Chapter 1005 - Waking Up from the Nightmare [2 in 1] (1/2)

“A snail? The old lady just warned me to be careful of the snail, so why would Jiang Ming have the shell of a snail inside his pocket?” Chen Ge was confused by this development, but he was certain that the old lady would not harm Jiang Ming.

Putting the shell carefully back into his pocket, Jiang Ming led Chen Ge out of the old lady’s room by pulling his hand. The child led Chen Ge all over the rental apartment. They visited the rooftop, the storage room where the tenants kept their barrels of gas, and a toilet cubicle that was filled with trash. Whenever he came across a snail, Jiang Ming would be overjoyed.

Chen Ge had no idea why Jiang Ming was so adamant about searching for snails, but he saw how serious Jiang Ming was, and he did not have the heart to stop him. He accompanied Jiang Ming silently. They ran all over the apartment, but in total, they only found four snails. Jiang Ming placed all of them inside his own pocket, then he grabbed Chen Ge’s hand and ran to the ground floor. As long as they did not make any sound, those strange neighbors would not come out. After being given a beating by the old lady, even Jiang Ming’s father had disappeared from their view.

“Are you going home now?” Jiang Ming nodded happily. He led Chen Ge to the rental room with the wooden sign hanging by the door and reached out to pull on the string that was attached to the lamp. The lights inside the room flickered a few times, and then the door of the room was opened. A slender woman with pale ‘skin’ appeared behind the door.

Seeing Jiang Ming arrive home safely, she had a warm and kind smile on her face. But when she saw Chen Ge, a flash of panic crossed her eyes. She was probably afraid that a stranger had suddenly appeared on her doorstep. The woman used sign language to communicate with Chen Ge. From that, Chen Ge believed she was a deaf and mute person, too. Chen Ge was not familiar with sign language, so all he could do was to smile and ensure that he did not look threatening to the woman.

The house door slowly opened. Jiang Ming excited ran into the woman’s embrace. He took out the snails one by one from his pocket like he was showing them off to the woman. The woman touched the boy’s head with a kind smile on her face. She watched quietly as Jiang Ming ran through his findings happily.

This should be Jiang Ming’s mother.

After entering the room, Chen Ge closed the door. Seeing the homely situation before him, Chen Ge felt himself being cordoned off from it. The woman’s face was not different from a normal person’s, but her body was covered with patches. Viewed from a distance, Jiang Ming’s mother was like a rag doll. Of her entire body, only her hands that she needed to work and her face did not have cloth patches on them. The other parts of her body had been patched up by threads and scraps of fabric, and her skin was like a coat that had been patched up many times. Chen Ge could not even begin to fathom what the woman had been through to appear in this manner in Jiang Ming’s memory.

The woman continued to sign, and she appeared to be complimenting Jiang Ming, but the happy atmosphere soon disappeared. The light by the door lit up again. The doll mother and young Jiang Ming turned to the door. Finally, it was Jiang Ming’s mother who walked to the door and pulled the door open. The stinging smell of alcohol drifted into the room, and the ugly grimace of the drunkard monster appeared at the door.

The mud-like body slammed against the door. The arm that had the bottle attached to it pointed at Chen Ge while the monster glared viciously at the rag doll woman. The woman signed, but the drunkard had lost his patience a long time ago and pushed her angrily away.

Seeing the drunkard return home, Jiang Ming took out the snails from his pocket and jogged toward the drunkard. He held the snails in both hands and tried to show them to the drunkard, but before he could even extend his arms, the drunkard monster smacked Jiang Ming on his shoulder and knocked his own son off balance. The snails fell to the ground, and the drunkard monster stomped on them angrily until they disintegrated into dust. These were the snails that Jiang Ming had tried his best to find all over the apartment.

The drunkard monster stared at the shattered shell on the ground, and his face turned redder. The blood capillaries bulged on his face, and he became ever angrier. The anger needed to find a vent to unleash. He flipped over the small table in the living room. The glass cup was about to cut Jiang Ming, but thankfully, the rag doll woman ran to shield Jiang Ming from being injured. The scalding water splashed to the ground, and part of it splashed onto the drunkard monster. His face was burning red. He grabbed the rag doll woman by her hair and pressed her to the ground.

After the woman was slammed into the ground, her first reaction was to wave her hand at Jiang Ming for him go and hide inside another room. The drunkard monster dragged the woman by her doll legs, and the arm that had the alcohol bottle growing out of it slammed down on her repeatedly. The boy stood frozen in the corner of the living room that now looked like a scene from a battlefield. He had no idea where he had done wrong. The snails lay shattered on the ground, and his rag doll mother had her life beaten out of her. His shoulders were shaking from fear. He had no idea whom he could request help from. He looked at his own mother who was in pain; he wanted to help her, but he was powerless. He did not even know how to speak.

“Don’t be afraid.” Chen Ge patted Jiang Ming’s shoulders that were shivering. “I will help you.”

Chen Ge leaped into the air and kicked at the drunkard monster. After separating the monster from the rag doll woman, he waved the hammer and slammed it right onto the drunkard monster’s shoulder.

BANG!

The drunkard monster slammed into the door. Chen Ge did not give the monster the chance to counter and continued to press on with his aggression.

“Jiang Ming, look at this. He is not invincible. He is just a weak coward. There is no reason for you to be afraid of him!”

The drunkard monster’s body was rapidly recovering. His arm grew to envelope the furniture inside the room, and the expression on his face was getting grimmer and grimmer.

“I will lure him into the next room. After he follows me, you have to run out of here as soon as possible!”

To give Jiang Ming and the rag doll woman more time to escape, Chen Ge could only attack the drunkard monster again and again. Every time he was knocked down, the drunkard monster would turn uglier and uglier. His body kept on expanding. His back was stuck to the wall, and his body slowly joined with the rest of the room. In Jiang Ming’s memory, the keywords ‘home’ and ‘father’ were closely joined together, so Chen Ge was not surprised that something like this would happen. The only thing that worried him was that Jiang Ming and the rag doll woman had not escaped from the room.

Cracks appeared on the wall, and the ceiling started to peel down in great pieces. The ground was shaking. The light behind the door flickered several times before it suddenly went off. After the light blinked out, a horrible stench came from the ceiling of the room that was now submerged in darkness. The cracks on the ceiling were getting bigger and bigger. The drunkard monster’s body was getting so large that his body was already touching the ceiling. At this moment, the roof of the room started to collapse.

The horrible stench pulled at his nostril like it was palpable. The thing that was crushing the room under its weight had decided to show itself!

Carrying a swirling exoskeletal shell, with a sticky body, a giant blood-red snail was crawling on the top of this home. An endless stream of negative emotions channeled into the drunkard monster’s body. One of the smaller antennae of the giant snail peeled back a small opening to show a mouthful of countless teeth. A giant body reached out from inside the shell, and the blood red giant bit at Chen Ge.

A snail? Why would such a scary thing appear in Jiang Ming’s dream?

Chen Ge retreated while he fended off the attack from the giant snail. After the latter showed itself, the world behind the door started to change. The walls of the apartment started to bleed, and the whole building shook like it might crumble at any moment.

“Go upstairs and find that old lady!” Chen Ge led Jiang Ming and the rag doll woman up the stairs. The neighbors who were no different from the monster started to become agitated with madness under the influence of the blood red snail. Initially, the feeling that this world gave Chen Ge was one of absurdity, like a picture that was randomly drawn by a very small child. But once the red snail appeared, the world became gorier and more chaotic, or in other words, it became more and more like an actual world behind the door. The trio went to the room where the old lady resided. Chen Ge knocked on the door heavily and repeatedly.

“Granny, I will take you and Jiang Ming away from this place! I already know how to escape!” The door opened soon after. The old lady stood at the door with the support of her cane. She saw the crazed neighbors and the blood red snail that was crawling this way.

“Your spirit is still lingering around, and that means there is something tying you to this world. You should not stay here; come away with us.” Chen Ge had already made his decision as he took out the comic. The old lady hesitated. She opened her lips to say something, but Chen Ge could not hear her voice at all.

“I will take that as a yes.” Chen Ge turned around to guard the old lady, Jiang Ming, and his mother behind him. He stared at the blood red snail that was slowly crawling toward them. “This snail is the real culprit that has literally crushed Jiang Ming’s family under its weight. It is also the representation of all the negative emotions and misfortunes in Jiang Ming’s mind. If I can destroy this thing, Jiang Ming might not be confused or scared by it anymore.”