Demon Whorehouse Transformation

She crossed the room and stepped through the wide archway, which led into a cold, dark hallway. Very little light made its way in here, but she was able to make out a pair of doors. The one on the left was just inside the archway. The one on the right stood much closer to what had to be the front door. Picking the closest one, she turned the handle and nearly fell on her face as the entire door came crashing down.

"Hmm. I guess that's -- cough -- one way to do it." She blinked away the dust from her eyes. "Maybe I should have knocked first." She laughed to herself and dropped the brass door handle -- which had come away in her hand. Carefully, she stepped over what was left of the door. The room here was little more than a closet. There was a small counter just inside where the coat-check girl must have stood, with empty clothes-racks two deep on both sides, and a third at the back. Even if only half of those racks had been filled on any given night, she could clearly see this had been a volume business.

Not finding anything of interest there, Kim backed out into the hall and tried the door on the right. "Come on, come on, come on." She felt the door give a little and kept pushing. The frame must have warped over time, sealing the room shut.

"Hey, need some help there?"

Kim screamed.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" The figure before her stumbled back a step. "It's me, Chris." He held his hands out, as if to keep her away. "I stopped by your place to see if you wanted to grab some lunch, and this weird old lady told me you were heading back to this dump."

"You idiot." She was panting slightly from the fright. "I nearly kicked you back into your mother's womb."

To his credit, Chris looked as if he honestly were sorry. He also looked a little scared, and far more nervous than he should have been, considering he was on the other side of the fright. Kim was about to tell him to go, that she could handle it quite fine herself, thank you, when she heard herself say, "Well, as long as you're here, I could use a strong pair of hands to help with this door."

Where the hell had that come from?

"Sure thing."

One push from Chris, and the door popped open.

A dank, musky odour rushed out, but dissipated almost as soon as Kim noticed it. She withdrew the flashlight and trained its narrow beam across the room. "Well, if you're still game," she said, "let's see what we have here."

Chris stepped back from the open door. "Ladies first."

As she passed through the door, Kim allowed herself a self-satisfied smile. He might be acting all gallant and polite, but she could see from the way his hand shook that she'd have better luck turning him into a gentleman than getting him to go first.

Inside was another, smaller lounge, with a segmented sofa running all the way around. What immediately caught her eye, though, was the elaborate spiral staircase in the centre. To her relief, it was made of the same wrought iron as the front gate. She desperately wanted a look upstairs -- where the real action had taken place -- but rickety old wooden stairs alone would have put a definite damper on her curiosity.

The petite blonde giggled like a schoolgirl. "I can't believe we're doing this!"

"Neither can I." No giggles from Chris, but those looks back over his shoulder were another nervous sign.

They took their time climbing the stairs, cautiously testing each step before shifting their weight forward. It made for slow going, but it beat the alternative -- an all too quick and possibly deadly descent. The higher they climbed, the darker it became, so Kim kept her eyes glued to the small circle of illumination the flashlight cast around her feet.

She was so busy watching for missing stairs that the second floor kind of snuck up on her.

To this point, she hadn't questioned her curiosity for a second. Give her a problem, a query, or scenario and she'd be all over it. Actually, it was finding problems that was in her blood, which was what made her one of the most sought-after software developers in the area. Her original coding might be simple and uninspired, but she had a knack for finding a way around the errors and omissions of others.

This, though, was something else entirely. It was like reading the tabloids or slowing down for a car wreck. It was trespassing, and she had no idea what possessed her to do it. She was normally shy, quiet, and not at all adventurous. Just peeking in a friend's medicine cabinet left her riddled with guilt for days. And when it came to sex . . . well, a good girl just didn't' belong anywhere near a place like this.

Still, something about the house just seemed to call to her.

She looked back to find that Chris has paused a few stairs beneath her. He looked pale, and she was sure it wasn't just the light.

"You've come this far," Kim told him, "so you might as well see what's up here."

A long, dark hallway stretched out before her, carpeted in dust, with doors to either side. Swallowing loudly, she raised the beam of her flashlight and watched it disappear into the darkness. Here was an entirely different world from the first floor -- so quiet . . . so dark . . . so stale . . . so closed off from everything else.

She'd laughed when Mrs. Henderson told her the place was haunted, but now she starting to understand why Chris apparently felt so creeped out. Not only had he not made a pass at her yet, but he'd hardly said a word.

According to Mrs. Henderson, the new Madame's perversions had been of a decidedly dark design. Breaking the ice with some relatively tame bondage and role-playing, she'd allowed things to develop into hardcore S&M, later adding some weird occult twist to it all. Ironically, the mysterious occult twist that proved to be such a temporary salvation, turned into their eventual damnation.

Clients came from all over the country to sample this darkest of perversions, and the Madame had extorted a high price for it. For a brief time, profits had eclipsed even the heady days of Prohibition, but it wasn't to last. Just as the brothel's reputation began to spread beyond the shores of North America, the entire operation came crashing down, literally overnight. Without any apparent reason or explanation, the Madame and her staff had fled the mansion in panic one frosty Sunday morning, never to return, and never to speak of what they saw.

Kim slowly made her way down the hall, taking small steps to avoid disturbing the dust any more than was necessary. Not that it helped when Chris was awkwardly, almost reluctantly shuffling and staggering along behind her. The dust he stirred up conspired with the darkness to further shroud what she already could barely see. Fortunately, just as she was beginning to wonder if there was an end to the hall, a telltale glint of metal was revealed in the distance.

She confirmed her suspicions with a nervous glance behind her. The stairs to the third floor were directly ahead. Now that she had her bearings, she felt comfortable enough to start checking out the doors on either side.

"Of course, all that haunting stuff is absolute bunk," she whispered. Chris snorted his disdain behind her, but she ignored him. "It does make a girl wonder. I mean, a grand old building like this, and it stands empty for decades. No homeless people shacking up inside, no teenage gangs hanging out . . ." She paused for a moment, lost in thought. "And no animals claiming it for their own."

"Some critters just know when to leave well enough alone."

It hadn't really registered to her until now, but the place was as clean as it was silent. She would have expected the stench of rat feces, dead squirrels, cat urine, and the like to be nearly overpowering after so many years of abandonment. At the very least, the smell of mould should have been all around her, but all she could smell was dust.

Other than the sounds of their own breathing, there wasn't a sound to be heard. No mice scratching inside the walls. No birds in the rafters. If she held her breath, all she could hear was the laboured breathing of Chris behind her.

Suddenly, it was as if a spell had been broken. Kim shivered with the November cold that she hadn't been feeling. It came on so quickly, she dropped her flashlight as her arms snapped up to warm her painfully erect nipples.

"Hey!" Chris screamed like a little girl and reached out to grab her arm.

Clouds of breath that she couldn't recall seeing a few seconds ago were hovering before her face now. Even her toes were beginning to feel numb.

"There is definitely something fucking wrong with this place."

Kim agreed. Her curiosity was completely gone. Whatever had come over her had broken, and all she wanted to do now was get out.

"Come on." Chris' meaty paw tugged at her coat. "Let's just go back the way we came."

Kim turned awkwardly, fighting his grip, not sure she remembered where to safely step without the flashlight.

"Hold on. Let me grab the flashlight."

Chris continued to tug. "No time. We have to go. Now."

"Relax. You're starting to freak me out." Having Chris to focus on was helping to keep her own fear at bay. "Besides, I never asked you to come."

"Oh, fuck this." Chris let go. "I'm gone."

Suddenly overbalanced, Kim stumbled back. "Chris," she called out, "take it slow. Be care—"

CCcccrrraaAAcccKKKkkkCRASH!

"Nnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooo. . ."

"Chris!"

BANG! WHAM!

" . . . Oooooooooohhhhhhhhhh . . . "

"Chris! Please be okay!"

CcccrreeeaaaakkkkkCccrreeeaaaakkkkCRASH!

*******

Chris was able to shake himself back to consciousness by the time the dust and debris settled. Tears blurred his eyes as he stared up through the gaping, jagged hole he'd left in the two floors above. One second he'd been retreating from the freakish cold, and the next he was crashing helplessly through the rotted floor. One of the old couches in the first floor lounge had broken his fall -- knocking the wind out of him in the process -- but their combined weight sent him plummeting again, this time into the basement.

At least, he hoped this was the basement, because he didn't think he could handle another landing like the last one.

Chris gasped desperately for breath. He was coughing up more dust than anything else. Panicked, he knew he had to sit up if he was to catch his breath, but he couldn't seem to summon the strength necessary to move. Instead, he waited until he could at least manage a regular rasping, and then began taking stock of the situation. First, he tried wiggling his fingers and toes to see if anything was broken -- and blanched when they refused to respond.

"Hello? Chris?" The voice was faint and far away. It had to be coming from above. "Are you okay down there?"

The panic began to well inside him again. "Paralysed. I'm paralysed. I can't move!"

He heard her scrambling away, then nothing at all for a few long minutes. Just as he was becoming convinced that she had abandoned him, her voice called out again.

"Chris, you're going to have to hold tight. I'm going to go get help. There's no way I can get around the hole and make it back to the stairs, but I think I can escape out a window and make my way down from there."

He wanted to cry out, to beg her to stay, but he knew he needed help. "Okay, but be quick." He licked his lips. "Please, Kim? Please be quick."

The sound of scrambling came again from above, and then more silence. Chris closed his eyes and tried to force his body to relax, to remain still, and to allow the healing process to work its magic. The thought of being permanently paralyzed was more than he could cope with. It scared him, but it also depressed him.

He felt so lost, so doomed, that the concept of putting forth any effort at all to rescue himself was alien to him.

{This . . . is good.}

A strange, inhuman voice reverberated off the walls.

{Very good . . . those who struggle . . . die . . . you . . . you I can use.}

Chris catapulted from panic to absolute terror in the space of a heartbeat. His head snapped left and right in a vain attempt to place it, but the voice seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"Who?" He had to swallow past the lump of fear in his throat. "Who's out there?"

Silence was the only response.

A cold sweat was trickling down his face, but that was the only physical sensation in his suddenly claustrophobic corner of the world. The darkness was pressing in upon him with suffocating intensity, and he had no idea who -- or what -- was out there. For all he knew, there could be some homeless, homicidal maniac crouched at his feet, just waiting for his moment. For all he knew, some inhuman monster could be sitting on his legs, already gnawing upon his flesh!

"Who's out there? Where are you?" He tried to keep his mind from slipping into madness. Where was Kim? It had only been a few minutes, but he wished she was there with him. He was clearly delirious, hallucinating, and he desperately needed somebody to keep him grounded in reality.

The silent darkness continued to mock him. Startling even himself, he suddenly screamed out, "What do you want?"

{Entertainment . . . amusement . . . diversion . . . perversion.}

Strangely, that chilling admission actually quelled some of his fears. He may have been trapped, completely at the mercy of his as-yet-unseen captor, but perhaps he could bargain his way to safety. High-pressure sales was his job, after all. He'd bargained with the best, negotiated deals he had no business even contemplating, and he was damned good at what he did. Besides, with his body already broken and useless, there was little he wouldn't be willing to do for his freedom. He honestly didn't care what price he had to pay, just so long as he got to see the sun again.

"Look," he promised, "whatever you want, I'll do it." Desperate for a glimpse of his fate, he gazed into the endless darkness, but it was no use. Try as he might, there was just no way his eyes were going to adjust. Down here there were no streetlights, no stars, no passing headlights, not even the faint illumination of a digital clock. This darkness was absolute.

Suddenly, something or someone lifted him up off the floor, severing the last of his physical sensations. As long as he'd been able to feel that cold, stone floor beneath his head, he knew he was alive. Now, though, it was like he'd been suspended in some kind of sensory deprivation tank. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, and nothing to feel. Only the fact that blood wasn't rushing to his head told him he was being held upright.

For all he knew, he might as well have been skewered upon some kind of giant meat hook.

{You are broken . . . but I will mend your inside . . . your outside . . . you . . . will become . . . mine.}

He cried out in despair as the hole above him slowly slid out of sight. He was being dragged deeper into the basement, away from the single, solitary, residual tie to his sanity. He remained little more than a head dripping sweat into the darkness for the longest time. Judging by his thirst, he must have passed in and out of consciousness several times, although there was nothing against which to judge the passage of time. It might easily have been several days before anything changed. Then again, maybe it was just a few minutes -- there was no way to know.

Chris wanted -- needed - to thrash around, to kick something, to hit something, but there was no outlet for his aggression. He'd never before felt quite so helpless. He didn't even know if he was still moving, much less where he was.

His first indication that something had changed was a very slight, almost imperceptible tingling in his arms. Under any other circumstances, it would have gone unnoticed, but after the terror of complete paralysis, it was impossible to ignore. Assuming he wasn't just imagining it, that tingling was the first indication he'd had that he might survive this ordeal intact.

Before long, the slight tingling became something more. He still couldn't see a thing, but it felt as if something had been wrapped tightly around his arms. Perhaps that's what was holding him up -- he couldn't yet feel enough to be sure -- but the phantom sensation was growing warmer and stronger the more he concentrated upon it. At the same time, he was beginning to notice a far different sensation down below. There was a warm, insistent, tightly focused pressure between his legs, almost as if he was sitting on a damp bicycle seat.

{You begin . . . to feel . . . to respond . . . this . . . is good.}

Something was definitely happening, of that he was certain. As to whether or not it was a good thing . . . well, time would tell.

His arms were beginning to throb -- almost painfully -- and now his legs seemed to be responding to the same kind of stimulation. As for the pressure between his legs, it hadn't changed, but he felt like he wanted to squirm away from it. The physical need was there, but that kind of movement was still beyond his control.

{You feel . . . but you do not . . . see.}

Long after the words themselves should have faded into silence, they continued to echo like laughter inside his head.

{Let . . . there be . . . light.}

The entire room exploded with a white-hot illumination. It was just as blinding and absolute as the earlier darkness, but the void of his prison was now white instead of black. After a few moments, his eyes did begin to adjust, but it was a slow, painful process. He paid for every new, blurry detail with wave after wave of agony, until he began to wonder if it was even worth it.

The first thing to come into focus was the dusty, crumbling stone wall ahead of him. It was hard to tell through all the mould and rust, but the stones seemed to be the same blue-grey as the wall that surrounded the yard outside. Something about them seemed almost ancient, as if they predated the brothel itself, but it was nothing he could put his finger on. Fortunately, they were a softly soothing colour to look at, and staring seemed to help with his headache.

As he allowed his gaze to slide across the wall he discovered the source of the blinding illumination that had so suddenly filled the room. There were antique iron braziers paced every ten to twelve feet along the wall, reminding him of some kind of medieval dungeon. They all appeared to be sporting the same white-hot flame, but there was something odd about them. He cautiously squinted at them out of the corner of his eye and realised that the braziers contained no torches to account for the flames.

"What the fuck?" He briefly considered the possibility of natural gas being piped through the walls, but he couldn't smell anything. Besides that, if there were still live gas lines here, the place likely would have gone up in flames long, long ago.

{You look . . . but you still . . . do not . . . see . . . look . . . closer.}

Suddenly his body was being jerked in all directions at once, manipulated like a puppet on a string. Although he was experiencing it, he barely felt it. It was like watching from inside a costume as it happened to somebody else. Whatever it was that had hold of his arms and legs yanked them all forward, while something else pulled him back by the waist. Fortunately, most of his body was still senseless from the crippling fall. Otherwise, being folded in half like that would have had him screaming in agony.

Seconds later, he was screaming in horror instead.

"Oh shit . . . this can't fucking be real." Wrapped tightly around each of his ankles was a dismembered black, ashen, sharply taloned claw. He could see them grasping and squeezing his naked, sweaty flesh. "No . . . fucking . . . way is this real." As for his arms, they were victims of the same grotesque bondage, only these claws were red and limned by faint traces of fire. "Son of a bitch. I . . . I want to fucking wake up right fucking now."