The Succubus - A short story for adult readers

Trigger warning: This short story includes references to murder, mutilation, sexual abuse, and abuse of children. Reader discretion is advised.

“You’ll spend the rest of your life with a scar, but you’re very lucky,” The doctor said, looking down at my chart. I grunted in affirmation. The nurse had wrapped me up; she had warned me it would sting, but the pain seemed far away.

The doctor looked up at me. “I am also prescribing counseling. You have experienced a very traumatic event.”

I shrugged, and he gave me a serious look, so I nodded to stop him from going on a speech about the importance of my mental health. He had no idea what I had been through, and no psychologist was going to either.

I had felt I would drown before her claws ripped my throat. She gnashed and clawed at me from above. I felt the slash on my face, and the dirty water and blood blinded me. My fingers kept brushing against the metal of my gun, but she kept me from being able to maintain a grip.

“You traitor! You coon!” she kept screaming as she continued clawing at my throat and chest. Her face was an unrecognizable conglomerate of hair, teeth, and gore—a monster trying to consume me, like it did all those I had set her upon.

I managed to grab the gun, and I shot her. I shot her until I heard the empty clicks. She sighed, then dropped. Once her body was still, I holstered my gun and looked around. I wanted no questions on what she was or how her body became riddled with bullets. But I was a cop; I knew how to hide a body.

Years had gone by before I dared to try to stop her. At first, she fed herself on easy prey that she knew I wouldn’t object to. She would disguise herself as a little girl or boy and lure her prey in. I could not mourn their deaths, although their screams still haunted me.

Every time I dared to even think of stopping her, her words came back to me and froze me in place. “It’s not that they don’t believe you, it’s that they don’t care.” Just those words over and over again. The screams of her prey made the words dance in red through my mind because it was true. Those in power didn’t care about these victims; to care would bring too much destruction to the status quo.

They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care.

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They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care.

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“You know that I will ensure she receives justice and protection.” She would whisper in my ear whenever I questioned our arrangement. “Do you really want to put that little girl through a trial? Having to explain what she was wearing as if she were some temptress? Having to listen to that bastard’s attorney excuse his behavior, to justify it. Oh, he was abused as a child. He can be treated. Why should his life be ruined? She won’t even remember; she is so young. Children are resilient.”

Points I had heard lawyers utter numerous times. Each time, my stomach clenched, and something inside me broke a little more. Maybe that broken thing inside me is what made her seek me out and offer the arrangement.

She would continue whispering in my ear, unrelenting:

“Or, they’ll try to get out of a trial by claiming they meant to spare that little girl. You and I both know this is a farce. She’s still screaming. I wonder if she is still bleeding. You remember how stained with blood her panties were? Those screams will always haunt us, but not him. He will walk free, unless you let me feast. But you can tempt fate if you would like. See if they’ll give this girl justice. There might be enough pressure on them now, enough publicity around it. A sacrifice of one of their own to appease the masses, to give the illusion of progress. But you and I both know that they don’t really care. So let us protect our own. You and others have been waiting too long. Generations of ladylike behavior, of trying to be one of the boys, even turning against your own. All for scraps at best, but more often than not, for nothing. You can’t trust them for justice, but you can trust me for vengeance.”

Sometimes I would protest feebly, trying to defend the broken system I was a part of, but she had a counterargument for that too:

“Don’t protest, you know the truth. The time for justice has gone and passed; let us get vengeance now. Let us scare them. They won’t begin to give out justice until they believe it is in their best interest. For future little girls, let me take care of it. Do you want more little girls to run to their mothers with blood-soaked, mutilated genitals? Let us beat them down so bad they will be too scared to get up. Let us truly give them a consequence they can’t brush off. Let me feast on his flesh and his marrow, keeping him alive until he has screamed far more than that little girl. Let me eat him, and let his chewed, gnawed bones be a warning to his kind.”

I let her.

It started with child molesters and pedophiles. It became easier and easier for me to allow her to feed on them, and for me to hide the few pieces that remained. Then she began to want to target other sexual predators.

“They need to pay too.” She argued, “Their victims get less justice than the children. Let me feed. These predators get rewarded for their crimes. There is no other way. You know this.”

Days I resisted. The deaths of child molesters and pedophiles were easily dismissed morally, and no one wanted to dig too deeply into the vigilante who was getting rid of them. But she wanted rapists now, sexual predators that were more accepted by society, and that was risky.

“Other women are not worth the risk? Will you be one of those who align with the enemy in some misguided attempt to be safe? Will you betray your own for them? Will you be a traitor to your sex and allow the predators who hunt you free range? Let me cull them. It will be a benefit for all.”

I was able to resist for a few more weeks after that. But I gave in. She knew how to needle me, how to tap into my trauma, my pain, my rage. I helped her hunt, and I hid her scraps.

At first, I thought I was like Batman. Now I realize I was Renfield. Sad, pathetic, subservient Renfield.

The first man she picked that wasn’t preying on children was a man who raped drunk women. Everyone at the station knew he was a date rapist, but we couldn’t get him. There wasn’t enough evidence, and the women he raped couldn’t remember, or were too ashamed to come forward. A few confessed to me they didn’t want to be called a lying slut for months on end for the slim chance he would go to prison. So we kept an eye on him, waiting for him to slip up. But he didn’t. #MeToo. #HimToo. It did nothing. He gorged himself with impunity. He gamed the system, he was selective with his victims, and he was a disgusting, vile piece of shit who deserved to die. I was excited when she revealed he was her intended prey. Then I felt guilt for the excitement, but not enough guilt to stop me.

She disguised herself as what he liked: young, dressed for a night out, and falling drunk. I stayed at her chosen feeding ground that night, a small patch of brown grass by the dump, and waited. When they arrived, he thought I was the trap; that I was the thing to fear. He started screaming at me, pathetic excuses, nonsensical justifications, and dubious claims. He didn’t turn towards his intended victim, whom he had dragged and dropped to the ground, when he saw a cop there. He didn’t see her get up, he didn’t see her change, he didn’t see her open her maw and clamp down on his shoulder.

But he felt it.

He screamed and tried to run towards me, his enemy turned rescuer, he thought. I have seen a lot of horrific things as a police officer, but I had to turn away from him. The desperation in his eyes as he tried to escape the pain and the horror. He screamed at me, begging me to shoot her. I kept my back turned. I heard her bite down on his throat. I heard him try to scream again, but all that came out was wet, desperate gurgling.

She killed him quickly, compared to the pedophiles. She must have been hungry. He should be grateful he didn’t suffer the way the others did. The way the little girls did. The way the women he raped did.

The sound of her feeding was muffled by the squabbles of birds feeding on the trash. I could still hear it, though. The hard breathing as she ate quickly and desperately. The smack of blood in her mouth, the snap of bone and sinew, the slurp as she sucked out his bone marrow. I could never bring myself to watch her eat. So I continued to stand there, looking out at the garbage and birds until she was done.

One day, I realized that feeding her had become routine. It had become my norm. I looked at those I arrested or questioned as possible food for her. The ease with which I sic’d her on the man who was raping closeted men, the priest who took advantage of the young boys in his charge, and the stepdad who raped his stepdaughter.

The stepdad I remember vividly, or rather, I remember his wife, the girl’s mother, vividly. She walked in while she was feeding on him. He was already dead at that point. She had ripped out his throat so his neighbors wouldn’t hear.

I was facing the door, while she fed on him on the bed, no longer disguised as the daughter. She walked in, saw me, an officer first, and then her husband and her on the bed. She froze in place, as did we.

I knew she had chosen him over her daughter, sending her daughter away to her grandparents for ‘her protection’. But she stayed with him. Stood by his side even after learning what he had done to her daughter.

I heard the words before I realized I had said them: “Kill her too.”

I saw the mother start to scream, but a black shape passed my peripheral vision and struck her. She was dead before any sound had escaped her mouth.

She gorged herself that night. She didn’t have to feed again for a couple of weeks.

Why am I more disgusted with the mother than I am with the stepfather?

I think rage and hatred can be sustained only for so long, or at least, it’s so exhausting that either it extinguishes with time, or you allow it to continuously smolder and burn all the happiness in your life away. Maybe that’s when I began to plan my escape and her demise. I just got too tired.