Chapter 8

八

I’d been taking the pills, stronger doses, every night. Had been avoiding dreams. But not avoiding ghosts, since I was seeing the torso again, the severed lower half of the deliveryman’s body, in his same bright orange pants. That damn torso, running around my fucking apartment.

I’d been hanging the pieces of paper with 安静 written on them around the apartment, but that was no longer keeping away the walking legs. The ghost had no respect. It accompanied the drilling sounds much of the time.

The torso had been running around my kitchen a lot, too. That’s usually where I’d spot it.

One evening, I was chopping vegetables, carrots, and accidentally sliced open the tip of a finger.

Bleeding profusely, I was running to the bathroom to grab my first-aid kit when I found that the torso was standing in the bathroom door’s threshold, blocking my entrance.

My hand a bloody mess, I screamed and cursed at the ghost, reached out to swat it away from the door.

Droplets of my blood splattered onto it, and the blood hit the torso like water landing in a skillet full of steaming hot oil, causing a ferocious pop and burst, singeing the ghost’s skin, and the torso tore off running from the doorway.

It was like I’d thrown holy water at a vampire. So I knew then what to do. In the bathroom, I held my hand over the sink, collected my blood in the drinking glass I’d used for brushing my teeth.

After I’d rung out, bled out a good bit, I wrapped up my finger with a bandage.

Then, carrying my blood, I rushed to my living room, where I’d been doing calligraphy. Pouting, I stood hunched over a table and dipped my calligraphy brush into the cup and painted 安静 in blood, on five separate sheets of paper.

I collected the papers, stomped about the domicile, taped the new sheets over the previous 安静 sheets. Then I wrapped up the blood glass in plastic wrap, set it next to my calligraphy brush, saved it for later.

After that, the torso disappeared from my apartment. But the drilling sounds got even louder, waking me up at around 4 to 6 a.m. every morning, four days in a row.