lobisomens

@taehyung k。 “-eems normal. How soon can we get him in for a CT scan?”

Hello?

“Not for a half hour, doctor Choi, there’s a backlog downstairs”

Why- why was he going downstairs? Wasn’t he in a bed?

Hongjoong was confused, how come they couldn’t hear him?

“Hm, alright, book Mr Kim for the earliest time slot you can. Although his initial physical seems fine, I’d like to make sure there isn’t any extensive damage to his brain.”

Damage to his brain? What did they mean damage to his brain? Had something happened? Where was he? And what was that incessant beeping? It sliced through his eardrums like razor blades, it hurt so much, why wouldn’t they turn it off? Turn it off! Turn it off!

“Mr Kim! No, you have stay down!”

There was another noise in all that commotion; strangled, in pain and terrified, the kind of terror that you only heard from children when frightened, that Hongjoong, with a jolt, realised was coming from him.

His arms are pinned by his sides, firm grip somewhat grounding his frenzied mind into his current situation- Hongjoong could feel the soft material of cotton beneath his fingers, the clean smell of antiseptic stinging his nose, and the medical jargon going over his head told the small, calmer part of his mind that he was in a hospital. But why? Hongjoong didn’t understand what brought him here? The last thing… the last thing he remembered…

Were the woods.

———

Run. Running. Faster, faster. It’s the only thought on Hongjoongs mind.

There’s a cold, frozen feeling gripping his heart, his heart that feels like it’s going to burst out of his chest and stop beating all at once. His lungs are gasping for air, but Hongjoong is silent. He burns, he freezes, he’s drowning-

But he’s still running.

He’s running until he’s not. Hot, wet breathing erupts goosebumps across his skin, Hongjoong screams as razor hot talons rip into his flesh like wet paper. The disgusting panting as the creature howls in delight at having caught its prey has him vomiting what little contents are left in his stomach.

He’s screaming, crying, begging for the thing- the, the monster, to get off of him, to spare him, not that whatever it was understood him.

All it understood was that Hongjoong was warm blood, its next meal.

Hongjoong was going to die.

———

“Sedate him now. Give him 2.5 milligrams of Midazolam.”

“Pushing 2.5 milligrams of Midazolam, doctor”

Hongjoong knew that the screaming echoing throughout the ward was his own. He knew that he was in no danger.

Yet he didn’t stop screaming until the world around him went black.

———

He’d had a nightmare.

Hongjoong knew that much, but what about? He just couldn’t place it for the life of him. He sighed, aggravated that he couldn’t figure out what this blank spot in his memory was, and he took it out on the pickled kimchi on his tray, stabbing at the cabbage as if it had offended him. It’d been a strange few days, being here in the hospital and not knowing why. Nobody else seemed too either. The doctors just kept touting that it was a ‘miracle’ he even survived, and his colleague, Choi Beomgyu, hadn’t known what to tell him either when he came to take Hongjoongs statement. Nobody down at the station knew what had happened.

Apparently Hongjoong had been found, for a lack of better word, virtually eviscerated just a few hundred metres from a hiking trail by a couple. Even when the site was turned into a crime scene, nothing turned up. Not even an animal foot print.

It’d been about a week and a half since Hongjoong had first woken up from his coma and then promptly put back to sleep. Apparently he’d had an extreme panic attack although he couldn’t remember why. Hongjoong was struggling to remember a lot of things these days… he knew he was having night terrors, he was waking up with a sore throat every morning and when the nurses came in to check on him, he could tell by their faces that they’d had to calm him down again. They couldn’t say what his nightmares were about, not because of some rule by his doctor but because they didn’t make any sense. Or he just screamed. Screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

Hongjoong carefully chewed on a sliver of marinated beef, working the juices around his mouth, and swallowed. It was tough.

He sighed, suddenly forlorn and lonely, in this big empty room by himself. This .

This balls.

[] in case it isn’t clear- Hongjoong works in law enforcement part-time. He’s in university as well for criminal studies/law