#i wanted to tear out his spine tear off his face literally maim his corpse unimaginable violence death death death burn him alive etc

[whumping-every-day]

Hey Sarah! Congrats on getting your card! I'm sorry you've been having a few rough days of writing. Writer's block stinks big time. Could I possibly request mercy killing from your card? If you have time and want to. I'm picturing the whimper maybe doing it to "free" a friend of the Whumpee that has also been captured? Thank you so much for all the effort you put into your stories. Please don't pressure yourself about them. We love them whenever you publish then. It should be fun for you!

Baby, buddy, my friend... thank you so much for your kind words. Also, you may regret asking me this. Because I saw this request, and immediately decided on doing the worst thing ever.

Have an Au of my vampire series, where Callum does not find and rescue Ash in time. Instead, Ash remains with the hunters who originally captured him. Callum happens to stop by years later to visit a friend. 

Content Warnings: Major character death!!! (non-canonical, but still) mouth/face/eye/finger gore, blood, broken/shattered bones, aftermath of torture, injuries, dehumanizing language, muzzles, put on display, tortured literally out of his mind, brief vomit, mercy killing. 

Tagging the vampire gang: @pepperonyscience @angelsuperwholock @pennsss @silver-sparrow-462 @silverinkgoldenquill @kestrelsparverius @learningtowhump @shameless-whumper @latenightcupsofcoffee @thebluejayswhump @what-huh-imconfused  @lostbetweenvampiresandmusic @vickytokio @pink-and-purple-flowers @gonna-feel-that-tomorrow @whump-em @umniyah-s

-- 

The creature twitches and shudders as it falls to the packed earth. The crowd of onlookers is thinner, now, as dusk starts to fall. A few of the townspeople linger, though, and the hunters just stand around and watch as they deal a flurry of kicks and insults to the quivering lump of flesh on the ground. 

That’s all it is, anymore. A lump of flesh. The muzzle is a part of its face, and its eye sockets are empty behind bleeding eyelids. 

There’s the rattling of strained, laboured breathing, but there is no other sound. Not even when one of the larger assailants sets his foot on the vampire’s chest and shoves. Something cracks as the creature’s torso caves in. 

“Alright, alright. ‘m afraid you will have to come back tomorrow, boys.” One of the hunters scoops up the chain attached to the creature’s collar. “Don’t worry, it’s not going anywhere.” 

One of the men laughs, wiping his boot off on the grass as if he’s touched something filthy. “Yeah, I should hope so. That thing’s practically our mascot now.” 

It takes some time, but the remaining villagers slowly start to disperse as the hunters drag the still-juddering corpse inside. It’s breathing, technically, but it’s still a corpse. There’s nothing about it that looks human anymore, not its face or its body. Its skin is still smoking, and the stench of burning meat still permeates the courtyard. Night falls, and the courtyard is empty, and the creature lies in a cage made of iron and floats on a sea of nothingness and agony. 

-- 

“Didn’t you say you have a vampire here?” Callum takes a long draw out of his tankard, drumming his fingers on the wood of the bar. He doesn’t know the hunter in front of him that well, but well enough that not stopping by when he’s in town would be rude. Derik is short and rotund, thick and broad. 

“Aww, yeah, man.” Derik is considerably deeper into his bottle than Callum is. “ ‘s hardly a vampire now, though. It’s a money-maker. Who’da ever thought people would pay to stand around ‘n watch us break it? It don’t even respond, anymore. ‘s boring.” The man slurs, glaring pensively into his bottle. 

Callum hides his grimace fairly well, but his next swig of beer tastes bitter on his tongue. He’s done awful things to these creatures, of course, but he tries to keep it quick. A bolt to the chest, or a clean decapitation with a silver blade. But then, he’s never been short on funds, so maybe he shouldn’t talk. “Hey. If it puts food on the table...” 

Derik snorts. “Barely. ‘sides, tha’s not the point. It deserves it.” 

“Ah.” Callum takes another drink. “So you guys caught it, and just... kept it?” 

“Mm-hmm.” Derik’s cheeks are flushed, and he looked about ready to pass out. But his eyes brighten suddenly, and he leans forward, nearly unbalancing on the stool. “You wanna see?” 

“Do I want to-” Callum breaks off. He doesn’t understand why the question fills him with a nameless sort of dread. He doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t want to know. And yet, that terrible dread is translating into sick curiosity. “I’ll take a peek.” 

“Yeeaaahh, that’s my man,” Derik crows. He slings a careless arm around Callum’s shoulders, and his breath stinks like booze. 

Callum is starting to regret coming here at all. 

--

“This is your vampire?” The words fall from his lips as horrified, and for a split second, for just a moment, it feels like it’s happened before. But everything is different, this time; everything is worse. 

They’ve disassembled the creature, piece by piece. Callum mistakes the dark lump for a shadow at first, but then the shadow moves. Callum’s hand falls to his knife automatically - but the figure is keening, quiet and raw. It sounds like a child sobbing, or a wounded, dying animal. It sends shivers down Callum’s spine. 

“Oh, yeah. It don’t do much no more...” Derik stumbles over to it, and he’s not steady on his feet, but he’s aware enough to spit down on it. The flesh of its lower face is burned away. Callum can see its cheekbones, and that it’s missing its teeth. Not just its fangs. All of its teeth. 

Callum gags a little and takes a step back, feeling horror roil in his gut. “What is wrong with you people?” 

Derik is busy fumbling with his pants, like he’s going to take a piss right on the creature’s broken body. He pauses at the words though, brow creasing. “Wha’s wrong with you?” He counters. “ ‘s a vampire. I can do.. wh-ever I want.” 

Callum can’t catch his breath, suddenly. The smell in the little stone room is rancid; filth and piss and rot, and the sour, overlaying stench of terror. The vampire is missing fingers, and the ones that remain are bent and crushed. Callum feels very cold, suddenly, and then very warm. 

His fingers shake as he grips his knife and draws it. He is driven by cold horror as he moves, his mind not even catching up with his body. 

Derik is too drunk to see him coming. Callum knocks him over the head with the hilt, and the man drops like a stone. Callum has to stifle the urge to keep hitting him. 

The vampire does not seem to be conscious of his presence... or of anything at all, really. Callum walks over to it, and the longer he stares, the more he feels the alcohol twisting and turning in his gut. 

It’s only when he sees the creature’s severed tendons, and the way the bottoms of its feet have been mangled, that he turns and vomits all over the floor. 

“Oh my god,” he mutters, wiping the back of his mouth. This goes far beyond overkill. This is - this is something else. This is the deepest expression of human evil he’s ever come across. Callum has never been religious, but this is an abhorrence.

There’s a stake in his hand as he crouches beside the trembling lump of skin and bone. Its head jerks in his direction, and the keening gets a little louder. 

He can’t heal it. Callum has tested the limits of a vampire’s body himself, but he’s never seen torture like this. He’d have to drain three people or over to even think of fixing it, and even then... Callum looks at the way its empty eyelids flutter, the way the exposed, caved bones in its chest rattle and wheeze. No. Healing it would not be a kindness. 

The hunter draws in an unsteady breath and grips the stake. It will be easy from here; a quick plunge, not even a moving target. But he can’t help but reach out, just once, as if something else is guiding his hand. As if allowing this creature’s last moments of contact to be violent is too much.

There’s no patch of the creature’s flesh that is not maimed in some way. Callum settles a hand as gently as he can over its empty eyes, and his jaw clenches at the way it shudders and twitches. 

“Easy,” he murmurs, even as he readies the stake. “You can rest now.” He doesn’t know why he’s trying to talk to it. It can’t understand him. Callum squeezes his eyes shut just for a moment, as if hoping to purge the gory image from his mind. But it’s still there for him when he looks again, and the creature is limp under his hand, finally fallen silent. It’s waiting, he realizes. Callum’s hands shake with fury, but he squeezes the stake harder and grits his teeth. “I give you mercy.” 

It’s a harsh motion, quick and decisive, and the creature turns to dust beneath his fingers. Callum is left gripping the worn wooden steak with angry tears in his eyes. Everything about this is wrong. Everything. 

He’s sick at heart as he stands, and as he goes back to the bar and pays his tab, and as he finds his way out to the stables and saddles his horse. There are monsters in their world, Callum knows this. But he will never again forget that the worst monster is and always has been humanity. 

It’s just one night in the course of his life, but Callum isn’t ever able to forget what he saw. And when he gets home and goes to collapse onto his cot, for some reason, the lab feels emptier than it ever has before.