Punish Me, Please Me Read online

  The audience buzzed with excitement at the preacher’s proposition. They loved titillation. Jeremiah was a master of public relations and he knew that he would get national attention for such an audacious proposition. He also knew that Stone could never agree to such a thing. It would cast him in a terrible light.

  He was not surprised when Stone immediately tried to temporize. “I can’t entertain that bet. Your daughter is a free, independent person. She’s not chattel that you can give away.”

  Susanna leapt to her feet once more, raised her arms heavenward and shouted, “Praise the Lord. I put my trust in God. You can do as you wish with my body as long as my soul is safe in the Lord’s hands.” With her hands held high, her breasts strained against her blouse, thrust toward Stone like a pagan offering. He felt a stirring in his pants and suddenly grew fearful that he would get an erection right here in front of the entire audience. Once again, he had to force himself to turn his attention from the daughter back to the father by brute force of will.

  Jeremiah raised his arms in imitation of his daughter and shouted, “Hallelujah, Lord. Test us and you will find our faith strong. It is the godless man who must fear God’s test, not us.”

  The audience applauded enthusiastically.

  Stone was losing them to cheap theatrics; and he hated to lose. “Name your test, then.” If the test were fair, he did not doubt that he would win. But that was as far as the theatrics would go; father and daughter would find some way to squirm out of their commitment afterward. If nothing else, they would pray together and God would tell them privately that he had relieved her of any obligation to slake the lust an unbeliever. Claiming that God had changed his mind had worked for Abraham. The faithful had the benefit of thousands of years of finding cheap justifications for doing whatever they wanted at the moment.

  “No, sir,” Jeremiah replied, with false piety. “It is you who is testing our faith so it is up to you to tell us what you would consider a fair test. We only risk these frail bits of mortal clay and dust, you risk your indestructible immortal soul. What would you take as indisputable evidence of God’s presence on Earth?”

  Stone shrugged. He was tempted to ask for a burning bush to appear on stage, but realized that asking for something ridiculous would only make him look ridiculous. He needed something that looked scientific. Something that was simple to understand, quick to execute, and foolproof. He plunged his hand into his pocket and drew out a quarter. “The chance of a tossed coin landing heads up is fifty-fifty. There is about one chance in four thousand of throwing heads twelve times in a row.” He did not know why he chose the number ‘twelve;’ maybe because Jesus had twelve disciples. “It’s not entirely beyond chance, but I’m willing to risk one chance in four thousand and I’m sure that your all powerful God would have little problem influencing the outcome of a dozen flips of this coin.”

  “No problem at all,” Jeremiah blustered. He looked at his daughter. “Let us pray.”

  She mounted the stairs at the end of the stage and walked gracefully toward her father. She had been raised in front of cameras and crowds; her comportment was perfect. The crowd stood, en masse, and cheered wildly.

  Stone was reminded of the story of the mob at Lot’s door. A screaming crowd evoked primal fear. With a flash of insight, he realized that an outcome in his favor could be physically dangerous for him.

  Jeremiah had brought this ‘debate’ to exactly the place that he wanted it. Logic and reason had been obliterated by raw lust. The stage was his workshop, emotion his tools, the mob his raw materials. No matter what happened next, Stone had lost.

  Still, he had to go through the motions of a fair test. He raised his arms, asking for silence. It was a long time coming. While he stood there, Jeremiah and Susanna stood apart, side-by-side, arms raised, his hands clasping hers in a gesture of joint prayer, eyes turned to heaven, praying loudly, begging God to spare her the humiliation of ravishment by an unbeliever, begging Him to reveal Himself tonight.

  Slowly, the audience began to sit back down, but it was a good five minutes before Stone could be heard. Eventually, though, the only sound in the auditorium was the prayers of the preacher and his daughter. Stone pointed to a distinguished-looking man sitting in the second row. “You, sir, in the gray suit. Would you mind stepping up here and helping us out for a few minutes.”

  The man nodded and made his way onto the stage; he had considerably less grace than Susanna and less charm than Jeremiah. He looked stolid and honest.

  Stone handed him the coin. “Is this a regular quarter, two-sides, not weighted in any way?”

  The man looked at the coin carefully, before saying, “Looks like any other quarter to me.”

  “Jeremiah, if we could interrupt you for a minute.”

  Jeremiah and Susanne continued to pray, oblivious to Stone and his volunteer.

  He walked over, stepped behind the daughter to get close to the father, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “I would like you to inspect the coin and observe the process. I don’t want any accusations that anything was done wrong later.”

  The daughter turned to look at him and, as soon as her face was turned from the audience, she let her distaste show. She hissed quietly, “I bet you don’t,” then turned back and resumed praying loudly along with her father.

  Stone hissed back, “I don’t need to risk accusations, the chance of a half dozen heads in a row is slight, a dozen is miniscule.”

  “Odds mean nothing when God intervenes,” Jeremiah responded gravely. But he lowered his arms and released Susanna’s hands. “We will watch your test if you wish.”

  “I wish it.”

  The three stepped over to the volunteer. Stone asked Susanna, “Would you like to inspect the coin?”

  “I have no need to trust you. I trust God. He could make even a two-headed coin land tails up if He desired.”

  “Flip the coin into the air, not too hard, we don’t want to lose it, and let it fall to the ground,” he instructed the volunteer.

  Jeremiah began to pray again, but Susanna watched the coin, aware that it was her lovely virgin ass at stake.

  The coin fell, bounced and rolled a few feet, then dropped flat. The volunteer bent over it. “Heads,” he announced without touching it, waiting to see if Stone wanted to confirm the result.

  “Praise God,” Jeremiah intoned.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Susanna echoed.

  “Toss it again,” Stone instructed without walking over to look.

  The volunteer retrieved the coin and tossed it again.

  The audience held its collective breath; the ring of the coin bouncing on the floor echoed.

  “Heads again,” the volunteer announced.

  “That’s two,” Stone said, wondering if maybe God was intervening. Two heads in a row was hardly unlikely, one chance in four, but the test was already going in the Christians’ favor.

  Jeremiah and Susanna continued to pray loudly, thanking the Lord for his mercy.

  The volunteer tossed the coin again and bent to look.

  “Tails,” the volunteer announced.

  Stone felt unexpectedly smug. The Weak Law of Large Numbers had triumphed over God.

  Jeremiah and Susanna continued to pray loudly, but they had heard the result – their prayers changed from pleading for intervention to acceptance of God’s will.

  The crowd was silent, waiting to see what the Christians would do.

  Jeremiah continued to speak to his God, making brief references to Daniel in the Lions’ den, Jonah in the belly of the whale, and the trials of Job. Finally, he promised to abide by God’s will, however difficult his trials and fell silent.

  Susanna looked less happy with the outcome of the coin toss, but kept her face composed in a mask of serenity. Stone could only see her emotion as a twitch in her eyelids and a quiver at the corner of her mouth. Lovely eyelids, luscious mouth.

  He had nothing to say so he waited for her to speak, curious how she would play
her hand.

  She spent a moment in silence, wrestling with her emotions, then, when she was sure that her voice would be strong and steady, said, “I will spend tomorrow praying for strength, praying for God’s forgiveness for our arrogance in daring to put him to our test, and then will allow my father to deliver me to your door at seven in the evening. I consent to your use of my body in any way that you desire throughout the night.”

  The crowed erupted into a powerful roar of combined lust and anger. Stone feared that they might begin to riot in the auditorium. He feared for his life.

  Jeremiah turned to the crowd and held up his hands in supplication. Without waiting for the roar of the crowd to abate, he shouted, “We accept God’s will. As always, God will do whatever is best for us, His children.”

  The crowd roared more loudly. Stone could barely hear Susanna say, “Give me your address so we can get out of here.”

  He wanted nothing more than to be gone as quickly as possible, so he pulled a business card from his wallet, scrawled his home address on the back, and handed it to her.

  As calmly as though she were taking a stroll through church, she walked alone across the stage, down the stairs, and up the aisle to the main entrance. She was fearless. She was the perfect martyr. The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses’ staff and let her leave unimpeded. Not a single person dared reach out to touch her. Not a single man in the audience wanted to be seen as the same as the vile, base atheist.

  While all eyes were on her, Jeremiah, tapped Stone on the shoulder and said, “We’ll leave by the stage door. You and I can’t go down there.”

  Thus, when the crowd looked back to the stage a minute later, it was empty. The debate was over. After a minute of silent confusion, people began to mill around in the aisles and then trickle out through the doors, discussing what they had witnessed in loud and confused chatter.

  * * *

  The next morning, the city newspaper carried the headline, “Atheist Wins Virgin in God Bet.” The story covered the debate briefly but inaccurately, giving considerable weight to Brother Jeremiah’s demonstration of his faith in his God and completely ignoring Dr. Stone’s long explanations of science and evolution. The story drew a muddied parallel between scientists’ belief that random mutations drive evolution and Dr. Stone’s belief that random coin tosses could reveal God, making both ideas sound equally ridiculous. The stakes of the wager, the woman’s body against the man’s soul, were described in sarcastic terms that made Stone look like a lust-obsessed pervert and Susanna like an Old Testament martyr. Jeremiah was quoted extensively in the article but the reporter had not bothered to phone Stone for a comment.

  When he read it, Stone concluded that the reporter must be a Christian fundamentalist, possibly a member of Jeremiah’s extensive broadcast congregation.

  The story was accompanied by a full-color portrait of Susanna in a choir robe. She looked ravishing. The picture alone would double the number of men who bought the paper to read the story.

  Stone did not consider himself to be a lust-obsessed pervert, but his loins stirred involuntarily when he saw the picture and remembered the terms of the bet. She was gorgeous and she had, at least for the moment, offered herself to him.

  Of course, Susanna would never present herself at his door. Even Stone, himself, could come up with a half dozen religious reasons for her to renege on the bet.

  If she did show up, there was no question but that he would have to send her away without laying a hand on her; without even a chaste kiss on the cheek. As desirable as she was and as horny as he was – his wife had left him for a mathematician last year and he had only recently tried dating again – he was still a gentleman to the core.

  He looked at the picture again. The couple of women that he’d gone out with last month had been middle-aged professionals, not young and beautiful like Susanna. Even when he had been her age, he had never dated such a beautiful woman. It would take no small effort to send her away without even a kiss, but send her away he would, even if he had to spend the next two months jerking off in regret.

  * * *

  Stone was sitting in front of his computer when his doorbell rang at exactly seven that evening. He had spent most of the day trying to write a chapter on punctuated evolution for a book that he hoped would become a best-selling undergraduate text – that was the only academic writing that paid well – but had not managed to write more than a dozen words. His emotions were in turmoil; Susanna’s promise to “deliver herself to his door for his use” filled his imagination with images of her naked, nubile body. That kind of biology was not suitable for inclusion in an undergraduate textbook.

  He told himself that he did not want her to show up at all, but he ached to see her lovely face up close and personal, even if only to tell her that he was relieving her of any obligation. He had made his intellectual point; he did not need to exact revenge on her body.

  When he rose from the chair, he had to reach inside his briefs and adjust his erection. He wished that his prick knew what his brain had decided: that it was not going to see any action tonight. At least, not with the lovely Susanna. Only what he could provide himself.

  When he opened the door, she was standing on his porch, dressed in a calf-length pleated gray skirt and white blouse, almost the same clothes that she had worn to the debate. Her makeup was perfect, not quite enough for him to see that she was wearing any cosmetics, but just enough to make her look stunning. Her long blond hair flowed over her shoulders in great golden waves. Her head was slightly bowed; she did not meet his eyes.

  She was the perfect picture of a young woman submitting to a man’s will.

  She was holding a small overnight bag. Her pajamas and toothbrush? She looked like she was going on a sleepover.

  Looking past her shoulder, he saw Jeremiah standing beside his car, a white Lincoln Continental. A uniformed driver was holding the rear passenger door open for him.

  The porch was bright under the glare of a portable floodlight mounted on a television camera. A bulb flashed. Then another and another from different directions. Someone had invited the press. It hadn’t been Stone.

  Before he could say a word, Susanna pressed past him across the threshold. The brush of her breasts against his chest was electrifying. As soon as she was inside, she told him to shut the door.

  “Wait a minute,” he replied, stunned by her determination to get inside quickly. “You have to leave. I don’t want you in here. I want you to go away.” He wasn’t sure where he had found the strength to tell the lie.

  She pulled the door out of his loose grasp and shut it firmly herself. “I’m not going anywhere until noon tomorrow. You’re going to spend the night raping me, sodomizing me, utterly degrading me.” Her velvet-soft tone did nothing to mask her steel determination.

  “No, I’m not,” he said. He could be as determined as her. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to make love to you. You’re a desirable girl. Very desirable. But I won’t rape anyone.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. You have to. You don’t have any choice. Don’t you get it?” She looked at him with the pity that one would give a retarded child. “If you don’t rape me, then Daddy will win. He’ll say that, just like Abraham, God spoke to you and stayed your hand. If I’m still a virgin tomorrow, then he’s going to announce to the world that my virginity is living proof of God’s existence. Your silly coin flipping wasn’t a symbol of anything. I am the symbol. If I’m still intact tomorrow then I’ll spend the rest of my life being my father’s personal Daniel, having spent a night in the lions’ den and emerging unscathed because of my faith in God. If you don’t touch me, he’ll have a hundred thousand new converts within a week. Suckers will be lining up to give him donations. You can’t just take my virginity; you’ve got to bust me good. You’ve got to make a statement. When I walk out of here tomorrow, I’ve got to be bleeding from both ends so the world can see that Daddy’s just a psycho whoremonger, pimping out his own daughter in God�
��s name. Those are the rules of the game.”

  “I don’t like those rules.”

  “Tough. Them’s the breaks. You made up the game, now you’re stuck with the outcome. Look at this as your golden opportunity. This never happens. Beautiful young virgins don’t walk into older men’s houses asking to be ravished. But it’s happening now. I’m standing here demanding that you ravish me. Be selfish. Be brutal. Take what you want. You can do anything you want short of maiming or killing me. I’ve given you my consent, publicly and irrevocably. I want you to rape me and keep raping me until noon tomorrow, no matter what I say later. It doesn’t matter if my courage fails and I scream and beg you to stop, you have to keep on using me every way you can imagine.” She dropped her bag by the door and walked through an archway into his living room. “The sooner we get started the better. You want to ravish me on the floor right here, right now? Or flip my skirt over my head and take from behind like a dog, bent over that chair? Or do you want to drag me upstairs to your bed? There’re good points and bad for each option. The bed would be most comfortable and the bloody sheets will be a terrific prop. You do have white sheets, don’t you? On the other hand, the chair is the most degrading and that counts for a lot. But the floor will leave nice bruises and burns on my back if you pound me hard enough. What do you think? You’re the rapist, so it’s your choice. Just go for it. You’ve got to assert yourself or I’ll just run right over you. I can be bad that way. Don’t let me get the upper hand.”

  “Are you really a virgin?”

  “In every orifice. I’m a public figure. Daddy barely lets me out of his sight long enough to take a dump. No guy’s ever had a chance to so much as kiss me on the lips, much less make me a woman. Now, you get to do it all and I expect you to plow me like a rutting goat on crack.”

  He winced at the metaphor and tried to soften the image. “Do you really want to make love to me?”