Page 11 of Devil Inside

You have to let these vessels breathe. Smooth them out. There can be bitterness. An astringency. Acidity. A lingering finish. Some can be sweet. Others sour. Every host is different, each filled with complex notes. Every memory, every scar. There are good years. Others, less so. But the depth of an individual vessel’s vintage, the hardships they’ve endured, leads to a more pleasurable union.

See. Swirl. Smell. Sop. Savor.

I prefer my hosts who’ve been heartbroken. Who havehurt. Such bruised beauties.

Take this vessel. A medium-bodied merlot. Smooth, velvety textures. Such soft tannins. He’s out for the first time since ending a five-year relationship. His companion left him for a younger man. Now he has something to prove. To himself. He wants to find love. That he’s not so alone. How heart-wrenching. To be surrounded by so many and yet still feel so isolated. All he needs is a little nudge. A push toward decadence.

I can offer him that.

What about her? A full-bodied Syrah. Such forceful flavors. Dark fruit. Peppers and spice. What a good vintage she is. This fresh hostess has been abandoned by everyone she’s ever opened herself up to. Friends and family. She has so much love to give and yet everyone she chooses to offer herself up to, a sacrifice of devotion, has spat that love back in her face. She is here tonight out of loss. There is no hope in her. Just yearning.

This one is bitter. I don’t like this one at all. It leaves an aftertaste.

This one has an earthy undertone. He has improved with age. Time has granted him secondary and tertiary aromas. There is a spice to him. I like it. I can savor him.

So many notes. So many flavors. So many experiences that I wish to sip.

I am drunk with memories, with experience, I can barely hold ourselves upright. Recollections begin to blur. The room spins. I should slow down.

I enter the body beside us.

Let me in...

Then the body beside hers.

Let me...

Then his.

Let...

I won’t be tethered to flesh, bound to one body. I want to be free. To drift. Be one with the music. I catch the current, the very song itself, and flow through every vessel, flesh to flesh to flesh, finding my way around the room and back again, never staying inside for long, using all this skin as a conduit, a circuit of limbs to travel the expanse of this space.

All it takes is touch. Contact. A simple tap suffices. Grazing skin.

Let me in...

Let me...

Let...

I want more now.More. Need to ride the song as its tempo crescendos, reaching its peak. I drift faster now,faster, picking up momentum from one vessel to the next, and the next, touching him and her, riding the rhythm of the song, driving, gliding, reaching such speeds as to create an infinite loop, an ouroboros of possession, inhabiting everyone at once. All of these people, over a hundred vessels, suddenly fastened together by sound.

By me. We are one now, all together. One entity. One tethered possession.

Look how strong we are.

Howconnected.

It is a blissful experience. Absolute bliss. I wish to ride this skin, all of these bodies, farther and faster until I break the sound barrier, faster than the speed of light, until I become infinite, until I become—

Our body gives.

The vessel we find ourselves in collapses on the dance floor. The connection breaks.

Snaps.

Everything suddenly goes so cold. Silent in an instant. What’s happened? Where did everyone go? We’re not connected anymore.