Well, when factoring in the time it takes to submit and get the story approved, I've probably missed out on Halloween by a bit. So, here's my little celebration for the spooky season, just in time for the spookiest holiday of all, National Bittersweet Chocolate with Almonds Day! A holiday as specific and mysterious as a monster story itself! This is a standalone "What if" scenario based on the "Welcome to Valsa" series—"What if the monster girls were a bit more monstrous?" Think of it as a dark detour from the rest of the series, in keeping with the season. Reading the original should not be strictly necessary, but also may heighten your appreciation of the context. Not your jam? I'll be back with the less spooky content in a few days. Hope you enjoy!
Trigger warnings include, but are not limited to:
Graphic Violence: Includes detailed descriptions of physical injury and pain, including gouging, lacerations, and death.
Body Horror: The depiction of transformations, exposed skeletons, and unnatural mutilation.
Non-consensual Sexual Situations: Includes depictions of sexual activity without explicit consent.
Gore: Scenes, including sexual scenes, involving blood, body parts, and explicit wounds.
Death and Resurrection: Characters die and come back repeatedly, often involving traumatic circumstances.
Manipulation and Mind Control: Scenes involving characters who are forced or controlled into acting against their will.
Psychological Distress: Includes themes of helplessness, gaslighting, and fear of losing one's mind.
Predatory Behaviour: Characters are depicted preying on others both physically and sexually.
***
Jev woke. He flexed his jaw and scrunched up his eyes at the burning pain he felt throughout his body. He could feel the strange, metallic taste of blood in his mouth. He lifted himself from the wooden floor, looking around. He was in a house—one that looked like his house, but different. Everything seemed just a bit off. Nothing seemed to meet at right angles, and there were strange inconsistencies, as though it were a peculiar copy built by a drunk. No lights were on, the only light seemed to be from the television, and from moonlight filtering through the window.
He brushed himself off, looking around. The room was enclosed in a way that his living room wasn't. Where normally he would walk freely into the dining room, instead there was a solid wall with a single door. But where there was normally a door to the bedroom, there was none. He could hear a quiet clicking, like someone tapping their nails on a table, but the source of the sound was nowhere to be seen.
Jev walked to the window to try to look outside, but there was nothing beyond. Though moonlight seemed to stream through the window, there was no obvious sign of its source as outside the window was impossibly black. Black in a way that was so profoundly empty that it felt almost uncomfortable to look into it. The television was on, but displayed "no signal", in a way that seemed impossible given that no cables emerged from it. Confused, he pressed the power button, which flicked the television off, only for it to flash back to life with a "no signal" sign.
"Yeah," he grunted in quiet frustration, "me too, buddy."
A loud crash sounded from somewhere deeper within the house, though Jev couldn't imagine what could have caused the sound, but whatever it was it sounded close, and getting closer. Concerned, his fingers wrapped around the handle to the exterior door, and pushed. It swung open readily as Jev walked outside. It was night, and a cool breeze blew over him, carrying the scent of rotting vegetable matter past him. Where normally there was a small porch and a yard before reaching the fields, here the beans grew right up to the door. They were tangled, dry-looking things which seemed to be half dead, and yet they seemed to be growing right before his eyes. Dione's tree loomed ahead, though now it seemed to be surrounded by a small copse of trees which emerged from a forest and formed a nearly impenetrable wall of dull green in all directions around the house.
Cautiously, Jev walked to the tree, the gnarled old oak standing imposingly over its neighbours like a mother goose sheltering her chicks. He pushed into the copse of trees, their sharp spines leaving oozing trails of blood on his arms as they slashed past. But eventually, he reached the great tree at its heart. There, beside a puddle which had formed within the roots of her tree, Dione knelt serenely, as if asleep.
"Dione!"
Her head raised and she stood, turning to face him. A warm smile crossed her face as her eyes met him before turning to a look of concern. The roots of the oak tree writhed beneath her, twisting together like a knot of mating snakes, but if Dione was concerned, she didn't show it.
"Jev! What's happened to you? You're hurt! Come here, let me take care of you, my love"
She crossed the space between them and he fell into her arms, his heartbeat settling as he felt them wrap around him. For the first time since waking, he felt like he'd found something normal. And yet, even this seemed wrong, somehow. Dione's skin, normally smooth and soft like polished oak, felt like bark beneath his touch. Her hair was a tangle of vines. Her face, normally a mask of gentle perfection, seemed sharper, more angular. Even her smell wasn't quite right, the usual scent of cedar and honeysuckle that followed her was tempered, muted slightly by the smell of must and decay that pervaded the space around her.
"Dione? Are you ok?"
Unconcerned, she rose to press her lips to his. For a moment, his concerns fell silent as their tongues entwined. Then she bit down, hard. He screamed in pain and betrayal, spitting out blood and searching her face for an explanation, but her serene smile remained, offering no answers. Her grip around his body grew tight. He felt a slithering along his leg. Looking down, he could see a wooden root twisting around his leg. He tried to pull back from it, but it bound him tighter. A cold shard of panic rose from within him, tempered slightly by the hope that this was Dione's doing.
"Dione? What's going on?"
She whispered quietly into his ear.
"I'm going to do for you what I've always wanted, Jev. I'm going to protect you. I only want to keep you safe, here, as part of my forest."
There were now several roots binding his legs, constricting tightly. The crushing pain from his legs and the rising panic through his chest meant that Jev never saw the massive thorn emerging from the back of Dione's hand. All he felt was the splinter of pain that wracked through his body as she drove it through his heart, its bloody point emerging red from his back. The sudden agony sent his mind into a spiral. Surely she hadn't meant to do that. Surely this was somehow an accident. He gasped in surprise as he felt strength slowly leave him. The last thing he felt was Dione's lips meeting his own, her hand, red with his blood, caressing the side of his face. He couldn't pull away. His body didn't have the strength to move him. He felt the slow, soft drip of his blood pooling from his body around the roots that held him fast.
"Feed my forest well, my love."
***
Jev rose from the floor with a gasp, clutching at his chest. No raw, ragged hole seemed evident, and not even his clothes seemed damaged. He could feel his heart pumping hard in the state of panic he was in, evidently undamaged, but he could still feel the pain of the thorn Dione had driven through it like the dull ache of a toothache. He wanted to dismiss it as a twisted dream, but despite the lack of evidence, Jev's senses told him it was too real.
He looked around. He was in the living room again. And yet, it wasn't the living room he'd been in before. The furniture was different. The television on the wall, rather than displaying "no signal" showed a rainbow of distorted lines, scanning across the screen, occasionally resolving into an image that stayed clear for a fraction of a second before dissolving into distortion again. He could see the occasional glimpse of the gentle curve of a feminine body, apparently nude, though it was nearly impossible to glean more detail from it than that.
He heard that quiet clicking sound again, and he felt his blood pressure rise, though he wasn't sure why. From behind a door that should have led to the bathroom, a trill of laughter, mirthless and cold filled the air, and in a moment of instinct, unsure of exactly why, Jev threw himself into another door, one that shouldn't have been there and had no reason to exist.
As the door closed behind him, Jev realised he was in the barn. Through the gaps between the roof boards, Jev could see streams of silver moonlight, illuminating the farming implements that lived within in beams of cold light. Everything felt out of scale here. The several tractors here that he could see stood the size of small houses and glinted in the silver light with razor-sharp corners and edges which looked primed to slice flesh and remove fingers. Even worse were the attachments, like nightmare versions of themselves; a thresher with its cowling removed, its insides revealing blades and spikes, all dulled with rust, a brush hog tall enough to fit a man into, its blades gleaming threateningly, and even the watering trailer, benign though it usually was, seemed filled with some chemical concoction that he was sure was somehow hazardous.
