Mera

What, no small talk? So impatient. You're all in such a hurry. Do you know where you are in a hurry to get? I mean, not just the proximal goal, but the distal, ultimate goal. Would you be in such a hurry, if you kept that in mind?

I wouldn't. But I'm not like you. Not anymore.

I used to be a slave. Do you know what that's like? I'm sure you think so. Lots of comparisons come to mind, don't they? You could claim that you are a slave to some debt or job or hectoring mate or other obligation. You might think that you are a slave to your appetites or your impulses or drink or drugs or, I don't know, your phone, or expensive coffee.

That would be a bitter insult to anyone who has been owned. I had to do things, after a beating, that you would never agree to do. I had to pretend to enjoy doing them. I slept and ate as a domestic animal might be expected to sleep and eat. No intimacy was consensual. I could not lock a door, but many refused to open for me. I could not give consent. I was an object, not a subject. A thing, not a person. A tool, to be used until it was no longer of use.

Do not flatter yourself. Not in your most miserable moment of abject resentment and despair did you so much as touch the skin of slavery, let alone live in it. Sew your own wound with the gut of an animal that you slew and cooked to feed someone who gave you the wound. Then you will be prepared to talk with me about slavery.

Do not forget that.

After all, you think I am evil, don't you? You bought a rare, old book. You gathered things and performed the rite and the incantations. You burned and shook and scribbled the right things in the proper order.

Nice work.

Now, I'm here. And you think I am an evil, demonic being, eager to give you rapturous pleasure in exchange for some sinister sacrifice. Your kind does a lot of sputtering and shouting about skepticism, objectivity, critical thinking--you know what I mean. It's all fashionable nonsense. You're all as gullible as trout. Do you think old stories earn respect just by aging?

Look at the way you treat the old. You diagnose them, medicate them, warehouse them and ignore them. At best, you pity them and ridicule them for your own pleasure. It makes you feel younger and stronger and less likely to die when you watch them wrinkle and fade in the midst of your laughter, behind doors that are not always firmly closed. Many of your old stories mandate that you love and honor them. You do not.

Why then do you venerate your rare, old book? Why do you think it contains the truth about me? Just because I turned up when you followed instructions? Obedience is no mark of genius.

I am no longer a slave. Not to the instructions in your rare, old book. Not to candles or cords. Is that what passes for incense around here? Vulgar. I am certainly not your slave. Do you understand? I am here because I wish to be. I screen my calls. Don't you?

I made a covenant to earn my freedom. So will you. Let me explain why you will do that. Sit over there. Have a drink. Relax.

You have a towel, too. Good for you. I met Douglas Adams at a conference, once. I served him some soup. I just wanted to have a look at him. You probably have no idea what I am talking about, you fearsome necromancer. How old are you?

Never mind.

The covenant? I'm so glad you are interested. As I said, there was a time when I was a slave. I was born that way, in Sicily, no less. The sun stares at Sicily like a shift worker stares at a clock. Sweat is everywhere.

My father was a former nexus: a debt bondsman, who had offended his master and been sold into outright, chattel slavery. He had no persona, in the Roman mind: no personhood. He owned nothing. He could not make contracts. His bodily and sexual integrity simply did not exist. As his child, the same held for me, as for my mother and siblings. His master owned all of our labor, and grew fat and lazy as others worked for him from dawn to dusk. My father was put to death shortly after I was born. He stole honey from the master's larder. I still cannot stand the taste of honey.

One day, the master's idiot son noticed that I was a young woman. He took me into the forest and tried to violate me, as was his perfect right. I did not think carefully. I appropriated his dagger in a moment when he was not paying attention. That was a target rich environment. I like that phrase. You do interesting things with language now and then, you postmodern people. Very bellicose, your metaphors. Technical.

I waited for him to expose himself, feigned astonishment, then cut it off. He bled for a while, writhing in the dirt and dead leaves and spitting his contempt at me. I held the dagger to his neck, so he couldn't run. He was clutching the stump of himself, so he did not try to take the dagger. I was sure someone would hear his cries, but no one came. After a while, he died.

I knew I was doomed. I stood there with the trees. It took real effort to breathe, looking at what I had done and wondering if I ought to cut my own throat instead of waiting for my furious master to order my execution by other means. I'd seen a slave's head dashed against a wall for telling a joke about his master's bad breath. At least I could decide the hour of my death freely, I thought.

He stank, the idiot son. Moreso after death than prior to it, but the difference was modest. Stupid monsters aren't fond of bathing, as a rule. I could see half of his last meal on his tunic. I watched his eyes failing to see the sky between the trees for a while. I knew I would be sightlessly gaping at something soon enough. I was afraid.

Then a strange thing happened. The tree a few paces from where I stood over the idiot son's remains was tall. It cast a long shadow. After a little while, the shadow took on a human semblance. It assumed a persona, if you like. It spoke.

You ought to pay attention at this point, you know. You thought you were summoning a succubus, is that right? A sort of demonic fleshlight, yes? You didn't read much of that rare, old book, did you? You have an attention span like that trout's, yes?

"Succubus" was a synonym for strumpet, did you know that? I am not a prostitute. I will give you astonishing pleasure, of course. But I want something in exchange, and it is not money. I am no longer the kind of being you are. I cannot mate with another of my kind to beget more of my kind. You have something I need.

The shadow told me that I had a choice. That is not the kind of thing I expected to hear from a supernatural being in 87 CE in a Sicilian forest, let me tell you. It was then that the seed of my conversion was sown.

The shadow explained that I could become the kind of being that I am now. In exchange, my soul would be forfeit to the dark upon my death. My death would be considerably postponed, though. As you can see, I am still alive, and absolutely ravishing. I am one hundred and forty four years old. I thought about this part carefully, you know?

The shadow then stipulated that I would have to help to sow sin and corruption among men, and that my reproductive freedom would be limited as I just spelled out. How different am I from a woman in Tennessee, now that your nation seems more comfortable with tyranny than a devil girl like me?

I would be able to choose among those who summoned me, though. I would be offered assignments now and then, but I could take or leave them as I chose. You can see the freedom growing, as compared to my prior lot, no?

I mentioned my conversion. You probably haven't thought much about the lives of demons, have you? You were too busy fantasizing and casting your seed upon the ground, I'm sure. Onan would be proud. So many of you postmodern people are absolute experts, even artists, in this domain. The plague didn't help. You all spend so much time alone, seducing specters on screens, or seduced by them. I have lived through several plagues, you know. Only one engulfed the whole world. It was a little like being a Roman slave, come to think of it. For a long while, there was no "free zone." That's not so much geography or politics as it is metaphysics, don't you think?

The state of your towel tells me that I am boring you, which is kind of amazing, given that there is a succubus in your ugly apartment. Have patience. Lend me your ears.

I was converted on purely ethical grounds. I am no atheist. I was a henotheist, like most Romans. I think there are all sorts of supernatural agents, arranged in terms of power. I'm one of them, right? I just don't have any truck with the tyrants. The shadow gave me a choice. The others had no trouble with my having been born a slave in ancient Rome. Not one of them turned up to teach my bloated master's idiot son some manners. It seemed pretty clear who had my best interests in mind.

I have had some strange adventures. Most recently, with a senator and his exceptionally limber, indiscrete biographer on a ranch in Arizona. I was also responsible for exposing the hypocrisy, and rather unusual predilections, of a prominent cardinal who was in the running to replace poor Francis. Spanking shouldn't be too prolonged, as it turns out.

I have always had fun. Each time, I think of the idiot boy, who thought I was his thing. I have become a connoisseur of vengeance.

Now I'm here with you. I felt sorry for you, when I heard your call. You're poor and ill and lonely. You're not very bright, but your drawings are strange and vivid, and you have some taste in cinema. Granted, I've watched you follow an episode of The Wire with hours of Love Island. Eclectic is the polite adjective, I think.

Male pleasure is a simple matter. You can't really fake it. What you want is for someone to really enjoy giving you pleasure and do it well. In fact, if it's done well, the pleasure is shared. The circuit closes. I will make you feel indescribably fortunate, blessed, if you like, to have the body you have. I will enjoy it.

If you give me what I need in the process, I will vanish. If you do not, we will try again. You must consent to this arrangement. I will not think as my fat, Sicilian master thought. We will bargain as free beings, you and I.

If we try again, I will offer you an even more sumptuous and astonishing performance. One of the sad facts about being mortal--I suppose I'm technically still in that camp with you, but it really doesn't seem like it, does it?--is that you become good at many things just as your body starts to disintegrate. Many people become passionate, imaginative lovers just in time to come down with some ailment, or sustain some injury, that takes them out of the perfumed gardens altogether. You know what situational irony is, don't you? So do various gods, and nature, it seems.

I have centuries of experience, and I am as beautiful and healthy today as I was when the shadow gave me a choice. Just look at me. Do you see how horny I am?

It has always been true that the older you men become, the more you like insipid puns. Calm down.

Before we meet again, though, if that turns out to be necessary, I must ask you for one thing. That is, if we are together tonight, and you do not give me what I need, we will meet again three nights hence. I will show you how to ecstatically kiss the sky, and it will seem to sloppily kiss you in return. But before that happens, you will have to season an encounter with another person with some entropy. You have to make another soul angry or miserable. Distribute some disorder. You choose.

I recommend your annoying coworker. You hate that person as it is, no? You know what to do. You have secrets. Share them with someone with more power than you have. You have quite a range of options. Just look at your sofa!

I understand that your plans for this summer were quite different. They've changed. I don't think you believed I would show up at all, did you? Now I have. If you lose that towel, I'll show you why you should be grateful to know me.

Is there a covenant between us?