The Succubus And The Prophet

Solon Phillips

#1.

#The Succubus and the Prophet

#A Succubus, suffering from existential crises and unsure of what to do, sought out a Holy Man who had a reputation for great wisdom.

#The Succubus spent a great deal of aggravation finding the ruins where he lived, and when she saw he was not home, she lit a fire by the door, and waited, spreading out like a nesting eagle, her wings extended like a black curtain backdrop as she lay next to the fire lethargically, her tail swishing on occasion, cutting through the fire smoke.

#That evening, the Succubus saw a crowd gather in front of the ruins, angry and desperate, but after a brief inspection, she saw they were not there for her. They were a posse, organized by a Rich Man on a tall horse.

#The posse set up their own fire, and waited, grim and quiet. Some of them stared at her, and her wings slowly repositioned until she was black with shadow set against the setting sun,

#The Succubus fell asleep and dreamt of mishappen butterflies tearing their way savagely out of mutant cocoons and then she awoke with a start when the crowd started to mewl and bellow like a calving cow.

#Amid the posse, she saw a Wild Man in rags striding contemptuously through the throng towards the door of the ruin.

#The Rich Man had gotten onto his horse and then called to the Wild Man as he walked by, perched upright and proper as a proud cock of the roost, but the Wild Man did not answer, and the Rich Man got back down from his horse and followed the Wild Man, grabbing his sleeve and turning him around.

#“Stop! I have grievances! You, you lout and troublemaker, you turned my wife against me! Don’t even try to deny it, I brought many witnesses with me. Don’t waste my time with excuses, all I want to hear from you is how you will atone for your blasphemy!”

#The Wild Man tore his sleeve away from the Rich Man and roared into his face, “Do not touch me! Do not lay your filthy hands on me, degenerate bastard that you are! Your wife deserves so much better than you; it is pure wonder you show your face in public!”

#The Rich Man grinned mirthlessly at his friends, the very picture of a petty man rallying support for his cowardice.

#“I? I am filthy?”

#But the Wild Man was already walking away.

#“No!” the Rich Man called, and he ran ahead of the Wild Man to stand in his way.

#“You are filthy, filthy and wretched! And I brought a priest to confirm it…” and the Rich Man beckoned to a Priest, who shuffled forward wrapped in robes so fine, they rivaled the Rich Man’s own clothing.

#“Hear me!” the Rich Man screamed to the posse, who were very eager to hear and believe, though they had already been told what the Rich Man had to say.

#“My wife is barren; she gives me no heir! I heard about this supposed ‘holy man’ and I suggested, in my desperation that she go see him to get the Gods to notice us and change our fate. I know now this was a mistake, and I should have trusted the Priests, but a heartbroken man is capable of so much folly, who can blame me?”

#The Posse was extremely sympathetic.

#“But this man, when my wife goes to see him, fills her simple mind with such wickedness, that the night she returns to me, she tells me she not only does not want a child, but has no love for me as her rightful husband, who lifted her and her family from poverty and elevated her to such a position, and that she will leave me to go live somewhere else, she does not say where, perhaps in the filthy ruin with this heretical mendicant, whose lecherous nature she can’t recognize…But you and I can recognize him, can’t we?!!”

#The posse cheered in affirmation when the Rich Man had wanted them to boo the Wild Man himself, and the Rich Man frowned and stood still for a moment as events altered from the course he’d scripted in his mind.

#The Wildman sighed, took the Rich Man up in his arms, and threw him to his sycophants, and there was general bedlam as they received him in shock and started calling for the Wildman to be burned.

#The Wildman, so obviously the Prophet the Succubus had heard about, faced the posse and roared again.

#“You are all sick and blind! This man’s wealth has driven him mad, and you are so impotent and eager for meaning that you grovel around him for the smallest of his crumbs!”

#The Priest raised his arms to speak, the fine clothing rolling back from his soft wrists, and the posse quieted, but the Prophet took the initiative to speak to the Rich Man directly.

#“And you! Lecherous and callous and obstinately stupid, an angry lout who forces himself on a woman and strong arms her family into an ill-fated marriage, so conceited and unfeeling he should not be left alone with animals, much less a human woman, and you dare accuse anyone else of wrongdoing? Damn you! Damn your family line, your impotence, and your diseased brain! Loneliness is all you deserve, and there is nothing anywhere that could vindicate such an obnoxious bastard as you’ve chosen to be…Get out of my sight!”

#The Priest raised his arms again, but the Rich Man was back on his feet and flying into a tantrum, stomping and spitting as he shrieked, “But I’m not alone, I stopped her leaving, I stopped her and beat her and locked her up! You don’t get to have her! Didn’t you notice she didn’t show up? That’s right, she’s not coming, and I’ll make sure I-”

#The Prophet took the Rich Man in his arms.

#“You did what?!”

#The Rich Man sneered, trying to summon his superiority and maintain the high ground.

#“I beat her! I beat her and locked her up, as is my right, as is any husband's right…” and here he pointed to the Priest, who nodded and opened his mouth.

#But the Prophet was speaking.

#“Your rot spills into your insides, even now the worms are drawn to the scent of your decay, and fungi readies itself to consume your poisons. Birds watch you, wild dogs haunt your path, all the souls you surround yourself with cannot protect you, and will smell the sickness and see it in your face and hear it in your phlegmy rasp long before you’re snuffed out, and it will all be mercy, Rich Man, for a just reward for your betrayal would be far more harrowing…”

#The Prophet released the Rich Man and pointed at the Priest.

#“And you, you greedy fucking envious prat! You refuge of the oppressor, you soother of guilty men’s consciousness, you slave and willing follower to the rich and high born, away from me! Don’t let any of that horseshit fall from your cursed mouth, you insect, you shit-greedy insect!’

#And then the Prophet was scrambling up the side of a fallen column and the posse was screaming, and the Priest did not lift his arms, and the Prophet roared on:

#“And you, what do you think happens to you now? After you so easily surrendered your souls to this treachery, what happens to you? When your wives and daughters look at you, what do they see? What is there for your sons to imitate, you empty broken vessels, you’re nothing but a group of suicides, who killed off the last of your humanity long ago! You’re ghosts! Nothing but ghosts, already dead, for how can life tolerate you!”

#The Prophet fell to his knees, tears streaming over his shaking hands, and if the posse quieted themselves, it was only in disgust at what they saw.

#“Your fields will wither!” the Prophet said, “Your vines shrivel, and your orchards stagnate. You will feel the sun burn down at you and your crop, the water will disappear, and when the starvation starts, you will turn on one another, listing off every one of your crimes that you think is so hidden and forgotten, you will all be the accuser of your neighbor, as your women flee from the sight of you with the children you should have cared for, and you lift your hand against your neighbor for blood and blame, without balm, forever scorched, enemies of the sun and the light, hidden in shadows and starving in spirit…Oh, Gods! It will be horrible, but it will not let up…”

#The Priest now raised his hands again, and the posse was eager to hear his words.

#“The Gods! The Gods speak through priests and priestesses, not wandering madmen! The Gods decreed Noble families should keep society together, and that Noble women should give offspring, and this fool had no right to interfere with Noble family affairs! Nothing will die, nothing will starve, accept this man here when you stop feeding him, stop listening to his raving nonsense, and recognize the Priests the Gods have sent you, and am I not one of those? Look at my raiment, look at the light reflected from me, which of us do the Gods honor, me or this beggar?!!”

#The posse voiced their opinion with verve.

#“No one will remember your names!” the Prophet lamented, “No one will know you lived at all except in whispers, none of your buildings will stand, and not even your children will speak of you as anything but a horror! Your wives will gratefully accept other, better men, and will not record your existence...” he shuddered and sobbed.

#One of the posse, one particularly aggrieved by the sight of a weeping man, went forward with a branch in his hands to strike the Prophet, but he fell on the branch instead.

#Filled with empathy, the posse took up stones and branches to improve on this first man’s effort, and the Prophet wept bitterly, lost in some other sight, and men took torches to their fires and lit them to burn the Prophet as he was now restricted by grief.

#The Succubus decided to intervene, spreading her wings broad and descending from the entrance to the Ruin, spitting fire and swooping down in a wave of heat toward the posse, who fled before her in hysterical panic, the Rich Man without his horse, and the Priest with his robes hiked high above his bony legs.

#The Succubus watched as men ran into the fading evening light, and the Prophet continued his lament until the sun crested the horizon, and only then did he lift his head and see the Succubus.

#“You’ve saved me, stranger, but for what I cannot imagine when death would be so sweet…”

#The Succubus was calm, if a little impatient.

#“I need the wisdom of a Holy Man. I heard about you and came to find you…”

#The Prophet winced as he stretched his neck, his eyes out of tears, exhausted, and glimmering red from the setting sun.

#“If I had wisdom, would I suffer so?”

#“Oh, no…” the Succubus laughed, “You’re exactly the man I’m looking for.”

#2.

#Inside the Ruins, the Prophet started a fire and piled dry wood. The young hungry fire threw their shadows like demented things over the walls and floors of the ruin, a long-forgotten fortress dwelling.

#“Forgive my rudeness,” the Prophet said as he brushed off a stool and set it before her, near the fire, “But I must break my fast or collapse here on the floor and be no good to anyone…Please tell me of your trouble as I prepare us a meal…”

#The Succubus nodded and sat down demurely, her tail wrapping around her and her wings folding like a robe over her shoulders. She extended one leg toward the fire and rotated to her side as she warmed the joints of her knee.

#“I understand, but tell me, Holy Man, what do you know of Succubae?”

#The Prophet pulled some ingredients from a large dirty bag next to the fire and shook his head.

#“Not enough, I’m afraid, and what I do know is prejudiced and slanted.”

#“How so?” she asked.

#“As I understand, the ‘Succubus’ was created to explain away a normal and healthy function of the male body, to eject semen in our sleep... Created by fearful and stupid men who prefer explanations to truths, the concept of a Succubus was designed out of dread men have of their bodies…”

#The Succubus shrugged, “I don’t know about our originations, the stupidity you mention seems accurate, at least from what I’ve seen of men, but do you know anything about our purpose, the life cycle of a Succubus?”

#The Prophet produced a wineskin and handed it to her.

#“I’m sorry, I don’t know anything, perhaps I’m just as ignorant as the men I despise…but please, tell me, I’m listening intently even as I get this food cooking…”

#She took the skin and quaffed a good measure of wine.

#She suppressed a belch. “This is repellant wine…”

#The Prophet agreed with a sniff, setting down a three-pronged cooking stand over the fire, and placing a pot upon it.

#The Succubus knocked back another good measure and wiped her mouth.

#“It is a terrible set of circumstances, the life of a Succubus:

#“In essence, now that I am fully grown, I am to rape a man of his seed while he sleeps, taking his seed into myself to hold for a time…”

#The Prophet looked up.

#“And then, as if that was not enough, I am to transform into a male form of myself and become an Incubus, and with this stolen seed inside me like poison, and in male form, go on to rape a human woman in her sleep and infect her with the poison seed…and that is it, that is the cycle!”

#The Prophet nodded stupidly.

#The Succubus threw up her hands, “You see? I say it plainly, it is detestable from beginning to end!”

#“Fucking horrifying!” the Prophet agreed with a heavy nod, and then he slowly got up to retrieve some water from a culvert in the ruin wall, walking in a daze.

#“Indeed!” the Succubus said, and then she drained another measure of wine before setting the wineskin away from her with a grimace.

#He brought back a great bowl of water and poured it into the pot.

#Strangely, in the firelight of the ruin, the Prophet saw the Succubus better than he did outside; she was pale and thin in a way he associated with starvation, and he hurried to find the rest of his ingredients to scramble together the meal.

#Her voice was gravely with fatigue, “All this cycle and transformation, all to produce fresh horrors on the world, spawning nightmares and monsters to bedevil man…”

#She stretched out more, closing her eyes as she rubbed at her other knee, and these pains confirmed in the Prophet’s mind that the Succubus was either ill or starving.

#He dumped all the meat he had into the pot.

#She whispered, “All of it, just so…pointless and cruel.”

#“I can see that,” he nodded, “and I hate what you hate.”

#He watched the fire feast on the dried wood, consuming it ravenously.

#“How does a Succubus know such things, the life cycle and the rest?” he asked quietly. “Is it instinct, or some kind of…”

#She opened her eyes and smiled, “Or some kind of association? Teacher succubae passing on lessons to students?”

#“I did stop myself before saying any such thing…”

#“It is instinct, though there is some association, we know of each other…and that is just where I need a Holy Man.”

#The Prophet did not know how much seasoning his guest was accustomed to and dumped a handful into the pot.

#She leaned forward.

#“I don’t want to rape a man and take his seed.”

#He nodded to her as he stirred the pot.

#“I don’t want to transform into a male, into an Incubus,” she went on.

#“I can understand that.”

#“I don’t want to spawn nightmares for man; if I could, I would have nothing to do with man at all!”

#“That is admirable!”

#The Succubus stopped and looked around the ruin and frowned.

#“Did someone drive you out to this place, perhaps one of your admirers outside?”

#The Prophet remembered the flavorful leaves he had drying on stalks and got up to fetch them.

#“No, I just can’t stand to live amongst people. It is easier to hear the Great Mother’s voice, out here in the quiet…”

#He brought the leaves back and dumped them into the pot.

#The Succubus extended her wings again as she stared at the fire, a reflexive gesture only, but the Prophet stopped stirring and gave her his utmost attention.

#Her voice was gruff.

#“I don’t want to do what I was created to do. I don’t want to be what I am supposed to be, I want to deny the transformation and stay as I am. I want to survive, as me. What should I do, Holy Man?”

#She looked up and stared at him with a trembling mouth, unashamed of her watery eyes.

#“What do I do?”

#He started stirring again, slowly, as he stared at the fire.

#Outside the ruin, the Rich Man had coaxed a number of the posse to bring burning oil in large clay pots. The group of them moved through the night like stumbling circus performers, teetering with their burdens, teetering just to the point of spilling or dropping them until they arrived at the entrance, and stared into the opening at the dancing shadows and murmured voices inside.

#“He’s communed with a demon!”

#“That’s how he must have known the future, and all those times he said all those things, we thought he was speaking for the Gods!”

#“We pour the jars out,” the Rich Man explained, “And then we light it! If they’re caught in it, all the better, but at the very least, they’ll race outside to avoid the smoke, and then we bludgeon them to death!”

#One man scratched his beard, stared into the ruins, and then muttered, “How much room do they have back there?”

#“What do you mean?”

#“How do we know that if there’s a fire, they come out here instead of further into the ruin?”

#The group looked at each other, searching each other’s faces for traces of wisdom while they kept their faces blank, hiding their doubt, and even their fear.

#“I know,” said one man, ignored far too long and yearning for some kind of place in the little hierarchy, for some handhold in the world he occupied, “Because I’ve been there; I explored that ruin before the Wild Man went in there…”

#Only the Rich Man knew that this witness was lying, but as a Rich man, he evaluated others according to usefulness, and at present, the Liar was useful. The others nodded and looked back at the Rich Man, ready to do as they were told with the amiable faces of imbeciles.

#“How did he summon that demon?”

#The Rich Man scowled and looked around him, catching the eyes of the new interlocutor and staring until those eyes dropped.

#The Rich Man nodded grimly and then looked back at the group, lifted a hand, and used a tone of voice that, in the Rich man’s ears sounded like indomitable command, but that to the men was too polished to be real.

#“All that matters is that that bastard beggar summoned a demon, and we must kill them both. Before they can hurt anyone else.”

#The group of men then scuttled forward and leaned the jars over to pour over the front walkway and into the Ruin itself with lapping plops echoing higher in crescendo.

#The Prophet dumped more wood into the fire.

#He brought out his bowl and scooped a rich scoop of sledge into it and handed it to her.

#“This tastes better than it looks…”

#She received the bowl with amusement, sniffed it, nodded her thanks with a laugh, and then rolled the bowl over to watch the sledge move reluctantly around the brim.

#“I have a spoon,” he said as he buried himself in the sack, stopped suddenly, and then came out of the sack triumphant, holding the spoon aloft to let it gleam with the growing fire, and then handed it to her with pride.

#She took the utensil as if it were delicate, sniffed it as well, and then started to eat the sledge, slow at first but gradually increasing in speed. She even hummed.

#The Prophet saw that the Succubus herself seemed less vulnerable and delicate, and nodded as he sat down opposite to let her eat in peace.

#His mind whirred; the Succubus’ words set off cascading levels of swirling concepts and possible meanings that ran unrestrained like a forest fire through his brain. He was afraid that in saving his life and sharing his meal, she had given him far more than he would be able to do for her, and he watched her eat like the meal was going to be the only consolation for her trouble.

#She finished, and he refilled the bowl and handed it back to her, satisfied by her appetite.

#She looked up and pointed her spoon.

#“Isn’t it wrong for you to help me? I’m not like your people…”

#“Like all those people out there?” the Prophet scoffed as he stretched out on his side of the fire, “Who search day and night for weakness in me, who use any petty detail they can find or create in order to refuse me, who seek my life and hunt me at all times? No, it is not wrong to help you. But how about you?”

#She stopped chewing and looked up again, one cheek stuffed with food.

#He waved his hand to the outside.

#“Is there some government of Succubus and Incubus? Do you have some hierarchy, would others not be vengeful if they knew you came to talk with me?”

#“There is a maker I’m afraid of, all the fathers…”

#“Father’s?”

#“All of my kind that have completed the cycle, double rapists, now Incubus. They are always stronger when they’ve completed the cycle…”

#“Ahh!” The Prophet sat up, “So, herein is one of your struggles; how to maintain your identity and defy these cycles, but then get strong enough to defend yourself from those who’ve surrendered to the cycles.”

#The Succubus nodded.

#The Prophet gazed once more into the fire.

#“If I’m taking my time in contemplation,” he said, “It is because I have never had a conversation like this before.”

#“What? No demons lining at your door to hear your judgments and pronouncements?”

#He grinned lopsided. “I deal with more predictable corruption, but it is all still powers and warfare, and I’m very interested in what you’ve said…”

#She finished the bowl again, and slowly bent over the pot to see if there was any more of the food, and when she saw some boiling away in a corner of the pot, she dipped the spoon in without making a sound to grab it up.

#She’d just finished the bite when the Prophet stirred.

#“Below this ruin, right under our feet and a little north of here, there is a fountain of pure clear water. Several cracks in the roof let in either pleasing sunlight by day or clear views of the stars and heavenly bodies at night. Please, stay here and wait as I fast and search out wisdom, something that can help…”

#The Succubus licked the spoon and looked sideways at him. “You will help me?”

#The Prophet looked up at her, “There is nothing more important to me in all the world. I want, no, I need you to defy your fate. You must defy it.”

#He scratched his head, “And I confess this is in part selfish, for what you’ve said today…”

#He looked at the fire, threw in a branch, and then stood up.

#“Thank you for trusting me. I honor vulnerability as sacred. I must do everything I can to help you for my own sake, for you are a symbol to me of something I have searched for all my life!”

#His eyes were wide and maniacal, catching and reflecting more of the fire’s light. “You are an answer to prayer!”

#The Succubus stared open-mouthed, waited, and then raised her arms and wings in an unspeaking gesture that implied, “What? What does that mean? Explain yourself!” but at that particular moment, the Prophet’s feet, the door behind him, and the walls burst into flame.

#The Rich Man and his group waited just outside the entrance, ready to trounce anyone who came running out through the flames as the fire cracked greedily and drank up the oil. He assumed the Prophet would come out first, but no one came out. As the flames cracked on, he worried that his prey was escaping him, and he motioned the group to step forward and prepare to throw themselves into the ruin.

#The Succubus embraced the Prophet and closed her wings about him, extinguishing the fire at his feet and driving the flames backward. The sudden pain shocked his system, and he passed out in her arms.

#Laying him down in a dark corner of the room, the Succubus turned and flung herself into the air, arching just under the ceiling and coming down on the emollient with a crash, the force of which threw fiery oil all over the Rich Man and several of his companions.

#The burning men tried to flee and unwittingly ignited those of their companions who had been spared the initial splash of blazing grease, and soon most of them were searing and crackling along with the others.

#At the same time, a blocky man in the back of the group, lightly seared, had put himself out, and now stood watching the Succubus.

#He realized her only real clothing was a type of shadow that moved about her person at her will, and seeing her as she was in that moment, wings spread wide, face consumed in rage, her body revealed thus, fascinated him. Soon he pushed his way forward against escaping men, reaching to get closer to her, and so any un-engulfed men were soon bundled with the engulfed and blistering along with the rest.

#Their haired burned brightest at first and then dissipated in charred tar atop them while the rest of their bodies smoldered under the raging flame, and as they fell over each other, instead of scattering they were consumed together in a mass of roaring white light.

#The few men who survived fled by instinct and did not come to themselves until they were back at their village.

#The Succubus watched the torrential heap swell and roast up to its peak, and only turned to go back into the ruin when the fuel of the fire was mostly used up, with only tiny flashes of igneous glow burning hot on fat and then dying just as quickly into the reeking tar.

#3.

#On the first day of the Prophet’s fast, the Succubus asked him, “What did you mean I am an answer to prayer?”

#He responded by motioning to his scalded feet, and when she snorted, he replied, “To defy fate, such as you are doing, means remaining angry! Anger keeps us from resignation and surrender, and something about your anger answers a question I have had my whole life…Please wait a little longer for my fast, and I will explain.”

#He lay down to sleep and the Succubus rose and hid in the shadows near the village.

#She watched as the Rich Man’s son assumed command of the area. He flogged the men who’d run from his father and threatened the villagers with a richly imaginative set of torments if they did not go to the Prophet’s ruin and retrieve his father’s corpse.

#Unknown to her, an Incubus caught onto her trail.

#It doesn’t matter who he was or what his name was, and it does not matter that he had no personal previous dealings with the Succubus, as creatures like him are all the same, and are in effect, interchangeable.

#On the second day of the Prophets fast, he got up to walk around, and she asked him again what he was thinking, and he said, “You are an inspiration to me. You want to get strong, but not strong the way your enemies are strong…you want to get powerful a different way than they did, and I will go on fasting until I can give you a reply that honors your question…An answer given quickly is often worthless.”

#The Succubus was disappointed, and the Prophet sat down next to her and said, “You know, it is possible that your race was entirely different before some human cursed you to your current predicament.”

#She looked up at him.

#He nodded.

#“An empathetic race, capable of change, somehow shackles to this fucked-up cycle that now curses you.”

#He smiled.

#“If so, your resistance to the cycle is a sign of an integral identity outside of your bondage!”

#The Prophet reached out and handed the Succubus a pendant.

#“Please take this,” he whispered, “it belonged to my daughter…”

#The Incubus discovered the village and listened to their whispers, gossip, lies, and the fears they cried out in the night.

#On the third day of his fast, the Prophet drank from the fountain underneath the ruin.

#The day was slow, lazy, and hot overhead, but the two of them were spared the heat underground, with only the dusty shafts of sunlight piercing down wonderfully at mad angles to light the chamber of the fountain.

#The Fountain itself tinkled clear and clean as water itself.

#“My first memory is my dad hitting me and my mom rebuking me for angering my dad,” the Prophet started. “I was a sweet boy, head in the clouds, and I always stood up for the one that was catching hell…but I could never understand it; why would the Great Mother make a boy so sensitive to suffering and injustice, and then make him too weak to do anything about it? What kind of cruel joke is that to play on a sweet little boy? It was outright cruel.”

#The Prophet wiped his eyes and then motioned up to the cracks of the chamber where light spilled in like amber, to which the Succubus understood the Prophet motioning to all the world.

#“Why bless a man with wisdom and sight, only to be ignored and unbelieved his entire existence? Force him, I say, force him to watch it fail, and curse him to live with his killers, live alongside the ignorant and hateful ones that drain his life and that will one day assassinate him? What is the good of all that?”

#He raised his head to look at her, chin trembling, and held out his hands to her.

#The Incubus shattered the ceiling crack in a downward swoop that blasted earth, clay, and brick debris throughout the chamber.

#He stood there between them; wings and horns and claws like the Succubus, but larger, and he was the color of pus.

#See them now.

#See them there, in the shattered cavern suddenly filled with light, as the Incubus turns to grab at the Succubus with an animal grunt like he’s going to pull her arm out of the socket, and she screeches and scratches at him, and tries to claw at his eyes, but he gets hold of a wing and throws her aside before she can rend his flesh.

#See her lift off, again and again, and swoop down upon him, and he repels her easily, and she just will not stop, though there is no hope.

#No! It is because there is no hope! A ragged and violent rebellion, down in the earth, as the Succubus refuses, refuses it all.

#And then the Incubus is on top of her, pummeling fists beating against her wings as they wrap around her head and neck to protect her, and her hatred is hot, and this is how it has always been, and the stronger one beats the weaker, and the weaker screams out with hate that always resides, that’s always there, as natural as a heartbeat, and she can’t kick him off or push him away.

#Let your fists bunch, and wince as you know what it is like to be at another’s mercy to one who knows no mercy.

#She cries through the broken limbs and the pain and the humiliation, “Fuck you! Fuck you!”

#And he says nothing, for what has he to say?

#The Incubus obeys.

#He obeys instinct and conditioning. He is there as an enforcer.

#On and on he pummels, again and again, until he hears it, the laughter, the mad laughter, and the Incubus stops, and turns slowly towards the fountain, and smells the water, clear and clean, and hears the laughter, but he can’t quite see the laugher, for the Incubus’ victims are usually asleep and helpless and afraid, and the living man stumbles forward, dying of hunger with his arms opened wide as if in exultant welcome, his words barely enunciated as they danced out of his madly grinning face.

#“I know you!”

#The Prophet totters emaciated. The Incubus stares.

#There is no signal in the Incubus’ brain that the human could possibly be a threat, and the Incubus blinks like an owl who sees only cold bodies, or like a bat who can find no insect no matter how he calls.

#The Man-thing draws near him while all others flee, it is a man, where the Incubus has accustomed himself to female prey. It is all so confusing, and the Incubus tries to

#The Prophet staggers forward and reaches up, and the Incubus sees electric wires fire off wild signals in his brain as this non-threat man-thing pierces the Incubus’ throat and drives his hand through the roof of the Incubus's mouth to grab hold of the Incubus’ brain, such as it is, right behind his eyes.

#“I know you now!” the Prophet laughed, shrilly and wild, like one insane.

#And he twists and tears the mind, and the mind does obediently all that it can do, which is to perish, and all that terrible bulk, paid for with such a price, falls over, useless, unfit to feed the dogs or disintegrate into the earth, so repellant and un-life it is.

#And the Prophet laughs.

#4.

#The villagers dug through the debris and carried the Prophet to the village center.

#When the Prophet awoke, he found himself set on top of a mound of flammable bails and chained in place to be burnt alive.

#After the fire was lit, the bails took up the flame with a gentle howl.

#When he saw that he was going to burn, the Prophet sang a new song, but he welcomed death rather than dreaded it, and death was denied him.

#The Succubus flew down to stand before him.

#“You didn’t finish telling me how I am an answer to prayer.”

#He leaned over and turned his head up.

#She snorted, “All that fasting, and you haven’t told me yet what to do.”

#The Prophet adjusted the chain so he could see her more clearly, and she sat down next to him the flames lapping at her feet and tail and the ends of her wings.

#“I have to apologize; I have no answer yet!

#“You are self-transcendence! You are proof of it, in the flesh! And where most see you and see beauty to be used, my eyes have seen fate defied! My unfulfilled desire for an unreasonable justice has become more than obsession, I admit that, but in you, I see that desire tears free, the egg is ruptured! To the outside! To refuse to be comforted, and to demand the outside! I want to be ruptured like you are, the answer to a lifetime of prayers, and I’m sorry I can’t help you as you helped me, for the only thing I know for you to do is chase down those alternate realities with all the venom you have and refuse to surrender! I’m sorry, it shouldn’t have taken days of fasting to say that…”

#The Succubus had not sufficiently covered herself in shadow, and the village women were scandalized.

#One of these women, named Malligrees, picked up a wood-busting maul from beside her hut and marched forward, bristling with indignation, certitude coursing through her veins, and can I say her certitude was any less than the Prophet’s?

#She raised the maul.

#“Come down off of there you slut, and get your reward in the light of day, for I have-”

#But the unreasonable Prophet did not respect this pious woman nor her complaint, and he interrupted her, pointing with accusation, his eyes suddenly blazing.

#“Malligrees, you shut the fuck up! I am pronouncing right now, you keep that festering slavering mouth closed until I’ve finished. Hear me, Mally, keep your fucking mouth shut!”

#And he shamed her in front of all her neighbors, and Malligrees was devastated, and she wished the fire would burn its way higher and kill the Prophet, and maybe kill her neighbors who’d seen her so shamed, and she despaired, for there was no vengeance for her.

#The End