Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#149Reader Mode

#149

The idea of “rotting together as ghost soulmates” didn’t land as romantic. It hit Seojun like a physical blow, a chilling confession that stole the feeling from his tongue. His mind seized, every synapse screaming the same frantic message: Pretend you didn’t hear that. Pretend this isn’t happening.

But his eye, traitorous and wide, flicked to the kitchen knife in her grip. A sharp thing, meant for carving roasts. Now, unmistakably, meant for carving him. The way that polished steel glinted in the darkness instantly transformed Seojun into the most accommodating man alive.

He stretched his lips into a smile so tight it felt brittle, like thin ice ready to crack. “Camry… wow. That’s… quite the confession. I’m flattered, honestly. It’s just… Don’t you think we might be jumping the gun on the whole ‘eternal haunting’ commitment? We’ve only known each other, what? A day?”

Seojun scrambled for an off-ramp. Any off-ramp that wasn’t him. “Hey, you know who’s probably single? Bobby Thompson. Maybe a little vertically challenged, sure, but ambitious! Always going on about making his first million. Probably has by now, actually. Total catch.”

But the smile never left Camry’s face even after his polite rejection.

“Oh, Seojun,” she said, her voice light, almost teasing, as she flicked her wrist in a dismissive little wave. “Money doesn’t matter anymore, silly! Besides,” her eyes seemed to drift, gazing into a future only she could see, “we have eternity. All the time in the world to spend… toge—”

“—ther!” The word exploded out of her as she launched herself forward, the knife whistling through the air where the last syllable had hung.

She didn’t aim high, not for the throat or the head. Some instinct, or maybe just the clumsy enthusiasm of a novice killer, sent the blade hurtling toward the broad, vulnerable expanse of his stomach. A rookie’s move, a distant, adrenaline-flooded part of Seojun’s brain registered—sloppy, but brutally effective. Wide target, hard to miss entirely. Precision wasn’t the point.

Not that he planned on offering constructive criticism like, “A little more to the left for maximum organ damage!”

He flung himself sideways, hitting the aged floorboards with a thud that jarred his teeth. Pain flared along his ribs, sharp and hot, but drowned instantly by the tidal wave of adrenaline. He scrambled backward, crab-walking desperately, air sawing in and out of his lungs as he finally found his voice:

“AAAAHH!”

It wasn’t just terror, though fear had its icy fingers clamped tight around his windpipe. No, this scream was aimed. He directed it down, through the floor, trying to pierce the silence below, hoping to reach whatever—whoever—had made those noises earlier. The woman in black? A squatter? He didn’t care. Anyone.

Someone please, please hear me!

As cries for help went, it was pure, ragged desperation. Pitiful, maybe, but undeniably real.

The knife’s tip halted, vibrating inches from the grimy surface of the antique mirror he’d scrambled near. Camry’s reflection stared out from the glass—unnervingly pale, her skin cast in a faint, almost bruised, blueish light. Her mouth stretched into something that vaguely resembled a smile, but held zero warmth. Only a predatory, consuming hunger.

Seojun’s stomach plummeted. A fresh wave of cold dread washed over him. There was something wrong with the reflection—it looked subtly warped, stretched thin at the edges, as if the mirror itself flinched away from her image.

Then she spoke, her voice dropping to a soft, almost gentle murmur. The kind you might use to soothe a frightened bird before wringing its neck.

“I know what you’re thinking, Seojun. Hoping for a dramatic rescue?”

Both Camry’s eyes, and the eyes in the distorted reflection, snapped to him. The doubling effect was nauseating. “I hoped too,” she continued, her voice taking on a brittle edge. “When the poison scorched my throat. When I was drowning in my own blood. When the only thing I could feel was hate for Leimia… so fierce I thought my heart would tear itself apart.”

She offered a small pout, lips trembling in a mockery of sympathy.

“But hope always bleeds out eventually, Seojun. No one is coming. It’s pointless to thrash about like this.”

His panic must have been broadcasting like a signal flare. She explained it all with a cloying, lecture-hall patience—sickeningly sweet, a lullaby sung by a killer. Her thumb caressed the smooth hilt of the knife, almost tenderly… then her fingers clenched, knuckles turning white. Her patience snapped.

“How many times?” Her voice cracked, rising sharply. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

She lunged again, faster this time. “It’s just us! Nobody else! Only you and me in this house!”

Death seemed to have gifted her infinite breath. Words spilled from her in a venomous, unbroken stream, even as her attacks grew faster, wilder. The knife became a silver blur—a diagonal slash that hissed through the air, a forward stab aimed low, a sudden upward flick near his face. There was a fluid, unnerving elegance to her movements, like a ballerina choreographing a slaughter.

“But please,” she added, and her laughter bounced off the oppressive walls, sharp and strangely doubled, “go right ahead and scream if it makes you feel better! Scream until your throat bleeds, Seojun! AHAHAHA!” Her shriek of laughter wasn’t human; it scraped against the silence of the house.

He didn’t scream. The thought didn’t even form.

He moved. Twisting away, scrambling backward across the floorboards on palms and heels, pure instinct piloting his limbs. Every desperate dodge, every clumsy lurch, was fueled by a single, frantic command hammering in his skull: don’t let it touch you.

There was no space in his mind for strategy, no room for anger, only the frantic, animal need to put distance between his skin and that gleaming edge. Beneath the panic, a cold certainty solidified: if she truly wanted him dead, he’d already be sprawled on this floor, another stain on the haunted history of this house.

This wasn’t just an attack; it was a performance. She was drawing it out, savoring the frantic rhythm of his terror.

The blade whistled past his ear, so close the disturbed air felt like a cold caress. As he jerked away, the chilling echo of her earlier words slammed into him with the force of a physical blow.

“Only you and me in here!”

His blood ran cold. Only you and me. Did she mean…? No woman downstairs? No one else at all? No chance of rescue, no possibility of intervention? Just… them?

The implication threatened to freeze him solid.

But the flash of steel arcing toward his neck shattered the paralysis. He threw himself backward again, his spine cracking hard against the unyielding wood of a door. His gaze locked on Camry—who now advanced with the unhurried, terrifying confidence of a lioness that knows its prey is trapped—while his fingers fumbled desperately behind him, scrabbling for the doorknob.

He found it. Twisted.

Nothing.

He twisted again, harder, rattling the handle uselessly.

The knob spun loosely in his grip, the inner workings completely shot. A dead, hollow click echoed the sickening finality settling deep in his gut. Trapped.

Camry watched his frantic scrabbling at the door, and a slow, terrifying smile spread across her face—less joy, more a kind of rapturous certainty. “See?” she crooned, her voice cloying sweet. “It won’t turn. Not for you. Not until you’re with me. Why fight it, Seojun? Just let go.”

Her voice, thick as poisoned honey, seemed to guide the knife as it drew closer. She shifted her weight, muscles coiling, preparing a wide, gutting arc.

There was no time for thought, only the animal brain screaming move.

Seojun didn’t think; he reacted. His leg snapped out, a desperate, driving kick aimed low, pouring every last shred of adrenaline-fueled terror into hitting her ankle, hoping to break her balance, anything.

A scream tore from his own throat—not the calculated cry for help from before, but an involuntary shriek of agony. A terrible crack echoed, not from her bone, but seemingly from his own shin at the point of impact. Blinding pain shot up his leg, intense and wrong, as if he’d kicked solid iron instead of flesh and tendon. Ice traced its way up his spine at the sheer unnaturalness of it.

But the shock was secondary. It worked. That was the only coherent thought his pain-addled mind could grasp.

Camry went down with a sharp grunt, stumbling forward, but the impact barely broke her momentum. Her grip on the knife remained absolute. She twisted as she fell, landing hunched but ready, eyes blazing with manic energy. If anything, the jolt of pain seemed only to ignite her further, focusing her like a laser.

She bared her teeth in a feral grin, breath hissing between them. Then, like something serpentine, she coiled low and uncoiled in a vicious, underhanded thrust aimed straight for his navel.

“Ahh! Shit!”

Dignity was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Seojun found himself executing a clumsy, panicked dance—a half-hop, half-skitter across the floorboards, desperately trying to keep his limbs clear of the flashing blade.

The instant her thrust missed, leaving her momentarily off-balance, he scrambled backward, panting, desperate for space. Any space. But the walls seemed to press in, shrinking the already small room. No room to maneuver, nowhere to gain purchase, and worse—

The only exit, that solid wooden door, stood there uselessly, mocking him with its broken knob.

Terror was a living, breathing thing in his chest now.

Weapon. Need a weapon. The thought screamed through the panic. His eye shot around the cramped room, frantic, hunting for anything. Bare walls shedding paint flakes like dead skin, that goddamn mirror clinging stubbornly to the plaster, a squat chest of drawers shoved near the corner. On top of it: two bags—Camry’s, and the one that must have been Leimia’s.

His gaze snagged on them. Not weapons. Not even close. Soft canvas satchels, maybe leather trim. Useless for defense, pathetic even as a distraction. Swinging one would be like trying to fight off a wolf with a folded napkin.

Still, bare hands against steel? That wasn’t a fight; it was suicide.

A desperate gamble, nothing more. He lunged, snatching the nearest bag—Leimia’s, he vaguely registered. The thin strap bit into his palm, the bag itself depressingly light, all yielding fabric and emptiness. Utterly, hopelessly useless.

A low chuckle scraped from the floor where Camry was pushing herself upright. It wasn’t amusement; it was the sound of death confirming the trap was sprung, cold and utterly devoid of humor.

“And what, precisely,” she asked, her voice dripping with mock curiosity, “are you planning to do with that, Seojun?”

She rose, the movement jerky at first as she favored the ankle he’d kicked, but smoothing out into that fluid, unsettling grace as she straightened. She leaned back against the door, effectively becoming the lock, sealing his only potential escape route. The knife hung loosely in her grip, almost an afterthought, but the confidence radiating off her was absolute.

“Go on,” she urged, gesturing dismissively with her free hand. “Take it. Leimia certainly has no use for it now. Neither do I, really.”

Her smile widened, stretching unnaturally, showing too much teeth. It was a terrible sight.

“Oh! But think, Seojun,” she cooed, her eyes bright with disturbed glee. “When you join me, we’ll have a matching set! Two dead owners. Two bags left behind. Isn’t that… fitting?”

Seojun’s knuckles whitened on the useless strap. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek, tasting the sharp tang of blood. Camry wasn’t physically imposing, but she moved with a terrifying reach, all lean muscle and unexpected speed. Every casual flick of her wrist sent the blade carving through the air he desperately needed to breathe. The corner pressed hard into his back, the sharp angle of the walls boxing him in, leaving him nowhere to sidestep, nowhere to retreat.

This was it. The brutal, physical reality of being cornered. Back pressed literally against the wall, the only way out guarded by a ghost with a knife and a terrifyingly cheerful smile.

His eye darted left, right, searching—a window, a loose floorboard, anything. Nothing but peeling plaster stared back. Pointless, anyway, he thought with a surge of bitter clarity. The door hadn’t just jammed. He knew doors in this house; the one upstairs had taken both his and Camry’s weight to shoulder open. This was different. This wasn’t stuck wood or a rusted hinge.

It felt sealed. Locked down tight by something else.

That cold certainty cut through the adrenaline buzz, chilling him deeper than the knife threat alone. This wasn’t just Camry losing her mind. This space, this moment… it felt orchestrated.

Flashes of memory, unwelcome and sharp, ambushed him: the corn maze whispering his name, its paths shifting malevolently. The crossroads that had refused to let him leave, looping him back relentlessly. Places governed by a twisted logic, warped spaces that held you captive until you deciphered rules no one ever explained.

Is that what this is? The thought landed like a lead weight in his stomach. Another impossible game? Some condition he had to meet before the lock released?

And if so… what? What cosmic loophole or desperate act was required this time?

A single bead of sweat tracked a cold path down his temple. He could feel Camry’s eyes on him, her patience radiating a terrifying confidence. Was she just going to stand there patiently, leaning against the door like a casual observer, while he tried to puzzle out his own survival?

The sheer madness of it sparked a hysterical impulse close to laughter, but it died in his throat, choked by a rising knot of panic. A reckless, suicidal thought flared: Rush her. Go for the knife.

He nearly choked on the idiocy. Biting down hard, the coppery tang of blood flooded his mouth, the sharp pain a necessary anchor pulling him back from the brink. Brilliant plan, genius. He could already picture it: his hands, slick with his own blood, slipping uselessly on the handle as she carved him up, that awful, delighted smile spreading wider with every twist of the blade.

No. Think.

His gaze swept the room again, this time with desperate precision. The bags on the dresser. The cursed mirror. Scattered pills. And—

The thermos.

Sitting innocuously on the chest of drawers where Camry had left it. Stainless steel, solid, catching a dull gleam of light. His focus narrowed, locked onto it.

Wait.

The poison inside was irrelevant. The outside was hard metal. Heavy enough, maybe, to inflict pain, to create an opening. Her knife looked like standard kitchen issue—lethal, yes, but not indestructible. Steel against steel…

It wasn’t a sword. It wasn’t even a decent club. It was grasping at straws.

But it was something.

A tiny, fragile ember of possibility flickered in the suffocating darkness of his fear. He couldn’t afford doubt. Couldn’t give his racing brain a second to shoot it down. With a strangled grunt, fueled by pure desperation, he lunged sideways and hurled the bulky canvas bag—Leimia’s bag—straight at Camry’s face.

“Rude, Seojun!” Camry snapped, the bag batted aside with a purely instinctive flick of her wrist.

Perfect.

For one vital second, her vision was momentarily obscured by flapping canvas, her momentum carrying the useless bag away. A single blink of confused annoyance.

That was all the time he had.

As the bag sailed past her, Seojun wasn’t aiming for her anymore. He lunged sideways, toward the dresser.

His fingers closed around the cool, dense steel of the thermos. The same thermos that had practically radiated suspicion earlier, offered with that too-sweet smile. Now, its weight felt substantial, grounding. A ridiculous lifeline, maybe, but solid. Real. He gripped it tight, the metal suddenly feeling absurdly precious.

Leimia’s bag hit the floorboards with a soft thud.

Camry blinked, annoyance sharpening her dead features. Her gaze snapped back to him—and froze. Seeing him standing there, panting, eye wide with a hunted look, clutching a thermos like some pathetic, makeshift club.

Silence slammed down, thick and heavy. The only sound was Seojun’s ragged breathing, each pull of air sawing through the quiet. Somewhere deep in the house’s structure, that low, almost subsonic hum seemed to intensify, as if the building itself held its breath.

His desperate gaze locked with her dead, empty stare.

One strained heartbeat. Then another.

Camry’s lips, tinged that unsettling blue, parted.

“Pfft—“

She slapped a hand over her mouth, but it was too late. A giggle, strangled at first, bubbled past her fingers.

The shock wasn’t the sound itself, but its horrifying sincerity. This wasn’t scorn, or a taunt. It was genuine, bubbling amusement. She found him, armed with a thermos against her knife, utterly, truly funny.

Heat flooded Seojun’s face, a burning wave of mortification so intense it momentarily eclipsed the fear. Even facing death, even with blood coating his tongue and his heart hammering against his ribs… this was somehow the most degrading moment. Standing here like a discount exorcist, wielding a thermos like a divine weapon against the actual undead. The image was so ridiculous it made his chest ache.

“Why not just drink it, Seojun?” Camry finally managed, her voice choked with wheezing laughter. “Better to be a neat corpse than a messy one, right? Hahaha… ahahaha!”

Something inside her seemed to snap then. The laughter lost all traces of mirth, twisting into something high-pitched and broken, almost like sobs. Her shoulders hitched violently with each gasp, the shrieking sound bouncing painfully off the close walls. Still laughing, she lashed out blindly with her foot, sending Leimia’s bag skittering away into the shadows.

“I watched… watched Leimia,” she gasped out between peals of broken laughter, clutching her stomach. “Through the mirror… after. Staggering around riddled with holes… Gods, it was… pathetic. Disgusting! She couldn’t pass as me looking like that, could she?”

Her eyes squeezed shut, doubling over, consumed by the fit.

But then the sound shifted. Changed texture.

The laughter deepened. Grew wet. Thickened into a choked gurgle.

A sudden, shocking rush of dark blood spilled from her mouth. Not a trickle, but a gush. It poured over her pale lips, viscous and glistening black in the shadows, cascading down her chin. Her skin, already deathly pale, seemed to tighten further over her skull, taking on a truly livid, corpse-grey hue. She was still shaking, still emitting that awful, wet laughing sound.

The blood streamed down her neck, painting stark ribbons against the grey skin, instantly soaking the collar of her shirt dark red. Each convulsive, laughing gasp pumped more of it out, a horrific fountain erupting from within. It sprayed and splattered, saturating the front of her clothes in deepening crimson waves.

Seojun was frozen. Rooted to the spot.

He couldn’t draw a proper breath. Couldn’t tear his eye away.

Nausea surged, hot and acidic, working its way up his throat. The scene unfolding felt nightmarish, unreal—less like something happening, more like a deranged art piece conjured from a fever dream, too visceral to be imagined, too horrific to be real.

His tongue felt swollen, his mouth bone-dry. He reflexively licked his lips and tasted it again—the sharp, metallic tang of his own blood from where he’d bitten his cheek.

Bitter iron. A ghastly echo of the horror unfolding just feet away, and a perfect match for the cold, coiling dread strangling his insides.