On the Verge by Garen Glazier Page B

all knew how susceptible they were to transference, to becoming attached to objects, the dreaded ligature. It was usually books, because stories had been their cradle and would be their grave, but sometimes other objects could become talismans too, and this painting was one of those instances. It revealed too much and so it held him, and he was no longer just an incubus—he was Lucifer. His existence would never be the same.
    The damage had been done. Dakryma had heard from others of the Verge about what it was like to be in the thrall of ligature. Depending on the reputation and whereabouts of the object, some lived wonderful lives in grand cities; others were consigned to dusty attics in obscure locales. The objects were their anchors, but they had a range in which they could roam, usually within the confines of the city or, in more rural places, a given tract of land with definite boundaries.
    Luckily for Dakryma his object was kept in Munich for a time until it was acquired by a Bulgarian prince and finally made its way into the galleries of the national museum in Sophia. He’d spent most of the last dozen decades tied to the city of Sophia, traveling only occasionally when the artwork was put on loan to other museums.
    In the intervening years he had taken up art history. While he was a man of taste and refinement, he had only a passing knowledge of art. He had assumed that an expertise in the field might serve him well considering his anchoring object was a masterwork of the Symbolist movement. Becoming a professor had also given him something to do with his time, and college students were often dripping in melancholy, especially around exams.
    But he’d never become fully accustomed to the limited life he’d been forced to live, nor had he enjoyed his augmented identity. He could understand why Stuck would think him a demon. He had always been surprised, frankly, that the artist hadn’t run away screaming the first time he had entered koshmar . That strange incongruity bothered him after the initial shock of the unveiling had worn off and he had asked Stuck in the dwindling light of his studio why he had kept painting even after he saw he clearly wasn’t human.
    There was a woman, Stuck had told him, and she had threatened the lives of everyone he held dear unless he painted the incubus. Dakryma had asked Stuck the name although he was fairly certain he knew the answer already.
    Ophidia, the terrified man had intoned with great trepidation as though she might appear at any moment to make good her murderous promise.
    Although he had been expecting to hear that damned appellation, the thought of her stooping to such a level just to exact some petty revenge filled Dakryma with cold rage. Their love affair had been quick and intense. Relations between succubi and incubi were taboo, however, and Dakryma wasn’t prepared to face the consequences if they were to be found out.
    His former lover had called him a coward and a litany of other curses gleaned from centuries of feeding off some of humanity’s most colorful people. She begged him to stay, but nothing she could have said would have made him change his mind. At the time he knew it broke her heart, but he was certain she would get over it. After all, in the grand scheme of things they barely knew each other. But it appeared he had underestimated the scope of her heartbreak.
    Ophidia had sentenced him to this painted prison out of vengeful retaliation, he assumed. Yet, just as he had miscalculated the extent of her acrimony, she perhaps had not fully considered the implications of consigning a man of his nature to nearly a century and a half of enforced confinement. He wasn’t sure if it was the new moniker the architect of his peculiar jail had bestowed upon him, or whether the poison of retaliation had turned the bittersweetness of melancholy sour, but either way the incubus felt himself changing. His outlook had grown increasingly cynical, his actions more