Note: This novel is not episodic. The chapters do not work as stand-alone stories. This chapter will not make sense without reading the Prologue and prior chapters.
Chapter 2: Carmelita Breaks
Carmelita was unable to guess by an order of magnitude how many years it had been when she started smoking again. She didn't think it could have been less than five, and she didn't think it could have been more than fifty, but between that she could not say. She had read every book on the shelf at least five times, except for Atlas Shrugged, which she had only read twice. Atlas Shrugged was the most evil book she had ever read, and after she finished it she vowed to never read it again. But then Jaleh had read it four times in a row and would not shut up about how much it explained the world so clearly. Carmelita wanted to know what Jaleh found so compelling, she wanted to read the notes Jaleh had spent so much time writing in the margins, and she had obviously broken much more important vows already, so she read it again. She had read One Hundred Years of Solitude eleven or twelve times in Purgatory, despite having read it twice when she was alive. It was the greatest gift from her captors.
Carmelita actually did not spend most of her time reading. It was a rare activity, actually. About a third to half of her time was spent in prayer. Well, it started off as half, and was now down to a third, maybe a fourth. Could the Trinity hear her here?
Carmelita now spent about half of her time talking with Jaleh and Suzie. Separately. The two of them never got to a point where they could stand to speak to each other for more than five minutes. But Carmelita had always been a good listener, and many people used nuns as counselors, allowing Carmelita to really hone her listening skills. Jaleh and Suzie were both awful people, and Carmelita probably didn't like either one of them anymore than they liked each other. But Jaleh's stories about their life were insane and compelling, more interesting than most Hollywood movies, definitely more interesting than most of the available literature, and Suzie was smart and observant, even if her observations were overly judgemental and filtered through an entirely delusional world view. Jaleh and Suzie both seemed to like Carmelita, albeit in noticeably condescending ways. For years, perhaps decades, Carmelita knew far more about their lives than they knew about hers. But slowly, they had pulled Carmelita's story out of her.
Naked in the waiting room for years, Carmelita could not avoid getting caught looking at Molroman.
Molroman had been there the entire time, lying on the couch and masturbating to porn. He was now inside a cage that was necessary to prevent Jaleh from sitting next to him and watching the porn, although it did not stop them from sitting next to the cage and masturbating while they watched Molroman and listened to the porn. For several, let's say years, Suzie would berate Jaleh for their filthy behavior of not just masturbating, but masturbating with a demon, and publicly. Then Jaleh would engage Suzie in a shouting match, yelling that they had needs, it was insane to think there was anything wrong with masturbation, this room where they were all trapped and naked was hardly "public", and there was nowhere for privacy.
This was usually followed by insults pointing out that Suzie was a stuck-up prude with insane beliefs, to which Suzie would usually end up responding by insulting Jaleh's insane refusal to accept that they were a woman. A few times Suzie dragged Carmelita into the argument. Carmelita would just say that masturbating is a sin, but she had no desire to enter into a full discussion about the sin that kept her out of heaven. Sometimes Carmelita would try to politely explain to Jaleh how the production of pornography exploits vulnerable women. Jaleh would politely ignore Carmelita. Eventually Jaleh would just ignore Suzie as well. They would bring themself to multiple orgasms while focusing on Molroman and the sound of sex coming from the back of the television, and Suzie's yelling would fade into the background. Eventually Suzie ignored Jaleh's masturbation.
Like Suzie, Carmelita did her best to ignore Molroman, despite the absurd impossibility of that task. Initially like Suzie, Carmelita's face when she did look at Molroman conveyed extreme disgust. They were both indignant at his requests and contemptuous of his masturbation. But Carmelita's initial disgust, indignation, and contempt slowly turned to shame as her body and her imagination betrayed her.
Carmelita could not stop thinking about Molroman's body. His muscles in particular monopolized her thoughts. His chest of course grabbed immediate attention, but there were other muscles she obsessed over. She replayed in her mind the rippling of his right bicep and the muscles in his right forearm as he stroked his massive dick. Then there were those two abdominal muscles - she never knew what they were called - that made a "V" pointing down at that dick. Those were the most beautiful, the most tempting. Those were the muscles that made her wet.
For years, maybe, Carmelita was able to maintain a look of disgust on her face whenever she looked at Molroman because she was actually disgusted with herself and with the lustful desires and memories he provoked in her mind. She was especially ashamed when she started to question whether to just give in and let him take her. There seemed to be no other way out of here, no other way to ever have even a chance of being in heaven with God. Besides, she had vowed to live a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience until her death. But she was dead now, so...
But no. The devil may respect technicalities, but God cared about what was in her heart. And what was in her heart was nasty, lusty, sin and infidelity. Even if God accepted the technicality and agreed that she was not breaking her vows, sex outside of marriage was still a sin, and doing it with a devil was likely a mortal sin, although now that she thought about it that was never actually addressed in either the Bible or her instruction.
One "day", for lack of a better word, Carmelita found herself staring at Molroman as he climaxed and cum squirted over the already cum covered floor, adding a wonderful freshness to the delicious stench of sex that filled the room. Carmelita took advantage of his inhumanly brief recovery period to glance at Jaleh and Suzie, and noticed they were both engrossed in books. As Molroman started stroking himself again and his dick began to rise again, Carmelita put her hand on her crotch and let her fingers slide through her wetness and rub her clit. She had to squeeze her mouth shut to stop herself from moaning due to the electric rush of pleasure that pulsed through her body. As Molroman's dick showed its veins and he stroked himself to the rhythm of the sounds of people fucking on the television, she matched his rhythm into her hole. She felt the amazing pleasure of sex that she had shamefully longed for fill her crotch. Her nipples hardened. Her...
"Holy shit, are you jilling off to Molroman?" asked Jaleh.
Carmelita froze, then jerked her hand away from her crotch. Suzie looked up from her book. Even Molroman stopped masturbating and looked at Carmelita. He smiled a sharp-toothed smile.
"What's going on?" asked Suzie.
"The nun was jilling off to the demon," said Jaleh.
"What's 'jilling off'?" asked Suzie.
"You know, this," said Jaleh. They spread their legs, stuck a finger in their vagina, and rubbed their clit a couple of times to demonstrate.
Suzie put her hands in front of her face and turned her head to the side. "Oh, gross!" she said. "Stop being a disgusting whore." She turned to Carmelita. "Is that true? Were you debasing yourself? With the devil?"
Carmelita put her face in her hands. Molroman turned off the porn, bringing silence to the room for the first time since he walked into it. Carmelita lowered her hands and said quietly, "Yes."
"Eew, disgusting," said Suzie. "I knew Catholic nuns were all secretly devil-consorting whores."
"No!" shouted Carmelita. "Not 'nuns'! *Me!* *I'm* a sex sinner. I'm here in Purgatory because of my sexual sins. All three of us are sexual sinners."
"Me?!" said Suzie, "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Look at our situation," said Carmelita. "The last thing each of us did before we died was to engage in sexual activity, we get stuck indefinitely in a room with a demon masturbating to porn, and the only way we can get out is to perform sexual acts we don't want to do. We are clearly being punished for our sexual sins. We are all sexual sinners. I have confessed to both of you about my life before I took my vows. Jaleh, you have regaled us with stories about how you used to seduce people of both sexes, use them for whatever you want, then discard them like trash, which is exactly how you talk about your various sexual partners, like they are all trash. And Suz..."
"Whoa, hold up. Rewind just a bit," said Jaleh. "'The last thing each of did before we died was to engage in sexual activity?' Yes I was getting pleasured by a very skilled slut, and Suzie had went to sleep after letting her husband 'satisfy his male urges', but you told us you drowned in a bathtub. Were you fucking a priest in the bath? Or another nun? Was that why you drowned? It got a little too rough?"
Carmelita froze. Suzie had her arms crossed with an expectant look on her face. Carmelita sighed and took a long draw on her cigarette.
"I was... fantasizing. About a priest."
"Whoa, you were jilling off to a priest? No wonder you ended up here," said Jaleh.
"No, not like that," insisted Carmelita as she puffed. "I didn't touch myself."
"Then what..."
"I was using the faucet," said Carmelita, "I was just letting the water run over me. It's not like masturbation."
Jaleh gestured around the room. "It looks like somebody didn't let you off on that technicality."
"Yes, you are completely correct. In every way that matters, I was masturbating. And that is why I am here, paying for my sexual sins just like the two of you."
"That's a load of shit," said Suzie. "I never committed a sexual sin in my life. I only had sex with Josh, I was a virgin when we married, and we never did anything unnatural."
