The Harvest Of Souls (beast wirt X reader short story)

4:Sticks And Stones

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes." -Marcel Proust

[Small gore warning]

My head sounded off like thunder, whizzing around, begging for me to get up, a twisted, tangled enstragment of adrenaline pumping through me like a last resort to floating back up to consciousness. As my voice set out small noises, assuring me that I was still here, I moved my sore head around.

My hand felt like something was clutching onto it. And as my head shakily went up, what I saw was a corpse of a hand made of twigs, grasping around my hand, as it's face stared down at me in sorrow and horror.

In panic, I used my other hand to get off of it's claws, yet as I raised my hand up, the upper half of the forearm slouched down in a disfigured way, the bone jutting out of it's sockets as my pulse rose, and my voice was soon screaming from realization of what had happened.

I wanted to pass out or vomit from just the sight of that arm, yet I tried drawing my attention to my other problems, my priorities had been set straight on getting my hand freed before I can do anything about my mangle of an arm. So I yanked and yanked! my good hand away repeatedly, the sudden lurking sound of footsteps drawing near motivating my adrenaline to quicken up the job, I eventually used my leg as a support to get it out, and off it snapped like pieces of frail twigs, turning to dust only to be blown away in the rest of the wind.

I reached for my bad arm, at the very sight of it, a familiar substance crawled up my throat in disgust, but I swallowed it down, knowing that I had to get the bone somehow in place.

As I slowly and carefully moved the rest of my bad hand up along the correct placement, I attempted to pull it up to put it in place, yet as I did it burned like a palm to the stove, or cuts lathered in lemon juice. I retreated back, only for the rest of the arm to hit the bone, as it howled in pain, in a agonizing frozen state, I couldn't move an inch, yet I still felt every nerve stand on the edge in a crooked form.

The footsteps grew louder and louder through my ears, like a oncoming death of waiting to be hit by a train.  I gathered all the remaining strength I could muster to stand up and get out, yet the very second my arm was out of it's resting place, it leaked down more blood, it pulsed at my nerves to stop me from getting anywhere else, and drained all the blood out of my head.

I could only get a few yards away as the footsteps quickened by the sound of my own movement, yet I stumbled back to the ground with a loud groan in frustration. My eyes felt like they haven't gotten rest in weeks as everything drew closer to me in a foggy vision. All I could do was hope that it was help, and not who I feared it was.