He’d barely ridden through the last of the waves when he was suddenly yanked out of the dreamscape, gasping like a fish out of water. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was, the bliss of his release quickly replaced with bone-chilling panic.
“We need to go.” A familiar demon was standing above him, her jaw tight with strain, her riotous pink curls falling over her face and shoulders, wavy horns pointing to sky. “Get the fuck up, Cunning; we need to go. Now!”
Knight scrambled to his feet. “What’s happening?”
All around him, in the dilapidated building of an abandoned sect which he’d briefly called home, the other nicquiris were grabbing what little belongings they had before spreading their wings and taking flight, leaping up into the air past the broken roof, disappearing into the clouds.
“Sentries,” Pink said, making Knight’s heart jolt and start hammering. No. How had they caught up so soon? Pink bent her knees and spread her wings. “Are you ready?”
Knight didn’t have much; just a couple of robes and other necessities which he never took out of his bag. He grabbed it, holding it tight. “Ready.”
They leapt into the air.
Knight glanced behind him just as the sentries burst into the building below. Where nicquiris like himself had differingshades of purple skin, the sentries’ skins were in ranges of wine red, their wings leathery with spines, instead of full of feathers.
Knight watched, heart in his throat, as the cold-hearted demons managed to capture a few stragglers before they could escape, with the aim to drag them back to whatever sect had sent them on the hunt.
He took a second to mourn his fallen brethren; they hadn’t been a true sect, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been something of a family.
Knight faced his front, following Pink, and wondered if all this running and hiding really was going to be the rest of his life.
Saint jolted awake before he was ready to, his heart hammering, lips parted on a silent cry as he rode his orgasm to its unsatisfactory end. He sank into the mattress when it was over, sighing heavily as he reoriented himself to the real world, one hand falling to his chest as if to stop his heart from pounding so hard, the other collapsing onto the mattress.
That had been ...
Odd. He didn’t have that particular dream often—yes, it wasjusta dream, he told himself stubbornly, despite all evidence that pointed to the contrary—but he’d had it enough times to know that the demon always performed some sort of aftercare afterward. They cuddled. The demon stroked his hair and fed him empty platitudes until he fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes again, he’d be back in his bed, a smile on his lips, a thin veneer of brightness painted over his semi-disappointing life.
The demon had never just ... disappeared, completely without warning. Not that Saint cared all that much, considering that it wasn’t fuckingreal.
He searched around his sheets. A glance at his phone screen told him it was nearing five AM. Was there a point in going back to sleep?
Besides, some part of him felt irritated. The very least his dreams could do was let him have his stress-relief before abruptly jolting him out of it just as he was on the cusp of it.
He had another jerk-off session while he was in the shower, desperately needingsomekind of endorphin rush. He clenched his eyes shut and thought of magical restraints around his thighs and wrists as he pulled fast and hard on his dick, before coming—once again, unsatisfactorily—down the drain.
That second disappointing orgasm seemed to set the tone for the rest of his day. He had a quick breakfast of oatmeal and toast, then grabbed a keke to his shift at Abinbo Primary School.
He greeted all the parents who came to drop their kids, even the ones who looked down their noses at him. He gave high fives to the kids who loved him, and hugs to those whose parents permitted it. His throat thickened when Mrs. Efezino secretly slipped five thousand naira into his palm, her eyes burning with sincere gratefulness because she’d forgotten to pick up her daughter on time again yesterday, and Saint had stayed with the shy six-year-old for nearly two hours after the school had closed and no one was left in the building. Samuel, the other security guard, would’ve waited with him, but he always left the second their shift ended to beat the evening traffic in town.
Work passed in a heat-filled daze, he and Samuel passing the time by gisting and munching on fried groundnuts when they didn’t need to be watching the gates.
Saint strolled to Chiamaka Amala Point for something cheap and filling to eat when work was over, still feeling off-kilter. Hekept rolling his neck, like there was a pain in his shoulders he couldn’t quite get rid of. Ugh. Honestly. Perhaps now was the time to say fuck it to that dream.
The demon never came unless Saint “summoned” him. That first time, a few months ago now, when he’d found himself inside that forest with the hulking humanoid creature stalking him through the trees, the arousal that had come blazing to life in his gut had felt simultaneously dirty as it had freeing.
This isn’t real, he’d told himself. In his dreams, he could do whatever the fuck he wanted. And what he wanted was to be pinned down by someone—he wasn’t too picky about the gender—and fucked so hard he felt it when he woke up.
When the demon had realised what kind of game he was playing, he’d been all too eager to give Saint what he wanted. Except, he wouldn’t do it unless Saint explicitly consented, even though that was the entirepoint; Saint didn’twantto choose. But after the demon had shown him how to draw the circle—a signal for the game to begin—he’d stopped showing up in his dreams until Saint had given up and drawn the damn circle.
Now, every time Saint found himself in that forest, it was his choice to play. If he didn’t draw the circle, he didn’t get his relief. One of the many pieces of evidence pointing to some kind of sentience in the demon, even though that obviously didn’t make a lick of sense. Did he have a demon just—what?Livingin his subconscious? Were his dreams based in a real, alternate dimensional world or something? There was no rational explanation, so that meant it couldn’t be real.
Still feeling off-balance, after his meal, Saint decided to walk home. The school, the local food joint, and his home were all within walking distance from each other, about thirty minutes between each. Sometimes, he didn’t mind taking a keke, the small three-wheeled vehicle cheap enough that he could afford the fare if he wanted to. Other times, that extra two to threehundred he spent on transport everyday felt like the difference between life and death.
He could’ve splurged thanks to the generous tip from Mrs. Efezino, but if he ever wanted to move out of his self-contain, as Nigerians called them, then he had to count every single penny.
He was extremely fortunate that when he’d applied for his job at Abinbo Primary School, they’d taken one look at his first-class degree and had decided to pay him a little over double the minimum wage as a sign of trust and to inspire his loyalty. He’d never wanted to be an Architect anyway, so it worked just fine for him. Not too long now and he’d finally save up enough to be able to rent a bigger place—actually start living instead of surviving.
He branched into a roadside kiosk to buy some Gala, getting a few more packs of the sausage rolls than he usually did.
