Dead and Horny

Hi, all! Annabelle Hawthorne here with my latest take on "What if a bunch of monstergirls and a wizard had to play hide and seek with Cthulhu?"

(This is still a better premise than whatever the hell that new Snow White movie was supposed to be)

New reader? Hello, and welcome to the madness! This is the third sequel to a novel that was a spinoff to a series that started with a man getting a blowjob in a bathtub. It somehow makes less sense than the movie John Dies at the End, but has way more dicks in it. Your best bet is to go back to Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 001 published back in 2017 (holy shit) and binge read the fuck out of these things before coming back.

Returning reader? Welcome back! We're keeping the anxiety and violence nice and high these days, and I've been so grateful for the excitement over this spinoff continuing! Apparently a bunch of you really want a story with disaster lesbians, mental trauma, and numerous stabbings, which really makes me wonder why Netflix didn't continue with its She-Ra series. Oh, well. At least Netflix isn't in charge of cancelling me.

Once again, a huge shout-out to my beta team, including Lit's own TJ Skywind. They see...some serious skeletons in my closets, fam. You know how monkey's will groom each other for ticks and eat them? I imagine being one of my betas is a mixed bag of joy (yay, early sneak-peek) vs existential dread (this grammer is so bad that it's like shoving glass into my eyes!). I super appreciate everything that you do.

I also appreciate my readers here. Thank you so much for, once again, remembering to shoot me some stars, leave a review, and generally keep the hype train going for the ever expanding Radley-verse. If you're disappointed that this isn't a Horny Monsters chapter, you can see when the next one is coming out in my bio. Life is busy for me these days, and now that I'm a full-time writer, it means that I am embroiled in several different projects. However, I still love all of you here, which is why Horny Monsters stuff is still being posted for you all.

That being said, I'll keep working hard at these tales to earn those stars of yours. After all, I would hate for anyone to accuse my story ratings of being

Rigged

An icy breeze ruffled Ingrid's hair as she stepped outside of the cabin door. She found herself wincing as the cold bit through her jacket, and she crouched down then moved to the side to allow Tasia to follow her. It was almost pitch black, the sole illumination belonging to the sodium lights that each ship had trained on the oil platform they were escorting. A swell hit the ship, causing it to raise up just as Lily stepped out onto the deck.

"Ack," was all she managed to say as she fell backward into Dana and they both disappeared back into the cabin. Ingrid and Tasia held onto the railing as the ship lurched, then rose up dangerously close to capsizing.

"Isn't the captain supposed to be steering this fucking thing?" Tasia whispered, clutching onto a nearby cable. She made a face and promptly slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh gods," she muttered through her fingers.

"Please don't tell me you are getting seasick," Ingrid hissed.

"I shouldn't," Tasia replied. "But these seas are--"

The bow dipped and a wave of cold water splashed over both of them. Even Ingrid's stomach lurched, and she was wearing an enchanted bracelet that was supposed to cancel out any motion sickness.

"What in Poseidon's shaft is going on out here?" Lily demanded as she hauled herself back through the door. The succubus was wearing a bright red bikini. "This isn't the cruise I signed up for!"

"Shhh!" Ingrid swatted her hand in Lily's direction. "Be quiet or someone will hear you!"

"Not here they won't." Lily stepped onto the deck and promptly slipped. When the ship dipped again, she slid about twelve feet before her tail grabbed onto a piece of rigging. "I don't sense anyone but us."

"What do you mean?" asked Ingrid. Her stomach lurched again and she had to close her eyes and take several deep breaths. "This ship should have a crew of thirty."

"It should," said Dana. The blonde didn't seem to be having any issues with how the ship swayed beneath her feet. She sniffed the air a few times. "I don't smell anyone on board either."

"Of course you don't." Ingrid managed to stand and walk toward Dana. "If I'm going to rely on anyone's nose, it will be my partner's."

Tasia inhaled deeply through her nose, and her face briefly twisted and stretched into the shape of a wolf's muzzle. "She's right. I don't smell anything but salt and metal."

"That doesn't make sense. If everyone was dead, the place would smell like blood."

"Unless there aren't any bodies." Lily used a combination of her hands and tail to pull herself along the rail toward a ladder. "I'm going to have a word with the captain. This tour was only supposed to be three hours long!"

Ingrid frowned. There had been very little intel regarding the vessels being used to escort the oil rig. Eulalie had been able to pull up some dossiers on the ships, which allowed her to instruct her magical rats on which room would be best for a portal. Telemetry had been the next issue, pinpointing where in the world they were currently cruising. Apparently certain weather buoys sent in some absolutely wild data about rogue waves that had triggered potential tsunami warnings that never came to pass. Satellite imagery over the area had been blacked out, and now, twelve hours later, here they were.

"Can you at least change into something less conspicuous?" Tasia asked. "In case the other ships still have people on them."

"Mom, you never let me wear anything sexy to the ocean," Lily complained as her bikini turned black.

"That's not what I--" Tasia rolled her eyes. "Fine. Whatever." She went pale and promptly leaned over the rail to barf.

"Fucking hell," muttered Ingrid as she moved away from the werewolf. They had been here less than five minutes and this op was already a disaster. Dana seemed to be the only one not made sick by the movement of the ship. Well, and Jenny. The doll was tucked safely inside a small pack that Dana wore on her back. The blonde had dressed in a black special ops suit that clung to her like a second skin, and looked like she had stepped straight out of a spy movie or an X-Rated flick.

Ingrid was wearing a dark suit that had protective magical properties, but it definitely didn't look nearly as cool. Tasia was in dark leggings and a tank top in case she had to transform. Aurora, for whatever reason, had put a black dress on Jenny before they all left.

Ingrid shivered at the thought of Jenny. At least the doll was being quiet.

As if on cue, Ingrid heard a giggle inside of her head, followed by singing.

The itsy, bitsy captain, he tried to sail his ship

The waves, how they fought him, yet it still remained afloat

But when the shadows came, they gobbled up his men

Now the itsy, bitsy captain, he burns in hell again.

Jenny cackled and Ingrid closed her eyes. Another wave washed over them. Her earpiece hissed to life and Lily's voice came through. It was distorted, as if the connection was weak.

"You all need to get up to the bridge," she said. "Right fucking now."

"Does that doll already know something we don't?" grumbled Ingrid as they moved toward the ladder.

"If she does, we can't make her tell us," said Dana. "Trying to understand her is an exercise in futility." She waited at the base of the ladder for Ingrid and Tasia to go up first, which allowed her to slap the werewolf on the butt.

"And how are you not motion sick," Ingrid demanded when she got to the top and looked back down.

"I only ate hair pie for breakfast," Dana replied as she scaled the ladder. When Ingrid looked at Tasia, the werewolf was blushing.

"She's not wrong," she muttered, then coughed into her hand and moved along the railing to get to the bridge door.

Their vessel was a repurposed fishing ship capable of doing mid-sea supply runs, and they found Lily standing near the helm with a pair of binoculars in her hand. She was looking at the oil platform.

What's wrong?" asked Ingrid.

"See for yourself." Lily handed over the binoculars. "All of the tow ships are adrift right now."

"But why?" Ingrid held the binoculars up to her eyes and squinted. With so much motion, it was hard to see the oil platform. When she tried to do a quick scan of the ships, she realized why the sea was so turbulent. A vortex had formed around the platform, and it was easily twenty feet lower in the water than the ships. The water wasn't swirling about and there was no current. It was like a crater had formed on the ocean's surface.

"Something happened out here." Tasia sniffed the air again. "I don't smell blood, but do catch traces of panic and alarm."

"A new fragrance from Calvin Klein," whispered Lily in a seductive voice.

Tasia walked around the wheelhouse and sniffed the air. "Yeah, this place reeks of terror and pee. Whatever happened wasn't very fun for those involved." She stepped over to the helm and started punching buttons. "This thing still has power. It's just getting tossed around. We can steer it right to the platform if we want." She looked at the others. "Um, who knows how to pilot a ship?"

Lily immediately hopped into the captain's chair, now dressed as a pirate. There was even a stuffed parrot on her shoulder.

"Avast, me bitches! We set sail for treasures untold and dangers unknown!" the demon declared as she hit a few switches and grabbed the wheel. "Prepare to get your booty plundered!"

"Raawp! Plunder the booty!" the bird declared as the ship's stabilizers kicked in.

"She just casually knows how to pilot a ship?" asked Ingrid.

"I've eaten a LOT of seamen," Lily replied. "It really sticks with you."

Tasia excused herself to step outside and barf over the railing.

Ingrid sighed and took the first officer's seat. She stared for a bit before looking up at the spotlight on their ship. The beam remained trained on the platform. After looking at all the ships, she realized that their beams had a laser focus on the platform, despite the fact that they were likely unmanned.

"What controls the spotlights?" Ingrid stood with a frown. "To keep them pointed like that?"

"Nothing, I assume." Dana moved to where Ingrid was and looked outside. "Huh. They're all trained on the platform. Hold on, I'll climb up and take a look."

Tasia stepped back in just as Dana walked out, and nearly a minute later, the beam of the spotlight wiggled back and forth, never quite moving away from the platform. They were much closer now, each ship just a dark shadow that circled the platform like a tiny planet. When Dana came back inside, she looked at the others with a frown.

"Is it automated?" asked Ingrid.

The blonde shook her head. "Negative. The beam of light is holding it in place."

Lily actually looked over at her. "Do you want to run that one by us again? I think I heard it wrong."

"There's nothing locking the light in place," said Dana. "It spins freely, but the beam won't stop pointing at the oil rig. There was a hand crank up there to turn it, so I tried to point the light away from the rig." She tossed something metallic onto the console. "The crank finally snapped off."

Tasia and Lily exchanged a look that Ingrid didn't like. She picked up the handle and looked outside.

"You're saying the beam of light is somehow holding it in place?"

"Yeah. I don't like it either," said Dana.

It wants to be watched

, whispered Jenny.

To be seen and appreciated.

"You can feel it?" asked Ingrid.

Can't you?

"I hate this," Ingrid muttered as the ship got near the platform. She tapped her earpiece a few times. "Eulalie, you hear anything?" There was nothing but static, followed by a screeching sound. "Shit," she muttered. "I think we might be on our own."

"That portal might still be open downstairs," said Lily. "If you're getting cold feet, you can bounce and let the big kids handle it."

Ingrid didn't dignify that with a response. She refused to let the succubus get the better of her. Ever since the disaster in the stacks, her confidence had been shaken and it was like Lily could smell it coming off of her. There was little to be done about it. Sometimes, missions went poorly. But the idea that it had done so in front of Lily was just icing on the cake.

Tasia picked idly at the black bracelet on her wrist as the ship drew near. Lily let out a "Yo ho ho!" and threw a lever on the ship which caused the engine to idle down.

"We need to strap up and strap on," the succubus declared as she stood. "Who remembers their bondage knots?"

"Rawrp! The safe word is chuckle bunny!" shouted her parrot. Lily patted the bird on the head and tried to feed it a cracker. The saltine fell onto the ground and got crushed under a boot before it disappeared.

"Don't we need someone to keep an eye on the ship?" Ingrid looked nervously outside. "This is kind of our only exit strategy."

"That's...actually not a bad idea, no matter how much shit I want to give you for it." Lily looked outside. "But if there's nobody out here, who is going to take our ship?"

"This whole place feels wrong." Tasia was staring at the oil platform now. She thought she saw people standing on it for a moment, but briefly lost sight of them when the ship dipped. They were gone once it level out again. "The waves aren't nearly as bad anymore, but my stomach is still lurching."

Ingrid frowned and rubbed at her own belly. For whatever reason, her anxiety was spiking, and it felt like she might be sick at any moment. Was this because of the thing hiding inside of the oil rig? The mission today was to properly locate the thing, then use a rat portal to potentially lure it to an isolated location that was already primed for spatial destruction.

"We can always swim to one of the other ships and make our escape that way," said Dana. "Or Lily can fly there and bring a ship back. We've got plenty of options. Splitting up is what got us in trouble back in Switzerland."

"Splitting up made sense there," countered Ingrid.

"I'm not saying that was a bad decision," Dana replied. "Merely stating a fact. We're stronger together for now."

Easy for you to say

, Ingrid thought. Dana got along with everyone else. Ingrid felt distant from the others, and her own partner was too enthralled with the blonde to remember that she was supposed to be Ingrid's other half. The feelings of isolation churned in her guts alongside a sense of dread.

They tied up on some sort of utility dock, which consisted of

thick metal posts and a rickety flight of stairs. The floating platform obscured the night sky, which helped to spike Ingrid's anxiety even further. The sound of groaning metal had her wincing as water slapped against the supports.

"I didn't know these things could float like this," said Tasia as she scaled the ladder. "Always just assumed that they were built on site."

"Some are too far out to sea," Dana replied. "Makes more sense to assemble them in a shipyard and tow them out."

"What, are you an expert on oil rigs now?" joked Ingrid.

"I watched two documentaries on them last night," Dana replied. "Along with

Armageddon

, starring Bruce Willis."

"That was my fault," said Tasia. "We were...snuggling."

"You didn't want to close your eyes, am I right?" asked Lily. "Didn't want to fall asleep, either."

Tasia rolled her eyes.

Ingrid sighed inwardly. This was clearly an inside joke that she didn't understand. At least Dana wasn't giggling over it. In fact, Ingrid couldn't remember Dana laughing at anything. The woman had a permanent case of resting bitch face.

They were almost to the top of the stairs when Ingrid stopped and pulled out a modified set of night vision goggles. When the others turned to look at her, they remembered their own and got them out. The headset itself was modified to function in regular lighting conditions and was acting primarily as a filter. Since it operated using a camera with a pair of internal screens, they wouldn't lose their shit just seeing a piece of the creature. The headset would fry out long before their brains would.

"Earpieces," Ingrid reminded them, turning on the noise cancelling function. The Order had extensively researched eldritch entities, and knew that it was best to isolate the senses as much as possible to avoid madness. "Can you all hear me?" she asked, touching the button to talk.

"Roger," Tasia replied. Lily and Dana both gave Ingrid a thumbs up, then moved to a scaffolding with ladders. The team climbed to the top, which now had them on the main deck of the oil platform. Since it was at the bottom of the mysterious crater in the water, it wasn't moving very much.

They did a quick visual sweep, then headed for the watertight door. That was where they found their first casualty. The rotting remains of a crewman protruded from the metal as if he had been shoved through it. Ingrid paused to inspect the corpse.

"Holy shit," Lily muttered. "Are you seeing this?" She poked the dead man's stomach. "He's fused with the metal."

"It's like with my old motorcycle," Dana replied. "This guy was essentially teleported and became one with the structure." She looked through the doorway and then came back out. "The rest of him is in here."

"When he rots, will he leave a hole in the metal?" asked Lily.

"He is the metal." Ingrid knocked on the wall. "The rest of him may fall away, but this slice of metal is now a steel-human alloy, the molecules forced into a stable configuration. The Order did a ton of research on this effect in the hopes of developing new tech that would be light years ahead of what is scientifically possible right now."

"Did they test on people?" asked Lily.

Ingrid shook her head. "Never on purpose, to my knowledge. Any sort of experiment involving the human mind itself is unreliable at best, and that's without the interference of an elder god. They did try something with cows in the late eighties, thinking it would be okay, but then they lost one and it turned into a major outbreak."

"Wait. Are you saying the Order is responsible for Mad Cow Disease?" Dana leaned against the wall and folded her arms. "I thought that was an illness caused by prions."

"What do you think misfolded those proteins to begin with?" Ingrid jerked her thumb at the corpse. "This is the shit we see on a larger scale. People don't go mad because they saw something scary. Looking at crap from outside of time and space has a way of affecting your body on a molecular level. Your brain is little more than a computer made of week-old pudding. Stir it up just a little and you become functionally useless. That's why we go through all these precautions with the headset and the earpieces." She pointed at the door. "If that thing was active, we wouldn't even be here. The few times something like that makes it to our world, they start to starve. Whatever their natural food is doesn't exist that we know of."

"They hunt the gods," said Lily. "These things eat divinity and anything that establishes the natural order. That's why all of the gods are in hiding. Or dead, honestly."

"That's one theory," said Ingrid.

"It's not a theory," Dana replied. "But we can talk about how we know that later."

"But only if you're a really good girl," added Lily. "I might even take you out for ice cream, too!"

"Fuck off," Ingrid grunted, then looked at Tasia. "Do you have anything to add?"

"No," Tasia grunted. "Too busy trying not to puke. It feels like everything is moving."

The group exchanged glances. "Maybe you should wait out here," suggested Ingrid.

"No, I can do this." Tasia gave Dana a look. "I'm just really sensitive to, well, everything is all. My equilibrium is out of whack. I feel like we're out in those waves again, but I can tell that the ground is stable. I hate it."