Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#133Reader Mode

T/N: Thanks for the coffee K! ദ്ദി ˉ͈̀꒳ˉ͈́ )✧

#133

“Ahhh! Holy shit! The killer vampire bugs are coming this way! Somebody do something!”

Leimia screamed at the top of her lungs, thrashing against her restraints. Panic jolted through her, her body twisting and jerking in a frantic attempt to break free. If sheer willpower could sprout wings, she’d be halfway to the moon by now. But the ties didn’t budge. They held firm, grounding her in this grim reality. And the worst part?

Everyone else in the kitchen was just as screwed.

All thanks to Charles and his absolutely brilliant idea. One mistake—one incredibly stupid, catastrophic mistake—and now they were all helpless, gift-wrapped meals for the bloodsucking nightmare swarming toward them.

Looking back, it was almost darkly poetic. Charles had planned to serve them up to Wendrick, hadn’t he? Every guest in the restaurant, chopped up and offered like a grand feast. Karma, apparently, had a wicked sense of humor—because he had been the first course.

Not that anyone was celebrating.

“For the love of—will someone shut her up?! Does she even know what time it is?”

A groggy voice grumbled from a shadowy corner, thick with sleep. Even muffled, everyone heard it. Right now, every sound, every whisper, was amplified, their senses stretched razor-thin by raw, unfiltered terror.

“Carrot! Snap out of it! This is not the time for you to be talking in your sleep! Wake up now!”

Alice’s panicked voice ricocheted through the kitchen. To him, it must have sounded like some kind of desperate serenade, because his eyes flew open, blinking in confusion.

“Alice?”

In a flash, he tried to get to his feet—except the restraints he’d completely forgotten about had other plans. Carrot’s movement was abruptly cut short, sending him face-planting into the gore-covered floor.

“Ugh!”

If they weren’t facing a slow-motion invasion of killer larvae straight out of a B-movie thriller, Seojun might have doubled over laughing. The way Carrot’s escape attempt ended with a full-body splat was pure comedy gold. If things were different, he’d be taking his sweet time enjoying the moment—especially considering he’d already had his own unfortunate run-in with the table edge earlier, thanks to the guy. But schadenfreude, especially at Carrot’s expense, was a luxury he definitely couldn’t afford right now.

“They’re getting closer! The goddamn vampire bugs!”

Even Camry, who had been doing her best to keep it together, looked rattled now. The creatures slithered forward—glistening, bloated, their translucent bodies pulsing like grotesque, organic lava lamps.

Leimia huddled closer to Camry, shaking so hard it made Seojun’s own nerves spike. Alice, meanwhile, gnawed on her lower lip, her bound legs kicking out wildly, trying to crush any of the creeping horrors that got too close.

Oliver sat frozen—a statue carved from grief—twin trails of blood snaking from his nostrils. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Just stared, empty-eyed, at the unholy heap that had once been Hugh.

At least Seojun’s brain cell sacrifice had bought them some much-needed silence. Hugh’s endless screaming had finally stopped, and for that, Seojun was immensely grateful. Now, Oliver simply watched—shaking, crying—while his lover melted into something unrecognizable. His tear-filled eyes were wide, unfocused, like a cow moments before the slaughter. It might have been tragic. Maybe even moving.

But all Seojun felt was relief—relief that Hugh’s dissolving remains hadn’t merged with the incoming swarm.

Hugh’s body had deteriorated fast without his arm. The handsome angles of his face, the smooth skin of his forehead, the fingers that once moved with perfection—all of it was gone. In its place, a shapeless, fluid mess, something disturbingly close to wet dough.

The blood splatter from Wendrick’s explosive demise had only sped up the process, like some kind of catalyst. The more it spread, the faster Hugh unraveled.

Really, Seojun shouldn’t have been surprised. The main ingredient in the devil’s home-shopping recipe for a perfect lover? Powder. Everything else was secondary.

And powder, by its very nature, dissolves in liquid.

“Ah…”

Realization dawned on Seojun.

His eye flicked to the larvae horde creeping forward, their movement sluggish now—too sluggish. They weren’t so different from the powdered humans, were they? Hell, they weren’t even whole anymore. Some of them were already crumbling, disintegrating into smaller and smaller fragments with each agonizing crawl.

A flicker of hope, fragile as spun glass, pierced the oppressive gloom.

Seojun’s gaze snapped to the ceiling. This was a kitchen. That meant the thing he needed should be right up there—and it was!

“Carrot!”

“W-what?”

Carrot was mid-roll, inching toward Alice with all the determination of a doomed soldier crawling toward hope.

Is he trying to be Alice’s meat shield? Admirable.

For once, Seojun felt a flicker of approval—small, almost imperceptible, but there. Considering what he had in mind for Carrot, that self-sacrificing attitude was definitely the right headspace.

Without a word, he pushed a metal awl across the floor with his foot. It must have gotten knocked off the counter when Charles stumbled into it earlier.

Carrot snatched it up, his initial confusion shifting into something dangerously close to confidence. His grip tightened, and a slow grin spread across his face—one of those I’ve got this grins.

“Oh, I get it! You want me to stab and crush these things with this, right?”

He didn’t get it. Not even close.

Seojun’s frustration spiked so hard it nearly short-circuited his patience. If he could reach Carrot, he’d punch him in the chest just to reset whatever malfunction was happening in his brain.

“Does that even remotely sound like a workable plan?! Ah! Shit!”

As much as he wanted to break things down in the simplest terms possible—maybe with interpretive dance for Carrot’s benefit—they didn’t have the time. One of the fragmented horrors had already reached Seojun’s feet.

He stomped down hard. A gross pop erupted beneath his sneaker, followed by a terrible, keening wail. The thing’s guts had burst, and Seojun grimaced, barely holding back a shudder. Then he turned to Carrot, leveling him with the kind of exasperated glare usually reserved for the world’s biggest idiot.

Carrot, doing his damnedest to swallow down the surge of indignant rage, clenched his fists, jaw muscles working overtime.

“Then what the hell am I supposed to do?!”

“Hit the sprinkler on the ceiling! We’ve got one shot at this, and I’m not screwing around—your next move is life or death for all of us! You have to nail this. Got it? If we make it out alive, it’s thanks to me. If we die, it’s all your fault. Dislocate your damn shoulder if you have to. Just do it!”

Seojun, hands still bound, raised his arms and pointed toward the sprinkler head embedded in the ceiling. This wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t even a request. It was a goddamn demand.

And dumping the fate of everyone on Carrot’s shoulders? Yeah, that was just more fuel for the fire.

Carrot shoved one of the creeping bugs away with unexpected accuracy before rounding on Seojun, his voice tight with barely restrained fury.

“You’ve been spewing bullshit since—”

“Carrot! Just do it! Action first, b*tching later! You got this!”

Alice cut him off, her face contorted in raw desperation, veins standing out against flushed skin. That one outburst had the miraculous effect of transforming Carrot from a rabid pit bull to a scolded puppy. His eyes snapped to the sprinkler, sharp with new focus. The awl in his grip might as well have been Excalibur.

Annoyance gone. Grim determination in its place.

Carrot inhaled sharply, muscles tightening, body coiling with tension—then he let loose a roar that tore through the air as he hurled the awl straight at the sprinkler head.

“Aaaaghh!”

Seojun, Alice, Camry, and Leimia all locked onto that single, critical point—each for their own reasons.

Charles had gone all out designing this elaborate deathtrap of a restaurant—sprinkler system and all—just to keep Wendrick fed. And in the end? He also demonstrated the rare virtue of removing himself from the equation entirely by dying alone.

But right now, the real hero, the undisputed MVP of this disaster, was undoubtedly Carrot’s bicep.

Clang!

The awl struck the sprinkler head. Glass shattered, shards raining down, followed by a sharp hiss.

Seojun didn’t blink. His gaze remained locked upward, watching.

A single drop.

Then—whoosh.

The sprinkler system roared to life, unleashing a frigid torrent.

A deluge of ice-cold water crashed from the ceiling, the same relentless sound that had been a distant threat outside now roaring within the kitchen walls. It pelted their gore-streaked bodies, washing away blood and viscera, a brutal shock to their systems—but in that moment, it was nothing short of a godsend.

The vampire bugs, however, were not having a good time.

Already sluggish, their movements slowed to a crawl… then a dead stop. The water carved through them like acid, their grotesque, glistening bodies dissolving on contact. Within seconds, they melted into sickly puddles of what could only be described as bug slurry.

“Ahhh!”

Leimia shrieked—a mix of horror and relief—just as one of the creatures had been an inch away from sinking its teeth into her foot.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the sprinkler sputtered, coughed, and fell silent.

They sat there, panting, soaked to the bone, looking like a pack of drowned rats that had barely survived a biblical-grade downpour.

But no one complained.

They had survived.

After escaping Wendrick’s nightmare fuel larvae, Charles’s mummified remains, and—whatever was left of Hugh, well, the less said, the better—they raided the kitchen for anything sharp enough to cut through the cable ties. By the time they freed themselves, their adrenaline had run dry, leaving them hollowed out and running on fumes. No one spoke. No one needed to. The newly liberated restaurant patrons moved on autopilot, each one dragging their weary asses out of the kitchen.

They only made it as far as their old table—the one they’d been sitting at before everything spiraled. Their personal base camp in this terrible place. It wasn’t much, but it was better than lingering in the kitchen, where the corpses or, well, whatever those things were supposed to be now.

Seojun gathered his things and took the cleanest table he could find. He couldn’t stomach sitting at the one where his hotcakes and coffee sat untouched, cold, like a shrine to the exact moment his world flipped upside down.

The others seemed to feel the same. They gravitated toward the largest table, a dazed and shell-shocked crew. Alice stared blankly out the window, her expression hollow. Sunlight streamed through the glass, too bright, too normal—almost offensive in its warmth.

“The sun is out…” she murmured.

“Yeah, it is…” Camry replied, her voice distant, her dark-ringed eyes heavy with exhaustion. The words weren’t really words. Just a reflex. Just something to fill the void.

Thankfully, Alice snapped out of her daze first. She shoved both hands through her hair in a messy before fixing Seojun with a laser-sharp gaze. The intensity was enough to make even him, who was practically one with his chair at this point, sit up a little straighter.

“More importantly, you…Seojun. Are you an exorcist or something? You seemed to know what you were doing back there in the kitchen. You even handled those… vampire bugs.”

There was a strange spark in her voice, a flicker of excitement. Probably because she was still hung up on his earlier rant about a devil. But whatever the reason, her question acted like a cattle prod on the others, jolting them out of their stupor. Suddenly, all eyes were on him.

Seojun, for his part, was completely blindsided. He shook his head, wincing as the motion pulled at his stiff neck. With a sigh, he glanced at Oliver, who looked as dejected as ever, before finally speaking in a voice so flat it could have been ironed.

“An exorcist? Not even close. Actually…”

Yeah, no. There was no way he was explaining how he’d seen flashes of the past through a pair of glasses he’d picked up in the restroom. That was the kind of thing that got you labeled insane. Instead, he opted for a heavily edited version of the truth—one that made slightly more sense.

So, with the same deadpan delivery, Seojun launched into an explanation about the devil’s powder. The one used to create the perfect lover.

“…So, when Oliver reacted so strongly to my gloves, I had a hunch. Especially since his hand was bandaged too.”

Seojun conveniently skipped over the minor detail that Hugh might not have been powdered human at all. Hardly important. Other than that, his story was mostly solid. He walked them through how he remembered the caution message from the devil’s home-shopping channel, tricked Charles into botching the ingredients, and figured out that powdered humans had weak spots in their anatomy—a crucial discovery that ended up being the key to their survival.

“I see… So devils really do exist, huh?” Alice murmured. There was real awe in her voice, the kind that came from witnessing something too bizarre and terrifying to fully process. “Or, even if they’re not actual demons, this is exactly the kind of supernatural encounter that deserves the name.”

Leimia, however, practically vibrated with excitement and all but pounced on Seojun.

“Wait, wait, what? There’s a home-shopping channel like that? What’s the channel called? If I could post something like that on my White Star account, it’d blow up for sure!”

Seojun immediately shut that down with a halfhearted wave, mumbling some noncommittal nonsense about not remembering. No way in hell was he getting sucked into Leimia’s influencer shenanigans.

Meanwhile, Carrot had barely reacted at all. He’d been frowning the entire time like he was still processing it. Whether any of Seojun’s explanation had actually sunk in was anyone’s guess.

Instead of grilling Seojun with questions, Carrot turned to Alice, his face dead serious, his tone bordering on solemn.

“That powder… just thinking about it is messed up. Alice, you’re the only one for me. My perfect woman. I’d never, ever go near that evil powder crap!”

Alice tilted her head, eyes gleaming with mischief. Then, with the kind of casual cruelty only a friend could pull off, she asked a question.

“Oh, Carrot… but what if you turned out to be a lover made from that kind of powder?”

Carrot froze. His eyes went wide. Then shaking. Violently. He looked like he was spiraling into a full-blown existential crisis over the state of his own existence.

Alice, clearly enjoying the spectacle, let the tension stretch just long enough to be unbearable before finally cracking up.

“I’m kidding, Carrot! If you were my dream guy, you’d definitely be smarter.”

“Huh?”

It was impossible to tell if she was joking, serious, or just throwing words out to watch him suffer. Either way, her comment worked like a pressure valve. Despite the fact that there were at least one—maybe three, depending on how loosely you defined person—corpses still in the kitchen, the atmosphere at their table finally started to thaw.

Alice, never one to miss an opportunity, reached out and took Oliver’s hand.

While Seojun had been rambling about the devil’s home-shopping channel, Oliver had all but folded in on himself—head down, shoulders practically touching his ears. At Alice’s touch, he flinched, his whole body trembling faintly. Slowly, hesitantly, he lifted his head, meeting Alice’s steady gaze. Her grip was firm. So was her voice.

“Oliver, don’t go down that road.”

“I… I…”

“Look, I know I don’t exactly have the right to say anything. We weren’t even on a first-name basis until today. And hey, if you decided to rip out all your fingernails and toenails, it’s not like I could stop you. But Oliver… you don’t have to end up like Charles. You saw what he did. You saw how awful it was. You can be better than that. Just look at Seojun. He resisted temptation.”

Seojun thought that last part was a little much. Completely unnecessary, really. But Oliver—Oliver actually glanced at him, his green eyes flickering with something dangerously close to admiration, before he dropped his head again.

Then he cried. For a long time. Heavy, gut-wrenching sobs that filled the room, leaving an awkward, unspoken weight in the air. Even Seojun—who wasn’t exactly overflowing with sympathy—felt something twist uncomfortably in his chest.

Alice let him cry.

Then, when the moment had settled, she casually added, “Oh, by the way, I checked. The road’s clear now. Guess things weren’t as bad as they seemed.”

Their goodbye was weirdly anticlimactic.

Alice had picked up some intel about the road situation, and just like that, it was time to go their separate ways. They made some half-hearted small talk about where they were headed next, but no one bothered exchanging numbers. There wasn’t much point. They weren’t lifelong friends or kindred spirits—just a bunch of strangers who’d happened to end up in the same backwater diner. Sure, they had survived a literal life-or-death ordeal together, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of memory anyone would want to relive over brunch.

“Ah, finally! Time to check out that haunted house Philly F explored!”

Leimia hummed to herself as she shoved things into her bag, the telltale rattle of a vitamin bottle coming from somewhere inside. Camry hesitated, sneaking a few glances at Seojun like she wanted to say something, but in the end, she kept quiet. Linking arms, she and Leimia strolled off together. Alice, Carrot, and Oliver followed soon after, leaving Seojun standing alone in the place.

When he finally stepped outside, the post-rain air smacked him in the face like a cold splash of reality. The sunlight was warm, but the breeze was crisp and clean, cutting through the lingering haze in his head. Slowly, he trudged toward his truck, climbing into the driver’s seat with all the energy of a zombie on its last legs. The cramped space seemed to finally drive home the reality that he had actually made it out alive.

“Ugh…”

Seojun groaned, pressing his fingers against his temples as a dull, persistent throb pounded behind his eyes. He let out a long, soul-deep sigh, then, with a sudden flare of irritation, cracked one eye open—only to immediately grind his teeth.

That look!

That subtle, insufferable look—like it was only natural for Seojun to be interested in the Perfect Lover Powder. The sheer audacity of it still stung.

It’s not like I’ve never had anyone interested in me before.

He slumped against the steering wheel, scowling to himself. It wasn’t as if learning the truth about powdered lovers had suddenly made him desperate for one. No, what really got under his skin was the curiosity. Did other people seriously have a crystal-clear, unwavering idea of their “ideal” partner?

For as long as he could remember, Seojun had viewed the world as a horror movie he couldn’t escape from. Romance? That had never even made it onto his list of priorities. He’d spent his life scanning for potential threats, not swooning over the concept of soulmates. It wasn’t like he was blind, though. Christina, for example, was drop-dead gorgeous. On the other hand, just one look at Bobby made it painfully obvious why the word “ugly” had been added to the dictionary in the first place.

“Hm…”

And yet, without fail, every time this topic came up, his mind circled back to Johan. It was inevitable. Johan had been the first guy to confess to him—not in some shy, hesitant way, either. No, Johan had completely bypassed ‘confident’ and crash-landed straight into ‘shameless.’ He’d declared his love at every possible opportunity, over and over, until the words had practically drilled themselves into Seojun’s brain.

Seojun blinked, feeling the slow creep of heat crawling up his neck as those memories played out in excruciating detail. It wasn’t until his ears were practically burning off his head that he even realized.

Thunk.

His forehead hit the steering wheel.

“Ah, ahhh. The teddy bear. Gotta put the damn teddy bear back.”

Still fanning his face with one hand, he dug into his pocket and pulled out the vitamin bottle he’d stuffed there earlier. Twisting off the cap, he peered inside, squinting.

No sign of the ridiculously cute, weirdly named teddy bear that should have been there.

Just pills.

A slow, creeping dread slithered down his spine, cold as ice water.

The bottles. They’d been switched.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

Johan stepped out of the hospital, his wallet significantly lighter and his mood not much better. He’d also had to say goodbye to his little sunshine-yellow car—though, in its current mangled state, “car” was a generous term. If anything, it now resembled a modern art piece titled Ode to a Junkyard. There was no way that thing was ever seeing the road again.

“Haa…”

He sighed, a sound that seemed to become a regular occurrence since leaving home. As if wrecking his ride wasn’t bad enough, the accident had earned him a full medical workup. The Wizard, ever helpful, had made sure he got a firsthand reminder of just how dangerous concussions could be.

At least the exam had been over quickly—though he was pretty sure he’d just cashed in a lifetime’s worth of good luck.

Johan tipped his head back, eyes tracing the endless blue stretch of sky. It was the same shade as his own wistful sapphire gaze—though, unlike the sky, his luck wasn’t exactly limitless. No broken bones, no brain bleeds. His body had always been stubbornly sturdy, and wearing a seatbelt had done him a favor. But at the end of the day, he was down to the clothes on his back and whatever was rattling around in his pockets.

Speaking of which, his total worldly possessions currently amounted to: a few crumpled bills, some lemon candies, the cross necklace after the teddy bear was removed, his miraculously unscathed phone, and the toolbox Christina had given him.

The rest of his belongings didn’t really matter. The real issue was that no matter how he did the math, there was no way he could scrape together enough cash to replace his totaled car.

“Guess I’m hitchhiking now…?”

Except, hitching a ride meant relying on the kindness of strangers, and Johan had no idea where Seojun had traveled to. While they were both heading toward the same place, he secretly hoped for a ‘chance encounter’ with Seojun before he showed up on his uncle’s doorstep in Georgia.

“This is the one option I really didn’t want to use,” he muttered, exhaling sharply.

Reluctantly, he pulled out his phone, thumb hovering over the screen before he started scrolling through his contacts. His gloomy frown slowly shifted into something more determined.

After all, fate wasn’t a thing of chance. If you wanted something, you had to reach out and make it yours.

His fingers brushed the cool metal of the cross hanging from his neck. Then, with a sunny grin, he hit the call button.

After a few rings, someone picked up.

“Hello, ma’am? It’s Johan…”