𝗛𝗼𝗿𝗿𝗼𝗿 𝗢𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘁𝘀》BTS

The Sleepover [Vhope]

Excerpt: About two highschoolers who have a sleepover one night.

Taehyung's POV:

I was always known as the weird boy; the one with no friends, strict parents, and strange habits. I was an outcast in part because I ate hot sauce sandwiches and sleepwalked. School days were long and torturous. There was nothing good about high school. The worst part was definitely the ridicule from the “popular” crowd. They roamed the school in a pack, infecting others with their hatred and prejudice. I tried to avoid them, but they always tracked me down. They could have been bloodhounds. As fate would have it, one school day I met a new boy, Hoseok. The best part about him was that he had no clique, yet. All the groups were vying for his attention. He was everything the popular crowd wanted: outgoing and fashionable. Hoseok was relatively good at sports, which left the jocks clamoring for his attention. He was also apparently rather intelligent, so the nerds stared longingly at him, hoping that the force would bring him to their side. However, one day at lunch, he sat down with me. At first I thought he was going to try and take my sandwich, so I smiled to myself, imagining what a surprise he’d get if he ate it. When he actually introduced himself to me, I was even overjoyed. I had made contact with a human and I still had my wonderfully delicious hot sauce sandwich. Over the next few weeks, we would become friends. Finally one day he said, “Want to come over to my house for a sleepover, Taehyung?” I didn’t know how to reply, I had never been asked to a sleepover before. That was something for people with friends. “Let me ask my mom.” I replied, the typical answer of a sixteen year old. It took some begging and persuading for my mom to allow me to go. She kept saying that I would scare my first friend away if he found me sleepwalking in his house. I wasn’t too worried about it, though.

Finally, I was at my first sleepover. Hoseok and I watched movies, giggled and built a fort. It all seemed like something out of a movie. Around two in the morning, we had the bright idea to film a vlog entry. Sitting on our makeshift beds, we chattered away at the camera until we slowly dozed off into a land of sleep. When we arose the next morning, we realized we had left the camera on all night, filling up its memory. “Let’s watch our vlog entry now!” exclaimed Hoseok, still a bit groggy. I yawned, about to agree with him and stretched. I felt really sore, like I had been working out. Suddenly I realized that I must have sleepwalked during the night—that was the cause of my soreness. “No, actually, let’s not watch it now. Let’s wait until high school graduation to watch it. It will remind us of what we were like when we were this age.” Hoseok reluctantly agreed.

It was two years later and so much had changed. I was no longer the outcast, Hoseok and I had acquired a large group of friends that seemed to be ever expanding. Sleepovers were now a regular occurrence, though we had never made another video blog since the very first one. Hoseok called me the day before high school graduation, “Taehyung, let’s have a sleepover and watch our vlog. I’ve been dying to see what ridiculous things we said when we were younger.” I agreed, he wouldn’t abandon our friendship now if he saw me sleepwalking.

We sat on the couch, buried under blankets, eating popcorn and started the video. Hoseok and I laughed at how immature and naïve we had been. It brought back good memories. Hoseok was about to turn the video off after watching us both drift off into sleep. “Wait! Don’t turn it off yet, you’re moving.” I blurted out. We watched to see what Hoseok would do. Panic gripped me. Something horrible was about to happen, I just knew it.

On screen, Hoseok sat up and stared into the camera. His eyes were completely white. At that point, I sat up, too. “Hoseok are you okay?” I asked him in a sleepy voice. Hoseok continued to stare unblinkingly into the camera, then he blinked. His eyes turned completely black, he turned his head and stared at me, his eyes eating my soul. Then I heard a noise, like a slow tearing of fabric. Hoseok fell backwards onto his bed in a pool of warm blood. I watched as his swollen body was torn open from the inside. I was about to scream, when a hand covered in dark hair clawed its way out of Hoseok’s chest using naught be its long dagger-like fingernails. The hand, dripping in the blood of my friend covered my mouth, stifling my scream. The rest of the beast crawled out of the hole it had ripped open in its host. How this large creature had fit in such a small body bewildered me. It was nearly eight feet tall, with muscular arms that dragged on the ground. It was covered in coarse hair, except for its long tail which was made entirely of rough scales. When it saw me, a smile crept across its face, literally from ear to ear, revealing deadly teeth that cut its own gums and lips. The creature licked its lips with its forked tongue, savoring the taste of its own blood.

I turned to run, but the creature’s tail caught me and coiled around my body, like a boa constrictor squeezing the life out of its pray. It hoisted me up above its head and let out a deep, rumbling throaty laugh that echoed and reverberated across the room. I looked down at my friend, he was just a pile of skin, most of his internal organs were strewn across the bed, though many seemed to be missing, where they went, I had not a clue. “Look at me!” the creature ordered. I gazed down at the blood soaked beast. “You will do.” It chuckled. Lifting up a hand, he sliced my skin with his razor sharp fingernails. The cut spanned from the bottom of my neck to my belly button. Wedging its fingernails in the cut, the creature slowly peeled the wound open, first the left side, then the right, ripping the skin and meat off of my bones. The same tearing noise filled my ears. There was nothing I could do—I was at the mercy of this beast. I looked down, I could see my ribcage and my internal organs which were spilling out of my body. Chuckling, the creature bit off one of its own fingers and used it to scratch my heart. Leaving the finger nestled in my ribcage, he picked up some of my intestines that had fallen to the ground and placed them back in my body and folded my skin back into place. By simply looking at me, no one would know what horrors had transpired, the cut mark had disappeared. However, I could feel the finger near my heart and it was growing. Soon, it had used many of my organs as fuel for its own growth. It inhabited my body now, not me. I felt the scar on my heart, the poison seeping through my blood. I was not me anymore.

The creature set me down, “You will not remember this in the morning.” It promised, while lapping up all the spilled blood. It proceeded to pick up Hoseok’s skin and crawl inside. Looking around, no one would be able to tell what tragedy had taken place that night. There was not even a mark on either Hoseok’s or my body. I drifted off to sleep. The video ended.

Hoseok and I looked at each other, terrified.

Then we heard it: that slow, ripping noise.