Using thepromptfoundry’s Ominous October list.
Ira Carpenter, having more sexy eldritch horror hijinks. Sexy but not sexual, if you get me.
CWs: eldritch horror, body horror, tentacles, eye trauma, penetration of eyes, ears & nose (not gory), possession
***
Standing at the railing of the elevated balcony, Ira admires the attendees of the winter masquerade swirling below and the really good wine they’re serving while he watches some kind of quiet drama happening near the far doors of the ball room.
It’s not his problem tonight. He’s not here to work. But it has been, plenty of times before, so he recognizes the dignified hustle and the veiled alarm in the hosts and a few staff members—somebody’s trying to quietly manage a crisis without disturbing the party.
For a moment, his curiosity almost sways him to go and ask. He could get away with it; he solved a case for the family last year.
But someone else catches his eye instead. In a swirling crowd of winter masquerade costumes, the woman in the harlequin ball gown stands out because her mask doesn’t match. Her gown makes her look like the queen of hearts; all bold red and black panels and gold tracing. Her mask is one of those Venetian-style full-face ones, with delicate seashell pinks and blues with silver filigree across the pearly white porcelain.
Her face is tipped up, and his notion that she’s watching him is confirmed when she raises a hand to give him the come-hither.
After a moment, he tosses back the rest of his wine and follows. Who is he to turn down serendipity?
She seems beautiful, at least from what he can tell. That’s one of the joys of a masquerade; anybody could be anything, really, if you just let them be. But it’s easy enough with her; she’s graceful and petite, with a nipped waist and an attractive sway to her hips.
She lets him catch up to her in a wood-paneled hall to the side of the library. She’s waiting for him when he comes acround the corner—stops him with a dainty gloved hand against his chest, close enough for her skirts to brush against his lower legs. Is he imagining the coquettish tilt of her head? It’s hard to tell with that mask.
Feeling cheeky, he lowers his head to delicately kiss the porcelain rosebud lips of her mask.
It seems to encourage her, because she steps forward and reaches up to pull his domino mask off. There’s something erotically hungry in the way she lets it drop, and he isn’t about to complain about the small price.
She reaches up to pull her mask off in return. Buzzing pleasantly with anticipation, it takes Ira a second to process the gagging sound he hears as it comes away.
The smooth curve of a cheek, a jaw, the edge of an eyebrow. A swaying stumble of her skirts. Long glistening mucousy strands of…something translucent and jelly-like slithering from her mouth and nose that he doesn’t reel back from fast enough before she’s pressing the mask to his face.
And then she’s falling to her hands and knees to the side of him, retching. And those jelly-like things are swarming into him.
They cram into his mouth and up his nose. Worm into his ear canals. He tries to shout and manages only a muffled grunt around them as he feels them probing at his eyelids.
He can’t pull the mask off his face. When he tries, the things hook into him so he can’t tear it free.
He trips backwards, flailing, clawing at the fucking things, and feels his shoulders bang against the wall. Squirmy wormy sensations force in beneath his eyelids and writhe in his eye sockets, deeper and deeper, till he swears he can feel them fucking twining around his optical nerves—
He thinks he hears a shout down the hall—something about a thief—before his hearing goes tinny and muffled as they worm behind his ear drums.
Into his brain. He gasps and whimpers, and suddenly the horrific parasitic squirming feels…so, so damn good. Full, thrilling, sensual explorations seething through his body to invade and explore him in ways he’s never experienced before.
Muffled behind the mask and with his mouth crammed full of tentacles, he moans.
His body pulls itself up off its knees with a grip on the wall’s paneling. He shudders and moans again with their wriggling thrusts deeper into his brain, and his hands tug his clothing straight, fix his mussed hair and brush himself off.
Shudders that feel like orgasms wrack through him and his legs step forward. He can’t see where he’s going; he can’t hear. But the mask can.
it stoops for a moment, reaching down with his hand to fish around in warm folds of…clothing? Folds that twitch and jerk away. The woman. Her arm knocks against his as she tries to scramble further away. His hand closes around something small and knobby and hard, about the size of his palm.
Trapped in his mind with it, blind and deaf, Ira feels its laughter, amused and delighted at his baffled, pleasured fear. It strokes his mind again to send another wave of inescapable pleasure through him, writhing again in his eyes and his ears and sinuses, as it makes him stride, helpless under its power, out of the party, tucking its loot securely away inside his waistcoat.
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