Phoenix: Blow a spark || ATEEZ

13| Inflicted pain

Wordcount; 1,150

Hongjoong was muffling his screams into the clenched fist he was forcing into his mouth. Tears were running everywhere and spilling down on his trousers until patches engraved the secret into the world. Pain was shooting through his entire body, making his limbs go trembling in all his popping nerves that swerved from his brain and made everything so much worse. Clutching as keeping a cord onto his dear life, Hongjoong was squeezing his right hand around his left wrist until the blood stopped running down into his fingers. His breath staggered at the moment as his whole body moved around for anything to hold on to, almost as if he couldn't control it himself. His face was distorted in running panic when he found himself fall to the ground, a writhing mess against the floor.

Time had been ticking eerie much slow, when he before this had been sitting in his room, reading a book. He had known that something was off when his mind suddenly started skipping lines before trying to find back, only to see all the words disappear from the page. The letters had started to blend in with each other, flow into a flooding liquid there ran towards the edge of the paper before dripping down onto his hands, with which he had held the book. Something had been knocking him over when a dark substance was strangling his airways in a warning. Devil's hand was playing with the strings he had been falling into when trying to jump off the edge.

When a sudden pain had dug deep into his left arm had Hongjoong drop the book, forgetting everything about its words, when he felt strapped down under his own skin. The boy felt as if he was trapped in a fire that burned all air away, and made him suffocate in the smell of his own burning skin. First then, his eyes suddenly widened in fear for his own future, as if death was tying him down to the ground, defenseless. And oh was he right.

Sweat was dripping over his nose tip while he curled into his own body, feeling the pain dig even deeper into his arm. He grounded his teeth and blood suddenly stopped running around his body. Another wave hit him harshly and he tore himself back again, slamming his head into the floor as he screamed. Fear suddenly struck him down and urged his hand to his mouth again, breathing rapidly against his palm. Hongjoong had never felt like this before.

He shut his eyes tight, as more tears dripped from them. How to stop this. He wanted it to stop, now!

Paranoid, he sat up, staring in the direction of the closed door, awaiting the footsteps that came closer. Hongjoong sniffed and dried his eyes with his sleeve when another pain came to fill his senses, and he was forced to claw his body forward. His nails were digging into his upper arms the whole time. Something wet was seeking through his blue shirt when everything stopped and terrified, Hongjoong lifted his gaze to stare at the dark patches gathering into black drops of liquid rolling down his left arm and hitting the floor with a silent echo. It was over.

The boy slowly moved the shirt up with a hiss, soon deciding it would be better to take it completely off. He felt new tears fall.

The Colour in his face drained when the bloody ink messages appeared before his eyes. Partly of the ink had been something he had ignored on purpose, but what filled his before intact skin, had been what had made these pains. Hongjoong's eyes turned red.

He grabbed a clean shirt and threw the other into a trash bin before hurrying to the bathroom and cleaning it all off before his dad would see anything. He couldn't know of this magic. His hands shook violently as he tried to find a cloth in the sink's cabinet. If only he could stop it, this would never have been so bad. Hongjoong forced the thoughts there swelled in his head away, only to stumble backward with dizziness and nausea. Just the small task he had given himself felt like too much and before he even realized it, his head hit the wall as if the whole world had been tilting at no time. The boy let out a groan and shut his eyes close in a new wave of pain.

It happened in a matter of seconds when he felt the angst of the item angle a bit in its place. Then the mirror fell from its sole nail and hit him on its way down before it shattered against the floor in hundreds of pieces. It cut him deep, but now he had a good excuse for his wounded arm.

A knock was heard on the door.

"Hongjoong, are you in there?"

The young phoenix wanted to answer, but the pain that inflicting his body was strangling his airways. If just he wasn't a part of this. When nothing happened, Hongjoong let out a sigh and twisted his face as he lifted his right arm to sit further up. A couple of shards of glass had cut into his bare stomach, making drops of blood draw lines across his skin, but nothing else seemed to have been hit, fortunately. His eyes fixated down on the ink messages in his left arm and his face suddenly turned sour. San would pay for this.

_____

No one had been knocking at the door, it all had been something he had made up in his imaginations. He was paranoid.

Hongjoong sat down heavily on the couch as he buried his head into his hands. His left arm still hurt, but the piercing pain from before had vanished again. His dad wasn't home yet, but that wasn't abnormal anyway. Being a single dad had him always worry so much about the family's economy, and therefore, he would always take the chances for overtime work.

The clock was soon passing by seven, and Hongjoong sighed another time before tearing his eyes away from the candle that burned on the table in front of him. This couldn't help anything. He got up from the furniture and wandered off into the little kitchen, wanting to prepare something for when his dad came home. This had to be a thing he never would be good at; cooking. However, his dad never minded his skills.

When he pulled the recipe book from the shelter, he wished to tear his attention away from his angered thoughts. Never had the feelings struck this hard, and Hongjoong could only see one confront that this would end as.

☯