Jungkook stared up at the ceiling from his place on the floor, the rough carpet brushing harshly against the back of his neck. He traced the swirls and indents of the plaster with his eyes, and crossed one ankle over his knee as he put his hands behind his head.

“Hey, Kookie, wanna get me a soda?” pleaded Jimin from the couch.

Jungkook looked up by bending at the neck so that the rest of his body stayed relaxed on the ground. He shot a look of annoyance at Jimin, who was smiling at the younger man as sweetly as he could. Taehyung was sitting next to the silently begging man, his thumb lazily tracing circles over the latter’s open palm.

“Why can’t you go get it?” snapped Jungkook in a tone that was more tired and lazy than truly angry.

“Because I’m too comfortable!”

Jimin lifted his head slightly off his boyfriend’s shoulder before immediately collapsing back on Taehyung’s arm, as if to suggest that moving any farther was impossible. Jungkook sighed as he reclined with a sharp grunt to look at the ceiling once again.

“You know, it’s bad enough that I have to be an awkward third wheel whenever I hang out with you guys,” complained Jungkook. “The least you could do is not make me be your personal servant on top of everything.”

“Fine,” relented Jimin. “I guess we’ll have to keep playing the game until someone else feels like getting up.”

At this, Taehyung snapped out of his languid state, and grabbed Jimin’s hand more fully, engulfing it with his larger one.

“It’s your turn - right, Jimin?” giggled Taehyung. “I’ll ask the question this time: Truth or Dare?”

Jungkook could practically hear the smirk in Jimin’s voice as the other man answered, a sly smile no doubt spreading over his lips.

“Hmm… dare,” droned Jimin.

“Oh my God; FINE!” yelled Jungkook as he propelled himself off of the rug in front of the sofa. “You win, you big jerk. Getting your lazy a soda is ten times better than watching you two dare each other to make out - again.”

“Hey, how’d you know that was gonna be the dare?” teased Taehyung before Jimin gave him a quick peck on the lips.

Jungkook wasn’t paying attention to them at this point, however, as the youngest had already made it halfway to the basement door by the time Jimin was snuggling back against the firm shoulder of his proudly smiling boyfriend.

❧

Jungkook opened the door and flicked on the lightswitch, not bothering to look behind him at Taehyung and Jimin, who were almost certainly back to acting like a gross, lovey-dovey couple once again, to the youngest man’s dismay. The boy was happy for his two older friends, but he himself was still at the young, awkward age where any kind of public display of affection felt uncomfortable to execute and even more traumatizing to watch. It didn’t help matters that Jungkook was chronically single. Jimin was always telling him not to worry; that someday the right person would come along for him, too, but Jungkook wasn’t so confident.

Pushing those troubling thoughts out of his mind, Jungkook turned left when he reached the bottom of the stairs, and headed into the small basement pantry where his parents kept all the soda and juice. He grabbed a few cans of cola, picked up a few bags of miniature pretzels for good measure, and made his way back to the carpeted stairs. It was a typical, lazy Tuesday for the three young men, and Jungkook suspected that he would need the sugar and salt if he hoped to make it out of the afternoon with his sanity in tact. The boys had been playing Truth or Dare for the better part of an hour at this point, and Jungkook didn’t know how many more not-so-subtle “I dare you to kiss me,” or “Who’s your most favorite person in the room?” flirts he could possibly handle before dying of embarrassment.

The young man shifted his unstable load so that he was holding it all with only one arm as he twisted the doorknob to the sitting room with his free hand. The handle rattled, but didn’t open - so Jungkook tried pushing on it a bit more forcefully. That didn’t do anything either, though, and he suddenly realized that Taehyung and Jimin had locked him in the basement.

Those jerks.

Jungkook frowned as he balanced the junk food, and banged his fist forcefully on the locked door.

“Yah! You two better not be doing anything weird and gross on my couch,” shouted the young man, pausing for a reply.

Neither of the boys on the other side of the door made any kind of vocal response, so Jungkook set his armful of food on the floor, and tried twisting the doorknob with both of his hands. He slammed his shoulder against the barrier, but the stubborn piece of wood refused to budge. He tried calling again.

“Hyungs!” yelled Jungkook. “This so isn’t funny. Let me out.”

He rattled the uncooperative door again, trying to figure out how his friends had managed to lock it. Most likely they had trapped him with the sliding latch, making it impossible for Jungkook to free himself. He could almost picture Jimin on the other side of the door, holding the shiny bolt in place as he and Taehyung tried to keep themselves from laughing; the younger of the two with his back against the door and giggles escaping in fits and snorts. Yet Jungkook heard nothing as he continued to knock, threatening bodily harm on the other two men if they didn’t immediately let him out.

❧

Suddenly, Jungkook heard footsteps approaching. They were coming from the other side of the basement door, and they sounded like Taehyung’s heavy, long-strided gait.

“Jungkook, what are you doing in there?”

It was indeed Taehyung’s voice, and Jungkook felt his face turn red as he struggled to hold back his anger and embarrassment.

“You damn well know what I’m doing in here, you idiot. You two are the ones who trapped me here,” Jungkook muttered through tensely gritted teeth.

A second set of footsteps came from behind the door, which meant that Jimin had now joined his boyfriend. It was the older man’s voice that came from behind the door next, and Jungkook listened to it as he continued to seethe.

“Kookie, the door’s unlocked,” laughed Jimin. “See?”

Jungkook heard the sound of the slide lock moving into place, followed by another scrape as Jimin immediately unbolted it.

“Try coming out again; maybe the door just got stuck,” suggested Jimin.

Jungkook turned the round handle again, but just as it had multiple times before, the door did absolutely nothing in response. There were actually two locks on the basement door: one being the slide lock on the opposite side, and the other a deadbolt that was directly connected to the knob. Although it was dim in the poorly-lit basement, Jungkook could see that the little switch that turned to indicate whether or not the lock was engaged was up, which meant that the door should have been open. The young man pounded on the wood again, but it still the hinges wouldn’t move.

“How about this?” suggested Taehyung, his husky voice muffled by the thick plank of wood. “You twist and push, and Jimin and I will tug on the doorknob from this side. That’s bound to make this thing open, right?”

“Okay,” agreed Jungkook as he held onto the handle. “Ready when you are.”

❧

The youngest man braced himself against the door, and pushed harshly with all his might on the count of three. He could hear Jimin and Taehyung straining on the other side, but it was only a few seconds before the other two dissolved into a fit of nervous laughter.

“Hey!” giggled Taehyung. “I said you could grab onto me, but I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Sorry,” replied Jimin. “Just trying to help Jungkook.”

“Guys! Come on; this is serious,” whined Jungkook. He paused as he took a step down, putting him more or less on eye level with the handle in the middle of the door. “Forcing it that way isn’t working out, though, so I’m gonna look for something down here that I can use to pry it open.”

He was halfway down the creaky stairs when Jimin called out from the other side of the door, stopping Jungkook in his tracks as the younger man turned to listen.

“Kookie, do you want us to, like, call your parents or something?” he wondered. “Maybe they would know what to do.”

“Oh, no way,” answered Jungkook with a laugh. “I’m supposed to be studying for midterms right now; they can’t know you guys are over here goofing off.”

Without even waiting for an actual reply, Jungkook finished descending the dimly lit staircase, and was about to step onto the concrete floor when something made him freeze. Standing on the other side of the basement was a shadow, but it was one that most certainly did not belong to Jungkook. The single, flickering light was in front of the young man, which meant that his shadow should be behind him on the stairs - and besides, Jungkook was sure that the shadow was far too large to belong to him. It appeared to be almost free-standing also; the dark shape wasn’t pressed up against the wall or stretched, like one would expect it to be under normal circumstances. The being in front of him was simply a black figure - standing, motionless, in the middle of the room.

Jungkook bit down on his tongue to keep from screaming as he slowly and breathlessly backed up, not daring to take his eyes off of the entity still stationed in the depths of the basement. He didn’t stop moving until his back hit the door at the top of the stairs, and he could hear Jimin and Taehyung whispering to each other through the barrier.

“Jimin…” gasped Jungkook wheezingly quietly. “Taehyung… get me the hell out of here, please.”

“What was that, Kookie?” Jimin asked, his voice far too loud to be considered inconspicuous.

Jungkook frantically shushed his older friend as he leaned up against the crack at the side of the door frame, his voice hardly audible as he described the thing he had just seen. He kept one eye pointed at the bottom of the stairs, beyond which the shadow was no longer visible - though Jungkook could feel that the thing was still there.

“Guys, there’s something down here with me,” he squeaked, trembling violently. “It’s this… shadow person, but it’s not just a normal shadow, y’know? I-it’s like a cut-out of a person, but it’s totally black - and it’s just standing in the basement beyond the stairs.”

“Uh, Jungkook?” It was Taehyung who responded first. “Did you drink something other than soda while you were down there?”

“I’m not making this up, dammit!” hissed Jungkook. “There is a person made of pure blackness in my ing basement right now.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s all calm down.” That was Jimin, and he sounded quite frantic despite his suggestion. “Are you totally sure that that’s really what you saw, Kookie?”

“Yes,” whimpered Jungkook, and he swallowed heavily.

❧

He couldn’t take his eyes off of the empty staircase. The shadow person didn’t seem to be following him for the time being, and Jungkook wondered if perhaps the entity hadn’t seen him at all. It hadn’t appeared to possess a face, but Jungkook didn’t know if that meant that it just didn’t have one, or if the thing had been turned the other way, meaning that it was the being’s featureless back that he had seen at the bottom of the stairs. Either way, Jungkook wasn’t interested in sticking around long enough to find out.

“We know it’s not locked,” said Jimin, referring to the door, “so if we can find something sturdy and thin to stick between the latch and frame, we should be able to unstick it. Hopefully.”

“Sounds good to me,” whispered Jungkook, turning to face the door. “You guys go find something; I am not going back down there.”

Jimin agreed, and left to locate a suitable object, leaving Taehyung behind to comfort a heavily breathing Jungkook.

“Don’t worry, Jungkookie,” soothed the older man. “We’ll get you out of there before you know it.”

Jungkook hoped so, but any certainty he may have had was shattered when he turned around to look at the base of the stairs. The shadow was there, looking up at him with what Jungkook was now sure was its blank, shadowy face, standing just as motionless on the bottom step as it had been in the middle of the room.

“Jungkook?”

Taehyung was calling him, trying to see if the other could hear him, but the younger man couldn’t pull in enough air to speak. He felt horribly cornered; so close to salvation that he could hear his friend through the door, and yet powerless to do anything but stand there.

“Jungkook!?” Taehyung raised his voice when he heard no reply. “Answer me, Jungkook!”

The frightened boy looked very hastily at the door, unable to conjure the words to make a sentence. When he glanced back, he saw that the shadow was now halfway up the stairs, just a few steps away from him as it continued to stare. Jungkook hadn’t seen or heard the thing move, and it had transported itself up the stairs so rapidly that the young man thought it must have just teleported. Taehyung was still screaming on the other side of the door, but Jungkook could barely hear him as the latter curled up into a tiny ball, trying to disappear into the stair he was now lying on.

The shadow person visibly moved for the first time, leaning down so its blank, matte obsidian face was perfectly level with Jungkook’s nose. It lifted its leg to take a single step up, and Jungkook closed his eyes.

❧

“Jungkook!”

Jimin and Taehyung’s voices rang out in unison as the door burst open behind the young man, who remained in the fetal position on the second step down. He didn’t have the courage to open his eyes, even as he could see the light from the living room flood in from behind his closed eyelids.

“Oh my God!” screamed Jimin.

Jungkook felt a hand on his shoulder, and before he knew what was happening, he was looking up into Taehyung’s terrified face before being dragged to his feet and pulled out the door. Jimin followed closely, and slammed the door behind them, locking both the deadbolt and the gold sliding latch before turning around and collapsing to the floor.

“You saw it, too?” Taehyung asked, his eyes glossy and wide as his breath came in gasps.

Jimin nodded. He was breathing rather heavily, too, and Jungkook watched as the older man’s chest moved irregularly up and down, continuing even as Jimin got to his feet and tugged Taehyung up to stand shakily next to him. Jungkook got to his feet on his own, and the three of them shuffled back to the couch in the living room, where they all sat in silence as they stared straight ahead at the basement door.

“I don’t understand,” said Jimin softly. “It was there, but it just… disappeared.”

“I dunno what that thing was either,” agreed Taehyung quietly in the middle of the couch. “But I’ll tell you guys one thing I know for sure: Next poor er to ask for a dare is totally kissing the shadow guy.”

Shadow People have always kind of creeped me out, although apparently the jury is still out on whether they’re evil, good, or neutral beings. There are certainly a lot of people out there who claim to have seen them - although perhaps fortunately/perhaps unfortunately, I cannot say that I’m one of them. Part of me kind of wants to have a paranormal experience like this just so I can make up my mind on whether to believe in it or not, but a larger part of me wants to stay as far away from creepy Shadow People as possible!

I feel like Taehyung would be one to bring a little comic relief to a situation like this, though - and besides, who knows? Maybe shadow people are secretly friendly and/or really good kissers : P