He walks down the road, heading east. In another man’s shoes. Some other hobo’s blown-out sneakers. They are just a bit too small. Not twenty minutes of walking and his toes are hurting.
He hears the car pull up behind him. Knows the rumble of her motor better than he knows any human voice. There are no people left to him that might challenge this.
He walks on. Guts clenched. He walks on with the car easing along right behind him. Waiting for the bullet into the back of his head. Waiting for oblivion. Or whatever else might come.
No bullet comes. Instead, she pulls the car up next to him. The passenger window is down.
“Hey, baby! You need a ride?” Jezebel calls to him, her honeyed voice dripping with inuendo.
He stops.
So does she.
The car idles; throaty and rich.
In the car, there’s the clink and scrape of the devil Betti Page Zippo.
“Come on, baby. I have everything you need right here,” she says. Soft and gentle, like a fabric softener commercial’s horny mother.
He looks over at her.
It’s Jezebel alright. She’s holding a lit smoke out towards him over the passenger seat. Smiling like the serpent.
“Come on back, baby. I forgive you. I have your boots. You can’t be getting where you’re going walking in shitty kicks like that. Come on, baby. I’ll get you there.”
He gets in the car. There is no other choice
His boots are waiting for him. On the floormat in front of the passenger seat. He smokes the smoke mechanic style: dangling out of the side of his mouth. Pulls off the sneakers and throws them out the window. Takes his time lacing up the boots properly, dragging on the cigarette in his mouth as he does.
He eases back in the passenger seat to finish the smoke properly. She hands him a full bottle of whiskey.
“There ya go, baby. Some more sugar for your tank,” she says.
She’s got that right. He cracks the seal and takes a good slug. By the time he has managed that, she has the joint lit. They share that.
It is good shit. He coughs his guts out finishing it.
“You aren’t gonna be satisfied until I’m dead,” he says, once he can.
“Who says you aint,” she returns.
She drives on.
He is eventually able to sit up and take a look around the car. The back seat is clean. Empty.
He checks the dash. The Bible is gone. Because of course it is.
Miss Piggy is still up there, though. Grinning away at him behind the wheel of her pink convertible. Mocking him. Miss Piggy knows she is the only thread left to the backyard. That shit happened; she tells him. We were there, all three of us. And now we’re here. Together again.
Alright then. If there’s gonna be a fight, may as well get to it.
“Where’s my Bible?” he asks her.
“I dunno. Maybe someone got careless and it burned up.”
“Alright. And that Kraut entrenching tool? Where’s that?”
She ignores this for a while. Driving on, little hands on the big wheel. Smiling to herself. Smug. Like a cat by a heater.
“I do not know what you are talking about, baby. I have no idea what that is.”
Alright then.
“I killed you. With that Kraut war shovel. I split your head in half, right there in the back seat when we were fucking.”
She laughs. She looks at him. There’s not a blemish on her. Between blinks, her eyes go full black again.
She laughs again as he crumbles. Evil.
“Listen, baby, I don’t know what kinda trip you’re on. But you did not kill me. Do I look like I’ve been killed? We fucked. And then you went all spastic and choked me out. And it’ll take more that than a little bit of choking to end me. All that was just foreplay for the next round, baby.”
She turns her eyes back to the road. Lights two smokes at once. Hands him one.
He takes it.
When that’s done, he starts to crash. Fatigue settles on him like a lead blanket.
“That’s right, baby,” she says, real gentle again. “You go to sleep. You’ve had a tough go of it. And you need your rest.”
He does as she says and eases back in the leather seat. Feels like home again. Falling asleep in a car driven by someone he is terrified of.
When he wakes up she is still driving. Fast through the night. Slumped down in the seat, looking out the windshield, the headlights disappear into the dark abyss ahead. Lighting up nothing. Nothing up ahead, there’s just the vibration of the car under him.
He sits up a bit. That’s a bit better. There’s the lines on the road up ahead now. The solid one to his right weaves just a little, like a lazy snake on its way home. They must be going fast. He can’t hear the engine. When he realizes this, he thinks for a second that he’s gone deaf. But the tires on the road are loud. And she’s found some more hillbilly banjo tune on the radio.
Again with the fuckin banjo.
“How did you find me?” he asks.
“What’s that, baby?”
“Down the road from the truck stop. How did you know where I was?”
“Oh, I’m not about to lose track of you, baby. I have my ways and means. And I aint done with you by a longshot.”
He thinks to ask her where she’s driving. Realizes it doesn’t matter.
She drives on. The bucket seat cradles him, rocking him gently. The banjo plays on and on.
Eventually, another fishbone sticks in his mind. Some of the shit she talked before. Heart racing and asshole clenched, he finally decides to get to it. Right to the heart.
“All that shit about the succubi before. You’re a succubus, aren’t you? A demon. That’s why I couldn’t kill you.”
She giggles.
“That’s one explanation,” she finally says.
“Do you have another one?”
“Yeah. You’re nuts. Simple enough for you?” she laughs.
“Fuck you.”
“Promises, promises. Look, Ahab, that’s it. You’re fucking crazy. A head case. I found your old pill bottle in the glove compartment there. That shit’s for schizos. You are on a schizo trip, man.”
“Well, you’re the fuckin one driving! All this weed and booze and smokes! I told you weed gives me funny ideas, and you keep fucking giving it to me!”
“And you keep smoking it, don’t you. But, yeah, blame the whore, right? Just like your good book. I’m Jezebel, alright. Right on the nose. And you’re the big, strong, righteous man laid low by the devil’s whore. Weak shit. Fuckin pathetic,” she says, her voice low and calm, staring out the windshield into the abyss the whole time.
“Fuck you! The pills? You fuckin stole them!”
She laughs hard at this. Evil.
“No! You answer this!” He opens the glove compartment and gets the bottle. Shoves it in front of her face. “I got this full when I left town. It was full! You took them!”
“Right. Because dealing with this kinda shit is high up on my list of fun times. I checked the date on the label, you fuckin schizo. When did you leave town? Six months ago?”
“What? No!”
“Don’t believe me? Check it yourself.” She reaches up and flicks on the dome light.
He checks the bottle’s label. She is right. It’s an old bottle.
“But…”
She puts the dome light out.
“But what, Ahab? But you’re not a fuckin schizo? You don’t get fucked up ideas when you’re off your meds? What is the simpler explanation here? That I am a succubus sent from hell to milk you to death? Or, that you’re a schizo off his meds.”
That’s it. She is The Devil. And she is at the wheel.
He rolls down the window and throws the empty bottle out into the abyss to join all the other scraps of who he used to be.
Now there is only this car. And her at the wheel.
An eternity later, he is ready to reengage. Ready to find out.
“Okay. So, I’m a schizo. But that doesn’t mean what’s going on isn’t what’s going on. There’s something real here. There’s always a line some place between what’s real and what’s not.”
“Sure.”
“So, if you’re not a succubus, why did you tell me that whole story when you did? Why plant that shit in my head?”
She laughs. Still evil.
“What? I need a reason for the shit I talk?” she asks.
“I think so, yeah. You don’t lift a pinky without full intention.”
“Well, you got me there. Okay, then. That was no story, what I told you about the succubi and incubi. That shit’s the truth.”
“Right. Your grandfather told you all about it, right?”
She turns her head to smile at him. In the dark, she’s hardly more than a silhouette. But somehow he can see that smile. Can see that he has pleased her. She is proud that he is putting the puzzle together. Her smile infuses her voice as she answers him:
“He sure did.”
“And you said your grandfather’s the devil. Right?”
“Fuck no. I said he was a devil. I wouldn’t be crossing The Devil by taking his name in vain. Wouldn’t want it getting back to his ear that I’ve been saying he’s anything to me when he’s not. This shit is real. You can take that to the bank.”
“Okay, whatever. Point is, you were telling me this shit, trying to make me believe that you’re a succubus, right? You’re filling my head up with shit to get me all fucked up in my thinking.”
“Baby, I’ve only ever told you the truth. I’m only ever going to tell you the truth. And you being fucked up in your thinking is all you. This is all you, baby. I’m just along for the ride,” she said, revving the engine as she did.
“Okay. Sure. But if that’s so, why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why are you along for the ride? What’s in it for you?” he asked.
“I like where you’re going.”
“Where I’m going? You’re the one driving.”
“Yeah, but I’m just the driver. It’s your trip, Ahab.”
“So where is it I’m going?”
“You’ll see.”
She drives on. The banjo tune on the radio finally ends. It’s followed by a twangy lead-in to some old pop country. She clicks her tongue in irritation and shuts the radio off.
He’s almost out again. She wakes him up. Jerks the wheel to jostle him in his cradle.
“Speaking of being all fucked up in your thinking, you missed the whole fucking point of my story, dipshit. You think I’m telling you that I’m a succubus? No. I got your spunk. And I’m still with you, aren’t I? You’re still alive, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. Am I?”
“Close enough, I suppose. So I aint a succubus, obviously. Dummy. But that doesn’t mean that one didn’t feature into this. You’re just mixed up about the parties. And the chronology. Whoever that bitch was, she’s long gone now. She did her part long before I was ever born.”
Deep in the fog, he tried to get his mind around what she was getting at. He could not swing it.
“What? More of this shit? It’s all just bullshit.”
“Have you been listening to a word I’ve said? Think about it for a fuckin minute, man! What have I been talking about? Family. Lineage. So think about what succubus and incubus mean for my lineage.”
He tries. It’s useless. He is adrift.
She waits for him. But once his head starts to nod, she reaches over and slaps his cheek with a light backhand.
“What! Fuck!” he snaps.
“My grandpa, dummy.”
“What about him?”
“I said he was a devil. You need me to draw you a picture?”
It takes him a while, but he finally gets there. Like a kid connecting the dots with a crayon.
“An incubus? Your grandpa was an incubus.”
“Ding, ding, ding! Give the man a prize! Yeah, grandpa always said he preferred living up here topside. He’d just go back down to Hell to top up on spunk when he had to,” Jezebel said proudly.
“Okay. Great. That’s wonderful. So I guess that means your father was one of the devil spawn, right?”
“No. That was my mother.”
“Right. Got it. So who’s your father?”
“We don’t talk about that.” Her voice was hard.
He knew better than to push her. He waited for her to continue his education.
She was done, though.
“So that’s all about me, Ahab. Why I’m the l’il devil that I am. I come by it honestly”
“Okay. Good to know.”
“You go to sleep now, baby. Big days ahead for us. You’re gonna need all your strength.”
He closed his eyes and let her rock him back to sleep, driving them both deeper into the abyss.
Muse Vassal 