Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#072Reader Mode

#072

Something cold and refreshing jolted Lacey awake, its icy touch nudging her back to consciousness. The chilly air wrapped around her body, sending shivers down her spine as she lay on the hard floor. Slowly, her eyes fluttered open, dark irises quickly adjusting to the dim surroundings.

The musty storage room, already poorly lit before, was now cast in deep shadows with the door firmly shut. A single dusty light bulb fought valiantly to illuminate the confined space. From her tilted perspective, Lacey scanned the room, taking in every detail.

Her gaze landed on Ben, his unconscious body sprawled out just like she was. His eyes were closed, but the expression on his face was far from peaceful. Legs outstretched and arms bent at unnatural angles behind him, he was a twisted reflection of Lacey’s own helpless state. The only difference was the tortured look on Ben’s face.

Lacey’s heart pounded against her ribcage, the frantic rhythm seemingly amplified by the close walls. Johan sat motionless, his back to Ben. What was he up to? The question had been looping endlessly in Lacey’s mind since she’d regained consciousness.

“Are you awake?”

Johan’s gentle voice sliced through the tense silence, startling Lacey. She froze, feeling like a helpless mouse trapped in a serpent’s unblinking stare. Though she remained silent, the deep, resonant voice was undeniably real. As Johan turned to face her, the sickly light illuminated his crimson-stained hands.

“Ah, you’re really awake,” he said calmly. “I thought it would be easier to search while you two were sleeping. Jun always said, ‘Kill two birds with one stone.’ So this is what he meant.”

Suddenly, Johan erupted into laughter, the bright sound jarringly out of place in these circumstances. Lacey stared at him, horrified and confused, her limbs bound tightly as the burly man chuckled to himself. A thin, desperate plea escaped her lips.

“You…you’re misunderstanding something right now. And if your assumption is correct, you should free me before that employee wakes up and calls the boss here.”

Johan’s response was one of reluctant indifference. “These days, convenience stores are into some really messed up things, huh…”

At his callous attitude, tears streamed down Lacey’s cheeks as raw desperation set in.

“Don’t you hear that? My dog is barking like crazy out there! He’s not just some pet…he’s my baby. I can’t stand thinking about that monster bullying him! Bobby, please hang in there!”

Lacey’s voice cracked with emotion. The storage door, once ajar before she blacked out, was now firmly shut. She swore she heard Bobby barking earlier, but Johan couldn’t hear a thing despite straining to listen. He believed in putting in the work, even for long shots and never hesitated to do so, but also knew when to cut his losses. Johan tapped the concrete floor with the monkey wrench, pulling Lacey’s focus.

“For someone who supposedly hates chocolate, you sure seem to like it a lot, don’t you?”

“Wait…what?” Lacey lifted her tear-stained face, eyes swollen and reddened from crying. Her brow furrowed in confusion as she tried to follow his meandering line of thought.

“It’s about that handkerchief. You said your attacker took it, right?”

Her eyes widened with recognition.“Oh, right…yes, that person did take it from me. But what about it?”

Johan never had much of a sweet tooth, but that aversion meant he knew the major brands that marketed in the candy industry. He distinctly remembered the delicate, lace-edged handkerchief the gruff man had used to wipe his hands as he left the storage room earlier. Once spotless, it was now stained deep red…except for a distinctive raised embroidery of a familiar logo that stood out with perfect clarity.

It didn’t take Johan long to make the connection – that unmistakable emblem belonged to one of America’s most famous chocolate specialty stores with locations nationwide.

“That handkerchief…wasn’t it some kind of promotional item?”

Lacey’s eyes widened slightly. “That’s…!”

But Johan continued before she could formulate a response. “I have this friend in my neighborhood, Cynthia. She adores her pet guinea pig and is always super careful about what it might accidentally eat.”

It’s common knowledge that chocolate can be toxic to dogs. If Lacey truly loved her dog as much as she claimed, she would undoubtedly be aware of this basic risk.

“That’s just too far-fetched!” Lacey protested, her voice rising in pitch. “I’m extremely careful about keeping chocolate away from Bobby. By your logic, no dog owner could ever have chocolate in their home. Your argument is completely baseless.”

“Well, that’s true,” Johan shrugged, his agreement feeling almost mocking.

He moved closer to Lacey, his towering figure looming over her as she reflexively cowered against the cold metal shelf. The dim lighting, casting ominous shadows across his face, accentuated the unease in the air. Lacey’s previous pleas for help, now forgotten, were replaced by a different kind of fear. Trapped within the confines of the room, she realized, there was no escape from this intimidating man.

Johan reached out, an unstoppable force compelling Lacey to remain frozen in place. His bloodied fingertips glided with an unsettling gentleness through her hair.

“But here’s the thing,” he murmured, his voice quiet yet filled with an underlying intensity, “I know you’re not being entirely honest with me, Lacey. Because there’s not a single scratch on your scalp. Unless…” A smile appeared across his lips, both cheerful and terrifying. “You have the power to spray blood directly from your veins? If that’s the case, you should probably rush to the nearest hospital. Or even better, a government research facility. I’m sure they’d welcome a superhuman.”

Johan’s deep-throated chuckle reverberated through the room as he inspected the sticky red substance coating his fingers, having pulled them away from Lacey’s hair. He leaned in close, his warm breath tickling her ear as he whispered conspiratorially.

“But this isn’t blood, is it?”

Lacey’s head jerked away, but it made no difference as the darkness engulfed them both. The feeble light above cast shadows across Johan’s face, obscuring his features, while his imposing figure left half of Lacey’s pale complexion shrouded in the encroaching gloom. Her dark red hair seemed to melt into the blackness that enveloped them.

The captive woman made no move to defend herself or argue. Instead, her panicked breaths slowed as a sense of defeat took hold. When Johan straightened up and stood tall again, Lacey’s eyes followed him, her gaze intense and unwavering. Saying she ‘glared’ would be an understatement – it was downright murderous.

Of course, her dagger eyes didn’t rattle Johan one bit. It wasn’t as if she could shoot lasers from those hate-filled eyes. He nonchalantly brushed his pants off before tilting his head, a curious glint in his eyes.

“I’m just scared that the owner might be lurking outside with a gun or something.”

“How did you know?”

Their voices crashed together in a jumble of words as they accidentally spoke at the same time.

“How did you know?” Lacey repeated through clenched teeth.

“What? That you were lying?”

“Yes…” she hissed.

Lacey dropped her act as the helpless victim and openly admitted that Johan had figured out her lies. Her eyes gleamed with cunning curiosity – she really wanted to know how he had seen through her performance. After all, knowing the flaws would only increase her chances of success the next time, wouldn’t it?

Johan looked down at Lacey and the still-knocked out Ben, as if appraising them both. Finally, he sighed and muttered, “Ah, I made another mistake.”

When Lacey shot him a look for his incomprehensible mumbling, Johan just waved it off. “Not about you. And if you’re wondering how I knew you were lying… there’s too many reasons to even list.”

“Too many? All because of some stupid promotional chocolate handkerchief?”

“That was just the trigger that tipped me off really,” Johan acknowledged. “For example, when that clerk first stumbled in here, you didn’t show even an ounce of wariness towards him as a potential threat. You said you were attacked while alone at an empty gas station, remember? If that had really happened, ‘Lacey’ would’ve been way more cautious around a strange man suddenly showing up.”

Lacey’s brow furrowed, but she couldn’t argue with his point. “Maybe I just recognized his voice was different from my supposed ‘attacker’?”

“Did you forget already? You spoke first, immediately asking him to untie you. Both of you have been lying through your teeth every time your mouths opened. It’s enough to make an innocent guy like me scared.”

Lacey’s eyes went wide with disbelief and outrage as Johan calmly ripped apart her flimsy story. She leveled him with a look of pure, unbridled murderous loathing. In that moment, her refined way of talking slipped as fury took over.

“Papa always said I’m too damn impatient,” she snarled in a gritty accent. “But this freakin’ idiot is just too slow on the uptake.”

Despite her menacing vitriol and the startling change in attitude, Johan stayed outwardly calm and unfazed. He glanced around the dark storage room before casually commenting, “Is that so? Guess the supposed ‘boss’ here isn’t just the owner, but your father too. One big, happy close-knit family business, huh?”

“Papa’s gonna shoot you dead, you bastard!” Lacey gritted out between clenched teeth, fury etching harsh lines across her face.

Johan just rubbed his arm and gave an exaggerated, dramatic shiver. “Oh, really? That’s so scary…”

He took a step back, as if cowering in fear. Then, without warning, Johan turned and delivered a sharp, stinging slap across the unconscious Ben’s cheek. The loud smack echoed in the small room.

But it did the trick. Ben immediately stirred, groaning in pain as his eyes fluttered half-open, dazed and barely conscious. Johan looked down at the pathetic sight and raised an eyebrow.

“So is that really true then?”

“Wh-what? What are you…” Ben’s words trailed off into an incoherent mumble, his expression even more bewildered than before the jarring slap. If a mere smack to the face left Ben this discombobulated, he was truly the king of fools.

Johan’s piercing blue eyes locked onto the bumbling clerk. “This whole gas station setup… I mean, is there a gun hidden somewhere in this middle-of-nowhere pit stop?”

The befuddled fool’s jaw snapped shut. But after a tense beat, he bobbed his head in a frantic nod – like a broken puppet jerking on its strings.

Johan studied him for one last, contemplative moment before reaching down and gripping the hefty monkey wrench with steely resolve.

“Someone I like taught me that people are far more useful in all sorts of ways when they know how to properly use tools,” he stated in an oddly conversational tone. With his free hand, he pointed towards Ben’s mouth. “So open up! Let’s hear the truth straight from the horse’s mouth!”

And with a playful shout, Johan swung the heavy wrench in a loose, careless arc…

Only for Ben to abruptly burst into a wild, keening wail of sheer terror at the mere sight of the tool. “Ughhhh, No, no, nooo! Mama, mama… Our family never, ever uses guns! Ahhh, mama! Maaama!”

“In this treacherous world we live in these days, it’s just so hard to know who or what to believe in… Ben, give me something reassuring that I can believe in.” Johan demanded as he scraped the hefty monkey wrench across the concrete with a spine-chilling screech.

At the blood-curdling sound, Ben promptly devolved into a frothing, visceral meltdown – hyperventilating wildly as a flood of fluids gushed from his eyes, nose, and mouth. The words finally exploded out of him in a petrified, blubbering torrent between ragged gasps for air.

“The skeleton outside is our mama! Mama was… mama got killed by a robber at the gas station with a gun! That’s why our whole family swore we’d never touch guns again! I swear on everything holy it’s the truth!”

“Ben, you stupid freakin’ idiot!” Lacey’s face flushed with scarlet fury as she aimed a blistering glare at the pathetic clerk. But her enraged shouts did nothing to quell Ben’s pitiful blubbering as he simply shrugged, apparently indifferent to her wrath.

“Cross-verification is important. Everything we learned in school comes in handy eventually, right?”

While Johan felt a flicker of pride, steam seemed to rise from the top of Lacey’s head like she was about to explode at any moment. At least until Ben hunched forward, finally revealing what he’d been hiding. The horror that crossed Lacey’s face in that moment made her forget all about erupting.

“You…you! What is that? What the hell happened to you, Ben?!”

Ben’s fingers were horribly twisted and bent at unnatural angles, like the gnarled branches of an old tree. The skin was torn and bleeding in several places, the joints swollen and puffy like over stuffed sausages. It didn’t take long for Lacey to realize the awful truth. The person responsible for Ben’s injuries admitted it almost shyly.

“I thought about tying his hands and feet, but I couldn’t find anything suitable to use here.”

Lacey couldn’t believe how calm Johan sounded as she stared at Ben’s discolored, swollen purple fingers, her heart pounding furiously. She let out a shaky breath, feeling a chill run through her.

“What have you done…?”

But to Johan, Lacey’s horrified question was the absurd one. His eyes widened in disbelief.

“No,” he countered coolly. “I should be the one asking what exactly you two were planning to do to me.”