Author’s Note:

It’s been awhile since I’ve put up the next part of my interview with the Guardian. I apologise. You have to remember that interviewing a demon is not actually my forte. I’m not a journalist, and I’m certainly not comfortable with my first big interview being the Guardian. I would like to say that I have more control of the situation than I do, but I wouldn’t want to lie. Needless to say the efforts have taken their toll. I’ve had to have a bit of recovery time before I could face our next session. I’m not sleeping well. I find myself fearing that I will drift off and end up back in the Guardian’s prison even without Talia, the succubus, to guide me there and safeguard my time with him.

When I’m not involved with the interview, I’m thinking about it, obsessing over it, over him. In the beginning I wanted to hurry and get it over. I had hoped for one meeting with him to do it all. Now, I find myself dragging it out, struggling to stay away, and yet dying to hurry back and finish.

Both Susan and Talia have banned me from his prison for a few weeks, fearing for my health, even though he has been nothing but polite to me, and done nothing that should affect me so. But he is a demon, and I have no special powers, no abilities to protect myself from him, so the interview has not been an easy thing to write.

While the Guardian has asked that our efforts be kept secret from Magda Gardener, I have heard the whispers between Talia and Susan about bringing her into the situation just in case. The Guardian, I think would not like that, and we all fear that to do so would mean having to abort the interview, since we can’t really imagine Magda being best pleased about our efforts.

In the meantime, I drink lots of coffee. Read into the night to distract myself and wander about the house and the garden at all hours. Having a bit of a break has helped, and I’ve had time to organise my notes and prepare this posts. But I know what is ahead. I know Susan’s version of the horrors that happened in Chapel House. I know what the Guardian has done. The idea of hearing his view on what went on there, I have to admit, I find both daunting and very frightening.

The links to the interview so far are at the bottom of this instalment. 

Chapter 7  Disappointments and Possibilities

“As my lovely Annie immersed herself in the scented waters of the big bath, I did all that was in my power, limited as it was at the time, to surround her, embrace her. I wanted her to feel as though the lover she imagined sharing such an experience with was, indeed there with her, delighting in her every touch, in her every sigh, in her every moan, and oh, how she moaned.”

I did my best not to let my own discomfort show. While it was true I didn’t want it to interfere with the interview, it was also true that I didn’t want the Guardian knowing just how uncomfortable the thought of his love life made me, and as I’ve already stated, I feared if he couldn’t actually read my mind, he could certainly read me. After all, he fed off body language, off emotions, off of physical responses, and the more visceral the better. But thankfully he seemed wholly caught up in his story.

“Perhaps it is not mine to tell, perhaps Susan would admonish me for sharing such a detail, but my dear Annie had come to Chapel House with the very idea of pleasuring herself, of enjoying an evening of carnal delights at her own hand. How I longed for it to be my hand, my mouth, my sex fulfilling her deepest desires. So convinced was I that she could sense my presence, that she had come clandestinely to Chapel House in hopes of drawing me to her, even seducing me, if you will, that I brought all of my essence to her that night. Understand, my dear KD, that I have no need to do such a thing, for by nature I am not limited to one space, having no fleshly container.

As I moved over the surface of the water, as I stirred it gently with my presence, oh how she writhed and shuddered and cried out in her pleasure. So very responsive was she that I became as a breath across ruby-hard nipples. I became as lips and tongue and teeth teasing across warm supple flesh. I became as a lover’s urgency moving down, down, down into the water. With my very will I cupped her, fondled her. I traced the crook and role, the stroke and plunge of her delicate fingers, as though they were my own reveling in that sweet, briny landscape, which I wanted desperately to touch, to kiss, to feast upon. I ached to plunge my essence deep inside of her again and again. With every fiber of myself, I willed her to acknowledge me. I was intoxicated with her presence, delighted in her pleasure.

I pressed as close to her as my imprisonment allowed me, close enough that my embrace was nearly a second skin. At that moment, that very second before she cried out, I was certain, so very certain that she felt my presence, that she knew I was there. And oh, how she did cry out, a cry worthy of a wild beast at the moment of the kill. In that second before her convulsions of release moved in waves over the water, I could have wept for the joy of it, as I waited for her to acknowledge me, for her ecstasy to be followed by terror. And then, I knew that terror would vanish, and she would delight in my presence, and yield to me. You cannot imagine how I felt, K D. And …”

Once again he stood and moved to the cliff edge. And I began to breathe again, wondering how long I had held it tight in my chest. I sat very still not daring to acknowledge to myself the impact of his tale upon my own flesh. After all, none of this was real. I was only here through a dream.

Suddenly his shoulders tightened, his hands clenched into angry fists and the air around us felt like that charged moment before a lightning strike. I white knuckled the arms of the chair, and my heart went racing again, at the raw, explosive emotion expressed in flesh that was not real. He continued. “You cannot imagine my disappointment, my raged at my own powerlessness when, instead, she dried her hands and reached for her mobile phone. Then she began taking photos of herself in her post orgasmic bliss. Oh they were nothing obscene, not really, just very … shall we say provocative. That she might share this moment with another enraged me, disappointed me. In my unhappy state, I caught only the fact that she was quite pleased with herself as she texted some friend named Susan about what she had just done. Before she sent the text, I read over her shoulder, her final words as she closed.

Think what a story you could make from this!

“She could not possibly have known that I had already imagined the story of her little exploits, only my ending was not the one she had chosen. I watched helplessly while she got out of the tub, as though nothing at all had happened, and dried herself. I was desperately disappointed, and had I been able, I would have punished her thoroughly for her behavior. In the end, this woman, who I had fantasized about, dreamed about, this woman who I was so convinced would surely feel my essence and discover I was there, was no different than all of the others had been throughout my endless imprisonment. In the end she would only be a vicarious experience once removed.

“I remind you again, KD, that these emotions I now ascribe to myself are only my way of trying to make you understand a little better my desperate loneliness, which of course, was not really loneliness at all so much as perhaps a loss of purpose. Even that’s a mortal way of describing what I experienced that night in Chapel House, my first time alone with Annie. If you had chosen to interview me before my current incarceration, you would have found the experience far more disturbing and far more difficult to understand. While Susan is certainly no longer mortal, she is still human in so many ways. I would have been far less able to tell you my story if not for my experience of her lingering humanity.

“Of course, if you had come to me before,” I felt his presence bloom around me like heat from a fire, “you would most likely not have survived the experience, but then,” he added quickly, “neither would you have cared.”

The heat receded in a heartbeat, and at that moment, mine was a heart beating very fast. He continued as if he had done nothing out of the ordinary, and perhaps he hadn’t. “Annie removed herself to the chapel for her repast. She boldly walked up the aisle between the pews all the way to the altar and brazenly seated herself atop it. Oh how I wanted her to notice me at that point, so intriguing did I find her. She had opened the wine and was nibbling on a few grapes when the response to her text came.

TMI

“That was all the first text said. At the time I didn’t know what that meant. Susan has since enlightened me.

“Annie only laughed her lovely silver-bell of a laugh, and then she proceeded to take several unholy selfies from her perch. Irreverent, I suspect is a better word, for that would describe my dear Annie. Then, with the laughter of a misbehaving child, she sent them to this Susan, and my jealousy bloomed again at the thought that perhaps the woman was Annie’s lover, though I didn’t think Annie had a taste for women. The text that returned piqued my interest.

Oh I can think of a few stories, all right, but no respectable publisher would buy them.

“Oh yes, this text very much piqued my interest. That this Susan was a scribe made
me lean close, my attention focused wholly on Annie’s reply.

You have to come, Susan. You’ll love the place. You can’t help but be inspired by it. I’m inspired, and I have no imagination. Come next weekend. Can you?

The response was almost immediate.

Dying to see. No pressing deadlines. All right! I’ll drive up Friday afternoon.

Read previous instalments here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6