Work Text
OMEN
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Somewhere You Now Know, The Arrival Slips Through Your Fingers
February 1st, 2000 She groaned.There was a haze, pressure, an oppressive weight crushing her skull between two metal vices. It was a splitting headache that was most definitely not normal, even during the mornings after she pulled one of her usual all-nighters and got much too little sleep as a result of her dumbassery. Perhaps she had caught a particularly nasty cold, and the symptoms were beginning to make themselves known. Perhaps she should have listened to her brother and taken some pills right after she started sneezing.
Eh, what was one more little mistake to add to that huge pile.
She rubbed her burning eyes.………Or she would have.Had she been able to move at all.
What the hell…?!
Ashley Graves’s eyes snapped open, her pink irises widening with an inexplicable sense of terror that made her heartbeat break out into a race. Whatever remained of her drowsiness was sucker-punched out of her, the malaise forgotten and replaced by ice-cold dread, because the sight that met her was immediately disorienting.This wasn’t her bedroom.Medical lamps, the same eerie things used in surgical theaters, were blasting her face point-blank with intense white light. Treatment that was way too unkind for someone who had just woken up, and despite the overwhelming brightness making her wince and her head spin more than it already was, it was far from the worst part. She tried moving her arm again, nothing, it was forced across her chest and her hand made to rest on the opposing shoulder. She tried moving her other, still nothing, it was bound in the same way as its counterpart, like those of a mummy. She tried moving her legs, fucking nothing, she couldn’t even kick. She tried to buck with her torso, nope, as strapped down as a torso could be.The only thing that Ashley could somewhat move was her neck, and so she craned it to escape the lights and look around her surroundings.She wished she hadn’t.A straitjacket. A fucking straitjacket?! And not only was she trapped by the excessive garment, there was a myriad of tightened belts pressing down her legs and core, and those were probably the reason why she could barely struggle an inch against her confinement. And then there were her feet. She slept barefoot, yes, so the feeling of cold air on her small peds was not a cause for suspicion or alarm. But what did was the fact that said feet were currently put through a stockade, with her large and pinky toes tied and pulled back.She kicked the stocks as hard as she could, nothing, her sad attempt did not even cause them to budge. She tried scrunching her toes, still nothing, the ties kept her black nails unmoving and shining against the light like a polished onyx. She pushed and pulled her arms against the white canvas, goddamn nothing, all she would accomplish at this point would be to exhaust or injure herself.Where the hell was she even? Who had put her here? Why were her uncovered feet through a stockade when the rest of her was cocooned up?
Unless…
No.There was one possible explanation behind this; one specific intention whoever had left her here, with her vulnerable extremities completely exposed and indefensible, could have had in mind for the particulars of this bondage.
No.
But she would think of it. She would not invoke it, she would not speak it, she would not even acknowledge it as a possibility, else she jinx and fuck herself as she always managed to do.Even more so because there was no one here. There was no one waiting for her to wake up. No kidnapper or perpetrator itching to gloat before they killed her or did worse. God knew there were many that could have taken her while she slept. Maybe she and her brother had gotten careless. Maybe they had not been able to outrun those coming for them. They had killed one hitman, yes, but who said that dipshit was the only one following their trail?And still, there was no one.There was no one but her in this creepy, lonely hospital room. Nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but try and calm her pounding heartbeat, to somehow breathe and slow down the cold sweat trickling down her brow, to stop shaking inside this sterile coffin and hasten her approaching funeral.So with nothing else she could do, Ashley dared to pose some questions. To the darkness now surrounding her. To the silence that was watching.“Wha-What the fuck?! Where am I? Why can’t I fucking MOVE?! ANSWER ME!!” And to that terror masked by rage, something answered back.
“Remember…”
“W-Wha… remember? Remember w-what?! Who’s speaking?! What are you talking about?! Wha-”
“REMEMBER…”
Ashley screamed with agony as her mind was forcefully pried open, and a sudden flood of memories cascaded through one tar-black soul.
“After a shootout with pursuing police units, notorious serial killer Andrew Graves has been pronounced dead at the scene of the altercation. Ashley Graves, apprehended after a brief chase following her accomplice’s death, will stand trial beginning next week on what is quickly becoming known as the “Trial of the Millenium” by the observing public. According to the prosecution, the sought verdict to be imposed upon the defendant should she be found guilty is the death penalty-”
What…?
They had been caught? But the police wasn’t even aware of them yet! It… It was supposed to protect them from this! That was the deal! They had fed It everyone It fucking fancied, and the dickless prick had just left them out to dry like this?! After everything they had done?!And a shootout? What? When? How? She didn’t remember any of this happening. And how could she? It hadn’t happened. It hadn’t. This wasn’t real. None of it was. Lies. LIES! Andy… he wasn’t… he couldn't… she couldn’t be alone now…
“In a stunning turn of events, after being found guilty on all counts, Ashley Graves’s sentence has been reduced from capital punishment to lifelong commitment to an undisclosed psychiatric hospital. The decision was made after a surprising recommendation from the jury and an even more unexpected agreement by the presiding judge. According to a released official statement, the facility now housing this convicted criminal is being kept concealed to protect it from “retribution and acts of vigilante justice.” After this commercial break, protests in support of the families affected by the Graves’ murder spree erupt in-”
Life in a psych ward?
Then… this place… i-it was-
The door to her prison slammed open, and Ashley was not able to prevent herself from letting out a shriek and jumping in her straitjacket. A procession of doctors and nurses followed suit. A legion of chalky overcoats marching in complete silence and swarming the corrective chamber, making it even more claustrophobic than it already was by default. She couldn’t see their faces, and she squinted hard to try. It was as if they were covered by a dark fog, obstructed and obscured, her eyes flat out refusing to see what was above their collars in the same way they failed to make out something hiding in the shadows whenever it was night.The straitjacket no longer felt restrictive, it was no safety Ashley was desperately clinging to. Like a blanket she wished she could hide her face under, because this silent parade was making the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on their ends.It was wrong. None of what she was seeing made any bloody sense. Especially how more and more doctors and nurses kept walking in one after the other. She had never been to a hospital before this, but she was fucking sure that they didn’t send close to a hundred people to treat a single patient. The tiny cell should not have been able to hold so many, they should have been packed together tighter than sardines inside a tin, but they just kept on walking and disappearing into each other. Feet sliding through the air right above the floor. Their movements much too ethereal and uncanny to come from people. The air was growing colder, downright chilly, and there was none of the suffocating heat so many people exhaling and sweating inside such a small space without any windows to provide ventilation should have caused.And then the last of them came through, wheeling in metal tables that carried a wide assortment of utensils and tools.They were not for surgery. They were not meant to treat or help her. They were most certainly not related to anything to do with medicine.Electric toothbrushes and flossers. Ball-bristled hairbrushes and scalp massagers. Plastic combs. Feathers. Gloves meant to groom animal fur with soft spikes lining the palms and fingers. Baby oil. The fucking baby oil! If there was more than this then Ashley did not give one inkling of a turd, because what her simple glance at her torturers’ picks revealed was enough to make her seethe with rage. Of course. Motherbuggerin’ of course. Why the fuck else would her feet be put through stocks and her toes tied up?!“NO! NO NO NO NO! NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN! YOU SAID THIS WOULDN’T HAPPEN ANYMORE! WE DID EVERYTHING YOU ASKED FOR! YOU PROMISED! YOU FUCKING PROMISED!!” It was always watching. It was always listening. Even when they couldn’t see It, when they couldn’t feel It, It was always there. So if she was screaming her lungs out and cursing both Heaven and Hell with her raw fury, it was because she was damn sure she wasn’t alone here. It had left her to rot, to suffer, It had fucking betrayed their goddamned agreement after how she and her brother had bent over backwards to satisfy its terms. Why had she expected better?! Why had she expected this thing to come through for her when It had always held them both by the balls?! She was a fucking moron, and fucking morons tended to pay the price for their stupidity with interest in this bitch of a world they were cursed to exist in.But the nurses paid zero attention to their patient’s screaming, as they rubbed fresh baby oil between their palms and began coating her flinching pair of feet with the monstrous substance.And the doctors did not care one bit for their victim’s protests, as they put on their latex gloves and made their choices out of the array of weapons at their disposal.“MAKE THEM STOP! YOU HEAR ME?! ARE YOU FUCKING LISTENING?! YOU WILL MAKE THESE ASSHOLES STOP AND GET ME OUT OF HERE! COME ON, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME?! I DID EVERYTHING YOU-” One of the faceless orderlies suddenly shoved an opened calendar right in Ashley’s face, shutting her up mid-roar. The piece of folded paper silenced her and made the blood drain from her face, because one date in particular was left untouched while all before it were crossed out in red.
February 1st, 2000
“W-Wha… no, nonono, that… that can’t be right. That can’t be right! You’re lying! We… we still have time! The y-year h-hasn’t ended yet! This is a mistake! You’ve got it w-wrong! When I went to sleep it was October! It was October, I swear!” It did not answer. Fuck. Fuck! Oh my fucking God… FUCK! It did not need to.Time was up, the bell had tolled, she had missed the end of the year. How her stomach had just caved into a chasm of dejected realization would not change what was coming. What It had explicitly warned them over and over would happen should they botch this whole thing and the ritual go tits up. Only God knew what It was doing to Andy now, in whatever pit It had prepared for him downstairs. Her brother had probably already gone insane, if he could even still think coherently or manage a single breath. Only God knew what would happen to her when her turn to kick the bucket came. Lifetime imprisonment in an asylum that might as well have been part of the underworld, where her every waking moment would force her to endure this most inhumane of torments, and then one day she would die and repeat it forever . She should have burst into tears, sobbed in mourning for the person she could have been had she made a single better choice, but she couldn’t even muster this crushed sorrow. She felt… hollowed out. Empty. How the hell was she even supposed to begin processing this? How did one just… come to terms with being damned? With still being alive but at the same time already having died?But Ashley wouldn’t have to wait long to find out, because one of the “doctors” made their mind and picked the hairbrush, its every bristle a scalpel and its every rake a cut, and brought it to descend on her left foot. And even though the condemned woman was shaking, her teeth chattering with nerves frayed beyond repair, her eyes so wide they sunk back into her skull as the torture’s commencement neared, she still tried to save herself. She couldn’t help it, it was in Ashley Graves’s nature to want to survive.
C’mon Leyley, time to put your negotiation skills to work!
“W-Wait wait wait! WAIT! I-I… I can still be useful to you! I-I’ve got… I’ve got awesome fat tits! You know those can go a long way in bringing in some new guys as sacrifices or followers! L-Look! They’re g-great in this straitjacket! T-Think about it, I know you still need loyal people for whatever it is you’ve got pla- EHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH FUUUUUUUUCK HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH NOOOOOOO AHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH PLEHEHEHEHASEEE NAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHANYTHING BUHUHUT EHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA THIHIHIHIS FUHUHUHUCKING PFTFAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH SHIIIIIIIIITTT!”
Admittedly, that hadn’t been her best of pitches.
Hate. Hate. There was no word in the English language that could accurately quantify how much Ashley Graves fucking HATED being tickled. How something so stupid, so childish and insulting, how undeniably cringe as this goddamn hairbrush raking up and down her sole was making her spill her guts out and cackle like a mentally challenged baby. If an eternity of torture was the inevitable fate in store for her now that she had failed, then why couldn’t it at least be dignified?! Why did It still insist on humiliating her like this, when she knew It was capable of much worse?! She had seen It work Its craft, for Devil’s sake! She had heard the screams, the lamentations of the lost, she and her brother had even sent many there themselves! But noooo, here was dumbass Leyley laughing it up like a lobotomized moron instead of squealing while she was skinned alive!Who would ever feel sorry for her?! Who would ever hold an ounce of empathy for suffering so harmless?! “Oh, boo-hoo you’re getting tickled. Big fucking deal. It’s not like it actually hurts, billions of other tortured souls have it way worse than you. You should be thankful that this is your sentence!” Ashley could already hear the mockery, the condescension, and all it did was piss her off even more.SHE WASN’T THANKFUL!IT WAS SO FUCKING BAD FOR HER!THIS WAS TORTURE DAMMIT, SHE COULDN’T TAKE THIS SHIT! WHY WAS SHE SO CUNTING TICKLISH?! “OHOHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA MY GOHOHOHOHOD! OHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA MY GAHAHAHAHAWD! STOP HNGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA FUHUCKING STOP NYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH STAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAP GRRRRAAAAGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAAAAAAAAH!” “Stop.” As if that had ever worked for her. As if that would make the hairbrush slow even slightly down. As if that would numb the unimaginably intense sensations shooting up from the bottom of her kicking and bouncing foot and straight into her brain. Fire, electricity, frostbite, the tips of a dozen knives were burrowing into her sole and stimulating her nerve endings without mercy or acknowledgement that there was a person attached to it and wishing they would just amputate the limb. Her capacity for complex thought beyond the immediate impulse to escape had flatlined; her nervous system was being continuously flashbanged by a deluge of white noise, like the horribly loud static that emerges from a tv when one switches to a channel that doesn’t exist.Already, Ashley’s animal instincts were beginning to take over any conscious actions she could have taken in her desperation to flee, to live, to evade the barbarous tickling that could never be administered with any intention other than punishment. She was thrashing in her binds like a woman possessed, pulling against her straitjacket’s arms with rabid frenzy that had long left the realm of anything even closely related to logic and belonged to this asylum’s chiefest export: lunacy. And all of this because one foot was getting worked over.
She still had another.
And the moment Ashley acknowledged this dreadful truth, a scalp massager began raking against the bottom of her right ped. Her previously spared ped.The screaming erupted the second it made contact. “AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPWAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAH!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH FUHUHUHUUUUUUCK EHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH FUUUUUUUUUHUHUHUHUUUUUCK!! GEHEHEHEHET THE FUCK OFF MY FEHEHEHEHEHEHEET!! LEHEHEHET ME GO YOU FREHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEAKS!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK WAIT WAIT WAIT NO NO PLEASE NO NOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAARGHH!!” It wasn’t just the scalp massager that had been added to the fun. Of course not. She just had to open her big dumbass mouth and entice her ticklers to put her in her place. It wasn’t like the massager and hairbrush would be lethal on their own, of course not! She needed to be destroyed by like a million things at once! It wasn’t like she was ALREADY STUPID TICKLISH AND THIS WAS GOING FUCKING OVERBOARD!The massager’s spikes were the claws of a hungry eagle. Each unbearably pointy, but not in the merciful way that would have caused her pain or even drawn her blood had her ticklers gotten too zealous with it. No, they were pointy in the no-good way that allowed them to effortlessly dig into the thicker skin of her soles and jab straight through the network of nerves waiting within. No matter how hard she scrunched up what few of her toes were not tied up, it meant jack shit against this infernal device if it could just bypass her wrinkles and set every little inch of kicking foot-bottom ablaze.This, plus the fucking hairbrush still rubbing her left sole raw and pink, were sharpened wedges through farmland, tearing apart her foundations and leaving enormous gashes where all that made Ashley Graves had once been. Rich tillings where seeds of madness had been planted and were quickly giving fruit, extracting nothing but hysterical howling and screamed ravings befitting of a loonhouse.Because a ploughshare and a sword have never truly differed. Because poor Leyley, who had done nothing wrong, was here to be executed and then quartered on the block. “PFTBFTPFHAAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAH!! EEYAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAH!! I CAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAN’T BREHEHEHEATHEEEEEE NAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I NEED AHAHAHAHAHIIRRRR HNAAARGHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!” Sure, she had never cared enough to practice the best skin-care routines or ever dared set foot in a beauty salon for a pedicure, but it wasn’t like her poor feet had rock-solid calluses that would have called for treatment this rough to drive her up the wall. Even more so when one considered that they were generously lubricated by the blasted baby oil that made everything tickle twice as bad, because of course a substance like that existed in this godforsaken world. These shitbags could have used their fingers, even if they had short nails, and made her guffaw with raging gusto she was ashamed to admit with just a couple of gentle swipes across her oiled soles. No, this was sending a message. She was to be shredded down to ribbons by these wicked talons and be forced to take it all like a good obedient girl all wrapped up in her blankie. But of course, of course, an eagle was more than just its claws. It had wings! And those wings had feathers! Like the long and stiff one currently sawing between one of her pinky toes! A feather! That feather! Defeated by a feather, of all things! It did not tickle nearly as badly as the massager and the hairbrush, but it was infuriatingly annoying. A constant distraction that on its own would have caused girlish giggling and a couple little yelps to bubble up her throat, but that was now being used to prevent her from ever adapting. Every time she thought she was growing resistant to the punishment, that bleeding feather snaked past her guard and threw her back down to the bottom. Every time she clenched her toes to grant herself some measure of natural armor, it snaked between her digits and forced them to splay or bat it away. Which naturally meant that she would never be able to stop laughing her ass off when pitted before the bombardment falling on her soles. Ah, but that wasn’t everything! How could it be?! Where the ball-bristles and the spikes were concentrated artillery, and the feather an infiltrator constantly probing for cracks, there was also a sniper. A buzzing, whirring, meant-for-cleaning-teeth sniper whose spinning tip was concentrating on each and every single one of her toe pads with excruciating attention to detail, violently ramming a fist through her skull and taking her corpse for a little jiggy.Where the feather was an annoyance constantly keeping her off-balance, the electric toothbrush was a problem. A serious, lethal, awe-inspiringly cruel choice for a tickle tool that was dragging her conscious awareness down the spiral of batshittery with every second of its heartless buzzing that passed. Her toes were not her greatest weakness, but there was something about the firm bristles spinning so quickly all over the thin, tender surfaces of her small toes that catapulted her sensitivity to new heights of farcity. “WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAT THE FUHUHUCK IS WRONG WITH AHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YOU PEHEHEHEOPLE?!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH FUHUHUHUHUHUCKING SAY SOHOHOHOHOHOMETHING AHAHAHAHAHAHAHALREADY!! YOU’RE HNGHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOH OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA KIHIHHIHIHILLING MEHEEEE BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!” They weren’t listening. Why would they listen? They were focused on one task alone, and it was to break her. Split her mind clean in two, and they were well on the way to succeeding. As far as they were concerned, she was a piece of meat to torment. A husk to bury, a rock to carve, a pair of immobilized feet to tickle and a face to gauge their progress. The straitjacket had reduced her to that; weakness and the expression of it. Not a person. Never a person.It did not matter that her laughter was by now so loud and anguished that it was bouncing off the walls and hurting her own ears. How ugly the sound she was being forced to spew, a bullet-fast staccato, a painfully mousy howl that was more befitting of a ditzy blonde, a high-pitched shriek more pathetic than that hussy Julia let out when she did this to her all those months before. How her throat was drying up and her cheeks now starting to cramp, unused to being locked into such a grotesque smile for so long. How she was smashing her head against her fluffy pillow over and over and over in a vain attempt to knock herself out or at least secure some distraction. How her black eyeliner was running down her face and her swinging hair sticking to her forehead due to how sweaty she now was.None of it earned Ashley any mercy or even a second of reprieve.In fact, it seemed to only encourage her torturers further.Because soon enough, one of them started quickly scraping all over both of her heels with the teeth of a plastic comb. “PWAH EHEHEHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH OH MY GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!! HEHEHEHEHEHEHEEEEELP MEHEHEEEEEE SOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOMEONEEE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHNYONEEE NYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHAH I WAHAHAHAHANNA GO HOHOHOHOHOMEEEEE HAHAAAAAAAAAHHHHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAH!!” She couldn’t take this anymore. This was the last straw. She had been dangling off the very edge of the abyss, and this had just kicked her in. Her heels were by far the most sensitive part of the bottoms of her feet. It made no sense, they bore most of her weight when she walked and stood. They boasted the thickest skin in all of her soles, and even had she bothered to pedicure herself they would not be soft or smooth unlike her arches. If there was anywhere in her poor fucking feet that should have been able to take this torment at least somewhat better, it should have been there, like it was for most people. And yet, her heels were unfairly ticklish. Ridiculously so, because if God was real then He was an asshole that had created her like this as part of some shitty joke. She had always wondered why her weakness was so weird, but she was in no position to question anomalies anymore. Andy knew it, because when they were younger he would sit on her ass and scratch her there ‘til she cried out that she was sorry for whatever it was that she had done at the time or wet herself. She knew it, because this was not the first or last time she would be tortured into unhinged ramblings and her extricator clearly knew all about her body’s fault lines by this point, and these faceless “doctors” evidently were well aware as well.If Ashley hadn’t been fuming like a furnace, despite what her ugly ass witch-cackling would’ve had an observer believe, she would have almost been impressed by the surgical precision being showcased in this torture session. So many different tools, each dedicated to a specific task and causing a measured reaction. By themselves, each sensation was devastating, all combined they were soul-shattering. And somehow, her captors were managing this masterpiece of the darker arts without uttering a single word to her or between themselves. Which was… scary. Terrifying, actually. How could so many things attack her soles simultaneously without intruding on themselves?! Her feet were tiny, just like the rest of her! She had been bullied about it for her whole life in high school! She could barely fill out a size 7 shoe!If the dying woman had thought her wardens were after something specific, she would have been singing like a canary by now. Money, information, favors, whatever the fuck it was she would gladly give in exchange for a mere minute of relief. But she knew they weren’t after any of that. They just sought her pain, and they were mining it with virtuosity. “BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *KOFF* AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *HACK* OHOHOHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *HAUGKH* HRKGHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHYAHYAHYA HYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH LEHEHEHEHT ME BREHEHEHEATHEEEEE *AUCKGH* AARRRGHHHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAHYAH STOOOOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOP STAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAP!!” She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe! SHE COULDN’T FUCKING BREATHE! They were going to actually kill her. She was drowning in her own drool, air surrounding her and prevented from being taken at the quantities she desperately needed. She threw her head back into the pillow and sunk on it, resigned to her demise. So exhausted and spent she could not manage resistance even when her brain was SCREAMING at her to fight. The inside of her straitjacket was drenched in sweat, and her vision was faint and spinning as if she had finished running a marathon and puked out her stomach lining right after crossing the finish line. Which she had most definitely never done during PE’s final exam. Her eyes were bulging out of their sockets, emptily staring off into the ceiling and the blinding lamps still shining down on her devolution, searchlights she could no longer run from, the lenses of a microscope that would dissect her into baser components and come to understand everything Ashley Graves had ever been.How much time had even passed? Minutes? Hours? Days? She had not the barest hint of a clue, because there were no clocks or indicators of passing time inside this isolation chamber. There was no sound except her roars of submission and the trk trk trk of the brush and massager unmaking her personhood one electroshock after the other, the bzzt bzzt bzzt of the toothbrush drilling into her skull and trepanning the wits out of her, and the rrr rrr rrr of the comb stabbing through her eye and severing her frontal lobe without giving one wet fart about the person it was ruining.This was turbofucked Leyley’s new life. She was only twenty years old, which meant she had long decades of this to look forward to before they inevitably killed her via cardiac arrest. And then, literal infinity downstairs where even worse tickle torture would be inflicted upon her for every second, minute, hour, day, year, CENTURY, MILLENIUM, AGE, ERA, AND EPOCH OF HER ENDLESS TOIL SHE HAD SOLELY BROUGHT ON HERSELF BECAUSE SHE WAS AND WOULD FOREVER BE STUPID! STUPID STUPID STUPID STUPID!!!!Fantastic.At least she’d laugh all the way, and like some people she really wanted to stab to death liked to say, it was the best medicine! Heheh, medicine. Get it, cuz this is a hospital. I’m so fucking funny, dude. But before Ashley could laugh it up some more at her utter lack of wit and absolutely nothing else, the torment suddenly came to a stop.
Oh sweet baby Jesus, praised be the Buddha.
The ravaged woman crumpled on the bed, every part of her body both inside and outside the straitjacket sweating bullets, her vision spinning and blurry, the bottoms of her feet tingling with overstimulation. Air, air, at last some sweet and life-saving air. She took big mouthfuls, panting and roughly coughing in between each one, eyes closed with complete exhaustion and tempting her to fall asleep despite her predicament.
“Th-Thank… *huff* …you. I-I will do better… *huff* …I will be u-useful. Please, just… *huff* …let me out and let’s talk about this. We can… *koff* …sign another contract. You’ve made your… *huff* …point, no more… *hack* …tickling. No more tickling… *wheeze* …please…”
But when Ashley opened her eyes, because she just had to cut her moment of peace short, she saw two of the entities standing before her, one a nurse and the other a doctor.And she almost screamed.She could finally see above their necks, the mercy that was her mind’s previous effort to refuse to see the shit now standing before her no longer protecting her. They had no faces. They had no heads. An empty space, an absence, a puncture wound stabbed through the very air and now causing it to crack like glass. Small windows into the other side, the side no one ever came back from when they crossed the threshold, groaning and croaking the death rattle of the pillar of sense that had just been unceremoniously murdered and its corpse pissed on. A hole that had once been filled by something, something even someone like her could tell had once been good, now an undead corpse seething with inexhaustible resentment and hatred so deep it strangled her throat mid-scream.Because inside these crunching crevices, these maws lined with needle-glass teeth grinding against themselves due to hunger that could never and would never be sated, were eyes. A single, so abhorrently alone, so seething with a crushing weight the Human mind and Human soul only comprehended as unmistakably evil, eye. One disembodied oculus per lack of a head, every doctor and every nurse standing as still as a mannequin while the eye that was their yearning for a spirit stared her down and impaled her to the bed.Crimson gazes, unblinking, swallowing all light still daring to graze this prison cell into those yawning chthonian pupils. They were dread stars amidst the black, engines of antediluvian malice that would rage until time itself tired of ticking, bearers of a grudge so ancient Ashley could not ever hope to understand how a single moment consumed by its heat would feel.The eye of It who had always been watching. Who had always been listening. Who had always been there even if she couldn’t feel It, even if she couldn’t see It, even if her words refused to reach It. It was here.For her.
For her.
“M-M-Master… u-um, h-hi! W-W-Were you… l-listening? S-So, y-y-you want to… t-talk this out o-or-” Another nurse, the eye that was her head staring at Ashley all the way, wheeled in one of the metal tables before she could finish her sentence. It only carried one tool, one blade yet to be unsheathed, the last and greatest of weapons that made the condemned’s heart drop down a sinkhole of despair. The doctor standing next to Ashley grabbed the offered plastic mittens from the table, the dozens of black spikes lining its undersides glinting in the shadows with wordless finality, and began to dispassionately put them on. The eye that was the man’s face glowed and flickered an eerie scarlet as it pored over the pants-shitting terror so clearly visible in gigascrewed Leyley’s face, because It had always found Its sustenance on Human fear and was not about to change.“N-NO! NO NO NO! NOT THE FUCKING GLOVES! NOT THAT! OH GOD, OH MY FUCKING GOD! ANYTHING BUT THOSE GODDAMN THINGS, FUCK!” Words did not answer Ashley’s screams. The yells that a throat abused, sanded down by booming false mirth torn through torment’s labors, was compelled to produce in pursuit of survival. The nurse standing next to her only lifted her hands, and in the entity’s grasp were two pieces of cloth.Ashley knew what they were for, just as she was unwillingly familiar with the hell that grooming gloves raised when used on the bottoms of her feet. How could she not after all that she had been put through? One was a muzzle to be stuffed in her mouth. The other a blindfold to wrap around her eyes.Speech and sight. What little remained of her agency. Her last senses, now to be deprived. She had been allowed to keep them until now, just so that their loss would be all the more poignant. It was obvious in hindsight, because hope was catastrophic when falsely given.“I’VE PAID MY DUES! I’VE SUFFERED ENOUGH ALREADY! I TRIED TO SERVE AS BEST AS I COULD! I SWEAR I DID! I DID MY BEST! I DID MY BEST! I’M SORRY!” Enormous hands, forged from solid shadow, each finger a sharpened knife, each palm as painfully cold as ice from a glacier, punched through the wall behind her and roughly grasped her head. The doomed woman thrashed and furiously fought against her bondage, her neck red and its veins bulging from the strain, but her strength might as well have been nonexistent against the stygian limbs that held her in place. She might as well have been bashing her face into a steel pillar. She might as well have been trying to move a concrete wall by slapping it. And the entity masquerading as a nurse knew it, because it started to slowly approach the head of the bed, cloth in hand. “WE DID EVERYTHING YOU ASKED FOR! ANDY GAVE HIS LIFE FOR YOU! YOU’RE A FUCKING TRAITOR, YOU HEAR ME?! A FUCKING- MMMPHHH!”
“Don’t fight it…”
The moment after the gag was shoved into her mouth and the blindfold plunged her into darkness, a rasping mouth whispered into Ashley’s ear and sent icicles up her spine. It was dead. A dessicated cadaver puppeted on spindly sticks that were once legs by a will from the beyond. A sound that could only approximate poor mimicry of the Human experience, because it had never lived it nor could it understand. Pinocchio was squawking that he was a boy, his nose so long that it had speared his father through the eye, because he could never and would never have a soul.
“MMPHH! MMPHHHHHH!”
“Let us cure you…”
The whisper now caressed the inmate’s opposite ear, and every hair in Ashley’s body stood on its end. A switch flipped in her brain and started flaring alarms and warning signals she struggled yet again against the straitjacket to try and heed. A person’s breath wasn’t supposed to feel cold. It was supposed to be stuffy, moist, grossly damp, but still damp. It shouldn’t have felt like the mist of a winter morning. It shouldn’t have made her shiver. And that was without even going into the words themselves.She didn’t need anything cured. She didn’t need anything cured!
“HRRPHHH! MNGGHHHH!”
Ashley couldn’t see, and it wasn’t just because of the blindfold. The disorienting light from the lamps above her head was gone. The only thing that penetrated the cloth covering her eyes was the black. There was only darkness. There was only the depths. Nothing but the nether, and the watching fires within.Her heartbeat was pounding out of her chest. She was hyperventilating, she felt like she was going to faint. Never in her life had Ashley Graves been so paralyzingly afraid as she was in this very moment. Never had she been so taken by fear’s embrace that she reverted from a person to a bundle of primal prey drive. This was wrong. All of this was wrong in ways she could not put to words but could definitely sense. This was a nightmare. She had to wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP.
“We will make you better…”
“NGH! NGHHHHHH!”
And then more baby oil began to be poured on her soles. It made her jump, it made her tense. And then the remaining toeties were wrapped around her squirming digits. It made her stifle girlish giggling, it made her kick against the stocks. And then she heard the whirring bzzt bzzt bzzt of more than one electric toothbrush being brought to life. It made her start sobbing into her gag, it made her weep defeat beneath her blindfold. And then she heard the doctor wearing the death gloves turn around and begin walking to the foot of the bed. It made her scream with humiliating panic, it made her thrash against the straitjacket with everything she had left and rapidly kick the stockade so hard that it started violently rattling.And it then began. “HNGRAGHH!! MFFAFFHAHMHMHMGAFPHHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHMHHMAGH M HMHMHMAMPHMAHAHAHAMPFHMFPHMAHAGHPFFMFMPFWAGHAGHARGRR!!” How could she begin to describe the havoc that pair of gloves was wreaking on her brain? Her sense of awareness, her lucidity, her ability to string together the most basic of sentences, her capacity to utter words more complex than the cavewoman grunts and growls she was currently puking out; it was all being devastated to degrees few people thought something as “““harmless””” as tickling could inflict on a person.The grooming gloves were worse than the hairbrushes. After It used those accursed ball-bristles on her for the first time and tortured her until she lost consciousness, Ashley would have wagered the entirety of her nonexistent life savings on there being nothing that could surpass the comically intense sensations hairbrushes inflicted when used to tickle feet, or at least hers. Especially when they concentrated solely on her heels until they left them pink.Turns out, she had been wrong. Dramatically so, as she had eventually found out. As she was currently being reminded. Because stupid STUPID Leyley had forgotten that it could ALWAYS get worse. Because she had dared plead for her salvation, and had only fucked herself further as a result. “MHRYYYY!! MMFAFFGHAGHMHMHMHMHMPFAAFHMMGAPHH HTAFF HTAAAAPHH PHFFAPHARGHHMHMHMHMHMHMMAAPHAHAHAHPHHMHMHHMHMMMHRYYYY!!” The hairbrush, when combined with unholy baby oil, was pretty much maxed out tickle torture. There was no arguing that fact, she had already been a test subject proving that cruel thesis true way too many times. But the one mercy that the hairbrush had, if one could even call it a mercy, was that it was small enough to only attack one part of the foot at a time. There was a limit to how much surface area it covered when swiping. It didn’t matter when she was getting wrecked by it, of course, just one portion of her sole being overstimulated was enough to launch her to the stratosphere. But ohh, even that could get a million times worse, believe it or not!Because the gloves existed. Now those were a bitch. They were large. They were flexible. They bent to follow the shape and curves of the foot, the arsenal of spikes the palms and fingers were lined with getting everywhere while they raked. Every little groove and crevice, the valleys between and underneath each toe, the curvature of the arch, the long prairies that were the soles and heels. A great nervous filigree, intricate and delicate. The gloves attacked it ALL at the same time. Burned those fields down and salted the earth for good measure. Instantly overwhelmed. No possible resistance. Immediate surrender, unconditional collapse.And worst of all, was that poor Ashley’s tiny ass almost size sevens were so small that the gloves were bigger than her peds. So they covered the bottoms of her feet in their agonizing ENTIRETY and made her want to tear her legs off and spend the rest of her days in a wheelchair. “HRYYYYYYY MFMFMFPHAHAHAHMMMHFMGHRRRGHAGHAHAHAHNGHRRYYYY!! PHHPWAHMFMMFMMFMMAHAGHAGHAPFTMHMHMHMHMHMHAAAAARRRRGHHMF MFMFMFMFMFHAHMFMFMFMFMGHYAHYAHYAHYAHNGAGHRMFMFMFMHRYYYY!!” She could feel every individual spike quickly digging into her soles, excavating muffled cackling like how a drill does oil. Every sharp point, every claw of the thousand-fingered beast, was harrowingly ticklish on its own. Like the hairbush’s bristles, they were able to easily penetrate the natural toughness of her skin and access the vulnerable nerves within. The baby oil eliminated all friction, made of her soles a slickened ballroom to host this danse macabre.But where the hairbrush inflicted only one type of torturous sensation, the swipe and its refrain, the gloves were responsible for hundreds of simultaneous attacks. Sometimes the tickler’s fingers dug into her toes, dexterously playing each individual digit furiously trying to curl up against the ties. Sometimes the hands wrapped around her heels and polished them like handkerchiefs to a knob, magnifying the decibels of her hyena-cackling. Sometimes the tickler’s palms were placed flat on her whole foot-bottoms and scrubbed hard against her soles in various directions. Up and down, from side to side, in zig zags, in spirals, in any conceivable design that would flush her brain down the toilet of what-the-fuckery. Sometimes the gloves were dragged with cruel slowness that made her belly-howl and clench up her asshole in sheer disgusted recoil . Other times they scrubbed with so much speed and pressure that she thought they wanted to peel her skin off, and they might as well have been doing exactly that.The gloves not only tickled like mad, they felt horrendous as well. The same need for immediate cessation as softly tracing one’s finger over the roof of the mouth. Or holding a cube of ice directly to the teeth. It is not painful, but the nervous system DEMANDS it to stop immediately despite no harm that it can cause. Her feet felt like they were on fire. Repeatedly stung by an army of pissed off bees. A generator of constant current hooked up to her soles and which was refusing to stop regardless of how much she convulsed. The spikes were legion, for they were many. Legio nomen mihi est, quia multi sumus. This was a weakness of the Human body that most people would not think too much about, because there were many more serious ones, but that destroyed Ashley Graves knew very well could break a person’s sanity without drawing a single drop of blood. Made all the more evil, wickedly cruel, undeniably beautiful in its twisted gloomy glory by the fact that this could continue for hours. Her body would not give out, her mind would crack of course, but that didn’t mean this would stop after it did. Her punishers would conduct their symphony until she had no more tears to shed, no more laughter to offer, not one more conscious second after darkness swallowed the corners of her vision and she passed out.And when Ashley woke, it would start all over again.And the whole thing would repeat again.
And again…
“NGHHHHH!! MFHMHMHMHMHAHHGRRMFMFMFMPAFAFAGHAHAHMHRYYYYY!! PWEFFMHEAS AHNGHMHM!! HTAFF HMFHMFHMFHMFHNGAAARGHHMFHMFMF PTAFF MHRYYYHAGHMFMFMFMAHAHAHPHFFMMMMM I’M TIHD AGHMFFHAHRG HNGAGHHMFHMFHMFHAAAAHHHHMGMFMFMFMF PWEAS NGHHH PWEASSS!!” Ashley’s laughter was so feral that it was somehow erupting through the gag, her screaming so shrill it could have made windows explode had this benighted room possessed any. Her entire body was sore, her erratic convulsions and involuntary spasms having secured her nothing against the uncaring bondage other than exhaustion. She had long surrendered to the straitjacket and the stocks, because they were sovereign authority and she but the speck that could not hope to rebel. Her toes were beginning to cramp, because she had been haplessly trying to clamp them shut since the second her execution started. Drool was flowing down her gag, tears down the blindfold. Her lungs pleading, begging, rasping out for air that was all around her but would not be allowed in. A dry island amidst a bountiful sea of oxygen. An island sticky with sweat and whose skin once fair was now red. Whose raven black hair was so wild and haggard as to resemble the head of a used mop rather than anything that had once been a woman. Hair set loose and wild by her head which swung from side to side, because the torture was that bad and she had to channel out her agony through the one part of her body that could move. Her throat stung and her voice was beginning to give out, but she did not care. She had to scream. She had to be heard. Even if her tormentors were literally incapable of registering it, even if the Master was savoring its every nuance. She had to make herself be heard, because Ashley Graves was alive. Alive! And she had to remind herself of the fact to not fly off into the nothingness of space. To not be carved into reduction and be flayed away from her own story.If this was the eternity that awaited her downstairs; her caged brain served on a silver platter, her soul’s backdoor exposed through stocked and toetied soles, entombed in foul sepulcher, buried alive in a coffin without exit, and her narrative rewired by a surgeon’s skilled hands, then… then that was it. Ashley Graves would cease to exist. Dead, but undying. Concluded, but enduring. A pitiable shade that had been robbed of her capacity to remember who she even was. A soul sucked dry of her identity, a hole that would only be filled with lamented wails.She was weeping beneath the cloth blinding her, and it was not just because of her mirth perverted into pain and stolen by every melody of ticklish abuse. Ashley was weeping for her brother. She could only begin to somewhat visualize the universe of torment his soul was now forever lost to. What she was experiencing was but a moment, less than even a minute of what poor Andy had to be undergoing, and she was already done. Perhaps after ages of retribution, the Master’s fury at their failure sated and them squeezed out of vitae supposed to be eternal, they would one day find each other again.Two shambling corpses, broken legs dragged through sulfur wastes, emptied of everything they had once been and not even remembering their sibling’s face. They would shamble into each other, and keep on walking without a single word exchanged.But Ashley’s despairing ruminations were suddenly cut short, because the electric toothbrushes again bzz’d alive.And their whirring, spinning tips landed smack dab on top of their victim’s toes.
“Our model patient…”
Her eyes snapped open and bulged out beneath the blindfold. Ashley arched her back so hard that she jumped from the bed, and when she crashed back down she stopped moving altogether. The imprisoned woman did not register the voices whispering in her ear once more, because all that she was able to do once her toes started being subjected to deep dental cleaning was to throw her head back into the pillow and howl.She was done. It was over. She did not know how many flossers were now assaulting the pads and tops of her little digits, but it was definitely more than one. Again, each spinning bristle was committed to planting itself on the thin and bony surfaces, not content to merely graze them and make their owner flinch and kick, but to stay there.When her traumatized digits spread and splayed in response to the aggressive invasion of their senses, the toothbrushes went after their oval-shaped pads and long stems. It did not matter that the toeties covered some of the skin, because all of it was equally sensitive and the bzz bzz bzz had ample surfaces to work with anyway. And when Ashley tried her damndest to clench her toes away from the powered bristles, they simply changed tactics and went after their tops, right above her nails. Bodily zones she had zero idea were ticklish before this but were proving so senselessly sensitive that it drove her wild with immediate panic.And all the while the FUCKING gloves kept on brushing. Brushing brushing brushing. Aided by that bottle of aptly-named baby oil that kept on pouring the substance on her feet and did not seem to ever run out. Scrubbing down the length of her soles while they left the toes alone to be worked over by her new friends. Friends! Just like she had seen it on tv, brushing your teeth leads to a radiant smile!
AND HOW PRETTY HER SMILE!
RIGHT?
“We will make of you a lunatic…”
She already was one. Perhaps Ashley was about to discover what limits of definition the word “cuckoo” had, because she had already grown wings and flied off into the sunset. The laughter was poring out of her with such strength and booming power that her whole diaphragm was kicking back and forth like the pistons of a car engine every time she let out a cackle. And yet no sound emerged from her mouth. Her lungs were catapulting out bursts of air mixed with spittle with such frequency and vigor that her throat said fuck it and threw in the towel. Her stomach sore and her abs pounding like if she had actually bothered to go to the gym for once in her life, fueling every racuous movement from a torso that had to let out roars of mocking mirth.But it just couldn’t. Silent laughter. Cut loose from her last tether to humanity. So overstimulated by so many combining sensations that she shut down and froze. She could not see, she could not make sound, she could not move, she could not exercise her will as a free and independent soul. As a person with agency over her fate.Because she was not one. She had no mouth, and she had to scream. So badly. So, SO badly. To scream was to defy, to scream was to rebel. Against It who had declared she was no longer alive, against It who was in the process of redefining her as a possession, a trophy on a shelf, an object that existed only to laugh until blood came out instead of saliva.
“You cannot be cured…”
The comedy of it all made her laugh. The tickling had been forcing her to do it for… however long she had been here, yes, but there was peak humor to be found in this as well. This was a mental hospital, and Ashley had always thought those existed to help people with maladies of the mind. But obviously, they didn’t exist to help them. They were made to ruin them. Mental hospital, it was right there in the name and she had just connected the dots! Dumbfuck Leyley at it again. It was unironically funny, though. Perhaps being left raving mad after this was done wouldn’t be so bad. It could be fun. It could be peaceful. She wouldn’t have to think so much on how this was her eternity from today on. She would smear the walls with her shit and make funny little drawings in between tickling sessions. And then she would laugh it up some more until she pissed herself in her trusty straitjacket.Such an awesome way to go.But perhaps it was what someone like her deserved.After everything she had done, perhaps there was some justice in this verdict.There was nothing else to hope for.
“You can only come undone…”
Ashley Graves laughed demented hysterics into the nether, unable to see the encroachment of the darkness all around her but well aware that she was in Its audience. Had she been freed of her infantilizing suffering, this scorned debtor would have prostrated herself and begged to be spared. Had she not been consumed by unwanted, uncontrollable silent cackling, she would have screamed in terror one could only feel when in presence of the divine. Of that which all mortals instinctively knew was more. Because beneath her blindfold, Ashley Graves could see only burning red staring back. An eye peeking from the other side, a miniscule manifestation from a whole as vast as all the passing nations that made this Earth once sacred a ruin. That God-Shaped-Hole, that absence of warmth and love and wholeness that had scarred creation without possible repair. A well of hatred so pure and beautiful it could only come from one who had been kissed by betrayal’s thorns and been changed by its poison. Per me si va la città dolente, per me si va ne l’etterno dolore, per me si va tra perduta gente. A pit that housed the Perfect Maker’s many unwanted mistakes, mistakes who could never forget nor forgive, and which had opened its jaws around one suffering tar soul’s neck.And one whose jaws had justsnapped
SHUT
***
Somewhere That Is Safe, The Arrival Closely Looms
October 21st, 1999 She gasped.Ashley sat up from her side of the bed in a panic, heart beating out of her chest and loudly ringing in her ears. Her face was damp with cold sweat, a large circle of moisture imprinting her pillow where her head had been but a moment before.She was home. No hospital, just a bedroom. No straitjacket, just her blanket. Her bare feet were still tingling, soles fuzzy with phantom sensations she quickly shooed away by rubbing them against the mattress.Not another moment passed before her head snapped to the other side of the bed, eyes wide with anticipatory anxiety and breath caught in her throat. She would either let out a sigh of relief or a blood-curling scream, depending on what she saw next. And she would not survive one of the two presented options. Ashley turned, and there was her brother, asleep on his side of the bed. Alive. Unharmed. In the throes of a nightmare as vivid as the one she had just roused from, if the movements of his eyes beneath his eyelids and the way he was squirming and turning in his sleep were any indication.But still.Alive.
Just a dream… just another stupid dream.
The younger of the two Graves siblings groaned, some measure of relief helping her breathe again now that her immediate worry was no longer so. She rubbed her exhausted eyes, only now allowing herself to feel the jackhammer of a headache pounding into her skull. The digital clock on their nightstand marked three in the early morning, which meant she had slept fuck all courtesy of the night terror their business partner had so generously sent their way.The date marked by the clock beneath the hour seemed right. Still October, still two months before the year ended, still enough time for them two to do what they had to do. The turn of the millennium was quickly approaching, and the frequency of the nightmares It made them have had dramatically increased as of yet. Before, it used to only be one per week, at most two, but now they were having them every single day. She didn’t understand how they were supposed to keep working in top form if they couldn’t manage a single night of full, peaceful rest, but she supposed they didn’t have much of a choice or say in the matter.It liked to communicate through dreams. Sometimes It sent them visions. Whispers of the future. Warnings about police activity, a heads up about someone following their trail, guidance that showed them where they could find their next safehouse, names and faces of contacts in on the plan. Those were useful, and It demanded payment every time. The currency was one she had never had any qualms securing, though.But these nightmares… they were different. Sure, they reminded them to obey, but the sadism It so clearly delighted in when designing each one… it was unnecessary. The thing was feeding on them, and not just on their pain. Andy may have pretended that everything was alright and changed the topic every time she tried to bring it up, but she knew how she was feeling. She could see it on his face too. They were thinner. Not in weight, but in… something much deeper. Something that would take a lot of time to grow back, if it ever did.The message was clear. One did not have to be a genius to interpret the travesty of a dream she had just woken from.
Don’t fuck it up.
As if on cue, the sigil branded on Ashley’s left palm suddenly lit up with crimson light. The spectral luminescence stung like a knife carving the symbol into her flesh, and it contrasted so much with the darkness of the night that the aspiring cultist had to hurriedly cover her hand with her blanket else it attract attention from their neighbors. The sigil was a lone eye, its single small pupil saying without any words being necessary what each of the entity’s followers understood very well.It was always watching. It was always listening. Even when they couldn’t see It, when they couldn’t feel It, It was always there. “Ow, ow, OW! Okay OKAY, you have my attention! Just… agh… fucking stop burning me already! Why do you have to do that every time?!” Ashley sucked air through her front teeth and swallowed a litany of profanities as she tried keeping her voice low for the sake of her brother’s sleep. Although it would likely be a kinder mercy to wake him. But before she could slap Andrew awake, she heard It.
…tAR SOuL…
Okay, it was her turn tonight.
Ashley stiffened. She ceased thinking. She stopped breathing. She had blanked, not from fear, but because It allowed nothing but Its presence to dominate the anthem of the soul. The Master’s voice was echoing inside her mind. Her every thought, her every memory, her every impulse invaded and polluted by the vines of fetid sludge dripping from every letter the unhallowed monstrosity had just uttered. A deep, almost rich, almost musical baritone that echoed off every corner of their bedroom with resonant gravitas that allowed no space for doubt or dissenting choice.A voice that had once been beautiful. Inspired awe instead of horror. Words belonging to something grand and good that could never exist again, now spoken by a corpse that knew what It had lost and would forever be enraged by the yearning want for more. Even someone like her could tell it, but she was not dense enough to ever bring it up. “…I hear you. Do you… need me tonight?” Ashley whispered the question. She already knew the answer.
…YoU knOw wHAt MUST bE DoNe…
Yes, she did.And she had already picked a target in preparation for this moment. One that lived all alone in a pretty fancy house. One that would be easy pickings regardless.Andy would be mad at her the coming morning, but she was beginning to reach the point where that did not matter to her anymore. He always wanted their targets to be bad people, to deserve karmic justice as consequence for their evil actions, because if they were being forced to do this they might as well put in the effort to do it right. Or so he said. They couldn’t afford to pussy out anymore.The end of the year was coming, and they had quotas to meet. Missing the deadline was unthinkable, and she would do what she had to do to keep both herself and her brother safe. He could whine all about dumbass morality when they didn’t have a knife to their necks and already pressing on their jugulars.This meaningless, vapid, ugly world they were cursed to exist in had never given them anything. Not since they were born, not since they had been naive enough to dream they could get something better than their lot. They had never had anyone or anything other than themselves, all else had to be taken. By violence if necessary. By violence, more often than not.That’s why their parents were dead, and they were not.
That’s why it was them burning all the way down in Hell, and they were still here doing fine.
Ashley Graves suited up, opened her nightstand’s drawer, and pulled out a cleaver and a handgun.She had a life to end and a soul to harvest.Besides, Andy would not be mad once she told him. That elderly grandma she was about to whack had probably been a real shit person in her youth.Cuz no one got old in this dumpster fire of a world without letting a few eggs crack. No one rose to the top without walking all over their lessers.And she would laugh until she cried once she saw it all fall apart.
…gOoD…