for ending you before you began (i murdered your soul and you are empty now)
Originally posted: 22nd April 2024
Fandom(s): Minecraft, Life SMP Series
Characters: LDShadowLady, ZombieCleo
Relationships: LDShadowLady&ZombieCleo, LDShadowLady/ZombieCleo
Additional notes: Horror, body horror, gore, blood and gore, injury, psychological horror, dereality, at least i think it might be?, kidnapping, mentioned stalking, fairy LDShadowLady, dark fairy tale elements, magic, eating something alive, queen LDShadowLady, pov ZombieCleo, queen ZombieCleo, ZombieCleo-centric, based on Double Life, possessive behavior
Summary: The Fairy Queen stares at the red-headed queen as she rides through the outskirts of the mortal parts of her forest. Blood splatters the woman as her soldiers cut down her enemies, as she plunges a sword into a traitor. The blood looks beautiful against her pale skin. The Queen realises that this is the woman she wants to join her in revelry. Wants to join her in her realm.
She is The Queen. She always gets what she wants. Finished, 1/1 chapters, word count: 2,611Original author's end notes: this was written for @skullhalo for the mcyt horror gift exchange! i hope you liked this!! this is actually like the 15th draft of this cause i couldn't figure out what i wanted from this but with uhhh like 5 hours left, here you go! i hope its good cause i havent really written too much horror before,,,
but yeah, this was a blast to write! the titles from where i end by sophie white, which is one of my favourite books ever. (current leaf here: i misinterpreted some elements of this book so hard that i didnt realise the actual author was ableist instead of just the character, whoopsie, ignore this!!)Meandering through the forest that spreads beneath her castle is a pastime Cleo doesn’t often engage in. The cloying tension present in between battle, when everyone licks their wounds and sharpens their blades. Cleo herself tries not to go anywhere without their guards at times like this. Which is why, when in between blinks, they end up going from their well guarded castle to blinking up blearily at the shining full moon, they fear the worst. Kidnapping, perhaps, a hostage situation. Some awful atrocity committed at the hand of her enemy. But there is no one else around. Simply Cleo in their loose and linen underdress and a forest, dark and overgrown. One which is home to a whole host of rumours, about fairies, queens, men who turn their backs on the world and women who grow wild. They turn, slowly, and see nothing but tall dark oak trees, the moonlight shining through their leaves and casting patterns on the knee length grass. Wildflowers and mushrooms sprout in the place between trees in wild spirals. Despite the wildness of it all, there is no sound. No crickets, rabbits, or deer. No owls or wolves hunting. Silence, apart from the whistle of wind through branches. Silence, apart from the rustle of grass underfoot as she starts walking. There’s no trail anywhere from where she should have walked to get here so she doesn’t know where she’s going. She doesn’t know why she’s so certain she’s going the right way. She doesn’t think she’s going home. No matter how far she walks, there is still silence. Cleo has gone hunting often enough to know what a forest should sound like. It’s not like this. Too still. Like a painting of a forest instead of the real thing. Carefully manipulated into position. Fake. They don’t know why they stop walking at first. Everything still looks the same. They’re almost certain that when they stopped walking it was in a completely non-descript section of forest. She swears that she looked away for only a second, only a glance at the ground, but when they glance back up, there is something where there was nothing. A clearing. Tall, gnarled, trees bent to leave space for an entrance before clustering together close enough to be indistinguishable from each other. Flower bushes tower over Cleo as they approach, gorgeous shades of pinks, reds, purples. There’s not much else she can make out in the darkness, in the fog that creeps into the clearing faster than they’ve ever seen. She needs to go further. They step forward over the line of mushrooms that guard the perimeter, unwillingly, as if pulled along by a string. She feels herself get dragged along, forward, closer to, to, to- To what? Soon, she stands in the centre of the clearing. A dark pond swirls with strangely silent fish, a cramped wooden house stands beside it, with a field thick with wheat that grows high above their head. They stand there. Unmoving. Silent, just like the animals that seem to have disappeared from this forest. It feels like they are waiting for something. Something important. As she stares at the twisting, churning, branches of the trees, there’s a sense of anticipation in the air. It’s so heavy she can almost taste it on her tongue. Usually, they would be pacing at this point but there’s something holding them down, pinning them in place. They’re not even sure if they’re breathing because it feels like that’s too much movement for a moment like this. Their muscles are locked up and sure, this should be terrifying, she can’t fucking move, but panicking would cause them to move. They can’t move. So instead, this is fine. This is fine. “Oh my gosh, hello! Aren’t you just adorable?” There’s a woman in front of them now. She wasn’t there before and they haven’t blinked. They don’t know where she came from. She wasn’t there and now she is and the anticipation is gone. Oh, she can move again. Wait, the woman was speaking. What did the woman say? “Don’t look so confused. I’m not a monster. Or maybe I am. Who knows?” She laughs. Cleo doesn’t think it’s a pretty laugh. No, wait, Cleo does. Or does she? They can’t decide, it’s such a confusing laugh. It pitches low and then high. Shifts like sand through their fingers, they’re unable to focus on it but they can’t stop listening. The woman herself is also like that. Her long pink hair flows in the direction opposite of the window and her skin seems to glow like silver in the moonlight. Her fingers look too long where their hands are grasped together and her clothes look beautiful, flowing, expensive, but simultaneously like no other material she’s ever seen. The woman, like the eerily silent forest, doesn’t look natural. She looks like she doesn't need air to breathe. Not like Cleo. Nothing about her is like Cleo. She doesn’t have a smidge of dirt on her, not even where the hem of her light pink dress meets the earth. Cleo glances down at her own feet, covered in mud from her walk and the hem of her underdress splattered with dirt. This woman shouldn’t exist, not the way she is. She is wrong. She’s also been smiling emptily at them as they gathered their thoughts. She hasn’t moved since she appeared. Not even to blink. “I’m so, I’m so sorry if I, uh, stumbled upon your land. It was not intended. I will be- I’ll just be on my way.” Cleo says nervously and attempts to back away from the unsettling lady. They immediately trip on a tree root that she hadn’t noticed was there. Maybe it wasn’t there. She wouldn’t know. “Blummin’ heck, am I that bad a hostess that you feel so unwelcome you need to apologise?! I’m the one who brought you here to see you, there’s no need to apologise.” She laughs again but her mouth is closed. Cleo wants to go home but they can’t move. They can feel roots below them, digging into them, holding them down. The woman comes closer. She’s still smiling and she leans over Cleo, they can see the pointed edges of her teeth, a predator like canine. She leans back, seemingly satisfied with whatever she saw and the roots drag Cleo to her feet and retreat back beneath the earth. The woman courtesies politely and finally deems to introduce herself. “I am the Queen of this forest. I don’t think you need any of my other names.” She grabbed Cleo’s arm and started dragging her along to a table that sits perched next to the table. It looks like a normal table, dark wood and pretty carvings. Cleo digs her heels into the dirt anyway. “Look, I’m sure this is all lovely but I have to go back home.” The Queen stops dead in her tracks and turns back, forcing them to face that frozen smile once more. “Oh! It is nothing against you, nothing against you at all. It’s just, to be fair, I have things to be doing is all I’m saying.” They smile hesitantly, no teeth, they know how people can be intimidated by that. They attempt to slip their arm out of the Queen’s slacken grip. Then, their words seem to hit her and the grip harshly tightens, nails digging in further than they thought they could. Nails seem to elongate into claws, piercing her skin. They gasp, nearly dropping to her knees as that empty smile and those dead little sparkling eyes keep on staring them dead in the face. She glances down at her arm and nearly vomits. The claws, and they are definitely claws, have dug in under the veins in their wrists, the veins pulled taut. The flesh around it has been turned to mush, the consistency of ground beef. The blood and the meat spill out around the claws. It hurts. Hurts like a butcher knife, a fire, salt water in a cut. They struggle weakly, pulling their arm back but the claws don’t move simply dragging further down into their hand. Veins pulled further, her flesh dripping down and landing neatly on her own foot. The veins burst and a flood of blood sprays. They can feel it hit their face. Chest. Feet. Their tears hit their arm and it burns. It burns, burns so bad. Fleshy pulp squeezed through tightly gripping fingers. Her vision blurs, from tears, from pain. They think she can feel the claws scratch at bone but she can’t be sure. It hurts too much, so much, so fucking much. Their arm is dragged upwards and her eyes involuntarily follow up to the Queen’s face, even as her legs buckle. She’s still smiling. Cleo passes out. - When she wakes up, the first thing they notice is the sharp pain in their arm. The second thing is that they’re being held down. Not by arms but ropes, maybe. Digging in deeply into their arms, legs. Digging into the bare wound on their arm. She blinks her eyes open and immediately snaps them closed when faced with just a faint glance of their arm. Thick mushy meat still dripping blood down onto the emerald grass, staining it a deep crimson. The root that’s holding her down bares down onto pink coloured bone. Loose veins float on the breeze like strings. Despite the closed eyes, the image is still inscribed on her eyelids. They gag, once, then twice. Then, they turn their head up and open her eyes, determined not to look. She can still hear the blood quietly dripping onto the ground amidst the silence of the forest. Her eyes immediately meet the Queen’s. The truth hits. They are trapped at a table. In a forest. With this atrocity against the sheer concept of humanity. They throw their weight around, a desperate attempt at escape, at freedom. The root chafes against the bone, the meat, she can feel it. She knows it won’t work but she won’t go down without a fight. Won’t go down without scrambling nails and blood in her mouth and a thumping heart. The Queen giggles, and giggles, and then laughs. Loudly. Gratingly. Laughs at her struggle. Cleo screams, and then she begs, and that devil just keeps laughing. Like this is a joke. When the screaming doesn’t draw any passerbys, when the begging draws nothing but laughter, harsh on the ears yet weirdly melodic like the bird song that’s missing in this forsaken forest, they slump into the chair. “W-what do you want?” She laughs and laughs and laughs. “What do you fucking want!?” The Queen stops laughing jarringly. The root tightens and Cleo chokes out a shuddering gasp. She’s still fucking smiling, sharp teeth on full display. They can barely breathe past the pain, scratchy gasps and whimpers filling the silence of the clearing. “Ah, I just wanted to meet you. And keep you. But mostly meet you!” She leans her elbows on the table, chin neatly cradled in her palms. “I’ve seen you running around so much. Hunting silly little animals and people. From afar, you’ve always looked so fabulous with that spray of blood on you.” Her eyes, unblinking, glittering, dead, rake up and down her body. Her undergown is soaked with blood, flesh and crimson painted across her arms. The red of hair matted with her own blood. “Oh, you look even better up close!” The smile is too tight, spreading further than it should. “So that means I was right. I need to keep you! I was right.” Trying to force themselves to talk just makes them more woozy. She needs to protest, make her let them go. All her energy is wasted though. She’s already scrambled to break free before and all it earned her was the horrific mush of pure red that she can only stare at from the corner of her eye. Maybe, maybe, if she just plays along, it’ll be fine. Yeah, it’ll be fine. She nods, a hesitant little thing. The Queen claps her hands together and the sound seems to shake the trees. They glance up as it happens and the moon is still out. How long has it been? Her head hurts. “That’s fabulous. Now, I’d be a bad hostess if I left you hungry so please, eat up!” There weren’t plates before but there are now. The exhaustion makes it difficult to care. They’re not sure if they even should care. It doesn’t seem too important, not when faced with the sudden overwhelming hunger they feel. A ravenous thing that claws at the stomach like a devil trying to escape. The thing on the plate is red. All they can think of is their arm, clawed to the bone. Somehow, the hunger doesn’t abide at the thought. They glance at the Queen, only to see she has no plate. Only eyes fixed determinedly on them. Turning their eyes back on the plate, their mouth starts watering. The thing is fleshy. Wet. Slimy. Pulsing. Oozing. She shouldn’t want to eat it, this- this beating mass of meat. There is nothing she should want less. And, yet, they’re still hungry. Still starving, exhausted, and they can’t think straight. This is fine. Something is wrong with the dish, they know this, but they can’t seem to care, to focus on anything but the food in front of them. It’s food. They feel like they haven’t eaten in days. How long has it been? Their hands are still tied down. The Queen is still staring. Cleo leans down shakily and takes a bite out of the flesh, tearing at it with her teeth. Blood pools on the plate under it, near overflowing thanks to its steady drip. It drips down her lips too as she chews. They swallow and- Oh. Oh, that is delicious. They lean down again, and again. Thick chunks of meat get stuck between their teeth, even more blood getting caught in their hair, on their clothes. The bloody, pulsing meat is the purest delight they’ve ever experienced. Sticky, and chewy, and so very, very alive. That’s what the pulse is. It’s alive. The pain fades as she tears through it with her teeth, meat pulling away far easier than it should. Oh, that tender, sweet meat. Oh, the sweet taste of iron rich blood. When she finally stops, the plate is empty save a pool of blood and their stomach has never felt fuller, not even at the richest of victory feasts. Looking down at their arm, it no longer looks so terrible. All claw marks and mush but looking at it now, they can see why such an act would be tempting. Why rending flesh from bone would seem so appealing to The Queen. Speaking of, she looks back at her, breaths gasping shakily but in a far different way than before. A far more satisfied way. The Queen stares back and oh. How did she not notice the beauty of the woman before her sooner. Full red lips, eyes like glittering diamonds. Luscious hair, gorgeous figure. The Queen is looking at her in such a gentle way, eyes blazing with affection. The roots retreat but Cleo doesn’t move. The blood keeps dripping a sweet melody. She reaches a hand across the table and towards their face. Cleo leans into it. They can’t think of anywhere they’d rather be than here, with a woman such as this. The forest comes alive with the sound of animals, music, life. “Welcome to my realm, darling.” She giggles, “You’re mine now. Forever.”