#skitter around crab holes

[aka-indulgence]

Add Aka to the ocean to turn her into Very Happy Aka

[tom-foolery-incorporated]

I’m thinking something with starscream!? Like smut with a dom starscream and sub reader where he bends her over and overstimulates her pls🙏

Bro did you shoot like some CIA brainwave thingy at me because the night before I had a dream about Starscream and today I’ve been thinking about him all day. Poorest meow meow, most evil loser, fucked up princess

Starscream x Reader, AFAB gender neutral reader, racially ambiguous, overstimulation, g/t, brat taming, finger fucking, slight breeding kink, degradation

Starscream wasn’t known for his patience. He constantly jumped on every opportunity to overthrow Megatron that came his way but somehow Starscream managed so be methodical.

Impatient and methodical.

Maybe more so impulsive and methodical.

He jumps in leaps and bounds to conclusions, always the worst ones. Starscream wasn’t the easiest to get along with by any means yet here you were always by his side. Soft little human form perched atop his shoulder and hugging his helm. Tiny, flesh fingers dancing over his wings as he allowed himself to rest into a recharge state. You were his and Starscream made that very clear.

“Too big!” You cried drool dripping from your mouth and onto Starscream’s desk. Your ass was propped up over Starscream’s arm in the air while your lower body was slumped against the cool metal of his personal desk. His other servo was busy pushing two of his digits into your wet hole.

“I’ve seen you take larger,” Starscream said smugly. “You have no business complaining about taking two of my fingers.”

You moaned as he scissored your hole open. You managed to take his digits down to the second joint and covered them in your dripping arousal. “I can’t believe how greedy you are,” Starscream scolded as he set a brutal pace fucking his fingers into you hard enough to push your body forward. “Speaking to Thundercracker like that,” Starscream huffed as you moaned out for him pathetically. “Is your human valve really so desperate to be filled you’d take any Cybertronian spike that came your way?”

You shook your head desperately. “No! No I only need yours!” Tears welled up in your eyes at the feeling of having your poor pussy brutalized by Starscream’s fingers. “Hm,” Starscream stopped pulverizing your sweet hole for a second to think. “I don’t believe you.” He added a third finger giving you no time to adjust as he returned to his previous pace.

“Please! I only want you!” You wailed feeling your wetness leaking around where his fingers plugged you. “Please!”

Starscream smirked at your reaction reveling in your pathetic form. “Prove it.”

He pulled his servo away from your body taking his fingers out of your slick hole with a schlick. Starscream brought his digits to his intake cleaning off your arousal with his glossa.

You panted watching him over your shoulder. His lascivious display did nothing to help you catch your breath. You turned your body over so you were on your back propping yourself up on your elbows with your legs spread.

Starscream simply sat back in his chair with a smirk plastered on his stupid, handsome face. You pouted at your lover completely furious with how smug he could be.

“Don’t tell me you’re already scared?” Starscream teased releasing his modesty plate with a hiss. His spike sprung to life slapping against his abdomen. You tried your best not to melt at the sight of his fully erect cock and kept your grimace firmly in place.

Starscream gave a firm stroke of his spike before frowning down at you. “I don’t think you want to learn what I do with brats,” he warned with a scowl.

“Takes one to know one,” you snap back with an all too proud smile.

You felt the air shift for the worse as Starscream’s turbines whirled loudly. He pounced slamming his hand down to grab you as you skittered backwards like a crab. “I shouldn’t have to put up with this attitude,” Starscream growled grabbing you around your waist. You shrieked at the sudden motion of being brought to Starscream’s lap.

His spike throbbed between your thighs as the tip beaded transfluid against your chest.

“I generously let you lay on my berth,” Starscream started as he pulled your body upwards so your cunt dragged along his spike. “I amuse your little human antics.” He pushed the tip of his spike against your clit letting his transfluid lubricate down your vulva. “And you still continue to behave like a brat!” Starscream reeled his hips back then pushed forwards stuffing the head of his spike inside of your hole.

You grabbed onto his wrists as your whole face scrunched up in pain. “I think for once I’m going to take what I want from this little organic valve,” Starscream purred with a sharp thrust. You cried out his name pressing the bottom of your feet against his thigh plating. “Such a lovely little hole to fuck,” Starscream said punctuating the last word with a deep rolling thrust.

He kept a steady rhythm using you like a toy. Your cries and squirming only did more to excite him. Your hole felt raw from his fingers previously abusing it and now his spike stretching you to your limit. Tears streamed down your face as you babbled out praises and cries of pain. Starscream seemed all too pleased with how you writhed against his spike. Your squishy body so tender in his servo he could crush you like a bug. The way you gushed and squeezed around his spike made his cooling fans sputter in bliss.

“Say it,” Starscream barked stilling his thrusts. You cried out in protest at him ceasing his movement. “Say that you’re my hole to overload in.”

You whine in embarrassment and softly repeat what he had said.

Starscream pinched your clit harshly earning a cry of pain from you. “Don’t test me, human,” Starscream growled. “Try again and be louder this time.”

“I’m your hole to overload in,” you said breathlessly. Starscream huffed still not satisfied. He flicked at your sensitive pussy making you yelp.

“I’m your hole to overload in!” Your voice rang out.

Satisfied with your display of submission, Starscream grabbed you around your waist and lifted your body up and down his spike. You went limp in his servo having every ounce of your being controlled by Starscream’s drive to cum in you. “I want you to thank me for interfacing with this filthy organic valve,” Starscream spat.

“Thank you Starscream!” You cried feeling yourself pushed far past your limits.

“Unlike you,” Starscream started with a grunt. “I don’t go around taking whatever spike comes my way.”

“I don’t-“

“Shut up,” Starscream barked. “As I was saying, I don’t just interface with anyone so you better feel special to even brush up against my interface panel.”

You nod giving breathless thanks to your lover. Starscream smirked all too satisfied with his fuck toy.

His spike twitched and writhed inside of your gripping cunt. The wet noises produced by your conjoined bodies mingled with your croaking thanks to have your pussy used by your lover made Starscream dizzy with lust. “I’m surprised how you managed to stay so tight,” Starscream hissed. He could feel his release crawling its way through his circuits. “With such a floozy lifestyle I was sure you’d be gaping for any spike that came your way.”

You cried out apologies and continued raining your gratitude onto Starscream. “I don’t want any spike but yours!” You cried feeling your lower body throb in ecstasy.

Starscream swore under his breath trying not to let his hips falter. His little human so beautifully submissive in his grasp. He could be as mean as he wanted to you and still control how you clench your thighs in arousal. “Tell me what you need,” Starscream panted his thrusts becoming erratic.

“Fill me,” you panted squirming in his iron grip. “Please! Fill me with your transfluid!”

Starscream whined your name pushing his spike into you frantically. His optics were squeezed shut as he sneered in pleasure. Your velvet walls were gripping him trying to milk him dry as transfluid spilled from his needy spike. Your combined juices leaked around where he plugged your hole. Starscream’s frantic thrusting didn’t cease until his lower body was shaking. You only shivered and groaned in delight at being so full. You could feel your womb stretching to accommodate the load your lover delivered deep into you.

Starscream’s fans blared in the silence of the room. His tired optics trained on your sweaty body. “My love,” Starscream panted giving you another thrust that made you cry. “Don’t act like I’m finished taking what I want from you just yet.”

[1starqi]

Beach Episode

summary: as the title suggests, you and your boyfriend go to the beach pairing: boyfriend!matthew x reader (gn) genre: fluff warnings: established relationship, reader has hair (sorry bald readers, love you), blond matthew (wrote this in may), very brief mentions of food word count: 1k

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You had the window rolled down since you got out of the city, and you can feel the cool breeze tangle and tousle your hair on the three-hour car ride. You know that your hair’s going to look and feel crazy when you get out, but it’s okay because the salt water can take care of that. Drawing you out of your daze staring at the crystal blue sea, you feel the hand intertwined with yours shift on the seat and a familiar thumb absentmindedly rubs your hand. The morning sun shines brightly above you and you squint through it to see the road ahead of you—it’s almost 11:00, an hour after you were supposed to arrive. Matthew's attentiveness made you behind schedule, he was careful to remember to pack a cooler of your favorite drinks, and some extra towels.

As you approach the parking lot, there are people milling about. An older couple sits in their blue beach chairs, surveying the scenery, and little kids splash in the shallow water while the older kids walk on the sand bar farther out. Matthew carefully parks the car by the fenced entrance between the yellow dunes. The asphalt below your feet as you get out is hot beneath your flip-flops and scattered with sand. The breaking waves break with a white crest and flood the abandoned sandcastles.

“Alright! I got the cooler.” Matthew calls from the other side of your car, bringing you back to the task at hand—transporting your stuff from the trunk of your red convertible to the beach. 

“I can get the towels!” You say, which turns out to be the wrong thing to say because when you turn around you see the beach towels already slung over his shoulder. You smile and roll your eyes, “I could do it, seriously.” You tell him, but he just shrugs and closes the trunk in response. You walk over to him and slip your hand into his unoccupied one. Your eyes dart back to the cooler he carries, wondering if it’s too heavy, but looking at how he’s carrying it and the way the muscles in his arm flex, you decide it’s probably nowhere near too heavy. However, you do feel a blush start to form under your skin.

A gull caws above you, “It really feels like the beach.” You comment and he hums in agreement and squeezes your hand. “I slipped in some more of your favorite cherry soda right before we left.” 

“How did you do that without me knowing?” He smiles and cocks his head to look at you. You don’t know if it’s because of the scenery or the sand beneath you, or maybe it’s your adoring boyfriend next to you, but your heart swells. Approaching your selected location, you can hear the waves crashing and it sounds just like having your ear in a conch shell.

Approaching the rocky outcove, he sets the blue cooler and towels down on the sand. You grab a thin striped towel and snap it over the uneven sand. As you snap it, a small crab skitters back into its home of a hole nearby. It falls almost perfectly, save for the corner that’s tucked under itself. Matthew reaches down and straightens it out. 

Relaxing with Matthew on the sand is pleasant, but as the afternoon wears on and the sun begins its descent toward the horizon, the temperature feels like it climbs higher. The higher temperature entices you both with the promise of cool relief of the ocean waters.

Looking over at your boyfriend with his elbows propping his torso up and his legs stretched all the way out. “Swim?” You exchange a single word with him, and that’s all it takes for you both to rise from your spot on the sand, eager to immerse yourselves in the refreshing water. Walking quickly, you make your way to the shoreline, the sand shifting beneath your feet.

The waves lap gently at the shore with the lateness of the day, inviting you in with their rhythmic motion. Matthew takes your hand and his grip is firm and reassuring. The coolness—coldness—envelops you, sending shivers down your spine as you adjust to the temperature and the shifting sand below your feet. The saltwater buoys you as you glide through the waves. You dive beneath the surface and the cool water wraps you in its embrace. When you surface, Matthew is beside you, his hair is slicked back from his face. As you both surface, your hair is strewn across your face like seaweed, and you hear Matthew’s infectious laugh ring out from next to you. “What? As if your wet hair looks any better.” You tease him with a pretend frown. You’re lying, though. You’re not sure if his wet hair looks better than yours, but you know it looks damn good. The blonde goes darker when wet, and you can see his roots beginning to peek through at his hairline.

“No, love. It’s adorable.” He smiles and tucks a strand behind your ear, freeing your vision. A huge smile breaks through your pout and you bump him with your wet shoulder, looking down to hide your smile.

Together, you float on your backs, gazing up at the vast expanse of sky above. The mosaic hues of the sky blend and melt together and cast a warm glow over the water. Here, with the ocean stretching out before you and your boyfriend by your side, a strange peace settles within you. Turning you head to see Matthew floating with his eyes closed and the sun shining on his face, you know that you can take whatever life throws at the two of you.

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A/N: guys im back heres a revised version of smt i wrote before i left hope u like love u mwah

[thedo0zyslider]

Found Ashore - 4k Words

Oli washes up on some random beach shore. One could say it changes his life for the better, or that it's more trouble than it's worth. He doesn't know and really doesn't want to find out.

A03 Link

Oli wakes up, face down in what seems to be sand, and feels absolutely wrecked . There is also something pinching at his side, which makes the whole experience a lot more unpleasant than it normally would’ve been, he thinks. 

He rolls over with a huff, already cringing at the thought of getting the sand off him. It’s going to be stuck in his hair for days! Days ! Why couldn’t he have washed up on some rocks or something? That sounded much better than bloody sand!

When Oli moves, he finds that the thing pinching him was a crab, one that seemed very fixated on ripping even more holes in his clothes (he can already feel the tear in the back of his jacket without even looking, god dammit.) He glared at the little curstation, and got another, more powerful and painful pinch to his hand when he tried to shoo it away. The blonde made a small yelp of pain, and sat up so he could soot away from the damned thing. The crab skitters after him. 

There is a voice coming from further inland, one that's steadily approaching. He assumes it’s the voice of a person, and not some stupid creature from all those sea shanties he’d heard the sailors sing about, and fumbles to find his monocle. Oli knows it’s somewhere in his pocket by some miracle, having felt it moving about when he rolled over, but cannot find the thing in his disorientation. 

The stranger reaches him right as he grasps it, and a seemingly kind face is now in front of his own. “Did you just wash ashore?” The man asks, his face blocking the sun out of Oli’s eyes. He stumbles to get his monocle on, and just nods in response. 

“Oh dear! Let me help you then!” The stranger grabs ahold of him, Oli not processing where, and moves him until he’s standing and leaning leaning on this very muscular stranger to do so. He blinks a couple of times, fairly certain there is sand in his eyes by the way they’re starting to water. Being washed up on a beach sucks, by the way, and he’s going to advise everyone he meets after this to never try it out. No matter how fun it looks. 

While Oli was blinking sand out of his eyes and thinking about his new and sudden hatred for beaches, the strange man had started babbling. “Are you okay? Do you need food, water? Oh, are you injur-”

“What I need.” Oli cut the brunette off, noticing that they were beginning to walk, presumably towards a building of some kind. “Is for you to stop rambling on.”

“Sorry.” The stranger muttered. “My name’s Sausage, by the way.”

“Sausage? Like the meat?” Oli said, rolling the word around on his tongue as he did so. “What kinda bloody name is Sausage? ”

“A very good and respectable name, that’s what!” The stranger-- Sausage --exclaimed, maybe a little indignantly. “What’s your name anyways? If mine is so weird!?”

“Oliver. But most people call me Oli” The blonde said, accentuating the last syllable or so. Sausage scrunched up his nose at how normal and un-weird it was, and muttered something about stupid people and their stupid “normal” names. 

“There’s a crab following you around by the way!.” Sausage was the next of them to speak, changing the topic away from his supposedly weird and uncommon name. The blonde had just met this man, but he managed to make every word that came out of his mouth cheerful. Maybe too cheerful, even. 

“I know.” Oli huffed, glaring down at the aforementioned crab. “It’s called crub.”

“Crub? Is it a pet?” Sausage asks, curiosity peaking into his tone. He smiles at the crab, and the blonde wants to gag just a little. He doesn’t know how anyone could smile at the damned thing, the damned pinching nuisance! 

“‘S my wife.” He muttered quietly in response, fully meaning to call it a pest instead of his bloody wife . Now to Oli’s credit, he was a bit disoriented from being thrown around by the waves for god knows how long, and also being washed up on shore. He was also remembering he had a wife right at that moment, a wife and a son he had decidedly not even thinking about before he went overboard. The wife that was going to tear him to shreds when (if) he got home. 

Sausage however, did not know any of that, and just blinked at the blonde in what could be called perplexity. “The crab…the crab is your wife?” 

“Yes…I mean no! No!” Oli protested, a groan slipping past his lips. He did not have the energy for this, he’d just been bloody washed up on a beach after all. “Ugh, just get me to a bed will you!?”

“He wants me in bed already, how charming.” The other man murmured, and in his dazed state Oli had to do a double take. A triple take even, before those words even somewhat processed in his brain. 

“ What. ”

“Nothing, let’s get you some rest now!’ Sausage smiled, and basically started to usher him along. Oli almost loses his balance, and holds onto this weird man’s arm tighter. They reach a house of some kind within ten minutes, and next thing the blonde knows he’s practically falling into a random bed he’s shown to. Apparently almost dying at sea makes your body pretty exhausted. 

He hears Sausage doing something in his room, and the room over as well. But Oli can’t discern exactly what he’s doing, nor does he care too. Mainly because his thoughts are already starting to slip away, eyes heavy with sleep as it quickly claims him. 

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Oli wakes up the next morning (at least he thinks it’s the next morning anyways, for all he knows it's been anywhere from three days to a bloody month ,) and is absolutely starving. And dehydrated he thinks. He wouldn't know for sure though, he’s never been bloody dehydrated before. Because that would be a stupid thing to do, get dehydrated. 

Sitting up doesn’t go well when Oli tries it, as he immediately gets lightheaded. He lets out a groan, and immediately flops back down. No more sitting up, at all, at least for a few minutes anyways. He turns over, and buries his face in the plump pillow beneath him. And he does this till he hears the telltale creak of a door opening, and what he presumes is Sausage walking in. Well he hopes it’s Sausage, and not any other weird, meat named person that lives there. 

“Oh!” That cheerful voice fills the room again, and Oli is confident he guessed the right meat named person was walking in. “You’re awake!”

“How long was I out for?” He asks, though it’s muffled around the pillow he’s buried himself in. Sausage manages to hear it anyways, somehow.

“A day and a half I think.” The man tells him, if a little uncertain. Oli makes another muffled sound, and rolls over so his face isn’t buried in the bed anymore. “How’re you feeling?”

“Light headed.” Oliver groans. 

“Well it’s a good thing I brought you some breakfast!” The blonde jumps upright at that, which was a horrible idea for his head. Sausage lets out a giggle, and sets down a plate on the sheets next to him. He’d been here for two days and was already being treated to breakfast and bed, how nice. 

He tries not to eat it too ravenously, but Sausage doesn’t seem to mind it. There is water placed on the nightstand next to him as well, water that he almost entirely forgets to drink. Sausage doesn’t stare as he eats, just starts asking questions. 

“How’d you end up on the beach?” The brunette leans against the wall comfortable, his gaze full of curiosity and probably a million more questions. 

“Can’t remember.” Oli says, swallowing some of the fruit that had been on the plate. It’s an honest answer really. He vaguely remembers falling off his boat, the fishing boat he’d been using, but that seemed like a rather obvious conclusion. There was probably a storm or something that caused him to fall. Not a thrasher, thankfully, because he was still very much alive and not in the belly of a big fish. Though he’s not really sure how he’s alive in the first place to be exact, but Oliver will never complain about not being dead. No one would really. 

Sausage hums in response, and asks more questions about where he came from, his home, his life, family, the like. Oli says he has a wife, a son, and used to sell salmon. Sausage cuts him off before he can finish that though.

“You said the crab was your wife.” Sausage says it so casually, Oli has to pause on his breakfast to keep from choking.

“I said what!? ” He almost yells it out, and Sausage burst into a small fit of giggles

“The crab that was next to you! It’s downstairs now, and you said it was your wife!” He exclaimed, and Oli hated the fact he’d brought that bloody little pest inside! Inside the hours he was resting in! To put even more holes in his poor clothes!

“I was delirious, Sausage!” Unfortunately, the blonde’s protest was in vain, and always would be. He’d said the crab was his wife, and that was that it seemed. 

“You still said the crab was your wife!” Sausage sing-songed, and Oli held back a groan. He’d dealt with enough people in his old line of work to know that Sausage was never letting go of this, and would be using it to tease him until they stopped knowing each other. Which would be sooner rather than later, hopefully, once he found out where he actually was. 

“Where am I, exactly? You never really told me that.”

“Oh! You’re on the faction isles!” Sausage told him cheerfully, like that was a normal thing to say about a supposed set of islands. 

“The what? ” Oli asks, the name somewhat ringing the bell. It's in the very back of his head though, a weird name he’d heard once and barely scared to commit to memory. Maybe something he’d heard in whispers and rumors over the years. 

“The Faction Isles!” Sausage begins his little explanation with far too much cheer, in Oliver’s humble opinion. “There’s four factions that live here, the Kestrels, Herons, Nightingales, and Kites! I’m a Kestrel though, all the other ones are lame.

“The Kestrels like money and riches, the Nightingales are all about family, Herons like makin’ a dumb legacy, and the Kites like killing things!” Sausage made little faces and sound effects as he described each group, which gave Oli a pretty good idea of the man's opinion on each Faction, and was glad they seemed to be in line with his initial ones. 

“Well that sounds like something I don’t want to be a part of.” Oli mused, and had that want shattered a second after. Courtesy of Sausage

“Too bad! As the leader of the Kestrels I already decided you are one!” Sausage smiled that bright smile he always seemed to have, and Oli really wanted to hit the guy over the head. Even if he was beefy as hell and could fold the blonde like a twig.

“Without asking me!?” Oliver exclaimed, dismayed.

“Yep!” The Kestrel smiled again, and Oli just groaned around the toast he’d been brought. 

“And you? You’re the leader?” He asks, honestly not believing a doof like this guy could be a leader for a second. Just, look at him really. He looked like more of a troublemaker, or a handsome person who’d swindle you on the street with his dashingly good looks and piercing blue eyes more than he looked like any sort of leader. “In a way, yes! Abd as your leader I order you to rest some more, okay?” Sausage does not stay after that, because he presumably has to go do more leadership like things. Oli stares after him, food and water half finished, a little dumbfounded. 

But after a few hours he does do what he is told, because he is still recovering, and rest sounded mighty nice right about then. A few more hours of sleep never hurt anyone, and especially not him.

Oli end up staying in bed recovering for about a week, and Sausage barely leaves his side the whole time, when he’s not busy pirating that is. Mainly because Sausage has never found a person washed ashore before, and has no idea how to properly treat it. He says a week of bedrest wouldn’t hurt, as a just in case, and Oli isn’t really complaining about getting to simply lay around all day.

He meets the other two Kestrels, Guqqie, another weird name, and Kyle, the only person with a normal name around here.  The two of them are fine, suitable company for now at least. There will be a few more Kestrels recruited on Fractioning Day apparently, and Oli plans to get the hell out of dodge before then, especially before he has to meet any pirates from any other stupid faction.

He does not, in fact, get the hell out of dodge. The next day is when Oliver decides to stay a little longer, once he realizes he can get rich quick, have some adventure away from the wife, and then leave with god knows how much gold in his pockets. The plan might have a few hiccups along the way, but it should work, for the most part, if he decides to follow it all the way through and return to being in the fishing industry, that is. 

Whatever happens, the next few months promise to be very interesting regardless. 

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Over the next few weeks of Oli’s stay on the Faction Isles, he and Sausage grow rather close. The other Kestrels would say maybe too close, but neither of them seem to care. 

Kyle and Guqqie are great, really, they are, but Oli just finds himself drawn to Sausage naturally. Not that he can explain why, he just is, and it feels somewhat right, and he isn’t a man who questions things like that. They seem to be together at every moment, doing nothing in the base together, getting drunk at the tavern together almost every night, adventuring together. Kyle even jokes that they’re acting like a lovestruck couple.

Oli has to wonder why that makes his heart flutter so much.

He finds out soon enough though, a few days later. When Sausage seems to flirt with him. It’s a little thing really, nothing like anything the brunette ever said to Alison, but it’s enough to thoroughly fluster the blonde and maybe render him a bit speechless. Not that Oli would ever be so taken off guard, that's why he was maybe speechless instead of definitely. 

Oli doesn’t even remember what the damned conversation had been about really, the one they’d been having when it happened, just that it had allowed Sausage to make some sort of unholy comment. Which isn’t a very hard thing to allow and something he can do with practically any conversation. 

He remembers they were the only ones home though, which was a good thing in the end it seemed.

The two of them were in the Kestrel base, at the bar. Oli was behind the counter, rummaging around for what might be left of the good stuff, because stupid Kyle had to go and bloody drink about ninety percent of it. Safe to say, the blonde was not very pleased with that, he wanted to get piss drunk right then and now, not five minutes later. Sausage had said he's just picky with his alcohol, and that he’ll get drunk off anything and it doesn't have to be the good stuff. Oli had insisted that they could only have the best drinks out there and nothing less of it. 

Sausage is sitting at a bar stool, babbling on like he normally did. It was endearing really, how much stuff he could just talk about, all off the top of his head. But anyways, the conversation they were having, whatever it was, got derailed like it always did into something weirder. 

Oli makes some kind of snide remark, brings up the wife again he thinks. Sausage mutters about how for a married man, Oli seemed rather eager to get all up close and personal with him. 

“You’re not any better,” The blonde huffs, closing another empty cabinet and going to open the next. Oli also cursed out a certain faction mate under his breath, muttering about where the fuck he’d hid the last of the strong stuff. “Flirting with everyone you come across like that.” He was going to throw all the weak alcohol Kyle had graciously left them at his head next time he saw that man, maybe spill it on his nice adventuring clothes as well. Leaving the rest of the faction the worst beers, really, this wouldn’t get even a Nightingale properly wasted, much less the heavyweight sitting behind him, no matter what Sausage claimed about his drinking abilities.

 “Yeah but you only flirt with me! ” Sausage points out, and Oli’s cheeks do not turn a light shade of pink. No never, not in a million years. “And you sound like you mean it too!” Oli makes no comment, just shoves another almost empty bottle of liquor to the side. He’d had to crouch down for his search a while ago, and is glad, because now his friend can’t see the blush spreading across his face, or how he’s starting to get flustered and almost dropping glass bottles onto the floor beside him. 

Sausage keeps talking, so much so that even if the blonde wanted to interject, he wouldn’t be able to. “Besides all the flirting with Alison and stuff? Doesn’t really mean anything.”

“Does it now?” Oli asks, eyes lighting up. He might’ve found what he was looking for, after gods knows how long. He’d also possibly found Kyle’s little hiding spot, so this might be a double victory. 

“Nah, it’s all just for one night stands and stuff.” Even when Oli’s not looking, he can tell what kind of hand gesture Sausage had just done. 

The next thing the brunette says is quiet, almost whispered. In hindsight, Oli doesn’t think he was meant to hear it, or that Sausage thought he even could. “Never worked with you anyways….not that I wanted just a one night thing…..” The blonde doesn’t hear the last part, mainly because he hears the first part, and ends up slamming the cabinet closed harder than he originally was going too. 

He stands quickly, two bottles of the good stuff clutched in his hands, and stares at Sausage; face red all the up to the tips of his ears. He watches, in real time, as a metaphorical light bulb appears above Sausage’s head, the other Kestrel processing that Oli had heard what he’d just whispered to himself. And if he didn’t want it to be heard, the blonde doesn't have the slightest clue why he would even say that in the first place.

“You…you what!? ” He exclaims, and somehow, the alcohol he’d spent twenty minutes looking for gets thrown across the room and hits the opposite wall. He hadn’t meant to almost hit Sausage with a bottle, presumably doing so in shock, but now he almost had, and there was shattered glass right in front of the door. Lovely. 

(In the back of his mind, he hopes Kyle steps in it, just a little bit.)

“Oli!” Sausage yells, having scooted back a little when the bottle was thrown. The other one is set on the counter for good measure. “What the hell was that for! Why’d you throw a bottle at me!?”

“Sorry, sorry! I just, um, ah….didn’t mean to do that, er..” He stammers, and his face goes at least fifty different shades of red. 

“Are you blushing!?” Sausage almost yells it out, eyes studying his face carefully. Which makes Oli blush more, goddammit. This night was not going how he wanted it, especially because he has absolutely no interest in getting wasted at all anymore. 

“No, yes! Maybe!” He blurts it out, because it’s the only thing that will come to the blonde’s mind right now. He wishes he hadn’t as soon as the words are out of his mouth. 

“You’re blushing!” Sausage repeats, a little giddy, like he can’t believe he just got Oliver to blush, like he hadn’t done so a million times before. 

“Well why wouldn't I be!? You just tried to bloody proposition me!” Oli yells out, and its those few words that send the rest of the night spiraling into a wildly different direction. 

“I didn’t try to do that-!” Sausage’s protest is cut off by what Oli yells out next, the worst thing he’s said all night. The worst thing he’s said by far, something else he wishes he’d never ever said as soon as it leaves him.

“If you wanted me in your bed so bad you could've just said so!”

It’s quiet for a good second, a beautiful second, before one of them has to speak and ruin it. “You’d…you’d have said yes..?” The way Sausage says it, it’s like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Oli can’t believe it either, really, his head starting to spin with something,

“I…yeah, I would’ve..” He says, taking an unconscious step back. His backside hits whatever is behind the bar counter, a keg maybe, and Oli can’t even be bothered by it.

“Would you have said yes to more…or just..?”

“Yeah, yeah, I…Sorry I-I need a minute.” He struggles his way through the admission, and the rest of the sentence, and 

“Oli, Oli wait!” Sausage’s calls after him end up being in vain. 

Oli doesn’t wait for even a single second, he’s up the stairs before Sausage finishes speaking. He’s running from this, that’s what he’s doing. Running from his feelings. It’s not the first time he’s done it, but it feels worse this time. Everything feels worse this time. 

Whatever he’s feeling right now for Sausage feels wrong, but also right. He wants him, loves him even. He has a wife at home, a son, a wife and son he’s trying to get back too. He can’t have him. Part of him doesn’t want to. 

He stands in his room not even a minute later, running a hand over his still burning face, hiding like he was a little kid again. 

The door makes a creak as it opens, like it always does. Sausage does not want to run away from this. Oli wishes he did. He hadn’t even heard him coming up the stairs, goddammit. 

“Finally got you in my bedroom, eh?” The blonde mutters, not turning around to face the other. Sausage moves towards him.

“Oli…” That voice, the one that is normally so light and cheerful, now has an air of somberness to it. Oliver’s heart breaks a bit, with the knowledge that he did that, that that was his fault. Sausage grabs ahold of his arm gently, and Oli half expects himself to tense at it. Instead, he leans into it like a man starving for affection. Like Sausage doesn’t give him all the attention at any chance they get. 

“Sorry, sorry..” Sausage mutters something about stopping with the apologies. Oli shuts his mouth and stops saying sorry.

“Hey, look at me…please?” Sausage’s voice is soft, and Oli does what he says without any protest. When he turns to face his fellow Kestrels, a warm hand comes to cup his cheek. He leans into that touch as well, placing his own hand over the brunette. It feels lovely to be held like this. It shouldn't.

“I wasn’t typing to proposition you back there. You weren’t supposed to hear that.” Sausage explains, Oli just huffs again.

“Figured.”

Sausage lets go of his face, and moves away, closer to the door. “I wanted a bit more than that, but it;' fine if you don’t.” He mutters. Oli stops him before the other man can get much further, reaching out to grab him. 

He holds Sausage’s face in his hands gently, one could even say lovingly. The other Kestrel leans into it almost instantly. 

“What happened to you having a wife?” Sausage muttered, maybe a little surprised by the slight turn of events. Oli kept leaning in until their noses bumped and their lips were only centimeters apart. It feels wrong, it feels right too, and the blonde almost doesn’t care anymore. He needs this man, needs him like he needs air. 

“Doesn’t matter now.” Oli huffed, fully aware he doesn't have that many qualms on being disloyal to his marriage. That either says a lot about what kinda marriage it is, or what kind of man he is. For his own comfort, Oli likes to think it’s the former. 

“I still think your wife’s that crab~” Sausage teased, and Oli bit back a slightly exasperated groan at his friend's words. That was still the worst bit the brunette had ever come up with, and he’d made a lot of bad bits in their short time together. “Shut up so I can kiss you!” He exclaims, pouting slightly. 

Sausage shuts up a minute later. Oli connects their lips right as he does so. 

The kiss is a sweet, pleasant thing, one that makes his lips tingle with something nice. He feels the way Sausage’s breath hitches, the way his hands go to rest on the blonde’s waist. It feels nice, all of it does really. Sausage kisses him back after a minute, a surprisingly hesitant thing for such a normally confident man. But Oli won’t complain, not when it makes him feel all warm and fuzzy all around. 

Hands roam across his lower torso after a few tender seconds together, slipping under his shirt momentarily, because Sausage is physically incapable of ever being subtle about anything he wants. He’s exhausting, that man is, with all the teasing and the dirty jokes and words that should never come out of anyone's mouth. But Oli doesn’t mind one bit. 

It goes no further than that, nothing more than a kiss and a few teasing touches. He's glad, secretly, because he doesn't think he could handle doing much else today. They pull away slowly, Oli staring back into pretty blue eyes as they catch their breaths; puffs of it falling on his face gently. The blonde smiles, bumps their foreheads together, and moves back a bit, mostly because Sausage looks pleasantly dazed by the whole thing. 

After a minute, long after Oli had come back to his senses and was missing the other’s constant attention, Sausage speaks. “That was…amazing!” His voice is soft enough to melt even the toughest of people, and Oli isn’t surprised when part of him swoons at it. Only part of him though, the rest of his being is demanding some kind of affection after all that fanfare. You can’t just have a first kiss with a man then move on with your day after all, that’s far too boring by both of their standards.  

Oli rolls his eyes with a fond, yet slightly indignant snort. “Yeah that was great ‘n all, now get down here and cuddle me!” He demanded, squishing Sausage’s cheeks in his hands. 

“Alright, alright!” The other Kestrel chuckles, letting him be dragged into the bed ( their bed , Oli’s head tells him.) Strong arms wrap around his midsection, and Oli buries his head against Sausage’s frame, feeling much better than he had for a good while, since he washed up on shore definitely, and maybe even before that.

Tender kisses are pressed to his hair, sweet whispers exchanged between the both of them, and it is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that Oli feels content in this man’s arms. 

“I love you.” Sausage mutters into his hair, then presses another kiss into it. Oli does not respond, just snuggles against him closer, and hopes the wife won’t be too cross when he returns home.

[cielenruine]

[YEET]

It was as if there was a disturbance in the force- something or someone appeared that made his mind and body react instantly even though his eyes hadn’t spotted it yet. It was such an odd feeling of ominous familiarity coupled with a spike of anxiety, an entire whirlwind of emotions cycling far too fast for him to register. He hadn’t seen who or what it was, he hadn’t heard, he had no physical confirmation that there was anything there to begin with- but his mind knew.

Taking in a long, deep breath of air as if to break the ice that had caused his throat to freeze shut, Lambert gulped down. Something in his body wanted to run and disappear, while other urged him to turn around and look at whatever it was in the eye.

He settled midway, kneeling to fetch a crab that was crossing over his foot.

Lambert didn’t know the face or name of whoever was there, and he most likely wouldn’t remember on the go. But his mind knew, and while he had tried to stop himself from trusting that faulty sense lest he embarrasses himself again, it was far too late. The professor turned around, crab in hand-

Catch it, Matt! Boo, you're so damn lame!

-and threw the crustacean at the other man, the sight of his face burning a hole in his brain. The name was lost, everything else too, but differently from before he wasn’t left with nothing. No, he knew this man, and part of him wanted to torment him endlessly for whatever reason- but in the fondest way one could muster.

Beaches were not his forte in the slightest. He had visited much colder ones in his youth, but nothing like these. The creatures that burrowed in the sand here were a new sight for him and it was relaxing to walk, being mindful of his step, and watch them go about their little lives. Matthias was hardly one for breaks but every now and again, it wasn't so bad to let his mind and body relax.

All at one then he was reminded why he rarely took them. He hadn't heard the man approaching him. It wasn't of too much concern, there was no one who would do them any harm here. That was what he thought until he felt a skittering and a pinch at his side. He quickly turned to meet the culprit who had launched the poor creature at him and all went still. He knew he'd be chasing ghosts coming here, but he wasn't sure anything in his life had ever prepared him to meet one face to face like this. Between the nerve to launch a crab at him and the scruffy unkept hairs that covered his ears, he was sure of it. He dared not say his name for fear of breaking his own spirit but it wasn't like he could ignore his own feelings.

So in keeping with what they both knew, he wasted not another moment jumping forward and tackling Lambert down to the ground. It was him. He was much scragglier and the wounds that had taken his life were somehow fixed up enough that he was here, breathing. He didn't know what to say but he couldn't stop his mouth from acting all its own.

"Where in the goddess's name did you come from?"

As much as he wanted to avoid it, his brain would not rest until he at least acknowledged the absurdity of the man underneath him.

[copperbora]

This is my two year old baby boy Keplar, aka the mortal enemy of my marine nano aquarium Purrling Reef.

A few weeks ago I had to put fortifications around the tank because he kept attempting to hunt my Ocellaris clownfish Moby and Purrling's other inhabitants as well.

I love Keplar dearly but he also recently decided that my emergancy airline's airstone did not actually 'need' to actually be in the water. The problem is, Keplar happens to have ferociously sharp claws, which I am very well acquainted with personally thanks to the fact that he loves rearing up against my leg when he is hungry to get my attention as well as recently, hopping up on my shoulder. So, this morning I discovered that he had finally poked enough holes in the airline that not enough air was making it to the airstone in the water anymore.

Why is this important, you ask? Because should the power go out - which it does reasonably frequently here although mercifully usually only for a few hours - the regular injection of air bubbles into the water from the air stone will keep my water oxygenated, therefore keeping Purrling's beloved (and expensive) marine inhabitants alive.

(And what do I mean by expensive? Oh ho - saltwater fish are not your $5 Betta splendens or cheap $2 zebra danio of yore - my baby clownfish cost me $24 - which is cheap for a marine fish. His neighbour yellow watchman goby Clyde cost $40, and I expect my future royal gramma basslet to cost between $80-$100. I'm lucky because the fish that I can get for my little tank are actually relatively inexpensive. It's not uncommon for reef fish to cost $100-$400+ a pop.)

Lieutenant Skitter the blue eyed hermit crab was a fortunate nab: my livestock dealer gave him to me for free because he felt bad that I had driven an hour to see him and he didn't have any of the fish that I wanted in stock.

So, first thing's first: I attempted to repair the airline with black electrical tape which is both waterproof and reasonably Keplar-proof.

Unfortunately, the tube was too far gone, so I had to replace the whole thing. I armoured this in electrical tape too.

Success!

Another thing I did as an anti-Keplar measure is let the back and sides of my tank become absolutely covered in beautiful algae. The algae naturally blocks Keplar from looking in and the fish from looking out so that they only have to deal with my snuggly feline demon from one angle. (I do plan on wrapping these sides with dark construction paper in the future because the algae may disappear once I add corals and the algae no longer has those nutrients to munch on.)

While Moby and Clyde are scared of Keplar, my newest addition yellow-tailed damselfish Jewel doesn't mind him and happily watches him back. In fact, she seems less afraid of Keplar than she is of me! I hope that Moby and Clyde will learn from her brave example. A lot of people despise damselfish because a lot of them can be jerks (fun fact: clownfish are also damselfish,) but marine fish breeder ORA swears that Jewel's species is mellow. So far, ORA is right and Jewel is doing an awesome job of doing what I bought her for - being a 'dither' fish. Dither fish are fish whose confident swimming inspires calm in more nervous ones, like Moby, who I swear was getting depressed before I introduced her. Now he's eating again and swimming more readily around the aquarium!

Hopefully Jewel won't harass the royal gramma (to be named Amphritite) when I get it; I plan on buying a little pen to secure Jewel while I introduce Amphi. I doubt that Jewel will pose any issue with the introduction of Moby's future mate, Cousteau, as Cousteau should flock straight to Moby. Eventually (soon, hopefully,) I will supply Moby and Cousteau with at least a couple of LPS coral from the genus Euphillia - hammers and frogspawns, specifically. Torch corals are nastily aggressive to other corals and need lots of space so I won't be adopting any (they are horrendously expensive anyway.) Hammers and frogspawns also need space but I factored that into the design of my aquascape with a seperate little island for them.

Marine aquarium keeping is a really fun and complex learning curve; there's so much that I am still learning and perfecting! (Like temperature; I thought that I had that figured, but I don't yet. I honestly think that I need a higher wattage heater because the one I have doesn't seem to be maintaining temps well enough. I accidentally left the floor fan beside the aquarium on last night and my water temps plunged from 25°C to 18.3°C. Fortunately my temperature controller's alarm went off and I was able to quickly turn off the fan!)

I'm enjoying this very slow adventure. Every new livestock addition makes my tank so much more interesting and I can't wait to see how Purrling Reef will look a year from now!

[elijahbell]

"Not necessarily, but I also wouldn't deny one if I stumbled across it. Quite useful, in case I have some treasure to bury. And I have to admit, this spot does not look half-bad when it's low tide." Elijah responded as he trudged closer across the sand, eyes trailing the waterlogged holes clustering on the beach. Little ocean critters glistened among the water - fishes and little crabs skittering around seashell-clad rocks. Picturesque, like an impressionist painting, or something straight out of a travel brochure.

More interesting than that though was the stranger, who'd decided to seat himself in this tropical paradise. A handsome fellow, though that was not what'd caught Elijah's attention on this sunny afternoon. Not at all. "I hope you don't mind some company. I've been wandering all morning, and even the best of us suffer quite a bit with the heat. And those tidal pools do look refreshing."

Elijah didn't dip his toes in just yet. Instead, he offered a slightly sandy hand to his compatriot. "Elijah, by the way. I figured I should introduce myself, if I'm going to bother you for the next half hour. Unless you'd prefer privacy in your hideaway." The man paused for a moment, eyes flicking down to the prominent, stuffy looking piece of black-fabric, that probably did nothing to cool it's wearer down. "What brings you out here, by the way? Most people tend to avoid the sun by hiding out in the shades right about now."

location: tidal pools open for everyone

Why was everything so fucking warm?

Apollo sat down on a rock on the edge of a tidal pool, dipping his feet into the water below, disappointed to find the water to be lukewarm. Ever since the craziness that had taken place on and off the ship, whose existence encompassed an absurdity he couldn't even begin to fathom, all his senses circled back to the heat he was constantly feeling. Granted, his turtleneck was a very unfortunate choice of clothing for destiny or god or whoever decided to put them there to pick for him, but that's what his closet mostly consisted of nowadays anyway.

But he definitely didn't deserve the heartburn. He rubbed at his chest as if he could soothe the pain that was building underneath and tried to take those deep breaths that the doctors had advised him to those days when burning was all he could feel. He closed his eyes for a second and tried to steady himself, when his effort for peace and quiet was interrupted by the sound of footsteps behind him.

"Looking for a hideaway as well?" he asked, instinctively trying to appear calm and collected as ever.

[dumb-hat]

Prompt #6: “Onerous” - FFXIV Write 2022

"Look, I'd probably make a shitty husband, but I take my husbandry seriously," Evander said to himself, mostly to get it out of his system. It was a stupid joke that had popped into his head months ago, and he just knew it would one day find its way out of his mouth when actual people were around if he didn't get it out now.

But... it was true, after a fashion. There were a lot of things that Evander slacked on, but providing for the animals in his care wasn't one of them. By his reckoning, once you took a creature out of the wild and brought it into your home, you owed it a good life. After all, if not for you, it'd be doing whatever the hell it wanted, whenever the hell it wanted. Sure, it meant that said creature no longer had to worry about predators, but that wasn't where your responsibility ended.

This was... perhaps a gray area. See, when he'd left his apartment, yesterday evening, he had one crab: a blue smallshell with a busted pincer that he rescued from a jail he was holed up in a couple years ago. Upon his return, he had two crabs, as there was now a curious red crab skittering around his apartment, clacking its claws as it circled St. Barnabas, the aforementioned smallshell. The two seemed to be friends, which was a bizarre turn, as St. Barnabas, at best, seemed to tolerate anyone else. Evander had to wonder how much responsibility he had in this situation.

What kind of relationship does one have with their pets' roommates?

Was this like, a landlord/renter situation? Or was this more like a second pet/first pet once removed kind of thing?

"Okay, well, whoever the hell you are, and however the hell you got here, your name is Klaus until you tell me otherwise. And, uh... No subleasing, okay? Well, no more subleasing, I guess."

St. Barnabas and Klaus clacked in unison, and Evander hoped that was a good thing.

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[misterymeats]

I’m going to wait until all of the rewritten chapters are done until I post them to ao3, but here’s the current version of the first chapter of Mid-Day!

Once upon a time, there was a lonely little prince. The prince had the creatures of the isles for friends, and for a time the prince was happy with that. But still the little monarch longed to see another creature like themself, until one day the lonely little prince met a young knight in training. … It's a beautiful morning on the boiling Isles. The tear in the sky is shining bright, the harpies are singing, and steam rolls off of the churning sea to coat the fetid island in a thick fog. It's the kind of day where you so much as take a step outside and your trousers already as damp as a swamp.

On a small dingy in a shallow harbor, a pair of fishermen tug on the ropes to pull up their haul.

"Oy Brandon, this feels like a biggun! This'll feed the family for a week, for sure!"

The net drains, before it spills out onto the deck. Amongst the flopping fish and skittering crabs, there's a distinctly non fishy shape rising from the catch. It's a young, lanky witch, with a pair of horns, and searing sunset colored eyes.

"Good morning gentlemen." Apricus says in a sweet and refined English accent, before promptly opening up their toothy maw and shoveling live fish in to be devoured by the handful. "Oi! That's our haul!" One fisherman shouts, while his companion turns to him and says.

"I dunno Brandon, I bet that kid would be alright for a barbecue as well."

"Byron you idiot! They don’t have no meat on them!" Brandon cried, before he turned to Apricus. "Get off our boat you little thief!"

Apricus chuckles before they bite the head off of another many eyed fish, and the two men quickly try to corral them off of the boat. The larger of the two fishermen abruptly charges, intending to tackle Apricus. Their response is to dart between his widely stanced peglegs and roll onto the other side of the deck. “Oi, what the-” The fisherman growls before tugging on his beard. “Mangy ruffler!” Apricus stands up straight, and takes another bite of their fish. “I’m not taking that much. If anything, I might guess that you two are exceeding your allotted catch for this season. You should let me skim your haul so you don’t have to deal with the authorities.” They muse as they put on a professional air about themself, though their eyes still gleam with mischief. It’s while they’re distracted that the second, quieter fisherman, sneaks up behind Apricus and wraps his arms around their torso. The youth kicks out their legs with a loud, “Hey!” But despite their protests they’re promptly tossed overboard, and they shriek the entire plummet into the water. After a few moments, Apricus breaches the boiling sea. They spit out a mouthful of water and steam before promptly erupting into a fit of laughter. The fisherman hear them and shake their fists at the teenager, and Apricus childishly sticks their tongue out at the salty sailors before embarking on their long swim back to shore. They’re still giggling as they pick fish bones out of their pointed teeth, and they approach a tree with a hole in the trunk. “So that’s lunch covered, what do you want to do with the rest of today?” The youth asks while they retrieve their clothes. A little doll with beady eyes is perched on a branch nearby, and it stands guard while they pull their pants and turtleneck back on while hiding in the bush. Apricus lets out a hum when they turn back to the doll and take it into their arms, and they nod along to a silent conversation while they weigh their options. “Oh yes, yes Lucy, a tea party would be excellent.” Apricus’ eyes widen and they let out a small gasp. “But I forgot my tea set! I even got a metal one just for traveling.” The youth pouts while they hang their head. “Sorry Lucy, we’ll just have to do that when we go back home. But-” They heft the cat doll up in their hands and beam lovingly at the stuffed animal. “We can still say hi to the rest of our friends! Like Mister Snake, Mister Baldersnatch, Lady Scarab, that weird old guy in a funny house-” Apricus then proceeds to list off at least fifty different types of insects with appropriately cutesy nicknames. “Sir Wormy, Sir Stingy and-” They take a gasp for breath, “Madam Mugsy.” They wipe the sweat from their brow. “Man, if I spend too much time socializing I won’t get home until sundown. Then Father will really get mad.” An impish gleam comes to their eye, but then they shake their head. “No, no, I don’t wanna get grounded.” Apricus lets out a sigh. “Okay, let’s just uh, drat. I don’t want to leave anyone out…” Apricus murmurs as they get lost in thought. They take up a jog and run along a steaming red river. On the skyline above a forest of lush trees, The Emperor’s castle sits atop a rocky outcropping overlooking this very same river. It sits just on the horizon, and it’ll be a couple of hours for the youth to return home on foot even with their long stride. It’s while they’re busy wondering the logistics of trying to encounter as many wild animals as possible on their trip home that Apricus sees a handful of birds bursting from the tree. Not long after, a young witch wearing a highschool outfit comes sprinting out of the forest. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees the boiling river in front of her, and then she looks over her shoulder, her long green locks of hair bouncing as she looks for somewhere to run. Her golden eyes lock with Apricus’, they’re wide with utter terror. Their legs were already pumping to bring themself towards her long before the witchling cried out for help. “Please help! There’s a monster!” The girl cries, her hands grabbing Apricus’ shoulders while she pleads. “Wait, where?” The girl looks behind her, and points back into the trees. In the darkness, Apricus can see a pair of oblong red eyes, and a low growl emanates from a set of dripping fangs. The girl, now feeling much safer that she’d found a suitable distraction for the beast hunting her, began to slip off. With their back turned on the witch, Apricus eyes the creature as the idea for what to do comes near instantly. They clasped their hands together while with honey sweet words they cried, “Carl! Is that you? Oh my goodness! Your hypodermic fangs have grown in so nicely this year! And look at your coat! It’s so silky!” The chupacabra’s eyes widen in recognition, and it forgets about its prey to preen at Apricus’ earnest compliments. Apricus takes a step closer as their friendly smile grows yet warmer. “Oh let me guess, you found a new calcium deposit this year? You have got to tell me. I’ve been looking for some good bones to give the snails this year.” The youth titters. “Do you remember last year, when there was a bunch of pecked out shells everywhere?” Carl sat on his haunches as he nods in solemn agreement. Truly, it was a terrible event, the infant mortality rate of the local flail snails that season had been absurdly high. The monsoon had been tainted with acid rain, and the poor creatures and flora of this forest have paid the price for it. Apricus lets out a forlorn sigh. “But! If we share this good news it shouldn't be so bad. I’m glad you’ve been doing so well lately.” Carl can’t contribute much to the conversation, but intelligence shines in the eyes of the chupacabra regardless. It spares the witch behind Apricus another glance. The witch from before is still standing there, her gaze wide and unblinking as she can only guess that this baby-faced teenager must have access to some kind of high level beast-keeping magic to allow them to stand within five feet of this bloodthirsty creature and live to tell the tale. “Oh yeah, that’s a new friend of mine.” Apricus says casually to Carl with a friendly wave, before diving back into conversation to distract him. “If you want, I can bring back some fishbones from the ocean the next time I go swimming! I know you love those as toothpicks.” Carl chitters as he nods his head. Reaching out, he lifts up a taloned hand and nudges Apricus��� cheek with the side of his gnarly appendage before turning around and padding back into the forest to seek another meal. “Bye Carl!” Apricus calls as they wave goodbye. The witch girl lets out a rather loud sigh of relief with her pursuer gone. Apricus’ pointed ears twitch, and they turn around to look at her. Their round eyes are far too large, almost doll-like, and their kittenish mouth parts to reveal a maw of sharp teeth with multiple sets of canines. Apricus’ slitted pupils rotate into a vertical position, before promptly dilating far beyond what should have been natural for a witch. It now occurs to the witch that perhaps there’s another reason why Apricus isn’t on the menu. “Hiya!!  I haven’t seen you around before! What’s your name?” Apricus greets, and they already put out their hand to shake. The witch glances down at their extended hand, and the crescent moon birthmark on their palm. She glances back up to Apricus’ face. “Um, what are you?” The witchling asks. “I’m a demon! A satyr specifically.” Apricus chirps while they grin good naturedly. “That's why I got a set of horns! And my legs are all weird and kinda not bent in places.” They say, before gesturing to their slightly bowed shins and unusually long thighs. “I don’t have hooves though, I just got like witchy feet. Personally I like it since it makes finding shoes way easier. Speaking of which-” Apricus finally stops holding up their hand to shake and points at the witch’s boots. “I like your shoes! They’re very nice looking, the mud adds to the overall colors.” The witchling blinks slowly as she stares Apricus down, her expression unreadable. Apricus’ smile rapidly grows more strained as they furrow their eyebrows. “Um. I’m glad you’re ok. Do you need directions on how to get back to town from here?” They ask, their voice faintly cracking as they maintain this conversation. The witch still says nothing, and Apricus scratches the back of their neck. “My name is Lilabelle.” The girl says, somewhat awkwardly as she glances back to the side. “Thanks for helping me and all. I can get back on my own. Bye.” And with that, Lilabelle starts walking along the river by herself. “But are you sure that’s the right way?” Apricus calls, and points to the direction opposite of the castle. “It’ll take hours to reach the capitol! You sure you don’t want to go to the harbor town instead? They have great fish there!” Lilabelle stops walking and gives Apricus a terse smile. “No, I’m not hungry. Thank you though.” “Okay!” Apricus calls as Lilabelle goes on ahead. They think things through for a moment, before calling out. “I gotta go that way to head home too! So don’t think I’m being weird and following you, okay?” Lilabelle picks up the pace to go on without them, and Apricus’ ears droop while they hug their plush doll. “Let’s just go home Lucy.” They murmur.

…

After a walk that felt longer than it should have, Apricus glances around to make sure that nobody is looking before unlatching their own bedroom window and slipping inside. Not that they’d have to, since their bedroom is four stories up on the wing of the castle that faces the river. Apricus quickly turns around to close their window before walking over to their bed, and places their beloved doll on their twin sized mattress amidst a plethora of other stuffed animals.

“Gee, it’s been a long day! I think it’s about time for a tea break, don’t you agree Lucy?” Apricus states, making their voice more clear than usual as they go to gather their personal tea set. They know Belos hears everything, even if he doesn’t always listen.

Apricus closes a notebook they haven’t used today for good measure, before they promptly go ahead to scoop up their plush cat doll and place it on the usual seat of a pile of textbooks balanced atop an intricately carved wooden chair. They then retrieve their tea set, and brew a cup of black tea using hot water from the suite bathroom shower.

“I say Lucy! Today has been most uneventful hasn’t it?” Apricus says primly, before grinning impishly as they sip on their cup of tea.

The inanimate doll sitting across from them naturally cannot speak, so I state,

Why yes, it has been. We really ought to get out more shouldn’t we?

Apricus then promptly erupts into a fit of giggles.

The carved oak and brass inlaid door to their bedroom is ajar, and Apricus can hear the sound of a heavy metallic clanking down the hall.

Instantly, they go dead silent and sit up straight in their chair, tidy up their hair, and fold their hands respectfully on the table.

A faint chill on an unfelt breeze comes into the room as Emperor Belos stands in view. The eye sockets of his mask are empty, but even still Apricus can feel his gaze boring into them.

“Remember, you have a test tomorrow, child. Do try to study diligently tonight. You don’t want to disappoint me again, right?”

“Yes Father.” Apricus answers as they peer up at their parent, but he’s already gone without bothering to respond.

Apricus swallows a lump in their throat and stares at their textbooks, and then to the doll in front of them.

“You’ll help me study, right Lucy?”

Of course my friend.

[theguidetocryptids]

It opened its eyes.

It saw the ocean, and the sky.

It saw the waves crashing relentlessly.

It saw seagulls soaring high.

It saw crabs skittering from side to side.

It didn’t know what it was here, why it had thought in the first place, or who had created it, but at the moment, it was content to watch the world.

It watched the sun scream across the sky and the moon meander after it, the latter not seeming to mind how many times it was lapped.

It watched the stars fade in, like pin-holes in the background of the universe, before the sky faded from black to blue and the fabric of reality was whole again.

It watched the turtles and the crabs and the people, splashing, and swimming, and living.

It felt a seagull build a nest upon its head.

It watched the cycles of the moon, how it waxed and waned, and fancied it a new being with every repetition, being born and dying again and again.

It watched the seagull find a mate, and soon realized it was the silent guardian of the mother’s eggs.

It watched the tides roll in, and out, and watched them eat away at the sand, forever taking away that which life flourished on.

It watched the eggs hatch, and felt the warmth and youth of new life.

It watched the sun soar across the sky, over, and over, and over.

And the moon follow, and follow, and follow.

It watched the seagull’s hatchlings take flight, even though they still had patches of down,

And it watched the moon die,

And it watched the babes as they grew into strong, full-grown gulls,

And it watched the moon live again,

And it watched its seagull friend lay another set of eggs,

And it watched the tide eat away the sand a little more,

And watched another generation raised again,

And it watched the world age, and age, and age.

The stars faded in, and faded out, screaming at the fury of the sun which they fought.

The universe ticked on and on, and on and on.

The planets grew more ancient, the seas grew ever wiser, and the world grew ever crueler.

It watched the seagull falter in its flight.

It felt the seagull settle down in its nest,

And it felt its only companion take its last breath, a life well lived, and lost only to old age.

It watched the skies, and the oceans, and the receding land, and the dying people.

It watched the void of space, and the things within it, and how they tried so hard to fight against that emptiness, that vastness, and how they lost.

It watched the bones of its friend crumble to dust, and blow away in the wind.

It felt each and every second tick by, and every moment in between.

It watched the days and the years and the minutes and the seconds roll by.

It watched,

And it watched,

And watched.

Forever watching.

Forever mourning.

Forever observing a world that wasn’t meant to last,

With creatures that were barely even atoms of the letters in the book of the universe, within a footnote no one cared about.

With their lives and their dreams, and how they raged against the universe, and how the universe raged back, in its silent, deadly way.

It watched the moon die a million times, and live a million more.

It watched the air turn toxic and the lands turn barren,

It watched the sun grow old and spiteful,

It watched stars wink out forever,

It watched.

It was dealt the worst of fates,

And the most blessed of gifts,

With a mind to remember,

Eyes to see,

A heart to feel,

And a life that couldn’t be snuffed out.

It watched everything that was beautiful,

It watched the sun rise on a nice autumn day,

It watched things struggle and drown in the unforgiving sea,

It watched things love, and live, and enjoy living,

And it watched them die, and decompose, and drift in the wind as dust and ash.

It watched everything that was wrong, and horrible.

It watched everything that was right, and wonderful.

And still,

It mourned its friend, who’s descendants walked the Earth, until no one was around to call it the Earth anymore.

It mourned the moon, who could never escape its cycle of death,

The sun, stuck in an endless race against someone who wasn’t even playing the same game,

The creatures, chasing happiness that was so easy to miss,

Itself, forced to watch the life and death of all things.

It mourned for everything, the whole of it, each and every speck of being that was ever forced into the cruel universe that this was.

It felt time ebb and flow.

It felt the universe grow and shrink.

It felt light stretch thin.

The void grow more massive.

It felt all the things that were on the edge of perception, the maybes and nots and the should-bes.

It felt all the things that could’ve, should’ve would’ve been.

It felt sad, and content, and angry, and hopeless.

It felt,

It watched,

It remembered it all.

Forever.

For an eternity.

Until the stars burned cold.

Until the heat ran out.

Until everything that ever was ceased to be.

Until it was the only thing left, drifting in a dead universe, with dead stars, and dead moons, and a dead planet with trillions of billions of dead creatures.

The oceans froze over, then sublimated away.

The core of the world stopped burning, turned colder than nothing.

And still, it remained.

Wistful.

Nostalgic.

Longing for a time that had been, long, long ago, when it had just watched the stars,

And the sky,

And the ocean,

And watched its friend fly, and cry, and live.

It remains,

A being that was,

Always will be,

And forever is,

Eternal.

A something who was never sensed,

Never allowed to love, or live, and enjoy living,

One could only watch, and hope, and mourn,

And remember, and remember, and remember.

It felt its mind strain against the liminal, against the boundaries that existed for no other reason than to Be.

It felt its mind strain to Be at all.

It wondered, now, about its creator, since there was nothing left to ponder.

How cruel a something must be to force it to live a life with no living, or love,

How it made living and love temporary, even fleeting,

How this world, this universe, this space was never meant to last,

How existence was a footnote to something larger,

How nothing could be as important simply being,

How nothing and everything were the same.

It felt its mind crack, and mend, and crack, and mend.

It tried to count the seconds, but ran out of numbers,

And reviewed everything over and over again, till it knew the story by heart,

How everything was limited, yet limitless,

How that which burns most brightly, burns the shortest.

How everything that was good, and wonderful, and beautiful,

Loved everything that was bad, and horrible, and hideous.

How it, itself, loved everything, and hated everything, and hated and loved itself.

And it watched nothing happen,

And it watched everything happen,

And it watched the shadows of things that could have been,

Things on the boundary between what was and wasn’t,

And it.

It was.

It was past the point of words, or thoughts.

Just feelings.

Just knowing.

And remembering.

Remembering when it opened its eyes . . .

[aka-indulgence]

Take Me by the Hand

So I wanted to post this on valentines (it’s not exactly valentine-themed, I just wanted to put something out hjdsk), but decided it was better to post now -w- this is a little fluff fic for @yeosin-n!! She has a really cool au called underwaves, and of course she makes just wonderful wonderful stuff and i love them all- and then its an undertale au!!!! in the ocean!!!!! ahdjkshd I kinda instantly fell in love with it... and UW Sans (Naut) as well, so uh!! Here’s a fluffy self-indulgent fanfic!!

Naut (UW!Sans)/Reader :D!!

"heheh, ya look like a big duck, darlin'."

  You try not to make a frustrated noise at him (lord knows he's already having WAY too much fun with you) and choose to simply mumble to yourself quietly as you take step by heavy step towards the innocently splashing waves, as if taunting your predicament.

  "I'd appreciate some help right about now, I could do without the remarks." You snap (softly) at him as you waddle your way over the sand, your heavy diving equipment jostling a little with every step.

  Naut had been helpful enough to put all the weight on you, and you wanted no more than to strangle the grin off the bastard's face.

  He's lucky you're dating him and love him too much to do that.

  Naut only chuckles for a bit, in your face, and you're about to throw your flippers at him when his laughs finally die down.

  "sorry, sorry," Naut lets a few more chuckles out as he wipes the "tears" away from his top set of eyesockets.

  You could swear you saw his lower eyelights turned into hearts for a second…

  "couldn't help myself. ya sure are a cutie," he says, and you would've made a sound of indignation if you didn't see the flowers happily popping into existence near the hole in his skull, floating down as if a slow waterfall was carrying it.

  You're the one with the happy little flowers, you want to tease, but at the same time, you didn’t want him to hide it. It was cute and pretty, you loved seeing him happy and relaxed.

  Without realizing what he's trying to do, Naut's already by your side, going behind your back. Before you could ask him what he's doing, you make a "hup-!?" Noise when he hoists your tank up.

  "better?"

  He was.. helping you carry your equipment.

  "Y-yeah!" You startle (you're not sure why, but the fact that he's actually helping you makes you feel.. sentimental).

  "ok then, let's keep going,"

  With the help of Naut, the journey to the water’s edge wasn’t as painful as it was when you started trudging down the sand, and you eventually got about chest-deep in the water.

  Naut let go of your tank, keeping you steady while you fit your dive boots into the open heel flippers. You fit your mask onto your face, and Naut starts drifting into deeper waters, now bobbing in the waves (how do skeletons float…? Of course he came from the ocean but… it’s like he has invisible floaties on!). He snrks a little. You make a face at him (well, as much of a face you could make with a mask covering half your face).

  “What?”

  “heheh… nothing. ya just… ya kinda look like a fish? with the goggles…” He makes two C-shapes with his phalanges, bringing them up to his sockets. “oh glowing waves above, i just wanna pinch you.”

  “H-hey! Stay focused!” you fluster, holding your hands out to him as if he was going to bite you. 

  Naut chuckles. “yeah, you’re right… i can always pinch ya later.” he teases, and before you could protest more, he gestures with his hand. “ok, check your second stage first, and let’s swim slowly…”

  You give the purge button of your second stage a couple of times, before attaching it to your mouth, floating towards your sea-lover. You release the air from your BCD, and Naut takes you by the hand, gently guiding you into the water.

  Everything feels different as soon as you are completely submerged, the sounds around you switching from air to water; your surroundings turning blue in an instant. For a few moments, you can only hear the sound of your breathing, the bubbles burbling around you.

  “you doing ok?” Naut’s voice snaps you out of your momentary awe, sounding practically as clear as he does outside the water. “don’t forget to equalize the pressure in your ears.”

  The sand slopes down, and you tilt your head this way and that, giving Naut the ok signal when you think you’re good.

  He’s dropped his teasing and playing around as he slowly brings you away from the surface; you vaguely feel like someone with a blindfold on while someone else’s pulling you somewhere to show you a surprise. He has to keep looking behind him to make sure he doesn’t run into corals or sharks or whatever.

  Your world completely changes around you- not that you’ve never seen ocean scapes before, but actually being in it to see it for yourself sure is a special experience. You see your first fish, catching your eye as it darts away from below you. The sandy bottom keeps going down, and down, and down���.

  … Until eventually, you reach a spot where it stops, turning into a plain of sand.

  Naut sits down- just, sits down on the sand, and it's so weird how he just so casually sits, legs apart below you, underwater. He tugs you a bit, pointing to the sand.

  You descend, knees hitting the sand with a soft ‘pwsh’... your hands inadvertently fall onto Naut’s ribcage.

  You see all four of his eyelights looking down, then lighting up, and you have no idea if he can see you blushing underwater-

  But thankfully, Naut knows to set his priorities straight, and right now it’s making sure your diving goes smoothly and safely.

  “good?”

  For a second, seeing Naut completely at home in this environment, you nod your head without thinking- shaking your head before giving him the ok sign.

  His grin grows and he laughs.

  Damn. Even underwater he still sounds smooth as hell…

  “heheheh… ok, bubbles. let’s get started then, shall we?”

  After about a minute of buoyancy practice, Naut kicked off the sand with his slippers (how did they stay on his feet under- you know what? Maybe you shouldn’t question the physics of underwater monsters so much), letting you follow him in your own pace.

  Not too far from the water’s edge, corals started sprouting out from the sand, and no longer than that, more sea life appeared. A rainbow of fish were milling about, shrimp and crabs skitter over the ‘living rocks’, and a sea turtle lazily swims by.

  Naut easily backpedals towards it, and it circles around him.

  Your eyes are taking in the underwater scene all around you with splendor; if you could smile, you would. It was all just so pretty, and your boyfriend’s over there becoming some sort of disney princess, as a few cleaner fish swim towards his skull. You don’t need to hold in your laughter on account of the regulator in your mouth, but your metaphorical smile gets bigger as you watch the tiny striped fish look around his crack while he’s completely unaware… he looks like he’s about to say something when his eyelights go out, as one of them starts nibbling.

  He flaps his hand like he’s swatting a fly away, and maybe you’re being tortured right now because you just want to let out a raucous laugh, purposefully shoving it in his face.

  “oh, of course, you’re entertained.” Naut lids his sockets a little, feigning annoyance, though the cute little flowers only continue to flow out of his skull.

  You want to gesture a “sorry (not sorry)” at him, but without knowing sign language, the most you could do is open your hands for a hug. He’s been wonderfully non-teasing the whole way down, and you think he deserves some credit, especially showing you… all of this.

  You’re thinking about how thankful you are to have him with you when you see his eyelights dart somewhere else with his grin turning mischievous. He points to the turtle still swimming nearby and asks “hey, what kind of turtle do you think that green sea turtle is?”

  … What.

  You blink at him a couple of times, trying to convey your “what kind of question” emotion you’re feeling right now, knowing he’s smart enough to realize what he just said-

  “hahahah, i’m joking i’m joking, i know it’s Chelonia mydas. c’mon, i’m no loggerhead.”

  w-

  …

  Loggerhead. Loggerhead sea turtle.

  …

  You raise your fist at him, and you hope he could hear your internal screaming at him. Looking at the way his sockets crinkle and his grin practically stretching from non-existent ear to ear, you think he can.

The dive was relaxing and pleasant, with Naut completely in his element, giving you the reassurance that you’ll be alright with him. He brought you to different parts of the reef, highlighting some of the animals similarly as to how he addressed the sea turtle.

  He brought you swimming closer to the seafloor, showing you clownfish in their stinging friend-homes, and with a straight face he said, “keep your friends close,” he put a ‘friendly’ arm around the carnivorous invertebrate, “keep your anemones closer.”

  You swam away from him then, closer to whee the sand starts sloping again. You met a singular jellyfish there, to which Naut poked away from you- it could just fit in your palms. You watch with mild glee as he gently poked it around… you know it’s a living creature… but wow did you want to bounce it and play around with it like a toy. He moved it away from you and sent it bobbing in the direction of the open ocean, and he turned to you to say “are you jelly you didn’t get to play with it?”

  You wanted nothing more than to show him a flat face, if you were brave enough to take the regulator off your mouth. You followed him back towards the reef, swimming through a large school of fish that parted as you did.

  “how you feeling seastar? i’m feeling fin-tastic.”

  He turned around to gesture at the school. “aren’t they like living artwork? so beautiful. i like to consider myself sofishticated, you know.”

  You almost couldn’t focus on the reef around you as you were both delighted and desperately trying to hide it from him, that you’re enjoying a diving buddy/instructor that could talk to you as you dive.

  You swam leisurely ahead of him, looking for more “landmarks” (sea… marks…?) to look at before you run out of gas, when you heard a rush of water behind you.

  You almost let the regulator out of your mouth when you see a huge eel flapping about near you, with Naut holding its tail end and keeping it from coming at you. He reeled it in towards him, holding its head.

  “don’t know what got into this guy. maybe your fins surprised him.”

  He goes silent for a while.

  “but i guess thaaat’s a moray for you.”

  Old jokes!!! He’s too much!!!

  You wished you could’ve said something to him so you weren’t simply being subjected to his continuous puns, but at that point it looked like you might just get that; when you saw that your pressure gauge showed less than 100.

  Naut quickly looked to you when you made a wave at him, giving him a 9-0 signal, trying to convey an “up?” as best you can.

  “oh. oh yeah let’s get you up, bubbles.” He said as he swam towards you.

  It was like- he had a switch for professional diving instructor and ‘regular Naut’. He quietly guided your ascent, slowly and steadily, making a stop below the surface to decompress, before finally swimming all the way to the surface and inflating your BCD.

  “Blah!” you ungracefully spit the regulator out, letting it sink into the water and take the mask off your face. “My teeth always feel weird afterwards…”

  “cus’ you’re clenching it all the time.” he floats towards you, putting an arm around you. “how you feeling, gull friend?”

  You open your mouth, only to stop when you realized what he said- as if on time, a seagull keows above you.

  You give him your best attempt at a seething glare, but you take a breath and smile, putting an arm around him as well. “You know what? That was really nice. I haven’t had this much fun in a while. … or really, I didn’t do that much before I met you. I liked this, Naut. Thanks for taking me out here with you.”

  You watch with satisfaction as Naut’s lazy expression and smug-ass grin fade away, his main sockets becoming wide and a light blush colors his cheekbones.

  Ha, gottem.

  “o-oh. you- yeah. i… you're welcome. anything for you, seastar. i’m glad you liked it.” his eyelights shift away from you.

  “Yeah… though not gonna lie, you really were a sun of a beach down there. Punning when you know I can’t say anything to you- it was like, water you doing!”

  “ha, yeah i know, it was-” Naut paused. And then he turned to you, seeing how smug and proud you looked of yourself.

  You watched how his eyelights dilated in his sockets, sparkling like sun rays dancing in the water.

  “heh… heheheh….” he chortled, “oh… don’t be mad now… it’s not a good idea to get too tide down to your emotions.”

  “Well- high tide or low tide, I’ll be by your side.”

  “better make sure you weren’t pier-pressured into that.”

  “Nah. I’m a girl who just wants some sun with my bonefriend!”

  He was smiling like a downright lovable idiot right now, eyelights shining like the sun.

  “hhhhoooh my god, i want to kiss you.”

  You give him a smirk.

  “Oh! So you’re feeling… naut-y?”

  Your grin weakens a little when Naut stops grinning, and his eyelights shrinking back to their regular sizes, shimmering. For a moment you worry if you said something wrong somehow, but your worry was unfounded- just moments later you watch as cute little hearts start coming out of his skull, with four of his eyelights turning into the same shape.

  “i don’t know why kissing’s naut-y, but it’s in my name-ture to be.”

  You’re smiling just as wide as him, ignoring how far he had to reach to make that pun. He closes his eyes and you let him lean in towards you, meeting him in the middle. He wraps his arms around you and kisses you while you reciprocate happily; bobbing in the waves under the sun.

[hypnoticwinter]

The Adventure of the Eidolon Chapter 6

Table of Contents

“Stop.”

The voice is barely a voice; it comes lifted on a hoarse tongue, a sere whisper of desert winds muttering unnameable secrets across the howling dunes. It could have been spoken by the tongues of a thousand beetles, joined as one to give life to that horrible, ancient voice, so old and cold that it strikes Watson in the gut like a frozen fist. His nerveless knees buckle and he puts his hands out to catch himself and finally, finally opens his eyes.

The dark-furred crab has sank down to the ground, the great armored disk of its body inclined downwards like a ramp, its claws tucked up beneath itself, its wings folded in contrition. The thing’s head is still, flickering a rhythmic coded staccato of whites and blues. Watson glances around frantically but sees no speaker; it is as though that titanic word had materialized out of thin air and fallen like a bomb into the middle of the kitchen. Watson starts to get to his feet; he doesn’t know what the hell happened to the crab, but if he’s fast, perhaps he can -

There is a wet, ripping noise from the far wall. As Watson watches, a hole opens in it, the edges warped and fraying, skittering fragments of darkness wafting from it and evaporating every few seconds. Through the hole a misshapen figure coalesces, its form shifting through impossible transformations. Behind it, a whirling kaleidoscope of chaos flutters, the shapes and motion and sound clawing at Watson until he finally forces himself to look away. There is, incongruously, a terrible, lilting melody, a hideous fluting or piping or something like it, fluttering through the hole and boring into his ears.

The figure steps through and the gate behind it shuts as though it were never there. The room feels as though it were about twenty degrees colder.

Watson looks up at the man standing there on the other side of the kitchen, or, at least, he tries to; his eyes will not raise all the way to the man’s face. Some sort of force prevents him from looking. All he can see are his feet, the hem of his midnight-black robe, the long, slender arms, curiously graceful, folded simply across his chest. His skin is black as well, the fullest, richest black that Watson has ever seen, the same shade as the space between stars, the black of absence or of emptiness.

Watson tries to speak but his throat fails him. Across from him, the crab makes a chirping noise. Its mouthparts are working furiously and then a rumbling hiss filters from them. “Iä! Nyarlathotep!” the crab intones, its voice like a vocoder, like Microsoft Sam if he were a dozen times stranger and more menacing. There is a reverberating, throaty buzz to its voice, as though it had a throatful of cicadas, and it is incredibly apparent to Watson that whatever its voice is for, speaking in this manner is not its intended purpose.

A roll of guttural syllables spills from its throat, all in that same horrible buzzing toneless voice, and as Watson listens he can feel the insane rhythm of the long, frenzied speech battering at his temples with almost palpable force. Watson must do something, he begins to feel, for having to sit here on his hands and knees, head bowed as though in worship, weighed down with the horrible weight of those words is simply intolerable. He must do something, anything, even if it were to -

“Enough,” the man says, his voice barely more human than that of the crab, and immediately the crab’s buzzing litany falls silent. There is a pregnant pause. “This man is my servant,” he intones. “I will treat harm to him as harm to myself. Now go back to Yuggoth and do all in your power to delay the Twins.”

The crab bows even deeper forward before scrabbling to its jagged, many-legged feet and scurrying backwards out of the room. There are receding crashes from deeper in the building as the crab bowls through whatever walls it had deigned to leave standing on its way in, and then the crashes fade gently to silence.

Watson can feel the man’s eyes on him but he still cannot force himself to raise his eyes to the man’s face. He can, with difficulty, raise his head and bring his gaze to the man’s collarbone, but he can will himself no further.

“You have a long road ahead of you, Watson,” the man says. The sound of his own name on those inhuman lips jolts through him like a missed step.

“Who are you?” Watson mutters. His voice is clogged and hoarse.

“You already know who I am,” the man says. Watson can hear the smile in his voice and reflects that perhaps he is grateful he cannot see it.

“Nyarlathotep,” Watson whispers.

Watson can feel the man’s smile widen. He feels as though his heart may stop at any moment, without warning. To have this ancient, immortal thing, lurking there across the kitchen island from him, leaning casually against the marble countertop, his pitch-black hands thrown back to support his weight as if he would have any need to - ! The thought, the weighty significance of it makes Watson’s skin crawl, but he is too petrified with fear to do anything, to speak bravely, to bolt out of the room. All he can do is sit there on his knees, his head bent on his futile neck, his hands in his lap.

Nyarlathotep walks around the counter, graceful as a cat, and places his hand on Watson’s head. Watson tries to move but all the strength has gone out of him; all he is capable of doing is sitting there with his hands in his lap, staring at the outline of Nyarlathotep’s knees beneath his robe.

Nyarlathotep places his thumb in the middle of Watson’s forehead and immediately there is such a blazing cold enveloping his head that Watson screams, or he would if he were able to force his voice to cooperate. The cold goes on for what feels like an eternity, and then Nyarlathotep withdraws his hand and it immediately subsides. There are tears in Watson’s eyes.

“What - ?” he starts.

“I have marked you, Watson,” Nyarlathotep says. “There, right in the middle of your forehead. All who see you who know how to look will know that you are my man.”

“But I -“

“Be calm, Watson,” Nyarlathotep says. The floorboards creak as he paces back behind the island. His jet-black arms are folded behind his back. Watson finds that he can raise his eyes now that Nyarlathotep’s back is to him. He can see the back of the Great Old One’s head, hidden beneath the cowl of his robe. “It means nothing,” he says, turning to regard Watson. Correspondingly, Watson’s gaze slides down, unbidden, until it rests on Nyarlathotep’s collarbone, as before. “Nothing except protection, from those who can see it. There are few things that would knowingly work against me, and those that would you are unlikely to encounter.”

Nyarlathotep makes a small, careless gesture. “You can get up if you want.”

Watson does so. His knee cracks like a gunshot. “When Nemaides described you, she made you seem…different.”

Nyarlathotep laughs. “Nemaides, Nemaides, Nemaides. Seventeen thousand years and she still doesn’t understand.”

“What?”

“Things change, Watson,” Nyarlathotep says, ignoring him. “Soon the stars will be right.”

“What does that mean?” Watson asks.

“An end,” he says, the weight of eons behind his inhuman voice. “Or a beginning, though not one you or very many others like you will enjoy.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Help Nemaides, that’s all. It will be very simple. She already knows most of what to do,” Nyarlathotep says.

“And if I don’t?”

Another sardonic laugh. Beneath it he can hear the howling of winds at midnight. Watson can feel his gaze sliding inexorably up towards Nyarlathotep’s face. A stab of fear pierces through his belly; he tries to shut his eyes but they are glued open, he tries to look away but his body will not obey him.

Beneath the cowl of Nyarlathotep’s robe is nothing but an inky, luminous void, spangled with distant, glittering stars. It seems to swell as he looks upon it, widening and broadening and deepening until it blots out his entire vision and all he can see are the stars, blazing distantly and impassively, somewhere far off. Watson opens his mouth to scream but before he can, he pitches forward into oblivion.

 * * *

 The city is awash with screams this morning, the same as any other day. The sun rises full and ripe in a blood-choked sky and glares balefully down on a forgotten world.

The woman peeks out of her hiding spot on the fourth floor. The building across the way collapsed during the night and the screams of the people trapped beneath it were truly horrendous. She didn’t sleep all night, cowering there in what used to be a janitor’s closet, a filing cabinet pressed against the ruined door, not daring to peek out through the tiny broken chunk in the frosted glass window for fear that someone or something out there might see her peeking out and know that she were inside, ripe for the taking.

The screams continued until someone or something had come by and fallen upon the trapped, wounded survivors of the building collapse. Then the screams became worse, pure shrieks of terror and dread and violation as whatever happened to them happened to them. There were children among them, and she had thrown up as she had listened to it, though she had tried not to, her body forcing the paltry nutrition from itself in revolt against the indignity it had been subjected to.

She had been beautiful once, but that was before the insanity had started. She had had long blonde hair and full breasts and thighs like a goddess, but two months of malnutrition and fear had taken their toll and she was now just like everybody else who was still sane and hiding among the ruins of this doomed world, forced into a kind of trauma-induced androgyny by the indignity of the situation.

She had been a manager in this very building before everything had fallen apart. Her life, after a long string of failures and stagnation and rankling ignominy, was finally beginning to look up.

Then on a day like any other, fully eighty percent of the worldwide population had gone mad overnight.

Or were they mad? The acts of depravity and violence she had witnessed certainly suggested madness. They fell on each other just as readily as on the sane, their normal victims. Great massing gangs of them roam the streets like sweltering balls of insanity, juddering and fragile and itching for the slightest excuse to fly apart into an exegesis of blood and viscera. They had become free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and reveling in joy. They had been taught new ways to shout and kill and revel, and all the earth was aflame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom.

The truly horrible thing about it was that they all looked happy. They all looked ecstatic, for that matter, no matter whether they were knee-deep in someone’s entrails or balls-deep in someone’s eyesocket, no matter whether they were half-eaten or leprous or bleeding to death, that look of manic enjoyment never changed.

Sometimes, in her darker moments, she envied them.

There were other things, too, things that had lurked in the hidden places of the world, things without names or sometimes even without shapes, things that had seen the change in the world as a reason to shrug off their disguises and venture out into the swollen sunlight that had not touched them for millennia. Almost all of them defied description, and almost all of them preyed with equanimity on each other, and on the dwindling humans remaining in the world, consuming them in horrible ways. She had only seen this happen a few times, but the sights had proved indelible.

She was entirely out of food. It was a miracle that the closet had had any to begin with, but the janitor had had a little stash of energy bars and bottled water, and she had worked her way through them incrementally, going from a two bars per day to one to half. Now they were gone and the hunger was already gnawing at the base of her stomach. The water is going as well, but she isn’t quite out yet, and she isn’t worried about it quite as much; she suspects that there will likely still be water pressure in the building, and the thought of making a run for the bathroom down the hall scares her less than the thought of making a run outside for food.

She had mustered her courage the other day and slipped from her bolthole, thinking to head downstairs to the cafeteria and see if it had been picked clean yet, but though she had made it to the stairs without discovery and had gone as far as the door to the cafeteria, she had heard something moving within and had stopped and listened for a while.

The noise was dulled by the metal door but it still gave an impression of immense bulk moving slowly and deliberately across the tiled floor within. Something about the noise scared her so much that she was rooted to the spot with fear for at least a minute or two, listening to the hideous slithering or sliding within, before she retreated soundlessly to the stairs and returned to the closet and lay there on the floor, breathing hard and trying not to cry.

Today is the day, though. She slides the filing cabinet aside and opens the door, peering cautiously down the hall; nothing. Besides the thing living in the cafeteria it seems as though this building has been abandoned entirely by now.

She hustles down three floors and then makes it to the foyer. There is dried blood everywhere but no bodies; the stench is unreal, and she gags even though she tries to breathe shallowly through her mouth. The buzz of flies is everywhere, but it is especially strong within the front office, a low whine throbbing like a headache as she edges past the door, eyeing it warily.

The front door is locked but the glass is broken anyway. Outside the street is relatively quiet. There are still screams from a few blocks away but there always are. The sky is still the same angry orange-red, dappled with faint whorls of cloud, somewhere far up, and the sun still looks bulging and unhealthy as ever. She takes a very deep breath there, right at the threshold, forgetting herself, and the putrescence from the office hits her right in the face and she bends in two and vomits, a thin stream of bile hitting the floor. Her eyes are swimming and she puts out a hand to steady herself. Her knees feel very weak.

Behind her the door to the office creaks open and she freezes. The buzzing of the flies intensifies. Very slowly, she turns to look behind her.

Standing in the door, regarding her, is a mass of flies formed roughly into the shape of a man, stubby appendages buzzing with gossamer wings and small black hardened bodies and purplish faceted eyes. It towers there in the doorway and then takes a step towards her, wings fluttering, and she screams and bolts out onto the street.

Her back prickles with fear, and the sensation of being alone and exposed and obvious is almost too much for her to bear. The buzzing follows her onto the street and she starts to run. She heads left, choosing a direction at random. There isn’t time to wonder if it’s a smart option; some of the flies have already landed on her and though she brushes them off, they are enormous, bullet-shaped things, with mouthparts like daggers and wings that batter at her with serrated edges. One settles on her thigh and bites deep and she shrieks. She brings her hand slamming down but only succeeds in smacking herself; the thing has flown off far before she could hit it.

There are howls from a street over, weird, inhuman ululations that echo in her ears and force the moisture from her throat. The fly-thing is slow, at least; she’s already outstripped it, buzzing maliciously like a seething black mass at the front of the building. She doesn’t pause to consider how she’ll get back in, even if she does manage to find any food.

The woman makes it another three blocks without any issue before they spot her. A whoop goes up and the crowd roars out of the abandoned building and is after her in a heartbeat. Terror is licking at her feet now. Her hands are trembling, and her breath is coming in ragged gasps.

There are only perhaps a dozen of them but they seem like more, multiplied in their fury and her fear. There are laughs and shouts and screams and babbling pouring from them. One of them, a woman leading the pack, her skin sallow and her hair lank, is missing an arm. Another, a man, has lost his lower jaw somewhere, and his tongue flops obscenely at her as he bounds along, galloping forward on all fours like a gorilla,

Some of them, the sanest, clearly, have started hollering at her as they chase her, telling her in excruciating detail what they’ll do to her once they catch her. She clenches her jaw and puts her head down, focusing on her breathing, on her feet. If she trips…

She has a lead, but not much of one. The density of the crowd behind her is working against them, though; they insist on bunching together and tripping each other, none of them willing to give up their chance to get their hands on her first.

There is a bloodcurdling scream behind her and a host of contagious yells of panic and fear. She risks a glance behind and then stops, gawping.

One of her pursuers is floating in the air about ten or fifteen feet up, spreadeagle, his face contorted with fear. As she watches he begins to spin, first slowly, then faster and faster until he is a blur and his screams are dopplered and distorted.

The woman backs away, and then starts running. Behind her, there is a sound like an overripe orange splattering into a wall, then a hideous, loathsome sucking, and the crowd howls in dismay. A chorus of retreating feet recedes into the distance, and then eventually she cannot hear them over the sound of her own breathing.

Eventually she slows and stops and then bends double, hands on her knees, gulping in grateful breaths. A rivulet of sweat runs down her spine and she wipes at her forehead, smooths her hair out of her eyes.

The city park is ahead and to the right, and it doesn’t look much changed. There are a couple toppled trees here and there, and the water in the lake near the entrance looks darker than normal, but it might just be a trick of the light.

Her original plan had been to go to the little bodega on the corner of Rush and Windmore. She’d figured that since it was smaller than the big supermarket two blocks down, there was less chance of running into something nasty there. The encounter on the road had spooked her, though; she looks down the deserted road, squinting against the bleary haze of heat rising in the distance. She can still see the squat office building rising above the smaller storefronts surrounding it; she could always head back and squirm back into her janitor’s closet and…and then what? Lay there in the dark and starve to death?

She shakes her head. She’s already made it this far. Even if she could get past the fly-thing lurking ominously in the front office, it would be admitting defeat. There would be no point to it.

If she follows the road the bodega is fifteen minutes away, but she could cut through the park. The path goes by the other exit on the other side of the block and that would put her out right across from the bodega.

She enters the park slowly, looking around carefully for signs of lurking eyes watching her. Nothing is forthcoming. In fact the park seems oddly untouched; the grass is still green and the wind still blows through the trees, as though the world’s hideous transformation had stopped at its gates and gone no further. She takes a deep breath in; the air is sweet and humid. It carries the aroma of flowers and pine needles and blows the stench of carrion from her. As she watches, the wind picks up and the trees shudder with its passing, and the sound almost brings tears to her eyes.

The woman starts off down the path, curving off to the left around the lake and its dark water. The gate closes behind her. She does not hear it.

Behind the lake, the path plunges into the trees. Back before everything changed she had enjoyed this part of the walking path the best; the shade from the trees and the warm inviting earthy smell of the ground had always made her feel at peace. Once she had even seen a deer there, just on the side of the path, close enough that she could have reached out and touched it had she wished to.

Now, though, the darkness of the path beneath those trees feels somehow foreboding. There isn’t anything specific she can point to that makes her feel that way; there are no corpses strung up in the trees, no half-eaten bodies in the undergrowth, nothing odd or amiss…it’s just dark.

She eyes the path, curving away to the left through the trees and takes a hesitant step further along. It’s cool underneath the thick green canopy and the sounds from the outside seem muffled and distant.

It’s nothing, she assures herself. Just nerves. And who can blame her for being nervous given the condition of the world? Just the other day she saw something far off through the window, as though a mountain walked or stumbled…God, even though it had been distant and mist-shrouded it was still impossible, it towered so far up into the atmosphere that space had seemed to bend around it. She had had to hunker down on the dirty floor of the janitor’s closet and hug her knees to her chest to calm down, it had been so frightening.

She turns the bend in the path and stops. Something is off. Or is it? Maybe it’s nothing. She’s just nervous.

She looks behind her and sees nothing amiss. Just trees, and grass, and earth, that’s all.

She takes a step forward. Her footfall is very loud on the worn asphalt of the path. She thinks about it for a moment.

It is utterly silent here, beneath the trees. There is no birdsong or rush of wind or creaking of branches or scrabbling of little creatures in the undergrowth. It is so silent that she can hear her heartbeat, that she can hear every click and gurgle of her throat as she swallows.

There is a creak of bending wood from behind her.

She starts to run but it’s already too late, and enormous wooden fingers close around her waist and lift her off the ground. She struggles but there’s no point; the hold they have her in is far too strong, and the fingers themselves are as barky and solid as logs. Then she is face-to-face with it and she screams. The thing is enormous, its head carved like a statue from living wood, dripping with glistening golden sap. Its eyes are like enormous burning coals, every etch and whorl of them alight with pitch, and its mouth flashes with polished cedar teeth, sharp as knives. Its hair was once green and wholesome, a vast canopy of leaves and greenery, but now it has turned gray and brown and rotten, leaves ravaged by disease and pockmarked with filth. It smells of the grave, of unwholesome life, of rot and decay.

The eyes flicker for a moment and the creature smiles.

The woman screams and screams but it does her no good. The thing breaks her chest open as easily as a matchbox, then it reaches in with trembling, clumsy fingers and -

“Stop,” Watson says. “Please, please stop.”

Watson blinks, and then pats at himself experimentally. He looks up at Nyarlathotep, still reclining lazily against the counter. He tries to speak but cannot get the words out. He coughs, clears his throat, starts again. “What was that?”

“A vision of what will come to pass, eventually,” Nyarlathotep says. His voice teeters on the edge of mocking.

“But what -“

“Help Nemaides,” Nyarlathotep says, “and you may yet prevent it…for a time. Speaking of which,” he turns abruptly, and waves a hand. There is a ripping noise in the middle of the air and a glow like ultraviolet, and then Nemaides, bare-naked and curled fetally, flops five feet down onto the floor. She hits with a loud smack and yelps. A great deal of water has come with her, splattering everywhere. Watson jumps, a yell of surprise forcing itself from his throat as he bolts to his feet.

Nemaides glances around cautiously. Her eyes lock first on Watson, and then they wander further and clasp onto Nyarlathotep. Watson is surprised to see a look of sheer, abject terror flit across her face before she disguises it beneath a mask of perfectly crafted blandness. She rolls from her side to her knees and bends forward, placing the balls of her palms over her eyes and then inclining in a bow before Nyarlathotep until her hands touch the wet, tiled floor.

“Iä! Nyarlathotep!” she intones, and a shiver runs down Watson’s spine, for these were the same words the crab-thing had uttered in its buzzing false-voice. Watson looks at her intently, trying not to let his eyes wander to the pleasant swell of her hips and thighs and behind; instead he looks at her back, her shoulders, the top of her head, the well-defined part in her hair mussed only a little by whatever she was doing before Nyarlathotep pulled her here - swimming, perhaps? She’s absolutely drenched, at any rate.

She looks entirely human, at least to his eyes. But Nyarlathotep wears the form of a man, doesn’t he? Perhaps an outward appearance of humanity means little.

Nemaides waits, utterly silent, not daring to move a muscle. She can feel, very dimly, Nyarlathotep sifting through her mind. She stays very still and tries not to think of anything in particular.

After what feels like eternity, Nyarlathotep takes a faltering, too-long breath. “Get up,” he tells her. Nemaides rises, glancing over at Watson but making no motion to hide her nakedness. In truth she has forgotten its significance. She looks at Watson but he cannot hold her gaze for long and looks away instead. She can see the mark blazing on his forehead and wonders if he asked for it or if it was given to him without choice.

“The Mi-Go,” Nyarlathotep says, his invisible lips curling in a sardonic smile, “have taken Sherlock to Yuggoth. You will have until the equinox, but not later; I will not be able to delay them any further than that.”

“That’s in four days,” Nemaides mutters. Nyarlathotep inclines his cowled head. “Natsa, if you were able to open a Gate, or arrange for one…”

“Saving you from your…dear friend is about the limit of my ability at the moment,” he says. Nemaides bows her head, swallowing hard. “I am being watched closely. Even now the Outer Gods are inquiring as to why I saved you.”

“Master, I -“

“Do not fail me, Nemaides,” Nyarlathotep says. “Take Watson with you, he will prove to be useful. Trust in him. And do not expect me to intercede on your behalf.”

“Watson!” Nemaides blurts. Nyarlathotep turns back to her and Nemaides immediately bows her head.

“You have a problem with Watson?” he asks. Whatever indulgent amusement was in his voice before has vanished utterly now. A rivulet of sweat runs unbidden down Watson’s forehead. He shuts his eye as it passes down his nose, not daring to raise a hand to wipe it away and thus call attention to himself.

“N-no,” Nemaides says, the words catching in her throat on the way out. “No, natsa, I just thought that -“

“You thought? That can be easily fixed,” he says. Nyarlathotep gestures and Nemaides sinks to her knees so quickly that her joints pop.

“Please,” she says. “I didn’t mean anything by it, forgive me, please…”

Nyarlathotep extends his finger towards her and Nemaides makes a strangled noise, almost a moan. Watson winces.

“Look,” Watson says, surprising even himself. “Look, stop. Please.”

Nyarlathotep looks over at Watson, or he seems to; Watson’s gaze remains resolutely locked on his collarbone, as before. He can feel his hands trembling but he forces them into fists, keeps his face neutral. “Please,” he repeats. “She’s sorry, she’s obviously sorry.”

Nyarlathotep laughs, a chuckle as dry as the grave, and lifts his hand. Nemaides collapses, heaving, to the floor. She slowly clambers to her knees and casts a surprisingly venomous look at Watson.

“This is your last chance,” he tells her. “You ought to be grateful. To myself and to him,” he says, pointing at Watson.”

“Iä, natsa,” Nemaides mumbles. Her cheeks are ruddy and her gaze is carefully downcast. She starts to say something else, but Nyarlathotep wobbles suddenly and Nemaides yelps and backs away. She claps a hand over her mouth, and Watson, with only a moment’s hesitation, does so as well. Nemaides is squinting like she expects a sandstorm.

Nyarlathotep is rocking back and forth unsteadily, his arms folded over his chest, and then he falls face-first to the floor. As soon as he hits the tile he explodes into a swarm of black scarabs, buzzing and seething and fluttering everywhere. One lands on Watson’s face and he looses a muffled yelp and bats it away with his free hand. There are so many of them they seem interminable, but Watson sees through slitted eyes that they are gradually filtering out through the broken window.

When it’s finally over Nemaides sighs. “Well,” Watson says, looking significantly at her. Her face immediately shapes into a snarl and Watson takes a step back, shocked.

“Don’t you ever,” she hisses, “presume to speak for me ever again, especially not to Him,” she tells him. Her eyes, twin pinpricks of fury, flutter over his face. “You filth,” she snarls. “You slime. Pias’ug ruftsh. May Tsathoggua feast on you,” she says. She leans down and spits at his feet.

And with that, Nemaides turns and pads towards the hall, giving no heed to Watson’s stammered apologies as he follows along behind her like a lost dog.

Watson sighs heavily. A bit of movement catches his attention and he frowns. “Nemaides…” Watson says, and she whirls.

“From now on,” she barks, “you will address me as ‘natsa.’ My name is too good to have your worthless tongue sully it. Are we clear?”

“Um, yes, Nemaides. I mean, er -“

She slaps him, hard.

There is a flicker of anger in Watson’s eyes, and for a delicious moment Nemaides thinks he might try something. Her mind is already forming the words and gestures of a spell that would strip the flesh from his bones. His shoulders tense and then relax, and Nemaides reluctantly pushes the words out of her mind and lets the power go.

“Try again, dog.”

“Nem - Natsa, I was trying to help you.”

He sounds wounded.

“If I need your help, tfta’a, I will call for you.”

Watson blinks hard at her retreating backside. Then he sighs and calls after her.

“Natsa,” he says. “You’ve got a scarab in your hair.”

And then Watson keeps his face very still and unamused as Nemaides squirms in revulsion and combs her fingers through her hair, plucking the wriggling, buzzing thing from it and stomping on it with one delicate foot.

Continue with Chapter 7

Back to Table of Contents

[sulfurousdreamscapes]

By the time the boat came ashore, Shweta looked too sick to stand up. She was shivering, and her body was cold. The spray had sprinkled salt all over her face and dress, but she looked like she hadn't noticed it. I hung up the oar and just sat on the wooden plank, heaving and trying to catch my breath.

"We made it," I said. "We didn't drown."

Shweta opened her mouth and held it wide open, and the dark hole between her lips looked like it could have been the void of infinity itself.

"Close your mouth," I said, stepping up and touching her chin. I lifted it gently, closing her mouth for her.

"I have to feel something, Ila," she said. Her voice was susurrations and whispers. "Otherwise the thoughts do the feeling for me. They always hurt me so much."

I could tell her something that I thought might ease the pain. Lord knew, though, that I'd tried a thousand times in the past already. There comes a point where you have to accept that you can't solve a problem because the problem isn't there at all. It's something else altogether, and you need a different set of tools to solve it.

"It's awful. You know, sometimes I think about my teeth, and..."

I lifted my hand at her. I knew this one. It was particularly bad.

"Don't," I said. "I've heard it before. Just come off the boat with me."

Despite her weakness, Shweta managed to hop off the boat just fine. Well, as fine as she could manage: she did land on all fours. I followed behind her and I helped her up.

"Is this the right island?" she asked, sniffling.

"I don't even know if this is an island," I said. "But you told me to sail by my feelings, right? That's how I did it, then. That's how I found it. No maps, no compasses."

Shweta pressed her head against me and wrapped her arms around me waist.

"I wish just being around you would be enough." Shweta's voice sounded bette rnow. "But it isn't. I still keep thinking, and thinking, and feeling it on my skin and inside and..."

I shushed her, both because she was going down one of the rabbit holes, and because I'd found a light. It came from a cave etched into one of the cliff walls. As I approached, a pair of crabs skittered away, into the darkness.

"Look," I said, pointing. The light helped Shweta stand up straighter. We turned to enter the cave, and we found an altar with paper talismans and candles and lamps. In the middle, lit on all sides by small lamps, we found a deity we did not recognise, with a smile we did recognise.

"Someone must live here, to light these candles and lamps," I said, but now Shweta shushed me. She lifted a finger to her lips, looked at me, and then looked back at the idol.

"I don't remember what the thoughts were," she said. "I don't remember what was bothering me." She looked at me delighted, and then a little confused.

"What was I thinking about that was vexing me so much?" she asked.

I embraced her, in the glow of the altar's lights.

[spacem0th]

Ok. So. I don't know exactly how to do this, but I'm going to try anyway. I've never really written anything before. I may edit this post in the future. Anyway. I made a Skykid OC! A Darkid (fan-made opposite of a skykid) to be specific. And I'd like to share them.

This is Tasokize. Before and after they became a Darkid. They're a little shorter than the default height. I ended up writing an entire origin story for them, and I'll be sharing it under the cut because it is LONG.

(Links to the picrews I used are here and here)

Name - Tasokize

Cape Level - 5

Origin

Originally, Tasokize lived in the Cidadel of the Valley of Triumph. They normally never strayed too far from the exit of the Elders' temple at the end of the flying race. One day, however, curiosity got the best of them, and they went to try and see what was through the unusually dark cloud tunnel.

Then, as they were clinging to one of the rocks jutting up from the slope, a flock Skykids tumbled into them, sending Tasokize whirling into the cloud tunnel. The flock of more experienced flyers regained their balance in the air, having forgotten Tasokize in their rush to the Wasteland.

Disoriented from tumbling through the clouds, Tasokize finally managed to regain their balance in the air. As their vision cleared, they gasped in awe. They'd never been on this side of the cloud tunnel before. They had talked to other skykids about what lie past the Valley, but they could never have imagined this!

A vast space in the clouds made way to what seemed to be some ruins and a social area, similar to what Tasokize had at the top of the mountains. And a fire! Tasokize sighed in relief as they began to decend. Just then, a loud, deep call rang out.

'What was that? A giant manta?'

They turned around just in time to be met with the huge armored head of a whale.

They'd learned about these creatures before; incredibly rare, and only a few were believed to exist anymore. Snapping out of their stupor, Tasokize was just able to register being knocked into the vortex before they blacked out.

'...Ugh...'

Tasokize jolted awake, coughing up sand and they rose to their knees. They looked up. What they saw was astounding. A massive wall, split down the middle. And before it lay pieces of ruins littered across a stretch of lakes of foul black sludge. Among the ruins and sludge though were growths of dark plants and crabs skittering about. The fact that there could be life in a dreary place like this was bewildering. But they were sure about one thing: they had to get out of here. And the only way out was to go further.

Carefully maneuvering among the wreckage, Tasokize eventually made it to the entrance of the temple. Desperately trying to ignore their growing unease, they took a deep breath.

'It's now or never.'

And they stepped into the darkness.

As they moved forward, They could make out a faint moving glow on the other side of the tunnel. A single, small source of light flew around silently near the other side of the castle's entrance.

'Is that..?'

They inched closer.

'It is! A manta!'

Excited to see light for the first time since coming to this place, Tasokize rushed over to the manta.

'Hello! What are you doing here all alone?'

The manta continued to fly around, oblivious to Tasokize's noise.

'Hey, why don't I play some music so you don't feel as lonely?'

They took out their small bell and began playing a confident tune. Distracted by the manta's light in the dusky ruins, Tasokize didn't notice the danger slowly rising from the depths to greet them.

They barely managed to dodge as they watched in horror as the huge black dragon roared and went in for the kill. In a flash, the manta was gone, and all was silent.

Tasokize fell to their knees, and broke down in tears.

'Wh-what? What was that thing? What did it do? The manta -- It's gone, it -- [It's DEAD] -- It disappeared!'

They knelt there, trembling, as they tried to get their wits about them.

'O-ok. So that thing... ate the manta? I think that's the right word... Which means I should probably try to avoid it.'

Tasokize stood and gathered their surroundings. Something didn't feel right. Glancing at the back of their cape, they froze.

'Ah. I lost a star. I only have four now.'

Glancing quickly, they spotted a Winged Light out in the open.

'Oh, good!'

They moved to go out and collect it, when the grating sound of the dark dragon sounded again. Tasokize froze. At once, their vision was flooded by a blinding red light. The dark dragon rose into a striking position, and Tasokize took their last chance to dash for the Winged Light. The dark dragon charged, and Tasokize dodged at the last second, managing to grab the Winged Light in the process.

They hid. The dark dragon was still looking for them. So they stood as still as they could, and waited. And when the grinding sound had passed overhead, Tasokize lept from their cover and out of sight of the dark dragon. After taking a moment to catch their breath, they slowly moved on, collecting one more winged light as they passed it.

Sliding down a gentle slope, they stopped abruptly as numerous looming, black shapes moved among boulders and bones in the large swamp. The same dark creatures as the one that had eaten the manta.

'No way...'

They couldn't get through there. It was impossible. Then they remembered passing a large pipe at the top of the slope that had lead in a different direction. Tasokize felt a small glimmer of hope, and they held on to that as they trudged back up to the pipe. At the top of the slope, they cautiously stepped into the pipe. They could feel a slight wind coming from the other side. Getting excited, they climbed up and over the ridge inside and ran out the exit.

Only to be greeted by the sight of a desecrated shipwreck. And circling it was another dark dragon. Tasokize's small hope withered.

'Well, at least there's only one this time...'

They moved toward the ship, hopping from one piece of rubble to the next to avoid the sludge.

'These crabs seem more territorial than the ones I saw when I first arrived... Is it because of the dark dragon?'

Tasokize made their way to a large hole in the ship's hull and stepped inside.

'More crabs... Of course... I need to get to higher ground.'

They climbed up the stairs to the ship's deck.

'Okay, how do I get out of here?'

They looked around. On the other side of the black lake, a series of pipes lead up to a crumbled wall.

'There! That must lead past the swamp!'

Spreading their cape, Tasokize took a running start off of the deck and soared over the lake.

Suddenly, a dreadful roar filled their ears. Their breath hitched as the dark dragon struck and launched them onto the other side of the lake.

'GAH! '

They crashed face first into one of the pipes, and they heard their mask crack. Immediately, they brought a hand up to their face, and felt the damage.

'My mask... my mask is cracked! What does that mean? That's bad right?'

Tasokize started to panic. They glanced back up only to see two of their stars sink down into the murky water, the dark dragon making its way back toward the shipwreck.

'NO! '

They reached forward, one hand still on their cracked mask. Their light was gone.

'They're gone... Two stars... I only have two stars left! Hah... Oh, Elders! What am I going to do? I have to hide...'

Tasokize gingerly climbed up the pipes to the crumbled wall. On the other side, what they saw filled them with dread.

'A battlefield...'

They worked their way across the pipes toward what looked like a crumbled fortress. Broken shields and various weapons and blockades littered the stretch of land between the fortress and what Tasokize presumed to be the elder's temple.

'What happened here..?'

Mounted on and around the temple were giant statues of a tall, crowned figure, the one at the center of the temple's roof being the most grand of them all.

'Woah... Who is that? The elder?'

Lowering their gaze to the gate, a small light and movement caught their attention.

'It's another skykid! I'm not alone!'

Tasokize ran toward the gate's activation key where the other skykid stood with a candle. The gate opened.

'Hey!' Tasokize called and waved. 'Help me, please!'

The other skykid turned to them. Terror twisted their expression. They bolted through the temple's gate, and it closed behind them.

Tasokize became desperate.

'NO! WAIT! DON'T LEAVE ME BEHIND! '

They collapsed. They'd just made it to the middle of the battlefield. Their mask chipped, and a piece of it fell to the ground. They put a hand to their cracked mask.

'Is this why..?'

Suddenly they heard the grinding sound of a dark dragon, and the area surrounding them was bathed in red. Tasokize glanced up. Two dark dragons had emerged from the black sludge, ready to strike.

'Oh--'

Tasokize moved to dodge, and they lunged.

'AGH! '

Tasokize was thrown back towards the broken fortress as the last of their light was sent flying in the other direction. They collided with a large piece of rubble, and rolled down into the murky water. Their mask shattered.

'No...'

They reached up to the fading light of the surface.

'Someone... Help...'

Tasokize sunk quickly.

And at once, their vision was flooded by a blinding blue light.

[END]

[yourdeepestfathoms]

The Leviathan

[Breakaway]

TW: Drowning, blood

———————

The first time Maria encountered the thing was early one morning.

The sun had barely began to rise, but even its fresh golden rays couldn’t cut through the thick, impenetrable wall of grey that had settled over the ocean. The water below was roiling, waves crashing and clapping loudly against the ship. Something in the sea seemed agitated- Maria could feel it. Perhaps it was because of the oncoming storm.

She leaned against the railing at the very back of the boat, watching the water and taking in the serene silence of the early morning. And that’s when she had seen it.

It was a mere silhouette in the fog, an outline of a large head and a long neck that slid down into the depths of the ocean. Despite it being at least a hundred meters away, Maria could see it as clear as day.

There was something out there.

And it turned to her.

The pointed snout turned and looked in her direction.

Looked at her.

Maria couldn’t see its eyes, but something told her, deep down, that this thing was looking at her.

And it’s stare bore right into her very soul.

Then, it was gone. Maria blinked and the figure had disappeared. She only saw the fleeting flick of a tail before fog encompassed everything again.

———

The second time Maria saw the thing was when she was snorkeling.

The activity was offered on an island called Cozumel, which was probably Maria’s favorite stop so far, mainly due to her Spanish heritage. It was a nice change of pace from all the European stops, even if they were just as amazing.

She, the queens, and the other two ladies in waiting, along with a few other tourists, were taken out on a boat to the middle of the ocean, where they then got to snorkeling for several hours.

And it was absolutely magnificent. Maria ended up ditching her snorkel to dive into the water and swim alongside fish colors she’d never seen before. And, while she was doing so, she noticed that they were going somewhere, not just flitting around aimlessly. They were going deeper into the ocean, down a sandstone cliff face and into a dark crater carved into a sandy plateau several meters away.

Something compelled Maria to follow.

She paddled slowly along the surface, careful as to not get caught by any of the monitors on the boat. Then, she took a deep breath and dove. Down, down, down, she swam, brushing by the drop off. Her ears popped, but she could hardly care. She was too enamored by the petrified forest of rainbow coral and sparkling stalks curling out of the sand along the plateau.

Fish were gliding down into the crater- tiny fish, large fish, long fish, fish the color of ebony and fish that looked like the sunset. They were gathering down there for something. And Maria wanted to know what it was.

A blobby indigo octopus goggled at her from the brambles of a jagged reef. Maria does a double take- was it normal for octopus (octopi? octopuses?) to be in such shallow waters? Sure, it was probably twenty feet deep, but still...

The octopus gawked at her face in the diving mask before lazily stretching one of its slimy limbs and clambering across the coral thicket. It seemed to be going down to the crater, too. Along with an emerald green sea turtle that took Maria by surprise when it glided over her head and a small, soft grey shark that brushed right against her foot without a care in the world.

Maria quickly went back up for air, but went back as fast as she could. She returned to the paralyzed forest and grappled onto one of the pieces of coral. A washed out red lobster blinked at her from another cluster, bristling its whiskers and snapping its pincers, like it was judging her for touching such an ancient and fragile piece of aquatic flora with her oily human hands. She let go quickly and it skitters away.

She paddles closer to the crater, feeling the chill of the depths embrace her tightly. It isn’t long before she needs to get more air, but she returns just as fast, kicking and pulling herself through the water until she got to the perimeter of the crater. Her flippers gently touched the sand as she crouched awkwardly- it wasn’t the best position to be in, as she was slowly floating off of the ground, but she managed.

Intense water pressure pressed uncomfortably against Maria’s temples, practically forcing her eyes into a wince. It was slightly difficult to see, but she dealt with it and looked into the crater.

The hole was illuminated by bioluminescent pink and purple jellyfish and violet and maroon glowing plants that almost looked like mushrooms. Skeletons of multicolored reefs twisted from the incline that dipped to the bottom, along with sun-colored tentacles of kelp and plum-streaked ferns and waving green fans, which almost acted as seating for the abundance of aquatic creatures down there.

Fish of every color were peering out from sparking anemone- some had beaks like parrots or big ogling eyes or long tails or bristling spines along their backs. A few deep green and dark grey eels had their heads poked from holes in the crater side, gaping their jaws open like they were witnessing the meaning of life itself. Sea turtles bobbed patiently above the forest and sharks in various sizes moved slowly through the reaching limbs of coral. Crabs and lobsters scuttled through the sand, stingrays glided on their bellies around the sides of the crater, something large and yellow was lying flat against the seabed, and that blobby octopus from earlier was attached to a zigzagged piece of coral. And, among them, there something very big.

In the middle of the crater was a jagged pillar of limestone surrounded by orange clusters of coral. Atop it, stood the thing.

It was too dark to get a clear view of it, but some details stood out. Like the whiskers that waved lazily in water around what was very clearly its snout. And the long tail that curled around the spire like a jungle snake. And the glinting green talons gripping a knob of limestone. And the fins bristled on a body part that couldn’t be made out.

Whatever it was, it was big. Or, well, long. Very long.

What kind of creature was this?

A strange vibration filled the water. It was a deep, rumbling sort of coo that sends shockwaves and ripples through the ocean, shaking Maria to her very core...but not in a bad way. No, it almost felt...peaceful.

And then a sharp sting sears in her chest like a hot knife.

Maria springs off of the ground. The sand sinks in and sucks greedily for her feet, but she manages to get enough momentum to return to the surface on time.

She bobbed up with a gasp, sucking in deep breaths of air. Once she regained her bearings, she was about to go back down and try to get a closer look when one of the monitors on the boat yelled at her to come back, that she was too far out. The option to ignore him or pretend like she didn’t hear and go back under arose, but she gave in and began paddling back. But not without stealing one last glance down to the crater.

From the sunlight filtering down into the water and the faint glow of the jellyfish, she swore every fish, lobster, crab, turtle, eel, shark, and octopus were looking back at her.

A deep green stare branded itself in her mind.

———

The third time Maria saw the thing was on a paper.

The next day while waiting to perform, she doodled a few shapes on a piece of paper at her makeup table. These two shapes turned into orbs and these orbs turned into great big eyes.

That thing’s eyes.

Maria crumbled the paper and threw it away quickly.

———

The fourth time Maria saw the thing was when she was at the beach.

The cruise had docked on an island she couldn’t remember the name of for a few hours, allowing patrons to explore the land and do the regular tourist things. Maria had decided to go to the beautiful beaches on her own and was able to find a rather secluded strip of shore after a quick hike through some trees. It was perfect.

She swam for a long time, looking at all the shells and aquatic life and colorful fish. But then the amount fish started to get smaller and smaller. Sure, it was normal for them to swim away from people, but there has been dozens just half an hour ago.

Confused, Maria decided to swim out a little further. She was thinking back to how all the animals had gathered in one area when she was snorkeling and was hoping she would see something like that again. But, instead, she just got teeth in her leg.

Maria wasn’t exactly sure what was biting her, she just knew something was biting her. She could feel its razor sharp teeth sink into the delicate flesh on her right leg. Blood hazes the water to terrible hues of murky red. It mixes horribly with the tang of salt when she opens her mouth to scream.

She thrashes and struggles, clapping her arms against the surface of the water before she’s yanked back down. A scream is choked back by an overflow of water that rushes down her throat. She coughs and cries out at the same time as darkening clouds of crimson billow around her.

Was this how she died?

Would her body be found half eaten by something or would it never be found?

The ocean is getting darker, and not just because of her blood. Consciousness is slipping away with each pull on her leg. Faster and faster and faster and—

There’s a guttural roar that simmers the water. The sharp, unbearable pressure on Maria’s leg disappears and she hears something heavy slam into a rock formation, but her eyes are already rolling to the back of her head before she can swim to safety...

Maria awoke on the beach after an unknown amount of time passed. She shot up with a sharp gasp, expecting a waterfall of water to be pouring out of her mouth, but none came. She only spit lingering salt from her mouth a few times.

She looked down and saw that her right leg was wrapped tightly in several slimy pieces of seaweed. She doesn’t need to untie them to know the wound was still present- she could feel the ache it caused whenever she bent her knee. Somehow, though, the kelp was easing the discomfort, because surely she should be in much more pain than what she was feeling.

How did these makeshift bandages get on her leg, anyway? She may have blacked out, but there’s no way she could have done this. And how was she safe on shore? Did she coincidentally get washed up there?

After looking around, Maria noticed something. Footprints in the wet sand.

Footprints with five splayed, webbed toes and claws.

———

The fifth time Maria saw the thing was on paper once again.

She had decided to buy herself a proper sketchbook from one of the cruise shops, along with pencils (colored and regular), markers, and pens. What came out was a diagram of what she thought the creature she’s been encountering looked like.

It was long- that was its main trait. Its body in her drawing resembled that of a Chinese dragon. Two sets of whiskers flowed from the cheeks on its big head, which had large, finned ruffs on either sides with small ears right above them. Fins ran down the spine- she didn’t know what color but she went with green. The webbed talons were green, too, while the rest of the body was an iridescent silver color. The beautiful tail on the thing was perfect for propelling itself through the water. She wonders if that’s what it’s used for.

———

The sixth time Maria saw was late in the middle of the night after a terrible nightmare. She dreamt of a young girl from court, a maid in waiting, a mere child named Elizabeth Blount. Bessie for short.

Several people in the show said Bessie was going to be one of the four ladies in waiting that were reincarnated, but either they lied or something happened because Bessie never showed up.

All the happiness and joy that Maria had felt while waiting to see her precious girl again left her in a flash at this revelation. She was cold without it—just like how she had been cold after the exile.

If anyone deserved a second chance at life, it was Bessie.

So why wasn’t she here?

She just wanted to hold her again...

Maria couldn’t bear to go back to sleep after her horrible nightmare of watching that little girl get gruesomely executed for an affair she had no choice in. She wandered out to the deck and braced herself against the railing, watching the boat split the sea as it moved along.

She wasn’t stupid enough to actually ever do anything bad to herself, but sometimes she wondered what it would be like to jump off the ship- to let the front of the vessel pierce her body, to let it run her over, to let the propellers shred her into tiny, bloody pieces, to let the black water claim her. Would that be enough to make up for her not helping the abused child Henry had imprinted on as his mistress?

Would exchanging her life be enough to give Bessie a chance to live?

Maria yanked off the necklace around her neck- a pendant given to her by Aragon. She doesn’t know why she’s let it linger on her for so long. What gave her the right to wear such a thing? Especially when it had been given to her by the woman who took the greatest blessing in her life away from her.

She angrily threw it as far away from her as possible, hearing it splash distantly in the water. She hoped it could be taken as an offering of sorts as she began to pray- pray for her to have her girl back, pray for her to see her, pray for her to be alive and there.

This process was then interrupted by something hitting her forehead.

Maria tottered backwards with a yelp, rubbing her head and hoping a bruise wasn’t left. She looked around for the offending item and saw her necklace lying in a small by her feet.

She picked it up gingerly and found small claw marks on one side of the gold pendant. She gasped in fright and it slipped from her hands, falling back into the water below, this time getting tread on by the boat.

And yet it’s thrown back up to her in mere seconds.

Maria watches the necklace fly through the air and clink on the ground several feet away. She waits for a moment, then picks it back up and throws it in the water again.

This time, it’s only a second before the necklace is thrown back up, hitting her in the chest with a bit more force and aggression. She grips the cold golden chain tightly as she carefully crept over to the railing and looked down.

Big green eyes peer up at her from the black water. Something about those eyes was so familiar, like a person is staring out of them.

“Bessie...?”

———

The seventh time Maria saw the thing wasn’t really visual, rather audible.

She was laying in her bed after a long two show day when a beautiful noise hummed through the air. It sounded like a cross between a howl, a coo, and a purr.

She quickly got up and pushed open one of her windows, sticking her entire upper body out. She scans the water, noticing it rippling several hundred yards away. The noise sounds again, this time in a tune of sorts, pauses, then goes once more.

High, low, high, low. That was the pattern of the pitch.

Maria wasn’t much of a singer, but she tries to sing the tune anyway. The possibility of being heard by someone didn’t cross her mind at the moment.

Silence. Maria thinks she might have scared the creature off with her unpracticed singing when it replies with the its tuned cry again. Maria laughs and replies to it with her own. It was slightly altered: Low, high, low, high. The creature copies enthusiastically.

Maria smiles and gets on her knees, leaning against her window sill, singing with the creature.

She never wanted to stop.

———

The eighth time Maria saw the creature was on a stormy day.

She didn’t know why she ventured out into the rain- something was just compelling her to go out to the back of the boat and lean over the railing. She watched the water bubble and splash and roil relentlessly for a long time, then she looked up with a new fire in her eyes.

“Are you here?” She called out. Her voice was soft, but something told her that it could hear her.

She could hear her.

Maria swallowed a lump in her throat. She wasn’t realizing she was shaking until that moment, and not because of the chill from the rain.

Slowly, she reached her hand out over the edge of the boat.

Rain starts to fall harder, pattering loudly against the surface of the churning ocean. The water was bubbling below the ship. The waves were crashing violently thanks to the gales whipping through the cold air, riling them up into towering shapes before they end up crashing back down with piercing claps. Lightning ignites the dark grey sky, thunder cracks loud enough to make it seem like the boat was ripped in half, and up comes the Empress of the Sea to touch Maria’s hand with her nose before diving back down into her deep sea kingdom.

[1boringblueboy]

A little tale I wrote.

There’s gonna be a drawing to go along with it but I have no art skills so it won’t be a good one. I have no writing skills either, so this isn’t a good tale, but whatever here it is.

You’re standing in the kitchen, at the sink. The dark house creaks as the moon starts to fall from the sky. It is the early hours of the morning, and all that is heard is the rushing of tap water as you fill a glass to take to your room. You wipe your eyes and yawn.

Suddenly, you hear it. Tik tik… tik tiktik… tiktiktik… tik.

Could it possibly be rats? No, there are none  of those in your house. Even knowing that, you can’t get the picture out of your head. The image of small rodent’s feet skittering through the hall. No, it is too large for that, far too loud. Too few feet. 

Tiktiktiktiktiktik.

Closer now, louder. More distinct. You turn to look down the dark hall. It is a sound like the tapping of pencils on a desk, the sound of fingernails on a glass windowpane. The sound of-

It’s the sound of six long, spider-like legs scampering across a hardwood floor. 

From the hall it emerges. At first, only the head is visible. Attached to this is a long, serpentine neck. It trails around the corner of the hall, peering into the kitchen. The head is round, and in the dim light it appears only as a dull grey color. On this head is a face- no, not a face. A mask. A circular mask with a simple smiling face on it. Two vertical lines for eyes, bold and black, and a line below them, curved into a wicked grin. It would be a normal sight, if it weren’t the face of a monster. Devoid of all emotion, the creature stares you down. At least, you can’t perceive the emotion. This means that you cannot divine it’s intent. Is it malicious? Does it plan to maim you? Or will it just observe from the shadows of the hall. Staring. Grinning. Not. Moving. 

The tap water rushes on, your cup overflowing.

The body now emerges from the hall. Twice as large as the head, and the same grey as the neck and head. From it sprout six spider-like legs. The face remains fixed on you, it’s unmoving eyes are like two icicles, stabbing into your heart with their cold, blank stare. 

Tik

It inches closer

Tik tik

One leg at a time

Tik… tik… tik…

You stand paralyzed, incapable of movement or thought. The phrase “fight or flight’ briefly flashes through your mind. You’ve never known which reaction would be yours, but you now know. Freeze. You freeze. 

Your spine is rigid, your limbs stiff as corpses. You cannot move. Body inactive all that is left for you to do is observe.

Your eyes dart around the room, your thoughts becoming more frantic and less coherent. This is it, isn’t it? Here is where I die. 

This is the thing that children fear, what goes bump in the night. Not the dark itself but what is in it. Or is this creature the dark? 

You glance around the room, searching for a weapon, knowing deep down that you stand no chance. But coursing through your veins is the basic, primordial desperation that is embedded in each living thing, that only makes itself known when the being’s life is about to be snuffed out. On the counter, a knife. In the sink, a saucepan. Your brain is prepared to fight with teeth, with claws, with bloodshot eyes and desperate screams of rage.

The creature grins.

Tik tik tik tiktiktik

The monstrous head looms now in front of your face, the body towering over you. Up close, you notice the sinuous neck, covered in the same grey, fleshy skin as the neck and head. It resembles the skin of a toad. 

All is silent. Your heart seems to have already stopped beating. You feel no breath in your lungs. 

THe creature draws itself to full height, it’s head almost brushing the ceiling. It’s mask smiles down at you. The last drop of desperation leaves you and the hopelessness fully sets in, settling in your blood and bones and making you feel heavy and the air feel thick. There is no hope.

It raises one long, slender leg. The legs, you realize, are not made of skin but instead some horrific exoskeleton like that of a spider or crab.

And now, now you realize, it is time for this great horrid thing, this monster, this great evil, to kill you. What will become of your body? It will not be eaten, for this creature has no mouth of it’s own, no face of it’s own. Only the mask, it knows only the mask. There is no more time. No time to say goodbye. No time to be struck by a deathbed epiphany, only fear. No time. 

The leg catches the moonlight reflecting it faintly. The house is still quiet, save for the ever-present rush of the faucet. The splash of the water running over the edge of the full cup in your hand. A dull thunk sounds throughout the house, staggeringly loud above the white noise of the sink. This is the sound of the single, sharp leg being driven through your chest. You feel it break through your ribs, your lung, and out through the other side of your torso. The pain, however, never reaches your brain, as you are dead before so much as a scream can leave your throat. Your last thought was one of curiosity, peaceful and childish. You were vaguely wondering what was behind the mask. The mask was the last thing you ever saw. The mask. The mask that is now spattered with drops of your blood. A squelching noise joins the sound of the sink as the beast withdraws it’s limb from where it was buried in your chest. 

Donning it’s chilling grin, the creature leaves your house. Your body lies slumped on the kitchen floor, a gaping hole ripped in your chest. 

The sound of the monster’s footfalls echo outside on the street.

Tiktiktiktiktiktiktik.

It’s gone before the sun can rise, before the birds can chirp, before the city, the sky, the world can awaken. No thoughts dwell in the mind of this beast, and no feelings reside in its heart. If it had either, it would be experiencing delight, as nightmares such as this one take such pleasure in tearing open the rib cages of any prey that falls into their grasp. They enjoy the warm ooze of blood and the soft squish of tissues and flesh. Most of all, they love to watch the desperation, that primordial urge to survive, to keep living, drain away. Drain out of the body before they tear it apart. They love to watch all hope be lost to the world. For they feed off that hope, consuming broken dreams and shattered expectations. They must assure that the mask keeps a happy face, for if that smile turned into a frown, who knows what would be left in the world.