An Extract from My Hero: A Wild Boy's Tale

By  

Tristram Burden

Night brought the forest into song. The tallest trees swayed in the light breeze, forcing deep groans to come from the earth beneath their feet. Joshua could feel the noise through the thick roots they walked around and over, the three of them mesmerized by the full-moon life of the forest. Howls and chirps, whistles and whooping surrounded them with frequent interval so as to give their minds space to enjoy the silence. Joshua was given sporadic glimpses of the stellar-spread above him - only obstruction to the full moon's light the spores dancing in clouds with every few steps. All seemed mauve, and even Moojaffa’s dark skin possessed a thin film of luminescence.
    The giant walked ahead, leading William and Joshua on a path he seemed to know well. He had become quiet, almost solemn, and Joshua was made to internalise the dreamy calm as the three made their way into the depths of the forest. The deeper they went, the more it seemed to Joshua that they were no longer in any ordinary place. A pervasive sentience, so thick Joshua could feel it upon his tongue, kept Joshua in company more than William and Moojaffa as they strode ahead, apparently confident that Joshua wouldn’t get lost if they became separated. The distance between them increased, as Joshua was forced to climb where Moojaffa stepped and William bounded with an absurd agility, and to crawl where Moojaffa merely pushed through thick vines with his weight, William following swift.
    On one occasion, Joshua saw Moojaffa ahead of him push through a thick set of undergrowth with William on his heels. When Joshua reached it some seconds later, he became tangled and heaved and pulled for what seemed an eternity until he burst through and tripped over a small ledge. When he looked up, nursing a wood-smacked shin, Moojaffa and William were gone to him. He strained his eyes, his ears, to hear or see the giant making his path.
    He shouted out panicked, “Moojaffa! William!”
    He screamed the names then, only to be greeted by the forest and its strange harmonies. He brushed his face of dirt, and took steps forward.
    First we walked towards the moon, then we walked with it on our left, then we walked with it on our right, then it was behind us, then ahead of us...and then...aw, fuck, it's like they lost me on purpose. Some new task for Joshua My Hero... Well fuck that, I told them I wasn't in the mood and I meant it...
    Joshua walked a little further before thinking it may be better to sleep here, make his way in daylight in his own time towards whatever scraps of civilisation he may find. He gazed about him in the moonlight, looking for a camp, when a great noise boomed through the forest, a deep and resonant drum driving through his bones.
    He strained his ear to discover its source when it boomed out again, as if to guide him to it. He walked in the direction the sound came from, as the beats seemed to increase in frequency. His excitement and eagerness at finding the source made him trip over roots and smack his face into thick branches: but he was oblivious and moved faster, as the drum picked up speed and other clattering could be heard, gathering around the central beat, gathering and moving in a synchronised cacophony that resonated through the landscape.
    As he came closer, he felt the drums within his chest, echoing around all the cavities in his body. He was sure he was close now, and he pushed his way through a set of vines and climbed up a small hill, then pushed through some more trees, and went downwards, almost slipping and rolling in his urgency. He then burst through into a clearing, landing upon his face, head filled with the pounding noise, certain now of its source.
    When he brought his eyes up from the dirt, he found his face besides the barefoot of a woman, tattoo of a snake writhing around the toes. He stood startled, and stared into a half-masked face, blank and doll-like, with colourful plumed feathers spilling in a fan around the rim, her upper-face the only flesh covered.
    He shouted out, “What’s going on?” But he couldn’t hear his own voice.
    She drew close to his ear, and whispered soft, hot breath exciting him, “Your wedding!”
    ...Come unto me...
    "My wedding?" Joshua backed away from the woman, baffled by the information, only to have her take his hand and pull at him.
    ...Cum into me...
    The woman, at the foot of a small incline which he recognised as having visited before, instructed him to remove his clothes. When he had done so, she knelt down and kissed his prick, sending shivers of electric fire up and all over his body and blood hammering into his crotch. She stood and took his hand again, leading him up a steeper incline where the clattering and booming of the drums became louder and louder. At the top, Joshua found himself standing on the outside of a large circle of seated drummers. But it was not them that caught his attention, but the robed figures dancing in the centre of the eight megaliths towering above them. They held hands and shook together, weaving in-between them, possessed by the persistence of the rhythm being beaten to life by a hundred different hands.
    His guide whispered into his ear, "Go to them," and gave him a gentle push of encouragement.
    The noise of these foreign proceedings rung through Joshua hard and heavy, and he finally saw that William and Moojaffa were there in the circle, robed and thinly masked. They payed no attention to him, were caught up in the dance with the rest of them. Thirteen that Joshua could count. As the beats got faster and more violent, some of the number responded with fits, spasms, and spontaneous orgiastic wailing could be heard erupting over the racket.
    Can feel myself being pulled into this...all so loud...this is some fucked-up ceremony...a wedding for me? Whom I meant to be marrying?
    Joshua walked past the frantic drummers, long heavy cowls pulled low over all of their features so that they seemed mere organic machines caught-up in frenzy. Unsure what to do with himself, he walked as close to the dancers as he dared, careful not to get caught up in the various flying limbs which struck out at the air. But he was pulled in: his arm grabbed and himself turned about and pushed past the dancers towards the stones. Previously occluded, Joshua could see now the scene in the centre of them. Six men painted gold, smeared now by their persistent activity, and nine woman rainbow coloured, shades merged by sweat, cum, spit and limb. Their passion roused Joshua, and reminded him of scenes he'd encountered in dream. The latter was confirmed especially when Joshua's eyes fell upon the creature these bodies encircled.
    He walked to the megaliths. Eight giant slabs, now of some black stone, smooth to the touch, moss fallen of them by a process unbeknownst to him. He walked into their centre, towards this beast and the orgy about it. The creature had a goat's head and a large white candle flaming between its horns. With a female torso, great breasts upon it glimmering with sweat in the moonlight, its goat's legs were crossed, but didn't conceal the immense stiff phallus that protruded there, reaching towards the stars. Without so much as a gesture, the creature was beckoning Joshua, and he could feel his own god now roused up and shaking within him.
    Above the drumming, Joshua heard the cries behind him, a rallied, pleading and reverent chorus: "Io Baphomet!...Opener of the Ways!...Spread wide thy eye and bid him entry!...Io Baphomet! ... Opener of Ways! ...Bid him entry! ...Spread wide thy eye and bid him entry!"
    Joshua was pulled into the circle and thrust above it by a gaggle of hands, towards the great creature, who began to work the huge phallus back and forth, and soon spread great silver rays all over him, quickly taking him to his left breast where Joshua tasted the sweetest milk, then to the other, where Joshua tasted a bitter poison and felt his head expand and contract in great throbbing pulses.
    ...Cum unto me...
     Vision excited and confused by all that he was seeing, when his eyes adjusted he was alone in the stars, before him the apparition of a man and woman, merged together and arms open to him, calling to him. His heart flooded outwards with a rare and intoxicating ecstasy, and he moved towards it, feeling himself mingle with the apparition, penetrating his god with every atom of his being, as he was penetrated likewise, caught up in an exploding cellular dance that he became suspended in, losing all consciousness of himself and stretched to the edges of the universe, flesh never returning to the limits it had known.
    Gradually shrinking into the confines of his own blessed skin, he pushed out again with his will, feeling himself amongst the stars and he and his god one and none together, seething through each other in an eternal orgy of non-being and joy.
    Then he felt the cold stone beneath him, and bodies about him, shifting, moaning, flexing over and around him.
    Then a mouth found his own cock, and a cock found his mouth, breasts and feet were thrust around him. Swollen labia punched his thighs and greasepaint, sweat and his own violent lust raged around him in a solid swollen song of passion. When he opened his eyes to find new meat, he  found that the circle of dancers had arranged themselves, male female and one over the other. The drumming quieter so that the chorus of moans and fuck aroused him greater, Joshua pushed hard and firm into a convulsing anus he knew not of which sex.
    Mind hammering between fucking and dreaming, half-sleep took him into the bosom of his own god again, in the form of a great winged serpent fiery and omniscient, penetrating Joshua to his core, exploded into every atom of him, nerves blasted beyond sensation, beyond time and far beyond space. It'd come, this god, into him deep. And Joshua was no longer entirely his own self.
    When he heard laughter, the ground shake, cries and screams and a mass of hail descend from the clear sky, Joshua knew that things were not quiet what they had been. He couldn't walk. Could only just breath. With the hazy movement of the bodies next to him, some still engaged but with the barest shreds of energy, he felt safe enough to lay back down, head neatly squidged against an ample stomach. He fell to the state of exhaustion his body had come to.
    Before his eyes were closed, he saw that the goat-headed figure was no longer there, and he slept, sharp-cool hail evaporating into steam once exposed to his heat.
    In the light of the dawn, the great black stones took on other colours, spectrum's which danced over their surface in oily swirls. Mist all about him, Joshua lifted himself from his rock bed, and wondered where his clothes were. A dense quiet had gathered in the clearing, whoever else had joined the ceremony the night before gone, leaving Joshua spread-eagled upon the rock to fend for himself against the strange forces he felt waited for him in the forest.
    Suffering as much from exhaustion as from euphoria, he rubbed his cock: it was sore and swollen. He'd had no oracles from it, had no messages from deep within, only an emergence, a reconciliation with his powers. When he felt within for the presence of his god, he was panicked at first to discover that something was different. But then he felt and remembered  -  his god seething through him, bonding with his every atom, and pushing through into every cell of him. At that moment of realisation, he felt love and the shadows of old, done with, pain slide away. He lay down and whispered to the grass, to the stones, and to the force now manifest within him. He could feel it stretching out to the corners of his being, into the contours and fine cracks of his skin.
    "You feel me here? You feel me here, don’t you?
    "You so old...
    "You deep in me, like I was born with a twin that lived inside me. Only you’re so big, my god. I might call you now my guardian angel and you’ve whispered to me for so long and now I know where your place is. Not in me, but somewhere else, and I’m in you.
    "Ain’t no god on you, ain’t nothing on you...
    "Gave me everything I ever hope for: feet to run, snake to love and be loved. All my pleasure is your pleasure and I ain’t ever gonna let you down, cos I know you won’t let me down...
    "Never have, never will...
    "It’s your time now, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here. You and whatever brother’s and sisters you may possess...
    "Been gone a long time, but now your awake. I know, I feel you now. Coming back to fix-up this fucked world. Fucked over by its keepers. We forgot our job, didn’t we? Forgot why we’re here. But you’ll remind us.
    “Whatever I need to do, I’ll do it. My will ain’t gonna be different from yours, now. This is deeper than blood. And I know that you didn’t chose me. There was no choosing. Because we've never been separate..."
    As if in response, a light rain began to fall upon Joshua's bare-back, and a slight crack of thunder rumbled around the forest. He stood and stretched in the promise of morning.
    Time for action. William and Moojaffa...thank-you.
    For whatever it is you've done here...
    And he went to gather his clothes, hum of the forest about him lulling his mind into thoughts of the journey ahead of him.


Tristram Burden has had his work published in http://www.ashejournal.com Ashe: Journal of Experimental Spirituality, Suspect Thought: Journal of Subversive Writing, and Prediction Magazine. Further extracts of his novel are available in  http://www.crossroads.wild.net.au.silkmilk3.htm and
Out of Control: Hot, Trashy, Man-on-Man Erotica