Tag me if any of these inspire you! I'd love to read the result. :)
Whumpee joins an exploration mission that’s being sent into a place where the air is toxic, so he has to wear some kind of breathing gear; the environment and discomfort cause him to lose his mind and rip the gear off, exposing him to the toxic air and damaging the equipment. The others on the mission have to make an awful decision on who to save.
Denied air, then forced to exercise: muzzle your whumpee or otherwise reduce their breathing ability, then force them to exert themselves. For example, whumper could tape whumpee’s mouth shut, then make them run laps until they pass out. Or force them to wear something that reduces their oxygen intake, then do rigorous chores. Imagine a whumpee on their knees, scrubbing the floor as they struggle to breathe, then passing out on the damp floor amid the cleaning supplies. Such a pretty sight for the whumper to behold…
An airless chamber: whumper has a specialized room that’s been sealed to be airtight, perfect for particularly stubborn whumpees, or even just whumpees that are fun to torture. A couple of minutes in that room, and they emerge weak, gasping, willing to submit just so they don’t have to suffer the horror of suffocation again. And then there’s that one whumpee, the one that won’t break no matter how many times they’re shut in that room. Because it’s not what happens to them that will destroy them, but what happens to the people they love…
Whumpee is tossed into a coffin with their crossed arms bound to their chest and their ankles fastened together, then left there for hours in silence. Claustrophobia sets in and whumpee panics and cries out.
Whumpee is confined to a tiny closet and forgotten while whumper is attacked. Whumpee is discovered by the attackers much much later, completely traumatized.
A is injured and needs to have a brain scan. They start to panic at the idea of being enclosed in such a tight space. The only person who can help calm them down is B, and B is not allowed in the room for whatever reason. Then A sees B through the glass and B’s smile and thumbs-up is enough to help them feel better.
Whumpee is forced to wear an iron mask as punishment. The mask can only be unlocked and removed by someone else, so they’re stuck for an entire day (or however long) unable to speak around the bit in their mouth and also short of breath.
Whumper knows about whumpee’s dislike of anything touching his face and forces whumpee to wear a mask that completely hides his face whenever he’s in whumper’s presence. Eventually the mask becomes part of whumpee’s identity.
Hero is given the gift of a scarf. What he doesn’t know is that it’s actually a gift from the Villain. He also doesn’t know it’s been cursed and will strangle him when the time comes. It won’t kill him, though—it will keep him just alive enough for Villain to interrogate him.
Hero is chained up in a dungeon. His chains are cursed so that every struggle causes more chains to coil around him. Villain enters the dungeon to find him completely wrapped in chains: around his neck, across his mouth, restricting his chest. Villain is amused and decides to leave Hero like that for a while longer.
Hero’s weapon is cursed so that every use weakens him for a period of time. The more he uses it, the more it weakens him each time and the harder it is for him to recover. Eventually his body begins to fail from how much he’s wielded it, but he won’t rest because he’s too fixated on using his weapon to its fullest potential.
Whumper knows that whumpee is deathly afraid of buzzing insects, so he slathers whumpee in something sticky and sweet and ties him up so he can’t wipe it off. Then he leaves whumpee outside to be tormented by insects until he’s hoarse from screaming.
Whumper ties whumpee up, but not too painfully and not to torture them; no, this time whumper is going to draw all over whumpee’s skin, to let them know who they belong to now. They’ll be whumper’s canvas, whether they like it or not.
Whumper is given a drug that induces hallucinations and is bound to a chair and left in an empty room for hours…whumper returns to find whumpee bloodied from straining to escape and delirious with fear.
Whumper knows that the rescuers are on their way, so he slices whumpee up just enough to cause him lots of pain, then rolls him up in a rug and dumps him in a corner where the rescuers won’t think to look. Whumpee’s only hope is to make enough noise that they investigate.
Alternately, whumper binds whumpee up and gags him so he can’t move or cry out, then tosses him in a corner as above, so that whumpee can only listen as his rescuers pass by without even knowing he’s right there.
Whumpee has been kept underground for as long as he can remember. He’s never seen sunlight, only fire. The earthquake nearly kills him, but he manages to survive. The sunlight on the surface sends searing pain through his entire body, starting with his eyes. He’s blinded, crippled with agony from the overwhelming light. A human voice breaks through the pain: “We finally found you. Welcome to the surface, whumpee!”
A fae whumpee is exposed to rain that’s been tainted with iron from an iron factory. The water burns his skin like acid. The whumpee has his chemical burns covered with bandages, but the bandages can’t take away the pain…
Sunlight equals torture. Whumpee knows this all too well. After all, he’s a vampire. But whumper has tied him up in a place where the sunlight is intermittent. Every few minutes, the torture stops and his skin can heal a little…but then the sunlight hits him again, and it’s excruciating.
Whumpee squirms as the sun blazes down on them, panicking because they’ll suffocate as soon as the water in the fountain dries up. They need water to breathe. All merfolk do. But whumpee is chained up and can’t escape. Whumper laughs as whumpee tries to get free. “My little fish out of water. I’ll let you go…as soon as you let me harvest your scales.”
Aerosolized poison for inhuman creatures: poison your whumpees with aerosolized versions of the substances that most afflict them. For example, whumper (maybe a hunter in this case) traps the werewolf whumpee in a chamber rigged with canisters of aerosolized wolfsbane. Or whumper could poison a fae whumpee with an iron-based gas. (Not sure how that would work. Just thinking on the spot here.) Imagine the inhuman whumpee trying to survive by wearing breathing protection, then having it ripped off when whumper attacks them.
One of whumpee’s regular tasks is to take care of the garden, which they don’t mind, as it allows them to spend hours outside, away from whumper. They dread rainy days because it means they’re stuck in the house with whumper and can’t escape outside. It’s been storming for days and whumper is in a particularly nasty mood, which means that whumpee is about to suffer even more, and they’re already not in good shape…
Caretaker is desperately searching for whumpee in the rain, but whumpee is nowhere to be found. The rain is getting worse and worse and caretaker is about to give up…but then they spot something in the grass. It’s a leg. No, a whole body. Whumpee’s body. Whumpee is unresponsive, their eyes glazed, their skin ashen. Caretaker sees that they’ve just about drowned from exposure to the downpour, and it might be too late…but caretaker is going to save whumpee, no matter what.
Whumpee is locked up in a tower that’s crumbling into ruin. Whenever it rains, the roof leaks and puddles of water form on the floor. They can’t escape the damp and are left to try to protect themselves with whatever they can find in the tower. After a bad storm, whumper comes to get them, only to find that whumpee has gotten dangerously sick from the cold and wet and needs help. But whumper refuses to call a doctor…
Usually prisoners are kept in the dark. This time, whumpee is kept outside in a wooden cage. Their only relief from the sun comes at night…but night is when whumper lets them out to torture them. And every time whumpee is thrown back in the cage, they can’t escape from the heat and light. A cold cloth on their bruises would be heavenly. But they can only dream about it as they wait for nightfall…
Whumpee is barefoot and lost in a pine forest. Cold and exhausted, they can only stumble forward in the dimming light, feet scratched and bleeding from stepping on countless pine needles. And whumpee has nothing except the shirt on their back to bandage their feet…
While hiking alone, whumpee slips and falls down a small cliff, gashing their side on a sharp rock. Exhausted and bleeding, whumpee can only lie in the gathering darkness and hope someone comes looking for them. To distract themselves, they start reciting all the song lyrics they can remember. As they’re slipping into unconsciousness, they hear a strange echo of the song they’re humming. It’s caretaker, blasting the song as they search for whumpee in the dark.
A thunderstorm hits when whumpee doesn’t expect it, when they’re out on a walk to clear their head and don’t have shelter. Lost in the driving rain and hail, whumpee has no choice but to shelter in the first place they find: an abandoned shed. The next morning, caretaker finds their bruised and soaked body in the one place they hoped whumpee would never find.
