This is a repost of a story called "Fate Is An Ugly Bitch" that was originally posted in 'Loving Wives'. I received too many comments about it being in the wrong category and or, not having the MC get revenge. That being said I've made a few minor tweaks and have rewritten the ending. Please enjoy this updated version.
And the Fates Laughed.
A story by R.C.PeterGabriel: All rights reserved.
Into every life comes challenges, strife, and even pain. To be clear I'm not talking about the stubbing your toe kind of pain. Physical pain either goes away because you've healed or you die. Either way, you stop feeling it.
Emotional pain never truly goes away. You either drown in your grief or you become numb to it. If you become numb and you think the pain is gone, you've tricked yourself into missing out on joy.
Granted, feeling joy in the first place, elevates the trauma felt as your joy is crushed under the boots of reality.
You can hide from joy but that isn't truly living. In a twisted way, living requires us to seek out pain. And it could be said that I have lived a very full life...
I had a wonderful childhood, surrounded by a loving family, and friends, and lived in a prosperous village. I was taught the benefits of hard work and grew into a strong man. The love of my life was two years younger than me. She grew up on the other side of the village longhouse from us.
I thought my joy had been perfected when I eventually left my parents and took my bride home to our new house for the first time. I was wrong. My joy had only begun. My wife had just blossomed into the perfect woman and only improved from there.
My joy increased every day and was multiplied with every child. We had four strong sons and two fine daughters at the start of my twenty-seventh winter... The winter that they came. The winter my joy first carried a cost.
They could have easily taken us all with very little fight. They had chosen instead to cull their numbers and test our will to live. They ensured we knew we were under attack as some form of sick game.
The grotesque creatures seemed as though they had once been human. They had emaciated-looking limbs capped with disease-riddled claws. They moved with surprising agility and possessed amazing strength. Their eyes were sunken red coals and they wore leathery skin showing wherever their tattered clothes allowed. Their black mouths gapped impossibly wide, filled with needlelike teeth. Their continuous drooling of rancid spittle threatened disgorgement from even the stoutest of our warriors. Their snake-like tongues flung the putrid goo about with seemingly no purpose but to cause disgust. That was until it landed on open skin and began to bubble and blister as it ate into you.
Even so, the fighting seemed somewhat even at first because we were armed while they were not. We managed to kill at least one of theirs to each loss of our own. Little did we know... we were being herded.
The women, children, and men too old to swing a weapon had gathered in the longhouse as the men of fighting age fought on. I almost faltered seeing my own father's head partially torn from his shoulders before a creature clamped its maw onto his neck and drank his fountaining life's blood. I don't know if it was terror or a desire to protect my remaining family that renewed my strength. Probably both, but I pressed their numbers with a berserker mentality.
Eventually, the carnage was nearly complete with only five of us left. Friends I'd known from birth lay in broken and bloody heaps. With bodies torn limb from limb, disemboweled or decapitated, and intermixed with the equally gruesome corpses of the disgusting creatures.
We lost two more as we took down their last... or so we thought.
three more appeared as we stood panting at the door to the longhouse. They were different than the rest, seemingly human. I could somehow tell that they were not. Two females and a male with power emanating from them like a physical thing.
The three of us backed into the longhouse and tried to bar the door but it burst open and flung us far into the room. The women and children were screaming as the creature's masters calmly entered. But a sudden calmness settled as the male quietly uttered: "Be still".
We all stared as the male surveyed the room and gave a slight nod.
A strange sense of foreboding washed over me as the women reached behind their necks and released the buttons holding their garments together. As the dresses fell, exposing magnificent bodies I heard most of those in the room gasp.
The two females grinned and strode forward to stand nearer to the closet fighting men. They were the blessed ones, as I had been thrown farther into the room by the doors having burst open. The Fates had blessed them with a quick death.
I watched as the men freed their growing cocks in hopes of receiving their unearned prizes. The women simply waited while the egger men moved forward to press against them. They were completely oblivious to the strangeness of the situation and to the danger the women presented.
Regaining my feet, I shuffled forward as if to join them as the women turned my friend's necks to the side and sank their fangs into them. All four moaned in bliss as the women fed. I knew my friends were as lost as all the other men in our village. I was the only one left to defend the elderly, the women, and the children. Seventy-four lives depended on me.
With a chilling sense of destiny, I swung my sword with every ounce of remaining strength. To this day, I don't know how I managed it. Cruelty of the Fates, I suppose. But my wrist came to a bone-breaking stop, just before I was flung the entire length of the longhouse.
When I came to, I had been stripped bare and hung from the ceiling by my wrists. One of which was broken. Fortunately, I could keep most of the weight off them by reaching a tabletop with my toes.
The physical pain was nothing compared to what I saw. I had a clear view of the room where all the elder men and children except mine were lined up on one side and all the women on the other. To my horror, my wife and children had been separated and were kneeling on the floor facing me. They were lined up behind the remains of what I had done. Four headless bodies lay in a pool of blood seemingly large enough to fill a horse trough.
A voice I didn't know vibrated in my mind. It took me a moment to realize that I wasn't actually hearing it with my ears. When I recognized its source, the man stepped out of the shadows to stand behind my wife.
"I was worried that I had hit you too hard. It would have been a shame to destroy you so quickly and without our having gotten to know each other."
"Who are you? And why are you doing this to us?"
"My name is unimportant. You will know me as 'Master'. As to why... To feed, of course."
"Why eat people? Why not sheep or cattle or fish, like everyone else?"
