luthwhumps

Whumper, who was just setting things up, pauses.

“Any particularly reason?”

“I have to,” whumpee says, shaking already, near tears. “I can't just- I have to.”

"Oh, god, oh, Whumpee--"

"Hey. Hey, I'm gonna get this off you. Don't move, I'll be as fast as I can."

"Shh, I'm trying to help, okay?"

"...Hi, sweetie. Can I take this off?"

Caretaker found them attempting to bandage their own wounds. Their hands shook as they tried to anchor the white strip to their bloody chest, not bothering to clean the injury. It should have hurt. The stranger should have been crying, screaming, but their expression remained neutral; not a single tear joined the blood beneath them. 

“Holy…” Caretaker gasped, and the stranger’s head jerked up to search for them. “What happened?”

“Nonono, stay with me, Whumpee, stay with me!”

“Oh, my God…what did they do to you?”

“It’s okay, you’re fine.  I’ve got you now…”

“You have to stop this!  Can’t you see what it’s doing to you?  To us?”

“I’m so sorry, but this is going to hurt.  Ready?  One, two, three!”

“No!  Don’t touch them!  Take me instead!”

“This is all my fault.  I should never have left you…”

“They’ve had enough!  Stop!  Please!”

“This was never supposed to happen.”

“Would you please stay still long enough for those stitches to work?”

“All this time…I never knew.  I’m so sorry.”

“Whumpee, it’s [Name]…don’t you recognize me?”

“You don’t deserve any of this.”

“I’m coming closer.  Is it okay if I touch you?”

“I thought I’d lost you.”

“Leave them the fuck alone!”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Whumpee?  Whumpee!  Wake up!  It’s just a nightmare!”

“I never stopped looking for you.”

“Shut up, sit down, and let me stitch you up.”

“It’s good to have you back.”

“You’re freezing!  Sit right here, I’ll be right back!”

“Why are you protecting them?  Look what they did to you!”

“Everyone’s excited to see you.  I had to lock them out just so you could keep sleeping.”

Uh.. idk what this is or why. Enjoy.

Cw: anxiety, self-destructive habits, lab whump, solitary confinement, implied kidnapping, prolonged captivity, abuse, non human whumpee

Caretaker was too old for “take your child to work day”. They were well into adulthood, yet because they still lived with Parent, they were dragged along to the odd looking facility at where Parent worked.

It gave them the creeps just being there. The walls were almost all concrete, the floors made of a white tile that reflected the fluorescent white lights. Every single door required a key card and pin entry to open.

“Parent, I’m too old for this,” Caretaker sighed, interrupting their excited rambling about their job.

“You’re my child, and as long as you live under my roof, I’m in charge of you,” Parent said matter-of-factly, straightening their white lab coat. “I promise it gets more interesting. But as I was saying, we work with complex live specimen, interacting with and examining them. We analyze their brainwaves, and how they differ from ours, then we work to replicate the DNA sequences, so we can clone the organism, it’s all quite amazing. You’ll see, our most complex subject can even speak!”

“You mean, like a parrot?” Caretaker decided to indulge their excitement. After all, they never really saw Parent smile anymore, especially after the divorce…

“Not exactly,” Parent grinned like a child offered candy, their eyes lighting up. “You’ll see soon.”

Not knowing what that meant, but willing to play along, Caretaker followed Parent through a door into some sort of decontamination room.

“We haven’t been able to replicate this one yet, so until we are able to, we must take extreme measures to ensure nothing happens to it,” Parent explained, as they began to scrub their hands in a hospital-grade sink. “It’s lived longer than any other, so you can understand why it’s so precious to us,”

Caretaker just nodded along, and washed their hands as well.

“Now, this one is usually well-behaved, but if a problem were to occur, this is what this little remote is for,” Parent said, as they picked up a little remote from a shelf. “With the press of this button here, it will automatically deliver enough electricity to incapacitate the subject, a stun which will provide us enough time to leave the room and call for security back up.”

Parent then turned to face Caretaker. “Are you ready to see something amazing?”

“Uh, sure?” Caretaker couldn’t help but phrase it like a question.

Parent turned to the door, and tapped in a key code. With a click, and a woosh of air, it opened.

Caretaker’s heart dropped.

What was inside the plain, padded room looked undeniably human, and utterly terrified.

***

“Caretaker, this is number five, or as I like to call it, Whumpee,” Parent smiled widely, and gestured across the room. Curled into the corner sat… something. It looked human, as far as it came to features, but… with wings? Large wings, like those of a crow, with ruffled black feathers. There were gaps, where it seemed handfuls of feathers had been torn out.

The poor thing looked up at Parent with obvious fear in it’s eyes.

“Whumpee, say hello. This is my child, Caretaker. The one I’ve told you about,” Parent said slowly, enunciating each syllable like they were talking to a child.

“Hel-hello,” The creature chirped, half hiding behind it’s trembling wings. “Care-Caretaker.”

“Isn’t it just amazing?” Parent grinned.

“Yeah… amazing…” Caretaker echoed, glancing around the room as Parent went off on another ramble about the creature. The room itself was small, the only furniture being a mattress shoved against one wall, the single blanket tossed askew, and a toilet sink thing in the corner, like the type you see in prisons. In each corner, there was a camera, allowing not even an ounce of privacy. “Parent,” They cut in, looking back at the creature. “What exactly are they?”

“I like to call it an Avionoid, as I was one of the main contributors to the initial study and analysis of it. The scientific name, however, is Pecerus afror.” Parent straightened their lab coat. “Whumpee, why don’t you come here and say hello?”

Caretaker’s attention was turned back to the creature, who slowly pushed to their feet, and even more hesitantly walked over to where Parent stood. Parent roughly clapped a hand over the creature’s shoulder, and they winced much more than they should have, Caretaker noted with a frown.

They weren’t that tall, maybe five foot one or two, with buzzed short hair. So close, Caretaker could see the faint markings in their skin, a light gray pattern against a natural ashen hue. It’s eyes were dark, quite so they couldn’t tell if they were brown or black, or another color entirely.

“Hello.” The creature repeated, it’s voice slightly raspy, sounding like it hadn’t spoken in a while.

“Hey,” Caretaker breathed, watching how the creature shook under Parent’s hand. “Are you- are you okay?”

“Why of course it’s okay,” Parent laughed. “This is a building full of doctors, it couldn’t be better!”

“I mean, they look scared,” Caretaker hated speaking as if the thing wasn’t right there in between them.

“Oh, that’s just nerves. It hadn’t met anyone new in a while.” Parent roughly patted the creature’s shoulder, and it but it’s lip, barely holding back a whimper. It was obvious something was very, very wrong.

“Why are they trapped in here? You guys could at least give it something to do,” Caretaker shifted their weight back and forth between each foot.

“Believe me, it has plenty to do all day. These avionoids are easily overstimulated by things such as bright colors and loud noises. We wouldn’t want to risk that,” Parent shook their head. The creature looked at Caretaker with wide, pleading eyes, their bottom lip trembling, looking as if they were about to burst into tears.

“What happened to their wings?” Caretaker asked, not looking away from Whumpee.

“The poor thing is sick out of their mind. It rips out its own feathers. We don’t know why yet, but it looks like some sort of psychotic disorder unique to its own species,” Parent shrugged. “One more reason we have to be careful when attempting to replicate it, we don’t want any of the bad genes ruining our model.” The way they talked made it wound like they meant some car model, not an actual living creature. A creature who was injured and scared.

“Oops- Come on Caretaker, we have to get going now,” Parent released the creature, and motioned them towards the door, their phone buzzing in their pocket.

“Wait, Parent,” Caretaker thought quickly. “Could I stay just a bit longer? It’s so interesting, how it can speak and all of that, I want to study it some more.” They lied.

“We have everything you could ever want to know on hard drive, I’ll show you in my office-“

“I know, but that isn’t the same as actually being with it. You could head back to your office, and I could just stay with it for a bit?”

“I don’t know…” Parent looked back and forth between their phone, and their child. “I suppose so.”

“Thank you,” Caretaker took the remote as Parent handed it to them.

“Press this button if anything happens, you know what it does. The code to both doors is written on the back of the remote for when you want to leave. Don’t stay too long, it’s feeding time is soon. Come back to my office when you’re done,” Parent pulled them in for a quick hug. “I love you kiddo.”

“I love you too, Parent,” Caretaker echoed as Parent tapped in the code, and left the room. Only once the door slid shut, did Caretaker turn back to face the creature, who had returned to its corner.

“Please,” It whimpered. “I- I was good! Good, good! I was really good, pl-please,”

“What?” Caretaker froze.

“Please don’t, I was good,” The creature sniffled, it’s voice trembling.

“Don’t do what?” Caretaker asked, glancing at the remote in their hand.

“Please don’t shock me, please. Please,” The creature tucked it’s head under its wings.

“I- I won’t, I won’t shock you,” Caretaker slid the remote into their pocket, crouching down to the creature’s level. “I promise. Your name’s Whumpee, right?”

The creature peeked out, and shook its head.

“It’s not?”

“Nnn- I mean, yes, yes, yes it is. My name is Whumpee. Whumpee, Whumpee, Whumpee.” It offered a small, obviously forced smile. It’s teeth were oddly shaped, as if they had been sharp, but then filed down.

“What’s your real name?” Caretaker questioned, sitting down. Red flags were going off throughout their mind, something was seriously wrong here.

“I- I don’t know how to say it in your language. I- I’m sorry, please don’t do it.”

“I’m not going to shock you,” Caretaker repeated. “I promise. Can you try to say it?”

“Nn-no, I- I’m not- not, not, not allowed, not allowed.”

“Uh, okay… it okay,” Caretaker mumbled, resisting the urge to reach a hand out to the creature.

Whumpee whimpered, and curled their wings around themself, burying their face in their knees.

“What are they doing to you?” Caretaker whispered.

“Bad things.” Whumpee muttered, as their hands went to their wing, twisting and pulling at a feather until it came loose, letting it drift to the floor. “Bad, bad, bad things.”

They were anxious, that’s why they were pulling out their feathers. They were scared.

The whumper singles out the whumpee for torture. They don't lay a finger on the caretaker, but they brutally beat the whumpee every day.

They force the caretaker to watch.

As the wounds pile on, never having the chance to heal properly because the whumper never stops, the caretaker starts begging the whumper to hurt them instead.

Helpless, desperate, they promise anything. Just let the whumpee have a break. Just please don't hurt them today.

The whumper smiles. They say that yes, of course, since the caretaker's been asking so nicely, they'd be glad to do as asked and switch them out for a while.

But the whumpee has to want it, too. The whumpee has to say that they want the caretaker to be hurt in their place.

The caretaker's eyes land on the whumpee, shivering on the floor and barely able to move. "Please. Tell them you want me to be hurt."

There's silence. In that silence, the caretaker's heart aches, because they know what the whumpee's going to say.

"N...no. Don't hurt them."

"Please! You can't take much more of this. I can't stand watching you suffer!"

"...no."

It's so dark they have to turn their screen brightness up. Even then, it takes them a minute to process what they're seeing.

It's Whumpee. Tied up, trembling, their head hanging low. They flinch as Whumper approaches.

Oh god. Whumper raises a knife. Caretaker is transfixed in horror for just a moment. When the knife cuts into Whumpee's skin and their body jerks and their mouth opens in a scream (silent, but maybe only because their computer's volume is off), Caretaker closes the video as quickly as possible.

Caretaker's limbs feel numb and heavy. How do they even process that?

Not...not all the videos are like that, right? They can't be. That's too many videos. Some of them must be of trivial moments. Not all of torture. Whumpee couldn't have survived that much torture.

Caretaker clicks on another one. There's a minute or so of waiting—horrible waiting, to watch Whumpee curled up small in a corner with each rib showing—but nothing more than that.

Then Whumper walks in and approaches Whumpee and kicks them once, hard, then again, then—

Caretaker closes the video. They feel like they could cry. Or shake, or vomit, or something. They open another video. They can't all be like this.

When Whumper enters with a whip, Caretaker closes the video immediately.

Too quietly? It's hard to tell. Team doesn't see any signs of injury, though. But Whumper wouldn't have taken Leader for no reason. They don't trust Whumper, and they don't trust Leader at this moment, either.

(It's true, Leader thinks. They're not lying—they're just barely not lying. There was no physical pain. Whumper was firm but almost gentle. What...what Whumper did... Leader can convince themself to say it wasn't hurt.)

"We were just talking," Leader says.

Just talking? But Whumper doesn't listen to reason. The team already knows that. And even if Whumper was some semblance of reasonable, Leader would never agree to their demands. What would be the point of talking?

(Just talking. Leader tries to shut out of their brain the memory of the filthy words Whumper said. It doesn't matter. Every word either wasn't true or doesn't matter or both. They don't need to remember...the degrading praise, the insults, the rationalizations... No.)

"I'm okay," Leader says when the team keeps pressing.

The team doesn't know whether to believe them or not, but is there anything else they can do? Maybe Leader is okay. But if not, they can't force them to tell them.

(That sentence was fully a lie. Leader isn't okay. They're so, so not okay. At the moment, they're not quite sure they can ever be okay again. Not after what just happened. Not if—oh god, it could happen again at any time, couldn't it? Leader feels sick.)

.

This can’t be happening.

The merman’s mind reeled as agony ripped through his nailed wrists. Iron nails punched clean through the delicate webbing of both hands, pinning him to the rough wooden post like a trophy. Every tiny twitch ground the metal against bone and cartilage.

His head was yanked cruelly backward, scalp burning where the heavy dumbbell bit into his long hair. It dragged him down without mercy, forcing his throat taut and his spine into a vicious arch. He couldn’t even lower his head. Couldn’t hide. Could only stare helplessly up at the face of his abuser while his body screamed.

Mother Sea, make it stop...

Glowing blood poured steadily from the puncture wounds. He felt it running hot down his arms, dripping off his elbows, streaking down the pillar in shining rivulets. More of it bubbled up his throat and leaked from the corner of his mouth, warm and metallic. His own sacred blood glowing mockingly in the dark water.

They’ll see it from afar. Everyone will see how I was broken.

His gills fluttered frantically along his cheek, opening and closing in desperate, useless gasps. Air burned them. His powerful tail hung limp in the sea, only managing weak, pathetic twitches now and then. No strength left. No fight.

A heavy boot slammed down onto his impaled hands, grinding the nails deeper. White-hot pain exploded behind his eyes.

Stop— please—

“So it’s true,” the hunter’s voice sneered from above. “Your kind really bleed liquid light.”

No. Don’t look. Don’t—

The merman’s thoughts fractured as another wave of agony tore through him. Fresh glowing blood surged around the boot sole. He tried to bite back the broken whimper that escaped his lips, but it came out anyway — small, humiliated, pathetic.

“Not so cocky now, are you?” The boot twisted slowly, crushing the mangled webbing. “All that royal bullshit about being untouchable… about dragging men screaming into the deep. Big scary prince of the abyss.” He let out a harsh laugh. “Look at you now. Absolutely fucking pathetic."

The merman’s body shuddered violently. The glow dripped from his chin, before bleeding into the water below.

He'd taken a sailor once. Dragged him down slow, so slow the man had time to scream in bubbles that rose like little pearls toward a sun he'd never see. The merman had laughed around his gills, laughed, while the light in the human's eyes went out long before his heart stopped.

Now his own light was leaving. Drop by glowing drop. And the hunter was watching.

"Please," he whispered.

The word tasted like ash. Like every soft, loud thing he'd ever broken for sport. He thought of his mother's court—how she'd warned him the surface would make corpses of their kind. That air was just another word for ending. He'd sneered. He'd been so fucking bored.

"Please," he said again, because the abyss wasn't answering, because the deep had never felt so far, because his father's voice wasn't rising from the black to strike this mortal down for daring—

"That's the whole point, Your Highness." The hunter leaned in close, close enough that the merman could see himself in the man's eyes—pale, shattered, dimming. "You can't do shit."

Another twist of the boot. Another scream, smaller this time, worn down to nothing.

His head lolled back, hanging off the pier's edge, and through the blur he saw not stars but depths—phosphorescent gardens where he'd played as a spawnling, pressing his small body into anemones that pulsed light back at him. Safe. Known. The memory hurt worse than the impalement, worse than the air burning his gills, because he'd been happy there. Truly happy. In a way his cruelty had never come close to touching.

His tail gave one last twitch in the water, barely disturbing the surface. The glow beneath him faded to embers, then to nothing, and the last thing he felt was the cold settling in—not trench-cold, not clean, but human cold, surface cold, the endless dry dark that came after light.

Somewhere below, something vast turned in its sleep.

It did not wake.

Feel free to what now? To ignore?? Are you kidding me? Aggressively posts

Whumpee’s eyes were still a little far away, but the smell seemed to bring them back. They look down, stomach growling, and take a stuttering breath. “Oh.” They look up at Caretaker. “Thank you.”

Caretaker smiles gently. “Would you like to hold it?”

Whumpee takes a moment, looking down at their hands and unclenching their fists, where their nails had dug into their palms. They were shaking, only a little, and had pulled their knees into their chest.

All nerves and disorientation, they nod, and take the bowl into their palms, crossing their legs slowly and leaning back against the kitchen cupboards.

“Thank you.” They say again, quieter.

“You’re welcome.” Caretaker says gently. They give their friend a long look. “You seem tired.”

Whumpee nods, staring down at the bowl. “I am…I am tired.”

Caretaker lets the silence fall gently between them.

“You haven’t been around the commons in a while.” They say, not accusing, just quiet. “I figured you might need some checking in on.” They move their hand down to the key card that had allowed them into Whumpee’s living quarters.

Whumpee’s mouth goes into a thin line, then they breathe again, and let out a kind of laugh. “Ah, well… I just.. felt too much like…”

Caretaker waits patiently for them to speak. It takes a few minutes.

“Too much like… myself.” Whumpee completes.

“Like yourself?” Caretaker gently probes.

“Yeah,” Whumpee whispers. “Like myself from… before. Who I… was. Who I used to be.”

“Your old self.” Caretaker nods, gently correcting it in their head, understanding. “How do you feel now?”

“Like me.” Whumpee says. “More like me, more like who I am. With you. With everyone here, now.”

“That’s good.” Caretaker gets on their knees in front of Whumpee. “I hope you get to feel that way. All the time.”

“Yeah.” Whumpee says quietly. “Me too.”

By this time the soup steaming had died down. Caretaker nods at the bowl. “Would you like to have some?”

Whumpee refocuses on it, as if just now remembering. “Ah, yeah… I was just… waiting.”

“Waiting?” Caretaker quirks a smile at them. “Waiting for what?”

“For uh… permission.” Whumper admits. “I… I used to have to ask.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well…” Caretaker says slowly, “you don’t need to anymore.”

“Yeah.” Whumper pauses, then stands up, and holds a hand out for Caretaker. Caretaker takes it and stands. “I don’t need to anymore.”

The two move to the dining table. Meant for just one person.

Whumpee pauses, looking at caretaker, who shrugs. Whumpee then looks towards the door of their quarters. They hadn’t even given it thought in at least a week. But now…

“Would you like to eat in the commons?” They ask caretaker.

Caretaker just smiles. “Would you be coming with me?”

Whumpee nodded.

https://uquiz.com/O4A9nZ

So this post was about Whumpee rejecting comfort from Caretaker bc they're so afraid Caretaker will punish them for accepting it.

What if it wasn't Caretaker they were afraid of? What if it was Whumper?

What if Caretaker thought Whumpee was free, but Whumpee knew the truth? What if there was a tiny camera embedded in Whumpee's skin? What if there was a tiny chip in their flesh that could cause brutal electric shocks or even directly stimulate pain whenever Whumper pushed a button? What if Whumper had set Whumpee "free," but both of them know the whump is still going on? Because if Whumpee allows themself any form of comfort, they will be punished for it. If Whumpee doesn't cause themself suffering, Whumper will cause even worse suffering.

I don't have too much to add to this BUT I do have one thing

Caretaker walking in and seeing Whumpee in the process of...looking for the chip. Of carving it out of wherever it was embedded.

"What are you doing?!" Caretaker exclaims.