Rigor
#1 of Rigor
Be forewarned, this is slightly darker than my other stuff. Not hugely so, really, just a bit more grim than I normally tend do be. Death as the major theme, and all that. Death, as in a supernatural entity, or a group of supernatural entities. Something like that. But I digress.
While I initially intended this as a one-shot, I left it pertty open, with a lot of avenues to explore, so if there's interest I may return to it someday. Enjoy!
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Standard boiler plate: This is fantasy, not real. Simple rule of thumb, do not do things to people without their consent in real life. That is bad. No more to say there than that.
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With a soft click, the musty room's door creaked open, bathing the filthy, rotting walls and scattered pieces of furniture with the dim, flickering light of an old lantern. Sophia let out a small sigh, dispassionately watching as a small colony of roaches skittered away in fear, quickly disappearing into cracks in the walls and floorboards. Silently shaking her head at the sad condition of her old bedroom, she stepped inside, pulling a large case behind her, and began making her preparations. As she reached into the case to grab a brush, the elderly cat couldn't help but stare at her hands, suddenly remembering the way she used to look, once upon a time.
So very, very long ago, her fur was a shiny, beautiful pitch black, with the only exception being her pure white face. Owing to her advanced age, it had since faded to be more of a dull gray, with her long, straight, shoulder-length headfur growing as white as her face. She once had a sleek, beautiful, buxom build as well, but that too had been stolen by time, leaving her stuck with a saggy, limp, and worst of all, frail frame well-hidden by a simple beige t-shirt and slacks. Her formerly bright crystal blue eyes were clouded over, just a shade above useless, magnified to a bug-like degree by the thick lenses of her glasses. Even her tail, which used to be as pert and lively as the rest of her body, limply dragged along the floor behind her as she moved.
Grabbing a pack of her blood and a thin cardboard stencil out of the case, she walked up to the nearest wall and began painted a large symbol. Using the stencil as a guide, she slowly created an open spiral, coiling around three times, then connecting back to its origin by a straight line. Despite the assistance of the stencil, the occasional shaking of her hands made things more difficult than they needed to be. Still, she was motivated to get everything exactly perfect. If all went well, she'd never have to worry about her age or weakness ever again. But then, if it didn't, she wasn't likely to have to worry for that much longer anyway.
Having finished the first wall, she moved on and did the same for the other three, then the ceiling, which was a tribulation unto itself, and lastly, the floor. She inwardly laughed, thinking of how long it had taken to save enough blood for all six surfaces. Of course, it wasn't like she had an option in the matter; according to the notes, the ritual required it be hers, and hers alone.
With the room completely prepared, she took a small, rolled-up mat out of the case, unfurled it on the floor, and sat down in the middle. The next part was the one she had been dreading since she first learned of the ritual, even more so than the confrontation. Pulling a scalpel out of the case, she briefly hesitated, staring down at her open hand. Feeling as ready as should could ever possibly get, she took a calming breath, bit her lip, and quickly, carefully carved that same symbol into her palm bit by bit. As much as she hated seeing her childhood home abandoned, she was grateful no one was around to hear her pained swears and yowls. Nothing, not even the long process of gathering her blood, prepared her for just how much slicing her own flesh hurt. The one saving grace was that the blade was incredibly sharp, easily making smooth, accurate lines despite her shaking and flinching. Before long, the deed was complete.
Tossing the scalpel aside, she retrieved the final item the ritual required: a small syringe filled with a glowing green fluid. Not wanting to give herself a chance to back out, she promptly jammed the needle into her arm and pressed down on the plunger. As far as she was concerned, carving herself up was the point of no return. From there, it was either success or failure, nothing in-between.
Immediately feeling queasy, yet calm, she laid back on the mat and stared at the crumbling ceiling. With nothing left to do but wait, she closed her eyes and simply reflected on her life.
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From the very beginning, Sophia was an odd kitten. At most times she seemed normal enough. Every once in a while, however, she had an inexplicable tendency to obsessively fixate on random strangers, babbling, staring, and reaching toward them. Once she learned to walk, though, it changed from an oddity to a genuine concern. After that point, whenever one of her moods struck she'd just take off running, scrambling after someone she'd never met as her parents frantically chased behind.
They always attempted to ask her why she'd run off, wishing for any kind of an explanation, to which she'd normally reply "I dunno!" and give a big smile. In rare cases she'd mention following 'the smoke people,' but that was just chalked up to having a vivid imagination complete with imaginary friends.
In any case, for her earliest years, those moments were so few and far between that they were largely hand-waved as rare, spontaneous frustrations. A few years later, after Sophia's grandmother moved into a nursing home, an odd pattern began to emerge. Sophia and her mother spent many afternoons visiting her grandmother, and more often than not, the curious young feline would slip away and disappear. In every single circumstance, when she was found, she'd be eerily, silently smiling at someone sitting inside their room, or even at a closed door. Without fail, a short time later, that resident would be dead.
Over the span of a few years, it happened reliably enough that she developed a reputation as a bad omen, to the point where residents would hide in fear at her approach. Though her parents and nursing home's staff chalked it up to superstition and coincidence, eventually it got bad enough that they begged her mother to stop bringing her along. Superstition or not, waves of panic were the last thing the staff, and particularly the residents, needed.
Aside from the disappointment of not getting to spend as much time with grandma, the rest of her childhood was fairly mundane. As she grew into a teenager, she'd still get weird vibes sometimes, or even catch fleeting glimpses of a shadow moving out of the corner of her eye, but it was never anything substantial enough for her to grasp that it was all real. In fact, it wasn't until the accident that she finally pieced it all together for herself.
One day when she was fifteen, she was struck by an overpowering sense of dread. It was the same vibe she'd gotten so many times before, only this time it was bigger. Stronger. Colder. In an absolute terror, she begged her parents not to leave the house, and her panic fell upon deaf ears. They shrugged it off, skeptically assuming she was simply trying to get out of going to the dentist. And with that, they were off. The bad vibe only got worse as they drove along, eventually making her break out into a cold sweat as she sat in the back seat, trembling as she clutched her knees to her chest. She was so terrified that she couldn't even scream when the back of the car filled with smoke, rapidly coalescing into what appeared to be some kind of wispy creature wearing a hooded robe, sitting casually in the seat next to her.
There was no mistaking that this was one of the smoke people, even if this was the first time she'd ever gotten a close-up look at one. When it turned to look at her, she caught a glimpse under its hood, opening her mouth in a silent scream at the vacant skull of a rat staring back. Given the lack of eyes, she didn't really know if it was looking at her. Or if it realized she could see it. Or if it cared at all either way. Whatever its motivation, it was only at that instant that she finally, truly understood what she was experiencing; she could sense death. She could see death. And death was currently sitting in the car with her. Before she could act on this newfound realization, her entire world exploded, and everything went black.
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While she, herself, miraculously sustained no injuries from the accident, she fell into a deep coma and didn't wake up again for months. The collective trauma of sitting face-to-face with death itself, realizing that it had been haunting her since birth, followed by the loss of her entire family... It broke her.
The ensuing decade was more or less a blur, locked away in an asylum, alternating between catatonia and raving lunacy until she regained enough control to be discharged. Of course, she had to lie about death. Or smoke people. Or reapers. Whatever the fuck the mute bastards wanted to be called. Her mind wasn't exactly healed, so much as she learned to keep the things she sensed, the things she SAW, a secret. She was still broken, but she could pass as normal, and that was all that mattered.
Once she was back in the world, now at the age of twenty-five, she lived for a time off a reasonably large inheritance that had been stored away, as well as a huge settlement from the accident. She was alone, aimless, and now that she was free, needed to figure out what to do from there. She spent some free time trying to research her ability, finding tidbits of lore and stories, but it was no way to spend the rest of her life. She wanted more. Much more.
An overpowering thirst for vengeance led her to get a day job as a janitor for the largest hospital in the state. As she so eloquently told herself, she wanted nothing less than to "Fuck death square in the ass," and she saw no better opportunity to do so than in than a place full of the sick and dying. She was no big fan of the work itself, but she loved the fringe benefits of helping to save lives. It was done more out of petty spite than any kind of altruism, but over the decades she worked there, she secretly saved dozens of lives.
Sometimes it was a simple matter, doing something to make sure a doctor was nearby at a critical moment, but that relied more on luck than anything else. With practice, she gradually honed her sense to the point where she could tell exactly what the cause of death would be, and from then on, death was her bitch. She'd discretely feed recommendations and ideas to doctors, or warn that diagnoses or dosages were incorrect, anything she could do to help. Time and time again, thanks to her, someone that would have died there went home happy. No one ever noticed her contributions, not that she cared. What she did was for her sake, and her sake alone. The only draw of saving lives came from the hope that somewhere, somehow, that skeletal rat was out there cursing her very name.
In direct contrast to her days at work fighting death, her nights were spent celebrating life as best as she could. After spending so many of her prime years in forced celibacy, she found herself desperate to make up for lost time, giving way to pure hedonism. She was horny, and she wanted everyone to know it. Despite the natures of the seedy raves and clubs she began to frequent, she never bothered with anything as simple as drugs or alcohol. No, she was happier simply getting laid at every opportunity.
She had long since forgotten her first time, as it was an awkward, embarrassing, patently unmemorable affair for both parties. However, she did remember her first time with a rhino. She was lying on her back against his belly as he held her up by her thighs, jack-hammering his hips, utterly pummeling his long, forearm thick shaft into her glistening cunt. A river of drool was running out the side of her mouth, making it all the way to her perky, plump breasts. It took a week for her to stop walking funny after that night.
And that was just like when she was triple-teamed by a group of horse brothers in the back room of a club. She never forgot the feeling of the two massive shafts, one buried in her rump, the other in her vagina, rubbing each other through the fleshy walls separating them. Naturally, she was deep-throating the third brother, barely able to keep herself from choking along the formidable length as it mercilessly fucked her mouth. She knew full well she she'd be calling in a sick day at work, but it was totally worth it. She quickly found that all she wanted was more. After all three horses were finished, sending torrents of cum into each of her holes, her stomach was cartoonishly bloated outward, and she loved every second of it.
One of her all-time favorites was in some particularly shitty club. She remembered kneeling in a bathroom stall over a wolf, straddling his hips, while a fox was kneeling behind her. Feeling incredibly kinky that night, she had taken both shafts together up her tight tailhole. Her ring was stretched to its very limit as the fox and wolf alternated their thrusts, taking turns pounding away at her ass. On top of the toilet's lid sat a mouse girl, who by that point was wearing nothing but a small neon blue top hiding her petite breasts. The mouse was moaning, tugging at her nipples through the fabric as Sophia hungrily ate out her pussy.
If there was one thing Sophia quickly learned about herself as she threw herself into the world of unrepentant pleasure, it was that to her, gender was a largely arbitrary distinction.
Her first time with another girl had been sometime earlier at what she later realized was a lesbian bar. She was chatting up a cute vixen with a bright red mohawk, and before she knew it they were in the alley around back. Sophia was moaning incoherently, squeezing her breasts with her back against the wall and her pants in a heap on the ground. The vixen was kneeling between her legs, driving her tongue into the howling cat's pussy as she rubbed her nose ring against her clit. By the time the vixen was through with her, she came so hard she was afraid she'd drown the eager fox in her juices. To her relief, the grinning vixen not only lapped it up happily, but proceeded to take her home, immediately pulling her into an enthusiastic sixty-nine.
While she and the vixen were never a committed couple in any way, that dominant fox was the first, and for a long time, only attempt at keeping a long-term partner she ever made. She had many, many other lovers in that time, but she and the vixen always seemed to come back to each other. Whether they had anything resembling love seemed immaterial. They just knew how to push each other's buttons in the best ways. Usually from inside. Sophia had long since lost count of just how many times she was so thoroughly filled by the vixen's fists, one fully exploring her rear, the other deep in her cunt. Those were some of the best memories she had, clenching down against the probing limbs as she gave the fox's dripping, quivering pussy a tongue job of its own. Other times, she would be bound, spread-eagle to the bed, getting brutally pounded by a thick strap-on, sometimes in her pussy, sometimes in her tailhole, always with a separate dildo stuffed into the other available hole. Though she was understandably antsy about being bound and gagged, in that context she soon discovered she had a passion for bondage.
Sophia did feel a bit of sadness when the vixen had to leave town due some poorly described 'misunderstanding' with the police, but she was used to goodbyes. If anything, she was grateful that the vixen left behind a truly stellar assortment of toys, including a strap-on she continued to use for years.
That strap-on came in particularly handy a short time later when she managed to bed a doberman couple, who after several years together wanted to experiment with swinging to spice up their marriage. The buxom female had a tall, curvaceous body that rivaled Sophia's. However, the skinny, slightly muscular male's own endowment was somewhat lacking. At least by her personal standards. Perhaps inspired by her time with her now fleeing ex-lover, she quickly realized that she had found the perfect opportunity to give being dominant a try; a proposition to which the larger pair eagerly agreed.
Positioning the dogs in a sixty-nine, with the male kneeling above the female, she pressed their muzzles against their mate's crotch and commanded they begin licking. She took a special amount of joy in the experience of binding them together, tying one's ankles to the other's wrists, leaving them helpless, trembling before her with pure anticipation.
After getting into her inherited strap-on's harness for the first time, shuddering at the feeling of the cool inner dildo slipping past her moist lips, she strutted over to male's muzzle. Prodding the strap-on at his lips, she smiled as she watched him shyly take the thick fake shaft into his mouth. The submissive male bobbed his head up and down, thoroughly coating it in saliva before she pulled it, lowering it toward at the entrance of the dobergirl's vagina. With a firm thrust, she immediately pushed the spit-covered shaft inside, making the moaning bitch writhe as much as her bondage would allow. Before the girl had any chance to recover, Sophia rapidly thrust her hips, slamming them together, pounding both of their pussies raw. All the while, the male up top meekly lapped at his wife's clit, sending her even further into spasms of pleasure. She had to wonder if she had set a record with how quickly she brought the pinned female to a gushing orgasm.
Not remotely satisfied with the pair, Sophia slipped the slick, dripping strap-on out and sauntered around to the other side of the bed. She grinned as she observed the satisfied bitch sucking on her husband's undersized knob like a pacifier, prompting him to return the favor, digging his muzzle deep into her now empty folds. Palming both of the male's round ass cheeks, Sophia leaned forward, whispering, "Time to teach you what a real man feels like," directly into his long, folded-back ear.
She placed the strap-on between his cheeks, taking a moment to trace his rim with the glistening tip. As he whimpered and twitched, she pressed the tip firmly inside, eventually pushing through the tightly clenching ring of flesh. He let out a long, pathetic whine, trembling in place, though the way his body quivered as he pushed back against her hips, it was clear that he was getting exactly what he wanted. Once fully hilted in his ass, Sophia gave him the same treatment as with the female, continuously slamming their hips together, filling the room with the sound of wet smacking, hammering his prostate with every thrust. Fortunately, the male seemed to make up for his lacking size with far greater control, lasting far longer than his wife. Sophia even managed to achieve her own orgasm before he blew his load, firing several spurts of hot, sticky cum down his wife's waiting throat.
Sighing in raw pleasure, Sophia pulled the strap-on out and held still, panting as she squeezed his cheeks, staring into his slightly gaping hole. She was surprised to feel a tug at her loins, looking down to see the female taking the fake shaft into her mouth and sucking it dry. Suffice it to say, even Sophia didn't expect the kinky bitch to take something that was just inside her husband's ass into her mouth. But there she was, doing it willingly. Once her initial surprise wore off, Sophia quickly took the initiative, powerfully fucking the female's throat while fingering the male's gaping hole, eventually working her whole fist past his loosened ring.
Sophia continued long into the night with that lovely couple. She lost count how many times she took both of their asses that night. All she knew was that by the time she had her fill, the panting male had been milked completely dry.
All told, that was one of her most memorable interactions simply because of how it truly awakened her hidden dominant streak. Many of her encounters past that point saw her taking on the role of dominatrix, binding, spanking, and powerfully, yet affectionately, fucking the living daylights out of her various sexual conquests.
Sometime later, during a nostalgic trip back to a certain shitty club she hadn't visited in ages, she happened to run into a skinny mouse girl that certainly remembered her. It had been years since their last encounter, though Sophia couldn't tell; that mouse's body looked as youthful and perky as it ever did. Making no attempt to hide their mutual interest, they sped into the bathroom and piled into a single stall. Unlike the last time, however, it was the mouse who was on her knees, obediently made to worship the grinning cat's cunt.
As it turned out, the mouse was still with the fox and wolf from before, the three of them sharing something of an open relationship, not to mention a home. After getting reacquainted with the group at their apartment, several times over, over the course of weeks, Sophia wound up being invited to move in. She gleefully accepted, making their threesome into a foursome, quickly establishing herself as something of a mix between a den mother and dominatrix.
Sophia fondly remembered those as the best among the best years of her life. Nothing could quite live up to being doted on by her ball-gagged slave mousie, watching as the submissive girl crawled about the apartment on all fours, begging to service her partners however they desired, whenever they desired. The only things that could even compare were all the times she got to tie up the fox and wolf, sometimes together, and repay them for doubling up under her own tail so long ago. Or maybe whenever they triple-teamed the mouse, or when she just took one of their asses while they double-teamed the mouse, or simply formed a train with the fox and wolf in the middle. It was the closest she ever really came to settling down, and for a long time she was happy. Simply put, she wanted nothing more than for things to stay that way for the rest of her life.
But then, all good things must come to an end.
She grew older. She grew tired. She grew less able to keep up with her desired lifestyle, and perhaps even burned out due to the years of pleasurable excess. Frankly, she was a bit surprised she made it the whole way through without ever getting a disease or serious injury. A part of her wondered if her power somehow gave her enough of a sense of danger to guide her through unscathed. Regardless, as much as she hated to acknowledge it, her sex life was over.
With her literal lust for life faded, she was left with nothing but her spite toward death. In a way, that too had changed, shifted into a kind of curiosity. She still hated death, sure, but she wanted to know more about her ability. Maybe even answer those questions she'd ignored all through her life. Where did it come from? How does it work? Was there anyone else like her? A brain scan at the hospital revealing nothing abnormal, and what little research she had been able to do over the years scared up a few leads, but nothing major.
Realizing that her only options for digging any deeper would require her to leave her hometown, for the first time in her life, she said a tearful goodbye to her friends and left, hoping they would remember her as fondly as she did them.
Using the considerable savings she accrued over her years, plus the original settlement from her parents' death, which she could never bring herself to touch, she traveled the world, seeking out information. Old churches, libraries, universities, historical societies, she visited them everywhere, trying to find out anything she could about death and her power. She was never optimistic about getting results, though after spending her entire life in one place, as wonderful as it was, she was just as happy to have a chance to see the world.
Over the following decades, the closest she came to any definitive answers amounted to creating a list of individuals throughout history that claimed experiences convincingly similar to her own. The truly strange thing about the list was that every individual was a feline of some pedigree, same as her, going all the way back to the first, a tiger from the sixteenth century. The tiger, whose name was recorded simply as 'Tot', was a court alchemist and physician, and luckily for Sophia was notable enough for someone to have preserved and published his research.
With some difficulty she tracked down a copy of the tiger's journal and 'scientific' notes, though aside from some theories on the nature of the harvesters, as he called them, it was ultimately a dead end. According to his notes, they were simple spirits, forces of nature that ferry souls to wherever it is souls go. Nothing terribly useful. What history remembered of him said that the insane tiger eventually killed himself attempting some kind of ritual he claimed would allow him to master death. Afterwards, when his assistant left his body unattended, the building mysteriously burned down and his body was never recovered. Though it seemed crazy, absolutely, something about the symbols shown in the ritual seemed familiar somehow.
Sophia stopped cold when she turned to the final page and saw a self-portrait the tiger had sketched. Specifically, it was his stripes, or rather, the small grayish black crescents he had alongside them, perhaps due to a degree of snow leopard ancestry, that drew her attention. She knew it the instant she saw them; she had seen that tiger before.
Years earlier, after landing in a European airport, she sensed that familiar feeling that death was nearby. Only it felt completely different. It was softer, gentler, almost warmer. For a moment she was worried she was sensing her own death, but it didn't feel like that either. Calmly yet urgently following that magnetic pull, she eventually found her way to another gate where passengers were in the process of boarding. She quickly pinpointed the source of the feeling, a tall, gaunt hyena wearing a fedora and a suit. Standing next to him, chatting politely, was the exact same tiger shown in that sketch, except maybe a tad younger. There was no mistaking it. It was him, crescent stripes and all.
Looking over to see Sophia staring at him in confusion, the tiger flashed a momentary look of recognition before winking, waving a hand with a red, spiral shaped symbol on his palm, and leaving to board the plane, followed briskly by the hyena. As the hyena turned, Sophia swore she could see a bit of another symbol peeking out from under the brim of his hat. Unfortunately, despite her attempts to follow, she was prevented from chasing them any further, and had no other choice but to let them go. Up until that very moment, she had never known what to make of that encounter. Now? Everything made sense.
The tiger's ritual worked. He enslaved a harvester. He was immortal.
And that was exactly what she wanted; a way to beat death once and for all. With her first real goal in years, Sophia gathered Tot's notes, particularly every bit detailing the ritual, and returned home for the first time in decades. She immediately worked on gathering materials, spending the next year getting things ready, making sure everything was going to be perfect.
The house where she grew up had been sold when she was orphaned, locked away, and forgotten, and for the past few decades had been abandoned to decay in its rural isolation. Figuring that it was the best, if not merely the most poetic, place to either end her days or become something new, she broke in and made her way to her old bedroom to get everything ready.
And that, she thought as the chemical stopped her heart, was where her story ends.
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Letting out a final, strained, choking gasp, Sophia felt nothing aside from an icy chill washing over her body. For what felt like an eternity, but may as well have been little more than a handful of seconds, she floated aimlessly through an infinite void. It was peaceful, if cold. And dreadfully boring, for that matter. She was close to losing her sense of self to the emptiness when a booming voice thundered, "SOPHIA BYRNE."
Her eyes snapped open, and she was back in her old bedroom, except, now, she was standing. Her body appeared to be transparent, which could only mean that she was now in her soul form. Glancing downward, she saw her physical body lying limply on the mat, undignified thing that it had become. To anyone else, this all would have likely been a terrifying shock, but to Sophia, it was simply the another step of the ritual. She kept her composure, knowing full well that everything hinged on the next step. Deftly hiding a dim red glow from her soul's left palm, she turned to the source of the voice and looked for her opening.
Standing, or rather, hovering in front of her was a harvester, just as she remembered it from so many years ago. A head and torso shrouded by a robe, the hint of a pair of wispy, skeletal arms, with everything else fading into nothing. Behind him was what appeared to be a small doorway opening the way to the other side. The creature's face was effectively hidden by its hood, and that simply would not do.
"Sophia Byrne. You are dead. Come with me," it bellowed, a shade more gently than before.
"Yes... I understand," Sophia said, hiding behind her own mask of fearful obedience. "I just have one request... Is there any chance you could let this poor old cat look upon your face? You look terrifying, and death is frightening enough already..."
After a slight hesitation, the harvester spoke, "...If you wish," and lowered its hood, revealing a familiar skeletal rat. The sight of his empty skull had been burned in her memory for the vast majority of her life. Face or no, she knew it was the same rat. And this was her opening.
Instantly dropping her meek facade, Sophia growled, "I was SO hoping it was going to be you." The harvester had no time to react before the spry cat lunged forward and slapped her glowing palm against his right eye socket. The instant they made contact, the six blood sigils activated, each firing a beam of piercing red light into the harvester's torso.
A deafening shriek of agony exploded forth from the harvester as the light burned through the shadow, rapidly dispersing the darkness cloaking his body. When the light faded and the ritual was complete, a nude, pained, confused black rat was kneeling at Sophia's feet.
Getting her first full look at the rat's body, Sophia was underwhelmed. The former harvester was scrawny, bony, gaunt, and unremarkable at best. Aside from his pink hands, footpaws, and tail, as well as a new bright red patch of fur over his right eye in the shape of the symbol, his body fur and short, unkempt head fur were a shiny, solid black.
"What... what did you do?" he gaped, looking up at Sophia in utter disbelief.
"First order of business," she said, totally ignoring his query, "I imagine you know what I want." The rat stared silently, mouth open in confusion. Letting out an annoyed sigh, she explained, "Heal my body and revert the age to, say, about 25 years. Then go ahead and pop my soul back in. Okay sweetie? After that we'll talk."
The rat himself did nothing, though his body obeyed completely. His hand reached toward the cat's empty vessel, glowing slightly as it caused the wrinkled heap of flesh to gradually revert to a much younger age. Sophia was positively beaming as she watched her younger self return. Her wrinkles vanished, her fur darkened, growing shiny and black once more, and her breasts plumped out, even perkier, far more round and full than she remembered. She wasn't proud of it, but there was a part of her wishing she could fuck herself. In any case, once the process was complete, the rat gestured toward her, forcefully sending her back into her body.
Sophia's eyes snapped opened again as she sat upright, hacking and coughing, eventually spitting up some of the green fluid that had caused her state of living death. She wiped the excess fluid from her mouth and energetically jumped to her feet, spinning about the room, joyously checking out her completely restored form.
"Did you hear that? Not a single joint popped! Incredible!" she laughed, looking down at her knees.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME!?!" the rat shrieked, though his now nasally voice failed to conjure the same sense of dread and urgency as before.
"Oh, right. Well, the notes on the ritual were mostly speculation, but seem pretty spot on so far. Essentially, I forced you into a physical form and bound you to me, body and whatever empty thing passes as your soul. I can use you as a conduit to control the attributes of my body, health, appearance, gender, and ESPECIALLY age. Short version, you get to live as my slave, and I get eternal life and eternal youth. Good deal, right?"
"Why... why would you do this?..." the rat begged, visibly trembling.
"I'm sorry, did you ask me WHY I did it? What a silly question!" she exclaimed with a laugh. "You heard me say eternal youth, right? Because that was most of it. The rest was, well, revenge I suppose, so I'm glad I ended up seeing you, specifically, again."
"Revenge... How... I don't know..."
"A long, long time ago, you and the rest of your kind took something from me, something that couldn't possibly be replaced, and I, well, held something of a grudge for a long, long time."
"You're doing this because I took your parents? That was-"
"So you did see me! And you remember me! Isn't that nice? But no, I still hate you for that, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't referring to them. No. What you stole from me was ten... years... of MY LIFE," she snarled, suddenly growing deathly serious. "The ability to feel death at every turn in my life, popping in front of me before taking my family, TRAUMATIZING ME INTO BEING LOCKED AWAY?!?!? INTO LOSING TEN YEARS OF WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE PRIME OF MY LIFE?!?!?"
She stared with wild-eyed hate at the rat for several seconds before her rage rapidly faded. "Yes, dear, I wanted revenge. In all due honesty, if I was truly my younger self I might be using that scalpel to take you apart right now, gleefully watching as the pieces stitch back together just so I could start all over again." The rat could scarcely muster a whimper, enslaved as he was. "But then, over the years my fury dulled, and finding a benefit for myself became far more reasonable than pointless violence. With our transaction here, I consider us even."
"Even... how are we possibly even? I was just doing my job and-"
"I think you'll find that 'I was just doing my job' is generally not very effective at winning victims over."
The rat stared in fearful silence for several minutes before speaking up again, simply asking, "...then what are you going to do to me?..."
"Hm, that is a good question, now isn't it?" she mused, placing her hand on her chin. "I need you to remain nearby, obviously, so I won't be releasing you. No, no. You are mine, for now and forever. It has been decades since the last time I had a little mousy pet, and it's been almost as long since the last time I got off, which, now that I mention it." Rubbing a growing wet spot on the front of her pants, she hummed with desire, slowly gyrating her hips as her strong, youthful tail whipped from side-to-side. "Hoo boy, everything just came flooding back at once there, didn't it? Good thing I came prepared in case this all actually worked!" Sauntering up to her case, she promptly pulled out a strap-on and lube, pleasantly commanding, "Get on your hands and knees on the mat, would you, dear? And do keep your tail up and out of the way."
The rat was powerless to disobey as he crawled onto the mat, remaining silent aside from a chorus of whimpers, kneeling on all fours with his tail raised high.
"I am so very glad I came prepared for our meeting. You should have seen the look on that skunk's face when a meek old woman walked into his shop and bought armfuls of sex toys. Ah, yes, that was fun," she chuckled as she dropped her pants and snapped the strap-on's harness on, squealing with joy as she inserted the internal dildo into her moist, youthful pussy. "Oh my... it hasn't felt that good in ages! I suppose it would have been particularly embarrassing if the ritual failed and I was found like an occult sacrifice surrounded by dildos, but I gambled and won."
Kneeling behind the cowering rat, she lubed up the long, thick strap-on and aimed it under his pink, furless tail. "It's funny, I never thought I'd ever be literally doing this, but LIFE is funny that way, is it not?" she chuckled, holding still for the briefest of moments. With a slow, initial thrust, she prodded the fake cock against the rat's clenching tailhole, gradually increasing the pressure until the round head popped past his rim.
The black rat's eyes flew open with a whine at the bizarre new sensation. Though he had received some degree of baseline knowledge about what it felt like to have an actual body as part of merging with the cat, having an idea of what something feels like is a far cry from actually getting your rear stuffed for the first time. Making a cry somewhat like a howl, he clenched his fists and curled his toes, shuddering down to his core. Though it hurt at first, being forced open in that fashion, the pain was rapidly replaced with a dull sort of pleasure as he got adjusted to it. To his own surprise, he felt his body reflexively pushing back against the cool, greasy intruder, taking it even deeper inside.
"Good to see you're getting into the swing of things dear," Sophia purred, grabbing his hips and firmly pushing the rest of the sizable length inside with a series of slow thrusts.
Every one of the rat's brand new senses were exploding in unison, from the rubbery taste of the mat he bit down upon, to the squelching sound of the strap-on stretching him open, to the confusingly pleasant feeling of being so full. A tense throbbing coming from between his legs got his attention, making him crane his head to see his long, thin, tapered cock had emerged from his sheath, pulsing with anticipation in front of his fat, round, dangling balls. He gasped sharply when his tormentor coiled her dexterous tail around the skinny length, rubbing her silken fur against the desperate flesh, pushing him close to the edge and holding him firmly there. Between that and the pressure against his brand new prostate, he could only give another long, mewling moan before biting down on the mat once more, ripping a hole open with his long incisors.
"Oh, sweetie, if you liked that, you'll LOVE this," she said, grinning lustily. The rat folded his ears back, partially out of fear, but also from anticipation. Biting down on the torn chunk of mat like a gag, he braced himself for whatever was coming next.
The instant Sophia saw the rat drop his guard, nervously looking back at her, she began brutally pounding his ass, hammering his prostate, and jerking his needy shaft with her tail. As long as it had been since she had done this, since she was last at her peak, her skills didn't seem to have rusted over at all. Indeed, if anything it was like riding a bike. Or in this case, a rodent.
The rat was too distracted to notice the cat's maniacal laughter as she slammed her way inside over and over, faster than he would have thought a physical being could move. The dull throbbing of pain and pleasure gave way to what felt like a building explosion, overriding his control to the point where he couldn't even squeak through his makeshift gag anymore. As she rode his ass ever faster, he did little more than silently stare forward, eyes pinned wide open.
Without warning, just as he felt his balls draw in, about to achieve his inaugural orgasm, the cat removed her tail from his cock and unclipped the strap-on's harness. After taking a step back, moaning as the slick internal dildo slipped out, leaving the strap-on itself fully embedded in his rear, she flipped him onto his back with a painful thud.
The former harvester was totally confused, shaking his head and futilely pumping his hips, desperate for release, when he felt her hand wrap tightly around his length. With a malicious grin, she furiously jerked her fist along the desperate cock. Within moments, she successfully milked several thick spurts of cum out of him, perfectly aiming each one into his flinching, squinting face.
As she let go of the rat's spent cock, Sophia smiled at his freshly decorated face, covered in splotches of white alongside the red symbol over his eye. Having failed to reach her own peak, she wasn't anywhere near finished with her new pet.
Straddling the drained rodent's head, she dropped to her knees, snatched the bit of mat out of his teeth, and thrust her pussy directly into his cum-spattered muzzle. Emotionally and physically drained or not, the rat had no choice but to inhale her musk, pleasuring her by exhaling his hot breath into her quivering cunt while incidentally tickling her with his whiskers.
"Lick," Sophia tersely commanded, repeatedly poking her engorged clit into his nose as she grabbed the back of his head and gyrated her hips. As always, he was forced to obey, sending his tongue deep into her cunt. She was purring as he flawlessly did as he was told, grinding her pussy against him all the while, rapidly building up to her own climax as she dominated the former specter of death. All too soon she threw her head back in a resounding yowl, shuddering with orgasm, utterly drenching his muzzle as her fluids washed away his own.
Releasing her grip on the back of his head, letting it drop to the floor with a dull thud, Sophia sighed with pure contentment. Off to her side, her pet rat was looking up at the ceiling, his eyes wide open with a vacant stare, his mouth just as open as if frozen mid-gasp. He was totally motionless for a disturbingly long time until eventually saying, "More," barely above a whisper. "Please, I'll do anything! More!"
Sophia grinned. She didn't much care that he enjoyed it, or even got off at all; the only thing that really mattered was that she did. Then again, if it helped to keep him servile, then all the better. He had no choice but to follow her commands, sure. But to have a pet, a subjugated specter of death, genuinely begging her for pleasure, willingly doing anything she wanted in exchange for just the hope of sexual release... No amount of money could buy her that kind of pleasure. Still, there was one last thing she needed to do before officially calling the night a success.
"Later, pet," Sophia said, quickly leaping to her feet, giving another sigh of joy at being young and healthy once more. "Oh, that reminds me!" Grabbing a small leather collar out of her case, she clipped it around the flinching rat's neck, leaving a small gold padlock dangling over his chest. "Now, pet, pack everything back into my case. It's time we leave for a nicer setting."
"Yes... Sophia?" he tentatively said, not sure what she'd want to be called.
Sensing this, she responded, "You may call me Sophia, whatever you like. I will be calling you pet, mostly. Though I suppose I should get your name for when we're in public." She waited for an answer, giving an annoyed huff when he silently began to pack. "You do have a name, right?"
"Yes, I do."
"...well, what is it?"
"Gioco."
"Alright then, be explicit with commands, noted," she said, rolling her eyes. Taking a small canister of gasoline from the case, carefully avoiding both her and the rat, she poured it out all over the floor. Once she was done, and the case was completely packed, she ordered, "Carry the case, pet," grabbed the lantern, and walked out the door. She was a short distance away before she realized she was alone, calling, "AND FOLLOW ME!" back into the room. Sighing with frustration, she realized that keeping him controlled with sex might be more necessary than she initially thought. It wasn't important; aside from the whole eternal life thing, as well as now having the ability to, for lack of a better term, shapeshift, that was exactly what she wanted out of him.
They quickly made it outside, and were soon standing in the lawn, staring in silence at her decrepit former home. Before Gioco could ask what she was doing, she simply muttered, "Closure," and threw her lantern through the window of her old room, shattering through the glass. Moments later, small flames could be seen erupting in the room, quickly spreading as the gasoline ignited. For a brief moment she looked almost sad, but quickly smiled again when she turned to see her new pet.
"...what now, Sophia?" Gioco eventually asked, probably hoping for another throw-down in the grass.
"Isn't it obvious?" she asked, turning her head to stare at him with a wild, toothy grin partially illuminated by the flickering flames. "Perhaps I'll spend some more time fighting your kind... But mostly? I have an eternity of options to go experience, and I'm going to do just that. It's a great big world out there, and I'm going to fuck it all."