My Personal Demon

15:05

I didn't often wake up with Jesper's head buried between my legs. Even though I still kept the demon in bed with me, he didn't usually claw at my body with fiendish desperation. He preferred to gently tease me, to make me the monster of desire.

I was especially vulnerable to his games today. Ovulation made my body more sensitive, something I couldn't hide as he licked my wetness.

"You taste different," he said, coaxing the bundle of nerves between my legs.

I made a strangled noise in response. I didn't know if he enjoyed me more or less. Judging by the way he was still consuming me, I would think it was the former.

The orgasm rises and falls, leaving me the same quivering mess as before. He was the ocean and I was the shore, with his waves dutifully caressing my sand. I'm convinced his favorite position for me was to be underneath him, aching and yearning for his embrace. He had an appetite for my rawness, an animalistic naked craving for the flesh.

He wanted to be inside me. Not in the way most men would have craved it, swaddled in the soft, warm, and slick. Nor did he wish to possess me, to hoard me all to himself. No, when he dug at my flesh, he was looking for my essence. He aimed to distract me with pleasure and pry my raison d'etre from my hands. After all, what is more precious to a person than the very thing that makes them tick?

I think he was studying me to break me. It was the only reason I could fathom for his sweetness. I felt it in the way he tried to bend me, flooding my skin with his alchemy.

He knew that I wasn't him. I didn't have magic beyond the residue that came with having physical relations with him. But I could tell that he was curious about my limits.

I was curious about him too. Loneliness was painful to him, absolutely corrosive to his spirit. It drove him into my arms and made it easier for me to take off his clothes.

Anyone would've seen what it was that made him weak. But if you really knew him, you'd see that his open-hearted nature was a facade. As I took him into my mouth, licking and sucking until his thighs tremored, I finally knew his taste despite being eons away from his true intentions.

What do you want from me? I almost ask him that question as he lays on my sheets, spent from my efforts. There was a sleepy look of pleasure on his face that made him utterly human. My heart thumped in my chest. If I took away his horns, I would've been tempted to call him my boyfriend.

But the word "boyfriend" was too mundane for him. He is my lover, self-named and chained to my side by an unknown crime.

Jesper gathers me in his arms, tilting my chin up for an open-mouthed kiss. I taste him and I, fluid and flesh as our tongues wrapped themselves around each other. The kiss feels more like sex than sex itself.

We don't leave the bed for a long time.

He finally carries me out, practically dragging me out of the covers. He takes me to the bathroom where he runs a hot bath. He carries me into the tub with him, painstakingly scrubbing every inch of my body. It wasn't the first time he took care of me, but it was the first time there was intimacy in it.

I think to the outsider looking in, I would've looked like I was in love. The deranged stalker watching me would look at the way I leaned into his touch and assume we knew each other for years. We were like newlyweds on our honeymoon, if Brisrock Piers could even be considered the sort of place for something that romantic.

But that image was a fantasy. No matter how many times we smoked, talked, and fucked, there was still that undercurrent of fear that I had about him. After all, we didn't know everything about each other. Who knew how much blood was on his hands or how old he was despite the smoothness of his skin. One misstep and I might actually see the sort of monster that he was.

I play with his hands, tracing every line on his palms. His hands grow and shrink, fingers slendering to the bone one second before puffing up in the next. I squeeze his hand, trying to force it down to one shape. He mimics my hand, elongating his nails and shrinking his palms. I swat it away, not willing to play along with his games.

That is, until I see a very familiar hand.

The mole near his thumb is a dead giveaway. He had shaped Charles's hand, slipping on a piece of his old disguise. I cradle it gently, bringing it up to my cheek. It had been a long time since I knew his touch. I nearly forgot what it felt like. But here it was, easily summoned at Jesper's whim.

Touching this piece of him doesn't hurt as much as I expect it to. I miss him less lately, having tucked away his things into the dusty corners of the house. The more that I forget about him, the more I can heal.

There are still shards of him littered throughout the house. I lean against the kitchen counter and one of the many conversations we had will rise from the past, bringing him to life again. But every day his image gets blurrier, washed away by the sands of time.

His notebooks still clutter the nightstand, piling up in the drawers next to his recorder and tapes. I can't bring myself to pack them away. In his writing, he's still alive. I won't lock his ghost up, too. I can't. I may take another man to our bed, but I can't shut away his words. That would be true betrayal.

But Jesper was inquisitive. He wanted to know more about the man that he was replacing even though I told him there was very little they had in common.

"You sometimes say his name in your sleep," he admitted. "I think I'm entitled to a piece of him."

I pull out his unfinished story, gathering his notes and old drafts. I even pull out his tapes, with the recorder ready to play them.

"He's in his words." Not that he was ever truly present anywhere else.

Jesper looks down at the pile of stuff that I've heaped into his arms. "You weren't kidding when you said he was a writer."

It was the only thing my dead husband cared about. I wanted to erase the thought as soon as it popped into my head, but unfortunately, it rang true. He spent more time constructing his alternate realities than he did with me.

I didn't take it personally. It was how he escaped from himself, pretending to be these made-up people in his made-up worlds. Writing was cheaper than his therapy sessions. But I wish he was more present. Our reality wasn't that awful, even without the trimmings that would've made our life more comfortable. I woke up everyday for the little things, the slivers of joy that came with being in love with him.

He didn't feel the same. Maybe it was because he thought he was meant for something greater. Being ordinary and living a mundane life with his wife wasn't enough. He needed to be immortalized, somehow transcending his humanity and beating the limits of time and space. But in the end, even he couldn't escape death.

It was only a matter of time before it was my turn. I can't imagine what I would say to him when we meet again. "Sorry" and "I love you" are the two things that come to mind. I wonder if he thinks of me the way I think of him.

If he was reborn, then he no longer has any memory of me. I don't have to worry about him when we're both dead to each other. For some reason, that makes me relieved. He would like that, existing only in the mind. In that sense, his body had been his prison.

That didn't mean I loved him any less. I understood what it was to escape, the way we transformed and shapeshifted through paper and canvas. We both had that gift few were proud of. The only difference between me and him was that I didn't let it consume me. Was I wrong for keeping my feet planted in this reality?

The demon reading his pages in my bed seems to suggest so. Somehow I was able to conjure up a piece of Hell in my house. What my husband would have given to see this sort of thing while he was living. He would've tied Jesper up and subjected him to interrogation, mining him for novel ideas. He would've asked me to summon another, prodding me for whatever magic I had.

Would that have been better than falling for him? If I'm not careful and I keep thinking about alternate realities, I might bring my husband back from the dead.