Warnings: This is gothic-themed yaoi, with references to things that go bump in the night. This is not wholesome at all and may be more disturbing to some than others (if your imagination is not attuned to writings of gothic nature). Also, there will be allusions to rape and bestiality, though the nature of it is dubious.
Disclaimer: Please take the time to read the (lengthy) standard disclaimer on my profile page. It's for all my Hetalia stories, so once you've read it you'll never have to read it again. Cheers!
Story #104
"Dreams Upon A Midnight Dreary"
Everything and nothing comes back to him, resonating loudly- indiscernibly, like a bell's distant tolling…
-x-
It always came on nights like this. When violent claps of thunder and lightning ripped the pitch black sky. Always on nights when the friendly magical creatures were hiding out of sight seemingly non-existent, as if knowing something he didn't; Of an evil lurking within the shadows waiting, lured by the smell of his palpable dread…
In that twilight of weariness and creeping slumber, where he lay nodding off most vulnerable, it was only the beating of his heart that foretold the fantastic horrors leading to the beginnings of a waking dream. He always valiantly endeavoured to stay awake… Yet he never recalls consciousness slipping, nor could he ever bring to recollection the resting of head to pillow, or sighing those steadied metronomic breaths. By the time he is made privy to his unwanted guest's presence, the night is a dream already wrapping itself around him, weighing down his eyelids as if he were dead; Sealing him within a coffin of sleep as they feasted on his disembodied soul…
The glint of the knife, the chase, the struggle— the unspeakably horrific ordeal… It always started and ended the same way. Like an open-ended movie, with no credits and no music. Just blood everywhere and pain rippling through him, and the buzzing static in his brain. He always remembers nothing of it—if not for the tell-tale fragments—like the middle parts were recorded over with fuzzy colour bars in shades of grey…
Then he wakes up.
The only trouble is, he was never asleep, to begin with. But he remembers being strongly intoxicated… by something— perhaps by the nightmare itself. Precisely an hour and one minute after witching hour.
Tonight was one of those nights. The stroke of midnight finds him wide awake. But he didn't even need to close his eyes. He finds himself sinking once again into oblivion, his mind careening the borders of a seamless dream –with no end nor beginning. He was looped in the film forever, into this sick game where he was the main actor; Except he is not playing a part, he was just being played. Over and over and over…
Until he was no more than a chockfull of disjointed memories, open wounds, violent bruises, and remains of a patched-up rag doll splayed inside-out. This was supposed to be the ending, with his own death played out, gruesome and tasteless- but it wasn't. Everything just starts over; The ending overlapped by the start.
His eyes flutter open in pitch blackness, slumped in his armchair. The embers of the fire long dead, the icy cold night already settled deep in his veins. He tries to move, but his arm is numb and heavy—immobile somehow—not to say that the rest of him wasn't as incredibly fatigued. He opens his mouth to call out. He doesn't recognize the sound that escapes his lips.
An odd distant plopping noise creeps into the corners of his consciousness. Blood, by the smell of it -pooling into a considerable stain on the royal blue carpet. He lets his head loll to one side as his eyes become accustomed to the darkness. He retraces the source- from the growing puddle to the dull trickling; to the tips of his fingers, up the dark trail running up his wrist; and finally to a deep gash on his dangling forearm.
It seemed to glow brilliantly, mesmerizing in a morose morbid sort of way…. Crimson against pale flesh…
At that moment, a form darker than the darkness enters his peripheral vision of the doorway; A hulking creature on fours, now sitting motionless from a distance, watching him. His mind couldn't quite grasp what it was, he didn't have time to scrutinize it. As it slowly lumbered towards him, his heart began to race. He knows he has never seen it before, but also that this encounter was not their first. The only thing that brought familiarity, was the rising fear in his gut. Perhaps it was a sprite playing tricks on him, or merely an apparition of his delirious fancy. Either way, it made no difference to know any more beyond the point of this whole game: To instil as much doubt as possible –as deeply as possible.
Where there is doubt, fear lurks close by.
The inscrutable creature paused at his feet, regarding him with a bored stare, as though indulging in his silent terror knowing his mind was too drugged to resist -let alone move. Content at the helplessness of its prey, it finally averts its penetrating eyes to the blood, dipped its head low and lapped it up. He shudders inwardly, but couldn't look away. His eyes were locked open, and so was his mind. He was a bound spectator to this macabre phantasmagoria. It only stopped when the carpet was licked dry, and when it finally did, its attention returned to him -expectantly. Rather than be sucked into those lifeless orbs, he fixes his gaze upon the creature's hugely deformed canine teeth instead, as a massive forked tongue flicked out to clean the remnants of blood—his blood—around its lipless mouth.
His own lips curled upward, half-amused, half disgusted -and for the most part, delirious. By now, he knew well what it wanted -which was the next part of this sick game- and his injured arm twitched involuntarily. The creature took that as an invitation and slithered closer. Gruffly sniffing the bloody, ragged crevice for a few moments before lashing out its tongue; licking and drinking unreservedly. A sob caught in his parched throat, eyelids rapidly blinking in an effort to shut out his awareness of the brutality, in vain; All his senses keening to the coarse, slimy appendage abusing his flesh—scraping, slurping, and squeezing into the cavity—all the more widening and bruising the raw flesh, the pain magnified to blinding. By the time it withdrew, the wound was licked clean, and fresh blood was slowly blooming in the fissure. The creature licked its chops, staring on tenterhooks at the pooling bright scarlet, and he could almost taste its impatience -a bitter coppery tang in his tongue. Its eyes, unlike any animal he has ever seen before; no light was reflected in them; no emotion… no soul.
This time, he stared defiantly into its black and fathomless sorry excuse for eyes, and mentally jeered at its frustration. He knew (the way you just know in dreams), that there was a knife lying around, a rusty and unsharpened one (the same one used to tear open his arm), but nonetheless—useful. Unfortunately not for his benefit, nothing put here ever was. The thing wanted him to use the knife to enlarge the wound in his arm, but he was not in the mood to indulge its perverse wishes at the moment, so he allowed his head to fall back against the chair –thinking it was too much bother to try locating the knife in his current state.
As if comprehending his insolence, the creature's black eyes stir, and with its fangs suddenly bared, it lunges at him, slithering up his legs and crushing his arms beneath talon-like claws. A scream rips through him, but it is quickly choked down to strangled sobs as the thing's jaw locks around his neck, teeth puncturing new uneven holes, and surely now, has its fill of his fresh blood. He gasps in small, quick increments through his nostrils as this went on unmercifully long, the weight on his chest and stomach hardly allowing his lungs enough space for air; acidic saliva burning like poison in his veins.
He should have passed out at some point, but that's how he knew he was still in the dream; In it, he was never granted such a mercy, rather he remained horrifically lucid through it all. His forearm flailed hurriedly, albeit weakly, his fingers wildly seeking the knife that lay somewhere on the floor. Whoever –or whatever- had put him here wanted him to find it. It was all part of the game. His arms were starting to feel numb when the tip of his fingers finally brush at the metallic coldness.
But it is never easy, and in his panic, the object slips once— twice from his reach, before he actually manages to wrap his fingers around the blade, nearly tearing the ligaments of his arm in the process of reaching, and not even caring that he was cutting his fingers deep— even tightening his grip more for fear that his blood would make his prize slick, and elude him again.
Finally, the creature disengaged from his neck leaving another part of him crushed and mangled, his body soaking in blood and drool, and lungs desperate to be filled; But the thing far from sated. He knew because it was never satisfied with simply feeding off him or mangling him, no… This encounter always had to end with him sullied, inside-out. He instinctively clutched the blade tighter as the creature pawed him below, petting and gnawing; irritation growing at the flimsy barrier of clothing that kept him from his new goal. He gritted his teeth at the futility of it all. Part of him revelled at the idiotic creature's frustration, but a bigger part of him knew that he was only prolonging the agony. The longer he put off the inevitable, the more drawn-out the pain and torture.
There were many different versions to it, but the violation to his mind and body remained consistent. He knew this cycle would only end with the creature having its fill. It had resorted to slobbering and gnawing at his garment, achieving no more of undressing him than lessening the torment, and it was getting just as frustrating for him as for his molester.
He would've scoffed at the irony of it if he could. Nothing was ever put forth for his benefit, and the blade in his fingers mocked him. He finally brings it up -and with his limited mobility- painstakingly, clumsily, sliced off his belt, and ripped open the clothing beneath it, enough to aid the creature in peeling it off him completely, impatiently, in the most primal fashion. He swallowed the lump forming in his throat as the thing puffed warm breaths upon his exposed flesh, so stimulated at the access it was finally granted that it eagerly ravishes his already soaked parts with its tongue, the acidic slobber causing his lower regions to ache and swell. His drugged mind filled with new sensations, and guttural whimpers rumbled from his chest. The drool was so sticky and so thick, and it was laced with a chemical so strong, that he suddenly remembered the reason he could barely move.
He was also becoming impossibly aroused.
It was unceremonious. He shuddered with each incursion, teeth chattering at the blinding force and friction, chest heaving as the movements gained urgency and speed. Each unsympathetic lunge knocking the air from his already deprived lungs, causing him to wheeze and choke and moan at the mind-numbing sensation of joining, his hidden nerves swelling at the abuse dealt by each merciless intrusion. His own breathless incoherent utterings mixing with the thing's primal panting, talons embedding itself around his hips, pulling him deeper and harder. And with every smash to his inner walls, he was stained anew. He no longer understood shame, nor fear; All he cared for was welcoming dissolutely, responding accordingly, and mindlessly becoming one with the beast…
The End.
(But there is an Epilogue…)