Do you know why most people get to fulfill their dreams, while others fall into despair—dragged into a life that feels borrowed, faded, like someone else's old coat?
It is the work of Lamia—the child-eating demon.
They say her name is older than war, older than love. She was once a mother, cursed to eat her own offspring, and now she roams the world unseen, feeding not on flesh but on what we all begin life with: joy, wonder, curiosity... our inner child.
By faith, I am not supposed to believe such things. The Torah forbids idol thoughts, and demons are given little space to dance in its pages. But I am not just a man of faith—I am also a man of science. And science, though dressed in reason, has its own superstitions.
My name is Abdiel. I was once a Kohen, a priest in a remote part of Eastern Europe, before I lost my sight. Before I lost other things too.
But this story isn't about me.
It is about Lamia.
And a boy named Samuel.
---
The orphanage was quiet that evening, bathed in a soft orange glow from the setting sun through cracked cathedral windows. Dust floated in the air like tiny ghosts, and the children sat cross-legged on the floor, listening to the gentle voice of the old man who visited them every Friday.
Kohen Abdiel.
To the children, he was a living legend. He dressed in black linen robes, walked slowly with a cedar-wood cane, and though he was blind, his eyes were milky with a strange sort of light—as if he could still see things others couldn't. His stories were always soft, his voice like sandpaper and honey.
That evening, he sat near the hearth and began to speak.
"Now here's how it works, children," he said, adjusting the shawl on his shoulders. "Most people live full lives. They chase dreams, they fall in love, they make mistakes... and they try again. But some people..." He paused, smiling softly. "Some people get eaten."
A few kids giggled nervously.
"Eaten?" a small boy asked.
"Not the way you think. Their flesh remains, but their spirit—the child within them, the spark of all that they were born to become—gets swallowed. And they walk around for years afterward, not knowing what's missing."
He took a slow breath, then began.
"It was the 1960s. Vietnam was raging like a fever dream. A young U.S. Marshal, tall and broad-shouldered, returned from the war, scarred but whole. He met a woman one rainy morning at a train station in Maryland. Their eyes locked. It was love—or something like it—at first sight.
"They married quickly. No one objected. And for the first few months, it was like a fairytale. She would whisper strange lullabies at night. Songs in a language he didn't know but found soothing.
"Then, just as quickly, it ended.
"She left him. Just like that. Claimed it was her fault. That she was unworthy. But he... he knew there was no fight. No betrayal. Just... emptiness."
Abdiel tilted his head, listening to the silence in the room. No one moved.
"A few years passed. He tried to date again. Tried to laugh, to work, to live. But something inside him was... gone. A hollowness. He no longer dreamt. He no longer felt excited about anything. It was as though his heart had been sealed in glass, and he was watching himself from the outside.
"And that's when he realized: his inner child—the playful, imaginative part of him that made life colorful—was missing. Not dead. Eaten.
"And the woman he loved? He never saw her again.
"But he remembered her scent. The heat of her. The way her eyes glowed sometimes, just before dawn, as if she weren't entirely human.
"And she wasn't."
---
The room had grown darker now. Shadows stretched long across the wooden floor. The fireplace crackled gently.
Abdiel leaned forward slightly, his voice softer. "That woman was Lamia. And she fed on his innocence. His capacity to dream. She fed on what made him him."
The children stared, wide-eyed.
"And so, my little ones," he said, placing his hands on his knees, "when people fall apart without cause, when the world goes grey too early, it might not be depression. It might not be trauma. Sometimes..." He paused. "Sometimes they've been fed on."
---
Years later, long after his stories had faded from the orphanage halls, Kohen Abdiel sat on a weathered bench in a quiet part of the city. His eyes, now completely white, stared blankly at the fog. His robe was older, his beard longer, but he carried himself with the same calm mystery.
He heard the footsteps before he smelled the sweat and cologne. A mix of youth and worry.
"Samuel," he said.
The young man stopped in his tracks. "How'd you know it was me?"
Abdiel smiled and tilted his head.
"I know you, my boy. I know all of you. Even the ones who try to run from their pasts. And I know... you've had an encounter with Lamia too."
Samuel's breath hitched. He sat slowly beside the blind man.
"Really?" he whispered. "How... how could you tell?"
Abdiel turned slightly. "Because I can smell her on you."
A long pause.
"What does she smell like?" Samuel asked, trying not to sound afraid.
Abdiel's expression grew distant, almost mournful. "Like sex," he whispered. "Not the fumbling kind. Not lust. But the kind that feels ancient. Sacred. Like you're being consumed and exalted at once. That's how she eats the inner child. Through rapture."
Samuel looked away, swallowing hard. His fingers trembled.
"She was so beautiful," he said. "But it was more than that. When we were together... I felt like I was dissolving. And afterward—" His voice broke. "—I stopped caring about my art, about my future. Even food doesn't taste like anything anymore."
Abdiel got to his feet.
Samuel called after him. "Wait... what can I do? Now that she's eaten it? Is there a way to get it back?"
The blind priest chuckled. Not unkindly.
"You can't do anything, my boy."
Samuel's heart sank.
Abdiel's voice dropped to a near-whisper. "Just like I couldn't do anything when I fell in love."
He walked away slowly, his cane tapping gently on the cobblestones.
Samuel sat on the bench long after he was gone, staring into the fog, heart beating like a ticking clock.
Behind him, somewhere down the street, came the soft sound of heels. And a woman humming a lullaby in a language he didn't know.
END