Prometheus Busted — Part 4 (CBT)

Heyo, everyone! It's been a long while since I last posted a story here, especially since urgent work assignments, a bout of sickness, and other real life things have been keeping me occupied, but I finally managed to get the next chapter of my superhero CBT tale completed after a flash of inspiration! I spent the last two or so chapters fleshing out a character that wasn't Tristan, even though he's the main character of this entire story, so I decided to make up for it with a chapter where he gets the spotlight all to himself. I also wanted to test out just how much abuse he can take, not just directed at his luckless nards but at the rest of him in general. I also wanted to write a CBT scenario I've pictured for a while now: a monstrous creature viciously castrating someone. I tried to write this chapter like a piece of straight-up horror fiction rather than the usual erotica featured on this blog, since although I've written feral animals busting people before, I didn't want to make this story sound like it was featuring beastiality, which I define as a person willingly engaging in inappropriate things with an animal. Maybe I can tolerate a creature having their way with a hapless person, but not if they use their actual genitalia rather than tentacles to do it. I can assure you that there is absolutely no human/reptile sex in this story of any kind. As for traditional monster violence, though... Well, that's another matter altogether.

Tristan's healing ability, while given to him during the development of this project just so he can get brutally castrated over and over without permanent harm, is something I haven't really explored in depth with regards to scenarios involving more standard violence, which is why this chapter is far, FAR more graphic than usual. Yes, you heard me right: THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS MULTIPLE INSTANCES OF EXTREMELY GRAPHIC VIOLENCE AND BODILY HARM, AND IS NOT SAFE TO READ ON ANY LEVEL IF YOU'RE AVERSE TO GORE. Gosh, I haven't written outright guro in a very long time, and the last time I did so it involved a character from an existing work of fiction getting torn to ribbons. Tristan, of course, is definitely gonna be luckier than that, but not by much. That being said, though, I'll go a bit easier on any part of him that isn't his manhood after this and the next two chapters, since I believe they're more than enough to demonstrate what he's capable of - even if he doesn't know it yet. ;) 

Sadly, the idea of what poor Tristan has to go through in this chapter isn't entirely mine, since it was one of the works of sfzephyr (his BustNut Studios three-parter specifically, which is technically a rewrite of a story by BustNut from the Eunuch.org website) that served as a bit of the inspiration behind this chapter as well as one I'll be getting to in due course. Once again, I highly recommend checking out his work, and my thanks go to him for the wonderful story that indirectly gave me the idea for this horrifying scenario!

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Prometheus Busted — Part 4

By Skaea

Contains: F/M, M/M, and */M ballbusting, femdom, peril, violence/gore, and graphic castration.

Word Count: 7,756 

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Chapter 4: Hydra Attack!

The light of the crescent moon shined freely over the glistening waters of the city harbor, without a single cloud in the night sky to obscure it. Obviously, almost every boat and submarine in use by the citizens and labor of the city operated only during the daytime, and they all were dormant and tethered to the docks at this late hour. Only the occasional cruise ship or tanker could be seen in the distance, its lights like unblinking stars so close to the horizon.

The city bordering the harbor was bustling with nightlife by this time, but not so for the harbor itself. It was peaceful and quiet, with only the sound of the gentle ocean waves lapping against the wood and concrete structures jutting out of the water.

In short, it was more than the two young studs who’d snuck onto the local fishing pier for an early-morning dip could’ve asked for.

“Last one in’s a rotten egg, Brent!” cried Earl. The lithe, athletic blond obviously had a head start, but even without it he was much faster than his muscle-bound friend could hope to be. He raced off the deck without a second thought, and leaped into the water.

Only to scream in shock and horror.

“Or was that the first one in?” asked the brown-haired football jock, his dark eyes glinting with mirth while Earl sputtered and cursed below.

“D-d-damn, this water’s c-colder th-than I th-th-thought!!” The soccer player shivered from scalp to toes, treading water just in front of the pier, but otherwise nothing else terrible happened to him after a few more seconds.

“Cannonball!!” cried Brent.

“No, no, NO—” cried Earl, but it was too late. There was a tremendous SPLASH, and then the blond’s face and scalp were drenched by the blast front of his buddy’s entrance.

The two men surfaced, laughing heartily, and began splashing each other with waves of seawater. The cool night air echoed with their joyous cries for several minutes before they decided to stop fooling around and just relax.

“Ahhh… Nobody around to chase us off, a clear sky, a calm sea… Now this is what I call a perfect night,” said Earl.

“You said it,” said Brent. “Oof, I feel like something’s building up inside me real bad… I haven’t come for two days, man!”

“Preparing for that chick you met at that wicked party the other night?” Earl laughed. “Heh, I feel you!”

“I knooooow, but I gotta unload right now! I can’t take it anymore!”

“Think she’ll mind less spunk, or…?”

“I don’t think she cares how much gets in her, I gotta get it all out before my nards explode!”

Before the other man could respond, Brent had frantically started pumping himself with one hand, using the other to tread water. The feeling of the cold sea against his loins only heightened their sensitivity, and it only took a few strokes before his massive cock stiffened like a ramrod. And a few more resulted in the man letting out a loud moan of pleasure, his orgasm rocking through him until it burst out of his dick in a visible cloud of white.

Earl, however, was determined not to let it out until the time was right. He too had met a pretty girl at the same party, and they’d hit it off so well, no doubt due to his good looks. He’d been given her number after just ten minutes of conversation, along with a promise that he’d be treated to a night he’d never forget the next time their paths crossed. He couldn’t wait for that opportunity, especially because it would allow him to win a bet he’d made with his friend that night: if he could get laid before Brent, then—

His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden scream.

“Brent? What’s wrong?!” Earl cried, whirling his head to face his buddy.

“SOMETHING BIT ME!” The brunette frantically swam towards the ladder. “IT FUCKIN’ BIT ME!!”

Earl didn’t need to be told twice; within a matter of seconds, he was following Brent back onto the dock. He was quite sure that the dark stains on the ladder and the deck of the pier weren’t left by seawater…

The moonlight made the water droplets clinging to the boys’ bodies sparkle like jewels, but in Brent’s case, this masculine image was ruined by multiple horrible black veins beginning to spread across his monster cock… veins which were spreading from multiple bleeding puncture wounds upon his dick head, each almost as wide as a pencil.

“IT BURRRRRNNNNS!!” he cried, struggling to keep from keeling over in sheer pain.

“BRENT!” Earl began to panic, realizing what was happening. “I’ve got a knife, h-hold still!”

“CUT IT OFFFFFFFFF!!”

Earl reached into his pants pocket and withdrew his knife, a small but very sharp blade he usually bought with him while camping. He grabbed onto Brent’s swelling, bleeding cock-head and pulled his friend’s dick straight.

“Don’t scream,” he said. And then he swung his knife in a blur of movement.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!”

Brent was bleeding quite badly from the stump where his once proud fuck-meat had been, but at least there wasn’t any poison in his veins now. Luckily, he’d gone limp the moment he’d been bitten, or the rush of blood to his crotch would’ve emptied him within minutes.

“G-get me to the hospital!” he cried, trails of blood already dripping down his legs. “I-I need—”

“Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll get help!” Earl allowed his friend to slump over his shoulder, but had to strain quite a lot to keep his very heavy friend from bowling him over entirely. “It’s okay! Everything’s alright! You’re gonna be juuuust f—”

He never finished his sentence. Brent suddenly let out a scream so loud that it sent birds that had been sleeping in trees several hundred feet away to scatter in panic. Then Earl felt his weight leave him, causing him to spin around in terror. It was as though an invisible force had grabbed him by his ass and was now pulling him away from his friend!

“NOOOOOOOOO! EAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRLLLLLL!!!” Brent tried to dig his fingers into the wooden deck, but his nails couldn’t even scratch the treated surface. Earl scrambled towards him, trying to help, but the serpentine shape that had seized him was too fast, too strong! And worse still, it hadn’t grabbed his rear, but his testicles, seizing his scrotum and pulling it with enough force to yank him off his feet.

Just before Brent could be dragged into the abyss, Earl grabbed his hand and attempted to tug him free. But it was of no use whatsoever, for next moment, the thing yanked with such force that Brent was actually wrenched out of Earl’s grip, a wet ripping sound coming from his crotch making him scream even louder. The larger man was suddenly hoisted into the air, screaming and crying and flailing, lifted a dozen feet over the churning water.

Then a second long, dark shape burst out of the water, clamping the jaws at the end of it onto Brent’s neck. The two shapes tugged in unison, and a horrible tearing noise could be heard as the first one pulled his fat juicy nuts free from his body.

Earl screamed in horror, but he was powerless to stop the things from vanishing into the water with a mighty splash of foam and blood, taking his best buddy with him.

The poor soccer athlete sank to his knees, sobbing. This couldn’t be happening… He’d just lost his closest friend and he couldn’t do anything to stop it… And nobody was going to believe him. They’d probably just arrest him for manslaughter charges once they saw all the blood…

Then a menacing hiss came from behind him, making his blood feel like ice in his veins. He whirled, lashing out with his knife and screaming in rage and terror, but the thing was too fast for him. It lunged with open jaws, ducking under his slashing strike, and engulfed his entire manhood in its awful maw!

Earl shrieked like a man possessed. Dozens of razor-sharp fangs had sprung out of its gums like switchblades, plunging THROUGH his pants and INTO the sensitive meat of his cock and balls. Almost instantly, his loins felt like they were on fire, the horrible venom coursing through his veins and turning them black as tar.

The beast suddenly yanked its head back, the recurved teeth tearing through his flesh and making him scream even louder. In a wild panic, he slashed at the creature with his knife, aiming for its eyes, but the blade glanced off of thick head scales without dealing any real damage.

Then a second monster grabbed his wrist, the intense pain of all those venomous fangs forcing him to release his knife, which fell onto the deck and embedded itself into its surface.

The hapless man felt the second head jerk back, and then the horrible sensation of his ARM being wrenched off its socket caused him to go silent out of total agony. His body instantly went limp while the first creature actually lifted him into the air by his balls. The last thing he thought before it started shaking its prize like a ragdoll was the relief that he’d be coming for Brent very shortly, wherever he was.

The inertia from the monster’s thrashing promptly snapped his neck, and then both the corpse’s pants and the flesh around his crotch gave way. The mangled body separated from its genitals with a sickening SHRRRIPPP, and splashed into the water, where yet a third creature snatched it up. The first two promptly dove into the water with their own prizes, the great commotion continuing for a long while as the numerous snapping heads proceeded to fight over the tender flesh of their victims.

Eventually, though, the splashes and churning waters died down, leaving only a knife embedded in the deck, stains of blood, and a cloud of red in the water around the pier to tell the sorry tale of Brent and Earl’s final swim. It was peaceful and quiet, with only the sound of the gentle ocean waves lapping against the wood and concrete structures jutting out of the water.

**********

“Yet another brutal killing has devastated the coastal community of Monumentropolis — and this time, it was a double whammy. Just last night, the remains of Brenton Kane, 24 and Earl Summerfield, 22, were discovered near the western fishing pier of the harbor, showing the same signs of grisly dismemberment as those of the last eleven people who were murdered in the harbor district just this month. Authorities suspect foul play, but they have not announced a culprit yet, though they did state in a press conference this morning that from what forensic investigation of the bodies has indicated, they’re starting to question whether the murderer was human…”

Tristan muted his TV without a second thought. Even if the station had wisely censored the gory details, he still couldn’t help but look away. The mere thought of what had happened to these men made him sick. He hadn’t been there to prevent these deaths, and worse yet, nobody else was preventing them, either. Didn’t authorities respond almost immediately when a giant fire-breathing dragon had rampaged through his construction zone weeks earlier? Hypocrites, the lot of them. All they wanted was some good press… No. He couldn’t think that way. He was one of them now, and the best he could do to help them relate to the lower class was to set an example.

The problem was that in this case, setting an example meant tracking down whatever had killed all those innocent people. Which was probably a suicidal endeavor, but hey, if he’d survived getting run clean through by a piece of rebar, then sorting this mess out shouldn’t be too much of an issue… right?

He wasn’t sure what to expect, but then again, that was bound to be the case for pretty much any crisis he got himself into. Monumentropolis was full of such incidents, he knew that much. He simply had no idea what kind of threat he was dealing with, or how prepared he was for it.

About the only thing for certain was that he was woefully underprepared.

Not that it would’ve stopped him, since his regenerative ability had given him a newfound confidence, and about the only thing he had to worry about was his manhood, which he’d lost and regrown several times already. He would swear his testicles had gotten a little bigger each time, as though they were almost adapting to their newfound trauma conga line. Only they were now even easier targets. The quickest way for whatever he was up against to incapacitate him would simply be to aim for his crotch, and that was exactly why he’d had his suit equipped with a cup…

He shook the thoughts out of his head. The little things always kept him from thinking about the general issue, and that was a bad habit he had to outgrow. First thing this weekend, he thought to himself, he’d take a stroll at the harbor and check out what was happening.

For now, though, it was back to work. Sucky, ignorant, arduous work, the kind of drudgery that only concerned the aftermath of shitfests like this.

Were his occasional feats of heroism really worth it?

*****

The following Saturday found Tristan exiting the bus at the stop closest to the harbor. He was quite sure that he was going to turn up empty, especially since there was usually no sign of the killer whenever a massacre happened. But that wasn’t going to stop him from trying anyway.

Even before he’d first found out about his ability, Tristan had never thought of himself as a guy with a big name or a stellar reputation. He was just doing what he was good at, even if it wasn’t good enough compared to a lot of other people. All the same, this didn’t change the fact that he was in a precarious position — too important now to be considered a bystander, but not famous enough to make the big leagues. There wasn’t any prestige in his line of work, and his hard effort would go unappreciated by everyone else — meaning that nobody would really care if he ended up being picked off by the monster of the day. He’d started doubting even the mayor would treat him as anything more than a statistic if something happened to him now.

What kept him from giving up altogether was the simple but incredibly empowering notion that someone had to deal with the threats that nobody else would want to be around. Whatever had been killing these people, the all-stars upstairs weren’t going to dirty their hands trying to wrangle it into submission. Serial killers probably haunted this place all the time, so maybe the police would be able to handle this latest one just fine?

But as Tristan jogged along the edge of the harbor, bathed by the orange glow of the setting sun, his hopes began to fade along with the light — being alone and unprotected at a time like this would surely expose him to attack, so why was nobody springing out of a dustbin and knifing him in the chest?

By the time the sun went down altogether, he’d already gone from one end of the harbor to the other and back, and still there was not a single soul lurking in the shadows in wait for him. In fact, almost every house in the area had the windows locked and the drapes closed, so this mysterious killer wouldn’t be able to try their luck with any of them.

Which meant that Tristan was exposed and vulnerable out here, and if it weren’t for his healing ability he’d be dead the next morning.

He slowed down and stopped in front of an old, abandoned boat house, situated in front of a delivery site for boat cargo right next to the water. Taking a flashlight out of his pocket, he turned it on and shone it upon each and every visible corner of the lot in turn.

And yet, even after almost two hours of acting as live bait, he still came up empty.

He was just about to turn and leave, hoping to try his luck again next time he didn’t have work, when a loud splash from the loading dock made him nearly leap out of his skin. He had to fumble not to drop his flashlight, and frantically scrambled to turn it off.

“H-hello?” he asked to nobody in particular. “…help?”

At first, there was no response. But then he heard a spine-chilling noise close by — the sound of a sinuous winding thing emerging from the water and onto the dock. Its scaled underbelly grating against the concrete and salt-encrusted wood rang in his ears at the exact same time as an awful hiss like a gas leak made his blood run cold as ice.

Tristan froze, as though suddenly turned to stone. Whatever was making that noise was just thirty feet away from him.

And it was getting closer.

Daring not to make any sudden moves, he turned his head just slightly to get a look at what he was up against. From the corner of his eye, he could make out a long, curving shape gliding across the harbor towards him, its front end twisting this way and that, as though searching for something. Something juicy and warm.

Very slowly, daring not to make any sudden moves, he turned around to face the creature. Its great muscular body was as thick as his torso, its snake-like scales dripping with seawater. Hard spiky plates covered its back, and there was a pair of tiny, useless clawed flippers near its front end, one on each side. Its yellow eyes, almost luminescent in the darkness, had evil-looking vertical slits for pupils, and a long forked tongue flickered in and out of its mouth every so often.

Whatever this… this thing was, it must’ve emerged from the waters beneath the harbor. But how could such a massive beast have kept itself hidden and picked off thirteen people without being noticed? Surely, at least one of the heroes who patrolled the waters around the harbor would’ve spotted it much earlier, unless…

Unless it chose to hunt when it was sure no heroes were around.

The thought made Tristan’s heart sink. There was nobody around to help him should it choose to attack. He started silently backing away, hoping the serpent wouldn’t notice.

Just when things seemed like they couldn’t get any worse, the monster suddenly reared up, reaching a height almost twice as tall as him. It was then that he realized that it had no less than seven heads.

And every single one was staring right at him.

Don’t move, don’t move, DON’T MOVE… Tristan’s heart was beating in his throat, a cold sweat breaking out upon his forehead. Thankfully the beast didn’t seem to be hypnotizing him, since his mind wasn’t melting under its gaze, but the feeling of being observed by such a terrifying predator was still no fun. If only he could just get to the street… Then he could run… Hopefully it wouldn’t be fast enough on land to follow…

No sooner had he taken a single step back, though, when the multi-headed serpent, the hydra, moved so quickly that he could barely register it in the evening light. Like a living cat-o-nine-tails, all of its long necks and scaled heads swung around and slammed into him in rapid succession. The man was flung bodily across the dock, plowing into a pile of wooden crates next to the warehouse. Next moment, the crates were suddenly collapsing all around him in a series of terrible crashes and crunches of breaking wood. Just his luck that one of them landed, corner-side down, upon his hapless groin, the sharp corner sinking into the flesh of his egg-sized left nut.

He rolled onto his side, clutching his throbbing crotch, and let out a strained wheeze of agony.

That was all the hydra needed.

The hiss of the jaws rushing forward were the only warning Tristan received. Instinctively he rolled sideways, the creature’s jaws snapping shut on empty air. The head whirled to strike again, but he was ready for it this time. Reaching out with both hands, he grabbed the base of the head, just behind the jaws, hoping to wrangle it into submission before it could bite or coil around him. The head was more than a foot long from where he was holding to the end of its snout, its powerful jaws more like those of a crocodile than a snake, a short spiny fin running from the crown of the head all the way down the neck. Tristan didn’t dislike snakes or other reptiles, but there was something unnatural about the beast, like it shouldn’t even exist. It reminded him of his encounter with that giant dragon a few weeks back, when he’d discovered his healing power.

Then he felt the sinuous neck jerk upward, and he was lifted, rising almost eight feet into the air, carried up by the muscle strength of that one head. There was the noise of grinding scales all around him, and a thrill of panic shot through him. The hydra was surrounding him with all of its heads, and a deadly bite could come from anywhere at any time…

The hydra swung its neck and head around, and the inertia caused his grip to fail, his fingers unable to find purchase upon the smooth, hard scales currently drenched with seawater. He was flung ten feet across the dock, his head actually hitting the pavement and drawing blood. Stars flashed before his eyes as he fumbled about for something, anything, that he could use to keep the beast at bay. Then the monster thrust several of its heads forward and rammed him into a concrete pillar and oh God, were those his RIBS cracking?!

And then he felt the muscular body coiling around his waist, lifting him into the air. Its tail had apparently seized him and was now raising him up towards those horrible heads. He couldn’t see where he was going, but he felt several cold, forked tongues licking against his calves and realized that he was about to be swallowed feet-first, or get one of his legs bitten off, or both.

“N-no! Get away!!” He cried out in terror, kicking out as hard as he could, though the strength of the beast’s grip meant his voice was not but a haggard wheeze. He felt one of his sneakers connect with something hard and heard a hiss of pain; a small twinge of satisfaction came over him, knowing that he’d actually kicked the hydra in one of its faces.

But all it did, of course, was piss it off.

The largest head of all reared back, opening its huge mouth to reveal several pairs of huge, venomous fangs, which flipped forward like switchblades. Tristan screamed wordlessly, his legs thrashing wildly, and then he heard the whoosh of the main head snapping forward…

He thought he’d feel the sensation of those horrible fangs plunging into his waist or thigh, followed by the agony of venom dissolving him from the inside. What he actually felt made him honestly prefer that option.

SQUELLLCH!

“NGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

It felt like two knitting needles had pierced through his jogging pants and underwear, and all the way down to the very centers of his balls - one spearing each nut, flooding it with deadly venom. Even though his breath was being squeezed out of him, he still let out a scream so loud that it actually startled the hydra, causing it to release its hold on him and also withdraw its fangs from his crotch.

He hit the ground hard, the pain indicating that he’d broken a few more bones in the process — maybe a few spinal ones. In panic and desperation, he tried to crawl towards the boat house, but the pain in his balls was already becoming too great. The venom was already searing the delicate tissues inside his testicles, the horrid pain causing him to scream like he’d never screamed before, clawing at the pavement so hard that his fingers bled. Worse still, the monster was doing nothing to intervene — all it had to do was wait for the toxin to finish its prey off, and then it would slither in to feast.

It was a few long, horrible minutes before Tristan managed to drag himself into the boat house, and by that time the swelling inside his nutsack had actually managed to cause it to pop out from under the hem of his pants. His healing factor had sealed off the puncture wounds caused by the fangs themselves, but as the venom seemed to dissolve the tubules in his nuts like acid, the acrid vapors had no way out and were now causing his nuts to expand and bulge like balloons… balloons which were now in pain like he’d never experienced. It wasn’t long before he could begin to feel the skin of his scrotum actually start to tear open, only worsening the already excruciating pain, the gashes in the delicate membrane leaking trickles of blood.

He managed to slump against one of the wooden pillars holding up the ceiling, unable to muster the strength to move any more, or do anything else except scream like a man possessed.

The hydra reared up, tongues flickering, eyes trained on Tristan’s swelling nutsack… and if it was surprised to see his scrotum actually tear itself to ribbons of skin, spilling his swelling nuts onto the floor, it didn’t express it. Tristan certainly did, though, with a sudden scream of pain that did nothing to help his predicament.

The grit and dust on the floor of the warehouse only heightened the pain of his now bare testicles, and he actually attempted to grab at his nut cords in a bid to yank the luckless organs off, but his arms began to feel like lead. Was the poison actually affecting the rest of his body, too?

The hydra prepared to strike once more, the decisive bite that would finish its prey. There was no fight in Tristan left now, the pain was too much… The thick, fibrous walls of his testicles were actually starting to crack and leak tiny drops of blood…

“No NO NOOOO…!” he cried, backing up towards the wooden pillar with what little strength he had, powerless to stop the poison dissolving his poor man-eggs from the inside, the agonizing reaction between the hydra’s venom and his delicate spermatic tubules continuing to inflate them like horrifying flesh balloons. There was nothing he could do but just lie there and scream — the sensation he was feeling was just that overwhelming.

Rearing back, its numerous horrible jaws opening wide, the hydra took aim at the ever-expanding organs now quivering before it as though they were moving of their own accord.

The strike was so quick that you could miss it if you blinked. But to Tristan, it happened in slow motion. The many heads on either side of the main one opened their jaws so wide as they closed in that it was almost like their heads had split open. The three on the hydra’s right side clamped their jaws upon his swollen, throbbing left testicle, and the three on its left side bit his right nut. The main head, however, was after more promising prey. Its deadly jaws slammed shut and, with a great squelching gulp, its jaws engulfed almost half of his massive cock, pinching the meat and blood vessels between them.

In that horrible instant just before they’d bitten him all at once, Tristan had noticed that there didn’t seem to be any teeth in the mouths of any of the hydra’s heads. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The flexible skulls of each head allowed the teeth to extend from fleshy sheathes in their gums like those of a python, two rows in each upper jaw and one in the lower. The instant they clamped down, the teeth sprang out with lethal force.

SPLORRRRCH!

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!”

Tristan would swear his scream could be heard for miles.

The razor-toothed bites of six serpentine heads had been delivered with brutal force to both of his swollen testicles, which had just about reached their limit in terms of how much internal pressure they could take. The puncturing action of all those teeth sinking into each hapless man-egg led to an outcome comparable to a python biting a water balloon… albeit one that was filled with a foul brew of acidic, flesh-burning venoms and enzymes, brew of dissolved spermatic tubules and fibrous testicle meat, leakage from dozens of ruptured blood vessels, and a veritable flood of raw sperm solution produced in a vain bid to flush the poison out, as well as the noxious gaseous byproducts of the entire process to top it off.

Said brew was now covering most of the floor around the monster, since both of his poor abused balls had outright exploded in a horrifying shower of streaming gore… some of which was now coating all of the hydra’s secondary heads, whose thick scales were impervious to the whole mess.

It wouldn’t be until much later that Tristan would find out, to his immeasurable relief, that only the central head of the hydra was venomous, and that its lethal venom-delivering fangs had missed flesh of any kind; in fact, his member actually fit just barely into the space between them. That didn’t change the fact that far too many recurved teeth had plunged into the flesh of his cock, however, and the fact that he wasn’t about to face the same fate as his poor testicles was of little relief to him in light of what was in store for him instead.

Everything that had occurred prior to Tristan’s continuous scream of utter agony had passed within less than a second, but the monster was not going to let go of his dick, and now that it had its meal in its grasp, it was time to finish things, venom or no.

The hapless man felt sparks of new pain in his arms and legs, and realized to his horror that four more heads had sunk their teeth into the flesh of his limbs. And now he was being lifted, carried in a spread-eagle pose into the air by the horrible cthonic reptile’s brute strength alone. With the victim immobilized and helpless, the other two were free to do whatever they pleased… such as striking at his exposed and vulnerable torso, which was exactly what they did. He felt a screaming pain in his stomach like a knife being plunged into it, and through vision blurred by tears of agony nad circulatory shock, he saw the remaining two heads pulling something long and wet and pale out of his torso. His intestines… Oh dear Gods, no. They had disemboweled him. They were eating him alive, and he could do nothing to stop them.

Nothing, that is, except struggle and scream even louder.

The hydra’s sense of hearing was quite poor, but it could sense the intensity of his inhuman shrieks, and feel his struggles become so intense that he now risked tearing his own limbs off. Shaking its head in irritation (and lacerating his cock even further in the process), it wanted so badly to shut its prey up once and for all. Then it noticed the wooden post…

Tristan continued screaming, his limbs thrashing in their restraints. One of the heads had bitten his upper left arm, and that gave his forearm the room to reach for the base of its jaw and grab it in a bid to rip it off. But he was losing too much blood now, and in the midst of his screaming he was actually leaking trickles of it from the corners of his mouth. The hydra was sure of its victory now, now that its prey had no chance of fighting back or escaping, but that damned screaming still grated on its nerves, and there was only one thing left to do. It reared all of its heads to full height, carrying its victim up with it, and then thrust them forward, smashing him into the post holding up the roof, the wood of which had decayed from years of going untreated or repaired.

More than a few of Tristan’s vertebrae shattered upon impact, but more importantly, so did the post itself.

The poor man instantly went silent from the overwhelming pain, blood pouring from every orifice and his intestines actually spilling out of the great gash in his stomach, making a huge gruesome mess on the floor. He would swear his grip on one of the monster's heads had started to slacken, but that became the least of his worries an instant later. The wooden beams and rafters of the boat house roof, also weakened by many days of wood rot and termites, began to shudder and crack, raining splinters down on the horrifying scene below. Realizing what was happening, the hydra began to scoot backward, hoping to drag its prize outside before the inevitable happened. But amazingly, Tristan was actually too heavy, 200 pounds of muscle with a will to live like nothing the monster had ever experienced before. His grip on the beast’s secondary head became as strong as iron, hoping to hamper the beast just long enough to take it down with him.

But then the monster lunged forth with its two free heads, and sank their teeth into the neck of the one he was holding, just missing his hand by an inch. The teeth actually worked their way into the spaces between the scales, sinking into the flesh beneath, and within less than a second it had actually bitten its own head off. The other heads holding his limbs also retracted their teeth, sensing that there was no fight in the remaining arms and legs left, and let the body fall towards the hard concrete floor.

The main head still wouldn’t let go of his cock, though – its horrible recurved teeth meant it couldn’t even if it wanted to. Which meant that now he was literally hanging by his dick alone.

The beast flung its head downwards, slamming its prey against the floor in one final bid to break its meal apart, but Tristan remained in one piece. It backed up towards the door of the boat house, taking its near-lifeless victim with it, but it was too late to escape now. The roof was already beginning to collapse, and the hydra was still only halfway out.

Tristan’s vision was going black around the edges, but he was dimly aware now of the monster thrashing its main head about, ripping his cock apart. He couldn’t even scream anymore, the pain was just too much. But he was dimly aware now of what it was doing, and there was no way he could avoid it.

An instant later, the roof gave way completely.

The wooden rafters split apart as the structure sagged and shattered, forming dozens of jagged spears hurtling down towards the floor below with devastating force. Both hunter and hunted now realized that one of them was hurtling straight for the very spot where jaws and crotch met, almost like a crossbow bolt aiming for the hydra’s main head. It jerked its head back one more time, saving itself from certain death, and then everything hit the floor in an enormous explosive crash, a shower of splinters, and a great cloud of dust.

There was one final spark of pure agony from Tristan’s groin, no doubt from the broken beam neatly severing his prized penis from the body it had been attached to, and then he felt many tons of wood coming down upon him like the sky itself was falling. For one brief instant, it felt like every organ still inside him was forced out through his mouth, ears, asshole, and the gaping hole torn into his stomach. And then there was nothing but the cold, bleak, and total darkness that could only be associated with the end of his luckless life.

Or was it…?

*****

The next time Tristan woke up, he found himself in a very unfamiliar environment, not to mention stark naked. The good news was that he was alive — and when he checked his crotch, he found to his relief that his balls were good as new as well. The bad news was… well… pretty much everything else. Suffice it to say that he’d gone in way over his head.

How he had been freed from a mountain of wooden debris, and why he was au naturel in a holding tank with tubes sticking out of every part of him like a scene from a sci-fi movie, he had no clue. What shocked him most of all was one simple fact.

He was alive.

He’d experienced several dozen events at once that could’ve each killed an ordinary person in an instant. By all accounts, he should’ve been pronounced DOA — Dead On Arrival. He had been mutilated beyond recognition even before the roof had fallen on his stupid, stupid head. And yet here he was, with not a scratch on his body — save for the IV needles plunged into his, well, everywhere. Including, to his displeasure, each of his egg-sized testicles, the suddenly intense pain feeling like they’d been impaled on a pair of thin metal spikes (which was, of course, completely true). He did not want to be reminded of what he’d been through that horrible night, but the state he was in did a great job of that already. At least he now had the fortitude to mentally screen out the pain.

As his ears acclimated themselves to his fluid surroundings (thank heavens there was a breathing mask strapped to his face, somewhat reminiscent of that of a scuba diver or the oxygen mask above an airplane seat), he realized that there was a speaker on the inside of the vat, which was no doubt hooked to a microphone on the outside; the reverse arrangement was also there. This allowed him to hear the enraged screaming of someone very familiar…

“…COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY FUCKED UP ON EVERY CONCEIVABLE LEVEL! HIJO DE PERRA! PUTA MADRE PENDEJO! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SCREAM IN YOUR EAR BEFORE YOU REALIZE HOW PINCHE IRRESPONSIBLE YOUR ATTENTION-WHORING HYPOCRITE COMPATRIOTS ARE TO SIT ON YOUR WORTHLESS CULOS WHILE DOZENS OF PEOPLE PER MONTH ARE POWERLESS TO DO ANYTHING BUT FUCKING DIE?!”

It took him a moment to realize that she was yelling into her phone, as revealed when she passed by his vat in the midst of angrily stomping around in a circle in the middle of the room. There were at least a dozen other vats lining the walls, but most of them were empty; still, the room bustled with life in the form of other scientists, doctors, and nurses attending to the control panels in front of the vats. At least it had been bustling, until a certain infuriated nurse had started shrieking like a woman possessed into her phone, attracting everybody’s attention.

“EVERYONE IN THIS HOSPITAL IS FUCKING DONE WITH BEING CIVIL, YOU TONTO DEL CULO!” she screamed after a moment of silence. “WE’VE TRIED SORTING THIS OUT DIPLOMATICALLY SO MANY TIMES, AND LOOK WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE THE MOST RECENT ATTEMPT! YOU’VE DONE NOTHING TO STOP SO MANY MEN, WOMEN, AND FUCKING CHILDREN BEING KILLED, FOR FUCK’S SAKE! I HAVE A PATIENT RIGHT HERE WHO NEARLY DIED TRYING TO CLEAN UP YOUR FUCKING MESS, THE ONE YOU’VE REFUSED TO CLEAN UP YOURSELVES, AND DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT WAS TO PUT HIM BACK TOGETHER LIKE SOME KIND OF FUCKING HUMPTY DUMPTY?!”

Another moment of silence, and then yet more screaming. “NO! NO!! N-FUCKING-O!! I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ANY MORE EXCUSES FROM YOU IGNORANT SHITHEADS!! OUR HOSPITAL HAS BEEN COMPLETELY SWAMPED WITH ENTIRE MORDEDURAS ARMIES OF THE DEAD AND DYING SINCE THE RECESSION AND WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO EASE THE BURDEN ON THIS HELLHOLE OF A CITY? NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!”

Yet another quiet moment, and then the nurse began shrieking louder than ever before. “DOES IT FUCKING MATTER?! WE’RE FILING THE LAWSUIT NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY ANYMORE, AND THE NEXT TIME YOU’LL HEAR FROM US WILL BE IN COURT! I HAVE NO MORE BUSINESS DEALING WITH YOU UNGRATEFUL PUTA MADRE PENDEJOS, AND NOBODY ELSE DOES, EITHER! GOOD!! BYE!!!”

She finally hung up the phone, looking absolutely livid. She turned towards Tristan at that moment, and then reacted in surprise and embarrassment. “Oh, you’re, um… I’m so sorry you had to hear all of that.”

Tristan shook his head slightly. “No apologies needed,” he replied, his voice cracked with pain and what felt like hours of nonstop screaming. “You, Nina, are a woman of excellent taste.”

She smiled just a little, but then her visage became one of pity and disgust. “Tristan… Why?”

The tone of her voice when she spoke that one word carried every single emotion she felt at that moment. Horror, fury, grief, sympathy, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit of admiration.

He looked down at his once-mangled body, and found that he had an answer. When he turned his gaze back to Nina, his reply was full of iron-hard conviction.

“Because someone. Fucking. Has to.”

If she was impressed by how determined he’d sounded, it seemed as though she didn’t want to show it. She looked at the other staff members, who were watching the conversation intently. Then she noticed the bag she’d left on the desk in front of  the control panel for Tristan’s vat.

“We recovered its head. The one that was cut off for some reason. I sent samples of its flesh to the governmental forensics teams for investigation.”

Tristan nodded. “At least we now know what happened to everybody.”

“You are the dumbest fucking person I’ve ever met in my life,” said Nina, half stern and half impressed. “But also the bravest and most determined by far. And I treat heroes of all kinds on such a regular basis that this is not a compliment to be taken lightly. It takes a truly extraordinary person to go through all of that and live to tell the tale. I’m sorry about your financial situation, and I truly wish you could live a better life, especially in light of this whole thing.”

“That’s still a bit of a backhanded compliment, though. Rich in healing factor, poor in sense, that’s me.” He chuckled dryly.

There was a long, awkward pause. Then one of the other staffers spoke up. “You sure you can’t stop him going back?”

“Yeah, there wasn’t a trace of it aside from its severed head when the police arrived,” added another. “What if it comes back? Who’s gonna have to deal with it then?”

Nina shook her head. “Tristan will move mountains to set things right. We know that now. But he needs help, and I know just where he can get it.”

Tristan's eyes widened. “You do?!”

She smiled more earnestly this time. “A lot of the people whom I’ve had to patch up were young upstart heroes who needed the guidance to finish what they’d started. I have more than a few contacts, and there’s one whom you should definitely consider. Last I heard, he might be able to relate to the both of us.”

It was unfortunate that his mouth was obscured by the respirator, because Tristan had an ear-to-ear grin at that point. “I’m listening.”

Nina checked her phone for a few long moments, and then looked up at her charge. “How familiar are you with a man called Myrmex of Mattellia?”

*****

Far, far away from the hospital, in the opulent executive suite near the top of a fancy corporate headquarters on the other side of the city, a jaw-droppingly handsome blond in razor-sharp business attire, somewhere in his early thirties, was rewinding and playing back a news report on his fifty-five-inch LED flat-screen TV mounted on one of the walls, built into the center of a pretentious modern art sculpture shaped like a pod of orcas swimming outwards from where the TV was installed, emerging from a ring of toilet bowls surrounding the screen. Disgusting as it was to any other person, it suited his vision perfectly. For this was a man crusading daily against the inhuman conditions that everyone lived in.

Lounging in his plush red-velvet chair, the man was closely inspecting the footage of police, firemen, and construction crews from at least half a dozen counties removing the debris from a partly collapsed boat house in the harbor district. Specifically, he was looking for what they had found inside the enormous mess of shattered wood and tiling.

The horrible red thing they ultimately uncovered had been blurred out, censored for public view. But it was the reactions of the people who’d pulled it out that told him all he needed to know.

Not long after the pile of gore was uncovered, there was a sudden commotion. Cries of shock, people actually jumping away from the body, screams of horror from most of the people on site. Police officers were desperately trying to avoid bystanders from stampeding in a wild panic, no doubt a bid to get away from whatever was inside.

In particular, the faint speech of one of the construction workers, which everyone else had no doubt missed due to the noise of the crowd as well as the newscast audio, had caught his attention.

“It’s moving!”

“It’s moving,” he repeated, pausing the recording. Even while mutilated beyond recognition, whoever the workers had freed from the rubble still had a will to live, an ungodly determination that surely exceeded literally everything else in existence.

Even death.

The blond executive smiled, a cold smile that, to the very few people in his company that he knew on a personal level, no doubt preceded things that no sane person would ever think of doing. These next few weeks were going to be very, very interesting…