From 2013, written the summer after Tim died and I had moved back home, to Dodge. Dodge as in get outa?  Tis the way ol’Dodgers, such as myself, refer to our beloved village. As for the getting out part, most do, some don’t, others won’t.

This has sat in my drafts all this time, it is about a night, a person who shall remain nameless, and this one stuck with me all these years and one I always meant to return to and didn’t, but here we are. 

Why didn’t I post it? Well, a few years have gone by and I honestly don’t exactly recall. I do know this though, back in Dodge again after all that time, and that there was some drama going on, but time has passed, and water under the bridge, the ship has sailed, I don’t really give a shite and quite frankly this seemed as good a time as any.  

As beer after beer was drunk, as the music floated through the warm spring night, she lay in wait.

Within the time it took to walk past her across the parking lot, in the brief second that our eyes met, I knew. She smelled of betrayal and lies. I could see the rank contemptuous gaze in her eyes, as she sauntered past me. Alone, as I was walking back to the car to get another beer from the trunk, I knew that look in her eyes.

I’d known her since high school, knew her for what she was, have always known, somehow, even way back in those after school bus rides home; though we barely ever spoke. We didn’t move in the same circles.

I know absolutely nothing about her today past her name. I didn’t know anything REALLY about her way back when, though I knew her for what she was, for the selfish, greedy, bottom feeder she was. I knew her succubus nature prevents her from playing with her peers now. I know friends for her can be a scarce commodity, as eventually, she will betray them. She places no value on friendships {beyond their physical presence}; they merely serve as a backdrop to her centre stage.

As she gazes down her nose at you, you are made aware of how insignificant she feels you are. It is a defensive posture of a child not loved enough? Did her dear mother ignore her growing up? Was she ever in the shadow of a blue-eyed, blond brother that she could never compete with? So she hunts out the weak, like a vulture circling its prey.

Don’t speak her name, don’t give her anymore then she has already taken. Recognize she only wants what you have. She desires to wreak havoc and live within the jealous eyes of another woman’s pain. She doesn’t know you exist or care that you exist. After she’s tingled your lovers’ pride, she tests the weakness of her prey. She says the things to him you won’t, make him feel the things you can’t, feeds off his desire to be appreciated, valued. She doesn’t value him. She thinks he is weak and something to conquer. She lies and says all the lovely sentences she knows he wants to hear. By lifting him up she raises herself, if only in his eyes alone.

She feeds off his vulnerability. It amuses her.

This one is incurable, beyond redemption, beyond all doubt, a succubus.

Ω The word is derived from Late Latin succuba “strumpet” (from succubare “to lie under”, from sub- “under” and cubare “to lie”), used to describe the supernatural being as well. The word is first attested from 1387.

Ω In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon or supernatural entity that appears in dreams, who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus. Religious traditions hold that repeated intercourse with a succubus may result in the deterioration of health or even death. [Wikipedia]

By the end of the night, I bounced and twirled and swayed to the rhythms given out by the band. I became lost and blissfully unaware of anger, or lies, or whoever she was. I would whirl her into this spinning mass of feminine power and let her taste the sweet richness of just having fun. I took away her defensive nature, and let her see, briefly, what she can never be. Never have. Song after song played, and I smiled at her.

This was not about her, it was about just letting go and revelling in the feeling of being alive. Revelling in the now, at the moment, in the rich, cascading cadence of sound and the blessings I knew to be mine.

As the night was drawing to a close the rain came, and the musicians tucked away their instruments, and I found her at the door entangling the mate of a very, very close friend.

If you look though, you can see through her charade of beauty. Her eyes are lined with black, to hide the lines. Her friends are false, her life is unsatisfactory, and she is weaker than she appears. Her weakness’ are the very things she doesn’t value. Her life is incomplete unless she is taking something that is not hers, and that she doesn’t even really want. All she ever wants is what she can’t have. Like the spoiled child she is, trapped in her own delusion, she withers in her own lies.