Incubus

      Ares returned home -

- set down his heavy implements of war, stripped off his cloak, tunic and went to the baths, rinsing the day off and making himself somewhat presentable. He poured himself more than one person’s helping of wine and leaned against the wall, watching Aphrodite sleep, her breasts heaving and falling. Good he hadn’t woken her, he thought. Once he’d gathered a pretty good buzz, he might be able to put his day away and carefully slid in to the large white bed next to her.

Bill, the only name that had ever suited him, not the one he was born with, no last name necessary, strode through his abode, his chin level with the floor, appreciative of what vast sums of money could do for someone with refined taste. Well, almost refined. His centerpiece ‘statue’ was actually the taxedermied corpse of Beatrix Kiddo. She’d been killed, dismembered, emballmed, stuffed, and mounted in his living room. Many people considered it fake, but he and Elle knew it was real. That thing had cost a lot of money. Bill slipped out of his black and gold robe into the shower where Elle was starting her day, if a little early, on a Saturday.

“Can eye wash your back?” He grinned a little with his voice.

He was an extremely fit guy with a scraggly dark beard, and he sat on the counter in her kitchen, using a large machete to open a watermelon, holding a large bowl between his ankles to catch the juice. An open catalogue of very serious weaponry that wouldn’t be out of place in a totalitarian dictatorship lay on the other side of him. He hacked off a chunk of watermelon, and spat out seeds into her trash can at his left. Seeing her, he spoke, his accent something between an Oxford educated east Indian person and something gravelly and low:

“Wake up, Miss Pauline, you’re dreaming. Have you ever heard of lucid dreaming? This is a lot like that only if lucid dreaming had a VR experience in an IMAX theater or something. Or, ‘The Matrix.’ Only, I’m not a woman in a red dress and there aren’t any agents. You can wake up anytime you like basically just by wanting to. Oh, and I’ll clean up my mess. There really isn’t one anyway.” Her kitchen was exactly the way she’d left it, except he was still in her kitchen, moving towards her living room.

John Lennon circles his ankles as he peruses her record collection.

“Come on mate, boss says I gotta watch you. It comes from him direct. I gotta be on you like a shadow. I got you a sandwich on the way over. You aint a flight risk, are ya?

He checked that his glock 17 was loaded and ready to fire. He had a few spare clip in his pockets, and an ankle piece. Just in case.

He picked her up from the club where she danced, leaving the engine running, the passenger and driver’s side door open in his classic electric blue Malibu. He was rail thin, but something in his eyes announced a predatory nature. The perverts who usually tried to catch the dancers on their way home gave him a wide berth. He leaned against the wall next to the door and began to eat a peach with his balisong knife. When she emerged, he squished the piece between his teeth, grinning at her, the blade still in his mouth.

“Ready to get off your feet?”

Pulse was the new place everybody went. It was a fit descriptor, as the music was loud enough to thud in the ears and in the blood. It smelled of clean sex, bodies, light, clean sweat, perfume, musk. Lights flashed, strobed, pulsed, blinded as much as they illuminated. The colors there even vibrated and pulsed against each other. 

Someone danced close behind her, and they pulsed as well, stamping their feet, swaying them both, and the crowd moved them as well. Their breath was on her neck, their fingers whispered and fluttered against her skin. 

He had taken her sailing, they had a hotel in Trinidad, in Incancos on the side between the Orinocco and the Gulf of Paria. They made a passable breakfast and people left them alone for the most part. It was away from the standard tourist traps, and they were allowed to free dive nude as often as they liked. He had made them an evening picnic dinner and they sat on the beach, watching the sunset come down behind the impossibly verdant trees. He leaned toward her, having finished his champagne, and pressed his lips to her neck, behind her ear.