
⁂
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me

★

tannertan36

pixel skylines
🪼
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
sheepfilms

祝日 / Permanent Vacation

Product Placement
Peter Solarz
dirt enthusiast

shark vs the universe

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
styofa doing anything
Three Goblin Art
d e v o n
occasionally subtle
Monterey Bay Aquarium

Janaina Medeiros
seen from Taiwan
seen from Netherlands
seen from Netherlands

seen from Singapore
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia

seen from Malaysia

seen from Canada
seen from China

seen from Malaysia

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Spain

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Sweden
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Netherlands
@rxcalcitrant
"Little thing~!"
…it’s a doll.
Kat’s sure that’s what it is. It smells kinda weird, and itfeels weird, but he’s pretty sure it’s a doll. An old one, like the ones inMiss Helsing’s office. She had said they were from when she was a little girl,and her grandmother was a little girl, and her grandmother’s father was alittle boy.
An old, old doll.
So he doesn’t touch it. In fact, he gives it a wide berth.There’s other things to look at in this office building, right? The policeofficer chief guy was a VAMPIRE. That was pretty cool.
The ten-year-old fledgling walked out of the office with ‘Swag’on the desk nameplate.
swagtastic-hiro:
Kat squats down so he can look the doll in the eye. It smells weird, like sugar and… well, one time a kid in his bunkroom had tried to hide a sandwich under his bed for two months. The doll smelled like rotten baloney, as best Kat could guess.
“How does a doll protect anyone? You’re tiny,” he says pragmatically, resisting the urge to poke the doll’s forehead. “I’m here because of a witch. That’s what the jello blob said.”
“I have my ways which are many and mysterious! Which pretty much means I have a lot of magic tricks on my sleeves.“ He wiggles his hands about with a big smile, showing his empty sleeves and humming happily.
“Are ya hungry? Have you eaten yet?“ He’s careful not to hover over him, instead walking around and looking around the room they’re in.
DESTROY
So I decided to draw a follow-up to that previous Vespa? heh
saccharinisms:
Those were all the words the boy needed to grin and go play with the remaining time he can be here with his friend, talking to him happily and pretending the doll is a real person. He will have to make sure to hide the doll when returning if one of his parents somehow find it, they will not be too happy him. So when it’s time to leave, Koharu sneaks his new friend into his big brother’s backpack for safe keeping. When they arrive home, there is only 30 seconds to spare to pose like nothing ever happened.
Later on when he knows Hikari isn’t around, he takes the doll out from it’s hiding place and runs upstairs to his room, closing the door behind him with a sigh.
“Alright, friend… What should I name you? We have time now! We can play more but y-you need a name.”
Hide listens carefully and lets himself be moved about. He’s hidden away, just like all the other times and when they’re finally alone. When they’re alone he blinks. Looks more alive, more like another little child, and beams at him. “I already have a name! My name’s Hide! What’s your name, kiddo?” He even goes ahead and sits, crossing his little arms and beaming at him. “I’ll be your best friend.”
“You know, I’ve had other friends like you. Are you lonely? You don’t have to be lonely anymore, promise. I’ll always be with you until you don’t need me anymore. You’ll see, one day you’ll have someone to love you. But until that day comes, I’m here for you.”
"Little thing~!"
…it’s a doll.
Kat’s sure that’s what it is. It smells kinda weird, and itfeels weird, but he’s pretty sure it’s a doll. An old one, like the ones inMiss Helsing’s office. She had said they were from when she was a little girl,and her grandmother was a little girl, and her grandmother’s father was alittle boy.
An old, old doll.
So he doesn’t touch it. In fact, he gives it a wide berth.There’s other things to look at in this office building, right? The policeofficer chief guy was a VAMPIRE. That was pretty cool.
The ten-year-old fledgling walked out of the office with ‘Swag’on the desk nameplate.
swagtastic-hiro:
…it TALKS. That’s enough to make Kat stop in his tracks and turn around, looking at the doll cautiously. There’s a lot of weird stuff in this office, but a talking doll?
That’s probably the weirdest, aside from the jello monster.
“I’m safe,” he mutters. And he’s a little offended. He’s ten, not a wimp. “What the worst thing you can get in an office? A papercut?”
“In this office? Prolly! But no. I’m actually meant to protect you. It’s something I promised someone a long, long time ago.” Hide beams and comes towards him. He’s a lot shorter than him but he’s still standing with the sort of confidence an adult has. “Why’re you here kiddo? There’s a lot of bad things in here.”
"Little thing~!"
Koharu had always wanted a friend but mommy and daddy neverlet him outside. Always stuck inside the house with big brother and them. Big brother who waskind but he could go outside while he could not for some reason. Mommy always said it wasdangerous out there, mean people who will take me away if I speak to them butif it was dangerous how come Hikari got to go outside?
It’s not like I’m different, maybe I’m smaller or thinnerthan the average 9 year old boy but why would people want to take him away?Koharu just couldn’t wrap his mind around it. It made no sense, he was like everyoneelse, right?
R-right?
Somedays brother would take him to the park without mommyand daddy knowing. He could always remember what the older would say with thecheesiest grin on his face.
‘What they don’t know won’t kill them, Ru!~’
On one of those days.
Koharu found a doll just abandoned on the ground and picked it up.
Something was odd about it, but it was just like, him. It was left on the ground all—
Alone. Just alone.
So pulling it close to his chest he hugged the doll,whispering softly.
“Y-you look like me…W-will you be my friend, dolly…?”
Hide found little ones like this one. Little ones that needed his help. Even if it wasn’t the nicest way to help them. He turns to the child and smiles. “Hiya there! I’ll be your best friend!” His voice is recorded for now. When they’re alone, he’’ll speak to him and be his best friend. For now, he simply smiles and lets the little one hold him.
swagtastic-hiro:
This was seven different kinds of freaky and wrong with a dash of ‘oh, god, why’ added for good measure. This was wrong to the core. This was…
This was a demon. A real, old, powerful demon.
There are so many little dolls. So many voices. They know his real name, and they’re begging him to help. His heart wrenches, for some reason. The garland on his head throbs. Think about the mission. He has to think about the mission, because these dolls might be as good as dead but the mage behind him is certainly not.
“Teleport out,” he tells her. “Get out right now.”
He keeps ahold of her. “Leave me here and get out. You can’t handle what’s going on, and I’m barely holding on. Get out!”
He turns to look at the dolls. “They stopped. They stopped the exorcism. It’s okay, just… go back in your doll body, alright?!”
“I can’t just leave you here! I can’t leave! I’m not leaving with my teammates here!” Why would she leave!? She was the only defense he had! ...or was she? He had a deal with this demon. The demon wouldn’t kill him off. But. But the demon would--
She screams as something suddenly pulls on her and she’s gone into one of the black patches. The dolls all tremble. This isn’t them being controlled. This is people turned into dolls. There’s strings on them and they’re all terrified. They’re all whispering and looking around afraid, shuffling closer to Swag, as if he could save them.
“TELL THEM.” The voice both whispers and yells. “TRIED TO TAKE ME AWAY.” There’s a large something coming. And there’s Hide. Or his little body is, it’s trembling worse than the others. “WOULDN’T STOP. TOLD THEM TO STOP. LOOK AT ME. DISGUSTING.”
"Little thing~!"
…it’s a doll.
Kat’s sure that’s what it is. It smells kinda weird, and itfeels weird, but he’s pretty sure it’s a doll. An old one, like the ones inMiss Helsing’s office. She had said they were from when she was a little girl,and her grandmother was a little girl, and her grandmother’s father was alittle boy.
An old, old doll.
So he doesn’t touch it. In fact, he gives it a wide berth.There’s other things to look at in this office building, right? The policeofficer chief guy was a VAMPIRE. That was pretty cool.
The ten-year-old fledgling walked out of the office with ‘Swag’on the desk nameplate.
“Hiya, kiddo!” He’s there with him with a big smile and opens his arms. “What are you doing here all on you’re own? Hm?” He crosses his little arms and beams. Unlike the rest of the dolls, he’s on and about moving and beams at the small child. Children in particular made him very happy. He’s not sure why, but they do.
Not to mention he wanted a friend. And he knew who this was. He still felt the connection. Poor Kat! “I’ll hep you be safe if you want!”
dxmonisms:
“I don’t know, I was raised by an angel who didn’t act like law enforcement.” He’d already mentioned his caretaker, so why bother hiding it, “He was nice and didn’t hate me for being a demon, like most angels I’ve come across. But he seemed to have free will. I mean, he raised me. That probably goes against angel instinct or something like that.” He looked around the training room, “And I knew angels to make questionable choices, Isn’t that like free will? Or is it only upper level angels who are locked into behaving a certain way? I mean, the higher the tiers the more powerful but the more they have to obey, or something like that?” He didn’t know much about angels, his caretaker had never bothered to explain much.
“Maybe he wasn’t as angelic as you thought.” It’s a tiny bit of doubt seeded in, but it’s enough. Regardless he pats his shoulders to let him know to put him down. “Bring one human. And I’ll teach you how to Whisper. It’s not hard at all and we won’t hurt them. Promise!”
A nephilim. By simple clues and cues he’d figured it out. That’s why he smelled both so sweet and acrid. Being cared for by an angel, probably to protect him from angels that would immediately strike him the moment they saw him and demons who would undoubtedly devour him without a second thought. To have just a little bit of divinity inside you...
swagtastic-hiro:
“There’s a demon on the loose. That’s what’s not right,” Swag says quietly. Everything his senses are feeding him is wrong. It’s too dark, too quiet, the smell in the air is too stagnant and heavy. He can barely see the light that the mage is pointing out.
…this is probably another bad decision, but he takes his sunglasses off. His red eyes glint in the dark. He can pick things out now, though large sections of the… basement? They were in the basement. Large sections of the basement are cloudy and blocked off by black spots, like someone took a sponge and left a spot of black paint in random places. They keep moving, and he keeps her from falling or touching the dark spots.
“Hey!” He calls to the dot of light. There’s almost no silhouette near it. “Can you hear me?”
It jingles. Soft. There’s no crying either. No. Yes there is. The closer they come to the little light the louder the whimpering comes. It sounds very much like a child crying. There’s a little body there. a small child sobbing where the little light is. She feels one of her friends here, right here. “....Mark?” The child turns around. No. Not a child.
A doll. Looking exactly like Mark. It twitches terribly and looks at them with terrified eyes. “It h--hurts. T--Tell them. Tell them to st--stop.” It stands but it seems to be in agony as it moves. “It hurts! S--So much! K--Katsuo. Te--Tell them to stop!” There’s so many little lights now. People who used to be people now little dolls all repeating the phrase. She stares horrified. What happened!? Her mind feels like it’s about to snap in two.
“Tell them to stop. Tell them. It hurts. It hurts so much.”
dxmonisms:
“Swag thinks I should act more like - Never mind.” He wasn’t going to tell another demon that he was half angel. That would be stupid. But he was curious about what Hide said about demons being pathetic…
“I know love means several things…demons are pathetic? What do you mean by that? We as demons cling to the idea of loving can save us? But isn’t that what you’re saying not to do? So we cling to people? Are angels better because they don’t need to cling to humans?”
“Every creature is pathetic in their own way but us demons? Angels? We’re the worst. Angels were made for nothing but law enforcement essentially. Messengers. They’re an over glorified cellphone.” Hide stays quiet, picking invisible lint from Hirael’s clothes. “So that essentially makes us demons... the internet I guess. Everywhere, used for everything. Good. Bad. Horrid. The only difference between us and angels is that, regardless of the rules we have to follow we gained what we shouldn’t have.
“We have free will.”
swagtastic-hiro:
“Damn old,” Swag agrees, focusing on seeing further in the dark. His vision without sunglasses in the dark is above-par. He could probably see without the fire if he took them off. But if he takes them off, the smoke, the dark, whatever it is- it’ll get into his eyes. He’s going to save that as a last resort.
The dark eats away at him. He can see it encroaching.
But he keeps moving, because it’s either that or people die.
“Gotta love angels,” he laughs, but the darkness eats the laughter, too. “Too bad we don’t have one around.”
He walks in the direction she points, pulling her along so that she doesn’t stop moving. They come up to a door, and he pulls it open. There’s more darkness. He smells sulfur, and it’s heavy in the air. “Stay sharp.”
At first there was a sort of silence, an echo to things, their footsteps. The moment they open the door, there’s no sound at all. No echoing footsteps. No wind. Nothing. There’s only a silence that feels almost like it’s pushing down and the darkness now feels palpable even. Off, far far away, is a little light.
Almost like a small candlelight. She feels one of her friends there. “The light. There, it’s one of them...” But was it? Why was there just a little light? Maybe it was another fireball! They come closer and closer, even if it takes forever and if she remembers the layout they should have walked downwards to the basement... Actually, everything felt off. She clings harder to him, ready to teleport at any time. “Something’s not right...”
dxmonisms:
“But angels don’t possess things? They just use human forms…” Maybe Hirael was more angel than he thought, “Does my human body count as raw flesh?” Hirael didn’t even know if he could possess something, due to his halfbreed status. He really hoped he could. He wanted to pass as a demon as much as possible.
“Oh. So don’t fall in love with humans? It would be stupid to fall in love with something as ephemeral as a human anyway.”
“Love means a lot of things, little one!” Hied giggles at this and tugs him to go to one of the training rooms he’d seen earlier. “Love isn’t simply a romantic thing. If you become connected to someone, if you think you can be saved by loving, because of what we are, we try so desperately to cling to that. A lot of demons don’t like to accept how pathetic we are.”
Hide giggles at that. “We’re all essentially crybabies looking for something that was.” He’d come to grips with this. Demons as old as he had understood it with time. It’s how they were so strong. If you understood that you were abandoned then there was no reason to cry anymore. It happened. Simple as that. “Angels think they’re so great, being blessed and in their tiers. For what? They’re blind slaves as well to a Will that created them. Pfah!”
swagtastic-hiro:
This is the second time in one day he’s had to wear one of these garlands. Not only is it gross and mushy, but it’s making him feel even weaker than he did before. Obviously, they weren’t meant to be worn all the time.
“Neither did I the first time I tried to exorcise the doll,” Swag pointed out, taking point and walking in front of the mage. He avoided looking at the people coming out of the building. “Ignorance is bliss. Only reason I shook the hand was because nothing else was working and someone was about to die.”
“Stay behind me.” It’s an empty reassurance. He’s so, so tired. “If something goes wrong, you teleport us out.”
She keeps close to him and nods. It’s silent if only for the sobbed whispers and whimpers, like small children crying. Worse, the deeper they go in, the darker it gets. She makes a small fireball and keeps to being besides him now. “It must be ancient.” She says, talking more out of anxiety than to inform him. “We’d read documents of demons like this one, so old they could probably tells us how the world was made.”
There’s sudden absolute darkness and she swears it feels like it’s eating at the little light she has going. She makes the ball bigger. “But those are supposed to be asleep. There’s legends that say angels forced them to sleep. Like, not sleep sleep, more like they were sealed away...”
The darkness is absolute. She stops, clings to him. There’s something nagging at the back of her mind, and she feels the garland throb. This entire darkness is alive and meant to make anyone inside lose their minds. She suddenly feels one of her companions. “Ah! This way!”
dxmonisms:
Hirael nodded, “Cool, and how do I do it? I didn’t know we could affect their souls like that.” He was getting used to the physical contact of the other demon, but he was still wary of him. “And it’s only for humans your connected to, right? Or can it be done to all humans?” He was still curious to learn about being a demon despite his wariness though.
“My handler only really stresses about me, I could just soothe him by obeying him for once.” he deadpanned. “But that would - what? - Warp me? What even is warping?”
“Do you know why we need to possess things?” Wow he hadn’t explained this in forever! It’d be interesting. “It’s because we’re raw. Open flesh if you want to see it like that. Or more like a crab looking for a shell. It’s why we choose a shell that fits us best to possess. Some of us are even strong enough to make one. Though in my opinion that’s a waste of energy.”
His little legs kick as he keeps explaining. “When we obey someone, we start to change. We’re not fitting the shell we inhabit anymore. We’re trying to mimic the soul we’re listening to. I’ve seen it. Demons obeying humans, even loving them. They become i n s a n e.”
swagtastic-hiro:
“This is bad,” Swag says, because it obviously is bad. And because it smells awful, a scent that curls up in his nose and attempts to stab it to death with a cake-scented cooking knife. Man, it smells terrible, the aura in the air is awful, and if Swag strains his ears, he can hear people panicking. “This is really, really bad. Goddamn, why didn’t you ASK me shit before you decided to do whatever you wanted?!”
He brushes off his shirt and pants and then pulls his shades out of his pocket and puts them on. That should keep the smoke out of his eyes. “Look, you got any of those nasty garlands? We gotta try to get the demon back in the doll. Cuz you know, exorcism worked so damn well.”
Judy’s worried sick. Everyone seems to be out here except for her department. “Yeah I do let me get them.” She has the two, what with her thinking Swag would want to be in the exorcism when they finally did it. She hands the gooey mess to him and wears it, feeling some of the dread she’s feeling go away only to be replaced by something heavy on her shoulders.
“They’d dealt with demons before.” She says mostly talking to herself as they head inside. It smells even stronger. There’s soft whispering. No, whimpering. She manages to watch someone being carried out. They seem fine until you see their face. It’s doll like. “We didn’t think this would happen!”