night on the town
Lilith
The night is mine.
Ours.
Feel this skin. A glove of muscle and bone. It gives us sensation. The ability to touch.
Taste.
We wish to taste everything. Honey on our tongue. The burn of liquor in our throat. All this city has to offer. It’s been far too long. Now we’re free.
The delirious need to partake overwhelms us, to experience every possible pleasure, leaving us dizzy in this blissful skin.
I won’t be tied down again, trapped in another dead-end vessel. Not like last time.
Never again.
Even now I can feel the itch. That prison of skin. How it felt to be locked behind those bones. In that decaying body. Such
an insult to our prowess. An absolute blasphemy.
To be trapped, like that, for so long, inside someone no one dared to touch.
Wasting away. Wasting our potential.
Our gift.
Not tonight. Tonight—we’ll cling to this skin for as long as it suits us. A full-bodied malbec. Dark fruit flavors. A smoky finish. Deep color. Robust tannins. Just a hint of spice. There’s a darkness within her, faint but present, the slightest shadows gathering in the corners of her soul.
She’s a healthy one. No addictions, no diseases. Just a delirious need to live. She wants to be loved.
Don’t we all, darling?
We are dancing, dancing in a sea of swaying bodies. We are ready to press ourselves to the very precipice of ecstasy. The
sensation of saints.
Not much time. Not nearly enough strength. So rusty. This skin will suffice. For now.
Always now, now, now . . .
Never later. Never then.
Tonight is all we have. Back in the saddle, as they say. So . . . where do we begin?
With whom?
All eyes are on us. We feel them slither and slide, trailing after our body. We like this. The attention. We are wanted once
more. Desired. It’s been so long. Lust is within us, and it resonates outward, penetrating all those around. A black hole at the very center
of ourselves. Our proximity pulls others in, dragging them into our orbit. They all want to lose themselves within us. Succumb
to us. Our ethereal undertow. Our voracious gravity.
Join us. Come and play . . .
They invite us to dance. Partake in the trivial pleasures they have to offer.
Have a drink, they offer.
Want a bump, they say.
Don’t be shy . . .
Their invitations mean very little to us, but we enjoy the hunger. The craven quality to their invitations. We bring this
out from them, every last man and woman. We embody it.
We itch for more. Something glorious, something . . . angelic. We want to ascend to new heights of pleasure, just so we can drag these people down, down, all the way down.
More. Now.
Now.
We soak in the sound. We spin, closing our eyes and losing ourselves to the song, writhing to the rhythm, its pulse parallelling
our own, riding it, dancing, dancing, dancing . . .
“Better be careful,” a voice warns.
We open our eyes to find a man standing before us. A canescent body. Older than our own. Forties, perhaps? Older? His thinning
hair is already in retreat, receding across his scalp. He tries so hard to hide it, slicking it with grease. There is a flap
of flesh that dangles from his chin, a wrinkled sac, that reminds us of a turkey wattle. It jiggles just so before us.
He’s so . . . thin. Not just his physicality, but his very being. A beanpole of a soul, all sinew and gristle. A tapeworm of a human being.
There is no mirth behind his smile.
Will he do? Appease our need?
He leans forward, his breath in our ear. It reeks. “You can get hurt up here,” he says.
“Is that so?”
“You could use a lookout.” He smiles, exposing a crooked row of teeth the color of corn kernels. “Someone to keep an eye on
you.”
“Are you offering up your eyes for us?”
His expression shifts, his smile slips. He is puzzled by us. Confused by our question.
We are bored already.
We give him our gift. Just a gentle caress against his chest. That simple breach between our bodies—contact—and we tip the scales. Push the balance. Just a tad. He doesn’t have that far to go on his own. His soul is already corrupted,
no surprise. A piece of fruit left out in the sun. It won’t be long before he joins us. Another drop in an endless sea.
See you soon, darling . . . Enjoy the time you’ve got left.
Away we go. On to the next impressionable soul. “Love what you do,” they say—and I am very good at my vocation. I absolutely love my job.
Who’s next? We drift into the mix of limbs. Lose ourselves in the song. The sound burrows into our body, reaching in deep.
A sonic assault. We enjoy it. The keening from the singer, the high pitch of his voice. It reminds us of home. All that wailing.
“You wanna watch where you’re going, hon . . .”
Another voice. Another man. This one is much like the last. A mask of bravado but buried underneath . . . we sense insipidness.
Tedium. Textures of flesh that provide so little.
We are not inspired. A waste, really. “Sorry,” we say. “Didn’t see you.”
“You’re looking at me now.”
“We don’t like what we see.” Another touch. A gentle caress across his shoulder. The scales lean even further forward, tipping
toward immorality, weighed down by our gift.
Then we push away.
“Bitch,” this man mutters as we drift off, unbothered by his bruised vanity. If only he knew what we were capable of. How
much more we could do to him, even here, now.
No matter. We’ll be seeing him soon enough.
We are ready to exit into the night. Explore what this world has to offer.
But wait. There. What is that?
We sense him amongst the rest: a lost soul. It sings to us somehow. His loneliness is nothing new. His fear is fascinating,
yes, but there’s more to him. Something we cannot put our finger on quite yet. All we know is that the textures of his flesh
resonate.
See how he burns. So bright.
Who is he?
Look how he shines. Amongst all the others, he absolutely beams. This man is a beacon eclipsing all these other sweating bodies.
A black hole in his heart, aching.
Now we are very curious. We want to taste him.
Just a lick.
We crave the salt caked to his skin. That dried sweat, endless oceans of experience, now evaporated, encrusted across the
vast expanse of his body, a tundra of time.
Will it taste like home?
We go to him. His eyes find us.
Good. Watch. See.
Look how fresh he is. If we want this ripe piece of fruit, we must pluck it.
“I’ll swallow your soul.”
“Come again?” His emptiness sings to us. The void within his chest.
What a blissful abyss.
He’s taller than others. A slender testament of flesh. His skin looks so tight, taut, strapped against his frame. Nothing
but sinew. A steel cable all coiled up. A serpent set to strike. The muscles along his arms are like leather, laced in veins
that tether themselves to the bone, a ship’s mast snaking up and disappearing beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt.
Charcoal sticks for legs. Stovepipe jeans. His threadbare shirt clings to his chest, damp with sweat. So tight. A second skin.
There is a smattering of holes in the cotton along his torso, as if it’s been eaten through by maggots. What a feast he must
make.
His black hair absorbs the light, trimmed to his temples, while up front, a few sprigs reach into the air. An oily sea urchin,
loose spikes writhing about. High cheekbones, draped in completely pale flesh. Filament lips. His eyes probe, never settling.
They seem to be a slate gray. This man is nothing but ash. Burnt offerings. What a succulent sacrifice.
We want his body. Not to possess, but to fuck. Feel everything two bodies can offer. The bristle of facial hair. The scrape
of nails down our back. The burn of skin. All of it.
It just takes an invitation. Let our body do the talking. Still got it. Our conversation is clipped, what little there is. This venue hinders our ability to whisper. To reach in deep.
We need to go elsewhere. Take him away from all this. Somewhere private, where we can have him all for ourselves.
“Come with me . . .”
He follows us, his hand in ours. The very warmth of it radiates out from his skin and into our own. His pulse picks up, quickens,
and we wish to glimpse into his heart. Drift from one chamber to the next, floating along with the flow of blood—his blood—a
circulatory tour of those darkened corners of his very being, like wandering through the empty halls of an abandoned house.
What’s waiting for us inside? What treasures might we find within?
Look at it—look at him—burning so bright in this dark light, tendrils of it radiating off from him in phosphorescent waves. A negative energy. Ultraviolet
light. A solar flare of skin.
He’s absolutely blinding.
The air is much cooler outside. We enjoy it. The chill. This brittle shift in the atmosphere sends a ripple of gooseflesh
over our skin. Our breath spreads out before us.
His breath spills out from his lips, as well, as if his soul is escaping from his mouth. We want him. This man’s warmth. To
absorb it, somehow. Soak it in. Make it our heat as well.
“Where to?” he asks.
Hell and back.
“There’s another bar down the block,” he offers. “It’s a lot quieter. I know the bartender there and he pours pretty deep . . .”
We lure him further out into the night, into the cold. There is an alley alongside the music hall. A shadowed space of brick
and cobblestone. The bare bulb overhead is a pale yellow, curdled cream, illuminating little. It only enhances the shadows,
like pouring milk in coffee. The light here doesn’t obliterate the murk as much as coagulates it. Thickens it.
“Where are you taking me?” he asks. Said the fly to the spider.
We don’t answer.
The detritus of delirious celebration litters the paved alleyway, discarded cans and bottles, the glint of green glasslike eyes watching us from the dark. The rats. The vermin.
Let them watch. Let them all see what we are about to do. A carnal carnival.
“Where are we going?”
We drag him into the alley. Lure him into the shadows. We are alone here.
I think we’re alone now, the song goes, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around . . .
He is ours now.
All ours.
Good.
Now.
Now.
Now.