Halloween
I’m not gonna lie, this is probably gonna generate so much hate, but I worked really hard on it, so try not hate it too much.
Warnings: blood, gore, language
Word count: 4950
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~Halloween~
It is dark and chilly outside as the young, blonde waitress walks home from work. She’s fuming, her steps clacking against the cement, mumbling about her dumbass boyfriend who neglected to pick her up. She is almost done with the one and a half mile journey, her house coming into view on the horizon.
Her steps pick up in pace for a few strides, and then slow significantly when she thinks she hears something behind her.
“Hello,” she calls into the darkness trailing. The noise comes again, coming from a bush that decorates the sidewalk. She leans in closer to the shrubbery, when a white and brown bunny jumps out next to her feet.
The girl gives a startled yelp, her voice echoing in the silent night like a bang on a steel drum. She stares horrified for a moment at the rabbit, and then laughs at herself gaily.
“Must be Halloween that’s got me so spooked,” the girls says to no one in particular. Despite this, she reaches into her pocket and wraps her fingers around the pepper spray she is carrying. She takes a deep, calming breath and continues to walk.
She makes it to her front door, where she pulls out her keys and unlocks it. Relieved to finally be inside, where she felt safe and warm, she throws her coat off and walks into the house.
She sees her boyfriend lying on the couch, empty beer bottles littered around him. Disgusted, she sneers at the drunk and then trudges up the stairs. She sheds her clothes in a trail leading to the bathroom, where she starts the shower and steps inside. While she’s shampooing, she hears the bathroom door open and sees a figure in the cloudy glass of the shower door.
“So, we’re you too drunk to pick me up at work tonight?” she inquires accusingly, venom in her tone. There is no reply. She rolls her eyes and sighs. “Fine give me the silent treatment. See if I care.”
The figure recedes into the hallway, and the door closes again. She huffs and angrily shampooes her hair, again mumbling about how dumb her boyfriend is.
When she finishes in the shower, she turns off the water and wraps a towel around herself. Cold air attacks her body causing her to shiver as she gets ready for bed. It is colder in the house than usual, but she shrugs it off, coming to the conclusion that he was probably too drunk to turn it up when it got too cold.
She is in her pajamas, ready to snuggle up into her blanket when she notices a lump in her boyfriends side of the bed. She pushes the lump distastefully, grimacing.
“Hey, I don’t want to sleep with you,” she says to her boyfriend. Again there is silence. She pushes him again, but he returns to the exact same position.
Without anther word, she slips into the bed, coming as close to the edge as she can without falling off. “Fine, but if you touch me once tonight, I will hurt you.”
The lump starts to shuffle, the person not being her boyfriend but someone else. The person grabs something from where he hid it underneath the bed, and swings it. It directly hits the girls neck, blood spurting from the fresh wound.
She struggles for a few seconds, trying to gasp for a breath that was being replaced by blood, and then dies. With a satisfied feeling deep in his gut, the murderer rips his sword out of the girls flesh.
He stares at the weapon proudly, admiring every aspect of it. The long wooden shaft, the sharp blade at the end, and the curved metal knife that served the purpose of hooking and slicing through enemies.
The man walks downstairs, grabs the slightly decomposed body of the girls boyfriend, and carries it upstairs, where he places him on the bed next to her. Making sure that they look like they’re simply sleeping, he walks out of the house almost as easily as if he lived there.
~
Kinzie paces back and forth from her living room, into the kitchen, and back as she talks to Jin on the phone.
“Are you guys still coming over?” she asks him, carefully placing her toes to her heel with each step. It is a habit of hers; to walk around aimlessly as she talks on the phone.
“Yeah, we were just heading out now. Jungkook just has to find his costume first,” Jin replies. She can hear commotion in the background and knows that Jimin and Taehyung were probably play fighting while they waited for Jungkook, to leave.
“Are you watching the news right now?” Jin asks after a few moments of silence. Kinzie says no and he tells her to turn to channel 9, where there was a special news bulletin.
“A young woman and her boyfriend were found brutally murdered in their home this morning. Police believe it to be connected to the string of six other murders around the tri-state area.”
“Wow that’s scary,” Kinzie says into the phone, taking a seat on the edge of the couch. There is no reply on the other end of the line, but Kinzie is too focused on the bulletin.
“The first murder, starting a week ago tomorrow, was of twenty-one year old college student, Lori Pascow. Pascow was found murdered in her house, just hours after she left her place of work for the night.”
Kinzie’s eyes fixate on the TV. The phone is held loosely in her fingers, the screen fallen down so it’s on her shoulder.
She jumps about a mile high and screams when there’s a sudden loud banging on the door, and she can hear seven different laughs fill the empty hallway outside.
“You guys are assholes,” she fumes as she opens the door. Jin, who is leaning against the door frame, trying his hardest to stop laughing, leans down and places a kiss to Kinzie’s forehead.
“You know you love us,” he says, pushing past her into the house. She rolls her eyes and huffs, but doesn’t argue.
“It was just too easy,” Namjoon explains, patting her back as he follows Jin. The rest of the boys file in, all making themselves comfortable on the couch and the floor around it.
“Come in, make yourselves at home,” Kinzie says sarcastically, plopping right between Jungkook and Taehyung in the middle of the couch. Jin shushes her and turns up the volume on the TV.
“Due to the heinous murders that have taken place within the last week, the police department has issued a city wide curfew of seven PM, effective tonight. Any person found out of their house will be taken to the police station until the morning.”
“What about trick-or-treating?” Kinzie whines. A prominent frown graces her delicate face, her bottom lip pushing out past her upper one.
“And our Halloween party?” Taehyung adds. Jin shrugs and motions for them to be quiet.
“Until this killer is caught, the curfew is in effect,” the reporter says, as if answering Kinzie and Taehyung’s questions. “That’s all for for the hour. Join us at 10 o'clock and see why Halloween could be bad for your child’s health.”
Jin turns the TV off and throws the remote onto the open love seat next to the couch. “Well shit,” he curses quietly. He looks at Kinzie, who is pouting.
“This sucks,” she whines.
“It will be okay Kinzie,” Jungkook comforts sweetly, throwing his arm around her shoulder and squeezing her to his side. He knows that Halloween is her favorite holiday, and the curfew just ruined it for her.
“The curfew doesn’t mean that Halloween is over,” Jimin states. “It just means that we’ll have to skip trick-or-treating and start the party before seven tomorrow.”
“Yeah, we can still wear our costumes, and Jin Hyung and I will still make you all of your favorite treats. You could even stay the night and we’ll have a horror movie marathon.”
Kinzie doesn’t look convinced, but smiles and nods in agreement when she looks at Jungkook’s smiling face. “Okay fine, but I still expect my little marshmallow ghosts and demon blood shake.”
“Namjoon are you and Yoongi still going to JoKwon’s for the night?” Jin asks the boys, who nod.
They’re all silent for a few moments and then Kinzie gets up, pulling Jungkook with her. “Pumpkin carving time,” she cheers, running out of the room.
The boys all look after her and laugh. They get up slowly and follow her. Only she would hear of brutal murders happening in their town, and still want to carve pumpkins.
“Hyung, shouldn’t we all be worried about the murdered on the loose?” Taehyun asks Namjoon, pulling him aside as the others follow Kinzie. Namjoon thinks it over for a few seconds and then shrugs.
“I think we’ll be fine as long as we obey the curfew.” He pats Tae on the back. “It will be okay.”
“Hey!” They hear Kinzie yell from the kitchen. They hurry to join the others and see Jungkook smiling triumphantly as he takes the biggest pumpkin, going to work on it happily before Kinzie can say another word
~
Kinzie turns off the water in the shower and wraps herself in a towel. Stepping out of the tub, she opens the door that leads from the bathroom to her bedroom.
It’s a cool night, Halloween in the air despite the lack of trick-or-treaters outside. Kinzie’s house is decorated full of ghosts, goblins, and the grotesque. In order to make up for their ruined Halloween plans, Junkook had made all of the boys decorate her house until midnight before he allowed them to fall asleep.
Now, Kinzie gets dressed into her costume, ready to head over to Jin’s house for their party. She finishes putting on the hat that matches her pinstriped suit when she first sees it in the mirror on the front of her door. The one leading out into the hallway.
She can’t tell what it is at first. It’s something white but she can’t figure out exactly what. As she looks harder, she realizes what it is: a white gloves hand, the rest of the body it’s attached to being hidden out of sight.
She opens her mouth to call out for Jin, or Namjoon, who might be messing with her one last time before Halloween ends, but stops. Next to the hand she sees something shiny glint in the moonlight shining through her window. All she can see is the metal glinting, and resemblance of a dark red liquid on the tip, but that’s all she needs.
She slowly tiptoes back into her bathroom, where she closes the door and locks herself off from her room. She hears whoever it is shuffling farther into her room, and she goes out the second bathroom door. She tiptoes all the way to her front door and exits through it, running as fast as she can to Jin’s house. She doesn’t even bother knocking, instead just entering the house, closing and locking the door behind her.
“Hey, Kinzie’s here,” Jimin yells to the others. He is sitting in the dining room, munching on this and that. Jin comes out of the kitchen with a hot pan in his hands, which he sets down and Jimin attacks instantly.
“Jin, is everybody here?” Kinzie questions, her spooked demeanor raising his eyebrow.
“Yeah, everyone else is upstairs getting dressed in their costumes. Why?”
“How long ago did Namjoon and Yoogi leave?”
“Just about an hour ago. Kinzie are you okay? Did something happen?”
“Well,” Kinzie begins, but she stops and bites her lip. “It’s nothing, maybe I’m just being paranoid.”
“No, tell us. I’ve never seen you so on edge.”
Kinzie sighs and gives in. “There was someone in my house. I was getting dressed and I saw him in my mirror, well his hand, and it was holding something, I don’t know, a knife or a blade, and there was blood, and-”
“Woah, calm down there,” Jin says, cutting Kinzie off before she can ramble any further. “Are you sure that you saw a person? It could’ve been a trick of the light. It is Halloween, so your mind is probably playing tricks on you.”
“I told you I was just being paranoid. It’s just the holiday,” Kinzie says, sounding as if she’s trying to convince herself more than she’s trying to convince Jin. He smiles and pulls her in for a hug.
“Come on, I’ll make you some tea. Calm you down a bit.” He leads her into the kitchen, Jimin following in hopes that there will be more fresh, new treats for him to munch on.
With a steaming mug of tea in her shaky hands, she sits on the couch next to Jungkook as Jin struggles to get the first movie started. They pick ‘Pet Sematary’, it being Kinzie’s favorite. Soon enough, Kinzie notices Taehyung peeking through the blinds that cover the window overlooking the front yard.
“Hyung, there’s someone out there,” he says quietly, looking at Jin, and then back out the window. Jin stops struggling with the DVD player and stands up.
“Don’t tell me you’re being paranoid too,” he groans, waltzing over to where Tae sits by the window. He pushes the younger boy out of the way and takes his place peeking out.
Kinzie, who has forgotten all about her tea, is also looking out a different window. “Jin, that’s who I saw,” she whispers nervously. She stares straight at the white gloved hand.
“Are you sure?” he asks. Kinzie swears she hears a crack in his voice, but she cant see any waver in his demeanor. He keeps a straight, strong face as he looks at her and awaits her answer.
Jin stands up. “Alright, I usually wouldn’t play into your paranoia, but since some freaky stuff had been happening, why don’t we all go and make camp in my room upstairs. Will that make you feel a bit better?”
“Alright come on,” Jin holds his hand out and helps Kinzie up. The others follow, and they’re on their way to the stairs when a loud bang on the door causes them to freeze.
“What the hell was that?” Jin questions. He pushes past everybody and goes to the door, looking out the peephole. He jumps back when another loud bang is heard and the door frame cracks a bit. “Guys go hide.”
“What’s going on hyung?” Jungkook asks.
“Did you hear what I said?” Jin yells quietly, ignoring his question. “Get out of here and hide. Go into the crawlspace.”
Kinzie is the first to book it out of the living room and towards the crawl space. She throws the door open and crawls inside the small area. Jungkook is next, squeezing against her and wrapping his arms protectively around her waist. Jimin, Taehyung, and Hoseok all squeeze in at the same time, followed by Jin, who struggles to close the door.
“Hyung tell us what happened,” Jimin begs. Kinzie can tell he is freaked out and she knows she’s more so than him. She can feel tears pool in her eyes.
“The person in the yard was throwing himself against the door, trying to get in.”
Jin slams the door as hard as he can, but it still won’t close. “God damnit.”
He stops trying and turns to the others. “Guys there’s not enough room in here. I’m going to go and hide in the attic.”
“Jin, no!” Kinzie demands.
“Don’t worry Kinzie. I’ll be okay. I think that if we hide for long enough the freak will go away.”
Kinzie furrows her brows and buries her face into her lap, where she sniffles and takes a deep breath. When she looks up she says, “Please be careful, okay?”
Jin nods and gives her a nervous smile. She watches him open the door and crawl out. He stands up until all she can see are his feet.
“Be careful Hyung,” Jimin repeats.
Jin stands in front of the door for a few seconds, scoping out his surroundings. Kinzie gasps when she sees a second pair of feet walk up in front of him.
A struggle ensues as the person tackles Jin to the ground. His body slams against the hardwood and he gasps for the air that was knocked out of him.
Nobody moves as they watch Jin struggle, terror rooting them all to the spots they occupy. Kinzie begins to bawl when she sees the same glinting as she did in her bedroom, the same dark red liquid at the tip of the weapon. Just as the intruder sends it down towards Jin’s neck, he catches it before it can make contact.
“Run,” he gasps, his voice strained as all of his energy goes to keeping the sword from slicing his skin.
Kinzie can’t remember getting up, and out of the crawlspace, to run, but next thing she knows she’s running behind Taehyung. He had grabbed her hand in a mad rush to get away, pulling her along behind him, out of the house and to Namjoon’s house next door. He pulls her all the way into the house, up to the attic, and underneath the bed, where he crawls underneath, beside her.
“Where’s Jungkook?” Kinzie whispers. Her heart is racing and she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to quiet her erratic breathing. Taehyung shakes his head, indicating his lack of knowledge on where the Maknae had gone.
Jungkook, meanwhile, watches as he runs away, Jin’s arms finally give out and the blade plunge deep into his Adam’s apple. He screams and turns forward, unable to watch any longer. Tears blur his vision, but he wipes them away hurriedly so he is able to see where he is going. When he finally gets into Kinzie’s house, he squeezes himself into a cupboard in the kitchen, where he allows himself to sob quietly.
The murderer, after disposing of Jin’s body, which he carelessly stuffs into the crawlspace, follows after Jungkook.
Jungkook hears the footsteps that follow him, walk right into the kitchen and stop right in front of the cupboard he is in. He holds his breath, sure that he is a goner, when they move away.
“Fuck,” he hears the murderer curse, and he is surprised by how unusual the voice is. It is a man’s, but it is squeaky and nasally, when he expected it to be deep and intimidating. This is one of the two only times anybody will ever hear that voice. It is the one time that the murderer says something.
When his footsteps travel even farther from Kook, the boy takes the chance to look and see where he is going. He is going deeper into the house, upstairs and into Kinzie’s room to look.
Jungkook slowly, at the speed of a snail, opens the cupboard door and slides out. His foot hits a pot, and he is afraid that it will give away his position, but the shuffling upstairs continues. Once he is fully out of the storage area, he makes a silent run for the bathroom, where he knows there is a window that leads outside.
He takes his time in undoing the latch, pulling the glass aside a few centimeters every thirty seconds or so. He wishes that he could go faster, but if he does then it will make a noise. When he finally gets it open just enough for him to go through, he climbs out.
He has his left leg and his upper body out when a group of people walk by on the sidewalk outside. “Happy Halloween dude. Are you sneaking out too?” one of them yells at Jungkook, his drunken slurs echoing through the open window and throughout the silent house.
All carefulness is replaced by panic as Jungkook hears pounding down the stairs, towards the bathroom. He is almost out even, ready to make a break for it when the worst possible thing can happen: his pant leg gets caught on the window pane.
He struggles as hard as he can, trying to tear away, but it’s too late. The group of drunks watch in astonishment as the boy who is crawling out the window screams and gets dragged back into the house, whoever was inside pulling him, doing so in the harshest of manners.
“Jimin! Kinzie!” Jungkook screams. “Help me!”
Jimin, who is hiding with Hoseok in Namjoon’s house, hears Jungkook screaming, and before he can run to help him, Hoseok forces him to stay.
“He’s gone Jimin,” he cries, holding tight onto the frantic boy, who is struggling as hard as he can to get free of Hoseok’s grip. “He’s gone and if you want to survive, you need to fucking stop!”
Jimin goes slack in Hoseok’s grip and begins to sob.
Kinzie does the same, burying her face into Taehyung’s shoulder to try and silence herself as much as she can. “It’s okay,” Taehyung mumbles, trying not to cry himself, running his fingers through Kinzie’s hair in an attempt at comfort. He agrees that crying for Jungkook is necessary, but he doesn’t want to risk their hiding place because of it.
When they hear a crash in Jin’s house, they know that the murderer has moved on from Kinzie’s. Hoseok, who has to quiet down Jimin, promises him that they can go find Jungkook and save him, if he just shuts up.
Jungkook, who is lying beside the phone, his hand reaching up to try and grab it, is face down, a pool of blood gathering around him. Jimin turns him into his back, almost gagging as he sees the mangled person who used to be Jungkook.
“Where were you?” Jungkook says, barely audible. He can barely talk, the words coming out gurgled and choppy. A tear falls from his eye and runs down his cheek before his eyes go glassy and his dead stare fixates on Jimin.
“No,” Jimin cries, collapsing at the Maknae’s side. He wraps his arms around the body, saying his name between every sob.
“Come on,” Hoseok orders. “We have to go and get help.”
It takes him almost five minutes to pry Jimin from Jungkook’s body, but when he does he doesn’t let go of Jimin. He clutches at his shoulder as they run out of the house and down the street, and they don’t stop running until they can no longer see their houses in the distance. They make it all the way out of the neighborhood, where they find a friends house, collapsing in a weeping pile on the front door. Their friend finds them holding onto eachother, pulling them inside where they can be safe.
Once they calm down enough, they retell what happened, and then their friend calls the police.
~
Kinzie and Taehyung are still underneath the bed when Namjoon comes home. They hear him come inside the house, slam the door shut, and they think it’s the murdered until they hear Namjoon yell, “I’m home. I almost got caught too.”
Namjoon laughs drunkenly. Both Kinzie and Taehyung grow looks of horror upon their faces when they realize that Namjoon just put himself and both of them in danger. So, Tae gets out from under the bed and runs downstairs, grabbing Namjoon by the collar and ripping him upstairs, both of them slamming into the closet in the attic.
Shut the fuck up, you idiots! Kinzie thinks to herself, but her mouth stays shut, no sound coming from her other than her breathing.
The same feet that appeared in front of Jin, appear in the attic. They’re still and it becomes eerily silent in the room. Kinzie has to cover her mouth with her hand to silence her breaths equally as much, careful to stay hidden. She squeezes her eyes shut when the feet move closer to her.
They snap open when there’s a pound on the wall and the feet move towards the closet. She silently curses the two boys occupying the space and then slowly starts to slide out from underneath the bed. If he got to the boys, they would be dead.
She gets to the door, stands up, and then slams it behind her as she starts running. She runs out the front door, around the back, and back into the house, where she scurries into Hoseok’s dance room, hiding behind the changing screen in the corner.
“Come on out, Kinzie,” she hears the nasally voice, the one that brought to her mind nails running across a chalkboard, call out. How he knows her name, she doesn’t know, but the way he says it makes her skin crawl and bile rise in her throat. She knows he’s close to her and so does he. Carefully she leans down and puts her eye to a hole in the screen, tracking the murderers movements.
“Come on out you little bitch,” he hisses. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I just want to rip your throat out.”
Kinzie takes her eye away from the hole and looks down and around her, trying to find anything that she could use as a weapon. She would use an umbrella if that’s all there was, but to her horror, there is nothing.
She looks back up and freezes. Looking at her, through the same hole she had been looking through, is an eye. A cold, dead, iceberg gray eye. She can tell that the face on which the eye belonged had broken into a big grin, the kind you see a psychopath who just murdered eight people, wearing.
Within a split second, she hears something woosh through the air, and then it comes in contact with the screen. It’s the blade, and besides smashing the screen in half, it also manages to slice through Kinzie’s shirt, gashing the side of her stomach. Kinzie cries out in pain and her hands reach up to the wound. She falls to the ground with a pained moan.
“You should’ve just let me kill you when I was in your bedroom. You could’ve saved the others,” he practically sings, his tone cool and steady. “The older one, Jin I think his name was, he was fun to kill.”
The guy steps so that his feet are on either side of Kinzie’s body, placing the blade just against her neck. Those ice gray eyes glint with amusement.
“Oh and the younger one; the one who was in love with you, his skin cut so easily.”
Kinzie begins to struggle, wiggling her body from side to side, until he stamps a hand down on her hand. The bones crack and pain shoots throughout the appendage. She quits struggling and holds her hand against her body, as if protecting it. He presses the blade harder, and Kinzie feels blood start to trickle down her neck.
“He screamed for you, you know,” he sneers. “He didn’t stop screaming your name until I cut his throat open.”
Kinzie clenches her jaw and glares at him.
Her eyes fly closed when he lifts up the sword and makes a move to send it back down. She hears an impact, but not with her. She feels blood start to run, but it comes from above.
Taehyung grunts as he pushes the murdered over, his body falling to the ground next to Kinzie. The large knife in his back sticks out of the flesh prominently. Instead of letting it rest there, Tae rips it out and sends it back in, over and over again until he knows that he’s dead.
“Come on Kinzie,” Taehyung orders softly, grabbing Kinzie and pulling her up. He pulls her shaking body to his and hugs her.
“Let’s get out of here,” Namjoon says from the doorway. He can’t stop staring at the dead murderer who had just killed Jin and Jungkook. Taehyung nods and begins to lead Kinzie out onto the street, Namjoon following.
Everything blurs as lights flash and sirens fill the air as five cops cars speed to the front of Kinzie’s, Jin’s, and Namjoon’s houses. The next hour is filled with questions, more cops arriving, and more questions.
Kinzie sits in the back of an ambulance, an EMT working to set the broken bones in her hand; 14 in all, her grip tight around Taehyung. She hasn’t let go of him since he helped her up and out of the house. Namjoon sits on the street, sobering up, the reality of what he had walked into finally hitting him full on.
Three stretchers, all occupied by a body and a white sheet covering it, make their way from inside the houses, to the street. A gust of wind comes and blows one of the sheets down, revealing Jungkook. His neck is mangled and sliced up, but his face is peaceful, unharmed.
Kinzie stands up, finally letting go of Tae, and makes her way over to him. She falls to her knees next to his body, where she busies herself with moving his hair from his face. She is crying, sobbing more like. She feels hands grab her underarms and lift her up, and she lets them. It’s Taehyung and he pulls her away, setting her down on the sidewalk, blocking Jungkook from her view.
It’s over, he keeps saying to her. Because it is over, and nobody else would be getting hurt. Kinzie just wishes that she felt the same. For some reason, she feels that there is more to come, and there is nothing she’ll be able to do to stop it.
