THE SOUND OF MY VOICE

Genres: Drama, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Fantasy, Horror

Rated: M for violence and mature themes.

Premise: This is essentially a story about the fatherly and daughterly love between two broken people, one who searches for his humanity and the other, who searches for her voice she again. Despite their brokenness, they are united by their unique strengths. The girl, despite having lost her voice is gifted with a prodigious affinity with music while the man, despite having lost his humanity to the monster within, is gifted with incredible willpower and exceptional physical abilities. Both must work together to make their voices heard by a society built to cast them aside.

The story will focus on the daughter's perspective of life but the father persona will also play a major role in the daughter's psychological development.

Author's Note: This is more of a warning to those who may be sensitive to graphic violence, but I did specify that this story is part of the horror genre above, so some readers may feel uncomfortable especially during this first chapter. In addition, I made use of italics to depict the transition between a hazy, dreamy environment to that of a clearer, realistic atmosphere, so don't be confused! It's not a technical error. Other than that, I hope you enjoy!


"Her melody moves the soul, her silence sunders the body." – Jericho Swain


CHAPTER 1 – CRIMSON PRELUDE

The blade was sharp.

Sharper than anything she had ever touched.

It cut through her, grazing her side and opening up her white dress.

It hurt a lot—more than anything she had ever felt.

A ribbon of scarlet burst forth and blossomed from where the blade had opened up her skin. The cut was deeper than she thought. Her dress was becoming soaked with the substance of life faster than she could scream. She clutched her side in vain, no longer sure of whether she was trying to stop the blood or stop the pain. As she pressed her hand into the fabrics of her torn dress, her fingers brushed against the wound and she opened her mouth to lament the pain but gave only silence.

The crimson life was leaving her quicker than she had ever imagined, spilling out onto the floor, overflowing through the gaps between her fingers, and staining the pale white skin on her hands.

It hurt—and it wouldn't stop.

'Somebody . . . help me . . .' she thought.

There was movement in front of her. A dark, butted figure. A man . . . a man with no face. No—that couldn't be it. It was an abomination. Her blurred vision cleared for a moment and she caught a glimpse of the figure. It was a demon—a demon with wicked claws, gleaming red eyes, and blades protruding from its arms.

Huh?

Was that her blood?

Was that her blood dripping from the tip of the demon's blade?

It looked fresh. It looked recent. But when did he—?

The girl's wound stung from the memory. They say deep wounds only become increasingly numb and eventually, the victim will succumb to a soundless, drifting, eternal sleep. What they say—it couldn't be farther from the truth. Being cut open like that was painful. Excruciatingly so. Every time she thought the agony would finally leave her body, her muscles would seize up, the streams of blood would gush out, and her head would swim, wavering between life and the afterlife.

A cruel, mocking sound resembling laughter came from the swirling blackness on the demon's face, where his mouth should have been.

'Little one. Little one.' It spoke in her mind. 'Little one, you can run and run, and we'll have lots of fun.'

The demon moved closer to her. Slowly, but surely. As if relishing every second of terror that passed. As if feeding off her fear. Feeding off her life force that was steadily ebbing away. She stumbled backwards, a sluggish, agonizing crawl—anything to put distance between herself and that thing.

She opened her mouth to cry out but to her shock, only a wheezing breath without sound escaped her lips.

'What was going on?' She thought. 'Why can't I—'

She gave it another try, sucking in as much air as possible, opening her mouth as wide as she could, and pushing the scream out from its chains of fear—but to no avail. She was terrified. The sound that was supposed to come out was stuck to her throat, unable to move any further up, just as she was up against the wall, frozen by fright.

The demon was standing right before her now. He bent down, the blade on his arm retracting but the arm itself, stretching towards her in slow motion. There was no rush. Both of prey and predator knew that. But while the girl's insides churned with sickness, the demon's heart surged with murderous glee. While the girl's legs shook uncontrollably, the demon's body moved with fluid certainty. While the prey's hands trembled from the burden of holding back the curtains of death, the predator taunted her desperate attempt to cling to life and wrapped his hands around her neck.

He squeezed, applying a little pressure at first, then increasing his grip on the helpless child's one last lifeline. The feeling of draining the girl's life with unhurried ease sent a wave of euphoria through the demon's mind. It was the finest pleasure offered by life—the action of being in control of another's life was almost orgasmic. The demon nearly came from the thought of it.

'Oh why of all times must my sword stand so erectly firm and stiff?' he moaned. Then, he noticed something strange with the girl's eyes—they were starting to close. She was losing her battle with death.

'Not yet—it is too soon.' The demon thought. 'I have not harvested all that can be harvested yet.'

He loosened his grip on the girl's neck and she gasped weakly. Oxygen filled her lungs again. She was alive—for now. Using the new energy to concentrate on one spot, she managed to open her eyes a bit wider compared to the slits they were before. To her surprise, the demon was changing. The darkness that shrouded him was melting away to reveal a middle-aged man underneath.

The man wore a ragged black dress-shirt with the top-half of its buttons undone and a pair of dirty grey pants. His hair was unkempt and filthy, and he smelled of corpses. However, he retained the gleam of red in his eyes—they glowed as if he were possessed by bloodlust. He finally spoke.

"I've always wondered how tight a child's sacred lotus is." The man licked his lips. His erection was now clearly visible from the bulge in his pants. "But just like a flower needs water before it blooms, your little lotus needs to be wet before I can plant my seed inside you. Just like I did to your mother."

The girl's eyes widened.

My . . . sacred . . . lotus . . . ? She wasn't completely sure what that meant, but she was nevertheless, her instincts told her that the man was about to do something terrible to her. As if reading her apprehension, the man put one hand on her stomach, holding her down and the other hand on her thigh, slowly moved it up her leg. She twitched and a shivered from the cold touch of the man's oddly smooth hand. It was a strange sensation, one she had never felt before. Despite how alien the feeling was to her, for some reason, it helped some part of her forget the pain from her wound. It was a dangerous feeling.

"Come now. Let me take them off." The man had grabbed hold of her undergarment and was pulling them down her legs in a tantalizing fashion. She realized something was wrong with what he was doing and tried to close her knees together but the man yanked them off her effortlessly. Instinctively, her hands went down to cover her crotch even though she was not taught such a protective measure but the man only smiled wickedly and immediately began choking her again with the hand that was on her stomach. She reacted as he expected, her hands leaving her crotch to beat at his choking hand. A futile attempt to survive.

The man brought her panties up to his nose and sniffed them. They were as pure and untainted as he expected.

How lovely it was when his victims were untouched maidens of innocence. It made the experience all the more pleasurable.

Carelessly throwing her underwear to one side, he lifted her dress and leered at the unripe fruit before him. He didn't even feel himself drool until a drop of his saliva splattered onto his arm. The girl shut her eyes in embarrassment. Somehow, she knew her body was already being violated by the man's sinful eyes.

"Now thy fruit shall ripen." The man growled lustfully.

His touch was deceivingly gentle when he rested his fingertips from his free hand on the lips of her lower orifice. The girl whimpered—the sensation was unfamiliar and it scared her profoundly. However, when he began to move his fingers up and down her orifice, she arched her back and inhaled sharply. This feeling—it was not pain or fear.

It was pleasure.

But the girl didn't know it. Because she neither rejected it nor welcomed it, she was suspended by the chains of ecstasy, unsure of whether this feeling was part of the two extremes of 'right' or 'wrong' that was imposed upon her by society. She felt warmer down there with each passing moment and . . . wetter. Her lower orifice was secreting some kind of fluid. She recalled the man's words—her lotus needed to become wet before he could plant his seed inside her. What was this wetness though, and what did he mean by his seed?

"You're feeling quite comfortable now aren't you, little girl?" the corner of the man's lips curved upwards and formed a fiendish smile.

"I absolutely HATE it when my victims get too comfortable."

Without warning, the man shoved two fingers inside her, piercing the heart of her femininity. The sharp, intense pain shocked the girl back into the dark reality and she suddenly found herself screaming at the top of her lungs. At the most perilous moment, her voice had returned to her. However, the man was unfazed, pulling his fingers almost all the way out of her orifice before thrusting them back in with all his might. By the fourth repetition, the girl's mind had gone blank. Tears streamed down her face as she screamed and screamed from the feeling of her womb getting torn apart.

The crimson essence of her life splurted from the gate between her high arches and decorated her white dress with roses and tulips and thousands of other blossoming flowers she could not name. They grew, multiplied and joined with the shifting red patterns emerging from where her side-wound spilt its own rivers of rubies, until the white canvas she wore had barely a single speck of white left.

The man suddenly shouted a final, savage cry and jammed his fingers as far into her orifice as he could, with as much force as he could. The girl didn't even have time to scream—she simply arched her back one last time, making a gagging noise before foaming at the mouth and convulsing violently. She stopped moving.

A look of elation shone malevolently on the man's face. Feeling a slight moisture where his groin was, he grinned with utter delight. There was nothing in the world that could compare to cumming when—

"Huh?" the man felt a bizarre coldness wash over the left side of his body. He glanced at his shoulder and found only empty space where his arm should've been.

"HUH?!" he cried out not from pain but from bewilderment. His body was still in complete shock—it had happened so quickly that his brain could not register that pain was the appropriate response his body should have made.

The cut was so abrupt that the blood only began spilling out after the man started moving. Glaring at the only possible culprit of the mutilation of his limb, he cursed her with all the colours of his nation.

(palette shifts from dull shades to vivid colours)

"You fucking bitch—what did you do?!" the man fell back onto his behind, screaming in anguish.

Then, he heard a bloodcurdling howl at the end of the dark alley. Slowly, he turned his head towards the source of the animalistic sound and discovered a monstrous, humanoid creature whose entire body was covered with fur within his line of sight. In its right hand, it held an appendage that seemed to have been ripped off a person.

"You—! What the fuck are you?!" he shuffled backwards in terror.

The creature sniffed the air and howled again. It set its yellow eyes on the man, snarling viciously before falling on all fours. The man couldn't tell whether the creature was more man or more monster—there was some kind of pressurized machine strapped to its back and gave off an eerie neon green glow. It began to lope towards him and when there was approximately fifty meters between them, it wind up its legs and then leapt an impossible distance. The man only had time to blink once before the creature landed beside him.

"Muerte." It spoke only one word before thrusting his muscular arm at the man's chest pushing him straight through the adjacent brick wall as if it were made of sand. The man landed in what looked like an empty storage room and lay still.

The creature sniffed the air again, catching a different smell in the air. It was blood—yes—but it was . . . sweet. Pure. Untainted. The scent led him to the body of a small, bloodied girl lying a few feet away. Leaning down and sniffing the girl's body, the creature growled softly. Judging from her wounds, she should be dead, but somehow, she stubbornly clung on to life and was hanging by a thread. Perhaps he should save her and bring her to a safe location to treat her wounds.

'Hold on . . . save her?' the creature clutched its head with both hands, expressing confusion at the apparently new emotion. A thought ran through his mind. 'Since when were monsters capable of compassion?'

Regardless, he felt compelled to do as his instincts told him, which for the first time in his life was not 'kill'. Bending down, he scooped up her frail frame into his arms finding that she was as light as a doll. Brushing off any other unnecessary, wasteful notions, he carried her off into the dark of the night.


Phew! I first thought of this story concept because I wanted to try to write something darker. Though if I were to be completely honest, I had quite a stressful time writing this first chapter due to entire chapter consisting of primarily graphic violence and other extremely mature themes, but I thought it was an effective way to set the stage with a tragic introduction. I'll probably dial it down a bit next chapter :).

If you liked the first Chapter, click FOLLOW to get updates on this story as soon as I upload them! If you LOVED it, then FAVORITE it! Let me know what you think so far in the Comments/Review section below!

Peace!

~Nightrous