Sucubus

I smell of sleepy oil, faint of old scotch and cigarettes the latter
mine and the former gift of the previous nights stalking about the
city haunts, my ears still ring faintly - choir and cacophony my eyes
still trick of lace and mesh that swirl on crowded dance floors.

I am old but I am young. I prowl this aging place in search of some
knowledge I cannot materialize in my head, but my hands pull fervently
at tomes only to pause, and push back to the blackened space from
which I retrieved them.

Is it possible that I do not know what I seek, or even who I am?
The creature appears, her face is tattooed with sporadic dashes of
shadow and light as she moves amongst the books. I see her through the
gaps combustion engines and comparative religion sight her
unknowingly, as phantom bookends that frame a delicate face I catch in
snatches and grabs.

I am furtive, my feet swing on self accord, away, move. I stumble for
a moment as my minds impetus juxtaposes my bodies instinct, leave and
leave now. My eyes fly away from her face, they settle unseeingly on
an anonymous volume - she has seen, she has noticed and she burns me
with her gaze.

I breathe, and I breathe again, and I am certain my breath betrays me
for now she surveys me, I am solitary in my attempt to remain reticent
for she announces her study of me in roaring staring silence.

I am in motion, the actor. I move to the side pantomiming continued
pursuance of the novels, journals and lectures held within these
leather bound pages. I gather a volume from its resting place and
pretend to review it.

She orbits my senses heavily, her eyes bear down gravity upon gravity
until I can feel the suit of my skin as it contains me within it.
Fathom upon league of pressure, I hold against it and yet I cannot, my
eyes flit upwards preparing a stolid glance, an appraisal, a
challenge.

She is no longer there. I breathe, realizing that I have not. My mind
toys with the concept of perceived beauty that which is felt on
impression but not actually witnessed by the eye. Is it driven by
hope, or does it come from the ether to be sensed by the solitary. I
return to the writing I have selected.

My minds eye sketches this largely unseen figure, it fills in gaps
from absolute empty space drawing only from the light scathed mask
that filled my vision but moments before.

My distraction here is the cause of my clumsiness. The cover, slick
from dust escapes my grasp and the book tumbles near noiselessly to
the floor. I hurriedly stoop to recover it from its new nest, resting
partially on the worn shelving and partially on slick patent black
leather.

I am nonplussed by this out of place element I can very
nearly feel my pupils expand in the darkened expanse I now occupy.

My eyes crawl, lavishly, slowly over what I now know to be the
footwear of the vanishing object of my previous surveyance.

She is breathing, there, above me beyond my periphery, I draw my eyes
along the dagger thin toe of the boot and I look down upon the pebble
on water reflection of myself in it's spaces. It broadens into view,
an ankle, beyond.

My kneeling stance disadvantages me; what moments I could have spent
there travelling upward to what and where my mind completes even as my
body stands.

She is cruel beauty, she is coffin and cream white of skin, lost soul
onyx of eye and terror sharp brow. She stares at me, her lips bleed
painted in perfection, parted and sensual as they are sardonic.

My brow raises to her unposed challenge a typical threat that I know
from mirrored observance conveys more aged confusion than worldly
understanding or mystery.

She laughs, at me, at this, at us, she turns back her hair on the
assistance of the slight flick of her head, this pale yellow yarn
these locks of hers in each strand do promise the dark silent
pleasures of her.

My skin burns, I am villified by my own inept motion and look of eye.
I reach for composure, I stretch for beyond this moment to grasp at
practiced moments of solidarity, and I find it in recollections of
fear and pain and anger from long ago.

This gives her pause and she softens to me, wordless lips bend gently
outward her face losing to the darkness yet gaining little light. And
there, between a sunbeams dance with shadow we stare at each other
long, full and deep.

She circles me, motionless, but with eyes that take a radial view of
me but I stand unmoved, my mind is a microscope I am a lens and I take
in every pore of her face, every facet of her silvery irises every
angle and every curve of her face.

She leans in, my reaction is negligible despite my notable inward
flinch, a reaction utterly shattered by her presence within the close
confines of my space, time and motion are glued in sticky
sluggishness, her scent catches my senses and I am hurled into
delirium.

She sniffs at me and my skin pricks wildly at the sheer
animalistic implication of her movement, I sharply inhale, motionless,
caught.

I am in what she is thinking and she has drawn herself within my
thoughts as well. Her face and body explode as if held back until now
filling me and overloading my senses with her presence and style.

As tall as I am, not of notable height and yet not diminished her
aquiline features are pale and fetching against her golden backdrop. A
regal nose sits on a face bereft of flaw smooth and sleek.

She wears a silken white shirt that glides gently across curves that
outline a woman of unflawed endowment, her sleek neck is endorned with
a solid strand of the blackest pearl affixed with a single onyx gem at
the apex, and that surrounded by an ornate inlaid silver framing. Her
shoulders are covered with a fine black cloak slashed with a red
interior and a low necked collar which appears fastenend by the
aforementioned pearl strand.

I am taking in short breaths, I drown in her extravagant simplicity,
her black skirt that hangs suspended gracefully over thinned hips that
curve suggestively, subtley outward and down to just below her knee,
and terminated sharply by dark black stockings cut begrudingly from
translucent silken lace.

She whispers something at me, leaning back slightly, but her words are
unclear to me spoken in my language but not in my tongue, they
crystalize in my head - jerking my limbs forward in forced puppetlike
movement, I reach for her, unlike myself and out of any social
convention, but she is not there for my grasping, her form just in
those moments blur to breath against my ear and more still understood
yet uncomprehended commands spoken under sight and sound to me.

My knees begin steady progress, defiant buckling I am bespelled and
without volition. Nails like carved stones trace a line down the
center of my back and I can feel the slick wetness of my own blood as
it seeps against my shirt. My undoing has begun.