The Devil's Favourite Obsession

*Music recommendation - Lucifer in Love - ISMAIL UG - YouTube*

One would be surprised at how readily people believed Cassian’s words over the physical evidence thrashing against his shoulder. Cixi’s body screamed every distress signal known to humankind — kicking legs, flailing fists, a spine arched like a drawn bow.

Yet the passersby on the pavement glanced at them with the confident stupidity of strangers, thinking that this was nothing more than a lover’s quarrel.

In what twisted universe did a man hoist a woman over his shoulder like a sack of grain, stroll through a public street with the casualness of someone carrying groceries, and get away with it by muttering two words?

A lover’s quarrel. Just as he once insisted to everyone that the gun his man was holding was not really a gun, but a toy.

”Could you please let me down?” Cixi’s voice came out strained and breathless, the blood rushing to her head from the inverted position. ”I will not run away. I promise.” She lied. She was going to sprint the moment her feet grazed the ground.

”Why do I not believe you, Cixi?” Cassian remarked, his stride never faltering, and despite carrying a woman who weighed fifty kilos on his shoulder, he didn’t seem out of breath at all. Didn’t he feel any strain in his shoulder?

”You need therapy.” Cixi jabbed a finger into his lower back for emphasis. ”When a person has trust issues, it is deeply connected to the inner child. It is a well-documented psychological phenomenon.” She had no idea where she had heard that. Some short video on the internet, probably. And it had sounded convincing at the time.

”Which online guru fed you this garbage?” Cassian inquired in return, and the question carried the genuine curiosity of a man who wanted a name and an address.

”Does it matter where I heard it from?” Cixi retorted irritably, sharpening every syllable despite the absurdity of arguing philosophy while dangling upside down over a man’s back.

”Yes! Because I am going to pay a personal visit to this individual and beat every childhood trauma out of him, he is still carrying and has not worked through, but feels entitled to lecture online and fool idiots like you.”

Cixi blinked hard. She was momentarily thrown off balance, which was impressive, given that she had no balance to begin with in her current position.

”Why?” she challenged, her braid swinging with every step he took. ”Are you planning to take his place and become an influencer?” The sarcasm dripped from her words like honey off a knife. She wiggled again, driving her fist into his back. ”Let me go!” She yelled at him once more.

”People will start worshipping me, abandoning all the gods, and I am not in the mood for that.”

Without breaking stride, he reached into his trouser pocket with his free hand, retrieved a cigarette, and lit it with the practised ease of a man who had done it ten thousand times before. One hand held Cixi. The other held the cigarette. He inhaled, the ember flaring bright orange against the fading daylight, and when he exhaled, the smoke curled past Cixi’s swinging braid like a ghost brushing against silk.

Cixi huffed at his comment. ”You think too highly of yourself,” she shot back. And started hitting him.

”Thirty hits!” Cassian stated it the way an accountant states a figure.

Meanwhile, Cixi paused for a heartbeat, her brain scrambling to decode the meaning behind those two words. Thirty hits. What did that—

She did not have to wonder long to find the answer.

”You have hit me thirty times so far,” he smoothly dropped the news on her, and the tone in which he delivered those words planted a seed of dread so deep inside Cixi’s chest that her lungs forgot to expand.

But she was Cixi, and she was turning reckless. And an immortal, daring, cursed one. ”You deserve a hundred beatings, in my opinion,” she declared, and punctuated the statement by driving her fist into his back once more — harder than every hit that had come before it, hard enough that her knuckles ached.

She waited for his response, but Cassian offered nothing. The silence stretched, and felt vast and unsettling, and in its absence, Cixi’s confidence began to inflate.

Was he offended? Is he angry? What is he thinking? So many questions swirl in her fatigued brain. Is he annoyed? Good!

She drew her fist back again, ready to deliver blow number thirty-two.

”Thirty-one hits,” Cassian muttered under his breath, yet his words were loud enough for Cixi to hear every syllable. ”Equals sixty-two Spanks!”

Cixi’s fist froze in mid-air. Her entire body turned into a sculpture of cold stone over a devil’s shoulder.

Her eyes widened until the whites dominated her irises, the blood draining from her already flushed face so rapidly that the world tilted sideways.

Sixty-two spanks?

Were those words meant for her?

Had she heard him correctly?

Or was he calculating something entirely different, like some business figure, some debt, some equation that involved speaking for some reason... Cassian’s words over the physical evidence thrashing against his shoulder. Cixi’s body screamed every distress signal known to humankind — kicking legs, flailing fists, a spine arched like a drawn bow.

”We were discussing influencers and how highly you think of yourself, yet here you are, counting my hits like a child,” Cixi replied sarcastically.

”If I become an influencer, all the others will soon be out of the market. How can I be so cruel to them, Cixi? And I didn’t know you wanted others to be as jobless as yourself. How jealous are you of people?” He clicked his tongue several times. ”You are turning into a bad girl, Cixi. I must punish you for that. I should add 70 spanks now.”