To Help a Succubus

Stephen couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d never considered himself a loser or an ugly duckling but he certainly wasn’t dashing or popular either. But here he was with the hottest girl on campus sliding his shirt over his head while he tried to get her bra undone. Apparently he wasn’t quick enough because she reached back and had it off with one hand as she went for his belt with the other. Then he was sitting on the small dorm bed, his pants halfway down his thighs.

A flash of light nearly blinded him and he knew at that moment that this was all a prank and one of her friends was waiting in the closet. He wondered if she’d forgotten to turn the flash off or if it had been needed inside the darkened closet. Stephen started to push Lisa off him but she persisted as if she hadn’t also just been partially blinded.

“Hey, c’mon stop!” He hadn’t meant to be so loud but he was frustrated and his eyes were still a bit blurry and he really didn’t like that she had played him for a fool. He could only imagine the fun little memes they’d make with the pic her friend had snapped of him.

Lisa backed away a step, she had never heard a guy say that before, at least not once things had gotten this far. She wasn’t certain how to proceed.

Stephen’s vision finally cleared, but that only compounded his problems. The closet was open … and empty. Strange. Stranger still, Lisa was glowing lavender and there seemed to be something over her head. A halo? Surely not. It wasn’t golden or round or anything like that. It was a … word. He stood up, his jaw slack, trying to get a better look. Succubus.

“Are we gonna do this or not?”

Stephen had heard of succubi and knew all about them even though he was certain they didn’t exist–or if they did he didn’t believe in them–but that’s not what caused him to stumble and smack his head on the wall as he tried to run with his jeans still wrapped around his thighs. He scrambled to pull up his pants and staggered out of the room as if he were a man on fire being chased by pissed off bees, leaving Lisa confused as to what to do with the rest of her break between classes–and the clothes her latest distraction had left behind.

He’d heard all the stories about crazy uncle Louis and everyone with a pulse knew Grandmother was battier than a dark cave even if no mental health professionals had graced her with a diagnosis to put name to the madness. And now, he was going quite insane. As he walked words popped up over everyone’s heads. Most he couldn’t read as they passed him a blur, which didn’t bother him considering they were figments of his imagination, but the ones he could make out only added to his confusion and the certainty that he was a lunatic.

Dreamcatcher. Pizza Sense. Temp Shift.

At this rate he didn't know whether reality would hold together long enough to get to a good shrink or if the buildings would start exploding into confetti before he made it back to his own room.

He was only a couple of blocks away from his dorm when his new nightmare occurred. A lecture let out and dozens of other students were streaming out of the door in front of him. To them, he was just another future alumnus of U of H. To him, they were a giant marching book. A sea of seemingly nonsensical adjectives that ran like a river of madness over the sidewalk.

Cookie Cutter. Dog Reader. Thrower. Penny Finder. Detangler. Direction Sense. Small Object Recall. ??????. Vocal Mimic. Space Bubble. ????. Perfect Tanner. Bloom Master. Truth Sense. ?????????. Subtle Guidance. Machine Mender. ?????.

Stephen staggered to a bench and screwed his eyes shut, not even realizing that he was gripping the underside of his seat for dear life. Afterimages of the words remained almost as if they’d been seared into his brain. He could hear some laughing and people talking about how obviously hammered he was when he remembered he was still at least half naked–more, if you counted the lack of his shoes. He didn’t care what they said. At that moment, there was nothing in the world that would make him open his eyes. He took slow deep breaths and waited for the laughing and jeering wall of people to disperse. The crowd was gone in half a minute that felt like three quarters of an eternity.

By the time Stephen was back in his room he was starting to calm down a bit. Getting a shirt on did him a world of good and as he sat down in front of his laptop to start doing a bit of googling, he felt almost normal. Nothing weird here. In fairness, that might just be because there were no other people around but he didn’t think that schizophrenia worked that way. He was fairly certain the hallucinations were audio and visual and that the visual ones weren’t confined to something so specific as strange tags floating over people’s heads or weird auras on hot girls you were trying to hook up with.

***

A week passed. Googling had not done anything but increase his anxiety by continually leading him to the conclusion that he must certainly be insane but that it couldn’t be anything as fun and garden variety as a mild schizophrenia. He’d tried to avoid going out of his room as much as he could and thanked God ten times a day that he’d had the wisdom to get a single room so there was nobody else to have to look at when he was there. Alas, he had two attendance mandatory classes this semester and he wouldn’t be able to pay back his stipend money if he failed them and lost his scholarship. So, on Tuesday and Thursday he ventured forth to face his madness. He tried his darkest sunglasses at first but they did nothing to stop his hallucinations. Covering the majority of the inside of the lenses with electrical tape so that he was looking through a pinhole helped immensely, but he also had almost no idea where he was going. He thought about getting a walking stick from a medical supply store to solve that issue, but he had no idea how he would explain his sudden–and quite possibly reversible–blindness to the people who knew him around campus. He was initially surprised that Lisa hadn’t come around, but realized she was probably busy with some other guy who didn’t have a psychotic break at the sight of her tits.

After the second week, he knew that whatever had happened to him was not just going to go away. He’d been back and forth about seeking professional help a million times and always decided he’d rather cope with being crazy in freedom than in a padded cell somewhere–which is where he imagined they’d send him after he told anyone what he was seeing. But, he knew that he had to do something. He couldn’t spend the next three years running around half blind and terrified of having to see anyone above the neck.

***

Stephen didn’t like shrinks. He respected the profession and the required education, but after having had to sit in enough of their offices for family and other counseling in his youth, he felt incredibly uncomfortable around them. He was extremely glad to find out that Dr. Krazen–what a perfect name for a doctor with the words Master Manipulator floating over her head–had a very good friend who was something of a specialist in the condition that he was afflicted with. She didn’t even bother charging him for the hour, which he didn’t find all that generous considering it’d only taken ten minutes to get her colleague’s card and carry on with his day.

Stephen called the number on the card immediately–for whatever reason, there was no name, or address, just a phone number in red against the black background. The man on the other end of the phone seemed to know he was going to be calling–most likely Dr. Krazen had already alerted him, though Stephen found it a bit strange that she had been in more of a rush than him to call the specialist–and offered to meet him any time he found convenient over the coming days, but also advising that they have their conversation sooner rather than later.

***

“I suppose the first thing you’re going to want from me is a cure. Something I can write out on a piece of paper and affix my signature to that a pharmacy will translate into pills in a bottle that you can swallow and go back to the way things were two weeks ago.”

Stephen took a few moments to answer. Part of him was impressed by the accuracy of the statement concerning his situation while another more deeply rooted part of him scoffed. Of course. What could be more obvious? It didn’t take a mind reader or specialist in the field to know that the only thing crazy people wanted was something to make them not crazy anymore.

“That’s exactly right, but something in your tone tells me you’re about to say it’s not that simple. Something tells me you’re going to say it’s impossible. If so, you could’ve just said that over the phone and been done with it without having me sit in your office begging and pleading for something that doesn't exist. So, go on. What is it? Am I stuck like this or have I misread things?”

“There’s no cure because there’s nothing wrong with you. Simple as that.”

“You don’t think constant hallucinations qualifies as something wrong? I’m sorry, what kind of specialist are you?”

“The kind that has the same … gift you do.”

Stephen was more than skeptical. Part of him realized that if he was crazy he couldn’t be the only person to ever live with this specific insanity–otherwise how would they name, and ultimately treat whatever it was–but he also had a very hard time convincing himself that there were other people going through life imagining tags over everyone else’s heads. And, if there were others, what were the odds he was sitting in a room with one of them now? Whatever this was was rare enough that two weeks of research had given him exactly zero leads and even fewer answers.

“Then what’s my tag say?”

“I can’t see yours. Just like you can’t see mine. It’s quite the conundrum, if I’m being completely honest. I imagine if we could see each other’s knacks we would see something like Seer or Power Detection or Knack Sense. I’m still not certain how the …tags, as you call them, work. I am curious, though. Would you be so kind as to tell me what Dr. Krazen’s tag was?”

“So you can tell me you saw the same thing, or a similar variation of it, and then con me into believing you really understand me?”

“Fair point.” Dr. Goldin pulled out a small slip of paper and a pen and started writing. He folded the paper in half and passed it to Stephen. “Now you can’t say I lied just to make our answers match. You can open it up now or after if you want. I’m confident in my abilities whether or not you think yours are just a touch of common insanity.”

Stephen opened up the folded paper. Will Bender. He sat the paper down on the desk in the small office that felt more like a closet than the practice of a mental health professional.

“I’m waiting. I want to see how close your version is to mine. I think you can probably tell a lot about a Seer from how they see other people’s knacks.”

“Master Manipulator, though I suppose Will Bender is certainly another way of looking at it.”

“Ah, a cynic. Not that it wasn’t already obvious from your hostility, but I can’t fault you for being skeptical about something so … supernatural.” Dr. Goldin got up from his desk and went to the door, beckoning Stephen to follow.

The diner they went to was just around the corner. Stephen was surprised by how busy it was at four in the afternoon until he tried the blueberry pie. Whatever else happened in this strange meeting with this unusual man, he’d found a new spot to grab a good slice of pie when he was having a rough go of things.

They hadn’t just stepped out for homemade desserts, as Dr. Goldin made clear when he started pointing out patrons and discussing their knacks–what he called the tags floating above their heads. According to him, everyone had a knack. Some were as simple as the girl two booths down who could–according entirely to Goldin’s conjecture about the words Deep Sleep–sleep soundly through anything. Some, like the knack of a colleague he mentioned, could do things like give a person the ability to know whether someone was telling them the truth. Many people claimed to have either of those abilities, but according to Goldin, these people really had it.

After a few minutes, someone came out of the back to have a quick chat with the doctor. She was matronly even though she didn’t look to be older than her mid 30’s and she hadn’t bothered to take off her white and blue and red splotched apron. She smelled of heaven and of pies that Stephen knew he would be back for. And why wouldn’t she? Her knack was Pie Perfection. He wondered if it applied to pizzas too. Beyond that, she seemed to really adore Dr. Goldin–which Stephen found odd, because for reasons he couldn’t quite name, he found the man irritating. Finally, she turned to him as if it was the first time she was seeing him.

“And is Dr. Goldin helping you out, too?” She beamed at him. It made him uncomfortable when people smiled at him so openly–especially strangers.

“I … guess you could say that. Did he help you?”

“Did he help me? He only saved my life!” She threw her arms around Goldin and squeezed him like she expected him to squeak before saying her goodbyes and returning to the kitchen at the insistence of a very worried looking waitress.

“How did you save her life?”

“She exaggerates.”

“Oh come, Doctor, don’t be modest. You took me here to hear about what a life saver you are, so go ahead and tell me.”

“I let you come with me because I remember how I was when I first awakened the sight and I figured if you were anything like me you could use a good slice of pie.”

“Let me guess. You found her turning tricks in an alley and told her she could just make pies instead?”

“She found me.”

“In an alley, though, right?”

“In my office. Apart from my other activities, I am a legitimate therapist. Unlike most in my profession, though, I happen to be able to see people’s innate gifts and talents. Really see them, not just pretend to. Some might say that gives me a leg up in helping my patients. Remember. You sought me out. Your paranoia is forgivable under the circumstances, but the hostility is starting to grate on me, if I'm being honest. You want my help or you don't. I'd really like to help you, seeing as you're the first other person I've encountered with my knack, but I'm not going to force myself on you.”

“That's just it. I'm not sure how you can help me. Maybe if my knack was making pies you could help me get a loan to open up a place like this, but my knack is just seeing what other people are good at. I'm not sure how I'm supposed to be able to use that.”

“Use it the only ethical way you can use any power. Use it to help others.”

Stephen was ashamed that the thought hadn't occurred to him first. Granted, until about an hour ago he was completely sure he was insane, but still.

“Okay, let's say I'm not crazy.”

“Thank you for catching up.”

“And I do want to use wha

tever this is to help people.”

“One would certainly hope.”

“How do you help a succubus?”

“I'm sorry … what?”