Sentry booth (1)
At eight o'clock in the evening, the temperature dropped sharply in the early spring night, and there was almost no one to be seen in the small garden corridor in the center of the community.
I sat on the edge of the lawn, wrapped in a thick navy blue coat, feeling quite confused.
I came out to feed the cats.
The chubby, fluffy little cat under my feet is indeed a cat.
但这只白手套白围巾的狸花猫正在骂骂咧咧揍我的鞋面，又不敢骂太大声，又怂又横，最后变成了哼哼唧唧的碎碎念。
“I’m really done.”
I tried to reason with this little ancestor, and patiently smoothed down his hair that was as fluffy as a dandelion: "I feed you cat food, and when you finish eating it, why do you want to beat me up?"
The little fat cat obviously didn't understand and was still stammering.
The communication was ineffective, so I picked up the cat in confusion, rolled it up and put it in my arms, zipped up my jacket, and then Master Cat kept nagging me and punched me again.
"Alright, alright, it's so cold, come back with me for two days until it's warm and I'll let you go."
I gently held down the cat's head, and stood up, shivering in the wind under the lit street light.
The cold weather is one thing, but the inexplicitly deserted atmosphere in the neighborhood recently also makes people feel a little uncomfortable.
I opened a grocery store in the community. The business has been neither good nor bad in the past six months, but I have become familiar with many people in the community. Therefore, I was the first to intuitively feel that everyone suddenly stayed at home. After 6 or 7 in the evening, the community almost instantly entered a kind of abrupt silence.
Take tonight's incident, for example:
Originally, a few young people from the property management team asked me to help take care of the stray cats in the community, feed them cat food at regular times and places, and catch cats for sterilization. But in recent weeks, fewer and fewer people have participated, and now I am the only one who has retained this habit.
Also, there are fewer cats.
The tabby cat in my arms is the only one I can see recently. But it basically hides when it sees people, and only when it sees me will it forcefully put on a wronged little fat face and say it's hungry.
Holding the cat gently through my coat, I said a few words of comfort to it and turned around to go home.
There was a rustling sound in the flower garden not far away, and following my direction, I could vaguely hear some grass and trees swaying in the darkness.
I guess it might be a stray cat. It probably didn't dare to come out because it saw people, but it was really hungry.
This kind of big cat has probably been hurt by people before, so it is very alert. It is impossible to expect it to come out and roll around to act cute. I didn't force it, pretending I didn't know and continued walking. I took the last half of the cat strip from my pocket and threw it on the side of the road.
Perhaps it smelled something, the sound in the bushes was getting closer, and from the sound it seemed to be quite large.
The kitten in my arms suddenly let out a short cry. I felt my arms tighten. It was the cat's claws that had hooked onto my coat.
The movement in the flowerbed suddenly stopped.
My eyebrows jumped and I looked over subconsciously. For no reason, I felt a slight discomfort in my heart.
The flowerbed was not under the lights, and the ornamental shrubs that were more than half a person tall had long been untended in this old community. At the moment, the large potted plants scattered across the corridor of the small garden could not be seen in the dim light.
I could only vaguely feel that the grass and trees had fallen down a little where it had passed, and there was a vague outline there.
As if it noticed my gaze, the thing that I thought was a stray cat or dog that was afraid of people did not run away. Instead, it moved forward a little, blurry, and seemed to be hunched over.
Cats...are they this big? I suddenly felt unsure.
It was just an irregular shadow, maybe I was just dazzled and mistook a cardboard box that was blown open by the wind. But holding the cat in a tense position, I felt a little uneasy for some reason.
It's not that I felt there was a little monster squatting in the darkness, I just remembered a piece of news.
About half a year ago in the east of the city, there was a crazy homeless man wandering on the street and somehow got into the underground garage of a nearby community.
At first, the owners only vaguely felt that someone had thrown garbage in the garage, causing the sour smell to drift into the car windows and was difficult to dissipate. When the security guards on night patrol accidentally ran into the homeless man, he was squatting beside the wheel of an owner's car, biting the face of a lost pet dog.
The security guards drove the mentally ill homeless man out in a panic and found a plastic bag tied up high on the inside of the drainpipe in the corner.
When they opened it later, they found the homeless man's right ear that had frozen off, as well as a large number of skinned stray cats and dogs, all with torn and bite marks.
This news was shocking and caused a sensation at the time. I was popular in the community and almost every customer who came to my shop liked to gossip about me. I almost knew it by heart.
But the news had been out for a long time, and was far away from most of the city, so it was soon forgotten. It was only then that I slowly began to think about it and became suspicious for no reason.
After scaring himself, the flowerbed was still just swaying gently in the wind, and the shadow showed no sign of moving.
I couldn't help laughing, thinking that I was indeed a little too suspicious.
But it was time to go back. I had bedding at my grocery store, so it would only take me about ten minutes to get back. There was a sentry booth just two minutes away at the corner ahead, and I could also stop by the security guard on duty, Brother Li, to get a cup of hot water.
But...what is it?
The question popped up again inexplicitly.
I don't know why I kept worrying about this meaningless question. My mind was full of thoughts about going back, but my feet were firmly nailed to the spot, staring at the shadow uncontrollably.
Reason tells me that I can take two steps closer and use the flashlight on my cell phone to see more clearly.
But a slight tingling sensation made my heart beat faster and a thin layer of sweat appeared on my forehead.
Wiping the cold sweat from my eyelids, I realized that maybe I didn't want to go forward to check out anything, and I wasn't that curious.
I just didn't dare leave.
I didn't dare turn around.
"ha--!"
The tabby cat in my arms suddenly stood up, panting violently, and arched its back. Its claws that were hooked on my coat suddenly tightened.
The shadow moved.
I stared at the flowerbed and slowly stepped back one step, then another, until I was under another street light.
I could already see the light of the sentry box around the corner from the corner, so I turned around and walked faster and faster.
“Pah.”
Behind me, very lightly, something was scraping against the bushes.
It was a very strange sound, clearly audible in my heavy breathing, but hard to describe. It was not the sound of stray cats or dogs, but it was not the sound of human footsteps either. It was something dragging its limbs and crawling.
It was like... like a leaky, shriveled leather bag, sticking to the ground and squirming, with the air constantly being squeezed out of it.
And it's very close.
It was like it had grasped my ankles from the beginning, pressing forward at a rapid speed, following my shadow and the light of the street lamp.
No, calm down, the sentry box is coming! Run!
"Brother Li!" I yelled as I turned the corner. My throat ached and my scalp suddenly tingled. I almost cursed.
The guard named Li had a rubber stick on his waist and was standing in the corner smoking. I ran past him in an instant and almost bumped into him in fear.
"ah?"
He looked at me dully, biting his cigarette butt.
There was a surveillance camera in the sentry box, and he had obviously avoided it and found a dark place to fish, and was walking on the edge of the flowerbed.
“Pah.”
I froze suddenly.
My violent heartbeat got stuck in my throat, causing my vision to go dark.
"What?"
He looked at me in confusion, then looked at the flowerbed, uttered an "ah", as if he saw something, and bent over to get closer.
"——Don't move!"
I grabbed him and almost knocked him over in a panic.
"Look at the flowerbed. Keep looking. Don't move."
I spoke in a hoarse voice, forcing him to retreat to the tall vertical light of the sentry box. I had completely lost my normal language logic and just kept repeating "Don't move" with an increasingly harsh and intense tone. The cat in the coat kept bumping anxiously.
The guard was obviously frightened by me. He stared at the half-smoked cigarette butt, crouching on his hands and feet, not daring to ask a single question.
I backed up and felt for the door handle of the booth, pushed him in first, then slowly backed out, locked the door, and propped it against the back of a chair.
"Bang!"
The on-duty flashlight was turned on, and an almost blinding light shone directly at us, making my eyelids sore and tears flowed instantly.
After doing all this, I finally breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed to the ground, my back soaked with sweat.
The security guard named Li looked at me, his face turned pale and he was about to cry.
I felt uncomfortable in such a small space. I looked at him weakly: "What's wrong?"
He shuddered, pointed at my feet, and his expression collapsed.
“Pah.”
I lowered my head and found that my feet were completely stained red. Blood had seeped through the thick fabric and was dripping down.
"……?"
The absurdity and sense of unreality left me in a daze for a moment. The cat in my coat suddenly jumped out and landed on my shoes again, whimpering softly.
Only then did I realize that the tabby cat's actions all along were a reminder of me.
I cut open my trouser legs and found a dark blue tooth mark on my injured ankle. The wound was very long and the flesh was white. But due to excessive blood loss, I was numb and didn't feel any pain.
I realized it later and looked outside the booth. I saw bright red drops spreading all the way, as if they had been licked by something, and the final traces were blocked outside the thick door of the booth.
"Brother..." The guard held the scissors in his hand, not daring to put them back in the drawer. He asked in a sobbing voice, "Are you still going to stare at the flowerbed?"
"Is there something?" I asked knowingly, yawning a little sleepily. I suspected that there was some virus on the wound, and in a short while my vision began to churn and turn black and blurry.
"Yes! There is an eye staring at me!"
The guard broke down and sobbed exaggeratedly. He fumbled for the spare gauze and alcohol in the duty room and kicked it towards me, almost bruising my thigh.
At the same time, his cell phone and intercom rang, and I heard him shouting incoherently to his patrol companions to help him call the police.
"Stand under the light and don't step on the flowerbed," I said.
The guard repeated to me frantically, and looked at me eagerly after calling the police.
But I didn't know what else to say, and I didn't know if the light and staring would be of any use. It was just something I could do to give my companion, who was about to faint from fright, a little comfort.
I quickly disinfected and bandaged the inexplicable wound on his foot. Seeing that his eyes were still staring blankly, I asked for another cup of hot water.
Finally, I stuffed the cat into the guard's hands. He cried so miserably that even the fat cat didn't have the heart to scratch him, so he just lay flat on his back and let his tears and snot get all over him.
I really wanted to ask, why didn't you call 120 for me, what if I have rabies? But I couldn't say anything in such a small place, for fear of driving the guard crazy.
With shaking hands, I took out my almost dead phone and clicked on a blocked stranger's profile picture and typed:
"This warrior, I think I saw a ghost. Or maybe it was a small monster. It's definitely not a human."
"address."
I breathed a sigh of relief and sent the location.
The guard spoke again, staring at my back with a dull tone.
"Brother Xu, the light."
"Bang!"
The vertical light outside the sentry box exploded, and it suddenly became pitch black outside.
At the same moment, the music of the phone shutting down automatically due to low battery sounded. The duty flashlight flickered for a moment, and it was out of battery.
"..." I let out a long sigh in the darkness.
"Brother Li, dear father, you said three days ago that the flashlight was out of power and that you wanted to go to my store to buy No. 5 batteries. You are so stingy with something worth only a few dollars!"
Two cold coins were stuffed into my hands in the dark.
"Six dollars and nine cents is not a discount!" I said angrily reflexively. Maybe I was too panicked and speechless, and in the end I couldn't help laughing.
The sentry box began to shake violently.
Both the man and the cat hugged me tightly, with their heads down. I was too embarrassed to say that the thing should be lying behind me, separated only by the glass.
My head was getting more dizzy, so I took the scissors from Brother Li's hand and left him the rubber stick with a wider defensive range.
Come on, let's see if my buffet life is big enough.
I took a deep breath and turned my head. My vision gradually adjusted to the darkness, and I looked into a pair of bloodshot eyes.
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