Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
39
Entering the Modern World
I DIDN’T MEAN to get all involved in talking about Peninnah. It just happened that she walked through the room stark naked and I forgot about everything else. The story, however, was a good segue into how well and how quickly I adapted to the modern world.
Humans have it easy. They live through a period of change over seventy or eighty years and then they die. I lived through four thousand years and am constantly reminded of how easy something used to be that is now very difficult and how irritated I get at things that are simple now that used to take hours. When I have to wait for a porn movie to download for thirty seconds instead of getting to see pussy instantly, I get furious. There was once a time when I had to wait until it was safe to go into the infinity room and call a concubine to me in order to see a pussy. What a life!
When I settled on Goat Island—remember the island in San Francisco Bay where I dismantled my boat and set up a trading post?—I hoped to have a few hundred years without contact with so-called western civilization. I was not there long before the Spaniards showed up and claimed everything. That wasn’t really a long-term ownership in the greater scheme of things. Maybe a century or a little more. Nonetheless, they built a fort and then they built a mission. Then they introduced smallpox, measles, the flu, syphilis, and a dozen other ailments that will kill you—if you’re human.
But after the United States won its independence from England, there was a steady push of settlers westward. The English were no better than the Spaniards, but they did buy the Louisiana territory from the French instead of just fighting them for it. Regardless, the Americans tended to be fiercely independent and adventurous. They didn’t care who ‘owned’ the land, any more than the Spaniards did. They didn’t care about the Spaniards’ claims either.
I impersonated the head of a wealthy Californio family and received a large land grant from the crown. From this large grant, I willed Goat Island to my grandson and conveniently ‘died.’ I inherited the island and continued to trade there for another fifty or seventy-five years, until Mexico ceded California and Texas to the US after the Mexican-American War.
Not the least of my trade was in the ‘Yerba Buena’ so plentiful on my island. In fact, the entire area took its name from the plant: Yerba Buena or ‘Good Weed.’ The natives had been coming to the island for centuries to harvest the happy herb. The Spaniards thought they had found a new type of tobacco and prepared to harvest and ship it back to Europe. That had some unexpected results. But you see, that area was known for its good marijuana plants long before I moved to Haight-Ashbury.
The city of San Francisco grew rapidly and became a popular port of call for both American and Spanish ships going to and from Asia. The city established a very independent presence, even while ostensibly being ruled over by Mexico. Ha! It was just more Spaniards who declared themselves independent of Spain but did nothing to improve the conditions of the natives, either in Mexico or California, aside from raping and impregnating them with half-Spanish bastards.
Don’t think by this that I have anything particularly against Spain or the Spanish. All Europeans were pretty much the same. They were God’s people and therefore had a right to despoil all of God’s creation. When the US won the Mexican-American War in 1848, Mexico was forced to cede California to the US. The only difference locals saw was that the English settlers cared no more for the rights of the Spanish and Mexicans than they did for the natives.
And then someone found gold!
I’d seen booms before. Mention gold or silver and Europeans go crazy. The boom in San Francisco was pretty mild compared to what we’d seen in Peru. I’d managed to stay hidden in Machu Picchu when Potosi became a silver boomtown overnight. It went from a vacant plateau to a city of 120,000 in a year! The gold rush was minor by comparison. But to us who lived there peacefully, 30,000 new residents of San Francisco in two years was a shock. Especially since these were seekers of fortune from the American East and from Asia. The Chinese population increased almost as rapidly as the English population.
For my part, I bought a bunch of goats and set them loose on the island. They were very happy goats, cleaning out the weed on the island. We gradually started to be called Goat Island again and attracted relatively little interest from the mainland because there was nothing valuable there.
We survived, even though I eventually lost control of the island. It was a Spanish land grant, after all, and the American Navy didn’t much care about that. They started surveying the island for a fort that would protect the inner harbor. My little trading post was condemned and demolished to make room.
I moved out to the north side of the bay and found a patch of land I could acquire that had no gold on it. I started growing grapes.
I’d really enjoyed my time in Italy making wine. I still had the old family recipes and we’d been growing grapes and making wine in the infinity room for a couple hundred years. I started a big winery in the valley and began producing wine almost as fast as San Francisco could consume it.
And that’s how I met Maureen.
“Don’t you come back in here if you’ve no money to buy your beer!” the redhead yelled as she pitched a big man through the door of her pub to land in the mud in front of me. She wore a dress with the sleeves rolled up showing her well-muscled arms, and was nearly as tall as I was. The fellow in the street got up and turned as if to object, but once he took a look at the redhead standing in the doorway, he grunted and turned away. The woman cast her eyes on me. “Is that my beer? I’m nearly out and I have thirsty men in here.”
“Sorry, Miss. I’m a wine peddler,” I said. “Fine wine if you’d care to sample some.” I had a wagonload of casks of wine that I was selling at any bar or restaurant I could make a sale to. Usually, if they got a taste of what I had to offer, they were happy to buy a cask or two at $50 each.
“What would I do with wine in an Irish pub? Don’t you have any good beer? I’d buy anything better than the whale piss they’ve been selling me.” She turned to go back into the pub, but simply grabbed a glass off one of her tables and handed it to me. “Draw me a tipple and I’ll tell you if it is any good.”
I grinned at her and turned to the spigot on the cask I’d tapped. I looked hard at the glass to make sure it was clean and paused to wipe it out with my towel. I drew the wine and handed it to her. Her tasting was not what I expected from a bar owner. She rolled the wine around the glass and held it up to the light to peer through it. Then she cupped it in both hands and inhaled the aromas from the glass. Finally, she sipped the liquid and washed her mouth with it before spitting it into the street.
“You’re a Ginney? This wine was made in the Tuscan fashion. A good wine for that region. You came from Chianti?” she said.
I was stunned. Yes, I had learned winemaking near Firenze in the Chianti fashion. How this Irish barmaid could identify that from washing her mouth out with it was beyond me.
“That’s where I learned the art. It was a long time ago,” I said.
“Ten dollars for a cask. Bring it into the bar.”
“Fifty,” I said automatically.
“And what? Think this is Nob Hill? Bring your cask in and collect an eagle for it. Otherwise, climb the hill and see if they’ll pay you for your labor.” She turned and went into the pub. I motioned to Zhi and Pari to guard the wagon before I hoisted a cask on my shoulder and followed her in.
“Hmm. Strong,” she said as I set the cask where she pointed. A barrel of wine weighs about 2,000 pounds, but I lightened them with a spell when I carried them. She didn’t need to know that. She looked me up and down in the light of the pub. “And tall. Is everything in proportion, or do you pack like a Chinaman? I swear, the first time I had one of them, I thought I was with a woman!”
I gave her a fully assessing once over. She was tall, broad in the shoulders, and busty enough to overflow the top of her corset. I pulled her to me for a kiss and pressed her against my sudden erection.
“Proportional enough for you?” I asked, releasing her. I thought for a moment she was going to swing at me, but she pulled two large glasses from behind the bar and handed them to me to fill.
“Listen here, boys!” she called to the room. “Bring your glass to the barrel here and let this mountain pour you a pint of red. I guarantee you’ll be drunk on your ass before you get to a second pint. A dollar a pull. You put the money on the bar before you get the mug.”
She was going to charge a dollar a pint and had paid me only ten dollars for sixty gallons? I frowned at her, but the first mug was in my hand and I started pouring as the money hit the counter. I saw people pushing their way into the pub as others hailed them from the doorway. Maureen, as she told me to call her, examined each coin and dropped it into a box next to her. Occasionally, she stopped to examine a coin and push it back to the customer.
“American dollars only. None of this old Spanish stuff.” She kept the line flowing. The coins stacked up on the bar. Maureen would turn a handsome profit from this night.
“You know I won’t be selling the next keg for an eagle,” I said. “Just so you know.”
“Bob, do me just a little favor and when the press gang makes a grab for you, keep the damage in the pub to a minimum. I don’t care what you do to them in the street.” I nodded and saw the group of rough men in the corner slowly sipping from their mugs rather than guzzling the wine down like most of the clientele.
“Nothing legal about pressing men these days,” I said as I continued filling mugs.
“They don’t take you into the legal navy, neither,” she said. “A privateer or merchantman who needs more bodies sends his own men out to get them. There’s nothing legal about it, but a hundred miles out at sea there’s no one to complain to, either.”
The moment came when the line had died down that the six roughs approached as if they wanted another pint. Instead, one swung his mug and broke it over my head. The others made to grab me and were surprised I didn’t crumble under the force of the blow. I turned and walked out of the pub with the six men hanging off me. I grabbed them and threw them one at a time into the muddy street.
They got themselves up and made to come at me again, when they saw the two slight men at my side. Zhi and Pari were set to guard the wagon and I noticed a row of sleeping men leaned up against the wall on the other side. One of the roughs laughed.
“Oh, the giant needs his little boys to protect him. Well, the master could use a couple of cabin boys to keep him warm at night. Get ’em all.”
We were not gentle this time. My women knew nearly every form of martial art from every country of the East. For the most part, westerners only knew how to grapple and punch. Those were moves the thugs never got an opportunity to use. When they landed in the street this time, they were unconscious. A stagecoach came rattling down the street with horses at full gallop and thumped over them, cursing at the idiots for sleeping in the street. They all lived, but they weren’t much of a press gang afterward.
I stepped back into the pub to see that the rest of the clientele were mostly asleep or too drunk to move. On the bar, Maureen had two piles of dollar coins.
“There’s your cut,” she said. “I’m an honest woman and would not cheat you out of a fair share of the proceeds. I just needed to make sure it would be worth it.”
“I understand and appreciate your fairness,” I said as I moved around the pub collecting empty mugs and placing them on the bar for Maureen to wash—or at least to dip them in dirty water and put them on a shelf.
“You can unload the rest of the barrels into the back room and I’ll split everything we make on them. Never turned a pub into a wine bar before. Do you think I need to hang some potted plants around and put cloths on the tables?”
“I could probably harvest some of those leafy things from the swamp if you want to decorate, but I wouldn’t put anything on the tables that could be stained by oafs dumping their full glasses on them.”
I transferred the last of the barrels into her back room as daylight hit the street, revealing the gang had been removed from it. There were a few more sleepers stacked up against the wall. I opened a gateway wide enough for two more girls to emerge and jump on the empty wagon.
“Have fun, Bob. We’ll get the wagon to the barge and leave the rowboat for you,” one of the girls said. “See you when you get to the island.” I didn’t like setting my girls loose outside the infinity room by themselves, but I trusted in their abilities and they seemed anxious to get the wagon out of town. I kissed them each soundly and they took off with the horses at a trot toward the harbor.
There had been no doubt in either of our minds that I’d be back in as soon as I sent the wagon away. She’d turned out the gas lanterns and shuffled all the remaining drunks out the door. She locked it behind me when I entered and hooked her arm through mine to lead me up a rickety stair from the bar to her apartment.
“Isn’t it a bit risky living alone above the pub like this?” I asked. One did not often see single women living alone.
“I earned the money to buy this place on my back,” she said. “There’s a bit of respect for a woman who will throw a man out on his face. They know the only chance they have of playing between these thighs is if I invite them in. Like I’m inviting you. Would you like to play between these thighs, Bob?”
She stripped off her skirt to expose the massive thighs she was talking about and I thanked my forethought that I’d chosen a body as big as this one for my wine-selling venture. I was sure she could crush a lesser man.
Her red hair and freckles proved to be consistent all the way down her body and I parted a thick fiery thatch to dip my cock into her wet and welcoming warmth.
“I’m not a gentle woman, Bob. Let yourself go and fuck me like a demon. I assure you I can take it. And I’ll love every minute of it,” she said.
I paused to think for a moment, being sure I had not exposed myself as a demon as yet. I was not normally a rough lover. In fact, I tried especially hard to be a gentle lover, ever since the time I spent as a woman and realized how sensitive and delicate a woman’s body could be. But riding Maureen definitely brought out the demon in me. I entered her in every way I could imagine and then she suggested a way or two I hadn’t thought of. It seemed that any way I took her, excited her. She was right with me every time I filled her with my spunk. When I thought we were done after a marathon day of sex, she jumped on top of me and rode me to completion one more time.
“Maureen, I’d almost think you were a demon yourself! How did you come to enjoy such unrestrained sex?” I asked.
“Oh, you’ve found my secret. You see these freckles? I earned one for every soul I’ve eaten in the past 2,000 years. And I’ve an appetite to take yours as well, Bob. I think I will never let you free.”
I could feel a binding spell taking shape around me and quickly muttered a counter spell. Maureen shrieked and I saw her face change shape. Her tongue shot out like the tongue of a serpent and she hissed. Small horns grew from her head and scales appeared on her body. I jumped aside and allowed myself to transform to my demon shape. There was sudden silence as she sat staring at me.
She definitely had snakelike features with the scales and tongue and tiny horns. She still had her prodigious breasts, but I had a feeling if I pulled the sheet off of her, I’d find a tail. I wondered where I’d been fucking. She hissed again and settled back on the bed, gradually shifting to her buxom redhead form.
“Wouldn’t you know that I finally find a man who could satisfy me and he wouldn’t be a man at all,” she sighed.
“You called out the demon in me,” I said. “What else could I do?”
“Yes, well, I’m sure you have all the women you could possibly want. I sit in this dingy pub and take tiny sips of the lives I desperately want. But in this world, there is too much danger for demons like us. I was nearly burned in New England, drowned in Ireland. But here, they would shoot me and carve my heart out as they hung me from the gallows. It’s a cruel world, Bob.”
“Perhaps. I’ve seen both the best and the worst. I live with my loves and try to be an honest man. I’ve taken lives, but they deserved to die. It gave me no pleasure.”
“You mean you took lives without sucking the souls from their bodies?” she asked in amazement. “You left the best part.”
“Souls never appealed to me. Disgusting looking things.”
“You’re a strange demon, Bob. Now what are you going to do with me? You know me for what I am. The powerful Jesus of Galilee was the last who got the best of me. In a way, I should be thankful to him. I was bound to the body of a mage’s enemy and Jesus cast me out. He set me free and I slipped away out of that hellhole and off into the world.”
“I knew Issa,” I said. “We traveled together a while. I’m nothing like him, but I try to honor him.”
“The church is the enemy,” Maureen said. “They hunt us when all the while they are the ones hurting people, killing without responsibility, and declaring their words of hate and subjugation.”
“I have to say you are at least partially right. I spent a lot of time living inside the religious state of the church and was not happy with what I saw. But most are innocent. Misled, but innocent nonetheless.”
“Ignorant slaves,” Maureen sighed. “What are you going to do to me now. I’m not a very powerful demon when it comes to other immortals.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Though if invited back, I might fuck you again. What a hell of a ride!”
“You have a gift for words. Why not get back on and ride me now.”
There was a considerable difference between fucking the snakelike demon and the redheaded Irish woman. It wasn’t at all unpleasant, though. She’d returned mostly to her female body and parted her legs happily for my invasion. I rather thought the little horns on her head and the forked tongue were charming in an outré way. One thing she had mastered over the centuries was using her body for the maximum amount of pleasure. Now that our cards were on the table, we got along well.
I stayed with Maureen for several days, serving wine from the casks I brought. True to her word, she split the take on every mug I poured. Her reputation grew as a purveyor of the best wine in San Francisco. A hotelier stopped at the pub and offered to buy out the remainder of her stock. She looked at me and thought of the amount of money she could make. Before she could respond, I broke into the conversation.
“It would cost you $700 a barrel,” I said. The hotelier turned to me, startled by the amount.
“That’s more than we pay for any alcohol. It is only the reputation you’ve gained with this that brought me here. I cannot possibly offer such a princely sum,” he said.
“You haven’t sampled this wine? Here, let me pour you a measure and let your tongue dance on its flavor.” I reached for a glass, but rather than the pint beer mugs Maureen had served, I selected a whiskey glass, about a quarter the size. I handed the hotelier the glass and he went about sniffing and tasting the wine. I noted his approach was not as carefully studied as Maureen’s. He didn’t spit it out.
“This is a magic elixir!” he said.
“Not quite. We have a vineyard on the north side of the bay where the soil is so perfect, we grow grapes that cannot otherwise be grown in America. My lady Maureen holds the keys to this winery and could be convinced to sell each barrel at just $800. We expect others will be approaching later today, attempting to get the exclusive on this remarkable wine. Your time is expiring.”
“$800? A moment ago, you said $700!”
“And just moments from now, the price will go up again. Do you not believe you could sell this vintage for a dollar a glass? The barrel measures over 1,500 glasses the size you hold. And it can be yours for just…”
“$800! I’ll pay $800 a barrel! When can we get more?”
“We’ll need to get back to the other side of the bay and bring the remainder of this year’s vintage. I believe we have one hundred barrels remaining.”
“I’ll take them. I wish to be your exclusive distributor in San Francisco.” He wrote out a check for $3,200 for the remaining four barrels in Maureen’s store room. I looked at it curiously and cocked an eyebrow at Maureen. I’d not seen a bank check before.
“I have an account at a bank where this man’s check will be honored,” she said. “We’ll go there directly and deposit our earnings, then leave to get the remainder at once.” I grinned at her and she pointed the way to the store room where the hotelier directed his men to load the barrels.
Maureen snorted a laugh when she saw that it took four men to wrestle each barrel out of the store room and up a ramp onto a wagon. When the pub was empty, she locked the doors, put on a very stylish hat, and took my arm to walk to the bank.
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