Writings on the Wall - Pt. 5

“Don’t listen to him, the man has been placed under disability for the last ten years. He’s only out on the streets because he keeps slipping his orderlies and there’s not enough money to put him into a more secure facility.”

~

I stared down at the handcuffs. “Why do you have police issue cuffs in your pants?”
Adonis, concentrating on tightening the cuffs, shrugged his broad, dress shirt clad shoulders. “They are the best on the market.”
I was wearing casual garment from one of the boys’ rooms. They were twin boys, as my captor explained to me, about sixteen years old and my size, which made for a exciting excursion into two full-size sets of closets. I had a chance to look at myself in one of the closet door mirrors, and I looked freakish. Clean and all, no holes in the dark blue jeans, no blood or vomit on the white shirt with the red print, and socks. Oh, socks, the sporty ones, thick and fluffy and warm.
I looked so good, I almost didn’t mind the manhandling and the handcuffs. Almost.
“I’m sorry I got the wrong address,” I said, staring down at the shiny metal bands around my wrists. I had a lot of experience with cuffs and given enough time, I was able to slip them, but my captor didn’t look all that ready to put me on a backseat of a car and leave me alone for a few minutes. He also was the most confusing person I had ever met. I couldn’t decide if he was stupid, oafish or simply playing along to see what I was all about, but right now I had bigger things to worry about. He wanted me to prove my Dark-theory to him. To do so, we had to go over to his neighbors, which was easier than it sounded, since there were no fences between the gardens. The hard part would be to figure out how to show him what I saw. I hadn’t managed that so far, not with anyone, so there was that.
“I’m sorry I might have to kill you,” he replied, tugged at the bit of chain linking the cuffs together, and stepped out of my way. “You walk in front of me. If you run, I shoot you. If you try to jump me or the neighbor, I shoot you. We go over there, you show me whatever it is that’s lurking there, we go back and I decide what to do with you. Understood?”
I bobbed a bobblehead nod and started walking, along the hall, down the stairs and back into the marble-covered first floor. It’s fantastic how many creaky and groany spots you find if you don’t try to avoid them. I relished each woody crackle beneath my feet and stomped extra loud when we walked towards the back door.
Adonis tsked at the broken window, threw me a sideways glance that had way too much father in it for my dirty imaginings of his body, and opened the door for me. His other hand clutched the gun casually, very unlike a policeman, very much like a lady might carry her purse. I stepped back outside, careful not to make any sudden moves as he followed me out into the darkness. The lawn looked like a little ocean of scalpels, pale white where the moonlight hit the blades of grass, but since he had at least given me my wet boots back, I wasn’t afraid to step off the marble porch.
We made our way across the lawn, him pushing me forward when I lost my train of thought, usually while staring at the foliage lazily moving in the nightly breeze. Even without a fence, I immediately knew when we stepped onto the neighbor’s property. I almost got myself shot, too, since I stumbled back gasping, right against the muzzle of Adonis’ gun.
Luckily, he had a good composure, had my captor. “What’s wrong?” he asked, standing all clueless and calm between the rose bushes drenched in Dark. I could see their buds flow and twitch beneath the evil, like tightly wound wreaths of tentacles, thirsty for my touch and blacker than a moonless night. Adonis even got some of it on his sleeve and I had to make fists out of my hands to stop myself from trying to brush it off him.
“Don’t touch the plants, they are hungry,” I wheezed, more as an excuse than to warn him, because he wouldn’t believe me anyway. One of the rose branches curled at my words, as if to slap me for my traitorous words, but I backed up and gave it a wide berth. As I turned around, I saw Adonis stoop down a bit to take a closer look at one of the rose buds, then back off with a puzzled expression. He heeded my words, staying away from all the bushes and flowers as he followed my steps, but his face said that he was humoring me.
This was definitely the place. I snaked my way through the tainted vegetation, shuddering at the sheer mass of Dark around us. It was dripping from branches, curling around giant flower stems, sitting in stagnant pools on the path stones, humming with strength and malice. Either the people in the house spent massive amounts of time in their garden, or they were in some way more powerful than any of my prior victims. It was almost impossible to avoid all of it, but neither the Dark, nor that eye-burning Light ever stuck to me like it did to other people, so all I had to worry about was my confused companion.
He still stepped where I stepped, looking bemused but calm, clutching his gun. “You know,” he said, throwing a glance at the beautiful sandstone-paved patio we walked towards, “it’s a shame those people never look at their garden. I mean, here you have all this beauty, and the only beneficiaries are the insects and birds.”
I sniffed, feeling a tickle in my nose that promised a major cold in the next days. “Maybe they see it as I do,” I offered, swallowing down the increasingly queasy feeling developing in my stomach. It felt a little like a bad garbage dinner, but since I hadn’t eaten anything for more than twelve hours, it could only be fear.
A nervous breeze blew through the pillar seamed patio, as we stopped in front of the back door. This one was all glass and plastic with a touch of chrome, but it breathed with darkness, bubbling and undulating like a bursting, maggot-filled carcass. I had never seen darkness this thick up close, and I absolutely didn’t want to touch it. This was bad, really bad. I needed a weapon.
“You’re paler. What do you see?” Adonis whispered, trying to keep me in his sight and throw a look at the door at the same time. I could have taken his gun, now that he was preoccupied with his own worries, but I didn’t. I’d have to kill him, and I really didn’t want to. He was the only person to ever actually make an attempt to find out what I was talking about, and I wanted him all to myself for a little longer.
I could have told him, but words weren’t enough. I bobbed my head a little, trying to identify the worst section on the squirming, bloated mess, then pointed at a spot that was bulbous with pressure. “Touch that, there,” I whispered, stepping off to one side to allow him more room.
Adonis stared at me, then at the spot I had pointed at. His gun never wavered away from my chest as he did so. “I don’t want to,” he finally said, frowning at his own words as he heard them.
“Why?” I asked, although I knew the answer. I wouldn’t have wanted to touch the door there, either, not even blindfolded, but he had ordered me to show him what I was talking about, so he had to come to his own conclusions.
He shrugged and his fingers played, like he was plucking at invisible harp strings. Not that I had ever seen a harp in person, but this was how I imagined a harp player’s hands to move. “I don’t know, I just…. really don’t want to touch the door there.”
I nodded slowly. “It sticks. Sullies. Rots. Your fingers know, that’s why.”
His face told me how silly he thought I was, but he didn’t disagree. Instead, he nodded towards the door, whispering. “So, how do you plan on getting in if you can’t touch it?”
“You can’t. I can.” I inched closer to the door, grabbed the handle and shuddered as the Dark wrapped its wet, cold-hot tendrils around my wrist. It felt like touching a bucket of hot glue and I really didn’t want to, but it was part of the job. I still intended to get paid at the end, it just had gotten a bit trickier. Bubbles of blackness popped and sizzled as the door morphed into a pool of tar, pricking the skin of my hand as I turned the doorknob and pulled the door open. Maybe my Adonis didn’t see anything, but by the way he rolled his shoulders and made a face, he surely felt it.
The door swung open and gave way to a luscious living room, if the onlooker disregarded the mushroom-like growths of violet and black Dark all over the walls and the floors. I stepped in, followed closely by the suit-clad armed man I hadn’t wanted to let go. He hissed behind me, I simply stared. The door fell shut at his heels.
In the middle of the room, a demon stood. Pocks and growths distended his nice pantsuit, sieving yellow and brown fluids through the cloth where the pressure got too much. It had claws, at least I hoped it were claws, but not at its hands and feet— they grew right out of its crotch, snapping at the air as the thing turned towards us. Small, pig-like eyes glared out of a vomit-yellow face, and pieces of pink, twitching flesh fell out the creature’s mouth as it opened its lips to a big, cruel smile. The Dark stood up to its ankles in the room, filling it slowly but surely and rising like the morning tide. Funny enough, it didn’t stink.
No, the room was filled with a whole different scent, and it was coming from the broken, disemboweled body at the feet of the demon. The small creature had been sullied, both by the loss of clothing and by the ripping of flesh. The whole room stank of blood, fear and death, sticking sickly to the insides of my mouth and nose. As the demon lifted his foot to take a half step backwards, a single lock of golden hair stuck to its distorted and warped toe nails, coming clean off what had been a head once.
Adonis had his gun up, side-stepping me to get a clear line of sight at the thing. I wondered how he saw the demon, wondered if the massacre looked as bad to his non-Dark eyes, wondered if he had ever seen something like this, something so purely malicious.
“What is this?” he hissed, sounding out of breath and twitchy like a fly-ridden horse. Cold wind blew against our backs, pulling long threads of Dark out of the sea around the demon and whisking them away as the beast stammered and gurgled. It probably was trying to explain the dead girl’s body at its feet, but something obviously stuck in its throat. It hacked once, twice, a third time, then it spit two fingers out, like a cat regurgitating a fur ball.
“What is this!” Adonis yelled, sounding appropriately panicky.
The demon roared, taking a step closer, stomping into the mess of entrails in front of him and squirting blood everywhere, like a kid jumping into a autumn puddle. A glob of pinkish pus dribbled out of its shirtsleeve.
“Shoot him,” I said, trying my best to sound helpful. Nobody listened to me, probably because I wasn’t yelling.
The demon took another step forward, dragging the ribcage with it as the bones got stuck on its stunted foot. This was not good, it was getting too close.
I turned around and threw all good manners into the wind. “Shoot him, god almighty!” I yelled, shocking Adonis into action.
He shot until the gun clicked empty. Then he vomited and ran out.
The demon fell, slipping in the blood and guts of its victim, gargling its last breath and then adding its black blood to the red of the little dead girl. The room fell silent.
I stood there for a few more moments, confused as to what best to do next. There was nothing here I wanted to touch or take, no bed I wanted to lie in and no food I wanted to steal, but having been robbed of my usual after-kill-activities, I felt strangely bereft. I finally drifted after Adonis, when the stench of blood and death inside got too much even for me. He was walking up and down the patio, barrel side pressed against his forehead and muttering to himself. He stopped when I fell in step beside him, though, and turned to examine me like he hadn’t seen me before.
“Who the hell are you?” he whispered trembling.

Hannah's Hideout: Why are Bad Boys so sexy?

Hannah's Hideout: Why are Bad Boys so sexy?: The if's and why's of stuff are what spices up life!

Cross-sharing my own blog is love. Or preposterous, I'm undecided. Nevertheless, since I'm too strung-out to write brilliant (hehe) stuff for two blogs all the time, I decided to link to those of my blog posts that I deem interesting to you.

Also note that I moved "Bending the Unbreakable" to Hannah's Hideout as a weekly goodie. You'll be able to keep "Writings on the wall" all to yourself until it's finished :)

A few words about Self-Publishing

Hello dearies!

I want to share this article with you, because it summarizes my current fears quite nicely.

Why I self-publish my literary fiction

As I mentioned before, I'm thinking about self-publishing Shapeshifter - not because I tried publishers and failed or anything, no. I'm reasonably sure nobody would want to publish that story, because it's too wacky and aggressive, and it's already been published.
I made a promise in 2009 to always have a few stories free to read, and Shapeshifter is one of them. If I want to keep this promise, I simply have to self-publish. I chose to do heavy edits on the older chapters and leave the published story as it is, so buying it actually will make sense. But try to discuss things like that with an agent or a publisher, hah!

Updated new Blog address

I've made a booboo - all those google accounts confused me so much, I actually created the new official blog with a wrong account. And since there's no way to move my author's blog from account A to account B, I had to download the whole thing, delete it, and create it fresh under a new url with my author's account.

I've been running around for an hour, updating all the sources where I already published my old new address. A little thinking before acting could have spared me this. Alas, now it is done.
If you bookmarked my new site, puh-lease update and forgive me! No more booboos after this, I promise!

Here's the new site: https://hannahcorrie.blogspot.com

And to burn that image into your minds:

The last chapters of Shapeshifter

Hello dearies!
As promised, I'm almost done. All but one steamy sex scene stands between me and "Fin", the rest is written. I'm not good with good-byes, so Chapter 13 grew so much that I split it in two, but the main story has been wrapped up. Chapter 14 will capture the last few threads to tie the knots.
Seven years of writing and growing went into this story, and when it's done, I will work through the first five chapters, polish them, rewrite a few things that taste too childish to me, and then I'll stuff it into an e-book and self-publish it for the smallest amount possible.
The first version as you can read it on this site will stay as it is. I want to thank everyone who read, commented and followed it on Literotica and GayAuthors.org - I wouldn't have come this far without your input and encouragement!

You can read Chapter 13 here!

Thank you!

Love,
Hannah

Writings on the wall - Pt. 4

My mother loved me very much, even though I was a bastard and never did as I was told. She loved me so much, she was afraid I’d run away and get lost while she went to prison, so she chained me to a radiator. It took a while until my wrist was thin enough to fit through the big boy cuffs, but even though she loved me so much, I didn’t want to die waiting for her.

~

I did as I was told. It wasn’t a hard thing to do, since I had no need to see the face of my attacker. This, too, was a situation I had been in multiple times and I had always been able to handle them. People who told me to ‘put my goddamn hands up’ or ‘hold it right there’ usually were in the mood to talk or negotiate, or they would have simply shot me. Talking meant living, and living meant opportunities to turn the tables to my favor. I liked turning tables, it meant getting paid.
“Who sent you?” the voice behind me asked, reverberating through my bones like a cat’s purr. See? Talking, just as I had predicted.
I licked my icy lips, trying to stay upright even though I couldn’t feel my feet anymore. “A whore, awful heels, bad, evil eyes, cigarette. I could see her pubes, she wasn’t wearing a slip,” I answered, because that was exactly how I remembered her. That, and her “shrill voice. Very shrill voice. Piercing, grating.” My knees buckled slightly, but I caught myself before I fell.
The man behind me hesitated, I could hear it in his breath. In-in-out, in, like a sleeping dog. “What district?” he asked, like it would matter.
“Eastern Ghetto,” I replied obediently, mumbling like that one time I had been taken to the dentist and gotten some kind of numbing injection into my gums. As long as I had moved, the cold hadn’t been that bad, but now that I had to stand still, it crept up my limbs like the arms of those little cuttlefish the Triad people liked to fry for dinner. Maybe I would be fried, too? At least I’d be warm…
I fell like a puppet with cut strings, toppled over face-first into the nice, clean carpet, too cold to feel the fibers carpet-burn my cheek. This was not good, not a situation I had been in before, but I couldn’t think my way out of it. My brain was just as cold as my limbs, sluggish and snail-like, drooling its mucus out of my nose like tomato juice. At first, I suspected that guy had shot me because I had moved. Would be hard to feel pain when I couldn’t feel myself, right? But there was no gunpowder smell in the air, and he didn’t loom over me to finish me off, so I probably had just succumbed to the cold.
The man did in fact loom over me, but only to crouch down and fill my nose with the most exquisite cologne I had ever smelled. Spicy, musky, almost too male, but oh so befitting his giant, ripped body. And his long ponytail. And the two-piece suit he was wearing, and his bronze skin. “Adonis,” I gasped, unable to stop him from flipping me onto my back and working his way through my pockets. He found the gun and a piece of chewing gum paper I had kept because it was shiny, but not much else.
“Christ, did you swim here? You’re ice cold,” he observed with a slight accent, not much to go by, but audible. He also sounded more annoyed and gruff than worried, but why should he be worried? I was out cold, haha, pun intended, and he had the upper hand. Fortunately, we were moving back into safe territory: interrogation. He wouldn’t kill me before he knew who had sent me, and that meant more time for me to free myself and finish my part of the deal. I just needed to get warm again, soon, now, quickly.
That wonderful cologne flooded my every sense as he carefully picked me up and carried me out of the room. My body would leave dirt, river water and probably parasites on his expensive suit, but right now I didn’t care, because it meant I could be close to that burning hot, broad chest and not feel bad about it. I’d feel bad soon enough and he would be the one making sure of that, but not in this moment. Him carrying me into the other part of the house also meant I’d find out what lurked behind the doors I hadn’t opened yet, so there was that. Optimism, optimism, as my psychologist always told me.
We took the last door on the right and stepped right into a dream of a bathroom, all marble and chrome and glass. I was draped onto the floor, then the man flipped the light switch and stepped over to a big bath tub.
“I don’t care if you survive the night, but since I have to find out what you were sent to do here, and since you jolly well can’t talk while dying, I’ll warm you up before torturing you,” he explained as he leaned over the tub and got the water going, watching me out of the corners of his eyes.
Maybe he hoped to make me flinch with that threat, but hell, my life was torture, so what?
As the tub filled, he crouched down and peeled me out of my clothes. If he was disgusted by the not-so-faint smell of body odor and street stink, it didn’t show on his face, but he threw my crusty clothes towards the door where they piled against the wall. I, for my part, let him do what he wanted to do, because flopping around like a mackerel on dry land would only work against me and tire me out.
His muscles bulged when he picked me up and dropped me in the hot water. It should have helped, but it only made me shiver harder, rattling my teeth against each other and clouding my mind further. The water felt scaldingly hot on my freezing skin. I gasped and flailed a bit, coloring it brownish as the dirt peeled off my skin like a snake shedding. Adonis kept me in the tub with one hand on my chest, out of balance and out of my depth, calmly waiting for me to heat up and calm down.
He was in a good position to ram a hair pin into his eyes and the door behind him was unlocked, but that would have to wait. If he wanted to torture me by water, I was prepared; I had learned to swim because a few bums had tried to drown me for a few weeks, pushing me into dikes and the river repeatedly. I had learned to hold my breath. And to regurgitate water like an owl.
“So. Who sent you, really?”
And so it began. “A whore,” I repeated, trying for my honest voice and sounding too breathless.
He dunked me, if only for a few seconds. He didn’t need to pull me up, I surfaced by myself, spitting and coughing warm, dirty water.
He repeated the question, I repeated the answer, he dunked me. We played this game for a good ten times, at which point he held me down for half a minute and had to pull me forward so I could get all the water out of my lungs, then he gave up and went on.
“Whom were you supposed to kill?” he asked, grabbing my hair to get a better grip on my head. Dunking was hard work and I was getting clean and therefor slippery.
It was a good question. The shrieky whore hadn’t told me, so I had assumed that I’d leave the house filled with bodies and empty of heartbeat. “Everyone,” I huffed, shrugging to make a point. My throat felt funny, raspy and painful, but my voice sounded okay.
I didn’t get dunked this time, but he threw me a disgusted look. “Even the kids?” he asked, more nauseated than when he had had to touch my clothing, like this was somehow worse than bad hygiene. Maybe it was, I wouldn’t know.
“Didn’t know there were kids,” I answered, lifting a hand towards his fingers in my hair. They hurt, tight as he held me. “Don’t like killing kids, but there’s nothing one can do when they’re filled with the Dark.”
Adonis dunked me again, but only to get my hand away from his. As soon as I let it sink back into the water, he pulled my head back up and leaned forward, staring at my profile.
“What do you mean, filled with the Dark?”
Oops. If I hadn’t swallowed this much dirty water, if I hadn’t been cold and hot at the same time, if I hadn’t been dunked so many times, I wouldn’t have made this mistake. I wouldn’t have told him, just like I hadn’t told anyone else in the last years. Nobody understood and it made them look funny at me. I didn’t like those funny looks, they made me try to explain.
“The Dark is dirty. It sticks like tar, it makes you do things, think thoughts, bad thoughts. The Dark ones ooze it, it follows them like smog. Wherever they are, they stink up their surroundings, make everything worse, make you petty and mean and sad,” I said, finding his eyes and holding his gaze. This was serious business, a serious explanation, and I wanted him to know that. “I can see the Dark. I see the Dark ones. Some of them don’t know what they are, don’t see their own, ugly, messed up faces, they just spread and spread. Don’t you ever feel bad in this house? Don’t you ever get moody?”
“No.”
I squeaked at his almost bored tone of voice. Where were the questions? The ‘freak’-calling? The actual calling the police? He didn’t even make a face, except for the wrinkling of his nose. I did smell like wet, geriatric dog, so he had a reason for that, but I had kind of expected him to react differently. Even the psych docs asked questions and tried to make me doubt myself, and they were the ones supposed to be understanding!
I was still opening and closing my mouth with the outrage of it all, when he shrugged and nodded his head towards the windows.
“But I do get the willies whenever I see the neighbors.”