A Dance with Desire

From the moment I first saw him, I knew he was different. The role of a succubus is to visit men and women in their dreams and give them all that they need to feel entirely satisfied before sucking their life force out of their throat. Before him, I thought all that was needed to fully satisfy a human was indulging in a night of animalistic, soul-breaking sex. But something about this one was different. His eyes never loitered down to my d-cups. His hairs didn’t stand on end when I whispered sweet nothings in his ear. His words didn’t begin to stutter and repeat themselves when I innocently worked my tender hand under his shirt.

He was a slightly chubby man, with ginger hair and a freckled, amiable face. His sky blue eyes looked free of judgement or severity, only displaying a small barrier of mistrust. He wore a sweater and some ripped jeans, and his cologne smelt like firewood. I’m used to the type that smells musky enough to give you a lung condition, but he smelt warm and cosy. It was a nice change.

In my realm of powers as a succubus, I have the ability to construct any story and landscape to my victims dreams, and transform them at my will. I typically use a familiar place from the person’s memory, somewhere they’re fond of that has a somewhat romantic atmosphere. Today I was using a bar that he occasionally goes to with his friends. I thought the dark, dramatic lighting and ambient music in the background would help to set the scene. Even so, he didn’t look at me with any of the intentions that I'm accustomed to.

Eventually I gave up. “So… Are you gay or something?”. His eyes looked away from me and down his glass of beer. “Uh, yeah. I’m ace.” He must have noticed my blank stare, “Asexual. I don’t feel any sexual attraction or desire.” Oh. That’s new. Then why am I here? 

“No desire at all? You're not feeling sexually unsatisfied in any way?” 

“Well, asexuality is a spectrum. Some feel a little attraction, or only in a certain circumstance. Or they still have a libido, but only like to satisfy it on their own, if ya know what I mean.” He took another sip of beer. “But as for me, I stay away from sex completely.” 

“If you’re looking for a client,” He gave me a little elbow nudge, “I suggest that fellow over there.” He pointed to a rolex-wearing older man sitting alone in a dim-lit booth in the corner of the bar, despondently looking down a glass of cider. I almost snorted out the margarita I was daintily sipping. “NO. No, I’m not… I-” I took another sip of my drink while working out a way to phrase my interest in him without blowing my cover. “I… I just wanted to spend some time with you. You seem lonely. Unfulfilled. I want to fix that.”

His eyes broadcasted a distrustful glare. “Why?” He asked, his voice as soft as a human voice can go without dissolving into a whisper. As if asking such a vulnerable question any louder would be leaving his guts open and naked on the bar table for me to feast on.

When I am spawned into somebody’s dream, some information is passed into my head about my new prey. Not everything, but just enough to allow me to seduce my way to their trust without prompting suspicion. Just enough to know that his name is Michael (Mikey boy to his close friends, and Mike to his parents), he’s deathly scared of spiders because they infested his bedsheets as a kid, and that people close to him love to take advantage of his kindness.

Because of this, I knew I had to get my answer right. “Why not?” I replied and gave him a friendly - and less flirty - pat on the arm. “I’m just looking for someone to hang out with tonight,” I continued, “And you seem like a good candidate for that someone.” 

After a couple seconds of interrogating me with his eyes, looking me up and down, his gaze softened. It’s always easier to convince people of things in their dreams; they don’t seem to question the most absurd circumstance. But even in the fog of slumber, Michael had more emotional armour put up than the rest. 

“Alright,” he said, “Can I buy you another drink?” 

“No thank you,” I shot him a warm smile, hoping not to show my slightly-too-sharp-to-be-human teeth. “But please tell me, Mr ‘I don’t have sex’, what keeps you satisfied in life?”

“The name’s Michael, actually.” He said with a soft laugh. “And as for your question… many things. I mean, there’s more to life than sex, y’know.” That was news to me, but still, I gave him a chuckle. “Sunsets, playing board games with my friends, lying on the grass and watching the stars late at night. Anything that makes me feel like a living, breathing person. ”

“Right…” How am I supposed to give him a lifetime worth of euphoria in sunsets and board games?

“How about this?” I broached, “If you could do anything in the world right now - anything at all - what would it be?” 

“Hmmm… that’s a good one,” He smiled at me warmly and took a deep breath.

“When I was 7 years old and learnt about the solar system in school, I wanted nothing more than to go to outer space. I had this image in my head of seeing the world in all it’s glory, half illuminated by the sun’s light. This huge mass of blue with splotches of green that makes up our entire existence. And then I would come back to earth and I would be able to say that I’ve seen everything. The whole world. All of it.” He took a deep sigh of contentment and the stars in his eyes seemed to shimmer. 

Then he continued, “But anyway, I’ve long since given up training for the NASA astronaut programme. Don’t worry, I’m not delusional.” He said with a heavy laugh. “The ideal astronaut is much stronger than I am, and I’m just not-”

“Let’s go.” 

He chortled. “Sure, let’s go to space!”

“No, I’m serious. Let’s go.” I grabbed him by the arm and ran with him out of the bar, giggling.

“Wait- I didn’t pay yet!” 

Under my command, the buildings and roads of this dreamscape all swirled around us and merged into a cacophonic tunnel of sounds and patterns that had been residing in Michaels subconscious. Honking car horns, bitter shouts of his parents, purring cats. The swirling waves of colours around us occasionally amalgamated into pictures; wrinkled smiling faces of loved ones, the sunsets he had spoken oh so fondly of, the magenta and yellow tulips that grew in the backyard of his childhood home. Running through this tunnel of reminiscence took a lot of strength, despite our bodies feeling weightless. All of the sounds and images grew stronger until they weaved under and over one another to create the fabric of a new physical landscape.

Michael put his hands on his knees and wheezed  for a few seconds. “What the fuck was that?” 

I jumped up, held in the air by the zero-gravity, and hugged my arms around his chest from behind. In front of us in this metal walled space station was the earth. Even though I knew it was all an illusion I created out of his imagination, it was still eye watering to see the world as it really is, rotating on it’s axis in the expansive void of space. I whispered gently in his ear “Look around you, Michael.” In the reflection of the window I saw his pupils expand like black holes and his lips part in awe. This wasn’t the casual yet guarded smile I saw from him in the bar, nor was it the same smirk I see in my other victims when they first see my body in all it’s glory. No, this was different. 

After a minute or so, he turned to face me and the (literally) starstruck look on his face turned to an almost boyish grin. “You actually took me to space!”

“I told you I would!” I couldn’t help but start giggling. And of course, he couldn’t help but start giggling too. 

Laughing in zero gravity is a strange thing; it sort of propels you backwards, and then that makes you laugh even more- especially when you hit your head against the back of the spaceship. At that point, the person you’re hanging out with (who you took to space in their dream for some strange reason) will cackle at you even more. Eventually, this whole ordeal will result in you and your friend pressed against opposite walls of a space station with your mouths aching from laughter, looking into each other’s eyes and wondering whether this is what it feels like to be happy.

“You never told me your name,”

And then you remember that you will never understand what it feels like to be happy, because there isn’t even enough of a ‘you’ to experience these emotions for longer than a single moment. So you think of a name. “... Evelyn”

“Evelyn,” He repeated to himself, as if trying out how the name feels in his mouth. How it feels for his tongue to go through those specific motions. “It’s a beautiful name.”

“Thank you.” It’s not mine. 

I pushed myself over to the window that he was leaning on. “Is it everything that you imagined it would be?” I asked.

He took in a deep breath and tears formed in his eyes, “It really is.”

“Good.”

“Thank you, Evelyn.”

‘Evel-hynnn” The word echoed around the space chamber, and the blackness from the window grew larger until it swallowed my whole vision.

I opened my eyes. I found myself on the carpeted floor of a mid-sized bedroom. One with space themed posters stuck to the walls, different board games stacked on a shelf, and a tabby cat sitting in the corner and watching me with its bright blue eyes.

It was all just a dream. Of course. How could I let myself forget.

I’m not sure why, but I felt tears running down my cheeks. This had never happened to me before. The stream ran down to my lips, and I licked it. It tasted salty and warm and... Human. 

Looking down, I saw a tall, ginger-haired man laying limp in my arms, his eyes closed by the haze of sleep and his lips slightly apart. For a minute, I let him rest and listened to his monotonous breathing. Watched his chest rise and fall with a steady, reliable rhythm like the tide of an ocean. 

I couldn’t hold back fate for any longer; the time had come. With the hand that I had been resting his head on, I cupped his neck and brought his head up to my mouth. I placed my lips on his and took a deep breath. Along with all of the air in his lungs came his life force; his childhood hopes, his deep-rooted fears, every one of his thoughts. His whole being was with me now.

I will have forgotten most of it by tomorrow. I always do. 

I looked at his forehead, sprinkled with dirt-brown freckles, which his mother used to kiss when he was a young boy. I wonder where that love will go now. I kiss it, as an apology; to his mother for taking her sweet boy, and to him. A verbal apology wouldn’t have been enough, so all I could do was press my lips to his still-warm skin. My kiss left a lipstick stain on his forehead; my crimson red lipstick shade contrasted against the pale pink skin like an abstract painting. My tears dripped down onto the red and made it run like blood down his face, some of it falling into his mouth through his parted lips. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” I couldn’t help but whisper under my breath. But it wasn’t enough. I kissed him again, on his cheek, then his neck. Over and over I embraced my lips to every part of his body. Every second my lipstick appearing more extreme against his ever fading skin. Soon I realised I wasn’t kissing a person anymore but a dead thing. A husk. 

My affection had made him look more inhuman, more violated, if anything. The lipstick and tears that now covered him from head to toe made him look like the victim of a brutal ravaging. Which he really was, I suppose. 

I stayed in the room for the next day, laying under his bed. I wanted to see what would happen to the body. He deserved his peace, after all.

The police came into his room the next day, after being called by his horrified mother. It was two policemen who trudged into the room wearing their gloves and holding evidence bags. One taller man with a beard and one shorter but skinnier man, who appeared younger and had bright blond hair. 

They both grimaced a little when they entered the room. “The amount of blood on that. Must have been a stabbing.” said the taller fellow.

“No, sir” Said the younger looking man, who had crouched on the floor and dipped his finger in the mixture, looking at it with disbelief. “It’s lipstick.”