Hello dear visitor, you can call me Chai. This is my humble whump blog, browse the wares as you please.
Mostly, you'll find reblogs which have caught my eye, but I am beginning to put out wares of my own. So far, there are only the starting sprouts of a series. Branching out into a new genre takes time, so please grant me patience.
Asks and DMs are always open, please interact with me as you like. Trust me, it will never be a bother. Just be aware that responses may sometimes take time to send out. Hate will be deleted without comment.
My Series
Nobody Left To Listen (On Hiatus)
Vampire pet whump. A vampire hunter breaks down vampires into fully domesticated pets. Still on its first legs.
Terry: King's Counsel Mini-Series (Co-Authored by @echo-goes-mmm)
Royalty whump, slavery whump and pet whump. A king is gifted a slave from a foreign empire. Nobody expects them to get along as well as they do.
Cheek: a round dull pain that clocks your entire head in a different direction. Itâs painful and throbs but the main effect of a punch to the cheek is how jarring it is. You feel it in your mouth, your teeth. And no matter how you position that punch the knuckles will always hit the jaw and cheek bones adding a frame of sharp pain in which the redness will be painted.
Temple: getting hit on the temple pushes your head to the side rather than turning it. Itâs disorienting because it leaves you very off balance. It essentially feels like a bad pressure headache, like when you have a sinus infection on a plane, but in one spot and on the outside. Itâs sharp in the middle and radiates outward and even after the initial impact it pulses like an earthquake epicenter. It easily causes long lasting headaches and is the most likely of these examples to cause a concussion.
Eye: this is a weird one. The fist doesnât fit within the eye socket so either the knuckles on the brow and cheeks bones protect the actual eye or they donât. The former option gives a full spreading pain below the eye which results in the classic black eye look and a sharp pain on your brow similar to hitting your shin on the couch. The latter option, well bad things can happen when a hard fast object makes direct contact with your eye but for the sake of this it feels like a vacuum bc the concave shape is being covered and pressurized. The eye feels pushed back and pulled forward all at once. It doesnât necessarily hurt that bad for that long unless the punch was meant to do damage. Iâm fortunate to say I donât know what it would feel like then.
Nose: remember that prank kids used to pull where theyâd line up their hands with their nose, push them in one direction and crack a knuckle at the same time to pretend to break their nose? Yeah thatâs what it looks like when someone punches you from the side in the nose, except itâs someone elseâs hand and your nose makes the sound instead of their knuckle. Itâs just like breaking any bone where you hear it and feel the action if it being done but that moment of shock blankets you for a split second until all the pain comes rushing back. Itâs sharp and needlelike and can give you black eyes just to add insult to injury. If you get hit in the nose from the front itâs like the uncomfortableness of when you have to sneeze but canât. Except that feeling took all the steroids and is now using your face as a punching bag to express its roid rage. It crackles outward like static electricity under your skin, your eyesight gets fuzzy and you canât tell if itâs because youâre tearing up, itâs hard to open your eyes, or youâre momentarily stunned and blinded. Just know itâs all three. I find that this one knocks the wind out of you the most. Gotta remind yourself to breathe just donât try to do it through your nose.
If you really want to know what this feels like Iâd suggest joining a mixed martial arts because theyâll teach you correct form and power distribution and you can spar with pads and actually hit each other.
Iâd also recommend learning what it feels like to punch someone in the face. Itâs much more fun and pretty damn cathartic when they deserve it.
It also depends on how you're punched too. Like, typical punch is thumb over fingers, not tucked inside hand against the palm, and typically the contact is made with the flat part of the fingers closest to your knuckles (as well as, obviously, you're knuckles)
But sometimes people can have odd proportions or wear rings or just be capable of punching someone with two fingers positioned oddly that kinda... Makes the punch a staircase surface instead of flat.
When I punch, I tend to unintentionally have my first two fingers kinda... Pushed forward. Which means my punches aren't... Well they kinda suck to be on the receiving end of tbqh.
The bottom image shows how I punch. The first two fingers are pushed out, sort of, and this, actually, is a much... Stronger kind of punch than a flat one like top image.
In martial arts, you typically get trained to make sure the punch you give uses the first two knuckles on your hand because those bones are stronger and the line from knuckle to wrist to arm is straighter which means force is easier to apply and the "recoil" is lesser for you.
(yes there are technical terms for all this, no I do not remember them, I had a shitty night so brain not working 100%)
Anyway. Back to the hitty hitty things.
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Nose:
Punching someone directly, like at the nose, without pulling your arm back to work up a swing, will have a different effect in terms of injury and the force behind it.
If I hit someone across the bridge of the nose from directly in front of them, the force I put in depends on my own speed, accuracy, and existing strength. If I can't pull back my arm to add extra momentum and force, then it's entirely on me and how I land that hit.
A sharp jabbing motion to the bridge of the nose is enough to bruise and possibly break the nose. It will cause stunning pain, the kind that makes you stop for a moment because your brain kinda stalls from WHITE STATIC OW before the aching settles in.
A hit from the side to the nose, as in a wide swing, is more likely to extensively bruise and cause bleeding but less likely to break the nose. Of course it can still happen if there's enough force behind it, because force and momentum science blah-blah.
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Cheek:
As said before by @burn-brighter-than-fire when you get a hit to the cheek, it tends to be a throbbing ache. Like, the kind of ache you get after the dentist has jabbed you with needles and bullied your teeth in a root canal or an extraction. It's because the tissue and such gets more blood in it, it causes pressure and swelling which in-turn causes more pressure. You can cut the inside of your cheek on your teeth, bite the soft tissue in your mouth, or even get teeth dislodged or knocked out with a good hit to the cheek.
When it's a punch with those first two knuckles hitting you, as I mentioned with the nose above, there is a higher chance of having your inside cheek getting cut or bit in the act of being punched. The force and pressure exerted with a wide arc swing, the kind you see in fancy slow-motion shots in shows and movies (especially Asian dramas which are đ[okay-emoji]) transfer a lot of energy into a relatively solid area with your jaw and cheekbone offering resistance to the punch you're getting. Bruising is common, a cracked cheekbone isn't ultra rare and if you have a "glass jaw"? Oh boy is that punch gonna hurt even more than it would otherwise!
Beyond the initial burn that has you stagger or stumble with the blow, the kind that makes it feel like you've just slapped a hot cloth to your cheek (genuinely, a punch tends to make an echo sensation of burning, just like a slap, because the skin of your face is very sensitive and the friction alone that's caused by the impact is enough to make your skin hurt), what follows depends on things like where the punch actually landed, where those first two knuckles hit, and the kind of punch delivered.
A wide swing will deliver a lot of force with that momentum. Most people don't know how to take that kind of hit and remain standing because, typically, you don't. Genuinely. Most punches that hit that hard will knock someone on their arse.
I know that personally. From both sides of the fight.
Someone who has training or has learned how to take a hit, can take the force and momentum and work with it. They absorb that force, let it push them back, turn them, shift their stance, even stagger with it and go down to one knee.
Turning your head with the hit will lessen it somewhat but it doesn't diffuse it entirely. Your jaw and cheekbone will take the majority of the force and energy in the punch and it will bruise. It will ache. It will throb. The faster your heart is going, the more it will throb in time with your heartbeat. It will creep up your face, along your temple, and become lime a low-level headache or the echo of a hangover.
Sound will cause that throbbing to spike. Every breath you take will cause the ache to flare. You will open and close your mouth and it will feel like someone is gripping your jaw and making that ache pulse each time you do.
If you're in a fight and have to think and move and talk etc after that punch, it will be somewhat dulled because adrenaline, but you can't ignore it. Especially if you're doing a speech or dialogue etc with your opponent.
If the punch hits higher on the cheek, closer to the ear, btw, you will almost certainly feel intense disorientation. More than the punch would cause because of how our ears work. The inner ear canal, the way nerves of the face are arranged over bone and through muscle and sinew etc. It makes it sound you feel like you're kind of trying to hear sound through headphones that have noise-cancelling effects but also happen to be really tinny and bad with bass and treble. Or like you're listening to something with a pair of headphones that are broke and failing to fully share the audio properly.
That pain, no matter where you get hit, will persist and linger. You will bruise, it will swell, you can easily get a split lip from your teeth because of the punch. So can have that to contend with too.
Basically a cheek punch is always gonna ache and throb with spikes of pain that can be hot and sharp or even make you feel tingly and shocky because nausea and adrenaline are not a great mix.
If the punch to the cheek is more of a direct hit, similar to how you can hit the nose while standing face-to-face and don't have the opportunity or space to pull back and deliver a full swing, the force is obviously going to be lesser and the hit closer to the front of the face rather than the ear and side of the face.
This kind of punch is more likely to cause a split lip and cause you to bite or cut your inner cheek because the force is distributed across your teeth and jaw. Unlike a hit to the cheek that comes from the side, there's no "hollow" space for the punch to strike so all the force in the punch gets despised through solid bone and teeth.
Honestly, I'd prefer a punch to the side of the face that makes me feel like I'm underwater with my hearing and a mega hangover over one that mainly hits teeth and my jaw. Genuinely. You can more readily take that kind of hit and stagger with it, adjust your stance to keep your balance etc.
Any punch to the front of the face, or near front, tends to just make you go backwards because your stance and balance tends to not be able to adapt to without giving your opponent more openings to then follow with more hits.
A step backwards as you stagger makes you more vulnerable (in my personal opinion and experience usually) than a step sideways or a stagger to the side because all your weight shifts back and that shifting can be harder to correct or compensate for in a fight, especially if you're disoriented or already injured.
A nice little aside here, specifically for a cheek punch is that if you have your jaw relaxed and muscles slack when you get punched, you will not be as injured. Tension is what makes a cheek punch worse. Tense jaw? Energy transference will make it bruise worse. Tense muscles of the cheek? More likely to cut your inner cheek and get worse bruising, maybe even a fractured cheekbone.
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Temple:
Same as with the cheek punch, if it's force that comes from a side punch, as in a wide arc swing, the force and momentum is gonna really turn your head. It's basically just a blunt force trauma to your temple. Disorientation, balance issues, heck, consciousness issues are expected here.
The pain is sharp and striking, can be easily like static and if I had to assign a colour to a temple injury/punch, then it'd be silver-white that just disrupts everything.
A hangover, a headache that presses and presses and presses is the easiest kind of explanation of the pain a temple strike causes. If you've ever grabbed your head and pressed the flat of your palms to your temples and felt that? That's sort of how it feels. It's a vice that just causes pressure that turns to an ache to a tingling, electric pain. Because blood builds where that punch landed and pressure builds under tissue and skin and it doesn't let up.
Add in a pounding heart and adrenaline and you get a baby migraine that makes following conversation agony. You get lights that stab your ears. Sounds that gouge your eardrums. You get everything aching even if you're not injured anywhere else because your brain is getting pressured and that has to translate to pain, it just so happens the pain ends up feeling like it's everywhere.
And with a temple strike, it doesn't really matter what kind of punch you get. The results tend to be the same. An upper cut, a full swing, a direct single punch with no pull-back and swing? Doesn't matter.
It's gonna hurt anyway.
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Eyes:
Any punch to the face hurts, for sure, but I'd rather not get punched in the eye tbqh. If the punch lands with those first two knuckles, you can easily get fractured eyesockets or your nose broken or a cheek fracture. If it's not the first two knuckles it still can do all that.
A pull-back and swing punch will bruise, make a stinging burning, an audible crunching or cracking if bones are broken or fractured, and that eyeball is probably going to be useless to see out of for a bit because blood and pressure and pain.
The pain can be sharp for a moment and subside to a throbbing that goes with your heartrate or it can be overwhelming because things break under the force exerted.
Unlike the cheek with the bit of padding and "hollow" space, the eye is in the eye socket which isn't a super large space, is hard and not padded like the cheek, jaw, and mouth, so when that full punch lands?
Bones can bruise just like muscle and tissue.
Bones can also fracture and break.
A fractured eye socket is... Its agony in the moment and blinding for a while after. Then it aches and throbs and stings periodically while it heals.
You know how your brain can sort of... White out for a moment when you elbow something? Because, you know, that's your "funny bone" and the nerves get all jangled for a moment? It's because your brain doesn't know how to process the pain for a moment. Then it hits.
If it's a little bang or bump, it stings like a shock and then fades to a throb like a distant rumbling of thunder barely audible to you.
If it's a bigger bang or bump, a jab, or even a fall with all your weight on the elbow joint, it's still a shocking sting but it turns into electricity in your nerves, up your arm both directions, aches and throbs and feels like the impact point is being pinched and twisted over and over until it eventually fades.
Getting punched in the eye is sort of like that.
Your nerves get overwhelmed because they're close to those bones and intertwined with muscle and sinew and ligaments and tendons and so on. That crackling electricity whites out everything for a moment, a split-second perhaps, before it comes back as your brain processes and translates and turns that input into pain pain pain.
I have been punched and kicked and slapped in the face many times before. I've blocked strikes that would have easily knocked me on my arse and caught one's that did. Of them all, getting hit in the eye is honestly the worst.
Because you don't just have the pain to deal with. If you're unlucky, you also have the panic and terror that can follow when you think you're blind in the eye. Because your brain stalls for a moment. It literally stalls from that pain input it has to process and translate and then send back out.
I have had the displeasure of being punched in the eye and felt for a long moment after, easily a few seconds (which can truly make a difference in a fight) that I was completely blind in the eye that got the hit. Because again, as mentioned, the pressure and force sort of... Makes a suction issue. It's like a mini implosion as the socket is covered and your eye pressed back and also pushed forward simultaneously.
I don't know the fancy science for it but I found that it seemed to have... Almost caused my eye to Error 404 for a hot minute after the punch for whatever reason. I literally couldn't perceive anything with that eye for about ten seconds (probably less actually but to me it felt like a lifetime for a split-second of disorientation turned confusion turned fear) before it subsided and I could see again.
My vision was blurry and took a good couple blinks to return to "normal" and even with the pain becoming less every second that passed, I genuinely would prefer to be punched anywhere else on the face than my eyes.
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This isn't universal to everyone and their experiences, obviously, and I'm coming at this from the side of how the punches can affect the pain and injuries but
TL;DR: if you ever have a choice of where to get punched, go for the side of your face for the cheek and keep those muscles slack. A punch to your eye is the least preferred imho 0/10 do not recommend.
Whumpee, having just ran away from whumper after months or years, attempts to call one of their friends from before whumper captured them, but it turns out that friend has changed their number.
Instead, they get a random person, who still agrees to come pick them up. They don't think it could get worse, so they agree, and after a bit a car pulls up. Someone gets out and wraps whumpee in a raincoat, taking them out of the storm.
They get whumpee in the car and whisper to whumpee "Don't worry, little one. It can get so much worse." Before shoving a gag into whumpee's mouth. "Now be quiet. Wouldn't want to have to kill any witnesses."
I don't know if any other writer has the same problem, but I find describing bruises and keeping track of them so difficult! Thankfully I just got a bunch of bruises today so I'm gonna keep y'all updated on how they look/feel until they heal.
Just bumped: apart from the pain of the impact I felt nothing, not even while pressing directly on the non-existent bruise
~2 hours later: still nothing to show, but if pressed reasonable hard it twinges a bit
~3 hours later: finally something shows, it looks purple, but very faint and it hurts to touch
One day after: the center of the bruise is now definitly purple surrounded by a ring of pale black, it hurts even with the softest touch, just brushing my finger over it. The bruise is not raised, but at the touch it feels like there is an unseen bump just under the skin, like a patch of flesh that is harder than the rest (I guess from the blood accumulation?! I'm no doctor). Of the various bruises I have the one that are placed reasonably near a join (on the joint itself or approximately three fingers away) also hurts when I do harsh/big movement with said joint and specifically the one on the inside of my wrist even if I turn the arm.
~36 hours after: ok, the bruise is starting to spread. The feeling of hurt is now not only in the bruise itself, but the tenderness has spreaded to the surrounding area up to two fingers away - the farther away from the bruise proper the harder the touch to feel pain, but it's still there even without the typical bruise colours. In regards of color: the center of the bruise is now a vivid reddish surrounded by a purplish black, in general the colors are still pretty pale and washed out. The edges are not very well defined, but hazy (probably because it's spreading). Harsh and/or big movements pull at the bruise and make it hurt enough to get me to flich a couple times when I forgot to pay attention to it (more out of the unexpectedness of it than from pain), also forgetting about them is now very difficult. Basically, if up to this point I could forget about the bruising if I was still now I can't - even while staying still there is an undercurrent of tenderness/pain/discomfort that makes it impossible to ignore the bruising.
~57 hours in: today was really interesting. I woke up this morning and the bruise was a faint purple surrounded by a thick band of black with a slight greenish tint at the edges, and it hurted even while staying still more than it did yesterday. By now though (evening) everything has already changed; the bruise is now a deep purple with a green band around and just a sliver of black dividing the two colours. The stationary pain is gone and skimming my finger over the bruise no longer hurts either - despite that if I try to actually touch it it still hurts like a bitch, same with moving my arm especially in a twisting motion. I would describe the pain as slicing, everytime I touch/press/twist the bruise is like making a fresh cut with a knife.
Also! I forgot to add this tidbit before so I'm adding it now! The way the colours of the bruise bloom mean that up until the ~28 hours mark even if it had already started to develop people wouldn't notice unless they knew to look for it! Right now, instead, is impossible to not notice even if you don't know. Just something to keep in mind...
~78 hours in (aka day 3): this morning the center of the bruise was a purple inching towards yellowing while the ring surrounding it was a definitive sickly green. Now that is evening the center is definitly yellow (with a slight tint towards green maybe?) and the green ring is getting spolches of black and purple. Also the bruise is still spreading, this time also in colour - interestingly the spreading bruise does not follow the pattern of colour of up until now, but is showing up directly in green or yellow. The firmness under the skin is getting harder and today, once again, even the simple act of brushing a finger over the bruise make it hurt. On the plus side, the not-bruise-color part of the skin no longer hurt to touch, not even if close to the bruise proper. Similary, movement (including twisting) no longer hurts. The pain if I try to press is still a cutting feeling of pain, far more than yesterday and slightly blinding in the moment.
Day 4: the center of the bruise is now colorless (aka has the same color of my normal non-bruises skin) surrounded by a circle of vivid sickly yellow and puke green. The hurts is also diminished, I need to press at least a little to make the bruise hurt and even then only on the coloured part, the healed part - even in the middle - don't hurt.
Day 5: I cannot belive the bruise is still here. Anyway, the yellow is receding leaving a bigger and bigger gap of healed skin in the middle, but some small mottling of black and purple (more like freckles, really) appeared in the green ring - and the green has gotten more deep in color, less puke green and more forest green. I also noticed that the firmness/bump under the skin is basically gone, but I remeber it being there yesterday (even if maybe slightly softer?!) so I think it's something that happened during the night. Pain level same as yesterday. I honestly didn't expect the bruising to last this long.
Day 6: I don't think there's gonna be a lot more updates after this one. This morning the bruise didn't show any major difference from yesterday so I didn't keep a very close eye on it, but by evening it had almost completely disappeared - the only trace remaining is a deep, vivid black thin ring surrounding the area. The hurt is also basically gone - unless I press relatively hard and directly on it. Honestly I'm surprised by how fast it changed in just one day.
Day 7: it's now been a whole week. The bruise has almost completely disappeared - only a half circle of pale yellowish green remains and no pain whatsoever. We are almost done I think.
Day 11: it's done! The bruise is now completely gone - no more colour, no more pain, fully healed!!!
This definitely took a lot more than initially expected and I don't think I even paid this much attention to my bruises. I learned a lot and had lots of fun doing it, made me a lot more self-aware of them too.
Some more info: my skintone is very pale (phototype 1) and I bruise fairly easily. The bruise I kept describing was on my inner forearm, but I also had one on the opposite arm that I treated with bruise cream and healed in ~6 days (it went through the same process of the bruised described, just much faster, fyi the last three days were compressed into one) AND another bruise on the outside of my knee that I didn't treat whatsoever and the pain followed the normal bruise, but didn't show any color at all, apart a bit of a shadow around day 4 that disappeared in about 12 hours.
And I think that's it! Thank you for sticking to the end and thank you also to all those who added their experiences with bruises to this post :) I found them very insightful and useful!
caretaker who thinks whumpee kind of deserved what happened to them because whumpee was a terrible, rotten person. every wince induced by caretaker's rough treatment of their wounds, every moment of peaceful sleep interrupted by nightmares brings caretaker a sick sense of satisfaction. caretaker hates whumpee. but, for some reason, they feel like they have to take care of them, which causes a lot of internal conflict. (yum)
or, an alternate version of this: maybe whumpee has had rumours and stories spread about them being a terrible person, which caretaker believes. as a result, caretaker is always rough with whumpee, carelessly treating them and ignoring every protest of pain.
whumpee deserves it, after all, don't they? so caretaker ignores their pleas and promises that they aren't who everyone says they are. and when caretaker eventually discovers the truth, the guilt consumes them.
Put them in a cage that's too small for them so that even if they did get out their muscles would be too stiff for them to escape
Lock them in the brig of a ship - surrounded by hostile crew and the endless ocean
Threaten/kidnap someone they love - Whumpee is trapped in a contract to do Whumper's bidding to save them
Stick them in a locked box-bed
Set a literal trap for them - they're running through the forest when suddenly a bear trap rips through their ankle, or the floor gives out and they fall into a spiked pit
Use BAIT - Whumpee shows up to rescue a gagged Caretaker, only for their panicked "mmmph!" to turn into "go! quick, get out of here!" Whumpee turns just as a sedative bites into their neck
It wasnât a bad job. Just boring. Monday morning shifts were so slow it hurt, but it was the only day he didnât have class and by god he was not going to give up more of his weekend.
At least heâd be done soon, and a local grocery store gig was far better than the campus Starbucks.Â
Movement in the corner of his eye startled him out of his boredom. It was only a customer.
âSorry,â he said, smiling. âI wasnât paying-â
The customer, about his age and short, looked shockingly out of place in what could only be described as historical reenactment clothes.Â
â-attention. Um.â
Daniel peered over the counter. He wasnât a history major, but the loose cotton shirt, pants (breeches? He didnât know the difference.), and long socks looked like something out of a bygone era.Â
The guy was even holding a woven basket.
âAre you ready to check out?â He asked, still weirded out by the young man.
The customer blinked at him, blue eyes owlish. Slowly he nodded.
On the counter and out of his basket, he gently set out a loaf of the fresh bread, a small bag of brown sugar, a half gallon of milk, and a block of cheese.
Daniel silently scanned the items. He didnât bother asking for the rewards number.
âWould you like a bag?â he asked, tapping on the screen. He looked up when he got no reply, and the groceries had already silently been packed away in the basket.
Okay. Sure.
âThatâll be eight seventy-two.â
The customer pulled out an honest-to-god cloth coinpurse out of his pocket. It had a leather cord and everything. Daniel watched incredulously as the young man took out six copper coins and set them on the counter.
They definitely werenât pennies.
Daniel picked them up. They were heavier than expected, and he honestly had no idea what they were.
âUm-â
âThe milk is so clean today,â the man said, voice soft.Â
âRight. Sorry, um, I donât think I can take these? And itâs not enough-â
âThe milk, Itâs so clean today,â he repeated. Barely above a trembling whisper.
Daniel looked at the customer, whose eyes were wet and oh fuck-
âCelia?â He called over his shoulder.
Celia emerged from the back room. She took in the view, and to her credit didnât even falter.
âHello,â she said, smiling.
Daniel moved aside as she took his place at the computer.
âThe milk-â the man said, practically begging.
âYes, itâs very good today,â Celia interrupted, and the man gave her a shaking, watery smile.Â
âHe doesnât have enough,â Daniel whispered to her, but she waved him off.
Celia took out a small jar from under the counter, and swept the six odd coins into it. The jar was half-full of them.
The young man slumped in relief.
âHave a nice day,â she told him.
Daniel watched him leave, the door chiming.
He turned on Celia. âWhat was that about?â
âI canât believe I forgot to tell you. He comes in every monday; buys the same things. Just agree that the milk is nice and take the coins.â She tapped on the jar. âNo big deal.â
âSince when do six pennies cover all that?â
Celia shrugged. âThatâs just what we do for him.â
âWhat about inventory? The cameras? Does the boss know about this?â
Celia grimaced. âLook, I donât usually tell out-of-towners âcause they get weird about it, but my dad owns the place, grandad before him, yadda yadda. Anyway, weâve been letting him pay that way sinceâŠâ she frowned. âForever, I guess. I dunno. Maybe that guy has a weird family that never caught up. I doubt weâll go out of business because we lose a ten dollar sale once a week.â
âOh.â
Daniel looked down at the jar of pennies.
âWeird.â
___________________
Okay, so maybe the customer (who Celia informed him was named Juno. How she knew, he didnât ask.) was a normal guy. Or maybe he was in a cult.
Every Monday, at 9:30ish, heâd come in and buy the exact same things with six coins, and comment about the milk.
âHeâs probably just autistic,â his roommate had informed him over a bowl of Lucky Charms.
Maybe.
Daniel swiped one of the strange coins the very next week, and took it straight to the anthropology professor.
Who, embarrassingly, sent him to the other side of the history department because apparently the coin was too modern for her.
âThis-â said Professor Langston, turning the coin under a magnifying glass. âIs a genuine 1786 Connecticut Copper.â
âWeâre in Pennsylvania,â Daniel said dumbly.
Professor Langston politely ignored him. âWhere on earth did you get this?â
âWork. It was in the change jar.â
Langston shook his head. âSome poor fool must have mistaken it for a penny,â he said with a sigh, handing it over. âYou should keep it. Itâs a great collectorâs item. Very rare.â
âThanks. I will.â
___________________
Danielâs shift ended at 9:30, but he asked Celia (Who was his manager. Perks of being the bossâs daughter.) if he could leave five minutes early.
Which meant he could follow Juno.
Juno crossed Diluth Square with nary a sound; impressive with all the leaves on the ground.
Daniel kept away, trying his best to stay unnoticed. Heâd never followed anyone before, and it felt kinda rude, but he was so curious it burned at him.
Across Main Street, past the collection of churches on 1st, and into the woods at the end of Deer Park.
The trail Juno went down was old and barely there.
Daniel shivered in the shade, trees somehow dark under the sunny mid-morning sky.
The wind blew a bit, and Daniel wished heâd put on his rain jacket. It wasnât supposed to be breezy today.
He heard windchimes in the distance. He hesitated.
What if Juno was in a cult and Daniel was going to get himself sacrificed to Satan or something?
Daniel dismissed it. Satan worship wasnât real. He read about it online.
He pressed on.
He turned down the winding trail, hoping Juno wasnât too far ahead.
And promptly stumbled.
In front of him, somehow, not even ten yards away, was a cottage.Â
Windchimes on the porch, smoke from the chimney, the smell of something warm and delicious. He couldnât place it. Daniel even heard clucking chickens, which must be behind the house.
It was like the place had popped out of the ground.
Cautiously, like an idiot, he crept up the stairs, and peeked in the window.
Through a doorway, he could see Juno was in what looked like a kitchen. Not a modern one, but with a cast iron stove and copper pots hanging on the wall.
Then a flash of movement. Juno turned.
A hand from behind the doorway grabbed him by the hair. Juno was dragged from Danielâs sight.
A scream. Shouting. Cursing; the sound of a slap-
Daniel jumped away from the window, rushing to the door. He tried the knob.
Locked.
He pounded on the oak, screams still crying out from inside the house.
âJuno!â He called âJuno!â
Nothing but screaming.
Daniel sprinted around the side of the house. There was a back door.
He threw it open and saw blood. So much red. A body.
Daniel rushed to the boyâs side. He looked so much smaller here.
No pulse. He was cold. Face frozen in fear. His arm at a wrong angle.
Danielâs eyes grew wet. He blinked.
He was facing Deer Park on a sunny afternoon.
He whirled.
The trail, old and barely there, stood before him.
Scared, Daniel gazed down the oddly dark path.
At the end of it, was the ruin of a house. A cottage. The windows had no glass. The windchimes were gone. The chimney had fallen into a pile of stone.
Daniel walked around the back, wading through leaves and waist-high weeds where there had been none merely a few minutes before.
The back door was gone, and so was the corpse. Rotted away ages ago. Nothing but spiderwebs, and silence.
Prisoner of war. Getting manhandled and beaten up just because they're "the enemy"
When a leader is captured and singled out because they're the leader and the enemy can just tell based on that solid bearing and the glint in their eye
Beaten up as part of interrogation. Especially in front of the other prisoners.
Tied up and left there shivering for hours
Chained to a wall so captors can just walk up and captive is completely exposed to whatever they want to do to them
âYou close your eyes, and I beat you until you're wide awake, yeah?â
âSleep won't save you. Not from me.â
âSure, you could sleep. But how will you know what I'm doing with your poor body while you're defenseless?â
âSleep? Not until I say so.â
âYou're starting to see things, aren't you? Tell me, is it spiders of bugs? Are the shadows moving yet?â
âOne thing I can promise you. You close those eyes, and you won't be opening them again.â
âPathetic, nodding off like a child.â
âLook at you, stumbling over your words and forgetting what you just said. Isn't it interesting how all it takes to break the human mind is to take away their ability to take a little nap?â
âYou close those eyes, and when you open them again you might be down a limb. Willing to take that chance?â
Traitor whumpee who spies on the team for whumper. Theyâve been properly âconditionedâ so they donât respond to much of any attempts from those around them to be friendly or bond, but as time goes on, they acclimate to their new surroundings.
Mistakes arenât punished with brutal beatings. Basic needs are met simply because theyâre needed, not as any sort of reward. After enough time, whumpee finally understands whumperâs treatment of them isnât right. It isnât normal, moral, ethicalâ any of those. They feel at peace among people theyâve come to call friends.
And then Whumpeeâs âfriendsâ discover why theyâre here in the first place, and they canât get it together in time to explain themselves before theyâre kicked out⊠or worse.
One of my favourite things to think about is when Whumpee is part of a team that doesn't like them.
This can range from mild dislike to absolute hatred.
Depending on the extent of discontent, the team may or may not ignore whenever Whumpee gets hurt.
It's even better when Whumpee themselves doesn't give a shit about their team's opinion of them. They deal with things on their own, and don't ever need help.
I just love it when Whumper is gloating to the team about the things they did to Whumpee, but they're being subtle about it, leaving the team to connect the dots themselves.
The moment when the team figures it out is just so... yes.
Caretaker's eyes widened in horror as it clicked. They looked up at Whumpee. "They didn't... Whumper didn't..." they began. It was too awful to say out loud.
Whumpee said nothing, only swallowed weakly and tilted their head in the tiniest of nods.
Then there's silence. Long, tense, and painful. Whumpee's face burns with shame and fear about being found out. The team doesn't know what to say. Whumper just stands to the side, beaming with smug satisfaction. They haven't had this much fun since Whumpee escaped.
