Wicked

Jake 3

Jake

Friday afternoon at school was hotter, there were sweat-stains on the back of school shirts as kids slapped handballs against the grey bricks. Walking the footpath and eating canteen food. I sat alone on the corner of the Marble Tree's enclosure, ignoring the teens who were furrowing away in the dirt behind me. I skimmed through my English essay assignment, got quickly bored and stuffed the papers back into my bag. Almost pulled out a cigarette but saw Mr Steele heading across the quadrangle from the office. These last few days I'd been spending more lunches alone or with others, away from my obnoxious bandmates. They gave me drugs and other nice things, but I could only listen to Laurene's bossy whinging for so long before having to struggle with the urge to knock her out. Lord knows what kind of shit her overprotective father would pull if I gave his sweet little daughter a black eye.

That morning I'd jumped out of bed, fetched Lilith's sigil from my bottom drawer, lit her candle and incense before pouring her another glass of wine. This offering was an apology. I was rescinding my previous ritual. I put the second glass of wine next to the first on my makeshift altar in the corner of my bedroom. Lilith could be fierce but also motherly, and luckily I could feel her willing to pull back from murdering my love.

At least three times now I've tried killing Kyle before either backing out or causing it to fail because of my own hesitancy. What would I be if he was gone? Each time I'd planned his death there'd been different reasoning. The first time I'd tried being logical about it: if I was so irrevocably in love with this boy surely the only way to be free was to kill him? Then afterwards it had been about justice, fairness. And then I'd wanted to kill him just to make an example of him, a way of flipping my middle finger to the universe. I also wanted to kill him for personal power. If this boy made me weak, surely it was a huge testament to my power that I could overcome and strike him down like a divining god.

In moments when I wasn't full of venom-mouthed satisfaction at the idea of him rotting in the earth, I recalled his beauty with a sense of hopeless tragedy. What if after he dies I never get over it? What if I still love him, even gone and weep with rage, demanding why he'd made me do this to him. I am a powerful man – a god. This worthless rodent-being had no power, the conflict of whether he lives or dies, the choices wrapped up in turmoil exist within me. His fate was in my hands.

I'd come up with an answer to my problem, and it felt like Lilith was willing to help me.

The first time I'd come across her name on the occult forum it stood out to me. Then after sleeping I'd dreamt of having sex with a woman in the shower and came hard. Definitely unusual when you consider I'd never contemplated having sex with a woman before. I abruptly woke up when the dream ended and could feel an invisible something sitting on the end of my bed.

After evoking her a few times I learned that Lilith was the fiercest being I'd ever worked with, more so than her male demon counterparts. She encouraged women she worked with to embrace their dark inner goddess while from men she demanded submissiveness. Lilith is the mother of succubi, the first wife of Adam who refused to lay under him in the Garden of Eden. She represented the dark feminine, sexuality and sadism. The seducer of men and the devourer of children.

A marble hit the dirt beside me and bounced into the grass, a shrimpy bespectacled boy went running after it. I felt the same rage I always do when someone comes close to invading my personal space without permission. My arms were itching to strike at the audacious pest. He scurried past me and back to his friends.

Kyle deserved the worst punishment possible. Killing him may not necessarily negate my feelings, nor would it cause him great pain for long. Instead I would have to torture him all the days of his life. He deserved to experience the utmost of human suffering, to experience as much pain as was humanly possible. I wanted him to be ripped apart and live through it. I'd do a ritual to give him a back injury instead, turn him into a fucking cripple. A broken insect. And then maybe afterwards he'd be dependent on me all his life and I'd be able to forgive him. I had an image of it in my head, him wheelchair-bound, living with me and needing me. Burning passion as I imagined making love to my paralysed partner, the fantasy got me flushed and hard.