The Succubus and the Store Clerk
Hunger has many faces. It’s the gnawing in the stomach, yes, but it’s the trembling of a hand too, the acid on the tongue, the sharp inhale of oxygen to the lungs. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I ring through Margo’s cigarettes like every other day, while she taps away on the counter with freshly painted crimson nails. Every cell in my body hungers for her, and she doesn’t notice it.
“Hot date?” I ask her, and she rolls her eyes.
“Where are you taking them?”
“Just to my place,” Margo says and slides some change over the counter. The quarters grind against the thick plastic covering the lotto tickets. “For dinner.”
We smile at our joke. But she doesn’t know how jealous I am that they get to taste her lips before they die.
†
The little lump inside me grows. It starts where the hunger does and spreads to every distant corner of me, chews on me, poisons me, until there is no more me left. Soon, very soon, I will give in to its appetites. On the good days, I can laugh at Margo’s jokes and smoke cigarettes with her. On the bad days, I lean on the shop counter and pray for an end, empty my stomach in the plastic-lined bin. Those days, Margo brings me silks and fine perfumes in antique bottles to distract me because the sweets she once brought will only make it worse. I don’t ask how long she’s had them. I don’t tell her they are of little help.
A convenience store is a pathetic place to die, I tell myself.
†
Margo’s lit window is a beacon at half past midnight. It overlooks a sprawling garden, bustling during the day, but now completely abandoned. The allure she carries with her every day pours past the open curtains. Margo’s lithe silhouette moves against the ornate burgundy and gold wallpaper, one hand gliding along the zipper of her velvet dress before it pools at her ankles. There’s someone else there of predictable appearence. Margo has a type. I spy from behind a rosebush as she pulls him close by the tie.
“I hope you enjoyed yourself,” I say, narrating the play unfolding before me.
I say his part out loud too. “I was hoping we were only getting started.” Before long, Margo kisses him. At first, he’s into it, hands running up Margo’s ass. As the seconds tick on by, he realizes the danger he’s in, and starts to fight. But Margo is stronger, and Margo is hungry. It takes no effort at all for her to pin the squirming specimen to the wall and drain him dry. With every drop she glows more vibrant.
I wonder how it would feel to be pressed up against that wall, to inhale her scent as the life was drained from me.
†
Today is a bad day. Margo sits on the windowsill, legs draped over the side. The tip of her cigarette glows orange with every inhale. “You didn’t watch tonight,” she says, hurt. From my bed, she’s a ghostly shadow against the night, black hair rushing down naked shoulders.
Today the pain was too much, and I didn’t have it in me to watch her feast. This is the first time I’ve missed our weekly dinner date since she first asked me to observe them, ten years ago. She said it elevated the flavour of her meals: a dash of acid cutting through an otherwise rich dish. “I’m sorry.” The apology falls flat. Best not to draw it out. “I never asked, but what happens to them? Do they disappear into the ether once they pass your lips, or do they linger?”
“They linger.” Margo takes another drag of her cigarette. “I feel them like the ocean feels every fish in its waters. They move inside me, animate me, every memory, every experience.”
When I first told her of my illness, she said nothing, only summoned sweets from Paris and left them by my door. When my hair thinned and fell out in clumps, she gifted me beautiful Hermès scarves and matching silk skirts to wear. And when all my struggles were proven futile, she drank fine wines with me in silence and held my hand.
“You’ve never tried to take my life.”
Margo laughs with the notes of antiquated crystal. “I never wanted to.”
“Why not?” Better to die in bed with a succubus than alone in a convenience shop.
As if reading my mind, Margo slips into my bed beside me. Her body moves against mine like a current, flowing, beckoning. Her hands explore generously. She smells of Sunday church service and everything unholy, of roses and cemeteries and death. “I thought you liked men,” I breathe into her neck.
“I like them well enough,” she whispers. “But I love women.” She whispers something else too: words, epitaphs, not for my ears, but to be etched along my flesh, like a curse, like a blessing. I can’t find anything sacrilegious in the way we surrender to one another, in the way our breath meets in silent prayer.
“I’d like you to,” I tell Margo when we finally rest against one another. I cannot think of a better way to spend what little life I have left, even as it leaves me breathless with exhaustion. “There’s not much left, but it’s yours if you want it.”
She hesitates. “It’s not immortality, chérie, just that your energy—”
“Will be with you for as long as you live?”
She nods. Her forehead, slick with sweat, presses against my shoulder. “I’ll always know that you’re there.”
What is death if not satiation? What is death but a feeling where no want exists, no hunger? To rest somewhere safe—I could die for that. Margo will keep me safe, I’m sure.
“I’d like for you to do it now, if it’s all the same.” I’m not sure how much longer I can stay awake, and I want to fall asleep with her fingers in my hair.
Margo’s cool palm cups the side of my face and turns me towards her. Her eyes are a starless sky beneath heavy eyelashes. “It’ll be just like falling asleep,” she whispers, and presses her lips against mine.
And she’s right. Dying feels a lot like falling asleep, when you go willingly. Margo drinks my breath, and with it goes the pain and the fatigue. Another breath, and all of me rushes past her full lips. I become the air in her lungs, the blood running through her veins. I am every beat of her heart, every ache, and every longing. She savours what’s left of me like the final sip of a fine wine, or the last drag of the Gauloises she brought from France two summers ago.
With her, I hunger for nothing.
© 2023 A.D. Sui
About the Author
A.D. Sui is a Ukrainian-born, queer, and disabled science fiction writer. She is a failed academic and a retired fencer. Her stories have appeared in Dark Matter Magazine, Augur, and others. She is represented =by Shannon Lechon of Azantian Literary Agency. Her debut novella The Dragonfly Gambit is set for publication with Neon Hemlock in 2024. When not wrangling her two dogs, she’s tweeting into the void as @TheSuiWay or posting pictures of her tropical plants.