New Short Fiction by Michael Glover

Enigmatic Succubus (Part II)

"Look! It's the moon!” I said as I dug my toes into the dark shadows in the sand.

“It's going to be up soon. I can see it's glow beginning on the horizon.”

“It happened last night too, and it will tomorrow, and yet, each night, you are amazed?” She asked.

The coyotes barked and trilled insanely in the warm California night.

A scorpion, like an animated shard of glass, crept from beneath a twig at my side. I watched it as it melted in and out of starlight, moved along the sand beside my leg, explored my right heel with an awkward, accidental bump of a pincher, then vanished into the darkness alone,

"​El escorpión es el no tu amigo mi amor,” she whispered.

“I know that.” I said.

“These damned dogs have followed me from New Mexico!” I exclaimed. “Listen to them, out there screaming. That's all they do......is scream.” I was speaking of coyotes. I've always hated the sound of them in the night.

“What you call screaming is only a beckoning,” she told me. “Why does it threaten you to be called?”

“I don't speak their language,” I said.

“Sure you do,” she replied. “They speak the language of loneliness in the night. Surely this is a language you understand well....no?”

“Has no sido solo toda tu vida mi pequeña Virgen?”

“I don't know....maybe....probably, maybe not,” I replied.

“What happened to all those years ago?” I asked her. When we were driving through a Georgia swamp with the moon overhead and a lifetime before us and you promised me that everything was going to be alright....always?”

“Yes?”

Well, it hasn't been “allright always”.....in fact....it got pretty screwed up several times....no, MANY times along the way!”

“Yes?”

“What do you mean yes?” I asked.

​”Mira, está la luna,” she said.

“I know.” I replied. “It's beautiful.”

“So what is it you want to know?” She finally asked. “Why the drama and the poor boy lost in the desert for the night without his blanket bit? You don't think the moon has seen this story before pobrecito?”

“There have been broken hearts,”I told her, LOTS of broken hearts.”

“Si.” She said.

“There have been deaths...there has just been a lot of STUFF!” I told her.” I've fucked up a lot of stuff over the years. A lot of it I've often wished I could take back now, but I can't.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I can take it back?” I asked.

“Of course not you silly one, no more than you can catch the scorpion that was here earlier. It is gone. It will never in all it's life, come back to you again. You can spend the rest of your life looking for it if you want to do something so stupid but you will never see it again.”

“There ought to be something to say.” I finally said after hours had passed and the moon was edging out of the night toward a ridge of black, broken teeth on the western horizon.

“For you there is always something to say.” She said. “But there is nothing that words could ever contain that they haven't already held and been emptied of....is there?” She asked. “Yet each time they are emptied you cannot be still until you have filled them again....then you are still not still!”

Then she left again while I was trying to figure this last one out. I heard her voice on the wind as I saw dawn creeping into the east....

“por cierto, los perros no te siguen, que les trajo con usted mi amor!”

“The dogs didn't follow you, you brought them with you love!”

“How could you say that?”

“y todavía hablas!”

- Michael Glover 2015

Mike Glover is a retired school teacher (special education) from New Mexico now living in southern California. Hobbies are walking on the beach looking for driftwood because each piece has a great story to tell…even if he has to make it up, collecting people and their stories and just trying to get it all written down before the long day is over and the time is all gone.