Sentenced to Heaven

Chapter One The Criminal Here he was, doing it again. In an exclusive suburb of Southern California, halfway between the mountains and the sea, eighteen year-old Alex Downing lay in bed, naked. The bed was large and luxurious, like the bedroom and mansion around it. He had the best of everything money could buy, from the lawyers who’d ensured his freedom to the tablet computer in his left hand. His right was otherwise shamefully engaged. Just under six feet tall, Alex’ body was well-built and fit. He’d come to his full height if not heft and knew without the need for vanity that he was appealing. Athletically gifted, he’d played varsity wide receiver as a sophomore. When not wrenched with effort and anguish, his features were pleasing, with guileless blue eyes. The pale blonde of fresh-cut pine, his shoulder-length locks (kept in a habitual ponytail) were thick and lustrous. Spare of facial or even much body hair, his skin easily took and maintained a perfect tan. Clear of blemish, it had all the smoothness of pampered youth. Expensive dentistry provided the flawless smile and before his fall he’d dated half a dozen of the hottest girls in school. Even at the clinic, the female staff and inmates (not to mention the gays) had been drawn to him despite his monstrous crime. Now look at him: it was eleven-thirty Saturday night and he was home alone jerking off – and crying while he did it. Despite rehab and the year of court-ordered therapy which had been his only punishment for murder, Alex felt more f****d-up than ever. Nor would any neutral party quibble. Beyond the fact that he was streaming tears as he beat off, and had already decided to kill himself, just look at what was on that tablet! Look at what he was beating off to! The video showed a trio of women whipping, shocking and sexually torturing a tied-up naked man. His formerly perfectly ordinary fantasy life had become twisted into bitterness and perversion. Wracked with remorse for his acts, and guilt for escaping the punishment he deserved, his craving for retribution was so pervasive it had infected his arousal mechanisms. Unworthy of the liberties he was taking but as unable to resist onanism as any adolescent, he now wallowed in imagining compensatory suffering. Disturbing as it was, the so-called ‘femdom’ video gripped him as compellingly as his fist. “Quit bawling, you vile piece of repellent s**t! Filthy male asshole, you deserve this and so much worse!” A buxom black woman in thigh-high boots, naked but for a spike-studded body harness, harangued the lucky f**k hanging by his bound wrists. Similarly bound feet dangling a foot above the floor, he shuddered and squalled into his ball-gag as she resumed beating him. Formed of supple leather straps, the flogger she used hissed and cracked. Blindfolded and with his genitals tied up into grotesquely bulging balls below a bloated, rigid pole, the prisoner yelped piteously when the petite Asian woman to his other side left off slapping and twisting and viciously yanking the latter to suddenly brutally squeeze the former. “Ha: listen to him squeal! What a pathetic f**k!” She spat on him and resumed her cruelly abusive penile manipulation. Alex ground his teeth, adopting the insults for his own. He jerked himself harder, wrenching at his organ in desperate emulation, then savagely bending it unnaturally back. Had he a baculum it would have been broken, and the pain in his increasingly raw p***s was more arousing than the pleasure that it offset and exacerbated. All too aware that he was compounding an already unforgivable offense, the criminal kept his attention desperately riveted to that little screen – lest even more compromising scenes arise in his mind. He panted and whimpered, wept and moaned. He twisted his c**k as he pumped it, almost tearing the reddened skin with his vehemence. Long minutes passed as coincidental punishments continued. Then at last the third dominatrix, skimpy skintight latex molded to her svelte body, stepped in with an electric shock-prod. Knowing what was coming, Alex’ breath began to hitch. She jammed her weapon against the captive’s swollen, straining glans. Sparks discharged, and a wisp of smoke wafted up. Immediately he went into flopping paroxysms, howling and jittering as she continued pressing the electricity home. That did it, at least for Alex. Though the actor in the film went on getting paid for enduring what the condemned in his bed would have given everything to appropriate, that unworthy was driven beyond his limits. Crying out his miserable climax, he spouted. Writhing and pumping through the last gobbet and drop, Alex wondered if he would come so hard when he finally hung himself. He’d heard that’s what happened, and that’s why people so dangerously played that way – David Carradine, for example. He had no intention of debasing his repayment by touching himself so, but he was still likely to blow his load as the rope closed about his throat. Would that final, involuntary ejaculation at his moment of expiation grant him a sick bit of transcendence at the end? Or would there only be the blessed relief from horror? He gave a blubbery exhalation. Orgasm past, Alex thumbed off the tablet. Leaving the mess to trickle, he crossed his arms over his face. Now he really cried, sobbing uncontrollably into his crooked elbows. Guilt, shame, remorse, resentment of his parents, disturbing s****l issues and the most virulent self-hatred imaginable tortured him worse than any possible physical affliction. How he ached to end it all! Alex Senior may have seen to it that his son and only heir escaped prison for his crimes. But the son had passed sentence on himself regardless. And now that his hope for the ideal executioner was lost, he was going to carry it out. He just had to make sure the message his suicide sent was received. Eventually Alex stopped sobbing. He used the box of tissues next to him to blow his nose and wipe his face. He let the semen stay to degrade him. Still his eyes leaked as he listlessly lay back. As always when occupied by the ruin of his life (and when was he not?), he reviewed the unsuspected progression that had taken him from innocence to damnation. What was the first hint of trouble? Three years ago the only flaw in his privileged existence had been his asshole old man and domineering mother. They’d had his life all planned out for him from their first attempt at conception to when he would eventually step into his father’s shoes at the head of the company. What sports he would play, what classes he took, what people he could associate with, all these choices had been made for him. Though the family money shielded him from any threat or lack, it was a gilded cage. Alex came to resent it, and to rebel in small ways. Yet really, was drinking alcohol such a rebellion? It was forbidden. Still everyone did it, from his parents themselves to all the rich kids at school: the very peer group they’d imposed on him. Even when the careless got caught they didn’t get in too much trouble. It actually seemed they were being subtly encouraged to break this rule, as a test of independence and rite of passage. So Alex drank, and like most other kids he got away with it. Encouraged, he started smoking pot, and he got away with that too. Visine and Listerine, baby: keep the eyes and breath clean and no one was the wiser. Even easier to hide, pills were passed around at school as well, most of them looted from their parents’ medicine cabinets. Pain pills and stress pills, these were actually habituating narcotics like Valium, Xanax, Vicodin or Oxycontin. All perfectly legal, doctors passed them out like candy to anyone who had insurance. What did Bill Maher say about Anna Nicole Smith, who died under the influence of no less than eight controlled substances? They cut her open and a Walgreens fell out. Alex had heard a hundred such jokes and stories at the clinic. At school though he’d been utterly blithe, experimenting with these too and happily on his way to becoming a serious waste product. By the time he reached sixteen he was partying all the time, though as yet he suffered no dependency. However, he was also given a car upon reaching that licensable milestone. One rebellion led to another, and irresponsibility to atrocity. Chafing under parental restrictions, Alex began sneaking out at night to party. Taking his sporty little jeep to pick up a couple equally rebellious friends, they would park in some secluded spot or visit a local hangout to drink and drug and shoot the s**t in time-honored fashion from midnight until four or five in the morning before slipping home over the back roads. Alex knew it was stupid to drive f****d up. He knew what could happen. Every town has tales of kids who’d killed themselves. But youth has delusions of invulnerability. With very few other cars on the road at those hours, the risk had seemed lessened enough to dare. No doubt millions assumed likewise and were proved right. But for Alex the gamble eventually failed. One night he took a few too many pills, washed down with too much booze. In the process of swerving and trying to miss him, the car he sideswiped rolled, caught fire and exploded. While he broke his collarbone, a man and his infant daughter were immolated. All he had to do was close his eyes at any time since to hear again their bloodcurdling final screams. Of course this being America – or hell, any country in the world – justice had to kiss the ass of Mammon. Given his previously spotless record, his ready admission of guilt and obvious remorse, no court could ruin the life of a boy of such heady prospects. And if certain campaign contributions suddenly shot up just before the next election cycle, well, the system must be working. Good judgment had earned its reward. Though Alex had admitted to horrifically murdering a baby, had volunteered for and looked forward to life in prison (since there was no death penalty for minors), his interfering father had it fixed so that he was only sentenced to a year of drug rehab and counseling. Good grief. *** So now he was free and ‘clean’ – though Alex still doubted he was ever really addicted, unlike (his mother) the wrecks at the clinic he’d seen hoarding sugar packets for the illicit rush. And though he’d barely been home a month, he already found living with his freedom unendurable. The US had the highest incarceration rate in the world, and here he’d burned a little baby girl alive – not to mention an innocent man in the prime of his life. And not only was he free, but thanks to his father’s meticulous estate planning he was officially a millionaire now that he was eighteen! How was that fair? Yet before he hung himself the way he deserved (slowly that is), he had to figure out a way to make sure the offended party heard about it. The widow, the bereaved wife and mother, haunted him with more sickening horror than even his deceased victims. Alex couldn’t begin to imagine what he’d put her through, or what she was still enduring. If he was tortured by remorse, how terrible must her anguish be? She’d been gruesomely robbed of her family, only to watch their murderer walk free. Why did she not come and kill him herself? She was certainly formidable enough. Alex’ memories of her at his brief hearing and disposition were indelible. A former Army officer employed at the time as a prison guard, a decorated combat veteran even, her name was Rachel Blaine. In her late twenties, she was as tall as he was and even more shapely and fit. Cinnamon hair razored up short, her face was attractive in a sternly authoritative fashion. With a strong jaw and high cheekbones, it was angular and intimidating, and the tiniest bit weathered from a hard career outdoors. Fiery green eyes shone with suppressed tears or blazed with condemnation at him across the courtroom. However much she wished him ill though, Mrs. Blaine knew discipline. Despite her catastrophic personal loss she maintained her dignity, remaining silent and grimly composed throughout the proceedings. In the end she didn’t even protest the incredibly lenient sentence. It was as if she’d expected such a travesty of justice. Nor did she openly acknowledge Alex’ apology and offer of atonement when he was given a chance to speak. Though his parents and the lawyers and everyone else put up a clamor at the extent of his contrition, her expression hardly altered. He remembered his promise to her now as if it had been yesterday, as he’d often repeated it to himself since. Spent and spattered in his rich boy’s bed, he made it yet again. “I can never repair the unforgivable thing I’ve done to you Missus Blaine. I can only try and atone to the very limits of my ability. So I promise you: all that I have is yours. I know there’s a lawsuit pending. But beyond all that, I will give you my entire inheritance when I get it. More, I offer you my life itself. I want to die for the terrible thing I’ve done and I will not resist if you come to kill me. I beg you, please do so. You deserve your revenge. And I can’t get the screaming out of my head.” Of course he’d been cut off and shouted down after that. But meeting those incendiary eyes and seeing them narrow slightly in recognition, Alex thought he read a tacit acceptance. She might even have given him the slightest of nods. So at least he’d had that hope of murder to nurture, and a possible end to his torment to look forward to. All throughout his incarceration and counseling he kept this suicidal intention intact. While the shrinks assigned to him yammered and nattered, Alex clung to his craving to expiate the harm he’d caused this remarkable woman. He found himself dwelling on her day and night. And yet there was a further, hideously inappropriate element to this obsession that soon tortured him nearly as much as his debt to her. Saying Ms Blaine was shapely and fit was like saying the Grand Canyon was a hole in the ground. The inescapable fact was that she had the most arresting breasts he’d ever seen to go with her rangy but well-muscled frame. It was not so much the size of these that drew every eye, though softballs were smaller. Nor was it the exquisitely spherical shape. So enticingly high and full, those robust badges of feminine fecundity boasted an amazing uplift as well. Something in their set on her torso seemed to thrust that succulent bounty aggressively forth even in a posture at rest. In any event they were by far her most immediate feature and even more disproportional in memory. Perhaps those of more maturity could look past them. But for Alex it was impossible not to react to this supremely desirable woman sexually despite the ghastly circumstances that had brought them together – and would forever define them. Prey to contemptible impulses regarding someone he’d so fatally wronged made the killer seriously soul-sick. Yet he was unable to suppress these. Just thinking about those t**s made him hard within minutes. Finally he found the only way to reconcile his lust with his terrible guilt and shame was to fantasize about Mrs. Blaine not only hunting down and killing him but cruelly punishing him too, in ever more erotic fashion. Alex spent much of his sentence doing so, imagining himself bound naked at her mercy, being tortured and dominated to destruction and devising increasingly messy ends for himself at her vengeful hands. Twisted as this was, it not only helped him to deal with a primal conflict, it reinforced his intentions. The more he jerked off and fantasized, the more his s*x drive became associated with his suicidal urges. That primordial force would now help override any possible weakening in his resolve to do what was right. Sick as it was, offensive as the lady in question would no doubt find it, his lust for her should at least aid him in making restitution. Especially since it now seemed his craving must go unrequited. That brief hopeful eye contact notwithstanding, Alex had returned home to find that his hoped-for murderess had abandoned him. Accepting the civil settlement Alex Senor’s lawyers offered her, she’d sold her home and moved away from the scene of so much tragedy. There was no forwarding address. Well, if the widow wouldn’t kill him, he’d simply have to do the job himself. Yet now that she had such an erotic hold on him, Alex found that he couldn’t bear to do it without being certain she would learn of it. He wanted to know she knew that her husband and daughter were avenged, that the worm who’d burned them had done the honorable thing in the end. He had to let her know he’d kept faith with her, so that she understood the depth of his penance despite his ungovernable response to her body. And while he waited for some sign of Rachel Blaine to pop up on the internet, or on public listings he could access, or until he figured out a way of drawing national media attention to his suicide, Alex Downing kept a last sliver of that last hope alive. Nurtured somewhere he barely dared admit to, he wondered if perhaps his nemesis had only disappeared so that she could strike unexpectedly and then melt back into her new life with impunity. A former soldier might think strategically like that. This possibility was all that allowed Alex to drop off at last, his despicable issue crusting his gut.