Chapter Twelve: Mai Minghe · The Comedy Horror Film

At the moment the world tilted, Mai Minghe remembered only two sensations.

The first was vivid and intense, banishing all rational thought and conjuring a twisted hallucination before her eyes—somehow, she recalled a time over forty years ago when she went on an outing in the countryside and saw a great tree.

It was the ugliest tree she had ever seen in her life: whether infected by fungus or virus, its trunk was covered in knobby, gnarled growths—one piled upon another, malformed warts intertwining. At a glance, it hardly looked like a tree at all, more like a large mass of diseased, distorted brown flesh.

Sweat beading her brow, trembling and in agony, she looked down and, where her right calf should have been, she mistook the sight for that same grotesque tree from decades ago—she didn’t even realize when her head had struck the ground.

Long, slender, sickly fingers coiled tightly around her calf, joint after joint, extending with unnatural length.

The second sensation was not really a feeling but a muffled thud, like the sound of a heavy object striking nearby.

At first, overwhelmed by pain, Mai Minghe’s mind was blank, unable to discern the source of the noise; then, whether it was the slick sliding of a palm across the floor or a flicker in her peripheral vision, a sudden flash pierced through her haze, illuminating her mind.

...So that’s how it is.

Because the slender patient had been tormenting her deliberately, Mai Minghe had done almost nothing but stoop over and vomit desperately within the circle formed by the round-headed ones. Yet no one in the room anticipated the unintended consequence of this ordeal.

The tiled floor of the ward was now slick and sticky with large patches of vomit and stomach acid.

During the earlier game of “Eagle Catches Chick,” five or six pairs of feet had trodden back and forth over this slimy, filthy mess, smearing it everywhere—meaning anything walking on two legs faced a real risk of slipping hard and losing teeth.

No matter how strange the fleshy tentacles might be, they still walked upright on two legs; if dogs had to eat their own mess, then so be it.

At this thought, a surprising surge of strength welled up from her body, which now felt as knotted and gnarled as that diseased tree; when the slender patient’s shadow loomed over her, she twisted hard and saw it.

Not far away, a round-headed figure had just fallen, slipping on the slick floor as it tried to stand.

If she could have laughed at that moment, Mai Minghe surely would have laughed aloud—trying to run?

No matter how bizarre the surface, the underlying logic still held; it seemed the basic laws of physics applied even to these strange creatures in their lair.

In that instant, Mai Minghe forgot the slender patient’s presence, lunged forward, stretched out her arm, and grabbed the ankle of the round-headed one.

At the same time, the slender patient’s hand touched her abdomen again.

It would have been no surprise if she lost consciousness—but strangely, she did not faint.

The shadow of the slender patient hovered high above her; she dared not meet its gaze, her eyes fixed only on the ankle clenched tightly by her left hand, holding on with her life.

Amid the blurring pain and the mounting emptiness and fear as the “snake band” was peeled from her body, Mai Minghe gripped the round head’s ankle without loosening.

A moan not her own trembled through the room.

“Tell… tell it to get lost…” she gasped, barely able to speak, “or I swear, I won’t…”

She need not finish the sentence; those at the door understood perfectly.

Within seconds, a round head spoke from afar: “Let her go!”

The slender patient ignored the command, continuing cautiously and even gently to strip away the “snake band”—but no matter how delicate the movements, the pain it caused still darkened her vision.

“Hurry up,”

All the round heads urged in unison, stepping forward in perfect rhythm. “We can’t lose a mature fleshy tentacle. Let her go or—”

“Understood,” the slender patient, evidently wary of the round heads, finally released Mai Minghe’s calf as they approached. It still gripped the “snake band” firmly, unwilling to let go of the illusion.

Once released, the calf gradually regained color and flesh, transforming from a knobbly tree back into living limb.

***

But it was all for nothing.

Mai Minghe saw a long, pale hand in midair, its fingers—countless joints extending—swinging toward her arm; she didn’t even consider how much it would hurt if it struck. She doubted she could resist and keep hold.

If her grip were swept away, wouldn’t all her effort be in vain?

Before the hand could reach her, Mai Minghe pushed off the floor, barely turning her body and stretching out her right hand to grasp the round head’s ankle—if one hand couldn’t hold it, what about two?

She knew this was a naïve hope. She understood she was trapped in a predicament no ordinary human could withstand.

The world seemed like a wheel rolling repeatedly over people, forcing them to bow their heads, reconcile themselves, and swallow bitterness; she didn’t know how, but she had survived eighty-six years this way. Days that seemed endless and unbearable had passed in the blink of an eye.

If she had resisted a little more, fought a little harder from time to time, perhaps she wouldn’t be filled with regret today—she dared not think further.

Compared to the entanglements and sufferings inflicted by people in this world, these strange creatures were almost straightforward, direct, even endearingly simple.

It was just a matter of reaching out one more hand—she could do it.

She had to.

Before she could finish this thought, her mind briefly went black; she knew nothing.

When she regained sight, she found herself lying on her side, hands empty and limp on the floor.

The round head had long since gotten up and retreated; the slender patient was peeling a segment of the “snake band” from her back—just one more loop and it would be free.

...Had she failed?

She hadn’t grabbed the round head after all.

Lying on the floor stained with her own stomach acid, her body felt prematurely worn out, as if preparing itself for her eighty-six years to come—weak and heavy.

The slender patient extended two long fingers sharp enough to pierce a person, flipping Mai Minghe—like a slab of dead flesh—onto her back, continuing to remove the last strip of the “snake band.”

When flipped, her right hand flopped softly onto her chest.

...Huh?

The fingertips were wet, smeared with something she couldn’t tell if it was blood or some filthy liquid; thick layers clung in the nail gaps, making her feel uncomfortable.

Wait.

...Blood?

The thought rising in her mind sent shivers through her entire body; as if driven by survival instinct, she scratched at the slender patient’s hand without hesitation.

Though contact with the slender patient always brought unbearable pain, it likely never expected Mai Minghe to reach out to touch it—yet there was something even more unexpected.

The moment her nails touched the slender patient, it suddenly exploded into a swirling mass of shadows.

It seemed that being touched was excruciating agony, so severe that the slender patient flung off the illusion, its long body trembling and thrashing like a frightened gray-white mist in the dim air.

...As expected.

Mai Minghe wasted no time, pushing herself up from the floor as the “snake band,” as if alive, immediately began coiling around her again.

Once upright, she quickly shook her hand, flicking the liquid off her fingertips toward the slender patient—laughing breathlessly as she did, her laughter sharp and fragmented like shattered glass, irregular yet bright.

***

It wasn’t that she was eccentric by nature; she could still laugh in this situation because the scene was genuinely comical: a tall, slender shadow pressed against the ceiling, twisting and rolling, flailing about; beside it stood a woman, trembling as if having a stroke, as if both human and ghost were simultaneously electrocuted.

Anyone watching would agree—even if this was a ghost movie, it was a comedy.

“What’s going on?” a red-haired man muttered from the other side of the ward. “Did it take the wrong medicine? Did you?”

He was standing by a hospital bed, pushing it toward the door. Seeing the slender patient’s form, he even halted his steps.

Mai Minghe understood his intention at once and shouted, “Wait, take me with you!”

Without waiting for his reaction, she circled the slender patient, strode over to the bed, leapt onto it, and urged, “Hurry, hurry! It’s not dead yet!”

The red-haired man seemed about to scold her but knew he had no time.

“You sure know how to hitch a ride—”

He gritted his teeth in complaint, pushing the bed briskly. As they neared the door, he braced himself on the railing and kicked off with his foot, leaping onto the bed. The momentum sent the bed rolling out the door, carrying them both into the corridor.

“Don’t touch the floor,” he called out, kicking the wall to slide the bed further into the hallway. “That creature is beneath the floor!”

“Really beneath the floor?” Mai Minghe clung tightly to the bed. “I told you before going out that the tiles between the round heads had strange fine lines—I suspected something odd. Luckily, it wasn’t invisibility magic.”

“There’s no such thing as invisibility magic!”

As the bed slid past the doorway, the floor tiles seemed to sense something, suddenly revealing faint, threadlike blood lines, like the red veins of an anxious, furious eye—but the two of them sat on the bed, not touching the floor, and the “eye” could only watch helplessly as they and the bed moved farther down the corridor.

“What made that tall slender one suddenly go mad?” the red-haired man asked, pushing the bed forward in a zigzag between walls, each bump stammering his speech.

The explanation was simple: when Mai Minghe tried to grasp the round head earlier, though she failed to hold it, her right hand had cut the skin on its ankle.

Before falling into the lair, she had often been bedridden, her fingernails long and untrimmed, never filed smooth—when she clawed desperately, she had torn the skin deeply and smeared the round head’s blood on her nails.

“...Aren’t the round heads supposed to be immune to it?”

Mai Minghe helped kick the wall. The bed zigzagged down the corridor, each collision jolting the speaker into a stammer.

“Well, the thing inside the round head must also be immune to it, right? So I wiped that blood on the slender one’s hand. I didn’t expect such a big effect.”

The red-haired man laughed, “This is your first time entering the lair? Not bad.”

“Will they chase us?” Mai Minghe asked.

“Very likely,” he glanced back down the corridor, still empty for now. “Get ready. After sliding a bit more, we’ll have to jump off and run.”

As they spoke, their bed passed by a window.

Mai Minghe caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass: hair disheveled, face pale, half her cheek smeared with dirt...

But the corner of her mouth was curled in a smile, radiant in the prime of life.