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#original horror short story
yandere-writer-momo · 13 days
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Yandere Short Stories:
Limerence (Prequel)
Yandere Rebellion Leader x Princess Reader
TW: Yandere behaviors, mentions of past SA (on yandere’s part), murder, death, blood, a man slaughtering your entire family to be with you, etc
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(Your name) quietly sobbed into her knees, her body curled tightly into a ball on the floor of her closet. The loud screams of the servants ring out through the hallways. Not a single doubt in her mind that the castle staff were being slain like cattle by the rebel troops.
When did everything go wrong? Would she soon join the rest of the castle’s inhabitants when the troops inevitably found her? Would they be merciful or would they gut her like a fish?
(Your name) didn’t want to think about it too much… she just hoped her death would be quick and painless.
Crack! Slam! Her door was splintered apart with brute force that made the closet doors shake. (Your name) quickly covered her mouth before she screamed out in fear. She didn’t want to alert the intruder of her whereabouts…
(Your name)’s breath hitched when she spotted a pair of leather shoes that stood outside the closet door through the crack of the door. Oh god… this was it.
(Your name)’s arms flew up to shield her face but strong hands quickly moved her arms out of the way so soft lips could be lovingly pressed against her soft cheeks.
“It’s okay… it’s me.” A smooth voice hummed softly while he continued to pepper (your name)’s face in kisses. “It’s Adonis.”
(Your name) reluctantly peeked her eyes open to see if his words rang true. Adonis’s chocolate curls were wild and his sea foam green eyes were filled with admiration. This was indeed her handsome childhood friend who stood before her.
“A-Adonis?” (Your name)’s brow furrowed in confusion. Why on earth was her stepmother’s personal servant here and why did he press kisses all over her like she was his lover? Didn’t he belong to her stepmother?
Adonis hummed in reply, his actions failed to cease while his hands now cupped her cheeks. “Yes, darling. It’s me… I’m here to get you out of here.”
(Your name) was shocked to be pulled into a warm embrace. Adonis’s muscular body did little to soothe her nerves, quite contrary. Adonis’s hug felt like a cage.
“Where’s my stepmother-“ (your name) nearly squealed when Adonis nipped at her neck. An angry red mark now visible on her smooth skin. “Adonis, what was that for-“
“She’s not in the picture anymore.” Adonis inhaled deeply to try to calm himself before he lashed out any further from the mention of his despicable mistress. “She interfered in our relationship for far too long.”
Relationship? What was Adonis talking about?
“Adonis?” (Your name) then noticed the speckles of blood that covered his tan face in shock. Blood?! Adonis wasn’t bleeding so whose blood could that be… no. Did this mean Adonis betrayed the royal family?
No… Adonis had been with her family for over a decade. They grew up together! Adonis and her were always such good friends! So why would he slaughter her family in the name of love?
“I love when you say my name, darling.” Adonis bent down and pressed his full lips against yours in a tender peck. “We no longer have to worry about what others think. I abolished this unfair system.”
(Your name) felt tears run down her face as Adonis continued to ramble. His sea foam green eyes lit up with madness. “We don’t have to sneak around anymore! You and I can finally be together, the way we were always meant to be.”
Realization sunk into (your name) at Adonis’s words. Did he mean the moments the two of them would run into each other in the rose garden at night? The nights where she’d have nightmares of fire and death while he would be slipping out of her stepmother’s chambers? The times she’d sit beside him on the bench and listen to each other’s woes? Adonis and (your name) always had a friendship since they were children… to think he interpreted her kindness for love was astounding. What on earth made him think she loved him?
“I’m so happy to finally be free. I no longer have to touch that vile woman ever again.” Adonis gave you a bright smile. “You were my singing light through this entire ordeal of my servitude. Without you, I’d be so lost.”
Adonis pulled her towards the window of her tower to gesture to the various fires set ablaze on the castle she once called home. The same scenery she often saw in her nightmares have become a reality.
“I destroyed it all. You’ll no longer have nightmares and I’ll no longer have to be intimate with our enemy!” Adonis gave you a bright smile when he took your smaller hands in his large ones. “This is the biggest gesture I can give you to express my utmost feelings to you. I’d set the whole world ablaze if they opposed us. It doesn’t matter the extreme, because I’m willing to go to any length to be with you.”
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kix-mm · 6 months
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I will find you pt2
Previous
@smallsday @devourerofcheesecake
You kept everyone in the shed, the monster eventually passed further into the neighborhood while calling out to you & your family. It seemed that everyone in the area was aware of this dire situation and had taken shelter and turned all the lights off. It made it quite difficult for the large creature to see anything.
Before you could make your decision your neighbors child finds you hiding in the shed, when you asked why they came over they explain that nobody was home and that they had an eerie feeling they were being watched. You reassure them that they made the right decision to leave the house, as it would have no longer been safe…
You have found an old backpack, it’s in decent condition and can hold 4 items.
You decide to pack while your eldest keeps watch and your neighbor helps you pack, though due to the only source of food coming from the outside freezer you don’t find much useful.
You find: 1 dirty backpack, 1 child & 1 frozen water
You have: 3 children. 1 light. 1 backpack (2/4 1 water & 1 spade)
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lavender-laney · 9 months
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project intro, choking on sea salt
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choking on sea salt
chapter 1, chapter 2 part one, chapter 2 part two
genre . gothic horror, folk horror
status . outlining, drafting
tag . #choking on sea salt
a fishing village with a foggy history. whispers and visions of century-old evils. unexplained shipwrecks and an ocean no one is permitted to step foot near.
if you're a fan of vengeful sirens, feminine rage, or the concept of "coastal gothic" (in the same vein as southern gothic), then choking on sea salt may draw your interest...
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summary .
sadie is a young journalist intending only to study the history of a remote fishing village. upon her arrival, however, the residents are distrustful and avoidant of her questions. it is forbidden to step onto the beaches or into the water, and the ocean elicits a visceral fear in the locals. more notably, though, is the startling lack of women, and sadie’s attempts to speak with the few women present are repeatedly thwarted or outright denied. sadie’s suspicions are growing, her notebook contains more questions than answers, and the eerie song echoing through the night is drawing her closer and closer to the ocean – and the century-old evils that lie in wait beneath it.
please let me know if anyone would like to be added to the tag list for posts about this wip!
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jgmartin · 9 months
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THE TALL THINGS ARE WATCHING
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We can’t leave the house.
They’ve boarded up our doors and windows, started shooting people trying to break free. There are things in the streets. Tall things. I see their shadows sometimes as they run past the wooden boards. I hear the rumble of their feet.
I don’t know what they are. None of us do.
They cut our access to television and the internet when the lockdown began. They even took out the cell tower. Anne said they didn’t want us communicating with the outside world, telling them about what’s going on out here. I think she’s right.
It’s been two weeks since the men in suits came by. They said they worked for government intelligence and that they were looking for a terrorist. They didn’t strike me as government types, personally. They looked distracted. Spaced out. More like Scientologists than CIA agents, but then I’ve never met a Scientologist or a CIA agent, so who was I to tell the difference?
Either way, they said it would be over soon, and they sounded official. More importantly, they had guns. “We’ll need to search every household,” they explained. “We can’t have anybody leaving before we’ve cleared their property, so we’ll have to board you in.”
It made sense, I guess. In a twisted dystopian nightmare sort of way. It made sense all the way up until the end of the fourth night, when the Tall Things started roaming the streets. They were dressed in long raincoats. Hooded. The way they moved gave me the chills, all jerky and snapping, so I stayed away from the windows.
Anne didn’t mind though. She was fascinated by them. Her and our gun-nut neighbor, Old Ty, exchanged theories written on pieces of cardboard, holding them up to the glass of our windows. GOVERNMENT EXPERIMENT, she wrote on hers. ALIEN INVASION, he wrote on his.
At first, it seemed to just be a bit of innocent, morbid fun. Finding some humor in a bizarre situation. Then Anne watched one of the Tall Things kill somebody, and everything changed.
It was an elderly man in our cul-de-sac, Mister Douglas. Anne watched him open his door, hammer down the boards as one of the Tall Things walked by. He shouted at it. Told it to get over here so he could see just what kind of unholy bullshit his tax dollars were being used to fund.
Next thing you know, there’s sirens in the streets. Soldiers rushing his home. There’s a megaphone shouting at him to get back inside. All of it is useless. All of it happens far too late, because the moment Douglas starts yelling at the Tall Thing, it starts to twitch and jerk like it can’t control its own behavior. Like a predator hungry for a meal.
It snaps its head toward Douglas, then tears across his lawn and snaps him up in its long, spider-like hands. It lifts him off the ground. Then, he screams. He screams and he screams until the Tall Thing lowers the hood of its rain jacket, and then Douglas goes pale as a ghost. Silent.
According to Anne, that’s when the skin of his face started to bubble and pop. That’s when he started hissing out steam, smoking as his flesh sizzled beneath his clothes, as if he were boiling alive from the inside out. Next thing you know, he’s dripping onto the pavement. Dripping and dripping until there’s nothing left of him but a puddle of flesh and clothes.
Nobody tries to step in. Not any of the soldiers, not Anne, and not even Old Ty and all his guns. Everybody watches in stunned silence as the Tall Thing finishes its execution and saunters away.
The soldiers roam with them. The soldiers and the people in long white clothes. Anne says they’re lab coats, and the people are researchers studying the Tall Things as experiments, but I think they look more like robes– like clergymen. All of them wear helmets with tinted visors. It’s as though they don’t want to get a good look at the things.
After Mr. Douglas, more people on the block decided to make a break for it. Maybe they realized this was worse than they thought. Maybe they started wondering what the point of keeping us locked away like this was– were we food for these creatures? Were they trying to turn us into them?
None of us knew. All we could say for certain is that the killing didn’t stop with Mr. Douglas. I woke up one morning to see several of my neighbors shot dead in their yards, their lifeless eyes gazing back at me from the grass. Nobody came to pick them up. They were left there to rot, picked apart by birds and stray dogs.
Soon, gunshots were ringing out at all hours of the day. People wanted out, but the soldiers wouldn’t let them leave, and so the bodies began to pile up. Eventually I think Anne and I were the only two left alive in our cul-de-sac. Even Old Ty had seemed to vanish. Probably shot dead in his backyard.
I’d rarely known death in my life, and now the sheer volume of it was numbing me. I couldn’t process it. I didn’t know how. But then, almost out of the blue the government had a change of heart. Or maybe they just shifted tactics. Suddenly they began letting people leave.
I saw it first with a house at the very end of the road. I watched the woman who lived there break out with a baby tucked in her arm and a grade-schooler holding her hand. The three of them darted across their lawn, jumped over their father’s corpse and piled into their minivan on the street.
The entire time, a soldier and white-coat stood only meters away, quietly observing. It didn’t take long for the rumbling to begin– that telltale sound of approaching death, of one of the Tall Things coming to claim its prize. The van started up, backfiring a plume of exhaust into the air. I listened as the woman shrieked for joy, but I knew the joy would be short lived.
See, from my vantage point at the end of the lane, I saw something that she never could. The boot locked around her rear tire. The van rode forward as she pressed the gas, and then clunked to a stop. My heart broke. The look on her face, the desperation wasn’t for her– it was for her children in the back.
The rumble reached a crescendo, and in the blink of an eye a Tall Thing crashed into the van and knocked it over like a diecast toy. I couldn’t make out much beyond that. Nothing but the sound of the monster tearing into the roof of the van and pulling the crying children out one by one while their mother begged for mercy.
If I were a better, stupider man I may have kicked down my door and tried to save them, but I wasn’t. I was a coward. Instead, I fell to my living room carpet and cried. I laid there and listened as their flesh popped and sizzled, as their skin fell to the pavement in long, heavy drips.
It’s a sound I’ll never forget.
The next day, things got worse. The soldiers no longer cared about enforcing the lockdown or even keeping people safely indoors. Now they were breaking them out. Like hungry wolves, they tore down boarded-up doors and kicked in living room windows, dragging families out onto their lawns for slaughter. If the screams were horrible before, now they were unbearable. You couldn’t ignore them. Anne and I cranked our sound system to the max, but it only served as background static. The dying cut through everything.
That night we barely slept. Anne tossed and turned beside me, while I stared blankly at the ceiling fan above. There was an understanding between us. We had been abandoned. There was nobody coming to help us, nobody coming to arrest these monsters and save the day. We were alone.
How long until her and I were dragged out of our home? How long until we became the next experiment chained to our fence, waiting to be attacked by one of those creatures? Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Neither of us knew, and somehow that made it all the worse.
I woke up to sunlight peeking through our boarded-up bedroom window. Anne was missing. I looked all over the house for her before I found her note on the kitchen counter, scribbled quickly.
I know you’re afraid, the note read, but I have to leave. You might think we’ll make it through this, that once they’ve had their fill of guinea pigs they’ll let the rest of us go free, but I promise you they’ll come for us soon. This might be my last chance. Since you won’t come with me, I’m going alone. I wish I could have said a proper goodbye, but I know you’d try to stop me.
Love always,
- Anniebear
She left through the basement hatch. I know this because I spotted her corpse some five feet away through our kitchen window. She gazed back at me, a look of shock painted across her pale face, with a small red dot where the bullet pierced her skull. I couldn’t even muster the courage to step out and bury her. Instead the racoons and dogs took care of her, one piece at a time.
She was right, though. Eventually they did come for me.
It was over a week later. By then I didn’t have the will to resist. I waited patiently at the kitchen table, drunk with a glass of whiskey as soldiers and white-coats dragged me from the house. When I’d seen it happen to other people, it seemed to occur so quickly. Now, it happened in slow motion.
I heard every word from the soldier's mouth. Every command. First, he patted me down and ensured I was disarmed, then he told me this was all routine and nothing to worry about. Together they took me out into my yard. The white-coat asked me if I had lived a good life, if I had been a man of faith. I didn’t know what to say. Maybe I was simply too drunk, or maybe I truly didn’t care anymore.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” the white-coat assured me. “You’ll be at peace once it’s over, brother.”
In the distance came the growing rumble of the monster’s feet. Of the Tall Thing coming to claim its bounty.
“How many more after this?” the soldier asked the white-coat, his hand painfully gripping my shoulder.
“Sixteen.”
“Then us, sister?”
“Then us.”
The rumbling deepened. The Tall Thing was getting closer, and soon my heart was beating in sync with its stampeding footfalls. Memories flashed in my mind. Memories of Anne, of my dead neighbors, of the mother who lived at the end of the road and her children, now puddles of flesh on the pavement. My hands became fists. Indignation and fury grew inside of me, stoked by whisky fumes.
“Why do this?” I growled. “Why not just put a bullet in my head?”
“Because we love you, brother,” said the white-coat. “You waited patiently. You had faith, and for that you will be rewarded with salvation. You will be raptured.”
The Tall Thing rounded the corner, its legs slapping against the ground in great strides. Its frame eclipsed the moon, casting a shadow across me and stealing the breath from my lungs. It slowed down as it reached my lawn, sauntering this way and that.
“What are they?” I whispered.
“The ones that made us,” the white-coat replied. “Those that gave us life.”
I shrank away as the Tall Thing neared, but the soldier shoved me forward. “Be strong, brother. Show it your conviction. We were brought to this planet long ago, but now our time is served and we’re finally going home. Don’t you want to go home?”
The Tall Thing reached up to its hood. As it did, the soldier’s grip loosened and both he and the white-coat stepped to the side, away from the creature’s view. I would not scream, I told myself. No matter what, I wouldn’t give these monsters the satisfaction of my terror.
It pulled back on its hood, and something grotesque looked down on me. It was as if a hundred different faces had been stitched together, fused into an abomination that seemed to smile from fifteen mouths. “We come in peace,” it said.
My teeth bit into my cheeks, clenching them closed. A whimper escaped me, a whimper and a groan as my stomach filled with a soup of boiling horror. I would not scream. No matter the pain-- I would not scream.
Its long, spindly hands gripped my face. It cocked its head to the side, a hundred different eyes blinking back at me. Then it tugged at the bottom of my mouth.
But I wasn’t going to let it have its way. I clenched my jaw, holding it closed. The creature blinked at me. Then it repositioned its grip.
Crack.
It snapped my jaw like cardboard. I roared in agony, my lower mouth hanging limply from my face. Tears fell from my eyes in a torrent.
“Shh,” it whispered, slipping a finger down my throat. I choked and gagged. It fished its finger around as a hundred different eyes rolled back, and fifteen mouths began muttering an alien language.
I struggled against it, pulling at its arm but it was useless. The monster was too strong. Then a gunshot rang out.
And another. The Tall Thing wheeled around, dropping me onto my lawn as the soldier began shouting into his radio. The next second, a bullet found the soldier in the head. The white-coat shrieked, fleeing around my fence as a round caught her in the shoulder. The Tall Thing shot up to its full height, standing level with the street lamps and then sprinted toward the shooter.
Toward Old Ty.
He’d set up a killzone on his roof, surrounded by rifles and ammo. He’d waited for a moonless night to do his business, and now he was raining lead onto the creature like a blizzard of death. “What are you waiting for?” he bellowed. “Get moving, dipshit!”
I did. I stole away, hiding in shrubs and behind sheds, watching as Tall Things came roaring down streets, jumping over houses and knocking over cars as they tried to reach Old Ty. He only lasted a few minutes. That’s when the shooting stopped, but it was enough time for me to get away.
Maybe enough time for others, too.
It took me three hours to hike through Debby Forest and make it to the next town, and once I did I breathed a sigh of relief. There weren’t any soldiers. No white-coats. Most importantly, there weren’t any Tall Things melting people in their clothes. Just quiet stillness, the thing early mornings were meant for.
I made my way to the sheriff’s department to blow the whistle on what was going on. To explain that people were being shot, that Tall Things were melting people on the street and that we needed to get our ass in gear and call in the National Guard– no, scratch that. We needed to call in fucking NATO.
But as I got to the door of the precinct I stopped. Something gleamed in the corner of my eye, catching my attention. It was there, at the edge of the curb. A puddle.
Strange thing was, it hadn’t rained in weeks.
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crown-ov-horns · 16 days
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Captured Angel
Michael Langdon x F!Angel!Reader
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Contains: vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, elements of coercion, implied loss of virginity, blasphemy, hierophilia
“Good, you’re awake.”
A chill ran down your spine. You had awakened in an unfamiliar room. Your head ached, your wings hung limp, and your limbs were heavy. The air was soaked to the last thread in malice. It made you nauseous. Gritting your teeth, you dragged yourself up, your mind aflame with a single thought – you had to get out. You looked around, but before you could spot a way of escape, you felt a presence. Dark... Darker than the blackest night. Your heart froze in your chest, a taste of iron suddenly coating your tongue. Though you had not seen his face, you could recognize him anywhere. Seven heads. Ten horns. His honeyed voice left a cold, oily trace on your very soul as he spoke. You drew a deep breath, and spun around, to meet a pair of piercing blue eyes.
His lips crooked into a smirk. Holding your gaze, he moved towards you. You drew back.   
“Get away from me, filthy Beast...” you snarled.
Deep down, you loathed yourself for the instinctive reaction. You were a soldier. You had a duty to stand your ground, and instead, you cowered. He promptly crossed the gap between you two.
“Ah-ah!” he scolded, clasping your chin “That’s not very nice, now, is it?..”
You grimaced. Michael Langdon. How ironic, for Satan’s son to bear your General’s name. The one who cast him out... You hoped it hurt the Evil One greatly. Michael caressed your cheek. You winced, and pushed his hand away. Sneering, he grabbed you by the throat.  
“Why am I here?” you hissed through gritted teeth.
He glanced down at your heaving chest.
“You’re my captive” he purred “Isn’t it obvious?”
You swallowed. Struggling would only worsen your chances, you knew as much. His gaze darkened with hunger as he watched you – like a wolf, salivating at a wounded deer. Your guts had coiled into a tight knot, a sickly sweet taste coating your mouth.
“Why didn’t your bootlickers kill me?” you asked, not quite certain if you wished to know the answer.
A chuckle escaped his lips. The Antichrist’s lecherous expression made your blood boil. How dare the abomination touch an angel of the Lord, you thought. A strange sensation was budding between your legs, but you pointedly ignored it, just as you ignored the feeling of unease clawing at the back of your skull.   
“That would’ve been a waste...” Michael tilted his head “They thought a gift would please me. They weren’t wrong...”
You snarled, attempting to pull away.
“Get your putrid hands off me!”
He tightened his grip on your neck.
“Hush” he coaxed in a mockingly gentle voice “I’m not going to hurt you, angel.”
“Vile creature...” you spat.
He pulled you closer. You bared your teeth, as your face almost crashed into his. Though you did not need air, the pressure on your throat was beginning to make you dizzy. Every nerve in your body screamed to fight - your muscles   had tensed, prepared for combat. You might have broken away. Escaped this unholy place. You should have at least tried... But, perhaps because of the mist gathering over your mind, your legs trembled underneath you. You found yourself staring at his mouth. His breath brushed against your skin, warm and silken. Your pulse leapt into a frenzy.
Michael snuck his other hand under your clothes. The captors had stripped you of your armour, and taken away your sword, leaving only your linen tunic to cover you. His fingertips caressed your thigh, slowly creeping upwards. You held your breath as you felt him part the soft folds of your skin.
You had never been fondled like this before. Carnal pleasure was forbidden for your kind. You should be disgusted, you understood as much. Still, the electric-like impulse roused by his touch paralyzed you, preventing you from breaking his arm.
He stroked your entrance. You stifled a gasp, your intimate muscles tightened in anticipation. Your hole was beginning to well with slick. Taking your lack of resistance for a welcome, he slipped two fingers inside you. The feeling of his skin against your sensitive membrane made your head spin, and you barely held back from bucking your hips into his hand.
He let go of your neck, only to wrap his arm around your waist. Keeping you steady, he spread his fingers wider, straining you until it hurt. You shuddered. He massaged the velvety walls of your flesh, driving you to the edge of madness. Aware of how much satisfaction hearing your cries would give him, you clenched your jaw. His skin grazed against a certain knot of nerves, and you nearly sunk to the ground as your legs buckled from the bolt of stimulation. Still, somehow, you did not make a sound.
It only made Michael more determined. He fixated on your sweet spot, leaving you to desperately clutch the lapels of his jacket. His mouth lingered but a thread away from yours - you felt his heartbeat echo against your rib cage. He narrowed his eyes, and pressed his thumb to your clit. Overwhelmed, you drew a sharp breath.
“Enjoying yourself, aren’t you?..” he teased “What is it, my dear? What do you want, hm?”
He pushed a third finger into your dripping slit. You whined in pleasure muddled with despair.
“Speak up, angel” he demanded.
Virtue be damned. Something tameless had infected you. Caught in the furor of sin, you eagerly cast your innocence aflame.
“I...” you stammered “I want... I need you to ravish me...”
Michael threw you onto the bed, and climbed on top of you. Laying flat on your back, your wings sprawled open, you looked up at him, your eyes sweetly half-lidded. His knee shoved between your thighs, he ripped the front of your tunic open. You sighed as cold air brushed against your nipples. He placed his hands on your breasts, savouring the softness of your bare skin. His eyes aflame with lust, he took a moment to admire your flushed, helpless body. Biting your bottom lip, you pushed your chest into his touch. He grabbed you by the throat again.
“You’re mine” he snarled “Mine alone...”
Against your better judgement, you nodded. Your gaze wandered down to his crotch, causing your mouth to immediately water. Michael’s lips crooked into a sleazy smirk. He unbuckled his pants, and slipped his underwear down. Your eyes widened as his hard cock sprung free. Large, but not obscenely so. You pulled the skirt of your tunic up, leaving your aching cunt at his mercy.
He pinned you down under his full weight. You wrapped your arms around him, savouring the feel of luxurious fabric under your fingers. Like an animal in heat, you craved to feel him inside. His eyes locked with yours, Michael clasped your leg, and positioned himself more comfortably. You blindly caught hold of his member, helping guide it into your hole.
Your heart skipped a beat – you let out a moan as your membranes clamped around him. Hardly giving you a moment to adjust, he began to move. The sudden strain roused a twinge, but it soon was obscured by shattering pleasure. No longer holding back your mewls and whimpers, you sank your nails into his back. Should the expensive suit get ruined, it will be his fault.
Michael groaned, his teeth bared in primal satisfaction. Your response only encouraged him, and he quickly picked up the pace. Each thrust sent a shattering wave of pleasure through your fevered nerves. You wrapped your legs around his waist, welcoming them. He traced the tip of his tongue over your neck. You hissed as his long hair tickled you, overwhelming your senses even more. He purred, and nipped at your jaw.
“Kiss me” you demanded.
He obeyed, leaning down to press his mouth against yours. You parted your lips for him, and allowed your tongues to battle for dominance.
“Say my name” he ordered, upon pulling away.
“I can’t...” you gasped in horror.
“Your general isn’t here...” he growled “It’s just you and me...” he pressed his face to your temple “Say my name, sweetheart. Show the Beast how much you’re enjoying your downfall.”
He pulled his cock almost all the was out, then slammed it back in, roughly grazing your sweet spot. Your cried out, and sank your fingers into his hair. You didn’t want to think about her. You loathed to imagine her disappointment in you. But his presence eclipsed her face. Drowned it in the storm of ecstasy ravaging you.
“Michael!”
“Good girl” he praised with a grin.
Shock after shock of ecstasy tore through your body, setting every cell of it aflame. Your forehead was laced in sweat. Your muscles quivered from the tension. You were close. Very close. Turned feral by the pleasure, he grabbed you by the wrists, thrusting into you with merciless force.
“Michael...” you moaned.
You couldn’t stand it anymore. You arched your back, trembling and convulsing as a scream escaped your throat. Michael threw his head back with a snarl. You had grown painfully tight around him, prompting him to reach his own release. You felt him spill inside you – it was the strangest, most pleasant sensation  you had ever experienced.
You collapsed into the pillows, limp and gasping for breath. He slumped down on top of you. For a moment, you allowed yourself to soak in the glowing haze of bliss. But, just when he had crept off of you, and was about to pull you into his arms, you leapt up. Using his surprise for your advantage, you climbed onto him – this time, you were the one to pin him down. You caught his gaze, and drew a dagger from underneath your ruined tunic. Afraid to molest their master’s gift, the devil worshippers had missed it.
“You will find the men who captured me, crucify them, and bleed them like pigs” you growled, pressing the blade against his throat “Do you understand me, Antichrist?”
A drop of blood sept from under the metal, glowing against his milky skin in a warning.
“Yes” he murmured, as his eyes blazed with adoration.
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ranuunculus · 4 days
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panels from a comic I made superimposed together
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mekanikaltrifle · 3 days
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Equinox: Sick Dogs
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In which the vampire hunter meets with a friend, to explore his latest hunt; a death in a High Street shopfront gone unnoticed by the bustling public, and a forgotten stray afflicted with some unknown curse...
CHAPTER ONE
Fifteen nights. Fifteen nights, but thirteen days, I’ve been tracking this one bloodsucker.
I need a better job. This blows.
I throw the dictaphone onto my couch. Stupid piece of plastic-- probably should capitalise the ‘D’ in that, since it’s a brand name, or refer to it as its generic name but that’s the sort of shit I do not have the patience for these days. Or nights? Anyway, the thing is stupid, but it helps me keep my thoughts in order, and doesn’t need a ‘net connection to function unlike far too many things these days. Or nights.
So, the bloodsucker. I’ll get you up to speed with it, order of business and all that. Shop talk. The whole razzle dazzle, so to speak.
I know vampires well enough. Blood-drinking immortal bastards, move under cover of night, come with a bunch of weird abilities and superhuman traits. Most of ‘em look like monsters too, as far as I’ve seen. Bat-like ears, animal teeth, claws, grey skin, weird off smell, the whole kit and caboodle y’know? On the regular they’re also pretty low-key, so people like me don’t find them, and so that humans at large don’t know they’re around. Take it from me, it’s easier to hunt when nobody can see you, and nobody’s expecting you either.
Thing is, the low-key approach means it’s usually the fuck-ups that get spotted by monster hunters. The ones that kill are the ones that get caught, eventually. Being immortal doesn’t make you immune to consequences, nor are you above retaliation. Especially when the shit you’re doing with your immortality is killing folks who already have it rough, and you even take the chance to survive off of them? Fuck vampires, is all I can say in short.
So how did I find this job?
I started tracking this one from what looked like a failed hunt. Found a young man lying against a shopfront window with a chunk ripped out of his neck. He wasn’t conscious, but for a few minutes he was still alive, and after kicking in the glass door and setting off the alarm, I did what I could to staunch the blood. Tried to call the ambulance as well, but I have issues with phone lines. And speaking to people. Forgive me if I don’t go into that right now.
There were people nearby. It was right on the high street, for fuck’s sake. He shouldn’t have been ignored, but there were just people walking by like nothing was happening, as if I hadn’t just kicked a door out, loudly, and sprinted into a locked shop with the alarms blaring off. But the high street punters just kept right on going for their late in the day Christmas shopping as if I wasn’t holding a dying man in my arms. It was surreal. I’m no stranger to weirdness, but the worst part was that even after I hit 999 and dialled up help (however troublesome) the ambulance didn’t even come. I sat there waiting, even after there was nothing left to save, and nobody came to help. It was like he and I didn’t exist. I could hear the operator on the other end asking if there was anyone there, and I didn’t answer because I couldn’t, but eventually she barked something down the line and it went dead. Only when what I guess was the store’s manager came to check the alarms, did I get up and leave the dead young man to what would come next. Blended into the dark in the back of the shop and fucking legged it out the lorry bay before anyone could notice me. Easy enough, but that’s besides the point.
I kept thinking about how open and callous that was. And clumsy. Most vampires I’ve ever tracked from hunts either only manage to kill someone once or twice before we track them down… or are subtle enough to successfully hunt over the long term. They don’t take so much their victim dies. Back-alley muggings and late night cold calls, break-ins and nightclub pulls of dubious consent. That’s usually what vampires rely on. Only way they get through the nights, and since most are confined to the hours after sunset, it’s also far easier to prey on the people nobody thinks about after closing time.
But I was running, and thinking. I do my best thinking sitting down, but this work doesn’t come with breaks when there’s someone just off to the beyond.
The poor lad, he’d been wearing a shitty polyester work shirt, and had a sticking plaster over his finger. The shop itself is the sort of place that sells screws and work tools and power drills and stuff, nothing special. This was also probably why it was closed a bit earlier than the other shops; they are running their late-opening hours for Christmas shoppers, but who’s buying tools late on? I think he’d been cashing up for the end of day. I wonder if he’d had someone waiting for him at home? A mum or a dad, or a boyfriend? Or girlfriend, I suppose? He looked at most twenty-five, but probably a good bit younger than that. Maybe younger than me? Whoever he was, I didn’t find a name-badge and he was never conscious enough to say anything. He was round-faced and scruffy looking, and sort of boyish. Charming, I hoped. Not sure about personality but he died quietly. Something tells me that wasn’t fair on him.
I’d have already had a lot to think about if I didn’t bump into anything else that night.
I still had a lot of blood on my hands, and it was drying. Sometimes I forget to clean it up promptly; nobody was gonna see me and I’m only human, but this definitely got me attention I didn’t need.
So I turn into a back street behind the shopping arcade-- you’d know the one, used to lead onto the BHS before that apparently closed?-- and was greeted with the second ugly sight of the late-afternoon. As of right now I’m not entirely sure what the thing was, but it certainly wasn’t someone’s fluffy puppy lost on the street. It was four-legged, sure, but its coat was a ragged black mess with some sort of nasty stuff dripping off it. It had a head in the same place a dog should have, though its skull was the wrong shape, studded with these awful white embers for eyes and entirely bare in places, so I could see the bones under bits of scabby ligament. Only thing that didn’t look rotten were its teeth-- all of those were sturdy, sharp and very much in its head. It couldn’t snarl without much soft tissue on its face but it certainly managed to growl.
It noticed me before I saw it too clearly, which I’m going to put in the ‘rookie mistake’ category and be thankful I came out alive. The blood let me down, I’m sure. The thing moved strangely; one minute it was shuffling about unsteady on its feet, and then the next it lunged with a force completely impossible from its shambles of a body. I took the force through my left arm and shoulder- knew it’d bruise straight away- and twisted so it rolled off to the cobbles behind me. Two seconds at most to myself before it got its footing and leapt again, but I managed to duck so it went right over my head, though I caught a scabby paw to the back of my coat. Not the worst thing it’s been soaked in at least, but the weight of a whole dog-monster using me as a springboard wasn’t pleasant.
When it landed in front of me was when I got the good clear look at it like I mentioned a minute ago. Something like that couldn’t be allowed to walk out into the street and attack someone, I knew, but it didn’t look like it really knew it wasn’t meant to be here. Some monsters seem to know they’re wrong, that they shouldn’t be, and it makes them aggressive or devious or confrontational. They taunt you with their impossible natures and they want you to hunt them. Sort of a sick validation, maybe. But creatures like this? They don’t know what they are or why, nor what put them directly in the path of humans or hunters. I would have thought it was totally unintelligent until it looked me in the eye… and whined.
Don’t ask me how I could tell the little burning point of light it had instead of an eye was actively looking me in the eye back. Hopefully you don’t have to meet a monster face-on and work these things out yourself. This is why I tell you stories, no?
It didn’t know a fuckin’ thing, besides sadness. Couldn’t hate something like that, so I crouched down in front of it. The beast didn’t come nearer, but it didn’t attack me either. I think it’d been scared or hungry or something and that’s why it lunged at me? When I got down to its level and held my hand out, it didn’t snap or lunge again, but it did growl. Warning, I think. It reminded me of a neighbour’s upset ‘guard’ dog from my childhood. Before I moved back to England, I lived in a really shitty suburb of Paris, in an arrondissement you’ll never see on a tourist guide, and one of my neighbours had this awful dog. Not even sure what it was, but one night it must have gotten a visit from someone else’s pet and next thing we knew, one dog was six and the puppies were the saddest looking things I’d seen before or since. I remember asking mum or dad if we could try and get one of them, but mum hated dogs and dad was allergic, besides. Clearly didn’t trust me when I said I could look after it in my room, where they didn’t have to go near. Maybe I never forgot the look on their hairy mutt faces as they wandered about the yard at the back, digging pointless holes to nowhere and crying.
The scabby dog-monster went flat to the floor, which I think was fear or deferral or something. Submission? I didn’t want to scare it anymore, so I took my hand away from it and that seemed to do the trick. I was having trouble reading its body language without any ears or facial structures besides teeth, but a minute or so of sitting quietly and not moving too fast meant it calmed down a bit. Maybe its decaying body couldn’t keep up too long, and it did seem to be in pain. Again, not sure how I could tell for sure, but it lay down on the wet floor and whimpered, the poor thing. I think it was tired. Me too, I recall thinking.
It couldn’t close its eyes, but once it was quiet enough, I did my best to put it down with my handgun. It was over pretty fast. That’s the other thing with monsters you’ll never know ‘til you fight them... some just die so easily you wonder how they survived long enough to try to eat you.
I tried to put its body out of sight, because unlike vampires it wasn’t going to just start crumbling to bone and ash right away, and I didn’t want anyone finding it ‘til it wasn’t clear what it had been other than once a dog. Two pointless deaths in one afternoon. I wish I could have said that was a record, but thankfully it’s not every day that happens. Just maybe once every couple weeks.
So, I was now covered in fresh, drying human blood, as well as dirt and indistinguishable monster fluids. Great start to my evening. I ducked into a public bathroom to clean myself off as best I could, and I have never been more thankful for my weird abilities, because the way I looked was awful. I don’t think I smelled much better either. While I was standing there washing my hands, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that I was walking into something- metaphorically, of course- and while I know that’s probably mental illness giving me these ‘tips’… I also have other senses.
I should tell you about them in better detail later, but for now, just believe me when I say I’m better attuned to weirdness and mortal danger than a regular out-of-the-box human being comes as standard. If nothing else, I’m here and explaining things to you that don’t sound real, but they’re more detailed than a random story I made up to scare you, right?
Well, next time I fight a particularly fragrant monster I’ll skip the shower before I come and see you, and then you’ll know what’s up. Maybe I’ll even bring some blood with me, to seal the deal.
Anyway, I watched the flakes of half-rehydrated blood wash down the sink as a guy pissed far too loudly in one of the urinals across the room and I could just feel this strange weight sinking over my skin, even under my clothes. It was like a pressure from the air sinking down on me, like swimming in shallow water right at the edge of a sea shelf… I could feel the depths below.
I’m not sure what it meant, but moments later I looked up into the mirror and I could see shapes in the negative, film negatives overlaid on the glass. Someone running through a hallway made of big heavy stones. Stumbling into the floor as beasts leapt from the dark- or the white, in this inverted scene- and they tore into the person’s legs and arms all violence and snarling. It looked old, far too old to have been filmed. Fantasy-like, it was that old. I didn’t want to watch another death straight away, so I looked away for a few minutes. The loud pisser thought to shake off his business but didn’t bother washing his hands. When I looked back at the mirror, it was frozen and waiting for me to keep watching.
Someone wanted me to see this, for some reason.
The scene ended as expected, with the poor soul being torn to pieces in a level of detail even I didn’t want to know about. In the end, it was just a body, being eaten by hounds. I’m not sure what it was meant to mean. Was it a threat? The mirror was just a mirror, a couple of blinks later and the pressure lifted a little off my skin. Not entirely, mind, but it didn’t feel actively pressing on me anymore. Why was I having to bear witness to this now, after all the other stuff I’d dealt with that day? Shit happening one-after-the-other isn’t news to me in the slightest, but I can still complain.
There was no doubt about it, there was probably a connection, but I have to say I couldn’t make some Holmesian deduction then and there. What I did do was go outside and sit on a concrete wall and think for a bit. Stare into the sky until the last of the light soaked away into the black and the stars presumably came out, deep behind the cover of grey-slate clouds. It being around Christmas, I think that probably put the time at somewhere around 4 or 5pm, but things that move under cover of night will take any night time cover regardless of how early it lands. Christmas doesn’t mean a thing to the supernatural, as far as I’m aware. Doesn’t really mean shit to me either, come to think of it. Nobody to spend it with, regardless, so why bother even if I was Christian inclined?
Oh, don’t give me that look.
So, I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to head back to my safehouse and clean up properly so I could document what was going on. Next steps in the plan were as follows: sleep, get dressed up a bit and then head to the couple clubs I’d found vamps in before to try and gather a bit more information. Oh, and eat probably. In whatever order made sense, and right now I’m fairly certain I ate before I went out but… not sure it matters at this point.
Strangest thing is that things have been pretty quiet since I had the three-for-one deal on vampire bullshit. Well, no, I tell a bit of a lie: there’s a couple of developments I made or came across in the two-ish weeks since that poor boy died, but I think I need to go and research a few things in my books before I tell you more about what happened next. I’d hardly be a good storyteller if I didn’t fill you in with the most accurate info I could, right?
I don’t think I’ll have made any progress on this all by tomorrow but do keep in touch, and I’ll ring you if anything weird comes up. You’re the only soul I’m trusting with all this, and really the only one that’d remember to come back anyway.
Have a quiet night, my friend.
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sasukeisawake · 1 year
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GINGER-ROOT; a short story by @derridaspectres
intertexts: [“ginger” - jana salnikova / “ginger-root” by @derridaspectres / “my mother & i” - lucy dacus / “ginger-root”, ibid. ]
cws: plant horror, mentions of throwing up, auto-cannibalism (i promise it makes sense in context), mommy issues, implied violence and murder 
themes: grief and loss, complex parental relationships, the sublime beauty and horror of the natural world
summary: a disaffected college grad returns home and grapples with the shadow of her vanished mother, her complex feelings towards her familial occupation, and a very tenacious case of embodied overgrowth. 
it’s finally here!!!! this story idea has been knocking around my head for at least a year now, and it feels so so good to finally commit it all to paper. i’ve always been really fascinated by plant horror (particularly the kind showcased in jeff vandermeer’s annihiliation and han kang’s fruit of my woman and the vegetarian), so i had an absolutely blast engaging with that ballpark of ideas while also trying to put my own spin on the concept. i hope you enjoy reading this story, and i’d absolutely love to know what you think of it if you’d be willing to share -- my asks and DMs are wide open! 
tagging @butchniqabi​  aka the lovely amatullah since they mentioned wanting to be pinged for this
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daniel-profeta · 3 months
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Everywhere I Look I See Your Face
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"I used to believe."
When I was a child, I used to look forward to bedtime with a sense of wonder. Each night when I lay on my dirty mattress, I would look for faces in the air around me. Swirling in that hazy DREAMWORLD were angelic presences that nurtured and listened to my cries. I would only see them a few times a year, but when they did decide to reveal themselves; it was uniquely beautiful. Their eyes were soft and kind, their fingers caressing the fog from my breath with gentle strokes of genius. Their searching hands were painting pictures that wandered and fluctuated within the colored dots you see when you stare at a light too long. A bird flying through the eye of a needle. Three golden strings braided into the hair of a puppet. A floating hourglass with the sand swiftly falling to a halting conclusion. Images and shapes swam before my wide eyes and lulled me to a peaceful sleep. The faces watched over me. Over time they came together into one single body. The faces were only one single face, pale and shining in the darkness of my room. The frequency of her visits increased as I got older. Her features became clearer, and she was beautiful to me. She wore a tattered black dress and she sometimes seemed to have wings as she hovered above me. Distinctly I remember hearing her voice calling me. It was faint as a whisper but had the quality and effect of the loudest scream. I was just on the edge of falling asleep and I sat up in bed as her words shot through my head. She was calling my name. She was calling out for me to return to her dwelling place. In that moment I felt a chill, far deeper and colder than anything my frail body had encountered before. This is the cold that sits beyond winter or frost and only inhabits giant refrigeration units in factories. Synthetic and alien, the cold gripped and scared me. That was the end of her. I grew up quickly. One could say I grew up before I was supposed to. Over time I forgot about the angel and as the sand quickened through the glass, I stopped believing in the face that once haunted me. Its features grew sinister, and my memory cast a shadow over thoughts of the creatures that hunt in the night. Then they came. Everything changed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 1234 1234 nothing but faces abcd abcd staring faces ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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The world is dark and the stars are cold now. The glass has run out and my head hurts. I am older and still dwell in the same room I grew up in. As it turns out, drifting through life was the right way to go about it. Life had extraordinarily little meaning aside from that which I assigned to it. I assigned nothing because I was too busy searching for something to hold onto. Someone to tell me what the truth was. But there is none. No truth can save any of us from the unflinching end of our time. Now at the end I wish I could have believed what others believed. I wish I could return to the faith and glory of a past life where I was unflinching and innocent. But the dead eyes have started staring again. Everywhere I look I see your face, and it has grown tired of twisting into that of an angel. False prophets abound in the land of the living dead, and I see her now for the monster she is. There’s nothing I can do though. I am resigned to the fate of constant failure and never-ending letdowns. I’ve learned that hope is the only thing that keeps anyone going at all, and if I must fall and be disappointed to allow myself to hope, so be it. The time is up. The glass is empty. Take me, for I go willingly and embrace the belief which has grown beyond myself. The last thing I saw was your face before I fell asleep again. ----------------------------------------------------
thx for reading
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yandere-writer-momo · 20 hours
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Here me out…
Lesbian/Male Yan who’s a Hair Stylist who uses their big, masculine hands to move your head so they can cut, iron/curl and style your hair THEIR way
And their so big and masculine too, their appearance is so scary and stoic that they rarely ever get any customers, except you, their cute childhood friend/newcomer who just moved here who’s nice enough to even tell them to choose the style for you!
DID SOMEONE SAY LESBIAN 🤤🤤🤤🤤
Yandere Short Stories:
For Those Who Wait
Yandere Butch Hairdresser x Fem Reader
TW: stalking, yandere behavior, unhealthy relationship dynamic, obsession, isolation, wlw dynamic, blood, and murder (mentioned)
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(Your name) sighed dreamily while Char ran her large fingers through her scalp. A smile on her lips at the soothing sensation of conditioner being lathered up on her scalp. (Your name) swore Char’s fingers were like magic.
“Does that feel good, mein Liebling?” Char huskily whispered from above (your name). Her German accent was thick and her voice was a raspy tenor. A deep voice for a masculine woman. “Der Schatz, my fingers could do so much more than just massaging dein (your) scalp.”
(Your name)’s eyes fluttered open to gaze at Char’s tender expression. Char was a woman of immense size and intimidation. The various scars that littered Char’s face did little to deter (your name)‘s fondness of her hair dresser. Who cared about Char’s past when she was so talented with hair? (Your name) never felt prettier unless she was in Char’s care.
“You do more than enough for me. You always style my hair perfectly.” (Your name) gave Char a giant grin. “Plus, my head fits perfectly in your hands.”
If (your name) would have paid better attention, she would have noticed the way Char quickly shut her muscles legs together for some friction.
Was it wrong for this hairdresser to feel such an intense attraction toward her client? To want to press her lips all over (your name)’s while (your name) sat sprawled out on Char’s lap while she cut their client’s hair- Jesus. Char once again let fantasy slip into reality.
Char hummed, her palms rinsed the conditioner off (your name)‘s scalp with warm water. The suds drained down the drain of the rinsing station.
“Let’s head into the dryer. Are you thirsty, Schatz?” Char asked (your name), which made the smaller woman smile.
“I’d love something to drink, Char. You know I’m happy with whatever you pick.” Char nodded and placed (your name) into the dryer and lowering the device on her head.
“I’ll go get that then, mein Liebling. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
(Your name) watched Char saunter off with a bit of pep in her step. Char was such an interesting character. It was a shame (your name) was her only client…
Char went into the back and nearly collapsed on the floor. Her precious client loved whatever she picked! Gods it made her knees so weak. Char felt like a school girl in love again!
Char shook her head and regained her senses. The giant woman opened up the fridge and grabbed a bottle of champagne to pour for (your name).
(Your name) was always so sweet, she deserved the best! And Char had plenty of money from her past as a contract killer. (Your name) would be in good hands once she accepted Char’s love!
(Your name) was new to this town so of course she didn’t know this town was full of ex assassins. It was refreshing to be treated like a human being again!
Char took in a deep breath and poured the champagne into a plastic cup. Her steel blue eyes studied the glass in interest. (Your name) trusted her so it wouldn’t be odd to press her lips against the glass, right? It’d be like an indirect kiss!! There wasn’t anything odd about that…
Char pressed her scarred lips against every inch against the glass’s rim. There was nothing weird about what she was doing… she was just a woman in love.
Char shuddered at the thought of pressing her lips against (your name)’s… but she had to be patient! Char knew her feelings tended to be overwhelming. And she didn’t want to scare away her precious client!
Char brought the glass to (your name) and smiled at the young woman who swung her legs back and forth in the chair. What a good girl.
“I have your drink.”
Yes… she’d be patient. For good things came to those who wait.
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thejournal123 · 4 months
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Being loved by an Artist is like being forever engraved in an old notebook page, or being lost in an old dusty canvas, ever-living in their solitude.
(Idk what I'm doing anymore)
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girlfromthecrypt · 7 months
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It's so hot here that my roommate started shedding his skin. [Short horror story/nosleep]
Marco and I have been living together for over two years now. We never had any issues with our arrangement. We work together to keep the apartment clean, rent gets paid on time and in full every month, and I believe we've actually evolved into being friends over time. Therefore, these problems we've been having really threw me off guard.
It started when Marco staunchly refused to leave his room. I wasn't exactly worried at first. Our area has recently been hit by an extreme heatwave, and since we don't have an AC, I figured Marco locked himself in with a bunch of electric fans. When I went to knock on his door, I could hear them whirring on the other side. It weirded me out that he didn't answer immediately, though. After waiting a couple seconds, I chalked it up to him being asleep, but just as I was about to turn and leave, he called out to me. "Jen?"
I breathed a sigh of relief. At least he wasn't dead. "Yeah, it's me! Just wanted to ask if everything's alright."
"Sure, I'm, uh… great."
His voice gave me pause. It sounded unusual, un*like* him. It was garbled and had an almost hissy quality to it. "You going to the store?"
"Yeah," I answered, trying not to make my discomfort known. "Need anything?"
"Can you get me a sixpack and a bag of ice, maybe?"
I told him I would and upon my return, I found a twenty lying on the floor by his doorframe. "Keep the change," Marco shouted.
I placed the items he'd ordered where his money had been and left, hoping things would be back to normal the following day. Perhaps Marco had caught a heatstroke working outside and that's all there was to it. Temperatures aren't normally that high where we live, so nobody's used to this kind of weather. The day after was a Sunday, and I made breakfast for the two of us like I did every week. Unlike every week, however, Marco wasn't waiting in the kitchen for it to be finished.
At first, I hollered for him to come out and eat with me, but when he didn't answer, I carried a plate of pancakes over to his room. I knocked, then asked into the silence whether he wanted any. I received no response, so I set aside the plate and banged both fists against his door. Still nothing. Both irritated and uneasy, I tried the doorhandle. My roommate and I are very respectful of each other's privacy, and I would never do so if it wasn't a pressing matter. It didn't amount to anything either way. Marco had locked himself in. He was definitely there, though. I heard his chair squeak.
"Are you okay?" I asked. "I can call a doctor, or…"
I trailed off when I saw a note being slid through the crack beneath the door right at my feet. I bent down to pick it up. It was in Marco's handwriting, but decidedly messy; like he'd been in a great hurry and practically spewed ink onto the paper.
*Hey Jen, I'm fine but my throat hurts so I can't talk. I'm sorry but I'm not coming out, I don't want to pass it on to you. I don't need a doctor, I bet I'll be fine in a couple days. Don't worry, ok?*
I frowned at the note, but took the news in stride. What else could I do? I told Marco I'd leave the pancakes outside for him, and not long after I'd returned to the living room, I could hear him dragging the plate inside. I found myself rather missing Marco's presence around the apartment. Three days went by without me catching so much as a glimpse of him. I'd have to walk past his door to get to the bathroom, and I would hear him playing the weather report on his little TV inside every time. On the fourth morning, I found another note, this time on the fridge.
*Hey Jen, I'm going out to see my mom. Be back in a week.*
What the fuck? First he's sick, now he's going on a trip. I was beyond confused. I tried to call him, but he didn't pick up. That wasn't really a surprise. Marco is one of those people who don't ever really use their cell phone. Most of the time, he doesn't even have it on him. Nevertheless, it only added to my growing concerns. Another two days passed and I didn't hear a thing from my roommate. I tried once more to call him when I got off work, just in case. It was already nighttime and Marco normally went to bed quite early, so I didn't really expect him to pick up. And he didn't.
Instead I heard a familiar ringtone coming from his room. It only lasted a few seconds before stopping abruptly, like it had been turned off in a hurry. My stomach sank when the realization set in. Why in the world would he lie to me? This didn't make any sense. The whole situation had the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but despite this, I began heading towards Marco's room. His door looked eerie in the dim lamplight of the hallway. I inched closer, hand outstretched to jiggle the handle. Locked. Of course.
"Marco?" I tried, pressing my ear up to the wood. "What's going on?"No answer. I could hear a squeaking noise coming from inside, like a chair being moved."What the fuck, man," I said, stifling the tremor in my voice. "You're clearly in there, I don't understand…"
That's when I had an idea. There were spare keys to all the rooms in a drawer in the living room cabinet. Neither of us had ever used them before, but there they were.
"Marco, if you're not gonna talk to me, then I'm coming in," I declared with all the determination I could muster. He didn't respond.
"I'm serious, I'm getting the spare and then I'm coming in."
Silence.
I bit my lip, turned on my heel and headed for the living room. My heart was thundering in my chest when I returned with the key. I crammed it into the hole with shaking fingers, turning it once, then twice.
*Click.*
I swallowed, steeling myself before I pushed down the handle and nudged the door open. The motion was accompanied by a drawn-out creaking noise that reminded me I should oil the hinges sometime. With my pulse thrumming in my ears, I entered the darkness beyond the threshold. I couldn't see anything except the limited areas that were illuminated by the ceiling lamp shining in from the hallway. In vain I groped around for the lightswitch, then I decided to give up and just proceed. Something stopped me from going back and grabbing a flashlight. I simply had a feeling I shouldn't turn my back on that room.
Both arms outstretched, I ventured further inside, feeling around for Marco's desk. Soon enough, my palms met with the smooth, hard wood and I braced myself against it almost desperately. "Marco?" I asked, an intangible fear compelling me to whisper. My hands started roaming the surface in front of me. I could feel his laptop, powered off and shut, his mousepad and a set of pens and pencils. Then I moved on to the chair. I flinched when I made contact with something dry and soft hanging over it. At first I thought it was a t-shirt, but the fabric felt almost like extremely thin baking paper. I continued to stroke it, and as my hand went down what was presumably the neckhole, I found that it was warm and damp.
Disgusted, I withdrew from the surely sweat-soaked piece of clothing. Remembering Marco's small desk lamp, I mentally palmed my face for not looking for it sooner. It didn't take me long to locate the switch. As the small light came on, its beam fell onto what I'd *thought* to be a shirt, causing me to recoil in shock. It was skin.
There was an entire fucking skinsuit slung over the back of the chair. It was like a snake's shedding, except tan and pink and human-shaped, with two arms and two legs and a tear in the back from which its wearer must have emerged. The remnants of the face dangled from the ragged neck-scrap, and it looked like the dried remains of one of those cosmetic gel masks. I stared at it for a moment, my eyes bulging and my heart in my throat before I started to violently gag. I clung to the edge of the desk for dear life, trying to keep my thoughts in order.
And that's when I heard it. A garbled, distorted hiss coming from right above me. I whipped my head up just in time to catch a glimpse of a figure scuttling across the ceiling and disappearing into the hallway at an inhuman speed. My mind raced, but before I could think of anything better to do, my feet were already carrying me out the door. I burst into the living room, my face burning as panic spread throughout my body. Inwardly, I was yelling at myself to get out, to leave this place while I still could. Despite this, I followed the sound of dishes rattling into the kitchen.
I hastily flicked on the lights and started looking around for the source of the noise. My stomach was churning and beads of cold sweat ran down my face. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that whatever had been hiding in the shadows could be none other than Marco.
Marco, who was somehow able to walk on the ceiling, who had shed his skin and deposited it on the chair at his desk. Marco, who I'd been living with for two years, who had always been kind and friendly and open, who never argued when it was his turn to clean or take the trash out. Marco, who most definitely wasn't human.
Marco…
Marco was staring at me. I could feel his gaze burning holes into my side. I turned to the right, slowly raising my eyes to the kitchen cupboard. Cowering on top of it, not unlike a wild cat, was my roommate. He had pressed himself against the wall, flattening himself to the cabinet on all fours like a master contortionist. His entire body was of a dripping, aggravated scarlet. His face was bright red, his eyes bulging out of his head; it looked as though the lids were missing. Marco's lips had thinned and receded so his gums were on display—I'd never realized how large his teeth were. Dampened brown curls clung to his neck and temples. Rooted to the spot, all I could do was stare at this thing that my friend had turned into.
He—it—stared back, that same hissing sound emanating from somewhere deep in its throat. Slowly but surely, it loosened from its rigidity and began crawling towards me, sticking to the ceiling like an enormous anthropomorphic gecko. The fluids coating Marco's pink body dripped onto the floor in front of me. I must have forgotten how to breathe altogether. My tongue was bone dry, like a dead leaf lying limp inside my mouth.
"Marco," I muttered. "Marco, this is you, right?"
A rumble rolled from his chest, something akin to a growl.
I raised both my hands, taking a step back as he advanced. "You're okay! I swear," I stammered. "I'm not gonna tell. Whatever this is, I promise I'm not gonna tell."
He stopped and cocked his head, neck cracking. His mouth fell open and his tongue dropped out. It was twice as long as humanly possible. I stifled a shudder, keeping my hands up and forcing myself to assume a soothing expression. "Everything's okay. Stop growling. You know me. We live together. I make you breakfast on Sundays and it's your turn to take the trash out tomorrow."
Marco closed his mouth. He crept over to the left wall and began descending, movements fast and spider-like. Once more standing on two feet, he started walking towards me, step by step, the soles of his skin-stripped feet creating a wet slapping sound on the smooth clean floor. I dropped my arms, focusing on keeping my breathing steady until he finally came to a stop in front of me. "You're okay," I repeated. "You're alright. Can you still hear me? Do you understand what I'm saying?"
A nod. Then, he opened his mouth, forcibly shaping the growls and hissing noises into distorted, almost intelligible words.
"My kind is sensitive to heat."
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jgmartin · 9 months
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CROOKED ANTLERS
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I sit down, pop a piece of spearmint gum and watch the woman across from me. She’s nervous, her hands are fretting in her lap and her eyes are bloodshot. 
“Long night?” I ask. 
She looks up, timidly. Her face is awash in anxiety. She doesn’t understand what’s going on here. She doesn’t understand what she’s doing sitting inside an abandoned warehouse with an asshole twice her age. 
It’s fine. I’ve seen it before. 
“Look,” I say, loosening the tie around my neck. “It’s just like I said. I only want to ask you a few questions, then you can go.”
“Why here?” she says, in a small voice. “This looks like the kind of place you’d take me to… I don’t know, murder me.”
I crack a smile. She isn’t wrong. “You don’t like it? It’s private. Besides that, it’s probably the safest place in the world for you.”
“Why? Do you have snipers on the rafters?” There’s sarcasm in her voice, but her eyes flick to the steel walkways lining the walls. She pulls her sweater tighter around her, shivering at the draft. “Or is this some secret government fortress?”
“No, and no.” I lean back in the wooden chair, and it groans under my weight. Damn. Not as slim as I used to be. “It’s much simpler,” I say. “This warehouse is the safest place for you, because I’m inside of it.” 
It’s not a lie. At least, not entirely. Still, she gives me an incredulous look. It’s the sort of look one reserves for blowhards and narcissists, and I probably deserve it. Time to change gears. “Tell me about the Event.”
She studies me for several moments, and then shakes her head. “On second thought,” she says, picking up her purse. “I think I’d prefer talking to the police.” 
She stands up, makes to leave and I don’t stop her. Her footfalls echo across the empty warehouse, the haphazard lighting casting her shadow in every direction. I hear her mutter something beneath her breath, but I can’t make out the words. I probably don’t want to.
Then, she stops. They always do.
“What’s an Event?” she asks.
I click my pen, and reach down for my clipboard with a groan. The last job did a number on my ribs. “An Event,” I explain. “Is a paranormal phenomenon, most commonly characterized by contact with a sentient entity. To use a more common turn of phrase, it means you stumbled across an urban legend.”
She swallows. At this distance, I can just barely make out her expression, but I already know I have her. I bring my pen to my clipboard and clear my throat. “You said your name was Amanda Haynes, correct?”
“Yes.”
I scribble it down. “And the Event occurred two nights ago, just outside city limits in the Cascade Mountains?”
Her sneakers patter across the concrete floor as she returns to her chair. Her expression shifts; gone is the nervous shyness, the small posture and the darting eyes. She’s staring at me now. She’s deciding whether she’s in or out.
“Yes,” she says at length. “It was in the woods. We were camping.”
I check three more boxes on my clipboard. “Stupendous.” So far the location matches up with previous sightings of the beast. I sigh, resting the clipboard and my lap and place my pen on top of it. “Why don’t we start from the top?”
“Before we do,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “How do I know I can trust you? This feels so... “
“Bizarre?” I offer. 
“Dramatic. Like I’m in an episode of the X-Files.”
“Fair point. You’ve seen my badge.”
“Badges can be faked.”
I bring a hand to my face, tracing along deep scars. “How about these? You don’t get these working for television.”
She’s quiet, skeptical, and her eyes drift down to the clipboard on my lap. She’s analyzing it. Determining if it’s a real government form or not. All things I’ve seen before. She wants to believe, but she isn’t ready yet.
“Let me ask you this,” I say, handing her the clipboard. She begins looking it over. “When you told the search and rescue team a monster attacked you, did they believe you?”
Her eyes meet mine, and I see it: the surrender. She knows as well as I do that I’m her only shot. What she doesn’t know, is she’s my only shot too. I’ve been looking for this legend for close to forty years now. 
One might say it’s been my life’s work. 
“I see your point,” she concedes. “Let’s get this over with.” 
She passes the clipboard back to me and I click my pen, bringing it to the box labeled ENCOUNTER. “Alright. You said that you were camping. Who was with you?”
“Just Rachel,” she says. Her eyes are filled with something. Guilt, maybe. “We’d been friends since elementary school. We hiked together pretty often.”
“Ah,” I say, noting her name on my clipboard. “Rachel Tully, correct?” 
The victim.
Amanda nods. “We went up to get a break from the doldrums of city life. Rachel just got out of a pretty serious relationship, and I didn’t want her cooped up in that apartment, stuck with all those memories.” 
Her voice cracks. Emotion spills into her words. “I suggested we take the weekend and go for a hike into the Cascades. There’s an old trail we spotted the last time we were up there, just off the main path. I said we could follow that, see where it leads us.”
She brings a sleeve to her face, wiping at forming tears. “Rachel didn’t want to. She said she was too depressed to shop for groceries, much less go on such a big hike. I convinced her eventually, though.”
“I see,” I say quietly. “How long was the hike?”
“I don’t know. It was a really old trail, overgrown in parts. There weren’t any mile markings.”
“Ballpark it.”
“Eight miles, maybe? We left early that morning, and it took us seven hours to get up there.”
I whistle, scratching at my gut. “That’s quite the walk.”
“It’s not that bad, honestly. We’d both done longer hikes, on harder trails. We actually didn’t go as far as we intended.”
“Why’s that?” 
“We came across an old cabin. It was run down, with shattered windows and it looked like it hadn’t been lived in for decades.”
My breath catches. I swallow the excitement before it has a chance to leak into my voice. 
“A cabin?”
She nods.
I’d gone looking for that cabin a hundred times. It was never there.
"What sort of cabin?" 
Her eyes leave mine, they’re gazing off at some distant point on the ground, transfixed. She’s replaying the memory. “We figure it must have been an old ranger cabin, which would explain the overgrown trail that led us there.” 
She pauses, her mouth hanging open, words struggling to break free. “Rachel suggests instead of using our tents, we could just stay inside of it. I remind her the windows are busted and it’s the middle of November. Plus, it’s probably filled with spiders. She says all the better. Let’s set up our tents inside the cabin. Double the protection.” 
Amanda gnaws on her bottom lip, her voice growing smaller and smaller with each passing sentence. “There’s dark clouds above us. It was supposed to rain, but it looks worse than that now. A lot worse. It looks like a storm’s coming, so I agree and we head inside to check the place out.”
“What did it look like on the inside?” 
"It looked like... a nest. We spend some time walking around it. It isn’t very big, there’s only a handful of rooms, but there’s… branches and leaves all over the floor. Every step we take, there’s a snap of a twig. 
"The entrance leads through a small kitchen alcove, with a wood stove and dining table, past that it opens up to a living area with some rotting chairs, and at the very end is a bedroom filled with splinters from a broken bed frame. The place is a mess."
The layout sounds familiar. I can almost smell the cedar and feel the toasty warmth of the wood stove burning during cold December evenings. 
“I check out the bedroom first,” she says. “I spot a couple of shattered picture frames. Call it the millennial blogger in me, or call it dumb curosity, but I’m drawn to them. One is old, yellowed and faded. It looks like it could be from the thirties. It’s a picture of a young man and woman, dressed to the nines. Probably their wedding day.” 
She smacks her lips, and then looks up at me. “Do you have anything to drink?”
I nod. “Of course.” I reach down and unclasp my briefcase, opening it up to reveal a stack of documents and three water bottles. Two filled with water, one filled with a black grime. I grab the two filled with water, crack them, and pass one to her. We both take a sip.
“Thanks,” she says, wiping her lips. "All this talking works up a thirst.”
"Sure," I say. "And the other picture?"
“The other picture is more recent. I mean, still old, but not ancient.” She laughs, but it’s a nervous, self-conscious laugh. “It’s a photo of an older guy, and a young kid with this mess of black hair. The two of them are standing outside the cabin holding rifles.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah, I figure it’s probably the ranger that lived there, back when the cabin was operational. Before I can check out anything else though, I hear a snap. It sounds like wood cracking in half, and then a crash. I drop the picture frame and Rachel starts screaming from the other room.”
“Screaming?” I lean forward, my pen scratching at the clipboard. It feels too early for the Callous Man to appear. Certain criteria haven’t been met. Still, if the work of my late colleagues has taught me anything, it’s that legends can evolve, and I keep an open mind to that.
Amanda nods. “Yeah, she’s screaming bloody murder. I storm in there, my bear mace in hand, expecting to see a wolf or cougar or bear, but I don’t see shit. I don’t even see Rachel. I call out to her, and she calls back, but she’s whimpering. The sound is coming from the pantry, just outside the kitchen alcove.”
“I look toward it, but I don’t see her there. I jog over, wondering what the fuck is going on, when I catch sight of the floorboards inside of it. They’re busted. Splintered and shattered. There’s a dark hole in the ground, one big enough for a man to fit through. I almost have a heart attack when her arm reaches out of the blackness.”
Amanda closes her eyes, takes a deep breath. “She shouts at me to get her out of there. I tell her to give me a second, and I take off my jacket and put it over the jutting pieces of broken floorboards, because I don’t want her getting impaled on the things, and then I reach down and pull her up. She’s bawling her eyes out, hyperventilating and once she’s firmly out of the pit, she’s pointing to her foot. I ask her if she’s hurt, and she tells me thinks she twisted her ankle.”
Pieces of Amanda’s Event are beginning to connect in my mind. The twisted ankle. The panicked friend. They’re all familiar ingredients, and the end dish is anything but delicious.
She keeps talking. “Rachel says we need to get help right now, and I’m a little thrown off by her panic. I mean, it’s a twisted ankle, not a death sentence, right? Still, I pull out my phone and check for service. Predictably, there isn’t any. I ask Rachel for hers, and she can hardly speak. She’s still pointing, but this time it isn’t at her foot. It’s at the hole in the cabin floor.
“She keeps whimpering about dead things. Over and over. Dead things. Dead things. Dead things. I’m wondering if I just became a party to my best friend having a psychotic break, but I give her the benefit of the doubt and check out the hole. It’s dark enough that I can’t see the bottom, so I flick on my phone’s light.”
Her fingers play at the tips of her hair. Tugging at it. “It takes me a bit for my eyes to adjust, but once they do, my blood goes cold. There’s bones littering the ground. Deer bones. Rabbit bones. Then there, at the edge of my vision, I catch sight of a human skull.
“I’m swearing up a storm, and my imagination’s going haywire. Rachel’s hysterical, and I’m feeding into it, both of us are repeating the words ‘what the fuck’ like it’s a personal mantra.” 
Amanda takes a breath, holding it for a few moments. There’s goosebumps on her arms. Even reciting the account is beginning to work her up. She exhales. “Then I remember I’m not living inside of a horror movie. I remember what I thought Rachel was screaming about in the first place. I tell her to relax, that it’s probably just a mountain lion, or a grizzly's dumping ground.”
“In the basement?” I ask. 
“Sorry,” she says, hastily. “I probably should have mentioned it earlier, but the cabin’s raised off the ground on these wooden stilts. Where I’m at, it helps thing’s avoid getting trapped beneath snow. There’s a crawl space beneath it. I figure an animal was probably using the crawl space as some sort of shelter.”
I check a box on my form. The story matches up, so far at least. The cabin is identical to the one in my memories. The question is, did she really encounter the Callous Man, or some rabid wolf? A human skull is a promising detail, but it’s not like predators don’t occasionally snack on hikers. 
“A logical conclusion to draw,” I say. “Does it calm your friend down?”
“Yeah,” Amanda says with a nod. “Rachel starts to breathe a little slower. She relaxes a little. Eventually, she’s ready to try standing, and she can — but just barely. She limps over to a dusty wooden chair near the fireplace and sits down in it, grimacing. She tells me she doesn’t think she can make it back down the mountain.
“There’s a crack of thunder in the distance. I walk over to the windows, and see the sun turning a blood red, setting over the tree line. Storm clouds are rolling in. Rain starts pitter-pattering on the cabin roof. Rachel’s groaning in pain, and she shows me her phone. It doesn’t have service either.”
“You were picked up by a search and rescue team, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“How’s that, if you had no way of contacting them? You weren’t gone longer than anticipated.”
Amanda sighs. “I was just about to get to that, actually.” There’s an undercurrent of annoyance in her tone, she clearly doesn’t care for interruptions once she gets going. I lean back in my chair. All the better for me. 
“Like I said, Rachel and I go on these sort of hikes pretty often. Me more than her, but still. I come prepared. All-weather clothing, bear mace, flint and steel. You name it, I got it. I don’t cut corners, so I made sure to pack my GPS locator beacon. It sends a one-way distress signal.”
“Ah,” I say, noting it in the report. “A survivalist.”
The fire in her eyes falters, and she pauses. A moment of silence stretches between us, and when she starts talking again her voice cracks. “Not as much of a survivalist as I should have been. Rachel wants me to use it, but I tell her no.”
Odd. 
“Hear me out.” Amanda’s eyes connect with mine, and there’s a pleading expression on her face. A desperation to be understood. “Rachel wasn’t in any immediate danger. Not then. Neither of us were. Plus, a storm was rolling in, and it looked like a big one.” 
She takes a shuddering breath. I know the look. Memories are clawing at her mind. “My father was a search and rescue technician. He was killed trying to rescue a couple of teenagers who got themselves trapped in a cave.”
Ah, there it is. 
The tragic backstory. I was wondering when it’d squirm its way out of her mouth. Somehow, all the human stupidity in the world can be traced back to our emotions overriding our will to survive. I scratch her reasoning down on the clipboard.
“I didn’t want anybody risking their lives when we had food, shelter, and weren’t in danger. I told her no. No way. I— I couldn’t have that blood on my hands if something went wrong and…” She trails off. 
“... And Rachel understood.”
Amanda gets quiet. She’s staring at me, and there’s that same look I’ve seen a thousand times before. 
I want to roll my eyes, I want to spit in her face for being such a naive idealist, but I hold it down. Instead, I plaster an understanding smile on my lips, and nod my head sagely. “You made the right choice. It was the only choice you could have made, knowing what you knew in that moment.”
It works. She perks up. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“So the two of you decide to stay inside the cabin then? You’re not worried about the bear or cougar using it as a snack bar might swing by?”
“At that point, we don’t really have another choice. I’m the outdoorsy type. I’ve seen storms, and I know that the one coming our way is going to be a big one. We decide the cabin’s our best bet, but we take precautions. I keep my bear mace close by, and we close all the doors. A cougar isn’t going to open a door, and a bear might break it down, but only if it feels it needs to. It’s far more likely to wander into the crawl space, safely away from us.”
“Sure. Makes sense.”
“I decide to put an extra layer between us and the front door though. Just in case. I clear out the busted bed frame and sweep the splinters from the bedroom floor, then I get to work setting up the tent.” Her voice dies. Memories are calling to her again. Difficult memories. 
“What happened?” I ask, the hairs on my arms rising. “Did you see something?”
She nods. “Yes. Animals were running through the clearing outside of the window. They were running past the cabin. Deers. Rabbits. Then a whole flock of birds burst through the tree tops and started flying over us.”
I lick my lips. Yes. This is very promising. My pen scratches at the clipboard in excitement. The Callous Man has a defining characteristic, one unique to him in the realm of legends. He always comes from the same direction. Always.
“Which way were the animals running?” I ask.
Her voice is small. Brittle. I barely hear it over the sound of my pounding heart. “South,” she says. 
I write the word, and underline it three times. My fingers are shaking with excitement. My mind’s racing. After so many dead ends and broken threads, so many killed and missing, it’s finally coming together. I’ve found one. A survivor, and not only that, but one that might still have the Link.
“How many animals were running?” I ask. I know the answer, but I need to hear her say it. 
It takes her a second to get the words out. They’re uncomfortable for her. Disturbing. “All of them,” she whispers. “It was like... an exodus of life.”
My heart hammers. My breath quickens. All of it, each detail of her story means one thing.
The Callous Man is coming.
I take a breath and stand up from the chair, stretching my legs. My back feels like it’s been crushed between two boulders, and sitting for any length of time always turns it into a pin cushion. Still, I couldn’t be happier.
“Everything alright?” she asks.
“Peachy.” I pick up the clipboard and clear my throat. “What happens after the animals flee the tree line?”
She opens her mouth to speak, but stops. Her eyes glance down to my open briefcase, staring at the manila folders and the crinkled old water bottle, filled with grimey black fluid. “Why do you have that?” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Its label is… yellow. It looks like it’s twenty years old. What’s that gunk inside?”
I scowl, kicking my briefcase closed. “An experiment. It’s nothing to concern yourself with. Now then, if you wouldn’t mind continuing, I’d like to hear what happened following the exodus.”
There’s a moment of shared disdain between us. She feels like I’m hiding something from her, and I feel like she’s putting her nose in places it doesn’t belong. Thankfully, it doesn’t last long, and she continues her account.
“Rachel calls my name from the main area, then she limps into the bedroom, leaning against the doorway. She looks really shaken up. She asks if I saw all the animals taking off, and I tell her I did. Her eyes are getting wide and I can tell she’s throwing herself into another panic attack, so I… I tell her that they’re probably just running from the storm.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe? It seemed like the only logical reason, but at the same time the whole scene felt so eerie. So wrong.” She opens her water bottle and takes a drink. “Either way, it’s not like I’m gonna start feeding into Rachel’s paranoia. One of us has to be calm, right?”
I shrug. “Sure. You said the sun was setting when the animal’s made a run for it. Is it dark yet?”
She nods. “Mostly. I mean, the last rays of sunlight are just barely peeking over the treetops. The storm’s making it worse. The clouds are blocking a lot of the light. I get a move on with finishing setting up the tent, and we set up this LED lantern that Rachel brought. It… feels weird.”
“In what way?”
“The silence.” She pauses, shakes her head and then mutters something. “Sorry, that’s the wrong word. It isn’t silent. The wind is howling and the rain’s coming down pretty hard, but there’s no sounds of life. No crows cawing, no squirrels chattering. I don’t even see any bugs in the cabin, despite a whole shit load of spiderwebs.
“I brush it off though. I keep telling myself one of us has to be calm. So we close the bedroom door and settle ourselves into the tent. Neither of us have much of an appetite, so we eat a couple of protein bars for supper and pull out our books. We don’t talk. I don’t even know if we actually read — I know I don’t. I stare at the words but my mind’s a million miles away, too wrapped up in the feeling that something is wrong with this place. Something’s wrong with this scenario.”
She sighs, running a hand through her blond hair. “I chalk it up to the darkness. Things always seem scarier in the dark, you know?”
I nod. The dark has always had a powerful effect on human beings. It makes it more difficult for us to see our enemies, and in my line of work, easier for them to see you. It’s a lose/ lose environment. Unfortunately, it’s often a necessary one.
“You don’t talk at all?” I ask, sitting back down in my chair.
“Not at first," Amanda says. "After ten, maybe twenty minutes, Rachel breaks the silence. She asks if we should use my rescue beacon, since it’s getting pretty bad outside. I know that’s not why she wants to use it, though. Not the real reason. I remind her that we can weather the storm in here, and call for help in the morning once the storm clears.”
Amanda screws up her face like she’s holding back a wave of emotions. “I manipulate her. I remind her my dad was killed during a botched search and rescue job, all because some teenagers couldn’t exercise a little bit of common sense.”
I study her. Perhaps she’s more cunning than I thought. Naive though. Still so naive.
“Rachel lets up. She agrees we can call in the morning. I can tell she’s scared, and honestly, so am I, and I know what we’re both thinking so I blurt out that there’s no such thing as monsters. I tell her we’re…. Fucking adults, and we’ll deal with this.” Amanda chuckles, it’s a small thing, full of disbelief and regret. “I promise her we’ll laugh about it in the morning.”
The woman’s not bad with a story. I idly wonder how popular her blog is. Unlike the gum in my mouth, her words have flavor. I dig in my jacket pocket and pull out my pack, popping a fresh piece free. Spearmint. It’s not a cigarette, but it’s the next best thing.
“Famous last words,” I say with a grim smile. “What’s Rachel think of your peptalk?”
“She… she’s fine with it, at first. I think she might even be on board. She doesn’t want to spend the night terrified anymore than I do, so anything that makes that fear a little smaller is a welcome distraction.”
Amanda swallows, and her expression goes blank. “It seems like everything’s going to be just fine, like it's just another overnight hike. At least, until we hear the footsteps outside.”
Here we go.
“There’s a creaking sound — like old wood straining under something’s weight. It’s hard to hear over the roaring wind, but given of our mental states, it’s practically unmissable. Something’s outside. The footsteps are slow, gradual. Whatever’s out there is taking its time, and both of us are frozen in fear.
“Rachel grabs the lamp and turns it off, and I suddenly realize just how dark it really is. It’s pitch. I can barely see Rachel, and she’s sitting close enough that we’re touching. It’s just us, the storm, and the sound of footsteps now. I whisper to her that it’s probably a deer, or maybe a mountain lion or just some kind of animal looking for shelter from the storm.”
Amanda's eyes are glazed, her hands picking at the fabric of her jeans. She’s lost in the memory.
“I don’t believe it myself. Something inside of me is rioting and telling me that we’re not safe. We haven’t been safe since the moment we walked into that cabin, and we won’t be safe until we’re far away. Still, I take a breath. I repeat that stupid internal mantra that one of us needs to be an adult. One of us needs to be rational.
“So we wait. I whisper to her that all the doors are closed. No animals are going to get inside. We’re safe. We’re safe. I keep repeating it, like if I say it enough, I’ll start believing it too. I do my best to reassure her and stave off another panic attack.”
Amanda uncaps her water bottle and takes a quick swig. Her hands grip it, squeezing, and the plastic crinkles. “It works. Maybe. I can’t see her, but I can’t hear her either. She’s not screaming. It’s good.” She swallows. “Then I realize things are bad. Really bad.”
“Why?”
“We hear this sharp whining sound — like rusty hinges, and we recognize it. It’s the front door of the cabin. Something opened it. The next second, the sharp whining is followed by dull thuds, like heavy footsteps. The floorboards groan, and we hear it, whatever it is, moving through the kitchen and into the main area.”
I remind myself to keep writing, but it’s hard. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, the moment when I can finally determine whether or not she’s actually encountered the monster I’ve been chasing my entire life.
“I’m clutching my can of bear mace to my chest, and Rachel’s whimpering beside me. I’m hissing at her to be quiet, to shut the fuck up, because I know that if whatever’s out there hears us, it’s going to come in here.
"She listens. Neither of us move, we just listen for the footsteps. Thunder’s crashing outside, and the weather’s screaming through the busted window, but somehow in spite of it all those footsteps are clear as day. I couldn’t tune them out if I tried."
Her fingers find the armrests of her chair, and she grips them. They scratch against the tattered wood. “I pull the safety tab on my bear mace, ready to blast something if that's what it takes. Rachel grabs my arm, and I feel her hand trembling, her whole body is. Something smells like piss, and I realize it’s her. She’s losing it.
“The footsteps get closer. They’re halfway through the living area now, and they’re approaching the bedroom door. Whatever’s out there is close enough that we can hear this… snickering sound. Like really fast, short breaths. Nyeh nyeh nyeh. It doesn’t sound human, but it doesn’t sound like any animal I’ve heard either. It sounds like a nightmare.”
I circle a box on my clipboard, identifying the sound as CORRECT. According to more recent eyewitness encounters, the Callous Man snickers before engaging with his prey. An evolution of his mythology. In my memories, I recall only the screaming.
Amanda keeps talking.
“Rachel’s squeezing my arm so hard that it hurts. Her nails are digging into me and I can feel her warm piss on the bottom of the tent, it’s soaking through my jeans but I don’t care. I don’t do a damn thing. I can’t, because as soon as I make a sound or a move, those footsteps are going to get faster, and something’s going to open the bedroom door and then I don’t know what happens.”
She stops talking. Tears are forming in the corners of her eyes, and she grips her sweater sleeve and dabs at them. “Rachel… Rachel can’t take it anymore though. She reaches across me, hissing at me to give her the rescue beacon. She’s begging me to activate it, and I’m trying to get my hand over her mouth and shut her up but she’s desperate and she’s fighting me.”
“The footsteps pick up their pace. They’re walking toward us, these heavy thumps on the creaking floor. I whisper to Rachel if we send the distress call, the beacon’s going to start beeping.”
Tears slip down her cheeks and Amanda stares, transfixed at the concrete floor. There’s something swimming in her eyes, and I think it’s self-loathing, but I can’t be sure. All I know is it’s familiar. “Continue,” I say.
“Rachel gets hold of it. She hammers at its buttons, and it works. It starts beeping. The signal’s sent.” Amanda’s voice trembles, her lips quiver with the onset of her next words.
“The bedroom door opens. It’s this long, drawn out screech and both of us freeze. It’s just the rusty hinges, and the beacon beeping. I want to scream. I want to run. I think we both do, but we’re too afraid. We’re paralyzed.”
She swallows. “I get my finger ready on the trigger of the bear mace. I don’t want to use it inside. It’ll probably fuck us up just as bad as whatever’s standing in the doorway, but I’m ready to if I have to. Moments pass, and all we hear is the beacon beeping, and the rain and thunder outside.
“Then, there’s that snickering again. Fast and raspy. It’s followed by footsteps, and now that it’s in the room with us it sounds big. The tent shakes, the whole room shakes. It’s dark enough that we can’t see so much as a shadow through the canvas of the tent, but soon we don’t need to. The footsteps start circling us, and then a finger presses to the wall of the tent and begins tracing around it.
“Whatever it is, it starts sniffing. Softly at first, then louder and with more intensity. I realize it isn’t a man, it’s some kind of animal. It sounds beastlike. Feral, and hungry.”
Amanda closes her eyes, putting her head in her hands. She takes a moment and groans. When she looks up again, her eyes are hollow. “Rachel can’t stand it. She screams. She screams to leave us alone. She screams we have a gun. She turns on the lantern and tells it to fuck off, go to hell, die in a fire, you name it.”
“I’m going to assume that didn’t go over well.”
She rubs her arm anxiously. “I don’t know. It didn’t seem to hurt things. It left the room— walked into the living area, but then it stopped. It didn’t leave the cabin.” Her voice trembles. 
“What happened after he — after it walked into the living area?”
“Rachel hisses at me that we should run,” Amanda says. “I remind her that her ankle’s fucked. She barely limped into the bedroom, how far does she think she’s going to get in the woods, over uneven ground that’s slick with rain? She tells me if we stay here, we’re both going to die.”
Amanda shivers. “I know she’s right. I know it, but I can’t bring myself to leave. It feels like the tent’s the only thing keeping that thing away from us. Like, as long as the canvas is between us, it can’t see us and we can’t see it. It doesn’t exist.”
It takes everything I have not to roll my eyes. Still, I flip a page on the clipboard and keep a neutral expression. Her perspective is not unlike a child’s. People often approach terror with irrational and sometimes nonsensical methods of survival. Of course, there’s nothing magical about her tent. There’s nothing about it that will save their lives.
“Continue,” I order.
“It starts with a creak of a floorboard. We hear it walking again, but it’s not coming toward us. It’s pacing back and forth, out there in the living area, and it’s snickering faster than before. Soon, the snickering gets heavier. Violent. It starts grunting, then growling.” She takes a breath, and chokes back a sob. Tears race down her cheeks, and her eyes are alight with terror.
"Then it goes silent. No movement. No grunting. No weird fucking snickering. Just the thunder outside, the howling wind, and the rain on the roof. I’m sitting there, clutching the bear mace and Rachel’s crying, and both of us are praying it’s gone. We’re praying it’s just given up. Decided to move on. And… and...”
“And what?” I press.
She meets my gaze with her own, and a hopeless horror swims in her eyes. “... And then the entire cabin shakes. Footsteps pound on the floor, and there’s this hateful, agonizing sound, like a hundred human screams mixed together and poured out of a single voice. Rachel and I lose it. We’re shouting, crawling over each other trying to unzip the door of the tent and get the hell out of there and then our world turns upside down.
“It’s like we’ve been thrown in a washing machine. My head cracks off her knee and we’re rolling around, bouncing in this cacophony of sound and fabric and then I realize the tent's been lifted off the ground. Above me, in the light of the LED lantern I see two crooked, broken antlers piercing through the canvas. That monster’s throwing us around, bucking like a damn deer.
“Soon the tent canvas tears and we fall free, crumpling to the ground in a painful heap. Rachel’s scrambling over me, holding the lantern in her hand and in the madness of it all I see her make a break for it toward the window. As she does, the light passes over that… that fucking monster.”
Amanda chokes back tears and sniffles. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I just need one second.”
“Of course.” I reach into my jacket pocket and retrieve a set of tissues. I pass them to her. “Here, blow your nose.”
She does. When she’s finished, both of us sit in silence for a moment. Her bottom lip quivers. “It must have been eight feet tall. It was crouched over, humanoid except its chest was covered in fur and its legs were scaly, like a bird’s. It had a long tangle of black hair and… and its antlers jutted out from its eye sockets.”
I mark the details down in excitement. Yes. Good. It’s a near-perfect description. It’s missing only a few key things. “The antlers,” I press. “Can you describe them?”
“They were crooked,” she says, slowly. “They came out at odd angles, both different, and around them was a halo of eyes. Tiny black ones.” She closes her own eyes and takes a stuttering breath. “I almost missed them except they all blinked in unison, and I remember thinking it was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen.”
“The fact that all of them blinked?” I ask.
“No. The fact that all of them were looking at me.”
“Did it attack you?” I have to know. The defining characteristic of the Callous Man is his method of attack. If she nails it, then I’ve got her. I’ve got my Link, and I’ve got him.
She shakes her head. “No. I thought he might, but then Rachel makes a racket. She’s throwing herself up onto the window ledge, and then she falls over the other side. The creature turns toward her, snickers, and launches itself at the window. It seems like it should be too big to fit, whatever it is, but it isn’t. It’s like a snake, the way its body contorts to fit itself into the window frame. It perchs there, and I see at the bottom of its scaly feet are these thick claws, and the hands it uses to grip the window have thin, impossibly long fingers. It drums them on the wall, before it launches itself after Rachel.”
My pen races across the form, filling in details and circling boxes as the information presents itself. This is very good. I’ve waited my entire life for this moment.
“I sit there for a second, in too much shock to move, and then I realize my friend is out there being chased by some… some fucking monster. I get to my feet and turn my phone’s light on, and in the distance, through the rain and swaying trees, I can see Rachel’s light, bobbing in the darkness.
“I call out to her. I shout her name, but she either doesn’t hear me or she doesn’t care. I scan the area for the monster, but I don’t see a thing. I lean out the window, looking around the cabin, using my phone’s light to illuminate as much as I can, but it’s not there. The monster’s vanished.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t take your opportunity and run,” I say. “The creature was clearly more interested in Rachel.”
Amanda glares at me. There’s a stubborn defiance in her eyes, and I have to remind myself that most humans have a perverse obsession with self sacrifice. Maybe it’s the Hollywood brainwashing, maybe it’s the fact that they just haven’t suffered enough, but they can’t get enough of it. Before she even speaks, I see it in her too.
“I couldn’t leave her,” Amanda snaps. “I was the one who dragged her out there on that hike. I was the one who suggested we follow that stupid, overgrown trail. I was the one who refused to use my locator beacon before it was too late. All of this was my fault. If I walked away from her then, I could never forgive myself.” Her voice breaks. “I still can’t.”
Time to get a move on. “You went after her then?”
“Yeah… I clambered through the window and took off, following her light as best I could. I had the bear mace in one hand and my phone in the other. The light from my phone wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep me from tripping on roots or running into trees. I kept calling Rachel’s name. Kept telling her I was coming.”
“She can’t have gotten far with a twisted ankle,” I say. “Then again, adrenaline can do incredible things.”
Amanda shakes her head. “She wasn’t moving that fast, at least compared to me. I was gaining on her. I could just barely see her silhouette ahead of me, and the LED lantern bobbing up and down as she limped away. Then the light drops. Rachel’s silhouette vanishes, and I hear her scream.
“I double over, running with everything I have. My lungs are burning and my feet are slipping on the mud but I don’t care. I’m not thinking anymore. I’m acting on pure instinct, and my instincts are telling me that if I don’t get to Rachel soon, that creature’s going to kill her.”
The words stop. Amanda’s body trembles, and she breaks down. She can’t hold it in anymore. The torrent falls out of her, and her face gets ugly as she sobs into her hands. It doesn’t take long before her palms are glistening with wetness, but to the girl’s credit, she forces herself to keep going. She doesn’t quit.
“Rachel’s screams stop. I can’t see anything really. The lantern’s on its side far ahead of me, and I can just barely make out a shape in the darkness. It’s the sound that still haunts me though.I think it always will.”
“What sound?”
“This wet, tearing sound. Like skin being ripped, and blood splattering the ground. It’s followed by a dull crunch, and then I hear slurping. Swallowing. I charge forward and I’m basically just adrenaline at this point. I hold my phone up as I close the distance and I see… I see it.”
She takes a sobbing breath. “I see the man with crooked antlers. He’s crouched over Rachel’s corpse, and one of her arm’s has been torn in half, dangling by a thin strip of flesh. It’s missing her hand. Blood is everywhere, and it’s still spurting out of her torn limb. I’m too stunned to move. Too shocked at seeing my friend, dead on the ground in front of me, being eaten by this thing.”
Her voice trembles, and she launches into another fit of tears. She brings a tissue to her nose and blows a thick wad of mucus into it, before throwing it unceremoniously onto the warehouse floor. She wipes her face with the back of her sleeve. “Then the thing rears back its head, and it tears what’s left of Rachel’s arm off. It starts to chew it.
“It’s… it’s more gruesome than anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t think we’re wired to deal with seeing that shit, as human beings, you know? Like nothing in my programming knew how to deal with that. Once it finishes chewing, it swallows the arm, and it opens its mouth again.
“Its bottom jaw falls all the way to the forest floor, its gaping maw large enough for a grown man to walk straight into. It sits there in front of her corpse for a second, and then that uproar of screaming starts again, like a hundred anguished voices stitched together.
"A flurry of human arms reach out of its mouth, clawing toward Rachel’s limp body. They clutch at what’s left of her torn limb, her hair, her jacket. They clutch at anything they can reach. Then they start dragging her into the monster’s mouth.”
There it is. It’s just as I remember.
Amanda loudly blows into the tissue again. “Then… I hear Rachel whimper, and my fucking blood goes cold. I realize the entire time I’ve been standing there, watching this thing eat her, she’s been alive. I was watching her get eaten alive.”
“My mind goes blank. I point the bear mace and let loose a blast toward the monster, shouting at it to get the fuck away from her. It recoils, howling in that symphony of screams and shuffling back into the bushes. I take my chance and press the lantern into Rachel’s hand. I tell her she needs to hold that for us, and she nods weakly. Her face has lost all of its colour, and I know she’s not long for this world.
“I get her good arm over my shoulder, and keeping a grip on the bear mace, begin putting some distance between us and that monster. She’s groaning. She keeps saying my name. ‘Mandy.’ Over and over again, but I tell her to be quiet. She needs to save her energy, and I need to hear that thing.
“We don’t get far before I hear it’s thunderous footfalls pound against the forest floor. It’s running at us. I wheel around, and Rachel’s lantern illuminates the monster for only a split second before I let loose another round of the mace. It snickers in pain and brings those long-fingered hands to its eyes.
“I don’t wait around for it to recover. I keep going. I don’t know where. All I know is I need to get away from this thing, because it isn’t going to stop until it finishes what it started. Again, I hear its footsteps pound and the dirt, and again I wheel around and blast the monster. It shrieks in pain and shies away, but only a few moments later it charges again.”
Amanda keels over and starts bawling. She grips her hair, then starts pulling on it so hard I half-expect her to tear a chunk from her scalp.
“I realize,” she says, choking out the words between sobs. “I realize Rachel’s too heavy. I can’t carry her. I can’t get away from this thing because I can feel the can of mace is almost empty and every time I hit it with the mace it affects it less.”
She shakes her head, her eyes are bloodshot, her cheeks tearstained. She sniffles and wipes mucus onto her sleeve. “I have to leave Rachel. I have to. If I don’t, it’s going to kill us both. You understand, right?”
For the first time in her desperate recollection of the Event, I do understand. “Yes,” I say. “Life isn’t easy. There aren’t any real heroes, just people who pretend to be. You made a difficult choice, but a necessary one.”
Amanda stares at me, she stares at me for a long while like she’s searching my expression for something. Finally, she nods, slowly. “Yeah,” she says, wiping more snot onto her sleeve. Her voice evens out, the tears no longer coming in torrents
“I did what I had to do. I put her down, apologizing. I apologized over and over again, and I heard that thing coming and I took off. I ran, full tilt into the woods. Behind me, I heard that screaming. All of that awful, horrible screaming.”
She swallows, and her voice stutters. “I listened to that familiar sound of tearing flesh, and then the dull crunch of snapping bone. I listened to the creature chew on Rachel. I tried not to. I tried to just focus on running, or the sound of the rain, or the thunder, or the wind, but I couldn’t. All I could hear was my friend being eaten alive.”
Silence stretches between us. I clear my throat. “Is that it? You got away, ran into the SAR team on your way down the mountain?”
“No,” she says, closing her eyes. There’s a look of resigned regret in her features. “I hear another sound. I hear a helicopter. A moment later, I catch sight of its search light, beaming over the forest. I know this might be my only chance, so I start waving around my phone’s light, trying to make as much of a scene as I can.
“It works. The helicopter swings over, and it lowers a ladder with a rescue technician. He straps me to a line and asks me if I'm alone. I'm hysterical, shouting a mile a minute. I shriek that a monster attacked my friend, and I point toward Rachel’s lantern, faintly visible in the distance. I tell him it killed her.”
Amanda gulps, wiping at her eyes. “He radios in to have me brought up, and says he'll go look for Rachel. I tell him not to. I know if he does, he'll die too. It'll kill him just like it killed her, but over the wind and rain he either doesn't hear me, or doesn't care.
“I'm pulled into the helicopter, and a few minutes later I hear the man’s voice over the radio. It's desperate. Full of grief. He says he needs a stretcher down there. He says he found the other woman, and that she's still alive.”
Jesus.
“Have you spoken to Rachel since?” I ask quietly.
Amanda shakes her head. “No. She um — she’s in a coma. Both of her arms are missing, the wounds are infected and she’s developed serious pneumonia. Doctor’s aren’t sure if she’s going to make it.”
She brings a hand to her mouth and chokes back a sob. Her eyes are wide, and her body quakes. “I… I left her there to die. If I had just stayed with her a couple minutes longer then the rescue chopper would have found us. It would have scared that fucking thing away and Rachel…”
“Would still be gravely injured,” I finish. “You can’t blame yourself. You didn’t know the chopper was around the corner. All that you knew was something wanted to kill you, and it was winning the battle for your life.”
Her shoulders wrack with silent sobs. “I could’ve stayed with her.” She breaks down all over again, and this time I give her all the time she needs. I’ve scarcely seen somebody so grief-stricken in all my years of doing this, and it's almost as bizarre to me as the anomalies I’ve spent my life hunting. To hate yourself for something as simple as wanting to live. It’s inhuman.
“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “That’s… that’s everything. Can I go now?”
I lean back in my chair, frowning. It’s not that I don’t empathize with her, but such messy reactions only serve to get in the way of actually fixing problems. In her case, getting revenge for Rachel.
She stands up, sniffling, then answers her own question. “... I’m gonna head home.”
“Wait,” I say. 
She stops in her tracks. “What?”
“Can you take me there?”
She stares at me with red, puffy eyes. Her face is a mask of confusion. Disbelief. “Excuse me?”
“The cabin, I mean." I lean forward in my chair. "Can you take me to the Callous Man?”
_____________________
I’ve never been a fan of the woods.
Call it a bad childhood experience. Call it being an out-of-shape asshole. I’m even less of a fan when I’m stuck hiking through them for work, and yet it seems like work has a sick sense of humor, because I find myself in these fortresses of shit and sticks more often than I’d like. Which, for the record, is never.
Well, except for today. 
It’s a long time before we reach the cabin. The girl said it took her and her friend eight hours. Well, it takes us twelve. My best days are behind me, unfortunately, but luckily I don’t need to be very fit for what I’m about to do. 
“I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have just followed the map," Amanda says. " I told you exactly how to get to—”
“Because,” I say, still breathless from the hike. “This cabin doesn’t exist on a map. You can point it out to me all you want on your iPhone, but unless you’re right beside me, I’ll never see it. It’s just the way the Callous Man works.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “You keep saying that name. Why do you call him the Callous Man?”
I pull open the door of the cabin, and instantly it smells like shit and dead animals. 
Great. 
“I call him the Callous Man,” I say, strolling across the creaky floorboards, “because that’s his name. It’s the name the first person that ever encountered him coined him with, and so it is the name with which I refer to him.”
“The first person?”
“Yeah,” I say, stepping into the bedroom. “Me.” 
The floor is a mess, covered in what’s left of Amanda’s tent. A small device lays a few feet away, and I figure it’s probably her locator beacon. 
“Hang on,” she says, appearing in the doorway behind me. “You’re the first person you saw the crea— the Callous Man?”
I nod, bending down and picking up one of the shattered photo frames she’d mentioned. Dusting it off, I hold it up to her. “This is my grandpa and I, showing off our rifles before going deer hunting.” 
She looks shocked. Stunned. Her eyes gaze at the picture, then back at me. “On second glance, you two really do share a resemblance. You and he look so much alike.”
“Yeah, I suppose we do.” I toss the frame onto the ground.
“You lived here?”
“Visited. My grandpa lived here.”
“You're kidding.” She shakes her head, incredulous.“This whole thing is so bizarre. It has to be a nightmare. It can’t be real.”
I flip the water bottle full of black grime in my hands, catching it with a smile. “You’re preaching to the choir, lady. If I had to guess, I probably hope I wake up from this even more than you do.”
“Unlike you," she says with a glare. "I don’t have any… secret agent training, or whatever.” 
“Unlike me, you’ve got my gun. The only training you need is to point and shoot, and not hit me with the bullets.”
She taps my revolver, strapped to her thigh. It was the sole condition of her joining me on this little woodland excursion, that she gets to be the one who carries the gun. I told her that’s fine, with one stipulation:
“Remember," I say. "Don’t fucking touch that thing unless the Callous Man’s already pulling you into his big mouth. I don’t need you shooting me before I finish my business.”
“What if he's attacking you?” she asks. 
“I’ll deal with it.”
“You’ll deal with an eight foot tall monster with nothing but your bare hands?”
The water bottle crinkles in my grip. “Just trust me on this. I’m a professional.” I place my hand on the windowsill and look out over the clearing, out past the treeline. The sun’s turned a golden red. Soon, it’ll be night. 
“Nervous?” I ask her.
“What do you think?” she says. “I hope you're as good as you say you are.”
The way she moves, the way she speaks and the way she keeps touching the revolver on her thigh tell me everything I need to know. 
She’s terrified. 
“Relax,” I say. “Save the anxiety for when our friend shows up.” 
Amanda pulls one of the chair’s from the living area into the bedroom with me. She sits down on it, rigid and straight. I’m almost proud of her. Sure, she was only willing to accompany me with a revolver strapped to her thigh, but she still chose to do it; she chose to get revenge for what thing did to her. 
What it did to Rachel. 
“Almost there,” I mutter. My eyes follow the sun as it slips behind the treeline. Shadows stretch out, engulfing the cabin in thin strips of darkness. “He’ll be here soon.”
Seconds pass, then minutes, and then things begin to change. It starts with a crow taking flight, and I already know he’s coming. I can feel him. A family of rabbits follow, bounding through the clearing. Soon, the entire forest is fleeing past us, far away from the Callous Man, and the death he represents. 
I pop a piece of spearmint gum and start chewing. It helps me focus. “You ready?” 
“Why?” she says, shooting up from the chair. “Is he here?”
“Does it make a difference? You're either ready or you're not."
She scowls at me, but her body relaxes. “I'm ready. Are you sure you can kill him?”
A mad mixture of impatience and nervousness flutters in my stomach. I toy with the idea of lying. It’d put her at ease. Then I decide it doesn’t matter anymore. Both of us are in too deep. “No.”
“No?” she repeats, hysterical. She rises from her chair, rounding on me. “You said you were professional!"
“I am.”
“You told me you’ve dealt with a hundred different monsters!”
“I have.”
Her mouth opens, but no words come out. She stares at me with something between stunned disbelief, and absolute loathing. She thinks I’ve signed our death warrants. 
“I’m not going to lie to you,” I say. “I’ve dealt with a lot of creatures. Some bad, some worse. I know this job inside and out, and I don’t plan on dying today, but the Callous Man is different.”
“How?”
“He’s—” I catch myself. We’re on the precipice, and there’s no going back, but there’s still words that can upset the operation. I exercise some tact. “He’s powerful. He can distort this world, and manipulate dimensions. It’s why I needed you here, it’s why I needed your Link. He chose you. The Callous Man gave you the key to his world, and only you — but he never said you couldn’t bring visitors.”
She shakes her head. She’s trying to piece it together — bless her heart she’s trying her best, but there’s not enough pieces to make sense of it, and that’s intentional. It's by design. I need her obedient, not unruly. Everything hinges on her cooperation. 
“I don’t understand. Why did he choose me?”
The sun finishes its descent, its red-orange rays fading to darkness. I flick my flashlight on, holding it up to the window and watching the clearing with bated breath. The Callous Man is coming. 
“He chose you because of the life you live," I explain. "The values you represent. It means something to him.”
“Values I represent? What, like honesty and integrity?" She snorts. "What do values mean to a monster like that?”
I smirk. “They mean you taste good.”
The night is still. Silent. Just as she earlier described, there’s no sounds of life, except this time there’s no storm either. It’s a cloudless sky, without so much as a breeze, and I can almost hear Amanda’s heart beating out of her chest.
“Ha ha,” she says sarcastically. She’s close enough behind me now that I can feel her breath on my neck. She really is terrified. “What do those values actually mean to it?”
“To him," I correct. "Believe it or not, that monster really is a man. When you become as powerful as he is though, food stops meaning what it means to you and I. It’s less about calories and more about filling a void. It’s trying to supplement its diet with concepts, ideas that it’s missing.”
“Why?”
“To become better. To cure itself.”
There’s movement in the clearing, and my breath catches as I see it: a set of crooked antlers. They rise from the bramble, soon revealing a face covered by matted black hair, one with a tiny snout and a halo of dark, beady eyes. The dots glimmer in the beam of my flashlight. 
“It wants to stop being a monster?” she asks, her voice thick with disbelief. “It’s eating people to save itself?”
“Shh!” I hiss. My eyes are wide, and my mouth is split into the largest grin I’ve worn in years. “He’s here.”
I sense her tense up behind me, but to her credit she doesn’t unholster the revolver on her thigh. She keeps her cool. I grip the water bottle tighter, reaching a hand to its cap. 
No. 
I pull my hand away, reminding myself that I need to keep my cool too. It’s still too soon. The Callous Man can still make his escape. Fade away. I need him committed. 
At the edge of the clearing, the man rises to his full height. I can see clearly now his dark fur chest, and his long, thin fingers resting on the ground. His bird-like legs begin a slow march forward, their claws digging at the loamy earth. 
“He’s coming,” I say, taking a step back. “Stay behind me. Directly behind me.”
She doesn’t speak, but I know she’s nodding. I hear her feet creak on the floorboards in concert with my own. My fingers play at the cap of the water bottle. Everything comes down to this. Forty years of horror and misery have led me to this moment. 
A snickering sound pierces the air. The man’s moving faster now, each footstep coming at the pace of a light jog. There’s hardly any time left, but still I wait. 
“He’s coming,” Amanda hisses from behind me. She’s panicking. Her hand clutches at my shoulder and I grunt, shaking her off. 
“Don’t,” I tell her. “Relax. We’re almost done here.” My heart races. Seeing the monster again after all these years is dredging up old memories, and the little boy threatens to take hold inside of me. My palms are thick with sweat. 
It doubles over, sprinting on all fours. Its armada of eyes connect with my own, while its crooked antlers sway in concert with its powerful body. Clouds of earth burst out from behind it, its long fingers tearing at the ground with each stride. “Nyeh nyeh nyeh,” it snickers. “NYEH NYEH!”
It leaps at the window. 
For a moment, time seems to stop. I stare, transfixed at the creature I used to know so well. Its horrifying, inhuman face gazes back at me and inside of it I see an insatiable hunger. A need to feed. 
My body freezes, my blood goes cold. Terror grips me as its fingers reach outward, passing through the window while its vocal chords chitter in anticipation. It wants me. 
I lunge to the side. 
It collides with Amanda, its antlers piercing her stomach and showering the bedroom in blood. Her body crashes against the wall with a sickening crunch, and lays there in a broken, whimpering heap. 
I stay as quiet as I can. The Callous Man shakes his tangle of black hair and looks around, reorienting himself. First to me, then to her. 
Then back to me.
Fuck. My fingers begin untwisting the cap of the water bottle. It’s too soon. I need him distracted. I need him feeding and committed, but I don’t think I have an option anymore. It steps toward me. The floor groans. My mouth feels dry, my limbs twitchy. Fear takes root in my chest, and the little boy inside threatens to take hold. 
No. I have to hang on. I open the water bottle, and my mouth begins stuttering the words. “T-Thu Val Nolar…” 
The Callous Man lowers himself. His back arches, and his tiny snout begins to open, growing larger and larger. Screams of a hundred souls echo from the void inside of him, their arms reaching toward me, desperate to draw another into their nightmare. 
“Gal Nush Alza…”
I continue the words, but there’s no time. They’re so close. He’s so close. I press myself as far against the corner as I can, but still I feel their cold grip on my leg. They pull. They’re strong. My balance goes out from under me, and I fall on my ass. “Yust val kulna…” 
It wasn't supposed to happen like this. She held the values he needed. Her. Not me.
I keep speaking the incantation. I keep moving my lips, but now my body’s acting on instinct, on learned behavior. I can’t so much as think as I slip further and further into the abyssal darkness of the Callous Man’s jaws. I keep speaking the words, but my voice is drowned by the pleas of the dead. Screaming. Howling. Begging. The incantation is all I have left. It’s not enough. It’s taking too long.
A deafening bang rings out, interrupting the chorus of screaming souls. The Callous Man recoils, its jaw sliding across the floor and its body writhing in agony. It stumbles to the side and then two more gunshots pierce the night. It falls to its knees. 
I can see behind him now. I can see Amanda’s bloody, mangled heap. One of her legs is snapped backwards, and her white shirt is torn at her stomach, with pieces of her falling out of the hole. Blood spills from her mouth like a fountain, and in her trembling hands she holds the revolver. 
“Thank you,” I breathe, rising to my feet on shaky legs. “Thank you, Amand—”
Another blast of the hand gun, and this time my ears are ringing like church bells. I stumble to the side, and in the dim light of my lantern, I see a bullet hole in the wall beside me. I barely have time to look back at her before agony rips through my thigh, and I collapse onto the bedroom floor. 
Fucking bitch! My hands clutch the wound instinctively. I don’t need to look at it to feel the warm wetness of blood seeping through my fingers. I gaze up at her, and she steadies the gun at me. I was so close. So goddamn close. Forty years of this shit and I’m undone by a blogger. 
“Do it,” I growl. Death by a bullet isn’t a bad way to go, all things considered. “Do it before he takes us both!"
She lowers the revolver, and tears fall from her eyes. She’s choking on a word, but all that’s coming out is a torrent of blood. It’s fine. I know what she wants to say. 
“I did it because it was the only way,” I explain through gritted teeth. “One of us always had to die, but if it was me, then it meant we both did.”
Her body’s twitching in shock. She’s still moving her mouth, but it’s just blood now. No words. Only blood. Her face is pale and glassy eyed, but I only see it for another moment before the Callous Man begins to rise. Nyeh nyeh nyeh. He’s snickering, but it’s violent. Angry. 
His eyes gaze at me. The antlers are casting twisted shadows in the light of my lantern, and it’s making him seem even more unnatural. More inhuman. Nyeh Nyeh. He turns away from me. He turns to Amanda. 
“Fel guz rea…” I whisper. “Morath un gre’ shan.”
His footsteps groan on the rotting cabin floorboards. I don’t see Amanda, but I hear the gurgle of blood. I hear the desperate shuffle of her body, pushing itself against the wall. I hear a gunshot ring out. Then another. 
The footsteps march forward, and so does my incantation. The water bottle’s shaking in my grip now, the grimey fluid swirling in a murky maelstrom. “Grea yulia.”
Another shot. 
“Thel ra dua.” 
A cacophony of screams. 
“Set kil ona.”
Amanda lets loose on the hand gun twice more, and then the firearm clicks impotently. She’s burned through every round that it has. It wasn’t enough. It never could be. My lips keep moving even as I hear her body being dragged across the floor. 
The ancient language flows out of me, and I’m deaf to the sounds of her flesh being ripped and torn, her limbs being devoured inch by inch. She needs to hang on. Her role in this isn’t over yet. 
I speak the final words.
“Set rindas!” The water bottle jolts from my grip, the murky fluid inside exploding into a dark cloud, twisting around the room like a tornado of smoke. I hear the screaming falter, then I hear the Callous Man lurch around, snickering in confusion. I hear Amanda groan. 
She’s a fighter. Good. 
It takes the cloud only a handful of seconds to coalesce into the greatest monster I’ve ever seen, but in that moment it feels like a lifetime. Its form snaps and cracks with bolts of electricity. Its twelve eyes glow an impossible blue. Upon its six muscled arms are heavy chains, linking to a choker on its neck and its face roars in fury. 
“This time I’ll have your soul, little man. I’ll enjoy it over a glass of your misery!”
I let a grin slip across my lips. For the first time since the Callous Man appeared, I feel my sense of humor returning. “Sorry to disappoint, Dreighar, but I summon you by means of an offering.”
The genie’s brows furrow and his mouth opens to reveal a row of jagged teeth. “I see no living humans here, save for one.” He’s smiling. He reaches an arm out to grab me, but as soon as his fingers brush my throat, they hiss and steam. He recoils, snarling. 
“She’s your offering,” I say, pointing past the Callous Man, to Amanda’s mangled body. “Now obey my command.”
A legion of screams interrupt us. The Callous Man’s jaws have opened, and once more a hundred arms reach from the maw — this time toward the newcomer. They grasp at the genie, phasing through the gaseous image. 
Dreighar scowls, his voice dropping to a low growl. “Very well. The words are spoken. A soul for a soul.” His body splits in two, circumventing the Callous Man and reforming in front of Amanda. She’s nearly dead. She’s confused. She doesn’t understand what’s happening. 
I’ve given her a mercy. Dreighar will treat her soul better than the Callous Man ever would. The genie’s hand reaches out to touch her, and in the next instant, her body is gone. Only the bloodstains remain. 
The Callous Man looks back to me, its jaw scraping along the floor. It recognizes there’s nothing in the genie to consume. It wants what’s inside of me, though. It wants the memories of its humanity. Revenge. 
It takes a heavy step toward me. Then another. The screams are deafening, but I know I don’t need my voice to be heard. A command is a command. 
“For her soul, I want His.”
The pale hands reach out from the abyssal maw, grasping my legs, and I let them. My body falls to the floor. It inches toward the jaws of the beast. Toward damnation. 
Then, light fills the room, and the cabin shakes with the low bass of eternity itself. The screaming fades to a whimper. Then, after a loud pop, it’s gone. 
Everything’s gone.
The Callous Man. The cabin. I’m alone, laying in a dark field, my lantern illuminating a clearing of grass, with tall trees surrounding it. My thigh aches, my mouth is parched, and my conscience is in tatters. But I’m alive.
I’m always alive. 
“Soon you’ll have fulfilled our contract,” says a hissing voice, scraping along my inner ear. It’s everywhere and nowhere. “I’ve taken ninety three souls for you. Only seven more to go.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it before,” I say with a groan. “Now, hand over my soul.”
There’s a swirl of smoke, and the frowning genie appears before me. He snaps a finger on one of his six arms, and produces a vial filled with murky purple fluid. “The man never deserved this,” he says. “He was your own blood.”
“Don’t lecture me,” I say, reaching for the vial.“You and I both know he was never supposed to turn into that.”
The genie pulls back, gazing at the vial. “What is meant to be and what comes to pass are two different things. You shield yourself in the delusion of intention.” 
He encircles me in a snaking ribbon of smoke, his face materializing near my ear. “You forced that destiny on the man. He had no desire to participate in your war.”
“Yeah, well none of us do. And yet it’s coming anyway.” Something takes a seat in my gut. Regret, maybe? Remorse? It’s an ugly feeling, whatever it is. I blame it on the woman. Why didn’t she just kill me?
No, I think to myself. Shake it off. I've got more important things to worry about.
"The vial," I growl, holding my hand out.
"I think I may have miscalculated," Dreighar mutters, staring at the vial with curiosity. "A soul for a soul, such is the terms of our contract, and yet..."
I swallow and it feels like sandpaper. When's the last time I had something to drink? "You got your soul, now give me mine." My voice cracks. Fuck. My voice cracks. 
The genie's twelve eyes swivel their gaze to me. A smile slips across its lips. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. Unsettling. "I count over a hundred souls in this vial."
My heart slams against my ribcage. Damnit. "That's not fair!" I shout, trying to rise to my feet, but my thigh screams in pain and I fall back to earth. "I only asked for his soul! I never asked for the souls he devoured."
"And yet, they are still a part of him."
"Please…" It can't end here. "Be reasonable."
"Reasonable?" the genie roars, and his form becomes massive. Lightning sparks around him, and the wind whips into a gale threatening to unseat me from the ground.
"You chain me to this earth for decades, turn me into a common reaper for your own ends, and you confine me to a plastic bottle! You speak of reason to me?"
"I did what I had to!" I bellow. "A war is coming, and we need these souls! We need an army!" 
"Your petty war means nothing to me." Dreighar points a long finger toward me, and a red aura swirls around it. Sparks crackle at its tip. Then slowly, reluctantly, he curls it back into a fist. "I am, however, a reasonable being."
My breath hitches in my chest as I hang on the monster's every word. 
"You have broken the terms of our contract, but I have also willingly fulfilled your wish. For that, I will give you a compromise, little human."
Compromise? That's good. Better than nothing, at least. 
Dreighar's eyes glint. "One month."
"One month?"
"Settle your affairs. Prepare for your war. One month from now, I'll take the soul I've dreamed of for decades. I'll spend the next century picking you out of my teeth."
I sigh, falling back onto the grass. It's better than I could expect, all things considered. I'm surprised the cosmic asshole didn't just scoop me up right then and there. 
Fucking fine print. 
"Okay," I say. "Can you get me out of here?"
He smirks, turning into formless smoke. "A soul for a soul. No more, no less." He begins swirling like a mad tornado of shadow, howling and roaring and a moment later he’s gone, vacuumed back into the water bottle.
Asshole. 
Looks like I'm finding my own way down. Once more I try to rise to my feet, and once more I wince in pain and fall to the earth. Damn. The revolver did good work on my thigh. 
No, she did.
The woman tugs at my thoughts. Her resolve. Her strength. Her blog. She could tell a story, Amanda Haynes. She's gone now, but there's still a story that needs to be told, and I'm running out of time to tell it.
I spot a mess in the corner of my eye. A pile of canvas, torn and bloody with tent poles poking out. 
That should do.
I crawl toward it, and a moment later I find what I'm looking for: a black device laying a few feet away — just like it’d been in the cabin. 
The beacon. 
I reach out and grab it, and click the button. It beeps.
Good. 
It beeps. 
_____________________
You don’t need me to tell you that the search team located me, and you don’t need me to tell you that they had a lot of questions, but that the Facility stepped in and took care of it. You also don’t need me to tell you that I’ll be walking with crutches for the rest of my short life.
What you need me to tell you, is why I’m sharing this. You need to know why I’m telling you this story, and why I need you to tell it to others. Your friends. Your family. Everybody. 
The reality is, a war is coming. It’s a war that humanity isn’t outfitted for, but we’re doing the best we can. Strictly speaking, everything I’ve just said is classified, and yet it’s critical this information be spread far and wide. What’s coming for us can’t be stopped by missiles and guns. It can’t be overcome by men and women. It has to be through other means. 
Legendary means. 
The folks at the top don't want to admit that. They don't want to sow chaos and uncertainty and admit our hourglass is dangerously low on sand, but it is, and chaos is coming one way or another. 
We're doing what we can at the Facility, but it isn't enough. Not even close. They'd skin me alive for telling you this, but my time's already up, so fuck 'em.
I’m asking you —all of you, if you see a creature that defies explanation, or a certain something that goes bump in the night, share your experience. Make it known. Against the eldritch abominations coming our way, those monsters might be our only chance. 
And honestly?
We need all the help we can get. 
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caixinliang · 2 months
Text
Practice 1
assignment 7, concept art -development assignment 01 story board
. Blog post 01
Using images to tell a story has always been an important skill for concept artists to develop, and after doing some storyboarding work I realised that storyboarding is a very practical storytelling medium, especially for film and animation practitioners, and that it's a quick way to work up front to set the tone for a project.
So,I decided to continue working on the science fiction flash fiction story "Knock" after consulting with my tutors.
The story:
Since "Knock" is a 15 word flash fiction, the first thing I had to think about was how to develop the story. I first searched the internet for some of the previous authors' sequels to "Knock" and found that most of them were confusing or too long and not suitable for the storyboard I wanted to draw.
So I decided to continue the story after "Knock" on my own. Actually, I don't have much experience in continuing novels, but I thought about what I wanted to express in my storyboards beforehand, and they are: alien creatures, fight scenes, and outdoor scenes.
Since my last storyboard was indoors and the main character didn't have much action, I wanted to do something different for this storyboarding assignment.
I re-watched the film Kill Bill, and I was very intrigued by the 2D animation of the film's opening sequence, which contained a lot of exaggerated fight action and gore, while the camera movements and graphic style were also very interesting.
youtube
Here are my newly drawn storyboards:
1. knock knock, then the door is pushed open by a strange looking alien.
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2. the camera zooms in sharply and the viewer sees a close-up of the alien's face as he speaks.
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3. The camera pulls back on the protagonist and the audience sees a close- up of his face.
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4. The camera moves quickly to follow the male protagonist as he draws his sword.
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5. low shot from the hero's point of view, the alien is injured.
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6/7. slow-motion shot from above as the alien is cut in half.
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8. Use of "Dolly zoom" to emphasise the big "post-apocalyptic" scene outside.
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Reference:
O-Ren Ishii story Kill Bill (2015) YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHnVsjBoHnY
Kill Bill: Volume 1 10/10 (2003) Directed by Quentin Tarantino[Martial arts film]. American: Miramax Films.
Thank you for watching ~
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whereserpentswalk · 14 hours
Text
Imagine being a sentient undead, but being a completely different being then the body was when it was alive. You just wake up one day as a creature with adult humanoid reasoning and emotions in a stranger's corpse.
Some people remember your body's past life. They expect you to have a similar personality, or even to be them returned, and then get really upset that you aren't them. Their parents said you were desecrating their child's body. But you aren't, you didn't decide this, someone just raised this body from the dead and now you exist. People say that they were brought back wrong but they weren't brought back at all, it's more like you were created from them.
You don't feel human. Even if you think like humans, you're in a form so different from how humans live. Your body is preserved by magic in the state it was when you were created, meaning it might stay forever, you were a fully functioning adult when you were born, and you probably will be forever. You don't sleep or eat so days really don't exist for you, and that also means you don't really need a home. The only somewhat humanoid function you have is sexuality, but even then, your body doesn't have that function even if your mind can be attracted to someone. It doesn't bother you that you never will have children, nor that you never were one, you were never created with that aspect of existence, if you weren't so grey and cold and twisted, you'd think of yourself like an angel, but you never could with how humans see you.
Humans see you as creepy sometimes. You'd probably have to worry about being shot at out in the country, but in the cities you're pretty safe. Still, the humans you meet always see you as creepy, and it's hard to get anyone who's not something like you to feel empathy to you, even if they'll never say why. People don't expect you to have emotions, don't expect you to get mad when you're wronged or upset when you're hurt, and they always assume your worst possible intentions. There's even a lot of monsters that try to make themselves look better by saying they aren't like your kind.
You feel like you're the same thing as more horrifying undead, the wights, and zombies, and ghouls, and undefinable things, that have a lot less ability to function in humanoid society. Even the lower functioning ones that are said to be mindless or animalistic or inherently evil or soulless. You don't see them as different from what you are even if they have different abilities then you. You never liked being called one of the "good" undead, like you're only tolerated by proving you're not like the others. Even some of the vampires try to claim their rights by saying they aren't like you, as if the monster hunters don't all see you as the same. As if the paladin's sigil doesn't burn them too.
A lot of people feel sorry for you. Like it's a curse to be what you are. But it's all you've ever known. This body is your body. You don't miss being human because you never were one.
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graceofagodswrath · 1 year
Text
When She Lost Everything,
She screamed.
She screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
She begged, pleaded, cried out to any god that would hear her. But if they heard, they were silent.
His blood covered her arms, her legs, every part of her. This pure, beautiful man who deserved the world laid in her arms, devoid of breath and cold as stone. This amazing, perfect person who had given her his everything and made her feel whole was now disappearing. His eyes stared up at her, once clear, now empty. Nothing. None of that love, none of that warmth that once resided was there.
He was no longer a person.
He was a husk. A corpse.
And yet he was still so beautiful.
Her tears cleaned trails across his red stained face.
Why him. Why of all people did it have to be him?
The world seemed to shake as she cried out to the sky. Her voice was growing hoarse and raw, but the pain needed to be released. It would burn the hole in her heart bigger if she did not let it out.
It burned, it ached, it bled. Everything was wrong.
The monsters who took her love were ahead. They laughed and jeered, taking satisfaction in their sadism.
The pain transformed. It warped, it morphed, it became something new. It still hurt, but now it lay hungry. Now it was a wolf, caged in her charred heart. The pain became fury and hate, her tears a salty drink before her skin lit aflame.
They took her world.
She was going to burn them.
All she remembered was the red. The burning liquid as she drove her fingers into that first man’s neck. The tug of skin on open flesh as she tore out his throat. The cries of surprise from the others. Men. No. These things were scum. Bacteria. She would cleanse them from the world.
Something stung her side, but she paid no attention. She only slammed her fist against the second one’s head. Bone cracked. A third grabbed her throat, but she dug her fingers into his eyes before he could close his fists.
Realizing the stinging in her side was a dagger the second had gouged into her, she tore that metal from her flesh, to far gone to feel the pain. She could only feel her blackening, burning heart. She screeched her death cry, no longer human, but that of an enraged beast.
She tore the rest apart. Limbs disconnected from torsos, heads separated from necks. The scum were reduced to nothing but unrecognizable piles of flesh.
And when she was done, she stood on the blood soaked ground. Breath badly left her body, and salty tears stung the wounds on her face.
The hatred and fury had carved their mark on her body, used up her soul, and left without empathy. She get only exhaustion.
With the energy she had left, she stumbled back to her beloved and fell to her knees. She wrapped herself around his cold body and let herself give in to the darkness surround her mind. Sleep, a voice whispered. Be happy with him. And she wanted to. And she did.
Until another voice chuckled.
You’re not done yet.
~~~~~~
Started this when I saw a prompt saying “why always a man avenging a dead wife? Why not a wife losing her husband and bringing the world down with her” and so I write.
Should I continue this? Was spur of the moment. Or maybe someone else would like to add on. Feel free to add and build this story.
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