The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  “You will. We all say no at first,” Abe continued, “but in the end, you’ll give in like we all did. You might as well sleep with him or anybody, even me.”

  And then I understood why he was here. I almost laughed. A cold bitter sound came from my throat.

  “Get out,” I told him.

  He looked surprised. “Baby, it’s gon’ to happen. You might as well get it over with.”

  “I’d rather die.”

  He blinked; then he shrugged. “Fine.” He threw his card on my bed. “Call me if you change your mind.”

  He turned around and leapt out of my window. It shut behind him. I ran to it and locked it though I wasn’t sure that would help. I tore up his card and threw the pieces away before dropping on my bed. I stared at nothing. I don’t know how much time passed. My mind was a blank sheet of white agony. Abe’s words kept filling the page and then falling off, only to be rewritten again and again. I had no defenses against the process. It went on.

  Slowly, though I began to pick out phrases I could tackle and comprehend. It came down to this only: Cristien didn’t love me. All he wanted was to turn me into a monster. The rest was inconsequential. My back pain returned. I cried out and my wings exploded. I fell over. Why was this happening to me? I hadn’t had even had sex. Was Abe lying? Some of it had to be lies, but how much? What was I going to do?

  But there was nothing to do. I was a succubus. I had read stories them. The word killed me. Images of winged wasted things, night riders that sucked the life out men, filled my mind. How could I become that?

  All my ideals, all my dreams and hopes died. I wanted love, but a thing like me could not love. A thing like me might not even have a soul. I could never have a B’shert.

  I had been taught that sex was sacred, that it was an act of creation, a holy act. It embodied the male energy, Elohim, and female energy, Shekinah, coming together. It was an act of giving, of respect and beauty.

  Now I would never have that. As a succubus, that life giving act would become an act of murder and death. Sacredness would become sin. I had been stripped of everything.

  Where could I go now? How could I ever go home? Something like me had no home anymore. I was a monster. My whole life disappeared before my eyes, my future, everything I had ever wanted for myself. It was like staring down a dark and empty well when it was too late to stop yourself from falling in but right in time to have a glimpse of the inevitable horror to come. How could I live like this?

  My mind rebelled. Things like this didn’t happen. They couldn’t. It couldn’t be true, but it was. It was happening to me. Why? What had I done to deserve this? I pounded my fist on the bed. Why, God? Why? Why was I being punished? Why Hashem? Was it because I wasn’t religious, because I dated a non-Jew? Was that why this was happening to me? This was too cruel. Too harsh. Please forgive me. Please, Lord, help me. I’ll be religious again. I’ll follow all the rules. I’ll repent. Just change me back. I prayed and prayed, and still I had wings. Hashem, God of my Fathers, had abandoned me.

  I wept. I cried so hard I lost my breath. I lost control. I cried out of rage, because of the unfairness of everything. I had let a thing that shouldn’t exist into my life, and now it was over. Why? I was not a bad person. I had hardly lived—how could I be judged so harshly?

  There had to be some way out of this. I stared at the phone. I should call my mother, tell her everything, but she wouldn’t help me. She would say it was what I deserved, and my religion would agree with her. So, I was trapped here until my wings went away again. No, I could go downstairs covered in a blanket. I would tell my mom I was sick, dying. She had to come. I couldn’t stay in this room any more like a trapped rat. I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back. I didn’t care how I did it. Somehow this had to be made right. I got my phone from my desk.

  “Hey, Alexa. First ring! Were you waiting by the phone, Love? Listen, I’m heading back,” Cristien said. “I know it’s too late for dinner, but I wanted to see you.”

  “Really?” I whispered. He should see me. He should see what he’d done to me. Bastard. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to take some revenge, something from him like he had taken everything from me. He had crept into every corner of my life and made it dirty. I had nothing left that was mine. I would never be the same. Alexa, the untroubled girl, was dead. Dead. And he would die too. I would hurt him. I would find some way to tear out his unfeeling heart. But first, I wanted this over, this game he was playing with me.

  “Alexa?”

  “Yes,” I breathed.

  “Hey, are you okay?”

  “No.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Abe came to visit me,” I told him.

  “Abe?”

  “He came to my room.”

  “What!?”

  “He flew into my room,” I said between my teeth. “He opened my window.”

  “Did he hurt you?” he asked.

  Yes. “He told me everything.” The tears began again.

  There was silence, but when Cristien did speak his voice was as unrecognizable as mine: “What did he tell you?”

  “He told me what you are,” I said past my closing throat.

  “And what is that?”

  “A demon.” What I am now because of you.

  “Alexa, I’m not a demon. I’m an incubus.”

  “And there’s a difference?” I asked, wiping my face as rage took over.

  “Yes. Listen, I’m coming over. This is not the kind of thing I wanted to talk about on the phone.”

  “Like you were ever going to talk about it?” Like I could stop him from coming. One day I would. I would find a way. At least I would find a way to make him regret his life as much as I could.

  “I swear to you I was,” he said.

  “You swear? To who? The Devil?” I asked, “Abe told me why you’re with me. He told me you want to make me one of you. Never. Do you hear me? Never. I’ll never be like you. I’d rather die.” And I’ll take you with me.

  “You already are one of us. Your father was one. That’s why I was drawn to you at first. But I swear, Alexa, I do love you.”

  I hung up the phone. Enough lies. Enough talk. I threw away the cell. Then I sat on the edge of my bed staring at the walls again, waiting. The blank page came back. Different words were written. Everything was jumbled. I wanted to die. I wanted to lose consciousness this once in my life, to have sweet oblivion, but my hopeful mind would not go away. It kept thinking.

  It said that the wings on my back were proof that Cristien was telling the truth. Perhaps he hadn’t changed me. That would make sense, it said. That would be the reason why this was happening to me. It was genetic, not a curse, it said. But I didn’t care. I let my mind run around and around playing with words, struggling to divide lies from truth. I let it.

  I was beyond truth or lies now. My whole life was shattered. I trusted nothing, most of all not myself. I was broken. I had nothing left. Nothing mattered. At the bottom of the pile of my collapsed existence lay my still beating, bleeding heart. I wanted to kick it, to crush it to death. Better to let it expire, better to be empty, than to feel this terribleness. Let it beat its last, please. Let it stop. Hush, now, hush, I thought.

  And then from behind me came a sound of someone at my window. The hair stood up all over me. My heart pounded rage and fear at once. Cristien called my name. It was muffled and low through the glass, but I heard it, like someone slipping acid into my ears. Then, slowly, because I had no strength left, I stood up and turned my back to him to accuse him, to lay before him what he could not deny. My wings. I looked over my shoulder at him and the sight of him struck me. Unlike Abe, he was my dream angel, a fallen one, but what else would ever come to me?

  He stared at my wings. His hand struck the frame, and the window flew open. He was inside. I stepped back.

  “Alexa,” he said, reaching for me. “What did he do to you?”

  “Don’t touch me,” I warned him, backing up. I didn
’t know what I would do. I didn’t know what I could do. I was so torn up inside.

  “Oh God!” He covered his face. When he pulled them away his hands were fists. “I’ll annihilate him!” Then he looked at me tenderly: “Love, do you want to go to the hospital? Do you want to see a doctor?”

  Was something wrong with my wings? I looked behind me then back at him, not understanding.

  “Because of what Abe did to you,” he whispered.

  “What did he do?”

  “You have wings. He must have done something.”

  “I had them before he came.”

  “You what?” Confusion then relief washed over his tense features, “I thought . . . I thought he hurt you.”

  Cristien collapsed on my bed. He held his head in his hands for a few minutes. When he lifted his head, his face was pale.

  “Alexa,” he began, reaching for me. I shook my head.

  “I don’t want to become a demon.”

  “You won’t be. How could you be, as beautiful as you are?” he asked. “Please, listen to me. It’s true, I’m an incubus, one of the Nephilim, half human, half divine. Immortal, but flesh. As you are.”

  “Because of you,” I accused.

  “No, because of your father. He was one. That’s the only way.”

  “The only way?” I cried, walking to my door, but I couldn’t leave. I had wings that were only good for holding me here. Was nothing sacred? My mother had slept with an incubus? This was too much to take. I balled my fists, wanting to fight something, the truth perhaps.

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry.” Cristien followed me. “That’s why I was hesitating. I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  I moved away from him again, stood blinking and staring out the window. My father, my real father, was like Cristien: a dream lover, a fantasy, there and then gone.

  “You’ll go like he did when it’s over,” I said.

  “No. Never,” he said, standing by me. He took me by the shoulders and turned me toward him. “I told you. I love you. I’m staying with you, forever.”

  “But Abe said you don’t stay. You can’t.”

  “Abe doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s trying to get me back for throwing him out of the apartment,” he said. His eyes were angry and serious. He might be telling the truth, but how could I know?

  “What we have is different than any other relationship,” he continued, “because you’re a succubus. We can be together forever.”

  I searched his face, his green eyes. Could I believe him? Should I believe him? Did I have a choice? If he were telling the truth, I might be able to go on living. I might have some chance of staying Alexa for the most part. But if he were not?

  “I can’t become a monster,” I said, begging him to understand that if he were lying he would kill me. “If there’s anything in you that cares for me”—he tried to stop me when I said this, but I wouldn’t let him—“tell me the truth, whatever it is. I’ll be all right. I can’t believe you now, and find out later . . .”

  He put his fingers to my mouth. I pushed them away.

  “You don’t understand,” I begged. “I’ll die. And I’ll hate you forever.”

  “Alexa,” he cried, and then he pulled me into his arms, “I love you more than my life, more than anything. Please believe me.”

  I lay in his arms with my eyes open. I felt him all around me like a surf wearing away my rage, my hopelessness. I shuddered, and he held me harder, and I felt it. I saw it too for a moment, his love, a white light all around us emanating from him, burning into me.

  It frightened me, and I resisted. All the pain in me resisted. All my fears resisted. All the parts of me that knew I should fight him, knew I should hate him, that didn’t want to be a winged succubus but wanted to turn into something much worse, a Scylla and Charybdis to crush every living man for what was done to me. Yet in the end, all that rage amounted to nothing. It was not greater than my desire to love and be loved, in any form I took. I let the light come. I let it fill me, all the darkest parts where the least of me cringed, sure in the knowledge that I could never be loved this way. I fastened my arms around Cristien, opening the doors of my soul to him again.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  He sat on my bed and had me sit in his lap so my wings would not press against the floor. We sat in silence, shy with one another now. It took time to get back to ourselves, to reassure ourselves that we were still together. It took time for the raw feeling in my chest to fade. But Cristien made the first attempt at speech, at normality.

  “So, when did this happen?” he asked, touching the edge of my wing.

  I moved it away. “Tonight.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen until after our wedding night,” he said, his tone chastising as if I had made them appear on purpose, “unless a little slap and tickle is considered sex these days.” Then he thought a moment. “Maybe it’s because I love you.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. How could such things be born of love?

  “Love is more powerful than any other energy,” he told me. “Maybe I ignited you simply by loving you.”

  “Ignited?”

  “Normally, you become a full-fledged succubus only after having sex with another of your kind—the other’s energy helps ignite yours, like lighting a fuse. But maybe the way I feel about you is so strong . . . It’s stronger than anything I’ve ever felt. When we held each other in the car, it was so powerful . . . maybe that’s why. . .”

  “I have wings,” I said, unintentionally flapping them. Well, that was better than genetics from an absentee father or being cursed because I was a virgin.

  He took my hand and kissed it. “I missed your smile.”

  I didn’t even know I was smiling.

  “That doesn’t leave much for the wedding night does it?” I asked.

  “It leaves enough.” He smiled with certainty. Then he was serious again. “I swear I was going to tell you. I was afraid. I wanted to wait till I popped the question. I was hoping you’d say yes to everything.”

  “There’s more?” I asked horrified.

  “A little. We won’t be Nephilim but demigods living off love forever,” he said rapidly.

  “Nephilim?” I asked. “Isn’t that Hebrew? Aren’t they children of humans and angels?”

  “No. It’s Ancient Babylonian, not Hebrew. And Nephilim are the children of humans and storm gods.”

  “Really?” Another shock washed over me. I shivered. I wished none of this were real.

  “Can’t we stay the way we were,” I cried. “Alexa and Cristien, humans?”

  “If that were the case, I would have died long before you were born. We never would have met. I never would have fallen in love,” he said.

  I sighed. “I should have known,” I said, studying him. “What man in the world could be so handsome, read Latin, and recite poetry by heart? I should have known you were something supernatural. And all I wanted was a nice guy I could bring home to my mother.”

  “You can bring me home to your mother. How is she going to know?” he asked.

  “She’ll know. Somehow, she’ll know. Jewish mothers are that way. That’s why they call them Jewish mothers,” I said, jokingly.

  “She didn’t know about your dad.”

  “I suppose you have a horrible and painful point there,” I told him.

  “Sorry,” he said, “but Alexa, nothing has changed.”

  “Everything has.” I slumped under the weight of it all. It was bad enough he was not who I thought he was, but now I was not who I thought I was either. I thought I knew myself. I had defined myself as a Jewish girl from Brooklyn, but now that was gone, all gone. Who was I now?

  “I’m still your Cristien,” he said, stroking my hair. “You wanted Prince Charming, chivalry, happily ever after. Well, here I am, the original knight in shining armor. I actually wore armor, rode a horse and can joust. So, what are you complaining about?”

  I sigh
ed at the thought of his age, “Do I want to know how old you are?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?” he asked.

  I realized then that our relationship went way beyond robbing the cradle. It was more like robbing the glint out of my great, great, great, grandfather’s eye. I looked into his twenty-something face, and the impossibility of it all hit me. This was crazy. There was no such thing as incubi. And if there were, why was I engaged to one? Why did everyone else get to have a normal life, while I got somebody’s freaked-out, drug-trip nightmare?

  “Why does life hate me?” I cried, dropping my head.

  “Okay, you’re starting to hurt my feelings,” he said.

  “I wish I didn’t even know. Why did Abe have to ruin everything?”

  “You had wings, remember? It had to come out sometime. And by the way, why didn’t you call me?” he asked, lifting my chin.

  “I was afraid you’d run from me screaming,” I mumbled.

  “So, it’s not so easy to tell the truth to those you love,” he said, raising his eyebrow unnecessarily to punctuate his point.

  “To them most of all,” I agreed, “because if they turn away it hurts the most.”

  He touched my arm, “But they are the ones most likely not to run away. I really did want you to know, to know me, everything about me. Nothing has changed for me, but the only question is, do you still love me? Can you?”

  Of course, I thought, but I said, “Who else would have me with these things on my back?”

  He moaned at my response. “Alexa? Do you?”

  I sighed, “Even if you had told me you were the Devil himself, I would probably still love you. I can’t seem to help it. God forgive me.” I covered my face in shame at the truth and sacrilege.

  “There’s nothing to forgive!” he said, grabbing me and shaking me. “We were meant to be together. That’s all. Come on, look at me.”

  I shook my head. One should love reasonably, with some kind of modicum of control, with some kind of sanity, but as long as Cristien loved me I would love him, and even when he didn’t, even if he spurned me, when all my love had turned to hate, I would hate him always because I truly loved him first.

  “I love you so much, and I’ll love you forever, and you won’t even look at me?” he asked.