hiding, lurking » pentagon

11

❝ E L E V E N ❞

━ i am beginning to get angry

Kino wasn't sure why the woods were calling to him; but like a siren song demanding to be answered, his mind retreated among the branches. It scared him a little bit, how strong this call was. He tried to ignore it.

He danced with the music blasting but the choreography he used to know by heart fell apart. He had two left feet. He opened stale text conversations with his friends, but it hurt too much to send them anything. No one had even heard anything from Jinho since the funeral. And with the music still playing, Kino sat down on the floor with his hand pressed hard, so hard, against his chest, and started to sob.

They were all falling apart and away and no one was doing anything about it and the knowledge that he'd have to be the one to glue them back together, back to each other, was too much. The woods called louder; he wanted to take pictures. He wanted to take lonely pictures, ugly pictures, ethereal pictures, and unhappy pictures. He needed to go to the woods. Almost like something else was controlling him, he wiped his tears, turned off the music, grabbed his camera, and left his house.

The walk to the woods was a blur. All he could be sure of was his grip on the camera - his knuckles were white. Shinwon had left hours ago, and Kino wished he hadn't. He wished they were still together. He stared at the ground as he walked.

When he looked up, he was practically at the woods already. He blinked. His skin felt like it was on its way to crawling. He pressed the power button on his camera and stepped into the woods.

It was infinitely quiet among the trees; the only sound the clicking of his camera. He started seeing everything subjectively; started seeing forlorn movement in the ways the trees leaned, started seeing them as his weary friends. He wasn't sure how long he'd been taking pictures when he heard the screaming start.

"Yanan?" What - "

Shinwon's hysterical question was cut off by a violent movement and a feeling like fire rending his flesh. It took him a few seconds of swimming vision and stopped breath to connect the two things:

Yanan, his best friend, had stabbed him in the stomach with a knife.

Shinwon's mouth parted and a tiny sound of shock and indescribable betrayal fell out of it. Yanan's head was tilted, like he was listening to someone whisper in his ear. Then he looked at Shinwon and grinned. The grin was unsettling; its presence on Yanan's face was like oil on water. Shinwon put a hand over his stomach, trying to ignore the blood and the fire, and tried to scoot away, but he fell over instead, letting out a scream as the pain flared. He glanced up, and saw Yanan frozen in that pose still.

He realized the hairs on the nape of his neck were standing up.

Then Yanan's head turned slowly to survey him, retaining its inquisitive and chilling tilt.

He realized another thing: he couldn't connect the thing in front of him with his best friend.

"What is going on?" He screamed out, expecting silence, another wound, anything but a reply. But Yanan's mouth opened, and that whisper came from it, and Shinwon's hand spasmed over his stomach wound.

"A game," the voice said. Yanan's mouth looked unnatural around the shape of the words. "And you're the third player. Can you play for long? I'd hate for our time to be cut short."

Shinwon was shaking and he felt lightheaded. It was getting darker; he wasn't sure how much blood he was losing, but somewhere in his mind, he was half-hoping that he'd pass out and wake up at home. This was a nightmare, and Shinwon was scared of nearly everything. The only thing scarier than a nightmare was not being able to wake up from one.

Shinwon tried to run. He forced himself to ignore the pain, ignore his wooziness, and get as far away from Yanan as possible. He pushed himself off the ground, legs flailing for traction, but then he felt Yanan's hand close around his ankle and yank. He landed face down in the dirt, trembling all over.

"How about we make the game more fun? Everyone likes to gush about the chase, but I always hated that part." And Yanan's lips pulled back in a feral smile. The hand on Shinwon's ankle tightened, tightened, with an inhuman strength, until his bone cracked, the noise covered up by his bloodcurdling shriek. He panted, vision swimming, as he struggled to keep his consciousness. He could not pass out, he could not -

The creature of his best friend snapped his other ankle.

It began to gloat, cradling its knife and admiring it.

"Wait until you see what I can really do," it whispered lovingly to the metal.

Shinwon dug his fingers into the soil and pulled, his mangled legs dragging behind him in a way that lit all of his molecules on fire, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to pull again, knowing it was hopeless, knowing he was going to die, praying he'd just die quickly.

"Don't try to escape," the thing hissed, sounding like a swarm of bees. Shinwon lost control of his bladder. He was crying. "This game is not fun at all. I'll have to choose a different player. Hmm, how to get rid of this one first?"

It lunged, and, wielding the knife with its inhuman strength, began to hack away at Shinwon's ankles.

Shinwon finally passed out as he heard his right foot thump to the forest floor.

Yanan had a knife in his hand and he was in the woods. He couldn't remember getting into the woods, or obtaining a knife. He wasn't sure why the knife appeared bloody; the only thing he knew was that he must've been possessed by the same demon that had tormented Yuto. Again.

He glanced around quickly, hoping to discern where exactly he was. However, his eyes lit upon something that made bile rise in his throat.

A foot. Severed sloppily, white bone visible, almost seeming to gleam, mocking, in the darkening woods. And, beyond that – a crumpled form. No. Oh no.

A body. And he could see breaths expanding its chest. He approached it slowly, heart beating in his mouth and ears.

As he stood over the partially mangled body of his best friend, the demon whispered to him. It said, You've made the game dull, but i believe I can salvage it. Most beings, much like humans, find that spite is part of their nature. I am no different, so I'm delighted to let my frustration out on the nearest thing...You.

Suddenly, Yanan's world was plunged into darkness. He was almost completely blind – he could see faint shapes and shadows, but not much else. Which meant he couldn't see Shinwon. He became irrationally terrified, petrified, of tripping over his friend's body, and his grip on the knife loosened, the sound of it hitting the ground making him flinch. He could've sworn he saw a thing, much like the things that had crawled beneath his bed all those weeks ago, scuttle in his shadowy peripheral.

He bolted, and his overstimulated brain began to create monsters out of the darkness, every tree he ran into a horrifying being that could kill him, torture him the way he must've tortured Shinwon, his best friend. He ran until his mind splintered and he found that he couldn't stop, he couldn't stop because he had to catch up with the pieces of his mind that fell out of his head, couldn't stop or the monsters that were multiplying would get him.

But somewhere in the tiniest untouched part of his mind, he knew that he was the biggest monster.

its been so long since i updated and this chapter was a rollercoaster to write but im mostly happy with how it turned out. hope youre all wetting the bed rn (: bc i lowkey am (: