Tossing and turning on the bed like a flipped JianBing, he was barely able to finally drift off to sleep after what seemed like an eternity of restlessness. This time, he wasn’t only dreaming of never-ending darkness. Xia Lian realised that his surroundings were familiar- he was inside the house he was currently renting. Only, the surroundings seem a bit muted, lighting a bit dimmer, and the whole interior washed in a cold grey colour. Although both his vision was now unclouded by the previous darkness, he could nevertheless still clearly hear that rustling sound in his ears. This sound seemed to come from the direction of the bathroom and before Xia Lian could react, he realised he was already standing in the center of the bathroom.
The bathroom was similarly enveloped in a layer of dark blue, the lighting dim as the sole light source above the mirror flickered nonstop. The rustling sound that Xia Lian has been hearing in his dreams since the last few nights seems to come from the direction of that human shaped mold.
The rustling sound originated from the fuzzy, now human-sized mold’s visible growth rate. Under the faint grey light it slowly layers up, slowly expanding. Xia Lian watched helplessly as the mold continued to multiply, protruding out from the wall surface, like a swarm of ants stretching out towards him. Xia Lian immediately turned around to pull open the bathroom door and dashed towards the living room. He raised his head upwards to see the few specks of mold on the living room ceiling were also simultaneously growing and expanding, shifting downwards, again distorting into a humanoid shape, moving quickly towards Xia Lian.
Under the quick pursuit of the growing and expanding mold in the living room and bathroom, Xia Lian is forced into the bedroom. But that big clump of mold is quickly shuffling as it overflows into the bedroom. The mold flows along the four corners of the wall, becoming an infinitely black mold in the shape of a human surrounding Xia Lian, so much so that a clump even grew out of the floorboards, morphing into a palm that tried to catch Xia Lian.
He continued to dodge and hastily jumped onto the bed, but he was unable to completely pull up one of his legs and the swarm of mold managed to grab a hold of his calf. It hurt the instant the mold touched his skin, as if it was burned by fire. Xia Lian kicked his leg, and jerked awake from his nightmare. He immediately tore his blanket off and jumped down the bed as he turned on the main light. His forehead was drenched, and he used his hand to rub the back neck, cold sweat flowing down his whole back.
To have this kind of dream… isn’t it a bit too suspicious? Xia Lian panics, panting and looking around all four corners of the room. Everything looks normal under the warm light, and there are no nightmarish human-shaped mold surrounding him. It was just… there’s a faint indistinct pain coming up his left leg. He quickly raised up his left leg to inspect. To his surprise, a faint light grey palm imprint slowly emerged on the skin of his calf, exactly like he dreamt of.
He tried to wipe it off with his thumb, but the imprint stayed. Immediately, Xia Lian went to the bathroom and opened the faucet, using water to wash it off, but the imprint did not fade the slightest bit. After struggling to wipe it, Xia Lian noticed something through the mirror’s reflection behind him. The human-shaped mold by the corner of the bathtub has somehow disappeared?
Xia Lian turned around and walked towards the side of the bathtub to confirm what he saw. He realised the human-shaped mold in the corner has really disappeared. Everything was gone, as if it was never there to begin with. He quickly rushed to the living room and looked up, surveying the ceiling. The few specks of mold on the ceiling have also completely disappeared without a single trace.
Impossible…
It all couldn’t have disappeared.
Is it possible that…
As if an idea formed in his head, Xia Lian dashed back into the bedroom. He pulled out his toolbox by the table and rummaged around to look for scrapers, not even in the mood to think how he was going to explain himself to the landlord when the time came. With the tool in his hand, he approached the pink wallpaper by his bed’s headboard and forcefully made a cut on the surface. With a loud scrape, a one meter gash was cut into the wallpaper. He continued to cut a few more times, and only when he was able to cut out rough edges of the wallpaper did he start to use his fingers to try to strip the wallpaper off.
“Huff…. Huff… Haa… Haa…”
Gulping for air, Xia Lian took a few steps backward, throwing away the scraper and paper bits in his hands, uncharacteristically quiet as he gazed upon the sight before him.
After his frantic tearing for an unknown amount of time, a big portion of his bedroom wallpaper has now been torn down. The wall that was originally covered by the pink wallpaper is starting to be visible. What made his hair stand is- under the wallpaper are countless grey-human shaped mold. They seem to fully occupy four sides of the walls in the bedroom. They have hands and feet, and varied in sizes, height, stances, all extremely warped and exceedingly terrifying as it surrounded Xia Lian in all four directions.
Xia Lian didn’t know whether the mold had existed ever since he moved in, or it had been slowly accumulated and grew since the past few days, or if it had climbed in from the rest of the house, including the bathroom and living room. But no matter what, it is terrifying to think about. Out of the pocket of his pants he pulled out his phone and looked at the time. It was still very late at night but he wasn’t hoping to call his landlord now for help, or ever. The landlord might only focus on the fact he had completely destroyed the wallpaper and demand reparations instead.
Currently, it was impossible for him to continue sleeping in the room. He looked down towards the pale skin on his legs, where the increasingly disgusting light grey palm imprint was. Xia Lian fished out two big band-aids from the medicine box, tearing it open and sticking it onto the imprint. If you can’t see it you won’t be bothered. He continued to take his phone, bag, key and anything he could carry on his body and went out the door.
Where to?
Of course, he could only go to the internet café to spend the rest of this horror movie of a night…
1. 煎饼 jiānbing: Chinese scallion pancakes... ↑
We recommend you to try hehe
2. Paint scrapers ↑
TN Notes:
Cookie: constant screaming out of disgust
Salmon: interested in how the mold works
Real talk though... can ML enlarge some body parts at will?
a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶b̶l̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶o̶k̶i̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶p̶t̶e̶r̶ >:(
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