Chapter 4
Creeping In Your HeartNone of them could ever know how they got here, all they knew is that they weren't from here and that whoever lived here seemed to have that bitter taste of hate on the tongues whenever they met eyes with the citizens of Monsterland. The people here were strange, that was no doubt, but they looked like your average citizens in the real world once you put one of them next to them, the insanity of the world they were mysteriously dragged into had made them madder than the people originally from the place.
Kim Minseok, the first to wake up and the first to find himself in Monsterland, he didn't know it at first but he had faced his doom the moment he had opened his eyes.
"Xiumin" Xiumin? What the hell was a Xiumin? Who was Xiumin? Because even if there were several eyes staring him down waiting for a response he knew his name has always been and always will be Kim Minseok. But they were looking at him, waiting for something to happen. What did they want to happen? Was he to stand up and greet them or did they expect him to make a run for it? Because who the hell would make a run for it when they didn't even know where the hell they were?
"It seems all his senses are intact, should we start?" One of them asked, white dresses, red stockings just as ugly as the matching white shoes they wore. Minseok could remember it all. And what were those things covering their faces for? What made them have to wear one? Minseok wished he had one, one that could cover his entire body and protect him from everything they did to his body.
Because who the hell could even think of doing a runner when they were strapped to a bed with every kind of constraint imaginable?
Minseok could remember strange coloured liquids and the stinging prick of needles piercing his skin. He could remember how it made his body feel as if he were on fire but he was cold to touch. He knew for a fact that his eyes were never these two strange colours, to begin with. He had been normal, your average brown eyed black haired male who was trying to make a life for himself with the best grades possible in a major at university.
Every day Minseok would blink awake praying he that he would be in his campus dorm with his roommate snoring through the alarm. But every time he opened his eyes his eyes locked in one of those faces staring down at him, they were always doing something to him, he didn't feel like himself anymore, he was trapped in the body of a stranger. A stranger that was cold as ice, angry and confused and if he clenched his fingers around the frame of the bed he could feel the layer of frost coat it as if the room was as cold as the freezer he used to keep his favourite sweetly flavoured ice cream in.
But one day when he woke up, Minseok wasn't constrained to the bed he had been for god knows how long. Instead, he was tied to a chair, Minseok had never seen the material holding him to the seat but whatever it was, it was stronger than whatever strength he had gained through those injections. This time he was sitting at a long table, there were a number of other wooden chairs as if there was meant to be more than him sitting at the table alone.
This time there was a lady, decked in a dress full of red, black, white and a tinge of yellow in the hearts lining the front of the skirt to the dress. Her hair matched the shape of the hearts on the dress, in a bright red with a small crown resting atop of it. there was a blaring blue on her eyes lids and her lips were small, unnaturally small.
"Xiumin, you are number ninety-nine" That was all she said, that name that didn't belong to him and a number that would label him forever. She was gone just like that and as the door slammed shut the material trickled away from his skin, making his body shiver as he stared with a perplexed expression.
"Where the hell am I?" Minseok muttered, his voice hadn't been used in what felt like centuries and he began to cough as the words were forced through a dry throat. Minseok raced to the sink for water, drinking straight from the tap until his throat was relieved from the itching dryness. When the feeling was gone Minseok slammed down on the tap, stopping the flow of water as he leant against the kitchen bench.
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Minseok knew if they could leave now, if they could make their escape they would save the others, those clueless people being taken from the real world and dragged to hell for the satisfaction of the so called 'Queen'. Minseok had heard the weak reasons for his life being taken away and why he was trapped here. They were special, Minseok, the six men next to him and Alice. The temptation, the saviour and the torment, she was everything, she was their ticket out of here but only because the Queen loved watching them squirm with a false hope.
Alice was just like him, like the six men already here and the five that were still in the real world. They had gifts, that's what Minseok constantly them reminded they had. The Queen of Hearts, she believed they were cursed, they deserved the torture and the punishment she was putting them through, and no one in the real world was doing that to them, so what better idea could she have than to bring them to her world and give them that punishment and torture by forcing their powers out of them and making them feel like monsters?
But the doom was there, Alice wasn't fated to bring them their freedom, that girl who remained, loving bright and confident through this whole thing, who had so much perseverance and innocence that the land she walked through couldn't taint her white soul. The Queen of Hearts found joy in her defeat, felt a thrill watching her fall limp on the broken ground before them and felt pride as the light left her eyes and the beating of her heart stopped. The Queen wanted this to happen, she had played them all as if she were playing chess, moving them and making their fate to what her dark thoughts wanted and it ran a chill down Minseok's cold spine.
Because she was the monster not them, and Monsterland was named after it's queen, not the innocent people driven to the limits of the mind. And Monsterland had a cruel way of working with the queen, squeezing and twisting your insides until your mind wasn't what it was before.
Until it drove you insane. And Minseok was as mad as a hatter because all he had left was to be a hatter.
"Because Alice loved hats, she wore a different hat every day, she once stole one from th
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