TW: Non/Con, AFAB!Reader, Unhealthy Relationships, Manipulation, Mentions of Non-Human Anatomy, Obsessive Behavior, and Rough Sex.
You weren’t sure when you decided the man living in your house and fathering your daughter was not your husband.
It might’ve been last week, when you caught him sitting in his unlit study hours after he’d promised he would come to bed, his eyes glowing vaguely red as he fiddled with a device you didn’t recognize with tools you’d never seen him use, before. It might’ve been two months ago, when Gabi’s teacher called you into a conference to discuss your daughter’s worrying new obsession with spiders and superheroes and the holographic women that, if what she’s been telling her classmates is to be believed, read her bedtime stories when her father wasn’t home. It might’ve been that first night – when he came home from work hours late and doting a black eye, missing the glasses you would never see him wear again and too shell-shocked to do anything more than stand in Gabi’s doorway and let you fuss over him. You’d done everything you should’ve, kissed his cheek and begged him to tell you what happened and pretended to believe him when he said there’d been an accident at the research facility, but it hadn’t felt right, hadn’t felt like it would’ve if you’d been taking care of the man you’d loved for most of your life.
And, when he snapped out of his daze long enough to drag you into his arms and pull you into a kiss more forceful than anything your Miguel would’ve been capable of, you couldn’t help but shudder, but draw back when his hands started to drift lower and he proved to share your husband’s instability, if only that. That was what made the final decision, really. He wasn’t your husband, but it wasn’t as if you couldn’t see a glimmer of something you recognized when you looked at him.
Or, it wasn’t as if you couldn’t normally see a glimmer of something you recognized.
Right now, you knew the man on top of you was a total stranger.
He wasn’t Miguel. He couldn’t have been. Miguel would never hold you so tightly, never dig his fingertips so deeply into your waist, never be so determined to keep you so suffocatingly close to him. His nails would never be so sharp – pointed claws piercing your skin, drawing blood that dripped down your sides and pooled on the sheets beneath you – and he’d never been so massive, either, bulging muscle lining his arms, his defined chest heaving with every ragged breath and strangled moan, both a far cry from the borderline malnourished lab-rat that was the love of your life. His face was malformed, misshapen; curved fangs poking past his parted lips, distorting the shape of his mouth and leaking drops of luminescent venom that fell onto your chest and coated everything they touched with the same numbing, buzzing static. Even his eyes – the eyes you’d always loved, the eyes you would’ve known if nothing else of your husband remained – were gone, drowned out by the shadows cast over his face, the darkness you couldn’t seem to shake when he was around. What little remained was tinted red and bloodshot, pushed miles past the point of remote familiarity. You’d let this stranger, this thing into your home. You’d let him drive your daughter to school, look after her when she was sick.
You hadn’t let him fuck you, but he was fucking you, and you hadn’t been able to stop him.
The sounds he was making were awful, too. Your husband had been adorably shy, prone to biting his tongue and repeating your name over and over and over again, as if the feeling of your cunt milking his cock made it impossible to remember anything else. This Miguel was, in comparison, couldn’t seem to stop making those terrible noises; throaty grunts and airy moans spilling past his lips, only partially muffled by your skin as he buried his face in the curve of your throat. One of his hands fell to your thighs, curling around it and forcing your knee against your chest, making it so he could force himself that much deeper into you, so he could thrust into you with that much more raw strength. You were glad Gabi was staying at a friend’s, tonight. Her room was next to yours, and you would’ve been surprised if there was an apartment in your building that couldn’t hear your headboard beating against the wall, couldn’t make out every pitchy rise and fall of the drawn-out whine choked out of some deep, vulnerable pocket in your chest as he buried those pointed fangs in the crook of your neck.
You felt him force something into you, your vision blurring as the blood seemed to smolder in your veins. Suddenly, the feeling of his pelvic bone catching on your clit was unbearable, your own slick now burning as it dripped down your thighs. It wasn’t a whine you let out, this time, but a sob – ragged and broken, hitched as it emerged from uncooperative lungs and further fractured by the way his chest pressed into yours as he straightened his back, as he drew back just far enough to smile down at you, to let those cruel eyes go soft and half-lidded. “Oh, mi amor…” You didn’t notice you were crying until his hand cupped your face, until his thumb swiped over your cheek and came away wet. “I could fall in love with you all over again.”
Your husband would never say that. Your husband would never imply that there ever could’ve been a world where he wasn’t in love with you, that there ever could’ve been a life he would’ve led that wouldn’t feature you at its center. Your husband would never grow fangs and claws and force himself on you with all the care and tenderness of a rampaging monster. Your husband—
Your husband wasn’t here.
Your husband wasn’t here, and it didn’t seem like he’d ever be coming back.
You curled into yourself, sobbing unabashedly. Miguel (or, whatever the creature on top of you called himself) welcomed your devastation with open arms, leaning back and pulling you onto his lap, bouncing you on his cock as a low, reverberating purr sparked in the base of his throat and filled what little empty space was left in your bedroom. He watched on as you scrambled to wrap your arms around his neck, letting out a breathy laugh as he nuzzled into the dip of your shoulder and went on. “Fucking beautiful,” he groaned, his cock practically throbbing against the walls of your cunt. “I don’t know how I got by without you. I’m never—” A fractured moan, the tips of pointed teeth ghosting over your jugular. “I’m never letting you leave my side again.”
It was a promise, a threat, spoken with enough dedication to send a cold shudder up the length of your spine. You only realized your mouth had fallen open when you heard your own voice, distant and distraught. “Who... who are you?”
Some part of you expected him to devolve, for what was left of his disguise to fall away and reveal rows upon rows of jagged teeth that would tear into your skin, countless eyes that would stare you down like some trapped insect, half a dozen more arms and hands he could use to grab and grope and pull and maim. You expected blood to spill by the bucketful, flesh to melt away like candlewax, rough edges and broken anatomy and all the terrible monstrosities that had to be lingering inside of a creature like him. You expected all the worst things you could possibly imagine, but in the end, what you got was so, so much worse.
His manic grin melted into a softened smile. He pressed another open-mouthed kiss into your throat before pulling away, staring down at you with more love than anything human could’ve spared. “I’m your husband.” And then, again, as he settled so deeply inside of you, you could only pray you’d be able to forget the feeling of him, one day.
➥ summary: Earth-42 Miles Morales finally learns to allow himself to be happy for once
➥ pure fluff
➥ one shot
Miles Morales had carried the weight of loss on his shoulders for a long time. The untimely death of his father had left a void in his heart, casting a shadow over his life. But amidst the darkness, a glimmer of light appeared in the form of (Y/n), his girlfriend.
Miles had found solace and joy in (Y/n)'s presence. Her infectious laughter and unwavering support had breathed new life into his world, allowing him to let go of his pain and embrace happiness once again. Those closest to Miles, his mother Rio and his uncle Aaron, could see the positive impact (Y/n) had on him.
One sunny afternoon, Miles and (Y/n) sat in Miles' bedroom, engaged in a playful conversation. Their laughter filled the room, as they shared stories, dreams, and aspirations. Miles' eyes sparkled with joy as he listened to (Y/n)'s infectious enthusiasm.
As the conversation lulled, Miles turned to (Y/n), his smile softening. "You know, (Y/n), I can't help but feel so incredibly happy when I'm with you. It's like all the weight of the world disappears, and I can just be myself," he confessed, his voice filled with warmth.
(Y/n) reached out, gently placing her hand on Miles' arm. "I feel the same way, Miles. Being with you has shown me what true happiness feels like," she replied, her voice filled with love and sincerity.
Miles' eyes flickered to a photo on his desk—a picture of him with his father, Rio, and Aaron. A bittersweet feeling washed over him as he thought of his dad. He missed him dearly, but he knew his father would want him to find happiness in life.
Rio, who had been passing by the room, stopped in the doorway, a warm smile gracing her lips. She observed the tender moment between Miles and (Y/n), her heart swelling with pride and joy. She had witnessed her son's transformation, from a grieving teenager to someone who had found happiness and love.
As the days turned into weeks, Miles' newfound happiness became apparent to everyone around him. His uncle Aaron, who had been like a second father to him, took him aside one evening. They sat on the rooftop, the city sprawled out before them.
Aaron observed Miles, his gaze filled with pride. "You've come a long way, Miles. Your father would be proud of the person you've become," he remarked, his voice filled with affection.
Miles nodded, a mixture of emotions washing over him. "Thank you, Uncle Aaron. I know he would want me to be happy, and being with (Y/n) has brought that into my life," he replied, his voice filled with gratitude.
Aaron placed a comforting hand on Miles' shoulder. "I can see that, nephew. You deserve all the happiness in the world," he said, his voice filled with sincerity.
In the following weeks, Rio also noticed the change in her son. She sat with him at the kitchen table one evening, their conversation laced with warmth and understanding. "I'm glad you found someone who makes you happy, Miles. Your father would have loved (Y/n)," she expressed, her voice filled with a mix of joy and nostalgia.
Miles smiled, his heart filled with love for his mother. "I think so too, Mom. (Y/n) brings out the best in me, and I'm grateful for her every day," he replied, his voice filled with affection.
Together, Miles, (Y/n), Rio, and Aaron formed a supportive network, celebrating each other's happiness and offering love and guidance. As Miles embraced the joy in his life, he became an inspiration to those around him—a reminder that even in the face of loss, happiness can be found.
summary: reader finds Miles’ sketchbook, learns two secrets of his.
warnings: snooping, so…much…fluff… dies, literal cringe and it makes me sick, awkward love confession
word count: 0.6k
A/N: the idea of snooping in someone’s sketchbook without them knowing physically pains me as an artist DON'T DO IT!!!
You were making your way over to the Morales household, it was summer break and you’ve been spending almost every second weekend over at their house. You get to their apartment, taking the stairs up to their floor. You check your phone as you walk to their unit, making sure Miles didn’t have to go anywhere last minute.
You knock on the door, your hands shoved inside the pockets of your pants as you wait for someone to open it.
“Who is- oh hello!” Mrs Morales opens the door, instantly recognizing your face.
“Hola Mrs Morales” you smile, giving a small wave as she invites you in.
Your eyes scan the apartment for any sign of Miles, but you don’t see him.
“Is Miles here?” you ask, taking off your shoes and putting them on the shoe rack.
“In his room” she smiles, going back into the kitchen.
“Thanks” you smile back, heading to his room.
You open the door, looking inside your best friend’s all too familiar bedroom. You don’t see him, so you frown as you take a seat on his bed, setting down your backpack. You wonder if he’s just in the bathroom, so you grab your phone and send him a text.
“I’m here!” you message him, waiting on a response.
You put your phone back into your bag, looking around again. Your eyes land on his sketchbook, and even though you know you shouldn’t snoop, he was your best friend and you were interested in what he’s been up to.
You open his sketchbook, and at first, it’s filled with his normal graffiti art. But as you skim through the pages, you see an influx of a singular person. You wonder if maybe you’re just overthinking it, but that person looks a lot like- you?
Those drawings aren’t even the weirdest thing in his book, you see the occasional Spider-Man suit- redesign?
You furrow your eyebrows and widen your eyes at the designs, does Miles work with Spider-Man? Or is he just a super fan? You don’t even let your brain consider the possibility that Miles is Spider-Man, like come on, my Miles?
You are so focused in thought that you don’t hear as footsteps approach the door, and as the door knob twists open.
“Hey sorry I was- WAIT NO” Miles shouts, reaching for his sketchbook in your hands, yanking it.
“I’m sorry I’m sorry!!” you exclaim, putting your hands up in surrender, your eyes still as wide as ever.
“Don’t look at that!” he says, not even making eye contact with me as he throws it onto his desk.
“I’m sorry I- I don’t even know why I looked at it!” I apologize profusely.
He doesn’t look at you, but you can see as his cheeks get red.
“Please, I’m very sorry” you tilt my head at him.
“It’s- it’s fine” he sighs, sitting next to you on his bed.
You both sit in silence for a while, your fingers play with your pant fabric as you sit still.
“Can I ask you something?” you abruptly ask, turning to face him.
He gulps and looks at me, his eyes wide. He looks like a deer caught in headlights.
“Are you Spider-Man?” “I like you” you both blurt out at the same time.
Now it’s my turn for my eyes to widen, and his jaw drops.
“Wait- no- uh” he tries to backtrack, stumbling along the way.
“I like you too” “I am Spider-Man” you both blurt out again
His eyes widen and your jaw drops.
“Woah” you laugh softly, smiling.
“I can’t believe you're actually Spider-Man!” you exclaim, shaking my hands.
“I can’t believe you actually like me?!” he says.
We sit in silence, letting our happiness and shock simmer down.
“So uh, can you show me the rest of your drawings?” I rub my neck, smiling as I scooch closer to him.
He smiles back, getting his sketchbook back from his desk.
A/N: Sorry to keep changing my Format layout!!! I’m still trying to figure out what I want all my fics to look like, and I write on two devices so it’s hard to get them to look Identical! But I hope you enjoy it!!!
Warnings: Gwen being a little creepy and climbing in a window, abandonment, just basic angst
~~
Gwen didn’t anticipate any of this to happen. When she heard the report on the police radio she thought it would be quick, even if her father was there. What she couldn’t have expected was for someone from another universe to be who she was dealing with. The guy looked almost out of an old, colorless comic book. Wings and clothing that seemed more like paper mache than metal and cloth, and a mask that reassembled that of a bird's beak. Gwen was more than confused to say the very least.
He was a difficult opponent, something she had not expected to be dealing with that night. What she also didn’t expect to deal with was two more masked figures to drop from a multi-colored portal and attempt to fight more against her than with her. His name was Miguel from what the woman said, and her name was Jess. They were skilled at their job, but it irritated Gwen that they barely let her help. Treating her as if she were a toddler, not a crime-fighting vigilante. But they got it done, even if there were a few casualties. When Gwen dropped from the ceiling next to Miguel, the last thing she expected to see was her father, pointing a gun at her head, even though her mask was off.
Needless to say, Gwen was not truly thinking when she went through that portal, leaving everything behind. She wasn’t thinking about her friends that would notice her absence from school and the garage band. She wasn’t thinking about her father, who would now have to grapple with the fact that his daughter was the one he had been hunting down for months, swearing vengeance against with all his heart, and she wasn’t thinking of you. How you’d get a call from her father, vaguely stating that she went missing and he didn’t know if she’d be back. She didn’t think of how you’d drop to the floor, clutching your chest as you nearly screamed from sobbing. Tears staining the carpet of your kitchen as you felt your world almost shatter in front of your eyes. She wasn’t thinking of how you’d stop eating, or how your grades would decline, or how you’d be alone at night, your late-night calls and conversations no longer there to fill the void of insomnia anymore, so you’d just lay there, your body feeling numb from the pain you had been feeling all day, every day, for months.
Gwen didn’t forget about you though. As she began her new career at the Multiversal Spider Hub, she began to realize just how different this life would be, or more specifically, how different it was not to have you around. The sound of your voice and laughter no longer rang in her ears like a melody. The warmth of your embrace and the softness of your lips were almost forgotten by her body like a nostalgic memory one remembers in the darkest of times. Gwen hated how easily her body was forgetting, and how easily she was letting it. But it’s not like she could go see you. No, she was given strict orders not to visit you, or miles, and getting thrown out of this position meant having to face her father, and that was something she didn’t think she’d ever be ready to do. So she continued with the missions they gave her, following their rules and operations, and no matter how hard she tried to forget you, to purge your smile and shining eyes from her brain, she couldn’t. It was torture. It had been months since she’s last seen you and it was like she was going through a withdrawal. She was constantly craving you, just to hold your hand one more time would be enough she thought, if she could just go see you once, she didn’t even have to talk to you. Just to make sure you were ok, that you hadn’t forgotten her either. It was mildly selfish, she knew that, but she couldn’t care less as she discreetly snuck back into the universe you both shared.
It was darker than she remembered. Without Spider Woman crime had begun to rise, and with the chief of police grappling with losing his daughter, the police force was suffering an enormous blow. In some ways, it still looked the same. The city park, where you and she would sit for hours on a picnic blanket, talking about complete nonsense and laughing about nothing, eating food that you either prepared or had bought, and just being happy with life. The school where you two had met, both waiting for the bus to take you home, as you both kept glancing at each other and sharing quiet smiles. Then, there was the Trade Center. One hundred stories up there was a landing deck that she took you to after you found out she was Spider Woman. That was where she asked you to be her Partner. That was the place you’d always go together if you needed space from life, to just be where you wanted to be and not worry about any other responsibility that life required. She missed those times. They were a lot simpler than what she had to deal with now, and she regrets never realizing how much she actually had before she let it all go.
As she stepped from the building she had emerged from, she started towards your apartment building. Her muscle memory led the way as she remembered swinging to your house almost every day, no matter the time because she knew you’d always leave the window unlocked for her. No matter how many times she told you it was unsafe, you told her that you were dating Spider Woman and you knew she’d protect you, which would then lead to you two cuddling and watching a movie.
When she stopped outside the emergency stairs near your window, she contemplated stopping. What was she doing? She didn’t even know if you would want to see her after she just left without saying a word to you. What if you didn’t love her anymore? What if you loved someone else? What if you didn’t even live here anymore and she was about to get shot by a 50-year-old man with a handgun? Pushing those thoughts aside, she peered into what she remembered to be your bedroom window, and when she saw you, she almost began to cry.
There you were, snuggled into your twin-sized bed, blankets tucked around your body like a burrito and your face was all but smooshed into your pillow. Your nose was scrunched and your mouth was open slightly, making her sigh. She missed seeing you like this. She missed coming to see you every night, for no reason but to just see your face.
She knows she should leave right then. Control herself and step right back out the window and leave because she had no right to waltz back into your life after she had no idea what had been going on with you since she left. But she couldn’t. It was horrible she knew but she couldn’t just leave. She had to talk to you, hug you, kiss you one last time, even if she knew one last time might be a lie. But she wasn’t able to before her comm dinged.
Scrambling out the window, not bothering to check if she woke you, she looked at the message displayed on the screen.
Earth 616 Possible danger. Contain the threat and report back.
Which was then followed by,
Don’t Go See Him.
~~
I stayed up pretty late writing and editing this since people seemed to like it so much! I hope you enjoy!
Have you ever thought about releasing your drabbles or flash fictions ? This might be a silly question but I just absolutely adore your writing style and am so inspired by it so I always love getting new content from you 💓💓
You stepped into the corridor to spot Miles Morales rounding the corner in the opposite direction of your dorm room, his eyes downcast as he hurriedly rubbed some webs off his palms.
“Miles!”
You lifted an arm to wave at him once he turned.
Miles whirled around and stood as tall as he possibly could have, bouncing on his heels a bit. “Yeah?” He tightened his grip on his backpack straps when you walked toward him with a curious frown.
After glancing at your surroundings for any prying eyes, you looked at Miles and whispered, “My roommate didn't come back again last night.”
Another glance proved useful when it yielded the sight of a group of students looking over their shoulders at you, but a few moments of silence, as well as a brief glare, convinced them to return to talking among themselves.
You turned back to Miles, who had not moved at all. “I was wondering if you saw them by any chance?”
This drew a lengthy “uh” from him as he opened his mouth as if to say something else, only to keep making the same sound. It was not until you tilted your head at him that Miles peeked at the adjacent wall and spoke with a stilted tone as if he were a first-time actor rehearsing his lines.
“I don't know anything about that.”
You slumped in disappointment and scanned the area for another person to ask, so Miles raised his hand and pointed a finger at you with his best imitation of a surprised smile.
“But you know who might know? The security guard!”
Just as you were considering the distance between Salas's office and the art classroom, your cell phone rang. A Japanese hip-hop song that you did not remember setting as the ringtone started to echo in the corridor and earned dozens of annoyed glances.
Miles gaped and squeezed the straps on his backpack so hard that his hands began to tremble. A bead of sweat rolled down his cheek, which he wiped with the back of his hand while muttering the words, “Not yet.”
A quick look at the phone screen revealed the caller to be Peter B. Parker.
As soon as you answered the call, your ears were bombarded with the hubbub of a busy restaurant. You could nearly smell the French fries steaming in vats, the patties flipping on grills and other fast food being peddled and devoured over the phone.
Indistinct chatter filled the background, and a rapid series of oinks and slams interrupted a nearby conversation.
Closest to the speaker was the sloppy noise of someone chewing a hamburger and slurping on a straw. “Hey, kid!” came a deeper voice from the other end of the phone, this one slightly distorted and muffled by a mouthful of bread and meat.
“Heard you're down a roommate.”
At this, you cocked your head and lowered the phone from your ear. You watched as the screen flashed the name “Peter B. Parker” again, but instead of resuming the call, your narrowed eyes rose to meet the sweat running down Miles's forehead.
“Miles, how does he know about my roommate?”
The sweat was like raindrops on his face now as if there was a thunderstorm crashing and booming just above his head. With his eyes darting from the ceiling to the floor to the walls, Miles was caught on each word and let one too many long pauses fall between his quickening breaths.
“I may have let it slip at our last get-together.”
The volume of his voice kept dropping until he was almost whispering by the end. He had raised his shoulders and tensed them to the point of crinkling his eyes and clenching his jaw at the discomfort.
His fists balled when you continued to inspect him, which drew a perturbed silence from you that you broke moments later.
“It only happened last night.”
Miles attempted to relax his fists and looked away, managing a chuckle and a faint smile. “Yeah, we got together early this morning.” His eyes lacked the dark rings that appeared when he spent the night slinging webs and throwing punches.
“Kid? You still there?” questioned Peter B. Parker before you could further interrogate Miles.
A brisk look at the clock hanging on the wall threw a cold chill over you. Its tick-tocks seemed to happen sooner and move the arms faster with each second that you counted them. Turning away, you faced the floor and shouted into the phone, “My art class starts in five minutes!”
The crunch of a French fry being gobbled was audible. “Ah-huh. Wanna grab a burger and tell us about it?”
Just as you were preparing to refuse his offer, one word stuck in your mind.
“Us?”
A crash followed the clatter of porcelain plates slamming into each other. The noise shifted from left to right as if someone was sliding across the table, and the thumps of multiple hands clutching the phone were joined by a decisive pig's oink.
The voice of Peter B. Parker, now distant, grumbled, “Yeah, yeah. Like they really want to hear about the golden ratio over lunch.”
This battle for the phone resulted in the comical voice of Peter Porker crossing over into your ear. “I can teach you everything you need to know about art!” His mouth was way too close to the speaker and prompted you to wince, but it was soon wrestled out of his hands.
What came next were the sproings and boings of Porker jumping up and down in a fight to be heard. “I'm a cartoon!” he shouted, running out of breath midway through the declaration. “No schoolteacher can do better than a living art piece!”
Finally, Porker collapsed on the table with a thud and a rattle.
Static, the movement of air and breathing of inconsistent volumes filled your ear as the phone was turned upside down and carried at various distances from someone's face. “How does this gizmo work?” asked a low, almost gravelly voice.
Peter B. Parker hummed in the background. “Just hold it to your mouth and talk,” he replied in the middle of a large bite into his hamburger.
The static interference vanished at once, and the monotone of Peter Parker became clear. “Play hooky with us, kid. I used to ditch college every week in my day.”
Hiding between the shouts and struggle of the others was the calmer voice of Gwen Stacy. “We saved a seat for you.” The smile on her face was evident in her tone, with the clear amusement exposing the way she relished watching her comrades squabble.
“It's next to me!” came an excited shout from Peni Parker, who was sitting farther away from the phone.
Gwen chuckled, “She wouldn't let it go until we agreed.”
A wave of cool water sprayed you from above, and the chink-chink of the sprinkler system rained down on the corridor. Screams filled the school as students ducked for cover and hid inside the nearest classrooms.
You looked up to squint through the water, your gaze dropping when the phone line went dead.
TW: Non/Con, AFAB!Reader, Semi-Public Sex, Tentacle-Adjacent Sex, Prolonged Stalking, Psychological Abuse, Themes of Grief, and Kidnapping.
You were starting to think that your apartment might’ve been haunted.
The science-focused part of your brain was forced to look at the evidence, to acknowledge how many well-accounted-for articles of clothing and minor keepsakes had gone missing over the past few weeks, to count how many times you’d caught shadowy figures flickering in the corner of your eye, to take stock of all possible causes and admit that, tragically, a temperamental spirit was the only remotely plausible explanation, even if you had to use the term ‘plausible’ more loosely than you’d like to. It made sense – or, it made as much sense as invoking supernatural entities could, anyway.
On the other hand, the part of your mind that paid rent every month and vacuumed twice a week really, really didn’t want your apartment to be haunted and vehemently denied that ghosts – unseen, untouchable, unsolvable ghosts – were something you’d have to deal with a down payment like yours.
Both parts of your brain could agree that leaving a fully in-tact, as-of-yet unopened bank vault would be a weird thing for a ghost to do, though.
Teeth grit, still dressed in the clothes you’d worn to the memorial, you stood with one foot planted on its overturned side and another lodged in your carpeting, the end of a crowbar you’d borrowed from your loudest downstairs neighbor lodged between the door and the wall where a badly beaten mechanism bound them together. You’d already called the cops, as little as you wanted to do with them or the quote-on-quote ‘heroes’ who’d failed to save him, but the operator had laughed you off of the line and despite the hours you’d spent buried in the deepest trenches of any search engine that would have you, the only report you could find of a bank robbery had taken place in London, on the other side of the world. You’d considered, briefly, that grief had driven you to hallucinations and this was just the first sign of an upcoming downward spiral, but that idea had been swiftly vetoed when you’d tripped over the damn thing and decided it was very much, very unfortunately real. The idea to pry it open had come a few minutes later, after deciding that you probably had a legal right to anything to investigate anything that spontaneously appeared in your living room – ghosts or no ghosts.
You heard something snap, felt the reverberation of a fracture underneath your palms, but the vault didn’t budge. The only thing that changed was your crowbar – the bent claw replaced with a jagged, broken-off tip when you managed to dislodge it from the vault. You winced, swallowing back in an agitated grown. Trial One: Crowbar vs. Spontaneously Generated Vault complete. So far, the vault reigned victorious.
You tried to take a deep breath, to count to ten and tell yourself that this was no different than a failed experiment, a half-baked test that just hadn’t gone your way, but you could still hear church bells ringing in the back of your mind, still picture two empty seats at the front of the chapel – one for Dr. Octavius and the other meant for the CEO of the Alchamax, neither brave enough to show their face. You weren’t even sure why you were so angry. It could’ve been the clipped speech delivered by a company representative who’d barely known him, the closed casket, the way your coworkers could barely bring themselves to meet your eyes despite your stunted attempts at making conversation through the knot lodged in your throat. It could’ve been everything. It could’ve been something else entirely. You didn’t know. You didn’t care. There were already tears streaming down your cheeks, dripping down your chin as you pulled the crowbar back and swung it into the vault’s door. The force of the collision rattled through your body, but you steeled yourself and did it again, then again, then again, until the smooth, black metal was dented beyond any hope of repair and your crowbar was warped and misshapen. Finally, when you were panting and breathless, when your hands threatened to cramp and your shoulders ached in their sockets, you drove the blunted crowbar into the vault’s door with what was left of your quickly draining strength. In the end, your aggression was rewarded with a metallic clang, the sound of something cracking open, and then, what was left of the vault door fell open – nearly taking out one of your feet before you stumbled out of the way.
You clenched your eyes shut, forcing out a ragged exhale and re-tallying your score. Trail II: Crowbar vs. Spontaneously Generated Vault complete. Although the vault put up a good fight, the crowbar’s endurance ultimately persevered. Interference from external factors and researcher’s bias will be considered later on with the assistance of a glass of wine and a mediocre romcom you’ll cry your eyes out to.
Once you’d managed to dampen the lingering heat of your grief-fueled anger, you turned your attention to the bank vault’s contents – the fruits of your labor, the results of your little experiment. You weren’t sure what you expected. Jewelry, maybe, artifacts or century-old paintings some underground dealer had to ditch in a stranger’s apartment for reasons you couldn’t begin to comprehend. Part of you, the part of you that remembered the number written across your last paycheck, couldn’t help but hope for something simple; a disorderly pile of unmarked bills that you’d count and stow away and pretend you weren’t dying to waste. That part of you wasn’t entirely wrong, either.
Neatly stacked in the overturned bank vault, only slightly disrupted by your attempts to pry it open, were stacks upon stacks of neatly organized dollar bills. Or, that wasn’t quite right, actually. They were bills, but they weren’t dollars.
You took one of the bundles in your hand. English pounds – sorted by color and bound together by paper bands toting a logo you didn’t recognize. Huh.
Maybe your next call should be an international one.
~
By the next month, you’d escalated from a vaguely haunted apartment to a full-blown spectral presence that you just couldn’t seem to shake.
Spectral presence. You still weren’t convinced it was a real term, but you’d picked it up after a conversation with one of your coworkers (former coworker, now, you had to remind yourself, one of your former coworkers) when you both stepped out of a quickly lulling group session and you’d off-handedly mentioned your little ghost problem. In the moment, you’d laughed and shrugged and promised to let them know if you ever called an exorcist, but the phrase had stuck, resurfaced the next time you couldn’t find the threadbare t-shirt you’d been wearing for the better part of a decade and cemented itself in the forefront of your consciousness when the aforementioned shirt reappeared on your balcony, a jagged tear running from the collar to the midriff and the hems eaten away to nothing. If that didn’t count as a presence, you weren’t sure what would.
That was the first time your little ghost problem had followed you out of the house, but it wouldn’t be the last. You could practically feel it, now; constantly looming over your shoulder, constantly watching, constantly leaving little trinkets in places it knew you would be. If you could even call them that. They were more like… oddities – rings made of a kind of metal you couldn’t recognize, puzzle boxes you couldn’t seem to figure out, things that should make sense but just didn’t when you looked into them. The only one you’d been able to make sense of so far was a pair of glasses, one of the lenses sporting a hair-line fracture. You’d spent the rest of that day huddled in your closet, the door shut and the lights off. You considered that you could have a stalker, someone or something who loved you enough or hated you enough to follow you around, leaving things you didn’t want to see in places it knows you’d find them, but you didn’t know how a stalker would even start to get their hands on something like that. You didn’t know how anything of his could’ve survived that explosion, but you weren’t in a place to ask those kinds of questions, anymore.
Currently, you weren’t in a place to do much of anything. You’d spent most of the night before sleepless and huddled into yourself, and now, you were glassy-eyes and exhausted, staring down an aisle’s worth of produce blankly as you tried to ignore the chill fanning over the nape of your neck. You kept your tongue caught in your teeth, counting out the micro-seconds between one breath and another with a precision refined by years of measuring the time between stimulus and reaction, holding yourself stiff enough to drown out the unsteadiness. It’d pass, soon enough. It had to pass, eventually. You just had to—
Something brushed against the small of your back and you straightened, snapping over your shoulder and finding, predictably, nothing. You tried to write it off as just another figment of your stress-induced paranoia, a symptom of so many late nights and so little external stimulation, but any hope of calming your racing heart was torn away with you by the feeling of something settling against the curve of your shoulder-blade, then dipping lower, following the curve of your spine before sliding to your hip. It was a phantom sensation – cold and weightless, hollow and so close to intangible – but you could feel it clearly enough to recognize that it was pressing against you directly, frozen tendrils sapping the warmth from your skin without clothes to buffer its awful touch. There was something else to it, too, a sort of buzzing that you couldn’t seem to compare to anything but static. It burnt. It didn’t feel like anything at all.
If you’d been braver, you might’ve glanced down, tried to see if the fabric of reality had opened to reveal some terrible, eldritch thing, but you weren’t and it was all you could do to clench your eyes shut, to cross your arms over your chest and pray that would be enough to protect you from the thin trail of frigid, searing static slowly creeping up your side, drifting to your navel, following the curve of your chest until it was resting just underneath the base of your throat. You weren’t sure what you were afraid of. That it would hurt you, maybe, that the thing that was haunting you for months would realize it could touch you and take the next logical step. You didn’t want to die in a grocery store. You didn’t want to die at all. You didn’t want to—
“Do you mind, dude?”
The static disappeared, dissolving into the open air, and your eyes shot open, immediately finding a strung-out teenager standing next to you, awkwardly attempting to reach for something you must’ve been standing in front of. More out of reflex than anything else, you stepped back, muttering an apology under your breath before retreating out of the store entirely. You decided, when you were a block away and just starting to catch your breath, that you’d never be going back. You decided you were never going to think about what’d just happened to you again.
And, later on, when you realized that you wouldn’t be any safer at home, you decided not to think about your little haunting at all.
~
It was creeping up your spine, again.
“You’ve got more than enough experience for the position we’re offering.”
Lingering at the nape of your neck, pausing, then circling to your chest to trace over your collarbones.
“And I saw your resume, too – very impressive stuff. We’d love to have someone with your qualifications on our staff.”
It usually waited until you were alone, locked in your apartment or curled up under your sheets. It hadn’t touched you again in public since your first physical encounter – something you were thankful for and horrified by in equal measures. You didn’t want to consider the possibility that it was a conscious entity. You didn’t want to think about what it would mean if it knew what it was doing to you.
“There’s just one question. You mentioned that you were formerly employed at,” A pause, a polite smile that meant ‘depending on your answer, you might not be in my office for much longer’, “Alchemax?”
You forced yourself to smile, too, shifting slightly in your uncomfortable leather seat and hoping that would be enough to dispel the trail of frost now gliding down your chest. “Unfortunately,” you started, and your specter dipped lower, past your stomach and into the space between your thighs. You clenched your legs shut, then thought better of it and crossed them, but that did little to stop the chill now washing over your lap, fanning over the inside of your thigh. If you didn’t know better, you would’ve called it groping. “I wasn’t in that department, if that’s what you’re wondering. Our work was supposed to be completely theoretical. None of us knew what was really going on until – well, until everything knew.”
Your total rejection of autonomy appeased the interviewer, who rewarded your sacrifice by nodding his head and shuffling the papers on his desk before launching into some lengthy monologue about benefits and turn-over rates that you couldn’t bring yourself to concentrate on. Your crossed legs offered little protection. The entity’s touch expanded, infecting everything it contacted with that awful static and turning your skin warm, hyper-sensitive. A strange, alien weight fell onto your clit, pressing down harshly enough to earn a sudden gasp, to make you jerk forward and wrap your arms around your stomach. The interview went silent, his expression turning to one of sympathy-tinged confusion. “Oh, are you alright?”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I’m just—” You tried to straighten your back, to brace yourself on the arm of your chair, but the entity dipped lower, two finger-like projections tracing down the length of your slit and you forced yourself to stand in spite of your unsteady legs. “It’s just been so humid, lately. I think I might need to step out and get something to drink—”
“Please, let me.” No, no, no. You needed to be somewhere else, to find a broom closet to hide in until this was over, but you couldn’t say that, couldn’t explain that all you wanted to do was get away from here and run farther than this entity would be able to follow you. You couldn’t say much of anything as you fell back into your seat, as your interview offered a curt apology and fled his own office before you could do the same. You might’ve thanked him, but you couldn’t be sure. It was impossible to hear anything over the sound of your own heart beating in your ears.
As you feared, the entity seemed to know that you were alone. Its formerly ginger touch turned aggressive, dull fingertips (because they were fingers, you couldn’t deny it any longer, couldn’t claim this thing was as far from human as you hoped it would be) burrowing into the inside of your thigh harshly enough to bruise before pulling back and turning their attention back to your cunt, your clit. It was more than just the ghost of sensation, now – the pad of a thumb pressing into the sensitive bundle of nerves and drawing loose, quick circles into your clit. Your body, senses dialed up by paranoia and defenses thinned by exhaustion, reacted instantly, an unfamiliar warmth pooling in your core as you dug your nails into the leather seat and tried to hold yourself still, tried to stop your stupid, stupid body from doing anything that’d suggest you wanted to be molested by a ghost.
You grit your teeth, to clench your thighs together, but your resistance only seemed to make it more aggressive. You felt a hand curl around your ankle and jerk your leg to the side, forcing your legs apart. It was quick to fill the empty space, three fingers pressing into your entrance as the heel of a palm continued to torture your clit. Whatever chill it carried, you were burning hot enough to balance it out, now, to leave you struggling to ignore the slick starting to dampen the inside of your thighs, the wet sounds that echoed off the blank office walls as two fingers slid into your pussy – only vaguely muffled by fabric still between you and it. Suddenly, the material of your dress-pants felt thin, transparent, and against your better judgement, you forced yourself to look toward the door. The interviewer had closed it on his way out, but it wasn’t locked. You doubted it was soundproof, either. If you were lucky, they’d be short-staffed, and no one would have a reason to pass this specific office though this specific hallway. And, if you weren’t…
You choked back a ragged groan as the fingers inside of you started to move, started to do more than just grope and tease and haunt. Rather than numb, rather than paralyze, the static seemed to tote a much, much worse side-effect. There was a sort of… buzzing vibration, a resonating tremor that made you want to lean back, go slack, and let the sensation wash over you. You couldn’t, though. Even if you forfeited the job, gave up on the idea of ever working in this industry, you knew you’d never be able to show your face in public again if someone walked in and you had to explain what was happening to you right now. That was, if you even could explain what was happening to you right now.
You caught the inside of your cheek in your teeth, biting down until you tasted blood. The digits quirked upward, rubbing against your pulsing walls before scissoring apart, stretching you open. There was no pattern to it, no method you could track and prepare yourself for. If you didn’t know better, you’d call it experimental. If you didn’t know better, you would’ve called it clumsy.
You could feel your face heating up, a knot of tension growing tighter in the pit of your stomach, but rather than sped up, push forward, force you further towards that inevitable ledge, the entity’s hand pulled back, rubbing one more careless pattern into your clit before falling away completely. You let out a sigh that was equal parts relief and disappointment, letting one last disgusted shudder run through you before straightening your back and—
And forcing a palm over your mouth just in time for a tongue, wet and thick and cold, to run over your cunt, hauling you back to the edge just as quickly as you’d pulled away from it. It was rough, the texture too savage to be human, and so wet, the slick you’d been trying to ignore was immediately replaced with thick, freezing saliva. Even the length seemed designed to torture you – long enough to lap over your entrance and your clit in the same slow, aching stroke; to thrust into you and fill the space its fingers had left empty. Memories of a course on specialized biology resurfaced in the fog of forced pleasure and helpless confusion, something about the evolution of a giraffe’s tongue and then, in another lecture, of the practice of masturbation among dolphins as a marker of their intelligence. You’d hated that fucking class. You hated that you were thinking about it now, instead of doing anything useful.
Its tongue was wider, more flexible than its fingers had been. It didn’t have to stretch you open, no, not when it was big enough to keep you full as its tapered end curled and probed against the walls of your cunt. Two fingers pressed into your clit, drawing loose patterns while its tongue split you open so gracelessly, so brutally, it almost circled back around to feeling good. You didn’t try to stop yourself from grinding into it, anymore, letting your legs twitch and your hips buck freely as it worked, as it tore you apart with all the care of a predator gnawing at slabs of raw meat. Every scrap of your limited energy was devoted to keeping yourself quiet, to stifling the needy whimpers and little whines that managed to escape despite your best efforts to silence them. That terrible buzzing seemed to grow stronger, now intense enough to send pulsing jolts of pure electricity from your pussy to your core, and you doubled over, blunt nails biting into your own skin as that thing finally shoved you over the side and brought your body to a trembling, blinding orgasm.
It nursed you through your climax, and as the euphoria faded and the aftershocks dulled into sharp, searing pangs, you managed to speak, your voice hushed and shaking for reasons that were entirely beyond your control. “Go away,” you forced out, praying that your interviewer had left the building, that there had never been a research center here at all and you were just sitting in a condemned building crying about nothing because grief had driven you insane weeks ago and you were just too lost in your own delusions to notice. “Please, go away.”
There was a second of hesitation, a lingering chill against the inside of your thigh, and the entity chose to show its first sign of mercy and finally, finally leave – its cold tongue lapping over your cunt one more time before disappearing completely. You had a second to pull yourself into a more dignified position, another to make sure you didn’t look like someone who’s just gotten finger-fucked by a ghost in the empty office of a higher-up who had to already think you were some mad-scientist reject before the door swung open, your interviewer stepping back in and smiling at you as if nothing in the world could’ve possibly been wrong.
His eyes flickered over your hollowed expression, your wide eyes, your unsteady posture as he handed you a lukewarm bottle of water. You could only wonder why it’d taken him so long to get. “Are you…” A pause, a slight wince. You tried to pretend you didn’t notice. “…feeling alright?”
“Just fine,” you said, your voice hoarse, barely audible. You managed to brace yourself on the arms of your chair, pulling yourself upward and leaving the bottle forgotten in your lap. You didn’t want to drink anything. Not until your hands stopped shaking, at least.
“I think we were talking about my qualifications?”
~
You got the job, despite everything. They asked you to start as soon as you could, but you’d made your excuses, cited a half-remembered clause that’d come with your suspension package and got whoever was in-change of that kind of thing to hold the position for another month. You couldn’t imagine willingly stepping back into that building again, not yet. You couldn’t imagine doing much of anything, not when he still hung over your life like the smoke of a funeral pyre.
It'd been a bad idea, looking back on it. You should’ve worked harder to get yourself out of your stifling apartment. You should’ve done more to keep up with the friends you’d pushed away after the incident, to make sure you didn’t leave yourself socially isolated and alone. You should’ve left town. You should’ve fled the country.
You should’ve done everything in your power to make sure you didn’t end up where you were now, facing down the thing that was currently standing in your bathroom doorway.
Your ghost, you figured – even if it’d been weeks since you genuinely thought you were only dealing with a run-of-the-mill haunting. It looked… blurry, for lack of a more creative descriptor; the white, chalky outline of a humanoid figure standing sharply out against the entirely black background. If it had a body, it was lost in the shadows of the hallway beyond, the shadows it’d created when it appeared out of nowhere and took every light bulb in your apartment out with a single pulse of extra-dimensional energy. Right now, the only source of light was the phone you were clutching in your right hand, your left similarly preoccupied, busy keeping your suddenly very, very thin towel wrapped around your torso. It probably didn’t matter. As far as you could tell, this thing didn’t have eyes, let alone genitalia.
That was what the rational, scientific part of your brain said, at least. The rest was replaying the memory of the way its hand had felt as groped at your thighs and couldn’t seem to comprehend much else.
You half-expected it to lunge at you, or rather, to creep at you, to disappear and reappear just outside of your peripheral, too far to see but close enough to sense. In the end, it only had to take a step forward, its movements slow and jerky, as if it wasn’t used to carrying its own weight just yet. Did it even weigh anything? Could you weigh something that clearly wasn’t supposed to exist? It didn’t really matter. You already knew it could touch you. You already knew it could kill you, if it wanted to.
Another step, then another. It closed the distance between you easily, coming to a stop less than arm’s length in front of you. You could see it more clearly, make out a smear of color in the void, like light catching on an oil spill. The white lines that bordered its form were moving in a way you hadn’t been able to make out from across the room, too; trembling and shaking, constantly shifting as if it was only ever a second away from falling apart entirely. If you weren’t so scared, you’d be tempted to reach out, see what happened when you made contact with it, rather than the other way around. If you weren’t so afraid, you might’ve been able to do anything.
It lifted a hand, reaching towards you with those same unnatural movements. Its fingertips brushed over your skin, painting a strip of frost across your cheek, and you felt your blood turn to ice. You couldn’t hear the buzzing, but then again, it might’ve just been a sign that you’d already gone deaf with fear.
You opened your mouth, but speech was hindered, your internal monologue limited to a never-ending mantra of ‘go away go away go away go away go away’. Eventually, you managed to spit something out, even if your voice was barely above a whisper by the time it reached your lips. “I don’t want you here.”
There was a second of stillness, of silence. You started to wonder if you’d made it angry, if it could be angry. You started to wonder if it could understand you at all.
Your makeshift flashlight wavered, sputtering a few times before giving out completely. You scrambled to turn it back on, to not be left alone in the dark with a monster, but your apartment flickered back to life and you found yourself standing alone, the entity having blinked out of reality in the time it took your eyes to adjust to the light. The only proof that it’d been there at all was your dead phone and how violently your hands were still shaking.
You considered leaving your apartment. You considered leaving the city – renting a car and driving as far as you were able to. You’d sleep in whatever shady, cheap motels would have you, start a new life across the country with only your meager savings and multiple PhDs to keep you afloat. You’d change your name. You’d get away from here, away from it. It wasn’t like you had much of a choice, now that the infestation had spread to your sanctuary, too.
You took a shuddering breath, then set your phone down and let your towel fall away. You didn’t bother getting dressed before climbing into bed and curling up underneath your sheets, hoping in-vain that your comforter would be enough to hide you from any unseen voyeurs.
Some part of you must’ve already known that it wouldn’t.
~
You couldn’t remember waking up.
You must’ve, at some point. But, if you had, you would’ve remembered being brought here, would’ve been able to recognize the feeling of countless hands wrapping around your wrists, your ankles; countless mangled tendrils tangling around your fingers and dripping down your arms, snaking up your legs until you were entirely at its mercy. The numbers didn’t add up. There were too many hands, too many moving parts, too many things for your confusion-addled mind to keep track of. You couldn’t seem to figure out if you were suspended mid-air or if the gravity was different, if you were genuinely as weightless as you felt. That, more than anything, fueled the growing nausea twisting in the pit of your stomach, the growing sense of wrongness that threatened to tear away what little stability you had left. What little sanity you had left.
You tried to look past the awful things wrapped around you, to ground yourself with something beyond shifting colors and distorted limbs, but whatever pocket dimension you’d been dragged into didn’t offer much comfort. An expanse of white stretched on as far as you could see, only interrupted by free-floating pools of pure darkness; drops of ink spilled across an otherwise blank canvas. Occasionally, the landscape would waver, leaving you in a pure void broken up by streaks of colorless flesh that’d burn themselves into your sight and linger as phantom visions for seconds after the false reality corrected itself. Even the feeling of its skin against yours was off-putting, unsettling, lacking the warmth that would’ve accompanied the touch of anything human. Where there should’ve been comfort, there was nothing, a total absence of life and familiarity to a degree you’d never experienced before. Where there should’ve been intimacy, there was strangeness, and you’d never taken well to strangeness.
A pang of pure ache ran from your cunt to your core, a sort of numbing electricity that made your legs twitch and your body seize. Right, you’d managed to forget. It was touching you, beyond just the hands shackled around your wrists and ankles and the amorphous tendrils laving over any part of you they could reach. Two fingers kept your pussy spread open and vulnerable while a thick, tapered tendril thrust into you at the kind of idle, languid pace that was simultaneously infinitely merciful and too agonizing to put words to. That was one of the only things you could feel – the agonizing stretch, the tight knot of tension sitting in the pit of your stomach. If you’d been able to move anything beyond your eyes, you might’ve gagged. If your body had been something tangible, something real, you might’ve felt sick.
The tendril curled inside of you, and every fiber of your being seemed to wither. Struggling was pointless, but you still had to try, thrashing against your restraints, digging your nails into that obsidian flesh and praying to whichever deity would listen that it wouldn’t think to fight back. Fortunately, your blunt nails and weak thrashing didn’t seem to faze it. You weren’t sure if it knew you were there beyond some unconscious tactile sense, like a freshly triggered venus flytrap closing around its victim. You weren’t sure which was more horrific – the idea that there was some sentient, self-aware being knowingly and decisively doing this to you, or the passing thought that you’d just been caught in the mouth of some mindless creature that happened to like the way you tasted.
You decided not to think about it. You decided not to think about anything. You decided that, if you kept your mind totally blank, if you refused to count how many times you’d caught a lingering shadow in the corner of your eye or felt a stray hand brush against the small of your back, if you refused to feel its disembodied tendril filling your cunt, then none of this was happening, then you weren’t trapped in an plane of endless nothingness and you weren’t being fucked by the monster that’d been haunting you for months, now. You clenched your eyes shut and promised yourself that you couldn’t feel its dulled tip rubbing against that sensitive, softened spot inside of you, that your hips didn’t buck as another hand appeared from a puddle of kaleidoscopic ink and pressed three fingers into your abused clit, that it didn’t matter if warmth was starting to pool in your core because it couldn’t matter.
Ignoring it wasn’t an option, though. It wouldn’t let you ignore it – its pace changing, speeding up, getting rougher as you failed to stifle your reactions, failed to swallow down the little gasps and moans that slipped past your parted lips. It was almost brutal in its unyieldingness, fucking into you with enough force to bruise as you writhed and scratched and screamed. There was no remorse, no care, just its forceful affection and your body’s response. Another tendril wrapped around your midriff, another hand falling to your chest, and you let out a long, wordless cry. The entity reacted immediately, the blunt head of a tendril forcing its way past your lips and lodging itself in your throat, forcing you to gag around its bulk. It smelled like ozone – fresh and thrilling and terrible all at once. It tasted organic.
This one, mercifully, didn’t seem to want to hurt you. It seemed content to explore you, to twist around your tongue and prod at every corner of your mouth. Still, tears formed in the corners of your eyes, dripping down your cheeks and pooling on your chest as you attempted not to choke, as you tried not to let the deformed mass fucking into your cunt tear you apart. Your vision was distorted, blurred and darkened around the edges, but you forced yourself to open your eyes, to stare blankly at the new well of ink forming some indescribable distance above you. It was bigger than the others, soon interrupted by a border of white appearing in the darkness, the shape wavering, sketchy, like chalk line drawn with an unsteady hand. Eventually, you made out a shape not unlike the one you’d seen in your apartment all those weeks ago, the ghostly entity that’d barely had to lift a finger to terrify you. This one was different, though – harsher, flitting and flashing in and out of existence faster than you could comprehend. If it’d been a breath away from falling apart the last time you saw it, reality was struggling to hold itself together around it, now.
A head emerged from the darkness, then a neck, then the entity’s broad shoulders. A hand materialized, extending from the pull of darkness and reaching towards you, towards the mess of dark matter and appendages that now all-but entirely encompassed your form. Its fingertips brushed against your jaw, then cupped your cheek, it’s touch careful, ginger, cautious. As if it was trying to be gentle with you. As if it was trying to be loving.
You’re not sure what part of your exhausted mind made the connection, which piece slid into place first. You let your head lull to the side, your jaw fall limp around the tendril in your mouth. You grunted, a premature attempt to speak that it could separate from all the other meaningless, ragged sounds that’d been forced out of you by its invasive touch, and the tendril pulled back, wrapping loosely around your neck. It still took you a moment to find your voice, but you managed to spit out something nearly coherent.
“…Jonathan?”
For a moment, the hands wrapped around your limbs loosened, the tendril attempting to split you in two faltering and before going still.
Then, there was a resounding, resonating purr that seemed to emanate from every corner of the micro-dimension. When the tendril started to move again, it thrusted into you with twice the force, twice the mania. This time, you didn’t have to pretend. You were floating on air, your thoughts blank and your mind empty – your body numb and unfeeling. This time, you knew you wouldn’t be able to get away.
