Looking forward to the holidays

Looking forward to tomorrow

Looking forward to growing up in childhood

Day after day, year after year

Looking forward to growing up in childhood

----- "Childhood"

But he grew very quickly. In the spring of his thirteenth year, the local children were still playing tricks on him, always instigating him to fight, because they knew that they would win.

After a fight, Ashu would run away in a huff, often crying his nose. He would run to the boys' bathroom and wash the mud or blood off his face before anyone else noticed. Then, summer came, and it was a long, magical thirteen-year-old summer.

He has always avoided the tall children, swimming in the local pool, and reading books borrowed from the library by the pool. At the beginning of summer, he didn't know much about swimming. But by the end of August, he was able to swim lap after lap with ease, and he had learned to dive high platform. The sun and water had turned his skin dark brown. In September, he returned to school and found that the children who had made his life so miserable were so small and weak that they would not cause him any more trouble.

Two of the children also tried to tease him, and he quickly repaired it, ruthlessly and quickly, so that they painfully learned to be polite. Ah Xiu found that he had to adjust his life: it was no longer possible for him to hide quietly behind other people's backs and remain inconspicuous, because he had grown too tall, too burly, too conspicuous.

Towards the end of that year, he joined the school's swimming and weightlifting teams, and his coach graciously invited him to join the triathlon team. He likes to be a tall and strong man, and being big makes him a whole new character. He used to be a shy, quiet, nerdy kid, which was a very painful experience, but now he's a big sluggish man who doesn't expect him to do anything other than move the couch to another room.

No one. Until Laura shows up.

Mr. Azir prepared dinner: rice and boiled greens were for himself and Mr. Nasus. "I don't eat meat, I'm a vegetarian," he explains, "and Nasus gets all the meat he needs in the course of his work." In front of Ah Xiu was a large barrel of KFC fried chicken nuggets and a bottle of beer.

There are a lot of chicken nuggets, which is more than the amount of food that Ah Xiu can eat. He gave the leftover chicken to the cat, tore off the skin and fried hard shell, then shredded the meat with his fingers and fed it to her.

"There's a guy in prison named Jack," he said as he eats fried chicken, "and he works in the prison library." He told me that KFC changed its name from KFC Fried Chicken to KFC KFC because their chicken was no longer real chicken. KFC's chicken is a genetically mutated xenomorph, like a large centipede without a head, with only segments of chicken legs, chicken breasts, and chicken wings. That monster feeds through a feeding tube. The guy said that it was because of this that the government did not let them use the word 'chicken' for the name of the fast food restaurant. ”

Mr. Azir raised an eyebrow. "You think it's true?"

"Of course not. I also have an old cellmate Loki, who he said changed their name because 'fried' had become an abusive word. Maybe they want people to think that the chickens were cooked by themselves. ”

After dinner, Nasus apologized and went downstairs to work in the morgue. Azir continued his research and writing. Ah Xiu spent a little more time in the kitchen, feeding the minced meat of the chicken breast to the brown kitten and drinking beer. After the beer and chicken were gone, he washed his dishes and utensils, put them on a shelf to dry, and then went upstairs to his room.

When he returned to the bedroom, he found the brown kitten lying at the foot of his bed again, curled up in a crescent-shaped hairball. He found several striped cotton dressing gowns in a drawer in the middle of the dresser. They all look old, but they still smell fresh. He put on one of them. Just like the black suit, this dressing gown seems to have been cut specifically for him, snug and comfortable.

On the bedside table is a small stack of The Owl Post, each dated no earlier than March 1960. Jack, the guy in the prison library, was the one who swore to tell him about the KFC mutant chicken, and told him the story of the Black Train. He said the government often used trains to transport political prisoners to secret concentration camps. In the dead silence of the night, the train quietly passed through the country. Jack also told him that the NSA used The Owl Post as a front for their affiliates around the world. He said that the Owl Post office in each country is actually a secret department of the National Security Agency.

"Just kidding," the late Mr. Mu once said, "how can we make sure that the CIA doesn't get involved in the Queen's private life?"

Ah Xiu opened the window a few inches, enough to let in fresh air, and also to let the kitten out to the outside balcony.

He turned on the lamp next to his bed, climbed into bed, and read the magazine for a while, trying to pause his thoughts and take the events of the past few days out of his mind. He picks the most boring articles in the Owl Post, which seems to be the most boring. While reading the article "I Am a Teapot", he found that he was already halfway asleep. Without waiting for him to turn off the bedside lamp and put his head on the pillow, he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Afterwards, he couldn't sort out the order and details of the dream. Trying to recall only creates a more confusing image. There was a girl in the dream, he had met her somewhere, and now they were walking across a bridge together. The bridge spans a small lake located in the middle of the town. The wind blows across the lake, waving like fish scales. Ah Xiu felt that it was countless pairs of little hands that wanted to touch him.

Come here. The woman said to him. She wore a dress with a leopard skin pattern, the hem of which fluttered and swayed in the wind. A patch of skin peeked out between the tops of her stockings and her skirt. In his dreams, his skin was as delicate and silky as cream. On the bridge, in front of God and the whole world, Ashu knelt in front of her, buried his head between her clothes, and inhaled her intoxicating feminine fragrance. In his dreams, he realized that he was also ** in the real world, that hard, pulsating, surprising**, hard and painful feeling when he first entered puberty.

He went back to the prison cell where he had lived in the past, with her. He kissed her deeply. Her arms wrapped tightly around him, her legs clamping tightly around his, making it impossible for him to pull away. In fact, he himself didn't want to leave her at all.

He had never kissed such soft lips, and he had no idea that such soft lips existed in the world. But when her tongue slipped into his mouth, it was as rough as sandpaper.

- Who are you?, he asked.

She didn't answer, just a push on his back and straddled him. No, not to ride him, but to wave with him, each movement more powerful than the last. Wave after wave of rhythmic pulsations and impacts not only shook his consciousness, but also shocked his body, as if the rippling waves on the surface of the lake were crashing against the shore. Her nails were pointed, piercing the sides of his body and cutting across his skin, but he felt no pain, only extreme pleasure. Everything seemed to have been changed by some kind of magic, and he got great pleasure.

He struggled to regain his sense of self, struggled to speak, and his mind was suddenly filled with the wind from the dunes and the desert.

- Who are you?" he asked again, panting and spitting out.

She stared at him with deep amber eyes, then lowered her head and kissed him passionately with her lips, so intensely and deeply, on the bridge across the lake, in his prison cell, on the bed in the funeral parlor of the city of Cairo. He struggled to master his senses, like a kite in a hurricane trying to grasp himself. He pulled his mind and his sanity back, and he had to warn her.

- My wife, Laura, she's going to kill you.

- I? She said.

A ridiculous fragment of memory rises somewhere in his consciousness.

He wanted to know her name, but he didn't dare to ask her a third time. He was accelerated, spun, tossed, and his body arched deep into her, as if the two of them were two parts of the same life. They tasted, drank, embraced, and longed together......

- Come on. She said, the voice was like the guttural sound of a cat's growl, erupt.

His whole body spasmed, and his mind seemed to dissolve completely, slowly sublimating to another realm.

The moment it ended, at a certain moment, he took a deep breath. He could feel the fresh air flow deep into his lungs. It was only then that he realized that for a long time, he had been holding his breath. It's been three years, at least three years without feeling this way, maybe longer.

- Rest now. She said, and then, her soft lips kissed his eyelids gently. Forget it, forget all the unpleasantness.

Then he fell asleep. His sleep was deep and dreamless, and he felt incredibly comfortable. Ah Xiu dived into a deep sleep and embraced the sweet sleep.

The light is a little weird. He looked at his watch, and it was 6:45 a.m. It was still pitch black outside, but the room was already covered with a light blue glow. He got out of bed. He was sure that he had been in his nightgown when he went to bed last night, but now he was naked, and his skin felt the cold of the air. He walked over to the window and closed it.

There was a blizzard last night, and the snow was six inches or even thicker overnight. Outside the window, the corner of the town, once dirty and dilapidated, is now a clean and wonderful sight: the houses are no longer forgotten, uninhabited and ruined, but the snow and ice have made them elegant and beautiful. The street was covered in a thick layer of snow and disappeared.

A thought hovered over the edge of his consciousness, existed only for a brief moment, flickered, and then vanished.

He can see things in the dark as much as he does in the day!

In the mirror, Ashu noticed something unusual. He came closer and looked in the mirror, and the whole person froze. He groped his ribs and pressed the tips of his fingers to look for the dark bruise, the memento he had left after his encounter with Mr. Stone and Mr. Wood, and the blue bruise that the madman Sweeney had given him as a gift, but he found nothing. His face was also clean and smooth, without a trace of scarring. However, the sides and back of the body are covered with scratches that look like cat scratches.

So he wasn't dreaming, not exactly a dream.

Ah Xiu opened the drawer and put on the clothes he found: a pair of very old blue Levi jeans, a shirt, a thick blue sweater, and he also found a black undertaker's coat hanging in the closet at the back of the room.

He put on his original shoes.

The people in the house were still sleeping. He walked out gently, hoping the floor didn't rattle. He went outside and walked through the snow, leaving a deep footprint with every step. The outside was a little brighter than what was seen from the room, with the snow reflecting the light from the sky.

After walking for about fifteen minutes, Ashu came to a bridge with a prominent sign warning him that he was leaving the historic city of Cairo. Under the bridge stood a tall, thin man, smoking and shivering incessantly. Ah Xiu felt as if he knew the man.

He came closer, and in the winter darkness under the bridge, he could see the purple bruises on the man's eyes. He opened his mouth to say hello: "Good morning, madman Sweeney. ”

The world around is so quiet that no cars even pass by, disturbing the tranquility brought by the heavy snow.

"Hey, man. Madman Sweeney muttered. He didn't look up, and the cigarette he smoked was hand-rolled.

"Madman Sweeney, if you stay under the bridge," Ashu joked, "people will think you're a legendary troll." ”

The madman Sweeney looked up, and Ashu could see the whites of his eyes around his pupils. He looked terrified. "I'm looking for you," he said, "and you'll have to help me, man." I'm in trouble this time. He took a hard puff of his hand-rolled cigarette and ripped it from his mouth. The cigarette paper was still on his lower lip, but the cigarette was torn, and the contents spilled onto his ginger beard and dirty T-shirt chest. The madman Sweeney stretched out his blackened hand and dusted off the tobacco, his movements a little spasmodic, as if the tobacco was some dangerous bug.

"With my current abilities, I'm afraid I won't be able to help you, madman Sweeney. "Still, tell me what you want." Do you want me to buy you a cup of coffee?"

The madman Sweeney shook his head. He took a tobacco pouch and some cigarette paper out of his denim coat pocket and rolled another cigarette for himself. As he did this, his beard stood on end, and his mouth squirmed, but not a word was uttered. He licked the side of the cigarette paper and rolled it up with his fingers, and the finished product only looked slightly like a cigarette. Then he spoke, "I'm not a troll, damn it. Trolls are assholes. ”

"I know you're not a troll," Ashu said gently, "what do you want me to do?"

The madman Sweeney played his brass lighter, and the inch in front of the hand-rolled cigarette was ignited by the sudden burst of flames and turned to ashes. "Remember when I taught you how to conjure a gold coin?

"Yes," Ashu said. It was as if he saw the gold coin in his mind again, and saw it tumble in the air a few times and fall on Laura's coffin, and saw it hanging around Laura's neck. "I remember. ”