A.M. Wyckid's Erotic Word-Forge

Your life sucks if you are fat girl, in a dead-end job, with an abusive boyfriend who takes your money, knocks you around landing you in the hospital, and then sticks you with the bill.

Things start looking up when you realize maybe you really aren't that fat after all, your hair is not as stringy, and your face, that everyone said was beautiful, really is. Then you find out your poker skills are uncanny, and win enough to cover most of your debts. You also realize that you aren't as straight as you thought you were, and your BFF, who is definitely gay, becomes something more than a friend.

So life is good, right?

Wrong!

These changes are happening because you are possessed by a demon. He's called Shuun and he's got you by the short hairs, metaphysically speaking. You are being pursued by criminals who think you know too much, your new girl's in hiding — from you as well as them — and every day brings some new dose of strange that's just hard to take.

You decide, that's just about enough of that crap: when things turn tough, the possessed turn evil!

Length: ~80,000 words

Attributes: B&D, D&S, F on F, Mystical, Sci/Fi, S&M.

Available on Amazon.com for 99¢

Shuun rose from his pallet and made his obeisances and ablutions before starting on his work for the period. Moving into the circle, he heard the roar of the furnaces in the distance, the hiss of steam entering the manifolds, and felt, in his very soul, the asuria leaving the manifolds and entering the over-sphere, ready to his command. He cleared his mind for the opening rite.

"Six signs for six directions," he intoned, and made the signs while turning to face each of the six ways.

"Five elements for five modes of thought." He ran through each mode while calling forth each element in turn.

"Seven seals for seven gates." He carefully checked each seal, mending flaws and adjusting alignment.

"Four Powers rule the four realms." This line always annoyed him as being mere filler.

"Eight paths connect the eight cities." This one, too, but he would never dare to leave either one out. The very idea of a botched opening ritual made him shudder.

"Three books regulate the three branches of the law." The books were real. He had even touched one of them once, many epochs ago.

"Nine bells for each of the nine tones." He sounded each in turn.

"Two streams of time allow the two ways of acting." He shifted from one to the other and back.

"Ten principles govern all correct forms." More filler. Or was there, ungrasped, some deeper meaning here?

"One self, many manifestations," he concluded, closing the rite. This last line always seemed the key to everything.

The circle hummed with the power of the asuria flowing in its channels forming an energy web that pulsed in tune with Shuun's will.

It is weak, he thought, but it is all I have to work with.

Satisfied that all was in order, he left the circle. It would continue without his attention for some time.

"Klar," he called, summoning one of his shedu. "Bring ska and lemma for my refreshment, and be quick about it."

Shortly, Klar returned with the refreshments. The ska was refreshing. Klar did make good ska, but his lemma was always a little flat. Shith made the best lemma, and Divot was useless in the galley.

"What is on the agenda for this period?" Shuun asked.

"Master. The status of this refuge remains unchanged. No new messages from home."

"New?" Shuun sneered. "You mean, no messages at all. Do you not?"

"Correct, Master. Forgive this unworthy. No messages at all."

"How long has it been?" he muttered to himself.

"Only two point eight one zero three three seven zero two cycles, Master," Klar replied.

"Quiet, you mindless idiot," Shuun snapped. "I was not asking you."

It was true that two point eight cycles was not really a long time, but the mission specification called for an immediate handshake within the first few micro-cycles of interface. Entry into this realm had been accompanied by severe turbulence, and there had been damage. The rest of his brothers remained in stasis. He alone was awake to start the mission and guide the repairs as best he could, waiting for word and help from home that was late in coming.

"Tell me, how many subjects do we currently have?" Shuun asked.

"Forty-five."

"Out of more than fifty-thousand," Shuun muttered.

"Yes," Klar agreed. "The rest have expired. These beings are weak. We are lucky if they last a quarter cycle. We only have the one that is active."

"Do not remind me," Shuun growled. Eno Hoch was a fascinating subject. He was also the only active subject, so perhaps Shuun had made him more interesting than the human deserved. True, the man was functioning in a highly unusual way since the death of his sons. Eno had tracked down the informer who had been responsible for their demise. He had adroitly managed her disappearance against nearly impossible odds. She was important in her context because of her sexual couplings with Major Daecher, and the Major was applying all his assets to find her. Even so, the basement where Eno held Sarohildi Gerber had not yet been found.

It is only a matter of time, Shuun thought. It will be amusing when they do find Eno and his captive.

Since taking the woman, Eno spent as little time as possible on self-maintenance. What time was left he used in three ways. First, the slaughter of his enemies.

They were called 'Nazis,' Shuun reminded himself.

Eno hunted Nazis in the dark streets, and Shuun had given him the tools to be a very effective and elusive killer. The clothing he wore could change hue and configuration at will and shed the fluids and fragments of his victims like nothing known in this context. His weapons were internal until needed, and the man's strength and regenerative powers were well outside the norm. After each encounter, Shuun changed Eno's face, height, and weight to prevent the man's capture.

At first Eno killed en mass, as if he were trying to put an end to himself as well. Now, it was one at a time, slowly, leaving a trail of body parts strewn for blocks and, at the end of the trail, a barely living, but still conscious lump headed for a slow, painful, inevitable death. Sometimes, when they were found by their comrades, they were taken to the hospital, but more often they were delivered a coup-de-grâce. Studying the terror the killings induced in Eno's enemies was the most valuable aspect of this subject. The people whispered of the Dresden Slasher, but no paper dared to print any stories about him.

When not engaged in bloody slaughter, Eno spent a disturbing amount of time staring into space with a profound silence in his head. Micro-cycles sometimes. The silence was irksome because these beings rarely had silence in their heads unless they were drugged or severely injured. Even in their unconscious regenerative state, there was chatter in their minds. It was their most endearing quality as far as Shuun was concerned. It makes them easy to work with.

It did no good to try to shake the man out of these episodes, and Shuun had given up trying. It was best to just let him emerge when he would.

The rest, and majority of his attention, was directed at Sarohildi Gerber. Eno had turned the windowless cellar where he kept her into a torture chamber that would have been the envy of the Inquisition.

Shuun recalled that time fondly. His authorship of Der Hexenhammer via the hand of Heinrich Kramer had created fanatics. The nudge he and given Johannes Gutenberg allowed the book, and thus the fanaticism, to spread far and wide. Those two events had altered this realm greatly. He had been bored, and that book had created the most interesting time for Shuun since their arrival.

Any one of the devices Eno constructed in his chamber of horrors could have ended Sarohildi Gerber's existence, but Eno never went that far. Why not just kill her? Shuun had asked.

"Because then her suffering would end," Eno murmured aloud to himself.

"Master?" Klar interrupted Shuun's reverie.

"What?"

"Do you wish me to continue?" Klar asked. "Our time grows short. Eno stirs and will awake in nano-cycles."

"Continue."

"As you know, there is something about this realm that prevents the drohgh from replicating at normal rates. We have so few that the repairs go very slowly. New damage is occurring all the time. We are not gaining ground. If we do not get help from home soon, we are going to lose operational capability."

"Do you think you are telling me something I do not know, you mental deficient?"

"I consulted the Codex Systemia in the unlikely event …"

"… that I overlooked something," Shuun finished. It was not the real Codex. It was a simulacrum of the actual one. It was supposed to contain all the same syntactic constructs and semantic responses, but much had been lost three cycles ago in the unfortunate events surrounding their arrival. "And?"

"One of the partial sections contains adjustments to drohgh epigenetics for cosm with difficult parameters such as this one."

"I saw the section," Shuun growled. "What of it?"

"There are only a small clutch of parameters …"

"Four thousand and ninety-six parameters," Shuun inserted.

"… we could experiment …" Klar continued, only to be cut off again.

"You over-empowered fool!" Shuun barked, his fury barely contained. "You can not even construct a decent lemma, and now you propose to tinker with drohgh epigenetics?"

"Master. Pardon the interruption," Divot called from beside the circle. "Eno stirs."

Shuun and Klar joined the other two shedu by the circle. In the view floating within, Eno sat up. He threw the bed covers off, revealing the bound form of Sarohildi. Eno had used her sexually once again before going into his regenerative stasis. Shuun was amazed at the many nuanced ways these beings used their procreative act. In this case to express contempt, to harm, and to degrade.

Slap! Eno struck her fleshy middle part with his open grasping appendage and growled, "Get up, you disease ridden whore."

She groaned and quickly rolled herself onto the floor trying to move fast enough to avoid his anger. He seized her and removed her restraints.

"Make me some breakfast and clean this place up. Do it well, and I'll let you go. Do it poorly and today will be the day I kill you. Either way, we're finished today."

He has never done this before, Shuun thought, amazed.

He dipped into Eno's mind to see what was there.

That's hope on her face, Eno thought with glee. Good! I can crush it later, but for now, let it grow.

There was a hammering at the door to the basement. "Gestapo! Open the door!" a voice shouted.

Eno jumped to his feet. Maybe it really will be finished today, he thought.

Shuun prepared himself to aid the man's defense. A scan showed five men at the door, all armed with pistols except for the one with the machine-gun.

Sarohildi sprang for the door. "Help! Help me, please," she shouted, grappling the locks.

Electrical discharge, Shuun thought. I should be able to do that, but the interface is too weak to support it. Then he noticed the glassy look in Eno's eyes and the total lack of thought. Why now? By the abyss that spawned us, why now?

The energy web in the circle shuddered, then wavered, and collapsed. The distant roar of the furnaces was replace by silence. The hiss of the steam descended a ninth and then another as the pressure dropped. The asuria flow from the manifolds sputtered and then ceased abruptly. Coruscating energy slithered along the edges of the circle, and the stench of plasma filled the space.

"It is going to implode!" Shuun cried, forgetting about Eno Hoch and his plight. "Everyone on me. We are going to try for a one-step shutdown." He judged that they had less than ten nano-cycles before implosion. The record, held by the legendary Gothu, for a one-step shutdown was 8.627 nano-cycles. Shuun had once managed 8.891 — simulated. It was going to be close.

We are not terminated, Shuun thought dimly. I had to try the shut-down, the implosion would have destroyed everything. The furnaces had failed before but never with so little warning. He had ripped open the seals and quenched the flow at the source. Fortunately, none of the likely and disastrous consequences of such an act had come to pass.

"Master. You are injured," Divot explained.

Injured? He assessed his condition. Not good. Not good at all.

"The others?" he asked.

"Klar is terminated," Divot said.

"A pity. Is there any significant damage?" Shuun asked.

"The codices are …"

Shuun's awareness waxed once again briefly. "… beat Gothu himself," he heard Shith say, with obvious pride.

"By only ten point three pico-cycles, but, yes, he did," Divot responded.

The cover on the regeneration unit clicked closed and he was deactivated.

Shuun rose from his pallet and made his obeisances and ablutions before starting on his work for the period.

Moving into the circle, he heard the roar of the furnaces in the distance, the hiss of steam entering the manifolds, and felt, in his very soul, the asuria leaving the manifolds and entering the over-sphere, ready to his command. He cleared his mind for the opening rite.

"Six signs for six directions," he intoned, and made the signs while turning to face each of the six ways.

"Five elements for five modes of thought," and he ran through each mode while calling forth each element in turn.

"Seven seals for seven gates." He carefully checked each seal, mending flaws and adjusting alignment. It was a tricky business with so little power.

"Four Powers rule the four realms." This line always annoyed him as being mere filler.

"Three books regulate the three branches of the law." It also bothered him that there was this odd break in the sequence. What about eight?

"Nine bells for each of the nine tones." He sounded each in turn.

"Two streams of time allow the two ways of acting." He shifted from one to the other and back. Had the shift always been that difficult?

"Ten principles govern all correct forms." More reeking filler!

"One self, many manifestations," he concluded, closing the rite. This last line was the key to everything.

The circle skipped a beat but then hummed with the power of the asuria flowing in its channels, forming an energy web that sluggishly trailed Shuun's will.

It is very weak, he thought. Will it be enough?

Nervously, he left the circle. It seemed to hesitate but then hummed on.

"Shith," he called, summoning one of his pair of shedu. "Bring deska and lemmu for my refreshment. Quickly, I want to get started."

Shortly, Shith returned with the refreshments. The deska was foul and the lemmu uninspired. It seemed there was a time when the refreshments were more satisfying.

"What is on the agenda for this period?" Shuun asked.

"Master. The status of this refuge remains unchanged. Nothing at all from home."

"How long has it been?" he muttered to himself.

"Only three point zero zero four four three nine three three cycles, Master," Shith replied.

"Silence, you ninth-witted fool," Shuun snapped.

"Master," Divot cried. "We have a new subject."

"Are you certain?" he asked with excitement. He missed Eno, had searched the Codex Mystica for information on the man, but there was nothing. There was some information in the local histories, but the turmoil of the time made it sketchy at best. Since he'd come out of regeneration, there had been very little to do and none of it at all interesting.

"I put the parameters through the Codex Principia and checked the results repeatedly," the shedu explained.

"Give me the coordinates," Shuun commanded, entering the circle.

"Zero point zero," Divot began.

This was a three-space realm so the first coordinate was fixed and calibrated to zero point zero by convention.

"Two four four two eight four one point eight," Divot intoned, giving the first significant coordinate, "by two eight two zero seven five point zero by five zero seven seven three five one point four, standard units, refuge relative."

Shuun scrolled the viewer to the desired coordinates. A human figure walked down a dark street. Her coat, for this was a female, pulled tightly around her against the cutting wind that blew debris along the walkway.

Shuun launched the payload into the spacial interface and guided it to the destination.

"Infection … affirmative," Divot announced, checking his readouts.