Destroya

I yawned loudly, my mouth gaping as I dragged the final two boxes from my now musty and derelict car. I scraped some dark dust motes from my dash, but decided to leave deep cleaning for another day, though my OCD nearly took over in that situation. Using my left foot, I cocked the door into its rightful place, but my path away was blocked by another, as I looked up, I realized it was my neighbor.

“Oh. Hi, sorry.” I apologized as I moved myself to allow him passage in between the cars. I noted that he had dyed his hair, black. It seemed a mote more naturally suiting than the bright crimson had been.

“Do you need help? I’m just grabbing my book, I can give you a hand or two,” He offered, locking his car loudly, reminding me to lock mine, which I did.

“If you want to, you can take the top box, but you don’t have to, I can carry it.” I didn’t want him to go out of his way for me, as I had awkwardly blathered. Besides, his breath smelt of smoke and war, his hands were as rough as the ground we walked on. He just made me distinctly uncomfortable and reduced my confidence rate to even shyer than my average timidity.

“You don’t have to be polite, there’s not much place for it anymore in civilized life, if there is any civilization left.” He grasped the top and bottom box, his calloused digits barely brushing my own. I gasped as he lifted them as if they were no more than paperweights; he grinned and walked to the elevator, me hesitating behind him.

“Thanks.” I stated bluntly, not beating around the bush or gushing, as he had just as candidly told me not to.

“You’re welcome.” Gerard said as he placed the boxes in the alcove of my closed door. I did not open it; my paranoia of the big city was farther reaching than my trust of this frank neighbor and war veteran. I had a last question before he left for the comfort of his own apartment, though.

“Did you know anyone named Frank? I think his last name was Erow or something, you had the same tattoo on your hand.” I didn’t want to bring this up for anyone, but I honestly felt guilty about leaving Frank at the Arizona-California border, especially when he implied he had family in California.

“Frank Iero. He died a month ago on a bandit patrol, or so I heard. He was a good man.”

“He is a good man, my car will never smell the same, though,” I laughed, he understood, chuckling absentmindedly as well, “I gave him a ride to the Cali border. See if you can get in contact with him; he was kind of pissed when he saw himself in an obit, I don’t know if he’s quite recovered.” I joked jovially, he understood, having known the man himself, and waved goodbye, trying to sneakily slip his phone from the pocket in his tight gray jeans, hoping he could contact his friend as quickly as possible.

“Bye.” I said, all shyness seeming to have evaporated when I met the stranger on familiar ground. It was dark and I found myself wanting to sleep, jet-lag didn’t quite exist for me, I could adapt anywhere. I dragged in the boxes and collapsed on the bed that I had made pre-meditatively in preparation for my drowsiness.

I finally woke; I sensed the presence of death, the stench diffusing through the hallway and under the apartment door. His aroma wafted through the seams in the walls, and I could almost feel the force with which his blade had rended my body, so heady was the flavor.

I looked down at my hands. They were those of a woman, and as thin and pale as she was, I now possessed her night-force, and I could do what I wanted with my demon strength in her body. It might eventually tear the body to shreds, but that was all for the better, especially if Gerard enjoyed the girl’s company.

Yes, I remember it well, the night I was slain by the demon hunter Gerard Way, demon hunter, which was the rank previous to his current war hero, or veteran, status. The residual energy of being murdered in my own chambers was enough to keep me alive for a month, and then war broke out. This war was source of enough emotional energy to keep me alive for centuries without body. And I trailed my enemy futilely, in incorporeal form, until a female, of the right body for my long-anticipated plans, suddenly becomes his neighbor. Now I am here, in her body and in the corner of her mind, and my disembodied madness is gone as her sane and fastidious brain waves course through me.

I, as a succubus, once in a body, must feed off of male sexual energy to exist, but since I existed in this girl’s mind, and only in her body when she was resting, I didn’t need to do that.

But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t play a little trick or two.

I began to crawl out of the sparse bed. I tiptoed across the floor, but the pink bunny slippers made maneuverability quite impossible. I slipped them off, smirking. If Gerard Way was still the same man, this girl would be able to charm him quite nicely.

Walking out of the apartment as quietly as the girl’s soft human feet could manage, I slipped into the room easily, using an old trick from my handbook of medieval training, since the doors were not much more in this time of recovery.

Creeping in, I sat on the exposed bed where the foul man lay. I breathed in his ear, shivering with delight at being bale to articulate the words:

“Ego mos have meus ultionis.” Scrambling away, I made it into the girl, Tori’s room, as quickly as he could wake up, which was quickly. When he woke up shivering from his dream, pocket knife ready to strike at invisible foes, I was long gone, supposedly sleeping soundly.

I rubbed my head as the car horns honked at me to keep up with the cutthroat traffic on the way to the accounting firm. I sighed and got myself in gear; high-tailing it to work as if there was a fire under my ass.

After managing to find parking in the mess of a business park, I got out of my car, locking it with a sonorous bleat. My kitten heels clapped against the pavement, and my navy blazer chafed my sore shoulder, I had slept funny last night, my new mattress didn’t quite have the perfect feel of my old one, back home. My stomach flipped in homesickness, I couldn’t have possibly left, could I? I couldn’t have left someone, family, who loves me for a blank and lonely existence?

I did.

And now I walked quickly to the building which held Smith&West Accounting and Tax Management. A blasé man met me at the door and showed me around the building, he clearly had been here too long. I was given a cubicle; I noticed it was smaller than the others, as my head calculated the approximate figures quickly. Oh well, I would soon be moving up, my mindless turmoil was the perfect worker bee attitude. I got an actual office on my first job within a year!

I put on my visor, yes, I wore a plastic green visor, but that was who I was, and the small town chicken in me clung to that piece of home. My mother had carefully embroidered the strap with my name in pastel pink cursive, it was just as beautiful as the numbers I began to crunch, brow furrowed.

Do you know what you did last night?

My eyebrows rose at the strange, strange utterances in my mind. I ignored them and continued to stare at the endless numbers, the endless bliss and lack of sensation, numb majesty.