Disclaimer: All persons, places, and events in this story are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, or events, is purely coincidental.

Father James A. Flaherty was a cynic, a hypocrite, an atheist, and a homosexual pædophile. Father Flaherty had entered the prieshood for two reasons: the job seemed like a sinecure to him , and the way he discharged his pastoral duties, it was, and it gave him access to boys in early adolescence.

Starting immediately after ordination and continuing unrelentingly thereafter, he availed himself of every opportunity to molest his altar boys. He preferred buggery, but worked up to it by jerking the boys off and blowing them first. Sooner or later, though, he would work his long thin trouser-snake up through the boy's asshole and stimulate the lad's prostate gland with it, being sure to bring the boy to an orgasm, often his first.

Only one boy in 15 years had put up a fight and whenever Father Flaherty thought of the incident, he winced and put his hands to his groin. He was trying to get Chris Bonaiuto to blow him when Chris slammed his knee up into Father Flaherty's crotch, bruising his balls badly enough to send him to bed for a week. He told the doctor that he had tripped on the rug and fallen against the corner of a table. Even on the following Sunday, when he was first able to celebrate Mass again, he was walking slowly and somewhat bent over.

He had been able to charm and/or intimidate his other altar boys to such an extent that they never complained even to their parents. About half of the boys obviously didn't enjoy it, but some were starry-eyed over the unfamiliar pleasure to which he'd introduced them and followed him about like puppy dogs. A chosen few got to go on weekend retreats with him, he and they returning blissfully exhausted.

Early on, Father Flaherty had concluded that, if God really were the wrathful Jehovah of the Old Testament, James A. Flaherty would have been incinerated by a thunderbolt long since . Therefore either God was indifferent, or He didn't exist. Either way, He need not be taken into account.

At 38, Father Flaherty was still a dreamboat, tall, handsome, flat-bellied and muscular. He worked out regularly and watched his diet. He had the gift of the Blarney and, if anything, was more persuasive than ever. He was contented. Life was good. He had already had his older altar boy, Walter Kowalski and had groped the younger, Stephen Debitzky a couple of times without any show of displeasure on the boy's part.

So, it was without any premonition of evil that he entered the sacristy of St. Sebastian's Church about an hour before the Tenebræ service on a very dark Friday evening to don his vestments and be sure that everything was ready for the service.

The altar boys would arrive in about a half hour.

He flicked the light switch but nothing happened; apparently the bulb was blown out in the ceiling light. However, in the semi-darkness, he could just make out the shape of the lamp on a table about a pace ahead of him. He never reached it. Suddenly, he was seized from behind. When he opened his mouth to call for help, someone stuffed a ball gag into it and tied it behind his neck. Someone else pulled his wrists behind him and taped them together with duct tape. The door was closed behind him, leaving the room totally dark.

Then, the lamp was turned on. Father Flaherty found himself surrounded by five young men in Ninja outfits with black cloths over their faces. They spoke no word either to him or to each other, lest he recognise their voices, for, unbeknownst to him, all of them had been his altar boys in recent years.

Of course, he struggled, but five against one represents rather unfavourable odds. In a moment, they had his loafers off, then his trousers, and finally his Calvin Klein briefs. The Ninjas sat him down on the stone floor in a corner where two of them held his shoulders against the walls, two held his legs widely apart by the ankles, and the fifth stood over the priest with his back to him.

The fifth Ninja raised his right foot and slammed his heel down between Father Flaherty's thighs, smashing his testicles against the stone floor. Father Flaherty convulsed and screamed through his nose. The Ninja raised his foot again and again, stamping on Father Flaherty's genitals a total of five times (once for each Ninja ?) By the fifth time, nothing remained of them but an unrecognisable bloody pulp.

Then the fifth Ninja removed Father Flaherty's cell. 'phone from his trousers ,wiping the blood off his boot hell on them, and, holding it with his handkerchief so as to avoid leaving fingerprints, walked over to the diagonally opposite corner of the room, out of the priest's earshot, though he was, in fact, unconscious, and called 911.

He told the dispatcher only "Father James Flaherty is seriously injured in the sacristy of St. Sebastian's Church." Then the five Ninja altar boys slipped out of the sacristy and out of the church into the darkness outside.

Walter and Stephen arrived about ten minutes later to find an ambulance and a police cruiser in front of the church and Father Flaherty being carried out on a stretcher, to be rushed to the Emergency Room at St. Justin's Hospital . The police wouldn't tell the two altar boys anything about that had happened to Father Flaherty.

When Father Flaherty regained consciousness in Intensive Care, he was surprised at how little pain he felt. Granted, the pain in his penis was extremely intense, but there was no pain in his testicles at all. As his mind cleared, be suddenly realized why. Of course, there was no pain in his testicles; he had no testicles. A nurse, seeing his eyes open, called out "Dr. Bonaiuto, he's conscious now. "

A handsome young man in his late 20's in green surgical scrubs entered the room.

As soon as the nurse had left he spoke to Father Flaherty. "Well, Father Jim, you'll never be Pope. Testiculos non habes et nihil pendens [ You have no testicles and nothing hanging.] a parody of the words spoken by the Cardinal who examines the Pope-elect to verify his masculinity: 'Testiculos habet et bene pendentes' [ 'He has testicles and well-hanging.'] "

Father Flaherty was very annoyed at the young Doctor's flippant and gloating manner. Dr. Bonaiuto bent his face down close to Father Flaherty's. "You don't recognise me, do you ? I'm Chris Bonaiuto, the altar boy who taught you such a painful lesson fifteen years ago, which you should have taken to heart. If you had, maybe you wouldn't be here now and would still have genitals. You screwed up my life royally, you fucking pervert. Well, now somebody has screwed up your life and he deserves a medal for it.

Though you don't deserve it, I'm going to do you a little favour. Listen carefully. There's a policeman out in the hall waiting to talk to you. In cases of such severe trauma as yours, it's not at all unusual for the patient to suffer amnesia covering the time of the injury and to remember nothing about it. That might save you some very embarassing explanations."

Officer Terrence Aloysius Mulcahey was shocked to learn of such a vicious attack on a priest and hoped to bring the perpetrators to justice. "Can ye tell me what happened, Father Flaherty ?" he began. Father Flaherty answered "I was hoping you'd tell me that, Officer." "Och, ye mean ye don't remember a thing about it ?" "I remember walking into the sacristy and finding that the light didn't work. The next thing I knew, I was in this hospital bed. "

"Well, all I can tell ye, Father,is that the attack couldn't have been perpetrated by one person acting alone. He must have had help. Probably four or five attackers were involved. Now who d'ye know who would have had such a grievance against ye as to inflict such gruesome injuries on ye ?"

"Well, I've rubbed a few people the wrong way, who hasn't ? But I never imagined that anybody hated me that much. I thought that I didn't have a real enemy in the world."

The police had no case against anybody, so the affair was filed and forgotten. Some officials of the diocese, in the light of recent pædophilia scandals, suspected that Father Flaherty might know more about the attack than he was telling and recommended that he be relieved of his pastoral duties "for health reasons" and be given an administrative position with the diocese.

The Ninja altar boys had the good sense not to boast of their exploit and so, to this day, no one knows their identities.