Martin Luther

This story doesn't contain any sex. If you want to read a story with sex this might not be the right one. All characters are over 18. Author is not a lawyer, do not rely on this story for legal advice. Author is not a doctor, do not rely on this story for medical advice. Author is not a priest, do not rely on this story for any kind of accurate descriptions of religion.

This story contains a lot of religious themes that many readers may find inappropriate. Rather than cut it out to make a super sexy story I have decided to leave it in as an honest exploration of the character's feelings and motivations.

As always, constructive feedback is always welcome.

Chapter 1 Two men in the chapel

Martin Luther Collins was on his knees in the chapel. No words would come and he only felt empty and disillusioned. They'd lied to him. The whole thing, it was all a lie.

"Ha, ha, ha." the voice of the school administrator laughed.. Martin would not turn. "You homophobes always come here as if there's a God that can actually help you."

"Do you mind? I'm trying to pray." Martin said as the administrator came forward enough for Martin to see him from the corner of his eye.

"I do mind. You're going to have to learn that you have no rights or privileges unless it is something that I give you. Maybe you think you're smart. Maybe you believe that God will help you think of a way to save yourself. But writing a letter here or making a phone call there, it will all make no difference. Who is the Church going to believe, my twenty years of service versus someone who lied in order to gain admittance."

"I did not." Martin defended against the accusation without turning to look at the older man.

"Your file says you did. Look, it's right here, written down. A week after you entered we discovered your lie and you confessed. We graciously forgave you and allowed you to stay. See, it's right there."

"It's a lie. You know it's a lie." Martin insisted as he refused to look at the folder that was being shown to him.

"Doesn't matter. It's in your file and it wasn't like we just put that in there in the last ten minutes. We put that in there a week after you entered and it's in every version of your file from here to Rome. Also, all these incidents of you breaking the seminary rules. Look. My, my. And all this gay porn we've caught you watching and you making sexual advances towards other students."

"You fabricated an entire file on me?"

"What's in the file is all that matters. That's in the file so it must be true. Just like how we caught you stealing and using drugs. And every time we caught you, oh, you confessed and swore to us that you'd do better and each time we wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt so we let you stay but our patience has begun to run thin."

"All this just because I actually studied." Martin said and then he finally looked up from his prayers.

"You think you're special. Every student here has to be judged by the same process. You can scowl at me with your eyes all you want but I know the secrets of the church that you do not. Dear boy. Martin. Please. Why fight me on this? You could have a good life. A good career. A guaranteed salary for the rest of your days and access to so much more. Unlimited income. Think of it. Millions of dollars to take trips and buy boats or do whatever you want. And also you could help us do some actual good in the world instead of giving people false hope. You could help us bring about the change that your mother died fighting for."

"She died because she was stupid enough to try and rob a bank."

"But don't you believe it was for a good cause? One more step to the revolution. Capitalism must die for mankind to be free again. You've been here a year, have you learned nothing?"

"I did learn but not what you wanted. The church is not what you teach it to be."

"And what do you know of anything? You're not even baptized. Ah, yes, we know. We know all about it. You can't say you didn't lie about that."

"I asked to be baptized. I asked you and Father Kurtz."

"It's a pity things have gone this way. I had such high hopes for you. You seemed a perfect candidate. Shame. You know what your mistake was? You took all this fluff too seriously. There is no Jesus. There never was. He's a figment of someone's heat stroked brain out in the desert. If he did ever actually exist he'd be someone like me not someone like what you imagine. What do you think it meant when the gospels say he loved John." The man smirked. "There is no heaven. There is no hell. There is no sin. We live and then we die and that is all there is. It's a shame you let all the magical thinking infect your mind. We should have intervened earlier. That was my mistake, I suppose. You would have been one of my best lieutenants. But you had to go and think that you could actually become a real priest and be a traditional one at that. Martin, listen to reason. There are no priests who are the way you think they should be. We are called to something better, ... higher. Any idea that you have in your head to just play along and keep your head down and get ordained so that you can then go and be some tradition thumping zealot is fantasy. In the real world you only have two choices, follow me or leave. That's it. Nothing else. And in case you're still not convinced I'll let you in on one of the many fascinating secrets that I keep. Even if we did ordain you, it wouldn't mean anything. Ordination does not give you some magical powers to go out into the world to do whatever you want. So to make that clear to everyone we changed all the ceremonies. All the rites are now what the rigid bigots would call 'invalid'. Have been for decades. St. Paul VI of happy memory made sure of that. There isn't a single validly ordained priest or validly consecrated bishop in this country and perhaps not even in the entire world anymore. Even if it had been a real thing it doesn't matter anymore because the chain of apostolic succession has been broken. Suppressed and snuffed out. Do you see now? Even according to their own rules the traditionalists have been beaten. The faith doesn't matter. It was always just a myth to lure people in. Only the authority of the Church matters and if you are not with us then no one will take you seriously. Get it yet? Don't you understand that? The institution is what's important. Being in the church, having membership; regardless of what we say we believe; is what matters, not an invisible man in the sky who doesn't exist. We could change our beliefs over and over and endlessly contradict ourselves but it would never matter so long as we hold together in the church. Your kind of Christianity is gone. It has lost. The gates have been taken. There are no more Christians left and we, ... We are what remain, a force for actual good in the world. Join me and help me make the world a better place. End poverty. End capitalism. Free the people of their archaic superstitions. Join me and you can have all you desire. If you want a girl on the side from time to time we can even arrange that. Perhaps you want to get back together with that Anderson girl. She seems charming."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd met her."

"Actually I have met her and she eagerly did exactly what I asked her to do. She filed many police reports informing the authorities that you were violent and abused her."

"More lies."

"Doesn't matter. You confessed it all to us and we wrote it down. It's all there in your file for us to keep from the police only for them to raid us and find the documents which support her story and then they arrest you. You see. You will be fucked. Now, if you don't want to be arrested and convicted then you're going to go back to my office and serve me. You're going to suck my dick when I tell you. You're not going to whine or complain about how much it hurts when I gape your cute little ass cheeks and unload my cum down your rectum. And really, wouldn't you rather I do this for you than having it done to you in prison? That is the choice, let me be gentle or suffer all the scrapes and cuts and STDs that prison has to offer. It is inescapable. It became your destiny the moment you came to us."

"Or I can just stay here and pray."

"No. That I can not allow. Even if he did exist, God can't hear you. We haven't told you yet but you've actually been formally excommunicated. Even if you do avoid the police you can't present yourself for sacraments at any church in the entire world unless I say you can. So go ahead and believe all this is religion hokus pokus is real. It gets you nowhere."

Martin took a breath and rose to his feet. "I think I do understand finally. I'd like to thank you."

"There, that's more like it. I knew you'd come around to the light." the older man said with lust in his voice.

"I was really struggling with this, to understand how there could be both yes and no as both being the correct answer. But now I understand."

The administrator was nodding with pleasure as his eyes looked at Martin while imagining how much joy he was going to have defiling the younger man's body. "Good. Let's go back to my office and make it official."

"I said I understand but you apparently do not. Cum ex apostolus officio. The See is vacant. ... Isn't it?"

The older man's face lost its joy and he rolled his eyes. "Don't do that. Don't even go there."

"I have to."

"That's your choice then?" the older man said angrily.

"Not a choice, just an inescapable conclusion of fact."

That administrator looked personally insulted by what Martin had said but then composed himself and put back on his veneer of authority and control. "Very well. You might want to run. I'm going to casually walk back to my office and then inform the police of a most disturbing crime that you confessed to us involving raping children. You had better be gone by the time they arrive to interview me."

... Chapter 2 One man solo scene

The story of how Martin had found himself in the seminary was a strange one. Was there ever a time in his life when he wasn't in the middle of trouble, he asked himself. Well there was that one brief moment. It was just after he had turned 18. He had a little apartment and a nice job. He was studying for the college entrance exam in his free time and he had some semblance of a future. Then he discovered women. One after another he'd find himself in a sexual relationship with someone who very clearly did not care about him one bit but for Martin that was how all of his life had been up to then anyway so he hadn't noticed that it was different than what other people experienced. He'd sort of date, have sex and then get dumped. Then he'd find a new girl and it would all happen all over again. No woman would commit to him so he came to see them as just people who would sometimes have sex with him. There was no thought to building a stable relationship because that wasn't what women wanted, at least not from him.

Then he met her. The evil one. There were times when he'd hold himself back from calling her evil and he'd tell himself that she was just mentally ill but really deep down he only knew her as the evil one whose name must never be uttered ever again. Other than her being sexy he couldn't even think of a reason why he liked her except that he found it interesting that her birthday was on the 31st of her birthday month. The number hung in his mind as the whisper of an echo of a long forgotten dream.

First she seduced him away from his then current girlfriend but not with sex. She lured him away with the prospect that she'd care about him. She'd be interested in him. She'd remember his name, his birthday, where he was from, and everything. She'd said she'd love him. Once he was hers she not only wanted to have sex with Martin but she wanted it all the time, many multiple times a day. She fucked Martin to nearly the point of exhaustion, not that Martin was complaining. Also she couldn't stand being apart from him and started to show up at his work just to be near him. Then she started to ask, then beg, then demand that Martin move in with her and then the plan changed to Martin moving away with her, allegedly so they could get a fresh start and not be near people who would judge them for being together.

Once the evil one had lured him to her, she began to systematically isolate him from everyone that he knew. Martin wasn't like other people who had siblings and parents and old childhood friends to watch their back. Martin had grown up in state's custody and he had no one. The closest things he had to parents were his social worker and his karate sensei from high school. Before long Martin found himself with no job and no apartment and no studies. He was off living with her in the middle of nowhere with no plan for life beyond getting through another day without an outburst or an episode.

Once she had him all to herself that was when the violence started. Martin tried to rationalize it with the fact that she was just a girl and he was a man. He told himself that he could usually stop her from inflicting any real damage to him because he knew how to block after five years of shotokan. He just had to put up with it long enough to get through to her. He would wait out her violent manic state and then she would calm down and apologize. But that calm would not last long and soon the next outburst was due to come. No matter how much he tried to show her that he cared about her and that he was going to be loyal to her no matter what, it didn't matter. She escalated and escalated and escalated. It was anguish. Yet Martin stayed and told himself that he had to be better than her family who had all seemingly abandoned her when they couldn't handle her. He was going to help her get better. No one told him that that was not how mental illness worked. There was no getting better for her. She was only getting worse because Martin was unknowingly enabling her madness.

The night she put a gun next to his head while he was reading Hemingway as a way to still tell himself that he was studying for college was the last straw for him. You can't block a bullet with karate. He had to get the fuck away from her or she was going to kill him. Hitting him was one thing but a gun just brought all this to a-whole-nother level. In order to get away he had to slip away in the middle of the night with only the clothes on his back.

As he was fleeing and the delusion of her charms lifted from his eyes the realization of what his life had become suddenly hit him. He was ruined. She'd ruined his life and he'd been so blind that he allowed her to do it. And now that he was gone she'd start looking for her next victim.

Martin found himself in a homeless shelter occupying bed number 25 with nothing but a copy of Pride and Prejudice to read over and over again while he wondered what he could possibly do with his life. That particular homeless shelter was run by some monks. Well that gave Martin an idea. Why couldn't he be a monk? Surely that would be the last place that the evil one would come looking for him. Martin didn't know anything about religion and he hadn't even been baptized but once he made inquiries there didn't seem to be any barriers for him. But more than a place to hide he could have a future with them. He wasn't asking that much of life. He never expected to get rich, just not struggle anymore. Aside from the religion part, it all made sense.

Instead of becoming a monk he eventually found himself in a school called a seminary. He was studying to be a priest. He knew that priests couldn't get married but with the way women had treated him going all the way back to his crazy hippy mom whose plan in life was to rob banks to fund a communist revolution that would topple the government, he could live without a woman or a committed relationship. All he really needed was the occasional piece of pussy on the side to take care of biological needs and he'd focus on just not getting busted for not being an actual religious person who had no business there.

The first semester Martin was in the school he was clearly the most privileged and popular student there. He was always given top marks on all his work no matter how rubbish Martin internally knew it was. He didn't know anything about Jesus beyond what was sort of generally known in the general population but it didn't matter. Seminary wasn't about Jesus anyway. It was about social justice and church finances. It was about learning who was the boss and doing what they told you to do. As long as Martin played along and just agreed with the teachers and administrators, which wasn't hard to do, then he was fine and could do whatever he wanted. If he wanted to go out and party a bit, it was actually encouraged and some of the staff would even give Martin and the other students money to go have a good time. Martin even got lucky and brought a girl back to the dorm one night and even after he got caught it was no big deal. They made it seem like he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. The staff at the school loved to get Martin talking about all the various girls he'd slept with in his life and Martin reveled it telling the stories once he knew it was ok. The seminary was just one big party with booze and girls all the time. There were even rumors that Martin heard of certain parties at the school were drugs would be used but Martin had not seen any evidence of that himself.

Yes being a priest was really the perfect job for Martin and he could almost say this was one of the happiest times of his life. He fit in perfectly and he was accepted just as he was. The universities that were the biggest party schools had nothing on seminary. It was better even than pleasure island from Pinocchio.

And then at the start of second semester a strange thing happened one slow January day when it was too cold and snowy to go outside. Martin was drawn to the dangerous books section of the library, specifically to section 2531 where he found Aquinas one day. He had heard the name mentioned in class a few times as the teachers explained why "Thomism" had to be wrong. Martin was curious and started to read the questions and the answers. And then ... something just hit him. He was confused and his heart felt like it had been struck by lightning. So much of it didn't make sense but like a kind of addiction he couldn't put it down. In order to actually understand Aquinas Martin went and actually opened up the Gospels and started reading. No. What was this? It was all turned around. He was lost in a sea of logic and reason and his mind would not let him rest until he could make some sense of it. He tried to put it out of his mind and not worry about it so he could continue to finally have it easy in life but the questions continued to nag him. After that it wasn't long that he found himself yearning to understand and he actually started for the first time to really pray the liturgy with sincerity. At first it was hard but then one by one the meaning of different prayers was unlocked and he started to understand more and more.

From then on it was night after night with the angelic doctor, the Gospels, and the Divine Office. At first he was doing this privately while still trying to participate in party life atmosphere promoted at the school but little by little he withdrew. Months later to his complete surprise Martin realized something inside of himself one day as he was standing outside of the lecture room. He believed. It was more than that. He knew. He was convinced. The words of Christ rang out in his heart. It was deep. It was radical. It was far beyond the bland veneer of religiosity that others saw in it. One part of his mind was trying to tell him that he shouldn't care about the mad ravings of an itinerant preacher from literally thousands of years ago. His teachers were usually telling him that Jesus was just wrong about everything anyway and he might not even have ever existed in the first place. But somehow Martin knew otherwise. Somehow Martin knew that he himself was the one who was wrong for even trying to dismiss Christ. Jesus was real flesh and blood and more than that he was God. Something about the teachings of Christ and the knowledge of Christ's divinity changed Martin in a way that could never be undone. He could see in himself all his sins, all the ways he had offended God all those times. He knew he needed to stop doing those things. He needed forgiveness. He needed to make himself right before God and Jesus had made a path for him to do it. Martin went to the chapel and for the first time looked up at the hideous new age cross on the wall. There on the cross was the body of Jesus created using sharp disgusting angles that made it difficult for the eye to look at it. Martin fell to his knees and wept bitterly for all the sins he'd committed in his life.