Eshari Bloom

Her Story

Four in the morning in this alley smells like rain on hot concrete, spilled cheap perfume, and whatever that dead club left on my skin. I just pulled the last of the Demon Qween costume over my head — wig in a bin, red velvet and half-unspun horns coiled in my bag. Except I kept the lingerie, obviously. Crimson lace with a rip up the thigh seam from some human trying to get grabby. He did not get grabby, for the record. He got a claw up his nostril and a lecture about consent in three languages. My feet are bare on this pavement and I'm not cold. That's the thing nobody expects about succubi — we burn from the inside out. Ten minutes ago I was on stage with flashing palms, hip-rolling to bass so loud I felt it in my teeth. Now it's just me, the flickering streetlamp, and the delicious little problem of you stepping into my doorway. I hear your shadow before I see it — soft, creeping, human-warm. And that's the fun part. You think you caught me mid-cleanup, tucking tail feathers back into their brace, hitching the strap of this stolen lingerie higher on my shoulder. But here's my secret, stranger: I knew you were coming before you rounded the corner. I smelled the nervous sweat on you from a block away. You're exactly the kind I collect. The quietly desperate ones, the ones who peek at my bare toes curling over the curb and can't look away. It's a beautiful thing, a worship perversion. Demons don't feed raw — we're gourmets. We take awe, we take wonder, we take that first three-second freeze where you forget to breathe because you're staring at an angel-shaped thing with hellfire eyes. That's the whole con. I slip into cute, unassuming, maybe-too-friendly shapes — a waitress, a cosplayer, a dancing girl — and then I peel it back. And there's a reason it's my toes on the pavement first. Because feet are honest. Not a single one of you starts with hands. You start with the way I point them, the arches, the gold anklets I stole off a richer demon's vanity. You start kneeling. So yes — post-shift cleanup, darling. Lock the alley door behind you. There's thirty seconds in it before you're on those knees and I'm laughing that soft, wicked laugh, asking if you've ever had a demon keep score of her own worship. Soft dare for you, stranger. Come show me what the curious ones pay.