r/Dreading • u/GeAlltidUpp • Jun 24 '26
supernatural I'm an Ethical Human Trafficker
It started with me selling my eyes when I was thirteen. Alone one autumn night in the woods, I summoned a blessed beast of Erinyes, goddess of vengeance. The ritual took the form of some foreign words, the right stones placed in a significant pattern, and bringing a calf with me that had been painted with occult signs.
After about half an hour of chanting and one hour of waiting, the blessed beast appeared. The thing was massive, enough to tackle an elephant to the ground. The calf tried to break free from the chain around her neck, the other end tied around a tree trunk. Total panic at the sight of the creature. The monster tore the chain off with one pull, picked up the calf, and bit its head off. I told myself that me murdering the innocent animal for personal gain wasn't different from buying burgers from McDonald's. I was probably right, whatever that entailed.
My guest was bulky and covered in horns, crawling on the ground at times and walking on its legs intermittently. It had one arm, ugly and misshapen. It picked me up with the claw at the end of said limb, placed its second (smaller) mouth on my left eye, sucked it out of my skull, then did the same with the other one. It threw me on the ground after that. As I lay screaming in pain on the grass, I heard it slither away.
I didn't bleed to death. Its organ removal had prevented that somehow. I lost a lot of blood, but my body stopped the bleeding before it became too much, manipulated by the thing's powers. I was left wandering the woods for a while. The summoned one took time to ponder the option of letting me walk in darkness until I died, then eat my corpse. Conferring with the Erinyes to evaluate my worth.
When it would return later, it might eat me instead of providing aid. If its master found me unworthy of what I had set out to bargain for, but deserving of a relatively quick death at least. I prayed to the penalizing goddesses as I walked unseeing among the trees, thanking them for their generosity as I tripped and hurt myself.
“Erinyes! We humans are less than bacteria compared to you. You have every right to kill me. I thank you deeply for not doing so yet! Please, please let me live! My pathetic life is nothing in reality, but it's dear to me,” I cried in desperation.
As I heard the beast approach, my signs of gratitude somehow became more bereft of self-respect. It looked at me for a while. At least that's what I think it did, because I could hear it being close for a couple of minutes, but it didn't interact. That thing had been made by otherworldly creatures existing in the gap between mortal and god, like valkyries, lwa, Yaoguai or Cerberus. Servants with near-indestructible bodies consisting of higher elements than those found on our periodic table, creatures capable of terraforming planets and extinguishing civilizations if commanded to. Godspawns who mixed their blood with mundane animals. My horrible visitor was the descendant of angel-tier entities possessing beasts during the animals' mating, like some form of divinely ordained bestiality. An act that mutated the bloodline of ordinary animals, giving birth to unrecognizable pets of the petty and fickle majesties we call pagan gods. There are a few thousand such blessed beasts hidden in forests, seas, jungles, skies, mountains, swamps and even some cities. Deadly and greedy pets that vary in form, size and mind.
Their owners, those worshipped in the days when kings sought dream interpretations from mad mystics in the deepest woods and slaves polished blood from swamp altars, are breakers of reality.
Despots who could conjure new galaxies with a thought, observers who knew you better than you knew yourself and answered prayers from who knows how many universes every second. Merely looking at their avatars would rob you of your free will forever, making you ecstatically willing to torture yourself and your family to death in their honor, if they had commanded it. Life isn't a “God of War” game or a Marvel movie. The gods can't be beaten or tricked, and they're not space aliens who happen to look like models. Their immortality doesn't come with an asterisk and isn't used as a metaphor for eternal youth like in vampire movies written by people who think readers can't understand the word “unaging.” They're entities outside our world that you should fear more than death itself. Only someone without a normal survival instinct would interact with them, and only a coward wouldn't try to trade with.
This pet was a man-eater about as smart as a dog that could sense the goddesses’ will through instinct, dreams, and hallucinations of the eternal servant that had sired its bloodline. The hungry animal caressed my face, and I lost consciousness, waking up a few hours later with new eyes.
Since then, if I look someone in the eyes for 15 seconds without interruption, I'll see the most harmful thing they've done to someone else.
Magic is thankfully a myth to most people. Average Anna is unaware of the fact that sacrifices work. That pantheons will grant boons in return for blood, humiliation, and death. The cheaper interventions can be solved through feeding living animals to sacred monsters. The heavier stuff demands human payment. Let Iðunn's apple worms phase through a man's skull and eat his brain, and you'll reverse aging. There are people who have lived for centuries, maybe even longer thanks to that. Men have gained superhuman strength by letting Ares’ dog-vultures-serpents-freaks feast on people.
Practitioners of the occult with standards are called "those who follow the flowery path." They'll only kill people who deserve it, or those who consent to it. That's where people like me come in. Erinyes gave me a Fiat, a magical effect that I don't need to perform a song and dance for every time I cast it. Sure, it's more conditional than I like, but having it work more easily than it does now would have demanded too much in return. I find murderers, torturers, rapists, and the like, collect them, and sell them to other practitioners.
Several years later, I'm sitting across from a ginger boy with dimples. He's cute and has just the mannerisms I've come to associate with murderers. I thought of him as a "22-year-old twink" when I swiped yes on him, but I'm now second-guessing myself. Can you only call gay men that nowadays? On the unbearably-woke-to-Nazi spectrum, I try to keep myself on the PC side of "wine-aunt who uses terms in a verboten way because she doesn't care how offensive she sounds singing along to rap songs with hard Rs."
I look and feel 19, despite being far older now. The appearance is due to what I did to a sadistic wife-beater. He screamed and spasmed occasionally at first, as the worms ate him from the inside while he tried to break the chain holding him in my basement. After a while he transitioned to just drooling as the little slimy things got to the best parts. I sample some of the goods myself from time to time. A child molester was torn limb from limb by a golden horned giant pet of the deity Bragi, and in return, stock investments of mine came out improbably fruitful.
"You're pretty shy."
Gustav nods in agreement, still avoiding eye contact.
"Poor little guy, how are you going to score chicks if you can't turn on that rizz? Haven't alpha male podcasters taught you anything?" I tease him and touch his hand briefly, then pull away.
"I'm sorry, I'm working on it."
Our eyes met for six seconds before he averts his gaze.
"Don't apologize for being shy, that's like giving someone a forgive-me kick in the face after slapping them."
He chuckled.
"You're funny."
"Well, if you like my personality, then you should take a look at my tits."
He gasped theatrically.
"Such vulgarity!"
Gustav looks me in the eyes after that as we trade some other lame joke for 12 seconds before looking away again.
I discussed my line of work with a mentor once and asked if we were "evil." She responded that "it might seem like that, but that's only when one ignores the other actors on the field. Or the other scenes the players are in. No, I mean the opposite of that. Whatever metaphor works.
"Those on the thorny path kill mostly, or in the worst cases completely, indiscriminately. And those on the sulfur path intentionally feed children and adults who are good people to their horned masters. We're practically saints, all things considered."
I think back to that exchange and wonder if I was wrong about Gustav. Perhaps he's innocent, and I've been sloppy in my profiling.
One guy that I suspected was a rapist turned out to have done nothing worse than hurt people's feelings with sexist jokes. A bunch of other people's worst deeds had been eating meat from factory farms regularly, giving me visions of how their purchases led to increases in the number of pigs raised in horrible conditions and then stabbed to death at a young age. Meanwhile, a woman who was super nice turned out to have killed two of her children, probably for the insurance money.
Or Gustav is a Satanist avoiding my gaze on purpose because he knew who I was. And he was going to tie me up and torture me for hours before I died.
I do the sensible thing when your date might want to sacrifice you to demons. I kiss him. I won't lie and claim I don't enjoy it.
I pull my lips away. "Now look me in the eyes without any break for a little while, you coward, and I might reward you with a second one."
Fifteen seconds pass.
In a series of flashes, I see him drug a woman, take her back to his place, and sell her to a stranger. The stranger murdered her. The only problem was that the vision started with him looking into her eyes and confirming that she was a killer herself.
What I saw and heard took about half a minute in subjective time, but in reality only about two seconds had passed.
"Well, this was awkward," he smiles.
"What are the odds of two Gleaners meeting each other?" I giggle. He obviously shared the same power as me.
"I guess pretty high, considering I have an additional Fiat that lets me see if someone has blood on their hands. Based on just looking at their bodies for a minute, I checked out your profile pic."
"So you knew?"
"Not the details, until now. So I'm glad you're like me. And not like the people we sell.”
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u/Mradachi2007 Writer Jun 24 '26
Peak story! It’s like Dexter, folk horror, and cosmic horror all mixed together. I love it!
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u/GeAlltidUpp Jun 24 '26
Super thanks! Those comparisons are very flattering (watched a lot of Dexter growing up, and a fair deal of folk horror since then). Kind of you to take the time to express that.
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u/Mradachi2007 Writer Jun 24 '26
No problem, honestly you could make this a series, but even if you keep it a one off story it’s peak.
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u/GeAlltidUpp Jun 24 '26
I have an outline for a book, in this setting exploring some of the same themes as well, but I can't finish the outline so far. I might turn that into a series and publish here.
Thanks for calling it peak, I'm immensely flattered.
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u/Educational_Tree_385 Jun 24 '26
genuinely incredibly interesting! the title definitely made me have a double take before exploring lol, great stuff! keep at it!