Leo rubbed his eyes. With the morning rush over, he finally had time to remember how exhausted he was. Which was ironic, considering where he worked. The garish yellow that infested the upscale coffee shop's theme was just as irritating as it was when he first started working there about a year ago. Still, many morning commuters flocked to have their sub-par lattes diluted with enough fattening toppings and additives for it to be considered basically a milkshake. As with most retail jobs, the longer he remained employed, the less he cared for the rest of humanity. Well, most of humanity anyway.
There she was again. Scarlet red hair draped over an elegant summer dress. Polka-dots this time, white ones on black. Her ample chest almost aching to be free of a slightly too small bra. Slender fingers stuck between the pages of a hardcover book on Renaissance architecture. She was probably a student...or maybe she's just well-read? Her name was Claire, he knew that. When she ordered her tall-black-one sugar, he had it written out on with marker on the cup. It was a daily struggle not to put a little happy face on the i: the ultimate in creepy barista technology.
"You're staring again."
A jolt of adrenaline shot through Leo as he looked around. It was just Ada, not his boss or anything. He sighed relief.
"Jesus, you startled me." He said, then looked down to see what exactly he was supposed to be doing, he thought. Oh, yes. Sweeping. He started sweeping again.
Ada frowned. "Why don't you just ask her out on a date?"
"No I...no." He shook his head, letting his eyes slide to his reflection in the glass refrigerator next to him. He was nothing special to look at. At least he was slim, he had that going for him. But he wasn't fit, barely able to handle the minimal amount of lifting his job entailed. He was short, too. Or at least short for a guy nowadays. He swept his dirty blonde hair back from his eyes. It was getting too long, but he hadn't had the cash to get it cut, and the last time he took the clippers to himself it ended...poorly. Everything he made was going into food, rent, bills, and his massive amounts of debt. Not exactly a winning, panty-dropping combination of attributes.
"Whatever dude." Ada said. She was his only friend in this place, a fellow college dropout and misanthrope. He had short hair she dyed black for reasons he never asked. Strong features, but definitely feminine. He'd broached something more than a friendship early on, but she'd backed out amicably. He'd smiled through it, but it had been yet another emotional kneecapping in a seemingly Mafia-esque beatdown of his self-esteem in recent years.
It had reached a breaking point when, six months ago, he'd been approached by a fairy. Not like, a slur against gay dudes. An actual member of a celestial bureaucracy that apparently revolved, at least partially, around boning. She'd offered him a night of consequence-free sex in an idealized version of his body. He'd taken it, and met a nice MILFy brunette who was into Some Strange Things. He'd enjoyed it on the whole. But after the magical effects had worn off...he was left with the fact that nothing had changed. He was still the miserable loser he'd been before, but now he was guaranteed to be a certifiably insane miserable loser.
The day continued much as it always did. Morning rush gave way to the lunch rush. The lunch rush slowly tapered into the strange I'm-Driving-Home-But-I-Still-Must-Buy-Shitty-Coffee-For-High-Prices rush, but by then Leo's shift was ending. He traded off with the evening crew, packed up his uniform, and left out the back. His bike was there, not stolen or missing one of its tires for a change. He undid the lock.
"Seeya later, Leo!" Ada's voice bounced off the walls of the alley behind the shop. He looked up only to see her waving hand pass by, picked up by her boyfriend and his goddamn electric car.
Son of a bitch.
Ada's SO was not a dick, impartially. As far as Leo knew, he treated her well and had a good job. But for some reason Leo couldn't picture him as anything other than a fascist dictator. Not a Hitler, specifically. Maybe a Franco, or a Petain. It was childish, irrational...but he couldn't help it. Anyone who could pick up Ada so easily had to be evil, right?
His ride home was uneventful. Construction, near death by inattentive driver, pothole. The usual. He lived on the second floor of a townhouse. Modest would be a kind word, chintzy would be more accurate. At some point, during the Carter administration perhaps, it had been a nice place. Now it was run down, faded wallpaper and creaking floorboards. At least his landlord wasn't a crook. She was a kind old lady, and was understanding when he came up a little short with the rent. Which happened more than he wanted.
He was beat. After a meal of hot sauce, rice, and beans (old family recipe, I assure you) and some casual sketching in his notebook, he passed out. His last conscious sounds for the day were a strangled, exasperated sound: "Ughguughhghuhgh."
***
In the middle of his sleep cycle, he felt a strange, warm sensation around his groin. Slowly emerging into wakefulness, he felt a chilled breeze against his strangely exposed skin.
"Whu...what the hell?" He murmured. From the glare of the streetlight outside his strangely open window, there was the silhouette of a woman. And from the wonderful feelings shooting through his lower half, her mouth was expertly working his cock.
The woman, whoever she was, slid her lips from his shaft with a wet popping sound. "You're awake! Well, that makes this interesting."
He pulled back against the headboard, his hand flinging out to the lamp on his nightstand. He flicked it on, revealing that she was quite attractive. That is, if one ignored the violet colour of her skin, her seething bloodshot eyes, and the fact that she had a pair of jagged horns pushing out of her forehead. A rather impressive pair of tits just barely restrained by some leather bodice getup. He'd be flattered if he was in the mood for being sexually assaulted. "You got ten seconds before I choose between calling the cops, or tossing you out on your freaky ass myself."
"I suppose I should introduce myself, now that I've sucked on your funbits. Mercy's the name." She held out a hand. Leo took it with some reluctance. In the lamplight, he saw a pair of shapes moving behind her. Wings, almost, though much too small to provide any lift. That and the horns...
"Holy shit, are you a demon?" He asked, almost as a formality.
Mercy gave a playful dismissive gesture. "Guilty as charged! You found me out mortal. Guess I'd better be on the move before you call the local inquisitor...you guys still do inquisitors, right?"
Leo gave a shrug.
The demon-lady stood up and looked like she was actually just going to leave out the open window. "But," she purred, "I might have a deal that you'd be interested in."
"Oh no, I'm not listening. Avaunt and quit my sight, foul servant of the man-goat!" Leo announced in his best radio voice, adding theatrical hand motions to great effect. He finished by pointing toward the open window.
"Ugh, what a killjoy. Though you're taking this whole 'appearance of a demon thing' pretty well, I must say." Mercy noted.
"It's not my first expose to your kind, sort of. I had a visit by a fairy lady. Offered me a night of consequence-free sex, didn't turn out to be the psychological salve that she had presumed it was."
Mercy's brow furrowed. "Oh. I see. One of those." Her voice dripped venom. Apparently there was no love lost between demons and fae.
"Anyways, I'm not interested in any deals, or tricks, or cursed objects or whatever. Just go and blow someone else. There's no helping me."
The succubus thought for a moment, then decided to stay. She sat on the window sill, wings fluttering a little in the breeze. "I guess you're kind of down on yourself right now. Feeling powerless...hopeless even?"
He nodded. "Yeah, self-loathing is the name of the game. I doubt a night of...whatever the hell you had planned would fix that. Sorry."
"What if what I had to offer wasn't in place for a night. What if it was permanent? What if I could give you control of your life...for good?"
Leo perked up. Against his better judgement, he motioned for her to continue.
"Well, as a member of the divinely-challenged, I have access to more...invasive...controls on reality. We're basically agents of chaos, after all. Anything that messes with the natural order is a big thumbs up from the man down stairs."
"What would this entail?"
Mercy approached the bed again. "Okay, so I'm going to throw something out there, and you can just turn me down if it has no interest to you: Mind Control." She whispered, spreading out her hands like she had just proposed an exciting future as a knife salesman.
"Mind Control?" He repeated.
"Mind Control." She confirmed.
"Isn't that unethical?"
"Extremely! It's an abominable betrayal of trust and a desecration of the concept of free will. But...it's your power. You can take whatever you want. Want to pay off your debt? Go down to the bank and get the teller to deposit some stock-broker's account into yours. Want a new place? Kindly request some hack reality TV star to get their ass out the door."
"And if I wanted to have sex with someone, I'd just have to ask, right? No possibility of rejection?"
Mercy gave him a playful punch on the shoulder. "Now you're getting it! Yeah, basically the world will become a carnal buffet. Fuck anyone, any time, any place."
"And you get, what? Syphon off my sexual energy while I do my thing?"
She barred her teeth. An uncomfortable amount of them looked like fangs. "Something like that. Here, let me get the paperwork."
A roll of parchment appeared in a spark of fire, written in some nearly illegible Gothic font. When he looked closer, some of the passages appeared to be in German. Others were in something older. A language that didn't even use Latin characters, and whose text seemed to slither impatiently on the page. Mercy held out a quill she'd gotten from...somewhere. The feather part looked much too large to have come from a bird.
"What the...I can't even read most of this." He said. But Mercy brushed it off.
