The children upstairs
Title: The children upstairs
Focus: Chen (OT9 in the background)
Rating: PG13
WC: 1606
WARNING: mention of homicide
Summary: Home alone after an injury, Jongdae decides to be a good neighbor and offer his leftover pizza to the family upstairs.
A/N: typing this up past midnight hasn't been my smartest decision,lol. Based on this creepypasta.
AO3 || AFF || DW
“Guys, I said I’m fine…”
“No you’re not, you just busted your knee attempting one of Jongin’s pirouettes.”
“Oh come on, it’s just slightly dislocated--” Jongdae insisted, stubbornly pushing Joonmyeon and Minseok off him to show them he could walk just fine, but a jolt of pain sparked from his knee and he hurriedly grasped for purchase, almost puking on the spot.
“You’re going to the ER, and that’s final,” Joonmyeon stated sternly, his lips drawn in a thin line as he looked at the manager and at the tinted van a few feet ahead of them.
“I don’t know how long it’ll take, will you be fine on your own after practice?” the older man asked from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, some of us will pile up in the other van, others will just walk. We’ll survive,” Joonmyeon reassured, more concerned about Jongdae’s ashen face, damp with cold sweat, than of sasaengs. He stepped aside to let Minseok help the vocalist sit and gingerly stretch out his leg, not without a string of sobs and curses.
“See you later,” Minseok piped up as the car started, and the two oldest members waved at the distancing car before heading back to practice.
It has been three days since Jongdae injured his knee during rehearsal and he was bored out of his mind. He couldn’t even take full advantage of the empty dormitory because the doctor ordered him to just sit on the couch with an ice pack on his knee and relax.
Too bad there was nothing on TV and his laptop, that he forgot to ask for before his bandmates left earlier that morning, was still in his room; he would hop all the way there, but he already attempted such a stunt the evening he came back from the hospital--it would’ve ended badly if Sehun didn’t hear the commotion and helped him up...laughing all the time and quickly informing everyone of the ridiculous position he found Jongdae splayed in. He was feeling a bit more confident, that day, yet he begrudgingly remained sitting on the couch, leg propped up, alternating his attention between the zapping channels and some game on his phone, or sending whiny messages and pitiful emoticons to the group’s chatroom.
(If the battery dies, he’s screwed.)
Jongdae had finally found something interesting on TV when he heard again stomping coming from upstairs, followed by children’s voices. He first heard them the previous afternoon, reasoning he never noticed before because he was usually never home at that time of the day and that the kids were possibly home for some holiday, or maybe they were still too young to go to school. After wondering briefly if their parents ever taught them to be more considerate of the neighbors, Jongdae moved his attention back to the TV, effectively finding himself engrossed in a documentary.
Some time later, a grumbling noise filled the quiet dorm and snapped Jongdae’s focus: a quick glance at his phone alerted him he missed lunch time. Not feeling like hopping around to retrieve and heat up the leftovers, he ordered a pizza, that the nice delivery man brought right up to the coffee table half an hour later. Eventually, Jongdae regretted ordering from the place that made the biggest pizzas in the city, not to mention the plethora of side dishes they added on the house; he would’ve stored what he didn’t eat in the fridge for the rest of the group, but the pizza was still relatively warm, so he decided to offer it to the kids upstairs.
(At least that’d keep them quiet for a while, he thought.)
After taking a few cautious step around the couch to be sure his knee could stand a bit of effort, Jongdae slowly headed to the elevator with the pizza box in a hand and an umbrella, as impromptu walking cane, in the other. Taking a familiar route to an unfamiliar household, Jongdae found himself in front of a cream door; he rang once, he rang again, bewildered by the lack of response despite knowing for a fact someone was in the apartment. About to turn on his heels, Jongdae felt observed--someone was definitely looking at him through the peephole.
“Who is it?” someone called out, at last. The voice was faint, even more so than what one would expect to hear from behind a door just a span ahead.
“Hello ma’am, my name is Jongdae and I live downstairs. I got some pizza for lunch but it’s too much for me alone, I was wondering if you and your kids wanted some,” the young man explained with a winning smile on his face, umbrella hooked to the crook of his elbow while he held the pizza box higher in front of himself.
The apartment’s door opened just a crack, wide enough to show an unusually dark room for that time of the day, and half of the woman’s pale face.
“Thank you, but we don’t want it,” she replied. Her expression was unreadable; it added to the eerie feeling at the pit of Jongdae’s stomach, but he gulped it down and dared to insist.
During their exchange, a peculiar smell wafted through the gap. Jongdae surreptitiously sniffed to figure it out and immediately regretted it: a lukewarm and sickly odour stuck to his nostrils and the back of his throat, it took all his willpower not to gag. Something in that house was rotting.
He almost choked when the faces of two children appeared all of a sudden right below the mother’s, forming a line, with the same wan expression of the woman.
“I guess we’ll accept, then...Thank you for your kindness,” she said monotonously.
Unable to look away but at the same time to look directly at the family’s faces, Jongdae slipped the pizza box through the gap, only to clutch defensively at his umbrella when the box was snatched away. Unnerved by the whole situation, Jongdae bowed stiffly and power-walked to the elevator, thinking back to those ghastly faces, how they were perfectly stacked on top of each other, with indiscernible shadows behind them…
Giving up on the elevator, that was taking forever to come no matter how many times he pushed the button, he turned to his right to take the stairs, mentally willing his injured knee not to give up on him right at that moment. He turned and spotted the same three waxy faces of apartment 13b, still half hidden by the door but this time peeking in the corridor, staring at Jongdae with dull eyes.
Hooking the umbrella under his armpit, Jongdae hopped as fast as his good leg allowed, thankful for the presence of handrails that he held with a vice grip in his breakneck run downstairs, back to the security of his dorm. Thirty-something steps never felt so long and difficult to reach the end of.
Once on his floor, hurt leg sticking at an odd angle, Jongdae dragged himself in front of the keypad by his door, punching the security code a couple of times before getting it right and giving one last glance at the stairs: there, half covered by the wall, were the three faces of the family upstairs; what wasn’t visible before, due to the darkness of the apartment, turned out to be hands holding the faces in mid-air.
Choking a scream in his throat, Jongdae dived in the apartment and bolted the door, slipping against it with laboured breath. With shaky hands, he fished his cellphone from his jeans pocket and called the police.
He fell in a restless sleep in the shoe area, unable to shake the feeling of being observed.
“I haven’t received any message from Jongdae for the whole afternoon.”
“Ya, me neither. How strange…”
Finally done with practice for the day, the rest of EXO trekked back to the dorm, only to find police cars and ambulances, blue and red lights spinning and lightening the neighborhood up, in front of their building. Joonmyeon approached one of the officers, explaining the lot of them lived there and asking what happened.
The policeman hesitated a bit before looking around and whispering, “Triple homicide. The husband was found insane in the wardrobe, while his wife and two kids’ decapitated bodies were in the bathtub. They’ve been there for the past three days. One of the residents found out about them and called us.”
The boys looked at each other, concerned, and hurried inside, splitting in groups to take the elevator. Joonmyeon, Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Yixing were the first to reach their floor. Baekhyun and Chanyeol snuck upstairs, observing the coming and going of detectives and forensic investigators, while the older two opened the door to their apartment, only to be startled by the slipping body of their bandmate, who in turn screamed for being woken up so suddenly.
“Jongdae, Jongdae, it’s just us!” Joonmyeon called, shaking the younger to calm him down and helping him inside; meanwhile, the missing members arrived and they all filed in the dorm, where Jongdae shakily recounted what happened..
“They’re alive, I’m telling you!”
“Calm down, sir, and please take your medicine.”
The inmate gulped down his pills brusquely and turned his back to the nurse, who left the cell without another word. The man made a point of never lifting or turning his head as he struggled to cover himself with the itchy blanket, always facing the chipped wall by his bed, never looking at the cell door or its barred window.
He didn’t want to see his wife and children’s faces staring at him.
Focus: Chen (OT9 in the background)
Rating: PG13
WC: 1606
WARNING: mention of homicide
Summary: Home alone after an injury, Jongdae decides to be a good neighbor and offer his leftover pizza to the family upstairs.
A/N: typing this up past midnight hasn't been my smartest decision,lol. Based on this creepypasta.
AO3 || AFF || DW
“Guys, I said I’m fine…”
“No you’re not, you just busted your knee attempting one of Jongin’s pirouettes.”
“Oh come on, it’s just slightly dislocated--” Jongdae insisted, stubbornly pushing Joonmyeon and Minseok off him to show them he could walk just fine, but a jolt of pain sparked from his knee and he hurriedly grasped for purchase, almost puking on the spot.
“You’re going to the ER, and that’s final,” Joonmyeon stated sternly, his lips drawn in a thin line as he looked at the manager and at the tinted van a few feet ahead of them.
“I don’t know how long it’ll take, will you be fine on your own after practice?” the older man asked from the driver’s seat.
“Yeah, some of us will pile up in the other van, others will just walk. We’ll survive,” Joonmyeon reassured, more concerned about Jongdae’s ashen face, damp with cold sweat, than of sasaengs. He stepped aside to let Minseok help the vocalist sit and gingerly stretch out his leg, not without a string of sobs and curses.
“See you later,” Minseok piped up as the car started, and the two oldest members waved at the distancing car before heading back to practice.
It has been three days since Jongdae injured his knee during rehearsal and he was bored out of his mind. He couldn’t even take full advantage of the empty dormitory because the doctor ordered him to just sit on the couch with an ice pack on his knee and relax.
Too bad there was nothing on TV and his laptop, that he forgot to ask for before his bandmates left earlier that morning, was still in his room; he would hop all the way there, but he already attempted such a stunt the evening he came back from the hospital--it would’ve ended badly if Sehun didn’t hear the commotion and helped him up...laughing all the time and quickly informing everyone of the ridiculous position he found Jongdae splayed in. He was feeling a bit more confident, that day, yet he begrudgingly remained sitting on the couch, leg propped up, alternating his attention between the zapping channels and some game on his phone, or sending whiny messages and pitiful emoticons to the group’s chatroom.
(If the battery dies, he’s screwed.)
Jongdae had finally found something interesting on TV when he heard again stomping coming from upstairs, followed by children’s voices. He first heard them the previous afternoon, reasoning he never noticed before because he was usually never home at that time of the day and that the kids were possibly home for some holiday, or maybe they were still too young to go to school. After wondering briefly if their parents ever taught them to be more considerate of the neighbors, Jongdae moved his attention back to the TV, effectively finding himself engrossed in a documentary.
Some time later, a grumbling noise filled the quiet dorm and snapped Jongdae’s focus: a quick glance at his phone alerted him he missed lunch time. Not feeling like hopping around to retrieve and heat up the leftovers, he ordered a pizza, that the nice delivery man brought right up to the coffee table half an hour later. Eventually, Jongdae regretted ordering from the place that made the biggest pizzas in the city, not to mention the plethora of side dishes they added on the house; he would’ve stored what he didn’t eat in the fridge for the rest of the group, but the pizza was still relatively warm, so he decided to offer it to the kids upstairs.
(At least that’d keep them quiet for a while, he thought.)
After taking a few cautious step around the couch to be sure his knee could stand a bit of effort, Jongdae slowly headed to the elevator with the pizza box in a hand and an umbrella, as impromptu walking cane, in the other. Taking a familiar route to an unfamiliar household, Jongdae found himself in front of a cream door; he rang once, he rang again, bewildered by the lack of response despite knowing for a fact someone was in the apartment. About to turn on his heels, Jongdae felt observed--someone was definitely looking at him through the peephole.
“Who is it?” someone called out, at last. The voice was faint, even more so than what one would expect to hear from behind a door just a span ahead.
“Hello ma’am, my name is Jongdae and I live downstairs. I got some pizza for lunch but it’s too much for me alone, I was wondering if you and your kids wanted some,” the young man explained with a winning smile on his face, umbrella hooked to the crook of his elbow while he held the pizza box higher in front of himself.
The apartment’s door opened just a crack, wide enough to show an unusually dark room for that time of the day, and half of the woman’s pale face.
“Thank you, but we don’t want it,” she replied. Her expression was unreadable; it added to the eerie feeling at the pit of Jongdae’s stomach, but he gulped it down and dared to insist.
During their exchange, a peculiar smell wafted through the gap. Jongdae surreptitiously sniffed to figure it out and immediately regretted it: a lukewarm and sickly odour stuck to his nostrils and the back of his throat, it took all his willpower not to gag. Something in that house was rotting.
He almost choked when the faces of two children appeared all of a sudden right below the mother’s, forming a line, with the same wan expression of the woman.
“I guess we’ll accept, then...Thank you for your kindness,” she said monotonously.
Unable to look away but at the same time to look directly at the family’s faces, Jongdae slipped the pizza box through the gap, only to clutch defensively at his umbrella when the box was snatched away. Unnerved by the whole situation, Jongdae bowed stiffly and power-walked to the elevator, thinking back to those ghastly faces, how they were perfectly stacked on top of each other, with indiscernible shadows behind them…
Giving up on the elevator, that was taking forever to come no matter how many times he pushed the button, he turned to his right to take the stairs, mentally willing his injured knee not to give up on him right at that moment. He turned and spotted the same three waxy faces of apartment 13b, still half hidden by the door but this time peeking in the corridor, staring at Jongdae with dull eyes.
Hooking the umbrella under his armpit, Jongdae hopped as fast as his good leg allowed, thankful for the presence of handrails that he held with a vice grip in his breakneck run downstairs, back to the security of his dorm. Thirty-something steps never felt so long and difficult to reach the end of.
Once on his floor, hurt leg sticking at an odd angle, Jongdae dragged himself in front of the keypad by his door, punching the security code a couple of times before getting it right and giving one last glance at the stairs: there, half covered by the wall, were the three faces of the family upstairs; what wasn’t visible before, due to the darkness of the apartment, turned out to be hands holding the faces in mid-air.
Choking a scream in his throat, Jongdae dived in the apartment and bolted the door, slipping against it with laboured breath. With shaky hands, he fished his cellphone from his jeans pocket and called the police.
He fell in a restless sleep in the shoe area, unable to shake the feeling of being observed.
“I haven’t received any message from Jongdae for the whole afternoon.”
“Ya, me neither. How strange…”
Finally done with practice for the day, the rest of EXO trekked back to the dorm, only to find police cars and ambulances, blue and red lights spinning and lightening the neighborhood up, in front of their building. Joonmyeon approached one of the officers, explaining the lot of them lived there and asking what happened.
The policeman hesitated a bit before looking around and whispering, “Triple homicide. The husband was found insane in the wardrobe, while his wife and two kids’ decapitated bodies were in the bathtub. They’ve been there for the past three days. One of the residents found out about them and called us.”
The boys looked at each other, concerned, and hurried inside, splitting in groups to take the elevator. Joonmyeon, Baekhyun, Chanyeol and Yixing were the first to reach their floor. Baekhyun and Chanyeol snuck upstairs, observing the coming and going of detectives and forensic investigators, while the older two opened the door to their apartment, only to be startled by the slipping body of their bandmate, who in turn screamed for being woken up so suddenly.
“Jongdae, Jongdae, it’s just us!” Joonmyeon called, shaking the younger to calm him down and helping him inside; meanwhile, the missing members arrived and they all filed in the dorm, where Jongdae shakily recounted what happened..
“They’re alive, I’m telling you!”
“Calm down, sir, and please take your medicine.”
The inmate gulped down his pills brusquely and turned his back to the nurse, who left the cell without another word. The man made a point of never lifting or turning his head as he struggled to cover himself with the itchy blanket, always facing the chipped wall by his bed, never looking at the cell door or its barred window.
He didn’t want to see his wife and children’s faces staring at him.