Content Warning: sexual references
The streets of Berlin were heavy with rain. I clutched the metal pin at my breast that kept demons away. Mama always said, a safety pin secreted under the jacket, hidden away from prying eyes, would always ward off evil, keeping shedim and lilin away. It was an old superstition, but the Rubensteins were a superstitious family. It made me a curiosity at my best friend Freida Barcomb’s salon, The Pink Bow. That, and my piano playing that sounded like the ghost of an angel, meant I could entertain men as the dessert wine of the Baltic Sea flowed.
I, Isla Rubenstein, had eschewed marriage for employment, and mama and papa had given up long ago at the shadchan, trying to get Yenta to matchmake me, whose every offer I refused. Instead, I owned a little flat in the Old City by the famous orangerie of Berlin, and across Old Town, my own business. I had scrimped and saved as secretary at papa’s bank to save enough to buy it and now, twenty-three years young and thriving, I spent my days at work, my evenings at the salons of Berlin and nightclubs, and there was much mirth to be had between kaffee und kuchen and glasses of Riesling.
But, today was the day – the day I’d make three year’s salary in a single evening. The day I met the Spaniard.
I had to get to my haircuttery for a very special client, rumored to be a Spanish nobleman of high status, whose eyes were green like emeralds, a Sephardic Jew. He was said to have long black hair that smelled of oudh. Jewish hair that Freida, with her platinum, straight locks, would balk at. But I knew how to use hot combs, how to cut the curls of and pleasure the scalps and chops of the distinguished statesmen of Berlin with the best shaving equipment and barber’s scissors on the whole Continent. The Spaniard would be the next to fall to my comb.
The Spaniard had booked my haircuttery – Ilsa’s Comb, the best in the Old City – months in advance and made strange requests: cover all the mirrors. Turn off the lightbulbs. Have a book of psalms and gold dust on hand. Gas lamp only, in the year of the Christian Lord 1885, when Berlin had just recently been electrified. 1885… so different than the Jewish calendar, who danced around the moon in thousands of epochs. And only have I, Ilsa Rubenstein, attend the Sephardic Lord..
A strange fellow, but I had no fear of men – I was good with my pistol, after all. And he was coming alone.
So, I fixed the room. Turned on the gas lamps. Covered the chic French mirrors with heavy shtetl-woven tapestries from Karelia, where my family was from, long ago, from Bethel. The tapestries depicted mud mice, Leviathan, Gog and Magog, all of Adonai’s creatures delighting in earth and ocean. Finally, over the shop window – which still could count as reflective glass – I hung one of Chava emerging from Adamah’s ribs and dancing happily like the town clock automaton, a terpsichore.
Smiling, I took the gold dust out of my pocket and placed it next to a bottle of fine plum wine. Little finger sandwiches with mayonnaise and cucumber, white bread only, were set out next to coffee and cake I baked fresh this morning – kaffee und kuchen, indeed. My rabbi had advised me to welcome the Lord with a humble heart, as he was giving me many year’s wages. I trusted my rabbi, so I did. I even did my thick dark gold hair up in a curling chignon, my mint green eyes flickering in the gas candlelight. I set his station up and waited.
Thunderous hooves. Neighing. The clink of bells. In walked the most beautiful man I had ever seen – olive skin, scandalously erotic clothes, bunches of whipcord muscles under old-fashioned robes that draped over his form in gray-green cloth, dark red-black ringlets of hair, and piercing sea green eyes. There was a beauty mark under his left eye, and gods-damn talons painted black coming from his hands. He walked in the dark of night, beauty and ruin in his wake.
“Pu pu pu,” I said automatically, warding off a curse. What was a demon doing at my door! I should have salted the corners of Ilsa’s Comb.
The beautiful, treacherous demon ran a hand through his beautiful, matted red-black ringlets, covered in sand as if he had wandered 40 years in a desert. His coils reached the floor. The demon smirked, giving a deep laugh. “You remind me of Bathsheba. Innocence in sin.”
“Get out of here, shedim, a Spanish lord is coming tonight!” I took salt from my pockets that I always carried and threw them at the demon.
The demon mockingly bowed. “And yet, I am the Spaniard. I traveled far for this haircut, Ilsa. Do not waste my reward.”
With that, the demon reached into his pocket and took gold coins out, raining them down on the counter. They fell in a wicked pile up to his thighs… his gorgeous, olive thighs. What am I thinking, Ilsa!
“You ate the Spaniard, you mean, you shedim. Pu pu pu!”
He fished deep in his pocket, sea gray eyes shining deep set under thick black brows. He pulled out a large princess cut ruby the size of my fist. I shuddered. “Is not your last name Rubenstein, Ilsa of the Comb?”
The demon smiled, recognizing the desire – for him and the jewel – in me. I trembled, tears in my eyes.
“The rabbi said nothing about demons needing haircuts. Your hair is a mess… Herr Demon.”
“Call me Ash.”
“You will turn me to ashes?”
“Short for… Ashmedai.”
I paled a ghostly white. “Well, screw me.”
“Gladly.” Ashmedai poured us two cups of the coffee, fixed mine with exactly what I always had – two sugars and cream – and drank his black. “Sit down, Ilsa. A demon still needs a haircut. Consider it a charity case. I am Solomon’s half-brother, after all. Sired by King David on the demoness Agrat. As a half-human, don’t I deserve idle chatter with a fair maiden?”
I blushed a strawberry red, wishing I was covered with a bag. He eyed my assets appreciatively. I sighed, wishing I had not dressed for The Pink Bow afterwards to impress Sigmund, the composer I adored. My decolletage was on full display. “Fine, kaffee und kuchen. But no more. Your hair would burn my scissors.”
“You are not the first Jewess to entertain a demon, you know. It’s more common than you think.”
“Perhaps the first to give one a haircut. Pu pu pu!” I retorted saltily, gently tasting the coffee. It was perfect. I served him the black forest cake with caution. Adonai would not like me to disgrace a guest, entertaining angels unaware… only, I was sure he wasn’t an angel. Ashmedai languorously licked his spoon of the chocolate.
“Mmm, delicious, did you make this?”
I stuck my nose in the air. “Yes, in fact, I did. I had it in my mind I was entertaining a Duke of Spain, not King of Gehenna.”
“Spaniards, demons, same thing, don’t you think?” Ashmedai teased. He inhaled the cake like he was a parched man back from the forsaken desert with a water glass. “You’ll make a good wife, Ilsa.”
“Like your dear Sarai?”
It was Ashmedai’s turn to flinch. “You had to remind me. I paid my dues for that, you know, ten leagues under the ocean for years and years. It was only when the barnacles ate my chains that I was free. I hate fish and water.”
I pointed to Milham the Hol Bird, the Jewish Phoenix, tapestry on one of my mirrors. “Including burnt bird?” Then to Leviathan. “Or the demon fish the faithful shall eat at the coming of the Messiah?”
Ashmedai sighed. “Haven’t you Jews realized yet, the Messiah will never come? There is no such thing as goodness in the world. Angels, sure, G-d, yes. But a Promised Messiah? Never.”
I set my coffee down sharply. “Watch your tongue, demon. Words matter.”
He leaned forward, tracing my knuckles. I shuddered, suddenly aware of his bulging yet sleek muscle, how badly he needed a haircut… it was my profession, after all.
“Words are only air.”
I jerked my hand away, coffee spilling on the floor. I sniffed.
“I think you are a sore loser, Ashmedai. To Raphael, to Solomon. To Adonai. And to me.” I looked at the cursed pile of gold level with the table, topped by the queenly, perfect ruby. “I will give you the best haircut of your life. I will keep the gold, but not the precious ruby. And then, you will promise to never set foot in Berlin again.”
“Is that what you truly want, Ilsa, Revke Rubenstein’s daughter?”
“I… yes?”
“What about Sigmund? What about having him madly desire you? What about bairns, and a wee little cottage in the Black Forest with the next Beethoven? Domesticity would suit you, Ilsa. I tasted your heart’s desires in the cake.”
I shuddered, tempted by the demon of lust. “He is a Protestant, Ashmedai.”
“And yet, you want him.”
I steeled my mint-colored eyes, then let my dark gold ringlets fall from their place atop my head. “To the shaving chair, Ash. You need to be knocked down several pegs.”
He shrugged, then slinked over. I noticed a demon’s dragon tail, black, scaled, and ridged, curling under his gray-green robes. Smoke rose like frankincense and rot from the burning scales. Ashmedai sat with elegance as I set to my work, building up the lather, shaving the dark black stubble. It was true, Ashmedai smelled of oudh as they said, but there was more: campfires like when mama and papa my brothers and I went to the Black Forest. Fresh air after a volksmarch. A new pair of lederhosen, just tanned. Currywurst that he had eaten before coming here.
Heat gathered in my belly, and I wanted to… to what? Kiss a demon? Get it together, Ilsa.
“Pu pu pu.”
I threw some salt on him. A good, extra measure.
“You still think salt, and metal, work on the King of Demons?” Ashmedai asked, touching his freshly shaved cheeks in admiration. The salt evaporated before it touched him.
“Well, what does?”
“Spread legs under my spear.”
I slapped him, right then. Blood flew from his wound, black. He laughed wildly. He crooked his head, green-gray eyes alight in mirth, and more.
“Again, Ilsa. For every man in Ilsa’s Comb that has copped a feel. For every time your uncle Frederick raped you. For every lustful eye, for every promise Sigmund gives, then treats you like yesterday’s whore. For the abortion with pennyroyal tea he forced on you, when you only wanted Sigmund’s child. Slap me again, Ilsa Rubenstein.”
“Shut up, bastard!” I felt myself crying out at my secrets spilled. Secrets Adonai, much less a demon, had no right to know.
I pummeled him, punching: right hook, left hook, we fell to the floor, his blood flowed, then his wound miraculously healed, then I dealt him another.
Ashmedai simply laughed. He smelled of ambergris, of oudh, of dragon’s blood and musk. Suddenly, furious, I stripped him of his fine robes and demanded. “If you are so good with women, pleasure me, you bastard!” The fire in my belly had spread to my loins.
Ashmedai, black and blue from our fight, simply kissed me. It was sweet, lingering. I bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. Took out all my anger at my bastard uncle, at wavering Sigmund, at all the stray hands and mean comments a working, independent woman drew. All the raping eyes I got on the street, walking alone.
Blood, blood that rushed from my womb. A twisted child. A twisted creation. The bairn who would never open her eyes, that I had buried behind the apple tree.
I wanted it all, my power, my magic – back. And this demon would give it to me.
Ashmedai rose to meet me, he suckled at my neck. Played with my sex under my bloomers. Gently, ever so gently, Ashmedai undid my corset with his teeth. His cock? Sandstone brown-pink, thick and huge, piqued and wet with precum. So different than Sigmund’s frail white member. It was uncut. I supposed all demons were uncut.
When he had eaten me out, toyed with my nipples, drew orgasms from the back of my neck, whispered wants and lust into my ear, he speared into me with overwhelming lust, the king of demons. I cried, I prayed, and he took the book of psalms from the table, opened it to the Song of Solomon, then tossed it to the bar still open. Just like a demon would – it was a sin to not close a holy book.
Ashmedai speared into me like a preying wolf, and I was the lamb. Delivered into the lap of Sheol, I seized my magick back. He pumped power, freedom, liberty, into my heart and core. Orgasm after orgasm assailed me as Ashmedai worked my body in ways I didn’t know was possible.
“You belong to no one, Ilsa Rubenstein. Your body is wholly your own. Your dreams are yours for the taking,” he moaned into my ear. It was the most holy thing I had ever heard.
When Ashmedai finished, his black-purple seed spurting hot and thick down my thigh, he licked me clean like a cat her newborn kitten and snapped his fingers. We were fully dressed, freshened, and cleaned, and no evidence of our coupling was left. Instead, I was dressed in a midnight blue ball gown, a peacock mask on my face, my hair in a perfect chignon.
“What – what is this for, Ashmedai?”
“You are to come to my ball tonight, Ilsa, after you make me look dashing with your hot combs and scissors.”
“I think that will do, Ash. That will do just fine. I’ll keep the ruby, too.”
He kissed my hand.
And so, I washed Ashmedai’s hair and massaged his scalp in the marble basin, using rose oil and oudh, and then I straightened his hair and cut his Jewish hair in only the way a fellow Jewess would know. In the end, I braided his hair in a crown braid in the upper section, and the lower section cascaded down to his waist in red-black curls of glory.
“The final touch,” I said, trembling, finding that doing the King of Demon’s hair was even more intimate than our fucking.
Ashmedai smiled, kissing my oudh-smelling hands. “Surprise me.”
“It’s an – an old Jewish custom.” I sprinkled the gold dust in his hair.
“Yes, just like Bathsheba would,” Ashmedai sighed, fond. He took me out of Ilsa’s Comb, and we danced the night away in his underworld paradise as Dumah played the fiddle in a Totentanz.
From that night on, I stopped going to The Pink Bow, and found myself at supernatural salons instead. Sigmund never wrote, but that didn’t matter.
After all, I had
Ashmedai.
And by Adonai, was his hair
Perfect.
Previously published in Black Sheep
Allister Nelson is a technical writer who has been published in Apex Magazine, Eternal Haunted Summer, FunDead Publication’s Gothic Anthology, Sudden Denouement, the Showbear Family Circus, and more.
