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墨書 Inktalez
The moment the ice spike pierced my palm, I heard the brittle sound of bones shattering, like dry branches snapping in the north wind. Zhang Degui's greasy breath sprayed on the back of my neck, mingling with the years of smoke and oil. He pressed his knee hard against my spine, the force seemingly intent on nailing me into the cracks of the concrete floor. The factory's tin roof was half-lifted by the northern wind, snowflakes mixed with rusty iron debris fluttering into my palm wound, while blood pearls crystallized and stuck to the gears of a rusted machine.
"I should have strangled you fifteen years ago." He yanked my hair and slammed my head against the concrete floor, each impact precisely hitting an old scar on my forehead. As the back of my head struck the ground with a dull thud, I heard the brittle sound of my teeth clashing. "Your mother, that filthy whore, clutched your birth certificate until her dying breath—" When my brow split open and warm liquid flowed over my eyelashes, blooming like red plum blossoms in the snow, I suddenly recalled the blood that dripped from my mother's mouth as she gasped her last fifteen years ago.
The wail of police sirens came from three kilometers away along the national highway, fading in and out amidst the blizzard. I arched my back, feeling the hunting knife lodged between my ribs rub against my breath with a dull sound. The last bit of strength surged from my toes to my abdomen; in an instant of rolling over, I heard the fabric tear apart. Zhang Degui's hunting knife was stuck in my ribs, its hilt smeared with palm blood, casting an eerie red reflection in the snow.
"When you were Boss Wang's dog," I glared at his murky yellow eyes and smiled, pressing my tongue against my broken gums, "did you know why he always had you deliver fresh goods?" His coarse thumb suddenly spasmed tighter, pushing the blade half an inch deeper into flesh. In the distance, police lights pierced through gaps in the tin walls, casting a blood-red grid on windows covered in ice crystals like some sort of invitation from hell.
"In those containers," I licked away the blood at the corner of my mouth; the smell of iron rust exploded on my tongue, "are your son's organs smuggled from Myanmar." As he pulled the knife from my side, it made a sickening sucking sound, like pulling a rusty shovel from mud. Zhang Degui staggered back, crushing frozen scabs underfoot; dark red ice crystals crunched beneath him.
I pulled out a voice recorder hidden in the sole of my boot; its cold metal shell pressed against my calf. The moment I hit play, his son's cries mixed with electric shocks exploded in the factory, sound waves crashing against rusty steel beams with a buzzing noise. Zhang Degui's facial flesh suddenly contorted into a grotesque arc; when his knife clattered to the ground, half a bloody lung lobe still hung from its blade.
The bullet pierced through glass; I heard my mother’s whimper from fifteen years ago as she was choked. The blood blossoming from Zhang Degui's forehead was so vivid it reminded me of wilted roses on a windowsill at an orphanage. As he fell backward, he knocked over a gasoline barrel; dark red liquid spread across a ground littered with used condom packaging, those yellowed tin foils floating in diesel like wilting white lotuses.
"Six shots." I lay in a pool of blood counting gunfire—the standard magazine capacity of a SWAT-issued 92 pistol. The snow fell heavier, covering my exposed calves; I lost body heat faster than expected. As my vision began to blur, I suddenly saw myself at fifteen curled up in a corner of an iron cage; Zhang Degui was injecting amber liquid into my vein while bubbles in the syringe refracted rainbow colors under sunlight.
"This is called obedient water," his sinister laugh mixed with diesel fumes echoed in my mind. "Your mother used this to serve her clients." As the liquid flowed into my bloodstream, I saw outside the rusty cage that my mother's purple wrists hung over the bed sheets; blood returning through her IV had already congealed into dark red.
When a police flashlight beam swept over me, I was digging at cracks in the concrete floor with a severed finger. The pain from lifting a nail revealed a corner of a blood-stained birth certificate; in it was a woman holding an infant standing in a field of rapeseed flowers—March 8th, 1999 stamped faintly on it. The officer's flashlight beam suddenly wavered as I heard myself let out a whimper like a wolf cub.
"Ambulance!" someone shouted beside me. In that moment when stab-proof clothing tore under teeth, I tasted rubber’s bitterness. It turned out that dying people truly had wolf-like strength; as blood sprayed onto an officer's bulletproof vest, I suddenly remembered that night when Mother was shoved into a trunk—she had bitten through the cloth gagging her just like this.
When the factory roof collapsed with a roar, snow flew up like a white curtain. I saw Mother standing in that snowy veil wearing a floral dress; purple needle marks on her wrists bloomed like mandala flowers. Fifteen years ago she had reached out just like this when I was stuffed onto that bus for orphans—writing "Survive" on the window with lipstick using three blood characters.
As the last breath was swallowed by the snow, I heard the cries of a newborn piercing through fifteen years of time. The sunlight of 1999 suddenly broke through the clouds, and the smell of disinfectant mixed with blood rushed into my nostrils. The sound of the nurse cutting the umbilical cord was as crisp as a bell, and my mother's pale lips brushed against my forehead. "Jian Jian, spring is coming," she whispered. Her voice overlapped with the wail of sirens in the blizzard. Just before my consciousness faded, I finally saw my mother's name on the birth certificate—Lin Chun'e. On March 8, 1999, she used her last ounce of strength to bring me into this world.
(End of chapter)
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