I have these all organised by fandom pretty much. There are some warnings that apply to specific fics in this list, but you'll find them above the cut. Happy reading, loves <3
chilling adventures of sabrina:
- uno - madam satan x reader (NSFW)
- insecurities are like lizard people - zelda spellman x reader
the flight attendant:
- thrill ride - miranda croft x reader (NSFW)
doctor who:
- ever so close - missy x reader (NSFW)
- housewarming - missy x reader
- mother's meeting - missy x reader
- obey your mistress - missy x reader
the hunger games:
- confidence and obedience - volumnia gaul x reader
Summary: You can always count on a Time Lord to push the boundaries of human endurance.
Warnings: NSFW. Orgasm control and denial. Voyeurism. Use of “mummy” but it’s not that serious. Typical Missy activities.
Word count: 869
Notes: I know myself well enough to know I will never be able to keep up with kinktober because I have too many other commitments in parallel, so here is my singular offering to the kinktober gods. All hail the first filthy Missy oneshot from me to grace this blog. Also my own gif choice made me giggle.
You couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. Your hair was plastered to your face, clinging to a thin sheen of sweat that was starting to form on your flushed skin. Your nails clawed into the armrests of your chair; better that than your own flesh, you figured.
“Just a moment, dearest.” Missy hummed thoughtfully at something on her screen. She leant over the TARDIS console, frowning. “Or two…”
You could’ve sworn she was doing this on purpose, but there was no way of truly knowing. She always kept her intentions veiled — it was what made her, made everything she did, so thrilling — but more often than not it was at the expense of your composure. It drove you crazy, and yet still she always had you crawling back to her feet and begging for more. You’d do an unbelievable amount of things if she asked.
“Missy,” you tried to gasp, but the air was lodged in your throat. The vibrations inside you intensified, purring away at your already sensitive cunt. “Missy–”
Missy didn’t even look at you, responding with an impassive, “Yes?”
The vibrations slowed again. You felt your clitoris throb and your body tense with a release held only just out of your reach. A whimper squeaked in your throat. Your arm started to move without a second thought. Your hand slipped between your damp, aching thighs.
That seemed to get her attention, if not the fact that you were so dangerously, painfully close to falling apart in front of her. She whipped around fast, and that same second the vibrator nestled deep in your wet folds started to buzz like it was trying to dig its way out of you entirely. You yelped, your hands clawing at your thighs and your body writhing in place.
“See, call me paranoid, but for a moment there, I thought you were trying to pull a fast one on me.” She eyed your slick vulva with rapt interest. “But you wouldn’t do that, would you, dearest?”
You weren’t sure whether blindly agreeing or being truthful and nodding your head would bring you relief faster, but that didn’t matter anymore, because now the vibrations were easing again, and you shook your head in protest.
“Missy–”
“Hush now,” she interjected sternly. You could see it now; the tiny little control switch on her wrist, one she could operate subtly and single-handedly. “Let mummy have her fun. Aren’t you having fun?”
She smiled at you so innocently, but then her nose wrinkled and her mirth started to slip through. You felt exposed like this, embarrassed to a degree, but this was far from the most vulgar position she’d ever seen you in, and definitely not the first time she’d caught sight of you naked.
The vibrator maintained a low frequency hum. It wasn’t enough, it couldn’t be further from enough. You craved a level of stimulation you just couldn’t receive for long enough to fulfil your needs. Your body was trembling, suspended in a state of borderline ecstasy for longer than felt humanly reasonable.
Your hand moved south again, and through tears that fogged your vision you mumbled, “Missy, I can’t… I need…”
The sound of her boots against the floor was intensely familiar to you. Her strong grip closed around your wrists, pinning your arms either side of you with strength equal to any rope or bondage she could have used. She stood between your legs, forcing them apart with just her body alone.
One of her hands lifted from your wrist. You knew better than to take that as an opportunity to go against her instructions, no matter how much it was starting to genuinely pain you.
She caught your chin, tilting your head up. “What is it you need?” she asked you, nodding encouragingly. “Let your mistress help you.”
It was like being offered fresh, cold water in a drought. You nodded your head desperately. “Yes,” you said breathlessly. “Please, mistress — it hurts.”
“Oh, I’d imagine so,” she concurred. That hand that lingered on your chin drifted down your neck, your chest, featherlight fingertips dancing against your already sensitive skin. “I haven’t exactly been keeping track of time, but as a Time Lord I think that makes me an authority on all things patience, so I’d say it’s already been…28 minutes? 29, at a push.”
Missy knew damn well that you couldn’t care less. But then her fingers slipped over your clit, and any frustrations you harboured towards her were forgotten. You let out a breathy moan, involuntarily countering her actions with a needy roll of your hips.
“Oh, you are desperate, aren’t you?” Missy mused. “And close. Ever so close.”
You were barely listening anymore. You felt the pressure starting to build again in your loins, her gentle circles drawing out steadily accumulating sparks of pleasure that had quickly escalated from a want to a vital need. Her attentions were everything you needed and more, she was right, you were close, ever so–
Missy’s hand lifted away with a flourish. She made a show of glancing at the time on the TARDIS console screen and looked back at your restless form.
Her lips peeled back into a merciless grin. “Half way there.”
Summary: You won’t let your resolve crumble. Not yet.
Warnings: Kidnapping. Stockholm Syndrome times infinity no takesie-backsies. Blood. Body horror. Bones shouldn’t squish like that. Missy is as Missy does.
Word count: 3588
Notes: Did this actual proper not-gaslighting-you-this-time finale take me 18 months to finish? No, never. Couldn’t be me. Would never be me. And I definitely proof-read this, because I've never in my life posted something that wasn't proof-read.
You stared absently into the crackling fire. The conscious efforts of the TARDIS to keep you warm was the only reason those flames hadn’t flattened yet. You had yet to pick up a book to read, although this time Missy wasn’t here to make remarks about your distractingly vacant expression and your boringly dull eyes. You could stare into space for as long as you want.
Hell, you could do anything you wanted. Missy had left you unsupervised again. You noted that this had started occurring far more frequently since your fabricated freedom. God, you were like a zoo animal, assigned a more open enclosure simply because you were domesticated and obedient enough to be trusted not to plan some daring escape.
There was no denying that it bothered you. You knew it would for as long as you were here. Missy thought you were getting comfortable here and . . .
Fuck, she was right. What were you even fighting against anymore? Rent-free shelter, food, hot water, quick and free medical access, and for what? A fractured bone here and a third degree burn there — nothing that couldn’t be healed.
You threw your head back, clenching your jaw. This line of thinking wasn’t just dangerous — it was demented. You couldn’t allow yourself to cave in yet. Your mind tried to protect you, softening the memories to seem less severe under the tint of nostalgia. Your brain conveniently omitted the ripping of your own flesh, the humiliation, the scarring, the game after game after game until it felt like your own perception was putrefying.
You still felt so much anger, towards Missy — towards yourself. And you’d long since lost the ability to properly regulate your emotions. When you were angry, you were a force to be reckoned with. That was the one thing Missy had failed to factor in.
The library door opened the moment you slammed your hand carelessly against the cold surface. The air was still. You used that limited amount of information to assume that the labyrinthian layout of the TARDIS had yet to reshuffle itself in a while, but you’d never be able to verify that for yourself. These halls had no distinguishing features, a detail you were certain was intentional. A series of distinctly-marked hallways would be about as effective as a bright flashing exit sign.
You tried the first door you encountered, but the light that beamed out felt like it was searing away at the top few layers of your eyes. Grimacing, you shut the door with a grunt of effort, but not before a thick wave of chemical odour hit you head-on.
Your grimace deepened. The hospital.
Like a hopeless, grim game of russian roulette, you tried another door. This one resisted at first, like the TARDIS itself was hesitating. Impatient, you smacked your hand against the door twice.
It shuddered into effect when your hand struck for a third time. The view it reluctantly graced you with made you falter.
You had horrible, horrible memories here. You couldn’t say with any certainty how many were real, and how many were figments of your fatigue-addled imagination. There was at least one occasion you were certain of, if the phantom twinge of pain in your thigh was anything to go by . . .
The door only shut behind you once you’d taken a few steps, although it was as if you could feel its impatience. It didn’t want you to be here. Maybe it was worried what you would do with access to the controls without Missy to put you back in your place.
Not much, you knew. The six-faced console was like nothing you’d ever seen before. It wasn’t just beyond human comprehension — it was completely unlabelled. You wouldn’t be able to distinguish between an ice cube dispenser and a self-destruct button. Trying to do anything with it by yourself would be a disaster waiting to happen.
You paced a lap around the console, but without anything to show for yourself. Missy kept this area largely barren, although you weren’t sure whether that had anything to do with your presence or if she was nothing more than a clean freak. An item she did keep around was a floor-length mirror. Looking at your sickly, scarred, harrowing figure, you didn’t think it was particularly self-centered to believe she’d left that here just for you.
You shuddered, making a conscious effort not to look. You worked your way around another lap of the circular room. You weren’t sure where to go from here. So consumed by your own inflated sense of anger and justice, you hadn’t considered your grand plan any further than this. The most that popped to mind was the old note you’d found many moons ago in the library.
‘If you can read this, you have to get out of there. Run while you can. I probably never made it, but you can. If you’re reading this, she isn’t looking. There’s a Vortex Manipulator n’
It was a haunting clue that hadn’t left you since. Missy’s haste to hide the complete note from you had set blaring red warning sirens off in your head. Whatever the rest of that note had said, there must’ve been truth to it. Fucking hell, you didn’t even know what a Vortex Manipulator was! Only that it would help you leave.
You studied the control panel, although the bizarre sight felt as though it was turning you dumber by the second. On one panel, an 8-by-16 array of unmarked identical switches had been configured to an oddly specific layout with no rhyme or reason. On another, cutouts revealed a white, fleshy mass you didn't dare to touch for your own safety.
Your gaze drifted to the structure itself. It rested at a slant, but if you ran your finger along its steel edge, you could feel the faint bump of a clasp. You probed at the creases with your blunt nails.
“Right, that’s enough of that for today.”
Missy hadn’t even finished speaking before you’d leapt back, your arms flying up in surrender. Your heart ached with how forcefully it pounded against your chest — Missy could probably hear it from the other side of the room.
Frowning, she planted her hands on her hips. “Well there’s no need to look so frightened,” she said disapprovingly. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
At a loss, you stared at her. “Is that a joke?”
A wry smile lifted the corner of her lips. And before you could dissect the expression into all the malice and nastiness it undoubtedly was, she held out her hand. It didn’t seem like she was offering it for you to take — her movements were a little too antsy and expectant for that.
You continued to stare, sadly the only expression you feared you were capable of. “. . . What?”
“If you think I am a patient woman, my dear,” Missy began, emphasising the word patient like it was the punchline to a joke you weren’t fully in on, “then I really worry for your psychological state.”
“But I–” You spluttered uselessly, “–but I haven’t taken anything!”
Missy’s eyebrows raised. She was looking at you with such an inquisitive gaze, like nothing you’d been subjected to before. It almost resembled . . . surprise. In a withdrawn, inconvenienced sort of way.
“You really have yourself convinced,” Missy realised, “don’t you?”
“What? But really, I haven’t–”
“Well, someone has,” Missy snapped. You recoiled; she tilted her head to the side, jaw clenched like a viper waiting to snap at your jugular. “And you’re the only person, aside from myself, who has access.”
“Access to what?” you asked apprehensively.
“Unless . . .” Missy tore her gaze away from you. She leaned against the control panel, caught in a momentary deep state of thought you knew never to interrupt. “Oh, I think I know what’s going on. You’ve tried to protect yourself — how sweet!”
The endeared smile she beamed straight at you was arguably more unsettling than her malicious scowl just seconds earlier. Her moods shifted fast, and keeping up was a herculean task on its own. Usually you could sort of follow along and understand what prompted each switch, but right now you weren’t so sure.
“Missy,” you started, matching each step she took towards you with a retreating step of your own, “I really honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her head lowered, her gaze hardening. She lifted a hand and beckoned you forward. You didn’t move. You swore her pointed red fingernails looked like claws.
Missy gave you only one more chance to concede, in the form of a short, cold, “Come here.”
Your breath left your mouth sounding shakier than you’d expected. You tentatively moved within reach. You outstretched your arm, mirroring her, expecting her to take your hand and pull you closer.
You hadn’t expected her to drag you flush against her. You bumped uselessly into her lithe, unmoving frame; not enough time passed for you to manage a gasp or an exclamation of shock before she planted her fingers on your temples and tipped your forehead directly into hers.
The only way you could think to describe the rapidly increasing pressure contained by your skull was like static, and the way it pushed outwards like it was trying to burst from the surface of your brain was agonising. Thoughts moved too fast, spurred on by energy Missy injected you with through her fingertips. Rapid, disorienting; the experience wasn’t unfamiliar, but the feeling it left you with was grossly alien.
You tried to focus beyond the blinding pain that threatened to chew through your body. Ideas, shapes, patterns, images and concepts, they flitted by like pictures from an old photo album. A figure came to form. The library, and the grainy texture of pages. The note you remembered so well, then slipped back as though it had never happened.
You were completely incapable of interfering with Missy’s impatient probing. Thoughts darted back and forth faster this time, as if her patience was thinning and she was getting dangerously close to the mental equivalent of throwing said photo album into a bonfire.
The room that appeared to you was distinctly in the style of the TARDIS, although you couldn’t recall seeing it before. Missy slowed to a thoughtful, contemplative pace. A vault with a strange lock. Scarred, dry, slim fingers wrapping around the handle. Cold leather with a strange bitter smell. Clumsy hands twisting at strange angles, followed by frustrated stamping against the floor. Sensations threatening to bubble over, a racing heart, spiralling thoughts, until–
You lurched forward, gasping, your hands flying to your throat as if to tear your airways open and expose your lungs to the air they were in burning pain without. You slumped back against the console limply.
“That’s it,” Missy said distractedly. There were no soothing gestures; your current state was the very last thing on her mind. “Nice and calm, deep breaths–”
Before you could flinch, Missy yanked your left sleeve to your elbow. Holding you still with her fingers wrapping around the base of your wrist, she began to feel blindly at your arm hairs, searching for something you for certain couldn’t see.
She stopped at the outside of your wrist, twisting your arm around. Two taps, and a wristband appeared. It was a leather strap, brown and mottled, scuffed with its age. A–
“Vortex Manipulator.” Missy didn’t just look at you — it felt like she was staring through you. “That was very naughty of you.”
You were struggling to keep up. “But I didn’t know.”
“No,” Missy corrected you, blowing out an exasperated breath as she stared at the device strapped against your skin. With a small flick of her hand, she plucked it from your arm and draped it over her palm. “You knew. At the back of your teensy little mind, you knew. And you knew I would find out. You knew you’d have to wipe your own memory in a last ditch attempt to rescue yourself. Maybe you thought I wouldn’t find out. But as it turns out…”
Like completing a magic trick to an unwilling audience of one, Missy revealed a book from behind her back. It was black and yellow, in the style of a For Dummies book but with a cartoon drawing of a scrawny man pinching his own temples and screwing his eyes closed in concentration.
“...Self-Hypnosis for Dummies isn’t foolproof to a Time Lord.”
You were playing a horrible high-pressure game of catch-up in real time, and as your lethargic mind tried its best to lay out a timeline of events, you found yourself growing increasingly frustrated with your inability to string together a single intelligible thought.
“I’d already found that?” you concluded. It was obvious though. You’d been unknowingly wearing this device for an indefinite length of time. “I followed the note but didn’t know how to use it. And I hid it from myself and erased my own memory when it didn’t work…”
Missy hummed, pursing her lips in agreement as she inspected the book you’d allegedly used. “Funny how hope works, isn’t it? All of that anticipation, all those dreams, but expectations just never live up to reality, do they? And yet you humans fall for the same set-up every single time. Oh, it’s so deliciously disturbing!”
For only a second, you were stupid enough to think you still had a chance to resist whatever Missy had planned for you next. You naively reached for the Vortex Manipulator that sat unprotected in the palm of her hand — the Vortex Manipulator you still had no idea how to use. But you didn’t come close. Your fingertips didn’t come even within a centimetre of it.
You fell back before you could determine what had caused your loss of balance, and following the momentum of your limp body your forehead smacked into the steel floor. The collision reverberated through your skull with enough intensity to deafen you. Maybe it would have if you weren’t so preoccupied with the searing pain across your frail face.
Missy kicked you over like a log. You landed on your back, and while your body rolled to a stop, she planted a foot on your wrist. She lifted her other heel, and the pressure against that joint alone was enough to have you squealing like a scared fucking piglet, but then you saw the direction that razor of a heel was moving in.
Dread consumed you, branching out through your body until it tumbled out of your mouth in a sequence of nonsensical pleas, repetitively chanting of the same few words growing increasingly manic with each fraction of a second — you were behaving as if Missy hadn’t heard you say, “No,” the first time. But she always heard. It was your frantic, spluttered begging that kept her going at times like these. Your desperation was her lifeblood.
“What will it take for you to realise that you will never — and I mean never — pull one over on me?”
Her heel pressed into your finger, and with the full force of her weight, she began to grind down. You screamed and wailed — you could feel the bones in your smallest finger shatter and splinter under the pressure.
“Have you ever tried making brownies by substituting flour for ground human bones?” Missy asked you.
The weight lifted completely before it transferred to your ring finger instead. Missy pressed your flesh into the floor with the same motions as someone putting out a cigarette butt on a concrete pavement. The bone shattered, the insistent squelching of your finger splurting out blood that splashed against the rest of your hand.
Missy spoke loudly and calmly over your screams. “Me neither.”
You finally gained enough sense to move your unrestrained arm, rolling onto your side — and twisting your wrist the wrong direction in the process — just to push desperately against her foot. Missy decided to demonstrate just how futile your efforts were by switching to your middle finger next.
You screamed and sobbed and writhed frantically beneath her. It took you dealing a particularly harsh shove to the back of her knee and a completely unnatural jerk of your trapped hand for you to tear the limb free. You didn’t stop to see how, or why; you scrambled away like a wounded animal until you could crawl no further.
Missy stumbled on the spot, your knock to her weak spot compromising her usually undisturbed balance. Once she’d managed to regain a reasonable sense of footing as opposed to tripping over her own two feet, she lifted her head and her eyes locked onto you.
You shuffled further, tossing a glance over your shoulder. The doors beside you slid open, as they were designed to if they sensed a presence lingering for long enough. Your weary eyes were greeted by the endless vacuum of space.
Cold. Tired. And tortured by a time-travelling alien sadist.
Missy’s footsteps drew closer. You could sense she was dragging this out, emphasising every sharp, damp click of her heel against the floor. You were shaking, trembling beyond reason, your entire body wracked with fear so intense and instinctual that you physically couldn’t will yourself to move. Your crippled hand moved to your chest, where only two full fingers and a mangled third remained.
You felt like you were choking, like those missing fingers had just been crammed down your tight throat in an effort to suffocate you. Your face boiled with tears.
Actual human tears. Oh god, they were real, real tears. Your very last crumbs of humanity were churning their way out of your system, and that started with your dignity. These were messy, ugly, snivelling tears, the pathetic gross kind. Because you were so tired. And afraid. And hurt. And gone. So far gone.
You opened your mouth to speak, but even you hardly understood the blubbering words that spilled out.
“Please, just stop — I want it to stop–”
Your body heaved with the intensity of your raw, unbridled cries. Missy’s footsteps stopped. Though your vision was compromised, and your awareness even more so, you could just barely discern her silhouette as she sank to her knees beside you.
“Have you reached your human limit?” Missy asked gently.
You weren’t fully aware of just how close you were moving to the edge of the TARDIS. “Please…”
“Stop,” Missy said. “Stop.”
The next word to roll off Missy’s tongue was your name. The name your old friends used to call you, the name your family used to shout when you minorly inconvenienced them — the name you used to respond to the moment it was uttered. Your name.
It had never occured to you that Missy might know it. For a while, it hadn’t even occured to you that you had one at all.
“I can make it all go away,” Missy probed softly, tilting her head to one side. You stared at your burning, harrowing, bleeding stump of your hand. “The pain. The fear — all of it. I can make you feel alive again. We can travel the stars together, you and me. Would you like that?”
You had no way of telling whether she was being sincere. She followed completely different social norms to you; there was never a surefire way of knowing.
You managed a weak, sniffled, “I’ve never said my name.”
Missy was amused by your observation. “You didn’t have to,” she responded dryly. “Do you think I would skip my required reading on you? Every last detail about your measly, short life. I know how much you hated every second of it. To be honest, I don’t even think I can claim full credit for your dreadfully pessimistic outlook!”
Missy knew damn well what she was doing. She wasn’t just trying to get another rise out of you. This was calculated. You never stood a chance, you realised that now. All that fighting, all that plotting and escapology you thought you were smart enough to pull off, and it was always going to lead you here.
Missy knew everything. She could estimate your decisions before you even made them yourself. She hadn’t been lying before.
You could never leave.
You considered hurling a whole list of curses and obscenities at her. There was so much you wanted to bellow, you wanted to scream until your lungs imploded and your ribs shattered, and yet all you managed was…
“Missy.”
“I can make it stop, love.” Missy drew closer, delicate fingers dusting off the blood from your face. “All you have to do is obey me.”
You looked up at her, stared into the dark pits of her vibrant blue eyes, and through that intimate, penetrating contact, she coaxed the words out of your throat.
“You are my mistress, and I will obey you.”
Your subconscious utterings pleased Missy. Not in the way that made her entire face illuminate with morbid fascination in response to some grotesque act being performed on you. Just in a calm, satisfied way. Her eyes twinkled, like a promise she’d been waiting on had finally been fulfilled. You almost wanted to smile right back at her.
Her lipstick-reddened lips dabbed the softest, tenderest of kisses on your forehead. You leaned forward, unashamedly reaching for her embrace. Her arms wrapped around you, comforting you, consoling you, and you crumpled against her chest. Her two hearts hummed a steady 4-beat rhythm into your ear.
Neither of you moved for a very long time.
—
I would like to add a big massive thank you to everyone who has stuck with me throughout this multi-part madness. It's been silly, it's been traumatising, but it's been a lot of fun. Big love to everyone and anyone who made it this far <333
Warnings: Kidnapping. Blood and gore. A Missy-esque bit of body horror.
Word count: 1376
Notes: Applying to internships has taken up all of my time so I haven’t been able to update in aeons. I’m not even sorry.
Waking up dazed and confused was becoming a very natural feeling for you. This ceiling was a strangely common sight. The pale grey tiles felt as though they were staring back at you with a shared kind of familiarity.
You pushed yourself upright. Your body immediately put up plenty of resistance, but not as much as you’d been expecting. A morbid part of you knew that you were just adjusting. This sort of discomfort would be the new normal.
Your gaze drew towards a tray of bloodied tools, resting harmlessly against the arm of a pristine white chair. The blue latex gloves on the other armrest had been twisted inside out to avoid splattering the chair in red.
Your palms smoothed down your hospital gown against your skin. You felt no bruises, no unevenness in the form of bumps or scarring. Your skin was clear, if dull, almost monochrome. You wondered just how many basic vitamins and minerals you were dangerously low on.
You started forward on wobbly legs. Pain radiated in a multitude of areas — some areas you didn't even know were capable of being in pain. But it was easy enough to ignore. That pain wasn't too sharp or troublesome. It didn't have you doubling over. If you could walk, you were fine.
You toyed with a blood-caked scalpel in your hand. In hindsight, you weren't even sure what had compelled you to pick it up. It wasn't as if any weapon existed that was a match for Missy. And even if there was, it wouldn't be a scalpel. The fires of hell probably weren't strong enough for that bitch–
"Who? Me?"
Missy stood behind you. Just a few feet away, she was just as refined and imposing as you'd always remembered her being. Her plum skirts swished around her legs as she took a step closer. You followed the line of her vision towards the scalpel in your hand.
"Now, where exactly were you going with that?" Missy asked calmly.
When interacting with Missy, there was no such thing as a lie. Lies were for just about anyone else.
"For a walk."
Missy grinned, a sweet yet cold expression that exposed her teeth. "Sure you are, poppet. Come on, back to mummy."
She was beckoning you back, her hands open and waiting for you to take. You stared at her palms. She didn't make a move towards you. She was letting you make the next move.
You shifted the scalpel around in your hand. "Why should I?" you challenged her. "Why should I do anything you say if it doesn't matter anyway?"
Missy exhaled sharply. "Sweetheart, I can't do this with you every time you have a crisis of self. Just come over here, give me your new toy, and no one has to get hurt. Alright?"
You watched her go still. Even now, your move in this game wasn't over yet. She was giving you a rare chance to reconsider. This was her showing mercy. She wasn't hurting you . . .
Yet. But she hadn't hurt you for a year of your life, and yet she'd never created wounds that ran so deep. She didn't need to cause harm in order to hurt. She was above that.
You shook your head. "No."
Pain shot through your arm like nothing you could have imagined. Your fingers were frozen around the steel door handle. You couldn’t consciously move them. You couldn’t move anything.
All too soon, sensation returned. You jerked away and stumbled onto the floor. The scalpel in your hand scraped across your face, eventually skidding across the shiny floor to a halt and leaving a notable trail of blood in its wake.
Your face erupted in blistering pain. You let out a pained cry and clasped your hands over your nose and mouth as blood poured over your trembling lips.
Missy stooped down and pinched the chunk of mangled flesh from the floor. “I suppose I can officially say got your nose.”
You wanted to scream for so many reasons. Tears burned in your eyes. Your throat was tight, but that feeling was nothing compared to the hot, thick viscera that coated your mouth and chin. You struggled to breathe past the fluids on your face.
You started to roll onto your front, but Missy slipped the tip of her boot beneath you before you could manage. She started to forcefully turn you over, ignoring your sobbing, garbled protests.
“Come on,” Missy said lightly, kneeling carelessly in the pool of blood beside you. “Let’s see what you’ve done. Don’t be shy now.”
This was all her fault — all of this was her fault. You were so defeated. The blood started to dribble down your cheeks and through your nose where it reached your throat. Your attempted coughs resembled inhuman grunts.
Missy pulled your damp hands away from your face. She laughed.
“Oh dear. See, this is why we don’t walk around with sharp tools. It’s only a matter of time before I get bored and shock you into slicing your organs off,” Missy sighed. She toyed with the exposed raw meat of your open wound, uncaring of the way you writhed in pain and clawed at her arms, gurgling incoherent words. “I think we can do better though. Shall we go again? I’ll aim for something more substantial this time, like an eye. Ooh, maybe an ear. Your tongue, if I time it right.”
You couldn’t stop crying. You were humiliated. You’d sustained injuries to last several lifetimes, you’d been torn apart and hastily glued back together in every way possible, but this felt more real than anything Missy had hurled at you before.
This was your face. It was the only familiar sight in your reflection. It reminded you of who you truly were. And now it was as disfigured, haggard, unattractive as the rest of you. Crumbling and wasting away like a plastic-corroded doll in a charity shop.
This was the largest piece of your identity to flake away so far. And it hurt.
Missy started to pull you up. You were just relieved that she was no longer poking her sharp red fingernails into the gaping hole in your face. “Come on, that’s enough sulking,” she said impatiently. “You humans are so hopelessly hideous with or without basic facial features, so I wouldn’t worry your ugly little head about it. That’s the spirit.”
She forced you to walk towards the bed you’d woken up in, disregarding the crippling pain you were in. Your knees buckled hopelessly beneath you. Missy half-dragged you alongside her.
“And hey,” she continued, “maybe someday I’ll get bored and reattach your nose. Or a nose, anyway. That’ll give you something to look forward to.”
You choked on a gasp. Blood spurted out of your mouth, all tangy on the tip of your tongue. You tried to make the most of the sensation — it was a matter of time before Missy started focusing on new areas of your face to maim.
Your knees slammed firmly onto the unforgiving floor. The blood-loss was starting to make you feel lightheaded. The thumping against the front of your skull wouldn’t cease, no matter how much you willed it.
You tried to speak, with little success. Your words tumbled out gurgled and splattered with blood. Hardly coherent.
Missy leaned in closer, tilting her ear towards you. “What was that, dear?”
You felt sick. The way she made you feel was dehumanising. On your knees in front of her. Pleading. Begging. Worthlessly so.
You cleared the immediate blood from your mouth and sobbed. “. . . Help me, Missy.”
Missy sighed, lowering her head in resignation. “Oh, alright,” she conceded. “Since you asked so nicely.”
She lifted your limp body off the floor. You put up no resistance as she carried you the remaining distance, her arms firmly supporting your weight this time. She gently set you down and lowered your head onto a soft pillow.
She moved the tray of tools towards herself. You watched her settle down comfortably, one leg neatly crossed over the other, as she reached for a familiar silver rod. Dread settled in the pit of your stomach.
“Let me just give my cautery rod a chance to heat up first.”
Warnings: Implications of starvation, i.e. the Dark Days™. Reader is a little morally grey. Gaul is intimidating in her own fun and festive way. Gender neutral reader. SFW.
Word count: 2186
Notes: I’m gay and it’s my birthday. I have absolutely no shame. I’ve also seen TBOSAS twice now thanks to my sister’s love of Tom Blyth. I love scary women.
If there was ever a word that fully described you, assertive would not be it. You shied away from confrontation at every chance you got. You always had. You’d survived on a small stock of grains and syrup for the duration of the Dark Days, purely because you didn’t want to argue with the other students in your household about who would be allocated how much of the measly amount of food they’d bring back from the market.
And it was pathetic. You knew that. You hated it about yourself.
But as you stared at what you’d hoped to be your breakthrough out of poverty — an application for the Gamemaker Scholarship Scheme — and the text at the bottom, something changed immediately.
Because this had been it. Your chance to turn your life around, to move out of that stuffy, decrepit house you shared with 15 others, to make something out of yourself like you’d always dreamed of. You were booksmart. You were quiet and calculating when you needed to be. You had this job in the bag.
And they’d flat-out rejected you.
You looked down at your handheld device’s cracked screen, and then back up towards the Citadel. A shining beacon of the Capitol — oh, that building was glorious. You knew you had to be here. This was it. This would be everything.
And you were done with taking no for an answer, you were through with smiling and taking the hits. You’d get this. You wanted this, more than anything before. This was what truly mattered now. This was . . .
Your throat seized up.
You’d been so caught up amongst your own thoughts, so preoccupied with your ideas of taking back control and standing up for yourself and your desires — but you were here now. And as you stood stupidly past the doors of Dr Gaul’s laboratory, the gravity of the situation came spiralling back to you.
No wonder the Peacekeepers had waved you straight through — with that silly look of faux confidence on your face, they can’t have possibly taken you seriously. You weren’t a security threat; you were a petulant child with a driving licence.
An extra detail you’d added onto your application. You could drive, too. Not that it mattered now, apparently.
“Step up here.”
It was Dr Gaul. Of course it was. This was the Head Gamemaker’s lab. And you’d just stormed in during the midst of your internal rampage. Because apparently placing a well-worded complaint on the front desk wasn’t enough. No, you’d-
“Well?”
Gaul’s cold voice broke you out of your thoughts immediately. She stood on a metal grate platform just a few feet off the ground, peering down into a glass cylinder reminiscent of an oversized fish tank. She didn’t turn to regard you with any sort of look. She was virtually motionless, leaning back against the metal railing with her gaze lowered.
You hesitated replying. “Me?”
“You are the only other person in this room,” Gaul responded plainly.
She gestured a shiny red gloved hand towards the empty space next to her. You could turn around and leave. You could, you really could. But turning around and leaving would be accepting your position, and wasn’t that exactly what you’d decided not to do?
Your feet were carrying you forward before you could give them the order to do so. You weren’t sure what you’d expected from a biology lab; possibly a nasal-burning stench of chemicals, combined with strange biological experiments, like the kind you’d only ever catch a glimpse of at the end of the games. Despite the lack of the former, there were plenty of the latter. You ogled at the glass display cases, and the shelves upon shelves of jars and tanks in various sizes, none of them empty.
You became aware of yourself and hurried forward towards the stairs. Each rattling step you took reverberated across the room gratingly. Your heart pounded against your chest. And as you reached the top of the platform, your feeling of self-loathing and idiocy only increased.
Maybe Gaul could see that on your face. Far be her response from reassurance, of course. Because she would be right to look at you with such disdain, like a speck of dirt from her shoe.
This was a really bad idea. The reasons to regret this were starting to stack up. Not to mention the fact that you weren’t even sure if Gaul had anything to do with those applications. That probably went through some other department. You were probably bothering a woman who had absolutely nothing to do with your current dilemma.
You stared at the item in her hands. She opened up a little plastic handheld container and used a small pair of tweezers to extract a single vibrant teal larva. It wriggled and squirmed uselessly.
“I have an almost infinite supply of these,” Gaul mused aloud. She twisted her hand around, inspecting the slimy creature under the lights. “Unremarkable. Simple. Existing only as a crucial piece of the food chain.”
She loosened the tweezers, and the larva dropped into the body of water in front of them. You watched it sink, and then it was gone. The tank was empty again within a second — not so much as a speck to indicate anything had been dropped inside in the first place. The water bubbled, though; not visibly, but a soft vibration that hummed against the soles of your feet.
“If you wanted to stare at wildlife, the zoo was probably your best bet,” she suggested, pinching another larva from her stash.
You shuffled away from the ominous tank. “No, I . . .” You swallowed. Chin up. Shoulders back. If other people could do it, then so could you. “You rejected me. From the Gamemaker Scholarship.”
“I reject many people. Many unremarkable people.” As if to prove her point, she dropped the next larva into the water and watched it vanish. “You must have not left a lasting impression.”
“But one of my–”
“Childish complaints are received by the front desk,” Gaul interjected sharply. The container in her hand closed with a click, and for the first time, she cast you a glance. You felt dizzy under her intense gaze, like she was pinning you down through her eyes. “And then the paper shredder.”
“This isn’t a childish complaint,” you protested, the corners of your lips curling up in frustration. “I meet the entry criteria perfectly, I scored 96% on the aptitude test–”
“Over 2,000 applicants scored higher than you,” she remarked. It was as if she took some kind of sadistic enjoyment in making you feel so small. “So why you? What makes you so special?”
You didn’t know what to say. You tongue was caught in your mouth. You were as useless and silly as a squirming larva. They probably had more use than you.
“Because I’m here,” you tried. You couldn’t muster up the confidence to back up your argument with any conviction. “Unlike anyone else you rejected, I’m here to ask you to reconsider.”
You inhaled deeply, watching her unmoving face in the faint hope that an expression would flit across her cruel, haunting features. The lines on her face creased with the movement of a faint sneer, and if you paid close enough attention, you could see her gaze narrowing. Her left eye caught the light, making the twinkling blue of her irises appear almost translucent.
“Good,” she praised you, her response soft. Your heart fluttered, and then collapsed in on itself once she uttered her next word. “Why?”
“Because . . . I want this position,” you said. You weren’t so much responding, more so thinking out loud. “Because I worked for it. Harder than anyone else. I deserve it.”
“If you deserved it, you wouldn’t be here,” Gaul countered dryly, “grovelling and whining about how unfair the system is.”
“But I do,” you pressed. “I deserve it. I spent months looking through research papers on the games. I put myself through 3 years of Genetic Engineering classes at the University, which I had to fund by working from 4 until 12 every night, and that was just for a chance to have my application read.”
“This isn’t Panem’s Got Talent,” she drawled, accompanied by an active display of disinterest. Well, this was mortifying. “I am not moved by tales of human suffering. Or did you believe otherwise?”
“I didn’t come here to tell you my life story,” you continued stubbornly. You felt like you were digging your own grave now. But then again, what was the worst she could do? . . . You looked into the tank and gulped. “I came here to tell you . . . you made a mistake in rejecting me.”
Gaul wasn’t listening. She inclined her head towards the tank, casting her gaze towards you with a cold smile. “Put your hand inside.”
It wasn’t a request; it was an order. A blunt, callous command. One she clearly expected you to obey.
You looked down at your own hand, and then at the tank, and then back at your own palm. You weren’t sure what to feel more astonished by — the fact that Gaul had made that request, or that you were genuinely considering doing so.
“And if I do,” you began, “you’ll give me the position?”
“All I asked was that you put your hand inside this tank,” Gaul repeated herself coolly. “Go on.”
You sank to your knees. It brought your eyes closer to the clear pool of water. You didn’t know what lurked inside. You didn’t feel safe enough to ask. But whatever it was, it was clearly predatory.
You started to lower your hand inside on your own volition. The tips of your fingers brushed against the icy surface first. You tested the sensation out against your skin, uncertain. Gaul’s icy glare pierced holes in the back of your head.
She’d moved behind you. She was dangerously close. So close, you could feel her brush against you. So close, you could feel her light breaths against the side of your neck. So close, she could easily grab you and push you in.
“To the wrist.”
You dunked your entire hand into the water without a second thought and squeezed your eyes closed in anticipation. You prepared yourself for the worst, even the smallest suggestion of pain.
But your nerves didn’t experience so much as a light tickle. The water was still. It didn’t hum the way it had. You wiggled your fingers experimentally. There was nothing to suggest you should recoil. Not yet.
“Why did you do that?” Gaul asked calmly.
You slowly lifted your hand out. Water dripped down your fingers and back into the tank. Your skin was unbroken and unharmed. Cold though, maybe.
You swallowed, somewhat afraid to turn around. “You asked me to.”
“I know I did,” she responded. You could still sense her presence, towering over you as your knees pressed into the uncomfortable platform. “But why did you obey without knowing the consequences?”
“Because . . .” You fumbled over your words again. “Because I really do want the position. I want to study under you.”
She hummed shortly. You briefly wondered if that was a dismissal, but some kind of curiosity kept you rooted to the spot. You weren’t finished yet. Not until you’d gotten an answer you had come here for.
You listened to her footsteps as she drifted away from you again. She’d been a lot closer than you’d thought. You shivered.
“I can offer you this,” she started. You stared up at her dumbly. She paid you no mind. “A simple lab technician role. Menial tasks for small pay. You say you want this position? You’ll have a year to convince me.”
A year to convince her? You weren’t sure how to even begin processing that, nor the dark undertones her suggestion carried. You weren’t sure for how long you would be able to handle her close attention and piercing scrutiny for until you cracked, nor what the consequences of that could be. Gaul was as forgiving and merciful as you were confident.
But that aside, this wasn’t what you came here for. This wasn’t the result you’d fantasised about. Not initially, anyway.
But then again, you supposed that employment was the next task on your realistic list at the back of your mind, so . . .
You stood up again, using the railing behind you for support. “500k a year.”
“We pay 425k,” Gaul told you.
“I know,” you said. “500.”
“425 with 27 days holiday.”
“36 hours.”
“40.”
“38.”
“And a confidentiality agreement,” she added. “We can’t have the other failures thinking that complaining will get them somewhere.”
“Isn’t that what I did?” you asked, confused.
She hummed a laugh that lacked any kind of joviality or warmth. It was blisteringly cold, mocking. Something was amusing to her, something that had gone directly over your head. A mystery that would unnerve you.
“You’ll start next week,” Gaul said dismissively. She batted a careless hand for you to leave. “Make me believe you want this.”
Summary: You’re not free. Freedom couldn’t be further from your grasp.
Warnings: Kidnapping. Missy being a manipulative piece of shit.
Word count: 784
Notes: I had to write this in my uni library because I’m without wifi and I’m too stubborn for Word, so if it takes me ages to update this again, that’s why. I will write fics on google docs to my grave.
You struggled to understand the words spoken to you in a way you'd never felt before. It was as though the rate at which you processed the things around you was completely stunted. What . . .? Who . . .? Why . . .?
But then you succeeded in your struggle to shift yourself upright. Your eyes drifted around until they focused on the figure in front of you. Deep shades of purple, haunting blue eyes hidden behind a thick set of lashes . . .
She stood up, nudging her chair away in the process. Unforgiving fingers gripped your chin, jerking your head up towards her. Her thumb gently traced your raw, cracked lips. Her sharp fingernails clawed at your jaw.
And when she spoke, the cold bleakness of her voice choked you from the inside. “I hope you didn’t have too much fun without me.”
You were upset, angry, furious. Words like that felt insufficient. You didn’t think you’d ever be able to verbally describe the way you felt. Your stomach twisted itself in knots, so much horror, so much despair sealed away and for so long. Like the snap of a coil, you launched yourself at her.
You hit blindly. Tears pricked away at your eyes. Your throat gurgled and crackled with every shout you made, every insult and curse you could even think to hurl at her, words so horrid you had once never even imagined saying them aloud. And yet it still didn’t feel like enough. A million of the most vulgar, vile insults in the English language wouldn’t have been enough.
Missy sharply yanked on your hair. Your head flew back. Her fingers snapped together in your vision. Your eyes followed them. Her honey-smooth words drifted through your ears, filling you to the brim with an uneasy, fluctuating sensation of warmth.
“Back to reality. Easy. Calm down.”
You went still. You wanted to move, and yet something was stopping you, like some kind of invisible force pinning each of your limbs in place. Any efforts to move were strangely futile. The most you could muster was a frustrated whimper as your hands curled into fists and your nails sank through your skin.
“That’s it,” Missy said softly. Even your random punches in her direction had missed her completely. “Nice and calm. See? There’s no need for violence.”
No need for violence. Missy’s rules were constantly bending and twisting to her own convenience. You couldn’t win a game when she was the creator. You felt like a hamster trapped in a cage, running the same loops, around and around, and expecting a different outcome. It was madness.
You sank to the ground as your knees gave out beneath you. You were curled up amongst the plush skirts between Missy’s legs, both of you on the floor. You were absolutely helpless. It felt like your own mind was betraying you. You wanted to push her away, push everything away, but instead you were totally still and unmoving as she held you tight in a horrid display of affection. Your hands curled around her sides. Undoubtedly you were squeezing her painfully hard, but even if that was the case, her expression never betrayed her.
Missy was overwhelming you. Everything about her. Her sickly sweet yet tangy perfume. Her strong arms winding around you as you fought against nonexistent restraints. The deep, firm thudding of her two hearts.
You could barely make a sound, aside from a small cry of frustration. Your tears seeped into her deep plum coat. Missy made little shushing noises in your ear.
“It’s okay,” Missy murmured. You were pressed up so firmly against her that you could feel her body hum with each word she spoke. “It’s okay. It’s just an adjustment, I know. Oh, you poor, snivelling thing. You really thought you had your life back, didn’t you? Aren’t I a cruel mistress? You can say.”
You tried to speak. The most you could mutter was a resentful, broken, “Fuck you.”
Missy kissed your forehead. You could feel her lips forming a nasty, horrible smile against your skin.
“And what have we learnt from this experience, my dear?” Missy’s fingers started to loosen up from your aching scalp. “There are several correct answers.”
You were a shaking, quivering mess. You were in no space to string together coherent thoughts, let alone translating those thoughts into coherent words.
“Shall I help you out?” she suggested. “Alright. You will never leave is one of them, but can you guess the other?”
You muttered through involuntarily clenched teeth. “I hate you.”
Missy’s body radiated with warmth. Your hatred fueled her. God, it made you sick.
Her lips moved to your ear as she whispered the final answer.
Warnings: Kidnapping. PTSD. An asshole of a psychiatrist.
Word count: 1893
Notes: I nearly threw up coughing as I edited this. That would’ve been dreadful, especially after how long I spent perfecting this lil bit.
You jolted in a way that made your spine lurch forward unnaturally. A feeling of static burrowed and splintered its way towards the surface of your skin, prickling at your eyeballs and just about any other expanse of soft tissue. Like dust, it softly collapsed away from you, and then you were still, and it was silent. You opened your eyes.
Your gloved hands were still clutching the steering wheel of your car. Little puffs of cloudy air left your mouth. You were restrained only by your seatbelt across your chest. That marked, scarred body of yours was soothed by the familiar fabrics of your clothes.
You went still. Your hands slowly lowered from the steering wheel as you gradually turned around in your seat as far as your seatbelt would allow. Your belongings were gathered to one side of the backseat. Just as you had left them. Just as you had left everything. Even yourself.
You sat forward again and twisted your keys in the ignition. The engine hummed to life with the same abruptness as the twitchy radio. You glanced around the empty, narrow road you were parked beside. There were no street lamps, signs of life, or buildings that emitted any light. Just an empty field.
Carefully, slowly, you began to drive forward. It was as if you expected someone to stop you — someone specific — but nothing, no one, did. You began to increase in speed. The road eventually twisted out onto the nearest motorway. Other cars drove alongside yours. Still, no one stopped you. There was no one to stop you.
You barricaded yourself into your own home that night. Your windows were tied shut with rope, creating knots you only knew how to tie from your recent experiences with crude restraints. You wouldn’t sleep that night. You didn’t sleep for many nights after that.
You refused to stop and take a moment to think and analyse your situation, because then you would have to face the question of why Missy would have ever allowed you to win. Had you really won her over? Had you really escaped her clutches? And how permanent would this feeling ever be?
You didn’t feel like you deserved the freedom you’d been granted. This was a punishment of its own. Missy was everywhere. In your mind, you could see her, in the darkened silhouettes of pedestrians after nightfall, in just about every shade of dark purple you encountered, in your own reflections through every window and mirror. Her existence ate away at your insides until you were a hollow, rotten mess.
Sometimes you wrote those feelings down in a calendar, like a reverse countdown since you were granted freedom, if you could call it that. Apparently it was a very good way to compartmentalise your thoughts, or evaluate your emotions, or some kind of drivel like that. It was the idea of one of your first psychiatrists.
Going back to work was difficult, as was learning to adapt to life and routine. It took you a month to muster the courage to face a small errand run alone, and two to buy groceries last minute after dark.
After three months, you finally stopped sealing yourself into your home during the day. It took you five months to sleep without furniture blocking your bedroom door at night. And it was silly — you knew you were being obsessive, and you knew that Missy would have no issue finding some other way inside if need be. That sense of security was only for show, to soothe your brain for even a second or two.
According to your psychiatrists, you were coping astonishingly well. You didn’t feel the same. There was plenty they didn’t know. Like how you hadn’t slept properly even once since you’d returned, or that you still felt genuine pangs of pain in the areas your horrific wounds had once been situated in — areas completely clear and mark-free — or that you hadn’t actually socialised with anyone since. You hadn’t been able to. No friends, no family. You were arguably more alone than you’d been before.
Nine months in, and you had successfully braved a road trip across the country alone to celebrate Christmas. You saw people you hadn’t in a long time. And then a couple of days later, you started the long journey back, following the strategically calculated route your satnav had given you.
You didn’t even slow as your car passed the spot. Although you had gripped your steering wheel so tightly that one of your fingernails snapped agonisingly in half.
But you were normal again. And it was right.
–oOo–
“Now, let’s talk about these halluci–”
“They weren’t hallucinations,” you said firmly. “They were real. They happened.”
“Okay,” Dr Keller held his hands out, his tone velvety and soft in an attempt to subdue your outburst, “okay. These events. Shall we go from where we last left off?”
He clicked his biro pen and sat back in his chair patiently. You didn’t like your psychiatrists — appointments were anything but honest and validating — but Dr Keller was one of the only ones who’d allow you to speak your mind completely before accusing your claims to be false, some kind of trauma coping mechanism or misinterpreted memory.
You swallowed, your foot tapping against the floor. He scrawled this observation down in his notepad. He was always very thorough in his examinations of you and your unusual mental state.
“I was in a library,” you began.
“A library,” he repeated, his head muffled against the open page in front of him. “Could you describe this library?”
“There were books. Loads of books. The most books I’ve ever seen in one place.” Your gaze moved to the glass of water on the table beside you. The fluid inside was unnaturally still. “And she was there.”
He paused, as if waiting for you to continue. “She being–”
“Missy.” You flinched. Her name left a stinging, sour taste on your tongue. “Yes.”
“Did she speak to you?” You nodded your head in response. “What did she say?”
“She said . . .” You stared at your palms. They were sore and red with self-inflicted scratches from your fingernails. “She said, ‘How poetic’.”
Dr Keller looked up, his thick grey eyebrows creased in bemusement. “Was this in response to a previous conversation? Or simply a comment?”
“Missy can read minds,” you told him.
You knew it sounded far fetched. It was the most unrealistic part of your experience. It was the detail that had every specialist you’d spoken to pulling the same face — an expression of false understanding that masked a deep layer of blatant alarm. You patiently waited for the day you’d be committed.
But he simply nodded. “She can read minds? Telepathically?”
You nodded. “Yeah.”
“And what were you thinking?” he asked. “What was she replying to?”
“I was thinking about . . . how dangerous she was. Even when she was sitting still at the other end of the room, I didn’t feel safe. She wasn’t even holding a weapon. She didn’t need to. Some of her best work was done without a weapon,” you drawled. Sometimes instilling your voice with some nonchalance and some uncaring dryness did wonders to fool your own brain into behaving the same. “She never let me die. She wasn’t finished ‘playing’ with me.”
Dr Keller continued to take notes. You doubted he’d take today’s session any further than that — you didn’t need a mirror to see the absolute disarrayed state even speaking about Missy had left you in. You could go home, scrub yourself clean in the shower until you were red and raw, sleep, work, and repeat this session again next week.
The clock on the wall chimed softly, signifying the end of the hour. The sound of it always managed to drag you out of any dark reverie. Like clockwork, you stood up and began to reach for your belongings.
“I don’t have any other appointments today,” Dr Keller told you. You froze with a hand on your bag. “And I’d like us to spend some more time on this, if that’s okay with you.”
You turned your head, your deep set frown saying all that needed to be said. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Because you aren’t like any other patient I have seen before. Because your case is one I am determined to crack.”
“I’m a case to crack,” you concluded. You pursed your lips to conceal your mild annoyance that threatened to become distress. Breaking down in front of anyone was always mortifying.
At first, he didn’t have a reply ready. He froze, mildly taken aback — maybe he could see that his words had upset you — but then his mouth twitched into the smallest of smiles.
“In the case of traumatic events, the human brain reacts in some extreme ways,” he began. He picked up the plastic model brain from his desk and held it up in his right hand for you to see. “Events can be remembered completely differently to how they originally transpired. Details can be changed drastically.”
You reluctantly sat back down with a small huff. You didn’t want to listen to this once again — yet another “explanation” for your “nightmares”, “hallucinations”, and “visions”. You knew what you’d experienced. It was real, you knew it. Even if no one else ever would.
Dr Keller placed his notepad down on the coffee table. His eyes flitted to the door, his gaze narrowing, but then he turned back to you. His expression returned with full confidence, as amiable as ever.
You didn’t respond with any kind of friendliness, not even fabricated. You looked to the door just as he had, as if you expected to see something strange or suspicious. Maybe there would be his next client outside. But he had no more appointments today . . .
You looked back at him. He was patient, waiting for your attention once more.
“But in your case, my dear . . .”
He leaned forward in his chair. The small smile he wore stretched out into a grin.
“. . . that squishy brain of yours changed nothing at all.”
You were up on your feet and moving towards the door faster than you thought was instinctively possible. The silhouette the light from the window cast against the door of the office wasn’t just your own. A woman was behind you, shoulders ruler straight and figure tucked away into an unmoving corset, her hair twirled into an effortless updo.
That was when you fell, and from there the writhing sensation under your skin never stopped. You were pushed head-first into impenetrable darkness. The empty space was winding its way around your neck like a noose. Your screams became strangled choking sounds the further you fell and the greater your efforts were to desperately squirm into something, anything at all. You had to wake up. This was a dream, a bad dream, and you could wake yourself up from it.
And then it all just stopped.
Your view changed so abruptly that it filled you with a sense of nauseating deja vu. You couldn’t remember the darkness anymore. You couldn’t properly recall the way it had engulfed you whole from the moment you’d gone tumbling down.
But you did remember everything else. Your appointment. Dr Keller.
‘Dr Keller’ herself pulled up a chair, grinning from ear to ear. “Wasn’t that just brilliant?”
---
No, the story’s not actually over. Not at all. I just like to cause problems and gaslight readers the way Missy would teehee
Summary: Missy wants to play, and you’re in no position to say no.
Warnings: Kidnapping. Beheadings. Yeah, I went there. Blood. Blackmail.
Word count: 872
Notes: Some would argue that this story has gone too far. Those people just don’t get the vibe.
Missy woke you up. She must have, it was the only plausible explanation as to why you were walking. There was no transition into consciousness, just sudden and unexplained movement forward.
The glaring lights that bordered the corridor created long and distorted shadows of your haggard body, a body you didn’t recognise anymore. You were fed enough to keep you decent, pumped with enough fluids to ensure you operated as normal, but everything else was wrong, withering away the longer you trudged through the TARDIS.
Missy spun on her heel sharply. “Perfect,” she said, her smile as broad as it was dangerous. “Awake enough to hold this now, are we?”
You blinked through the blurry haze caused by your watering eyes. The task that took the most of your attention was simply moving forward. You fought aches in every joint as you transferred your weight onto one leg, and then the other, tearing at old unhealed wounds and pressing into torn ligaments and fractured bones.
The addition of a sudden weight in your hands wasn’t well received by your body. Whatever it was, the heavier weight on one side of the wooden rod began to drag along the floor with an arrhythmic cacophony of ear-splitting screeches.
Missy let out a sigh. “Music to my ears, poppet,” she said as she turned a corner. You slowly followed. “It’s as if you’ve been snooping through my Spotify.”
Maybe once, you would’ve indulged Missy in some kind of reaction — pretended to be amused to satisfy her, or rolled your eyes in an act of defiance — but that was while you’d had hope. Your hope had been ground to dust between Missy’s soft fingertips a very long time ago. Or possibly very recently.
You followed Missy around another corner. This was strange. That was a ridiculous thing to think — everything about this was absolutely batshit insane, as you constantly tried to remind yourself — but whatever was happening now was a different kind of strange. You wondered if this had something to do with what you’d said earlier, but you didn’t bother to ask.
Missy pressed the twinkling green jewel on her ring into a black panel beside the sealed door. There was an unusual expression on her face. Or perhaps not.
You walked into the room after her as soon as it opened. Sometimes your body instinctively behaved as though it was an extension of her own. A little piece of you hated it, but the rest truly didn’t care.
Your sight began to warp. It twisted you off your feet, the sensation growing more intense the further you turned from the centre of the room. Cold hands moved your head forwards and twirled your eyeballs around in their sockets until you could look at nothing else but the person in front of you. It was then that the warping stopped.
You had absolutely no idea who this was, you quickly gathered. This person had no emotional significance to you. But that didn’t explain the shackles, or their head chained down over the ledge of a rotting wooden surface.
Your gaze followed theirs towards the axe in your hands.
“See, dearest, I really am unbeatable when it comes to this game. That much I can promise,” she murmured. Her voice was like silk, so clear, so fluid. She circled you slowly. “Would you like me to teach you to play by my rules?”
You didn’t respond.
“Unlike my predecessors, I don’t believe that an execution needs to be complicated in order to be effective,” Missy explained. She brushed against your shoulder as she passed you once more. “Take this set up for example. What you’re holding is an axe, far sharper than any blade known to humankind. Can you guess what I want you to do with it?”
You stared at the axe in your hands. It was positioned forwards now. Your grip was firmer than you remembered it being.
Missy moved in behind you. She was pressed against your back in a gesture far more intimate than you were used to, but it didn’t feel that way. There was something so distant and cold behind it, numbing your hands as her fingers interlocked with yours. She began to guide the axe upwards. You blindly followed.
“Just like that.” Missy left a soft kiss on your neck. “Well done.”
She stepped out from behind you and traced the tip of her nail across the person’s exposed neck. Their long dark hair had been haphazardly bunched off to the side to allow you better access.
“Bring it down right here with as much accuracy as possible,” Missy explained. “Or don’t. That makes it funnier. Oh, now I want you to miss! I love it when that happens! It’s like watching a watermelon pop.”
Your head resisted those invisible cold hands, shaking from side to side insistently.
“I–” You choked on your words, “I can’t.”
“Of course you can’t,” Missy responded. She sounded so patient, so content with your refusal. “But you want to leave, don’t you? Would a countdown help?”
Your nails sunk into the softened wood of the handle.
“10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . 7–”
Your eyes followed the clumsily detached head as it rolled across the floor.
Summary: You refuse to accept the inevitable. Not yet.
Warnings: Kidnapping. Blood. Some gnarly wounds, and some equally gnarly methods of healing them.
Word count: 1194
Notes: Count on me to clean forget about this until the middle of summer break. Definitely slayed that one.
It was a strange feeling, such soft sheets pooled around your waist, caressing your bruised and beaten skin with each tiny breath you took. Your hand — littered with marks and slender from your strange and unlikely unsafe diet — came to rest on top of the silk comforter. It felt wrong, touching something so pure and gentle after so long.
This must've been Missy's room, or at the very least one of the nicest rooms aboard the TARDIS. You spent most of your time sleeping in the most randomest of places — usually between sofas, rugs, chairs, and hospital beds. You hadn't known what true sleep was until you'd accidentally fallen asleep here during an unsupervised wander. It put any other sleeping place to shame.
Missy had yet to return. This was good, you convinced yourself earnestly. Escape would be all too easy if she really put that much faith in you.
But in that case, why were you still here?
Suddenly disgusted by the bed, your tranquil slumber feeling undeserved, you pushed the sheets far from your body and stood up. The biting chill of the floor felt like adequate punishment. You were losing yourself a little more with each passing moment. That was one thing you couldn't afford.
Your bare feet moved noisily beneath you as you padded into the adjoining bathroom. It was all shiny and cream with majestic gold embellishments — luxurious to the point of tacky. Wasn't that the kind of humorous remark you would've made a long time ago? Maybe a digging comment about the tiles on the walls, or the dusty state of the mirror?
Your eyes moved away from your reflection the moment you caught eye of it. It was a hideous sight. You wouldn't indulge yourself in that ghastly state you had been crumbled into.
The cupboards took your fancy. Each was crystal white with a glistening gold handle, encrusted with some kind of sapphire stones. Once again, Missy's choice of decor felt slightly excessive, but it honestly came as no surprise to you.
Your hands roamed the shelf blindly, eventually settling on a narrow tube. A green cross was plastered on it beside various symbols. That was a universal sign, right?
You sat back on the floor and unscrewed the cap. Collecting a small amount of the blue cream on your fingertips, you delicately applied to one of many small cuts on your arms.
The pain was unimaginable. It felt as though your skin was moving on its own accord, like something was writhing and crawling beneath the surface. Your teeth sank into your knuckles in a desperate bid to silence yourself.
But the sensation came to a halt as quickly as it had come on. Your gaze slowly lowered to your arm, where your once broken skin had completely sealed itself over.
You continued on every other mark that was visible to you, ending on the broken remains of the stab wound that had been callously created through your right thigh. Missy didn't care enough to heal you to any proper or safe standard, after all.
You lifted your head. Too preoccupied with your attempts at stifling your agony every time it threatened to escape your lips in the form of a scream or cry, you'd scarcely even noticed Missy enter in the first place. She gave you little to no acknowledgement at all. Surely she knew you were here, crumpled on the floor directly behind her, right?
You eyed her blouse warily. What covered it must've been blood, judging by the consistency and the way it had splattered across her alone, but the colour was nothing you'd seen before. Broad smears of dark pink, like a vibrant viscous paint.
Missy glanced over her shoulder in approximately your direction and then back at the mirror. "I mean," She gestured to the state she was in, "would you look at that? How rude."
You watched her closely as she cocked her head to the side and eyed you beneath her thick lashes. She approached you within two strides, and you cowered away, prepared to be met with some kind of blistering pain that simply never came.
Hesitantly, you opened one eye, and then the other. Missy wasn't in front of you anymore. It was as if she hadn't moved in the first place.
"Aren't you glad I didn't close you up using this?" Missy juggled the tube between her hands while she swiftly removed her dirtied blouse and the corset beneath it. "It's not for humans, poppet."
You wanted to look away — at the very least out of decency while she removed any clothing that covered the top half of her body — but you couldn't help but stare at the wound that connected from one side of her stomach to the other. Something quite wide had impaled her, and yet she showed no indication of being in pain at all. It almost made you feel lousy in comparison.
Shades of pink and red combined as she began to apply liberal amounts of the cream to either side of her torso. Only now did she give any indication of discomfort, but only in the form of a soft wince that vanished less than a second later.
"Oh," Missy clicked her tongue, "look how much you've used–"
Missy was in front of you in seconds. Her hands haphazardly swiped at your own wound, scraping away the smallest traces of excess that lined it. You yelped, but she shushed you carelessly, as if just the sound of your voice agitated her.
As she moved back to the mirror, you continued to watch her as she used that small amount of product she'd collected from you on herself instead. The edges of her gash were starting to close. The blood that pooled around her feet was starting to spill towards you.
"I want to leave."
You'd said those words with such finality that they'd come as a surprise to yourself. And to Missy too, if her tauntingly fond smile at you through the mirror was anything to go by.
"Aren't you precious?" she sighed, a blood-coated hand clasping over her chest where one of her hearts would be.
"What would it take?" you pressed. "For me to leave? I'll do anything."
Missy turned on her heel. Her hands stained the sides of the white basin behind her as she leaned back and regarded you with her burning gaze.
"Are you sure you want to play this game with me, poppet?" Missy asked you, and somehow it felt like a courtesy, as if she was genuinely giving you a chance to retreat without repercussions.
But the look in that woman's eyes, the look a predator would give their prey, incited a definite nod of your head.
"It's not a game to me," you said.
Missy's smile nearly reached her eyes. She knelt down beside you. Another small amount of cream was smeared into your thigh. Your hisses of pain were ignored as she took your face in her cold, blood-dampened hands and planted a delicate kiss on the crown of your head.
"Anything it is, dearest," Missy promised you. "Anything for you."
Warnings: Kidnapping. Needles. Bad medicine, because Missy is no doctor. Stockholm Syndrome.
Word count: 485
Notes: My flatmate plays very loud music, so if this is a nonsensical mess in any place, you can absolutely blame him. Just writing that sentence left me with 3 errors to autocorrect. Not slaying as much as I would like to at the moment, I can’t lie.
"It'll be easier for the both of us if you just tell me these things, poppet."
The pain was searing. Your injuries only ever felt more painful whenever Missy was involved. She treated you with no care, no precision, complete neglect of your sensitive nerves and sore body.
This time you could feel her stitching your abdomen together by hand. The needle punctured carelessly through your skin as thread was woven between the seams of the wound, thread you were fairly certain wasn’t medical grade in any way. It hurt, but it was nothing compared to the kind of pain you were usually put through on a daily basis. Comparatively, this was okay.
“I have so much planned for you,” she continued. “Really, I do. You and I are going to have such a fun time together. Well, I will, anyway.”
You could only nod really. You were tempted to ask about her plans, but even if she did choose to divulge, you weren’t sure if you could handle it. The things she did to you were bad enough, but when you actually gave the atrocious acts she committed a name — torture, kidnapping, stabbing, burning, brainwashing — it all immediately felt so much worse.
Your head rolled to the side. It felt too heavy to hold up. Your eyes were only opened when Missy peeled your eyelids apart with her fingers and shone a white light directly into your pupils.
“Just a mild concussion.” Spots from the light were left in your vision, even against your closed eyelids. “If you’re going to faint, do it properly. Honestly, it’s as if you want to crack your head open like an egg.”
Missy wheeled away on a chair. You were fairly certain you were in a hospital bed again. It was a combination of the overly sanitary smell and the rough abrasive bed sheets that gave it away. It would explain why Missy was constantly moving back and forth, and how she had so much medical equipment immediately to hand.
Your head throbbed, but that was the only sign that you’d fallen in the first place. You’d long since reached the point where you craved death. But Missy knew that. She absolutely did.
That was probably the only reason why she wouldn’t let you die.
“Say something nice.”
She gripped your jaw tightly. Your head held in place, you reluctantly allowed your weary and bloodshot eyes to open.
You didn’t have anything nice to say. You didn’t have anything to say at all. Speaking was often a waste of energy, something you had a certain lack of in the first place. But as your eyes met Missy’s expectant gaze, you gulped and silently cleared your throat. Your words were a hoarse whisper.
“Thank you, Mistress.”
Her mouth stretched into a smile. Her aching hold of your jaw didn’t soften though, not even as she leaned forward and left a gentle kiss on your forehead.
Summary: You’ve ignored injuries for a long time. This is no different.
Warnings: Kidnapping. Stockholm Syndrome kinda. Blood. Missy being a neglectful lil shit.
Word count: 472
Notes: Un-proofread, in fact unread-through at all, because it’s nearly 1am and I’d rather do that when my eyes are fully open and I’m actually in a fully cognitive state. If this is good, you’re welcome. If it’s shit, I’m so sorry, but at the same time, I reckon I slayed, sooo…
You followed without hesitation. It was all you seemed to know how to do. The urge to ask a question or to protest in any way had sort of dissipated. Speaking up never changed the outcome for the better.
“Seeing as you’ll be here for as long as I feel like, standard procedure in the event of a fatal malfunction is something you probably ought to know.” Missy sounded bored just by talking. “If the TARDIS ever — I don’t know — throws itself into a supernova or something, there are certain spaces to avoid, systems to reboot to make sure you don’t shrivel up and squish like a vacuum-packed raisin — you get the gist.”
She walked a few paces ahead of you, but at no point did she turn around or check if you were still present and attentive. You didn’t like that. A little voice at the back of your mind reminded you that you didn’t like her sudden carelessness one bit. It meant she knew she could afford to be.
She knew you weren’t going anywhere.
The elevated heels of her boots clicked rhythmically against the floor. She walked like a true Edwardian woman — with beauty and elegance and grace, charmingly flawless and precise. But something darker stirred beneath, especially when she began to slap her black-boxed weapon against the open palm of her hand.
You weren’t sure whether she was accelerating or you were simply growing far too tired to keep up. Despite the aching burn that persisted against your perpetually exhausted legs, you began to speed up. You didn’t want to risk falling behind. You weren’t sure what was worse — being left alone to find your own way through the TARDIS, or Missy finding you first.
Missy’s ship was as fascinating and enrapturing as it was bewildering. The halls felt so full of life, almost as if you could feel it in the walls, but you knew it was just you and Missy now. You knew better than to believe you were anything but alone.
You’d ignored several injuries for as long as you could remember being on the ship. There was always something — a previously fractured bone throbbing, or a burn stinging sharply as it rubbed against the fabric of your clothes.
So when you touched a particularly sore area of your stomach and brought your bloodied hand back to your eyes, you weren’t entirely sure how to react.
“Missy.”
Missy loosely hummed in acknowledgement.
You quietly cleared your throat. “I’m bleeding.”
“Oh, you’ll be fine.” Her words were like the crack of a whip. “So as I was saying, the layout can be visualised by using a very simple 11 dimensional map.”
You had no idea what Missy had gone on to inform you about. It was difficult to receive and comprehend an explanation while completely unconscious.
on a daily basis i watch my bff flatmate lose his everloving shit over jenna ortega (so valid btws), and i sit there and pretend to judge him, well knowing that if fuckin michelle gomez was ever mentioned in conversation or even insinuated i would spontaneously combust.
like, we watch nuwho together, as all bffs should, and as we were talking about hot doctor who women he mentioned MISSY oh my g o d my loml im on m y k n e e s and i nearly choked on my cheese crackers tbh
(on another note, i told my bf that michelle gomez is everything to me, i would literally DIE for that fine woman, and he genuinely laughed and told me i'm too clumsy to die for anyone)
Summary: You can barely recognise the person you’ve become.
Warnings: Kidnapping. Stockholm Syndrome.
Word count: 364
Notes: This is very enemy-to-caretaker-y to be honest, it was a bit of a jumpscare, really didn’t see it coming. Sometimes I just zone out and write and then frighten myself with what comes out of it. I’d like to think this chapter is enjoyable.
The towels you were shrouded in were soft. The Egyptian cotton was kind to your abused and aching skin. The softness acted as a sufficient distraction from the bruises that you were almost permanently littered in.
Your towel-dried hair had been pinned back with a claw clip. Beside you was a bowl filled with some kind of viscous purple substance that was gently being wiped over the right side of your face using a sponge. It didn’t sting, but you could feel the tingles it left across your entire body. Even when the pain of the treatment slowly began to make itself apparent, you gave no indication of it.
“I want to leave.”
“Well, you can’t –”
“Will I ever?”
You knew the answer, but you asked anyway. You wanted to hear it yourself, like the final flickering candle of hope waiting to be silently snuffed out. You felt the sponge falter against your cheek.
“No.”
That single word was said with such honesty that you’d never heard from her before. You could feel it at the bottom of the stomach. The genuinity in her tone had been so grounding.
And for the first time, you resigned to her answer. You didn’t fight it, you made no effort to argue. You simply nodded your head in understanding, or at least as much as Missy’s hand would allow you to.
Once your cheek had been wiped clean again with a damp cloth, which collected the last of the dirt and grit from the pavement between the fibres, you were given a protein bar. It wasn’t much — your meals were rarely much — but it filled you more than just water did, and it tasted far better than the completely unrecognisable foods and drinks you’d been given in the past.
You peeled away at the wrapper using your brittle and broken nails. The taste was bland and dry, but you hadn’t expected anything else. You weren’t sure if your tongue could handle any stronger tastes.
“This is where you belong now.” Missy tilted your chin up, but her strong fingers weren’t punishing you with an iron-strong grip this time. The artificial white lights illuminated her cheekbones. “With me.”
Warnings: Kidnapping. Torture, as usual. General Missy cruelty to be honest.
Word count: 904
Notes: Took me ages to write this, but mostly because I was procrastinating for two weeks straight, and by procrastinating I mean sitting on my arse and watching The Good Place, teehee. Enjoy.
Missy didn't let go of your hand, you noticed. She simply wouldn't, even once you had loosened your own grip to subtly signal that you were capable of walking on your own. The only response you received was her grip tightening.
You wondered what kind of punishment this would lead to. You hadn't done anything wrong, you thought, but Missy didn't simply do nice things. She was not nice. On the contrary, unpleasant was a far better word to describe her, and unpleasant people do unpleasant things.
For a fleeting moment, you considered what would happen if you spoke up and asked about where you were going, but you disregarded that idea instantly. Silence was safe, silence stopped her from hurting you as badly. If that was all it took for the woman to loosen her chokehold of your life and safety, you were fine with that.
You quickly recognised where you were. It was that circular room you'd found yourself in on only one occasion, twice if you included that one unexplainable nightmare. You still weren't entirely sure what purpose it served; Missy had yet to explain a lot of things you'd seen, that included.
Your eyes quickly locked on a spot on the floor. Any bloodstains had been cleaned since, but that was far from enough to erase the event from your mind.
Missy steered you around the other side of the room. You weren't even given a moment to dwell on it before she slid open a set of doors, something you'd somehow never even taken notice of before. And now that you were seeing it in full, it was so clearly obvious, but nonetheless a frustrating thing to miss.
The light genuinely hurt your eyes for a few moments. Missy stepped aside and let go of your hand, which made it a little easier for your pupils to adjust. You shielded your eyes with your hand until your vision was clear enough to lower it.
You didn’t know what to think. In front of you was St James’s Park, London. You’d been there a few times before, you recognised it quickly. It was already dark out, with no noise but the distant sound of traffic signifying there was anyone nearby at all.
Your feet were glued to the doorway. You couldn’t move.
You turned to Missy. “What?”
Missy nonchalantly motioned to the open door. “You’ve made it very clear you want to leave, so go on. Give it your best shot.”
A soft breeze touched your face. You hadn’t felt anything like that in years. And when the smallest of raindrops fell onto the back of your hand, you nearly passed out right there and then.
But you swallowed back your hope. “This is a trap.”
“It might be,” Missy agreed. “It might not be. I’m a deranged lunatic, remember? I might’ve just, I don’t know, gotten bored and decided to set you free, sweetheart.”
You stopped to think about it. It would be a risk to take, but you had no idea how great. It was a gamble, and you weren’t sure how you felt about playing with your own life. It would be all too easy for Missy to pull out the rug from beneath you in the worst way possible.
But one foot was already out of the door. Quite literally, and then the other. And then you were standing outside, the light rain wetting your hair and dripping onto your clothes. The ground beneath your feet was so real, as was the cool night air that filled your lungs.
You didn’t look back. You broke into a sprint the moment you were consciously able to. It immediately hurt — your muscles ached from lack of use and the wound on your thigh still hadn’t fully healed — but the pain was incomparable to the adrenaline that kept you moving forwards.
But the pain suddenly grew worse, and it was no longer isolated to just your legs. Your whole body convulsed, and you collapsed under your weight, the side of your face scraping against the cobbled pavement.
“Look at you, Speedy Gonzales.” You heard footsteps, and when you opened your eyes a pair of black boots came into view. “You made it a whole 10 feet from the door.”
Your instincts had you crawling forward against the soreness, but then you were back down with another shock, this one felt right through your abdomen. Your hands curled into fists as the wave of searing pain ripped its way through your side. You were gasping against the ground for air.
Missy made a noise of disapproval. “Don’t be naughty. That’s all you’re getting.”
There was an ongoing urge to try again, but you just felt numb. No matter how much you focused, you could barely move your body by even an inch. Crawling forward was impossible.
Your voice was nothing but a hoarse splutter. "Why?"
Her shoulders moved in a loose shrug. “I'm a deranged lunatic. You thought so yourself," she reminded you. "Come on, poppet, back inside.”
Your body protested as her arms wrapped around you, scooping you up helplessly from the pavement. You were too weak to feel pathetic. The rain was starting to worsen, water dripping from your eyebrows and catching on your cold lips.
Missy had no trouble walking you inside — her strength was as inhuman as she was. Because that’s exactly what she was: inhuman.
