It was dark out, and the road was surprisingly slick as the car manouvered quickly but carefully down the winding, rain-soaked road. The downpour itself had stopped hours ago, but the streets were still very much dangerous and wet when Jin glanced over at the clock on his dashboard.

2:36.

And that was AM. Jin had been driving for at least four hours since the last time he had gotten out to stretch his legs, but it would all be worth it to see his family the following morning. Or, rather, later this morning. The occasion was a cousin’s wedding, and Jin was looking forward to seeing her walk down the aisle, smile beaming as she glanced shyly at her fiancee from underneath her veil. The groom himself was very gentlemanly; a lawyer that Jin had met several times and liked - so he was looking forward to the ceremony as well as seeing his parents and extended family members.

The car was quiet as a crypt, and that thought made Jin tear his eyes away from the road momentarily to look at his boyfriend, who was sleeping in the passenger’s seat. Hoseok’s bangs hung down into his face as he dozed, breathing steadily in time with each swoosh of air that passed over the sleek car. Jin brushed his hand absentmindedly over Hoseok’s cheek before looking back out at the dimly lit road.

“Mmmh?”

It was Hoseok, and Jin’s breath hitched as he realized he had woken the other man up. He felt a little guilty about it, but at the same time it would be nice to actually have somebody to talk to while he drove. The road they were on was quite rural, and they were still at least a good two or three hours away from their destination.

“Sorry. Did I wake you?” Jin whispered, still worried about disturbing Hoseok in case he hadn’t fully woken up yet.

“Mmm, maybe,” replied Hoseok sleepily.

The younger man made a move to take Jin’s right hand off the steering wheel, and the other happily obliged, holding his boyfriend’s hand idly over the center console as the car sped along, not slowing pace at all. He played with Hoseok’s fingers for a bit as the other man pried himself fully out of the clutches of sleep, stretching lightly without letting go of Jin’s hand.

“What time is is?” wondered Hoseok with a yawn.

“Just after two-thirty,” replied Jin, looking briefly back at the clock.

Hoseok groaned, filling the silence that had aded the small space just moments ago.

“At least it’s not raining anymore,” offered Jin, trying to keep positive even though the mood wasn’t particularly rotten anyway.

“That’s true, I guess.”

Hoseok removed his hand to scratch at his cheek for a moment before dropping the arm to rest at his side. Jin put his own hand back on the wheel, and continued to gaze at the barren road, the only even remotely exciting thing a black bag lying on the shoulder of the road. Garbage; probably tossed out the window in the middle of a lengthy car trip much like their own.

❧

“Should we stop for a while, Seokjin?” asked Hoseok.

The younger man was more alert now, and had managed to shake off the last lingering touches of sleep as he, too, looked out the windshield at nothing in particular. Jin shook his head.

“I want to make sure we get there,” he insisted. “The wedding is tomorrow - or, today, I guess - and I want to have a chance to visit with everyone before we have to leave the day after that. We can rest when we get to the hotel.”

In the back of his mind, Jin hoped that the hotel would have a night-staff person on duty to check them in; otherwise they would have to sleep in the car. And neither of them would be happy about that. Especially after he and Hoseok had already split the cost for the room. Still, the town they were going to was very small, and Jin thought that it might not be out of the question for the manager of the inn to just lock the front doors overnight, stranding him and his boyfriend until morning.

“Fair enough,” agreed Hoseok, snapping Jin out of his rambling thoughts.

The car was quiet again for a few minutes before Hoseok continued.

“Jin?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Do you… think they’ll like me?”

Jin looked at his boyfriend, who was shrunken back in the seat a little, his eyes on his shoes as he fiddled with a loose thread on the hem of his shirt. Jin smiled as he tilted the other man’s chin up to look at him.

“Hey,” said the older man comfortingly. “They’re going to love you. You know why?”

Hoseok shook his head, blushing.

“Because I. Love. You!”

Jin paused between each word, poking Hoseok playfully on the nose. The young man smiled, and settled back in his seat with his eyes closed peacefully. Jin looked at him for another moment before turning his own eyes back toward the road. Hoseok happened to reopen his at the same time, and Jin heard him gasp sharply.

“Jin, look out!”

Jin swerved, and as he did so he saw the young boy in front of him try and fail to jump out of the way of the car. The vehicle slammed into him, and Jin watched in horror as he sailed over the roof and landed with a thump behind the car. The vehicle came to a rolling stop, and both of the men inside sat frozen in shock.

❧

“Seokjin.” Hoseok took a deep breath. “Did we hit something?”

The inquiry seemed absolutely absurd to Jin, who was shaking violently as he held onto the wheel. It wasn’t a question of whether or not they had hit something - and it hadn’t been a something at all. Jin was certain it was a person; a teenage boy if he had been correct in his frantic analysis as the pedestrian had gone soaring over the hood. He took a minute to compose himself before answering Hoseok.

“I… I think so.”

Jin released a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding, and unbuckled his seatbelt as he prepared to step out of the car. Before he could reach for the handle, however, Hoseok’s hand was on his, and the younger man looked up into Jin’s eyes as he stopped him.

“Jin, honey, are you sure you want to go out there?” asked Hoseok nervously.

“Of course!” replied Jin in a harsh whisper. Hoseok jumped a little, and Jin regretted scaring him, so he softened his voice. “Of course I have to go out there; we can’t just not check on the poor kid. He’s probably hurt.”

Jin thought there was also probably a worse - and unfortunately more likely - alternative, but he didn’t say anything for fear of upsetting his sensitive partner. Hoseok nodded to show that he understood, but buried his head in his hands as Jin reached for the handle. The latter continued opening the door, and was just about to shut it behind him when Hoseok called out again.

“Wait.”

“What is it, Hobi?” asked Jin, bending over to look in on the worried man.

“Just… be careful, okay?” sighed Hoseok. “Call me if you need anything.”

Jin smiled sadly, and closed the door as gently as he could.

❧

Outside, it had started to drizzle again, though the water really felt more like a mist against Jin’s cheeks as he scanned the road, looking for any sign of the presumably injured young man. The road in front of him was empty but dark, so Jin took a few hesitant steps forward, moving toward a streetlamp that illuminated the road a couple dozen meters down the lane.

The side of the country road was lined with wet grass, and Jin stuck close to the natural barrier as he shuffled his feet, one in front of the other, slowly making his way down the dark street.

I should have turned the damned car around. Then maybe at least I could use the headlights to see.

It was too late for that, however, and as Jin inched along he started to notice a lump just off the shoulder of the road. When he got even closer, he could see that he had been correct in his assumption that it was a young boy. The child looked far too young to be out on this stretch of country road so late at night, and Jin realized that he himself was shaking as he approached the unmoving young man.

Stop it. This is ridiculous. It’s just a kid.

“Hello?” Jin called out.

He was still a few meters away from the injured boy, who made no response as Jin’s uncertain voice pierced the muggy night air. Jin kneeled down as he crept closer.

“Young man? Are you okay?”

His voice squeaked as he asked the question, and Jin might have been embarrassed if not for how terrified he was feeling in that particular moment. It was essentially his worst nightmare come to life. Here he was, on the side of the road in some unfamiliar town in the middle of nowhere, after having run over a random kid at two in the morning. A kid who was now uttering absolutely no reply as Jin tiptoed ever closer.

“Hello?” He tried to keep his shaking voice calm, but as he finally reached the boy he had hit, it became apparent that doing so was going to be impossible. Jin’s voice cracked as he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Hoseok!”

The younger man practically fell out of the car, stumbling to regain his footing as he rushed over to Jin. He left the passenger side door open, and hit the flashlight from the glovebox against the palm of his hand, trying to get it to light up. Finally, the connection took hold, and Hoseok ran through the rain - which had now started to pick up - and toward Jin and the boy as the beam from the flashlight bounced with each step.

“What’s wrong, Seokjin?”

Hoseok had barely finished the question when he gasped weakly, nearly dropping the flashlight as it shone to reveal the boy’s mangled form. The poor kid’s face looked like it might have been pretty at one point, but his visage was now torn and scraped against the pavement, revealing stark white bone in places where the soiled flesh had gotten peeled away. A pool of blood had leaked from underneath the boy’s head, and the rest of his body didn’t look much better. Jin was almost certain that arms were not supposed to bend that way.

“Oh my God,” breathed Hoseok. “Oh my ing God.”

“I know,” replied Jin, his hand covering his shocked mouth. “Oh, Hoseok.”

❧

The teenage boy was obviously dead; it only took one look at his permanently open, glazed-over eyes to realize that the life had left his ruined body. Jin prayed that the young man hadn’t felt much pain. He hoped that the hit had been fast and hard enough to kill the kid instantly so that he hadn’t suffered while Jin and Hoseok had spent time talking in the car.

Jin hesitantly put a hand on the blood-soaked shoulder of the boy’s sweatshirt, and flipped him over so that he was lying on his back. Hoseok looked away, and Jin took the flashlight from his boyfriend as the younger man dry heaved on the side of the road. He shined the beam on the scraps of flesh still clinging to the poor boy’s face, and bent over to search through the corpse’s pockets.

“What are you doing?” asked Hoseok, mortified, as he came back to stand by Jin.

“Trying to find some sort of wallet or something,” explained Jin as he did his best to hold his breath. “Maybe he has an ID on him that’ll tell us who he is.”

Jin wasn’t entirely sure why, but discovering the boy’s identity seemed to be of the utmost importance for some reason. It was clear that nothing could be done to save his unlucky victim, but Jin was set on at least getting some closure concerning who the boy was. If not for the sake of the unfortunate young man, then at the very least to make Jin himself feel better.

“Here we go,” said Jin as he pulled out a leather wallet. He read the name printed in plain, block letters on a student ID: “Jeon Jeongguk.”

At the same time, Jin saw that the boy had the name “Jungkook” embroidered on the sleeve of his navy blue sweatshirt; most likely a nickname with a slight different spelling that he went by for sports or something at his high school. Jin ran his thumb over the white thread, now stained crimson, as Hoseok stood shaking behind him.

“Poor Jungkook,” whimpered the younger man.

Jin stood up with a grunt, and brushed off his knees. He pulled out his cellphone, and had started to dial the number for an ambulance when he realized belatedly that he didn’t get any service this far out in the countryside.

“Damn,” he whispered, putting the phone back in his pocket. “No signal.”

Hoseok had been crying quietly, but he stopped now to look up at Jin with wide eyes.

“Wuh-why do we have to c-call anyone?” he sobbed.

Jin eyed his boyfriend from the side before turning fully to face him.

“What are you saying, Hobi?”

“I just mean… well, why tell anyone about this? We don’t have to; you don’t have to take the blame for this, Jin.” Hoseok’s voice was a bit louder now, and more confident as he continued speaking. “No one will know. It’ll just look like an accident!”

“Hoseok, it was an accident,” reminded Jin, his own voice starting to waver. “And he had a goddamn school ID; people will know he’s gone missing. He’s not just some random ing kid that we can leave on the side of the road to get picked clean by the vultures.”

“But none of that means that you have to get in trouble for it!” insisted Hoseok, the tears streaming down his face once again.

Jin grabbed hold of the younger man’s shoulders, and looked deeply into his wild eyes.

“Hobi, listen to yourself. This is crazy. Yes, I killed this kid, but I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen and leave him here to rot.” Jin paused to take a breath. “Besides, there’s probably blood all over the front of our car.”

This thought seemed to sober Hoseok somewhat, and he dropped his head, too ashamed to return Jin’s stare. The older man was having none of that, however, and he tipped Hoseok’s head up to look in his eyes once again.

“Hey, listen,” he said calmly. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

Hoseok sighed as Jin pressed a delicate kiss to his forehead, but said nothing more.

“Fine then,” panted Hoseok. “What do you want to do with him?”

❧

Jin eventually settled for wrapping the dead boy in both his and Hoseok’s jackets, and dragging the body over to the trunk of their small sedan, where he popped the hood and fumbled to get Jungkook in the back. It was hard work - made worse by the way the rain made everything too slippery to grip - and the limited light afforded by Hoseok’s flashlight didn’t help as much as Jin wished it would have. Regardless, he accomplished his task, and, drenched in blood and rainwater, finally took his seat behind the driver’s wheel at precisely 3:14AM.

“I don’t like this,” objected Hoseok weakly. “I don’t like this one bit.”

“I know,” Jin comforted him. “But we should only be an hour or so away from the next town, and when we get there we can go to the police station and explained what happened. It’s unfortunate, but I’m sure they’ll understand.”

“I hope so,” Hoseok mumbled as the engine sputtered to life.

The drive was uneventful for the first fifteen minutes, Hoseok staring fixedly straight ahead and Jin too afraid to break the silence. He was grateful for the quiet, in a way, because normally he would assume that Hoseok would be freaking out in a situation like this.

Bump.

The car went over a pothole, and Jin jerked a little as the vehicle righted itself. The young man was still apparently on edge from the night’s earlier events, and it was making him jumpy. He settled quickly back into the rhythm of the road, and would have been content to leave it at that if Hoseok hadn’t spoken up.

“Jin, did you… did you hear that?”

“Pothole, baby. Nothing to worry about,” replied the older man, not removing his eyes from the still-empty road.

Bump.

“There it was again. Did you hear it?”

Jin thought he might have, but he didn’t want to make Hoseok panic any more than the latter already was. At the same time, however, he was sure they hadn’t hit another pothole. He kept quiet.

“Seokjin, answer me,” yelled Hoseok, spinning around in his seat. “Did you hear that?”

“I told you, it’s nothing.”

Bump. Bump.

“Okay, don’t tell me you didn’t hear it that time,” Hoseok hissed. “Jin, what the heck is going on?”

“It’s the road, Hobi,” insisted Jin. “It’s just a little bumpy.”

“Bull,” croaked Hoseok. “Potholes don’t make that sound.”

Bump. Bump. Bump.

Jin definitely heard the distinct noise that time, and it was starting to sound more like knocking with every repetition. He was still driving speedily through the now fairly intense rain, but he looked over at Hoseok to see that the younger man’s face was pale as a sheet.

“Jin, did we really make sure that Jungkook was… you know? Dead?”

Jin thought back. He couldn’t seem to recall actually checking for a pulse, because at the time it had seemed completely unnecessary. Jungkook had even felt clammy and cold when Jin lifted him into the trunk of the car. Now, however, the young man questioned if perhaps that was just a trick of the mind, or a result of the chilly rain.

“Jin, I think we have to check.”

❧

Jin brought the wet car to a screeching halt, and he got out of the driver’s side without waiting for his boyfriend to have time to catch up. Jin’s hands were trembling as he clenched them into fists on the way to the back of the car, mentally willing himself to calm down and muster up the courage to check the trunk.

He looked up when he reached the rear, wondering if Hoseok was going to follow him. The younger man hadn’t moved from his spot inside the car, however - and he showed no signs of doing so, so Jin gazed down at the closed hood of the car.

That’s fine. I can do this.

Bump. Bump.

A noise came from the trunk of the car as Jin looked at it, too frightened to actually open the thing and look inside. It sounded like something was hitting the metal.

Bump.

Jin took the biggest, deepest breath of his life and opened up the trunk. Jungkook was still there, and he was still very much dead. Jin found the corpse’s perpetually opened eyes creepy for the first time, and he leaned down to close them. That done, he gave the boy a quick once-over examination, and again concluded that he was, in fact, deceased - exactly as Jin had previously assumed.

He slammed the trunk shut and shook the rain from his hair as he climbed back into the driver’s chair. Hoseok was waiting for him, looking at Jin expectantly before the older man had even taken his seat.

“Everything’s fine,” reassured Jin, which seemed to relax Hoseok considerably.

❧

The two men started driving again, their gruesome cargo staying silent in the closed-off trunk of the little sedan, and everything was fine for the next ten minutes. Jin started to see signs for the upcoming town, and mentally practiced what he would tell the police officers while Hoseok focused on playing with another loose thread on his tee-shirt.

Bump.

Hoseok’s head shot up.

“I thought you said he was dead.”

“He is, Hoseok,” replied Jin firmly, trying to convince himself just as much as he was his boyfriend. “I swear; I checked.”

“Then what the hell is that noise coming from the trunk?!” exclaimed Hoseok.

Bump. Bump. Bump.

The noises were coming much faster now; each knock barely waiting for the preceding one to end before echoing through the car.

“We should have just left him, Jin!”

The older man turned to look at Hoseok, who was glaring at him from the passenger seat.

Bump. Bump. Bump.

“Why didn’t you listen to me?!”

The sounds from the trunk were becoming almost deafening, and Hoseok had to shout to be heard over them.

Bump. Bump.

“Hoseok, stop,” begged Jin. “I told you it’s not him!”

Bump. Bump. Bump.

Jin’s head spun wildly, and he tried to focus on the swirling, rain-spattered road in front of him as Hoseok tore off his own seatbelt, lunging for the back of the car.

“What else could it be, Jin? What else could it BE?!”

Hoseok knocked into Jin’s arm, sending the latter’s hand flying off the rapidly spinning wheel. The car slid and flipped, rolling end over end into a ditch as Hoseok was thrown forward and out of the shattered windshield. The sedan continued to drag in the dirt for several meters before jerking to a stop. The headlights were out and, the car itself was upside-down, making it impossible to see anything past the pitch black windows.

Jin coughed, and tasted blood as he felt water pooling beneath the top of his head. The car was sunk nose first into the mud, and Hoseok was nowhere to be found, no matter how much Jin blindly felt around the empty passenger seat.

“Hoseok!” he yelled hoarsely.

Bump.

The same sound came again from the sealed-off trunk, muffled now by the crumpled metal.

“Hoseok!”

Tap.

A second noise made Jin’s ears perk up. He looked out the driver’s side window, but it was too dark to see. There was unmistakably something just outside hitting the glass, though, and Jin couldn’t for the life of him see what it was.

Tap. Bump.

Ah, the classic story of The Tell-Tale Heart. That was one of the first horror stories I remember reading as a young-ish child, and, needless to say, it’s stuck with me. There’s something so undeniably horrifying about being confronted with your past mistakes, and although it’s been years since I last read the story, I can still recall how Poe almost makes you experience his character’s guilt and horror when the murderous narrator starts to hear his victim’s heart from underneath the floorboards. It just makes you feel so uncomfortable when you read it.

This is the first story in this collection I’ve written where things end up… not so well for most of the characters. Or, really, all of them. I wanted to take the inspiration from Tell-Tale Heart, but then ask what would happen if it wasn’t necessarily the murderer’s conscience that got to him right away, but rather that of a friend’s? Maybe Hoseok was feeling guiltier because he suggested they leave Jungkook, or maybe he was simply right all along and they never should have put the poor boy in the back of their car. Either way, unlucky Jin ends up with two potentially undead problems on his hands by the end of the story, so I guess it doesn’t really matter much for him.