“… ‘It drove him insane to know.’”
The girl felt her eyes water, but only a layer of mist coating them, versus welling tears. She removed her reading glasses and wiped her eyes with her violet jacket sleeve. Sighing at how easily she could be affected.
Calypso was just rooting for the protagonist to give into his murderous impulses a moment ago.
Nearing the end of “The Darkness: Our Only Companion”, where the protagonist tries in vain to delay his shadow finally becoming one with him, his lover is begging for him to not give in. But the union has already happened, and at this point, has murdered everyone in his path in twisted bliss. Even his lover is wavering, can only see the monster he became.
But this sentence, the narrator’s musings of this entire scene. The reason he’s roaring because maybe, he knows she can’t see him anymore, how he isn’t a man anymore. And the little humanity he lingered within, it was the very thing that drove him insane. Despite being gone at this point.
This was the shit Calypso adores—she’s been steadily getting giddy the more and more he lost it, the more he finally gives up his meek human skin. She only got the book yesterday, and she’s already at the end of a 200-page novel.
But for the life of her, she couldn’t turn the page. The musing stuck in her maw. Her dainty, pale hands didn’t have the strength to turn the page. She constantly wiped her brown locks away from her moist brow. Her usually pouty lips tightened into straight line. Her gray eyes shaking behind her reading glasses.
She sighed again—too aware of how this is the second time. She folded her glasses, letting them hand from the collar of her fairy blue shirt, and laid the book flat against her purple skirt.
Leaning her head back against the bark of the tree, not caring of her brown hair would get something tangled if she did so. She took in the chirps, rustling, and stillness of the woodland night. Clearing her overly-sensitive mind.
“Calypso Grimes, you are the most wishy-washy person I’m forced to know…” she berated to herself. “You search for morbid smut, and yet can’t handle the consequences that come with it… Despite you finding these things so you can understand these consequences. You do this to yourself…”
Calypso rose her head, patting the back of her brown locks that reached to the back of her nape. She was going to sigh again, but withheld it, clamping her lips together as her brow furrowed. Before melting back to her stony, indifferent face.
“Now then,” Calypso lifted the book from her lap, raising her brown eyebrows lightly. “Let’s finish this cautionary tale, hm?”
A wad of slime slammed the book back down, making it too heavy for Calypso to lift—not alone hold onto. She blinked, watching as the pages grow soggy within the layer of flim that shone in the moon light.
“…That was… A 20-dollar book…” Calypso said, dejection mixed with irritation rumbling her tone of voice.
She continued to look down. Then sucked her teeth as a sigh escaped her mouth. If she wasn’t frustrated then, she was now.
Regardless, Calypso put a chipper expression as she looked up. Her anger still coming through with her eyes and mouth smiling and her jovial cadence.
“So how can I help you night, friend~?” Calypso spat indignantly.
She was met with a sneering, walking jaw.
Crooked fangs as big and wide as tombstones. A “body” that only served to perch this jaw and extended outwards as if it were a head, but it didn’t stop just at that. It was to the point that Calypso felt the support was purely bare minimum, as the beast bobbed its front seemingly involuntarily. Amphibian-lite legs which folded into themselves to provide what should be impossible support with taloned feet that dug into the leaves-covered ground. A beast writhing in literal darkness, dribbling mad with guttural panting.
“I do not like…” Calypso blinked in confusion. “Any of that—"
Calypso cocked her head, almost the same time as the Jaw Monster… “Titled” its own head to its side. “I don’t quite understand why my mind went to it, but you’re kinda why I hate possums… Fucking snouts are just too long for me. Rats and stuff? Sure, but they’re relatively small. Just seeing that magnified just gives me the willies—"
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The Jaw only growled in response, as Calypso closed her eyes, taking off her jacket and tossing it to the side. She leaned forward, her head within biting distance of its fangs, with lowered eyes and assured grin.
“Now then. Why am I granted this conference, dreg~?”
While it was hard to read expression, the movement and the gestures were loud and clear. The Jaw Monster gritted its goop-covered teeth pensively, as it put one foot behind itself. Steeling in a stance while reeling back as it possibly could.
Calypso couldn’t help but smile at that.
“Ooooh… This new to you, huh? Expecting the old song and dance of a human screaming or fighting back despite not having a lick of chance~?”
The meek girl gently grabbed the edges of the ruined book, lifting it with all of her available might, whimpering as she laid it away from her legs.
“Wow that was heavy, I think I might’ve torn something—Anyways, sorry, you really won’t get that from me, I’m afraid. Especially since, you know. Ruined a 25-dollar book I was just going to finish.”
There was a series of roars that emitted from the beast, frantically throwing back and then thrusting the “head” with each one trailing into a piercing screech. So deep and so loud, Calypso could feel the reverberation in her skull, and her ear drums on the verge of bursting. After it stopped, it was clear the action had a toll on the Jaw Monster, as it was visibly panting with the entire body.
Calypso rose up to her feet as her boots crunched the leaves, with a full body shrug.
“Good attempt, at least—”
Within that second, Calypso was pinned into the tree by the beast.
Using its head like a lance, the Jaw Monster extended its maw and adjusted it to the left. Thrusting the head forward like a whip, it trapped the girl within its trap, slamming into the tree and immediately biting down into it.
Calypso couldn’t help but laugh at that.
“Bad move, little dreg.”
Her features twisted, sharpened by malice and pleasure. And despite her smile becoming crooked in shape, it was a lot more genuine than before.
A full buck from both Calypso’s arms caused the Jaw Monster’s namesake to break. And with the freed arm, Calypso punched the beast away, right into its insides. It sailed away, planting right into the ground, with the most pathetic whimper it could manage.
It tried to shuffle away, with its jaw hanging off the left side. But it was still able to vocalize its pain, its fear.
As Calypso continued to laugh lowly over it, despite trying to take its mournful wails in.
“You should’ve followed your initial instincts, dreg,” Calypso shook her left hand, freeing it of spittle. “You should’ve just accepted the confusion, and just run.”
Raising her left hand, as a leather fingerless glove suddenly covered it. On the back of it, a large, milky white gemstone rested.
On closer inspection, wispy ghosts skimming across the smooth surface.
Calypso’s grin lacked sympathy, remorse. “Now you’re mine.”
The Jaw Monster opened its mouth in awe at what it was witnessing. The girl was bathed in light, and her chuckles grew deeper. She was cut off, by sudden jerking of her body as her shadow grew in size, showcased the violent changes of her once feeble body. And her gestures conveyed what a sheer delight it was for her to do this.
Sharp bone sprouted from her flesh, as it turned into a peach pink hue. Her elbows destroyed themselves to become scythes, jutting out from her trembling arms as the last of the flesh barely cling on.
The structure of her body, not only growing double the height, gestated into a more fiercer, primal vessel. Despite the chaotic nature of the growth of these bones, they ultimately converged into armor that was a mockery of a ripped dress. Ribcage acting as a bust and bodice, an extra jaw that formed at the neck acting as a high collar, the pelvis sprouting bone flaps that hit the thighs. Any hint of surreal elegance veered into spikes, and blades. Literally crowned as a deformed skill manifested on top of her head, as her magenta mane flowed in the chill of the night.
Without a face, the monster still conveyed fear. Hopelessness. Resentment. Anger. And then fearful rage as it now looked up at its enemy. Meeking out an unstable, pitiful roar.
“Cute~” Calypso grinned with her fangs visible, her dark eyes glowing. And a moment after, she pounced forward.
It wasn’t even a battle. The Jaw wailed, wallowed in immense pain that it brought with itself. The woodland creatures, even those of the night, turned their heads respectively at the noises, the sounds of flesh being torn and life squeezed out by a predator. They quickly vacated the area, out of fear of their own lives.
Moments later, and covered in disgusting black tar, Calypso salivated over the shredded corpse as her panting was not only audible, but visualized with steam.
“Nooo…” Calypso grabbed at her arm with her claw. “No, Calypso… You have to save this, that’s why I waited, you beast… It’s so yummy raw though…”
She turned her head up at the Moon. Her eyes and rows of slightly dirtied fangs being the only visible part of her at the moment.
As she idly licked at her raised claw, her terrifyingly jubilant expression quickly fell.
“Still not as tasty as a full Subsumed…” Calypso grumbled. “These groundlings are somehow getting more and more terrible… But what can I do…?”
The innate surge that rocked her within caused the monster girl to shudder, Calypso hugged herself until she settled.
“I know, I know…” Calypso argued with the new side of herself. “I need it, a proper challenge… I don’t care how, but I need it nooow…”
Calypso clutched at her head, starting to chuckle.
“I’m still scared to try, to find them all again, but I can’t stop imagining it…! A thrilling hunt… A fight to remember! Me against them! Me against them all! Me against my very own fear!”
She laughed uproariously, as she hugged herself looking up at the Moon, as the black wisps floated away her body. Calypso Grimes may have lost her mind, and her soul, but this experience has steadily and consistently felt so grand.
***