It was late when Hoseok finally pulled his station wagon into the driveway of his house, and he realized - somewhat belatedly - that he had forgotten to leave any lights on.

Crap. Now it looks like no one’s home… Which they aren’t. I’ll be lucky if I haven’t already gotten robbed.

It was paranoia, he knew, but the young man couldn’t help it. His parents had raised him to be aware of the dangers of the world, but their plan had backfired in that Hoseok now saw the potential for danger in everything. A leaky faucet was a flood waiting to happen. A misplaced school book had been stolen by aliens. And a dim porch light was most definitely an invitation to burglars.

Hoseok sighed as he sat idling in the driveway, windshield wipers whisking away the fine mist that showered his car, as he waited for the automatic garage door to open. The thing was unbearably slow, and he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel while he waited for the gap to get big enough for the bulky car to slide though.

He hadn’t really meant to be out this late, but Jimin had kept insisting that everyone stay for “one more song” - and of course that “one” had always inevitably led to three, after all the other men insisted on getting their own turn with the karaoke machine. It had been a fun evening, to be sure, but Hoseok didn’t like driving at night any more than he did coming home to a dark house. As a result, he had eventually been forced to excuse himself while Jimin and the others continued to sing, drunk off of nothing but their own youth and the inherent thrill of night, as Hoseok himself slipped quietly out of the room.

❧

Hoseok jumped suddenly in his seat. He had become so lost in his thoughts while waiting for the garage door that the entrance was now fully open, waiting for him to pull the car in. Annoyed that he was now wasting even more time by replaying the night - which had already gone on too long - over again in his head, Hoseok yanked the gearshift into drive and rolled slowly toward his spot in the garage.

Out of the corner of his eye, by the light of the bulb that buzzed on the ceiling, Hoseok saw a dark, blurry shape dart into his open garage. He stopped the car and squinted into the dimly lit corners of the space, trying to see if perhaps it was a wild animal of some sort trying to get out of the sputtering rain - but the garage itself was totally empty. Only the recycling cans stared back at Hoseok as he scanned, unable to find anything worthy of note.

Great. Now I’m seeing things.

With another loud sigh, Hoseok took his tense foot off the brake, and continued his slow crawl into the garage. The car’s wheels crunched over the dry concrete inside as he came to a stop, immediately hitting the little button on the remote to close the garage door behind him. Hoseok spent a few minutes just sitting in the parked car, checking that he had all his personal belongings while he waited to make sure the door shut fully.

Keys: check. Wallet: check. Phone-

Something made him stop.

It was a squishy, wet sort of a sound, and it had caused a drop of water to land on the roof of Hoseok’s car with a loud plop. His mind flashed through possibilities of what the source could possibly be; most likely a hole in the roof of his garage, which meant that the whole structure was definitely bound to collapse, and would probably do so while Hoseok was sitting there.

He looked up through the sunroof. The water droplet was large and strangely sticky-looking, and Hoseok watched as it slid languidly down the top of the car and past the passenger’s window. It almost looked more like goo as opposed to water, and Hoseok looked above him again with a confused and furrowed brow.

❧

“Holy !”

Hoseok swore as a black, gelatinous blob dropped from the garage’s ceiling and onto the roof of his car. The thing appeared to be alive, and it slithered like some sort of giant slug across the top of the parked station wagon. Hoseok could see its slimy belly undulating sloppily as it left behind a trail of the goo wherever it went - a substance that Hoseok could now see had slight, unnatural teal-ish tint to it.

What the heck IS that thing?

The creature slid down the front of the car, pausing on the windshield as it settled in front of Hoseok’s face. Reflexively, he checked the locks on the doors.

God, the one time I forget.

Hoseok pushed a button on his side control panel, auto-locking all the doors of the car. He wasn’t sure what the thing in front of him was, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want it getting in. He leaned forward in his seat to examine the creature, and as he did so, the slug wriggled and squirmed - almost as if it was getting excited.

“What the hell…?” mumbled Hoseok.

He couldn’t quite tell if the being had eyes or not, but it seemed to be able to sense when Hoseok leaned closer. The young man also saw that the only defining feature on its otherwise flat, dripping underbelly was a perfect ring of sharp, white teeth. The mouth expanded and contracted in a circle as the thing twitched its body against the glass, and Hoseok continued to gawk at it in disbelief. It didn’t do anything - just sat there on the window - but Hoseok still felt uncomfortable about getting out of the car with the disgusting thing that close to him.

“Okay, okay. What do I do?” the young man muttered privately to himself.

He stared at the drops of rain that raced down his side window. He could hear the creature make an audible squishing sound as it pulsated continuously.

Of course!

❧

Hoseok pulled out his phone, swiping past the screensaver that showed a cheerful picture of him and his friends posing in front of a restaurant he had long forgotten ever visiting. He scrolled through his contacts until he found Jimin’s number, and opened up a new text message thread to ask for the younger man’s assistance.

Hoseok paused. The creature outside was still humping his windshield. What could he possibly say to Jimin that wouldn’t make him sound like a total lunatic? Hoseok stared down at the phone dumbly before finally deciding to try starting the conversation off open-ended.

“Hey, Jimin. You around?”

Hoseok sent the text and waited, but after more than a few minutes passed, he figured he wasn’t going to get a response. He thought that maybe Yoongi would reply instead, and sent out an almost identical text to the older man.

“Yeah; why?” texted Yoongi a few seconds later.

Hoseok sighed with absolute relief. Now he at least had contact with the outside world, and maybe Yoongi would have an idea about how to deal with this… thing. Whatever it was.

“I’m… in a bit of a predicament,” typed back Hoseok.

Almost as soon as he hit “send,” Hoseok’s phone began vibrating. Yoongi’s contact picture lit up on the screen, and Hoseok accepted the call as he brought the phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hoseok, what’s going on?” Yoongi’s voice came through the speakers with a slightly frantic tone. He sounded stressed, and Hoseok could hear car horns blaring in the background. “What do you mean you’re in a ‘predicament?’”

“There’s a - uh… Some kind of strange… creature on my car’s windshield.” Hoseok waited, nervous that Yoongi wouldn’t believe him or would think he was joking - although this was no prank.

“I’m sorry. What?” Yoongi seemed distracted. “What did you say is on the window of - Park Jimin! Put that down. No. I don’t care if he was friendly; you don’t take food from weird hobos. Give me-”

Hoseok frowned as he listened to a brief argument erupt between the two men on the other end of the line. Eventually, Yoongi apparently regained control of the situation, and he turned his attention back to Hoseok.

“Sorry about that,” grumbled the older man. “You think you’re in a predicament? Wait ’til you hear what I’ve been getting into. Jimin got us kicked out of the karaoke place, and then Namjoon managed to get us lost in some super sketchy part of town.”

“The map on my phone said that this was the way to go!” Namjoon’s voice came through scratchily on the phone, as he was yelling from somewhere beside Yoongi.

“Okay; look, what were you saying, Hoseok?” asked Yoongi, sounding frazzled.

“There’s, like, a giant slug on the windshield of my car,” explained Hoseok. “It’s weird, and it’s mouth is all creepy, and I don’t know what to do.”

There was a pause on the phone, and Hoseok wasn’t able to hear even so much as the other man’s breathing.

“Hoseok, are you seriously calling me about a stupid slug?” snapped Yoongi. “Just wipe it off and put it under a leaf or something; leave it in your front yard. For Christ’s sake.”

There was another short interval of time where Yoongi was too busy yelling at Jimin to stick with the group and not wander into traffic to listen to Hoseok, so the younger man waited patiently while he watched the creature in front of him wiggle and writhe. After a minute, Yoongi got back on his phone.

“Yoongi, listen to me,” pleaded Hoseok. “This isn’t a normal slug. It’s huge! And it’s gross and menacing and it’s - there’s teeth! I don’t know if it’s dangerous. But it’s really ing freaking me out.”

There must have been something in Hoseok’s panicked voice that convinced Yoongi that the younger man wasn’t lying or overreacting, because the elder took on a much more serious tone after letting out a concentrated sigh.

“Fine,” he relented. “I’ll be over to your place as soon as I can, but in the meantime just… try to relax, or call animal control or something. I don’t know how long I’m gonna be.”

“Thank you,” breathed Hoseok. “Thank you, Yoongi. Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah. You owe me one,” Yoongi joked with a chuckle. “Jimin! You idiot; get out of the-”

With that, the call ended, and Hoseok stared down at the numbered buttons on-screen, trying to decide what to do next.

❧

Making a call to animal control certainly sounded reasonable enough, but Hoseok was sure that the operator would laugh at him rather than be of any help when he told them about the strange slug on his window. He decided to wait a bit longer, and placed the cellphone on his dashboard while he tried to come up with another plan. The creature slid its mouth over the glass when Hoseok put his hand near the windshield, positioning its teeth to be closer to the young man’s appendage.

Hoseok knew that Yoongi would keep his promise to come help him, but he had no clue how long it would be until the older man was able to do so. He waited for nearly fifteen minutes, tapping his fingers on the plastic steering wheel and examining the animal in front of him. Yoongi was apparently lost, and Namjoon and Jimin seemed to be a source of more trouble than help, so for all Hoseok knew it could be hours before his friend would arrive.

He turned the keys, which were still in the ignition. The roar of the engine made the slug outside shrivel in surprise, but before long it was back to slithering in place on the windshield, never daring to venture away from where Hoseok was sitting. A cool breeze from the car’s air conditioning brushed against Hoseok’s face as he had another idea. He the windshield wipers, and watched as they swept away the leftover raindrops before crashing into the black thing, which hindered their arc and sent the wipers back into their well.

The slimy creature screeched; a piercing shriek that sounded almost human, and made Hoseok slam his hands over his ears. The noise continued as it was joined by another sound that was reminded Hoseok vaguely of scraping. He peeked up to see that the creature’s mouth was now spinning, it’s pointed teeth etching a circle into the glass like a small, rotating saw. The windshield started to crack around the scratched circle, and Hoseok panicked as he once again had to think of something to do.

The creature was definitely hostile - Hoseok was thoroughly convinced of that now - and it was making progress on the glass at a worrisome pace. The young man reached for his phone, but as soon as he got close to it, the creature screamed again, causing him to recoil immediately. Blue-green slime had started to drip onto the dash, and the creature relentlessly chewed through the window at an determined, alarming rate.

In a flash of inspiration, Hoseok pressed the button on the remote control to the automatic garage door. At the very least, he could get himself out of this confined space before attempting to square off with the creature, and if things got bad then he could always just run away once he was outside. The car was still in park, so he threw it into reverse while he waited for the door to open, heart pounding forcefully against his chest.

There was just one problem.

The door wasn’t opening.

Frantically, Hoseok pushed the gray button again, but the door still didn’t budge. He glanced above him, and saw through the sunroof that the connection from the automatic winch to the door had been severed, which meant that he was effectively trapped in the cramped garage.

Goddamn slug ing thought ahead.

He put the car’s gear back into park, and shakily turned to watch the slug.

❧

A moment later, the creature completed its hole, and a perfect circle of cut glass exploded on the steering wheel as it fell. Hoseok climbed into the back seat, desperate to get away from the thing that was now squeezing itself into the car, through the narrow hole it had chewed for itself. Faster than he could react, the slug leapt at Hoseok and attached itself to his arm.

Hoseok cried out in pain as he felt the creature’s teeth sink into his flesh. There were dozens of the little spikes, and they seemed to penetrate quite deeply as the slug squirmed against the young man’s arm. He ripped it of, hurling it into the wayback of the car as he climbed quickly forward, buckling himself back into the driver’s seat. The slug zipped over to him, moving much faster than it had when it slithered down the face of the car, and immediately crawled onto Hoseok’s head.

Half a dozen trickles of blood oozed down the boy’s twitching arm as he put the car back in reverse, preparing himself to drive straight through the still-closed garage door. He could feel the thing wiggling on his forehead, trying to find another place to sink its horrible teeth. Hoseok wasn’t about to let that happen, though, and he slammed on the gas, sending the car hurtling backwards before crashing through the door in a shower of splinters of wood and glass.

Back in his driveway, Hoseok rolled down the driver’s side window with his left hand while tugging on the slug with his right. The creature released with a wet pop, and Hoseok whipped it’s body out the open window and in front of the vehicle. Swiftly, he shifted the car into drive as the slug lay stunned on the ground.

There was another blood-curdling scream to accompany the disgusting, moist splat that was produced when Hoseok’s wheels ran over the creature, and he rolled the car back on it again just for good measure. His vehicle stalling half-in, half-out of the garage, Hoseok undid his seatbelt as he leaned out the door to inspect the damage. The slug was crushed, its ring of teeth still twirling as its body lay amid a puddle of blood and goo. It was dead, as far as Hoseok could tell, and he hesitantly kicked it with his sneaker to confirm this suspicion as fact.

Hoseok wiped at his forehead, and got a nasty handful of the sticky, teal-colored slime. He brushed it on his pants before climbing back into the car, locking the doors as he leaned back in the driver’s seat.

He gazed up at the lightbulb on the ceiling of the garage, the halo of its island of light matching up with the neat, flawless circle that cut through his windshield, nestled amongst the streaks of cracked glass.

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this is the first story I’ve written where the main character actually “defeats” the monster in it. Not that a giant blood- slug should really be all that hard to kill, but… still, good for Hobi; finally someone takes charge of the situation and wins, haha.

And, yes, I really do worry about leaving lights on when I’m not home so that it looks like there are still people inside. Although I don’t think that would necessarily protect against the slugs ; ) Those guys are coming for you no matter what.