Innocence

by Samael Wolf

  Esti nodded, still reticent. “Right. And… if that happens, if the demon goes null, they don’t pass on a portion of their essence anymore. They pass on the whole thing. Since they can’t actually live without it, they stay connected to their offspring by that essence, like an umbilical cord. And then when the younger demon turns of age and their essence goes unstable…” Her grim expression said it all.

  “They die?” I whispered, piecing it together. “Your father died when your essence changed?”

  Her nod was almost imperceptible, and I couldn’t read her expression. Anger? Sadness? Something that was both and yet neither? “I got a double whammy when I turned thirteen. Triple whammy, almost. My papa died, and I found out nulls pass on especially unstable essence, and not much of it either since I’m only half demon. So I have weaker powers than most demons, and I need to feed a lot more often to maintain them. With most demons, if they last long enough, feed enough, their essence will eventually stabilize. Mine might never, and if I ever had any kids, they might have it even worse than me. Only full, stabilized demons reliably create new essence in the world, and I’m neither of those.

  “That’s why I have to ask what it is you’d want out of a relationship, because there are some things I couldn’t give you. Fidelity, for one. I have to feed three or four times a week and there’s no way a single person can provide that much energy. Especially not you, since even feeding from you once seemed to hurt you so much. I also can’t ever give you children, which, yeah, not usually a problem for lesbians, but even the turkey baster method is a bad idea as long as I’m in the picture. Sometimes children inherit the essence just by proximity. It’s weird and I don’t really want to get into it right now.”

  I waited for her to continue, but that seemed to be all. Easing out of my chair, I sidled up next to her on the bed and gingerly put my arms around her. When she didn’t object, I allowed myself to lean against her gently. Her skin was chilly and I derived a strange enjoyment from feeling it leach away the heat that seemed to have overtaken my body.

  “Oh,” I said softly. “I was expecting something bad. I’m very sorry about your father though.”

  Esti stiffened momentarily, then let out a quiet laugh and shook her head, her arms finding their way around me tentatively. “Just when I think I have you figured out, you go and surprise me again,” she teased in a voice just as soft. “I probably could scare you away if I tried, but somehow, you make me not want to make the effort…”

  “I don’t know why you’d care. I don’t feel like anything special,” I murmured, letting myself luxuriate in her proximity. I didn’t think anyone had ever held me besides Dad when I was young. Maybe my birth parents, but I barely remembered them. Normally touch just felt so intimate that I didn’t dare initiate it with others, but this was an intimate moment, wasn’t it? I scarcely knew what I was doing, in all honesty. Esti stifled a giggle as I nuzzled closer, trying to warm her. She was a rock, barely moving as I, a tide of seawater still radiating the heat of the sun, wrapped myself around her. It was entirely instinctual, but it felt right. My mind had become a place of abstractions, uncharacteristic, but fulfilled by some calling Esti had unknowingly unlocked.

  There were more words after that, but I had gone beyond them. I was the seductress tonight, and affection was all language that I needed. A whole conversation could be had in a squeeze; a novel could be written with a kiss. Eventually Esti stopped trying to use words and started speaking the language I had discovered, and I found out that night that even a demon, half or otherwise, could be enticed to cry pleasure to the heavens.

  I hadn’t really answered her question. What did I want out of a relationship? I think I was too inexperienced to know one way or another. I was making it up as I went along, filling in blanks with cuddles and the dance of fingers over flesh. If it only lasted a single night, I still would have counted myself privileged for having had it together, if only because this time I could fully participate, reciprocate, and even negotiated. Anyone who thinks there’s nothing worthwhile to talk about during sex has never had a chance to enjoy the thrill of a partner willing to indulge and guide, and that night, Esti was both.

  I learned she liked to feel the caress of a woman’s tongue between her legs.

  She taught me that I liked to be cuddled back-to-belly against someone while they caressed and explored with their hands.

  I shyly asked about the kinds of toys she liked to use and her lurid descriptions finally cracked enough of my shell for me to show her my little vibrator, which she put to good use on us both in a way I had never imagined two people could share.

  When at last we fell asleep together—I begged her not to leave, although I don’t think she actually wanted to—something had changed between us, and I wasn’t sure how long it would last or whether it had a future at all. All I knew was that, like her, I had decided I was willing to try.

  “Your destination is on the right.”

  “This must be it,” Esti said, handing my phone back to me. “Kids’ toys in the front yard, if you can’t see ‘em.”

  If the weather were any different, it’s possible I might not have. One of the reasons I didn’t like riding in cars was that when the windows were up and the outside world was sealed away behind glass and plastic, I could barely see where we were going and I didn’t care much for the sensation of hurtling across barely visible ground at high speeds. Fortunately, it was another hot August afternoon and I could have the window down, which at least gave me a partial view of our surroundings. It was worth having the wind blowing in my face—something I wasn’t fond of either—to see more clearly as Esti somehow navigated the arcane labyrinth of Seattle roads and took us into the northern suburbs to Mountlake Terrace, gripping my seatbelt a little harder than I necessarily ought to have.

  Not that my girlfriend is that bad a driver.

  “You just thought it again, didn’t you.”

  “Hm?” I replied, turning my head back toward her. “You don’t read minds, too, do you?”

  Esti grinned and tapped my nose with her finger. “Nope, but you blush so prettily whenever it crosses your mind. And there you blush some more!”

  “Shush, you.” But yes, I was bordering on crimson, and not from sunburn. It had only been a couple of days and I was still thoroughly enamored with the idea of having a partner in my life. I’d never had much time or thought for romance and still had no idea what I was doing, but so far friendship plus a lot of cuddling and affection seemed to be doing the trick. Esti, at least, seemed happy. Me, I was merely smiling so hard my cheeks hurt.

  Opening the door, I stepped out into the sunlight and stretched, glad to be free of the hot confines of the vehicle. I turned to bid Esti a temporary farewell, but she was already turning off the engine and stepping out with me. Something about her expression made me uneasy. I’d grown up in the city, so I could be forgiven for not recognizing it immediately. She was still smiling, but her joviality had melted away, and although she appeared relaxed and casual, she was scanning the house and surroundings intently. It was the behavior of a skittish deer — or perhaps a hunting cat anxious about rival predators was a more apt comparison.

  Seeing me staring at her in bewilderment, Esti made an effort to grin, although it came across as more sickly than reassuring. “Just want a proper hug before you go,” she said by way of excuse. I, of course, saw through her flimsy deflection and immediately interrogated her on such suspicious behavior.

  Just kidding. My naïveté knows no bounds.

  “Of course,” I murmured happily, chalking it up to yet another case of my chronic inability to understand people. My embarrassment at the misconception was swiftly forgotten as I wrapped my arms around her waist, hands tangling in her hair for the sheer joy of stroking my fingers through that curtain of gold. Despite the warm air and the heat radiating up off the sidewalk beneath us, her skin was blessedly cool and I happily poured warmth into it as I stood up on my toes to kiss her. The te
nsion I felt in her body evaporated at last, as did any last thought I had about it.

  “Better get going,” she sighed, disengaging with a last teasing tug at my hair which sent a thrill cascading down my spine. “But just think: Cassie said she should be on her way out today, so we’ll have the house to ourselves by the time you get home. Don’t let the kid wear you out early!”

  It took longer than it should have for me to figure out why this was significant. Nearly an entire month with just Esti and myself — unfettered privacy. I cleared my throat and carefully stepped back, wondering when I would become inured to her constant teasing. “See you in a few hours, then,” I said, having no adequate retort, and turned to walk up the short driveway to the house.

  I had nearly made it up the front steps when it hit me. At first I thought it was the foulest odor I’d ever smelled, and I had gotten as far as saying ‘ugh’ when I realized that the air I was breathing smelled and tasted perfectly clean. It was more like I was absorbing this through my skin, discerning its qualities in a way which was eerily like synesthesia but which felt more like I had developed a new sense altogether. I would have been more unsettled by this if I could concentrate past the sensation of being smothered by incorporeal rotting flesh.

  Esti was already running up behind me, reacting much too quickly to my distress. I think she must have been watching to see if I would notice whatever had first set her off. When we had another chance, we were going to have a talk about trust and communication.

  “Shit, I’m sorry, I was really hoping I was wrong,” she was saying as she dashed up the steps. Unfortunately, this noise alerted the people inside. The door opened as she reached my side and Sophia peered out through the screen door.

  “Yes, you’ve got the right place,” she said cheerfully, mistaking our apprehension for uncertainty. She opened the door wide to invite us in, apparently heedless of the intangible taint in the air. “Hi, Sanmei, and this must be your ride?”

  Esti, bless her heart, recovered her composure before something foolish could tumble out of my mouth. “Yes ma’am. I just wanted to be sure we had the right house so I knew how to find my way back when it’s dark.”

  “But you’re not staying?” Sophia asked with a little bit of urgency. A halo of light I shouldn’t have been able to see played around her head, but the effect was more ghastly than angelic. There was no question whether it was connected to the phantasmal emanation which was still roiling my stomach.

  As Esti made assurances that she would be leaving momentarily, I just did my best to keep my composure as it penetrated that Sophia simply did not detect, in any way, shape, or form, the aura of pestilence which seemed to have permeated her home. It was even worse inside. I was surrounded by the fixtures of a relatively well to-do abode and yet I couldn’t even begin to appreciate any of it because I was just trying not to openly gag. Every step felt like slogging my way through a membrane of putrescence. It dragged at my feet and pulled against my bare skin, but Sophia seemed completely unawares and even Esti barely wrinkled her nose. Either my girlfriend—shut up, hormones, this really wasn’t the right time!—had better acting skills than I thought, or she simply didn’t feel it the way I did.

  As Sophia momentarily walked away to fetch a list of phone numbers for me to call if there was an emergency, Esti closed in and whispered to me. “I’m going to circle the block until she leaves. Whatever’s going on here, I don’t want you to have to deal with it alone. Just sit tight.”

  I nodded, barely managing to restrain my tongue as Sophia returned promptly with a torn out sheet of notebook paper. She hesitated as she handed it to me, as if only now remembering how silly it must seem to give a handwritten note to a blind person, but I managed to put on a show of inquiring about the grandparents listed as the first means of contact and her concerns visibly faded as she supplied answers and dismissed her doubts at the same time. They were her own mother and father, aged but still perfectly capable of looking after their grandchild in a pinch, and at least one of them would probably be awake even after it got dark in case I needed to call them for anything.

  Somehow I didn’t think they’d be able to help with the problem that seemed to literally be surrounding me on all sides.

  Esti said her faux-farewells and departed ahead of Sophia to avoid arousing suspicion, and Sophia directed me to Jeffrey’s room upstairs where he had apparently been playing with his ‘new friend’ all day. I didn’t really want to go any further into the house, especially without Esti, but I was worried about the boy and how he might be reacting to this phenomena. At her urging, I began climbing the stairs.

  If I ever experience anything like those stairs again, I may not survive with my mind intact. I made it three steps up before the fourth caused me to impact with something that resisted briefly and then gave way, and the sensation could only be described as a blister in reality giving way to something I had no desire to name. Every step thereafter seemed to be against heavier gravity, and yet my feet plunged down upon each stair more slowly than they should have. It felt like running in a nightmare, but all my nightmares were dark smears of color, whereas this was an ascension into light which felt as far from holy as could be. Convinced I would see the earth far beneath me, I slowly craned my head back and saw Sophia climbing the stairs beneath me, her lips moving soundlessly as she gazed emptily past me with a blank, cheerful expression that frightened me with its inappropriateness. I shuddered and labored to hurry to the top. I swear my feet physically clung to the last few steps, as if adhering to something sticky, but I persevered if only to avoid looking back again.

  Jeffrey was exactly where his mother said he’d be, and his room was utterly saturated in invisible filth. No, it wasn’t just that — it was the origin. I could see the aperture from which corruption oozed and sloughed outward and it shaved years off my life to realize that I could give it a name.

  Zackary Orkin.

  I’m not sure how I recognized him when there was so little to identify. It was like looking into a man-shaped hole in space from which a light shone but did not illuminate. I was certain if I looked too deeply, I would be drawn into its depths with no hope of escape, and I was just as certain that he wanted this to happen. Hatred emanated from him like steam rose off boiling water and I felt singularly targeted by its enmity. Though he didn’t seem to move, I felt his presence close around me, the light playing over my skin with a harshness I was almost surprised didn’t leave bruises.

  I can’t even begin to describe how frightened I was at that moment. It was surreal and the threat was explicit, but what truly made me quake was the palpable feeling that I felt like I should somehow remember this. I didn’t just recognize Zackary Orkin despite the transformation he had undergone, although that was surely part of it. What I felt was deeper, even instinctual, like something that might have happened in a dream. I found myself fixating on the air between the phantom and Jeffrey, and yes, if I twisted my perception just so in a manner I had never tried before, I could see what appeared to be a cord which appeared to link their bodies together, and somehow I simply knew that its nature was parasitic.

  Jeffrey’s was squatting on the floor with a pile of plastic army soldiers as if nothing were amiss, but at my entry, he turned an expressionless gaze upon me, mouth opening and closing slowly as if to call out. What emerged instead, after a pause, was worse. “Hello. You’re finally here. Now you can meet my friend. I hope you like him.”

  I couldn’t help gasping. It wasn’t a child’s voice that emerged from his mouth. I would have hesitated to call it Zackary’s voice either. It wasn’t really the voice of a living creature, and perhaps not even one of a being which had ever been ‘alive’ as we conventionally use the term. It was more like something a person could have created using a computer, trying to synthesize human speech from an apparatus that lacked the biological components necessary to make it sound real. It was missing the subtle qualities given to a human voice by the way air pushed through th
e throat and around the tongue, emerging without inflection or the natural pauses between words.

  I need Esti. The words banged through my head like a bird trying to escape its cage. There’s no way I can handle anything like this on my own.

  Spurred by that thought, I gathered myself to flee the room, but then realized Sophia was coming up behind me and there was no way I could get around her. She blocked the doorway, leaning in with a smile which made my heart tremble. “I should be back in a couple of hours. Don’t give Sanmei any trouble! And Sanmei, if you don’t get to any tutoring today, it’s fine. Don’t try too hard if either of you doesn’t feel comfortable, okay?”

  I nodded mutely. What else could I do? She clearly couldn’t see what I saw, and Jeffrey’s odd behavior was nothing more than a child behaving out of sorts to her, normally quite understandable given how recently he had lost his father. How could I even begin to explain the abomination hovering just over his shoulder? If I hadn’t recently become aware of the supernatural world overlapping my own, I wouldn’t have believed it myself.

  The phantasm didn’t bother waiting for Sophia to finish leaving before it spoke. I wasn’t entirely sure she could hear him anyway; I felt like I was perceiving into more than one frame of reality and not everything I heard and saw reflected on each level thereof, which was a headache I’d have to suffer at a later time — if I survived this.

  “You’re the reason I died. It’s your fault. This wouldn’t have happened to me if it weren’t for you.”

  Zackary’s voice was no better than the one he had inflicted on Jeffrey. It was recognizable as that of the man in life, but only just. Now it sounded like he had a malfunctioning electric razor lodged in his throat, but the snapping, harsh drone did not fail to convey his suffering and rage, and they stabbed at me as much as the accusation.