I was falling, no, rising? No.
No.
It wasn’t that simple. I don’t know, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. That was my state of being, I was not. I couldn’t- my mind- I had no mind.
And the screaming. The screaming was so loud. It horrified me. Even in this state, even in this, this non-existence, it made me want to run away. It was the dying of the damned, the screams of torture, sounds that sent a shock of pure soul crushing fear through the mind.
Because no one and nothing should be able to make those horrifying, gut wrenching, screams. The wails of creatures that wish they could die. That had become little more than spirits of torture.
The world, no, the, the space around me, was like a cloud of red. I didn’t see with my eyes but I felt it. Things moving in the space between spaces. Scales and leather, twisting shapes of dementia, and all the while, the screaming.
Screaming.
So much pain. It wouldn’t stop, it was only getting louder. Closer. I was screaming, wailing like a baby, scared. So scared. My body, I had no body! My soul, my soul was lost adrift in this place, shaking from pain that transcended even the soul. I felt the bearest edges of it.
And Broke.
Flesh torn, nails tearing, skin melting, gums stabbed with needles, eyes ripped out, teeth smashed, ass impaled, genitals ripped off, intestines pulled apart, brain scraped out, pain pain Pain PAIN PAIN!
PAIN!
THE SCREAMS OF THE DAMNED, THE FOG OF HELL, THE SCRAPES ON MY SOUL!
AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
IT HURTS!
KILL!
ME!
My non-existence morphed as my soul was torn asunder, suffering the tiniest fraction of Hell. Twisting, turning. Breaking. Colored, changed. A million atrocities, a million tortures visited me at once, from a million different souls. I felt it as a creature tore my flesh into ribbons, as something tore out my nails from my hands, as acid poured over me and melted my skin, as needles were ruthlessly stabbed over and over again into my mouth, as something reached in and tore out my eyes, as hammer blows pounded across my face and shattered my teeth and jaw, as my ass was penetrated by a spear up to my heart, as something with soft hands grabbed my dick and pulled and pulled and pulled until it came off, as my intestines were yanked out and used like jump rope, as my head was broken open and my brain scraped out, and all the while the Screaming.
Not from just me, not from just one person, or a million, or a billion. A, A universe, a plane of nothing but tortured souls. Endless. ENDLESS.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I had no body, no brain, nothing to shield me from the horror. Nothing to block any of the terror or pain. I was vulnerable, Raw.
Like a man stripped of all flesh and forced to suffer a sandstorm.
I saw it, in that brief moment.
Between the endless pain and endless torture, between one moment where I felt myself be raped in a vagina I didn’t have and my jugular be flayed by a knife I couldn’t see, I saw it. Freedom. Far above in the red fog, there was freedom. Freedom I couldn’t reach. Then a piece of information pushed its way inside me.
Visitor.
I hadn’t arrived or been sent here, there was no grand or even petty purpose behind it. As my soul continued to be shaped like clay from torture, as my mind continued to be absent in this realm, that piece of information lodged itself into me. That I was no resident, that I wasn’t a tortured soul. I was just a lost soul. A Visitor.
This was just, along the way. An, accident? No, even less than that. I needed to go from point A to point B and this had been the path. That’s it. That was it. And now I was trapped here. Trapped here in hell, unable to get any closer to my freedom, the freedom meant for me, the freedom and place I was meant to go to. Only able to suffer and see it. Watch but I couldn’t reach it.
I felt myself crack and shatter.
I hadn’t been evil or bad, I hadn’t been trying to reach here, I hadn’t done anything to deserve this. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter at all. Deserve was a mortal concept at best. The universe doesn’t care. It just is. It just was.
My raw soul was hit with the realization, the acknowledgment, of all of this.
It exploded.
A million pieces flew, then shattered into a million more each. Less than dust, less than atoms, breaking down until not even a God would be able to tell there once was a man here.
And then it came back together.
The transformation completing itself. Spooling me back together. But new, different. What had been incompatible, now was not. What had not been, now was. The undefined had been defined.
I felt myself rising, rushing, falling past the screams, the demented shapes, the red fog, all of it and more. Falling, falling, into a speck of blue.
I hit it.
.
.
.
I gasped for breath, dying for air. I more resembled a gasping fish than a human right now but my head was trying to make sense of everything. I had had hangovers before and this was the absolute mother of them all. I tried to retrace my steps.
I had been reading a good book, sitting at home, and then-
My mind blanked out.
Nothing. And now I was gasping on what felt like a wooden floor. Had I suffered a seizure?
“D-Demon! I have, um, summoned you! So, do my bidding!”
I looked up at a man that looked absolutely terrified. Holding a glowing red gem in his hand, pointing it at me like it was a gun.
My mind blanked out again.
There was a moment of silence as both of us just stared at each other.
“...what.”
And then I noticed my tail and all hell broke loose.