A Failed Escape [Subscriber Reward]
The city of OldQuarry has fallen.
(Art by Jintally)
There's a followup to this story you can read, right now, on my Subscribestar!
$40 subscribers get a 1.5k word short story like this every month, and there's a slot currently available!
A Failed Escape By Limewah Subscriber Reward for Flarfenarfle (Feb 2025) 18+
Utahime was surrounded by several dozen piercing, expectant gazes. The cinnamon-furred kitsune tried not to let them see the nerves behind her green eyes.
They were all counting on her to get them out of the city with their minds intact.
No pressure there.
The group, all filthy, exhausted, and terrified, were holed up in the remnants of a tavern, filled with dust and the musty scent of mouldy, long-abandoned food.
Those beasts were still outside. Those enormous floating eyes looked like they’d been plucked, nerve-tail and all, from some giant’s skull. These enchanted constructs were created by a vindictive witch with a personal grudge against the OldQuarry’s mayor, and had overwhelmed the city in a single afternoon.
That was more than a week ago.
Most of the city had fallen - as far as Utahime knew, her and the others in this room were the last ones who had not fallen afoul of the patrolling eyes.
One glance into one of those creatures’ eyes, and…
Utahime shuddered. Best not to think about it.
Not just because of the chill those thoughts sent down her spine, but for the way that chill turned disturbingly warm when it reached the base of her kitsune-tails and formed a warm caramel puddle in her thighs.
The looks on their faces. The way their bodies moved.
The fear turning to…
“What’re we doing?”
She shook her head, pulling herself back into the present. Her right paw was hovering disconcertingly close to her inner thigh.
One of the survivors, a grey-furred hare with tufts of pink hair, was bouncing on the balls of his feet, eager to go.
“Yes, yes, sorry.” Utahime shook those feelings away. “We’ll be in sight of the gate as soon as we leave this house. Keep your head low, don’t look up, don’t look back… just run. As long as at least one of us gets out of here, gets some help… it’ll be worth it.”
Most of them didn’t look all that convinced. But that young rabbit, his whole life ahead of him, pushed forward, his eyes brimming with belief and courage.
“I’ll go first!” he said.
Utahime was secretly a little glad that someone volunteered. If someone was going to get blindsided and brainwashed when they broke cover, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely! LET’S DO THIS!”
Before she could stop him, the hare rushed past her and burst through the door.
She shouldn’t have run after him. None of them should have. But their position was compromised, they couldn’t stay…
Utahime put her head down and sprinted, her face turned towards the dirt and focusing on her clog-clad feet digging into the dirt path.
She only caught a glimpse of the hare’s legs. He was falling to his knees. Looking up at… one of those things.
Poor thing.
The eye-creatures hummed, a by-product of the thrumming magic that kept them suspended in the air. It had a seductive, ear-tickling timbre to it, almost to a distracting degree.
“MOVE!” she yelled. “KEEP-!”
Her gaze was too down-turned for her to see quite far enough ahead. She crashed head-long into a body, tumbling right over it.
Time seemed to slow as she tumbled through the air.
She found herself staring directly into the face of the figure she’d crashed into, as he too tumbled.
The marten’s fur was barely holding on to his gaunt, dehydrated face. His gaze was slack, eyes blank and almost lifeless. As she landed, he toppled to his side, still masturbating even though there was barely anything left to expel after what must have been days of onanism…
There was the heat again.
She pulled her gaze away and re-oriented herself towards the gate. It was still there. Others were rushing past her, covering their eyes with a forearm, or a shawl…
But the eyes were swooping in and around, their nerve-stalks slithering down to grasp and whip and force them to stare.
It was working. One by one, the fleeing survivors were snared, their sprint slowly deteriorating into a stumble, then to stillness. Necks craned upwards, jaw hanging open with awe, hands already working to disrobe as their eyes turned to spiralling rainbows.
The hum was getting stronger. There were whispers within the buzz. Words in a language that she didn’t understand, but could feel, viscerally. Speaking to something primal within her soul.
They told her to…
Submit.
“Nnno…” she growled, teeth gritted, and broke into an all-fours sprint.
There were many more obstacles. Some newly ensorcelled, others who must have tried to escape before and failed, now in varying states of health and consciousness, but all of them masturbating(some with frantic energy, some weakly using the last reserves of their consciousness).
The gate was in sight. Her limbs couldn’t fail her now.
As she lunged forward, her wrists were grasped. Wet, thick, slick tendrils grabbed and yanked. Another one grasped her throat and wrapped around her head like a shawl, squeezing tightly She gasped as she was pulled upright, her body tensing in service of a terrified shriek.
It died in her throat as the tendril tugged her upwards.
Several eyes stared down at her. Deep, black pupils within yellow seas.
She clenched her eyes shut and pulled her head away, tensing against the wet grabbing tentacles.
…how was she able to do that?
The whispers were still there.
You can resist…
Was that her own thoughts, or were they coming from that voice…?
You’re very strong…
She was very strong.
Take another look… see what it feels like.
She could take another look. Just a taste of the bliss, to make it easier to resist.
When she opened one eye, the other shot open too, and her will drained away.
She had a moment to realise what a fool she was, before she ceased to be able to think at all.
The eyes were very pretty.
At first, the pupils seemed to be completely black. But the longer she stared (however long it was), the more Utahime noticed little shapes within them. Hints of colour within the darkness, like a rainbow peeking through a storm cloud. Spirals and circles and fractals…
And the longer she stared, the smaller she felt.
Several of the eyes peeled away, leaving only one to focus on her. The distant screams and shouts were barely reaching her ears. They seemed unimportant.
She listened to the hum.
She could hear the whispers more clearly now. She began to understand them.
Your lust is your mistress.
Give yourself to it.
She felt a vague desire to struggle and run. But her body wouldn’t allow it. When her wrists were unbound, they fell to her thighs and clawed at her clothes, to get access to the puffy heat between her needful thighs.
She bent forward to stare, her head twisting to follow the slow, feathery back and forth of the swaying eye and its swirling blackness.
She could see herself within its glossy reflection.
Her pupils dilated gradually, and saliva slid from her mouth. Her pussy was aching and dripping now, and she was no longer able to resist the aching, shameful desires she’d felt.
The desire to fall under this spell and to lose herself forever.
There was no shame in her head anymore. Just the blackness.
And the whispers.
You are a slave to your lust.
You will obey it.
Until you can obey no longer.
She was a slave to her lust.
As she leant forward to stare her fingers slipped into her cunt. It was a perfect fit. More perfect than any other time she’d masturbated in her life.
She gasped and whimpered, finding the most sensitive spots within the tunnel, making her toes curl and her eyes cross.
The eye came closer, as if to keep her from looking at anything else. Not that she could.
Utahime stared. She masturbated. Her mind was starting to come apart, like smouldering parchment.
The hum grew louder, the whispers rattling inside her skull, pouring into her mind like a cascade of flame, scalding and burning her insides, fulminating her thoughts, until the constant whisper and buzz, the overwhelming aural assault, suddenly went -
Quiet.
She could no longer hear the hum. It fell away like a trapdoor beneath her, and the sudden plunge into quiet took her stream of consciousness with it.
That stream of consciousness would never return.
The fox’s thoughts were quiet.
There was nothing inside her brain, save for the very basic functions, the ones that let her breathe and kept her heart beating.
Otherwise, she was insensate, warm flesh, an endlessly cumming automaton. She was silent, too, save for soft guttural squeaks whenever she came.
The eye moved away, but she didn’t notice, didn’t even follow it. She stared into space, her throat letting out low, ghoulish moans as her sex leaked all over her fingers.
One more masturbating puppet, one of the legions of helplessly masturbating cretins, rubbing until their wrists atrophied, until their bodies dried, until what little brain activity they had ceased.
OldQuarry was lost. And Utahime was just one more statistic in the strange tragedy.