Sex with the Devil

by Noah Harris

  “Oh, you going to join Women’s Lib now?”

  Richard gave her a sheepish grin. “Nah, I got my own liberation movement to work on. But this straight guy really laid it on me. Told me I was cutting myself off from half the souls in the world.”

  “Far out. I see what he’s saying though. You know I don’t have any guy friends?”

  “Working in this place, I’m not surprised.”

  Their eyes met briefly again. Candy tensed and looked away.

  “But actually I came here because I wanted to hire you for a private gig,” Richard said.

  Candy looked disappointed. Richard blurted out a hurried explanation.

  “It’s not a stag party of anything like that. In fact, it doesn’t involve sex at all. I need you for, um, a kind of religious ritual.”

  Candy stood up.

  “Oh, you found Jesus? Look buddy, the last time I did a private gig with a holy roller he wanted a three-way with his daughter.”

  Richard sat up. “No, it’s nothing like that. I swear.”

  Shit, I messed this up. But why the hell did you think she’d trust a man anyway? You’re just another John to her.

  “We’re in danger. The whole city is…” Richard’s voice trailed off. He realized he sounded crazy.

  He pulled out a packet of cigarettes. He didn’t smoke tobacco much. Although he never really liked it, everyone back in Chillicothe did so he had smoked to fit in. But he’d brought them along for another reason.

  “Sorry. Sit down and let me explain. Want a smoke?” Richard said.

  Candy glanced at her watch, gave a little shrug, and sat down beside him, this time leaving some space between them. She took a cigarette, sniffed it, and put it in her mouth. Richard produced a lighter, lit her cigarette, and lit one for himself. He stared at the flame. Fire always helped him focus. The throbbing of the rock music in the main room began to fade into the background.

  “What are you doing?” Candy asked. Her voice sounded like it came from a mile away.

  Without looking away from the flame, he reached out and found her hand. He held it, gently but firmly. It was stiff in his grasp but she didn’t try to pull it away.

  “What are you—”

  Richard summoned an immense force of will and pushed them through to the other side.

  Candy screamed.

  They stood on the bare, rocky plain. A geyser of lava shot up in the distance, lighting the roiling clouds a garish red. The air stank of sulfur. Winged figures wheeled high above.

  “What the fuck is going on!?” Candy screamed.

  “This is the demon realm,” Richard said. “I’m a wizard, although I never meant to be one. I never knew I had this power. I wasn’t even sure I could take someone else here until just now.”

  Candy tried to pull away, but Richard held onto her hand. He didn’t want to risk them getting separated.

  “Let me go!”

  “We’ll go back in a minute. Let me explain first. Demons are trying to break through to our world. A cult is helping them to do it. They tried to get me to help them but I refused. I know a spell to stop them, to keep the demons from coming into our world and seal the door they’ve managed to push halfway open. But I need a woman to complete the spell, and you’re the only woman I know!”

  Candy stared at him like he was a madman, then she looked up and screamed again.

  A dark, hairy demon swooped down on them, its vast leathery wings covering them with their shadow. A huge erect member threatened them.

  “Begone!” Richard shouted, and it vanished.

  Candy gaped in wonder. “H-how is this possible?”

  “There are more worlds than most people know. If the cult manages to break the barrier between them, creatures like the one you just saw will enslave humanity!”

  The scene wavered. Richard felt a pain in his head. He tried to focus, bring the scene back into clarity, but then his head exploded with another blinding pain…

  …and he was back in the cubicle at the strip bar.

  The Samoan bouncer hit him on the side of the head and he fell to the floor. The throbbing pain just before his fist landed told Richard that the pain he had felt in the other world had been his previous punches.

  His vision spun. The last sight of the demon plane faded out as he felt himself hauled up by the collar and hustled down the hall. The bouncer kicked open a back door and tossed Richard into an alley, where he landed against some trash cans. Richard, the metal cans, and their contents fell to the ground in one big clattering, stinking heap.

  “If I see you around here again I’ll twist your head off and shit down your neck!” the bouncer said, and slammed the door.

  “That went well,” Richard mumbled as he picked himself up.

  He stumbled away, dejected. All he had managed to do was scare the crap out of some poor girl. Now what?

  He walked for a while, unsure what to do. After the pain in his head had subsided and he had calmed down, he decided to go back. Not only was Candy the only woman he knew, but now she knew too much. He couldn’t have her blabbing about what she had seen. The best case scenario was that she’d be locked up in the loony bin. The worst case scenario was that someone would believe her and investigate.

  No, he had to make sure she kept quiet. Maybe he could bribe her or something. She deserved an explanation at least. He didn’t want her to think she was being stalked by the Devil.

  A few hours later, Richard stood down the street from Aphrodite’s Nude Revue at closing time, watching the entrance. He kept glancing around him as he hung out in the darkened doorway of an electronics store. One o’clock in the morning on 42nd Street wasn’t the safest time and place. He watched as the last of the customers shuffled out into the night and the neon sign of a nude woman switched off.

  No one else came out for another twenty minutes. He had to brush off three drug dealers, five prostitutes, and a john who thought he was a gigolo before he finally saw the front door open again. Half a dozen girls came out, followed by the Samoan, who stood by the front door, looking up and down the street, glowering. Richard moved further into the shadow of the doorway.

  He was in luck. Candy came his direction, accompanied by two other girls. One peeled off at the first side street, but the other continued walking with Candy headed right for him. He turned his back as they passed.

  “You sure you’re OK?” the other girl asked.

  “Yeah,” Candy said. “Nothing a line wouldn’t fix.”

  They both laughed. From the sound of their voices they had passed him by, probably without giving him more than a wary glance. Facing a closed doorway like he was, they probably assumed he was taking a piss. It was a common enough sight in this neighborhood even in broad daylight.

  He waited a moment and then followed them through the thinning crowd of 42nd Street. Many of the strip joints and adult bookshops closed after one in the morning because only the worst customers went out at this hour and staying open was more trouble than it was worth. People reeled along the sidewalk, drunk or high, hustlers, pimps, and hookers were out in full force, giving bold stares at the slowly passing cars.

  Candy and her friend walked right through it as if they were invincible. It was amazing, but they had a confidence to their walk, a boldness, that showed they were not for sale. They might have been shaking their tits at guys and going into the back room for twenty dollar bills all night, but now they were off duty and wanted to be left alone.

  Only one guy didn’t get the message. A middle-aged man in a cheap suit, so drunk that his eyes were half closed and his mouth hung slack with a stupid grin, wove his way through the crowd. He saw the girls, hiccupped, and intercepted them.

  Richard quickened his pace. If he could look like the white knight, maybe Candy would listen to him.

  He never got a chance. The drunk started to say something, reached out both his hands to cup a breast on each girl, and got Candy’s foot square in his nuts.

  The guy
let out a squeal and doubled over. The girls went right on walking. A black pimp in a three-piece purple suit standing nearby laughed so hard he almost fell down too.

  “Go back to the suburbs, creep,” Candy called over her shoulder to the man on the ground.

  She glanced up and her eyes fixed on Richard. She went pale.

  He stopped, raising his hands in a placating gesture.

  Candy turned to her friend. “Diane, I gotta meet someone. You go on without me.”

  Diane stopped and scoped out Richard. “Really?”

  “He’s a friend. It’s OK.”

  “If you say so.”

  Diane walked off.

  Candy took a few steps towards him and stopped well out of reach.

  “Watch it, brother!” the pimp called. “She can kick so hard you’ll be sucking your own balls!”

  “Can I buy you some coffee?” Richard asked.

  To his surprise, Candy hesitated only a moment before nodding.

  “Now that’s the right approach, my man,” the pimp said. “Go get that pussy!”

  “He’s gay,” Candy called over her shoulder as they walked away.

  “Fucking faggots are bad for business!”

  They walked in silence for a time on opposite sides of the sidewalk. A casual observer wouldn’t even have realized they were together.

  “I don’t want you to be scared of—”

  Candy raised a hand. “Don’t even say that shit.”

  “I mean—”

  “I only said yes because I want some answers.”

  “You know a place where we can be alone? I mean, in public?”

  “There’s an all-night diner right over there.”

  A few doors down she took him into a shabby eatery. A few bums and drunks sat in the booths or at the chipped counter while a guy in a stained apron and no shirt flipped some thin burger patties on the grill. He had thick back hair that made him look like a bear.

  “I could take you someplace better,” Richard said.

  “I ain’t picky. Joe, I want a number eight!”

  “Coming right up, Candy,” the man at the grill said without turning around.

  “I’ll have a beer,” Richard told him. At least that hadn’t been made by this guy. He wondered how many of his back hairs ended up in the burgers.

  Candy picked a booth at the back far enough from everyone else and sat down. He noticed that she took the side of the booth closer to the exit so he couldn’t block her path.

  Richard couldn’t figure this girl out. Granted, he had never been good at figuring girls out before, but Candy had just been transported to another world and now acted like he was just some garden-variety creep.

  Candy fixed him with a penetrating stare.

  “So what’s going on? How did you do that?”

  “I didn’t lace your cigarette.”

  “I know you didn’t. Tautolu saw it too.”

  “Who?”

  “The bouncer. After he threw you out he had a nervous breakdown.”

  “Was he disappointed he didn’t beat me up more? The side of my head feels like it got hit with a sledgehammer.”

  Candy trembled a little and shook her head. “No, he saw. He told me that he heard screams from the room and came in, thinking you were getting rough. He smelled sulfur and when he looked at us, he could see right through us, like we were ghosts or something! And he saw that terrible fountain of lava too.”

  “Shit. Did you guys tell anybody?”

  “Of course not. Who would believe us? Hell, I can barely believe it!”

  Candy shuddered, lit a cigarette, and stared out the caked-on window at the passersby.

  Richard collected his thoughts. “It was all real. I recently discovered I have the ability to shift between this world and the one of the demons. It’s not Hell. That apparently doesn’t exist. I suppose Heaven doesn’t either. The demon plane has its own laws and factions just like here, and the barrier between the worlds is breaking down.”

  “Thanks to that cult you mentioned. You said you needed me, why?”

  Joe came with a bottle of beer for Richard and a chicken fried steak and scrambled eggs for Candy. After Joe left, Richard continued.

  “You’re taking this better than I expected.”

  “I was freaking out at the time, trust me. Now I want to know everything, and I mean everything. If you want my help, you gotta be straight with me.”

  Richard smiled at the unintentional joke. Candy got it a second later and giggled.

  “If you can’t be straight, then at least level with me,” she added.

  “All right.”

  Finally, Richard told her everything—the whole story from his arrival in New York, to the scene at the Everard, to his and Georgios’ capture and escape, finishing up with his summoning of the giant demon and what it did to the skinhead. His voice shook with fear and guilt at that last detail.

  She listened with rapt attention, eating her meal without taking her eyes off Richard for a moment. Once he finished they sat in silence for a time. She looked out the window at the street with all its litter and its shabby people. Two hookers stood just beyond the glass, shaking their asses at the passing cars. Finally, she nodded.

  “All right. I’ll help you.”

  “Really?” This had turned out much easier than he had dared hope.

  She looked at him. “You’re a good guy, Richard. And these monsters need to be stopped. Hell, I’ve been fighting monsters who can’t control their dicks all my life. This ain’t nothing new. I wish I could shout ‘begone’ and make them disappear like you did.”

  Richard put a hand on hers. She tensed for a moment, and then relaxed.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She pulled her hand away. “You can thank me by paying me.”

  “I don’t have much money, but me and my friends can make a collection.”

  Candy shook her head. “That’s not what I want. OK, it’s part of what I want. You seem like a guy who can get things done, Richard. Working as I do, I get a sense for people. I think you can help me get out of the life.”

  “There’s a guy named Peter I already helped out like that. I know lots of people. OK, they’re all gays, but that doesn’t mean they can’t find you work. I can even set you up in a spare room if you need it. Once we get this whole mess sorted out I’ll do whatever I can to get you a normal place to live and a normal job. And you know what? I think I’ll join you. I’m sick of hustling my ass for the magazines.”

  Candy looked him in the eyes. “Do that for me and I’ll fight all the demons in the world with you.”

  Richard was still avoiding his own apartment, knowing it lay exposed to attack from two different planes of existence now. Instead, he had gotten a room in a cheap motel. He also had to pay for a separate room for Georgios at Steve’s insistence. Luckily he still had some cash from Cliff’s bribe, but that wouldn’t last long. Once that was gone he’d be broke again, back in the same bind he had been in before the blackout.

  Would he have to go back to posing again? He doubted he’d make enough money quickly enough to pay the bills or even to eat.

  There’s always porn, he realized. Your hot body could make hundreds a week if you’re willing to do it.

  Richard took a deep breath. No, that was going too far. He had to get his life in order.

  First things first, save the world.

  He called a meeting at Adam and Steve’s and gave Georgios strict instructions to stay sober.

  “We are at war,” the Greek youth said with a haughty air. “I have no time for teaching faggots how to be men.”

  “Georgios, it’s OK to be gay. Why can’t you just admit it?”

  “Shut up!” Georgios snapped.

  Richard held his tongue. He had more important things to do than try to pull this guy out of the closet.

  Hell, it isn’t a closet. This guy is hidden in a bank vault.

  Georgios and Tyrone accompanied him to Adam
and Steve’s apartment in the afternoon. They all looked forward to enjoying the air conditioning. The heat still baked the pavement and turned the city air into a muggy, pollution-ridden miasma.

  Candy met them on the way and they went up to find Laszlo already there. Adam and Steve looked surprised at the appearance of a woman.

  “Hey everyone, this is Candy,” Richard said.

  Steve looked at her with horror. “Don’t worry, honey, we’re all on a diet.”

  Candy pointed to Laszlo. “He isn’t.”

  “I do apologize, Ms. Candy, if my gaze seemed rather too penetrating. I was merely trying to ascertain if you were a real woman. There are many convincing transvestites in the city’s alternative community.”

  She cocked her head. “Are you for real?”

  “Never mind him, he always talks like that,” Tyrone said.

  “This professor is real idiot,” Georgios said. “It is easy to see she is real lady.”

  Candy laughed. “A lady? You’re blind as well as a fag.”

  “I am not the gay!”

  “Folks, could we get down to business, please?” Richard said. This is the army I have to help me save the world?

  Everyone sat down and Steve served some tea.

  “Candy here is going to help with the feminine side of the ritual,” Richard explained.

  “Alison,” Candy said.

  “Excuse me?”

  She put a hand on his. “My real name is Alison.”

  Richard smiled at her. “All right, Alison.”

  “Does she know what this will involve?” Adam asked.

  “I took her to the other side.”

  “Pulled me right out of a strip club and into the demon realm,” Alison said with a shudder. She lit a cigarette. “Nearly gave me a fucking heart attack.”

  Laszlo leaned forward with interest. “You took another person to the other side and didn’t even use a summoning room? You are the most magically adept person I have ever met. And to think you did this all without training! Once this is all over, I would like to become your personal teacher. With my tutelage you could go far, my young friend.”

  Richard shook his head. “I don’t want to be a wizard; I just want to be a gay man who can live safely in his community.”