Corviss
The apartment was empty, save for the girl.
There was an annoying, repetitive drip coming from the kitchen, one that would need to be fixed if he was going to be forced here each night, but the rooms were dark. Half-opened curtains cast long shadows across the floor, easy to slip within.Perfect. He’d flown in through one of the shadows, dropping with a muffled thump as he changed, rising upright, navigating his way down the short hallway until he reached the bedroom.
The girl was a lump. A rounded mound beneath the bed clothes. He didn’t know why he’d been half-expecting her to be stretched across the bed naked and writhing, or else, already secured to the bedposts, spread eagle, his for the taking. Instead, she was a lump beneath her covers. She didn’t appear to be any more alluring or lascivious than any other human he visited in the course of his main work; no different than the countless other lumps of flesh upon which he’d squatted.
Corviss sighed in vague disappointment. He wasn’t sure what he was meant to do, and the very notion ofuncertaintywas enough to ruffle his feathers.
Ambiguity was not something with which he was comfortable or familiar—his job was one of a straightforward nature, and he did it well. Sit on the humans, peck into their unconscious minds, and introduce a ribbon of fear. His presence alone was sometimes enough to do the trick. He fed on their fright, gobbled up their unuttered trauma, gorged himself on their panic.
Thiswas altogether different.
He disliked beinguncertain, a distasteful emotion if there ever was one. He didn’t particularly like being in the position he found himself trapped within in the first place, didn’t care for what was nowexpectedof him, and dearly wished he’d simply skipped out on the responsibility.This is what you get for making deals with devils.
“It’s the easiest gig in the world. By the time you’re on the third or fourth visit, these humans are begging for it. You show up, blow a load, and clock out. By the end of the month,you’llbe beggingmeto make the switch full-time.”
The incubus’s words were earnest and confident, his voice oily and cocksure. If the bastard was angling for a crossroads gig, Corviss thought, rolling his eyes, he’d not be surprised to hear it. Besides—he already knewhehad the easiest gig in the world—squat on their chests, render them immobile, and let them sink into an inner world of fear. That was it.
He’d done his taxes last year on the job, squatting on the chest of a CPA, picking through the man’s consciousness for hidden loopholes. Just a few months ago, he’d secondhand watched several seasons of a popular true crime drama through the mind of the human who had binged the show earlier that day, leaving him engrossed in the storyline, jotting down a note in his calendar to revisit the woman once a few more seasons were released.
What the demon described sounded strenuous, and the thought of having to actuallyworkwas hardly appealing. He was, alas, in no position to decline the offer.
“Enjoy the sulfur springs,” was all he’d said tonelessly to the smug incubus, vowing to himself that he’d never be persuaded into socializing off the clock ever again. He had come up short in a gamble, and now he was forced to pay back the debt.Once this is done, you’re never drinking again.
Sighing heavily once more, he unzipped his long, black coat, shaking out his wings. The girl stirred when he pulled back the blankets, a small prey-animal whimper coming from her throat as he pushed up the long t-shirt she wore before climbing onto the bed. She was bare beneath, which at least made things a touch easier, he supposed.
He hadnoidea what to do, where to start, how to go aboutanyof this!
. . . And so he fell back on familiarity, taking up his customary position on her chest, instead of opening the girl’s legs. She was soft and warm, and he wiggled himself against her as if she were a nest, deciding there was no one around to witness the undignified movement. Her brow furrowed as he made himself comfortable, her subconscious aware of his presence, struggling to push him off. Struggling was, of course, futile.
Corviss resented being referred to as a demon, as humans so often did. They had no idea the sophistication and skill that went into achieving a seamless paralysis, and no low-bred demonsheknew had ever aspired to learn, not to his knowledge.
Most of the humans he visited had no idea just for how long he perched upon them, rendering them frozen. It wasn’t until their conscious minds swam up through the dreamsea, struggling to wake, that they became aware of anything at all. By then, he’d already fed on the fear they seeped, fear from the nightmareshe planted, sating himself until they struggled, and when they began to push back, he was usually ready to move on.
His job wouldn’t be as simple with this girl.
He was expected to leave behind a calling card—one expelled from his cock, directly into her womb, if possible. Not that it would make any difference, he snorted, not for him. Demons and humans had been molded from the same inferior clay, but his seed would never take hold in such an inferior vessel. Unless this lump of human was actually a harpy, capable of laying a true egg, there would be no threat of visitation obligations every weekend and presents on Solstice morning for him.Thank the stars for that.
If the incubus had an insemination quota to keep, the dumb fuck had done a poor job of settling his debt, but that wasn’t Corviss’s problem.
He waited until the girl’s breathing evened out once more, looking around the room, wondering if there was something there with which he could amuse himself.The only thing you're meant to use for amusement is the human beneath you, you fool.He wrinkled his nose at his own inner voice, his wings rustling. He was right, he was forced to admit. He would need to get started eventually. First though, he wanted to peer into her mind, as old habits were impossible to break.
The girl's eyebrows had drawn together, her heart rate picking up slightly, and he pressed a long finger to her forehead, shadows unraveling and rooting into her brain. Corviss tipped, delving into her inner world to see her nightmare as it began.
A candle. A fat candle in the middle of a glyph-strewn square of fabric. He watched the girl standing before it, her lips moving as she read. This must have been the ritual she performed, the one that called the absent incubus up, the reason he was there at all. He watched from his perch in the corner of the room as the candle flame flickered, igniting the cloth upon which it sat. Thecheap, pressed-wood table went up in a heartbeat. Her mouth had dropped open, her face frozen in a mask of panic, and in her eyes he saw the flickering flames of her apartment, overtaken in a matter of moments. Beneath him, the girl flinched, and he sucked up her fear.
There was something else there, though, something even better. Flames leapt around them, but in her eyes he could see the reflection of the deeper nightmare, beyond this superficial fear. Corviss pushed his way into the dream girl's eyes, dropping through them as easily as jumping into a swimming pool.
The surface of her dreamsea was desolate and black, rolling waves as far as the eye could see beneath an inky, starless sky. He disliked the isolated emptiness, wondering what waswrongwith the girl to have such a landscape within her, before diving below the surface to the waiting nightmare.
A shop, lined in shelves, littered with indistinct items. The girl stood in the center of one of the aisles, shrunken and small, standing before the tall, leering shape of a dark-haired man.
The man in her dream gave Corviss pause. Her somnolent mind painted him with overdrawn features and a comically villainous, cruel air—his wide mouth stretching in a sneer, canines pointed and gleaming . . . but around him was an air of menace and magic, and Corviss could tell even through the dreamweb that her subconscious depiction of him was not far off from reality.Perhaps she had made a deal with a devil of her own. He watched as the strange man captured the girl like a bug, placing her screaming beneath a dome of glass, another curiosity for his shelf.
Beneath him, she trembled, exhaling another whimper, her arms twitching. He wanted to stay like this, delve deeper, taste the hidden recesses of her mind . . .But you need to get on with it.
He sighed. There was no sense in delaying the inevitable. Shifting in his crouch, the girl jolted beneath him. One of the talons on his bird-like feet had nicked her skin, and the blood welled in a thin, ruby streak, proof that he had been there. He did not leave closets ajar and the spaces under beds disturbed like some amateur. Instead, the lucky few were left evidence of his existence with the odd cut or bruise, the weight of him sitting upon their chest enough of a remembrance to make them afraid to fall asleep, usually.
