❝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)
━ never trust your eyes; they'll never show you what's real
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"Fooled you, didn't I?" Kino sneered, voice thin and hissing.
Jinho could barely breathe. His hands were shaking violently and he was frozen, unable to comprehend the horror in front of him.
Kino's limbs were abnormally skinny and emaciated, like he hadn't been eating or leaving his room at all, and many of his fingers were hanging at an angle or missing. His back was hunched, and his eyes followed Jinho's every move with a beady, eager hunger. The skin on his face looked like it had been burned horribly, and scar tissue and blood caked together to make him unrecognizable.
No, actually, Jinho did recognize him--he looked like his worst nightmare.
Jinho's eyes darted to the door and the horror in front of him hissed like it'd been branded. It was too close to the door; he'd never make it out. Maybe if he could get out the window...Blackness pulsed on the edge of his vision at the thought.
"You'd die if you tried," the creature snarled. Then it picked up something from Kino's desk, something Jinho hadn't noticed before, too fast for him to figure out what it was. With panic eating him alive, he could no longer think; he felt like he was in a room filling with water and it was up to his chin and the ceiling showed no signs of budging.
The creature began to advance on Jinho, slowly, rotting lips twisted into a sadistic, leisurely grin.
"Kino!" Jinho shouted out of desperation. "You're not alone! We're here for you, I'm your friend!"
The creature threw its head back and gave a shout of laughter. The sound was like metal on rock. Jinho saw blood bubbling on its lips, thick and dark. It glared at him, letting the blood spill over its lower lip and paint its chin with gore.
"Am I pretty? Don't you want to look like me?"
Jinho had nowhere to go; Kino's bed was in the corner farthest from the door and the monster was upon him, shoving its face right up to his, letting its gravestink wash over him, pulling bile up from the depths of his stomach. Light reflected off the thing that had been on Kino's desk, and Jinho saw that it was a pair of scissors.
"Maybe I should do this to you, hmm?" It said, then brought the scissors up and stabbed its own eye, puncturing it. Matter burst forth, some of it spraying Jinho, and he threw up even as he turned his head away. The thing recoiled as Jinho heaved, flinching. Jinho heard something shatter, but he didn't know what it was until the monster spit out a mouthful of blood and white chunks. Teeth.
"Maybe I should sew your lips shut with your own veins," it spat, fury blazing in its eyes. It leaped forward and grabbed Jinho's shirt. "I think I'll have to settle for this, for now," it said, then grabbed Jinho's hand. The feeling of its broken, mutilated fingers touching his skin made him lightheaded. He thought he was going to pass out from pure terror, and that was before the thing began to caress his fingers. Jinho held his breath, tears slipping from his eyes, and then the thing grabbed his pinky finger and snapped the bone almost in half. Jinho screamed at the pain, screamed at the top of his lungs. The thing snarled in anger and broke another finger, making him scream again, screams turning into sobs and pleading as the thing broke all the fingers on his right hand.
"Now it's time for your eye," the creature hissed, but Jinho barely heard over the strange roaring in his ears. When it picked up the scissors, which were covered in oozing goo, he screamed again and the pain racing all the way up from his hand into his head flared white hot. His eyes crossed as the scissors neared his face, trying to track them, hoping to God that the monster wouldn't stab his eyes. He felt the metal touch the thin skin just beneath his left eye, felt the blood and white matter, felt his heartbeat do a strange thing that made the world turn gauzy and soft.
Then the creature drove the scissors into his eye and he felt it pop, felt it leak down his cheek, and he screamed loud enough that he felt something in his throat rip and then he passed out.
When he came to a second later, the creature was gone, his fingers were all intact, and his eye was fine. His heartbeat was too fast, and it didn't feel like it would settle down anytime soon; he could only take thin, gasping breaths that did not get him enough oxygen. His right hand was laying in the pool of vomit on Kino's bed, and he jerked it away, wiping it off on the blankets because they were already ruined anyway.
He put his head between his knees and tried to take deep breaths, but that just made spots dance in his vision. When he looked up again, the creature was standing in the corner, grinning as it watched him.
"Wooseok!" Jinho screamed. "Wooseok, help me! Help me!" And then his heart did something strange in his chest, reminding him of a goldfish flopping over belly up, and he collapsed on the floor.
"Jinho?" Wooseok shouted. He had been searching for the other boy, retracing their footsteps and looking into every room he came across, but he kept hearing things behind him falling and breaking, and the fear was getting to him. "Jinho!"
He heard more screaming, and this time he knew that it was Jinho, that it wasn't just the demon making him hear things. The only thing he'd heard since Jinho disappeared was things hissing and tapping inside the walls, following him, and the things behind him breaking. He began to run, following the screaming down the hallway and to the closed door of Kino's room. He stopped short. He had the feeling that the demon had been herding him around like a lost sheep, trying to keep him away from this room.
He threw open the door just in time to see Kino stand back from Jinho, who was laying on the floor.
Kino turned to Wooseok, and he was sobbing. But Wooseok saw him shove something metal into his pocket, and a different emotion that was not grief shimmered in his eyes.
"Jinho--"
"He's dead," Kino said in a dull, emotionless voice.
Wooseok wanted to scream at him, make him realize what he'd done, but he knew he had to get out of there before he was next. He glanced at Jinho's still form one last time, tears welling in his eyes, before he turned and ran from the room, ran to his car, started it, and drove away, leaving the dead body of his best friend behind with a murderer.
As Jinho lay dying, Kino sobbing over his body, he realized that the demon had made him see the horrible Kino-creature and feel the torture, but neither were real. Kino was himself; it had been the demon inside Jinho's head all along, not Kino's. He should've been afraid of his own mind, and now it was too late. He thought he heard something, but his senses were dulling and the world was slipping away from him. He'd never know what that something was.
And then everything faded and he was nothing more.
WOWIE JINHO IS MY BIAS SO I LEGIT CRIED WHEN I WROTE THIS AND I FELT LIGHTHEADED TOO HAHAHAH IM DYING
anyway, i apologize for not updating for a long time. i've been super busy this summer with work and touring colleges on the days i don't work, and it's exhausting and scary to think about. like i have one year of high school left and then i have to figure out pretty much my entire life. so i haven't had as much time to write this poor fic and i feel like such an asshole omfg.
