Desiderium, Monsters the First Ch 16
My #WedPeeks post for this week is chapter sixteen of my new novella, coming soon! Desiderium is a dark fantasy/horror and is for mature readers.
*Warning: There is violence, sex, and a lot of profanity in these pages.
~ SIXTEEN ~
Realization
The first thing I did when I finally stumbled, exhausted, into my house was eat. The second thing I did was search out all of the pictures I had of Sophie, pull them out of the hiding places I had stuffed them in, and set them back into the light of day.
Now that I was fully awake, I realized how much I missed her. I wanted so badly to see her and to hear her voice. The phone was a constant temptation for me. She was only ten digits away. But she had been specific. Remember her, think of her, but call her only when I had come out on the far side of this thing. I was not through. I was in the thick of it. I had no idea if Annabel would go after a woman, but I had no intention of finding out. There was no way I was going to call Sophie until I had seen this through and was able to go back to living a normal life. As normal is it could be, anyway, knowing now that monsters were real. With Sophie’s face all around me once more, I fell into an exhausted sleep. I had to regain my strength. Annabel really had left me for dead, and I think if it hadn’t been for Sophie and the memories we’d made together, I would have been.
I had some research to do. What was she? And how the hell do you kill whatever she was? I found the answer to the first question surprisingly fast. A succubus, a demonic being that fed off the sexual energy of humans. It proved a lot harder to figure out how to kill one, though. Most of the info I found involved adolescent boys whining about a girl they were dating who they thought was crazy or needy. There was also plenty of information centered around exorcism and demonic possession, but none of that really seemed to apply to my situation. I was not possessed, I was obsessed; two very different things.
Searches into the occult got me closer, but the results quickly overwhelmed me and I couldn’t tell what was fact (if you could call any of this fact) and what was just Joebob Internet Troll’s opinion/fantasy on the matter. I didn’t have time to learn the in’s and out’s of the occult. I needed answers now. I needed help.
I turned my attentions to finding the nearest occult store. I walked in and walked right up to the cashier. The place was empty, thank God. I felt stupid just being here, felt sure I’d be laughed out of the place as soon as I asked my questions, and the fewer folks around to witness my humiliation the better. I felt like a tool, but I owned it, walked right up and just asked outright.
“Um, excuse me,” I started, trying to sound confident. The woman behind the counter looked up from whatever she was reading with a vague smile on her face. Friendly, but only because she had to be. Clearly she was very involved in whatever she was reading. But once she had focused on me her eyes narrowed, and the glance turned to a bit more of an examination. I squared my shoulders, ready for embarrassment.
“I need to know how to kill a succubus.” I spit it out clearly in all my humiliated glory, and then waited. But this pronouncement was met with silence. She was still staring at me, her eyes somehow unfocused and focused at once.
“Succubus,” she said, then, “yes, you most certainly do. I have never seen anyone so drained yet still living. How long has this been going on?”
I stared in open-mouthed surprise. I had thought she’d laugh me out of the place, but she’d not only taken my announcement in stride but acted as if this ridiculous thing I had just admitted was as obvious as the weather. Maybe I had a big giant S for succubus emblazoned on my chest. Or maybe S for sucker.
I had always believed places like this were really all about new-age-y hippy Christians acting all open-minded and shit; apparently that wasn’t entirely true. Certainly not this place, and certainly not the woman behind the cash register.
“A couple of months,” I replied finally.
“Only a couple of months? You look like you’re barely on this side of dead,” she said, making a disapproving little tsk tsk noise with her tongue.
I shuddered at how close to the truth that statement was. It had been two weeks since I had set foot outside my apartment. During that time I had slept and ate and slept some more. I had done some thinking, too, but mostly I’d slept, giving my body time to recover. Giving it time to take a few steps away from death’s doorstep. I felt OK, but obviously didn’t look it.
She nodded knowingly. “You have never set foot in a place like this before, have you, Honey?” she asked. I took a breath to answer but she just kept on talking. “This will be hard for you, being a neophyte and all, but it has got to be you. No one can banish her except you. Priests’ll say different of course, but their full of cockamamie bullshit. Succubi ain’t like other demons. They don’t possess.”
She had moved out from behind the counter and was bustling through the store gathering stuff together in a basket. Rocks of various sizes and colors, one remarkably phallic in shape, herbs—some loose and some bundled—four white candles. Wordless, I followed behind, listening.
“Without a possession, there is no exorcism. And the trappings of religion mean nothing to these entities anyway. Simple elemental type critters they are, their language is in the ebb and flow of energy only, doing whatever they need to keep the flow moving. To stay alive, and stay here, where they have easy access to human energy. Male energy.” She turned and looked at me with studied focus, winked, and went back to gathering.
“She can be banished, though…”
“I want to kill her—it. Not banish it.”
“Well now.” The woman smiled as she made her way back to the cash register with a basket full of occult goodies. “For these critters, that’s one and the same. You can send them back to where they come from. They don’t exactly die, though. Not the way you and I’ll do some day. That’s why they love feeding on us. Mortal energy is violent and brief, just like our lives. Burns hard and hot, but it burns fast. Such energy is difficult to find in other places. I think it’s like a drug for those things from the other side.”
Like a drug, I thought. So I was her drug, just as she was mine. I suppressed a shudder.
“Now…” The woman was saying, “…I will write down what you need to do step by step. Follow the directions explicitly. The summons needs to come from you. You’ll know what to do, but if you don’t prep right and set up right you’ll not likely come through to see another day. You need to make damn sure you’re protected before you start this. And strong. Now, go wander around while I write, we’ll talk about it when I’m done.” She made a shooing motion with both hands.
I wandered around the store looking at everything from tarot cards to bibles while the woman scribbled away up front. When she finished she walked me through everything and sent me on my way. I had to wait almost a month before I could give it try. Time to heal, the woman had said, to get strong, and to do the ceremony when the moon was right. When everything was supposedly in my favor, my power waxing at its strong point.
So that was that. I had a month to do what was likely going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.
I had to dig up my brother and steal his bones.
The only way to truly banish a succubus is by stabbing her with a knife made from the humerus of one of her victims. The idea of digging up Blake from his grave and desecrating his body made me sick and shamed. Revenge may be sweet, but it’s also ugly.
