Chapter 6: Divine Defecation
The human knees were the worst part. They ached. The marble, so flawlessly cold, sent needles of pain up through the bone. This was a specific, mundane agony the blob had never known. Loic remained, naked and trembling, the chemical bitterness of the nobleman’s final transformation still coating his tongue, etching the back of his throat. He kept his eyes on the floor, on the distant reflection of the blood-red chandelier, fractured in the obsidian.
Her boots clicked, a slow, deliberate staccato that echoed in the cavernous silence. They stopped, toes pointing at him, polished to a liquid shine. He could see the faint, ghostly outline of his own face in the leather.
“Look at them,” Lilith’s voice came from above, conversational. “You left a smudge, just there, by the welt. The light catches it. Careless.”
He lifted his gaze. The boots were perfect. He saw no smudge. That was the point.
“You promised,” she reminded him softly. “This tongue. You have it back. Fulfill your promise.”
A knot tightened in his human stomach. The previous act had been horrific, but it had been done by a thing, a monster of her creation. This… this was him. Loic Jaton, of 22 Rue de la Paix, third-year architecture student. He was to press his face to the foot of a demon.
“The alternative,” she mused, as if reading the paralysis in his hunched shoulders, “is to return to your prior state. Permanently. A sentient stain, watching centuries of petitioners become the grime you are tasked with consuming. Which is more… you?”
The choice was no choice. It was a scalpel, dissecting his last illusion of dignity. He leaned forward. The cold leather touched his lips. The scent of it, rich and oppressive, filled his nostrils. He extended his tongue, the action feeling absurdly large and clumsy. It touched the smooth surface near the sole.
It tasted of mineral polish, of ozone, of the faint, dry dust of the foyer. It tasted of her.
“Properly,” she chided, and shifted her weight. The boot pressed harder against his mouth, forcing his head back at an awkward angle. “Clean it. Don’t just dab at it like a frightened kitten.”
He began to lick. Long, slow strokes along the sole, over the arch, around the sharp heel. The texture changed from smooth leather to the subtle grit trapped in the stitching. His saliva smeared and dried, and he had to go over the spots again. His world shrank to the topography of her footwear. The taste became the only taste. The ache in his neck and knees became a secondary chorus to the primary, humiliated rhythm of his tongue on leather.
He heard a soft, sighing sound above him. Not pleasure. Boredom.
“Adequate,” she said, just as he finished the left boot. “Now the other. And then move higher.”
He obeyed, repeating the process on the right boot. His mind, that traitorous architect’s mind, began to note the details—the precise angle of the heel, the grain of the leather, the way the light captured every minute contour. It was a defense, a way to retreat into observation. He finished, his tongue feeling thick and dry.
“Higher,” she repeated.
He looked up, confused. Her gaze was impassive. She gestured with a slight tilt of her hip. The sleek leather of her attire continued up her calf, over her knee. He understood.
A hot, shameful flush spread across his skin. He leaned in again, his tongue tracing the path from boot-top to the curve of her calf. The leather here was softer, warmed by her skin. It held a different scent, something metallic and alive beneath the polish. His movements were mechanical, a degrading pantomime of servitude.
Then she shifted again. Her hand came down, not on his head, but on his shoulder, applying inexorable downward pressure. “Enough of that. You missed the point of contact. The most stained part.”
With her other hand, she guided his head, turning him, forcing his face toward the back of her legs, toward the space where the tall boot met the underside of her thigh. The air was closer here, warmer. The scent changed, becoming muskier, profoundly personal.
“The leather drinks in everything,” she whispered, her voice a dark ribbon in the silence. “Sweat. Effort. Power. Clean it.”
His tongue touched the damp, intimate hollow behind her knee. The taste was suddenly sharp, salty, complex. It was nothing like the boot. It was wholly, undeniably her. A biological signature. He worked, his eyes squeezed shut, his consciousness spiraling inward to a single, screaming point of shame.
She let him work for a minute, a low, contemplative hum in her throat. Then the pressure on his shoulder changed, becoming a push rather than a press.
“Lie back.”
He toppled onto the marble, the cold a shock against his bare spine. She stood over him, a silhouette occluding the hellish chandelier. She placed one boot on his chest, not hard, but with enough weight to pin him. He stared up, past the sleek lines of her legs, into the shadow where her face should be.
“You have a resilient tongue,” she said. “It learned to lap up mud and filth. It learned the taste of a melted soul. Let us see if it can learn to be useful in other ways.”
With a slow, deliberate motion, she lowered herself, turning as she did. The world became a confusion of black leather and shadow. Then her weight settled, not on his chest, but on his face. The soft, cool leather of her lower garments pressed against his mouth and nose. He couldn’t breathe. He struggled instinctively, his hands coming up to push feebly at her thighs, which were like pillars of iron.
She ignored him, adjusting her position with a small, final shift of her hips. The pressure relented just enough for air to whistle past the seal of leather and skin. He gasped, drawing in a breath that was saturated with her scent, a dizzying, suffocating perfume.
“You will be silent,” her voice came, muffled and resonant through her own body. “You will be still. And you will be grateful for the essence I choose to give you.”
There was a tension in her form, a subtle tightening he felt through the intimate contact. Then, a low, soft sound. A release.
Warmth bloomed against his sealed lips, a sudden, shocking wetness that seeped through. It was followed by a trickle, then a steady, shameful stream. The liquid was hot, carrying with it a pungent, organic bitterness that bypassed taste and went straight to the core of his understanding. It pooled against his mouth, and with her weight holding him, he had no choice. To breathe, he had to part his lips.
It flooded in.
His body convulsed, a deep, visceral retch that had no outlet. His throat worked in helpless, gagging swallows. The warmth filled his mouth, acrid and dark, a physical invasion of her most private function. It was a mockery of communion. She sighed above him, a sound of casual relief.
When the flow ceased, the weight remained. He was drowning in it, the liquid filling his mouth, threatening to spill into his nostrils.
“Clean it,” her command was a vibration through her body into his skull. “Every drop. Use that resilient tongue.”
Tears leaked from his tightly shut eyes, mingling with the foulness on his cheeks. He moved his tongue. It was no longer an instrument of will. It was a tool, sponging the liquid from his own mouth, from the leather pressed against him. He swallowed, each gulp a seismic event of degradation. The aftertaste was a long, dark stain on his soul.
He worked until his tongue found only damp leather and the taste of his own despair.
Finally, she rose. The cool air of the foyer rushed over his soaked, violated face. He lay spasming, coughing, empty and full at once.
She stood looking down at him, fastening something at her wrist. Her expression was one of detached appraisal, like a gardener considering a peculiar, wilted plant.
“You retain it,” she observed. “The human form, I mean. Even after that. Interesting.” She took a step back, her boots clicking on the stone. “Get up. Go to the antechamber to the left of the main stairs. You will find a grate in the floor. Wash yourself. The water is cold. It will help you remember.”
She turned and began to walk away, her figure receding into the gloom of the endless foyer.
“You will sleep there tonight,” she called over her shoulder, her voice already echoing with distance. “Tomorrow, we see if your hands are as educable as your tongue. The west wing needs… renovation.”
Loic rolled onto his side, vomiting a thin, bitter stream of nothing onto the perfect, uncaring marble. The taste, however, remained. It was inside him now. A new foundational layer, laid down upon the taste of leather and the memory of a nobleman’s soul. He pushed himself up, his human body trembling with a weakness that felt eternal, and shuffled toward the darkness she had indicated, the chill of the floor seeping into the bare soles of his feet, a minor ache compared to the ruin within.