The minuscule horned man leapt to his feet, waving his hands and shouting as Neve screamed.
"Stop it, stop it!" he cried. "Please, please stop screaming!"
Neve didn't exactly stop screaming, but she did begin to get some words out, particularly "holyfuckholyfuckholyfuck." Slowly, over time, it petered out to some incoherent babble as she sat wrapped up in her bedsheets, staring at the tiny guy in her room. He'd rather nimbly leapt from the bedside table onto the bed, jumping like he was in a superhero movie so that he'd landed right in the center of the mattress.
Like a superhero...or a flea.
He sauntered across the bed to Neve, and put his hand on hers. She could definitely feel that, although it was a bit like having some string placed on your hand.
"What are you?" she asked.
"Well, I'm an incubus."
"An incubus?"
"Yeah, you know, demons who visit women in their dreams and...uh...seduce them."
The dream...it was already half remembered, but she could recall the horns, and the forked tongue, and...the two cocks...
But this was absurd. Demons were not real. There was no such thing as an incubus. There had to be a better explanation than this.
"Oh my god, oh my god, I'm having a schizophrenic break, aren't I?" asked Neve. "Like, I've really completely lost my marbles."
"Uhhhh...n...no?" offered the tiny little demon.
"But we're not in my dream now," said Neve.
"No, we're not. I, uh, actually forgot that this might happen. It's been a while since anyone used my phallus. Like, fifteen hundred years."
"
Your
phallus?"
"Yeah," said the incubus.
"I'm having a mental breakdown."
There was a knocking on the door. The RA's voice came through.
"Neve? Sophia?" she tried. "Are you two okay? I heard screaming"
"It's nothing, Jackie!" Neve shouted. "Just a bad dream."
"Neve, will you open the door please?" Jackie called back through.
"Fuck," Neve muttered to herself. She was wearing just her panties and a beat up tank top that had seen better days. She got out of the bed and the demon--or whatever he was--wolf whistled her.
"Oh my god," she said. "I'm being objectified by my own mental breakdown."
"Hey, you're really hot, what can I say?" shrugged the incubus. Neve was surprised to find that part of her thrilled to hear him say that. A dumb part of her. The part of her that thought maybe the pipsqueak might be telling the truth.
"Neve," called Jackie. "Will you open the door?"
"Coming!" she shouted back, pulling on her jeans and t-shirt.
"Not yet you're not," said the demon.
"Shut up," she said to him. "And if you're real, don't you need to hide?"
The demon chuckled.
"Okay, this maybe isn't going to do much for the 'I'm totally real and not a figment of your imagination' argument, but only you can see me," he said.
Neve shook her head, then opened the door. Jackie, her RA, a basketball player on the school team, stood in front of her and peered in.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"It was just a really disturbing dream and part of it stuck with me after I woke up," said Neve.
"Haha, cute," said the demon. He'd jumped over to her bookshelf so he could see the exchange with her RA better.
"Jackie's hot too," he observed. "Tall."
He paused.
"You should fuck her."
Neve's eyes grew wide, and she almost looked over at the demon, then caught herself before that could happen.
"Is Sophia in there? I thought I heard you talking to someone."
"Just myself, sorry. I'm going slightly mad."
Jackie grinned at her.
"Okay, well, you seem fine to me."
"That's good to hear," said Neve. "Thanks, Jackie. I really appreciate you coming to check on me."
"Okay. I guess next time...I don't really have any advice for next time, actually."
"Let's hope there isn't a next time," said Neve.
She closed the door when Jackie left and leaned up against it, staring at the tiny incubus on her bookshelf.
"You should've answered the door naked!" he exclaimed.
For some reason, Neve found this suggestion an enticing fantasy, of being naked in front of her fully clothed RA who was trying to figure out what was wrong, Jackie's eyes roving her body...
Neve shook her head.
"No, that would've been gross," she said.
"Awww, you liked it!" said the incubus.
"Listen, shut the fuck up, okay? If you're real, then you can stop talking all the time."
"Yes, but also because I'm real I can ignore what you tell me to do--hey, what are you doing?"
Neve had started gathering her things, throwing her laptop, notebooks and books into her backpack, getting a fresh pair of socks and putting her sneakers on.
"I'm leaving."
"Because of me?" he asked.
"I have to go to class," said Neve. "I'm not dealing with whatever this is right now, I have things to do."
"I'll come with you," said the demon.
"No! No no no. Stay here!"
"I told you, no one but you can see me," he said. "And it wasn't a request."
"Fine, but don't distract me," said Neve.
"Oh, sweet, distracting you is all I'm here for," he said.
"Yeah, sure, whatever," said Neve. "Whatever you say, Inky."
The demon stopped in his tracks.
"Inky?"
Neve just grinned at him and turned on her heel, not waiting to see if he managed to make it out the door before she locked it. He did, leaping onto her backpack and crawling along to take position on her shoulder.
***
He was intolerable--nearly everyone they passed was someone he suggested she have sex with. Worse when it was people she knew, because he'd pepper her with questions about whether she liked them and if she'd fuck them if she got the chance.
A few of them weren't immediate "no's" too, and he'd pick up on that, then start observing the things he thought she might like to do to them.
And, most infuriatingly of all, sometimes he wasn't wrong. Sometimes the things he said got stuck in her head, and her whole body flushed as she thought about it, thought about a guy pushing her up against the wall, hiking her skirt up, one hand on a breast, while she frantically helped him get his cock out so he could drive it up...
That said, she did manage to tune him out for a long while, especially during lecture, which he found especially dull, amusing himself by speculating which people in the room would be interested in fucking Neve and how they might go about doing it.
By lunchtime, Neve was feeling slightly more at ease with whatever the hell was going on. She got her lunch in the cafeteria, then took it out to eat under a tree on the common where she could be somewhat away from people.
"You're never going to get laid all the way over here," the little demon observed.
"I don't want to get laid right now. I just want to eat my lunch, Inky."
"That's not my name!" he complained.
"So what is your name?"
"Idlu," he said, proudly.
Neve stared at him for a bit.
"I like Inky better," she said, and was secretly pleased to see the wind get knocked out of his sails.
"You're Sumerian?" she asked.
"Ah, no. I'm primordial," said Inky. "But people didn't start writing things about me until Sumer."
"Why are you so tiny? Weren't you tall in my dream?"
"Entering the corporeal world takes a lot out of me and also I forgot this would happen."
"A primordial demon forgets things?"
"It all sort of starts to blur together after a while," Inky said, waving his hand. "If you lived millennia, you'd understand. In a few hundred years, I'm sure you'll just be a dim, pleasant memory."
"So why me?" she asked. "If I'm so forgettable."
Inky stared at her for a moment like this was a stupid question, waiting for her to figure it out and supply the answer herself.
"You fucked my phallus..." he offered after none was forthcoming.
"So now you're here?"
"It summons me," he said. "I mean, usually, I'm strictly dreams, but occasionally I'm able to cross over. The phallus is kind of a bridge. But, I didn't make it, so I can't really control when I cross. It pulls me to you in the dream, and then once I've entered it, I become corporeal again. Well, sort of. I become corporeal to
you
."
"What? The Sumerians made a phallus that, when someone uses it, it forces you to become real?"
"Uh...yes? I guess so. It sure kept me busy back in the day, I'll tell you that much."
"Who would want this?"
"Women who want to fuck demons?" supplied Inky.
"And there are lots of those people out there, are there?"
"There are, actually. But there used to be more that knew how to make that want into the real thing, I'll admit," said Inky.
He paused.
"I blame the printing press and widespread literacy, myself, for the decline."
"How do I get rid of you?"
"I'm not sure I remember, honestly," said Inky. Neve suspected this was not said honestly, but she also didn't want to yell at a tiny demon only she could see in the middle of the quad.
"Yeah...right..." she muttered.
"Look," said Inky. "It's a college, I'm sure that someone will know. Center of learning, and all that."
"Are you going to stay this tiny?" she asked.
"Oh, no, my strength will return over time," said Inky.
"How long is that going to take?"
"I'm not sure I remember, honestly," the demon repeated. "Like I said, it's been a while since this has happened."
"You have to be lying," said Neve. "If this hasn't happened that often, you'd think it'd stick out."
"Do
you
know why your body does things?" Inky challenged her. "Do you know
exactly