The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  I would stay with thee, if somehow dreams reality made.

  We would stay until the womb of time shut and life was no more.

  I would lie with thee then with heavy lids and sated needs.

  We would lie until this orb and these stars spun never more.

  I would be with thee, if somehow wishes reality made.

  We would be until this galaxy and this universe pulsed and strained nevermore.

  I would love thee then, drinking thee in with greedy hands and lips.

  We would love until space collapsed, distance devoured, and matter mattered no more.

  I will stay and lie with thee. I will be and love with thee.

  We will until the Cup of Life lays cracked and drained at our feet, for from dreams and wishes reality we will make.

  The second read:

  My love for you is boundless,

  My need of you is endless,

  You are my strength and my weakness at once.

  With your words you have set me free.

  You are the flame in my soul.

  You are the power behind my every joy, my every sorrow.

  I want no other friend, no other lover.

  You are my end and my beginning at once.

  You have awakened me, and I can never sleep again.

  I will never be the same.

  You have made me over with the passion of your heart.

  I burn with the fury of it.

  A fury that is ours alone.

  I printed my poems, put them in my pocket. I turned around in her chair and watched her sleeping. I wanted to leave. I knew I should. I should leave her alone with her dreams of love and soulmates, but I couldn’t. I wanted to believe it was because I was destined to seduce her into immortality, but it was more than that. I wanted her for myself. I wanted to eat her words, consume her thoughts. I wanted to devour her.

  The second poem sealed her fate. Those were my feelings stolen from my heart and written out for me to see. She was my mirror reflection. You can’t live without your reflection. We were on a collision course. I had my foot firmly pressed down on the accelerator, and I wasn’t letting up.

  If the only way I could have my bit of heaven was by ripping it down from the spheres then so be it. It was Fate’s fault, not mine, for casting me down, for making me so low that the only way I could have her was by helping her become a monster. If Fate had cared, it would have kept her safe: it would have blinded me. If it had been merciful, it would have taken my eyes, so I could not look up and dream. It would have ripped out my heart, so I could never aspire to such a one as she. It would have torn out my arms, so I could never reach her, never touch her. To be a devil isn’t so bad; to be a devil that can still see beauty, still remember what it was like to be in the sight of the most holy, now that was an obscenity, and that was what I was.

  I rose and knelt by Alexa’s bed. “Please, forgive me,” I begged, crumpling her sheets in my fists, crushing her poem against my skin. She couldn’t hear me. And even if she could, she wouldn’t forgive me as I had never forgiven Lily, but I had to ask.

  I picked her up at six on Saturday night. She wore a white dress spangled with gold stars. Her knees flirted with me from under the hem of her skirt. She was breathtaking, a vision. She came into my arms and she was mine. With her poem still lilting in my mind, she seemed more delicate, more beautiful, and I was more determined than ever. I would be her first. I would take that in compensation for all the rest I would lose. That was what Abe had told me. He had made me see that it was that or nothing. And I wasn’t walking away with nothing anymore. I had had that for hundreds of years. Life owed me.

  Abe said it owed me her. I agreed. It owed me her forever at my side. But since that would never happen, I would take what I could get. I was not a knight-in-shining-armor. I was the dark lover, not Prince Charming. Abe said that I had to accept that. And for once I listened to him. I listened to him all morning. I had come home from her side tormented. I had flown around in darkness, remembering my former life, attempting to find a way not to destroy her.

  I had come home, but I could not sleep. I woke Lance, and I told him everything. He had laid out a plan for me already, a step-by-step seduction that led up to Sunday, the day she would yield to me. Then we would explode, my energy would ignite hers, and she would change forever.

  “Stick to the plan, dude,” he had said and sighed. “And be gentle. She’s a nice girl.”

  I had shown Lance Alexa’s poems. I never thought I would show them to anyone. I didn’t think I could share her. But I had to explain to him why I had to stop, what I would destroy if I kept going. He had handed them back like I’d shown him naked pictures of her. He looked bitter for the first time since we had met.

  “Listen. Some shit in this world you can avoid, some you can’t. Dude you know about Oedipus. Trying to avoid your fate only brings you closer to it. Accept it, that’s all. It’s going to happen. It has to. Make the best of it.”

  “And how was Oedipus supposed to make the best of killing his father and marrying his mother?” I asked.

  “Shit, if he had killed the guy he thought was his father, who wasn’t, and married the woman he thought was his mother, but wasn’t, he wouldn’t have killed his real father and married his real mother. You know what I mean?”

  “But don’t you think he would have felt horrible murdering and raping the parents who had raised and loved him?”

  “What was the use of that?” he asked. “The man was screwed from the beginning. He should have accepted his fate and kept his mouth shut and enjoyed his mother. What was all this blinding and blowing the news all around for everyone to hear?”

  “There was a plague. The land was cursed.”

  “Oh please,” he shouted, throwing up his hands. “Like the gods weren’t doing their moms and sisters? The plague was in his mind, in his guilt.”

  “Listen, the only way he could have avoided his fate was to kill himself. That was it.”

  Lance frowned and shook his head, “Dude, you missed the point. His father tried to kill him. He couldn’t. The man couldn’t avoid his fate. He might as well have accepted it.”

  I rubbed my face with my hands. “What are we talking about this for?”

  “I’m saying there’s no way out of this for either of you. If she were human, then I’d say let someone else break her heart. But she’s one of us. There’s no other way. Sorry.”

  At this point Abe lurched into the living room. He had been wearing the same off-color white underwear for a week now. He scratched himself. “What you sorry for, Lance?”

  “Nothing.” Lance folded his arms over his chest. Abe looked from him to me.

  “You aren’t still blabberin’ about that girl?” he yawned.

  I sat back.

  “Jesus Christ,” he went on, “I don’t see what the big noise is about. It’s not like she’s the last succubus ever. I swear to God you’re bragging now, Cristien. Rubbing it in our faces. Geez, either shit or get off the pot! If I had gotten to her first this would be over with by now and she’d be chained to the radiator in my room where she belongs.”

  Lance glanced at me. He could hear the sound of my fists locking. I could rip Abe’s wings off in less than a minute. I was older, stronger, faster.

  “You know what your problem is?” Abe asked me, throwing himself down on the couch right next to me, “You still think you’re a knight, some better-than-everybody knight. Newsflash—you failed. You’re the thing knights used to try and kill. You just haven’t accepted it.”

  He was right. I had almost redeemed myself, but I succumbed to Lily. I had three more hours to go on my vigil and I would have been a knight, but I crumbled. I wish I had died instead. He leaned over, grabbed the beer I had been drinking off the table and took a swig.

  He set it down between his hairy thighs, “You’re not the good guy anymore. You’re the thing good guys dread. All because you feed off deranged night creatures doesn’t ma
ke you any better. Somebody is dead at the end. One of our kind. That isn’t better. You should let everybody feed off humans like we’re supposed to.”

  “And kill them like you nearly killed Mikayla?” I growled.

  He smirked. “There was nothing innocent about her.”

  “She’s just a girl. She hasn’t even lived. How much more innocent can she be?”

  “Please. She wanted it. I gave it to her.”

  “She wanted love and you nearly killed her.”

  “She wanted sex and a good time!” Abe insisted. “She got what she wanted. Why shouldn’t I get what I want?” he asked.

  “Because what you want is death.”

  “Who cares about one stupid bitch, anyway?”

  “Her friends. Her family.”

  He sneered and turned away from me. But I knew the pain that loss could cause people. “I keep the city safe by stopping the ones who have no self-control. I keep the peace. I saved Alexa’s life. She’s one of our kind.” When I had first changed, that was not true. Thanks to Lily abandoning me, I was the grim reaper of the bedroom.

  “Oh please, you can’t save her. She’s a succubus, not some nice girl who found some great guy and had a fairy tale life waiting for her. I say enjoy her. She’s going to be giving it away like water soon enough.”

  I didn’t hear him any longer. I was thinking about Alexa with some other man. And my guts wrenched like somebody had slit me open, then reached in and gathered a fist full of my stomach, liver, small and large intestines and squeezed. Some other man touching her? The thought drove me to the brink of insanity.

  “Listen,” Abe burped, “Somebody is gonna get her. And if you don’t want her, I . . .”

  He didn’t finish his sentence because I reached over and put my hands around his neck. He would never touch her. Never. It took Lance a good long time to stop me. I was enjoying watching the bastard turn blue.

  Abe cursed at me and stumbled to his feet, but that was nothing new. He always cursed.

  “Shit! You’re crazy, you know,” he croaked, rubbing his throat. “But in the end you’ll do her. You don’t have the balls to let her die!”

  He was right again. I couldn’t let her die. I had no choice, but Alexa was so strong willed. Maybe she was stronger than me. I remembered her “nos” and in them found something troubling. What if she resisted? She needed me to change, but what if she refused me? I thought about her personality. She would hate being a succubus. She would see it as I did, as a curse.

  Oddly, I found some hope in that though. She would also want to reform as I had. She said she did not want to be a monster. I could show her how to feed from other forms of energy. I could show her a way to shatter this curse. I would teach her. She would learn in time. And more importantly, she would be a willing student. Resolved, I got dressed for our date.

  I took Alexa to dinner Saturday night. We ate at a pizzeria that still had red and white checkerboard tablecloths. The owner could be seen spinning the dough, bits of it sticking to his arm hair. We bought slices. She told me about her school work.

  “We started reading Clarissa.”

  “Clarissa?” I repeated, choking on my food.

  “Yes, she was this girl”—she began to explain as if I were unfamiliar with the plot—“and he was this guy who wanted her. He did unconscionable things. Finally, he raped her. Clarissa killed herself, basically. And he’s murdered in a duel because, I guess, in the end, he couldn’t stand himself any longer after what he’d done.”

  I swallowed. Life hated me. Even her classes were conspiring against me. I could see the doors in her eyes closing. I could feel her leaving me. Before, I could only guess what it would be like for me when she went out of my life. Now, I had a taste.

  I can fairly say it was the first time in my new life that I really wished I wasn’t supernatural: if I had been human the pain would have stopped because I would be dead. I can only describe it as what a person would feel if he somehow, by some terrible miracle, survived the fall off a skyscraper. It was the feeling of every single nerve, bone, sinew, and cell breaking and howling in agony at the same time. A person might have one second of conscious agony before he saw the white light, one brief insight into what the word “disintegrated” really meant. But I had to sit, blinking at her while this happened. I couldn’t get up or down or scream or vomit the way a visibly injured person might. I sat there.

  “Is there such a thing as true love?” she asked, staring into my eyes. “Or is it just some stupid dream. A fairy tale for little girls? What am I doing here with you? What are we doing?”

  I took a brief breath and tried to speak. I had to swallow before I could make a sound.

  “It’s a book. It’s not real. It isn’t an auger for the future. Stop trying to pretend you know what is going to happen because believe me, you don’t.”

  My voice sounded vicious even to me. She was hurting me, hurting me more than anyone else had in my life. I had only come close to this kind of pain when Lily betrayed me. Lily. Damnation. That thought brought the ax swinging the other way. I was Lily and she was the knight holding on to her virtue. I calmed down and started forgiving Lily a little too. It wasn’t a conscious thing, but I began to understand what she had been going through. She really couldn’t help what she had done to me.

  Alexa looked away. I reached for her hand, making her lift her eyes to my face. She looked beaten.

  “Sorry, but I hate it when you say those kinds of things. It hurts,” I told her.

  She looked surprised, like she didn’t know she could hurt me.

  “I’m sorry too.” She clasped my hand. “I don’t want to hurt you. I just don’t want a bad ending.”

  She looked miserable. She looked the way I felt. I didn’t want to hurt her either.

  “I don’t want it to end at all,” I told her honestly.

  “It’s getting harder to say ‘no’ to you,” she confessed in a whisper. She looked up at me again, hoping for understanding, asking for my love. I looked away. I was a monster, not a man. I couldn’t give her love, give her what she wanted or needed. I could only help her survive. That was all. I hated myself for that, for being so much less than she deserved.

  “Well, I guess I’m finished,” she said, sliding her chair back.

  I pushed my half-eaten pizza away. I paid, and we left. I took her hand, and we walked out. I had to touch her. I needed to. When I held her hand, warm and small in mine, everything felt promising, good and right.

  On the street, the night was brightly lit by businesses and street lamps. It was nice walking with her. We looked in shop windows at shiny chotchkes for sale. The music store shouted each time someone opened the door, playing the latest and loudest. The video store was showing scenes from a Chinese kung fu movie. I could feel her fingers holding mine while we walked. I saw us again and again in the reflection of store windows. A guy and a girl, holding hands. How the eyes could be deceived. How mirrors could lie.

  We went back to my car. I knew what I should do, how far I was supposed to go, but something about being alone with her in a closed private space did things to me. Sure, I may have planned to go farther tonight than I had the last time, but when I held her in my arms I knew nothing but her and an incredible desire, urge, passion. I had no plan, because when I turned to her, when I touched her, when I pulled her to me and kissed her, I had no past, no future, only this burning hot brand of a moment.

  She was the fever and the cure. Her skin was the panacea and the poison. Her lips were the cause of my madness and its only remedy. I couldn’t breathe hard or fast enough. My hands couldn’t seize all that I needed. Everything eluded me but the swirling pleasure I chased all over her body, trying to lock it down long enough to own it. I ended up in her seat with her in my lap facing me. My shirt was open and her dress was pulled up. Her hair was wild. Her eyes were wilder. Her hands were making me moan. It was too much, too much.

  “I think you should take me home,” she ga
sped, sitting up.

  “What?” I panted.

  She moved, repositioning herself and making me clench my jaw. She stared into my eyes, her puffy mouth slightly open: “I think I should go home.”

  It was like I was running, getting ready to jump into the most beautiful lake, when my skin was hot and sweaty and it was a hundred degrees, and, right when I was launching into the air, somebody took the lake away.

  “Okay,” I managed to say, feeling a little dizzy, “Give me a minute. Could you get off me?”

  “Oh, sorry.”

  She’s sorry? I wanted to rip my hair out as she covered up. She opened the door and then climbed off me, pulling her dress down. My mirage was gone. The cool night air did a little something. It brought me back enough to feel serious regret while I slid over to my seat again. How could she do that? Turn it off like that? What was she a machine? I felt like someone had put an eggbeater in my head. I leaned against the steering wheel. Hot. Cold. Hot. Cold. She was making me insane. Wow. I dragged my hands through my hair, rubbed them against my numb thighs then shook myself a few times. It was then that I realized she was still standing outside the car watching me.

  “You can come in now. It’s safe,” I said. “I’ve defused the bomb.”

  She laughed a little. She had to change soon, I told myself. I couldn’t stand much more. She was already on the verge of giving it up. Each time she gave a little more. One more day, and she would be mine. This game would be over, and the honest work would start. I couldn’t wait to train her, to help make the best of her new life.

  When she sat down, her expression was frightened.

  “Did I scare you?” I asked.

  “No, I scared myself,” she admitted. Her eyes were focused on nothing.

  I felt the door closing between us again. The pain hit me. I gripped the steering wheel as it wrapped around my raw pulsing nerves, and I squeezed.