Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The sky has been dark for as long as you can remember.

So has the rest of the land.

You revile calling this barren wasteland “home.” Nothing grows here. Nothing lives. There is only death. Every day a new pestilence, a new famine. The only comfortable place here is the palace of the despot, high on the hill.

The despot who has ordered mass executions for his own amusement. Who sees spitting in the street as a crime worthy of slow torture. Who is the reason this land is dying and has always been dying. Who is the reason you cannot leave, for attempting to set foot outside the walls of this desolate place is a swifter death sentence than anything else you could do here.

Perhaps you shouldn’t fear death. You can hardly imagine that, though. What kind of person wouldn’t fear death? Who would be so bold as to put his own life on the line to break through the barrier holding him down? Who could stare the abyss in the black and not flinch an ounce?

That person isn’t you.

You keep your head down. You do what you must, so that your spouse and children may survive. You pay the exorbitant taxes, mortgaging off ever more of your property. You pay respects to the memory of the fallen in your bloodline, almost all of whom were taken too soon.

You pray God above, blessed be his name, has a plan that justifies all of this.

Then, one day, it seems as if your prayers are answered.

Rumors run wild through the street like canals after a rainstorm. The despot is dead. Slain by a young and beautiful warrior. You’re free. You’re all free.

Though the sky is still dark, you rush home and sweep your spouse into a tight embrace. Your family comes out from behind their various doors, and you dance in celebration.

Mistakenly, you believe the screams coming from outside to be a sign of a victorious revelry.

All of a sudden, it happens so fast. Blinding, blue light. Then, in an intense rush of pain, you are no more.

Until you are something again.

You try to speak. Only a moan comes out. Your lips have been stitched shut.

Everything is wrong. You’re not breathing. You can’t feel the desert wind blowing. You raise your hands – your green, knobbled hands. You flex them. A bony knuckle tears right through the skin. There is no pain.

A sharp voice calls you to approach him.

Without even thinking, you do.

“Now kneel,” the voice demands.

You get a good look at your devil before you find yourself unable to do anything but kneel. He controls you with every word. You cannot even protest. Would you be able to, if your mouth were capable of speech?

He’s beautiful. Almost ethereally so. That’s what is most frightening of all. His perfect face, his lavish curling hair frame eyes that radiate pure malice.

The creature that hovers at his side is more traditionally demonic. You hate the sight of it. But it, you can understand. It doesn’t lie. It looks as ugly on the outside as it does on the inside. Your devil…his very face is a lie. He looks like someone you should be able to trust.

Someone who you would have expected to save you from your previous hell.

Now you understand.

“Now go wait outside with the others,” he commands, and you do. In doing so, you resign. You know you can never break free of this new hell, this torment that is ever so much worse than the impoverished, scrutinized existence you wish you had counted as a blessing.

As you depart the room, you hear him say, “You know what, Xerxes? I think I’m going to like ruling this kingdom.”

Chapter Text

Chupacabra.

That is what your people keep bringing to your attention. They hold the corpses of your livestock up before you with bleary, teary eyes. Their goats. Their alpacas. Their llamas. All of them limp as rugs, unnaturally fluid. Drained of blood. Other organs removed as well to create more of a hollow.

This is a problem you have never encountered before. However, it is your duty to solve it, even if it seems to lie outside your ken.

The problem is that all of the guards you deploy to find and identify the creature seem to turn up dead. Mangled, in fact. Not drained like the animals. It looks more like they were mauled by something predatory.

Something that was dead set on getting to the livestock, and wanted the humans out of its way.

It’s getting worse. It isn’t just cattle anymore. Now people are turning up their cats, their dogs, the songbirds that were found bled dry in the streets. You need to take decisive action, or else it will be the civilians themselves next.

You ask your most trusted royal advisor what to do, and all she does is shrug and say “Search me.” It only figures that now, in the empire’s hour of desolation, she would be more concerned with whether the paint on her toenails matched the feathers in her headdress.

You’re on your own to solve this mystery, and so you decide to stalk the fields and find the Chupacabra yourself. Your wife begs you not to do so. After all, every man you have sent after the Chupacabra has died. Your son is only two years old. He needs you to raise him.

You love your son. You love your wife. But you also love your people, and if the economy doesn’t get bled out, their veins will.

Your mission is fruitless for the first month. You have spent midnight after midnight roaming the fields, fearing the most ancient of terrors, and yet it is never you that is assaulted. The victims are still only animal, and the culprit strikes wherever you are exactly not.

Then, one night, that changes.

You crouch behind the shed in the nearby village, watching the dark shape lope onto the fields. You can’t remember ever seeing anything like it in your life before. Its long, limber legs. Its sharp claws that don’t retract inward. Its rows and rows of fangs.

The people were right. It was the Chupacabra.

But how to stop it? What will kill it? Now that you have found the root of the problem –

Well, by then, it has also found you, so that train of thought ends there.

You’re not sure what gave you away. Heavy breathing? A noisy jostle? The beast, eyes luminously red, looks up from the llama it is draining, and for a moment, you see something you feel doesn’t belong in its extended claws. A small glass vial filled with blood.

Before you can ponder the implications, the Chupacabra has leapt toward you, and that is one of the last things you know.

You wish it was absolutely the last thing you had known. It would have been better to die in ignorance.

As you come to, you hear a familiar, exasperated voice: “And your first instinct was to bring him back HERE?”

“I’m sorry, my lady, but he saw what he shouldn’t have, and seeing that he is the emperor…I thought it might be more trouble than it was worth for him to turn up dead in the middle of a field.”

A sigh, and you really wish you didn’t know exactly who was sighing; “Fine. I’ll deal with it.”

Your vision clears. You’re strapped to a chair carved of stone. Its back is jagged, and you get the feeling it’s carved in some ornate design, much like most of the palatial furnishings. You attempt to make a noise of protest, but your mouth is bound shut as well.

While you’re not entirely certain of the room you’re in, you can guess. It’s large and bleak, with glass instruments of science strewn about. You always knew there was a “secret lab” in this palace, but you figured its owner was just being dramatic when she called it that. You figured it was just a place for her to organize her agendas and store the million formal gowns she owns.

You figured you didn’t have a serial murderer working at your right hand. Or, more accurately, the boss of one.

Your advisor glowers at you, and beside her, there stands the Chupacabra, looking considerably less frightening (if not still physically impossible) in the bleak light of the laboratory. You cringe as the Chupacabra itself speaks; “My lady, he is waking up.”

She sighs again. “I don’t suppose I can get away with ‘Nothing to see here’ at this point,” she groans. “All right, all right, you got me.” She moves to the lab table. “I have to get the ingredients for my extract potions SOMEHOW, don’t I? The Chupacabra was the perfect cover! Better than that flea plan I was considering.” Something flashes in her hands. “And before you ask, ‘What potions?’ – “

You can’t ask anything. You’re still gagged.

“Well, let’s just say the Chupacabra didn’t exist before I gave him a little…dose of my own medicine,” she goes on. “…Is that how it works? Is it a dose of MY medicine or a dose of HIS – never mind.”

“My lady,” the Chupacabra brings up – and you recognize his voice now! He’s the young, limber man who follows your advisor about, doing her tasks at her whim! “Will you please allow me to turn human again?”

“After you let the EMPEROR see you?” she cries at him. “This is going to be a PR nightmare!” Then she shrugs. “Ah, well. Here you go.”

She casually flings a vial of pink liquid over her shoulder at the Chupacabra. It – he – gulps it all down.

Then flinches.

“Oh, hasn’t anyone told you the most important thing about my right-hand men?” she asks.

Foam pours from his mouth.

“Every decade or so, I get a new one.”

The Chupacabra that wasn’t collapses, never to rise.

Now you see clearly what was shimmering in her hands. A syringe. She plunges the needle into the same source flask that emptied into the poison vial her right-hand drank so eagerly.

Flicking the glass of the syringe, she advances upon you. “Like I said,” she asserts, “a PR nightmare! My nightmare is only just beginning. But rest assured, in a few short minutes, for you, it will be aaaaaaaall over.”

As the needle sinks into your forearm, she whispers, “And don’t worry about your precious baby boy. I’ll be sure to raise him right.”

Chapter Text

You fill your crooked-wheeled wooden wagon with apples to take to town for the day’s sales. As usual, you have to cull the rotten, wormy fruit, and far fewer of your crop is pristinely red than you would like. But it will have to do.

It isn’t as though you desperately need the money. You live all alone. No partner, though you always are on the lookout for a beautiful woman. Not that you consider yourself an ogler. The point is, you’re single, and your house and farm are small enough for one single person to live in and maintain.

Not like your neighbor on the pig farm one over. You cannot stand the man. His property flourishes because of all of the pigs he sells to slaughter. His herd increases continually. He swears the pigs just “wander in” to his paddock, no owner’s mark, and he takes them in, but you have a strong suspicion – no, you’re convinced he’s been stealing pigs.

Never mind him. You’ve finished up the sales day. You tried to pass off a few more bruised-looking fruits as palatable, which, technically, they are. But the upper crust turned up their upper-crusty noses. Only the finest fruits, the reddest, the smoothest, no blemishes, will do.

On your way out of town, you pass by the anvil. You give it a glance out of habit. Everyone does. Everyone waits for the one who will be able to claim a destiny there. But it’s all just a fairy tale. It won’t happen. After all, there’s no such thing as magic. Wizards and witches, they aren’t real. You know this, unlike most of the dunderheads you sell to.

It’s dark. A storm brews overhead. You find a nervous sensation stirring in your stomach as you pull your wagon back toward home over a rough and rock-studded road. It’s not the first time you’ve been out past sundown, but you doubt you’ll ever get used to it. Even if you don’t believe in legends about the occult. What you do believe in: highwaymen with arms, bears, and wolves that travel in packs.

And now, that CRACK you just heard.

Your wagon, after hitting a particularly large rock, has split its dying wheel. There’s no hope of repair without replacing the wheel entirely. But that wouldn’t really be a problem. Sure, it would set your income back by months. But you soon realize it’s low-priority. Because the road is flanked by a deep ditch, and when the wagon breaks, it topples over, and it drags you right back down with it, off the road and into the ditch.

For about ten seconds, you think you’re going to die.

If only.

A startlingly pale hand reaches through the darkness, closing around your collar. Its owner tugs. You instinctively let go of the wagon, righted in balance on the road. The wagon crashes to splinters below.

Now your salary is going to be set back two years. But at least you’re alive.

As you turn to thank your savior, your jaw drops. You’re looking at the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever seen in your life. Tall, slender, hourglass figure, long-lashed green eyes. She speaks; “Oh, my dear, are you all right?” You sigh, taking in her silvery voice, her long purple hair.

You tell her you’re fine. More than fine! After all, you had such a pretty rescuer. (Did that slip out?)

She giggles: a bubbly sound. “Well, you’d best watch where you’re going,” she tells you. “We wouldn’t want anything gruesomely nasty to happen to you in the dead of night, now, would we?”

Something’s off about how she says that. Maybe you should be paying more attention to that and less to where your eyes wander on her.

You give her your utmost gratitude, then, regrettably, inform her you must be on your way. Unless she wants to accompany you home…?

She laughs like tinkling bells. “Oh, not tonight, but perhaps in the future, if nothing awful happens to you in the meantime.”

As you contemplate her morbidly quirky sense of humor, she leans forward and kisses you on the cheek.

You’re ecstatic. It practically feels electric. No, really, it’s like something popped a little where her lips met your face.

You’re so distracted by your beating heart that you don’t realize when she leaves. Strange. The field is flat and open. She couldn’t have gotten so far in such a short time that you can’t see her on the horizon. Then again, it is very dark.

Thunder rumbles overhead, reminding you that you must get home.

The rain begins just as you shut the door to your meager shack. You decide not to fall into an anxious spiral about the finances you can’t keep up while your wagon is broken. Instead, you think more about the roadside beauty, her perfection, the way her kiss still feels tangible on your cheek.

It really does. It’s a pleasant situation, like bliss infused in your skin. Oddly enough, it seems to be spreading out from there, radiating over your entire face.

Inspired, you rush to the mirror, hoping to pinpoint exactly where she pecked you. Perhaps she left a print of rouge. You won’t be washing your face for days.

Your face appears in the glass.

And you scream.

It comes out as a horrid wail that isn’t even close to your voice.

Your face – no, your entire head is that of a pig’s. Pink skin; long, rounded snout; ears that protrude upward. You clasp your hands to your face, feeling at it. The pig’s head is your head, not some sort of mask. When you open your mouth, it is a pig’s mouth that opens. You twitch your nose; the snout mirrors it. Maybe it’s just your mirror – no, your fingertips can feel the shape of your snout now, and they confirm the awful truth. You attempt to curse. You can’t form words; only squeals.

You hear a distant and ominous sound. Not the thunder, this time. This is a laugh. A sadistic, gleeful laugh. A witch’s laugh. You cast your gaze about, but to no avail. You already know this laugh is coming from miles and miles away.

You sink into your favorite battered chair, trying to think rationally about this. How can you go about remedying this? This is magic, which you didn’t even believe in until a moment ago. Ordinary people don’t believe in magic, lest it be that of the sword in the anvil. Could you perhaps hide your face when next you go into town? Put up a hood, wrap a balaclava around to leave only your eyes visible, stop talking entirely. It’s drastic, but it’s all you can think of to do.

You bring your hands together to wring them nervously, thinking of the panic you’d cause in the town square if you were uncovered in that state, of what people would scream upon seeing a person with a pig’s head.

But as your hands collide, you realize you probably won’t even have to worry about that.

Because they’ve just turned into hooves.

Chapter Text

The merchant told you, quite excitedly, “They say that no one who wears this necklace shall ever be in want of a husband!”

He’s obviously making that up to sell jewelry at inflated prices. Still, you can’t help but take him a little seriously. For one, you’re…well, “vain” isn’t the right word. You just know you’re better-looking and more quick-witted than your current single status seems to indicate. For another, you do want a husband, and you want one soon. For a third, you just want an excuse to waste some money on the necklace. It’s the most beautiful piece you’ve ever seen. A deep plum-colored teardrop on a golden setting. Is it an amethyst? No, an amethyst would have more facets. The color is too solid to be an opal. Whatever it is, you want it.

So you pay the hefty price.

Already, the necklace’s weight on your collar makes you feel like a new person. It seems that the gem’s very presence is drawing the eyes of the men in the marketplace right to your throat, and from there, those eyes wander every which way on you.

You like that.

It’s an eventful day. Perhaps it’s simply that you’re more confident than usual, now that you have your gem. Or perhaps the gem really is enchanted. You get asked out to tea, and you accept, sharing a cup with a very pleasant man who you wouldn’t mind seeing again. You then come up short buying ingredients for your dinner that night, and an attractive fellow steps in to pay the rest of the bill for you. Any one of these men could be husband material.

You’re really not vain, you tell yourself as you twirl before your mirror later that night, admiring the sparkle of the teardrop against your collarbone. It isn’t wrong to like the way you look, or even love it. You would even go so far as to say you just don’t understand how anyone could pass up someone as good-looking as you, especially after getting to know how charming you are.

You’re so enamored with the necklace and the new burst of confidence it’s given you, you decide not to take it off even as you lie down to sleep, where you have pleasant dreams of being wooed by men of all sorts.

You wake in the middle of the night rather unexpectedly. It takes you a moment to figure out why. Then you pinpoint a couple of sensory aspects that brought you out of your slumber.

For one thing, the room is completely malodorous. That’s the first thing that scares you. The smell is putrid, and it seems to be close by. It’s like someone left the corpse of an animal in your room.

Or maybe not an animal.

You don’t want to know what’s making that smell, but you have to find out. That is, until your waking brain registers the second sensation.

Cold. Cold that raises goosebumps on your skin, whether bare or clothed. It isn’t the room that’s chilly. You can’t blame the night air. Your stomach seems to fold in on itself as you realize the scene.

In your sleep, you turned over on your side, curling up a bit. Now someone – no, something, you can only think of it as a thing – is curled up directly behind you, pressed to you like a lover would be. It’s roughly human-shaped, but far, far too cold.

It has an arm draped over you.

Acting on instinct, you struggle. The moment you do, the arm’s grip tightens. You’re pinned down to your bed, trying in vain to escape this creature – it smells too awful to be an Ifrit – and only managing to get yourself turned around so that you’re facing the other way.

Facing it. The dark of the room preventing you from seeing exactly what it is.

Then, out of the darkness, a chuckle that sends a chill up your spine. A raspy voice whispers in your ear, “Why so reluctant, my dear? Why, it’s only truth in advertising. You’re wearing the necklace, and now you’re no longer in want of a husband.”

Stunned into silence, you continue to struggle.

“Cold feet?” the voice asks. “Now, now, you’re not allowed to have colder feet than mine.”

You’ve figured out by now you can’t escape. You finally muster the energy to scream.

It’s swallowed up by a pair of ice-cold lips violently pressing against your own.

Chapter Text

May 15, 2004: the day the world ended.

Or at least, everyone thought it was going to.

For roughly twenty-four hours, the sky went completely black, save for the moon. Where it was visible – over most of Asia – anyone who looked at it saw that it was shot through with veiny black lines.

Power went out. Rivers dried up. Trees shed their leaves. Natural disasters were reported worldwide against the jet-black sky. It seemed the end was nigh. Some news reports even seemed to have footage of monsters, hulking things that never got too close to the camera but were too large to be human.

There were smaller things, too. You’ve read “Lost Episode” CreepyPastas: stories about altered television that suddenly has darker, gorier endings. All television was like that for that twenty-four hours. No matter what you watched, it would suddenly have a horrid twist to it that definitely was not there on first airing.

A women’s magazine company even reported that the woman on the cover of that day’s issue was not the model they’d photographed, nor did she resemble anyone contracted by their studio at any time.

You called your friends on a half-static connection, getting your words out as best you could on a broken cell phone line. You sobbed as you told them how much you loved them, and that if there was life after this, you would find them there and befriend them all over again.

Then, suddenly, as quickly as it had happened…it was over without a trace. And no one could say exactly why.

The world was even more panicked now that it seemed to have been saved. People were starving with curiosity as to what had occurred. Now the rivers flowed again, the television showed its predetermined lineup, and dawn broke after a pure-white moon. And everyone wanted to know why they had been forced to confront their own mortality for twenty-four hours.

You included.

It became an obsession. News and conspiracy-theory programs ran streaming on your television while you roamed the Internet, seeking others who had any information at all. Forums were founded for the sole purpose of reporting phenomena. You got a complete list of what horrors the planet had endured on May 15, but nothing that pointed to why.

Until a month later, when the archaeology major turned up.

She was studying at a British university, but focusing on Asian studies and cultures long past, wanting to connect with her own Chinese heritage. A study trip had put her in proximity to certain texts that had either been purposely hidden or simply not paid attention to. In the midst of translating them out of an old dialect of Chinese for her thesis, she stumbled, by sheer coincidence, upon a link to the day-long apocalypse.

The texts spoke of almost the exact same things the world had only just reeled in the wake of. The difference was that back then, it hadn’t been a day. It had been a year of darkness, drought, and plague.

Many contested the student’s translation on that point, but she argued that she had gone over it several times, and if there were any error, it was in the text, as it definitely said “year.”

One other facet of the text caught the student’s eye, and once she shared it with the world, it became a fascination for both the rational and the irrational. Cryptid lovers, tabloid reporters, and actual historians all capitalized on this single discovery.

The people who had endured the year of darkness had given it a name. The exact source was not identified, out of fear on the part of the unnamed author, but it was definitely portrayed as a “source” from which the misery sprang. Phonetically translated, this source was called “Wuya.”

The student could not offer any explanation as to what a “Wuya” was. It sounded like a name, perhaps an old Chinese given name, but that hardly made sense. How could an actual human being be responsible for all but the end of the world?

Anyone with a recording platform leapt on the concept like a cat on a seven-legged spider. YouTube was filled with “What Is Wuya?” vlogs. The History Channel eventually cranked out an entire big-budget documentary based on a speculation of what “Wuya” might mean, choosing to assign the name to a vengeful god. This sparked some outrage among the Chinese viewership, as there was no known god (or goddess) called “Wuya,” and it seemed distasteful to just make one up for the purpose of capitalizing on current events.

In any case, as questions of Wuya piled up, fear of Wuya died down. When months passed with no further incident, the world began to think Wuya was some sort of fantastic Bigfoot-type creature rather than an actual threat.

You, however, find that some nights, you can’t sleep.

There’s nothing in particular that strikes you differently about this incident than anyone else. You don’t have any secret insider knowledge. All you know is that a millennium and a half ago, people thought Wuya was gone for good, and Wuya did a very good job of hiding for centuries.

You have no proof the end of the world isn’t still yet to come.

Chapter Text

When you live on the surface of the earth and are repeatedly told that below you, in the spaces beneath the city, lives a pack of bloodthirsty monsters, you are, sensibly, terrified.

When you live in a small space below a city and know for certain that the entire surface world that surrounds you is filled with monstrous beings out to kill you, it is nothing less than hell.

You have to make trips above. That’s a fact. This is where you find the tools, the supplies, the food that keeps you and your brethren alive. You go at night, and in groups, to lessen the danger.

Already, tonight, you’ve had to flee because someone spotted you in their yard, taking things out of their trash that they weren’t going to need anyway, and turned a gun on you from the uppermost window. You’re lucky the bullet only pierced your box.

The worst part is you’re used to this.

Every night, it’s the same. They yell, they scream, they throw things. Some of them try to kill you. You’ve learned to weather it. You’ve learned that this is normalcy. There’s nothing you can do. Any one of them is twice your size, save the children. The only thing you can possibly hope to do is retreat inside of your box, holding very still and hoping you get mistaken for part of the trash.

Feeling like you might as well be part of the trash.

You had a friend among these people, once. The only good man among them. But recently, that changed. They wouldn’t tell you where he had gone, or why. It was apparently too horrible to tell. Your imagination has filled in the blanks. There are only so many reasons why an innocent would no longer be able to care for his son.

You miss him so much. It’s hard to consider yourself the lucky one, though, when he no longer gets to suffer and you are evading constant attack.

Yes, every night is the same –

No.

Not tonight.

Tonight, there’s something different.

Through the dark and the fog, there is a sudden blinding shine. Has the sun already come out? Is this someone’s torch? No, it isn’t a flame. It’s brighter. It’s a pair of lights that cut through the night, advancing ever closer.

You struggle to name it. They’re obviously electric lights, but you’ve never seen anything like this. Well, except for the tiny lights your brethren use on their headlamps when exploring the deeper sewers for places to paint their murals (a much safer place than up here in “civilization”).

Lights for heads…head…lights?

These headlights are coming up fast on you and your traveling companions, and just as you realize what they’re attached to, your friend grabs you by the wrist and begs you to run. You comply.

The thing coming toward you is a monster. A monster made of wood and metal. A behemoth the likes of which you’ve never seen. It creaks and rattles threateningly. It aims for your party with predatory intent.

The five of you, you bolt like you’ve never run before. You zig and zag, alternating the side streets you choose in order to throw it off.

It’s fast. It doesn’t slow down. You consider: can something made of wood and metal really be alive? No. It looks a lot like those devices your friend built, once upon a time. It could only be this intelligent, able to follow your every turn, if piloted by a human mind attached to a perceptive pair of eyes.

You’re being hunted down.

The nearest sewer grate is just a corner-turn away. You and your friends hurry up, eyes on the prize. A few more steps –

One of you trips.

You halt. You turn back, against the others’ cries. You hoist your friend to his feet, shove him along. As terrified as you are, you would never leave one of your fellows behind.

That gives the pilot of the behemoth the advantage. You’re surrounded by rope netting, and everything goes black.

Then, suddenly, bright light surging through dingy windows. You’ve awoken in a cramped iron cage that chills you where it touches your bare skin. You adjust so you’re sitting on the rear wall of your box.

This building seems starkly empty. It’s a wide, open warehouse floor, one that hasn’t seen maintenance in years. The only notable features are a small, rounded table and a tank of –

Fish?

No. Those are leeches. Fanged, bloodsucking leeches.

Who would keep those as animal companions? What are you dealing with here?

The answer strides down the stairs loudly, making sure the click of his shoes resounds on every step. You can’t see up the stairway from where your cage is positioned. You tremble as the predator gets closer, closer –

“Comfortable, are we?”

You look up to him. He carries himself regally, like the heir to a throne who has already arranged for the “accidental” death of the current regent. The smile on his face is malicious, disguised as civility.

You try to respond to him. However, though you are well-versed enough in his language to understand it, you, like most of your kin, have never mastered speaking more than a handful of words of it. The two are different, you know – speaking and listening. So you speak in your own language, pleading with him to let you go.

He cuts you off midsentence, obviously neither knowing nor caring what you’ve just said. “No,” he muses, “I suppose not. Your friends were a slippery lot, you know. I wouldn’t worry. They’ll be along in time. Now. Are you ready to see what I brought you here for?”

You do know the word “No,” and you say it loudly.

You’re not listened to.

The predatory man, the would-be usurper, pulls a lever with a harsh creaking sound, and the floor gives way to hell itself.

At least, that’s how it seems at first. What really happens is the floorboards pull apart to reveal a hidden workshop. A large furnace dominates it, lending its red glow and intense heat.

You’re brought down to this workshop, where you’re finally let out of your cage – but not before the floor (which is now your ceiling, and much lower than you’d like) is sealed from that side. You have no escape.

A high-pitched giggle sounds from the corner. You know that voice. You whirl and point, crying out excitedly.

Your friend isn’t dead. He’s here. He’s always been here, suspended upside-down.

Oh, how long has he been hanging like that?

He tries to greet you in return, but your captor cuts you off. “You’ll have all the time you want to catch up with your little friend later,” he explains, grabbing you and physically turning you around to look at a pile of scrap metal in the corner next to a deadly-looking trash compactor. All you want to do is retreat inside your box, but he’s holding your limbs out, so you can’t do that. “First, let’s go over your assignment. So long as you’re here, you’ll have every need of yours provided, so long as you keep up a good work output.”

You ask, against your better judgment, what it is you’re supposed to be working on.

He explains. You’re going to be building an instrument of murder, is what it boils down to. And if you refuse, well, that’s what the trash compactor is for.

“But don’t worry,” he says smugly, as though that’s supposed to be in any way reassuring. “You won’t be going it alone. No, not at all. Within a matter of days, you’ll be treated to a little family reunion. The more, the merrier, and the faster we can all call it a day and return to our respective homes.”

You get the feeling he doesn’t intend to let you go once you’ve built his machine.

However, over the next few days, you realize he has, in many ways, kept his promises. More of your friends show up, captured by the great behemoth and its headlights. You have time to converse with them. To converse with the only human friend you ever had – his sanity slipping, but at least recognizing you as beloved to him. You’re given food. You aren’t given much to sleep on, but you’ve always just curled up inside your box and slept on the hard floor anyway. And down here, no one’s shooting at you or screaming for you to die. Suddenly, it feels like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders. No matter what awaits you at the end of this journey, you truly feel like this cramped, overheated space is still leagues better than what lies outside.

You think that for the first year, anyway.

You change your tune for the other nine.

Chapter Text

You have one primary task: make sure the door stays locked. Don’t open it, no matter what the prisoner on the other side says.

Not that he’s very persuasive anyway. Supposedly, you’re holding one of the most dangerous men on the planet. You don’t really buy that. He’s a bit of an imbecile. After all, he practically walked into captivity.

Either way, you know better than to open his door or even listen to what he says through it. So do the others on duty with you in the facility.

It gets boring, patrolling a prison ship. Nothing ever happens. The door stays locked. He can’t really open it from the inside. You’ve made friends with most of your co-workers, and sometimes you all hang out for a laugh. Tonight, however, you aren’t interacting with them. You’re on monitor duty, which means you can tune one of the screens in to the tournament. The others scoff, calling you unprofessional, but you know they’d never sell you out. They maintain their posts around the ship.

You love the tournament. It’s all of the best and brightest young athletes bringing the shinest, most colorful gear into play. Each has a different fighting style, and you have an analytical mind for this, observing how different weapon styles affect the outcomes of different matches.

For instance, a hydrophobic boy had the foresight to install an electric pulse into his weapon, so when the battle moves to a wetter field, all he has to do is stab and activate, and he’s secured a victory over a team of four.

A sudden noise gets your attention away from the screen. You look over to the co-worker in the spot where it had come from. It sounded like him grunting, like he’d hurt himself or something. The others look to him, too. But he looks back and just waves, signifying he’s all right.

You return your attention to the screen.

You don’t like the roller-blading girl. She’s rude. You can tell every victory she’s ever won has been through foul play of the psychological kind, tormenting her opponents until victory.

Now it sounds like another of your co-workers has just gasped. You all turn to look at this one. He flashes you a thumbs-up; he’s fine.

You could really do without all of these distractions from the tournament – and it actually happens a couple more times. The same story. Every time you look, the person’s fine. Geez, you’re getting paranoid up here. Working in a prison facility will do that to you, you suppose. That’s why they have tournaments. To get your mind off these things.

Your favorite fighter is up against a particularly tough opponent now. She takes a lot of abuse, but that’s what fuels her to go in for the victory. The cocky young man finds himself floored as she celebrates. You find yourself smiling. She approaches him, presumably to taunt him or give him some sort of handshake to signal a good match.

Then she punches him in the leg, snapping the bone.

You gasp. Everyone in the arena gasps. You hear another gasp from behind you, alerting you to the fact that one of your co-workers has been watching over your shoulder. Did that really just happen? Did you all see that? They replay it. That’s exactly what happened.

The young fighter is protesting, saying she didn’t mean to, that she saw something that wasn’t real. Your stomach is lurching. That’s not how these tournaments go. They’re in good fun. No one’s ever been such a poor sport as to commit such an act of violence after a match.

For a moment, you consider how deadly each of these athletes could be if their morals were removed. You don’t like thinking about that.

From behind, a cough. You turn and look. Your co-worker gives a dismissive wave; she’s fine.

Back to the tournament. Back to the screen. After that fiasco, it has to get better. It was a fluke, a one-time thing. It was horrifying to watch, almost like a fever dream, but now it’s over. It’s back to fun and good sportsmanship.

The two redheads greet each other pleasantly. They seem to be having fun sparring.

Until the one with the long ponytail suddenly seems perturbed. She lashes out with an unseen force toward the other girl –

And the other girl is ripped apart.

You nearly vomit. It takes you more than a minute to realize that the guts littered across the arena floor are not organic. She was a robot. Does that make it better? Less horrifying? She seemed so real. No, wait – why was the girl a robot? What sense does that make? There’s something else going on here, and you don’t like it.

The audio feed is hijacked. A woman begins to speak. You can tell from her opening words that what she is about to say is going to change everything for the worse.

But you don’t get the chance to listen.

Another grunt of pain from behind you. You turn and look to see your co-worker shrug.

Wait.

It’s been a different person who made the noise each time. Each time, you all turned to look at the one who had made the disturbance. That one never spoke, only gestured.

All this time, you never noticed your numbers were dwindling. You only ever focused on the one who had caught your attention. So did the others. But now you’re looking, really looking.

Your body is wracked with chills.

It’s only you and the other guard left. The others…you can see some of their limbs sticking out from behind the furnishings.

Gods.

They’re dead.

They’ve been picked off, one by one, and you sat back and watched television while they died right behind your back.

Worst of all – your stomach really churns now – based on what you’ve seen, you now have reason to believe that the guard you’re looking at, the other one left alive, isn’t actually who she looks like.

You get out of your chair, storm over to her, and demand she tell you who the hell she is.

She knows the game is up. But she doesn’t tell you. She shows you.

The face of your comrade melts away and is replaced by a new visage. She’s young-looking, with hair in three colors – blonde, pink, brown. Her eyes sparkle, the irises changing color before you. She gives you a smile. She looks like the sort of character a young girl would design for her fantasy stories…but you know this woman is far less benign.

You both reach for your weapons, but she’s the quicker draw.

You fall, bleeding out. She knows she doesn’t have to be as careful with killing you quickly. After all, who’s left to hear you?

As your vision blurs, you can barely make out where the woman is headed. Once you put it together, it all clicks –

And so does the door. She went right for the locked door. And now, it’s unlocking.

With your dying moments, you realize that was what she came for this whole time.

The woman was just the opening act. What comes out of that door will be far, far worse.

Chapter Text

You’ve never minded that your husband and stepson kept secrets from you. God knows you have your own. All you know is that your husband would never cheat on you, nor steal from you, nor harm you in any way. Your stepson treats you like a blood parent, with respect and love. Even though you met them later in life, you feel you’re a perfect family.

It’s hard to describe exactly how your husband caught your eye. He is very fair of face, to be sure. His ears are peculiar in the good way. They almost seem pointed from some angles. He and his son share the same red-gold hair that sparkles in the sunlight. Most importantly, though, he is kind. Whenever he makes a promise to you, he always swears on some charm or another that he will die before he breaks his vow, and then he follows through. His laugh sounds like music. He seems…magical. And most importantly, he makes you feel like royalty.

As established, however, he and his son have their secrets. Places they go together that are just for them; you’re not expected to come. You respect that they have a bond that is older than theirs with you, and they need privacy for it. They also have a collection of trinkets that they treasure above what you’d expect a normal person would – antiques seem more valuable to them than the actual money they’re worth. And you’ve heard of nickel allergies before, but this family seems to carry within its genes an allergy to iron, and neither can touch a lot of it for very long.

It doesn’t matter. You love them, they love you, they love each other.

That isn’t the only thing going well in your life. You appreciate your job at your accounting firm a lot. People assume it’s tedious, that you must hate it, but you always find it interesting. You’ve handled some bizarre clients, after all. Like the wealthy man with the tower here in the city. Or the charming old man and his son who live out on the island.

Your supervisor is kind to you. While you haven’t conversed with him much, you appreciate him a lot. You don’t feel you’ve ever experienced the type of abuse others have in these cubicle-type jobs. He praises you for what you do well and gently corrects you when you make a mistake.

One day, you decide you want to combine these aspects of your life: the love of your family with the satisfaction of your job. You bring a framed photo of your husband and stepson to work and set it up on your desk.

Your supervisor comes past to congratulate you on a well-done project, and his eyes flicker to the photo. “Is that your family?” he asks. He surveys the photo with curiosity, as though seeing something there that you don’t. Which is ridiculous. There’s no way he knows your family better than you do.

You affirm that that is your spouse and your stepson. Then you casually bring up the photo you’ve seen on his desk at the front of the office area, the one of the blonde girl.

“My niece,” he replies. “A very talented girl.”

You’re surprised. Not that you’re one to judge, but, well, the girl in his photo is very definitely white, and your boss is quite Asian. You know he must be connected to his heritage quite well; after all, he does have that strikingly red tattoo of a Chinese dragon that starts on his face and trails down his neck to disappear into his suit.

This exchange opens the gateway to a bit more conversation between you and your supervisor. He boasts a little about his niece’s grades and her role in the school play. It’s rather touching to see how highly he thinks of her. He mustn’t have children of his own, you realize.

In turn, you explain how it’s going to be time for your husband and his son to head out on their annual road trip. It’s a special bonding activity they have; they head down to a particular lake in the southern part of the state every autumnal equinox. You don’t go. You understand that this is sacred to the both of them. In fact, the way your husband talks about the equinox reminds you of how worshippers might describe a ritual. Even though you know he probably just takes his son out for some fishing and bonding with nature, which was never your thing anyway. You find yourself continuing to talk about how after the equinox, they come back home to help you prepare for Halloween, which the three of you always celebrate together with a big feast and decorations to the nines. You even relate the cute little tradition your husband started of not even calling it Halloween, but “Samhain,” which doesn’t sound at all like it’s spelled.

“Your family sounds quite…enchanting,” your supervisor says.

You agree, all smiles.

“As a matter of fact,” he goes on, “I was planning to be out of the office myself around the date of the equinox. It is the perfect time for a hunt.”

You didn’t know he hunted. You ask what sort of game he takes. Whitetails? Fowl?

“I have taken both of those in my time,” he says with a pleasant smile. “I shan’t keep you much longer. After all, our work never ceases.”

You feel like you’ve grown closer to him today. Maybe you’re even making a new friend.

The equinox approaches. Your husband and stepson load up the SUV and head out for their lake visit. You enjoy some alone time, catching up on some television and reading while ordering takeout.

The time has already passed when they should have come home from their trip. They are nowhere to be seen.

You give them an extra day, but there is no sign.

You call the police, as any sensible person would do.

The investigation begins, and it seems as though your family has disappeared into thin air. No one even has a lead. The officers are baffled, and they stand around your kitchen talking about how they don’t know what to do. Right in front of you. Where you can hear them confirming that they can’t find your beloved husband or stepson.

All you want is for them both to come home safe for your Samhain. Like you’ve done every year.

You realize that in your distraught state, you can’t show up for work. Not like this. You’ve been crying hard, and you’re going to cry a lot more today. Without thinking, you dial your supervisor’s cell number.

When he picks up, you tell him that you can’t make it in to work today.

“A shame,” he replies. “However, I am not who you need to speak to. Remember, I am away from home.”

Oh. That’s right. Forcing a smile, you ask him how his hunt went.

When you hear his answer, it actually lifts your heart to know that of the two of you, one isn’t enduring hell and is actually doing quite well for himself.

When you ask, his response is a simple “Very successful.”