❝the suicide of your friend was not a suicide. it was an escape attempt.❞
⤷in which the lives of ten boys become nothing more than games and something is hiding among them.
[a pentagon au]
{completed}
(#153 in horror 1/13/18)
━ i can make you blind, but i can also make you see; which one is worse?
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Jinho had been following Wooseok when it happened. Wooseok had stopped in front of the stairs, froze really, and Jinho wondered why. Normally, Jinho enjoyed wondering, but this wondering was shot through with a heavy amount of panic. He was screaming in his head at Wooseok, actually, and was about to ask why he'd stopped when he heard the noise again.
The scuttling was coming up behind him, and fast. He became stiller than Wooseok, heartbeat loud and invasive in his ears, like a train bearing down on someone tied to the tracks. He could hear it approaching, and with it, panting breaths.
His fear was palpable, squeezing a fist around his heart and crushing his windpipe. So when the thing's claw closed around his ankle, the floor seemed to sag where he was standing, like whatever was holding the world together forgot to do its job for only a mere second.
Then the thing yanked his ankle and its force took Jinho's legs out from under him. He flailed around for something to break his fall, and his fingers brushed the fabric of Wooseok's shirt. He tried to get a grip on it, but fell to the floor instead, biting his tongue hard enough for coppery blood to fill his mouth. He'd always hated blood and pain, and he fought to stay conscious, even as the thing started dragging him down the hallway. His tongue throbbed. The floor kept sagging beneath him, and it was dizzying. His only conscious thought was getting his ribbon off. He struggled weakly, scrabbling at his wrist while he spit out his mouthful of blood. He heard the ribbon tear very clearly, and to him, it was the sound of the universe tearing; a separation between two places: where he had once existed and the place he was in now, a place he couldn't come back from.
The scuttling thing began to pick up speed, and Jinho began to claw at the ground, trying to see if there was anything he could grab to wrench himself from the thing's grasp, trying to figure out what the scuttling thing was. He wasn't sure what scared him more—not knowing or the idea of knowing. What if it wasn't Kino at all? What if it was something worse, something out of his worst nightmare?
The terror filled him, turning his blood to ice and making him light-headed. Then the hallway seemed to turn upside down, and he blinked to find himself outside of Kino's door.
He stared at the wood, eyes tracing the pattern of the grain, as his mind tried to piece together what had happened. His tongue felt fine, and he reached down to touch his ankle, feeling no contusions or marks. The light coming from underneath Kino's door didn't do much in terms of illuminating the hallway, so he couldn't see any marks, either. He tried to calm his shaking hands. He hated that he didn't know what was real and what wasn't—the thought made him check his wrist. Bare.
He breathed a sigh of bitter relief. At least Wooseok would know that he couldn't be trusted. Then he realized something.
If he was outside Kino's door...Where was Wooseok? Wooseok had been in front of him. What if the scuttling thing got him, too, and he was in danger? Dying?
