Demon Lovers: Succubi Page 7

  It was petty, I knew. Mother Vinegar was gone the moment I infected her with the virus of myself. This was just a simulation, a tiny part of me, myself, that I was running to seem to look and act like Mother Vinegar. Redundant. Recursive. Trapped.

  But oh, so satisfying.

  How am I different from my mother?

  I’m not, really.

  And now that Chester’s awake, I’m ready to start putting Mother’s plans to conquer Earth in place, with a few, minor modifications. She wanted to kill everyone off, after all, and I’d much rather leave things almost exactly the way they were. To be the women behind the men, riding them.

  I rub the back of Chester’s neck until his head lolls forward and he starts to relax; then I lead him to the bed in the next room. I straddle him, taking it gently. He’s had a rough time, and it’ll be a while before his synapses are working the way he’s used to.

  Unlike Mother, I happen to like humans.

  Very much.

  ~ ~ ~

  In the Manner of His Own Choosing—Jennifer Pelland

  Jennifer Pelland’s short fiction has been twice nominated for the Nebula Award. With a short story collection (Unwelcome Bodies) and a debut novel (Machine) in print, she has demonstrated a remarkable gift for dancing adeptly on the raw edge of challenging subject matter.

  That’s a gift well suited to this anthology.

  One of the raw edges explored in these pages is the question of motivation. Beyond her need to feed, what is it that drives a succubus? Why does she choose a particular victim? Pure schadenfreude at ruining a life or claiming a soul, justice, vengeance: these are some of the reasons depicted in this collection.

  But what is the calculus for vengeance, and what role does mercy play? This is a question Jennifer deals with in her short but powerful piece, “In the Manner of His Own Choosing.” This visceral story grapples intimately with death, one of life’s greatest challenges, and the decisions made at that threshold. Things that should be routine business for a succubus who metes out retribution.

  Should be.

  In the Manner of His Own Choosing

  I am vengeance in the form of a woman. I have been here as long as you have felt shame over your natural bodies. I am your creation, and I will be your destruction. Your guilt is more delicious than you can ever know, especially the guilt you don’t even realize you harbor…

  * * *

  From the place beyond time, she is drawn by the stink pouring off of him. It is new, intriguing, powerful, and she follows it to a darkened bedroom where it mingles with the reek of ointments and piss. She stares down at the figure on the bed. He’s almost pretty. His skin glows a milky blue in the moonlight, and he has a jawline sharp enough to cut paper.

  And the guilt. Oh, the guilt.

  She crouches over him and tears through the tangled blankets, running sharpened fingernails across his flannel-clad groin.

  He moans in his sleep, and his eyes flutter open.

  “Are you what I think you are?” he asks in a voice barely more than a rattle.

  “You’re the one who called me. You should know.”

  He lets out a long sigh and closes his eyes again. “Well. Hopefully this will be better than dying of cancer.”

  The demon rears back, taking a good, hard look at him, at the hipbones rising like mountains from hollowed flesh, nails cracked and yellow, head as smooth as an egg, and a groin that lays still beneath her practiced touch.

  What could he possibly have done to deserve her?

  * * *

  I come for the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak. I punish you in the most intimate way, and I am very good at making sure that you do not enjoy it. I leave you gasping at the very edges of life, staring into your eyes as you realize that you are about to slide into the Hell that you deserve. It is the most beautiful sight imaginable…

  * * *

  “Why did you call me?” she asks.

  He looks at her with clear disappointment in his eyes. “Aren’t you going to—?”

  “What did you do?”

  “I…I’m dying. I guess I called you so I could die of something better.”

  She looks around the room. It is littered with dirty laundry and books half-read. On the dresser is a staggering array of pills, some sorted into plastic containers with days of the week stamped on their lids. There is an unopened box of adult diapers by the closet door, and a commode chair just in front of it. By the bed is a large-numbered phone, a long list of doctors’ phone numbers, and a single framed photo.

  She picks it up and looks at the little girl in the picture. She has the same blue eyes as the man on the bed. She wonders if he used to have hair as dark as hers, before the poison she smells running through his veins robbed him of it.

  The stink of guilt thickens. She looks down at him, sees him staring up at the photo with haunted eyes, and feels her heart harden.

  What has he done to this child?

  * * *

  I avenge those who cannot avenge themselves. Sending those who hurt children to an early Hell is a special love of mine. I, who carry death where other women carry life, know just how precious the ability to create and sustain a child is…

  * * *

  He snatches the photo from her hands, placing it face-down on the bedside table. “Please, just get it over with.”

  “With pleasure,” she hisses, straddling his body once more and tracing her fingers in maddening spirals across his groin.

  His penis lies limp under her nails.

  He closes his eyes and mutters, “It hasn’t worked in months.”

  This will not stop her. She will find a way to make it stir. It is her gift, and it has never failed her yet. She tightens her hand around the shaft and feels a faint flutter in response. Yes. This will work.

  “God, if I can get just one last boner before I die…” He chuckles, but not with mirth. “How shallow is that? It’ll be a miracle if you pull it off.”

  Rage floods her, and she lunges forward, her face mere inches from his. “I am not here to perform miracles.”

  He does not flinch. “Fair enough.”

  She settles back, tightens her grip, and begins to slowly and rhythmically massage his flesh. He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, his Adam’s apple jutting far too prominently from his thin neck. The sharp jawline she had found pretty only moments earlier now looks to her like cemetery bone. His skin is so papery-thin that it’s nearly translucent—she can practically see the blood creep down to his ever-so-slowly-growing erection through it.

  No man has ever taken so long to get fully turgid in her grip.

  This will take some time.

  And she still doesn’t know why she is here.

  Although she has an idea.

  * * *

  Men beg for me. They beg for me to stop. They beg for me not to stop. They beg for me to go faster. They beg for me to go slower. They beg for my teeth and claws, and then they beg for gentleness in the very next breath. In the end, I make them all want everything I have to give. I make you enthusiastic participants in your own demise. No wonder you call for me. Fools…

  * * *

  He looks down at her handiwork, at his half-stiff member, and shoots it a wry grin. “Hello, old friend.”

  She is oddly captivated by his expression, and massages her fingers up the thickening shaft as if playing scales. He sucks a breath in through his teeth, and the grin turns to a real smile. “I’ve missed this.”

  “This is only the beginning,” she says.

  “God, I hope so. If I’m about to have sex that’ll kill me, it had better be the sex to end all sex.”

  By definition, it certainly would be.

  “Sorry it’s taking so long,” he said.

  Him? Apologizing to her? This was new.

  She looks down at him, placing one hand on his hollow belly, and asks, “How long has it been?”

  “Since my last erection? Pretty much since the chemo start
ed. So, about five months. Not that I’d used it for much more than solo recreation since…” His smile vanishes abruptly.

  That’s it. She needs to know why she is here, and she needs to know now.

  She looks over at the bedside table, rights the photo again, and feels a new wave of guilt flood through him. The child? Is he talking about the child? “I’m here because of her, aren’t I?”

  “What?”

  “I’m here to avenge her.”

  His blue eyes grow wide. “What do you mean? What happened to her?”

  * * *

  I am the raper of rapists. The torturer of torturers. The murderer of murders. I am as real as you have made me, which is very real indeed. My only regret is that you didn’t dare make more of us. I am Hell’s own appetite, and you are my feast…

  * * *

  He yanks his pajama bottoms up, struggling to sit, and tucks his knees to his chest. “What happened to my girl? Is she all right? Oh god, I have to call her grandmother…” He reaches for the phone.

  She rips it from his hand and throws it across the room.

  “Just let me…” He swings his legs to the floor, tries to stand, and fails, falling to his hands and knees. “Let me talk to her one last time.”

  She crouches on the floor, slamming her hand down in front of him. “What did you do to her?”

  “I didn’t do anything!”

  “Did you touch her? Did you rape her?”

  “No! God, no! What kind of person do you think I—”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “You have to know. You’re the one who called me.”

  “I don’t—”

  His gaze locks with hers, and she sees a lie form and die on his lips.

  “Because…” he whispers, his eyes wide and helpless.

  She leans in. “Because?”

  “B—because I’m abandoning her.”

  “Abandoning…?” She does not understand.

  “My…my baby girl is going to be an orphan—” He swallows hard. “She’s going to be an orphan and it’s all my fault.”

  He curls into a ball, weeping like a baby, and she stands and stares down at him, perplexed.

  * * *

  “Fuck” and “cunt” should be the most beautiful words in your language, and yet you turned them into the dirtiest words you could imagine. Is it any wonder that I exist? Your own twisted psyches created me and the Hell that I send you to. I should be grateful to you, and yet I am not…

  * * *

  “I…I’ve done everything wrong,” he sobs. “Everything.”

  The succubus crosses her arms tightly and takes an unsteady step backwards. “Explain.”

  He wipes ropy snot from his nose and sniffs hard. “We…we wanted a baby so badly. My wife had a bleeding disease, but she wanted to try…and she didn’t…” He trails off, his face twisted in unmistakable grief. “I shouldn’t have let her. I shouldn’t have. I just thought I was being supportive, you know? At least she got to see the baby before she…”

  She presses one hand against her mouth, wrapping the other around her belly, as if to contain the growing horror inside of her.

  “I only wanted what was best for my little girl. I did everything for her. I had to. There was only me. And when I started to lose weight, when I found that lump under my arm, I…I thought that if I didn’t go to the doctor, it wouldn’t be real, you know? She didn’t have a mom—she didn’t need a sick dad, too.”

  She steps back again, silently willing him to stop talking, but he doesn’t seem to notice her anymore.

  “By the time I passed out at work, it was too late. The cancer was everywhere. I sent her away to live with my mother-in-law. I didn’t want her to have to suffer this with me. I didn’t want her to…” He falters, looking down at his ruined body. “I didn’t want her to remember me this way.”

  He looks up at her with eyes bloodshot and blue, and she struggles to compose herself. She finds a box of tissue on the floor, hands it to him, and helps him back up on the bed with shaky hands.

  Before today, her hands have only ever shaken with rage.

  * * *

  In the end, you all use me as your confessor, as if that will somehow redeem you. But I do not offer redemption, not even in death. If you pass on from this life through the gateway between my legs, you are beyond redemption. I hear your confessions and laugh. They have come too late, far too late…

  * * *

  “You’re avenging her because I’m stupid,” he says. “You’re avenging her because if I’d just seen a fucking doctor—”

  The succubus puts her finger on his lips and shakes her head.

  He reaches down, shoving at the waistband of his pajama bottoms. “Just get it over with. Just make it all stop.”

  “I can’t.”

  “But…”

  She tucks the ruined blankets around him as best she can. This man does not deserve Hell. He’s lived in one of his own making for too long. Better to have a few more weeks in this one than an eternity in the one she’ll send him to.

  “Please,” he whimpers.

  She steps back and starts to fade away.

  He struggles up onto his elbows, the sinews on his neck straining under his pale skin. “God damn it! Put me out of my fucking misery!” he screams, before collapsing on the bed, gasping for breath.

  Head still shaking, she dissipates, going back to the place before time.

  * * *

  I am vengeance in the form of a woman, punishing guilty men with a song in my heart.

  Mercy is…beyond me.

  Although I do occasionally find a way.

  ~ ~ ~

  We’ll Always Have 9 A.M.—Maitha Moon

  Succubi are often associated with dark impulses and destruction. But what more are they capable of? The interior life of a succubus is not often closely examined, but maybe there is room in such a being for impulsiveness, for consideration—even, perhaps, for the kinder emotions.

  Maitha Moon is a newcomer to publication, but not to imaginative approaches to storytelling. She conceives of succubi as creatures bent on corrupting souls—a mission that can lead to a very hectic schedule, indeed. But when seductive Vera just wants to get on with her busy day, she learns something rather startling about herself and about the Big Scheme of Things. She also discovers what it costs to lose something she never thought to find.

  Let’s just say that sometimes the Universe does not cooperate in keeping to a succubus’ agenda.

  We’ll Always Have 9 A.M.

  Vera looked at her watch again, impatient to get this job done and move on to the next victim. It wasn’t like she didn’t enjoy the sex—she actually quite often did—but today felt different somehow. She felt hurried. She couldn’t figure out what it was; it seemed just like any other day on the Earth. A beautiful sky, nice temperatures, people going about their business as usual. Nothing was out of the ordinary, as far as she could tell, except for the odd feeling of hurry-it-up. It was a day quite similar to everyone else’s, except that she was a demon.

  She had thirty souls to corrupt that day—not a bad number for her; she could handle it. She was a sex machine…a goddess…a succubus. Rare was the soul that could resist her, but in reality, the job just wasn’t that difficult anymore. It wasn’t like the old days, when people were surprisingly virtuous in spite of the historical rumors to the contrary. The advent of the Information Age had ushered in easily obtainable porn, a need for immediate gratification, and a sense of narcissism that was unrivaled in history. People were horny, lustful, greedy, and many would sell their own mothers just to make a buck. It was almost too easy. There was talk in Hell of dismantling the Succubi Program, because people were very nearly doing their work for them.

  Vera glanced down the sidewalk again, expecting Nicholas to come strolling along any moment now. Her first victim often set the tone for the entire day. She hoped it would be a good lay, a successful cor
ruption, and she could move down her list quickly and efficiently.

  Nicholas Vicenti was just starting down the street, and hadn’t noticed Vera yet. He was up early even for him, semi-enjoying one of the crappy cappuccinos the local donut shop sold. He was stereotypical even as far as other Italian Americans were concerned, and because of that, they mostly avoided him like he had the plague, so he was often a loner. He wasn’t a very smart man, just smart enough to do what someone else told him, and he wasn’t a very generous man, dishing out exactly what he thought people deserved—which wasn’t much. He was a knockaround guy, but not a very good one. He probably could have gone to Hell for that alone, even though he hadn’t killed anyone yet, but it had been decided that another nail in his coffin wouldn’t hurt. Lust was just the right angle, because, well, Nick was a knockaround guy. He couldn’t get laid unless he paid for it, but he felt that his piece was far too valuable to risk with a prostitute who might have God-only-knew-what diseases lurking in her pussy.

  So Vera stood in the middle of the sidewalk, holding a coffee in one hand, and a map in the other, while cars and trucks rattled down the street, and Nick came ambling down the sidewalk in his cheap polo shirt, chinos and sport jacket.

  She wore a fine pair of very high platform black heels, just barely suitable for an office, a pair of black hose that had a perfectly straight seam up the back to draw the eye—his eyes in particular—upward, to the just-shy-of-banned-from-work tight black skirt that perfectly framed her utterly perfect cheeks. Her small but muscular waist was outlined by a fine silky white blouse that was clinging in just the right places and sliding sensually across others. Her hair fell in a luxurious brownish black wave, just to her shoulders. She was an Office Hottie, lost in the Big Bad City, and there was no way he would be able to resist her.

  As Nicholas approached, she could feel his presence like a salty warm sack of flesh and bones, his soul, for all its taints, still shining bright within its confines. She could sense his eyes crawling across her fine features, drinking her in.

  Suddenly she stepped out in front of him, innocently of course, and caused him to run into her, hard. She dropped her coffee, map, and tote bag to the cement, coffee spewing everywhere. As she turned toward him slightly, pretending to fall into him, she pressed her large firm breasts against him, making sure that he got a nice look down her blouse too.