Okay for all intents and purposes this is the finale of the story, there is one more chapter but it is straight up porn with no plot and can be skipped if you’re not into that. That one will hopefully be up tomorrow. Thanks to anyone who made it this far for reading!
This was the first time you’d been to König’s home but you weren’t paying attention to anything around you, your focus was on him as he locked the door behind you and shouted something in German over his shoulder.
A bald man with a mustache and an average build came around a corner to meet you at the door. He wore military garb and held a machine gun. This should have scared the shit out of you, but you were strangely calm. Crises had always brought on a sense of clarity you rarely had otherwise. Once the danger or stressor had passed you broke completely, but you were great in a tight spot and kept calm easily during.
You knew that König employed private security at his home as well as the hotel, but you’d never seen any of them decked out like this. This man was a professional who knew how to handle his weapon. The rest had been off-duty cops who you frankly wouldn’t have trusted to guard your lunch from your coworkers, but they made the guests feel safe.
The man stationed himself in front of the locked door as König led you further into the house. He brought you to a living room with a large fireplace along the wall to your left. The front and right-hand walls were crystal clear glass, looking out over a meadow lined with thick forest. You could see the lights mounted about the house that must have allowed König to light the meadow very well at night, though they were off now. It was still mid-afternoon so the light was just starting to fade a bit.
He led you to a large white couch facing the fireplace and sat next to you, taking your hands in his.
“I am sorry if I have scared you, but something has happened,“ he told you. "The breeding specimen I introduced you to, I made a mistake. I am so sorry, my love.”
“What do you mean a mistake? I don’t understand,” you answered.
“I didn’t recognize her changes in behavior lately, and I should have. She shouldn’t have been brought near you at all with the state she’s in,” he tried to explain.
“What changes, please, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Slow down.”
“My researchers and I met today to discuss her progress, and pointed out some things that confused them, but alarmed me. We track all of our specimens in the wild, of course, and she had changed her normal hunting routes overnight, traveling much farther from the Resort than she normally does.”
“Okay, and what does that have to do with me?” you asked.
“She seems to be…” he swallowed audibly. “It seems as if she’s grown unhealthily attached to me as a caregiver, and has been… hunting you since last night, she’s not been out of earshot of you since you met her.”
Your stomach dropped. You were being… hunted? What? How did a job at the front desk of a hotel turn into this? Was it worth it? Was he worth it? You knew the answer to the question before you asked it. Of course he was. He would always be worth it to you.
“Okay, so what do we do?” you asked.
He pulled you closer to him with one arm and kissed your temple.
“We keep you safe, just like I promised.”
That dark weight on his hip had suddenly become too heavy to bear, and he was glad he was sitting down. He held you tight, unsure if he would be able to do what needed to be done if the time came.
“I have my men searching the woods to drive her out, she won’t be far now that you’re here. I cannot get her to respond to my calls anymore. She is completely out of my control.” He ran his hand through his hair anxiously. “But if we can bring her here we can capture and subdue her.” He hoped he was right.
“I want you to stay with me at all times, alright?” he asked, though it barely sounded like a question.
“Okay,” you chewed the inside of your lip nervously. He sensed how nervous you were, though you were doing a great job of not showing it.
“Come here.” He turned and pulled your head to his chest, running his fingers through your hair. You sniffed once, deeply, to keep yourself from crying. You resumed your abnormally calm demeanor but stayed with your face buried in his chest, breathing in the scent of him as he rubbed your back, shushing you and muttering reassurances.
You stayed like that for a while, until you were interrupted by the sound of the crackle of the radio on the front door guard’s hip. He answered in German and quickly left the house through the front door at König’s nod, locking the two of you in again once he was on the other side.
“They’ll find her soon.” he whispered in your ear, your face still pressed into the front of his shirt. You sat up at his words, and that’s when you heard it, that strange screeching you now knew belonged to a creature bent on your death. It was a strange feeling saying that so nonchalantly, even if only to yourself. This animal wanted you dead for competing for the attention of the man you loved.
“What the fuck…” you whispered through an exhaled breath.
“What was that?” König asked you.
“Nothing.” You pulled his arms back around you and settled in to wait as he held you warmly, his chin resting on the top of your head. You could call it cozy if it weren’t for the bloodthirsty animal coming after you.
Just saw Heretic and it is so right about the inherent horror in questioning your beliefs, in the dawning realization that the people you trusted were lying to you (sometimes, intentionally), and that the quest for truth can feel like a slow descent into the pit.
Okay guys, here’s part 4, I’m not sure how long this will go, I guess I’ll just write until I get to the ending I’m planning. As always, likes and comments are greatly appreciated, you don’t know how excited it makes me to get a comment on something I’ve written or drawn!
By the time König had finished his tale, you had barely managed to digest all he’d told you. You sat silently for at least a full minute, just absorbing the frankly incredible story he’d just told you. Humanoid animals who reproduced through a one sided relationship with humans, using their bodies and resources to raise their young.
Any sane woman would have run after hearing what König had to say. You knew it wasn’t right, but you found this fascinating more than anything. Something like this existing at all, let alone being kept secret and studied for hundreds of years clandestinely. You needed to see one. I guess you weren’t as sane as you thought you were.
He had continued to hold your hands in his the entire time he spoke, worried that after what he was about to tell you , he may never get the chance to touch you again, a thought König found unbearable. But he’d sworn he would never lie to you, and he intended to keep that promise. He couldn’t start anything romantic between you without complete honesty, even if that honesty cost him the love of his life.
You pulled your hands from his reluctantly (you’d found their warmth comforting) and reached for the small wooden flute König had pulled from his jacket pocket to show you how he controlled (for the most part) the creatures, training them from a young age to recognize it’s different tones and what was meant by each.
You examined it closely before handing it back to König and took a breath, letting it out slowly. König held his while waiting for your reaction. Would you ask him to leave? Would you quite your job? Would he ever see you again after tonight? He couldn’t bear the last thought, just now having realized the depths of his feeling for you.
To his surprise it was you who reached across the table to take his hands again, looking into his eyes. You’d made up your mind, and it hadn’t taken much convincing, something you might find concerning later after the emotion of this moment passed.
“I want to see one,” you told him, still staring softly into his blue eyes.
“You… what?” that was the last thing he thought he’d hear from you after this.
“I want to see one,” you repeated, still not breaking eye contact.
König swallowed audibly.
“That can be arranged, of course, but are you sure?” He asked, his expression worried.
“If they’re important to you, then they’re important to me too,” you looked at your lap as you said these last words, too embarrassed to meet his eye after such a confession.
He thought for a moment, charmed by your shyness at making such a confession. If he hadn’t already, he’d have fallen for you right then.
“You will not be working tomorrow, correct?” he asked. He knew full well the answer to that question, the man made the schedule and always knew when you worked, visiting you nearly every shift and always showing up to take you home.
“No.” you answered, looking back up into his eyes. They looked apprehensive. He bit his lower lip nervously but didn’t break eye contact.
“Very well. I will meet you here at dusk tomorrow. Dress warmly, we will be walking a bit in the dark.”
You nodded, finding your voice a difficulty at the moment. You cleared your throat and squeezed his hands from across the small round table.
“Will I be… is it okay, out there?” you nodded to the door nervously.
He smiled gently and rose from his seat, your hands still held in his larger ones, pulling you slowly to your feet as well. He pulled you close to him and dropped your hands, pulling you into his warm embrace.
“I will never let anything happen to you, as long as I live. That is a promise. I swear you will be safe here as long as you keep the doors closed and locked until morning. Okay?” he pulled away and looked into your face as he asked the last part. The sincerity with which he’d said this made it impossible not to believe his words.
“Okay,” you told him, letting out a breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding since his arms had pulled you against him, “tomorrow evening.”
He put a hand behind your head and gently pulled you into his shoulder.
“Until tomorrow evening then, mein abendstern.” You felt him kiss the top of your head before reluctantly letting you go and making his way to your apartment door.
“Do not forget to lock the door.”
“I promise.”
He left. You had a lot to think about and didn’t foresee any sleep in your future. You busied yourself preparing a pot of coffee and yawned loudly as you poured yourself your first cup. You took a seat on your couch and let yourself get lost in thoughts of what just happened and what it all meant.
hi tumblr peeps! 10 years ago today (or maybe it was yesterday, close enough heh) i started the hexeosis animated hexagon art blog here on tumblr, the first place hexeosis ever existed. i posed a few gifs that first week and really got going in August of 2013. I was super fortunate to have my gifs go viral almost right away and its been honor and a privilege to share my artworks with you all. thanks everyone for all the reblogs, comments, likes, shares, purchases, feedback, angry emails, it’s all good and am forever grateful that you took to the time to look at my silly brightly colored shaped polygons. here’s to 10 more years! (provided we survive the robot apocalypse)
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Sleeping Woman With a Cat. Wladyslaw Slewinski. 1896.
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Cabildo Quarterly. Issue #13. Summer 2019. With new poetry, fiction and essays from Margarita Serafimova, Luke Kuzmish, Ama Birch, Ben Stein, Katherine Sinback, Bruce McRae and Jude Vachon. Available here. All right!
Cabildo Quarterly #12, summer 2018 is available now! With new writing from Kaylee Duff, Timothy Berrigan, Kelli Stevens Kane, William Repass, Kurt Morris, Paula Coomer, Daryl Gussin, Margaret Emma Brandl and Howie Good. Click here or get at us for hard copies.
To commemorate the first anniversary of you-know-what, Dead Trend has recorded a cover of New Order’s “Age of Consent.” Check it out here: https://deadtrend.bandcamp.com/track/age-of-consent-2017
