Work Text:
Vox didn’t like being stalked.
He knew that was how most people felt about being stalked in general, but it still fucking annoyed him to find out he had one. A stalker, that was. And a damn creepy one at that.
Vox also knew that he realistically shouldn’t be allowed to say much. It was “wrong” to watch people against their will—but that was part of why he himself had participated in the act so often.
It could have just been his voyeurism talking, (sadism, more like), but he’d always gotten a sick, chilling thrill when spying on his victims, silently memorizing their schedule, their habits, their everything—watching the harrowing realization dawn on their faces when they saw that nothing they did mattered anymore, not when he’d finally caught them. He’d savored that haunted look as the dying light slowly faded from their eyes.
Yeah.
Vox understood the appeal of the hunt.
But he’s never been the one on the other side of it. Vox has never been the victim, the prey.
He was the one with the power, the one who watched and listened and struck. He had made sure it was that way. It had to be.
It seemed the afterlife had other plans for him.
Vox had barely even moved on from the 5 stages of grieving over himself, (he was still stuck on fucking denial. Why in the literal hell was he in literal hell?) when he’d first felt it. That unfamiliar, unsettling, cold creeping sensation following him whenever he wasn’t looking. It wasn’t all the time.
But that just made it worse.
At least if it had been consistent, he could have anticipated whoever the fuck it was who had the gall to stalk him and show them what happened when some random nobody decided to pry on him and his privacy.
They weren’t though. Consistent, that was.
And though Vox loathed to admit it, he sensed that even if he did catch them, disposing of them wouldn’t be as easy as it had been when he was alive.
There was… something off, about his stalker. Dark.
It was the kind of darkness that caused goosebumps to creep up on his flesh, caused his chest to ever so slightly tighten, in something almost similar to what he’d heard described as “fear.”
It wasn’t fear.
Vox didn’t fear things.
Perhaps this strange, shadowy darkness he sensed whenever that thing watched over him, was just habitual. Habitual wariness.
Vox was bright. Figuratively and, er, literally. (He was also still in denial over his head permanently being a television, but he tried not to think about it much.)
That awful darkness was nothing but a thorn in his side, a threat to his natural luminosity.
And it was surely customary to be wary of what was your natural opposite. Something you didn’t quite know or understand.
Vox never grew comfortable around that look (that stare). He would feel it while doing random things, during random times, of course.
Vox would simply be walking down the streets of hell and would feel it. That look. (That stare.) Heavy, weighing down on him only when his back was turned. Vox could have sworn the shadows in the alleyways he passed during those moments seemed just a bit too deep, just a bit too alive, but he simply wrote it off. Paranoia could cause you to see many things that weren’t actually there, he reasoned.
Not that he was paranoid.
Simply cautious.
It didn’t matter when it was, either. He would be in his bed drifting off to sleep in the late hours of night, and would feel it then, too. His heart would freeze for a moment before speeding up again, in—caution. He would eye the shadows in his room obsessively, nonsensically imagining a horrible monster with long horns and ticking eyes emerging from the perpetual darkness where it lived and dragging him into it.
When Vox dreamed those nights, they were static-filled and lightless.
If he even dreamed at all.
Sometimes, having the knowledge of an unknown and unseen presence was just too… disquieting to allow for sleep.
Last night was one of those nights.
Vox groaned, collapsing face (screen) first onto his shitty couch in his shitty apartment after his shitty day.
His tormentor had caused him to lose valuable sleep, and it cost him.
Today, he had fumbled over and forgotten his words so many times during his pitches that anyone who didn’t know who he was—which was fucking everyone—would’ve assumed he didn’t know how to speak in public at all.
Vox groaned louder, pulling a worn blue blanket over his head and just wishing the couch would swallow him up. He closed his eyes.
He was so humiliated.
But even more than humiliated, he was tired. Tired of his new life, his new fucking head, that horrible thing that kept watching him—everything!
It infuriated him to his core that he was just so fucking helpless. He couldn’t kill his way to the top anymore, couldn’t do anything. Because even if he could, that thing won’t leave him the fuck alo—
There was a thud.
Vox’s eyes snapped open.
What was that?
Thud.
Vox’s heart sank in a way he was dreadfully familiar with now.
Was it his stalker?
It couldn’t be—that slimy fucker has spent too much of its time hiding effortlessly in the dark to just accidentally slip up and make itself known now.
But Vox lived alone.
So what was that noise?
Thud.
Vox swallowed uneasily.
It was just the lack of sleep. Causing him to see and hear things that weren’t actually there.
Vox closed his eyes.
His heart still sat heavy in his chest.
A few minutes passed, and nothing happened. The apartment became silent once more.
“‘S just your ‘magination,” he mumbled to himself, face pressed against the armrest of the couch. He pulled the blanket further onto himself.
Just his imagination.
Vox’s heart steadied. He felt sleep coming to claim him at last.
Thud.
Vox’s heart staggered and he threw the blanket off of him, stomping noisily as he stood. He looked around the darkened living room, face emitting a soft blue glow in the near pitch black as he grit his teeth.
The room was dark, yeah, but it wasn’t there, hiding and watching. It was someplace else—where the thudding started.
Vox cast his gaze to the hallway, where the left led to his bedroom and the right to his bathroom.
Thud.
It was coming from the left.
Vox clenched his fists to hide the way they trembled. It wasn’t his stalker. He—it couldn’t have been. Vox was used to its presence by now, and knew when it was watching. Some idiot must have broken into his home while he was gone and was doing a really shitty job at keeping themself hidden.
Vox nodded to himself, the blue glow of his face stupidly moving with the motion.
It wasn’t his stalker.
But whoever it was would pay.
Eager at the possibility of blood being spilt by his hands, Vox’s heart sped up with something different, something he’s been missing since he arrived in hell:
Anticipation.
He’ll finally be able to let off some steam.
Vox took off his shoes and quietly stepped into the hallway.
Thud.
He turned to the left, face barely illuminating the hall to his bedroom door. In the midnight ambience, his hallway seemed to stretch on for miles. He walked forward.
Thud.
That one was louder. Because he was closer. Yeah.
Vox kept walking.
Thud.
And walking.
Thud.
And—
Thud.
Vox’s face glitched, filling with snow. He banged the side of the boxy thing roughly. His features returned to his face, barely lighting up the way.
He looked in front of him, face to face with his door. His breath caught in his throat.
He felt it.
That—that—
It was there.
Vox’s face glitched again and he hit the side of his head with more force than before.
So it was his stalker after all.
Yes. He felt it. He could recognize it instantly, now. He hated that he could.
Heavy, cold, too intense for something that wasn’t even visible.
It wasn’t watching him this time.
This time, it was waiting for him.
When a loud thud came again, Vox jumped. It sounded so close to him. Just beyond the slab of wood separating them; him and it.
Fuck.
He rubbed his shaking hands together, trying to calm the hell down before he freaked out.
It—it wouldn’t want to be caught, right? Obviously. When Vox had stalked his victims, his first and foremost priority other than getting as much information as he could was to keep silent. Make sure that no matter the circumstances, he wouldn’t make himself known.
So why the hell was his stalker being so fucking loud? Did it know Vox was here? It had to. It’s been watching him for, oh god, how long as it even—
Thud.
Vox stared at the door, heart racing, rubbing his now-sweating hands together. He looked down.
Pure darkness seeped from beneath the door—the way light would have, if things were normal. The glow of Vox’s face did nothing to dampen its presence; if anything, the shadows seemed to stretch, to lengthen.
Vox raised his gaze to the doorknob.
He didn’t breathe when he forced his warm palm around the cold knob—
Thud.
—and turned it.
The door creaked loudly as Vox slowly opened it. The thudding stopped, as if pausing, quieting to hear who had intruded.
The feeling was stronger now.
It was here.
But Vox didn’t see anything.
His room was pure shadow, the dim glow of his face futile against the dark. Eventually, his eyes grew adjusted. And the only reason he didn’t scream at what he saw was because his throat had closed in terror.
A monster.
Like the ones he’d been raised to fear, the thing under the bed—except it wasn’t like that at all. It was the same and different all at once but one truth remained: it was terrible.
Its elongated antlers scraped against the top of the ceiling, long, sharp, overbearing. The rest of its body was just as horrible. With a hunched over frame, spindly and oversized limbs bent at unnatural proportions just to fit themselves in the too-small space.
There were countless things that were wrong with the creature in the room. Its sharpness, its size, its simple bone-chilling presence and unsaid dominance—but the eyes.
Those were what would haunt him.
There were twin, glowing red dials where the monster’s eyes should have been, slowly ticking away in the dreadful silence as if counting down the seconds Vox had left to live.
The sight of them was what gave Vox the ability to move again.
Vox spun around without looking back, madly grabbing at the doorknob to try and escape his room, escape that thing.
He turned the knob and was met with resistance.
The door was locked. In the back of his mind, Vox didn’t remember closing it.
He desperately tugged on it again, but the smooth metal slipped easily through his sweating fingers each and every time. He cried out in frustration and—and fear. He was going to die again and this thing was going to be the thing that killed him.
It was everywhere now—even stronger now that he wasn’t looking. Especially now that he wasn’t looking, that thing’s dark, terrible presence.
It wanted to swallow him up.
Vox refused to look behind him. Those awful glowing red dials still burned behind his eyelids whenever he closed them to blink, and his heart raced a little harder each time he did so.
Something touched his shoulder.
No. Not touched.
Gripped.
Vox screamed.
“Whoa there!” A surprisingly human-adjacent voice said.
The firm grip on Vox’s shoulder tightened, and it caused him to freeze, temporarily stopping his manic banging on the door. He hadn’t noticed that he had simply resorted to banging on the door when all hope seemed lost.
With bated breath, Vox’s body could do nothing but allow himself to be turned around.
The first thing he saw was blue.
The previous logic-defying, light-eating shadows that had been leaking from his room were gone, replaced with an easily penetrable darkness where Vox’s brightly glowing screen diffused into rays of pale cyan. Then his brightness eventually lessened. He didn’t know why or how. He wished it hadn’t.
Vox’s mind reeled at the sight in front of him and he blinked.
A person. Or something that looked like a person.
The light of Vox’s screen cast shadows across the man’s face, the sharpness of his features made more prominent. Yes. It was a man, he thought. He had a strange haircut and antlers jutting from his skull, but he was so noticeably human-like it was baffling.
It scared him.
Because looking into those blood-red eyes now, he knew he was looking into the same eyes as the monster. His stalker.
“Why so jumpy, pal! I didn’t frighten you too much, did I?” There was a grainy, staticky filter laced over every word. It was somehow worse than whatever inhuman growling Vox had expected. “HA! Who am I kidding, of course I did!”
A distorted glitching sound escaped Vox’s lips. He didn’t know what he had opened his mouth to say.
The man (creature? Monster? Thing?) laughed, then, and Vox was suddenly very, very cold. Sharp, razor-like teeth pressed into an amused grin. “Struck speechless, are you? How charming,” he (it?) said. Vox stared, unmoving, while his insides moved too much.
“Who are you,” he mustered a whisper. It was void of emotion, somehow betraying none of the numbing terror he felt inside. It left him feeling taunted.
Something baleful glinted in those dark red eyes, and the smile widened. Vox summoned all the strength he could and willed himself to step back. The man was still holding his shoulder.
“I believe you know the answer to that, dear,” he said, suddenly letting go of him.
Vox couldn’t stop the shaky sigh of relief that escaped his lips. And for a foolish moment he almost felt safe.
Then the man began walking forward.
Vox immediately staggered backwards, nearly crying when he felt his back hit the door.
No. Please—
“S—zzt—op, I—“
Warm. Weight. Heavy. Touch. Touching him. Arms. Caging him in. A face pressed against his neck arms caging him in almost like a hug a really awful hug arms caging him in a cage a cage a cage a cage a cage a—
Vox thrashed in the arms containing him, glitching and screaming in disgust—in anger. The closeness made him so unbearably nauseous he couldn’t even process it. There were no thoughts. Just the roaring demand that he needed to—
“Let me go!—“ Vox yelled, electric blood rushing through his veins and sparks shooting off of him as he felt his strength return to him. True strength, this time. No longer fueled just by the need to run but by the need to fight back.
Warm breath wafted against his neck as the man laughed. A cold shiver ran down Vox’s spine. He continued to squirm and struggle, anything to push the thing off him.
“So dramatic,” he said, unaffected by everything Vox was doing.
There was a cracking sound and the arms around Vox, while already firm, became impossibly worse, now—heavier. Bigger.
The creature was growing.
Vox’s strength didn’t so much fail him as it was simply overpowered. Overshadowed.
He thought he had gone blind for a moment. He was unable to see the outlines of the thing’s body from the light of his face. He blinked harshly, desperately trying to see what was happening, but he couldn’t. And it wasn’t because his eyesight had gone out.
It was his light.
His light was dying and this creature’s all-consuming darkness was killing it.
His arms ached and the longer, spindly sharp ones wrapped around him made them truly useless. There was nothing to do anymore. There was only feeling. The sights that were surely there were no longer visible from his dim face, the overwhelming darkness intensified to such an impossible degree all around him.
He was hot yet shivering. His stomach twisted in repulsion and his heart pounded rapidly in his chest, as if it too wanted to escape from its cage.
There was something warm and firm and fuzzy and beating against his face and Vox realized it was the skin of his tormentor. His face was right on the flesh its blackened heart rested under. He felt a sudden bout of confusion because he swore he and the man were the same height before but then he remembered. The creature was growing.
He didn’t know when but his back had eventually been moved from the hard, wooden surface of the door to something considerably softer. It felt like a bed.
Vox’s weak thrashing ceased.
It felt like a bed.
The creature lifted its face and Vox didn’t have to move to see it, because it was everywhere: above him, caging him in, with antlers that spread out too long, limbs that stretched too thin, red dials that glimmered in the permanent dark.
“You don’t know,” it drawled, its sharp yellow teeth pressed together in that god-awful smile and speaking without moving its mouth, glowing like its eyes. Like the grille of a radio. “… how long I’ve waited for this.”
Thin, cold snake-like things began to wrap around Vox’s limbs, and for a second he thought they were snakes, slithering and binding—but they were worse. Everything was worse here. Everything was worse in the dark.
Tendrils of freezing shadow tied his limbs down. The nausea returned, (it never left), simmering in his gut and Vox didn’t have the energy to fight anymore.
He tried anyways.
The monster laughed, grating and jagged. Invisible airwaves shuddered from the inhuman rumble. Vox’s head spun.
“Still trying to run, rabbit?” It said, and something sharp reached to touch his antennas; claws grown to the size of his head. “You really are so entertaining,” it laughed, that cut-up laugh.
Vox tilted his head away from those monstrous claws, his blistering resistance to what that was happening still fueling him. He would do anything that was physically possible to stop that terrible touch—at least delay it, for just a second.
“You can’t delay me. Not for a second longer.”
The shadowy things were so cold they burned against his sweating skin. They had started to peel off his clothes.
Vox froze, then. Truly froze.
Something wasn’t right.
He had expected this monster to torture and maim and kill him in the most gruesome manner possible, but this felt different. The softness against his back and near gentleness in which the shadows undressed him made something dark begin to take shape in his thoughts. Something so dreadful he couldn’t name it.
The eyes ticked. Vox refocused on them.
Sinister and red against the pure blackness of nearly everything, they stuck out, growing louder and glowing brighter each awful second that it ticked by. Vox looked closer; it felt like looking death in the eyes. The emotionless dials were not so emotionless. They were not just dials ticking down his demise. He remembered that these were the monster’s eyes. The windows to its damned soul.
And in them he saw hunger. Hunger, but not in the way Vox was used to. Not in the way he himself has felt hunger, fueled by the thrill of the hunt, the promise of power, or just plain bloodlust.
This was not bloodlust.
This was just—
Vox’s eyes widened. His throat began to tighten.
“…No,” his voice cracked.
The snakes continued to strip him. The monster laughed, the sound reverberating—
“No!—“ Vox screamed, thrashing as much as he could with his weakened limbs and spirit. “Stop—s—zztop! P—please, I don’t—“
A large face was pressed against his. A long, hot, wet tongue forced itself into his mouth while his tormentor’s claws began to grope along his naked body and Vox understood. He understood everything.
The thing bit his mouth and lapped greedily at the blood. Vox sobbed. Vox sobbed because he understood.
This was his own personal hell. A fate worse than death.
A long length of hard flesh pressed against his thigh. Vox cried in pain when—
—his head hit against the stiff cushions of the couch.
“F—zzuxk!”
His arms flew to the sides of his head in an effort to soothe the pain. All he was met with was smooth wooden paneling.
He grimaced. His heart was racing and his clothes stuck to his skin.
Vox’s breath hitched.
His clothes.
He looked down, startled by his own brightness. His screen was glowing as it should have, projecting a bright blue light that allowed him to see his body. His clothed body.
He looked up and around his room, trying to see where the hell he was before he allowed himself to let his guard down.
But when he looked around, he wasn’t met with the otherworldly darkness of his bedroom.
He could make out the outlines of his living room, furniture and boxes strewn about; a mini grand piano in the corner. And every time he moved his head, the light moved with him.
Vox breathed and breathed and breathed, clutching his chest. He closed his eyes, and felt wetness spill from them and trail down his screen. He breathed.
It was a nightmare.
He wanted to feel relieved. And some part of him did. His heart had eased and he could finally fucking breathe. That—thing hadn’t actually gotten to him. That—that thing might not even be real at all.
But another part of him, something more honest, perhaps, felt incomplete about all this.
He did his best to ignore that part.
Vox sighed, stretching happily, (or as happily as he could), and pulling a familiar, worn blanket over himself again.
In the periphery of his drowsy eyes, a shadow moved.
Vox smiled, only slightly deranged, and closed his eyes.
He probably just imagined it.