🎃 Hide and Seek 🎃
Tags : Boogey Man San//Horror//
TW : Blood
Word Count : 1k
A/N : So truthfully, this is a little more on the horror side, I guess, and doesn’t really have San in it- I mean he’s a Boogey Man, you don’t really see them. Also, the rules of the game are actual rules to an Urban Legend game.
General Masterlist Ateez Masterlist
What was supposed to be a normal Halloween themed sleepover, filled with sweets and scary movies, had been turned into a scene from a bad horror movie. It started out with you and your friends reminiscing about your highschool days, and pondering your old Halloween tradition of going to abandoned buildings to look for ghosts, and daring each other to walk alone through the dark forest nearby.
“Let’s play the Boogey Man game, we never got around to trying it!” Your friend Frida begs, pouting her lip to help get her plea across. Your friend May snorts in her direction, while Yuri gives her a skeptical look and questions what the game even is.
Quickly pulling out her phone, Frida looks for the website she found the game from while explaining the rules. “We would need some type of candles for all of us to carry, a salt ring, and something sharp like a needle. The point of the game is to play hide and seek with the Boogey Man. First we have to find a specific Boogey Man we want to play with, they all have their own names and chants we have to say. According to the forum I found the other day, they all play differently too. So we find who we want to play with, perform the ritual, and we play. You know when it’s near because your candle will start to go out, but if it goes out for longer than five seconds, the Boogey Man will have found you. And then it’s game over for you. If your candle starts to go out, you have to run to the circle to relight it, but you can’t stay in the circle if you aren’t relighting. That’s cheating the game.” She finishes as she finally puts her phone to our faces, showing the forum.
“Okay, why do we need a sharp object? What happens if we lose, and how do we win?” I ask, already regretting the decision to have a sleepover in the first place.
Just as she opens her mouth to respond, Yuri does for her, eyebrows furrowing as she reads the forum page “It’s to prick your hand. That’s how “it” knows who’s playing, supposedly. I can’t find any discussions on if we lose, but we win once the sun is up and we haven’t been caught.”
Taking her phone back, Frida presses the screen a few times while saying “The forum says different things, some people say that you die, some people say that nothing happens. It’s just a game, it can’t actually harm us.”
⇒ ⇐
Huddled in the empty closet, you press your hand over your mouth to silence your cries, and to block your breath from hitting the flame. You don’t know what happened to everyone, but you know that you saw Yuri’s limp body laying outside the salt ring, with the jagged words ‘Cheater’ carved into her arm.
Hearing whispering, you peek through the boards of the closet door to see Frida and May enter the room, May’s hand shaking badly enough to almost make her flame go out. Seeing both their flames shake- seemingly from a wind that you knew wasn't there, you perk up, wanting to alert them, but also not wanting to give away your hiding spot.
Frida seems to notice though, quickly blowing out May’s flame, and running out of the room with the door slamming the door behind her. You can’t see her, but you can hear her freak out, sobbing loudly. You want to help relight her candle, but you know you can’t. It’s one of his rules, San’s rules. And you didn’t want the same fate as Yuri.
When picking the ritual earlier that night, Frida made sure to say that she wanted to play with San, a boogey man who was notably fast, and according to the forums, ruthless as well. He is the type to play ‘Cat Mouse’. And Frida thought he would be more fun than the others.
You huddle your hand around your flame as the room’s temperature drops suddenly.
With the feeling of dread filling you, you close your eyes, not wanting to see what happens. You didn’t know what would happen. Hearing heavy footsteps and May’s panicked noises, until they suddenly stop, with a sound of what you could only imagine as May’s body dropping to the floor.
You wait another few minutes before opening your eyes, only to see a young man sitting next to you, a smirk on his face.
“Found you,” He says, blowing out your candle, and as your vision goes black, a searing pain erupts on the inside of your wrist, causing you to lose consciousness.
⇒ ⇐
A bright light wakes you from your sleep, you open your eyes to find you and two of your friends laying on the living room floor. Sitting up, you look around the room, unsure if the last few hours you could remember was real or not. Looking at your wrist, you gasp.
Where used there was originally soft skin, was now a compass engraved into your wrist, with the initials of ‘C.S’ below it. It happened last night, but the scarring looks like it had been there for years.
Waking the other two girls, Yuri and May, you all check each other over, and recall your versions of what happened last night. All three having similar scars, with Yuri also having ‘cheater’ engraved on her, you guys search the house for the missing girl- unsure if you wanted to even consider her a friend anymore.
The following months after playing the game had been new for you. Yuri moved to a new city, May moved across the country, everyone slowly breaking off ties with one another. No one besides you three girls could remember who Frida was. It’s like she vanished from Earth all together.
Sleeping was not an option for you anymore; your dreams are haunted by the being known as San, hearing his whispers for you to play the game again, to bring new people for him to play with.
Not sleeping had worked, until suddenly it didn’t. Instead of only seeing him in your dreams, now you see him in real life. Even if you were with other people, you can see him, hear him.
It wasn’t until you were hanging out with a new group of friends for game night, that you broke.
“We should play the Boogey Man game,” You suggest, your heart shattering as your new group of friends take the bait. As you explain the game, you see San leaning against the wall, a cheshire grin on his face.