Demons on His Shoulders

By

C.R. Boucher

            Wendy slowly sank more deeply into the snug warmth of the sheets and fuzzy comforter.  Color dissolved into the blackness that was 2:01AM.  Craig’s breathing took on a sweet, long drawn, soothing rhythm.  The heat radiating from his hair-covered chest alone could ward off the invasive chills of a thousand winter nights.  Despite the damp remains of their earlier passions, she scootched even closer.  His skin was the organ of choice in these wee hours of Sunday morning.  Wendy closed her eyes, reveling silently in the earliest bloom of that elusive flower that is love.  Kimmy was already teasing her about feet that no longer touched the floor, eyes that saw only pure color, and ears that heard even the subtlest poetry in silence.  She found herself in a world where time was becoming less important, less relevant. Her life had taken on a surreal resonance since she met Craig, her emotions and desires stronger than judgment, bolder than wisdom. Wendy still found it difficult to believe it was not just fantasy. 

    From a lamp on the peak of a garage across the street, glowing amber light streamed in through the part between curtains on the small window at the foot of their bed.  Not a great amount of light, but enough to give definition to soft shapes in the room, characterizing them as more than just dark forms in shadow.  Wendy knew she should be afraid.  Fear would make sense at the moment.  Craig was a stranger to her only weeks ago.  Now, at a moment when fear should dictate her choosing, the warmth of a soul and the tingle coming from pure contact with his skin was magic enough to extinguish any fear she had.  A strong gust of wind tossed the bare branches of an old maple tree into a quirky dance.  On dim walls, the shadows of those stiff, dormant branches, reached, grew and clawed like black lightning across a storm filled sky. 

    “How do you want to do this?”   She whispered into the dark room.  “Tell me.”

    There was no answer.  She had not really expected one after all.  But, what the fuck?  Did it hurt to ask?  No, and she knew that too.  She knew more than she wanted to, and that was where her uncertainty came from. 

The red digits on the alarm clock glowed 2:13 in slightly tilted numerals and fear was fed to her through the colorless night, through the shadows, or the shapes moving across the foot of the bed.

    Craig rolled away from her in his slumber, pulling his warmth with him.  His pale, muscular shoulder picked up a bit of amber from the light outside.  Wendy reached over and with her long, painted nails; she drew a soft pull leaving four thin white lines on the surface of his skin.  That same action had so fully aroused him just four hours ago, that her partners performance brought her into a shared sexual frenzy unlike anything she had encountered with any other partner, man or woman.  The lines remained as she drew more of them in other directions.  Before long there was a series of crosshatched lines that reminded her of the tattoo that had intrigued her on that first night.

    It had been Halloween night at Kimmy’s party.  Wendy dressed in the same costume she had used for years.  Each year she would add some special bit of paraphernalia to add excitement to her witch costume.  Last year she added the rubber tits that she flashed nearly all night before anyone realized that the rubber tities were a bit too large to really belong to the ultra thin witch doing the extraordinary Halloween flash.  She told them all she was casting a spell and it did not take too long at all before she had bewitched a number of men that night.  Even in the dark over a full year later, she smiled at the memory of that Halloween surprise.  This year she again wore the rubber tits, but she added a rather large rubber surprise below the waist as well.  Again the witch won first prize.

She went home with the lifeguard that night. Craig had worn a pair of Vontage sunglasses, a red headband just above the glasses, a tiny pair of orange Speedo trunks that left less to the imagination than Wendy’s prosthetics, his large feet were shoeless, and then, there was the wonderful tattoo on his left shoulder.

    Unusual was to weak a word, fascinating only slightly better.  A true artist had created it.  The detail and design were first rate.  The way the creature moved as Craig’s shoulder muscles flexed gave an appearance of true life that a bit of art on paper could never emulate.  All night long, between beer, chips, dull conversations and her periodic flashing of rubber body parts, Wendy would steal glances at the image on Craig’s shoulder.  She found herself drawn to him, and more accurately to it.  She wanted to touch it, to feel it, to scratch it with her nails.  Wendy wanted to see if it really lived.

    “It’s Bogart,” he said later, “my love demon,” he told her in a quiet voice.

    “I don’t mean to stare,” she said, “it’s just…”

    “No, no, no,” he paused, “stare away, you can’t help yourself, it’s part of his charm.  Me and Bogart are a team.”

    Wendy took him up on his invitation.  They stole away to a quiet room in the house and he sat on the edge of a large soft green chair.  Wendy took off her pointed hat and approached the tattoo.  It was her first really good look at it all night.  She gasped softly in shock.  She giggled.  The detail was astonishing.  There was a man’s head with a widely grinning smile.  But this was not an image of just a man.  There were too many arms and legs.  Wendy could make out at least two pair of women’s breasts and maybe three serpents wrapped around a pair of muscular legs.  There seemed to be more than four bodies wrapped and twisted together in a knot of passion and fervor.  Out of the left side, reminding her of the frolicking on Greek urns, she could make out a clearly defined phallus of enormous length and girth.  A woman appeared to be admiring or praying to the phallus at the same time that she was a part of it.  The effect was extraordinary.  Wendy found that she was nearly panting just from looking at the image.

    “Watch this,” Craig said.

    He flexed the muscles across his back and the image rippled.      Wendy felt that ripple deep within herself.  She sucked in a long deep breath.

    Whatever the fuck he called it, she knew she would be going home with this man on that Halloween night, and she did.

    The numerals glowed 2:27 in their dim red way.  It was nearly time.

    Wendy rubbed his back in small circles.  Her finger tips lightly caressing Craig’s skin.  His breathing was long and deep.  He was far away in the land of the Tooth Fairy and Old Saint Nick.  She felt safe and she closed her eyes.

    Back on November first, when she woke up beside him for the first time, Wendy ached from the pulling and pushing, the holding, the hugging.  This was a hurt that was very different from the hurt of a workout at the gym.  She thought it more like the rewarding hurt in the days after a marathon.  Craig instructed her to touch and rub Bogart.  It aroused him to greater heights to have his love demon caressed.  He guided her to new pleasures.  They were without inhibition.  They were tireless.  He and Bogart were a team. Wendy felt as though she shared her bed with several lovers, each more adventurous and tenacious than the last.  Her passions were given free reign.  They were matched, coaxed, nurtured and fed.  That morning as the sun brightened the bedroom on her first morning, she knew what she had to have.  She knew it was more than physical. It was emotional.  Wendy knew that the seeds of love were planted during that night.  Lying in the dark silence beside Craig, remembering those times they had been together, she waited for the perfect moment.

    She could not see Bogart, but she felt him.  Even from under the sheets and fuzzy blankets, his attraction was strong.  She reached her hand into the deep darkness.  Her fingers grazed it.  She felt the sharp tingle.  Wendy slowly placed the palm of her hand over the shape of Craig’s shoulder.  She felt the first stirring movement.  His skin seemed to shift beneath her touch.  Bogart seemed to respond to the warmth of her hand.  She fell to a shallow pant.  Her legs ached to be apart, her breasts needing to be kissed.  She moved her hand away and Craig moaned, rolling completely onto his left side.  Bogart was so close, just below the line of blanket.  Wendy could feel her own sweat puddling into the small of her back.

She spooned into the firm curves of his warm torso.  Her arms were reaching across his muscular arms as she tangled her long thin fingers into the curly hair on his chest.   Wendy pulled him as close as she could; she knew she wouldn’t wake him.  After their coupling he always fell dead to sleep.  As the gentle cadence of his breathing continued, Wendy pressed her body tightly into every hollow and swell.  Her breasts were pressed nearly flat into the muscles stretched along his back.  Her nipples ached and tingled.  She needed them to be kissed, to be sucked, and even nipped at.  She pulled Craig closer.  There was no room for air between them.  The seal was complete and she was ready.

    2:32.      
    The light across the street shut.  Wendy sighed at the shadow that now completely covered the bed and the two nearly indistinguishable bodies.  Her hand ran down his chest, across his firm abs and through his dark pubes.  She found what she wanted, hard, with a mind of its own.  Wendy wrapped her hand around its length, holding it like from the top down, like a gearshift in a Mustang 5.0.  It was a bit wet at its tip.  She smiled in the darkness and squeezed.

    She felt the little pinch at the tip of her nipple.  Then her entire body shuddered and began to sweat.  The moisture completed the seal between their bodies.  Wendy felt the conflict of chilling heat course through her entire body.  She became keenly aware of the connection granted through touch.  She remembered Kimmy telling her about Reikie and energy healing.  She remembered scoffing at her friend, but no more.  She understood the energy between them had joined.  She could not separate herself from Craig no matter how sincere the effort.  She could see each shape in shadow for what it was.  She could her the tic-tic of a clock three rooms away.  She was intensely aware of every click, shuffle and sigh.  More, she was aware of movement just below her breast.

At first she was sure that Craig had come back from his dreams.  The touch was so familiar and so solid; she knew his fingers were tracing the line between colors, following the shape and curve of her left nipple.  Her new awareness reassured her that she was wrong.  Craig was motionless.  Bogart was flying solo.  That knot of quiet fear tightened in her lower belly.   She could still back out, she knew there was some way, but instead she took a long breath, held it and closed her eyes.

    Wendy was grateful to be lying down.  Even without weight on her feet, she knew her knees were weakened.  Had she been standing, she would, without doubt, have been on her way to the floor.  From her overly sensitive nipple radiated a new feeling, a radiating circle of wonderful touching, tingling heat.  Like those ripples from a stone dropped into a still lake, tiny waves reached toward the encompassing shores of her sweating body.  Her breathing quickened.  Drops of salty sweat ran from her brow, joining with the tears running in rivulets along the curves of her nose and cheeks.  She closed her eyes, shutting out her strongest sense.  Her nose whistled with each breath while her heart thundered with the cadence of her life.  Wendy swore she could feel the inside of her skin and the molecules of water escaping through each tiny pore.

    Craig remained still and silent.  This was between Wendy and Bogart now.

    These sensations were beyond sexual.  Her mind raced with inefficiency, trying to understand, categorize and communicate the onslaught of feeling.  It was touch reversed.  Touching from the inside out. 

    Life from beside life.

    The first flash of light surprised her, and she opened her eyes.  Pain, sharp and frightening pierced her cornea.  Wendy forced her eyes closed, pressing the lids with all of her focused thought.  The pain eased, and stopped.  Another flash again surprised her, but she kept her eyes press closed, sealed, and pain free.   The flashes quickened.  She began to get glimpses of color within the light.  Quicker and quicker, like the flashes of light between frames of old-fashioned eight-millimeter home movies.  She thought of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp and Old Hollywood.  Images began to come into focus.  Wendy sharpened her attention.  She needed to see what she was being shown.  There was no doubt in her mind this was communication, images being sent though this new form of touching.   The more intent she grew, the slower her breaths became.  Each breath, long slow and deep, was effective in supplying her both air and calm.  The rippling tempest began to slow as she calmed her self and stared into the flashes of light.

At first she saw tawdry visions of sexual ambition, both awkward and revolting.  Within the blinking, intense light she saw women spread in acrobatic distortion.  Men thumping in rock and roll dance movements.  She saw multiples and multitudes.  She saw race, creed, color and species exchanging pleasures in increasingly repulsive combinations.  And then she saw a pure golden light filter over the anomalies.  She felt a strong pull on her nipple.  There was a bit of sharp pain, but Wendy kept all of her attention on the new light.  It was steady, comforting and welcoming.  The swell of golden wash enveloped her vision as though she had walked into it.  The ghastly visions of debauchery were gone.  To her surprise and relief, as she was welcomed fully into the golden glow, she saw four people, sitting calmly by a roaring campfire.  The golden glow grew from the licking flame in the center of the small group.

One man, his back to Wendy stood.  His bare skin absorbing some of the light and reflecting even more.  She found herself needing to touch his skin, his hair, his every inch.  He turned to face her.

Craig smiled at her from the edge of the fire.  Behind him a woman with straight black hair that hung to the small of her back stood and walked beside Craig.  She put her arm around his waist, giving him a gentle hug.  She spoke first.  Her voice was like a ringing church bell, soft, sweet and resonating in the absolute silence of this place.

“So you’re ready for Bogart?”  She asked in a straightforward tone,  “You really think you are?”

    “She doesn’t even know what she’s supposed to be ready for,” Craig answered.  “She’s after a feeling, just like the rest of us were.” The other woman left the fireside to side to the other side of Craig.  Her short blonde hair shimmered like the tawny mane of a storybook princess.  Blue eyes, like the eggs of a robin, stared into Wendy’s vision.  Heaving from beneath a soft white blouse, the princess’s round breasts enhanced each of her short breaths.  Her body was image perfect.  Her voice sounded like a soft whisper in a dream.

    “She knows, Craig, look into her, feel her.  She’s nearly here already.  I think you’re afraid to let go, lover.”

    Craig turned his head to look at the princess squarely.  She smiled and said nothing.  The last of the quartet was distractingly ugly.  His round head had no hair to speak of; it was covered with a fuzzy film like coating.  His pale flesh rolled into creases and crevices large enough to hold terrifying secrets.  The left arm was no more than a stump; his right arm a long thin splinter of hardly covered bone.  Below the waist, his giant manhood was fully extended.  Wendy was reminded of the same image within the tattoo.  He opened his mouth to speak, revealing, irregularly spaced yellow and brown teeth.  The horrid curse that created this man was beyond all darkness.

    “She’s ready,” he said with a voice infected with sin.  “Vicky, Do her, she wants to share in Bogart, she shares.  It’s too late for otherwise.”

    “But,” Craig started.  The princess wisely held him back, stepping between him and the creatures assaulting glare.

    “Now!” came the command.  Somehow, Wendy thought, that’s Bogart.

    Vicky swept her long hair over her shoulders, removed the red wrap from her waist, uncovering her dark thatch of personal wonder.

    Wendy had never been so completely attracted to a woman before, but in this place, in this light and in this company, just the anticipation of Vicky’s touch enticed her in new and fantastic ways.  As the woman approached, Wendy saw the princess reach behind Craig’s head, pull his mouth to hers and engage him in a long joined kiss.  Watching that kiss further affianced Wendy’s growing desire.  She forgot all about the hideous apparition of Bogart standing beside the glowing fire.  Just as Vicky reached to touch her, Wendy felt pointed pain shoot from the center of her chest and find a way to the outermost parts of her every extremity.

The pain was complete and violent.  She released a good scream and pulled away from Craig, breaking the seal and falling from the bed.

    2:33

    One minute later.

    Craig rolled over, a wide knowing smile pasted across his face.

    “D’ja get’im?”  He asked in a soft deep voice.

    “Huh?”  Wendy barely said.

    “Bogart, I ain’t got’im no more, right?”  He rolled over showing her his empty shoulder.  The tattoo was gone.  The love demon left an empty space on Craig clean bare shoulder.

            Wendy got onto her feet and reached for a lamp.  The new light, real and harsh, filled the room with truth.  The Lovecraftian marks were now on Wends left breast.  Ten arms and ten legs clearly defined, wrapping and holding in love and fear.  She could read the lies and nightmares between the ink lines of three out of five heads.  Her nipple felt as if an army had feasted.  Her entire body hurt. 

    One fucking minute gone!

    “Thank you,” Craig said softly, and “I’m sorry.”

    “For?”

    “Loving Bogart.  Look at me.  What are you seeing?”

     In the stark light of the bedroom lamp she watched as Craig began to change.  Right before her eyes, he aged.  His hair turned white and fell out like the soft white cotton top of a dandelion in mid-summer.  His vapid skin sagged, drooped and wrinkled.  The joints on his fingers swelled in arthritic distortion.

     “I was born in nineteen-oh-two, my dear.  Bogart kept me for his pleasure as he kept Vicky and the one you thought of as the Princess.  I can’t even comprehend how far back they go, or how far back he goes.  He pays well for our services, but you gotta wonder.  A demon’s a demon whether he loves or kills.  Bogart is a love demon, and after so goddamned, fucking long, I’m done with ‘im.  He’ll always have a bit of me like he’s got bits of the other two.  But I’m hopin’ there’s enough o’ me left…” Another batch of hair fell to the sheets as he wiped at his brow.  “But it’s looking like he took it all.”

Wendy watched as Craig just withered before her eyes.  The man she had slept with so many times became an old man in just a few minutes.
    2:37 

    “Look at your tittie, Wen, Look at it.”  His voice was weak and broken.
    Wendy turned so the full power of the bedside lamp lit her skin.  Bogart moved.  The arms and legs stretched and reached.      
    Wendy’s pain eased.  Color came back into her skin, a luscious rose hue.  Her breast swelled at least a full cup size and her tummy tightened.  She smiled as the hard ridges of abdominal muscles swelled and defined themselves.  Her legs firmed up.  Standing barefoot and naked, it looked to Wendy, as if she wore eight inch spiked “fuck me baby” heels.
    With every inch of her development, Craig discharged more of himself.  He looked every year of his true age.  His tattered voice could only whisper.
    “Thank you, and sorry, Wendy,” he repeated as he closed his eyes for the last time.

    Wendy reached out to touch the body of the old tattered man.  As her finger touched the side of his hardening cheek, his skin split.  Creamy golden ooze began to leak from the split.  She wiped at the mess with the sheet they had shared.  The thick liquid began to exude a golden light.  His skin split further, filling the room with magical light.  With a pop and a flash the room seemed dark, even while the bedroom light still worked just fine.

    Craig, or what he had become, was gone.  No body, ooze or light.  She heard no breathing.  She smelled no scent.  It seemed to Wendy she had been alone all night, and dreaming.

    2:39

Bogart began moving across her chest.  She watched as the amorphous shape shifted and searched for a comfortable setting in his new home.  With one leg extending under her left breast, a hand grasping toward the nipple on her right, and two legs reaching around either side of her neck, Wendy hoped Bogart would find a better, less conspicuous place to stay than that.  She dropped into the empty bed turned the lamp off and looked at the clock, as she closed her wet, tearing eyes

    2:40

and it was over or rather newly begun.

The End

 copyright 2006 C.R. Boucher