The Fractal Paw
#1 of Stories
This is a story about a Fractal Paw character I came up with for a friend of mine who has a huge paw fetish. The FP was the only solution I could come up with to satiate his incredible lust of paws paws paws!
"Hello! Welcome to Colorado's Exotic Emporium!" he said as I entered through the door of the tiny curio shop. The place was tidy and well lit for being in the historic district, with all the little odds and ends neatly arranged on shelves through out the store.
It made me sick.
I just wanted to tear the place apart and smash all his little trinkets to bits in front of him. But all I did was smile as I approached the counter and replied "Hello, I'm looking for a certain artifact. Something old and rare that I heard you might have on hand here, I believe it is called the Fractal Paw?". I saw him blink at the mention of the Fractal Paw and just for a moment saw something wash across his face, an emotion, a thought, but I couldn't discern what it was. No matter, this simple break in his smiling facade was enough to confirm that I had come to the right place.
"I'm sorry to say that we have no such thing here at this store. I usually pride myself on keeping stocked with just about any thing one would want, for a price of course! But maybe you would be interested in something else, like say, a mechanical dancing elephant that would bring you hours of countless amusement and joy!" head said using his most pleasant salesman pitch. I couldn't stand to hear any more drivel and lies from him so I reached up between his ears, grabbed his head by the fur and slammed it down into the counter 2 times till his head was bleeding out onto his fur and all over his sickeningly clean counter top. Not so clean anymore! In a rage I slammed his head into the counter one more time for making me waste a moment of my time listening to his garbage.
While leaning in dangerously close to his ear I said. "Tell me where the Fractal Paw is at or I will make you suffer in ways you can't even imagine." He moaned just a little while I pressed his face to the counter and smeared it in the blood running out of the cut in his forehead. When he didn't respond I whispered "And before I'm done with you, I'll start working on your friends. I've been watching you for a while now and know all your little social buddies. So if you want to keep them safe, you will give me what I want. Or not, in which case I'll get my satisfaction by tearing everything you love apart instead." At this, I heard him start to mumble something while I held him down.
"Speak up, I can't hear you when you are whining like a baby." Turning his head so I could head him better he mumbled "Ok, I'll take you to it. It's 15 kilometers outside of town to the south,in an abandoned church. But are you sure that that you want this...." I pulled out my pistol and whipped him against the back of the head, knocking him out before he could finish his thought. I knew that Colorado was a master conversationalist from my observations of him over the last 10 months, but even just the few things he said infuriated me for some reason. Part of that reason was that he was always so 'nice' and people like that deserved everything I gave to them when I had my way. Weak, nice, accommodating people that had no idea about the pleasures of inflicting torment on others. Maybe when I was done with this, I would show him anyway what real pain was like once I had access to the Fractal Paw.
As I tied him up and brought his heavy feline body out behind the store to put in my delivery truck, I thought about the object of my desire. All the research I had done on it described it as an object able to grant immense pleasure and pain depending on who possessed it. The local opium dens where I usually prowled for prey were spreading word about this mysterious artifact, which I discounted till I had taken one participant in my 'leisure time activities' who told me where to find the prize. He was a mess before he finally cracked and told me about Colorado's shop, which began this little journey that I now found myself on. After loading up the body and making sure it was secured, I drove outside of the city to where he had said it would be. If he was making this up or trying anything funny, he was going to suffer even worse than what I had originally planned for him.
Pulling up to the church, I unloaded Colorado and waited for him to wake up while holding my pistol aimed at him. "Time to wake up, sleepy head" I said as I kicked him just enough to open up the gash on his head from earlier so that it would start trickling blood again. "Stand up and walk, show me where the artifact is at. Now." He slowly got up and looked at the pistol, then at me and calmly asked "Are you sure you want this? This isn't what you think it is going to be." "Of course it is, and even if it isn't, I've come too far to turn back now" Which was an honest answer. If this turned out to be a disappointing chase of a red herring, at least I'd have some fun with the Bobcat before making him beg to be put down. "Very well, but remember that this is what you want." he replied, turning toward the church. I walked behind him, just far enough away that he couldn't turn around and take the gun from me. As we entered the building, I could smell the rot of neglect and mold that had accumulated from years of being abandoned. We went to the back of the grand room and he pulled out a key from his vest that unlocked a small gate behind the altar. As the gate opened, a series of small lights came on and barely illuminated the stairs going down into the crypt below.
"Down this way to get what you want" he said as he closed his eyes for a moment and slowly stepped down the stairs.
As soon as I entered the gate and began walking the stairs behind him a wind blew up through the tunnel. I saw a small flash of light and felt a stinging in my eye as I tried blinked to get out whatever speck had flown up the hallway. "Stop! What was that light?"
"That's what you came for, The Fractal Paw. it won't be much longer now that we are heading down. You should expect to see more flashes as we get closer." He was right. As I followed him down into the crypt, I was seeing more flashes of light from every direction. They were only there for a moment, but they were beautiful. Like something warm and enticing. Hot blood flowing over instruments of pain. The cries for mercy from a victim as I worked on them for hours. This is what I was looking for and somehow I found it! As we reached the bottom of the stairs, we came to a small hallway that led into a larger chamber with whirring machines around the side of the room.
"Where are we and where is my prize?" I screamed at him as he stopped in the center of the room. Not able to take any more of this waiting and heady with adrenaline from the anticipation the lights brought, I shot him in the shoulder. "WHERE IS IT?!"
"Look up."
As I looked up at the ceiling, I finally saw it. The Paw.
Standing there looking at it, I barely noticed that it filled up the entire ceiling, which must have been at least 10 meters square. The Fractal Paw was shining with a brilliant multicolored outline of a feline paw that shimmered and...changed.
"I see it moving and shifting, a pawed edge growing to encompass the whole and then starting over again, slowly, but...picking up speed, it is beautiful, and all mine!"
And that's when the sound came. It was a subtle buzzing at first that went along with the speed of the fractal, but was now growing quickly into a painful cacophony of noises, clicks, harmonies and dissonance.
"What's happening?! What the hell is this thing!?"
Holding his shoulder and putting a handkerchief on the wound to stop the bleeding he said "It's what you wanted, though you may have misheard from those poor souls 'riding the dragon' in your hunting grounds. I'd been watching you for years as you went about your excursions and taking joy in tormenting those less fortunate than yourself for your own amusement. But I didn't know quite what to do with you till I made contact with the Fractal Paw in this very communications room that I built. The Paw is older than the universe and not of this time line, so it came to me, seeking sanctuary from the pain that this reality inflicted on it. It, like most intelligent creatures, knows the services I can provide to beings of the extraordinary, or monsters as you might call them."
"But the pain, the sound, this isn't what I was looking for myself, make it stop!" I tried to look away but everywhere I looked the fractal was always there in front of me, growing steadily more intense. Always in front of me no matter where I looked.
"The Fractal Paw, a being of immense pleasure and pain to whoever it possessed. It requires a host mind to nourish itself on and a body interact in this world. Some people describe the experience as most profound and pleasurable after they awaken from centuries of voluntary service. A service which you adamantly entered into once you followed me down the stairs. The Fractal Paw just needed time to adjust to it's new environment, which is why I brought you here to this room."
My entire body felt like it was on fire as my vision began to black out and closed in around the fractal paw burning in my mind. I could barely hear Colorado above the intensely deafening roar of sound that seemed to be coming from everywhere and working in time with the flashing Paw. The last thing I heard was,
"As soon as you entered the gate upstairs, the tiny Fractal Paw entered your eye."
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