Just Keep Breathing

@abxaquilone

“Tuunbaq,” she repeated softly. The word–his real name– tasted foreign on her tongue. And the very air seemed different around her when she uttered it. That feeling of dread in her stomach at the power emanating from his very presence was enough to tell her that he was her absolute superior, that she stood no chance against him. But when he briefly explained his life story, she almost instinctually drew back. Yes, he was gorgeous, but dangerous powerful men and monsters often were. More importantly, why did it suddenly feel like she was drowning when he almost touched her as took the napkin?

In a foolish and completely ineffective effort to wrestle some control back and maybe throw him off-kilter, she swiftly leaned in and kissed his cheek. She then grabbed her jacket and her purse, hopping off the bar stool.

“Thank you,” she said, meeting stunning eyes one last time, eyes that were going to draw in too deep if she wasn’t careful, before attempting to put as much space between them as possible. 

It did get a little easier to breathe as she slowly made her way out of the bar. And yet as soon as she was outside, panic set in and stole her breath again. What had she gotten herself into this time?

                                                    *    *    *

Wait by the phone she did. Though Ruby was hardly idle in the days she waited for him to contact her. She scoured the internet, went to the library, and read up on every bit of Inuit folklore she could find about the first “tupilaq”. The terror who bore the name of Tuunbaq. The monster who was feared men and gods alike… The more she read of him, the more she understood exactly what he was, and the more devastated she came. All she’d done apparently was trade in one cruel god for another. But this one didn’t claim to love her, and she owed him now. She should have demanded that he name his price for his services when she’d met him in the bar. She should not have kissed him. Because now, he could ask her for anything…and she didn’t have much right to refuse him. All she could do now was bitter angry tears at her own stupidity. 

And then, days into her regret, the phone rang. 

She stared at her cell phone for a long moment, almost wishing she could take it back. Instead, her hand shaking slightly and her voice steady, she answered, “Hello?”

The voice on the other end was husky and strangled, as though something impeded the air in the other’s throat, “Come and take your book!“ A few words of address were literally spat out and followed by the short beeps.

                                                   *     *     *

After she left Tuunbaq finished his drink and got to work. At first, he looked for information about the Necronomicon, but all of it was myths and urban legends.  There was no actual evidence that someone somewhere actually saw the book or held it in their hands, and if he was a human he would stop there. As they say, takes one to find one. He was a myth, too, and Ruby, his client also didn’t fully belong to this realm.

Everything he had was a scent, so he started the search. Driving in his car, walking on foot, sliding in the shadows as a shadow he covered block after block until he finally caught the tail of it. The smell was stronger than he felt on Ruby, more distinctive and absolutely… disgusting. It was a smell of the graveyard mud, of rot and decay, of death and of a very ancient evil. Of course, it couldn’t scare him away. He made a promise, had a job to do, no stink, however nasty, could stop him. He followed the trail almost all day, and when the sun went down he stopped before an old and abandoned house. Necronomicon was inside, and something else was there, too. Tuunbaq stepped inside and the attack was immediate. Anyone else would be torn to a bloody pulp, but he wasn’t anyone, he was the Terror.

                                                   *     *     * 

His way home was blurred, he was hanging on the last thread of sanity when he opened the door of his apartment, closed it, and headed in the bathroom’s direction holding onto the wall. The large book wrapped into the piece of cloth was thrown into the doorway of the living room and landed on the couch. Whispering curses on different languages he stumbled into the bathroom finally and leaned over the vintage looking tub. He was vomiting out the black goo that stunk like a drowned corpse but didn’t feel better. Something he had inside him didn’t want to go lightly. Hobbling like a blind man, bumping into stuff he walked to his bedroom and fell on the big bed. There he pulled the phone from his pocket, made the call gathering all his last strength and threw it aside. Convulsions ran through his body, he growled and the growl belonged not just to him, his fingers dug into the blanket, and he looked like a dead man himself, pale and slimy with sweat with remains of sludge on his lips.

@peritxetxinvenit​

“Come and take your book!”

He had done it. He had actually done it. 

There was no thought going through Ruby’s mind, at least, no thought that she could truly register before it flitted away. She was acting on instinct alone. The closer she was to his home, the louder the book called to her. It was a visceral reaction merely prompting her to go faster. She had driven over to his apartment well above the speed limit, and she had ignored the few people she passed on the way to his flat. 

There were invisible fingers wrapped around her rib cage, clenched into a fist, pulling her, drawing her ever closer to the object she had been searching for. Drawing her closer to what the book could grant her...

She burst into his apartment, about to call his real name upon not seeing him, but she was stopped short. She stood in the living room of his home, a rectangular object partially wrapped in cloth upon the ornate sofa. She stared at it mouth agape, lungs still for a long moment as she staggered over to it. The closer she came, the stronger the pull. Like a moth to a flame. 

It recognized her, it’s author, it’s keeper, in turn. A slow wheezing breath escaped the mouth of the book, the eyes widening and pinpoints of hellfire awakening as pupils. It stared right at her, understanding swirling in its unnatural gaze. This living breathing gateway to hell had always been fiercely loyal to its true owner despite the many hands that had opened it and perused its secret pages. 

“Ruuuuuby,” he growled in a voice that would make any other being shudder. It made Ruby rush over and kneel before it. She ripped the cloth away, revealing the shriveled moving face upon the books cover. It called her name again, this time with an air of excitement and urgency. She ran her fingertips over the cover before holding it to her chest. 

Her sons had stolen her immortality at the behest of their father. It had caused her great pain. The book fully restoring it to her caused even greater pain. She clutched it to her chest and bit back a cry of agony. Purple tinged smoke washed over her, leaped into her lungs, her eyes, her ears. Her restored nature set to work correcting the “errors” of being human. Her rapid healing began to reverse the cell aging and damage she had sustained while being mortal for the past year. Her senses returned to their highest powers, inhuman physical prowess coiling in her muscles. Her mental strength came flooding back to her, along with the ability to hear the whispers that didn’t belong to the human world. They were deafening, and it took her a long moment to regain control silence them. She heard something splinter and realized she’d broken something in his apartment. Shit.

She slumped forward on the couch, the book humming in approval. For the first time in a year...she was herself again. The fear of human mortality was gone, but the emotional lessons she had learned, the softness to her soul that being fully human had granted her was not something her immortality could erase. She didn’t want to forget those things. 

What she did want was for those snarky little whispers to stop ringing in her ears and figure out where the man who had retrieved the book was. She stood and called his name, continuing to hold the book close. It had been gone for almost thirty years, she wasn’t about to let it go again that quickly. 

She found Tuunbaq right after finding the noxious smelling goop in the bathtub. She ran over to where he was sprawled on the bed, akin to a corpse. She tossed the book on the bed beside them and lightly slapped his cheek. “Tuunbaq? Tuunbaq!” she yelled, “What’s wrong?”

Then she heard it. That little whisper, mocking and gleeful. It was coming from... She pressed her ear to his chest, the little voice chattering louder than ever. “Shit!!”

When she had been reading up on Tuunbaq and his kind, the remembered reading the term ‘soul eater’. The Necronomicon was a fierce guardian between the human world and hell, but lower ranking demonic spirits could cross through. If they had been waiting to escape...and they knew the book was in possession of a being who consumed souls...then they probably thought Tuunbaq was an exceptionally easy target to be possessed. And he was in a way without realizing it. But these entities had never been human, they didn’t really have souls, so they must have been like poison to him. She pulled one of his eyelids up only to find completely white eyes. White eyes like the reanimated corpses she had spent the last year killing off. Her heart thundered in her chest. She didn’t want him to be dead. And she didn’t want him possessed either. Her eyes slowly turned black, and she moved to kneel above him. She placed her hands firmly on his chest, the book fluttering itself open in preparation. Whatever was inside him was leaving. Now.

@abxaquilone

Ruby’s uneasiness lessened as his gaze began to truly focus on her, understand that she was there with him. But her heart broke at the sorrow that poured from him. It was a true and genuine heartache, and she feared that as much as she yearned to comfort him, there was nothing she could do.

Ruby buried one hand in his hair, stroking silken strands. Her other arm wrapped around his broad shoulders, her lips tenderly touching his skin. Maybe she was supposed to tell him that everything was okay the way it was, but to do so felt like belittling his anguish. She couldn’t do that to him.

“It’s okay to miss home,” she said warmly, he was safe in her arms and she wanted him to know that. “You’re allowed to miss the world that you know.”

She silently noted that this was incredibly human of him. To be homesick…Ruby had lost count of the times she yearned to go back to her family’s old home. To see her mother in the kitchen and her father in his favorite reading chair. But all that was there was dust, and shadows, and a deafening silence. She buried her nose in his hair, breathing him in and wishing she could do more for him. However, she’d gladly hold him for as long as he wanted. Her fingers traced lazy patterns over his skin as she attempted to let her comfort and affection wash over him. She opened and closed her mouth a few times before she gathered the courage to speak. 

“We could go there if you wanted. We could go see your home. If you ever wanted to show me…I’d love to see it.”

He didn’t think that it was okay. Tuunbaq was thousands of years old and for the last ten years he lived in the human world like one of the humans. He wished so badly to forget everything about his past life and his kingdom of ice and snow, but his memory was ideal, and no amount of dope could help. He tried to clean his head and focus on her touch and her voice. It felt good to be caressed like this and to be actually cared about. Ruby made him remember of his maker, Sedna, the only being he respected and even feared. She also reminded him of sixam iea who were not scared of him and always treated him not like a monster, but as another sentient being. These memories elicited a new groan of pain.

“We’re not going there, Ruby. I can’t go! … The prophecy had come true, the ice is melting and my guardians are gone. If I come back I will stay there and die.” His last days in the circle had almost killed him, weakening and sick he missed the trap humans made for him, and now he wore scars as a reminder that he wasn’t absolutely immortal. “I don’t want to die, but I miss my life there so much…” He thought, he escaped the prison, but was there actually such thing as freedom? Was he free here restraining himself in a human form, befuddling himself in order to think less about who and what, and why he was?

@peritxetxinvenit​

Trapped between two worlds. Tuunbaq was trapped between two worlds, one of which he could never set foot in again. Ruby understood that feeling all too well. Hell not a place she relished venturing into. Tuunbaq yearned for his Arctic tundra, but Ruby didn’t miss hell. The demonic side of her needed it all the same. She could never go back there, never dare let herself become entrapped by her first mate in a realm where he ruled supreme. Tuunbaq’s throne had been stripped away from him. She almost smiled for they were too opposites sides of the same coin. Both in limbo, both with one foot in two worlds. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, pressing her lips to his skin once again. She had hoped that going back to his home would provide him the relief he needed from the human world. A world he had been in for some time now, but it was perhaps still very foreign to him. She had once told him how remarkable it was that he learned to adapt and survive. Yet surviving wasn’t thriving. A pang of anguish hit her chest as the despair rolled off him in waves. This man she loved...who wasn’t a man at all. 

Ruby realized how remarkably selfish she had been. She had focused on readjusting to her own restored immortality since he’d given her the Necronomicon. Having it suddenly stripped away and just as suddenly restored to her had taken a tremendous toll on her. Yet she had rapidly settled into the role of being his kept woman, learning his moods, learning his preferences, trying to avoid angering him. And although she recognized his power, her own dual nature submissive to him out of self preservation...she seemed to have forgotten what he truly was. This form he took was a beautiful mask. The monster it hid was no less beautiful in her eyes, but in order to remain in this human world, he had to keep a tight control over himself. Walking into him destroying his home was the closest she had seen to Tuunbaq letting the mask slip. She belatedly realized that he couldn’t keep this up forever nor should he have to.  

“I don’t want you to die either,” she whispered, her words choked with emotion. It was true. She would miss him desperately if he ceased to exist. Ruby also found that statement to be selfish as well. 

A twinge of guilt settled in her chest, but she cradled him close as he sank to his knees. This god she had given herself too was on his knees, sounds of anguish escaping his throat like a mourning animal, begging her for something that took her by surprise. Her heart shattered at the sight of him looking up at her. She leaned over and held him close, kissing all over his face and began humming. She didn’t even bother to protest or say she had a terrible voice. She merely hummed a tune to him before the words of the song came back to her, and she sang them softly. Words in a language her soul knew intimately. Words that no other human really understood in this century. An ancient Sumerian love song, every word and note dedicated to him, even if he couldn’t understand it. Because she did love this monster in human form.

While she sang, she was thinking. She couldn’t afford to be arrogant and think that she was enough to ease his pain. In that moment she realized that perhaps she was more like the drugs he consumed in copious amounts. A distraction, a band-aid, a temporary relief. She loved him, and she was a mere plaything to him. It hurt her much more than she ever thought it would have, even though she’d known this would happen from the start of their relationship. But recognizing that she wasn’t enough made her even more generous. Because she had something to give him. She could give him a place that didn’t require anything of him. Somewhere quiet, safe, and cold. A place to let the mask slip. Not a replacement for his frozen home, but a stepping stone between the worlds he was trapped in. 

No screamers

No scares

No false info

Have a nice day, ok?