The Mistress

Since she arrived, nobody has slept well. Not during the night.

She arrived without warning, claiming it was some lucky turn of fate that brought her to our doorstep. She began right away, acquainting herself with my father and mother. She planted a plum tree in our back yard and insists we let the white petals litter the ground in the spring because it is beautiful.

She twists her hair into painfully tight knots and holds them in place with long polished sticks gilded and carved with flowers and dragons.

She makes my father smile, simply with her own enigmatic smile. She and mother get along; when the house smells of their moon cakes and the kitchen smells of smoke, I know they have spent the day together.

I ask her why she came to our doorstep, why she has such light hair, why she is so young, where she came from. She smiles and tells me not to trouble myself and to stop squirming because I am going to ruin my hair.

There are small hints though. The apple blossoms in her hair. The soft words she recites over us when my sister and I are supposedly asleep in the middle of the night. The tattoo on her neck.

There have been stories of creatures like her. With sweet tongues and sharp teeth. But each day when she presents me with a new ribbons or my hair (in black lace), or shows me how to make smaller stitches, or dresses me in her red kimonos, I wonder if succubi are truly that bad.

But now we sleep through the day and wake at night. And I have seen flashes of the same smile on mother's face,  on my sister's, on mine in the mirror. Succubi are not found, I was once told. Succubi are made.

Text by Lucie MacAulay