Chris Miller

Succubus

Starting on Sunday, after an evening of heavy drinking alone in my room, I had four dreams on four consecutive nights, every one of the dreams different but all of them involving this same mysterious woman dressed in black. She was a real bitch. Every time I saw this woman I experienced a feeling of impending doom.

Sunday’s dream started on the steamship Orizaba, where I was drinking absinthe shots from a tarnished silver flask with the great American poet, Hart Crane. The sky was black and the sea air gave the atmosphere an ominous feel, like we were on the verge of something cataclysmic. We were somewhere north of Havana, in the Gulf of Mexico. The poet and I smoked high-priced Cuban cigars and talked about our favourite poets. He liked Charles Baudelaire and I preferred Robinson Jeffers.

“Ever read, ‘Be Angry at the Sun’ — an excellent poem,” I said.

“Overrated tripe,” said Hart Crane, blowing cigar smoke in my face.

We stopped talking about poetry and redirected our topic of conversation to suicide. He told me about the time that he tried killing himself by drinking iodine. I told him about the time when my daughter slit her wrists. My daughter was only looking for attention, so my anecdote wasn’t quite as dramatic as Crane’s. She cut across her wrists, not up and down, which proved she was only looking for attention, not an end to her life. His reminiscences were more interesting than mine were. I suggested that a gun down the throat was better, but he disagreed. That was Hemingway’s method, and it worked for him, his brains dropping into the orange juice on a sunny Montana morning.

When the absinthe was all gone, I bade farewell to Hart Crane and he walked over and threw himself at the spinning boat propeller. As is often the case, his actions spoke louder than his words. His blood filled the ocean, alerting me to the fact that this was only a dream. Still, a guy gets freaked out seeing such a sight. My heart started racing like crazy. I wasn’t prepared to witness something like that, something so violent and tragic. I felt discomfort in the center of my chest, as though a vice was squeezing my heart in its grip. The uneasiness lasted for a few minutes. Small pains shot up both arms, and my back, neck, jaw and stomach were also hurting.

That’s when the woman in black came over. She was a large individual, with watermelon-sized boobs, enormous ass, and certainly met my standards for a woman. Her eyes contained an inner light that excited me. I knew who she was. She was a succubus, a female demon that visited men in their dreams and got buddy-buddy with them by fucking them to death. A guy had to die some time and I figured her method was as good as any, way better than Hart Crane’s iodine idea, better than Hemingway’s rifle blast to the head, and certainly better than my daughter’s sliced wrists.

“What’s your name, cowboy?” she asked.

I told her my name.

Then she spoke in a voice that promised riches beyond my comprehension. “You shouldn’t waste your time talking about poetry.”

“Why not?” I asked, my fragile heart beating like a madman’s.

“Life’s too short for poems.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s the fault of life, not poetry.”

Said the woman in black: “You should have asked Hart what it’s like to die.”

Ignoring her statement, I asked, “Who the hell are you anyhow?”

“The name’s Lilith.”

Everybody on the steamship knew Hart Crane’s reputation as a heavy drinker, so I was confident that no inquiry would result. As a poet, he excelled more at being a drunk, and in that regard we were on the same wavelength. Frantic drinking binges wrenched the words out of our bellies and onto the page. Between drinks came spurts of creativity. This method of writing worked for Hart Crane, but not so much for me. The words never came out right for me, the way they did for Hart Crane.

The dream ended and I woke up in a cold sweat, my heart thumping like I’d just run the Boston fucking Marathon or something. I felt like I was going to puke. I reached for the bottle of aspirin on the bedside table, and swallowed two down with a dry gulp. For good measure I took the bottle of nitroglycerin that was also there, and put a couple of drops under my tongue. I lay there, still and silent, for several minutes. I was fucking frightened like you wouldn’t believe. My whole body was shaking uncontrollably. The doctor had warned me about my heart, my high blood pressure, angina, and all that shit. He told me to eat Cheerios for breakfast and enough of those bacon sandwiches already.

I calmed down eventually, yet still felt haunted by this woman in black whose name was Lilith, almost as though she had some influence over my waking life, too. Feeling around with my toes, I found what was either a slipper or a bunny-rabbit. It was a slipper. Just once I wanted it to be a bunny-rabbit. I found the other slipper, put them both on, stood up, and wrapped my bathrobe around my naked body that was drenched in perspiration, and made my way along the hallway to the shower.

Monday was a typical Monday. I went to work, came home, drank beer in front of the TV until bedtime, which was just before midnight. The doctor had advised me to cut back on my beer intake, but I didn’t listen to anything the doctor told me. I knew about living the good life. At the insurance company I made important deals; and I was a respected member of the Chamber of Commerce; a confident, highly regarded man of business. Given my longstanding success rate, I deserved a good old-fashioned drinking binge six or seven nights a week. Getting drunk was a God-given right that I wasn’t about to relinquish anytime soon.

The woman in black, however, this Lilith lady, was about to change my views on life and death. Soon, I drifted off into a deep slumber and I had my second dream about her…

Lilith stood at a busy street corner wearing nothing but a blouse made entirely from whipped cream and a skirt slapped together from assorted lunchmeats. The air was thick with steam, and Steven wiped away the sweat accumulating on his forehead. Amidst the squalor of this stinking otherworldly city street was this one delicious woman. Right away I was drawn towards her. Cars were whizzing past, and she waited for the crosswalk light to change. I was in my Acura. I pulled over beside her in hopes of striking up a conversation. Vehicles behind me started blasting their horns. I was fully aware that this was a dream, so I didn’t give a flying fuck about delaying traffic.

“Hey, it’s you again!” I announced.

“Yes,” said the woman with pastrami and pepper-loaf dangling from her genitalia, as I pulled alongside her. “How’s it going, honey?”

Eyeing her fleshy breasts where pointy nipples poked out from the whipped cream, I asked, “The better question is, what kind of idiot do you think I am?”

“First class,” she said.

I knew full well that this was only a dream. I ignored the dangers and surrendered to my temptations. Clothed in lunchmeat, this woman was too appetizing to ignore.

“Look, why don’t you get out of my dreams and into my car?” I said, quoting a line from a popular 1980s song.

“Not tonight,” she said, looking at me with that same unearthly glow in her eyes. There was something sinister yet sensuous about her.

“Why not? I need a woman — badly.”

“Not tonight,” she repeated.

“That’s what my ex-wife used to say: not tonight.”

I wasn’t lying. My wife always complained of migraines whenever I felt like having sex, and since my libido was pretty high in those younger years I didn’t have much choice but to jerk it on the toilet. If Lilith really was a succubus, as I suspected she was, I wondered why she wasn’t propositioning me for sex. It’s not like I would’ve refused or anything. I derived pleasure from kinky shit. Hell, I would’ve let her stick her tongue up my ass if she offered.

“How about a midnight snack?” she asked.

I got out of my car. Opening my mouth, my stuck-out tongue made the movements of a skilled gymnast, as I crouched on the pavement and tongued the whipped cream from the enticing woman’s navel, which caused her to respond with a pleasured sigh and a slight spasm of delight. Not unlike a teenage girl, she had a small, round, compact ass, like a pair of soft pillows. Tilting my head, I licked a piece of salami that dangled from the crack of her ass. My mouth was all over her body. Next, I nibbled at the baloney along her thigh. The meat tasted good, and I took a chomp of mouth-watering bratwurst that clung to her bare hamstring.

“Tastes good,” I told her.

Down on my knees, something — a slice of roast beef perhaps — hung down, tickling my cheek. I looked up and saw that what tickled my cheek was not roast beef at all, but a huge cobra. Lilith didn’t look the same either. She had the hideously burned face of an old woman, her skin wilted and dried, and atop her head was a tattered old hat.

“Enjoying your midnight snack?” she asked.

I tried getting up, struggling. She had me by the shirt collar. Covered by shadow and mist, she grinned, evil and broad, her teeth rotten and crooked.

“I was enjoying your little smorgasbord,” I said, impudent as ever in spite of my fear.

Chuckling under her breath, in a mocking voice she said, “The meat market’s closed, but I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Lilith stepped out into traffic and a public transit bus struck her down in an instant. Her guts were smeared on the front of the bus, and people were shouting “Holy fuck! Holy fuck! Holy fuck!” over and over again. Her aged body was lifeless on the sunlit street.

The last thing I remembered was a crushing pain in my chest.

When I awakened I was in a hospital bed. This wasn’t a dream — this was for real. Three nurses, asking if I was all right, crowded over me in their clean white outfits. I had medical equipment of some description hooked up to me. From my body, tubes and wires stuck out every which way.

“What the hell!” I said.

“Calm down, Mr. Straker,” said the blonde nurse, the prettiest of the trio.

“Where am I?”

“You’re in Henderson General Hospital,” said a dark-haired nurse, who was not pretty whatsoever. “You had a heart attack.”

I didn’t say anything. The three nurses explained that when I didn’t show up for work my secretary called my home and nobody answered. I didn’t remember any of this, of course. Apparently, my secretary got worried, drove over to my apartment, and found me on the floor convulsing. A blockage in my heart’s arteries cut off the blood supply to a portion of my heart, which caused a blood clot to form and stopped blood flow in a coronary artery. My secretary called 911. The paramedics arrived and revived me with their defibrillator, that electroshock device you see on TV where the doc yells “Clear!” and zaps your chest with it. They saved my life in the nick of time or so I’m told.

“Get some rest,” said the blonde nurse.

I listened to her advice by closing my eyes, in hopes of getting some shut-eye. I’d considered telling the nurses about Lilith the succubus, but I didn’t think they’d give a shit, really. Just before I drifted off, I opened my eyes and saw a little girl, maybe eight years old, wearing blue hospital pajamas, walking by my room. An intravenous unit was attached to her tiny hand. Next, I closed my eyes and slept, dreaming of her.

In this third dream I was in an interrogation room. I was tied to a chair, my hands roped behind my back, and I was staring into a bright light with some guy off in the distance shouting questions, one after the other.

“Why did you rape my little girl? What kind of a sick pervert are you? Have you no heart?”

I answered, “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Let me out of here!”

The bright light dimmed a tad. Lilith entered the room from out of nowhere or so it seemed, and came towards me. The little girl with the IV unit stood beside her.

“You again,” I said.

“Yes, Jake,” said Lilith, still dressed in black, just as mysterious as in my previous encounters with her.

“Why am I here?”

Lilith smiled a big wry grin, but didn’t bother answering my question. She just stood there grinning. The little girl from the hospital was holding a doll, one of those dolls with a plastic head and a cloth body.

“Show us on the doll,” said Lilith, “where Mr. Straker touched you.”

The little girl had a sad smile. She pointed between the doll’s legs, and then started crying in a soft manner.

Again out of nowhere, some guy rushed towards me and tackled me in my chair. I didn’t blame him. I’d attack anybody who touched my daughter, too. I fell to the floor, defenseless. With my hands tied behind me, there was nothing I could do to stop him from pounding me repeatedly in the chest. He screamed with rage, “You sick fucker!”

What I felt next was the worst thing I had ever experienced in my entire life. I felt a heavy, strangulating, suffocating, anxiety enveloping my torso. More and more the certainty was with me that I was at death’s door, knocking loudly.

The fourth and final dream involved a roller coaster. It happened on Wednesday night when I was still in the hospital being cared for by the medical staff. I drifted off into La-La Land, and I was at an amusement park, which I never enjoyed at the best of times, and certainly not in my frangible condition. A brittle heart, my mind confused, Lilith sat beside me.

“How much more of this can you take?” she said, placing her hand between my legs and stroking my inner thighs.

“Leave me alone!” I said, as the roller coaster bulleted downwards, and I let out a scream.

Finally I was beginning to realize what Lilith was doing to me, and how she planned on killing me. When I slept, she was in control of my nightmares. She made me see and feel things that would terrify me and put me into cardiac arrest, and eventually end my life.

“Goodbye, Lilith. I won’t be seeing you again,” I told her. I pinched myself and woke up in the hospital bed, the doctor and nurses around me, trying to keep me from flat lining. My hair was sweat-soaked.

The doctor and nurses were convinced that I was sabotaging my own health by binge drinking, never exercising, eating too much bacon, and putting too much salt on my French fries. What they didn’t understand is that I had been doing those things my whole life and never had a heart attack. Now I’d had two in as many nights as a result of Lilith. She was the root of my health problems, not the goddamned butter and fast food.

“We almost lost you this time,” said the doctor.

“Don’t worry, doc. I know how to end this madness,” I told him.

As long as I stayed awake I’d never have to face Lilith again, and she could never cause another heart attack. Awake, I was safe from her demonic tortures. Awake, she couldn’t harm me.

Hour after hour I listened for the slightest sounds, such as the floor creaking, the drip-drip of the bathroom sink or a dog barking blocks away. Having this gift for staying awake, I was safe from the succubus. I set my alarm to go off at regular intervals, just in case I did fall asleep. Caffeine became my salvation. Three days and three nights later, I still hadn’t slept a wink. Coffee and cola kept me going, at least for the time being. This was the only way to avoid death. I have vowed to never sleep again.