Succubus

Andrew has an odd dream...

The Succubus

I awoke from a seemingly coma like slumber. A new day and all the bull s**t that comes along with this eventuality to look forward to.. However, something seemed amiss, something seemed different today. I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it but it somehow seemed that events had been set in motion that I had no control over. With this ominous feeling settling in my gut, I set about my morning business. I walked into the bathroom and cleared my bladder and bowels. Excellent, I thought, everything functioning properly! As I brushed my teeth I thought of my morning coffee, but somehow I assumed some coffee would be brewing in the kitchen, after all it is the 21st Century, and automatic brewing is a simple feature on most coffee machines.

Just then I noticed the delicious aroma of freshly brewed coffee enter my bathroom. It was like taking a stroll through the countryside after a spring shower, the feeling of intense satisfaction after a night of passionate love making, admiring artistic perfection when viewing “The Thinker”, or the feeling one got after watching “The Blindside”. Something about freshly brewed coffee just made me think in metaphor. 

After showering and dressing I move to the kitchen and began prepare my breakfast, while listening to CNN which I have put on my television. Yes! My morning is going according to plan! Perhaps my ominous feelings were a little hasty. Conceivably my day will not be affected by forces beyond my control. I gather my food and sit at the kitchen table and catch the headline update that is put on every thirty minutes.

“Good morning, its 6:30 A.M., January 19, 2017. Here are your morning headlines,” said the pretty brunette reporter with an unnaturally white smile. It is not uncommon for me to ponder about these things; after all I’m a dreamer. But even as my breakfast progressed pro forma, something still seems out of place. Suddenly it hit me with a jolt. January 19? That’s my birthday! Hurray, I think joyously! I’ll get a cake, maybe even a surprise party as well! Then an uncomfortable truth settled in… 2017? In a very feminine and 2009 manner I mentally say “Oh Emm Gee,” I’m thirty! Suddenly I panic. All my greatest fears from my seemingly distant youth come to mind; Am I married? Do I have children? Do I even have a job? Do I still have a full head of hair? And more importantly… where the hell am I and why is it 2017? 

My thoughts are interrupted when I hear the male anchor say, “In other news, next week President Obama will end his second term as president and boy we can’t wait for that to happen.”

“You can say that again Ric,” the brunette said with a chuckle. "I'm looking forwards to a tax cut!"

Obama’s really almost out of office? Well that can’t be such a horrid thing I muse. Perhaps I can salvage something of my life. Still, I must accept the fact I’m thirty years old, single, and rapidly approaching my death at seemingly warp like speeds. Looking around my futuristic and ultra modern apartment, I felt a sense of emptiness. I’m thoroughly depressed. Fortunately, my Chesapeake Bay Retriever chose to walk in just then. I didn’t realize that I had a dog and I quickly gave him breakfast. Hermes, my dog’s excellent name chosen straight from Greek Mythology, is my only friend. I know this in my heart of hearts and I accept this truth without fault. Again I am pulled from my thoughts by yet another distraction, this time in the form of a knock at my apartment’s door. I walk over and open it without even asking who it is.

Suddenly a camera crew enters my apartment, start setting up and prepare for filming. For a moment I’m thoroughly confused… why is there a camera crew in my apartment? A man approaches me with a broad, toothy smile. He reminded me of the Monopoly man, still I thought he was still in jail, afterall I had never finished that game. He shook my hand and called me “And”. Perhaps he was too lazy or stupid to complete my name by simply adding “rew” or the letter “y”. For a moment I consider selling this ridiculous looking man a consonant letter, yet I sigh as if I have long ago accepted this fact of life, nevertheless I don’t understand how. While I know this man, I really don’t know him at all and while I feel this camera crew is supposed to be in my home, I really don’t know why they are in my home. Finally, while I was awake at the ungodly hour of 5:30 in the morning, I’m not entirely sure why I awoke so early. 

“Why is there a film crew setting up in my home?” I ask the man with the broad, toothy smile. 

“Don’t be ridiculous ‘And’, this is your own personal MTV film crew. Remember? You signed away your life when you were 23. As long as we paid for your medical school, you agreed to allow us to follow you around as a professional. Well… here we are! You’re now going to be on ‘True Life �" Finally I’m A Professional; A career affected by legislation introduced by the Obama Administration’,” the man with the broad, toothy smile said, all the while still smiling broadly.

“That’s ridiculous! Sure I watched “Jersey Shore” a few times, I even admit to watching “The Real Cancun”, but I hate MTV… PASSIONATELY!” I protested to the man. “I didn’t even watch MTV growing up, my father wouldn’t allow it. He said “They will fry your brain and make you stupid”, and that was when the “Real World” was still actually decent back in the 90s. You guys still had that show “Undressed” that felt like a cheesy “Skinimax” job that I would sneak in sometimes… just because of the adrenaline rush I got from watching a channel I wasn’t supposed to. Carson Daly was still cool and he would countdown the hit songs from MTV studios in Times Square. Those were good times man! Slowly but surely you insisted on playing shorter portions of the songs and let him talk more, which inevitably led American teenagers to realize that he was not cool at all. Having said all that, I must reemphasize that I hate your network… with a passion!” I conclude my rant with a glare and I mutter, “VH1 is certainly a better network anyway…” I add a fist pump for emphasis. Oh no! Maybe I do belong on this network.

Through all this the man with the broad, toothy grin seemed unfazed. If anything, his smile seemed to broaden, if that was at all possible. He nodded his head slightly the entire time I spoke to him, as if completely grasping everything I was telling him. “Look And, you have to understand, we knew Carson Daly was not cool. That’s why we made him talk more. After a while ratings went down and we sacked him. We saw the writing on the wall and he didn’t. He’s still at NBC you know; he just doesn’t know they don’t air his show anymore.”

Somehow this knowledge made me feel much better, after all everyone knows Carson Daly is a stupid git. Still the notion of having an MTV camera crew following me seemed intriguing. I asked him what my responsibilities would be. 

“Essentially, you’re supposed to act as miserably as possible. At the end of every episode, the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel will seem to brighten. Here, we’ve made you a very special opening sequence I think you’ll like. We settled into my sofa and turned on my awesome 80” LED, 3D display from Sony. Hermes scurried over to my legs desperate for me to pet him, after all that was the greatest perk of being my best buddy. As I obliged him, the opening credits started. 

I stood on street corner looking up at sky scrappers, while music eerily reminiscent of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show” played. However, the words had been changed slightly to; “He’s gonna make it after all!” Needless to say I was thrilled at how unbelievably unoriginal the whole thing was. It was exactly what I expected from MTV and they delivered. At the end of the sequence ‘True Life �" Finally I’m A Professional; A career affected by legislation introduced by the Obama Administration’ appeared in the Chiller font available on Microsoft Word. I had a great feeling of affinity to this font as it made everything seem far more terrible. Even the word “Kittens” seemed cruel and evil in the chiller font. The writing turned red and dissolved as if it were written in blood. Again I was thrilled. MTV was going to make me a celebrity, even if they stretched the meaning of the word. After all, it was 2017 and I was pretty sure Snooki was still trying to have sex with anyone that would have her down the Jersey Shore and she was more likely than not still being ditched for taller and thinner conquests, without a terrible accent and better skin. 

Now that I knew I was a doctor, I expected life to follow the script of House quite closely and if not House, then Doogie Howser at the very least. I feared that it would not be like that at all and be more along the lines of E.R. or worse, Grey’s Anatomy. I shuddered at the thought. I refused to believe that fate would place me in a working environment staffed by men perceived by women to be outrageously attractive and all while have women of questionable attractiveness and neurotic personalities around me. Mean while they talked about their miserable love lives and readily ignored their patients. Now I was worried.

I set about my day, bidding adieu to Hermes as I walked through unfamiliar streets with the confidence of a veteran resident. I arrived at Mercy Hospital and set about my job, healing people even though I didn’t remember going to medical school. Either I had taken a really powerful hallucinogenic or I was dreaming. Somehow the latter seemed more realistic as herbal remedies were as far as I was willing to go on the illicit narcotic market. 

As the day came to an end I was relieved, only three perspective patients had died waiting for socialized medicine to accommodate them with a doctor’s appointment. Somehow I knew that teenager from the inner city with the sawed off shotgun wound wasn’t going to make it very long. I decided to let him go, that’s called triage for you uninitiated souls. I remember turning to the camera and shaking my head sadly and theatrically for the audience. “This is what socialized medicine has brought you… another perspective patient who wasn’t willing to create a group health care plan, even if he had a pre-existing condition, in this case, shot from a 12 gauge shot gun.” 

Monopoly man came up to me after my shift with his broad, toothy smile and gave me a big hug. “Brilliant work today Doctor, you’re show is #1 on MTV Reality Channel 5.” This is much better than Steven Seagulls’ latest incarnation of his terrible “Lawman Franchise”. But my day was not yet over. It turned out that it had in fact seemingly just begun. I was informed that I had to go on a blind date, as I had to appease the teenaged girls out there in America who actually thought love wasn’t just a chemical reaction that took place in the brain and was indeed real. I snickered, but how bad could female companionship be?

I headed off to the restaurant to meet tonight’s date. When I arrived I was mortified to see that the woman was twice my age and failed to grasp how helpful cosmetic surgery could be when utilized properly. However, I was raised a gentlemen and having a conversation with someone old enough to have witnessed the NASA Moon Landings could in fact be good fun. We talked and talked and I realized I enjoyed talking to this woman. I offered to walk her back to her flat which was only a few blocks from the restaurant we had chosen for this evening. 

When we reached the door to her building, she turned to me and shyly said, “It’s been so long since I kissed a man, I’ve forgotten the feeling, would you be willing to kiss me goodnight.”

Panic coursed through my body, this woman was old enough to be my mother and she wanted me to kiss her on national television? I decided at the very least the teenaged girls would find it cute that I would entertain this woman’s request. After all girls were easy enough to read if you thought about it; I mean really, why do you think Twilight was so successful? It wasn’t because the books were any good or for that matter the movies. No it was the pretty covers and generically attractive boys cast for the films. I stepped off that train of thought, closed my eyes and kissed this woman. However, in my imagination I pictured myself kissing Alessandra Ambrosio, a tactic used by many men. When I opened my eyes, to my amazement, Alessandra was before me in all her glory. I was thrilled.

She explained to me that in the year 2010, she had been declared the most attractive woman in the world and Heidi Klum showed herself to be the actual witch she had always been in secret. Angry that anyone had the audacity to have the spotlight taken off her was too much to handle even after she was pregnant again. She cursed Alessandra Ambrosio turning her into the decrepit elderly woman I had fortunately kissed. 

Alessandra invited me into her home. At this point I subconsciously understood that this was not real. This was definitely a dream but my subconscious mind decided to interrupt my admittedly strange ability to think rationally in the middle of a dream. I remained in Alessandra’s room. She then did something I had never seen before nor expect to ever see in real life. She reached around her back, tugged on a string around her back and seemingly magically every article of clothing on her fell off. She was skilled to be sure. She motioned in a sexy manner with one finger to come closer, “I have something to show you,” she said to me. She sat down on the edge of her bed and spread her legs and immediately went into labor, yes… labor.

To be fair this was not what I expected to happen. Considering that she didn’t look pregnant I was rather correct in being as shocked as I was at the turn of events. I asked her what I should do and she exclaimed that I was a doctor, calling me foul names in butchered Brazilian Portuguese, which in turn I believe to be butchered Spanish. I sat down and started coaching her to the process, when the baby’s head began to crown I asked her who the father was.

“You are,” she said with a strained smile.

I shook my head, obviously it was not possible as I would have known if I had impregnated Alessandra Ambrosio, any man would. 

Seeing that I was having trouble grasping how this was possible she added, “it was immaculate”. I decided that something fishy was definitely going on and I was getting the raw end of the deal. I decided to do what I had sworn I would never do in my youth, and run away from the responsibility of fatherhood. I mean where’s Maury when you really need the b*****d? I ran outside into the city that I had now decided was officially New York. At the time I had decided this, I thought, what luck! A cultured city unlike that garbage one known as Boston with all their crappy sports franchises. 

I looked around for an NYPD squad car but, much like Maury, they’re never around when you need them either. Finally I spotted a homeless man. I asked him where the NYPD was and he replied, “In New York City… Spare some change?” I looked at him in the manner I looked after watching Avatar. The manner I presumed many people looked after the admittedly spectacular 3D wore off. That look was of course, “what the f**k was that all about?” and “You’d think after a decade he would have come up with a good story at least!”

It then dawned on me that the man had spoken in a Boston accent to me, that indeed everyone had spoken to me in a Boston accent the whole day. I wasn’t in New York, I was in Boston! I fell to my knees, clutched the left side of my chest and screamed. Alessandra Ambrosio ran into the street carrying her child wrapped in swaddling clothing. She smiled cruelly at me and said I was like every man out there, horrible, useless, and unable to cope with responsibility. Thus, I had chosen to abandon her and her child. I rose to my feet and slowly approached her to look at the child. My blood turned cold when I viewed it clearly, for before me was a demon child. I looked up at Alessandra Ambrosio, but before my very eyes she transformed into something more hideous than is possible to easily comprehend. Before me stood Julia Roberts, a succubus!

I awoke with a start. I looked around my room, the familiarity bringing me great comfort. My Yankees poster lit by the morning light coming through my windows and shining with pride, after all 27 championships are not easy to come by. I turned on my TV and tuned into CNN. Good Morning America! Its January 14, 2009. Wait but that means… Obama possibly for another 7 years! My nightmare seemed more humane…

Reviews

[Eira]

k, I don't know the word for it, but something that burns at my retinas is when you've put a word into the text divided.
You have a few; bull s**t, love making etc
Also, I agree with the other reviewer. Confusing me here with change of tense.
All and all I really don't get the story... at first I had trouble understanding if it was supposed to be some sort of "I woke up 7 years into the future" or "Holy cow, how did I get this old so fast" and in the end it was a dream? Stuff happen and change too fast at the end. being on tv, dating an old woman, seeing her give birth, turning out she's morphed into someone else, suddenly being in Boston instead of NY... like, what?
Not really my cup of tea, but try to change the structure and the way you’ve built the story, references flying all over the place, dialogue up in the middle of it all… it’s just a bit too messy.

Good luck though

[vinny ciambriello]

First, sentence structure and tense. Punctuation. You need to edit this and rewrite it. It appears you wrote it in a rush, whatever came to mind. That's okay sometimes. It's not okay here. I'm new to this site, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little too critical. It seems no editing was done whatever. Got the story lean and mean and fix your sentences. Good luck.