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It’s cold and dark when Yeosang comes to, at least that’s the first thing he notices. The cold strikes him to the bone, cutting through his clothes and skin as if they were nothing. It’s the kind of cold that leaves your chest aching with each dry breath you manage to pull past your numb lips. The darkness is less overwhelming, leaving the world around him in varying shades of black, almost as if he’d never opened his eyes in the first place.
Pain is the next thing Yeosang processes.
This proves to be a much more pressing matter.
The skin along his forearms and hands burns, flaming hot regardless of the near unbearable cold. The sticky blood that had run down his skin now dry and crusted. The ache in his wrists where desperate hands left bruises in their haste. The ankle of his left leg had to be sprained at the very least as it sent wave after wave of pain up his leg from its place twisted in front of him. The abused, cracked dryness of his throat where his vocal chords were begging for reprieve after his screaming (begging? pleading? praying?) to please help him, please don’t let go, help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help help he-
To make it short; Yeosang Had Felt Better.
He doesn’t have time to linger on that though.
Not when that thing could be lingering anywhere, just out of sight in the darkness. Yeosang needs to move, and fast. If he couldn’t run, which would not shock him, he would just have to crawl, even drag himself out. Jerking his arms forward Yeosang has to choke back a shout, though to his surprise it’s not exclusively one of pain as his shoulders scream at him from over exertion. It’s a shout of loss, one of realisation.
The metal chains around Yeosang’s wrists clank sharply against the floor as all the fight falls out of him in a single breath.
Idley his mind flashes past the others, to red blood covering a white shirt, the limp swing of a corpse, once bright eyes glossing over as they take in the last sights they will ever see. New tears burn as they fall down his cheeks unceremoniously down the path of their predecessors. The lifeless faces of his friends, his family stare back at him in the darkness. It’s with a sickening sense of finality that Yeosang realises that soon he’ll be with them.
Yeosang wonders if they made it out. He hopes that the thing had been distracted enough with hauling him off to wherever he was that they could find an exit to the labyrinth that they’d found themselves trapped in. An image of the dense forest they’d woken up in flashes past Yeosang’s eyes along with the thought ‘Oh, it doesn’t make a difference if they get out of here does it?’ they’d been doomed from the start.
The only thing left for Yeosang to think about was how it would happen. Would it be swift and painless? Or would his final breaths be weighted down with suffering?
He’s not sure which is less terrifying.
It’s as Yeosang is pondering the pros and cons of just being left to starve to death that he’s broken out of his thoughts. The wet slap of bare feet against concrete echoing against the walls, the sound is almost deafening. More muffled was the sound of something being dragged along behind.
Yeosang squeezes his eyes shut as the click of a light switch snaps through the room, the scent of decay and rot filling his senses makes his head spin.
“ Oh good, you’re awake… ”
Its voice sends a shiver up Yeosang’s spine, the idol slowly opening his eyes, holding his breath. Circular eyes and a wide grin greet him. Yeosang suppresses the lurch his stomach gives at Its close proximity, instead forcing himself to take in every detail of it. To get a good look at what remorselessly killed his family, what will kill him. From the skin that looked like a too large and too damp suit pulled carelessly over wire thin limbs that realistically shouldn’t be able to support Its impossible yet hunched height. Its goat-esque legs and curved spine that actually do look like they could give out at any second. An endless stream of tears cascade from Its never blinking rat-like eyes to Its unwavering smile that exposes too many perfect, sparkling, human teeth.
Its voice is grating, like having an ice pick shoved through your ear canal and straight into your brain. The thing either doesn’t know this, or doesn’t care as it hums a scratchy tune to itself, turning away to drag something, someone , into the darkness. its not like Yeosang needs anything more than the shadowy figure in front of him to recognize Wooyoung.
After so many years of being side by side Yeosang would be able to pick Wooyoung out of a line up with little more than a photo of his toe.
The clanking of chains bounces against the concrete walls creating an asynchronous harmony with the broken glass of the thing’s humming. Yeosang regulated his breathing, trying to force himself to remain somewhat calm to take away any satisfaction from that thing that he can.
Click
Suddenly the room is flooded with a new light. This one infinitely more blinding than the dim yellow light of before. The sterile whiteness of it forces Yeosang to squint as his eyes adjust slowly. He blinks in hopes of acclimating himself to it quicker, his pulse spiking as he realizes he no longer knows where their tormentor is. That worry is quickly shoved to the back of his mind as he pries his eye open finally.
Yeosang bites his tongue to hold himself back from crying out. The iron tang of blood filling his mouth.
In front of him is Wooyoung, as he had assumed. What Yeosang had not foreseen was just how bad of shape he would be in. Yeosang hadn’t even known it was possible for a human to be so many shades of black and blue. It’s near impossible for Yeosang to tell if the blood staining the other’s once crisp white shirt dark red. It couldn’t have been more than two hours since Wooyoung had frantically yelled at them to run and get out, practically shoving them through the door as he tried to hold the thing back. Yet that was Wooyoung sitting only a few feet away from him, hands hanging limply from the chains above his head. Hell if it wasn’t for the steady stuttering rise and fall of his chest Yeosang would have assumed that the thing had just brought a corpse here to fuck with him more.
But who is Yeosang to talk? He knows he can look much better.
He blinks the tears out of his eyes as he forces himself to look away from Wooyoung. Instead trying to take in their surroundings, The thing could be heard tinkering with something just outside of Yeosang’s field of vision. Contrary to the rest of what they’d seen of what was originally assumed to just be a shack, the room was completely lined in concrete. A drastic change from the worn wood they’d been accustomed to.
The room itself was more of a hall. It couldn’t have been more than eight feet from the wall Yeosang was bound to to the one that Wooyoung leaned against. However to the sides it seemed endless as the walls were stretched past the reach of the blinding light.
What felt like hours passed as Yeosang sits motionless (except for the slow clench and release of his hands) on the cold floor. Their captor is still shrouded in darkness clinking away with god knows what, each sound like another weight on Yeosang’s lungs as he waits for anything to happen.
Wooyoung wakes up slowly. Starting from a slow shifting in his legs and arms, his eyebrows furrowing as he undoubtedly tries to follow the events that led him to being chained to a wall in a concrete basement. Yeosang wants to say something, to do something, to help the younger in some way, but that’s a difficult thing to do with the fear that’s been prickling at his own mind for hours.
Not that it matters anyway.
It notices Wooyoung’s new found consciousness just as quickly as Yeosang does. The impossibly long legs fold like an accordian so that the grinning face is the first thing Wooyoung’s eyes see, his face switching quickly from confusion to panic. To the dancer’s credit, he does not scream or react beyond the unavoidable shock that fills his eyes. The thing is quick in standing back to its full, towering, height between them a new glint alight in its eyes as it looks between them.
“Now that you’re both up, should we begin?”
And fuck if Yeosang doesn’t like the sound of that at all.
The thing turns its back to them, striding away to whichever corner of the room it was in before. The shuffling and clinking begin again but this time with intent. Yeosang’s eyes dart to meet Wooyoung’s, and he tries, he really tries to convey that it will all be okay, that they will be okay, even if he knows it won’t be. Wooyoung returns the hard stare and nods at the older, as if them pretending that this isn’t about to go ass up on them.
Just as quickly as it left, the thing is back, folding itself down to be eye level with Yeosang once more, and dropping a small pouch mere inches away from his fingertips. It turns away from him to face Wooyoung, its grin growing wider. Yeosang watches helplessly as it wraps long bone thin fingers around the younger’s right ankle, snaking around the joint on either side before effortlessly pulling it out of the socket with a sickening pop. Wooyoung’s left ankle gets the same treatment. Yeosang is frozen, jaw dropped, and stomach churning as he watches in horror. Tears flow freely down the younger’s cheeks as his chest heaves with each labored breath.
The thing moves quickly and efficiently with its deceivingly frail looking hands. It only takes a moment before a louder pop echoes around and Wooyoung’s left knee is bent at a disgusting angle. Red wells up where his teeth dig into his bottom lip in a desperate bid to muffle the screams of pain he can’t hold back. Blood rushes past Yeosang’s ears as he pulls at the shackles binding his wrists to the floor, but even the sickening popping and cracking of Wooyoung’s right knee getting ripped from the socket isn’t drowned out by it. In fact as if to mock him, the thing starts its humming again, this time though it punctuates its song with the sound of Wooyoung’s hips being dislocated clapping its spidery hands in joy when he can’t hold back a scream.
It looks at Wooyoung’s legs, now twisted and limp against the concrete, like some sick art project. Long fingers brush against tear soaked cheeks, the grin widening again and Yeosang wonders vaguely how anything can have so many perfectly straight and blunt teeth. The thing was quick to turn its grin back to Yeosang though, dropping itself over his legs before catching his jaw in an icy vice grip. Its other hand tangling into his hair, holding his skull firmly in place.
Then,
Snap.
Yeosang isn’t sure if he blacked out or died for a moment. However he finds himself wishing for the latter as the pain floods his brain. Distantly he can feel his jaw, hanging limp and open. Not that he could have closed it if he tried. He caught Wooyoung’s eyes over a bony shoulder, while still distant and tear-filled the unfiltered shock and disgust was apparent in the younger’s eyes.
The broken jaw was just the beginning to Yeosang’s displeasure. There was no amount of pain or disgust that could prepare him for the freezing fingers that unceremoniously into the gape of his mouth. If he had thought the odor of rot was bad before, it was nothing compared to the flavor. Gripping his tongue like forceps pulling it from his mouth slowly. Yeosang couldn’t control his breathing anymore as panic truly began to have free reign.
‘Oh fuck no, hell no, hell fucking no-’ Yeosang squeezes his eyes shut to pretend like he’d never seen the rusted scalpel held precariously in front of his face. He wanted to fight back, to do anything, but for some reason Yeosang just finds himself sitting limp in disbelief at the first touch of metal to his tongue. The taste of iron fills his mouth as the blade slides cleanly through muscle. Blood rapidly filling his mouth and falling past his lips turning his screams into garbled choking. All his thoughts reduced to ‘it hurts’ the thing dropped his head as quickly as it’d grabbed him, waving Yeosang’s tongue around like some sort of prize.
Yeosang’s head was spinning, vision blurring in the flood of tears spilling past his eyes. He can barely process the thing snapping his jaw back up and tilting his head back so that the blood pools in the back of his throat. It switches out its grasp on Yeosang’s disembodied tongue to produce a tapestry needle, threaded with heavy black thread. On some level Yeosang is sure he can pick out the precise pain of the needle being passed through his lips sealing his mouth shut, however in the moment it’s just mixed in the swirling vortex of pain. It’s then with a final lurch that the taste of rust and iron is joined with the burn of acid and bile. The unholy mix of vomit and blood trickling from the space where his lips are pressed together as well as his nose.
The edges of Yeosang’s vision blur to black as the thing releases him and lets him collapse into a heap on the floor. Yeosang can feel himself shaking as he chokes and gags around the liquid filling his throat, desperately trying to breath only to feel the burn of blood and bile in his lungs. Somewhere distantly Yeosang is aware of Wooyoung calling his name as well as the sound of the joints in Wooyoung’s arms being popped out of place one by one, just like his legs had been, Tears were once again mixing with the mess coating his once crisp white shirt. The sound of Wooyoung letting out a particularly loud sob was followed by a metal click and the flop of his arms against the ground, a moment passed before a particularly loud snap echoes throughout the room followed closely by absolute silence. Then, just as suddenly as the whole nightmare had begun for Yeosang, it faded away to nothingness.