Gray Patient Prison 2

Fourteen years ago, a provincial public hospital famous for its treatment of terminal cancer opened a branch, which was located across the street from the Xingfuchun community.

Because it is an old community with low housing prices, many family members whose relatives are seriously ill and need close care come here to rent houses. In addition, some patients move out of the hospital and live here.

Older people are superstitious about "disease energy". Seeing that the number of patients is increasing and the rent is rising day by day, the former indigenous people have rented their houses to others.

Since then, the number of tenants has increased and it has become a well-known patient building.

After the Qin family moved out, the tenants of Room 303, Unit 3 were replaced by a family of three. Yin Sui made repeated inquiries and learned that the husband, who worked on a construction site to support the family, fell seriously ill and was transferred to a branch hospital. His wife resigned and rented a house in the community. Their son, who was in junior high school, attended a boarding school. Not long ago, the husband was transferred to another hospital, and the house is now available for rent.

"Come and see the house tonight?"

The homeowner's voice on the other end of the phone was hoarse and it was difficult to tell his age.

"Is it not possible? I'm a little anxious."

Sensing the genuine tone of the questioner, the homeowner became more eager, probably thinking he could take advantage of the other person's anxiety to raise the price. He agreed without hesitation, "Sure, sure. Better to arrive early than late. I happen to be free today. I'll go to the house and wait. Call me when you get here."

Yin Sui took the subway and got off at the station. As soon as he stepped out of the subway station, he saw a huge and clear hospital sign standing quietly in the dusk, burning all night like a mosquito trap, and groaning patients walked in one after another.

She turned left and came to an old building that pales in comparison. There were no shopping malls or square dance troupes nearby, and the door was open in a deserted look.

There are many residents in the house, which is prone to flammable and explosive substances, and it is always shrouded in a gloomy and gloomy aura, so thieves dare not gamble with their lives.

She went downstairs to the apartment building without any obstruction to make a phone call.

"I'll be waiting for you inside the house. Just follow the people coming in and out of the neighborhood during the day. Once you're inside, walk a little further until you see the sign prohibiting vehicles from entering, then turn right and go straight to unit three. But the elevator's broken today. Don't worry, the property management repairs these elevators pretty quickly. It should be fixed by the time you've finished viewing the house, so it won't affect your future residence."

"Yeah, okay."

Old residential areas in the south are often very damp, especially the corridors. As soon as you walk in, you are hit by damp steam, carrying with it smoke and dust that is invisible to the naked eye.

Yinsui was choked and kept coughing, but the turbid smell that was everywhere in the air only came back again and again.

People can only adapt to it, there is no room for it to avoid it.

Fortunately, the floors of the residential complex where I live are neither too high nor too low, and the sun can dry out some of the moisture. Unfortunately, the patients living here rarely get sunlight on the lower floors.

The 303 metal nameplate hangs on the top of the gate. The gold paint has peeled off, and the numbers are inevitably eroded by the dark blue of the edge.

The crisp knock on the door broke the silence in the corridor.

The man in the room opened the door, and he was as thin as an iron rod, squeezing out from the gap. The man had a long face and prominent cheekbones, and his bones were stained with meat, and the flesh was hanging loosely in the skin.

The landlord is also a patient? Yin Sui frowned imperceptibly, his eyes sweeping across his sunken cheeks, so as not to reveal any abnormality that might hurt others.

He opened his mouth, his tongue stiffly across his mouth: "Come in."

"Excuse me, are you the landlord?"

There was no sound in the entire building, including the hurried footsteps of residents and the barking of dogs. A few minutes passed and no one passed by in the entire corridor. It was empty and quiet, and her question, which was deliberately asked in a low voice, seemed to bring out a little echo.

The heavy eyelids were lifted with great effort, and it turned out that there were no wrinkles around the corners of the man's eyes. The guess of his age being forty was overturned, and his slender neck also had no age lines.

Thirty, twenty? His actual age jumped from older to younger.

The straight nose bridge, deep eye sockets, cheekbones and jawline, each facial feature was picked out separately and compared with the photo, and the two completely different faces were incredibly similar.

"I'm looking for Qin Xiao."

"I am Qin Xiao."

She quickly stepped back and turned around in one go, but before she took a step, the scene behind her extinguished her thoughts of moving forward.

An old man's head in distinct black and white emerged from the corner of the stairs, and a round, rotten fruit without hair appeared, with centipedes and snakes building nests in the shriveled flesh.

They crawled across the old man's cheeks, using their mouths and feet to carve holes and live in them. A centipede, longer than the distance from the face to the back of the head, left a section of it, its legs twitching and probing; a slender snake curled up into a ball, replacing the eyeball, its tail squeezing from the eye socket like a dark tear.

Snakes and insects coiled around the dying, rotten body, and the aging soul was able to see the light of day again. The snake stood up halfway and hissed, while the cloudy eyeball on the other side crawled to the center of the eye socket and aimed at her.

Humans and animals coexist, drinking blood and eating flesh.

Unexpectedly, the road was blocked, leaving us in a dilemma.

The person in front of him didn't answer but just kept repeating, "Please come in."

Faced with a dilemma, Yinsui chose the good-looking one. At least the one in front of him had a human form and his facial features could be distinguished.

There was no furniture in the living room except a bed and a huge refrigerator.

The bed sheets and quilt cover were in blue and white stripes, and the dark grey refrigerator with a smooth and mottled surface was placed horizontally, like a matching morgue bed and coffin.

The man said again, "Please sit down." Then he turned and walked towards the inner room, the arc of the door opening was too small to allow the naked eye to see anything.

"Ding." The glass collided.

"Clang--" the iron basin fell to the ground.

A series of sharp noises rang out like a rapid-fire barrage.

He was looking for something in the kitchen. It was definitely not a water cup for entertaining guests, but most likely a cooking utensil.

Yinsui retreated to the door, but the smell of the old man's medicinal wine was still lingering, indicating that he had not left and was still blocking the way outside.

This time I still can’t retreat.

The man found that he couldn't find what he needed in the kitchen, so he walked into another room and finally came out satisfied.

If I take a chance, the bicycle will turn into a motorcycle. If I lose, I will be stewed in an iron pot.

"Excuse me, is this Qin Xiao? Your sister Qin Yun asked me to come over and help her check on you."

Stopped, it worked.

"If she and Aunt Qin knew how you were doing, I think they would feel much more at ease."

"There's nothing we can do." Hearing his sister, the two eyes that were motionless like dead things came back to life. The man, no, Qin Xiao looked helpless, and then smiled.

She exhaled the breath that had been stuck in her chest.

"Since they are guests, how are you going to tell them about me? I'm doing well, just tell them I'm doing well. Maybe a photo can serve as proof. Do you have a camera with you?"

"I brought my cell phone."

Qin Xiao nodded, having already withdrawn from his frenzy, and spoke rationally: "Wait a moment, you need to tidy up before taking pictures. If you bring back a picture of you and a homeless person, Qin Xiao will laugh at me."

"Please feel free to call me anytime."

Yinsui watched him open the door of the refrigerator next to him.

Without any cover, the packed meat immediately slid out of the box, its surface surging with waves of flesh and blood and white skin rising and falling.

The thick pig head's left cheek is connected to a light and unstable bird wing, and the right cheek is interdependent with the golden chicken claw. Chickens, ducks, geese, fish, pigs, sheep and cows are all connected by flesh and blood, and they all have the same pair of frightened eyes of death.

Qin Xiao bent down to salute them, held the pig's head with both hands, and scooped up the other organs.

He opened his mouth, which expanded into a bloody hole full of teeth on his face. His pink mouth contracted hungrily and began to stuff them into his body one by one, like pressing a complicated puzzle back into place.

With a gulp, the pig's head fell into the bottomless bag. A sharp and shrill groaning sound was heard, and then his shriveled belly slowly expanded.

Then there are the sounds of fish leaping from the water and roosters flapping their wings, as if there is a universe inside where countless creatures are resurrected and repeating their previous lives with full vitality.

Finally, he closed his mouth and completely transformed into a tall, handsome, normal appearance, if you ignore the various strange animal calls and running hooves in his stomach.

My body, once hollowed out by illness, was refilled with the ingredients my mother lovingly prepared. My soup was better than the old man next door, who drank medicinal wine daily and tolerated seahorse snakes burrowing holes in his body. His knees ached, but only this way could he stand up and walk.

As the saying goes, “You are what you eat”, so you either lose it or you swallow it up.

"Cheese." Yinsui, with a pale face but expression as usual, raised his cell phone and turned on the flashlight.

The camera flashes.

The youthful boy's smiling face was copied into another square frame, which was more colorful and lively than the one placed on the bed.

"Want to record another video and talk to them?"

"No," Qin Xiao, who had an ordinary demeanor, actually showed some liveliness. He even took the initiative to joke about the animal sounds in his stomach: "I couldn't find a single human word after listening to the video."

“Just extract the audio.”

"Extract audio?" I've been isolated from the world for too long and have fallen behind the times.

Yinsui nodded: "It just brings out your voice and cuts out the other sounds, so don't worry."

"Mom, sister, you don't have to worry about me. I will take good care of myself and go home as soon as I recover. Qin Yun, don't think I'm nagging. Study hard. There are all kinds of delicious food and fun things in big cities. When you get into college, I'll buy you a new phone." He frowned several times and tried his best to endure the mischievous animal.

"alright."

“Does it look good in the photo?”

"It looks good, especially photogenic."

"It does look better this way," he complained with a hint of annoyance, "but they keep moving around and making too much noise. I have to spit them out and put them in the refrigerator before I can stop them."

So I want to replace it with a quieter core.

The adults swallow the little ones, and the nesting dolls fit together perfectly. If I hadn't been thinking about my mother and sister, I would have been living in the big refrigerator long ago.

His thoughts were not apparent on his face, and Yin Sui considerately said that the guest should follow the host's wishes, as long as he was happy.

After vomiting, he no longer had the energy to speak. Before that, he asked thoughtfully, "Are you Wei Cifu?"

Wei Cifu, a girl from the same village who is one year younger than Qin Xiao.

"I am."

Qin Xiao was relieved: "It seems it's not too late then."

In fact, it is very late, so late that we will be separated forever and will never see each other again in this life.

Just like she would not tell Qin Yun the true status of her proud brother after she returned, Yin Sui now accepted it without saying a word.

The missing body was reported in the local news, which detailed his illness: stomach cancer.

A dead body with no pulse and no breath can't get out; a seriously ill patient who is still alive will probably die after taking two steps out.

Tearing down a castle in the air without the materials to build a new one will have no effect other than making the dreamer homeless and suffering in his waking state, so it is better not to tear it down.

Qin Xiao vomited it all back, and returned to a state where he didn't even have the strength to lift his eyelids. He sat on the bed and closed his eyes to rest.