Freebie Friday: For Grihmfait
** I opened up "Freebie Friday" over on FA, and got two requests. One was from Grihmfait, and together we came up with "Hellmouth Tattoo" for a plot. This is what I came up with from that ^^**
Jake and his boyfriend, Adam, walked down the crowded sidewalk laughing and joking. Today was Jake's twenty-fifth birthday, and he had decided to go and get himself some ink. Madison Ave Ink loomed before them, its red bulbs glowing eerily in the darkness of the evening. Bells chimed as they crossed the threshold into the cool building, staffed by a purple-haired woman with enough piercing to blow up a metal detector and a skinny guy decked out in tattered black denim. Jake approached the counter, smiling, and tapped the small chime. The girl looked up from her magazine, green eyes running the length of his body. "Can I help you?" "Yeah, I'd like to get some ink done. I have a reference image, if that's alright..." He reached into his wallet and pulled out the yellowed scrap of parchment they had found tucked into the back of an old painting. The woman behind the counter unfolded it gingerly and glanced at its contents. Drawn in a dark red ink was a strange circle, inlaid with swirling runes and odd, sharply-angled lines. It seemed to pulse and shift beneath her scrutinous perusal but that seemed to only excite her. "Please, follow me. I think we have an artist who can capture this exact pattern. Your partner, however, will have to wait." Jake nodded to Adam to have a seat as he set off behind the woman, smiling at him reassuringly before vanishing from view.
Sarah, as her nametag read, led Jake through a red curtain in the back and into an oddly dim room. Seated on a black stool in the corner was person in long black robes, its back to them as it scribbled furiously with an old fashioned quill. Jake smirked; it must be one of those weird High Fantasy goth kids. "Vorel? Take a look at this- this man would like this as a tattoo. Can you... can you replicate this?" A black-furred arm snatched the paper away and studied it intently. "Yes, I can do this," a sultry voice answered, "but only if he signs a waver. 'Designs' like this can often times get out of control very quickly. If he is dedicated, he will comply." With a nod Sarah passed over a sheet of paper to the waiting man, oblivious to their conversation. He was busy studying a painting on the wall of a hideous monster with three screaming faces spread about its body and slithering pink tentacles that seemed to writhe right off the canvas. It was battling three smaller figures, one with a bow, one with a sword, and one off chanting to the side, an ancient book clutched in her hands. "Sir? We need you to sign this." Pulling his gaze away from the scene was hard but Jake managed to sign the papers regardless. The robed figure stood and turned to him, her gold eyes gleaming. She wasn't human! Jake backed away until he collided with solid wall, shaking his head and muttering to himself. "What... What the hell are you, some kind of demon?" The woman smiled and lowered her hood, revealing jackal-like features and black fur covering her head. Anubis, he thought, she reminds me of old pictures of Anubis. "My appearance is a blessing of the gods, indeed. Sit, Jacob, I will not harm you. I will give you an amazing gift. You have my word." As she spoke her eyes began to glow with a strange green light. Jake felt himself calming, felt his revulsion ebb away as he stared at her. "Will you take your shirt off and have a seat?" "Yes..." The strange creature began to fasten shackles around his wrists and ankles, and then took a seat beside the tattooing chair. In her hand she held a strange needle made of bone. With a deft move she drove the needle into her breast and watched with detachment as it began to fill with her unnatural black blood. Once it had reached its capacity she placed it against his bronzed skin and began to draw.
Four hours later Jake exited the back room, beaming, a bandage showing beneath his gray shirt. "Let's go home, love." The two men left and returned home, Jake telling the tale of the strange tattooist and how he was so relaxed he slumbered during the length of the procedure. Adam smiled at him, glad to hear his experience was so painless. Inside their modest home, jake asked for his help applying the lotion to his sensitive tattoo. "I don't want it to dry out; this thing nearly cost me a fortune." Adam gingerly undressed his lover, being careful not to bump against the irritated skin. As he began to apply the lotion to his hands his eyes happened upon the design. It swirled and shook, the runes dancing and skittering across the circle they were contained in, it hue shifting from a dark black to a bloody crimson before his eyes. "Jake... Jake, it's moving. What the hell happened in there?" "What do you mean it's moving? Pictures don't move. Maybe you should lie down, we'll do this in the morning-" Adam cut him off by dashing to their closet and grabbing a small traveling mirror from one of their discarded luggages. He held it behind Jake and pointed to the full mirror resting on their armoire. Jake's jaw dropped as he witnessed first hand how his new ink was behaving. He had never seen anything like it! "What is this... what did she do to me?" As he pondered the question aloud, his back began to ripple and bulge. The sound of a mirror breaking came from behind him as Adam backed away quickly. Hot pain lanched through the flesh of his back and he began to scream- skin parted from muscle as a large black tentacle shot out of his back, ripping through his skin like tissue paper. A second and third followed, each lined with many-fanged maws that chanted gibberish cacophonously. Adam covered his ears in horror, shouting and screaming unintelligibly as his sanity left him. A dark blue hand reached from a shifting lump and dug its claws into Jacob's side, followed by another, and they began to push a giant-horned skull through the man's torso. Hot tears spilled down his face as the creature emerged, cackling in a hollow voice that echoed through the bedroom. As it fully emerge it grabbed Adam and began to wrap its tentacles around him, cackling as they tore and bit at his soft skin, creating gaping wounds that they shoved themselves into with vulgar lust. The demon rolled its head back and began to stroke the largest tentacle, currently burrowing into the red head's supple rear. Jake watched, weeping, as his closest friend and veritable soul mate was violated and torn asunder. As the demon's claws picked up speed a purple liquid began to leak from his squirming appendages, dripping onto the floor and sizzling the hard wood upon which they landed. He was cumming. His seed shot from each of his writhing members and drenched Adam's unconscious body, coating him in a burning, smoking acid that ate away his flesh and muscle. Jacob screamed. Black mist seeped from his weakened body, bringing more horrors with it. They clawed their way out him by the hundreds, leaving him to the agony of their departure as they left to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting city around them. As their numbers dwindled he was left alone with the corpse of his mate, which he crawled toward in a desperate attempt to die near him. "Not so fast, love." That voice... Jake turned his head to glance upon the naked body of the Anthro woman he had met at the parlor. She bent down and placed a hand over the gooey skeleton that was once Adam and began to chant. The bones jerked twice and stood up, liquid gore still clinging to its thin frame. "Chain him up and tend to his pain. We need him alive until we finish." The corpse's head nodded slowly. It grabbed Jake round the wrists and drug him out into the yard where it restrained him between two thick trees. His eyelids fluttered as he stared at the jackal woman exiting his home. "Why? Why me?" She chucked and leaned in close to his ear. "Darling, when one finds a strange magic seal, they might want to learn to do their research. Now you're a Hellmouth. Congratulations." With a pat on the shoulder she turned and began following the stream of shapeless horrors that had started to drip from the center of his swirling ink.