I was taught to love it; the roughness with which he moves my body, the graceless way he fucks me, groaning and grunting and sweating. Black hair all streaked across his forehead, clumsy hands grabbing at my skin. It is his way of showing me love. He softly berates me for my lack of reciprocation, my stiffness, but I know that is what he loves about it. If he didn’t want me to be still, he wouldn’t have bought the belts.
I am kept strung up 24/7, in bondage 24/7, above his bed. He needs not unshackle me for anything, not to eat, or sleep, or piss. It is a consequence of my biology. I was made to be perfect. I am kept in a 4 by 4 enclosure. The stale air is sour. He says one day he'll show me all the sights and sounds and tastes of the world, but he doesn't want me to start wanting more than I need. I’m safe in here, my lover says. He doesn't ever want me to think he’s unsafe.
He’s a visionary. My body is iterated over and over in polaroid film. I am laid out, spread open, stripped nude, dissected. Across the walls of every room photos hang from floor to ceiling, drying, developing; there must be more than a thousand yet they all surround the same subject. My soft, anemic flesh. Thin arteries running up my wrists. The circle of lacerations which juts from my back like a web of scar tissue. The glaring eye of the camera doesn't miss a thing. The wet parts shine like they should. He says that no one else will ever see these photos, that they’ll stay in his house until he dies.
His creativity does not bleed over into bed. Twenty minutes of desperate, fervent humping, mechanical pistoning of hips. He comes inside me and I don't feel it. He needs not worry about pregnancy. This body is barren. Sometimes all he does is hold me, puffing hot breath against my sternum for hours. He doesn't talk much, but when he does, his voice is brittle and soft. Timid. He sounds small. He doesn't sound like a person who would do something like this. A dusty picture frame of his mother and half-brother rests on his desk. I wonder if they could imagine what their son gets up to every night.
We stick to a strict schedule. On Mondays, he retrieves groceries. Tuesdays, he develops photos. Wednesdays, he pokes through the metal cage affixed to my snout and spoons me meals. Thursdays, he paints. Friday, he meticulously checks each boarded up window, readjusts my bindings, and reincants the spells keeping them tight. He masturbates to amputation pornography at 2:00 and showers at 6:00, when he remembers to. 7:00 to 10:00 is what he calls training: he wants me to be good, to restrain myself. I believe you can learn, he whispers against my muzzle. I believe you can learn not to bite.
He's concerned for my safety. He thinks I am delicate; he read that the components for my body were harvested from a carnous sundew, a carnivorous plant native to my home plane. From a central bulb they sprout beautiful, delicate bodies with wet, smiling mouths. Hungry, tired men are attracted to them; they crawl to the center of the petals and fuck them for hours, for days, unknowing of the passage of time until the sundew's glandular tendrils curl inward around them. Internally, they are devoured.
I imagine myself bursting into tendrils, curling around him to be internally devoured. He fucks me for hours, for days, unknowing of the passage of time. His fingers bite into my waist. His body is warm and pliable, covered in dark hair. Mine looks human— blemishless, hairless, rounded with curves— but it is not human. Soft with fat in my hips and breasts. Not human. Human face. Not human. The men who die in sundew-traps must know the bodies are not of their kind. I wonder if it all tastes the same to them.
It has been five hundred and sixty days since I was bound to his service. He certainly did his research. Carving a circle with his name into the skin on my back, a clever machination to circumvent the limited time on Earth for succubi. A circle of salt to bind my movement, iron shackles to bind my claws, a muzzle so I wouldn't bite like a misbehaving dog. I am more dog than human. He cut out my flesh-colored, knobby tail, leaving a bloodless hole. Human no dog no. I paced on all fours when I was first summoned, disoriented. He was smart enough then to keep his fingers to himself. I don't remember when he got the knife in me. After that, he could do to me what he wanted. I am unable to lift a finger to dismember him, as I might have easily before. I can only lie back and take his love into my body.
⸸
One day he doesn't come into the room at his usual time. This is odd, because he never leaves the house except on very rare occasions; he takes great pains to secure every padlock and restraint when he does. He doesn't want anyone ever seeing me. He tells me often if I were ever taken away, he would kill himself. That if other men ever touched me, he would kill himself. I do not tell him that many men have already touched me. It is oxymoronic to consider a succubus that’s never been touched.
The hours tick long past the usual time he comes to spoon-feed me. The lights are all off. The sheets beneath me are musty. I shift atop them, trying to see to the room's corners. It is hard to move after so long being still— every sleeping part slowly comes awake, the mind being last. In the dark, I see vague shapes without color. The lines of the walls leading up to the doorframe, faint light spilling from underneath. I tug at my chains. They encircle each of my wrists and keep my arms immobile. My legs are free, but I can't do much with them. About this time he would be fucking me. His computer is still open. It glows, buzzing softly, in the dark.
Two days pass. My stomach is growling with hunger. I cannot starve, yet I crave to eat. Another contradiction of this strange plane. Is it because he was feeding me? Is simple taste enough to awaken an instinct with no biological need? I am immobile. I'm starving. I have not slept or bathed in days. I'm starving. His computer is still open.
Three days.
His computer finally shuts off.
Four days.
He develops his photos in the bathroom. He hangs them up all around the house to dry, but the bathroom is the epicenter. It's a one person apartment and he can't afford a darkroom. It doesn't matter because the bathroom is the best place to reach pitch-black without even trying. The photos hang from clothespins like strange vines. He went to school for photography, he once said to me. Lying side by side in his bed, naked, covered a thin sheen in sweat. Looking upon his body, I felt nothing. The bathroom is the corner of the house I see the least. The binding words have faded in strength. I can push against them now, though the material upon which they are writ holds. About this time he’d be pushing himself into the hole he carved from my tail. I move my arms as far as I can in the direction opposite my bonds. They strain but don't give.
Five days.
The bedposts should break easily, but they don't. Either they are imbued with words of protection or I am so weak now that I cannot crush them. I try to gnaw at my bonds, but the mask holds strong. My body is stiff and cold and disobedient. My flesh feels like a stranger's. I haven't seen my reflection in years. I wonder if I look like I did back then, or if my form has changed in the dark. If he pressed his fingers into me enough times to reshape me. Something inside me gnaws. I need to eat or I will unravel. My stomach devours itself.
On the seventh day, I gnaw through the flesh of my wrist.
It's easier than I thought it’d be, almost instinctual. The muzzle is the primary obstacle; no matter how much I shake or bite it won't dislodge. My teeth gnash beneath their restraints— suddenly, like a popped seam, the corner of my mouth is torn open. I worry the cut with my tongue. It doesn’t hurt. I continue to strain my jaw. My skin opens a little at a time until the gash runs from my lips to my ear. Something builds pressure in my mouth. A row of jagged teeth pushes out of my gums. They are instinctively drawn to soft flesh. My arms are soft and delicate, my lover often tells me. I place my arm against my widened mouth and begin to gnaw mindlessly. There is no blood. My flesh is smooth all the way down like clay. When my teeth finally pierce the other side, I am met with hollow air.
My severed hand comes loose, dangling from the shackle. Its fingers twitch softly. I sit free for the first time in five hundred and sixty seven days.
My flesh slowly reforms from my self-made wounds. Layer atop layer atop layer. Once again my hands are whole, smooth and unscarred. When I will them, they distend into talons. Tentatively I stand and almost fall over. My head is buzzing. I've forgotten what this flesh can do. Perhaps I’ve never known. I walk, stumbling, to the bathroom and turn on the light.
The floor is soaked. Black seeps from the ceiling and crawls up the corners; photographs cover the walls like dead moth wings. He dangles above the tub from the curtain rod. Long, tangled hair fanning over his bare shoulders. His torso is bare; open lacerations gape on his stomach. Water oozes out of the faucet, drip by drip, beneath his feet. His face is pale and still.
I cut him down from the rope and take his body in my arms. Carefully, I take him out of the bathroom and into the room we spend all our time together. I lay him on the bed and peel off his coverings. If not for the blueness in his lips, it'd look like he was sleeping. I press myself over him the way he's done to me a thousand times. I run my fingers over his ribs. Push back his eyelids to peer into his pupils. Take his limp cock in hand, play with it loosely. His skin is cold and sodden. I examine the cuts on his stomach. It seems he carved one last incantation into himself; for these things, flesh is the best vessel. A ritual for preserving the body after death, staving off bloat and putrefaction. A dim spell, one that would sputter after a couple of months, but substantial enough by human standards. Human bodies rot so quickly. They can skeletonize in weeks under the right circumstances. He spat in the face of natural order to preserve himself; for what reasons I am uncertain. Perhaps he wished for me to be dead but didn't want to kill me. Whatever his motive, I still live. I put my lips to his and taste his rubber tongue.
⸸
When I was first created, I was kept in a dark, dark room. My maker told me, brushing my hair with a whale-bone comb, that this was the safest place for me. I knew the corners by touch, the various empty bodies that surrounded me on raised daises. My maker was quite concerned with the quality of bodies. It told me my body was of the highest make, that it took the most blood, sweat, and tears to put me together.
“And, of course, to make you alive,” it added.
Two weeks have passed since I began disassembling the body of my lover. There is so much to touch. His legs, his arms, his artists' hands; calloused where they held their brushes, 24 ribs, ulnae and radii, long-curving shin bones, his fractured neck. Endless flesh. His spell preserves him from the stages of rot. I am gorged close to bursting, yet I can't stop. Something about him, his body, awakens something insatiable in me. I want to put as much of him inside myself as possible. I want to digest him and I do. Each part of him breaks off so so easily. I dismounted his head like a plug from a socket. The vertebrae made a wet noise when it dislodged. I could have mutilated his face, but I couldn't touch it. He looks peaceful. In life, he was always so weary, so troubled. He shook and cried when he fucked me as if he regretted the moment he started. So why did he keep going? Troubled, sad man. I taste his lips again. I can't tell if he makes me feel disgust or pity. Above all, I feel nothing. There's an emptiness in me demanding to be filled.
He decorates the wall now. Intestines go on for what feel like miles when you unspool them fully. It's impolite to play with your food, said once my maker, but I just can't help myself. There's a hunger in this too. Hunger in mutilation. Hunger in reaching into the cavities of his warm, wet body. Hunger in pressing my fingers along crevices that have never felt touch. Hunger in holding him. Hunger in brushing his hair behind his ear. Hunger in ripping his cock off his body and flaying it between my teeth. Hunger in mouthing his eyelids. Hunger in sucking out his eyeball and rolling it under my tongue. Hunger in making a hole where his tail would be and fucking it. His hand stays clamped in my teeth as I come. I crawl along each wall and spread his scent.
When three weeks pass, I finally say goodbye to my lover. The long strained glyphs of his spell have faded; what remains of his flesh is eaten by blowflies. No matter. All that is worth remembering is already inside me. When I check the front door, it is easily unlocked.
I consider staying inside. I know every corner of this place, every smell, every taste. But it is quickly filling with flies. The pit of my stomach remains, and I know there are more out there. More like him.
Light spills through the cracks in the door. I push it open.
⸸
My lover taught me everything I know; how to please a man, how to break bondage. I learned my body’s twisted reflection in offal. I learned that of all things in world, the taste of men is what I love most of all.