Gryphon

Massive Disclaimer: There will be a lot of weird and upsetting imagery. If you're not a fan of body horror or manipulation, stay warned. Also, if you have any adverse reactions to the following topics: Sexual assault, Sexual assault of a minor, war topics, and body horror. Be warned. This chapter is meant to show a lot about this world I'm crafting. Black and white isn't even a thing here. Everyone has an awful past, and everyone has trauma. There are no happy endings.

Ty went to sleep before I did. The moment his head hit the pillow, his eyes shut tight, and his breathing grew steady. I tried to follow his example, but it took some work. For some reason, despite what I had just been through, my eyes just wouldn’t grow heavy. At first, I thought it was something wrong with me, but when I realized what my mind drifted to every time my thoughts went quiet, the issue became clear.

It was that woman sleeping in my room. She’s the only person within law enforcement that knows of me. The only reason she hadn’t given me up was that her sense of justice prevented her from turning in someone she deemed innocent. However, if she just so happened to have lower standards for morality, my home could very much end up in rubble the next day. 

Yet, despite my obvious cry for him to decline the offer, Ty went ahead and sheltered her anyway. It didn’t take long to figure out why. I knew of his past, and she was the sister of his first lover, Freya. Because he blamed himself for her death, he probably saw this act as some small way of paying Jessica back the debt he owed her.

Did I have a say in the matter then if that were the case? Maybe not, but it will make my life a whole lot harder. Not only would I have to figure out where the killer was, but I’d also have to do it without the hawk seeing me in the act.

That only applied more pressure onto my shoulders during the time I didn’t need any more stress. I had to take the example Jessica gave me, though. If I stayed awake all night, then I couldn’t think to the best of my ability. 

Willing my eyes shut, I steadied my breathing manually and drifted off into dreams. After about half an hour, I finally reached the tranquility of rest.

***

Sunlight broke through the window. The golden rays of sunlight hit my eyelid, and they bothered me enough to wake me up. I opened my eyes and noticed Ty had woken up before me. The bed was empty, and he wasn’t in the room. The room door was left slightly ajar, and I could hear some rustling from the living room.

Yawning, I sat up from bed and rubbed my eyes. For some reason, they burned when I touched them. Even with my eyelids protecting them, when I rubbed my eyes, it felt like I stared straight into the sun for hours. 

Leaving it as just irritation for not getting some good sleep, I stood and scratched my back. My tail swayed back and forth as it enjoyed its freedom. Normally I’d have to keep it locked up tight in my backdoor, but since the only two people in the house were ones who knew what I really was, I felt no shame in hiding it. 

If only I could do it while on the streets. Sadly, that’s a dream I wouldn’t live to see come to fruition. All I could do was make enough headway so that my future kids and grandkids could finish the work I had begun. 

Making my way to the living room, the rustling noises I heard grew louder. I didn’t know what it was at first, but the closer I got to the room, the more I understood what the sound signified.

Sitting on Ty’s chair, his pants lay around his ankles. Sitting on top of him, bouncing up and down like a true succubus, Jessica moaned from pleasure as his rod touched all the spots her fingers couldn’t reach.

At first, I was shocked to see them going at it, but the shock slowly faded away as acceptance took its place. It’s not like them fucking meant anything after all. They were probably just horny and decided to have a go. Though from my studying, I thought humans liked to do it more in private. They were taught that sex was a shameful act to do in a public spot, so they would hole up in a private place before pulling down their pants.

Then again, I was in Ty’s home technically speaking. I’ve been living in it for so long I began subconsciously thinking of it as my home as well. They probably thought I would be asleep, so they began going at it. They probably didn’t even realize I had just walked in on them. There was nothing surrounding them but themselves in their mind. Why would they be suspicious?

Deciding it was best just to get breakfast going, I turned away from them and headed toward the kitchen. 

“Good morning Harmony.” 

I looked at the two and noticed they had turned their heads toward me. I only looked away for a second, but in that second they spun their heads a hundred-eighty degree. Their eyes were the first thing I saw. Their eyes were open, but nothing stared out of them. 

No pupils, irises, or even eyes to speak of laid in their sockets. Only darkness existed in those eyelids, but that wasn’t unusual. I’ve had people look at me like that all the time. It was only natural.

“Harmooooony,” Jessica called out. “You’re man’s cock feels so fucking good. I was just sitting here, minding my own business, then he had to come in here waving this meatstick around. It was so massive I expected it to stick out of my mouth. And it did. See.”

She opened her mouth and I peered down her throat. Just past her uvula, I could see the head of Ty’s penis waving hello with the tiny hands it’s always had.

She closed her mouth, and I returned to staring at their eyes. It was then I saw movement in their sockets. It turned out it wasn’t darkness in their eyes. What I was staring at were millions of tiny, microscopic bugs crawling in their eyes. Four spindly legs erupted from each of their eyes, and the legs manually closed and opened the eyelids, trying to imitate a blink to the best of their abilities.

“Don’t you feel anything from this?” Ty asked. He slammed his hips against Jessica’s and her cheeks puffed out as his head assaulted her mouth. “Do you feel anything at all?”

I sighed, not giving in to the temptation that these people wanted from me. 

“Why would I feel anything about something that isn’t real?”

Right then, the television sparked to life. The screen remained silent, but the speakers played at full volume. From them, the sound of bombs and an old-timey man speaking in a strange accent erupted out. There was an underlying sound of static and interference as if the sounds weren’t coming through the TV. Instead, it sounded like some of the radios that I would find in the garbage back at my homeland.

Approximately one hundred thousand of the population perished from the first of many devils. Half of that died from the second, and it’s said that they’re still counting the bodies. There may be more to it than meets the eye.

Lives may be lost, and a nation now faces hardships greater than we ever will, but that only means one thing. The war falls to our feet, the victors. All this bloodshed served a purpose. All this bloodshed meant something.

The speakers began to distort, and the next line to be read came from a demonic-sounding person. 

Why don’t you do your duty and repeat that statistic? Bloodshed is the means to an end.

The speakers cut out and I promptly ignored it. There was no meaning in even listening to whatever my brain cooked up. Jessica’s moans returned to full glory, and Ty gurgled whatever liquid was in his mouth. I took a brief look and saw something red trickling down his throat, but once more, I ignored it. 

Opening the refrigerator, I took out a roll of sausage meat. I took out a knife and began cutting it into small patties. Before I could get halfway done, another voice spoke up. It was one that I just couldn’t ignore.

“Hello, Harmony.”

My eyes went wide, and I gripped the handle of the knife. I spun around and pointed the blade at the person that I heard behind me, but I saw no one. Looking around, I wondered if it was another trick my brain thought of. 

“Down here.” 

I looked down at the counter and found a head. The body was nowhere to be seen, and the head smiled at me. My knife hand shook upon seeing her, but I kept my grip strong. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t falter somewhat though.

Dark pink pigtails drooped from each side of the head. The hair spread out on the counter and flayed at the ends. A single fang snuck out from her top lip, and her grin resembled that of a cat. Her eyes were the same as mine. Pink and heart-shaped, like all other succubi. However, hers differed from most others.

All cubbi have heart-shaped eyes. Incubi have blue eyes that glowed like crystals that charmed any woman, while succubi have pink abysses of eyes, meant to draw unsuspecting men into the depths. Despite their similarities, the shape of the eye and how much it resembled a heart differed from cubbi to cubbi. 

Mine, for instance, could be mistaken for a normal human eye until looked at a bit closely. By then, however, it would already be too late for anyone looking into them. The head’s eyes were shaped perfectly like a heart. Not only were they unmistakable as hearts, but there was some flair to how the curves folded in on themselves. Almost like someone had surgically changed her eyes to look like cursive hearts.

“How’ve you been, Harmony.” The head asked.

I took a deep breath, settling my nerves. It was all a dream, I told myself. She’s not real. She wouldn’t dare step foot here. 

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” the head rebutted my thoughts. “You think I’m completely insane, and you’re partially true. So if I’m insane, why wouldn’t I risk it to come see if you’re doing the job I asked you to do.”

The head looked around, inquisitively staring at each corner of the room. Her eyes sunk into her head, and reappeared behind her, sticking out from her neck hair. She looked at the living room and paid special care to the two humans humping in the living room.

Her eyes returned to normal and she gave me a disappointed frown. “This isn’t the room with the red button?”

“Of course, it isn’t. I’m not doing your plan anymore.” I tried to speak confidently, but my voice came out more shaky and unsure than I would have liked. 

The head sulked and a tear leaked from her eye. “But the red button makes things go boom. I want to see the humans go boom. You’re supposed to do that for me.” Her voice sounded more like a child than that of a full-grown cubbi. It didn’t really surprise me, considering her body fit the loli aesthetic that I saw from one of Ty’s porn games. 

“The humans won’t go boom. I’m going to resolve things peacefully.” 

The head’s eyebrows raised and her smile widened. At first, she began to chuckle. After a second of that, she broke out into an insane laughing fit. Tears streamed from her cheeks and hit the counter. They didn’t stop there, as they streaked down the counter, the tears formed a puddle on the floor in the shape of a bomb.

After half an hour of her laughing passed by, she finally opened her eyes. There wasn’t a smirk on my face, and I wasn’t laughing alongside her. She petered out. Her laughing quieted faster than it began.

“You’re not joking?”

“Of course not. Why would I joke around about that?”

The head groaned and she looked at me. Her eyes hardened, and she became much more serious than she had been acting just a while ago. Even though she wasn’t actually real, her eyes gazing into my soul sent my heart into a wild fury. It beat against my chest so fast and rough, I could feel my ribs expand from the pressure.

“What are you playing at?” The head asked. “You know that cubbi and humans cannot live on the same planet as one another. As long as they have the red button, there’s no chance for our survival. What happened to your cubbi survival instincts?”

“My survival instincts are still intact. I just don’t want to genocide an entire species for our survival. Why don’t you understand that?”

The head groaned, but a smirk returned to her face soon after. 

“Okay then. I’m on board with the peace option then. Tell me. What is your plan to ‘peacefully’ get the humans to not kill us all when they feel like it?”

I smiled. She may not be real, but I would take great satisfaction in describing my plan to her in any shape or form when she couldn’t hit me. 

“Simple. I’m going to start small. Right now, I’m befriending ordinary humans. I want them to get close to me, and make them think of me as a friend. From there, they’ll introduce me to other people, and when I expose my true self, they’ll see me for who I am inside, not outside. I’ll continue doing that until there are enough humans on the cubbi side that’ll protest against their leaders.”

I laid out my plan without pause, and my smile widened the more and more I thought about it. The idea of the plan brought a smile to my face. People marching through the streets, each of them pressuring their governments to give us a chance to live. From there, we can figure out how to deal with our biology, and figure out a way to either fight it or work with it. 

The thought brought a grin to my face, but the head looked at me with utter disgust and shock.

“So you want to sing kumbaya with the humans until you annoy them enough to let us live? How long would that even take”

“How do you know what kumbaya is?” I asked.

“This is your dream. I know whatever you know. Now answer the damn question.”

I thought for a second about the estimated time I could expect the plan to come to fruition.

“It’s hard to say. I’m hoping to at least get enough work done in my lifetime so that when my children and their children’s children are born, they can at least live in a world where they won’t need to hide their tails between their legs. However, it may take longer than that if conditions aren’t set up right.”

“I kind of get the timeframe now,” the head interrupted. “You see, there’s one fatal flaw in that plan of yours. Actually several.” She returns to that serious face of hers before explaining the supposed flaws in my incredibly sound logic. “How do you know the humans will let us live long enough for your plan to hit its stride?”

I opened my mouth to retaliate, but the head just kept talking.

“Not only that but how do you even know if this plan of yours will work? If the humans go boom, then there will be no more humans to threaten us. If we do your plan, then we’d have to worry about us being boomed every day of the week while your peaceful negotiations carry on. Even then, how are you going to get people to protest, anyway? They all think of us as monsters.”

“That’s the thing. I’ve already made friends with some humans. All I need to do is repeat what I’ve done with them.”

The head laughed. “Do you actually think they’re your friends? One of them’s in the hospital because of you not rescuing them on time. You broke Ty’s arm after killing someone right in front of him. The redhead thinks you’re a demon. The big-boobed mistress is too depressed to do anything, and the other guy has a daughter he needs to take care of. As far as they’re concerned, you’re nothing to them.

“Face it. Whatever you wanted to do is paltry to reality. Just give up and get into the building with the red button.”

I bit my tongue, not wanting to yell. However, I remembered I was in a dream and even if I yelled at her, she couldn’t do anything to me.

“You listen here you loli cunt,” I squeezed out. “I’m sick and tired of fighting and killing! I don’t want to do it anymore! From now on, no more blood will dirty my hands! Do I make myself clear to you!”

Instead of looking offended, the head stared at me with pity in her eyes. She sighed and closed her eyes.

“You need to remember where this all began, don’t you.” She opened her eyes and met my gaze. “Blink.”

All of a sudden, my eyes grew heavy. I didn’t want to but the order she placed on me overpowered my own will. I closed my eyes, then reopened them. When they opened, I found myself right back in hell.

When I opened my eyes, the familiar sight of Ty’s kitchen disappeared. Instead, I found myself in an all too nostalgic location. Standing on a cliff, high above everywhere else, I found myself back in my homeland, Juxtevia. 

To my left, a sprawling city covered the island. Unlike human cities, buildings rarely went anywhere above two stories. The largest building on the island was the palace at the far end of the island. Decorated in pink and black, it towered everything else, reminding the cubbi who it was that controlled them.

Houses showed their age. Mold and mildew stuck to walls, and brick cracked and split. The walkways caved in from overuse of cubbi constantly walking back and forth from work and home. From my vantage point, I could see a variety of cubbi passing by with dead eyes and worn bodies. 

To my right was the edge of the cliff. Looking down, there was a beach completely overtaken by boulders and rocks the size of a two-story house. Waves constantly crashed against them, slowly breaking down the rocks until they became jagged and sharpened. If someone fell from the edge, they’d be skewered by the point of the rocks.

“Remember this place?” 

In front of me stood the head. Except, she wasn’t a head anymore. Her body returned to her, and she gazed down at the rocks. The salty sea wind pushed back at her pigtails and she had to hold her hair in place just so it didn’t get into her eyes.

The name of this cubbi, Lilly Onnyx. Her form was that of a child. She was actually somewhere around forty, but she stopped growing around the time she turned twelve, around the time her body fully transitioned. Another curse of the cubbi at work. Not only could a cubbi entice a victim by looking into their eyes, but there was a specific part of the cubbi that would be irresistible to people with fetishes that matched.

I once met a cubbi whose hands were so luscious and pristine that even cubbi that didn’t have that sort of fetish would ask to suck her fingers. An incubus even asked if he could take one of her hands home with him, and when she refused, he didn’t take no for an answer. In short, he was taken to a farm the next day, and she died of blood loss. 

For Lily, her body structure was what enticed a sort of sick individual. People living in this world may not like to admit it, but there’s a fetish for everything. Even among the cruel and unjust. Lily once told me a story about how she was nearly gang-raped by a group of cubbi due to her figure. It ended up with her having to purchase some trash bags and a saw, but she managed to get out of the situation just fine. 

She had clothes on, but I could barely call them that. It seemed more like she wore string than anything resembling clothing. Her “bra” covered her nipples, but only just enough that I could still see her areola sticking out the edges. The thong she wore barely covered her slit, and she walked around in that getup everywhere she went. She would get trouble with almost everyone, but she still wouldn’t put on any actual clothing. 

“I remember the first time I brought you up here,” Lily said. “You just turned ten a few months ago, and you got your first period a day ago. You were confused, and I tried to console you.”

“Well you did a damn good job at it,” I said in a mocking voice. “Look at me now. The picture of sanity, right here and waiting to share her wisdom.” 

“The whole point of this wasn’t to make you live a good life. It was to open your eyes to the reality of who we are. We are cubbi. We feed off the fluids of the opposite sex. There is no shame in that. Anyone telling you to fear it needs to be put in their place.” Lily looked out into the sea, lost in the reflection of the sun on the water. “The baby’s getting angry.”

The sound of a baby wailing appeared from just behind me. I froze, and my eyes widened. I turned behind me, something I was trying not to do since I found myself here. 

Two metal doors jutted out of the ground, connecting to a brick shed. A single chain padlock lay on the ground, at the foot of the doors. Those doors were the only way in or out, and on the other side, a baby cried and screamed.

I shook my head, a nauseating pain pounding at my skull. Tears fell from my eyes faster than I could wipe them away. My breathing quickened. My chest grew taught. I wanted to scream but found myself unable to. 

“You need to remember the hatred you felt when you were still just a young girl. There’s no shame in feeling mind-numbing anger at this world. Give in to it.”

Lily approached the door and grabbed each handle with each of her hands. Counting to three, she yanked the doors open, and the toddler's wail increased in volume. In turn, my senses numbed themselves even more, and sweat accumulated on my face. 

“Remember what I told you back then. It’s because of the humans that we have to resort to this. If there were some way for us to more effectively handle our bodies, we could help so many of us. However, all of the advanced medical technology rests in the human world. They hoard it to themselves, leaving us with only scraps.”

She walked away from the door and positioned herself behind me. I thought nothing of it, lost in my own little world until I felt a hand on my back.

She pushed me forward, and my feet moved without my consent. Every one of my senses screamed no, but I couldn’t stop myself. 

“Let this anger fuel you. When you wake up, I want you to burn their world to the ground. Give in to your instincts. They’re what makes a cubbi a cubbi.” 

As soon as my feet touched the front of the doors, my mouth could finally move. I shouted and tried to get out of the way. I was too late. She pushed me, and my feet launched off the ground. I fell into the hole, and she closed the doors. The only things I could hear were my screams and the baby’s cries.

I fell on the ground hard. My skin grinded against dust and cobwebs as I slid across the floor. Looking up to the only entranceway, the doors shut with a slam, and the sound of chains wrapping around the handles echoed from the outside. I was locked in, and the only thing I could see was darkness.

The baby’s cries continued to putter on. It didn’t even stop to breathe and it just kept screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And screaming. And screaming and screaming and screaming andscreamingandscreamingandscreaming. 

Silence. The sound of the baby’s screams finally quieted, and I could finally think again. I kept on telling myself that none of what I was experiencing was real. However, that didn’t serve to calm me down in the slightest. 

Something clawed at my ankle. I jerked my foot away, but something else grabbed onto my shirt. Then something else grabbed my head. Then my waist. Then my hips. 

I screamed, begging for mercy, and called out to anyone for help. No one came. Whatever grabbed onto my head pushed me onto the ground as the hands masked by darkness pulled off my skirt. 

I screamed. And screamed. And screamed.