There was an extra puddle of blood on the carpet.

Calvin was half-kneeling, his knees touching the cold ground, and his gaze rested on the blood on the ground.

Some little white dots were wriggling in the slightly blackened bloodstains, and they were maggots.

"I want to wake up. ”

Calvin realized that he was shivering, and he gasped hard, controlling his breathing, and then began to mumble to himself like a psychopath.

"It's a nightmare...... It's just a nightmare. "

He continued, the intense fear that made him feel as if he had shrunk into a tiny ball of viscera.

"It's all gone, long gone. ”

However, maggots on the ground are on the rise.

Calvin could even feel the subtle touch of those things falling.

Who knew that maggots actually make a subtle sound like a light rain when they fall from mid-air?

God, he thought he had forgotten that feeling.

No matter how much Calvin denied it, he couldn't ignore the horrible sensation — his back was starting to itch, the itch that made him want to scream.

"Hum—"

At the same time, the TV, which had been playing screeching music before, flashed after a static sound, and then the entire screen turned black.

Calvin looked up suddenly, and saw his own distorted shadow on the slightly bulging surface of the screen.

His body stiffened suddenly, and he gasped like an asthma attacker.

"It's fake, it's ......"

Calvin kept whispering, but in the same way, he raised his hand uncontrollably and leaned behind him tremblingly.

He felt something slimy, wrapped around the wisps of feathers.

High heat is transmitted from the cracks of the feathers, accompanied by a foul smell.

There was a slight tingling of the fingertips, and Calvin knew that it was maggots that had grown between the feathers, and with a little force, he could even pull out clusters of yellowish eggs from the feathers.

"No, no, no, no—"

Calvin's voice began to spiral out of control.

"It's not really, it's not—"

His wings are back.

And in the most horrible and disgusting state.

Calvin could almost hear his own sanity bursting. If this is a nightmare, then this is a nightmare that has defeated Calvin. The days of wandering with his wings in a high fever were the most eternal nightmare in Calvin's heart, because they represented the weakest and most powerless time of his life. But at this moment, the despair that could not be resisted and had nowhere to escape was once again overshadowed Calvin—and everything was as if it were yesterday.

["Sad, right, oh God, poor little Calvin......"]

The childish voice that is peculiar to children rang out in small pieces.

Calvin lowered his head as he stared at the wriggling, expanding maggots on the carpet.

The head of each maggot had the face of a child, yes, the same children Calvin had seen on television before, even the rotting cheeks and corpse-dripping facial features.

"But when you run away from it all...... We are rotting...... Calvin...... You should protect our ...... You were supposed to illuminate everything...... But you have allowed us to rot...... Hee-hee-hee-hee...... You should kill them...... Kill those sinners ......"]

They looked back at Calvin with blood-red eyes, their mouths open and closed, revealing their tiny yellow teeth.

Calvin took a deep breath, and the sudden heat (presumably brought to him by the rotting wings) made his eyes darken.

He jerked his grip on the knife that had landed beside him earlier.

The maggots with human faces let out high-pitched, excited laughter.

"No ......"

Calvin whispered softly—he swung the chef's knife and slashed hard behind him.

"Whew-"

Calvin was sure he had slashed something.

Warm blood gushed out and soaked his back.

But he knew it wasn't the damn wings he had struck on his back.

"Ho ......"

A painful breath came from behind Calvin, who turned his head, blood splattered on his cheeks.

A woman clutched her neck in pain, and between her fingers, a huge wound turned outwards like the grinning lips of some animal, white skin, thin yellow fat, red muscles, white veins—blood, a lot of blood—gushed out from between the woman's fingers.

The woman's eyes were wide open, as if they were about to bulge out of their sockets, which made her tiny pupils look particularly unseemly, not to mention that she was wearing a fashionable purple-gray wig, which now drooped down her forehead, revealing the receding hairline and the gray scalp between the sparse strands.

Calvin stood there immobilized, looking at the woman he had slashed and seeing that she looked familiar.

"Garr...... Text......"

The woman held up an arm, and she looked at Calvin in pain, his name spitting out from her blood-foaming lips.

It was at this moment that Calvin suddenly realized her identity.

Although she looked much older and more emaciated than Calvin remembered.

There was an air of abnormality in her—even in the midst of such nightmares, she still seemed distorted and strange, and seemed even weaker and more frightening to Calvin than the maggots with rotting human faces.

But Calvin still made out a thin shadow of the past in his crumpled features.

"Mom?"

Calvin shouted the word in shock.

Then he shivered and fell to his knees.

Behind Calvin's mother, an old woman named Rosa, a door slowly emerged.

The frame of the door seemed to be embedded in the air, and at first it looked like some kind of 3D projection, but soon the door became real in the void. It is silvery-white, the bezel is covered with smooth metal, and in the upper part of the door panel, there is explosion-proof glass inlaid with a wire grid. Through the glass window, Calvin saw not the silent room in which he was now, but a white hallway, the light in which it was so bright that it was almost blinding.

A faint trail of footsteps came from behind the door.

Calvin watched as the door was pushed open.

Someone rushed in.

"Oh my God, Mom, what have you done to yourself. ”

A rather handsome man, also young, dressed in a strange white robe of the Greek style, let out a cry of shock.

Calvin's pupils constricted.

The man had sloppy silver hair and dark blue eyes that were almost purple.

His skin was strangely pale, and his eyes, nose, and lips were ...... The facial features are extremely exquisite, but they look eerily mechanical.

He was surrounded by a crowd of people who, when he exclaimed, were busy like worker ants.

Those people didn't see Calvin, or rather, they couldn't see Calvin.

The only one who seemed to be able to see Calvin was Rosa.

Calvin ...... It's mine...... Baby......"

The old woman let out a low groan, and then collapsed with a thud as Calvin watched.

"No—Mom—"

Behind Rosa, the young man let out an unnatural scream.

He lunged at him, and for a moment, Calvin even thought he had made eye contact with him.

"Who's there?"

But then, he heard the man ask.

The man's voice trembled, and he seemed to sense something, but he couldn't see Calvin.

Thankfully, he couldn't see it.

Calvin didn't know why he was so happy.

“……”

Calvin's lips twitched slightly, but he didn't make any sound.

A strong sense of absurdity, reality and nightmares, half-dreaming and half-awake overlap. Calvin had never felt so confused.

Nightmare.

Authentic.

Nightmare.

Authentic.

……

He tried to convince himself that it was all a dream, but the scene in front of him: the young silver-haired man, his old and decaying mother, and the milky white room that was gradually emerging behind the two men...... Everything seems so real.

It was so real that Calvin was sweating profusely, and his heart was almost paralyzed.

But on the other hand......

"Shhhh

The sweet smell of decaying human bodies came from behind Calvin.

Calvin saw a pair of hands dripping with pale green slurry, finger bones covered with mold, and small children's hands.

The hands reached out from behind Calvin's shoulders and covered Calvin's mouth.

"Don't speak, don't open the door, don't open your eyes. ”

Calvin's shoulders shuddered, and he swore he heard Isha's voice.

In this near-crazy dream (or reality), Isha's maturity and calmness, which were completely incompatible with her age, constituted the only stable order—Calvin swore he wasn't completely insane because he heard Isa's voice at the last minute.

"Brother Calvin, it's time for you to go back—don't forget what you're about to do. The door is about to open, you have to hurry. ”

Isha left an almost whispered message in Calvin's ear.

The smell of decay grew stronger.

He lowered his eyes, blood on Isa's ginger hair, drooping next to the corners of his eyes.

Immediately after, he felt the cold hand...... Countless pairs of small, cold hands slammed down on his back.

Calvin fell forward heavily.

The blood he had vomited had begun to turn black and was still accumulating on the dirty carpet. And his face was pounding heavily on the blood.

"Hmm-"

The moment Calvin's cheek touched the blood stain, the pool of blood began to expand and deepen indefinitely.

Calvin plunged into a sea of scarlet blood.

……

"No, no, no, no, no—"

Then, Calvin wakes up to the sound of his own screams.

If he hadn't been so frightened, he would have felt a little ashamed of his screams as if he had entered a haunted house.

But in reality, he didn't have the time to care about that.

A sharp pain struck him the moment he jumped out of bed, and he fell heavily to the ground.

The room was silent, the air conditioning was still abundant, and the hum of the central air conditioner seemed to overlap with his nightmare from a short time ago.

Calvin swore he had never been scared by a nightmare before, but this time, the overlap in detail made him involuntarily stiffen.

"God, are you alright?"

Fortunately, in the next second, the slightly overly childish male voice came from the door.

Vickyli rushed over in shock and helped Calvin to his feet—to the sound of the cutlery breaking.

It took several seconds for Calvin to realize that Virgili had broken a mug and a pale pink plate.

Golden eggs and half-melted cheese tumbled to the floor, along with sizzling bacon roasted, making a mess of the rug at the door.

"Whew...... Whew......"

Calvin rested his face on Vicili's shoulder.

For a few minutes, the only thing Calvin could do was snuggle up in Vicili's arms like a frightened child, his eyes fixed on the "masterpiece" on the ground, and he gasped for breath.

"Hey, Calvin, calm down, it's all gone, it's all gone. ”

Vigilli's voice echoed softly in Calvin's ears.

"My back...... It hurts...... Wings ......"

Calvin's mouth opened, he tried to organize his language, but all he could actually say was a few fragmented words. 166 Reading Network