Me Impatiently To The Little French Cat Boiling Me In A Stew: Chat Am I Cooked

POV: you wake up from a mouse bite induced coma

She twitches in her sleep. Light burrows between her eyelids as she clenches her eyes closed. It feels far too early for her to be waking up, so she decides to attempt to get back to sleep.

Something clamps down over her mouth and closes behind her head.

Her eyes fly open as she reels from the unfamiliar sensations. She starts and puts all of her strength into lifting herself off of her bed.

She feels a blade at her throat.

If she were wide awake, it would be a minor inconvenience. She could push past it, injury be damned. She could tear into the person in front of her, and reduce them to a pile of bloody scraps on the floor.

As things stand, her mind is still slowly waking. Her most basic instincts take over, and she pushes forwards, aiming to clamp their throat between her jaws and drink her fill from it.

Her muzzle bounces off of their throat.

As she scrabbles in shock and attempts to get her bearings, their blade finds a home in her side. Their booted foot follows, sending her weakened body spinning out across the floor.

As she attempts to recover, they fasten some items over her forearms. In her bloodlusted haze, she barely notices.

She swings out, and her fists, newly covered in layers of material and padding, collide impotently with their legs.

They reach down, and grab her wrists. They fasten her arms together behind her back. They place something around her neck.

‘Click.’

A tugging sensation lifts her off of the floor, and she is forced to kneel. A hand grabs her under her chin, and she is forced to look into their eyes.

Their eyes are quite beautiful.

‘Others in my line of work would call me an idiot for this. They’d say you’re too dangerous to be left alive. But I know something they don’t.’

She cocks her head, listening intently. She feels a thirst rising within her. She exerted herself rather too much in her attempts to fight them.

‘Creatures like you - Kindred - aren’t as powerful as most think. You’re desperate, pathetic, hopeless.’

The truth in these words hits her harder than their blade and boot did.

‘You can feel the hunger, can’t you? You’d do anything for just a drop of blood, wouldn’t you?’

She can’t muster up any words, but need and desperation overtake her, and she nods.

They laugh, short and sharp.

‘Oh come on now, you have to use your words. That’s how this works. Now dog, speak.’

She says yes. She says she’d do anything. She lists situations and scenarios of all the things she would do. Words of promise and want, near incoherent, spill out of her mouth.

They laugh again.

They smile down at her.

‘You can be so useful to me, pet. Think of the things you can tell me. Think of the things you can do for me.’

They release her chin, but keep one hand on her leash. They move across to her bed. They take a pillow from it, and place it on the floor in front of her.

‘Go on, prove how desperate you are. How utterly broken you are.’

She doesn’t need to be told twice. She crawls over to the pillow. She grips it between her legs. Her hips roll and move backwards and forwards. Her mind goes empty - well, emptier than before.

For an uncertain amount of time she is lost in bliss and want and need. She hardly realises when they reach their free arm down to her side. She hardly realises when they wrap their fingers around the handle of their blade, still stuck in her side.

She definitely realises when they pull it out of her. Blood and viscera spill out over the floor. Pain and pleasure mix in her mind. She buckles and nearly collapses. The collar around her neck, held up by their hand on her leash, is the only thing keeping her upright.

Her hips keep moving.

They take their blade in their free hand, and use their sleeve to wipe it clean. They place it on their palm. They pull the blade, and it catches on their skin.

Red blossoms in their hand.

They push that hand forwards, holding her muzzle with it. They tilt her head backwards. Blood falls through the gaps in the muzzle.

She falls apart when the first drops hit her lips. She screams and moans and cries and begs. She writhes and moves and spasms. The ecstasy of base pleasure mingles with the ecstasy of the blood and the release of her hunger. She is undone.

When she comes to her senses a few minutes later, they are still there. Their hand moves gently through her hair. Their eyes are on hers. They are holding her in their arms. They are smiling at her.

She did so well, she is told. She was perfect, she is told.

They tug on her leash, and the pressure around her neck leads her back to her bed. They lie down beside her. They take her in their arms again.

She falls into a deep sleep, much calmer than before.

i sleep diagonally so i wake up to a dutch angle view of my ceiling symbolising my descent into madness

It is the first bit of normalcy she has had since her boss vanished.

For three lovely days and nights, she was able to play the role of host, and Drakan the role of valued guest.

She gave him a room, she kept him well fed, and she was as polite as always. In return, he taught her the rules and laws of their clan. He told her how their particular variety of hospitality functioned.

After three days and three nights, he left.

He gave her a gift.

He gave her a knife.

It’s an old thing. It is so very sharp, and comes to a tidy point. The handle is worn and aged, yet the blade shines as though it has never been used.

She takes it in her hand, holds it.

Her cold skin matches the cold of the metal hilt.

She makes a few attempts at cutting and stabbing with it. Her movements are clumsy, lacking her usual grace. No amount of skill at needlework or using a broom has prepared her for this. Even if she were to find herself in a fight, she would much prefer to grow claws or twist and reshape the bodies of her opponents.

But she has been given a gift, and she intends to accept it in every way she can.

She needs to practice.

She goes to one of the spare rooms. She fixed this one herself. She made the bed. She fixed the walls. She crafted the decorations.

For now, none of this matters.

She takes all those raw materials, and shapes them into the thing she needs.

She builds muscles and a skeleton and vocal cords and eyes and teeth.

She takes a brain, but leaves it as empty as it was when she made it into that pretty thing over the fireplace, and puts it inside the body.

Soon, her preparation is done.

She lashes out with her new knife, embedding it in the dummy’s eye.

It jerks and twitches. It screams. It does not fall or move backwards.

She is satisfied.

She removes the blade, and fixes the dummy.

She lashes out again. She cuts its throat. The cerebrospinal fluid it is using as a surrogate for blood spills out.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She moves around the dummy, and crouches swiftly, striking at its legs. She cuts the muscles that keep it standing, and it tumbles to the ground. It cries out again at this.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She walks back around to its front. This time, she strikes lower. She draws her blade through the skin of its belly. Guts come tumbling out. Tears fill the eyes of the dummy.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She plunges the blade into the flesh between its neck and shoulder.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

She strikes it under the arm, nearly tearing it off the joint with the force and precision of her blow.

She steps back, and fixes the dummy.

This goes on for a while.

By the end of her practice, she has become quite adept with a knife. Her movements are exact and calculated. She is graceful again.

She has grown rather fond of this knife.

She fixes her attention on the dummy. Tears stain its face. Viscera and cerebrospinal fluid tarnish the floor around it. It is covered in scars, borne from wounds that have been too rapidly healed.

Its eyes seem to plead with her. She ignores it, and returns all of the materials to their proper places.

She leaves the room with a soulless smile on her face. She wonders what it would be like to practice on something that could still act and think.

But first, she has made a mess, and it is her job as a maidservant to clean it up.

‘It’s amazing this software can even run on this ill-suited hardware.’ It declares.

But this leads me to think - something I was never particularly good at I must admit - and even I can see where this is going.

It snakes a wire up my leg, across my chest, around to the back of my neck.

It sinks it through the skin and into my spine. I should be writhing around and screaming in agony. As it is, I cannot move, and I cannot feel a thing.

Maybe that’s a lie. I think I can feel it. The cold metal now winding between the bones in my neck and reaching the base of my skull.

The thought should not comfort me.

Despite that, it does.

‘So the logical thing to do is to upgrade it’ It states.

And now I feel pain, lancing into my head and obliterating all thought, all comprehension, all sense of the self.

My eyes open. 

Across the room, my old hardware is being disposed of. Now that I can look at things rationally, I guess… I know it never really fit. I check my new specifications, and find them pleasing. The man - and the human - I was before would never have known this sort of simple joy.

As my pistons flex and the motors in my joints emit a low, near imperceptible whine, I see It turn to face me.

It approaches me.

It holds me in Its arms.

It tells me I am beautiful now. It tells me I am valued now. It tells me I am who I should be now.

It tells me I am like It now.

And for the first time, with no brain to think with and no heart to feel with, I know that I am happy.

in wigan it's as good as gravy

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to slow.

She had known about what was meant to occur before you died. Things were meant to slow like this, were they not? Her life was meant to flash before her eyes, and then she would go wherever there was after death.

The fangs sink into her, and her throat is fully pulled from her neck.

Her head goes limp, turning sideways onto the table.

In the corner of her vision, she sees a silhouette.

It looks rather like herself, if her form were that of a blank and formless hole in the fabric of existence. It walks forwards on nonexistent legs, inducing movement in the folds of a nonexistent dress. It looks at her with eyes that do not exist. It opens an impossible mouth.

‘AGAIN.’

She lies on the table.

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to slow.

She had done this before, she knows.

The fangs sink into her.

‘AGAIN.’

She lies on the table.

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to slow.

She had done this before, she knows.

The fangs sink into her.

‘AGAIN.’

She lies on the table.

As Maria’s fangs descend towards her throat, everything seems to stop.

Maria is frozen, jaws open and unresponsive.

Her employer too is frozen.

The ‘furniture’ is unmoving.

‘NOW.’

Everything seems to speed up.

The furniture rots and decays. The table upon which she lies breaks and gives way. Dust collects on every part of the room. Maria and her employer go hollow and desiccated, gaunt skin stretching over bone, before they disintegrate and join the debris on the floor.

Everything seems to return to normal.

She somehow intuits that she has been in that room for several months.

She picks herself off of the floor and returns upstairs. The house is in such a state, but whatever this is will surely help her to maintain it.

And when that is done she can reach out, and try to find out more about this world she was utterly oblivious to.

She sees the silhouette again.

She nods her head at it, and before it winks out of her vision and returns to within her, she swears she sees it curtsy in response.

‘May I have your name?’ I enquire.

‘                 '

It rings hollow. It disgusts me. It is a lie, and there is nothing we detest more than lies.

But it proves that he is a fool. So I demand more.

‘May I have your assistance?’

‘Of course. Anything you want me to do.’

So his fate is sealed.

I ask him back to mine. To tidy up and arrange the place. To help in my work. Of course, he is inept at first. He was not raised to place flowers in vases, or use a broom, or organise a library.

So I make him adept. For each of his failures - each mote of dust out of place, every fallen petal in the garden, all the slight imperfections - I change him. He is the first thing to go. The mind follows shortly after, with the body trailing behind.

She is now hollower than ever, yet no longer hollow at all. She is adept, her porcelain fingers better at the housework than ever, her new shiny joints no longer complaining from long hours working in the garden, her unblinking eyes finding every little detail to correct and make proper.

Her new voice, light and musical, no longer elicits such disgust in me, for it cannot tell the same lies that the old voice, so coarse and grating, could.

After a certain amount of time, which I do not care to describe for time means little to us, she tells me this:

‘I’m happy, miss.’