Dove's Blood: Nightmares (fiction excerpt)
NSFW - Lite "Adult Content" - Lite "Gore" - Trigger warning (female being bound, threatened, "Lite" inappropriate touch)
What's this mean? It's a horror/terror story. The intent is to make the reader very uncomfortable. It's a Nightmare Scene. It isn't meant to "be nice". It feeds on certain key and rather sterotypical vunerabilities of females, of being treated like an object.
However, it's not "heavy". It is a short story so the content is limited. It is a nightmare.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
These dreams of the character Mariesk comes from a part of her past her psyche has "blanked out" in order to cope. They are horribly traumatic. They stem from her being a werewolf, from her lack of control, and from others who would pervert, use, and abuse that violent streak in her very feral heart. In this scene, the captor are trying to trigger another bout of violence by preying on her. The intent is to trigger her, so that her raw instincts take over, so that her thinking mind ceases to function, so that she looses control. They WANT her "lost to her self" in order to bring the "monster" out in her.
Blood.
She sensed it, a deeper percpetion beyond the conscious awareness of her physical senses. It was an almost spiritual contact, the energy of life that touched her face, hands, shoulders, and covering her eyes. She knew what it was even before her mind connected the physical impressions sent to it by her skin, nose, and tongue.
All was covered in blood.., and she was blind.
Her heart raced. Fear crept into her mind. Adrenaline flooded her body and she stiffened in a fight-or-flight response before she could tamp down the emotion. Her shoulders, back, and neck ached. She felt a numb tingle in her hands. Her wrists felt pinched, as if bound by something rough and itchy. Her breath came in a ragged series of three short gasps before she could steady and calm herself. Everywhere around her, her sense of smell warned, was the sticky, iron-tang of fresh blood, new death, and older blood-rot of something left to go for at least several hours. The smells gagged her. Not able to control her response, she coughed once as the scent of rotted bloodoverwhelmed her.
Someone noticed. There was a soft, mirthless "Huh" followed by a single set of wet, sticky-sounding footsteps which approached her. Then a hand touched the back of her head, grabbing at something there. She froze.
The blindfold was removed with a swfit jerking tug, it forced her head down and forward. With her face pointed downward, she found she looked into her lap and at the floor under her feet. She was seated in a chair. Blood soaked into her clothes, her hair ran with it, and it dripped downwards into her eyes. There was so much of it that her vision was blurred. She tried to wipe it off and realized she was tightly bound to the chair by something that seemed like rough twine ropes. Shapes and shadows flitting about just outside her line of sight, fuzzy and red-hued. They made no noise.
Her instincts screamed with fear. Visions of childhood monsters that skulked in the dark closets invaded her mind. The hairs along the back of her neck rose like the hackles on a wild animal. She heard another cough and a groan. This sound was directly in front of her. She glanced up through the sticky, wet haze of red and saw another figure sagging forward in what she believed was a second chair. She turned her head into her shoulder and tried to wipe the blood away from her vision. It worked only to further cloud her vision, as she discovered she was full soaked in blood.
More footsteps approached. Then there was the laughter. She felt violated by the sound of it. Her mind and body reacted as if something foul had entered her very soul. The other figure also stirred, roused by the rough, mean, dark sound of it. The mirth wasn't happy. It was hostile with a perverse hunger and a note of insantiy that creeped across her skin and made her go cold in dread. A terrible sickness rose up inside of her and it further fed her instinctual dread. There was something very inhuman about that laughter, and it too seemed to drip with blood.
She licked her lips and swallowed, another instictive response that she instantly regretted. She felt the tang of blood in her mouth and fought the urge to vomit. However, something about the taste disturbed her far more. It seemed somehow familar. It was as if she knew who it belonged to, that it wasn't her own, and that triggered memories that were not coherant, whole, or sane.
She cried out, only to have the cackling, insane, laughter grow in volume. The figure across from her jerked and roused some more. She struggled against her bonds and felt the cording of the rope cut into her wrists. The laughter grew more encouraging, as if her struggles were desired. A part of her mind and heart rebelled at this and she grew still again. Her head turned toward the sound of the laughter, her face a blood-soaked scowl of anger. Again that sick laughter rose, almost like a hyena's cackle.
That's when she felt the hands. They petted her back, rubbed her shoulders, carressed her hair in ways that made her sick. A soft, furry paw-like hand touched her cheek and ran it's claws softly down to her chin. The paw-hand cupped her chin for a biref second before it moved to her throat, then her shoulder, and paused over her heart. The claws pressed into her chest, just over her heart, as if to tear it out. There was a barked snarl that stayed the movement, then the claws lifted away and traced the back of her neck instead. Then she felt sharp, canine-like teeth tease the flesh of her neck. There was another, harsher, snarled growl-snort that stopped the "game" that played out around her.
Suddenly a more human hand roughly snatched the hair on the back of her head and forced her face upwards as her whole head was drug backwards. Something made of cloth was used to clean her face. It smelled of lavendar laundry soap.
~~
Mariesk sat bolt upright. Sweat dotted her skin in a cold sheen of fear. She clutched the blankets to her chest, as she fought to steady her breath. Her sheets smelled of sweat and lavendar laundry soap. Instantly she tried to rationalize it, to remind herself it was only a dream. A horrible nightmare, yes..., but only just a dream.
She got up from her bed, naked, and shivered as she walked towards her private bathroom. In the shower, she washed off the feelings of dread and horror. It took 2 hours under blazing hot water before she felt clean. After another half hour where she simply sat on the toilet and soaked in the steam, her mind finally relaxed. She reflexively shivered once more as she sloughed off the last of the emotionally-triggered sickness she still felt inside her stomach.
Refreshed, she left the bathroom wrapped in a towel that also smelled of lavender. As back into her bedroom she walked, still damp from the shower, she considered that connection. The half-moon shone through her curtains in a blue-white glow and highlighted the room with its soft touch. Mariesk approached the window as she removed the towel from her body and wrapped her hair in it. She stopped in front of the window, reached out to part the partly open curtains aside, and touched a small moon-stone that hung by a fine silk thread from the window's lock. She smiled.
All was right with the world. It was only a dream.