I Accidentally Summoned A Succubus

I'm halfway to Marcus's place when my phone buzzes against the steering wheel.

The ringtone makes my jaw clench before I even look at the screen.

The Imperial March.

I set that tone for him when I was fifteen. Thought it was funny then—calling my dad Darth Vader. Now it just reminds me that some jokes stop being funny when they become true.

Dad.

"You'll get the seventy today." I groan, fighting the urge to end the call immediately. 

No hello. No small talk. Just straight to business. That's how we've operated for two years now.

"Didn't ask yet," He says, as I take a left turn.

"You always call when you need it. Let's skip the foreplay."

I wait for him to answer. There's always more. Some pathetic justification, some attempt to make this transaction feel like something other than what it is: extortion.

Instead, I get that sound. That quiet, disappointed exhale he's been making since I was twelve. The sound of a man who wanted a different son and got stuck with me instead.

"You know," he says finally, "most fathers and sons actually talk to each other."

"Most fathers don't blackmail their kids."

"Blackmail's a strong word."

"So is seventy thousand dollars."

Silence.

I could hang up. Should hang up. But something keeps me on the line. Maybe it's the same sick fascination that makes me watch car crashes.

"She asked about you yesterday," he says.

She. His dominatrix. The twenty-seven-year-old who makes him crawl around hotel rooms on his hands and knees, barking like a dog.

"I don't want to hear about your midlife crisis, old man."

"Goddess Miranda thinks you might be—"

I end the call.

My hands are shaking. Not from fear. From rage.

I pull over, engine still running, and stare at my reflection in the side mirror. Same face I've had for thirty years. Same cold eyes. Same mouth that never learned how to smile without calculation behind it.

But right now, I look exactly like him.

That's what I hate most.

Not that he's weak. Not that he's pathetic. But that I understand him.

Because deep down, we want the same thing. We just want it from opposite sides.

He gets off being controlled. I get off controlling.

He kneels. I command.

He begs for punishment. I crave the power to give it.

We're two sides of the same fucked-up coin, and the only difference is that I'm honest about what I am.

My mother created us both. She was a master class in psychological abuse—beautiful, intelligent, and vicious as a snake. She'd spend dinner cutting him down piece by piece while I sat there, ten years old, watching him take it.

"You're useless, Richard. You know that? A real man would tell me to shut up. But you? You just sit there like a beaten dog."

And he would. Just sit there. Apologizing. Making excuses. Never once standing up for himself or for me when she turned her attention my way.

"Your father's weak, James. Don't be like him. Don't let anyone push you around."

The irony is that she was right. I didn't let anyone push me around. Including her.

By the time I was fifteen, I was immune to her games. She'd scream, I'd stare. She'd manipulate, I'd analyze her technique. She'd try to break me down, and I'd watch her frustration grow when nothing she did affected me.

She died when I was seventeen. Liver failure from years of vodka breakfasts and wine dinners.

At the funeral, I didn't cry. Couldn't. Felt nothing but clinical interest in watching other people's grief performances.

But him? He cried. Not from sadness—from relief. I saw it in his shoulders, the way they finally relaxed for the first time in decades.

That should have been his moment to become the man he never was. Instead, he just found a different woman to destroy him.

Now he's sixty, living alone in a downtown loft I pay for, spending my money on a dominatrix who probably laughs about him with her friends.

"Did you miss Daddy today?"

"Yes, Goddess. I've been a bad boy."

I found those messages by accident when I was helping him set up his new phone. He'd synced everything automatically. His texts, his emails, his browser history.

I know more about my father's sex life than any son should. I know he pays her two thousand dollars a session to humiliate him. I know he's never actually fucked her—she doesn't allow it. I know he sends her money between sessions just for the privilege of texting her.

And I know that every month when I wire him seventy grand, at least half of it goes straight to her.

I'm funding my father's financial domination fetish.

The bitter irony isn't lost on me. I write about men who take control, who command respect and obedience. My readers worship the dominant characters I create.

And in real life, I'm bankrolling a man who gets off being treated like human garbage.

But here's the thing about blackmail—it only works if you care about the secret getting out.

And every month, I care a little less.

Let him tell the world I'm SalemVeritas. Let him destroy my academic career. Let him cost me everything.

Because the alternative—continuing to fund his pathetic degradation fantasies while he holds my identity hostage—is starting to feel worse than exposure.

I used to think the worst thing about my father was his weakness.

Now I know it's that he passed just enough of himself to me that I recognize the hunger in his eyes when he talks about her.

We both crave extremes. We both need power exchanges to feel real.

The difference is that I'm strong enough to be the one in control.