I am Joel. My hair is auburn, wavy and shoulder-length, my eyes almond-shaped and green and large. I am twenty-one years old, a college student and part-time volunteer at a local animal shelter. I am very, very much in love with Satan.
My lover is the Archetype, the Shadow. He makes young girls touch themselves in their most private places while they conjure images (varying from girl to girl) of the lover that was meant for them, when in reality, all of those men--blond or raven haired, muscular or plain--are him: Satan, the one I call Thon.
We had met and had our first brief encounter over a year ago. He'd been with me just for one night, and in the day, when I had rested up from our exertion, I woke up to find he had gone.
Was it just a dream? A very vivid, unlikely dream? I was sore, and my whole body pulsed as if it were a heart. I was naked and tangled in a blanket.
Months and a year had passed and I had myself pretty much convinced that this was a severely vivid hallucination. I kept myself occupied with my Medieval studies in college, and most of my weekend hours and after-school hours were spent taking care of strays at the shelter just on the outskirts of town. Earth was in the death of winter and the sky was dense with clouds and all was silent, a sure sign of heavy snow to come.
My supervisor and I had become concerned for one stray cat we rescued from certain death in an alleyway--a few days ago she wandered off and never returned. We were sure that the cold would endanger her life.
And that was the most of my worries. All seemed quite normal.
Heavy snow did come, and as I watched the fat snowflakes at my window I resignedly gave up hope that the feline would ever return to us alive.
The morning after the silent, peaceful storm I ate my breakfast as I gazed at the blinding expanse of white, sandwiched on each side by frosted tree branches, as my front window faces away from town and towards the countryside. A small ditch ran alongside the trees on the left side, covered with at least two feet of snow, the same ditch where in springtime I liked to stroll, swatting at mosquitoes and picking the elusive gnome-like asparagus.
Out in the distance I spotted what seemed like a big black boulder. Strange, I thought, that all the little branches of the trees were covered with snow, but that boulder was not. It must have been placed there after the snow – but why in the world would anyone want to place a boulder there?
I put on a heavy coat and some boots and trudged out in the knee-deep snow. The boulder was about the distance of a football field away, so by the time I got close enough to see any details my face was nipped by the cold and a warmth glowed within me from the laborious walking.
This was no boulder. It seemed to be moving but I couldn't quite tell what it was. As I moved I saw something in the corner move like a tail. Closer, closer – it was a tail!
I approached and within ten feet of the object I saw a half orange face looking at me – it was the missing cat from the shelter. She lay in the lap of a man who sat Indian-style in the snow. The man, in a long black wool coat, stroked the cat with a gloved hand.
He had long, black hair, and wisps of it broke off in the slight breeze, dancing as if from the heat rising off of a fire.
