Sleep Therapy

*** Content Warning: Contains adult themes, sexual situations. ***

Demons don’t sleep. Obviously. So, I work a more or less twenty-four-hour day, seven-day week, no holidays. I work while the humans sleep. We don’t really have names either, but I think of myself as Lilith or Damien or Echo, depending on the client’s needs. Now, I know you may think I am evil, because I am a demon. I hope to persuade you that you are quite wrong in your assumption.

I like to think I provide a service for my human clients. They need me to deal with the stresses of their daytime lives. Of course there is a price to be paid for my services, but that’s not my department. I visit my regular clients while they sleep, giving them erotic dreams. These days, many of my clients lead very isolated lives, sitting at their computer keyboards all day, imagining sexual partners (or in many cases, sexual slaves) who adore them and provide gratification. At night, I make their dreams come true.

As the hours pass, I visit people all around the world. All ages, races, sexes, cultures, and kinks. I am an equal opportunity demon. I don’t actually speak any of their languages – I interface directly with their minds, using images and emotions, and with their bodies, electrifying their nervous systems. Follow me for a few hours and watch me work.

We start in Rio, during Carnival. The streets are crowded, and everyone is celebrating. But I’m not here for them. My client here is an old man who sleeps in the afternoon as well as at night. I like to catch up with him in the afternoon. He is sad, living alone in a busy city, isolated from his family and friends, preparing to die a lonely death. As he nods off to sleep in his armchair, he often remembers his youth, and I use those memories to conjure up a beautiful woman from his past – his first wife, who died decades ago. As Lilith, I flirt with him and seduce him. I have a smooth, lush body, and when we make love he often weeps in his dreams, as he feels his hands roaming across every inch of that long-lost body. As I prepare to leave, I see him sink into a deep, restful sleep. When he awakens, I hope he will feel a little happier because of my visit.

Not that far away in the Amazonian jungle, a young girl sleeps and dreams of having a lover. She has no experience of sex, so I visit her as Echo, taking the form of a beautiful young man who transforms into a river dolphin. Her people tell stories of the dolphins visiting human women and taking them into the river, sometimes leaving them pregnant. I have gathered seed from the old man, so I could give her a part-demon baby, but she is too young. Some incubi would take advantage of her trusting nature, but I am Echo, more or less sexless. Instead, I woo her, giving her a romantic fantasy lover, starkly different from her future in real life.

I move north to visit a young man sleeping on the streets of New Orleans. He sells his body for food, and he sleeps fitfully in the early morning cold. I visit him as Damien, giving him care and gentle love, a fantasy that he wants with all his damaged heart. His real life consists of playing a part, just as mine does. His homemade tattoos give him a dark and dangerous look, and sometimes it’s hard to make contact with him because he has dulled his mind with drugs or alcohol. In our sessions, I wrap him in soft woolen blankets and protect him from the harsh winter. He softens and moans as he settles against me. I give him a respite from his bitter life for a while.

Westward now to a woman reading alone in bed in San Diego. She is having fantasies while awake, but I know her well, and just watch her and wait. She drifts into a sleeping state, and Damien picks up where her fantasies leave off. She has a lover, but he is often away, and she hungers for excitement. Damien is brutal in his attack on her. She twists and turns in her sleep, but she can’t escape him. With a passionate sigh, she submits to him. Many people see me as their real-life lover, but she is one of the many who do not. Her version of Damien is as close to my real self as possible. He takes from her, controls her, and ignores her needs in favor of his own. I used to think that I was doing wrong in these encounters, but now I see how essential they are to some people’s well-being. They enjoy in their sleep what would be unwelcome when they are awake. Now I enjoy these interludes as restorative to me, in preparation for continuing my good works around the world.

On to one of my most disturbing clients in Los Angeles. He would scare me if I was human. A man just approaching middle age, he fantasizes all day, every day, of having a woman subservient to his needs, adoring him and worshiping him like a god. He believes that he is a god, that the worship is his due. Sadly, in his day-to-day life, no one looks up to him. No woman wants to spend time with him, except in exchange for money. And sometimes he spends that money, but there is never a connection, just a transaction which leaves him angry and depressed, even violent. Lilith gives him what he truly desires. She appears in a different form each time, looking like an idealized woman from a picture book, and her eyes are always downcast, her body always waiting to serve him. Sometimes he cherishes her, more often he beats or defiles her. I wonder what would happen if no succubus visited him – would he come to terms with reality, or would he become even more destructive?

Crossing the Pacific now, I stop in Melbourne at the home of a husband and wife. I admit I find them amusing. They pretend to have the perfect marriage, but they both need me at night. When the lights are out, they move as far as possible from each other. I visit them one at a time. Lilith appears to the husband in the shape of his wife. He is apparently still attracted to his wife in the abstract but finds her too annoying in the flesh. And then Lilith appears to the wife in the shape of the wife. She is apparently attracted to the image of herself, but not to her husband. Humans can find an infinite number of ways to torture themselves and those they love. I once stayed around to watch them as they woke up in the morning. They eyed each other with mild dislike before donning their daytime masks, smiling and kissing as though they were still in love with each other. I like to think that they only stay together because of me.

I’m moving on now to India. A middle-aged widow with three children, worn down by work and poverty. I find many of my clients because they are reaching out, actively seeking my help. This woman doesn’t do that, but I know she needs what I bring. In her deepest sleep, as she has laid down the heavy burden of her daily life, I come to her as Echo, giving her beautiful visions of the world she will never see in real life. I don’t believe she even remembers these dreams in the morning, but I know she breathes more easily as she travels with me in her sleep.

And so on, through Africa and Europe. The lonely, the unloved or unloving. All flavors of want and need, reaching out for contact but finding only my caress. I am male, female, human, animal, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual – whatever you need me to be. No human will ever give you what I can give. I know your inner needs more than you know them yourself.

Am I evil? Do I steal the souls from these people? Or do I perform a public service, allowing people a measure of joy in their lives? Are you judging these people for their faults, or sympathizing with their pain? Before you hate me, travel the world as I do, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with no holidays. You may learn something.