horror!au

1344w.

"Amber?"

The young woman looks up, snapped out of her trance from a world that exists between reality and limbo, and stares at the stranger in the white coat with dark eyes. She remains mute as she stares, thin shoulders slowly hunching uncomfortably in the dirtied outfit she wears.

"My name is Dr. Henry Lau, and I'll be working with you today," the stranger introduces, tapping his pen against his clipboard. Amber's eyes flick from pale hands to handsome features, never moving from her wooden and worn-down seat a meter away. "I hope you don't mind if I'm recording our session."

The young woman gives no indication of her preferences, but her shoulders relax slightly, and Dr. Lau takes this as a good sign to continue. "Do you know where you are?"

Amber's gaze settles on her own fingers and the dirt encrusted beneath long fingernails. She absentmindedly brings up a thumbnail to her lips, teeth drawing the filth out from underneath. "I'm hungry."

Dr. Lau's eyebrows raise, and he clicks his pen to scribble something down. "Alright, alright, Amber. What would you like to eat?"

Now engrossed with cleaning her nails, Amber mutters a small reply. "My mommy's rice soup. And chicken."

The scribbling stops, pen hesitating with a hover over printed lines. "Your... mommy's rice soup?"

Amber nods. She's almost done cleaning all the nails on her left hand.

"How... old are you, Amber?" Dr. Lau asks cautiously. The young woman sitting in front of him couldn't be any less than seventeen years of age.

The younger tilts her head up, pallid face exposed fully to the fluorescent lights overhead for the first time since the beginning of their session. "I'm five," she responds, drawing knobbly knees to her chest. The doctor notes the ragged clothes and the poor condition of the other's body -- Amber seems to suffer from a state of malnutrition.

"Alright, Amber," Dr. Lau continues, though the waver in his voice is difficult to disguise. "Do you know where you are?"

Amber looks around. The graying white walls, rings of water seepage dampening some corners, makes the room unimpressionable, and there's a mirror seated into the wall behind Dr. Lau, though she has the strange feeling she's being watched behind the mirror. She delicately rests her hands on the table in front of her, one that she's just noticed. "I don't know."

Dr. Lau nods. "That's okay. You're in one of the interrogation rooms in the Seoul Police Department, Amber. Someone found you..." He clears his throat here, unable to finish that she was found with a knife in her hand and plunging it into the body of her sister. "... Found you outside, that's all. We brought you in. Do you remember where you were before you came here?"

"Home."

"Alright, is your mommy and daddy at home? Can we talk to them?"

Thin shoulders shoot up again, and Amber draws back, dark eyes staring at the psychologist in front of her in horror. "No, no," she pleads, furiously shaking her head. "It's not safe at home, don't tell them, it's not safe- "

The older shushes her reassuringly. "Amber, don't worry, it's safe here, I can assure you- "

"No, no, no," the young woman repeats, visibly shaking. "It's not safe, it's never safe! He's coming!"

"Okay, well, who's coming?" Dr. Lau asks, leaning forward with urgency.

Amber's lips thin into a line as she whimpers, and there's a moment of silence before the young woman lets out a horrifying shriek. "He's coming! He's coming! He's coming here, I can SEE him, I SEE him- !"

Overhead, as the younger thrashes in her seat, the lights begin to flicker, and the louder Amber terrifyingly shrieks, the intensity of the bulbs flickering increase. The psychologist jolts in surprise with an inkling of real fear slithering down his spine. Never before has he experienced such a case that the police have asked him to consult on as this one.

The fear amps when Amber scratches herself with her long nails, raking claw-like gashes on papery skin, and Dr. Lau has to clamber up from his seat and stretch across the table to restrain Amber's wrists. The younger continuously releases bloodcurdling screams, dark, dark eyes widening to grotesque proportions with respect to her bloodied face, and when the lights all burn out with a loud shatter, the door behind them opens with a slam.

"Henry, I thought you said she was stable!" the head detective roars over Amber. He strides over to clamp Amber's wrists and ankles to the chair with powerful velcro, glaring at the psychologist all the while. "The power's been cut throughout the station!"

"She was, Hyukjae! I don't know what happened!" Henry argues hotly, running a hand through sweat-matted hair.

Hyukjae grabs Amber's jaw forcefully to turn her head to him. "Who is coming, amber? Who?"

"Mr. Scratch," Amber pitifully whimpers, tugging against her restraints, before she falls silent and still. The two adults tense when Amber looks over their shoulders, into the pitch black of the gaping hallway that Hyukjae emerged from. Her next sentence slips out as a barely-there whisper.

"He's here."

It takes ten minutes for the officers and detectives in the station to realize that the power grid's been cut around the block, and that their backup generator is shot, as well. It takes another ten to have everyone accounted for and to light candles to illuminate the station, and five more to calm Amber down enough to tend to her self-inflicted wounds and bandage them up.

"Are you calm enough now to help us out, Amber?" Henry gently asks, ignoring the crazed look Hyukjae sends his way. He understands that empathy is the last emotion the detective wants to use on an individual with a recent mental breakdown that simultaneously occurred at the same time the station's electric lines were overloaded.

Amber nods slowly, thumbnail pushed against her lips once more. She's cleaning the grime away with her teeth and tongue, ignoring the band-aids on her face that make it more difficult for her to move his mouth.

"I understand that this... Mr. Scratch has been hurting you." The speed at which the younger gently rocks herself back and forth in her wooden chair quickens at the mention of her assailant. "Can you draw him out for us?"

Hyukjae pushes forth a box of crayons and a sheet of printer paper with hasty motions, and earns himself a stern glare from Henry. It takes a brief moment, but Amber inches a hand forward to open the box, and slowly unfurls herself to skim for a black crayon. By the candlelight, she starts to sketch, crayon held firmly in her fist the way a toddler would draw, and when she finishes she sets the crayon down and pushes the paper forward for Henry to hold up to the dim light.

The figure that Amber draws is alarming, to say the least. It's a black figure with bony shoulders and lanky arms that reach down to its legs, sharp talons on the end of each hand. The face is simple enough to identify as having two eyes and a mouth, except the mouth takes up half the face in all its gaping glory, and the eyes wide and blank.

"This is who you said you saw?" Hyukjae questions, trepidation tainting his inquiring tone.

Amber nods, making eye contact, and her shadowy stare matches the smoky hue of the creature she drew. "He follows me around and hurts people," the young woman affirms, and then, in a moment of clarity, some of the childish undertones in her voice are replaced with a sudden glimpse of maturity. "He's the one that made me hurt my mom and dad."

—

a/n: im stressin out over ap exams and acts + moving to renovate my home so uh

this will be th last update for a bit until th end of th second week of may ahha i love mgg n cm

i love yall thanks for stickin round