DEMONLOVER
Nancy A. Collins
Sina was restless. She couldn’t squat in front of the television set and act as if nothing was wrong between the two of them. She finally decided to go out and catch some live music, shrugging off Mike’s silent reproach. She knew she’d have to deal with his pouting when she came home, but she didn’t care. She had to get out of the house or go mad.
As she pulled into the club’s parking lot, she saw a man loitering in front of the building. He stood with his hands in his pockets, one leg drawn up, the boot heel resting against the doorframe. He was cool and he knew it. The wall behind him bristled with rusty staples like a buzz-cut porcupine. The bar’s door was propped open, allowing the music to thump and crash its way onto the street.
As she drew closer, Sina saw he was tall and lean, with a handsomely muscled waist. His hair was blond and cut so it fell across his brow with practiced nonchalance. His eyes were electric blue, cold as witchfire. They were the eyes of a white tiger on the prowl.
Something detonated inside her. She grabbed the car’s fender in order to steady herself. Excitement turned the oxygen in her lungs into ice crystals and helium.
A blond. Funny, she’d never been attracted to blonds before. She normally preferred dark men, the closer to the Mephistophelean ideal the better.
Her throat constricted into a dry tube and her ears filled with the sound of blood. She felt clumsy and ridiculous, but there would be no running away. The longing would not permit it. A horrible giddiness surged through her, just like the time she’d taken nitrous oxide at the dentist’s prior to losing cavities.
Sina hesitated, digging into her pocketbook for the cover charge. She could feel his eyes flicker over her like lasers. She looked up, forcing herself to keep from trembling. He was studying her, his lips compressed into a flat, unreadable smile. His eyes were those of a debased angel, blue as Depression glass.
She averted her gaze and moved into the thundering dark of the club. She didn’t have to turn to see if he was following her. She could feel his presence, as if she were joined to him by an invisible cord.
The club was close and smoky, the walls painted flat black in an attempt to create the illusion of space. The band was thrashing away on the stage, surrounded by a knot of wildly pogoing dancers. She wound her way to the bar and was startled to see him already lounging there. The only open space was at his elbow. Setting her jaw, she moved next to him and ordered a beer.
She had to fight to keep from gasping aloud when he shifted his stance. His hip rubbed against her like a tomcat. The beer bottle shook as she lifted it to her lips.
She had found him. It had to be him! The sexual arousal she experienced was so powerful it was almost unpleasant. Her crotch ached just looking at him. But what could she do about it? She wasn’t drunk enough to simply swagger up and tell him to take her home and make her like it. She’d been out of circulation too long. She’d forgotten the anxiety and paranoia inherent in the mating ritual. What if he didn’t want her? What if he was gay? The stainless-steel death’s head leering at her from his earlobe didn’t help matters either. As much as she loathed frustration, she feared rejection even more.
“I noticed you looking. See anything you like?”
For a moment she didn’t realize he’d actually spoken to her. She blinked rapidly, as if startled from a daze. His face was inches from hers and she inhaled his musk, pleasantly redolent of masculine sweat. Her brain froze like a rabbit pinned by the headlights of an oncoming car.
He’s bad news. You can tell by looking at him. No. On second thought, don’t look at him. Don’t do it. Don’t say anything. Finish your beer and go home. That was the last she heard from her common sense.
All attempts at witty remarks and sly come-ons fled. Her prepared speech died in her throat. All she could do was answer with the truth.
“Everything.”
His name was Feral. He smiled when he said it. He pulled her onto the dance floor, his personality sinking its fingers into her will. Had he asked her to cut off her right hand, she would have gladly done it.
Every time he touched her she felt her skin tighten, as if a mild electric current had passed between them. She’d forgotten the exhilaration that comes with a sensual high. When Feral wearied of dancing, he suggested they go outside. The night breeze rapidly cooled the sweat on her body, making her shiver.
As she leaned her back against the wall, Feral tucked his left leg between her thighs and ground himself against her hips. It was an incredibly juvenile, but deeply gratifying, public display.
He kissed her, his tongue probing with expert thrusts. His arms encircled her, locking around the small of her back. She felt like she was in a vise and, for a few brief moments, he lifted her on tiptoe. She could not control her breathing or pulse. Her fingertips vibrated against his skin.
He disengaged himself from their embrace and motioned for her to follow. Feral ducked into the alley that flanked the club, negotiating the garbage-strewn passageway with the grace of a panther. Sina wasn’t quite as certain.
“Feral?”
He turned, his eyes glowing in the darkness. He reached out, quick as a snake, and drew her to him, capturing her left wrist and pinning her arm behind her. There was no violence, no struggle; just the sound of their mouths meshing. Feral’s free hand explored her body under her blouse, his fingers tracing the curve of her rib cage, squeezing her nipples and rubbing them with the ball of his thumb. She gasped aloud, writhing against him like a cat in heat. His mouth covered hers and she had to remind herself to breathe.
Feral backed her against the wall, plucking at the snaps on her jeans. His erection, lumped in his pants, was nestled against her hip. Feral reached down to pull on his belt buckle, and for the first time since she’d entered the alley, she was afraid.
“No!” She freed her left arm and placed her hand atop his own.
Feral stopped, his blue eyes questioning her. What could she say? That she was scared of fucking? He’d think she was some kind of neurotic cocktease.
“No, Feral. Not here. Not like this.” She nodded to the heaps of reeking garbage that decorated the alley.
He stood there for a second, then nodded. His hand dipped into his pants pocket and handed her a motel key.
“When you’re ready, just come on over. I’ll be there.”
Sina sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the man she’d once imagined she would spend the rest of her life with. She knew she should feel guilty there was so little remorse to be scavenged from the death of a five-year-old relationship.
She studied Mike’s familiar features, now rendered alien by the hollowness inside her. She tried to remember what it had been like, before the tedium and resentment leeched the passion from their lives. Her head began to throb.
She closed her eyes, trying to summon pleasant memories of their life together, but all she could feel was the longing, roiling like a storm cloud inside her.
The years they’d spent together had not been perfect, but they had been good. At first she didn’t mind the long evenings at home; after the numerous chaotic affairs she’d suffered through, it was somewhat novel not to party every weekend.
Yet, although her previous lovers proved to be highly unstable, sex with them had been like walking on live coals and swimming the Arctic Ocean at the same time. She was dismayed to find sex with Mike lacked the delightful friction she’d grown accustomed to. She hoped that as they grew together, their sex drives would adapt accordingly—his increasing while hers decelerated, until they reached a suitable, mutually satisfying compromise.
At the end of two years Sina marveled over how they’d succeeded in reaching a level of stagnation it had taken her parents two decades to attain.
After their fourth anniversary passed without comment or celebration, Sina knew she’d been deluding herself.
It was then that the longing began. At first it was shadowy, ill-formed post-coital dissatisfaction. She no longer made advances toward Mike, preferring to accommodate him whenever he felt the urge, which, thankfully, proved to be infrequently. Sex, once her drug of choice, had become housework.
She knew she was being silly. So what if sex with Mike didn’t sparkle? He loved and respected her. He offered her shelter and stability. She forced herself to recall her earlier relationships; the ones that had left her—emotionally bruised and physically battered—on his doorstep in the first place. The memories were sordid, tinged with self-disgust and more than a little sexual excitement. The hunger grew.
It was sheer accident she’d come across the poem.
When she read of the nameless woman, wailing for her demon lover, her face burned with the heat of recognition.
She realized she was mourning the lover she’d gone so long without. The lover she’d pursued in all his varied, imperfect guises for close to a decade.
She knew that the only love her demon was capable of was self-destructive, cruel, vampiric, parasitic, and all the other words her best friends had used to describe Jerry, Alec, Christian, Matt, and the others whose names, faces and genitalia had now blurred together in her memories. They were men incapable of love yet able to inspire suicide threats.
There was something about the love they offered her that friends could never understand, and it was beyond her ability to explain. Despite the unhealthiness of the attraction, Sina had experienced ecstasy with her would-be demon lovers. In order to taste the kind of love the poets rhapsodized about, Sina knew she had to suffer. To love as the immortals do is to know damnation.
At first she’d felt guilty for being unable to transcend the demands of the flesh, but that was soon replaced by resentment of Mike’s inability to provide her with what she needed. He could not save her from herself and she hated him for that.
The longing continued to grow. She couldn’t close her eyes without seeing disembodied sex organs pumping away like Victorian steam engines.
She was hesitant about taking action. She still remembered Lee and how he’d dislocated her shoulder and blackened both her eyes. She had loved him with a passion that was close to maniacal. She had lost control that time—and it nearly cost her life. It had certainly robbed her of her self-respect.
One evening when Mike was not home, she went out to a bar, intent on screwing the first man who looked at her sideways. Once she got there, she discovered she couldn’t settle for just any man.
The older men in their synthetic-fiber suits were ridiculous, if not actively repellent. Sina visualized them naked: paunches overshadowing their erections, their bandy legs white and absurdly hairy compared to their heads.
The younger boys with their acid-washed jeans and silk tour jackets were incapable of appreciating the lyricism of sexuality; all they were interested in was hopping on, getting off, and pulling out.
There’d been no demon lover there to satisfy her. She knew that when she finally found him, the recognition would be immediate. Her heart, soul, and womb would know him the minute she saw him.
She knew Feral was the one she hungered for. She glanced at Mike’s slumbering form, his back to her. She promised herself to sleep on it before acting on Feral’s offer. She climbed in bed next to Mike, pulling her limbs tight against her body in order to keep from accidentally touching him in her sleep.
She needed to get her head straight and think about what had happened. She had security, a home, and someone who cared for her. She couldn’t throw that away.
When she closed her eyes Feral was there, shimmering like an ice sculpture in the Mojave, and she knew what her decision would be.
The motel was every bit as seedy as she’d expected it to be. Men like Feral didn’t shack up at the Hilton. The motor court centered around a swimming pool with fungus-dappled tiles and a basin spider-webbed by slippage. An overweight woman in maid’s whites pushed a housekeeper’s trolley along the second story’s promenade. It was hard to tell if the towels on the cart were clean or dirty.
Sina stood outside the door to Feral’s room, working the key between her fingers like a rosary. She was walking the razor’s edge. She’d almost forgotten what an exquisitely scary experience it was, like hanging over an ice chasm with nothing but a piton for support.
I should leave now. While I can. I could still go back. Mike would never know the difference. We could start all over again. I could do it.
She unlocked the door and stepped into Feral’s room.
With the curtains pulled and the lights off, the room was as dark as a movie theater. There was a stale, closed odor permeating the air. Something heavy struck the carpet, as if someone had fallen from the bed onto the floor.
Feral’s voice came from the darkness, his tone urgent: “Close the door. Now.”
She did as she was told. Her eyes had grown accustomed to the gloom, although she found the smell stifling. She could see Feral on the opposite side of the double bed, his elbows propped against the mattress. She wondered if he was a pusher. If so, she was lucky she didn’t have a bullet in her skull from walking in unannounced.
“Feral … remember me? You gave me your key …?” She took a hesitant step forward.
“Sssina.” It sounded strangely sibilant. “Yes. I remember. I’ve been waiting for you.” He pulled himself upright, exposing bare white flesh down to his waist. He appeared to be supporting his entire body on his forearms, the muscles rigid as marble. Sina was relieved to find the insides of his arms free of needle tracks.
His chest was hairless. In fact, except for the champagne-colored hair on his head and his slightly darker eyebrows, Feral’s entire body was as smooth as glass. At least, those parts of his body she could see. She took another step toward him. Funny, he didn’t seem to have either nipples or navel.
Feral smiled and moved to meet her, gliding from behind the bed. His naked flesh glowed in the near-dark, as translucent as opal. His genitals were overlarge, and as she watched, his penis grew to full erection. It was almost enough to take her mind off the fact that from the crotch down Feral was a snake.
He was at least fifteen feet long, from his pointed ears to the tip of his tail, legs merging into a seamless column as thick as his torso. Like his human upper body, Feral’s serpent half was as pale as milk. Sina was reminded of the albino snakes found in deep caverns.
Feral moved like a cobra, holding his human self upright as he slithered forward. He towered over her, swaying slightly with every ripple of his abdomen. The revelation of Feral’s inhumanity was nowhere near as terrible as Sina’s realization that she still wanted him.
Feral’s erection was now parallel with her sternum, his amber hair brushing the mottled plaster ceiling. His eyes were still blue, only now the pupils had become reptilian. She could not look away and she recalled how, as a child, her grandmother once told her about snakes charming birds out of the trees and into their jaws.
“I’ve been searching for you for so long.” Feral’s voice managed to sound earnest, despite the forked tongue. “It took me so long to find you … to pinpoint the source of the Call that drew me from my place in Hell. I’m sorry I kept you waiting for all this time. I can only move amongst your kind at night. I was afraid I would never find you. But your Call was strong and it would not let me rest until I found you.”
He wrapped her in a moon-pale coil, his scales whispering against her flesh. He didn’t feel slimy at all. He felt so good she wanted his touch all over her body. She shed her clothes and gasped as his scales brushed against her naked flesh. Her hands caressed him and Feral hissed his pleasure. What was left of her sanity fled as she felt herself respond to his sinuous constrictions and undulations.
Feral’s coil tightened, lifting her within reach of his human self. She clasped his forearms, reaching up to kiss him, and wrapped her legs around his waist, lowering herself onto his erect penis. Feral’s split tongue flickered out, tasting her moans.
She pressed herself against his cool, dry skin and shivered as his tongue played across her breasts. For the first time in her life she was truly happy, cradled in the coils of the demon who’d braved the dangers of the mortal world in search of his human lover.
“So this is it, huh?” The john grinned. He smelled of Southern Comfort and his words came out slurred. He wore an ill-fitting polyester suit that did little to conceal the beer belly hanging over his belt. He stuck his hand up her skirt as Sina unlocked the motel-room door. “You bring all the guys you pick up here, you whore?”
“All of them.”
She opened the door, motioning for him to follow. As the john crossed the threshold, he sniffed and made a face.
“Phew! It sure does smell in here! You need to air this place out!”
“Don’t worry. In a little while you won’t notice it at all,” she assured him.
He giggled and licked his lips. “Ain’t that the truth.”
As Sina locked the door, Feral moved from his hiding place in the bedroom. The john had time and breath for one muffled shout before the coils silenced him.
After making sure he was suffocated, Feral and Sina quickly stripped the corpse of its clothes and wallet. The naked dead man’s belly overshadowed his pubis and his legs were hairier than his head.
Sina tossed the wrinkled polyester suit onto the mound of similar garments in the corner of the motel room. She’d have to make another trip to the Salvation Army pretty soon. She retired to the bed to sort through the wallet, leaving Feral to finish what he’d begun. She’d gotten used to the sound of cracking bones, but she still had a hard time watching when it came time for him to unhinge his jaw. Besides, he wasn’t the only boyfriend she’d had whose table manners left a lot to be desired.
She stuffed the bills and travelers checks into the shoebox she kept under the bed and dumped the credit cards and ID into a paper bag, to be disposed of in the nearest Dumpster.
It wouldn’t be much longer before someone noticed what was going on. But by then they would be well on their way. Feral made it sound really nice, not at all what she’d been led to expect. She was looking forward to meeting his folks. She had to be sure to stay on her best behavior. After all, every girl wants to make a good impression on her future in-laws.