Succubus

CW: Sexual content, mental health issues, and murder

Holiday House, 16 Bluff Avenue

Watch Hill, Rhode Island

August 8th, 1954

I kept the bust I made of my husband the morning he had—according to the coroner—a heart attack, not because it was any particular feat of artistic engineering, but as a reminder of why he had to die. 

Two hours earlier, we had been sprawled naked across the floor of my studio, my flushed cheek pressed against the cool tile. Salt-laced zephyrs wafted through the window, which I’d flung open just as William had caught me around the waist. At our next door neighbor, the Procters’, dinner party last month, Elsie Procter had groused into her gimlet that she did not need a front row seat to our quarrels. Nor your reconciliations. Her jowls had quivered with outrage. This was the same woman who had tutted in the restroom of the Misquamicut Club at my engagement party seven years earlier that rich older men married women like me—“young, skinny hussies from the boonies with Dust Bowl dirt still stuck to those common shoes”—because youth elixirs were the one thing money couldn’t buy. 

It took every ounce of restraint in this hussy’s skinny body not to kick down the divider, in vintage Ferragamo pumps, thank you very much, and strangle the old coot with her own pearls. However, after the recent dinner party, I had returned home and loudly fucked William on the pool lounger closest to our shared hedge. 

Today was Sunday morning, and it was only right that we woke her. Wouldn’t want Elsie the Prophet missing church. 

William’s hot mouth was latched onto the fleshy skin below my thumb, sucking with the vigor required to extract venom from a snakebite. At some point in the midst of our throes, a shard from a shattered vase had lodged itself in my hand, a wound which only throbbed once we parted. The remnants of my tantrum from last week, when William vetoed the purchase of a skiing chalet in the Swiss Alps. 

Extraneous, darling, had been the only explanation as he drained a tumbler of Johnny Walker Black, his voice echoing around our forty-room beachfront residence. Besides, a spitfire like you has no business on a snowslope. Fire and ice don’t mix. 

The comment had pulled me up short. A spitfire. No one had called me that since my Bitch Pack days, a slew of sharp-tongued girls from good families doing everything bad. We ran St. Louis society, it didn’t run us. But it was Betty West who had been in the Bitch Pack. I’d glanced down at my white shirtdress and sensible loafers. I hadn’t been Betty West in a long while.

“There.” He released my hand only to tuck it under his expansive flank. “You won’t be dying of blood loss anytime soon.” 

I barely heard him, my own thoughts a sharp ringing in my ears. 

When his mother pinched my waist and tutted about my ‘baby-weight bottom,’ hadn’t I swallowed the snide—it’s been 54 years since William, what’s your excuse?!—remarks? Hadn’t I swapped the slinky, sheer evening gowns for chokingly high-necked tailored skirt suits? Didn’t I asphyxiate Betty West under a thick layer of Northeastern haughtiness in order to become Rebekah Harkness—nay, Mrs. William Hale Harkness? 

At that moment, Mr. William Hale Harkness’ breath in my ear sounded like a foghorn. Our mingled sweat felt like a blood oath. The question “would you kill for me?” had always been the zenith of devotion, but not everyone was capable of it. Yet I had done it.

And I could do it again.

I shifted, but my husband kept me pinned in place. He nuzzled into my neck, blowing a raspberry that always made me laugh. I stopped straining under him and instead melted into him. How easy he made it to be chocolate left in the late afternoon sun, the stain impossible to remove.

He untangled himself from me, the instant coldness leaving me momentarily breathless. Instead of covering myself, my arms reached unconsciously after him like leaning sunflowers. Chocolate and flowers, the unimaginative man’s answer to romance. How boring I’d become.

“Darling, Dr. Gerity said you shouldn’t.” 

“The good doctor said no more whiskey.” William towered over a silver platter bearing a chilled bottle of Moët & Chandon, two sparkling crystal flutes, and an assortment of pastries and fruits. A lilliputian carafe of orange juice had been pushed through the slightly ajar door as an apparent afterthought by a chagrined servant. It begged to become a mimosa, but it was merely ornamental. William and I were all or nothing people. It was perhaps the only thing we had in common. “He said nothing about champagne.” 

“He also said no strenuous exercise.” I gestured to my naked form. “You’re oh for two.”

He crossed the room in elephantine strides, unapologetically loud thumps that always spurred the children to come tumbling down the stairs to greet him the moment he arrived home. “Well, if I’m to be denied both making love to my beautiful wife and the ambrosia of the gods, then there’s really no point living, is there?” 

“Ah, so you do have a death wish.” 

He sat, hauling me into his lap without spilling a single drop of sparkles. “If I die, who will keep you in line?” 

The question sent a shiver of pleasure down my spine. My father, the previous owner of that title, had died just last year. If my husband followed… 

“Hmm?” A wet kiss behind my ear, a different shiver of pleasure. “Who will you be?” 

I twisted in his arms, knotting my fingers in his coarse chest hair and yanking him forward so his nose touched mine. “A woman with a skiing chalet.” 

His laughter boomed around the room. The vibrations filled me with levity, a thrill that had not lessened since the night we met aboard his yacht, bobbing in the Block Island Sound. I’d snagged an invitation from a fellow former-Bitcher, Jane Johnson Heminway. She’d bagged a northeastern Mr. Moneybags and had spat out three children in four years. After my divorce from Dickson, a man whose only true attribute was in his name, she was Mrs. Oh, Betty, Think of the Children! She’d scolded me worse than my own mother about not being able to give up the olden days, yet her calls never ceased. When I said I had no interest in the yachting excursion—it made champagne bubbles bubble in all the wrong places—she’d insisted. She’d gone for my jugular: It’s Bill Harkness’s boat. 

I’d always viewed men as amusing playthings, but after suffering through a perpetual winter of ennui in a seven-year marriage, it was no longer a game but a hunt. They’d become a kind of bloodsport to me. The Most Dangerous Game; animals that didn’t know they were being hunted until it was too late. My claws were sunk two inches deep into their hearts. Bill Harkness was the apex predator of the animal kingdom. With a first name that was currency, I needed his smug smirk hanging over my roaring fireplace. 

I’d strutted down the gangway in Watch Hill Harbor with a face full of Helena Rubenstein cosmetics and a mind full of newly-acquired ornithology knowledge. Unlike most men who named their ships after powerful, mythical women they liked to believe they could cow into submission, William Harkness’s eighty-foot yacht was called “Ardea.” “Heron” in Latin. Clearly one of those dull men whose bank account was the only interesting thing about him. 

The starched-stiff man I found on board matched my mental image, with his well-coiffed hair and immaculately-tied cravat. But a dull man could never command a crowd like him. The shadow of a smile sent a wave of giddiness through the air. The slightest shake of a head prompted an instant subject-change. With an endless arsenal of cutting commentary and pithy quips, I was no stranger to the spotlight, but this was a different strain of authority. After hours of such a captivating silent film, I’d needed a break below deck. 

Even with my back to the door, I knew he’d entered the cabin moments after me.

Good evening, Ms. Pierce. The sound of my ex-husband’s name in his mouth made me recoil.

West, actually. I turned. Rebekah. Or Betty. He was even grander up close. A monument. No, the Empire State Building. 

How had the society papers back home phrased it? If you’re blue-blooded enough to be on informal terms with me. 

A horribly pretentious thing to say, but William laughed. The first of the evening, it shot a bolt straight to my core. 

Red-blooded, I’m afraid.

And he was. A true, red-blooded American dynasty. As Standard Oil’s heir, his head on a platter was worth upwards of $100 million. 

I cocked my head and arranged my face into what I called the Harmless Puppy. Eyes big, mouth slightly slack. Vulnerable. They loved that shit. You don’t want to be on informal terms with me?

He raised his hand, and for one glorious moment I thought he might touch me. Instead, he plucked a champagne flute behind me. I’m sure you’ll find I am a very formal man.

Shame. 

Rebekah. It was an admonishment. For what, I wasn’t sure, but suddenly Betty sounded like a foolishly juvenile nickname. You seem like someone who’s never heard the word “no.” 

I wasn’t sure if he lifted my chin or if my gaze was simply magnetized skyward, the way it was when standing in front of the tallest building in the world. His eyes were frosted doors, but I could just make out the dancing taking place behind them. 

Someone really should teach you. 

Then he was gone.

In the art studio, a sharp pinch jerked me from the memory. 

“You are a—” William pinched my stomach again, the dough that I stared at at least seventeen times a day since his daughter’s birth five years earlier. But it was a gesture, unlike his mother’s, that was filled with affection. “Naughty minx.” 

“My Native American name.” 

“Mmm, you’d certainly know how to use every part of your kill.”

I took a satisfied sip from the flute, holding the bubbles in my mouth instead of swallowing. They tasted like that first euphoric month together in July 1947. An invitation back to the Ardea, alone this time, arrived at my cottage within hours of my initial departure.

After a few moments, the sharp fizz on my tongue ceased, their spark gone. 

Just wait, the older female guests at our autumnal Park Avenue wedding had purred, a glimmer of schadenfreude in their cataract-glazed eyes. Newlywed bliss won’t last forever. It won’t always feel like this. The jabs were meant to douse my radiant smile and sow seeds of fear, but all I felt was relief. Do you promise? I wanted to grab their wilted hands, diamonds studding each gnarled knuckle. Apologies from husbands over the years. When? When will this agonizing ecstasy end?

With a brooding father whose idea of affection was eye contact when you spoke (only when spoken to), and a trophy-wife mother who was content to collect dust on the shelf, I was never certain what love looked like, but I was always told it resembled an ephemeral bubble of bliss. I craved the pop. Being William Hale Harkness’ wife was a full time job not because of the status or the estates or the events. It consumed me. William had said someone needed to teach me “no,” but in reality, he taught me “yes.”

When he didn’t approve of my gown for the evening. Yes, darling, I’ll change. 

When he frowned at my annual reunion invitation of the Bitch Pack. Yes, darling, they really were such senseless escapades. 

And the worst of all. When he wanted another child. Despite the puppies and rainbows that society tried to force down our throats regarding motherhood, I despised it. I woke every morning to incessant knocks that even my pointedly thick oak door couldn’t muffle. Sticky hands on fine silk, parties that ended too early, breasts that would never be the same. I wished that motherhood was like divorce. I yearned to sign a piece of paper and be done with it forever.

Still, I said yes. Our servants’ cheeks were perpetually pink in the hall due to all the yeses he had made me scream. Within one year of marriage, I had given him a new daughter. I didn’t leave my bedroom for two months after the birth. There was something dark and heavy sitting on my chest. How did my life come to this? I didn’t remember making a deal with the Devil, but somehow my soul had been signed away anyway.

William took a deep sip from his glass. “Now, what is the great artiste’s vision that she simply had to rouse me at seven on a Sunday for?”

“I want to sculpt you.”

“Darling, I know you’re talented, but I’m not sure anyone could capture such hubris.”

“Yes, how could I forget? Your fatal flaw.” 

William was the most selfless, humble person I knew. His philanthropy rivaled that of John Rockefeller. 

“You’re my fatal flaw.” 

“Not Buffy?” 

Buffy was William’s ex-wife. While he was over in England serving in army intelligence during World War Two, she had run off with film star Robert Montgomery. William and Buffy’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Anne, was following in her stepfather’s footsteps and had just begun acting. A natural, William had crooned over the Christmas ham when she visited last December. I remembered my tight smile, the shrill, unnatural pitch of an insincere woman as I joined in on the praise. I envied Anne not because she looked like Buffy, but because she had a passion. She was someone. She was not a possessive—not someone’s daughter or someone’s wife—she was self-possessed. 

He pretended to spit on the floor. “Never Buffy.”

“You love me more than her, right?” It was a ridiculous whine that felt like vomiting fiery bile after a night of overindulging. Not that I remembered what that felt like. William always switched me to water after two cocktails. 

He squeezed my hips. “Only by an iota.” 

I gyrated them hard, earnestly, against him, pushing him firmly down onto the tiles. “Anything I can do to help my case?”

The clay sat, cold and hardening, on the stand.

Next to it, among my smattering of paint tubes, lay the vial of poison. 

***

It was quarter to ten and I’d been watching these two fuck for hours from my perch between Oxblood Red and Hunter Green.

When I first arrived here over a year ago, I thought: There has to be some mistake. This can’t be the man she intends to murder. Let me tell you, this confusion did not happen with my other clients. Officially, Madame Tofana’s little shop on Bay Street sold tchotchkes and sunscreen, but that wasn’t what some women came in for. Some came into Madame Tofana’s with poorly-concealed bruises and downcast eyes. Broken spirits who had reached their breaking point. Women who needed something stronger than sunscreen to protect them. Madame Tofana would listen to them sniffle—one’s tale of woe wasn’t required to acquire the poison, the madame had no gripes with morality, but it made the women feel better—before tucking a vial of Wolfsbane between a wheel of Brie and that day’s fresh catch. 

This one had blown into the shop with all the verve of a Nor’easter. She was dressed head to toe in snow white. God help the person who dirtied it. She stood erect at the counter, her words infused with a certainty that rarely matched the request. 

“I need that herb that gets rid of something unwanted.” 

Unlike the other women, she offered no reason. You could tell she was not the kind of woman who was used to answering to others.

A psychic was hard to surprise, but Madame Tofana’s eyebrows rose. The women in this town never visited her. Rich husbands were usually of more use in life than in death, what with those damn prenups. Nevertheless, she reached for me, delving into the standard explanation: I went best in teas but alcohol was alright too, if used correctly, it should mimic a heart attack—

“Oh, no.” The woman’s hand slid over her stomach. 

The madame’s eyebrows rose again, but she returned me to the shelf and plucked out a different vial.

The rich woman’s hawkish eyes cut back to me. “Did you say a heart attack?” 

I went home with her that day wrapped in a silk Hermès scarf. 

***

I was almost always used immediately, but over a year passed before that morning in the art studio. The husband, dapper looking fellow, had already had two heart attacks without my help. Why didn’t the younger wife just let him expire on his own? But over the course of the year, I saw it. This wasn’t about abuse.

This was about control. 

“Do you want more champagne?” They were finally done, both heaving on the floor. I wondered if the plan had changed, if she was going to fuck him to death, but she rose and brought me into the kitchen. As naked and shameless as Eve before the apple, she ground me up. I floated down into the flute, bouncing off bubbles. Upstairs, Adam drank me in one one large gulp.

Even from inside the large man, I could hear her. The screams. 

Then, the laughter.