Not Safe For Words

creepy_shetan

comment_fic

Behind the red door at Barbed Wire was a dimly lit hallway, walls papered in moody black and purple damask with flickering sconces throwing light in small pools just beside each heavy mahogany door. Carnelle had a bizarre moment of dissonance as she compared this darkly sensual hall to the generic grey stretch of hallway she’d traversed earlier in the day.

She released Costa’s hand as they cleared the threshold, confident he’d follow her to the room of her choice. They walked the hall and she let her long, elegant fingers flick across discreet “do not disturb” signs hanging from several crystal doorknobs. They found a room towards the end of the hall, and she pulled their own sign from a pocket by the frame, hanging it delicately on the knob before entering after Costa and shutting the door behind them.

“Well, this certainly isn’t why I normally drag a man back here, but let’s handle our business,” Carnelle murmured as she settled on the navy-blue duvet of the brass four-poster bed that took up the back wall of the room. This room was done in dark blues and golds, with a celestial sky painted overhead.

Costa was goggling around at the array of furnishings in the room when he said, “No, I suppose not. What is all this even for?” He was reaching towards a rack on the wall where an assortment of floggers and paddles hung, each wrapped in clear plastic with a sanitation seal. “Is this a torturer’s chamber?”

Carnelle snorted. Silly Dream. “Nah kid, to the people in this club this is a pleasure chamber. Some humans really get off on a little spice with their sugar.”

He released the royal blue leather fraternity paddle he’d grasped, letting it swing back against the wall. “Right. That must lead to at least some bad dreams. Things gone wrong kind of nightmares. I’m sure I’ve a brother who’s specialized for that.”

“Why didn’t the council find whichever Son of Somnus was specialized for murderous dreams to catch this guy? Why tap you, and make you change focus?”

“There are thousands of us out there, and I imagine finding the singular Dream who has dominion over the types of dreaming I’ll be searching for would take a lot of Council resources. I’m easy to find; I signed up to serve the council centuries ago,” replied Costa evenly.

“Really? I was assigned council duty as a type of community service for breaking a few human interaction rules. I certainly didn’t volunteer that first time.  Why’d you?”

“I’m…bored? My work is very satisfying, but it really is all I’ve got happening, and filling my daylight hours becomes tedious sometimes.” Costa scuffed his combat boot against the hardwood floor, then looked up and met Carnelle’s eyes. “I can tell you don’t want to work with me.”

She thought about softening her response, but just replied, “Yeah. I Hunt alone, and I don’t see how you’re going to be helpful with this. Your skills are a little too, ah, ephemeral, for what we’re supposed to get accomplished.” Her hand waved in a gesture of vague frustration.

“I think I’ve got a unique way to help you, that you haven’t considered. My primary role as a Dream is to cause humans helpful nightmares, but that’s certainly not all I can do. Skimming and spying on the disturbed dreams of a whole neighborhood is what I offered to do when the Seven first spoke to me.”

“What?! You can just see the dreams of an entire neighborhood? How long does that take?” Carnelle demanded.

“I could probably clear three or four city blocks a night?” Costa offered.

“Well, what the hell are we dicking around here for? Let’s head over to West End, where my last lead went cold, see if your dream peeping heats things up again.”

Grasping her unlikely Hunting partner by the hand once more Carnelle drug them back down the hallway, through the heaving crowd, and out into the night.

This fill was inspired by a song prompt from 

callibr8

Here is a link to the song with lyrics from Callibr8's prompt, "Erased" by Vixy & Tony.

Creatures made of Water to the Ocean must Return 

I left her there beside the sea furiously weeping. I donned back on my selkie coat that she’d kept hidden away from me. Diving deep into the cold blue heart of the ocean who’d been calling. Singing to me a song of home and relentless aching longing.

In the sea I couldn’t tell how she stirred the sky to thunder. How her magic called a maelstrom designed to tow me too far under. In her agony and pain she meant to deal me more the same. For daring to forget her she’d attempt to tear my life asunder.

We’d been tumultuous lovers, meeting in a summer meadow. Where I’d come ashore to walk awhile and reconnect with human fellows. She’d been a maid studying magic’s ways and never meant for a man to know. And the tryst meant to last only a season somehow became her life’s singular reason.

So soon I longed to leave her, though I’d never meant to deceive her. She’d known my nature from early on, but couldn’t bare the fate of being gone. From my memory she’d be erased, when the ocean I re-embraced. So she stole my soul and trapped me in that place.

Our love turned sour, more so every hour. And I searched the sea shore night and day. Once each rock and crevice, cave and cliff, I had finally scoured. Then she finally, in a fit of rage, threw my selkie coat out onto the harbor.

So now I swim in a relentless dim, trying to escape her love sick sadness. Her name I have forgotten, but her sobbing wails they are still haunting. My home coming with the sea usually meant to me such personal gladness. Has now become a tomb as I drown beneath the waves she’s stirred into a whirl with her madness.

Far better it had been, had I come ashore and then, having seen the beautiful maiden on the field. If I had turned and ran away, clutching my skin as though a shield. And never would I have pretended to feel. True love between a woman and a seal.

~~~Notes~~~

This fill was inspired by a prompt from FB user Sarah Becca and fills the “hunter” square in my 1-1-17 card for the Dark Fantasy Bingo challenge. 365 words – This already has a planned follow up of sorts in "Finder's Keepers" which is the fill I'm working on for 

ysabetwordsmith

This is for a Dark Fantasy challenge, and there's some frank sexual language and references to Terrible Things happening off the page.

Provisions

She considered how doing what it takes to fly under the radar in modern society sometimes made her feel like the monster humanity had painted her kind for generations. Human law, at best meant to protect their own more vulnerable members, inadvertently made meeting her needs much riskier. So in order to make a fast getaway she brutally aroused the nice policeman, who was honestly just trying to talk the young woman out of “working the streets” for her own safety, until he was so incoherent he couldn’t remember who he was let alone who she had been. Then she left him like that and ran, feeling dirty and cheap.

She preferred to use the Allure only when feeding or hunting and providing a very happy ending indeed when it was of mutual benefit to her and the meal. Using it to trick her way out of being picked up for solicitation seemed low and mean spirited. They weren’t feelings she was particularly used to and she mentally planned on avoiding experiencing them ever again.

But she couldn’t leave this area yet. She’d been sent on a mission from the Otherworldly Council and before she could safely begin her hunt she needed to score a light snack. A quick seduction, fast sex, and an acceptable amount of energy transfer if she lucked into finding a client who liked giving it in any of the ways she liked taking it, and then she’d be ready for part two of her evening. The important part.

As a succubus Carnelle was rarely called upon to complete Council business, only occasional covert operations, frequently blackmail of a human in power set to change their laws in a way that would prove detrimental to Otherworldy kind yet again, but tonight she was hunting a human predator who’d developed a disturbing little fetish for kidnapping and molesting the young children of Otherworldly households. How he’d gone from the monstrous habit of molesting children of his own species to those of the hidden realm no one had figured out as of yet but the Council believed this was the area of the world she’d be able to meet him, Hunter to hunter.

~~~Notes~~~