Succubus
By Rod Foglio
Copyright 2011 Rod Foglio
Cover art by Carlos Guerrero
*****
Eileen took off early from work that day. She was eight months pregnant, and even though she was able to sit down most of the day while she worked, it was still hard on her back. As she pulled into her driveway, she didn’t pay much attention to the unfamiliar car parked in front of her house. Instead, she looked to her neighbor’s window just in time to see the lady dash quickly out of sight. Since moving into the house, she had noticed that the lady next door had a little too much time on her hands, and had a tendency against minding her own business. Turning her attention towards her own house, she focused on getting inside. Her husband, Curtis, would be home, since he didn’t have a job, and she was looking forward to seeing him. She wasn’t particularly quiet when she entered the house, but Curtis was so busy upstairs that he couldn’t hear her. She could certainly hear him though, screwing somebody up in their bedroom.
“Son of a bitch!” Eileen muttered as she marched to the kitchen and retrieved a butcher knife from a drawer. This wasn’t the first time she had caught him cheating, but it damn well would be the last. She’d had enough, and didn’t care about any consequences. When she got back to the stairway, they were still going at it. She grabbed on to the wooden railing to climb the stairs, her scrawny arm struggling to pull her body’s weight upwards. The other arm flexed tensely while grasping the knife, indicating a determination that belied her body’s struggle. Her frame was thin and gave the appearance of frailty, with only her extended belly adding an unnatural plumpness to her torso. She kept her eyes on the bedroom upstairs, while the pretentious moaning sounds they made mocked her as she made her way up. By the time she got to the top landing, Curtis was finished doing what he was doing and turned toward her as she entered the room with the knife raised and pointing at him.
“Oh, shit,” he said as he jumped out of the bed, naked. She stopped herself and watched him scramble to get his pants on, and then looked over at the woman sitting up in the bed, who was glaring back at Eileen with contempt of her own. Eileen had never seen this one before. She was a pretty blonde thing; with bimbo written all over her face as far as Eileen was concerned.
“Get out of that bed.” Eileen instructed her through gritted teeth.
“Oh Curtis, she’s got a knife!” the bimbo shrieked pathetically, but didn’t budge from the bed.
“Get out of that bed!” Eileen yelled this time. “That’s my side of the bed!”
Curtis came at her and grabbed the wrist of the hand which wielded the knife. She attempted to pull her arm away, but in spite of her being pregnant, he kicked her feet out from under her. The wind was knocked out of her as she landed flat on her back when she hit the floor, leaving her momentarily paralyzed. Using this opportunity to get on top of her, Curtis sat on her pregnant stomach and pushed her wrists downward. “Let go of the knife,” he told her, staring into her with his cold blue eyes. Struggling was useless against him, even though she tried. He was too strong. “Drop the knife!” he ordered her to do once more, as he squeezed her wrists painfully. She didn’t want to let go of the knife, but now she was afraid her baby would be hurt if she continued to fight him. It was only for that reason that she loosened her grasp on the weapon, letting it fall harmlessly beside them with a light clang.
“I hate you!” she screamed into his face, the crack in her voice making it known that she didn’t mean it.
He picked up the knife and got up off of her, paying little care to what she had just said.
The blonde woman was out of the bed now. “What a freak,” she said as she rushed to get her clothes on.
After Curtis walked out of the room, taking the knife with him, Eileen clumsily stood herself up. After she had gotten to her feet, she confronted her rival with one word, “Whore!”
“Oh fuck you!” the girl spat back. “He can’t even stand the sight of you, you’re so fucking ugly.”
Eileen’s face dropped, believing what the woman said was true. She had always felt that she was homely, and what was happening now, what had been happening since she married this man only reinforced that innate belief which had been drilled into her since she was a small child. She felt worthless. Unwilling to respond to the insult, she walked out of the room to follow Curtis downstairs. “Why do you keep doing this Curtis? Why?” she questioned him as she descended the staircase, to no avail. “I wait on you hand and foot. I pay the bills around here, and this is how you treat me?”
“He doesn’t love you, why don’t you get that,” taunted the bimbo from behind her, as Curtis continued to say nothing.
Eileen pursed her lips and frowned as she looked back up to the landing at this woman, involuntarily revealing that the taunts were hitting home. She couldn’t take anymore. She wouldn’t. “Get out! Both of you just get out.” She waved her hand into the air, symbolically dismissing them from her life, and walked into the living room to sit down.
“Come on Curtis, you can come to my place,” the woman offered.
Coming out of the kitchen with a beer in his hand, Curtis grinned at the woman. He pulled the tab on his beer, turned his head to Eileen and chided, “You need to calm down.”
And with that, he left. Eileen didn’t even watch him walk out. She buried her head between her hands to cry, wishing that the nightmare she had feared from the beginning of their relationship was not really coming true. Somehow, she had known this would happen. She knew that there would be no happy ending here. Women like her didn’t have happy endings.
He came back a few days later, but Eileen didn’t let him in. Standing on the opposite side of the door and clutching her dead grandmother’s rosary beads for strength, she yelled at him to go away. She loved him desperately, but even so, she knew that he would never change. She had put all of his stuff out in the garage for him to take, and glanced out of the back window furtively while he went through his belongings and took what he wanted. The rest of it would stay in that garage for years, gradually being piled into a corner to collect dust for as long as she would live in that house.
After he had gone, she paced around the lower floor wondering what she was going to do with her life without a husband. Being a single mother had never been her plan. As she passed through the kitchen, she was surprised by a light tap from the back door. She could see through the window that it was the neighbor lady. What does she want? Eileen wondered. She walked to the door and opened it without hiding the combined looks of puzzlement and annoyance.
“Mrs. Samson,” the lady said in a polite tone. “I have some extra vegetables from my garden that I thought you could use.” She held a basket of the said items at her waste. Eileen allowed her to enter without saying anything, but had to sit down at the kitchen table while the lady set the basket on the counter. “I’ll leave these here for now. I’ll need the basket back, of course. My name is Dorothy. I’m sorry that I haven’t introduced myself before. I just want you to know that if there’s anything I can do for you, please feel free to ask.” Displaying a cautious smile, the neighbor strolled over to the back window and pulled back a curtain. “Perhaps next year, I could help you start up a garden of your own. We can place it right there next to the garage.”
“Dorothy,” Eileen said as she placed her hand onto her extended stomach. “Would you be able to drive me to the hospital?”
With only the neighbor to accompany her, Eileen had the baby that night. She didn’t bother to call her parents to come to the hospital, nor would they call her until after she had returned home. It was weeks before her mother finally came to the house to see the baby, and her father never came over. It was just as well. Her family had a lot of problems, and she didn’t mind keeping them
at a distance. She supposed that eventually, word that she’d had the baby would get around town and back to Curtis that it was a boy, whom she named Jason. He didn’t contact her though, and would never try to see the child. Just like her own father, it was obvious that he didn’t care.
When she sought a divorce, Curtis had the audacity to contest it. She was sure that he wanted a cut of the house, which she had put the down payment on herself with no help from him. Eileen was afraid she would have to sell her house and give him half of the money, but when the story came out in court about how she had found him in bed with another woman, the judge felt sorry for her. Her bursting into tears didn’t hurt her case either, even when she admitted to wanting to kill