Handle with care {Selfpara or Prologue of 'Letha & Christopher' }
I didn’t happen that often to her; getting rejected when she was on the hunt for a meal. She had learned to be more than cautious so she always changed her form when she was ‘active’ and she never tried to approach someone without a little observation, estimating the situation, checking out if he or she really was alone and could be potentially interested in her.
Still in very little occasions she overlooked some variable or her target was simply too stupid to understand what she wanted from him. The guy whom she had chosen for the evening was quite strong and although she normally avoided choosing such targets as a precaution, he was the only person she was interested in this club that night. It was not as crowded as usual - after St. Patrick's Day some people probably intended to economize a bit so she decided to try it with this one. What’s the worst that could happen? This rhetorical question should be answered half an hour later in a rather unpleasant way..
While she observed the man he had tried to hit on a woman, had been rebuffed pretty hard and then started to get himself drunk. Actually more or less perfect conditions for her aim, that’s why Letha couldn’t be dissuaded from her plans even when her target was surrounded by a group of men, which patted him on the shoulder and obviously told him stupid jokes. Normally it was better to not have too many witnesses around but these kinds of people didn’t really count. As the guys were withdrawing again her target disappeared inside the toilet rooms for quite a while and Letha had time to drink up.
Instead of returning to his place at the edge of the dance floor afterwards, however the guy walked purposefully to the exit and disappeared and so the succubus had to hurry to catch up. ‘Hunting’ outside the common flirt- and dance areas around a club was not only more time-consuming but also dangerous - luckily the guy in front of her hadn’t gone too far and did not show the slightest inclination to go home right now. He leaned against the stone wall of some small side street near a street lamp and took a pull on a cigarette, a beer bottle in his left hand.
Letha smiled to herself and took a deep breath. It was showtime! If you dealt with the issue of human prey scheme for so long and so intensively as she had to it almost went automatically to embody exactly the woman the man would most be interest in. So instead of approaching him as confident and upright as she would normally have done it, she first pulled down the shoulder straps of her dress a little, wrapped the carrying strap of her handbag clumsily over her shoulder and kind of stumbled uncertainly towards the man. When she saw that he had noticed her she acted surprised and immediately lowered her eyes.
"Oops, I didn’t want to disturb anyone -didn’t knew someone was there..’specially not someone as good looking .. " she giggled deliberately silly and played with the clasp of her hand bag. If she hadn’t been so focused on her role she would have noticed the unnaturally dilated pupils of the man - or how erratic he drew on his cigarette. As she turned to go the man held her back as she’d expected - but something wasn’t right about it..
"Not so fast, doll, stay. We can make ourselves comfortable here! "
His words were unintelligible and sluggish and the grip with which he held her back roughly on the shoulder was painful. Letha, surprised, looked the man right in the face and almost jumped back, startled. He was on drugs. Not just the “easy stuff” that students would take for some illegal relaxation - but one of those substances which destroyed the brain pretty fast. Whatever it was, he couldn’t have taken it for a longer period of time otherwise she would have noticed the symptoms at the very beginning, she wasn’t stupid! He had been quite normal before- could his mates have given him something? At least that would explain why he had been in those toilet rooms for so long. Anyway, this was out of her range - hard drugs were a lot worse than a strong will or incontestable principles; the man who had downed them was - despite her skills - practically uncontrollable! If Letha feared anything, it was losing control. So instead of continuing to play her role nicely and somehow wriggle out of this mess she made the mistake to give in to her instinct to flee and simply punched the guy. "Get off me!"
The effect of course wasn’t at all what she’d hoped for, instead of letting her go the guy just got angry and pushed her roughly against the wall beside the streetlight.
"Like hell I’ll do, bitch, you can’t come on to me like that- I'll tell you when you’re allowed to go and.." Letha only listened with half an ear. Her heart raced and she looked around whether someone would be around to help. Usually there was absolutely no reason for her to fear humans at all, even if they wouldn’t be flirtatious with her they were at least so sympathetic because of her powers to never seriously hurt her. The guy in front of her instead was unratable - he might turn around and vanish into thin air - or go crazy and hurt her. He seemed to no longer feel any pain because of the drugs; he hadn’t even flinched when she had hit him and it was a miracle that he somehow was still able to form coherent sentences considering the crazy look in his eyes.
Letha did the only thing she could right now, keeping quiet and hoping that nothing would happen to her. The guy seemed to be content with that and relaxed his grip before he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her neck. Letha had to restrain herself not to be shaken by disgust, but she was used to a lot of things eventually, so she didn’t stop him. Then, however, the guy began to grope her and the succubus’ patience nevertheless snapped. This was her game, nobody would dupe her! She let go of all caution and kicked his private parts to break away while he dealt with it, but the man caught himself far too quickly again and roughly pulled her back at the strap of her handbag. The strap of her dress tore when she abruptly pulled the handbag from her shoulder; she rather lost the bag than being hurt!
She wreathed herself finally out of his grip as quickly as she could and simply ran, so that the guy failed to reach her again and screamed a tirade of insults behind her. Relieved, she turned ‘round the corner, imagining herself already safe when something hit her; the clink of breaking glass resounded and a sharp pain made her cry out. Startled, she touched her aching shoulder and then looked at her fingers, covered in a mixture of blood and beer. This asshole had actually thrown his bottle of beer at her! Fortunately he had only managed to briefly graze her shoulder, it doesn’t bear contemplating what would have happened if he had been targeting correctly and hitting her head!
Letha was boiling with rage though because she still feared the man she didn’t went back. Instead she swiftly turned into the nearest backyard and changed shape, without the extra kick of energy from the actually planned meal and because of the injury, it was protracted and took longer than usual, but she didn’t want to stay in this shape for any other second!
The abrasions were no problem and disappeared almost completely while her appearance was in transformation but everything that literally went ‘under her skin’ couldn’t be change as simply and so the dirty cut remained as it was.
Letha would have been glad to have her handbag with her now. Not because she had something valuable in its pockets (money meant nothing to her now that she had enough and she never took an ID with her when she was on a hunt - after all, she couldn’t get one for every appearance she had and so she just made sure to look old enough to never be asked to show it) but because she missed the thin sweater she usually took with her in her bag. Now she had no choice as to stay in that thin dress with the torn strap and go back home as she was.