Inside The Devil | M.yg × P.jm✓

I

Now, there he stood alone in the monotonous room with bare walls. The silence chirps like crickets in the soggy grass of the big field in the habitat. The air peeked through the open door, shadows shading the corners of the wall, and fell over the floor.

He stayed like that for another three minutes, expecting to hear a voice and once footsteps and snarl and came a giant monster to eat him whole; clawed paws and cursed bear-eyes, and perhaps, greet his death unsurprised. Three minutes passed and nothing happened.

He finally settled on a plan of wandering the poky cramped office. He turned around and saw the documents piled in a heap on top of the table. Dr. Park walked to it and picked it up, and read them one by one. They are document information about the patients in the hospital. He then concluded that the office might be occupied by a psychologist from the past.

He turned the page, there was gold; he turned the next page, there were marbles; he turned another page, and there was a black butterfly. Dr. Park reads the visible syllable left on the dusty paper—when suddenly—he came to a familiar name.

"Min Yoongi," he whispered, eyes moving marginally from letter to letter. He moved his finger vaguely, there in the bottom right corner, scrawled in red ink in a foreign language: ‘Diabolum invocamus. Filium satanae, iniquum et injustum. qui in corpore haedi. Veniet et nobis.’

He squints his eyes, face turned into a wrinkle of confusion as he reads the text aloud. "Diabolum invocamus. Filium satanae, iniquum et injustum—" The lights flicker, and the thick voice echoed down the hallway. There was a shrill titter that came unknowingly from the distance. The temperature inside the room rose and he broke in excessive perspiration as if someone pure a gas and lit a match on the ground he was stepping in.

"Qui in corpore haedi." His voice becomes stronger and louder, raspy and choked vehemently. His breathing was rough and his lips trembling. "Veniet et nobis." As the time he finished reading it, there was a crackle of wires, the burning lights guttered, flinching wobbly across his face, and the bulbs exploded into a splintered glass, and the whole building was plunged into darkness.

Silence. There was a deep silence, and only his heavy breaths he could hear. The paper was still in his hands, holding it precariously. He listened through the silence, steadying his breathing. His heart thundered in his chest and the room grew cold as though he was standing naked in front of the refrigerator.

He thought he saw a figure out of his peripheral vision run past him. It was as fast as the light, as dark as coal. It splints like a Cheetah and gone into the wall. He knew he shouldn't be going now and following the person, (if it was a person) as there were only two certainties that could happen. He could find the person and stay alive, or he could be laying on the ground in the pound of his own blood. But Dr. Park is not a coward, he will go on and on even if the path leads to his grave just to see the root of the curiousness that grew within himself.

So here he is, musing at the misty hallway he thinks the person went. He took a deep breath in before he moved his feet forward, slowly and immutably. Prowling as though in search of prey. Eyes onward, unwavering and firm. His feet continue to drag him towards the ceaseless straight line, and the inability to stop continues to guide him to his destination. His shadow dogged after his step.

He stopped in the middle of the hallway, looking left to right, trying to remember which way did the person take. The turns elucidate him. He took an effort to remember the direction but the answer seemed to come foggy — when suddenly — he heard running footsteps of small feet and a kid scampered in front of him. He recoiled and stumbled, almost falling back in surprise. When he gains back his awareness, he furrowed and turned to the left, his eyes following the kid. But when he did, the kid was gone in the pitch of black.