Commission and Art-trades! Vol. 01

With a rattle, the two six-sided dice came to a halt on the table. Their sides didn’t sport numbers or points, but small words.

‘Knee’

‘Lick’

The man that had made the throw looked at them with a confused smile.

“Lick knee?” The smile growing more extensive, he looked at the woman sitting in front of him. “Did those dice really just tell me to lick your knees?” With glee in her eyes, she raised her foot and pointed it in his direction. It was a silly game that they were playing, but she knew that from the start.

“Come on, boy,” she said. “Do what the dice are telling you. We have a deal!” He rolled his eyes, grabbed her leg gently, swooped down, and gave his girlfriend a quick lick on her knee. Not the weirdest thing they had done, but the strangest on behalf of eroticism. He kept her leg, gently stroking it, enjoying the sense of the stubby hair that you got when you didn’t want to shave every day. He had told her that he didn’t care, but she did, and if it made her happy to shave her legs, he wouldn’t stop her. His eyes followed her legs up to her hip, her slender waist, and stopped for a second on her small breasts. She didn’t wear much, just a negligee, barely covering her dark, olive-toned skin. He didn’t linger too much, but skipped straight ahead to her laughing face. He loved her dimples. If he was honest, he loved everything about her.

And so did she about him. He, actually licking her knee, was so… typical. Quickly, she grabbed the dice and let them roll.

“I wonder what pinnacle of sexiness I will reach with this throw, my love.”

The dice rattled until they didn’t anymore.

“Oh my,” she said.

“Oh no,” he added. And for a second, there hung a heavy silence between them. Then they both erupted into laughter.

“I know I said I would like to try something different,” he said, raising his hands as a safety wall between him and his girl,” but this is a bit too different for my taste.” First, she waved away his concerns, then she pushed away his hands, pushing herself on top of his lap.

“Well, it’s too late now.” She grinned, and grabbed his underwear on both sides of his hip, “the dice have spoken! And if they say ‘bite dick,’ I for sure will ‘bite dick’!” With that, she pulled down his knickers. It was a shame, really; It was the first time that he’d bought something like this. Just for this night. Beautiful lace underwear, in a very slimline cut. They’d actually made something you could tastefully put in a penis. She liked it. Too bad she had to pull it down so early. She felt his hand on her head, his fingers running through her hair. She’d had some bad experiences with men doing this, but never with him. He was gentle, soft. He made sure to have her consent for everything they did.

“You don’t really want to bite it, do you?” He was half-joking, but the other half of him was honestly concerned.

“Nah,” she said. “Or, well, maybe. Let’s just see what I’ll feel like.” And with that, she wrapped her lips around his cock, gently sucking on his glans, her hands cupping and fondling his balls lightly. A moan escaped his throat, and his hands let go of her head, just to make sure he wouldn’t push her deeper in the heat of the-

“Fuck!”, he yelled as a sharp and burning sensation pierced his genitals. “You actually fucking bit me!” With eyes wide in shock, his girlfriend pulled back her head.

“Oh my god!” She yelled. “I’m so sorry, honey! I didn’t mean to, it was an accident!”

“You fucking bit me by accident? You never did that shit before!” He was furious, and rightly so, she thought. She didn’t know what had come over her. For some reason, her jaw just twitched and… well, bit his junk.

It took a while for both of them to calm down. Even longer for him to believe her, that it was an accident. She offered to try again, but he hastily refused.

“I know you are normally better at this, but I don’t want to take the chance. It still hurts.”

He could see her guilty conscience in her face. There was no way that he could keep being mad at her.

“Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s just try again, okay? The dice have been fun so far, so, maybe just another roll?” She nodded, and he let the dice dance across the table surface. With a groan, he registered the result.

“Slap face? Are they serious? Have they tested those combinations at all?” She couldn’t help but giggle.

“But it would be fair, wouldn’t it? I bit you, you slap me? Quid pro quo?” With a cheeky smile, he put his hand on her cheek.

“Well, if you insist.” He just raised his hands a couple of centimeters, to give her a cute little touch on the side of her face.

The force of the slap made her turn her head and left a glowing red mark. Both of them stared at each other in shock. She knew that he didn’t want to do that. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. They were in love. He never touched her before, and he certainly wouldn’t now.

Both their gazes wandered to the dice on the table.

“Something is wrong here,” he said. He didn’t move, just to be sure he couldn’t hurt her again. “Please,” he added, “get rid of them, yeah?”

Quite in contrast to him, she wasn’t as superstitious, but still, she got up and grabbed the dice to take them away from their room. And instead, she dropped them. With a loud noise of ebony hitting on glass, they jumped across the table.

“Damn,” she muttered, right before grabbing them again and leaving the room.

“Uhm, my dear?” She heard her boyfriend call out. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t you worry, I will take care of them!” And without much thought, she opened the garbage bin and got rid of the dice.

‘What a weird experience,’ she thought.

“I threw them away, just to make sure, okay?” She didn’t quite catch why he was looking at her so scared...

“Is everything alright?”, she asked. He didn’t answer directly; instead, he asked her a question.

“What are you doing with that knife, my dear?” His voice cracked, his eyes quickly jumping first from her face to the sharp blade in her hand, and then to the untouched dice on the table.

“I… don’t know,” she answered. She couldn’t remember grabbing that thing. Her eyes followed his line of sight, and with a gasp of shock, she saw what the dice spelled out.

‘Cut’

‘Finger’

She tried to release the knife from her grasp, to just let go, but her fingers wouldn’t budge. She felt the force of her muscles pulling, but it was as if her palm and digits were glued to the handle.

“What is this? Why can’t I let go?!” A panic started to rise in her. Things had been weird before, but now it began to break the rules of reality. This couldn’t be the cause of a mistake. The man ripped himself away from his frozen state, his hands grasping for the dice.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take them away. I don’t know what they are but-”

He couldn’t pick them up. His fingers were just gliding along the surface of them. No matter how much he pushed or pulled, they refused to move, sticking to the surface of the table. It was like the laws of physics didn’t apply to those dice anymore and- No. it was not like that. It was that. Those dice were outside the realm of possibility. And with that he understood. “We don’t have a choice. We have to do what they say.”

She didn’t want it to be true. But something in her knew that he was right. With tears in her eyes and a heart full of dread and fear, she saw how he put down his hand on the table. In another contrast to herself, he was calm, collected.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s do this. Careful. Just a small cut and everything is going to be fine.”

“You p-promise?”

“I promise.”

As if it had a mind of its own, which was entirely possible in this situation, her empty hand grabbed his wrist, to secure his hand.

“Just a small cut,” she muttered to herself. At first, she only laid the knife onto his pinky, hoping that the weight of it alone was enough for the smallest of cuts. But no luck. A slight tug surely was enough, but alas. Still nothing. So she moved again, and again. But whatever she did, there was no cut.

She didn’t hear his screams, didn’t see his agonized face. He tried to pull away, but her grip was as iron. And with every swipe she did, the blade cut deeper into his flesh. Blood was already gushing out of his wound onto the table and pooled around the dice. With a curse, she put her own weight onto the blade.

“Why doesn’t this work?”, she cried out through her tears.

The noise of the blade cutting and crushing through his joint was blood-curdling. Like biting through the gristle of a bloody spare rib, it cracked through his whole body. The noise sends a shiver through her spine, releasing her of the spell she was under. With a gasp, the blade finally fell on the table, right next to the severed digit.

Their screams cut through the night. Fear and pain mixed into a crescendo of breaking voices and panic. With blood still spouting on the floor, he aimlessly flailed his good hand around in the hope of grabbing something to stop the bleeding with, too panicked to realise any of the available options around him. Instead of grabbing a cushion, or even his knickers he toppled the vase on the table and smashed a glass by flinging it against the wall. And then there was a noise that stopped his action. The laughably gentle clicks of a pair of dice hitting the ground, pushed from the table in his blind attempts at self-preservation.

He couldn’t see what the dice said; instead he felt it. There was an urge in him, to grab her by her slim neck, and press down on it. He saw in his inner eye how her pretty face would turn blue. How her endless screaming would finally stop, and how his own bloody stump would end the life of the woman responsible for it.

She tried to get away, but her vision was obscured by her tears, and her path blocked by the couch they had laid on cuddling just a day before.

With all of his weight, he pressed her down, his fingers wrapped around the neck of the woman he loved, pressing her face deep into the fabric he once loved her on.

“No!”, he screamed. Lifting the veil of aggression clouding his mind. “No, please don’t!” He begged his hands to stop their devilish deed, to release her out of the deadly grip she was in. “Why is this happening?!”

“Because you wished for it, don’t you remember, love?” a surreally happy and chipper voice asked.

The man’s head snapped around, his vision barely registering the stranger sitting in the corner of the room. And if his vision would have been clear, he would not have believed. A man, or something resembling one at least, his skin red and shimmering like wine, his teeth jagged and sharp, forming a childlike grin. Small horns poked out of his black, unkempt hair, and his long finger twirled around the tip of his own tail, which was hung with a couple of golden rings that clashed with the simple black overall of his.

Still smiling, he changed his upright position into a more bowed one, crossing his legs on the edge of his seat.

“Didn’t you say, just today, that you would like to do something you’ve never done before tonight?”

“I- I don’t know!”

“Well, yes, you did, love! And I provided, aren’t you glad? Don’t you like my little toy? It’s a Wymark original!”

“Please, please just make it stop. I’ll do anything!” He felt the struggles of his girlfriend slowly began to fade.

“Ah, my love, that is so gosh darn adorable, isn’t it? I mean, didn’t she just cut of your fi-”

“Please! What do you want? Just tell me! I’ll do it!”

“Well, no reason to cut off my sentence. But I do like your sense of humor! That was clever.” He cackled with a laughter that would’ve fit in any kindergarten around the world. The laughter of a child with no bigger concern than who to catch in a game of tag. “I don’t want anything from you. Just wish for it, and I’ll make it happen.”

“I- I wish for all of this to stop! Please!”

“Oh, really? How unfortunate.” Whip-crack went his ruppy tail, and the curse was gone. “But if that is your wish, who am I to intervene?” With a wink and a blown kiss, he vanished into the nothingness he had come out of.

But the man didn’t care. Neither had he listened to nor had he looked after the strange devil in his home. As soon as his body allowed him to, he rolled to the side, pulling her face out of the deadly embrace of fabric. With a gasp, she filled her lungs with air, hyperventilating but alive.

It took him a while to get out of his shock. Without a word, he stood up and went to the door. His finger was still bleeding, and his vision was quite blurry. The adrenaline took care of the pain, but a wound like that could always be deadly. And as he reached the door, pushing down the knob, he realized that the door wouldn’t budge. He pulled again, but nothing, and the laughter of desperation began to swell within him.

She didn’t laugh.

“I’m sorry. There is nothing I can do,” She said, as she picked up the dice for the last time.

They jumped across the table and down onto the floorboards.

‘Each other,’ said the first, coming to an abrupt halt, the second one still spinning on its corner. As if in slow-motion, they read the words.

‘Kiss’

‘Rescue’

‘Heal’

And then, finally, it fell on its side and came to a halt.

“I’m so sorry,” she said as she reached for the knife.

“I know,” he answered as he clenched his hand into a fist.

“I love you,” they said.

‘Kill,’ the die demanded.