Copyright Oggbashan April 2005
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.
*****
I lay back on the bed beside Lucina. I was satiated with a week of food, drink and sex. I had kissed and caressed and sucked her massive breasts, risking suffocation as she pressed my face deep into her cleavage and pressed her tits together behind my head. Frequently she had lifted and dropped a heavy tit over me thumping my head so that I seemed to have been punched many times. I had ridden her three times during the night pumping my seed into her heavy body while her legs and arms clamped me tightly. She had flattened me and demanded hours of pussy worship including sixty-nine. My face was beginning to relax after surviving the pounding her hips had given it. My tongue was numb. My ribs felt sore from supporting her weight and resisting her crushing hugs. I had managed to wriggle out from underneath her only a few minutes ago when she started to snore loudly.
Despite achieving both objectives, the overt and the covert, I had a vague sense of disquiet. Apart from the effort of satisfying Lucina night after night, it seemed to have been too easy.
I had come to this secretive country apparently as an anthropologist seeking surviving rites worshipping the Earth Mother. There had been vague hints that something had survived the cruel repression. I had found what I was looking for and tomorrow I would observe the whole ceremony from a secret hide.
Tonight Lucina had shown me the May Pole used for the women's rite and the special attachments at its top. The May Pole was kept hidden in a barn until May Day Eve. It seemed to be a couple of the roof beams but they were lowered the day before May Day and would be erected using a treadmill crane in the disused quarry at dawn. I had seen, handled and photographed everything. I had helped Lucina attach the fitments to the pole so I knew how they worked. They were spring loaded and when compressed formed a wooden version of an iron maiden. My fingers tingled as I remembered the feel of the dried blood. Pig's blood now but once it had been human. That May Pole radiated evil.
The other May Pole was already erected in the village square. Tomorrow young children would dance around it singing songs in praise of the dictator of this impoverished country. Once they had sung words in praise of Spring, words that meant one thing to the children with a hidden meaning that was very different. Now they sang turgid verses about 'The Protector of the People'.
Lucina, the proprietress of the village's only inn, had been willing to help me find out about the Earth Mother for payment in dollars and sex. She told me that she was named after the Roman Goddess of Childbirth. She looked like a manifestation of the Earth Mother, large, plump, rounded and earthily sexual. The dollars had been easy. Satisfying her sexual demands had been difficult but I had paid in full. How long it would take me to recover when I returned to civilisation I didn't know. What I did know was that it would be a long time before I wanted to experience a big beautiful woman again. Lucina had been too big and too powerful for me.
Lucina had kept her side of the bargain. Apart from the detailed revelations of the women's rites, she had told me exactly where the troops from the capital had dug an underground installation. I had managed to get close and photograph everything visible. There were missiles in silos under the abundant tree-cover. The staff in contamination suits confirmed the biological warfare nature of the payloads. Lucina and other villagers had reported finding violently contorted dead animals in the valley close to the site.
I had completed my covert mission. I had sent everything, covert and overt, twice by email to my superiors in London. All I had left to do was observe tomorrow's ceremony and get out of the country in one piece.
I reviewed what I knew about the May Pole. The attachments to the pole were hinged and spring loaded. They would be covered with a white globe of muslin held out with straws threaded through tunnels stitched on the inside of the globe. Once the pole was erected the globe would be about six feet below the cap of the May Pole. The wide ribbons were attached to the cap of the pole. As the dancers, who had to be pregnant women, twirled, the wide ribbons would cross the globe and gradually crush it. The dancers would lean out, pulling hard so that the ribbons would lash tightly.
As the entwined ribbons crushed the muslin globe, the hinged pieces would be pulled remorselessly inwards against the pole. On the underside of each piece were many hollow needles. They would pierce the stuffed pillows tied to the pole and sink into the concealed bladders of pig's blood and lock into place. The blood would pass through the needles and run down the ribbons, soaking them and the muslin globe.
When the dance had twined the ribbons below the globe, the hinged pieces would reveal their secret. They formed into a representation of the Earth Mother, heavily pregnant with massive breasts, her mouth open in the scream of childbirth. When the dance unravelled the ribbons the blood soaked muslin would remain, showing the Mother as a red horror.
Lucina had explained that originally the sacrifice strapped to the May Pole had been an eighteen-year-old male virgin. He would be overpowered and kidnapped before dawn on May Day by the newly elected May Queen and her attendants. He would be stripped naked. His mouth would be stopped with a cloth soaked in a virgin's menstrual blood and that was held in place by a white silken hood sewn on by the May Queen herself. Her long silver belt would bind his arms, her white stockings tied his feet and hands before he was fixed to the May Pole with her attendants' belts. Finally the muslin globe would cover him from view.
The May Queen and her attendants would replace their silver belts with golden ones. They would follow as the May Pole was carried to the village square and erected. They would watch as the dancers twined the ribbons round the May Pole crushing the muslin globe and killing the sacrifice inside the wooden statue.
In the early part of the twentieth century after a dearth of young men because of wars, the custom had been changed. The sacrifice became a serial adulterer who would be tried by the May Queen and her attendants. His offended wife would bind and gag him with her oldest underwear as the May Queen and others held him helpless. After the Second World War the authorities had suppressed the May Day celebrations, which still continued in secret, but with pig's blood replacing the human sacrifice.
The bloody ribbons would be removed, cut into lengths, taken out of the quarry and handed to the unmarried girls of the village. The girls would use their ribbon to tie the hands of any unmarried man they wanted and would lead him to the railings surrounding the former church. There the man would be tied to the railings. If he proposed he would be led inside the church, now the Party office, to register for marriage. He had to wear the bloody ribbon wrapped around his right arm until the marriage was consummated. If he refused? The girl would leave him tied to the railings. He was then fair game for any other girl. If he refused all of them he would be left until a female relative untied him at dusk. The female relative could demand a week's labour for releasing him and he had to wear the ribbon around his left arm until he had completed his task.
If an unmarried girl did not want to marry anyone, she could tie the hands of one of her close male relatives and attach him to the strings of her apron. He could be released if another woman wanted him in marriage or by agreeing to serve his female relative for the week wearing the ribbon on his left arm.
Why didn't all the men take off for the whole of May Day? Any man wearing a bloody ribbon on either arm was considered to be sacred. He could ask any married woman for sex and her husband could not object. The wife could refuse if she didn't want that particular man but only if she agreed to find a suitable replacement within twenty-four hours. If she couldn't find a substitute she had to provide the sex herself.
