though no one had been in the church, it was open and kept clean so he had walked in and begun to pray for guidance and for a miracle.
"We can save her." A woman's voice said.
Ian vaguely looked up to see a woman clad in a simple white dress that hung down almost to her feet, which were clad in simple sandals. The dress was pulled tight to her body with a rope belt around her waist. It was obvious that she wore no bra as the dress showed off the body beneath it without openly exposing it. Ian thought that the somewhat risqué display was oddly out of place in the little church.
"Forgive me, are you a member of the congregation here?" Ian asked.
"An Acolyte," she replied in perfect though heavily accented English. "Though not of this congregation. But I often come here when I am called."
"Who called you?" he'd asked, his curiosity briefly peeked.
"You did, even if you did not know it." She answered.
He had looked at her then, seriously looked at her for the first time since she had intruded on his prayers. She was a lovely woman, perhaps in her early thirties. Her light brown hair was almost blonde and framed the face of a true beauty. His heart leapt in his chest at the sight of her.
This is what Heather should look like!
He thought to himself. The woman's image blurred as the thought brought strong emotions to him.
Suddenly she was holding him and he was crying hard. His face was buried in her breasts, the cloth there becoming soaked with his tears. The emotions of three years of bitter disappointments spilled out of him. Their initial attempts at having a child, the failure of which leading to medical tests that showed she had cancer. The long downward spiral of failed radiation and chemotherapy treatments. The disease slowly ravaging his wife's beauty and vitality. His long desperate search for help going unanswered.
Two months ago he had heard a rumour, a small town in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Europe that was purported to have cured many diseases. Against his doctor's advice, he had taken his wife and come to the town's hospital, where doctors there had told him what he already knew, his wife had only a short time to live.
Now he was being held by an unknown woman in the town's only church, crying as he begged for help for his wife.
"We can help her." She told him quietly. "But there is a price to be paid. You may not like what that price may be." She told him bluntly.
Ian looked at her again. Though she was beautiful, there was something oddly strange about the woman. As he looked up into her eyes he knew what it was. Her eyes had the look of aged wisdom about them. As if this woman had seen many things in the apparent short years of age that separated him from her. Something in those eyes called to him, sought him out. They seemed to look deep into his soul.
He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as those eyes stared into his. He wasn't frightened by her. But there was something about her eyes that spoke of experiences that few could have acquired even in many lifetimes. And that brought a cautious respect from deep within him.
Her last words repeated in his mind and as if she had spoken them clearly, and he responded. "Anything." He gasped out. "Anything at all, I will pay any price even if it dams my soul."
"So be it." She had said and at the sound of those words a strange peace settled over him. He knew he had committed himself to something unknown, perhaps even dangerous, but he also knew he would do anything for his wife.
A few hours later he was in his hotel when his room door, which he thought he had locked, opened and the Acolyte entered ahead of another woman. He recognized the mystery woman immediately, he had seen her many times in and around the little town. She was referred to simply as the 'Priestess', though of what religion he had no idea. The Acolyte stepped aside and bowed to the other. The Priestess did not acknowledge her as she stepped forward to look at Ian.
The woman's presence was like a blow to his male pride. The overall impression was of overt sexuality tied to innate beauty. He felt himself reacting to her presence on a primal level, his groin twitching at the sight of this incredibly beautiful woman. It was a feeling he hadn't had since before they discovered his wife's illness, and one he didn't particularly want to feel at this point in time.
She was tall, only one inch shorter than his own 6'2" height. Her stunningly gorgeous and statuesque figure was draped in a sheer diaphanous gown made of layers of material playing on a single colour, in this case reds, the colours of autumn. The colours became stronger the deeper toward her body the eye travelled. While the material covered her it did not fully hide from sight the utter beauty of her naked form, clearly visible beneath, yet at the same time the gown sheathed her body from prying eyes. Thus the longer he stared the less visible she was beneath the gown. The effect was to showcase her awesome nudity at a casual glance, yet hide it from prying eyes.
Her feet were clad with a simple but effective Greek style leather sandals with laces winding up strong calves to tie just below her dimpled knees. She wore no jewelry.
