NOVEL NEXT v1 CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: In which detente is reached due to dire mutual circumstances.
Micki awoke in an unfamiliar room, smaller than the first chamber they’d kept her in. Somehow, her captors had moved her during the night. Had her dreams been so deep, her sleep so sound? Or had they drugged the water?
She looked around. Once again, there were no windows; only white walls and sparse furniture. A chair and a table, both bolted to the floor, and a single bed; all were very plain. In one corner, a metal toilet and sink reminded her that this was a cell, not a studio apartment.
She sat up and felt her head pound like a bass drum. Micki felt groggy, her thoughts sluggish; she could think clearly enough to know she was in worse shape than she should be. They had drugged her—or dulled her thoughts and senses by some other means. Subdued her.
That thought reawakened the ache of memory: she recalled the men in the park, what they’d commanded her to become. Micki looked down at herself; she was still wearing Susan’s tank top and yoga pants, and her body hadn’t changed despite the phantasmagoria of her dreams. She was still short, curvy, and just slightly demonic, the points of horns poking up through her sleek black hair.
“Psst.” The sound echoed from somewhere near the toilet. Micki walked over to it. “Who’s there?” she whispered.
“C’mon, dummy. It’s me.” Micki peered at the metal toilet bowl. Scratches and scuffs marred the outside of the bowl, but the vertical inner lid was shiny enough that she saw herself reflected. Next to her, Yael. She was relieved to see the youthful, scowling features of the demoness; they made a strange pair, both appearing younger than their years, but Micki’s aspect was clearly adult, while Yael looked like an angry teenager despite her millennia. I keep wincing at how I look like “jailbait” now, she thought, but she’s the original model for that, and I’m… the grown-up version? Above her button nose and round, cute features, Yael’s eyes were glowing yellow-white; she wore a black bustier and blue jeans.
“Listen to me… get down here and whisper, quietly… act like you’re doing something proper, so they won’t notice.” The demoness put her hands together in a mockery of worship. “Like you’re nauseous or praying, or something! You priestly weirdos pray to the toilet, I’m sure. At least Martin Luther did; what a freak…”
Micki sank to her knees. Yael’s eyes tracked her, then whispered again. “That’s better.” Micki couldn’t believe she was talking to a toilet bowl, but here she sat: locked up with no other ally but her possessor.
“Yael… I’m sorry, I let them take us. I couldn’t—” Suddenly, Micki’s mind flooded with images of her last exchange with Yael. In the park, Yael whispering a spell in my ear. A man on top of me, bearing me down. Pushing my thighs apart with his knee. His pants down, his—I spoke the words, the man changed… Micki froze, caught in the memories.
“Hey!” Yael was waving her reflected hands. “Hey, kid… snap out of it! That was a fucking goddamn horror show. None of it was your fault. I’m…. I’m sorry about how that happened, okay?” Yael’s eyes looked strangely blurry in the distorted reflection. Had she ever apologized before? “We’re stuck in here with each other. If you don’t want to become Spencer’s pawn for an indefinite eternity, we’ll have to get you out. Let’s work together. What do you say…?”
“Okay.” Micki whispered. Yael had possessed her before she’d even known the demon existed. She’d changed Micki’s whole body and life. Father Michael Belmont was gone as a result, leaving behind a scared young woman with his memories. The two beings housed in the shell of a former priest still couldn’t agree on the eventual fate of Micki’s body, mind, or soul. But what other allies did she have? “A truce, then.”
Yael smiled. “Yeah. A truce.”
Micki sat down next to the toilet, leaned her head on one arm, and stared at Yael. At least the bowl looked like no one had ever used it. What is this place? She wondered. A mental hospital? A prison? Run by the Vatican? Along with its many hospitals and orphanages, she knew the Church operated what some priests euphemistically referred to as “convalescent facilities.” She did not know where she might be.
Micki’s attention swerved back to the demoness with a flush of resentment. “Yael… you knew. When you decided on that hideous spell, to revenge ourselves upon those men who attacked us, to transform them. You knew I’d need the energy of his arousal, that he’d have to…” she trailed off.
“We are succubae, child.” Yael shook her head. “Any power we have comes from worship or desire, sexual energy or forces greater than ourselves.”
Micki looked down at her lap as Yael continued. “You’re right, though… it didn’t have to happen like that. I exhausted myself struggling with you… hanging on. If I’d stored more power, if we hadn’t been fighting…” Yael balled up her fist and slammed it into the reflection, from the other side. Somehow, Micki heard the angry gong of the metal bowl ringing.
“I could have acted differently too… I could have… if I hadn’t just run off into the park without paying attention, alone when I ran into those pieces of shit…” Micki stared at the corner of the room. She realized she was stuck in a loop, reflecting on her mistakes as if trapped in a confessional. If she’d been a priest counseling someone else, she’d certainly point out the need for compassion, forgiveness, the uselessness of blame. She wasn’t a priest; she was a prisoner. There was nothing else she could do. There wasn’t any hope in sight of escaping this place. They were both stuck in here.
“STOP IT!” screamed Yael in her mind. “Stop it right now! You’re giving into despair and self-blame and I won’t allow it. You know who’s worthy of blame? Those men, and they’re suffering for it now. This place is to blame, and the people who sent those fools to look for you. We’re trapped because of Spencer—not you.” Micki took a deep breath, looked up at the toilet, and then back down at Yael’s reflection.
“All right.” Micki’s shoulders slumped in a grudging sigh. “I’ll try to remember that.”
“I’m so hell-damned hungry,” grumbled Yael. “Can you masturbate or something?”
Micki sighed. “Impossible. I can’t do anything like that. My body feels numb, the opposite of sexual. And I’m too tired.”
Yael rolled her neck, stretching. “Your body doesn’t need to be awake for you to masturbate. I could make a dream for you… a delightful dream?” She snapped her fingers, and Micki felt cool air blow across her body. The texture of the brick wall was in front of her, a body pressing her into it from behind. A hand on her breast. Yael’s fingers were warm and soft, with a texture like calfskin.
“What… what’s going on? Did I fall asleep on the floor by the toilet?” Yael was standing behind her, curling around her. Micki could feel the demon’s breath ruffle her hair.
“Not yet. But you’re about to.” The hand slid around her, down her stomach.
Micki felt a shock of electricity—more intense than static, less than a frayed wire—when the hand reached the mound of her sex. Suddenly she recoiled, slamming herself sidelong into the wall. She remembered the man’s hand tearing at her underwear. “NO! Stop… stop—” Words bubbled out of her like nonsense syllables.
Yael blew away like smoke. Micki opened her eyes. Her body slumped over the toilet, her head lolling. Yael slid back into view in the reflection of the toilet lid. “I’m sorry,” sniffed Micki. “I just don’t think I can… I’m not sure I can feel pleasure like that anymore.”
Yael shook her head, smiling sadly. “You’re not broken, Micki. You’ve been through too much, and you need to heal. Don’t worry about it, my bad. Auntie Yael getting too hungry, too eager. It’s not exactly the succubus way, but I can fast for a spell. You… get some rest, okay, kid? But not next to the toilet. Your dark lady commends you to go lie down.”
“Yes, dark mistress.” Micki let out the briefest of chuckles. The only laugh left to her.
***
It was easy to lose track of time. They were somewhere underground; Yael could slip far enough from Micki that she could see they were beneath a forested area. She returned to report on the time of day, letting Micki track the hours.
“I have to sneak around,” sighed the succubus. “They draped this whole place in some kind of spirit web; if I touch a strand, or get too close to its edges, it vibrates and snags me… I can’t quite explain it, but it’s not a pleasant experience.”
Every morning, her captors put Micki through a regimen of prayer, eating a simple meal, stretches and exercises in the confines of the room, followed by study. The range of subjects was startling: history, theology, political theory and current events, but also military tactics and human neurology. Some subjects were remedial for someone of Micki’s lengthy education, but others were entirely new. Presiding over her rapid-fire lessons, the two nuns presented entirely different demeanors: Sister Mary Margaret scowled or cursed her, while Sister Mary Elizabeth was stern or kind by turns, wielding both praise and condemnation.
Even more surprising, most mornings ended with training in self-defense, taught by Father Kincaid. When Micki asked why, he reminded her he could not answer her questions. Kincaid only said she was being “prepared,” staring beyond her with a faraway gaze.
Each afternoon, Spencer’s clergy ordered Micki to devote herself to “quiet meditation,” which meant that they turned the lights down and left her in the small room alone. If she hadn’t relied on Yael for company, the solitary confinement would have been too much to bear. Each day, after long minutes of listening for silence, she crouched by the toilet, pretending to be sick or simply disinclined to her bed, to whisper to her only companion.
“I had to punish them,” Yael said on more than one occasion. “They sought to defile one of mine—I mean, to defile us. Do you know I once had priestesses, of old?”
“Yes,” Micki murmured. The demoness had mentioned it before, sometimes dredging up fragments of memory from her millennia of forgetting. This information is valuable, part of her mind registered. Mostly, she listened out of exhaustion and boredom.
“Have I told you the story of my name, child?” Sometimes the succubus sounded more like a grandmother than a naughty teenager, the guise she wore. “She faced a similar situation to what you experienced in that clearing. An enemy commander fleeing from battle sought her body. In her terror, she called upon me and I entered her. For a long while before that, I lay in the earth beneath the Negev. Then I entered Yael in her pain and fear; I drew that man’s seed forth until he lay in a faint, then drove a stake through his brain.”
Micki’s eyes grew wide. “That… became a story in the book of Judges. Scholars debated whether that passage implies rape for centuries.”
Yael rolled her eyes. “I’m certain none of your scholars mentioned me, or how Yael was driven forth by her husband and her nomadic tribe for unclean practices, or whatever they used to call fucking married men and women. Instead, the Israelites celebrated Yael for a time… until her horns and tail sprouted, until she was more me than her. Then they considered us an embarrassment. I remember her and wove her into my being.”
The implied promise hung in the air: Micki could embrace the same fate, losing herself into the greater being of Yael, becoming a memory. She said nothing.
Micki’s dreams consistently featured Monsignor Thomas Spencer, who questioned her over and over in the dreamscape of the Cloisters, asking her about her life, her past, her friends, and most of all, her current state of mind about her body, sex, and gender. Yael didn’t like the questions.
“He doesn’t have access to your mind; that bothers him. You’re not fully his creatures, unlike those others who pretend to be priests and nuns, so he seeks knowledge of you. That sort of knowledge is power, much like a true name. Don’t answer him; evade his inquiries.” Micki did her best, trying to turn the tables by asking Spencer questions of her own. He never once gave her a straightforward answer, proving a master at such games.
Two weeks had passed, according to Yael, when Sister Mary Margaret barged into her cell during the afternoon as they were whispering to each other, fixing Micki with an accusatory glare.
“Who are you talking to?” she demanded. Micki knew her face flushed with heat; she wasn’t sure if it was anger or shame. Or both; but any emotion was bound to show guilt in the nun’s eyes. “All of this nonsense, muttering and whispering, must cease at once. Tell me who you’re speaking to and what you’re trying to do.”
“Just praying, Sister,” Micki kept her voice and eyes lowered. “I’m studying the scripture and praying that all of us may be forgiven our sins.”
Sister Mary Margaret took a step toward her, shaking her finger. “Liar! I can smell your lies. You’re not praying. You’re talking to that succubus, the demon hiding inside of you, and I don’t like it. We have forbidden contact with her! Forbidden!”
Micki’s heart skipped a beat. “Sister, please. I didn’t mean any harm—”
Mary Margaret slapped her across the face once, vicious and quick, before she could move.
“It’s not me you have to convince,” Sister Mary Margaret intoned. “It’s Monsignor Spencer. I don’t know what he sees in you, but he’s insisting that we refrain from exorcism.” She paused, staring at Micki with an expression of barely controlled disgust. “I won’t allow you to get away with any of your filth. I’ve seen what happens to young women with succubae inside of them.”
Micki’s eyes darted back and forth, trapped. “Shhh,” whispered Yael in her ear. “You’re all right. I’m here.”
A fire filled her heart. Micki rose to her feet and reached out to touch the nun, as if to comfort her, or seek comfort. Sister Mary Margaret, shocked and with a curled lip, recoiled from her outstretched hand.
“No!” the nun shouted, as if Micki had waved a hot poker in her direction. “Get your unclean hands away from me!” She turned to leave, stopping at the door. “You’ve been bad. And bad girls receive punished. “
Micki sank to her bed and curled up against the wall once Sister Mary Margaret slammed the door. Yael still lay with her. She felt the succubus’ hot breath, steaming the cool air of the cell.
“Little mouse,” the demon said, “I have an idea, but you’ll have to be brave. Can you be brave for me? For us?”
Micki sat for a long time, staring at the ceiling. Then she nodded her head—to herself, as much as the other succubus. “Yes.”
