by Mark Cain
There was a scurrying from the shadows at the edge of the lobby. An octogenarian dressed in a bellman’s outfit ran up to me. He had a big, scoop nose and hair combed back tightly over his skull, revealing a receding hairline that rivaled my own. This guy reminded me of an ugly Bob Hope, but I knew for a fact that this wasn’t Hope, because the comic had gone through the Pearly Gates after dying at the age of one hundred. Besides, you can’t have Hope in Hell.
“I’m not a crook!” yelled the bellman.
Oh. Him. “I never implied that you were.”
“Well, I’m just sayin’.” The bellman looked at me apologetically then slapped an out-of-order sign on the elevator door.
“Where are the stairs?” I asked with a sigh.
“Behind the elevator.” The old guy walked me around to a door. I pulled on the handle. The metal door was stuck, and I had to pry it open with my crowbar, since there was no glass to throw my hammer through, my preferred method for opening stuck doors, and my screwdriver was only good on softer materials, like wood.
This took ten minutes, and by the time the door finally popped open, I was drenched in sweat. I looked at the bellman who was flashing me the V for victory sign with both hands. I used one of my hands to flash a hand sign of my own - much more expressive, and using fewer digits as well - then stepped inside the stairwell.
I only thought I was sweaty. By the time I’d climbed all twenty flights of stairs, I felt as if I’d gone swimming in my coveralls. The door at the top of the stairs was also stuck, so I repeated my performance from the base of the tower, using my crowbar to push, pull and generally strain against my portal opponent until it finally succumbed.
Soggy me stepped into a beautifully-appointed office suite, with a three hundred degree view through massive, thick plate glass windows of the Strip below. The neon lights were everywhere, forming the garish constellation of promiscuity that was Lustland. I took a moment to gawk, suitably impressed.
“May I help you?”
When I turned and saw the office receptionist, the nausea that I felt earlier returned with a vengeance, along with a migraine that felt like the Acme anvil had landed on my skull. My throat tightened as she stood to receive me. A lower part of me tightened as well, and suddenly my coveralls didn’t seem nearly as loose as they had before. I was facing the sexiest woman I’d encountered on either side of the mortal divide, including, I hated to admit to myself, Florence Nightingale.
If this had really been a Looney Tunes cartoon, my jaw would have hit the floor, and my tongue would have rolled out like the red carpet they use on Oscar night. Instead, I just stood there like a grinning idiot - with a migraine.
The receptionist appeared to be four or five inches shorter than me, though, since she was standing behind a desk, that was a bit hard to judge. Her long, curly auburn hair framed a beautiful face; her full, pouty red lips just cried out to be kissed. The woman had a mind-boggling body, with large breasts that were nearly spilling out of a tight, white, low-cut blouse; narrow waist; and generous hips. All of these assets were nicely packaged in a short, form-hugging women’s business suit. As she stepped around her desk, I realized she was shorter than I thought, perhaps five-two. Now I could see that her legs were beautifully proportioned as well, shown off to great effect by four inch spike heels and fishnet black pantyhose.
What is it about fishnet pantyhose that we guys find so sexy? Go figure.
“What a babe!” shouted a voice from my pocket protector.
I’d forgotten about Bik. He seldom said anything, but just kept his eyes open, absorbing all our experiences, a sheltered kid who was in the big city for the first time. For some reason, his outburst irritated me, drawing my attention away from the incarnation of sexuality before me. “Bik,” I said, a little annoyance creeping into my voice, “go pay your grandfather a visit.”
“But I just talked to him!” he protested.
“Do it anyway,” I grumbled. “I can handle this. I’ll see you later at the office.”
Grumbling, Bik shot out of my pocket protector and disappeared down the stairwell.
“What was that?” the woman asked.
I turned back to her. She really was very sexy. And her face was so beautiful … right down to the two cute little horns that sat on her forehead just below the hairline.
Right. Succubi have those.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. “That was Bik.”
“What’s a Bik?”
“A fire giant.”
“I see,” the succubus said with amusement as she came closer. Her breasts were almost brushing my coveralls before she stopped. She glanced down. “Is that another fire giant in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”
“Ahem,” I ahemed, taking a step backwards. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smiled, sweetly I thought, which made her look even more sexy. “Of course not,” was all she said.
“I … I’m here to see Asmodeus.”
“And who might you be?”
“The name’s Minion. Steve Minion.”
The young succubus lit up. “I thought I recognized you!”
“Pardon?”
“‘Flo Does The Super.’ It’s my favorite movie.”
Crap. That damn porn movie. Will it haunt me forever?
“I’m your biggest fan!” she enthused. “I thought you had a great part.”
I blushed. “The demon who reviewed the movie thought my part was too small.”
“Hmph. What does Bifrons know about such things? They’re my specialty, and I’m telling you, your part is, er, was far from small.” The succubus came closer to me. Now her breasts were really touching my chest, though the rest of her seemed eighteen inches away.
“Are those real?” I asked in disbelief.
The succubus unbuttoned her suit coat and draped it over a nearby chair. Then she took my right hand and placed it on one of her breasts. It felt full, firm, yet soft. I probed her magnificent mammary a bit more, just to be sure, you know. The breast had the right heft, or so it seemed to me. The nipple was soft but erect beneath my fingers. “Well, it feels real enough,” I said, as my face heated up again in embarrassment. My discomfiture, however, didn’t leave me wanting to remove my hand. She shifted it to her other breast. “Yep,” I concluded, finally, after another complete examination. “That one seems bona fide too.”
“They’re as real as you are, honey,” she purred.
“I’m ectoplasm.”
She giggled, giving my fingers a squeeze before she released my hand. Reluctantly, I dropped it to my side. “Well, there you go,” she said, touching my nose with a soft finger. She grinned impishly, and her blue eyes flashed in amusement.
Blue eyes. I’d never seen a succubus with baby blues. They were beautiful. Blue had always been my favorite eye color, until I’d met Flo that is. Her eyes were a rich, chocolate brown that complemented her chestnut hair.
As I thought about Flo, the receptionist’s eyes and hair began to darken.
“A penny for your thoughts,” she murmured.
I shook my head.
No. Flo is Flo and this succubus is, well, a succubus. Besides, on her blue and auburn are a better fit.
The female’s eyes and hair snapped back to their original colors.
I don’t think she was reading my mind. I just think that a succubus, like a chameleon, changes colors to match her surroundings, or in this case, a man’s pheromonal preferences.
“I loved you in that movie!” she said in a voice that made Marilyn Monroe by comparison sound like Daffy Duck. “You’ve got great moves!”
“Thank you, I guess,” I replied, not knowing if she was just flattering me but feeling absurdly pleased at the same time.
She took me by the hand and led me to a nearby couch. The succubus sat down with extreme grace, I thought, considering how short her dress was. I didn’t even see something I wasn’t supposed to see, regrettably, though it w
as a damn close thing, I tell you. She pulled me down next to her, leaning one leg against mine.
“I’m Lilith, by the way.”
“Of course you are.”
“No, really!” she said, looking as if she were concerned I thought she was lying. “Mom named all of us Lilith.”
“And what’s her name?”
“Lilith.”
I looked up at the ceiling. “Right.” Then I thought about what little I knew of succubi. “I remember now. Your mother is the Lilith.”
“Yes,” she said proudly. “Adam’s first. His ex-wife, I guess you could say. Also the universe’s first feminist.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Well, the way Mom tells it, she refused to submit to Adam, saying she was made out of clay just like him and demanded equal rights.” Lilith Jr. bit her lower lip, looking impossibly cute as she did it. “Mom got the boot for that, and Eve got the gig.”
“But why did she name all succubi Lilith?”
“It was her own little bit of immortality, I guess.”
“But she’s already immortal.”
“You know what I mean. Anyway, our dad didn’t mind, so we’re all named after Mom. Makes it easy to remember all your sister’s names. Of course, my aunts Mahalath, Agrat Bat Mahlat and Naamah also slept with dad, and my cousins – well, they’re my half-sisters as well, but I think of them as my cousins – are succubi too. They’re also all named Lilith, for reasons that escape me.”
“And how many succubi are there?”
“At last count? I think 666.”
“That would fit.”
“Yeah,” Lilith agreed. “A nice, round number.”
I looked at her quizzically. She seemed awfully nice for a succubus. “Your father: he’s the archangel Samael, right?”
“The very same. The bad boy of the good guys. You know, for an archangel, he sure slept around a lot.”
I cleared my throat. “So it would seem.”
“Love him to death, though.” She looked a little sad for a moment. “I wish I got to see him more, but the bosses upstairs frown on archangels making social calls in Hell.”
“Do tell.”
Lilith’s wistfulness vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. “But you didn’t come to the office to hear about my family tree. How can I help you?”
“Well,” I said, reluctantly coming to the purpose of my visit. “I’m on special assignment for Satan, and like I said earlier before we got, uh, distracted, I need to see Asmodeus.”
She frowned a little, as if the answer disappointed her. Did she really think I’d come to see her? Not that that seemed like a particularly bad idea to me at the moment. “I don’t think he’s in, and he’s usually scheduled up the wazoo, but let me check his calendar.”
She got up from the couch as gracefully as she had sat down then swayed her way toward her desk computer. I was mesmerized by the undulating movement of her hips and the shape of her spectacular ass, which was pretty easy to ogle, since the skirt of her suit was so tight and short it left little to the imagination. As she leaned over her computer, I noticed that resting on her, ah, cheeks was what looked to be a small, pink arrowhead, hanging from a short white tassel.
Then I recognized it for what it was.
Lilith turned to look at me, arching an eyebrow. “Looking for a little tail, Steve?”
Lilith had sensed my eyes on her. Of course, any heterosexual male with or without a pulse would have had his eyes nowhere else at the moment. “Yes, I mean no, I mean, oh hell, can I just see Asmodeus now?”
She leaned up from her computer, giving me a full-on view of her incredible cleavage. “I’m sorry, Steve, but he’s out of the office.”
“Damn!”
She looked hopefully at me. “Maybe I can help?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m here to discuss some problems we’ve been having with the HVAC system.”
Lilith nodded. “I noticed. I’ve been cold all day.”
“I noticed,” I said, remembering the feeling of her erect nipples beneath my fingers.
The succubus seemed to read my thoughts and blushed. She actually blushed! It was charming.
“Well,” I said, reluctantly getting off the couch, “tell him I need to see him.”
“I schedule all his appointments. I have to tell you, it doesn’t look good. It’s tight,” she said with a mischievous smile, looking down at her skirt and then back up at me, “I mean really, really tight, but I’ll fit you in somehow.”
She did have a way with words. I gulped. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”
“I know you would.” She walked over to me. “Tell you what, handsome … ”
Handsome? She must be nearsighted.
“Meanwhile, maybe I can give you some background information. I’m Asmodeus’s personal assistant. I know more about his comings and goings than he does himself.” Lilith embraced me, an odd gesture for someone who had just met me, but what the hell. She was a succubus, after all. “But not here,” she whispered in my ear. “I get off soon. Buy me a drink, and I’ll let you give me the third degree.”
She was still holding me, and I found that without volition my arms had folded around her. My right hand was a little lower than it should be, but she didn’t seem to mind. “Uh, okay.”
“I’d like to get you out of those coveralls.”
“What?”
“I mean,” she said, smiling innocently, “they’re hardly proper for taking a girl on a date.”
“This, ah, this isn’t a date.”
She pouted, looking cuter than hell, then put a hand on top of mine, the one that had now slipped completely down to her ass. I felt like a stallion in rut. She rubbed her body against mine then stepped away from me. “It better be,” she purred, “if you want any useful information.”
I shook my head, trying to get it above the testosterone flood in which it was drowning. “Ah, o … okay.”
“Good,” she said, taking me by the arm and escorting me to the elevator. She pressed the button, and it opened immediately. I stepped inside.
“Meet me at the Kit Kat Club in an hour,” she said, as the doors started to close around me, “and don’t be late.”
Chapter 12
I was hot and bothered on my ride back to the Fifth Circle. Straddling BOOH’s neck was like riding a broad-bellied mare, and the constant motion did nothing to alleviate the insistent tightness that I felt below my waist. By the time my friend set me down at my apartment, I was just as horny as when I’d left the hot little redhead.
Climbing the six flights of stairs to my studio apartment, I wondered about Lilith. Was meeting her just a normal encounter, a result of working on the job, or did it have something to do with my careless comment from earlier in the day? Another wave of vertigo passed over me, convincing me that a cold day in Hell was not to be taken lightly.
Hiking up all those stairs hadn’t calmed down the old gonads. It was time for a cold shower. I twisted the knob on my front door. “Crap.” It didn’t open, as usual. I fished for my screwdriver, grumbling. “My own doorknob should work today, of all days.” I paused, as something occurred to me. “After all, it is a cold day in Hell.”
My nausea returned - somewhat diminished, as I seemed to be getting used to it - but something else happened too. As if by magic, the previously-stuck knob turned. Frowning, I stepped through the door jamb. Inside, roaches were skittering to and fro. They appeared to be staging some form of athletic event. An oval track had been laid out on my floor, and six runners, each wearing a number on its diminutive back, were speeding around it. On my table, where I’d left some sour milk in a bowl, three of the vermin were in a dead heat, swimming the breaststroke from one end of the bowl to the other.
My bed was down and unmade. This was unusual. Mine was a Murphy bed, and normally each morning I'd at the very least fold it up, unmade, into the wall just to get it out of my way. My apartment was not much bigger than a jail cell, and I needed al
l the floor space I could get when not actually lying down on the Murphy. Most mornings, I even made the bed. Flipping it up into the wall tended to throw the sheets all askew, but I performed this ritual bit of housekeeping anyway. It was a matter of discipline for me, one small act of rebellion, creating order in a chaotic Hell. Not today though. For some reason, on getting up this morning, I must have sensed that today was going to be unusual. Or maybe I had had a particularly bad night; I can’t really remember. In any event, I’d left the bed down. This worked just fine for the roaches. A number of them were queued up on my sheet, and one after another, they did impressive dives down to the floor where I’d left my pillow.
Great. Roach Olympics. It would be nice to for just one day live in a roach-free apartment.
Hmmm.
I thought back to meeting Lilith and to my experience with the door. Maybe they had been flukes, but this seemed doubtful. Clearing my throat, I said in a very loud voice, “It will be a cold day in Hell before I come home to an insect-free apartment.”
This time, I felt no nausea at all. (I'd always had a pretty strong stomach.) Poppity-pop-pop! Every roach in the place disappeared.
Well, this is an interesting side effect of my current troubles. Perhaps I can use it to my advantage.
Off came my boots, as well as my still-damp coveralls, underwear and socks. The clothes were disgusting - pretty damn smelly - so I threw them into the bathtub and turned on the water.
The water had its typical yellow hue; I never knew if it was the result of rust or uric acid. The smell was terrible, but that was also standard fare for my toilette. At least the water was cold, and judging from my still rigid member, that’s exactly what I needed. I stepped in the foul, frigid spray. Between the stench and the forty degree water, my parts finally calmed down.
Wow. So that’s the power of a succubus.
I mean, I knew that was exactly the power of a succubus. I’d just never been on the receiving end of one’s attention. Succubi are usually used for tempting and entrapping men on Earth or enticing but not delivering down here in Hell. The latter was probably the situation I was in now, though Lilith didn’t seem the type. And of course, I was in love with Florence and would never even look at another woman.