Francine tried to ignore the voice that was nattering from the back seat of the old jeep that carried them along the dusty road, thirty miles south of Baghdad. The voice belonged to Roxanne, a co-worker with the American consulting firm that had hired them both to help organize the maternity ward at a local hospital during the recent baby boom. Most of the time she appreciated Roxanne's company but right now she wanted to enjoy the scenery as they drove towards the ruins of Babylon. The chance to see Bablyon's ruins was, after all, the reason Francine had taken the job.
Francine was single and unattached at forty-three years old. Her work as an international consultant in hospital administration left her little time for a personal life. She liked it that way. She could have had relationships if she'd wanted them. Men liked her. She wasn't tall but she had a voluptuous figure. She was pretty. The pretty clothes that filled her closets at home let her show just how pretty she was. But Francine had trouble keeping a man. If she started to date a man then she did everything she could to make him happy, in every way. One day the man just wouldn't be there anymore. He'd suddenly break up with her or move away. Eventually she gave up and buried herself in her work.
Roxanne was a serial monogamist at twenty eight. Technically, she was an Executive Assistant but her real work involved networking with whatever office became her assignment. She always had stories to tell about her boyfriends. That was what she was doing now, between screams to the driver to slow down. She was always leading men on, taking as much from them as she could, then dumping them when someone or something better came along. It wasn't right but it was fair, since the men she picked did the same thing to their women. For Roxanne it was easy to snare men. She had the perfect waist and hips combined with a covergirl's face, fiery red hair and crystal blue eyes. Even language wasn't a barrier to her as she had learned several European and Middle Eastern dialects while travelling with her parents. Roxanne would get angry if you suggested she had sex with the men, though. She said that she was saving herself for the right man.
Roxanne was good to her girlfriends, though. That was why Francine had agreed to come along on her trip to the ruins of Babylon. From the day they'd met Roxanne had treated Francine as if they'd been best friends forever. Francine smiled at the jokes Roxanne was making about the two men with them now.
"How big do you think they are? Do you think they're circumcized? Do you think the wives would get mad or want to join in? Maybe they know some hot guys in town. You want me to ask them?"
She finally stopped when the driver craned his head around, smiled broadly through a perfect smile and said, "You. Fuck. Off."
The two young men had been assigned by the hospital to protect the women. Although there hadn't been a violent incident in months it was still a violent country. The hospital recommended them. They came from good families and were well known as good men.
It was a hot summer day in October. Temperatures went as high as a hundred and ten Fahrenheit, only cooling to seventy late into the night. Back in the city, the rest of the staff would be sipping lemonade or going to the shops for ice cream under umbrellas. Here, in the flat, open sea of sand, the sunlight showered its burning rays on everyone and everything.
They drove over a long, low mound that was as close to a hill as could be found within a hundred miles. As they passed the crest they had a blowout in the left front tire. The jeep spun out and left the road, then slowly turned on its side and skidded to a stop. Both the satellite cellphone and walkie-talkie were destroyed. There would be no way to get help except to walk back. Roxanne didn't think that she could walk twenty miles and that it would be best to wait for a passing truck. Francine knew that they were on a less-travelled road and that trucks only used this route once or twice a year.
The only agreement that they could reach involved Francine going with one man, while Roxanne would stay at the jeep with the other. Francine resisted the urge to comment on what would happen after she left. The image in her mind involved Roxanne offering to peel her guide like a grape and suck his cock dry if he discovers that there is a way to right the jeep and drive back to the city.
They had walked for about five miles before she had drained her water bottle dry. Even after living eleven months in a desert country she still couldn't resist the heat. The air shimmered around her as the rising air rippled in long thin waves. Thinner than the cooler air back home, it let the sun shine from every grain of sand. Her limbs felt like bags of wet flour. Breathing became a chore. She stopped caring about keeping her body covered, pulling her blouse out of her long loose pants and opening the top buttons. Luckily she's thought to wear a large white scarf over her hair, which was tied back with rubber bands. She discovered a large abandoned car ahead with just a little shade from the late afternoon sun. She headed straight for it and sat down. Her companion didn't bother to argue with her. There was another abandoned car nearby. He went there and sat on his heels, pausing to check for spiders, snakes and insects first.
She stared at the desert with half-closed eyes and fought exhaustion. There seemed to be something moving out there. It looked like an owl was flying low over the horizon towards her. It was huge, almost as big as a man. As it drew closer she realized it wasn't an owl at all but a woman with an owl's wings and clawed feet. She recognized it from her studies. It was something out of Babylonian myth: a lilitu.
Francine was terrified but too exhausted to run. In legend, the lilitu was an evil blood-drinking Babylonian demon. It would haunt the mid-day sun in the desert and descend on lost travellers. She stopped moving, hoping to escape its notice until her companion could shoot the thing. She couldn't see him now. She couldn't tell if he was unaware, was too afraid or had left altogether. The creature noticed her, looked directly at her and arched its wings to land nearby. Francine couldn't see it after it landed and wouldn't risk lifting her head to look. She heard a sound like that of a cabbage being chopped in half, followed by silence. The lilitu reappeared a few seconds later, crawling easily across the hot sand on bare arms and legs.
Francine saw how beautiful the monster was. The feathers of its owl's wings were flawless and clean. Its face was slightly rounded, with beautiful deep wide brown eyes that sparkled with green and amber highlights and sensuous lips that smiled slightly over a neat little chin. Its body was smooth as stone, with muscles on its arms and legs that rippled as it crawled. Its black hair was braided tightly and held under a strange headpiece. Other than that, the lilitu wore nothing.
