Side-Write: For a Thrill (Patreon)

Happy Halloween! For the holiday I've taken another stab at a scary story! This one turned out rather grisly I think, so please think twice about how scary you'd like your night to be. I tried to play with the themes of the holiday a little along with seeing how dark I was comfortable going.

As always, this is not the truth of this world, but a what-if! Enjoy if it's your thing!

WARNING: Disturbing horror content within!

~~~

So far, you have to say, you're disappointed. You thought you'd found the very pinnacle of debauchery, the climax of your journey, but this place is... rather boring.

You've been away from home for about half a year, now. You'd decided to go ahead and try going on a "pilgrimage," after an old friend of yours got back from his. You'd been shocked to see him come back at all, you'd thought it was a crazy idea, but sure enough he'd made it back, and he was so... different. More confident. More mature.

The idea went like this: lots of dumb people run out into the woods on the weekend to get scared and fucked or whatever, and it's like they get addicted to it. Other dumb people spend their whole lives just afraid of what's out there, never leaving the city but whispering more and more crazy stories about what's just out of sight. And the old people all have stories about how terrible it really is out there, how even the people that go out in the woods have no idea what's really out there.

Well. It's not like it can kill you, right? So what's the big deal? So a few people have started going out on pilgrimages: wander the world seeing what it's really like, living off the land while they're young and flexible, letting what happens happen. Lots of people would call it completely insane, but your friend had figured it was better to just see for himself, rather than live in fear. And... it looked like he was right. He'd come back almost a different person. He wouldn't talk much about what he'd seen, though-- he said you had to experience it for yourself, or something like that.

And that got under your hide a little. All winter you'd thought about it, and... in the spring, you decided to give it a shot yourself. You figured your only had a little more time to do what you wanted before your parents got impatient and made you take over the family business. So... rather than live a life of fear or temptation, you wanted to see for yourself what was out here.

It had been... hard, at first. Scary. You were hungry a lot, and kept struggling to keep yourself clothed, but... eventually you gave up on covering yourself. Hardly anyone wore clothes out in the wilds anyway. And either they'd just get torn off you anyway, or you'd lose them when you died to something and came back in some other random patch of nowhere.

You're plenty used to it, by now. You've been fucked just about every way possible, by creatures you'd never even known existed. You've been attacked, torn apart, kidnapped, eaten whole, and once, burned alive. Yeah... it was hard. You were tempted to run home. But... you always come back to the world, safe and sound. The pain disappears, and you just remember... the way you tingle when they touch you, when they covet your body like you're made of gold. These days, when a glistening pair of eyes lock onto you and draw rapidly closer, you find yourself smiling.

You only have so much longer, though... your friend hadn't been out this long, and the weather is starting to turn cold. It's hard to walk around naked when it gets so chilly, especially at night. Besides, your parents might write you off as dead if you don't get back soon. But you just... You don't feel like you're ready. Not yet. Your heart still jumps when something rustles in the darkness. If you tried to go back to a normal life now, you couldn't... you'd stare out the window every night, wishing, just like those losers.

No. You understand the temptation, now, but you still need to master it. You still need to burn it out of you. You've got to keep going, just a little longer...

When you found this place, you thought you'd finally found the end of your journey. A city. A whole city of monsters! As you first poked around the edges of it, your mind went wild. You know how monsters are treated back home, and you've seen how they act out here. If this city really is full of monsters, then... surely you'd be hunted constantly, driven from street to street by a pack of them, a mob, an avalanche of lusty, ravenous beasts! Every shadow might hide a new attacker, every window an avenue of approach, every block teeming with creatures that want nothing more than to seize hold of you and put you through some new, exquisite and terrible fantasy of their own design...!

You stride down one of the biggest streets, now, grimacing at the memory. That's how it should be. But everyone is just... staring at you and moving on. Some even ignore you! The way they look at you... if you wanted this, you could've just walked around naked back home!

There are families, with children, or sometimes even a pack of children running about on their own. Sometimes they point and laugh. This isn't how it was supposed to be. And everyone's wearing clothes! Well, most of them. Some don't really have the forms for it. The variety of creatures is dizzying, some you haven't even seen before. If you'd come here early in your pilgrimage it might have been fascinating to see so many other forms of life, but right now you're too frustrated to really care. This was supposed to be the best and the worst of it all! But it just... feels like home, but kinda weird.

You wander the city for most of the day, hoping to find something else, something more like you expected. Nobody's even calling the guard on you? You'd imagined maybe getting locked up in a cell with the worst of the worst for the night, but... it's starting to look like you might be sleeping in the cold. The streets are starting to empty, the sun is lost behind distant buildings now, and a chill breeze keeps assailing you, making every intersection a shivering, hurried crossing.

Finally, as the sky darkens, you duck into an alley just to escape the wind. Maybe if you barged into one of these homes, the infuriated tenant would take you as their personal plaything and... No. You're not a criminal. You've barely even fought back against those that assaulted you. You're not going to break into someone's home. You just... don't know where to go, in this strange place.

You're thinking back to what places you passed that might admit a vagrant for the night when a faint noise catches your ear. Your eyes are drifting to one side, deeper into the alley, and something feels... strange. You're curious about that noise, a sort of mumbling rumble, but you didn't... mean to look that way? You try to look back out toward the street, but your eyes keep dragging the other way instead, sliding across the bricks as they... what's happening to the wall?

That low, grating noise is growing louder as you frown at the wall across from you. Shadows? It might be shadows, many tiny shadows flicking across it. Bugs in the street lamp? But you didn't see a light shining directly on that wall. You stubbornly tug your eyes away from the darkness to your side, from that sound. Something is very wrong. The sky is swarming with shadows too, curving in arcs, swimming in a great vortex... centered in that direction. Deeper.

Your eyes drag that way, and you see... something... in the darkness. A figure. A writhing shape almost like that of a person, but it's... blacker even than the shadows. It burns your eyes, that deep black, like staring at the sun. But worse still are... its eyes. Two pinpricks of white, juttering like they're peering at you through boiling water. You feel the rumble in your skull now, just below your ears, vibrating in time with that shuddering light. Your eyes are drawn to the creature's, but the closer you get, the more you feel... crushed, drawn in, like the shadows swimming around you, endlessly circling those two points, will drag you up into the sky and around, circling that vision as water does the drain. You jerk your eyes away again and again, your lungs empty, your body trembling, and you lurch to your feet. You have to get away. You cannot turn your head, cannot pull your eyes away faster than they're sinking into that gleaming void, but if you drag your body away, put buildings between you, maybe...!

You have to run blind, head flopping helplessly, hands scrambling across the wall to guide you and keep you from falling. You feel that great, terrible, churning noise grinding through you, trying to drag you away, and you fling yourself out of the alley, falling on your back to put the corner between you.

The noise is muted, but still there. Countless shadows still flit across the sky, but at least you can look up to see them. You run. You grab at walls, at signs, at chairs and street lamps to anchor yourself as you haul yourself away from... whatever was in that alley, turning corner after corner just to try and keep it out of sight. The noise is finally fading, and the sky seems clear again, though it's so dark now it's hard to say. Are those stars twinkling, or getting obscured by some motion...?

You're looking every direction but forward, so maybe it's inevitable you run into someone. You squawk like a fool, nerves rattled, as you bounce off a great, solid creature and fall to the street. Stuttering an apology, you struggle to get your feet under you, shaky and panting-- when you hear a great CRUNCH.

You've heard bones break before. The sound is unmistakable. You look up.

Framed against a flickering oil street lamp, a monster looms over you, its body a tangle of countless black-furred limbs, its face a long, pointed skull. Its teeth are a chaotic mismatch of fangs and molars, from many different species. Its jaw snaps open-- it does not swing, the bone shatters with another terrible crunch to let all those teeth hang on its chest, then half of the jaws breaks again, snapping upwards to form a merry, distorted grin. The bone fuses together in a mass of splinters as you watch. One of its arms breaks with still another CRUNCH, folding halfway down to swing a myriad of claws closer to you. Black goo bleeds from the wound torn open around the bone, but quickly dries... into the same dark mass clothing the creature. Not... fur.

It does not move any joints that you can see-- it is a solid structure of bone and black... oozing flesh, but in the space of a few seconds, a great rattle of sickening crunches announce it bending down, turning three different limbs to reach for you, claws of naked bone curling with tiny, brittle snaps.

You launch yourself away from the beast all at once, finally coming to your senses half a second before it can snag hold of you. You don't think. You only know you need to get away from this... thing, and your body is already moving, tumbling to the ground in your stupor but launching yourself up again. You force yourself to look away, to search the streets for more of these terrible things as you flee, lest you stumble right into another's arms.

The windows are dark. Only the street lamps and a tiny sliver of moon light the way now, and every lamp is a single, lonely pool of light in great stretches of darkness. You find yourself itching every time you leave one, the darkness seeming to eat away at your nerves, and you run all the faster, only slowing to breathe when you're in the light. What... is this place? What are those creatures? You thought you'd seen so much already, but nothing had been so... impossible, so... unbearable to behold as these things.

You finally stop to breathe under a lamp, clutching the post and glancing constantly around into the darkness. Nobody. But... as your heart's thundering slows, and your own desperate panting eases, you do hear something... something familiar.

Talking. Laughter. Your heart aches, suddenly yearning for the noisy streets back home. Somewhere... not too far away... there are many people, gathered together. Your feet move before you even realize you need to... to be there. You need company, even that of these creatures, if just for a little while. Hopefully somewhere bright.

Sure enough, there are many merry lights shining ahead, you can see so even around the corner-- and when you turn that final bend, you let a long, shuddering breath go.

Crowds mill between tables laid out with all sorts of food and wares, lit by hundreds of candles and torches, many stashed in colorful pots or carved gourds to look like grinning faces. They barter and chatter and gossip, and at any given moment someone is laughing or giggling, somewhere out of sight. It's a night market! You shuffle closer, eyeing the decorations and the people, and as you approach, some of them do the same. And their eyes...

This is closer to what you expected. There's a... hunger, in those eyes. Some simply smirk when they see you and carry on with what they're doing, but many of them pause to stare, watching you pass with the silence of a predator. The noise and merriment seems to dull around you, but as you walk deeper into the market, you hear it resume behind you. You walk in a bubble of quiet and leering, not disrupting the revelry of this place, but perhaps adding to it in your own way.

Meat sizzles in one of the stalls you pass, and your stomach grumbles, but you press on. You're not sure it's safe to stop here... Sometimes the crowd grows thick, and you're shy to press past the masses of strange creatures. Most of them are speaking languages you don't know, you only occasionally recognize a few words here and there in the chaos. You pause now and then, and manage to dodge through tight gaps, occasionally earning a few grumbles from those you squeeze past, but nobody reaches for you. Nobody touches you.

You're passing through a crossroads when a woman, some kind of reptile sitting on a barrel, begins to play the flute. From the first note, you find you rather like the tune. You sway to it, and then you begin to dance. Others laugh and watch as you start to spin and waggle your heels, your exhausted body somehow inspired to flail about, so beautiful is this gentle melody. You grin back at the people around you. Don't they want to dance, too? You spread your body in offering, lunging into the air and collapsing to the ground, only to wriggle back up in perfect rhythm with the woman's flute. She rises, and together, you form a two-person parade down the street.

Vendors catcall from their little shops, and some of the people parting for you in the street reach out to touch you as you undulate before them. Fingers caress your aching muscles and your soft bits, and you grin at each of them as you twist into outrageous, suggestive poses, arms flailing as you nearly fall over time and again. The people laugh as you move among them, turning here and there... until the shops thin, the clamor of the people starting to fall behind you. But that's fine-- the woman's still playing that lovely song, and that's all you need!

A broad creature slouches next to a door, glancing over as the two of you approach. He eyes you up and down as you cavort for him, but he does not smile. He does open the door, though, and you obligingly step inside.

The inside seems to be a single large, dark chamber, with a few lights at its center. Many smaller creatures mill about in the darkness, leering at you with eyes that gather the light, as you dance your way into the cleared area, like a center stage. The woman follows you in, bringing her lovely song to a triumphant climax, and though your body screams in protest, you can't stop now! You dance wildly for the large, strange creature hanging from the ceiling in front of you until that final note fades... and then you collapse to the floor, gasping for air so desperately you choke on saliva. Your every muscle is on fire, and you can barely move your head, but you cant help but stare.

If a single grub was so impossibly large and fat that it was as big around as a cottage and several times as long, it might... look a little like the thing hanging from the ceiling by a great myriad of chains and slings. Except... this monster has many odd strands of flesh hanging from its sides, swaying like a weeping willow's tendrils. And something is... stirring strangely in its flesh, in a way you don't yet understand. You stare at it in the muddle of light and shadow, trying to convince your body to move, to respond, but your face only twists up in a mask of disgust.

Creatures chatter all around you, and you manage to glance over. Countless grubby little monsters, maybe goblins or something similar, swarm in the darkness. They snicker and whisper and jeer in their own ugly language, and you see gleaming teeth wetted by sweeping tongues. Your stomach turns. You've enjoyed a lot of strange things in the past, but you've run into ones like this before, and it's... never fun.

A twitch of movement drags your eyes back up to the great, corpulent creature above you, and you see one of those little ribbon of flesh... curl upwards and sway about in an odd way. A... gesture? The goblins, or whatever they are, redouble their guttural noises, and you look around. They're shifting eagerly now, crowding into the light a little, and... behind you, the reptile woman bows. One of the goblins hands her a bottle. She bows again, and turns to disappear into the shadows, back whence she came. You work your mouth, trying to say something, to reach out-- but something in the corner of your eye makes your head crane around.

That fleshy tendril is moving closer, wider than your hand one way but thinner than your finger the other. It's reaching for you. You shudder, your face twisting up again as you try to drag yourself away from it, but you can't move nearly fast enough! You summon all your strength into one desperate lunge as it nears-- and you tingle all over in an instant, suddenly feeling as light as a cloud. You stare at the sallow length of flesh touching you-- except you can't... see where it's touching you. You feel its touch, but you don't feel... anything...?

You're rising into the air, above the circle of jeering creatures, and when you look down you see-- yourself. Your body lying on the floor, like a discarded doll. Your face is blank, your eyes staring at nothing. What is...? Why...?

As you watch, the goblins finally step into the light, their skin sickly yellow in color, their bodies misshapen. With manic grins they approach your mortal form, grabbing at you with dirt-encrusted fingers. You don't feel it. You don't see yourself react. You feel squirming revulsion, but your face is still blank below, even though your chest moves with breath. They grope at you, lick you, tug your hair, check your teeth. You try to shout at them, but you don't make a sound.

A desperate helplessness sinks in. You can't move, you can't feel anything, you can't do anything! You need help! You need-- your body! Leave it alone!!

You look up, and recoil at the sight of the maggot, now much closer. It's dragging you up towards it. Its flesh writhes in many places, and when you force yourself to focus on one, you finally recognize what it's doing, though you don't want to. Square in the belly of this creature is... a mouth. It has no teeth that you can see, but it writhes as though trying to speak, sneering and licking its lips with a broad, dark tongue. By all the gods, you need to get out of here.

You look down, trying to... you don't know, do something! Get back to your body! Maybe if you focus on it, you can move... back...!

The goblins are tugging your body back and forth now as they rummage through it-- literally stuffing their arms into any hole they can find and digging around, as though you're a purse concealing some treasure. When they don't find anything interesting, some leave to let others take over. They start to use you, to pleasure themselves with the warm, living doll that is the body you've left behind. Others simply chew on your flesh, or twist your joints in impossible ways to see how resistant you are to breaking. You wince, trying to ignore all that. Your body! It's yours! You need to get back to it, even if it's in an awful state! But the creatures are getting impatient, snapping at each other as more of them try to get more of you, tugging this way and that. One of them pulls out a meat cleaver, and the others cheer.

You scream in silence, reeling in fury and terror-- and the world goes lopsided, your mind... fraying. Did you... break? Go insane? It feels like something is... caressing you, like you're an animal getting petted way too hard. But it's... wet, and terrible. You look up again, and jerk, flailing, whimpering silently.

Its mouth is wrapped around you, suckling at... whatever is left of you, whatever formless mass this abomination has pulled out of your body. Its tongue is curling around you, slobbering across your very mind, and you can feel yourself... changing, like something is melting away, getting peeled away. Your frenzied hatred is dulled, leaving you confused. Why do you feel so little anger? They're still-- you glance down, but look away quickly as the blade swings down. They're butchering you! You seethe all over again, but that tongue surges, and a low, gurgling moan surrounds you as your anger melts away again. You're overwhelmed with... violation, with disgust. It's... eating your... your emotions! Wearing away at your soul!

And suddenly you slurp free of that loathsome mouth. You squirm, or try to, still feeling that lingering touch on a part of you that has never been touched before. You've never known so deep and terrible a betrayal of your innermost sanctity.

You're moving. Up the creature's body. And another one of those spots... another mouth opens, grinning, to welcome you in. No. NO! GET AWAY! You writhe, in your soul you writhe, but you cannot escape this tiny wisp of flesh pulling you up to meet a dark tongue, misting with anticipatory breath. It moans again as your disgust surges... and dissipates, dragged out of you. You're being violated in what may be the worst way imaginable, but every time your disgust surges, this monstrosity sucks it off you like another layer on a hard candy. You struggle to hold on to yourself, to reject this creature and its power, but you are left feeling no disgust... only horror.

And so you move on... to another mouth. Your gaze falls to your body below, and you see one of the goblins carrying away one of your arms to enjoy with a friend, while another sits down with your head. A deep, creeping terror seizes you, but melts away under yet another needy tongue.

From mouth to mouth you're passed. You feel jealousy for those creatures that can still move, still do as they wish, but that's eaten too. You feel so incredibly tired, and you wish to go home, and you miss your family, but each of those is eaten in turn. When you start to grow angry again, the fresh emotions are harvested again, back in that first mouth. You grow... dull, and slow. When everything else is gone, you start to feel... aroused, watching them do things to your body. But the maggot eats that, too. Eventually... you feel happy, that you've given so many creatures so much to enjoy. But the maggot eats that too.

In the end, you feel... nothing. Even when the looming parasite lowers you so you can get a good, long look at the grisly remains of your body, increasingly dirtied and stained with goblin juices, you only manage to feel enough to earn a few more licks. You feel... dead. Empty. More dead than when you've actually died. Which... you should have by now...? Are you going to be stuck like this forever...?

A quiet existential dread sweeps over you... until that, too, is eaten. You lie silent, like a doll. You've finally come to match your body again.

And when nothing stirs you, nothing brings a hint of feeling to whatever is left of your soul... the monster releases you. You sink slowly, floating down in roughly the direction of your body, though it's spread across half the chamber by now.

And for a few moments, you tingle... and feel yourself, again. You feel your fingers, and your back and your eyes. You wish you didn't, but you feel everything. All the hands. All the teeth. The digestive juices. Everything.

Then, finally, you feel the familiar release of death.

...

When you rise, on the outskirts of town, it's a cold, piercingly bright morning. Brow set against the sun and the wind, you get your feet under you. And you head for home.