"Since that night, I have never had a good night's sleep. Almost every day, as long as I close my eyes, I can feel her standing on the bedside whispering."
"Sometimes she even choked me so I couldn't breathe..."
In the retro-decorated psychological clinic, a man wearing thick clothes sat on the sofa and slowly described his recent experiences in a tired voice.
His clothes are incompatible with the temperature of the current season. This kind of dressing means that he has either a physical problem or a mental problem. In either case, he really should see a doctor.
"Dr. Su, I feel like I'm going to die."
Listening to the patient's description, Su Xing, who was sitting opposite, stopped turning the pen in his hand, sat up straight and spoke half-jokingly.
"Yeah, in this damn weather, it's normal for you to be suffocated by the heat when you wear something like this."
Hearing this, the man tightened his collar and wrapped himself even more tightly.
"Dr. Su, you know I'm not talking about the weather."
Su Xing coughed twice and looked through the information.
"Ahem, Mr. Lin, from what I understand, you seem to be a writer, and you also write some supernatural horror stories. So I was wondering, is it possible that you paid me to come here to find inspiration, or that Your awareness of your own horror stories reaches such a level of paranoia that you experience hallucinations and auditory hallucinations.
Based on what you described earlier, I initially speculated that it was schizophrenia. "
Hearing this, the man sitting opposite stared at Su Xing with his dull eyes and murmured, "Dr. Su, are you saying that what happened to me is just a delusion caused by cognitive paranoia?"
Su Xing shrugged noncommittally.
"Is this situation normal?"
The man sitting across from the coffee table reached out and pulled off the scarf around his neck, revealing the covered bruises.
Has it reached the point of self-harm?
Seeing the bruises on the man's neck, Su Xing put away his relaxed attitude and became serious.
"If self-harm has already occurred, this is not a small problem. Mr. Lin, I remember you just said that since that night, can you tell me how many days ago 'that night' was? And what happened that night? Or Tell me what you saw?"
The voice fell and was replaced by a long silence.
The man with a haggard face opened his mouth several times but never made a sound. He didn't know whether he was recalling what happened that night or he didn't want to.
Su Xing didn't rush, but checked the recorder and waited quietly. After all, his charges were based on time. If others were not in a hurry, then he didn't have to be in a hurry.
"About a week ago."
"You know, in our line of work, we always need the stimulation of inspiration, so I stayed out very late that night before going home. The time should be around twelve to one o'clock in the morning. I didn't find what I wanted that night Inspiration, so I feel very disappointed.
But when I stepped into the empty elevator, I suddenly thought of an urban legend circulating on the Internet. "
"Could it be that weird game circulating on the Internet about traveling to another world through an elevator?" Su Xing had also heard of this urban ghost story, saying that you could travel to another world through an elevator at midnight.
The man nodded slightly, then a wry smile appeared on his lips.
“Thinking about it now, only a lunatic would do something like this in the middle of the night, but before that, who could have imagined that this would really happen?
According to the rules of ghost stories, I pressed the buttons for floors 4, 2, 6, 2, 10, and 5. Until the elevator stopped on the fifth floor, nothing happened. Just when I laughed at myself, how could I believe such a legend? At that moment, a woman in a dark dress walked in outside the elevator on the fifth floor.
After she came in, she didn't click on any floor. She just stood in the corner of the elevator with her head lowered. I didn't look at her, let alone ask. I just pressed the button on the last floor - the first floor - according to the rules of ghost stories. "
"The elevator didn't go down, but went all the way up! It rose very quickly, giving people the illusion that they were about to be crushed by gravity. At that time, the woman standing next to me spoke."
"She asked me where I was going, why I was in such a hurry, and if I could go somewhere with her. She was scared to be alone. She seemed to be talking to me, or to herself. She also said, 'I It's beautiful, don't you want to look back?'"
The man's voice gradually trembled, and his emotions began to get excited.
"Her voice was very nice, like a lark, so I couldn't help but take a look. Doctor Su, you have no idea what I saw at that time. The woman's face was mangled, and there were irregular blood stains all over her eyes. Bones were visible, and the wound looked like it had been torn out by something like glass!
And the dress she was wearing was not a reddish-brown dress at all, but a white dress dyed red by blood over and over again!
Under the hem of the skirt was a solitary ankle, which was locked with a slender iron chain, and further down... there was nothing further down, she was just floating there. "
"Dr. Su, I can feel that she is cunning! Her eyes are full of resentment, and she is trying to tear apart every living person she sees."
As he narrated, the man's emotions gradually collapsed, and his words already had a vibrato.
Su Xing spoke up at the right time, trying to calm the other party's emotions.
"Shh, Mr. Lin, don't say such nonsense. You have to know that there is no such thing as trickery in this world. Well - at least we are not allowed to have it in China. My clinic has just opened, so we can't say such nonsense. Such words."
After saying that, Su Xing got up and poured a glass of hot water for the other party, indicating that he should never mention such things again.
Holding the hot paper cup, Lin Lu raised his head and looked at Su Xing. For some reason, this young psychiatrist who spoke a little awkwardly gave him a feeling of relaxation. After taking a deep breath, he continued to speak.
"Later I wanted to escape, and my house happened to be on the tenth floor, so I got out of the elevator without hesitation. But I forgot that the world outside the elevator was no longer reality at that time. There were no lights in the corridor, only seepage from the windows. The blood coming in, the place where the door should have been in the corridor was blocked by a red brick wall.
The air was as heavy as liquid, and the entire corridor was like a coffin.
Before I had more time to react, the woman in the elevator followed me out. She changed her soft-spoken tone and became fierce and violent. She asked me to accompany her to a funeral. I didn't agree, so she Even more angry.
At that moment, the whole building was shaking, and her long hair was clinging to the surroundings like a spider web. I was so nervous that I couldn't breathe, and my brain was so dizzy that I lost consciousness. "
The story should have ended here. At the end, Su Xing seized the loopholes in the story and asked.
"Mr. Lin, if like you said, you should have been killed by that kind of thing in that world, then I want to know how you returned to the real world and lived well for seven days, and you are still sitting here with me. What are you talking about?"
While talking, Su Xing wrote down the inference of "paranoia" at the end of the note in his hand.
But before he finished writing, Lin Lu, who was sitting opposite, spoke again.
"I woke up on the bed in my room after comatose. I don't know why this happened, but what is certain is that something on my body must have been thrown there that night. And I am still alive, maybe because of the funeral The time has not come yet.”
After saying that, Lin Lu turned sideways and took out a rather festive-looking invitation from his backpack.
"Dr. Su, when I woke up the next morning, this thing appeared on the bedside. It was this thing that made me conclude that all this was not a ridiculous nightmare."
Hearing this, Su Xing looked at the contents of the invitation with a puzzled expression.
It is more appropriate to say it is an invitation than an obituary.
The general meaning of the content is to invite others to attend the funeral of a certain woman.
The name of the invitee was Lin Lu, and strangely, the deceased and the signature had the same name, a woman named Chen Xin.
If nothing else, this woman was the one Lin Lu bumped into in the elevator.
"Inviting others to your own funeral? It's bizarre enough."
The rose-patterned invitation looked like it was for a wedding, but it was filled with eulogies. This sense of dissonance made people feel uncomfortable.
A prank? But there can't really be someone who is trying to curse him to death, right?
