This preacher prefaced his sermon with an old story.
He would not know that I knew the players in his tale, nor that I knew he was telling a highly oversimplified version of events to make a point about modesty and propriety. Then again, I doubt he would have cared to know that her name was never Bathsheba, that it was a tongue-in-cheek name given years after she passed. Nor did he know that David did spy her bathing, but that it was no accident or purposeful temptation on her part. David had caught her because he was an absolute pervert who crept around women’s homes and bathing places to try to catch a glimpse. The stories never mention his stutter either, but that is a small detail.
As he droned on, I grew more annoyed at the inaccuracies I was hearing, and those I figured would follow, what gradually grew more offensive was how he tried to make these lies into “Truths” to live by. Even in those times, no one was living by these definitions of “modesty” he proclaimed to be inherent. People had sex in the open, on streets. I never wanted for meals back then.
Thankfully, I could tell Tabitha was not paying attention. She kept peeking at John, hoping he would turn around and glimpse her. He did so only once to make a funny face to her. My poor little one.
Before I knew it (but not nearly soon enough), this hellish service was over and people got up to politely mingle. Tabitha calmly waited for John to acknowledge her and introduced us to his parents. His father, John Senior, didn't even bother to hide his slack jawed interest. But it was Roberta’s resentment that left a set of fingernail marks along my hands after our handshake. She hates me without knowing why. Part, yes, is her husband. But there is more. I could see it, her hidden desires that she had kept closeted. Desire for power she thinks I have.
We made small talk. Roberta made the observation that her husband is running for city council—something I cared next to nothing about—and she said I should vote for him. Tabitha was playing at being interesting while still demure. She desperately hoped to win John’s parents’ approval. Meanwhile, he kept glancing at that blonde girl who had been sitting near the front. I was still trying to find a graceful way to exit when we were blindsided by the preacher and his family. We were formally introduced.
This preacher was much too comfortable around Tabitha for my taste. He put a hand on her shoulder in a warm greeting. I considered ripping that hand off and feeding it to him.
“Derek,” he said. He smiled and offered his hand to me.
“Thelma,” I said and offered mine. When our hands touched, his loins grew taut, a fact he hid by shifting behind his wife Kristie.
For her part, Kristie was the practiced one. I could see into her as well, her hidden sapphic desires. They were buried beneath a deep self-loathing. What a waste of a life then to be married to such a man.
“I hear this is your first time. Very happy to get you here to help us celebrate the word of the Lord.” Derek said this with his best salesman smile.
There was an itch on my tongue to correct him. Your word, you mean, I thought but did not say. “Well. It was an experience,” I said, countering with a decidedly serpentine smile.
Before I could gracefully bow out and tow Tabitha away from this place, Kristie quickly interjected “Will you be coming to the town meeting on Tuesday?” Her eyebrows were raised in a perfect imitation of a begging puppy.
I try not to stray too much into the politics of mortals. It seems unfair: I can live forever while they must cope with mortality. But now that I have my daughter, a human, prone to death, and I have discovered there an unexpected but quite new fascination. “Town Meeting?”
“Yes, there have been some new ordinances proposed,” Roberta said, her own visage mimicking a viper's. Her eyes were clearly predatory.
And I thought I was the one with the snake parentage...
September 22nd
The meeting skipped my memory, as did the elections. There was a rapid mad dash at the store that needed tending. I was running out of erotic texts faster than I could restock. I became occupied with feeding on these paltry meals.
Then came my daughter’s temper tantrum. Having read the parenting books I thought I knew what to expect. I thought I would not take it personally. I was not remotely prepared.
When Tabitha was young, her tantrums could easily be soothed. These outbursts were often caused by things neither of us could control. Her tooth hurt. Her toy broke. She was tired. A child had picked the lollipop she wanted. These were the cares of a growing human who, barren of language, cried to cope.
Now, as a teenager, she focuses all her rage on me. “Why can’t you be like the other moms?” she screeched at the top her lungs, reminiscent of a banshee I knew before the first World War.
“Why do you have to look like that?”
“Why do you dress like that?”
“Why can’t we just do stuff like the other kids?”
“Why don’t I have a dad?”
After she finished screaming at me, I left her to cry and hid away at the back corner of the closed book store. Succubi cannot cry. We are not made for that. If there had ever been a moment where I wanted to, it was the image of my daughter screaming to me that she hates me. How to tell her? What do I say do her? How do I tell her that she was given to me one night because I knew her mother from my feeding grounds? How to tell her that we were friends of circumstance, and that only a year after she was given to me, her mother was murdered by her father? That I had lost touch by then, getting her to safety and only knew from a newspaper clipping what had become of her human mother?
How do I tell her that I am old enough to remember civilizations that are now confined to dust? That her grandmother is Lilith, that story she thought was funny? That she will grow and die like those around her, while I cannot be “normal” like them…for I never was? How to tell my child that when she dies one day, I may look for a way to destroy myself?
Succubi have sex to live. We do not love. I have never loved a person, except in a deep sense of friendship or companionship. Now I love a child as a mother, and it is a greater pain than I have ever known.
I lay there, on that floor of our little bookstore, unable to cry and counting the clumps of dust beneath the shelves, when a sign was pasted on the door window.
Dragging myself from my corner I slowly made my way and unlocked the front door. It was probably another advertisement from the combination take-out restaurant down the street, I figured. Instead I read it over and over again.
No wonder Roberta had the smile of a hyena the other day at the grocery. The flier announced the new city ordinances, and prominent among these was the banning of “Lewd, Lascivious and/or Un-Christian Materials for Sale or Distribution.” It has been a good few years since I have seen laws like this in any place I resided. It explained the number of people stocking up on items at my shop. Across the street as I read, a the Marlowes were trying their hardest to look me over without my noticing. They were rather inefficiently cleaning their own storefront while sneaking glances my way every once in a while. I ignored them..
Before, these laws never affected me, not really. But I no longer feed the way I used to. I no longer feed in a way that could easily work its way around obscenity laws. No, I have built a safe and quiet life here for my little one, subsisting on the secondhand cravings arisen from the lust-filled perusal of book covers and jacket blurbs. I did this for us, for her.
She would hate me and not understand if we had to uproot. How would I survive for her if I cannot feed? I have seen my kind when we were denied sustenance. Withering away from the groin to our feet. Who will protect her if I am gone? I could not help but panic.
My panic gave way to anger, an anger I had not felt since I knew Tabitha’s mother.
A few phone calls later and I had come to the crux of the issue. The counsel’s two newly elected members, the self-righteous preacher Derek and John Sr., proposed and passed the measure as a way to prevent the town’s moral decay. Seems that I had been mentioned by name at
that town meeting as an example of those decaying morals.
Very well then. They want decaying morals, I’ll bring out their own and watch them crumble. That anger that I felt since reading the flier has moved me to a plan.
September 25th
I waited. Patiently. It was two days before I was able to set up a meeting with the preacher, one on one. Kristie greeted me at the door of their immaculately clean little home. It seemed too clean for a home with a small child and my keen eyes noted the ragged look of her hands. She smiled politely. Beneath the glossed lips I could taste resentment. On its surface, perhaps, it looks like disgust for me. But the further you studied her, the people she truly resented are herself and her husband. Especially her husband. She bottled her desire for me and made it a poison. In truth, I would be doing her a favor.
She led me to her husband’s office. It was exactly how you would picture it, complete with framed, poorly translated biblical quotes and local church-appropriate newspaper clippings adorning the walls.
“Ms. Barton,” he said, getting out of his seat and shaking my hand. I did not miss the disapproval in his use of “Ms.” He motioned to a chair across from him and sat down as he said, “What brings you here today?”
He knew why I was there, or at least he thought he knew. I called on my old tricks and let my instincts take over, “Oh please Derek, let’s dispense with the formalities, call me Thelma.” I showed him a beguiling smile and removed my light jacket. My button-up shirt, although closed to the nape, had a small gap that when I moved functioned as a window to my cleavage. I could see his eyes, zeroing in on that gap, and then, remembering himself, moving upwards. “I’m here to talk about the ordinance.”
“Oh, um, yes, well. We’re really proud of that. It seems to meet the needs of this town, you know. We just have…” he cleared his throat “…a lot of children here. It seemed a good measure to keep them safe.”
“Oh, I completely agree,” I said, laying my hand delicately on that gap for effect. I took a deep breath and watched as he became focused on my fingers resting on my shirt, sitting above my breasts. I could see him noticeably change. His breathing grew strained, and I sensed the engorgement of his loins. Men, here or a thousand years ago, are incredibly foolish. They jump their eyes to breasts like babies. “No. I just wanted to get some clarification, really, as to whether this is going to affect me?” I leaned forward.
“Well, I mean, you have—from all reports, at least—a fine little bookstore—”
““Reports?” I said. “That’s odd, I sure thought you’d already dropped in, but I suppose I must be mistaken: After all, had you done so, I’m sure I would have given you a tour as you are new to our little town,” I said coyly, running my fingers up and down my blouse.
“Well, no, I don’t have much, um, time for reading.” He coughed. “Nevertheless, the majority of your store is fine I'm sure. The only things that may have to leave are books that may come off as, um, corrupting or immoral.”
At that moment Kristie interrupted us, deliberately and loudly, to let her husband know that she was heading to the neighbor’s for a play date with their child. It was clear that Kristie wanted out of this marriage, even if she did not recognize it herself. Even if that exit includes finding her husband in an affair. She will get more than she bargained for in that respect.
She left and I looked back to the pastor with a pout on my lips. I let him see me cross my legs. “Oh Derek, what do you mean ‘immoral’?”
He licked his lips. “Oh, you know, anything that might steer the children in a wrong direction.”
“And what direction would that be?”
I leaned in closer, and as I did, a button on my blouse popped open. We succubi have a certain amount of control over the things that touch our bodies, and this little trick has served me well in the past. It was apparent that he was heaving.
“Well of course, anything that makes them unruly. And anything, well— pornographic.” He adjusted his crotch.
In a show of false outrage, I covered my cleavage with a gentle press of my hand. “Derek! Are you suggesting I traffic in pornography?”
“No! No! Of course not, Thelma!” Derek was obviously agitated at the loss of his view. “I just, I mean, perhaps you’re too sweet to notice that a few of your books have some mature content.”
I rounded my eyes into a perfect doe-like expression, subtly asking him to explain what he meant.
“Here.”
He pulled out a ragged copy of one of the more tame erotic pieces from my store. It has a shirtless man on the cover and a barely dressed woman clinging seductively to his waist. I recognized the scent of lust on it immediately.
“A concerned member of our congregation showed me this as an example of what is sold there,” he said. Roberta’s desire had already stained the pages such that it reeked.
“That?” I took it into my hands, touching his fingers in the process. He stifled a shiver. “But how could this be pornography. It’s just words.” I stood and turned to a random page. “How could something that reads like ‘she ran her fingernails down his chest, making delicate circles on his firm, muscular stomach’ be an issue?” I sat down on top of Derek’s desk, where he now had a perfect view of my long legs. “He twitched, his desire lengthening in his pants. He took her in his arms and...”
Derek coughed. Sweat trickled down his temples. “As you can see, Thelma...” he placed a hand over the one of mine that lay atop the book “...we... can’t have people moved to their base desires.” His voice was cracking.
“But how could people be moved to sin by simple words?” I put two fingers to his chest and fluttered my eyes. “I mean, do these words move you?”
He breathed in deep and his pupils dilated. He was almost there. “Well, I mean, I’m an adult, with full control of my faculties. But read on.” He swallowed hard.
I nodded and turned back to the page. “‘With one single movement he pulled off her tight-fitting gown, releasing the perfect curves of her body to him.'” Another button popped open on my blouse as I willed it to. “‘Take me! She moaned, wrapping her arms around his neck and bringing his lips to hers.’”
Derek was breathing close and, on my neck, the scent of his desire and the tapioca pudding he had earlier in the day was thick in the air. In a moment, he would be gone and in my thrall. “Oh Derek, I think I see what you mean.” I rubbed my legs together in mock excitement.
He took me into his arms and tried to dive for my neck, his hand reaching for my behind as he did so. They never know that this is all a game to me. More often I am simply disgusted by the effort.
I pushed him away. The trick as a succubus is that I can put any human under my command for a certain amount of time. As long as I do not fully feed, I can move him according to my needs and plans. “Oh Derek! I have never met a man like you!” I lied, some days it feels like I have only ever met men like him. “And I think you know this desire between us is there, but…”
“Yes, it’s here, Thelma. Let me show you how a man of God performs,” he said, and set about unbuttoning his pants.
“No. No. Not here. Not like this. Tomorrow evening. Meet me at my store at six. I’ll close early to do....” I winked and ran my tongue across my teeth “...inventory.” I raked my nails across his forearm to mark him. “Until then.”
I kissed two of my fingers and pressed them to his neck. Then I scooped up my coat, the book, and a stray letter opener in one swift movement and left his home and him wanting more.
Foolish men. Foolish yesterday. Foolish today. They will be foolish tomorrow.
September 26th
Early this morning I had a friend watch the store as I made a “delivery”. It's a school day, and Roberta would be at some church meeting that I had seen on one of the fliers. I dropped into John Sr.’s office for a drive by consultation. He was around, as it is almost lunchtime and well after tax season. Before he could ask me to leave, I sat across from him in tears.
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“John! You don’t understand! I think I’m going to be audited!” I said in fake hysterics. He panicked. I’m sure Roberta had read him the riot act for being as attentive as he has been in public. He hesitated coming around next to me, but ultimately followed his instinct and put a tentative hand very carefully atop my shoulder. “I don’t know what to do!” I wept.
“Now, now, um...” He passed a tissue. “What makes you think you’re being audited?” He finally put that hand on my shoulder, and I covered it with mine while dabbing my eyes with the tissue.
“Well... I got this phone call and…”
He laughed.
I looked up at him, sniffing, my jacket coming undone. “What’s so funny?” I leaned into his knee.
“Oh! That’s a scam! You’re not being audited!”
Looking up at him with a pitifully grateful expression and a quiver in my voice I said, “I’m not?” I placed a hand on his knee and his jaw went slack.
Mere moments and a few seductive suggestions and touches later, he was in my thrall. Unable to think of anything aside from my body, he was intoxicated by me and therefore at my command. I let him know that we should meet that evening, to consummate our affections physically. I ran a fingernail along his jaw. I told him I was actually afraid to go anywhere in general lately, lying and telling him my fears owed to a stalker-like stranger I’d seen lately in and around my store. He wanted to defend me against this “stalker”, being the man he was, he claimed, he would take care of this stranger himself.
He said he would bring a weapon at 6:15. I left him wanting more.
I poured hand sanitizer on my walk back to the store. Passing the grocery while scrubbing my hands with the sanitizer, I decided to stop in and pick up a large box of chocolates that Tabitha likes. She has become so frustrated with my non-answers that she has given up speaking to me altogether. But I can feel it in the air, that she is approaching heartbreak soon, and she will need something to comfort that. I hoped, I even prayed that she will come to me when that happens. That’s a time a girl needs her mother the most.
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