The Monster Under the Stairs (non-canon)

Emma sat outside, staring at the forest. The others had gone to their rooms to think about what could give them the edge, to save them from the audience. Emma had instead drifted out here.

The cold helps me to think. It has since my first case. It keeps me in the moment.

But it did not help now.

How do you win over a group of people you never met? Do they love intimacy and romance? Cruelty and humiliation? Some arbitrary mix of both?

The only clue she had were the best girl rankings. And while Emma was smart, she wasn't some eidetic memory genius either.

I'm mid. That's all I can tell myself. I'm probably safe… maybe? I need to be ok with that…. I'm not though.

She breathes deep, the cold air raking its claws down her throat and into her lungs. The air helps to fight the panic that swells in her, though nothing could extinguish it. Nothing but the oblivion of sleep, assuming no nightmares, a huge ask.

Still, feeling this brainstorming session going nowhere, Emma stands from where she was leaning, walking inside.

She crosses the large empty lobby slowly, in no hurry to be anywhere. When, as her foot touches the first step, she hears a sound. A slight sound, something that could pass for the stair squeaking. But stairs don't have gaps in their noise.

Emma looks over the banister, only to see something she never saw before. As she looks at it, she leaves the stairway, stepping beneath it. A hatch sits at the foot of the stairs, just barely giving enough height for somebody to enter…

Emma feels a sense of danger. This is… someplace she shouldn't go, she knew it. But the sound raised again, now clearly talking, clearly a voice. Emma reaches down, popping her finger into the hole, pulling up, the hatch popping open.

What do I even think is down there? This is probably a trap. But…. What if somebody is trapped? Mark was trapped, according to Ben…What if Yuki is torturing them until after the elimination? Or worse, maybe she's torturing them until somebody finds them? By running away, I might be condemning them to Yuki's "attention" for who knows how long.

Those are her active thoughts. But beneath those are the basal emotions. Fear, yes, but curiosity, empathy, and also the inkling that maybe, through some divine providence that the answer to how to gain the audience's favor lay down these dark stairs.

So even as she curses herself, her foot takes the first step. And another until she walks into the mysterious abyss.

At the bottom of the black stairs a landing and another set. There is no light source immediately visible, but the light from the lobby meets another from the bottom of the stairs. Emma can tell this place is not intended for the eyes of the audience… but she continues forward, down the staircase. As she reached its bottom, she looks on in awe.

The source of the light is no torch or lightbulb, but glowing ice. There is a hallway before her and at the end of the hallway, a door. But between her and it there is a wall of ice. Along its surface, a magic sigil clearly patterned off the fractal of a snowflake. The wall isn't transparent to show the door. It is an opaque wall. One that is about mid-thigh high. Along its top, water droplets cling to the ice, the wall melting bit by bit.

Emma touches the top of the wall. Her hand is hit by the cold, a cold far stronger than a melting ice block should be. But still manageable, still something she could live with. So, steeling herself, she slid over the wall to the other side. A few more words from Yuki, much clearer, draw her further in. She walks forward, inching toward the door, which is cracked open. And there, she sees a truly terrible sight.

A middle aged woman sits on her throne among a pile of bones. But as Emma looks closely, she realizes she knows this woman. Yuki sits on a recliner, wearing only a loose t-shirt over her body. She is sitting with her legs up, her panties just visible when she shifts her legs. She is watching a massive tv. And she is eating hot wings… straight from the frozen bag labeled nuclear hot, the frost clearly visible on the pieces as she pulls them from the bag. As she finishes them, she drops them to the side into a trash can, which is littered with bones.

Emma wonders why she had come all of this way, as Yuki complains in Japanese, though the subtitles allow the audience to understand her, as she flips through tv channels.

“God, why would you even put a Japanese girl on, when you’re not even going to emphasize their good points? It’s like having a French girl who doesn’t surrender or an Irish girl with blonde hair. I mean I guess she’s exemplifying the Salaryman archetype, but that’s the least sexy part of Japan. People want girls enslaved to a man, not to THE MAN.”

Then her expression shifts, as the scene changes on the screen. She reaches to the side, pulling something that had previously been hidden onto her lap… She pulls up a dakimakura, a goth girl scantily clad on both sides.

“At least Sylvia has a good taste in goth girls, Morgana is a real keeper. I’ve already ordered her plush set. I swear though, if Morgana is eliminated, I’m going to tear into that set and steal her for myself. She has everything! Ok, maybe I’d have made her chuuni nature work a bit by making her a bit more parasocial, maybe make her a vtuber… Guh, Rose, lame.”

Yuki lifts the remote, switching to another channel. “Oh, this is great, the girls are still in Colt’s old place. I sorta miss the old coot… He treated me like a lady and not like some dirty foreigner. Sentimental old fool.” Yuki drums her fingers on her chair, lost in her own mind for a bit. “...anyways, I wonder if they fixed their little gap in the fences. Maybe I should make the next transformation even worse, then they’d have to fix the hole they left in Mallory’s mind. Maybe they like being NTRed by another host, grabbing a transformation and their audience loving it and choosing it. Well, I’m just being a responsible senpai, teaching them to dot their Is and cross their Ts.”

Emma turns, disgusted by what she just saw, but that proves fatal as a bit of frost that had clung to the cold door crunches beneath her foot. Yuki turns to look at the door, her eyes narrowing.

“EMMA!”

Emma runs as fast as she can, vaulting the wall like it was a hurdle and she was at the Tokyo Olympics. Normally she wouldn’t be able to jump over a small bump, but adrenaline pumps through her veins. She gets to the bottom of the stairs, as she sprints like her life depends on it, largely because she actively believes it is. She bounds up the stairs… Only for the stairs to continue on up into infinity. As Emma turns, she sees Yuki, now in her full outfit and young once again.

“Fuzukenna!” Yuki looks down and scowls as the subtitles show “Don’t fuck with me!” Yuki switches to English. “Those fuckers showed my room didn’t they? God, they love to be voyeurs, the bastards. ‘Oh Yuki, you could soften your image if you just let people know a bit more about you. Oh Yuki, you should go on Today, maybe **** Al Roker, it’ll be great.’ So, how did you get past my ice wall, my little mouse? It should’ve frozen you solid the second you touched it. Did the producers put you up to humiliating me, you little skank?! Gave you some way around it?”

Emma considers running up the endless staircase in front of her, as Yuki slowly stalks toward her. Instead, she flinches, covering her face, hoping **** is painless. “The wall was mostly melted. It did feel super cold, but not like too cold.” Emma cursed as her transformation triggered. “I’ve never talked with anyone, I swear!”

Now, Yuki was above her, and she lifts her like a doll. She takes her and holds her under her arm. With her other hand, she pulls down the lawyer’s pants and panties in one swift move, only to reveal the chastity belt she wears. “Ha, I forgot you got this.” Yuki lightly pats Emma’s ass. “Now, keep talking!”

Emma shudders. “Uh, so your wall was down, and I thought you might be torturing somebody, like you were torturing Mark. So I thought maybe I could come down and save them. I didn’t know that was your room, I swear!”

Yuki turns, looking at the wall. As she sees its sorry state, she shakes her head. “Fine, that matches the footage I’m seeing. You stop looking for an hour and…”

Then she looks down at Emma, slapping her ass. “Wait, you… You figured it out didn’t you?” Another spank on the woman’s ass. “Speak now, or else I will eliminate you.”

Emma cries out scared. “Ok, yes, I did just think of what happened, I’m sorry. You… You’ve been burning power haven’t you, doing funky things with time and causality, keeping a close eye on everything and everyone, looking forward in time. You… You’re almost out of power, aren’t you?”

Yuki slaps the woman’s ass again. “And?!” Emma tearfully continues. “And… in the vision, they said… that you gain a bunch of worship and power… from sacrificing people. From eliminations. Tomorrow… you’ve planned out that it will give you enough power to finish off the season…”

Yuki smiles. “Well, aren’t you a smart little girl? Well, I’m sure that you know what that means right. Itadakimasu!” Her hand reaches back, tearing the clothes from the girl in a single gesture, before she stops.

“Wait… ugh, that would ruin continuity. I’d need to explain to the others what happened, and then I’d need to reveal I let my guard down. Ugh… Actually, you’ve been pretty low in the rankings a couple of times. Maybe the audience will choose to eliminate you anyway. And…” Yuki touched Emma’s ass, who answered with her own voice but Yuki’s words. “I’m the only slut who hasn’t put out, why would they keep a frigid girl like me around?” Yuki slaps Emma’s ass. “Right, right.”

Yuki begins to walk back to her room, swiping the wall of ice away with a wave of her hand. “So, how about a different punishment?” As she enters, she drags a wooden stool next to her recliner. She plops the girl on it, only for icy chains to bind her with her arms behind her in a reverse prayer pose, her legs tied to the legs of the stool, kept apart revealing her belt.

“How about this for a punishment? You are trapped here, unable to make any last plea for the audience’s mercy? And while you’re trapped in that belt.. I think I’ll allow you to feel all of the sexual sensations of the other girls, but they will always stop just short of letting you cum.” As Yuki waved her fingers, a sigil appears on the chastity belt. “There. And trust me, things are going to get fun, there was a reason I didn’t look too closely for where you ended up. Now, I don’t want you to ruin my me time, so no talking.” A white ballgag appears in Emma’s mouth.

Yuki smiles, as she sits down in her chair. “Now, let’s watch the Satan season… the extended cut!"