#that flup grip

[whereisthedamndaddymanual]

You will notice the image has been slowly getting control over your body.

You will notice you have found you need more of what I am giving you.

These attention horizons

[chorusnihili]

@vilefilth CONTINUED.

How the hell did this little thing get in into his house? He doesn’t remember allowing anyone or anything in here, or did he? Whether he let it in or not, it didn’t matter. He didn’t want it in here now and that is what mattered at the moment.

Just as he’s about to pick up the little nuisence to throw it out, the tiny octopus-thing SLAPS his odious tail. He freezes, staring at the little thing for several moments before snerking, then going into full blown, boisterious laughter. Vile’s annoyed mood quickled shifted to amusement for this little thing. He’s not sure if picking it up would help any, but he had to do it. He had to pick the thing up.

He gently lifts it up, careful to not harm it in anyway and levels it with his eyes. The small octopus-thing was far up from the floor now…

“YOU’RE A LITTLE SPITFIRE, AREN’T YOU,” Vile chuckles, then tilts his head. He wondered if the thing could understand him at all. “YOU LIKE SHRIMP, LITTLE GUY?”

No time to wait and find out. He slithers straight into the kitchen and approaches the fridge, fetching out a bag of newly thawed shrimp and lifts it so the thing can see it. He shakes it a little.

“YOU LIKEY?”

The octopus inflated as the large (stinky!) creature reached towards him.

For a moment, he considered holding himself to the ground, and there was indeed that resistance for a second or two, before he realized it would be a bad idea and released with a loud flup!   

A loud huff.

Despite being not even four feet from the top of his head to the end of a tentacle, he sure acted much larger, staring at the snake-esque creature with a dirty look (and a pout.)

But, he seemed content to try his luck, remaining limp in the other’s grip.

And that expression melted away in response to a simple word--

“FOOD?”

He could speak, even if his understanding of vocabulary was limited.

His mouth morphed into a rather comical squiggle at the sight of the shrimp, and two tentacles reached towards it.  He at least had the decency to not attempt to openly swipe it.  

[metamatronic]

Sammy Lawrence’s Gay Crises Prt. 2

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

“Of course! At least eighty-five percent.”

Sammy glared at Joey, who was in the middle of working an incredibly complex pentagram- and Sammy had seen a lot of pentagrams in the studio. “What’s the other fifteen percent?”

“Death or horrifying mutilation.”

He quietly pulled Norman aside. “Are you sure you want to go through with this? I know I can be pushy about it but I won’t-” A clawed finger pressed against his lips. Norman tilted his projector and whirred softly. “Really.”

Sammy closed his eyes and indulged in the closeness as he was pulled into a hug, claws scratching gently at the base of his scalp and a hand rubbing reassuringly over his shoulders. He didn’t let go, even as Henry bumped into him walking into the room with more chalk and the missing candle. Even when Joey called for Norman to come, he held on selfishly. Eighty-five percent. He had to believe that the proverbial needle would land there. He had to.

Norman stood awkwardly in the center of the circle, watching Joey, who was… watching Sammy? He tuned back into the conversation.

“Sorry.”

Joey heaved an exasperated sigh. “As I was saying, the ritual needs a blood sacrifice to start it, and since you’re, ahem, closest to him-” Norman’s glare was boring into the back of his head for sure “-it would be best for you to do it.”

“A blood sacrifice.” To say he was incredulous was an understatement. Joey rolled his eyes.

“Just cut your hand or something, I don’t need you to bleed out.” He held out a knife that Sammy distinctly remembered seeing in his office as a letter opener. He grabbed it and stalked past to the edge of the circle, holding it over his hand and hesitating.

A soft crackle reached his ears and he looked up. Norman was watching him worriedly. Sammy gave him a wavering smile. “I’m doing this for you, Normy, so you better not- don’t-” He took a deep breath. “Come back to me.”

A sting, and wetness dripped from his hand into the circle.

Whatever fuckery the pentagram did, it left Sammy’s ears ringing and everything blurry. He had the distinct feeling he had looked upon something the human brain wasn’t meant to comprehend. He stumbled forwards, rubbing his eyes, and yelped as a hand grabbed his collar.

“Don’t break the pentagram!” Joey hissed in his ear. “Norman needs to walk out of it. If you cross the boundary you’ll taint the magic and fuck everything up.” Sammy gritted his teeth and stayed still. He rubbed his eyes again, and everything snapped into focus like a rubber band.

Norman was on his hands and knees in the circle. Long curls fell in his face. He had a face. He had a head. The projector was gone. Sammy swallowed back a tiny noise. He watched as Norman slowly reached up, touching his face in what he could only imagine as awe. His body was still an inky black, but it seemed… different, somehow, something so subtle Sammy couldn’t put his finger on the difference.

He finally looked up and Sammy couldn’t help but gasp.

It was definitely Norman’s face, perhaps a little more gaunt and pale than before, but irrevocably Norman. What kept Sammy rooted to the spot was his eyes- eye. One was covered by his hair, but the other was staring right back at him, wide, pupil-less, and glowing gold against the black of his sclera. Sammy swallowed, hard.

“Norman?”

His mouth opened, and if possible his eye got even wider. He grasped his throat, and Sammy heard a tiny squeak of noise. He still couldn’t speak, and Sammy’s heart dropped.

“Normy, can you stand?”

He covered his mouth. Joey shoved Sammy aside. “Norman, you need to get out of that pentagram right now if you feel sick. Nothing can break the lines. Nothing. I don’t know what would happen with you in it.”

Norman stared at him and his shoulders lurched abruptly. He pushed himself halfway to his feet and staggered out of the circle, promptly doubling over and vomiting ink everywhere. Sammy rushed to his side, meaning to hold his hair out of the way, and stopped in his tracks as he saw the wires still looped over his back. He still had hair, but the lower part of his scalp was nothing but cables.

“Oh, Norman,” he sighed, ignoring the ink soaking into his shoes to rub his back. “I’m not sure anything really changed.”

He got a glare in between mouthfuls of ink, and Sammy grinned. “Not sure I would call that mug of yours an improvement.”

“Sammy!”

“What? I was joking!”

Henry crossed his arms. “He has no idea what he looks like and you start off with that?”

Oops. “You’re real pretty, Norman. I’d kiss you if you weren’t spewing ink everywhere like a burst pipe.”

Sammy swore he heard Joey snort and mutter “Romantic.”

The longer Norman stayed hunched over, the more worried Sammy became. He looked up at Joey. “Is this normal?”

Joey shrugged. “Never done it before.”

Henry dragged him back before Sammy could snap at him for putting Norman through this goddamn experiment. “Let’s give them some space, Joey. And maybe get Norman some clothes.”

Oh. Sammy was suddenly very aware of how far his hand was wandering down his back. He massaged the spot between his shoulder blades as Norman gave a shuddering cough and sat up. “You feeling all right, Normy?”

A shaky nod. “I’m gonna get you out of this puddle now, okay?” He hooked an arm around his shoulders, feeling the muscles of his back shift under his grip. Norman clung to him, weak and shivering, and Sammy whistled. “Really did a number on you, didn’t it?”

Norman smiled ruefully and Sammy’s heart skipped a beat at the sight. He had forgotten his smile. He led his friend over to the wall, letting him down slowly enough that he could get his legs under him and Norman pulled them to his chest. He was blushing, and Sammy remembered what Henry had said about clothes. No, Lawrence. Stop that right now. He squashed the thought and kept his eyes firmly focused on Norman’s face.

“Do you need anything?” Norman tugged on his sleeve until he sat down beside him, examining their hands. He still had claws, though not nearly as pronounced, and Sammy squashed some other thoughts about that realization as quickly as they came. He flexed his fingers, wincing as a thumb brushed across the tender slice on his palm, and Norman brought it to his lips. Warmth spread across Sammy’s cheeks at the motion, over far too soon as Norman took a deep, deep breath and exhaled, dropping his hand.

Sammy couldn’t help it, he needed to make sure this was real and not some demonic fever dream. His fingertips stopped inches from Norman’s cheek, held in place by a blackened hand as he raised an eyebrow accusingly. Sammy looked at the ground. “Sorry.”

His head snapped back up in surprise as Norman turned his hand and pressed it against his cheek. He closed his eyes, tilting his head into the touch, and Sammy dared to move, to tuck a frazzled wire behind his ear and slowly, slowly map the face he never thought he’d see again.

Norman sat still, eye transfixed on Sammy as his hand wandered his face. This close, he could see that he had a white pupil, glowing brightly and bleeding into the gold of his iris. He flinched as his fingers neared the bridge of his nose, and Sammy paused.

“May I?”

Eye shut tight and jaw tense, he nodded. Sammy slowly brushed aside his bangs, keeping his face carefully neutral.

Norman only had one eye. The socket of his other one was overflowing with wires, spilling down his face and wrapped around his head. Sammy ever so gently brushed over them, tracing their paths down, slipping his hand under them to cup Norman’s jaw. “Thirty years, and you’re still the most handsome damn thing I’ve ever seen.”

Norman cleared his throat harshly. “I could say the same about you.”

Sammy froze. “You can talk?” He never thought he would hear his voice again, no matter how rough it was.

He seemed just as shocked as Sammy, staring into middle distance as he shakily brought a hand up to his mouth, then down to the speaker still nestled in his ribs. Sammy realized the sound had come from it, not his throat. Odd. “I can talk. Sammy! Sammy I can talk!” Black tears welled up in his good eye and he buried his face in Sammy’s shoulder, mumbling. “I can’t believe it.”

Sammy rubbed his back, and noticed that thick cables still wrapped around his torso. Norman stiffened suddenly, and he jerked back. “Did I hurt you?”

“No…” He reached up to his shoulder. “I just realized that it’s gone. The film reel.” He smirked and Sammy’s chest clenched again. “Never thought I would be so glad to have something ripped out of me.” Norman rolled his shoulder several times and sighed happily.

“The speaker is still there, though.” Sammy tapped it, and was mildly gratified when Norman gave a surprised squeak. “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“Not really. I can feel it but not the same way… how does it fit?”

Norman shrugged, clearly done questioning his existence. He wrapped his arms around Sammy and hummed into his ear. “Sammy?”

“Hm?”

“I would-” He coughed again, but it sounded more nervous than anything. “I would like to kiss you.”

All the blood in Sammy’s body rushed to his face in record time. “Uh-”

Norman was smiling sadly at him again, that golden eye seeming to pierce straight through Sammy. There was a hint of self-loathing in his expression- one Sammy knew painfully well, had seen time and time again on everyone who had worked in this damned studio- and that simply wouldn’t do. He cupped his face in his hands, feeling his thumbs smooth over sharp cheekbones, and stared into gold. “Give a man a warning before you drop a bomb like that on him, will ya?”

He tasted like ink, but Sammy didn’t care. He threw everything into the kiss, crushing their mouths together as if the devil himself would drag them apart again. He felt Norman’s hands slide down his back to rest just above his hips and sighed into his mouth.

The door clicked, and both their eyes snapped open. A snigger, the soft flup of clothes being tossed, and then it shut again. Sammy had to pull back to breathe. He stared at Norman, still not entirely sure that had just happened.

Norman grinned back, a dusky flush gracing his cheeks. “Not bad for a first kiss, huh?”

“Hm…” Sammy pretended to think it over, sliding neatly back into his personal space. “I think I need a second one to be sure.”