By: Apple Ardent Scott
I was hungry and Murphy was dying. Memories of the ancient days when I hunted freely and without pity aroused a sweet melancholy, and I imagined squelching his flesh between my fingers and extruding his savory soul from his veins. A familiar, bitter hunger rose in my throat, the unfortunate scar left by a foolish priest. While his feeble beliefs and clumsy rhetoric failed to banish me to the abyss, a forgotten spark of faith in his soul cursed me to wander in the twilight, always hungry, yet powerless to take a soul without consent. I leaned against the corner of a building and watched an old man named Murphy as he wallowed in his own twilight.
His lips were dried and cracked like the trail of crusted spittle across his dented chin. In the light of a distant streetlamp, his thin gray hair glowed like a sulfurous halo around his head. He shuffled to a hunchback stance from a concrete stoop with one hand in his pants. He scratched and adjusted his junk, then withdrew his hand from his threadbare jeans and raised his fingers to his nose. With a clenched grin he sniffed long and hard, savoring the scent of his own dirt and piss. His nose lay like a flesh-covered boulder of pumice on his pockmarked, uneven face. He licked his fingers and his flat brown eyes rolled up in his head. His eyes might have been a bright chestnut once, but long ago their brightness sank below layers of bloodshot yellow pus from a passive-aggressive liver. His toothless smile revealed the dark, rotting flesh of his gums stretched thin over his jawbone. He cackled and flies swarmed toward his gaping maw, drawn by the stench of stale beer and decaying food coating his tongue and throat. With bleak hopefulness he thrust his hand back into the crotch of his jeans and leaned with his other hand braced against a filmy green dumpster. Facing a brick wall, he pulled out his short, pinky-thin penis and grunted. A trickle of urine dribbled from the tip, across his index finger and onto the ground. The old man flapped his dick up and down like a down-home grandma wrung a turkey’s neck on the day before Christmas. Drops of piss soaked into the ground, his shoes, and his shirt, reigniting crusted layers of dormant filth into the active, moist stink of a living death.
I inhaled the sweet aroma of desperation and sauntered into the alley. Murphy turned and tucked his little mole back into his pants. He glared at me, frowned, grunted.
“Fuck you, bitch.” The old man fell back against the cold brick wall and slid his ass to the pavement. “You ain’t got what I want.”
“Murphy,” I laughed, “you don’t know that. But you have something I want.” I flung my black hair forward with both hands, framing my smooth obsidian face. “Don’t you?”
“I said fuck off.” Murphy turned his back to me and hunched over. The absentminded hand in his pants fondled his reluctant pecker.
“Let me help you with that, Murphy.” I opened my cloak and straddled his diseased face. “Look at me.”
The old man’s hand went as slack as his dick. He shook his head and looked away. I leaned down and caressed his cheek with one slender, ebony finger.
“I can give you the release you want.” I let my breath singe his ear with each whispered word. I slid his hand up to my breast and let him feel my leathery skin. “Just ask.”
Understanding flared in his dim eyes. “You just want to kill me.” Murphy sobbed and his shoulders heaved, even as his scarred hand squeezed my breast with lustful resignation.
I knelt in front of the pathetic man. “Yes, Murphy, I do. But you have to want me.” My fingers reached into his hair and caressed his grainy scalp. “That’s my curse. But then, it’s your blessing.” I lifted his chin and looked into his old, pain-scarred soul. My lips brushed his forehead and he whimpered. “We both have needs, and we both have sorrows. Your release is final, but it only brings me more hunger. You get to choose. I have to beg.”
Murphy pulled his hand away and wiped a poisonous yellow glob from his eye to the bridge of his nose. “Will it hurt?”
I licked my lips and stood up. “It will be the most exquisite pain you have ever had.”
Murphy focused his weary eyes on mine. “Demon.”
“Tell me.” I leaned my head closer to his rank lips.
Murphy cried, dropped his head against mine, and whispered his last words in my ear. “Make it go away.”
“Thank you, Murphy.” I knelt on the asphalt and leaned his head back against the bricks. Softly, I licked away each bitter tear, put one hand on his chest and one on his crotch, and opened my mouth, baring my sharp teeth and scaled tongue. I longed to savor the lusciousness of his life, the heartaches and sorrows, the self-pity and despair, but hunger hurried my mouth to his. I latched on to his face and suckled like the runt of a litter granted a shriveled, dusty tit. Murphy held me like a lover in the throes of his last passion. His grunts and squeals muffled in my mouth, and his body shuddered in my embrace. Too soon his spirit slowed to a trickle and I withdrew, leaving him a last few drops of life to enjoy by himself.
“I take good care of those who take care of me. Goodbye, Murphy.” I squeezed his crotch, kissed his forehead and walked away. From the street I heard his moans of euphoria as his final bliss oozed into his hand and onto his jeans. His last cry faded and I heard his body slump over in death.
As I walked on, scouring the streets for more souls to sate my hunger, Murphy’s soul lingered sweet on my tongue, and I savored every single one of his wasted years. We made a deal, and I gave him a bonus. Demons aren’t all bad.
Bio:
Apple Ardent Scott is a…
Shuddermonger: (n): A person who is involved with something in a petty or contemptible way (usually used in combination): a shuddermonger. One who can cause another to tremble with a sudden convulsive movement, as from horror, fear, or cold.
She deals in things that make you shudder.
Her stories have been published on the web and in print to the delight (and sleepless nights) of her wonderful readers. She’s currently trapped in Lafayette, Indiana with her family, including her grandmother’s ashes in the garage, her father’s ashes next to the television, and her favorite dog buried in the backyard.
Apple Ardent Scott is afraid of everything.
http://www.appleardentscott.com
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