Writing Explorations: Week 70, A Rare Demon

[The Mood is Write]

My Writing Explorations series of exercises are a chance for users to explore new concepts and practice the art of raising two fingers to Writer's Block while screaming obscenities to fickle muses: to rebel against the idea that a person requires a mythical force inside them to make new and amazing things.

No. Listen well, users: there is no being inside you waiting to be let out. You are the writer, and in this exercise, you are given a place to push not only against Writer's Block, but also against the forces of stagnation. Feel trapped in your genre? Explore a new one! Stuck with a singular archetype? Do something else! In this thread, you will not be critiqued unless you request it. Should you wish it, I will happily offer my thoughts on how it might be improved, but I will not comb looking for fixes: this isn't the place: this place is for safely trying new things and indulging a love of writing.

Shake the bars of your cell block and roar, writers!

[fieldbox=How do I take part?]You can write to one or more (or none) of the prompts, the theme in the thread title, the bonuses—hell, you can even cast aside all of what I offer if you get a different idea.

The whole point is "get writing!"[/fieldbox]

Prompts:

1. The stench hit her when she opened the door, strong enough to dizzy her and give her a horrific high. Yet still she stepped through. It was her duty.
2. A creature bound by a collar is loaned out to various temporary masters. The creature can only disobey their orders and the orders of the opposite sex if those orders go against their owner's orders, or if the temporary master becomes an enemy to their owner.
3. A demon-summoning appears to go awry. Instead of a hellhound, a doll-like young girl appears in the circle.
4. The asker waited, and the longer the questioned remained silent, the more the asker realized that the answer would be like a noose around the questioned person's neck.

Bonus Rounds:

• Write in a random genre.
• "Aw, look at 'em! So young and willing to get themselves killed!"
• "Freedom doesn't feel the way I thought it would."
• "It's not called slurring your words. It's called talking in cursive, and it's fucking elegant."
• "She's a predator posing as a house pet."
• "In my defense, I was left unsupervised."
• "You're a woman. Use it. Bring every man you meet to his motherfucking knees."
• "She's got the eyes of innocence, the face of an angel, the personality of a dreamer, and a smile that hides more pain than you can ever imagine."

 

[Dahrinn (Groucho)]

Illuminated by the kaleidiscopic glow of the light of the gibbous moon shining in through the stained glass windows, what appeared at first glanced to be a young woman stalked silently down the dim hall, clutching a loaded arquebus. Her eyes, a dull shade of pink with deep red veins branching inward, scanned her field of view one surface at a time. Floor, left wall, right wall, ceiling floor, left wall, right wall, ceiling, with the occaisional glance over the shoulder. Her ears, covered by delicate snow-white hair, listened for any disturbances in the already unnerving ambience of the vast estate in the dead of night... the howl of the wind, the creak of planks, the quite slow, weak beat of her own inhuman heart.

A chill ran up her spine as she slowly turned a corner. A trail of blood lay out before her, leading halfway down the hall and left into a room of unknown purpose, where this creature first crawled forth from. She examined the scene; scratchings upon the floor, a splatter upon the walls... minor burns to the carpet. It was precisely the outcome of what her persistent nightmares and visions fortold... of a horrid creature breaking free and tearing apart it's creators.

She knew not what blasphemous debasement of the laws of nature the previous sorcerers held up in this accursed mansion had persued, but the possibility of another attempt at a homunculus of her quality disturbed her, as she was fully aware of the more common results of such ambition. She brought a hand to her chest to feel her heartbeat, a single slow thump with a pause long enough for her to finish a breath, before the second thump. With a measured grace, she moved to the door and turned the knob, careful to allow no clicking or squeaking from the mechanism. It was upon the opening door that a hideous stench hit her, almost knockong her over and forcing her to hold back gagging. A few good blinks were required to cleanse her eyes of tears, when she saw the grisly sight of the creature's creation, and her fears were confirmed.

All over the large room were dead things, deformed by mistake then mangled by design, appearing as discolored and disproportionate mutant humanoids which had been mauled by some malavolent, or perhaps merciful, entity. They were homunculi, and they were the same strain as her... almost her kin... a few of them appeared proffessionally dissected... hopefully that was the case. They were far from sapient, but pain and terror were not unknown to them.

After the initial shock, she steeled her will, focused or her arquebus, and stepped courageously forward. As long as this thing was alive, it suffered, and she would put it down. It was with the pained cough of a nearby being that she turned sharplt, and focused her arquebus, before staring, wode eyed and concerned.

A sorcerer was laying on the ground, a broken piece of glass running piercing his thigh, and the front of his robes red with blood. He was her creator, her master, the only man to create a successful human replica homunculus in five hundred years, and a verifyable madman. He coughed out a quip along with some drops of blood.
"Aw, look at you, so young and willing to get yourself killed!"
She responded with quiet infuriation.
"Me get myself killed?! Why the hell did you come to this forsaken place?!"
"You and I both know I'm not best left unsupervised... Why did you come here? You're free now."
"Freedom doesn't feel free when you're plagued by nightmares that only cease by slaying the source."
"Very well. Unfortunately for both of us, my healing potion failed... and as a result I'm incapacitated until further notice..."
"Will you live?"
"Assuming the creature doesn't cone back to finish me off.'
"That won't be a problem. Where is it."
Her master's eyes widened and with a trembling hand he pointed upward.
"...on the ceiling."

They say was midnight at the abandoned Greywood Estate when the sound of a gunshot alerted local guards. It was in the following investigation that they found blood trails, scratchings upon the walls, and even burns upon pillars and curtains. Despite this, no bodies have been found. Locals suspect a group of local surgeons practicing the occult for the peculiar scene. Their witchcraft trials have been postponed until after they have been found. By order of the local Lord, they are to be returned dead or alive if found.

 

[Asinis]

Alyx could almost feel the teeth of her past. Just beyond the gloom, and ancient dust. It was yawning at her heels. She remembered her first kill. It happened in this broken place. Her memory was growing sharper, more lethal with every step through these halls of long dead machinery. Alyx shared some bloody history with this place, and if not for the shovel of duty, it was a history she'd have preferred to keep buried. Yet here she was, sent back to this rotting Golgotha. The tomb of the first devil she'd ever cast from this planet. Like all Devils before it and since, it was welcomed to earth with words of blood and shadow, spoken from the lips of evil, greedy men. With poisoned knowledge, an insidious terror was born.

Alyx remembered. She'd followed a ghastly trail of human debris, clear across the last city on earth. She was always left floundering in the creatures wake. she was perpetually several steps behind it. Each day was its own holocaust of despair and horror. Sleep became a fond memory, and then a distant one. Her perception of time, like her grasp on reality, began to evaporate. Her entire system was cannibalising itself with hatred. The arctic tendrils of a predatory psychosis began to eradicate the woman she was before her nights had become frozen by twisted shapes howling in the distant valleys.

Eventually, she found it, almost a decade ago now. In the voiceless fringe of a grey forgotten district, skulking amongst the bones of what was once a factory. She remembered its voice tear through the atmosphere like a snarling wind of glass. no words in it, no scream, it was raw feeling. Every cell and wisp of smoke, each grain of emptiness, every sick fibre of hunger, pain and lust which defined this creature was expressed in a single auditory defilement; so violent, so vivid, it almost swept away the last shores of Alyx's sanity in that tiny instant. Yet, ten years later, almost to the day, here she was again.

"Here you are!"

The high, piping voice struck her like a gunshot. It jerked Alyx out of the fuge state she'd tumbled into whilst walking down memory lane. Total shock. Alex swivelled, hand already full of gun iron. Her bowels loosened. She almost blew the head off of a rookie devil hunter. Luckily for both of them, Alyx didn't shit herself. Luckily for Bell, her student, Alyx didn't blow her mind out the back of her skull. It was a close thing though, and by the look in Bell's eyes as she threw herself to the dirt, she thought so too.

"It's me! It's Bell. Please don't shoot me!" Bell, short for Tinkerbell, sounded like a broken dog whistle.

"Fuck. Fuck. Bell. How many times?" Alyx hesitated a moment, savouring a recurring fantasy of blowing the girl away. Alas, it was not to be. She lowered her gun arm, and holstered the almost comically large revolver. Not that Bell was Laughing.

"Stop. Fucking. Sneaking. Up. On. Me" Bell was the only human capable of sneaking up on Alyx. She was like some kind of idiot savant; an easily excited, high pitched, talkative, obnoxious fool who could move like a deadly fucking ghost.

(Had to stop there, was getting obsessed, cheers for the inspiration <3)