Promptober 2025 Day 20: Claw Marks

Using thepromptfoundry’s Ominous October list.

Slip is a Chicago Spirit OC who belongs to diristine and clefrot. David is mine, some kind of god/horror/thing who belongs to Ira’s crew.

CWs for drowning, choking, mind/body/something-control, mindfuck, suicidal ideation, hubris

***

Slip realizes he might be in over his head about the time the claws start sinking through the back of his neck into his hindbrain.

David’s grip is crushing—David? his frantic brain flits to, who names a nightmare god ‘David?’—and Slip feels his whole body losing its ability to coordinate itself under the pressure. His knees buckle, dropping him slowly to the floor.

Oh. He might die here, actually.

“After all, Filip,” David’s voice murmurs, “isn’t that the real reason your lungs fill with water when you work magic?” Slip hears that like it’s coming from his own chest, echoing through his bones. “Wasn’t there a moment when the water poured into you, when you felt it pouring into your men, and you were so very much one with them? Hovering with them in the liminal moment between life and death?”

Slip’s breath hitches in his chest. No.

But. But yes. The memory comes back to him, the swirling blue-white at the surface of the water as he sank into the depths. The vibration of the water as they tried to shout for help, with no air to shout into. The sensation of it sweeping down into his lungs, the sensation of the water not just surrounding him but becoming him. He’d become it, as his consciousness had diffused into that world, and he’d flooded into them, and they’d gone down together—

His magic stirs. He stirs it, or the claws puncturing his mind do, and he can’t tell the difference. The water begins to pour into his lungs, and it tastes like life and death, and when he tries to cough it out, it shoves upward, into his sinuses, and then back down, leaving him choking and gasping for air like he had that night, like they all had even as he’d coveted every space inside them.

“Didn’t it feel so terrifying, so good? You were like a god in that moment. ” Slip’s body reverberates like he’d spoken the words himself around this growing column of water that’s fucking his trachea. He moans and it dribbles from his nose. “The moment you seek again now out of fear and hubris, each time your magic begins to pour through you.”

He claws at his own throat. He can’t breathe. He doesn’t want to, if it means he has to let the magic go. It’s running wild now, and he can’t tell if he’s calling it or if David is, somehow, but he can feel the tides seething through him, he can feel the Moon, is it even possible to die when he’s not a human body at all, he’s a force, a substance, thrumming invisible in the air and plunging into these lungs—

His lungs convulse, grabbing desperately for any tiny gulps of air he can, and informs him very clearly that yes, he absolutely can.

#bodyHorror #chicagoSpirit #choking #drowning #eldritchHorror #horror #hubris #mindfuck #monsterfuck #myFanfiction #myFiction #nsfw #objectPenetration #suicidalIdeation