"You say kill it, just kill it. ”

The boy took another deep puff of his cigarette. "You said you were staying in a hotel?" he knocked on the window of the cab behind him, and the glass window was lowered. "Hey, go to the hotel, on the side of the road. We're going to drop off the guests. ”

The driver nodded, and the glass window went up again.

The flickering fiber-optic lights in the trunk continue to change colors, circulating into various dull hues. Ah Xiu felt that the boy's eyes seemed to be flickering as well, the green glow of an old-fashioned computer monitor.

"You remember to tell Drinkward. You tell him that he is already history, that he is forgotten, that he is old. Tell him that we are the future and that we will not give him or anyone like him any chance. He should be locked up in the Museum of Historical Garbage, and in the meantime, people like me, will be speeding in a limousine on the superhighway that belongs to tomorrow. ”

"I'll tell him. Ah Xiu said. He felt a little dizzy. Let's hope you don't catch a cold.

"Tell him that we've fucking reprogrammed for reality. Tell him that language is a virus, faith is an operating system, and that prayers are nothing more than fucking spam. Remember to tell me or I'll kill you. The boy's voice came through the smoke.

"Remember," said Ashu, "you can let me get off here, and I'll walk back the rest of the way." ”

The kid nodded. "It's a pleasure to talk to you. He said that the cigarette had matured his voice, "You know, if we want to kill you, we can delete you immediately." You know? With a single tap, you're randomly rewritten and everything goes back to zero. You don't have a choice. He knocked on the window behind him. "He's getting off here. Then he turned to Asho again, pointing at his cigarette. "It's made of artificial toad skin," he explained, "and you know, now people can synthesize toad tryptamine." ”

The car stopped, the doors opened, and Ah Xiu climbed out of the car with some difficulty. The belt on his hand was cut. Ah Xiu turned around, and inside the car was a churning cloud of smoke, and two lights were flashing all the time. Now the light turns copper, which happens to be the color of the toad's eyes. "It's all about having an absolute advantage, Ashu. Nothing could be more important than this. Also, I'm sorry to hear that your wife died. ”

The doors closed, and the stretch limousine drove away without a sound. A few hundred yards from the motel, Ah Xiu stood still, breathing in the cold air, before walking under the red, yellow, and blue advertising light boxes. The most delicious fast food imaginable is being touted as nothing more than hamburgers. There were no surprises along the way and he arrived safely at the hotel.

Every hour is stabbing you, and the last hour is taking your life.

Behind the front desk of the hotel, a thin young woman stood. She tells Ah Xiu that his friend has checked him in and hands him the rectangular plastic key card in his room. She had long, pale blonde hair, and her face was vaguely rodent-like, especially when she looked at someone with a suspicious expression, then relaxed and smiled. She refused to give him Drinkward's room number, and insisted on hanging up the phone to Drinkward's room to inform him that his guests had arrived.

Drinkward came out of the room, walked into the hall, and waved to Ah Xiu.

"How's the funeral?" he asked.

"It's over. Ashu replied.

"Don't want to talk about the funeral?"

"I don't want to. Ah Xiu said.

"Good. Drinkward laughed, "It's been a lot of talk these days. Let's talk about it. The country would be much better off if everyone learned to endure pain in silence. ”

Drinkward takes him to his room, passing by Asho's own room as he walks through the hallway. Drinkward's room was littered with open maps, some spread out on the bed and some taped to the wall. Drinkward used a brightly colored marker pen to draw markers all over the map, making it a fluorescent green, baby pink, and bright orange-yellow.

"I just got kidnapped by a boy. "He told me to tell you that you should be thrown into the dustbin of history while people like him are speeding down the super highway of life in limousines." And so on. ”

"Little mongrel. Drinkward cursed.

"You know him?"

Drinkward shrugged. "I know who he is. He sat down heavily on the only chair in the room. "They don't know anything. He said, "I don't know any bullshit." How long are you going to stay in town?"

"I don't know, maybe a week. I'm going to settle Laura's funeral, take care of our apartment, dispose of her clothes and belongings, everything. Doing so would have driven her mother mad, but the woman deserved to be mad. ”

Drinkward nodded his head. "Well, as soon as you're done, we'll leave town. Good night. ”

Ah Xiu walked through the hallway and back to his room. His room was identical to Drinkward's, with a blood-red painting depicting a sunset hanging from the wall above his bed. He ordered a cheese meatball pizza over the phone and went to the shower. He poured all the shampoo and shower gel in small plastic bottles provided by the hotel into the bathtub and stirred up a large lather.

He was too big to fit into the tub, but he half-sat in it and enjoyed a bubble bath comfortably. Ah Xiu once promised himself that once he was released from prison, he would enjoy a bubble bath. He finally made his promise.

Shortly after the shower, the pizza arrived. Ah Xiu eats the whole pizza and pours a can of non-alcoholic beer.

Ah Xiu lay comfortably on the bed, thinking to himself, this is the first bed I slept in since I was free, but unfortunately this thought did not bring him the perfect happiness as he had imagined. He didn't close the curtains. The lights of cars and fast-food chains outside the glass windows gave him peace of mind, letting him know that there was another world out there, a free world that he could walk in whenever he wanted to.

It should be in the bed at home, Ah Xiu thought to himself, living in the apartment where he and Laura lived, lying on the bed he shared with Laura. However, there was no longer her there, but her relics, her scent, and her life were still haunted by her...... It's just too much to bear.

Don't think about it, Ah Xiu thought to himself. He decided to ponder something else, and he remembered the coin trick. Ah Xiu knew that he didn't have the talent to be a magician. He doesn't have the ability to do all sorts of tricks to make people believe in him, and he doesn't want to perform poker magic or conjure up paper flowers out of thin air. He just wants to manipulate coins, and he likes the feeling when he fiddles with them. He began to make a mental list of the magic tricks that would make the coin disappear into thin air, and he remembered the gold coin he had thrown into Laura's grave. Then he recalled what Audrey had said to him, what happened when Laura died. Again, he felt a dull pain in his heart.

Every hour is stabbing you, and the last hour is taking your life. Where have you heard this phrase?

He remembered Drinkward's words: Bear the pain silently, and can't help but smile. Many people admonish each other, saying not to suppress their feelings, but to let their emotions vent naturally and let the pain in their hearts come out. Ah Xiu had heard too many of these words. Ah Xiu thought to himself, in fact, he should also talk about how to suppress his feelings. He estimates that as long as you suppress the pain for a long time and press it deep enough, it won't be long before you don't feel pain anymore.

Sleep slowly enveloped him, and before he knew it, Ah Xiu sank into a dream.

He's walking......

He walked in a room larger than the entire city, and as far as the eye could see, there were all sorts of statues, carvings, and crude portraits. He stood beside a statue that looked like a woman: she was naked, flattened, hanging down from her chest, with a string of severed hands around her waist, and in her own two hands held sharp daggers, where the head should have been, but from her neck emerged twin twin vipers. The snake's bodies arched and glared at each other, as if they were preparing to attack each other. The statue was extremely unsettling, and in the depths of it, there was something extremely violent, extremely wrong. Ashu stepped away from it.

He began to wander the hall. The eyes of the statues seem to follow him all the time.

Burning and shining on the ground in front of the statue. The man with white hair, a necklace strung with teeth around his neck, and a drum in his hand, stared at Axiu, the woman with a fat ass and countless monsters poking out from between her legs, staring at Axiu, and the man with a ram's head and a golden ball in his hand, and his eyes were particularly large.

Suddenly, in the dream, a clear voice began to speak to him, but he could not see the person who spoke.

"These are the forgotten gods, who have passed away. Legends and stories about them can only be found in the long river of dry history. They left, forever. But their names and images remain among us. ”

Ah Xiu turned a corner and found that he had come to another room, which was more spacious than the one before. Looking around, you can't see the edge of it. Closest to him was a tan mammoth skull, polished and smooth, and a petite woman in a shaggy tawny cloak with a misshapen left hand. Next to her is a group of statues of three women, carved out of the same granite, the upper body separated, but the lower body is joined together from the waist, their faces seem to be carved in a hurry, not yet finished, but their ** is very finely carved. There was also a flightless bird that Ah Xiu didn't recognize, about twice as tall as his body, with a vulture-like beak and human arms. There are many, many such sculptures.

The voice sounded again, as if in a classroom, explaining, "These are the old gods that have disappeared from memory, and even their names have long been forgotten. Those who once worshipped them were as forgotten as their gods. Their totems had long since been shattered and lost, and their last priest had died before he could pass on the secret.

"The gods also die. When they do die, no one mourns or commemorates them. Ideas are harder to kill than humans, but at the end of the day, ideas can be killed. ”

A whisper spread throughout the hall, and the whispering sound made Ah Xiu feel a cold, inexplicable fear in his dreams. The all-engulfing panic gripped him tightly in the temple of the forgotten gods. There are statues of gods left here: the god with the face of an octopus, the god with only dry hands – and what could have been left behind could be a meteorite falling from the sky, the remnants of a forest fire, no one can tell......

Ah Xiu woke up suddenly, his heart beating violently. His forehead was covered with a clammy sweat, and the whole person was completely awake. The red numbers on the bedside electronic watch told him it was 1:03 a.m. Outside the hotel, neon signs spill into the rooms through the windows. Ah Xiu stood up, dazed and a little confused. He walked into the bathroom of the hotel room, went straight to the convenience without turning on the light, and then went back to the bedroom. The dream he had just had was still vivid in his memory, but he couldn't explain why it scared him so much.

The light that came into the room from the outside wasn't very bright, but Ashu's eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. A woman was sitting on the edge of his bed.

He recognized her. Even among a thousand, or even a hundred thousand, he could recognize her at once. She was still wearing the navy blue suit she wore when she was buried.

She spoke in a low voice, but in a tone he was familiar with. "I guess," Laura said softly, "you're going to ask me why I'm here." ”

Ah Xiu did not speak.

He sat down in the only chair in the room. In the end, he couldn't help but ask her, "Is it really you?"

"Of course it's me," she said, "I'm cold, Asho." ”

"You're dead, baby. ”

"Yes. She said, "I'm dead." She patted the place next to her on the bed. "Come and sit next to me. She said.

"No need. "I think it's better for me to sit here." There's still something between the two of us that hasn't been figured out. ”

"Say I'm already dead?"

"Maybe. But I want to know more about how you died. And the thing about you and Robbie. ”

"Oh," she whispered, "that's it." ”

Ah Xiu could smell – maybe he was just imagining himself – a smell mixed with earth, flowers, and preservatives. His wife, his ex-wife—no, he corrected his name, should say his deceased wife—sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes unblinking, staring intently at him.

"Ah Xiu," she said, "can you get me a cigarette? can you get me a pack?"

"Didn't you quit smoking?"

"I did. "But I don't have to worry about any health hazards now." Also, I feel that smoking can calm me down. There are vending machines in the front lobby. ”

Ah Xiu put on his pants and T-shirt and went to the hall barefoot. On the night shift was a middle-aged man reading a copy of Stephen King's. Ah Xiu buys a box of Ms. Victoria's cigarettes from the vending machine and asks the night shift man for matches.

"You're in a non-smoking room. "You have to make sure you open the window before you can smoke." He handed Ah Xiu a box of matches, as well as a plastic ashtray with the hotel's logo on it.

"Got it. Ah Xiu said.

He went back to his bedroom. She spread out her hands and feet and lay on his crumpled quilt. Ah Xiu opened the window and gave her cigarettes and matches. Her fingers were cold. When she lit the fire, Ashu saw her nails: nails that used to be neatly trimmed were now ragged, and the nails were stuffed with dirt under them.