The woman stands over me and kneels down, smiling lasciviously into my eyes as I sob and whimper, doing everything I can to make anything about my body respond so I can flee.
Succubi are just fantasies, right? Yet here one very clearly was, kneeling over what should be my very dead body. She licks her lips and titters quietly “You're scared, aren't you? You haven't even the slightest idea what's happening. Don't fret. You'll have plenty of time to figure it out while you settle in.”
She reaches down to my chest, and points her sharpened fingernails down right at the center of my chest. Fuck, she's going to tear my heart out, isn't she? That sounds like a thing a succubus could do. My whines grow more distressed, but I can't manage a scream.
As she presses what look to be razor-sharp nails down into me, however, I don't feel my flesh give. She simply painlessly slips inside, leaving a faint blue glow where she's cut into me, but no blood. It’s like my body isn’t actually there for her.
I feel something grip me. Not my body, but me. My actual self. That intangible concept of everything I am beyond the physical. I shudder as I recall the concept of a soul, and I renew my impotent wriggling.
She doesn't want my heart or my flesh; she wants my SOUL, and I find myself unable to comprehend what kind of fate awaits someone who's very being gets stolen away.
And then she lifts her fingers, still keeping hold of that intangible thing that I am. I feel movement in a way I've certainly never experienced before. I can't say that it hurts, and in fact, there is a pleasant numbness that makes the agony my body is in almost bearable for just a moment before she stops pulling.
A wide smile grows on my captor's face. She makes interested humming noises, poking and prodding her nails at my essence and enjoying my profound discomfort and terror of being violated in a way that’s deeply more personal than I ever imagined I could have been.
And then she moves my soul again, upward, and I feel my entire existence lift with it. I want to gasp, but I can't feel my throat anymore. The horrid pain also washes away. I metaphysically release a sigh of relief before the implication catches up to me. I can’t feel the pain because I’m not attached to anything in pain. I've just been disembodied.
Every way that I know to express terror feels distant now. Each function of my body that could scream or cry feels like a phantom limb connected to a phantom body that frustratingly won't obey a single thing I try to do.
It quickly dawns on me that I'm still aware of my surroundings, though. I have no eyes to see, I have no ears to hear, but I still have a facsimile of all of my senses. It's an awareness of everything around me I can’t attribute to human organs I'd always taken for granted. It’s a bizarre experience on top of the series of bizarre experiences that I’m being assaulted by today.
Curiously, I glance back at my body with my new soul senses. It’s a torn pile of bloody pulp that I can barely recognize as a human being, ripped and cut along so many surfaces of the skin, bones sticking cleanly through the body at odd angles, and scattered metal poles impaled through the torso. My body is in ruins.
But none of that matters now. An actual succubus is holding my soul in her fingers, and I still have no idea what kind of terrible end awaits. I flail impotently for anything I can do to fight back, but it turns out that the amount of things a soul alone can physically do is quite limited. I want to flee instinctually back to my body despite knowing that it won't be any more help in its current state, but it's something besides this dreadful feeling of profound vulnerability that I feel in existence as raw essence.
“Aww…” the succubus coos like one might at an especially adorable baby animal, smiling longingly into the depths of the most real true self I could ever know.
And then, without warning, something I can only describe as pain, but not any kind of pain I've ever felt. This wasn't a broken limb or a deep cut, I feel a piece of my metaphysical self torn away as the succubus's teeth cut through my very being.
A profound emptiness that makes me deeply dread what comes next replaces part of my sense of self. I'm going to be eaten. By a demon. Not just my body, my EVERYTHING is about to be devoured.
She puts a hand to her cheek and closes her eyes, clearly savoring the taste of my… me, but her glowing claws still hold an iron grip on the rest of my soul, leaving me unable to snap back to my body. I'm doomed in such a terrifyingly different way than I assumed I had been during the fall.
A voice calls out calmly from behind the succubus in that moment. “Hey, you gonna finish that?”
The succubus’s eyes go wide and she wheels around toward the voice, still holding tight to my soul. In a flurry of motion, I hear the piercing of flesh and watch two large pieces of rebar fly from the corner doorway and cut directly through both the demon's shins and into the broken concrete beneath her, pinning her to the ground and just barely missing adding another piercing to my devastated corpse.
From out of the corner doorway walks a woman, but I hold my breath on saying that I'm saved because she too is decidedly inhuman.
She has deep red eyes, just like the succubus, but her pupils are elongated like a cat's. Shoulder-length black hair is speckled with motes of white that seem to shift ever so slightly with her movement. Her entire body is covered with dark brown fur, and she has a small snout extending out of her face, not unlike what I'd expect from the obvious other feline features I can spot: a pair of triangular, twitching ears atop her head, and a fuzzy tail swishing beneath the overly large emerald green turtleneck sweater she wears. She has a huge open-mouthed grin on her face, revealing a set of powerful fangs. Though she looks unarmed, I have an instinctual feeling that this is an incredibly powerful creature that I should very much fear.
But I'm still too afraid of continuing to be devoured by the succubus to worry about the motivations of my savior. Given the choice, I'm on team weird catgirl!
The succubus lets out a grunt of pain and tries to shift her pinned legs away “R-Reaper… this is my prey!”
The new woman looks unamused “You saying you're gonna fight me for him?” She seems to glance my way and bristles for a moment at her own words “… Them?” she hedges, then shakes her head “Whatever, you can go, just leave the kid their soul. You got a bite, and if you leave now, you get to live.”
I feel a little offended when she calls me a kid. Especially when I realize just how short my savior is. I'm not even sure if she breaks four feet in height, and that's when I realize that she's pinned the succubus's legs in place not to immobilize her, but to cut the demon down to her size, crouching down so she can't stand back up straight without ripping through her own ligaments.
But the succubus lets out a loud cry, standing anyway as the metal bar tears through her skin. It does remarkably little to stop her from continuing to use her legs. What would disable a human body, however, is apparently barely a hindrance to a demon, and she flees, closing her fist tightly around me as she runs full-tilt toward the opposite door.
She doesn't get far, however, before I see something whizz past me again, this time making a splattering noise as I'm suddenly freed. I see the succubus reeling, arm holding across to her chest toward the severed stump of the other limb that once held me, now sitting on the ground, palm facing up where the muscles of the fingers automatically unfurl without the rest of her body to maintain them, and the blue glow of the power that held me fades as well.
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I feel myself begin to slowly drift back toward my body, but a soul doesn’t move fast on its own, and I'm transfixed on the apparently terribly one-sided battle happening around me. I look to the wall to see what had flown by to sever the demon's arm so easily, and… is that a pirate's cutlass?
“I warned you.” Came the catgirl's voice again, and I keep my eyes on her this time so that I can watch how she keeps launching random things about the room. With the slow flash of matter materializing into her hand from actual nothingness, what looks to be a pole of some sort begins to simply appear in the palm of her hand, reality climbing out of the way from the solid object like it was always supposed to be there.
And when the end of it spawns in, I’m shocked anew as its engine begins to hum. At the tip of her absurd polearm appeared to be a blood-soaked chainsaw blade. The succubus stands in the corner in stunned panic as the catgirl revs the engine to create a horrible metallic spinning noise, and in a flash of motion, launches herself across the room hard enough to crack the stone beneath her starting point.
And at that moment, I feel my soul finally return to its home, deep in my chest, and the physical pain I've been numb to outside of my body returns tenfold, mine and the succubus's screams of pain echoing each other. It seems that a detached soul reattaches just as easily and resumes the functions of a body just as if it had never left.
My vision once more locked to my eyes, I can't watch what’s happening in the room's corner, but I know from the dwindling screams combined with the sickening sound of ripping flesh and the terrifying roar of a motorized blade that I probably don't want to see it.
Holy shit, there’s a bloody monster murder happening in the same room as me, and I’m kind of rooting for the murderer after what the succubus had done to me. I wonder if I'll ever feel whole again after that, with a piece of my true self torn out. And what does the catgirl intend to do with me, exactly?
Everything hurts. The supernatural is real. I'm apparently immortal if I survived that landing. Today has already been a day, and I can't help but shiver as I hear the obvious victor of the battle behind me cackling in rapturous joy the moment the succubus's screams cease. True happiness unbridled by sanity as the chainsaw continues to tear over and over again into what must at this point be nothing but a pile of bloody chunks.
Great, she's a psychopath. I gulp down the blood pooling in my mouth as I wonder if she's just going to eat me or my soul herself, anyway. The demon had called her a reaper after all. The grim reaper dealt in souls, right? Then again, I'm pretty sure I don't remember it using a fucking modified chainsaw. Oh, wait. Fiction again. Or not? Fuck, I'm not sure if I know the difference anymore.
I feel my hand twitch. Am I regaining control of my muscles? Already? I hadn't thought this whole thing was survivable, but I definitely shouldn't have been able to already start feeling even a tiny bit better. I was expecting complete permanent bodily paralysis at best.
The sound of the engine suddenly winks into nothingness behind me, and a composing exhale of air came from the tiny woman's voice. “Lucky I showed up when I did. Doubt you fancied an eternity in a hot girl's gut.” She walks toward me again and I feel my already unbearably taxed heart beat faster as she kneels over me much like the succubus did, the wet stain of fresh red blood splatter drenching her shirt and face. Her expression is… disarmingly soft, golden cat eyes shining down on me. “Or maybe you're into that. I don't judge. Landing really fucked you up. Should’ve aimed for the street. We're gonna be here a little while.”
She put her hand down toward my chest, and I give a whimpering cry as a wound suddenly opens up. I want to scream, but I start to realize what this is. I saw before that I had been impaled in the landing. There were plenty of metal bars in the construction, now jutting through my battered corpse. She’s pulling them out. Except without the pulling sensation. They’re just disappearing. Something about that made sense. If she could pull something from nothing, she would obviously be capable of the reverse.
“Thank you.” I plead in what little bit of a hoarse voice that I can imagine, too afraid of not showing reverence to this creature.
The girl nods, letting out an amused huff of air “Wow. Not used to hearing that from humans. Gonna knock you out so your spirit can heal faster. Have fun dreaming about whatever you think is happening here.”
Before I get the chance to protest, a stiff piece of paper manifests into her hand. I get the chance to remember the word talisman before she slaps it roughly onto my forehead.
Is she casting some kind of magic on me? That certainly wouldn’t be out of place after everything else supernatural that just happened to me.
And that is my last thought before my eyes become heavy and my vision fades to black, my senses numbing into comfortable oblivion.
—
I get a few distant flashes of scenery as I sleep. The smell of coffee. My job, right? Then of something else. Paint. Acrylics. The scents feel comforting to me. Then oppression and bitterness chase that feeling away. With my memory in shreds, my dream doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Before I can put much of anything together, I feel myself stir.
My eyes flutter open slowly, and to my dismay, I'm still staring up at the familiar series of holes in the ceilings. It wasn’t a dream. This isn’t a nightmare I’m going to wake up from.
I still feel like everything hurts, but it's become a soreness rather than the sharp shock of pain that coursed through every inch of my body before. I had healed. In how much time? I had no way to tell, but the sky was still dark. She told the truth; I had just slept off all those terrible injuries. Does that mean I can trust her?
I take note of my surroundings now that my neck muscles work again. A gentle crackling noise comes from somewhere else in the room. A small plume of smoke has joined the view of the dark sky above me, and a gentle glow shows me where it is around me.
I also smell food. Roasting meat. I hadn't realized how hungry I am until that moment, but I feel ravenous. I suppose making a recovery from the shit I just went through would be hungry work.
I experimentally flex the muscles in my hand. I'm somehow certain that my muscles are still more sore than I've ever felt in my entire life, but my body obeys me, so they must be at least somewhat functional.
With monumental effort, I reach down and turn myself over to look toward the flames. The catgirl is sitting cross-legged right next to a small bonfire, leaning over and watching chunks of meat skewered through by strips of rebar cook. She looks to have washed herself and her clothes of the bloodstains she’d made while I was out, which didn’t really do that much to assuage my fear of her after what I’d been around to witness her do.
She turns her head when she sees me moving, her ear twitching cutely at the noise I make, and gives me that reassuring, gentle smile again. I can't help but note that her eyes were a soft glowing gold color. I could have sworn they were red when I first saw her. “Oh, hey. Pretty quick healer for a human.” She comments, turning back to lift one skewer and offer it toward me. “Let's have a chat. You probably have a lot of questions, but let's settle your stomach first.”
Okay. I guess that sounds like something a reasonable person would offer. And I don't have any other food around. Or clothes. At that thought, I move a hand to cover up my groin, which seems to amuse her. Then I force my body up to a sitting position with my other hand. I take some time from there to stand up, and I manage to walk over closer to the fire. The warmth feels nice. I collapse to sitting next to it like she does, and she shakes the skewer toward me, to which I cautiously nod. I immediately take it in hand and sink my teeth into it. I have no idea what kind of animal I'm eating, but I can't deny it's delicious and that I was starving. The adrenaline from my encounter must have been suppressing the feeling until now.
As I greedily tear off pieces of meat, the woman simply wills matter into existence again. A thin grey blanket this time, which she tosses my way. I clumsily wrap it around my naked form, thanking her silently as I tear through my meal. She stares at me the whole time, like there's something deeply interesting about me when she's the chainsaw wielding maniac catgirl who saved my life.
“Sai'Andra Rhodes.” She finally speaks up cheerily “Everyone just calls me Sai though. You remember your name yet?”
That gives me a little bit of pause, stopping mid-bite on the food in my mouth. How does she already know I'm an amnesiac? I've spoken two words to this woman. “Tyler Snow.” I offer, hoping that honesty is my best bet to stay on her good side.
Her face shows a twinge of amused… disappointment? But it only lasts a moment. “Alright, Tyler. Ask away.”
Just like that? She's just going to answer anything I ask her about the series of ludicrously absurd things I'd just experienced? I can't even pick out what I want to ask first. So I settle for the most obvious and practical place to start. “Where… am I?”
Her grin grows noticeably, and she can't help but flash her fangs as she leans back and looks up through the ceiling, seemingly admiring the empty sky above.
“It's called the underworld. Welcome to your afterlife, Tyler Snow.”