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simplynerdilicious-blog · 18 days ago

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🟡 Hither, Hither / Do Not Come Near

Hither, hither, love! Let us feed and feed! –John Keats, “Hither, Hither, Love”

Characters: cryptid!König, gender neutral!reader Location: a (fictional) mountain with forest and caves in Austria. Inspired by the "lamp eyes" in this (second) image by toxooz CW: you are being hunted, pissing (non-kinky) as intimidation, luring, fear, anxiety, dread, inaccurate battery drainage, inaccurate forestry regulations (don’t leave your fire burning while you sleep), inaccurate camping regulations for Austria (basically don't do anything Reader does), profanity Word Count: 2276 Mood Music:

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The sunlight filters through the trees as you hike the trail up the mountain, taking in all the natural beauty that Austria has to offer. The rich, woodsy scents of earth, spruce, and pine surround you, the evergreen needles muffling your footfalls as you walk. Green carpets of rolling grass are dotted with blue and purple, yellow and white, and even little trumpets lining the trail to herald your arrival.

It’s like The Sound of Fucking Music over here, the sheer splendor of your surroundings making you feel like you made the best decision of your life to do this hike. You'd researched what trail to pick and what to take with you. You’d planned on this for months, and honestly, you couldn't have picked a better day for it: three days, two nights, just you and Mother Nature. Everything was perfect.

Pulling out your instant film camera, you take a selfie to remember this perfect day by. Maybe you'll even take selfies all the way up the mountain just to document your journey. You had enough film packs for it, and this felt like the kind of thing that needed documentation, so why not?

You pose and aim the camera at yourself, looking in the little mirror attachment you'd bought for this purpose, and take your picture, the flash going off in your face. The camera's motor whirs as it spits out your first instant exposure, and after collecting it, you continue on your hike.

You repeat this pattern every half hour or so or any time you find something particularly interesting or lovely, stopping to take pictures and/or selfies and reloading your camera's film pack every ten exposures. Soon enough, you notice the sky changing colors and decide you’d be wise to find a good place to make camp for the night.

Under a small copse of trees, you set up your tent on a bed of pine needles, driving the tent spikes into the ground with a stone you find at the site. After building a small fire a safe distance from your tent and any trees, you start cooking your dinner, taking out your instant camera and the stack of photos from your hike.

You take one more selfie before you lose the light completely, snapping the picture with a blinding flash that leaves you blinking. You take your newest photo and lay it on your knee, leaning over to stir your dinner in the pot as it's heating, waiting for the shot to develop.

After collecting your dinner, you look at the developing selfie and notice something strange in the background: two bright dots to the right of your head set in a swath of darkness. You squint, rubbing the exposure with your thumb despite knowing you’re not supposed to touch it. Maybe something was wrong with it, something on the exposure itself that kept the light from hitting the paper in those spots, resulting in blank areas.

As the photo develops further and the image takes form, you look closer at those two bright dots — a yellow-green now — and your first thought is that they are very much like eyes, staring at you from the shadows of the forest.

A chill runs through you. You turn, sweeping the trail with your flashlight, but you see nothing, just bushes and trees; hear nothing but crickets and other small creatures. Your flashlight flickers slightly, and you turn back to your dinner and your warm, cozy fire, unable to get quite as cozy as you were a moment ago.

How absurd. It was probably nothing; just a weird fluke. You continue your meal and look through the stack of photos from the day, carding through pictures of beautiful landscapes and flowers, stopping when you come to your next-most-recent selfie. You’d found a few edible berries on the trail and decided to take a picture of yourself, your mouth stained red by their juices.

You’re about to move on to the next photo when you see them: those two dots — those eyes — in the shadows again, further away than in your most recent selfie.

Your heart stutters. What is this?

As you arrange your pictures chronologically, you are struck by a chilling discovery. In each selfie, two bright lights — two glowing eyes — can be seen somewhere in the background behind you, hidden in a large, dark shape or the shadows of the trees. You card through the photos, heart beating hard, thumb sliding over each one frantically, and they're there in each one, down to your first at the base of the mountain, watching. Following. Getting closer and closer to you each time you take a selfie.

It's probably just an animal. A bear or something, judging by how tall it seems as it peeks around trees and through the thick brush. Its form is never clear, just a silhouette with those bright eyes looming in the darkness, staring at you.

You shiver.

Well, if it is an animal, you should probably keep the fire going to drive it away tonight. Granted, you know you shouldn't leave the fire burning all night unattended, but the idea of being left in the dark makes your skin crawl, and everyone knows animals hate light, right? Remember our ancestors, the cavemen? Yeah. Just an animal. It'll be fine.

So you throw some more logs on the fire, wash your dishes, and bury the water in a hole you dug to cover the smell of food. Then you get into your tent, zipping it up all the way. So much for a fresh breeze, but at least in this shelter, you feel some sort of safety, some separation between you and the unknown.

Your flashlight still flickers, and you decide to change the batteries now instead of later because you intend to leave it on all night. Not that you're scared or anything; it's just that extra light means extra animal deterrent, right? That's how that works, right?

Sleep does not come easily, and you toss and turn in your sleeping bag, eyes jolting open at the slightest sound of nature outside (which, surprisingly, is everywhere — why did you think this was a good idea?).

It isn't until just after midnight that you hear it: a whistle. You try to convince yourself that it's only something that sounds like a whistle, like the wind or a bird, and you nearly make your case until the next one sounds with a little bend in it. A little wheee-oooo in the pitch black of the forest, as if someone were pursing their lips, beckoning, just for you.

You hate it. Instantly, your heart pounds, your ears straining for voices or footsteps; maybe it's another camper hiking this trail, too, and needs shelter. But if that were the case, did they have to be so fucking creepy about it? You try to control your breathing, listening for anything other than the creak of the trees above you, but still, you hear nothing. It isn't until the sky starts to turn grey that you feel safe enough to sleep; dawn is on its way.

When morning arrives – too quickly – you're more than happy to get up and break down your camp despite your lack of sleep, deciding that you'll eat your breakfast on the trail instead of at a leisurely pace like you'd planned. No. The time for leisure has gone. Judging by the map, you are now closer to the exit of the trail than you are to the entrance, so you decide, uneasily, to keep going forward.

As you hike, you don't dare waste time with selfies; you're too scared you’ll find more of those glowing yellow-green eyes in the background. Or worse, find the owner of said eyes. Thinking back to your childhood cat, you know a lot of animals have eyeshine, which helps them to see better in the dark. They reflect light and make it look like the eyes glow or some shit, especially in photos, making them look like little demons. You recall that many predators seem to have them and then quickly wipe that little factoid from your mind.

You busy yourself with nature facts for a while, reciting aloud the names of the plants and forageable berries you see along the way. By the time you find your next spot for camp, you are completely exhausted, not only from the hike or your poor sleep the night before but from the anxiety of constantly looking over your shoulder.

Instead of pitching your tent right away, you spend most of the time before sunset looking for firewood and building an even bigger fire than the night before. No whistling bears or campers or whatever the fuck were going to come near your tent tonight.

The fire blazes hot and high as you sit before it, huddled in a blanket with your flashlight and cup of dried food — no smells of cooking tonight to lure hungry animals or hikers, for that matter.

Immediately, your mind goes back to the whistle, its testing, beckoning nature making the inside of your skull itch with unease. Maybe it was one of those birds that mimic human sounds that happened to be around at night. Surely, there were birds like that, right? It's probably a bunch of things together and not just one thing. Just a coincidence. That's the only conclusion you can come to. Because the alternative — the one that claws at the inside of your head and tells you that something, or someone, is out there — that just can't be.

After dinner, you stoke the fire, load it up with a couple more logs, and retreat to your tent, burrowing into the sleeping bag with your flashlight propped up in the center to illuminate your sleeping area. Exhausted from the lack of sleep the night before, you drift off thankfully quickly, only to be awakened sometime later.

The night seems hauntingly quiet, as if nature itself senses something is wrong. Leaves rustle from a distance away, and you hear the movement of a creature outside, the fire and your flimsy fabric shelter the only things between it and you. Your flashlight, stalwart watchman of the tent, starts to flicker, the set of batteries you'd put in it reaching the end of their lifespan, and that's when you hear it.

Wheee-oooo.

Your heart stops at the sound of the whistle, and you hold your breath, hoping that if you’re just quiet enough, just pretend that you’re sleeping, that whatever — whoever it is will just go away and leave you alone.

Thud, thud, thud, thud….

Are those footsteps?

The sound comes closer, twigs snapping under the weight of this person, this creature, and you scramble for your flashlight, slapping it, begging the light to stay on, to stay steady. A third thwack, and it's clear that your attempts at resuscitation are failing, and the batteries finally die, leaving you and your tent protected only by the dancing light of the fire outside. You curse under your breath, diving for your old set of batteries that you’d removed yesterday. Screwing off the top of your flashlight, you fling the dead batteries out and, with shaky hands, slide the old batteries in as, in the background, you hear the sound of water pouring and a sudden hissing.

This gives you enough pause to look at the silhouettes projected on the fabric of your tent: at how the flames of your fire — your precious sentinel — quiver, cower, and die.

The smell hits you then, the stench alerting you to the fact that this was not water putting out your fire, but in fact, someone was pissing on it to put it out. The heavy, acrid smell of boiling urine invades your nostrils, making you gag.

You refocus your efforts on threading the cap of your flashlight back on the barrel, your shaking, frantic hands making the threads skip until marvelously, mercifully, you screw the cap on, and the flashlight flickers to life just as your fire dies.

The growl that sounds from outside and the heavy thud-thud of footfalls that draw closer to your tent sound much closer to something human than animal, and you have to wonder who in the world you managed to piss off to make them stalk you so far up a mountain and into the woods at this hour of the night.

Suddenly, the tent lurches, and you scream as whoever is outside rips the stakes from the ground and yanks the entire thing toward them. You are engulfed in a polyester death shroud, scrambling for your pack and waving your flashlight around blindly.

You need your knife — anything to protect yourself at this point, but as the creature rips the tent open like it was made of paper, all you can grab is your camera. You point it at him and press the button, the flash lighting up the night like an atom bomb, and he snarls, stumbling back, blinded.

A split second is all you get to see him. The man is bigger than any person you've ever seen in your life, dressed in black and wearing a black cloth over his head.

You run. You don't have time to look for shoes. You don't have time to look for your knife. You just clutch your camera and run, hoping that you can find a place to hide.

They don't tell you that the forest floor is not good for running barefoot on. They don't tell you how modern human feet just aren't made for it anymore. But you know from all the twigs and branches cutting into the soles of your feet that you are fighting a losing battle. That you are prey and your hunter is going to get you.

You can hear him running after you, those heavy footfalls sounding like the thunder of ten thousand angry gods, and despite your head start, you know he'll catch up to you on those long legs of his.

When you spot a cave, your prehistoric animal brain cries, "safe!", "home!" and like a fool, you listen, running inside, losing all light as you slip into the pitch black of Mother Earth.

Feeling blindly for the wall, you move slowly and hear him enter the cave, a low growl sounding out like echolocation.

You know he hates the light. Your camera has nine exposures left. A sound to your left has you pointing the camera in that direction and pressing the button. Light floods the cave, burning its landscape into your retinas, his dark shape a retreating blur.

Eight.

You have to find the way back out. Coming in here was a bad idea. He clearly has an advantage over you, being able to see in the dark. You’ll have to burn through your exposures to get back out. Gravel grates to your right, and you take another picture, blinding both him and yourself, the exposure falling uselessly to the cave floor. Absently, you wonder if people will ever find them.

Seven.

Will people even find your body?

Light blazes through the cave again, and you can move toward the exit, cursing as pain lances into your sole from stepping on a sharp rock.

Six.

You can tell you're bleeding from how the dirt sticks to your foot and from the snarl you hear behind you: the predator scenting his prey. The next flash exposes his dark shape behind a stalagmite, and you rush in the opposite direction.

Five.

The click of the shutter echoes in the cave as the camera flashes again, your brain trying to memorize the location of obstacles.

Four.

His roar reverberates in the cave, shaking the very air around you and has you screaming, snapping your camera beside you.

Three.

You hear him stumble in frustration and are convinced you actually got him good that time, and you snap again for good measure.

Two.

You move faster toward the exit. You can actually see the outside world now, so close, but still so far. You blow an exposure behind you to stall him further.

One.

A breeze from outside blows across the cave mouth, and you can almost taste it if not for the wall you just ran into.

Zero.

Only it’s not a wall.

His reflective eyes blaze as he looks down at you. The hood-like structure on his face parts down the middle like a pair of bat wings, the exposed red maw lined with dozens of razor-sharp teeth. His jaw opens far wider than anything you've ever seen or ever will, and then your light goes out.

author's note- this was on loop as I was writing:

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#cryptid!könig #spooky story #campfire story #horror story #a forest

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simplynerdilicious-blog · 20 days ago

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Random headcanons

Food.

Creed doesn't have a lot of control when eating: he eats like it's the first time in ages, and could be the last. He basically inhales the food, actually enjoying it only after he's eaten enough and or feels safe. He could keep eating indefinitely if you put food in front of him, no restraints, no shame, just a void to be filled. His healing factor helps him battling the nausea and the too full part. If he's by himself, he then nap the hell out of all that food. The presence of food, even still alive, gets him sidetracked and he needs to refocus on the task at hand.

Sleep.

He sleeps curled up, or half curled, with his head on his arms. If he's sleeping with someone, the someone becomes a teddy bear. He secretly loves being the small spoon but it's very difficult to find someone big enough. But with his past lovers they found a way: he stays face down and they sleep literally on him. Apparently it was Mystique the first to think of it, but Victor remembers someone else, heavier than her, and with the scent of clear waters and snow and forests. He runs hot, but if he can, he sleeps hidden in blankets, still trying to banish the cold he felt when he was in the cellar and during the first winter he was alone outside.

Mental Health.

The Canon: He never left that house, as he said himself. There's the mini "Spider-Man. Punisher. Sabretooth: Designer Genes" where he basically says he has PTSD. In another one, "It comes with the claws" (it's a Daredevil issue if I remember well) it seems he's not completely grounded, and he doesn't know what to do with people (and specifically women. He takes one and he's very gentle and careful but doesn't know what to do with her).

The headcanon: his mental health is highly challenged because of his upbringing. When he was prisoner in the cellar, he lost a great part of his ability to understand people and the notions he had, leaving him extremely late in what a person should know or feel. He basically lost roughly 3 years (old 90s canon). The solitary confinement is torture and he's been closed there for ages, plus the father hurting him and withholding food. So, yeah, he's weird and has a LOT of problems. Since he tried to get help but people said he didn't deserve it, he chose to be not conforming and accept that "normals" will never accept him for what he is, but he push it in their faces.

He def has ADHD and he's not in tune with emotions. As a defensive mechanism he shares false facts about his misdeeds to create a different picture of himself, and this is the same reason behind some of his taunts.

His Mother

As you may have read on my stories, his mother tried to protect him. She couldn't help him because of the abusive husband, and also cultural setting, but she loved him dearly, and tried to do all that she can. She gave him all the food she can hide from her husband and also blankets or things to keep him warm, and she talked to him. She also cleaned him and his small place, trying to keep it as clean as possible. One of his most treasured memories it's her using warm water and a soft cloth to clean him, and then letting him sleep a bit on her. Her arms were the safest place on earth for a long, long time. So yeah, I'm following the canon in which he spared her, after killing his father. She kept him safe even knowing he was completely deranged and out of his mind. She would have kept him with her, but Victor was restless and needed to get away from everything and go deep in the woods.

Queer.

He def isn't straight and he also is "age blind". For the "not straight part" it's the comics fault. He's queer coded to the bone. In some issue he's pictured like one of those "bisexual evil characters", but nothing is clearly stated (as it's pretty common).

Clean.

He can't stand being dirty. He washes as soon as possible, and he does that even when running free in the Canadian forests. He wouldn't have a strong scent because it's dangerous and helps finding you. Many people think he stinks because he doesn't smell of chemical products, and also after battle who would smell like flowers?! No one.

He's an asshole.

Absolutely an asshole. He's snarky, pushy, talks too much about the wrong things, tries to boast himself and he's too loud. He also tends to vanish up north without saying anything to anyone to recharge his batteries. But kids weirdly feel safe with him, so probably he's not so bad. Even if he sometimes says he eats them for fun (like the cats, he doesn't eat them, there's not enough to eat, not even as snacks)

#Ma boi #Victor Creed #Sabertooth #Headcanons

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