ALL NOVEL Chapter 8: Stay Put
The chains rattled again as the deranged human struggled with their weight. A roar in his face, a little bit of my might, or whatever the thing causing the air to tremble was, and he dropped to the ground, eyes wide, trembling with fear, as he should.
The female was next.
»GROWL«
“Oh, shut up,” the shoelace bitch spat back, annoyingly unfazed by my growl or my might. If anything, the female hastened her work, attaching another chain to the ring on the floor and spewing one curse after another. “You, brain rotten imbecile, when I’m done with the mutt - I’m gonna carve some basic sense into your head. Only a half-wit would have suppressing chains lying on the shelf when dealing with beasts.”
“B-but I have never . . . they never . . . ”
“Never what? Ah, whatever. Just - get your shit together and help me chain this beast down.”
Me, a beast?
Well, as much as it pained me to admit it, I guess I was indeed closer to being one than before drinking that icy concoction. It robbed me of my voice and brought out this . . . this primal ferocity in me. It awakened the beast slumbering within me. But was I a beast? No, I was not!
»I am still human!«
A rather pathetic roar - a fairly apt reflection of my stubbornness to give up who I was.
“Good. Then be a good girl and lie still, will you?”
‘What the heck . . . ?’
After experiencing it a few times, the voice of the hateful female in my head didn’t throw me off as much as the fact that she understood my growl. How? Since when? The answer, however, was always there. Just like her, I guess.
She never left my mind, rummaging inside, listening not to my growls, but to my thoughts. And I didn’t even notice. Unlike the pull of both my Slave Array and the collar, weakened as they were by the weird haze of bestiality coming from somewhere deep within me, her touch seemed utterly absent from my mind. Whatever she was doing was away from the sight of the beast she saw.
Terrifying. Sly and twisted, but truly terrifying.
What else had I missed? Had she searched my mind for my greatest secrets, erasing my most precious memories without my knowledge? Had she left any seeds of thought there that would guarantee my obedience to her once sprouted?
Well, judging by her fright, I didn't think so. Something told me that to do so she would have to go deeper, where the beast lurked.
And she feared it, trying to chain the beast before it was too late, before it came out.
To be honest, I shared her fear, afraid that once the beast bares its fangs I will lose it all. But the chains terrified me more. Why? Why the utter loathing of a piece of metal? The answer was engraved right there in them in the form of runes. They were not too dissimilar to those on the collar gripping my neck. So no, it was no ordinary iron. Once on, I might never take the shackles off again.
Hence, when my ears twitched at the sound of iron scraping against iron I lunged at the female with a roar.
»Don’t touch me!«
“You should learn to obey,” the twisted female replied with a smug sneer as, instead of hitting her, I merely rolled onto my side, held back, not by orders, but by my own weakness. “ . . . But don’t worry. My young one will teach you. She’s good with beasts.”
Weak . . .
I was weak, a weak beast . . .
Those two words echoed in my mind with the force of the brewing thunderstorm, rattling me to the very marrow of my bones, hurting the pride I didn’t know I still had. Was it even mine? I didn't know anymore, engulfed in rage.
Was I some feeble beast cowering in a corner with her tail tucked between her legs? No! These two little humans ought to fear me.
»ROAR«
With a bestial outcry devoid of any meaning, a ripple tore through my body and then through the air. The cabinets, their vile contents, and the two people in the room shook under the weight of my might. The slumbering beast deep inside me had awakened fully.
“Fuck! You brain-dead half-wit, get off your ass and chain her down before she completely turns.”
Turn? What was the bitch yapping about . . . ?
With my eyes inevitably drawn to my left leg, grabbed by her, and deftly shackled, a horror struck me. My nightmares came true. Eyes wide open, I watched my leg get covered in fur and take on bestial shapes. Worse, it wasn’t just that one leg. The other was changing, too. Another success, as the deranged human would say. After all, it was a symmetrical mutation, which I should be grateful for, considering how some of the others ended up looking. But the thing sowing terror in my heart was, the changes didn’t stop at my legs. My whole body was being covered in a mess of fur and feathers, my hands reshaped into front beast legs.
As if I had lost the last shred of humanity, I was turning into a full beast - just like the human bitch said.
The realization tore a whimper from my throat and twisted my insides in dreadful despair, more so than the beastly side effects of the vile concoction ravaging my body.
‘No. Please, No. Stop . . . go back to sleep.’
That desperate plea in an attempt to cling to the remnants of my humanity had only hurt my newfound pride and made me pissed with myself. Sure, I didn’t used to be a badass chick with a black belt in tai chi or whatever, frequenting bars in a rush for brawls. But I never used to be this whiny puppy, unable to wipe her own ass without her master’s approval, either. It was this place. This world. That deranged human and that mind-twisted female who beat the last of the fight out of me and turned me into this.
So when it came to resisting that feral urge coming from somewhere deep inside of me, I couldn’t do much but watch myself turn into a beast. Before I knew it, I had paws for hands, a snout full of sharp teeth for a nose, and a flat chest covered with thick fur. The only solace I found in this change was that, unlike previous mutations, it came without pain.
Not much of it, at least.
There was this little dull strain in my muscles and bones, but more or less, the whole transformation of me into a beast passed as though something natural. Almost as if the beast . . . had been inside me all along, waiting to bare its fangs one day.
And I did bare them.
The moment the deranged male got his shit together and stood up to put the shackles on me, I growled a warning at him.
»Dare, human!«
The smell of his piss hit my nose, and he slumped back to the ground with terror in his eyes.
If only the other freaks could see him like that. It was a sight to behold, sending a shudder of satisfaction through my body, stroking my pride. Annoyingly, the moment didn’t last long, broken by a rattle of chains.
The female. She was strong willed - of a twisted mind. Foul-smelling, cruel, dangerous.
Not as strong as me, though.
»GROWL«
Not just a warning, an attempt to rip her throat out.
However, much to my irritation, the female swerved away from my fangs in time. Her teeth bared back in a sneer. “If you think I don’t know how to handle a beast, if you think I'm afraid of that thing inside of you, girl, think twice. I’ve trained hundreds of beasts like those. Just wait till I muzzle you, you mutt.”
»Why muzzle if not afraid?«
Growling back over her blatant lie - the fear was all over her, I could smell it - I prowled for an opportunity to bite off that tongue of hers squirming in her maw.
Annoyingly, the female decided to bite first, trying to prove she wasn't prey.
“Fine, have it your way, mutt. Time you learn to behave. STAY PUT!”
With her words thundering inside my skull, a giant hammer struck my mind.