Sticks and Stones May Break Your Bones, But Chains and Whips Might Kill You

Today’s prompt: “Write a sex scene you wouldn’t show your mom.”

You still have bruises from your last session with Mistress Xi, but you’re already back for more.

As suburban dungeons go, Mistress Xi’s is pretty good. The walls are painted a dark red, and every few inches there’s another hook or peg holding a gag or a nipple clamp. You stare at the shibari ropes and collars, harnesses and handcuffs, whips and paddles. Not to mention the bench and the sling. You’re getting excited just looking at them.

The smell of disinfectant wafts through the air. Mistress Xi is careful to run a clean, safe dungeon. But you brought a collar and ball gag anyway. You like having your own.

Mistress Xi cinches the collar around your neck. You hand her the gag. “No,” she says, laying it on the bench. “Not yet. I like to hear you beg.”

Click. Click. Click. The four-inch heels of her thigh-high boots sing out to you as she slowly, deliberately walks along a wall of the room, vinyl caressing her ass cheeks with each step, tapping a clamp here, a restraint there, until at last she selects a pair of leather wrist cuffs. She strolls back to you and seizes your wrist, sharply pulling your left arm behind you, then your right. She binds you, then admires her handiwork, making sure nothing’s going to hurt unless she wants it to.

“What should we start with today,” Mistress Xi says, again walking along the wall, tapping items. You know better than to answer.

Click. Click. Pause. You crane your neck to see what Mistress Xi has selected – a riding crop.

“Are you ready for me to cover your ass in bruises?” Mistress Xi asks.

“Yes, please,” you reply.

She smacks your backside sharply with the crop. “Yes please what?”

“Yes, please, mistress,” you reply.

Swat. “That’s better.” Swat. “But we can’t have you forgetting your place, slave.” Swat. “Can we?”

“No, mistress.”

Swat. The crop stings across your ass, and a shiver of joy travels up your spine. You can picture the red marks decorating your cheeks.

After several more swats, Mistress Xi decides you are ready for the sling. She straps you in and places your feet into stirrups, giving the soles of your feet a few judicious smacks with the crop in the process. As she fastens the ball gag in your mouth, you feel deliciously vulnerable.

A smile quirks across Mistress Xi’s face as her thumb and forefinger pinch your left nipple and tug until your whole chest moves forward. She does the same with your right, then takes a slight step backward. She raises her leg and presses the toe of her boot against your crotch. “Mmmmph,” you thrill.

Mistress Xi strolls along the wall once more and selects a clamp. She bends down in front of you to attach one end to your genitals, and you steel yourself for an excrutiatingly pleasurable pull, when a succession of loud bangs comes from down the hall. It sounds almost like a battering ram. Mistress Xi looks alarmed, and moves to investigate.

Crash. It sounds as though the front door just gave. Mistress Xi opens the door to the dungeon to see what’s happening, and a man with a widow’s peak wearing a black hooded robe and a gold sigil on a chain appears in the doorway, flanked by several armed men in heavy boots.

You’ve heard about these guys. They call themselves Cthulhu’s Army. They’re fanatics.

“This is a private session,” Mistress Xi says with the same authority in her voice she used in your scene. “You have no right to be here.”

“Meredith Xi,” the man in the robe says. “You are hereby charged with perversion and obscenity in the eyes of our Dread Lord Cthulhu. Your days as an abomination are now at an end.”

“Perversion?” Mistress Xi’s voice drips with sarcasm. “Do you even know anything about the god you claim to serve? He’s not known for morality. He’s mostly just known for devouring shit.”

“Silence!” the man in the robe says, and a soldier next to him slaps Mistress Xi across the face. It’s shocking to you to see her be slapped. She’s always been the one doing the slapping.

“Take her away,” the man in the robe says. Two soldiers grab her by the arms and hustle her out of the room.

“What about…” another soldier says, jerking a thumb toward you.

“Kill them. I don’t care how,” the man in the robe says.

The soldier grabs a short length of chain and a hook from a nearby wall, fastens it into your collar, and pulls you up until you can’t breathe.

Photobombing

Today’s prompt: “Your most treasured photograph”

Spirit photography was this movement where people either thought they were capturing ghosts in photographs, or were pretending that they had done so. It started out in the 1800s with double exposures. Other people tried to claim they had captured ghosts on film in the form of orbs called “ghost lights,” but it’s almost certainly all light reflecting dust particles. Spirit photography to this day is filled with obvious frauds ands overly credulous straw-clutching believers in the paranormal.

The phenomenon of “Eldritch Photos” or “Old One Photos,” on the other hand, was altogether different. Most people were convinced that the grainy, ghostly images of spiny or betentacled elder gods that began showing up in people’s selfies were all photoshopped. And when each and every person who’d had an elder god show up in one of their photos turned up dead or missing 10 days later, most people dismissed it and chalked it up to urban legend.

Maybe if you could reach out to them, they’d believe. But it’s been 12 days since a faded image of Cthulhu photobombed your concert selfie, and 2 since you were sucked into his tentacly maw. You can try to arrange dust motes all you like, or press on planchettes, or hang around mediums or fortunetellers. But for most people these days, not even seeing is believing.

The Last Thing

Today’s prompt: “The last thing you’d want to do”

Your answer to this question has varied quite a bit over time. Kiss someone gross during spin-the-bottle. Spend another week in that toxic, soul-sucking office. Have to put down the family dog. All of those answers are melting away as a slimy, muscular tongue shoves you toward several rows of sharp teeth, and you know that being eaten by Xinlurgash the Ever-Consuming is the last thing you’d want to do.

The Nape of the Neck

Today’s prompt: “The nape of her husband’s neck”

Her eyes sighted along the nape of her husband’s neck as she stood behind his easy chair, ax wound up behind her, looking for all the world like a pulp horror comic cover.

She’d spent 22 years married to him. 22 years of enduring his belittlement. 22 years of “Ugh, Lorrie, hurry up and put your makeup on,” of “Shut up, Lorrie, can’t you see the game’s on?”, of “This is why everybody thinks you’re crazy, Lorrie.” 22 years of lewd comments about her sister. 22 years of threats and yelling and of him storming out of the room.

After 22 years, she had finally had it. And so she made her target halfway between his combover and his shoulders and she swung the ax down and his blood splattered her apron.

And it felt so good. It felt so empowering. For the first time in decades, she felt free. And she wanted more.

Police took Lorrie in after she’d dashed out into the street with her ax and taken the heads of the first four people she ran into. You were number three.

What's That Smell?

Today’s prompt: “A bad smell and where it came from.”

Your decomposing body.

Best Friends For Now

Today’s prompt: “Describe your best friend.”

Your best friend has a chunky blond pageboy haircut and likes to wear striped knee socks with shorts. She loves anime and Swedish fish, and her head tends to bob up and down unconsciously whenever she’s listening to music. You’ve bonded over arduous geometry homework and repeated viewings of Cowboy Bebop.

You really didn’t think she was the murderous cultist type, but some people are just full of surprises.

Upset Stomach

Today’s prompt: “What was the most recent incident in your life that made you upset?”

When people talk about having an upset stomach, they’re usually talking about some minor nausea. Not being force-fed live, acid-resistant monster larvae that eat you from the inside out. That made you very upset indeed.