The Tobias Problem by Allister Nelson
Editor’s Note: This short story is a work of fiction. The views expressed in this fiction are solely of its author. This fiction does not reflect nor represent the views, beliefs and opinions of the editors and publishers.
* * * *
The Tobias Problem by Allister Nelson
“Sarai,” my demon says, a look in his eyes like simmering stars. Ashmedai’s gaze is burning. “More whiskey?”
I smile, my brown hair, blue eyes, and freckled skin skipping like fall leaves in the Kentucky light. It’s derby season, and we’ve come for the horse races. “Whatever you say, Ash.”
He smiles. It’s just us alone, alone in his impossible bar. My demon is always near me, stalking the planes of time to follow me into each life. Sarai, daughter of Raguel, but that was so long ago. Now, I am Sarai, daughter of Benjamin Telsheim, a New York stockbroker.
Having your own personal demon has its advantages, regardless of the Telsheim riches. I know the best clubs and have an endless credit card Ashmedai pays for. The chicest vacations: St Tropez, Isla Mujeres, Monaco, Bali, St. Barts. We took pics in Bali’s infinity mirror temple last month, just Ashmedai and I kissing as the pink tropical sun set over the thick fanning palm leaves, and the gray stone bespoke an old faith like the Jewish blood that runs in my veins.
My mothers always die in childbirth. My fathers are always distant, passing me off to nannies. And I, Sarai bat Raguel? Sarai bat Benjamin? Sarai bat Iosif? Sarai bat… never mind.
I am always starved of love. All my love, comes from him – the tall, handsome, sandstone skinned Sephardic demon serving me whiskey on the rocks. I’d bet on a winning horse today with daddy’s dollars, refusing to bet against the King of Gehenna with his own money. A filly named Mistral. She’d overtaken all the other colts, bearing her jockey alight on her back like streaming sun over a Finger Lakes creek. On weekends away from Columbia, Ashmedai drives our little Mazda Miata from my freshman dorm to upstate, and we fish, barbecue, camp.
Daddy is blameless. Daddy never knows. I am Sarai, bat Regret. Sarai, bat Melancholy. Sarai, the daughter of Silence.
“Sarai?” Ashmedai asks me later that night, thrusting deep into me as his sweaty, oudh smelling kisses dissolve in hazel smoke as he and I begin to climax. He struggles to hang on to his human form.
He traces hosannas on my breasts, kneads my back with his sheathed claws, brown fingers tracing eternity onto my olive skin.
“What is it, Ash?” I say lovingly.
He kisses me, hard, thirsting after immortality. Another rock of his hips, and he is buried balls-deep. Orgasms assail my body, and stars rocket to the forefront of my vision. I clutch onto his wings as he fans them out to cool me, biting my bottom lip as he pumps, thrusts, kneads my hips with star-touched hands.
“What are we?” he pleads, sweat that smells of cinnamon and dragon’s blood dripping from his chest.
“Friends, Ash – oh, right there! I’m cumming! Oh Ash, you’re amazing.”
He moans hosannas in my ears, turning to swirling clouds of incense smoke that is not too thick to choke on, but thick enough that it is as if I am in the Second Temple with the Kohen Gadol, his breastplate of bezels shining in Ashmedai’s disembodied adamant eyes. Ashmedai’s smoke lifts my form up into the air as I make love to my demon, tendrils restraining me, tickling me, begging me.
With a great rush, the shadow side of God penetrates my womb. Aeshma’s spear of wrath fits between my slit like I am the hilt, and he is the lance. The full glory of the patron of war explodes in fireworks under my stomach, and delicious throes of ecstasy send me writhing in his immortal darkness.
Then, in a fructation of flesh, we fall apart. Back into the sheets, he tucks me in, nursing me back to health. It is always too much, such pure, overwhelming need and satisfaction.
It is never enough. I lean into his arms, trembling.
“I want to be man and wife,” Ashmedai says timidly, nuzzling sweat off my perfect brown nipple.
“That is for Tobias, Ash,” I giggle.
“What did I tell you?” Ashmedai drawls, pressing me to his perfect dusky abs and pecs, his ringlets of red-black hair spiraling down onto my breasts, his leathery warm bat wings cradled under me. “Raphael stole Tobias’ soul away to marvel at G-d’s throne. They’re a whoring lot, the angels, trading their favorite humans like playing cards.”
“Is that why you keep me all to myself?” I sigh, taking a drag from the Chesterton he has summoned. A bit of his fire enters my lungs as I inhale the rich tobacco.
“I cherish you, Sarai bat Raguel. You are not disposable, you know, whatever Tobias or that damnable Raphael says.” He wraps his arms tightly around me, possessive. “You are nineteen. What is stopping us from eloping, cream of Manhattan’s Upper East Side? My Jewish princess clad in gold and myrrh?”
I giggle, kissing gently his throat. “You will never marry me, Ashmedai. Not after my suitors you killed. We will always just be friends.”
He scowls, holding me with passion. He wedges his muscled olive leg between my thigh, rubbing against my seed-stained sex. His seed is black, tastes like anise. “We have always been more than friends. And those men meant to hurt you. To rape you. They were different than Tobias.”
I stub the spent cigarette out on the ash tray, then roll on top of Ashmedai, playing with his curls. “Oh Aeshma, oh Ash, oh Ashmedai. You could have killed beautiful, peerless Tobias just the same.”
There are tears in Ashmedai’s eyes. He does not like being denied. His freedom by Solomon. His heart’s desires by me. His rulership by his mother Agrath, who is always scheming with the soul of his father, King David.
I kiss Ashmedai’s black oil spill sheen tears away. Licorice. Chocolate. Meadows.
“I’m a changed man, Sarai,” he finally whispers. “Can’t you see that? Everything I do, Sarai, is for you.”
I rest my head atop my demon’s chest, listening to his vicious heart. “You must live for yourself, Sakhr.”
He winces at the teasing name. The cruel name. Bound to stone. Enfettered under hot desert sun.
“You are a cruel mistress, Sarai.”
“You do not belong to me, Ashmedai, no more than you belonged to your father David or to your traitorous brother Solomon. But I pray that you never leave my side, no matter what life I may walk through. You are my anam chara. My heart’s dearest companion.”
Ashmedai rolls the word – anam chara – heart’s companion – off the tongue, then braids my dark brown hair.
“Say Sarai, will you walk with me always in the garden?”
I kiss him on the cheek, smelling his musk and cologne. Oudh radiates from his hair, alongside rose oil. “Always, Ashmedai. Always.”
A glimmer in his gray-green eyes. “That is enough for me, then.”
We walk through his Underworld rose garden, later that night. He reads me a book of Rilke. I read him some poems I have written at Columbia. Ashmedai offers gentle, constructive critique.
The next day, in his Mazda Miata, we kiss in the rain. It is always raining, in my Ashmedai’s heart. But rain makes his roses bloom.
“You are my flower, Sarai.”
I think of Tobias as I kiss him. How Tobias could never measure up. How I regretted losing Ashmedai, the rest of my life as Raguel’s daughter. How my soul followed Ashmedai to hell. How I made a pact with my demon love’s mother, Agrat bat Mahalath, to always be by Ashmedai’s side.
How when Raphael and Tobias came for me, an old widow, to take me to Heaven, I beat them away with my broom. The archangel and my mortal husband were always more lovers to one another than Tobias could ever be to me. That man, he gave too much of his heart to G-d.
Adonai lets things in for a reason. Once, millennia ago, G-d placed a sweet little lizard named Ashmedai on my wall. Ash saved me from a rapist on my wedding night. A pickpocket. A warlord. A thief. A tyrant. None of those suitors were worthy.
Plain Tobias, jealous Tobias, when I cried out Ash’s name under him, sours on my tongue. Our marriage, bitter. Our children, loved by me but not by their father, no matter how much Tobias claimed otherwise.
But then, Ashmedai pulls on my bottom lip with his fangs, careful not to puncture, and I am pulled back into his orbit.
“You are my stem, Ashmedai. I will walk with you always.”
Thus spake Sarai, daughter of Raguel. Daughter of Men. Forgotten of G-d.
Remembered by her demon.
Treasured by her demon.
Always.
* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Allister Nelson 2023
