Prompt Short Story: Cursed

Content Warnings: violent death (mentions), curse, magic, behavioural training (mentions)

Fucking unbelievable. Here she is, in the middle of the goddamned night, calling to say she’s done it again. And of course what that means is “You have to help me!”.

Fuck. And she knows, of course, that I’ll never say no. I can, but she knows I won’t. I promised dad I’d look after her. And she fucking knows it. Goddamned fucking little princess.

If I swear enough, maybe I’ll feel better by the time I get to wherever this address she’s sent me is. I just hope I’m in time to stop anyone getting hurt. Again. At least the traffic’s light at this time of the morning, I guess.

When I get out of the car, she’s already sprinting towards me. It’s an abandoned construction site–pretty sure the owner went bankrupt, this place hasn’t been touched in years. Probably owned by the bank now and they’re trying to sell it at a stupid price, and surprise! Nobody’s buying in this shitty economy. Not that banks care, they make billions without even trying.

“Oh thank fuck you came, thank you, I’m sorry,” Sandra gasps into my neck as she flings her arms around me. It doesn’t seem to occur to her that I might like to not be covered in the blood she’s wearing all over.

Oh, and she’s naked of course. Suppose that’ll make cleanup easier.

Let me explain a little background here, before we move on from the gross, bloody hug I’m getting.

Our family, all down our mother’s side, are…well the word is technically ‘cursed’, but that reality varies a lot. Sandra? Definitely cursed. Me? Not so much. When our stronger, and baser, emotions are aroused, and we don’t control them, we shapeshift into something that still looks like us, but far less human. Claws, sharp teeth, cat eyes, pale skin. And once changed, it’s incredibly difficult to force the change back, without satiating whatever caused it in the first place.

Sandra is a sucker for the base emotions. Sex, anger, whatever, they make her feel powerful, and she likes that. The issue is the aftermath of many of her power trips, which tend to involve a human torn to pieces somewhere. That’s when she calls and begs me to help take care of it. By which she really means take care of her.

Don’t ask me where this curse came from, our parents (dad knows, of course, he can’t really not) pretty much refuse to even admit the topic into conversation. Gran knows too, as does Mum’s sister, but they’re on orders to tell us nothing. They didn’t even tell us to expect it to happen once we hit the hormone chaos that is being a teenager.

Never really forgiven them for that, to be honest. Sandra and I, we moved far away as soon as we could. Still separate–we live apart, have different jobs, friends, etc, but we’re always there for each other. Or, more accurately, I’m always here for her. I can’t remember the last time I needed her help for something. Not even when dad died.

I pull her off me, grimacing at the blood–at least I’ve learned to wear old stuff when I answer these calls.

“Sandra, listen to me,” I tell her firmly, and after a moment her eyes connect with mine. “Good, now tell me what happened.”

“I-I was out dancing, with Regina–you know, from work? We were having fun and a couple of guys were buying us drinks…I guess I got drunk…this one guy, Shamus, he offered to walk me home. I know, I know, don’t even give me the look.”

The look I was giving was about 60% glare, 40% ‘how do you never learn your goddamned lesson??’.

“We walked past this place and we came in, started making out in one of the buildings, and, god, I wanted him. I was drunk and suddenly so fucking horny. It’s been a while, you know? Hardly manage to even masturbate without turning all monstery so sex has been off the table. And the bed. And the counters… Sorry, yeah, so, I tore his shirt off, and then I sorta…tore his chest off too.”

“For fuck’s sake, Sandra, why would you let yourself get drunk? You need to keep your inhibitions, not throw them all away!”

Sandra hung her head. I sighed and pulled her into another hug. She’d never had the same type of control I had. It was her love of the rush, the power; it overcame whatever attempts she made to stop it because she kind of wanted it to keep happening. But this was the last time. I couldn’t keep cleaning up her messes, and she couldn’t keep making them.

“Sandra, I need you to sit in my car, alright? There’s an afghan on the back seat you can bundle up in.”

She nodded, and I walked her there, reaching in the boot and pulling back the carpet to get at the tools I kept in there. Tools to dig a grave with. A portable power washer to clean up with. Tools and fuel to cremate a body if there was too much evidence. I figured I’d just want the latter two tonight but I took everything anyway, and walked to the shell of a building she’d indicated.

I was right. It was a cremation job. Set the fire inside the building; use the rotting wood from in there, and the floor’s concrete so it’ll burn out when the fuel’s gone. Won’t stop the guy from being ID’d–which is good–just stop Sandra from being linked. I washed everything around, and everything she might have touched, lit the poor bastard on fire, and drove off before anyone spotted us. Thank fuck she chose someplace deserted this time.

She’s been asleep on the backseat for hours, now. I woke her up long enough to put a seatbelt on, then again to down some water and painkillers, otherwise she’s just been crashed out.

The hangover is gonna be rough. But the shift also takes a toll. And there’s the added weight of having killed again, of course. It’ll be a rough awakening. Not surprised she’s sleeping as long as she can.

She’s also gonna be mega pissed at me when she figures out what I’m up to. You see, I also flipped on the child locks in the back, and locked the electric windows. And I’m driving us to the place we swore we’d never go back to.

But it’s too much. It’s out of control and I can’t let her keep doing this. Each of those bodies is a weight on me, too.

So I’m taking us home to see mum.

They’re both gonna be mega pissed. Mum doesn’t like that we left after dad died. She basically disowned us. But if she won’t take us in, I know our aunt will, we’ve touched base a few times over the years and she knows what’s been happening. She’s kept telling me to come home, so here we are. Time to find out if I’m about to get a shotgun in my face!

Good news! I did get a shotgun in my face, but mum decided not to pull the triggers. Or smash me in the face with the stock. So I figure I’m ahead so far!

With Sandra? Not so much. She immediately disappeared somewhere to sulk. Nowhere far, because now she’s leashed like a fucking dog. This shit is why we left but fuck, I don’t know any other option any more, and I sure as fuck understand it a lot better these days.

The property has a boundary line, buried a few feet beneath the packed dirt. Anyone who gets one of mum’s leashes–they’re ankle locks, sealed with magic so they can’t be tampered with–can’t step over that boundary without enough blinding pain exploding through their entire nervous system to put them down for at least a few hours, and leave them not capable of much for another few on top of that.

So yeah, Sandra’s about as pissed as I expected. And mum is just as pissed at both of us, as I expected. So this all went well…no surprises, at least.

The leash is just step one. The way to keep her from bolting. Training comes next. They’ve modernised that somewhat, there’s no aversion therapy or any torture bullshit like that anymore. It’s mostly like being in rehab, I guess? Earn privileges for being good, lose for being bad. Focus down and help teach your inner monster who’s boss. I took these lessons with me. Sandra didn’t. So now she has to relearn them, and she’s split. She wants that power, but she also can’t keep killing.

Right now it’s me she wants to kill. Well, equal parts me and mum. She’s decided to pretend we don’t exist, which at least stops her screaming at us for a bit. Anytime she starts to shift, she gets to cool off in one of the basement cages. We both hated those so much, but I am beginning to understand their necessity, especially when both of us went on a tear.

I’m starting to try and make things up to Sandra and mum. They’re having a little encounter session in the basement, so I’m cooking them a winter stew. Just right for a cold day, and will hopefully warm up some cold shoulders too…provided they don’t just refuse to eat it out of spite. Yeah, they’re both more similar than they are different, especially when you force them into close contact.

Lucky for me, I gotta get back to work! Sandra has taken her version of ‘sick leave’, by which I mean she quit her job over the phone this morning, and argued them into using paid time off for her two week notice period. What she’ll do later? Nobody knows. But she’s pretty good at charming her way into jobs, and then pretty good at picking up the work and doing it well. She just gets bored easily.

I’m not in the same boat. I had to work my ass off for years to get where I am, in the job I wanted, and I’ve got shit to do that I can’t just abandon. I’m sure she’ll give me shit for this too, but I already took the rest of the week off, and I’m heading home tomorrow. If I work through the weekend, I should be mostly caught up.

I’ll say one thing though. For all the cold shoulders and anger, this was still far less dramatic than I expected it to be! Thank fuck.

Or…maybe not? That’s a lot of screaming from downstairs. And crashing.

I’m just gonna go check on that…

I’m sure it’s nothing.