In this scorching central city, the huge pale moon shone on the roof of Rogers' modest suburban cottage, where strawberry-haired men hummed and handled corpses, and the same moon shone on Pine Street. In the apartment of No. 72, Rand was still sleeping in his warm bed. In the kitchen, a blue fluorescent fish was swimming slowly in a salad bowl that was a bit small for it, and the white membrane on its tail gradually fell off under the gentle beat of the water. Across the wall from Rand's apartment, Mrs. Smith's doorknob turned.
The old man's apartment had a pungent stench, and the stench of excrement and cat urine made the teenagers who crept into the door frown unbearably. One of the teenagers turned on the light after listening quietly to the sounds in the room.
There were three of them, the young Mr. Smith, the grandson of Mrs. Smith, and two of his companions, perhaps a girl named Daisy, and a boy nicknamed Stone, and what they had in common was a pale face, black their lips and nails, as well as the various metallic ornaments that adorn their skin. "Mr. Smith" looked at the stained carpet under the dim light, and "tsk" contemptuously.
"Hey, didn't you say let's not wake up the old guy?"
"Stone" muttered at him.
"She's not here," our young Smith said in a low voice, licking his lips. "If she were there, there would be a terrible snoring here. I think the nurses took her somewhere for treatment. I Think today is our lucky day."
"Lucky day? Are you sure you can get enough things for us in this garbage heap." Daisy sneered while observing her nails.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
The teenager rushed up with a twisted face, but was blocked by the "stone" (his figure was as strong as his nickname).
"Shut up," he instructed the two arguing, then ripped open the zipper of his backpack and put it on his arm, "We have to hurry up and get the goods at night."
With that, he started frowning around Mrs Smith's apartment, tossing the barely usable things into his backpack - a few tortoiseshell vanity boxes, antique-looking porcelain dolls, barely usable Candlesticks…
When collecting these things, his brows were always furrowed, and it was obvious that even he could not be satisfied with these things.
Young Mr. Smith had said that his grandmother's house could get some stuff - they were going to sell it for money to buy some happy "goodies", but it was clearly not going well.
"Mr. Smith" cursed as Daisy climbed on the cupboard and attempted to pluck the silver crucifix from the ebony cross on the wall.
"Damn it, my grandma would know if that thing was lost!"
Daisy turned her head and gave him a casual sneer.
"Damn," she deliberately imitated his tone of voice, "you didn't tell us this was a garbage dump before you came."
A mix of embarrassed exasperation appeared on "Mr. Smith"'s face, and he turned angrily and rudely opened all the drawers in the apartment, but there was very little that could be converted into money - even if As young as he can know, no one wants to take over a set of dentures that are missing a tooth.
Facing his predicament, "Stone" and Daisy showed a cold indifference and contempt. The teenager almost felt that the eyes of the two were like mice biting his thumb, making him restless. And at this moment, he suddenly accidentally saw the window on the other side of the balcony.
He went out to find the apartment balcony was shockingly close to the window over there.
In that moment he found an outlet for his predicament.
He called his companion, took out a screwdriver and tucked it into his waistband, then turned over to the window that belonged to Rand's kitchen.
Daisy frowned, leaning against the balcony railing and watching them both.
"Are you sure you want to do this? This is theft!"
Teenage Smith blushed and gave her the middle finger angrily.
"Shut up, I know what to do!"
he said, and carefully pried open the window.
He reached into the window.
And where he couldn't see it, a very thin thread was taut, in front of his fingers.
Maybe only one millimeter away, the boy's fingers will touch the thread - what happens next will be very unsightly, and dozens of threads of polymer material that are only a quarter of the thickness of a hair will be directly taut. On his body, he will even be strangled into similar-sized pieces of meat without feeling pain, and then wrapped up and sent to Rogers' collection box through the principle of leverage. The blood will be pre-set in the collection box. Directly into the sewer pipe. Everything would be clean, neat and flawless, fully in keeping with Rogers' "Spider" moniker.
However, the boy's hand stopped in front of the thread.
"Hey, did you smell it?"
He frowned and smelled at his companion.
"what?"
"It smells a little disgusting," said the young Mr. Smith, squinting and bending down, leaning his face beside the window sill, he thought he smelled blood... He didn't know it but he instinctively felt something The place is not right.
Then he felt a slippery layer of fur on the edge of the window.
The fur became slimy, and it had a strange heaviness to the touch, although it was actually light.
Mr. Smith took out his phone, and his fingers left a dark trail of blood on the screen as he swiped.
Then he saw the faint light of his mobile phone and saw what he touched, it was a cat skin.
Boneless, muscleless cat skin, a green eyeball came out of its socket, spun round and round, dangling on the back of his hand.
"Damn, what's this-"
"Stone" looked at the things in Smith's hands with a twisted face, and almost broke out swear words.
Then he saw a blue light pop out of the stinking cat hide. For a moment he thought that maybe it was a prank made by the cowardly and useless companion, because the bright blue tentacles drilled straight into the boy's mouth, nose and ears.
The latter made a terrible "cluck" sound in his throat, like the whispers of a demon, he twitched like a seizure at "Stone", his eyes rolled irregularly like marbles in a wine bottle, and the whites of his eyes turned. The part of it was congested and turned dark red almost instantly.
"Stone" took a step back uncontrollably, and then his body was empty, and he almost fell like that.
He reached out and grabbed the edge of the little sump at such a horrific time. He could feel the night wind blowing against his body, he was shaking.
"Help... help me..."
He was gasping for breath, trying to scream—but the terrifying horror made his throat unbelievably tight, and he ended up making only a small, new-born kitten's meow.
Shake, shake, shake.
From above the sump came an indescribable sound, a damp, ominous muffled sound, and he heard the characteristic sound of bones slamming against hard objects surrounded by flesh and blood, from the boy's throat. The "cluck" sound that came out of it was accompanied by the sound of bubbles bursting on the surface of the water.
"Stone" finally felt a clammy cold between his legs.
He could barely feel his hands, his body was sliding, sliding.
However, the silence came suddenly.
The wind stopped and so did the sound.
"Stone" swallowed dryly, and he made a weak sound.
"Daisy... Daisy... help... help me..."
Following his call, a figure appeared above him.
In the backlight, he could only see a black silhouette, but even that didn't prevent "Stone" from crying out for help.
"Daisy? Smith?"
he called tentatively.
His hands could barely hold up. Despair almost made him cry, but his throat was so dry that he couldn't even cry, and the only thing he could do was throw his head up and look pleadingly at the figure above.
"Oh, kill you... kill you... kill you..."
At this moment, the song that they had arranged by themselves rang, which was the ringtone of young Mr. Smith's mobile phone.
With the screen that lit up when the call was called, "Stone" finally saw what the figure looked like.
His pupils widened in an instant.
…
after an hour-
"Well, that's kind of funny."
Rogers, crouching on the wall of the apartment like a giant spider, deftly dismantles the traps that had been set here—all of which showed no sign of being triggered.
However, he still narrowed his eyes.
He thought he smelled that smell, the smell of blood.
Seconds later, Rogers landed like a bird on the balcony of Mrs Smith's apartment.
There's some mess here, but the mess in the home of an elderly person with dementia isn't a special thing.
The clock was ticking in the room, a silver crucifix was upside-down for some reason, and Jesus, with his head over his head, seemed to show an oddly distressed expression at Rogers.
There is no one here.
"it's very funny."
Rogers shrugged and repeated.
On the other side of a wall, the blue fish looked back at its tail.
The tunica albuginea there had completely fallen off, revealing the intact scales underneath.
A finger with a black nail painted under the water has been soaked into a translucent white.
The fish swam slowly, and the sucker sticking out of its mouth suddenly covered the finger.
After a while, everything returned to its previous calm.