Succubus Resurgent

The Succubus starts to get her strut back.

First,

She does something about her hair.

The stylist is stoked;

It's not every day she gets a genuine bona fide soul-stealing demon in her chair for a color and cut.

As the split ends fall,

Little smoke wisps curl up from the floor of the salon,

So that the place starts to smell like an unlikely combination of hair spray, peroxide, shampoo, and brimstone.

Succubi sleep around;

It's what they do.

Next thing they know, they're on Oprah, cautionary tales with long red fingernails, dabbing at their intense dark eyes with a hankie and blubbering out, "Mother was right. I'm miserable!"

Well, shit.

The Succubus is not about to let this happen to her.

She reminds herself that she is the kind of girl who hands out the ace of spades as a valentine,

Runs with the wolves,

And goes where she damn well pleases, doing what she will when she gets there.

She has stopped spelling out Chloe's name with the bones of her victims, though she knows she will never really forget her.

These days, she enters the dreams of Denise the waitress, but instead of stealing, she finds herself leaving shavings from her black and eternal heart behind,

Strewn across Denise's dreams like rose petals on white bed sheets.

Her love is such, that mornings find her woozy and talking gibberish, making up nicknames for her new baby,

Like "Pooky"

And "Love Muffin."

She would die if anybody besides Denise heard her,

But, the woman is impossible to resist...

Sitting in her shrimpy kitchen, smoking, wearing Van Gogh "Starry Night" jam bottoms and an old top, that though it is loose--or because it is--makes her breasts look so appealing that,

If there were a road where her stove and refrigerator are,

She would cause pile-ups all over the place--

Broken fenders and hearts.

When they kiss,

Denise's cigarette flares up in the ash tray like a sunspot,

The tv on the counter goes all weird,

And the copper-bottomed pots all fall off the wall.

"Be careful with my soul," whispers the Succubus, who knows better than most how to spot one that's been stolen.

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