Reborn as a Prophet in a Horror Movie

#194Reader Mode

#194

Seojun grimaced as the words left his mouth. He hated being the one to say things like that. Why was it that staying alive meant gambling the very life you were trying to keep? People who were actually good at this stayed alive without ever putting that precious life on the line. But him? Seojun had danced along the razor’s edge between life and death so many times he’d lost count. That didn’t make him experienced. He wouldn’t dare call himself a pro. And now here he was, options exhausted, doing the one thing he despised above all else: tossing his one, irreplaceable life into the pot and praying the cards fell right.

Oddly enough, he didn’t feel anxious. No fear clamping his muscles rigid, no panic crawling up to smother him. Perhaps it was because of the “mass of heat” standing next to him. Something about Johan being there loosened just enough tension from his body to keep him upright. Seojun had a pretty good idea why.

Yeah… a guy really does need some muscle to depend on.

His gaze settled on Johan’s forearm, the same one that, not long ago, had swung through Samantha’s neck and taken her head clean off, casual as knocking the cap off a bottle. Seojun looked his fill, tracing the coiled power in that arm, then finally spoke, eye flicking away.

“We’re short on time, so I’m only saying this once. Samantha’s blind, so sound is the only thing that’ll draw her toward us. You all know that much already. So here’s the plan: whoever bait leads her into that room over there, grabs the ID card the moment she’s inside, and gets the hell out before she can react. While she’s in there, the rest of you haul that bookcase from the room across the hall and use it to barricade the door. We’ve got that twine, too, so we’ll wrap it around the bookcase and the handle tight like we’re mummifying the damn thing. Once it’s tied down, she’s not getting through. Not a chance.”

“Isn’t it a little too dangerous for whoever has to be bait?”

It was a fair question from Brown, and Seojun nodded hard to show he understood the concern. Acknowledging it wasn’t the same as backing down, though. He turned away and set the bouquet he’d been holding on top of a box behind him, handling it with surprising care, as if it could still be damaged.

Which, at this point, it definitely couldn’t. The flowers were a mess by now, soiled and drooping with half its petals gone to wherever petals go. But Seojun would’ve kept holding onto it even if it were nothing but a fistful of bare stems picked clean of every petal. Why? There wasn’t any deep, dramatic reason. He just felt compelled to do so.

“All right, listen up. This plan’s going to make noise no matter what we do, so obviously the bait has to keep Samantha’s attention locked on them the whole time. But if that’s all we do, the person who’s bait is just volunteering to get torn to shreds. We’re not going to let it come to that. So, here’s the solution: we throw a bedsheet over her. I know how it sounds, but think about it. It’ll throw off her sense of direction and screws with how she tracks movement. She hunts by sound, so covering her messes with both. And hey, if the sheet gives us even a little protection from her swings, all the better. Well… maybe that’s asking a lot from a ratty old sheet, but it’s better than nothing. The one thing working in our favor here is that she doesn’t have proper hands and feet. We drape something over her, and she won’t be shaking it off easy.”

The blades jutting out of her hands and feet made Samantha horrifying to deal with, and also at the same time, the reason her hands didn’t do hand things anymore. All the little tasks everybody else runs on autopilot, the simplest things you never once thank your fingers for: gone for her. Samantha couldn’t perform the simplest tasks anymore.

Standing loose and easy, Seojun tipped his head toward the room Brown had been hiding in. “You said that room’s full of metal bookshelves and desks, right? Good. Once we lure her in the room, we bury her. We bring the whole damn room down on her if we have to. Pile on so much junk she can’t rip her way free. You catch that, Johan? I’m counting on your musc—no. I’m counting on you. Brown, I need you to find some bedsheets please. Search fast and toss them over as soon as you’ve got whatever you can grab. After that, I want you working with Johan to figure out which shelves in that room can be pulled free the easiest since you know the layout. And don’t waste time. We don’t have any to spare.”

“…Huh?”

Johan had been staring intently at the elevator entrance, so lost in thought that Seojun’s words didn’t even register at first. When they finally sank in, Johan turned his head slowly, like the act itself took conscious effort. He tapped his ear, a bewildered look flickering across his face before he spoke.

“Jun… what are you saying? Why are you making it sound like you’re the one who’s going to go up against the nurse zombie?”

“Because that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Seojun answered firmly, no hesitation in his voice. “You heard me, Johan. I’m going to do it. We trapped Pete, didn’t we? Same plan, same trap. It’ll work.”

“…What kind of nonsense is this, Jun?”

Johan’s face twisted with something beyond frustration, his brows dropping low as he glared at Seojun. It looked like someone had yanked the rug out from under him. He almost seemed betrayed.

Seojun was caught off guard by the intensity of the reaction. Things were too urgent for an argument, but even so, he found himself snapping back.

“Oh, come on! Weren’t you the one who said you loved it when I asked you for things? How you’d do absolutely anything for me if I just said the word? Anything, Johan! So was that all just useless talk? Huh??”

In a span of a single blink, a whirlwind of thoughts went through Johan’s, the main one being that he never quite said he’d do ‘absolutely anything’. But rather than point out that, his eyes glistened suddenly, welling up with tears and a low, pleading sound came from his throat.

But Johan didn’t get the chance to say anything more.

BOOM!

Clatter! Clatter! BANG! BANG!

The elevator doors rattled violently in their frame, shaking like something on the other side wanted out and wanted out now. Even Brown froze mid-pull on the door, bedsheets forgotten, his head snapping toward the sound, eyes wide with dread.

The gap between the elevator doors widened just enough for an arm to snake through. It was thin, deathly pale, the knuckles tinged blue as if frostbitten. Samantha never entered a room quietly. Her presence always caused a commotion. The pounding, the scraping, the tortured groaning of metal… all of it screamed her arrival. And yet, for all that noise, not a single sound came from her. No grunts of exertion. No heavy breathing. The noise belonged entirely to the elevator; she was just the thing coming out of it.

The Nurse dragged herself out of the elevator one joint at a time, vertebrae popping like knuckles, moving the way something moves when it has crawled its way up from the deepest pits of hell.

Seojun’s single black eye widened, taking in the full horror of her as she emerged fully into the corridor. She was worse than he remembered. Much worse. The Nurse he’d faced before was already a walking abomination, but the fall had made sure there wasn’t even a hint of humanity left in her appearance.

Her head was still twisted the wrong way. That much hadn’t changed. He’d seen it enough times now that his stomach had almost, almost stopped lurching at it. He could handle looking at her head.

Her chest, though, was another story.

Whatever crude stitching had been holding her together, the fall had undone it. Now, her torso had split wide open, from the hollow of her collarbone to her navel. What was left of her nurse’s uniform hung in tatters, revealing everything beneath it. So Seojun saw it. All of it. Her heart, burst and sagging like a balloon three days after the party. The ribs around it snapped and splayed outward, less a cage now than a display case, presenting the horror they’d failed to contain.

The Nurse began to tremble. Slowly at first, then building into a violent shudder, like something winding itself up into pure, seething rage.

She’d lost a few fingers and toes somewhere down in the darkness below, but it didn’t seem to matter. If anything, the damage only seemed to fuel her, her murderous resolve burning hotter than ever. Seojun didn’t stop to think. He moved on instinct, snatching the monkey wrench out of Johan’s hand, and slamming it into the wall without so much as a pause.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The deafening sound ricocheted through the basement, metal striking against concrete hard enough to set his ears ringing. Samantha’s head ticked sideways with a dry crack. Her head was still turned the wrong way, so Seojun couldn’t tell for sure if she was looking at him. But he didn’t need to see her face to know. Every hair on his arms stood up and delivered the verdict for him: she’d noticed him. Wonderful. Great. His plan was working. He’d never hated a working plan more.

“Johan! Brown! Hurry! Move! Do it now!”

“R-right!”

Brown all but barreled into the room, his heavy footsteps landing with the force of dropped sandbags. Seojun didn’t let Samantha fix her attention on him by getting louder, hammering the wall in double time, drowning one racket under another. Give him a gong, a cymbal, a soup pot and a ladle, anything, and he’d have been going at it like the world’s most desperate one-man band.

Uncharacteristically, Johan hesitated longer than it needed to. When he finally spoke, his voice came out soft.

“Just hold on… for a little while.”

Then he moved. Despite being a hulking figure comparable to Brown, Johan could be startlingly quiet. He slipped into the room with all the noise of a breeze brushing past. Seojun inhaled sharply, filling his lungs until his chest ached, then let it loose with everything he had.

“SAMANTHA! Over here! I’m right here! Come and get me!”

To be clear: this wasn’t enthusiasm. Do not confuse it for that.

It wasn’t like Seojun had volunteered for this because he wanted to. Standing in front of peril, gambling with his life on the line, feeling every heartbeat arrive like it might be filing its resignation… none of that was fun. But when you broke down the situation and looked at it for what it was, the hard truth became painfully obvious. If you had to choose the person best cut out for bait duty… it was only ever going to be him.

Say they picked Brown. All that soft, generous padding of his, the kind that perfectly matched his soft, generous nature, would make him too tempting of a target; Samantha’s blades would have a field day, slicing him up like he was there to be portioned out. So, Johan, then? No question he’d be exceptional at it. Fearless to a fault, long arms and legs, all that firm athletic muscle… Seojun’s one good eye had already seen how easily Johan could handle Samantha.

But then there’d be an entirely different problem.

Namely the painfully obvious fact that Seojun, teamed-up with Brown, would be roughly as helpful at lifting the bookcase as a houseplant. There was simply no conceivable way he could see himself hauling a heavy steel bookcase across a room at any speed you’d call useful. His arms knew their limits even if his pride occasionally forgot them. Grabbing a sack of rice, throwing a goofy flex and bragging about his “guns” to a nonexistent audience… that was strictly a home activity, performed in his room where nothing wanted him dead.

So after much deliberation, Seojun had volunteered himself for bait duty. There’s a right place and a right time for everything, after all. And up until he was facing Samantha, he’d even been patting himself on the back for the solid tactical call.

“……”

Okay. So maybe he’d bitten off a bit more than he could chew with this one.

Seojun’s bloodless cheeks uncontrollably. The freshly “redecorated” Samantha didn’t even have to move. The sheer bloodthirsty pressure radiating off her was more than enough to knock the wind out of him. Sure, losing a few toes had slowed her down, but whatever speed she’d sacrificed had clearly been reinvested in sheer malicious intent. It filled the space between them like a thick, choking fog, stealing what little breath he could force into his lungs. Each inhale was shallower than the last.

His knees trembled, threatening to give out entirely. The edges of his vision turned hazy, darkening and swaying like shadows at the edge of a dying candle. But Seojun managed to pull himself back from the brink. He clenched his jaw, steadied himself, and shouted again.

“Samantha! The monkey wrench that knocked your head clean off? Yeah, it’s right here! Come and get it!”

Did she understand me?

Samantha had gone utterly still. Her head tilted slightly, the weight of her attention shifting faintly toward the last whisper of sound Brown had left behind. For one eerie, stomach-turning moment, nothing about her moved. Then she lurched. Her body snapped toward Seojun with unnatural precision, like a compass needle locking onto true north, and she started coming. Fast. Too fast. Faster than anything missing that many pieces should be able to. Her jagged blades scraped against the floor with every step, a sharp, rhythmic clank that beat out like the countdown of a clock, dragging her closer and closer.

“Gah!”

Even with his mouth running nonstop, he never once let his eye drift off-target. Trapping Samantha mattered to the plan, it just wasn’t the point of it. The point hung somewhere around her neck, if you could still call it a neck. His eye traced over that ruined stretch of flesh and metal one painstaking inch at a time, searching. Panic attacked him, tried to slam his eyelid shut, tried to make him turn away and stop looking at her altogether. But Seojun fought it, held his eye open the way you’d hold a door open against a raging wind.

Find the ID card. That was the point. Without it, everything else fell apart. Samantha had somehow dragged herself up an elevator shaft with what little was left of her hands. If the card had come loose somewhere during that climb, if it was lying at the bottom of the shaft right now…

That would be a disaster.

By some ridiculous stroke of luck, she turned out to be the conscientious sort of ghost. Despite losing a handful of fingers and toes, the ID card somehow stayed right where it was supposed to be.

There it is!

Seojun’s dark eye widened to its limit, his teeth grinding together as he pounded at the wall like an absolute madman. A deafening crash roared in his ears, but he didn’t stop.

What worked in his favor was that the elevator and the operating-room-turned-storage closet weren’t all that far apart to begin with. So when Samantha, armed with her bottomless, bloody-minded persistence, finally closed the distance… well, Seojun was ready. His thin, wiry body rolled aside at the last possible moment, as if he’d waiting for that exact moment. Samantha smashed into the wall instead. Her claws stabbed deep into the surface with a vicious screech, and one of the jagged blades tore straight through her own hand with a gross, wet crack.

And Seojun did not miss his chance either.

He slid the monkey wrench under the lanyard of her ID badge and pressed it hard against the ragged, pulpy mess that had once been her throat. He leaned in with all his strength, forcing her head bent back and back and back… until her neck bent at an angle no neck should ever allow. Until the two of them were face to face, close enough to share breath.

If she’d had any breath left to share, that is.

The horribly close distance brought a sudden jolt of something unexpected. A twinge of something stirred in his chest. Something that had no damn business being there.

Her eyes were stitched shut. Her mouth, or the ruined mess where it used to be, wasn’t capable of shaping an expression anymore. There shouldn’t have been anything left to read in that face. It should have been empty.

It wasn’t.

The rage pouring off of her hit him like a blast of heat from an open stove. There was nothing visible, nothing tangible to point to, but he could feel it pressing against his skin all the same. More of it than a body this broken had any right to hold. Seojun had too much to worry about to spare any pity for Samantha in his current situation. And yet, for one brief, stupid moment, the sight of her tore something sharp and deep into his chest, a pang he wasn’t ready for.

Then his fingers closed around the badge, and the moment was over.

He yanked hard. Perhaps the lanyard had never been properly secured to start with, because it came away without a fight. The card so flimsy he half-worried it’d snap if he gripped too hard. The corners of his mouth pulled up before he’d decided anything about it. Elation bloomed in the space where that ache had been just seconds ago. That’s pity for you: a fickle little thing, gone the second something better comes along.

Seojun did not, however, get to stand around basking in the win. Pulling the lanyard meant pulling Samantha along with it, and she was far less concerned about losing her ID than taking advantage of her proximity. She took the opening without hesitation, lashing with those jagged, blade-fingers. Two scythe-like claws sliced through the air, heading straight for the soft, vulnerable spot beneath Seojun’s ribs.