Text: Episode 41

1.

I remember that the sun was still scorching at noon that day, but I didn't expect that it was just after about one o'clock in the afternoon, and the whole sky suddenly became gloomy.

I read a few copies and threw them back in my suitcase and closed his suitcase.

At that time, I couldn't tell what it was like in my heart, and I had mixed tastes.

It was hot, I couldn't breathe, my chest was tight, and my heart was uncomfortable.

The body was slimy, the heart was messy, it was humid and muggy that day, and it felt a bit like a southern summer.

The gloomy day gave me a glimmer of hope, and I prayed for him to have a rain, so that it could cool down and refresh.

From that day on, I always remembered the articles in the box that consisted of countless words.

2.

Documentaries about Africa are shown on TV, and the heat wave blurs the shape of lions.

I looked up at the wall clock on the wall: 18:45.

There were already a dozen empty beer bottles on the table.

His head was dizzy, but he was very energetic, and he drank like no one else, but he didn't speak.

"Let's go, pack up and eat hot pot."

"On such a hot day, do you really eat hot pot?"

He just spoke, not looking at me, and the corners of his mouth twitched more and more often.

I turned my head to look at him.

"You don't understand this, the hot pot is hot and sweaty, and then let's find a bathhouse bubble pool, how refreshing and cool." At this moment, the scene in front of me made me feel familiar, and even the words I said made me feel familiar, "Just pay me for going out for a walk, always growing grass on my head in the house." ”

He smiled and nodded, and staggered to his feet, his shoulders moving so much that he seemed to twist his arm down, and then he raised his right hand and reached out to his left back and scratched it, and then scratched his stomach, and finally he pinched his neck with his hand, and a purple mark appeared.

"Hey, hey." He noticed me staring at him, laughed dryly, and went to the bedroom to find his socks.

The two of us went out for a stroll in the direction of Labor Park, and the evening breeze blew with the hot smell of the day, which was not very cool.

There was nothing to say all the way, he lowered his head as if he was thinking about something very important, I was really more and more worried about his mental state, under this worry, but there was still a sense of schadenfreude in the nameless place in my heart, this kind of thought made me very comfortable in my fear.

Ten minutes later, I came to the door of the hot pot restaurant.

The neon flashes and changes colors, and the four big words "sauerkraut hot pot" are bright red on the signboard.

Several waiters were busy in and out.

One of the skinny young waitresses saw me and him coming over and hurriedly greeted him and arranged a seat.

After a long day of choosing, the two of us finally picked a table under the tree outside the store.

He didn't speak, so I took it upon myself to order the bottom of the sauerkraut pot, square meat, potato chips with green vegetables, yam slices, interphase fat beef, dried tofu shreds, tofu bubbles, fish balls cut crab and shrimp crawlers, old vinegar spinach, peanuts and cucumbers, a box of pure raw and a pot of barley tea.

In the blink of an eye, cups and plates were lined up, and copper pots were placed in the middle of the table.

The pot is boiling and the heat rises, there is sauerkraut at the bottom of the sauerkraut pot, the more the sauerkraut in the Northeast is cooked, the more fragrant it is, it must be accompanied by house meat, and the crab and shrimp crawler are cut first, that is, the skin shrimp.

The sauerkraut is boiled in the pot with the square meat, the heat is churning, and the oil flowers float after a while, and the aroma is tangy.

"Am I ordering a little too much?" I opened two bottles of beer, handed him one, picked it up and poured it myself, the cold beer swirled in my mouth, it was very refreshing, I looked at the carbon chief of the copper pot on the adjacent table and muttered: "You have to be very careful with this pot, or you will burn someone to death if you are not careful." ”

He lowered his head slightly, the corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily, and then "hehe" laughed a few times, stretched out his chopsticks and put a few pieces of fat cow into the pot, casually shook the head of the chopsticks, picked it up and licked it in his mouth, and then took the sesame paste, fermented bean curd and leek flowers in a small bowl and mixed them, and put a spoonful of the hot pot restaurant's own fried chili oil into a small bowl, and after doing all this, he put the chopsticks on the plate and said slowly: "Not much, I remember that I used to eat more than this." ”

I grinned and stretched out my chopsticks to grab all the pieces of meat he had put in the pot onto my plate.

As long as he can talk to me, I can still persuade him.

3.

"I've been dizzy lately, and I'm dizzy now." He pouted, picked up the whole plate of meat, and put it all down into the pot.

"It's normal for you to feel dizzy now, we've both been drinking all afternoon." I picked up my beer and took a sip.

He didn't speak, his eyes fixed on the heat coming from the hot pot and the meat tumbling up and down.

I finished the meat on the plate only to realize that something was wrong with him, coughed, and held up the bottle to him for a drink.

He picked up the bottle, touched it lightly, and took a big sip of it.

"Let's talk about it." I put down the bottle and looked at him, "It's basically been me talking all afternoon, listen to you this time, I'm still the same sentence, I don't think you're in the right state." ”

"Hmm." He answered, picked up the bottle and took another sip, "I'll go to the bathroom." ”

Before I could answer, he got up and walked into the store.

4.

19:48。

He had been there for a full twenty minutes, and I almost kicked open the toilet door to see if he had fallen into the pit or run down the sewer to get somewhere else.

"You crawled out of the pit?"

"I've been hearing people talking to me lately."

I frowned, "Someone talking to you?" Who? ”

"I don't know who it is, I can't see him."

I looked at him earnestly and motioned for him to continue, while I listened quietly, without interjecting or moving my chopsticks, and from time to time I took a big sip with him with a wine bottle.

You must remember that there is a saying in my memory: "Listening carefully is the best comfort in itself." ”

It took him a long time to come back to his senses from his stunnedness.

"I don't really know who he is, I can't see him at all. But his voice was clear, and he told me how to write it, how to finish Untitled. He closed his eyes, "Just like me in the novel, I am under the control of some kind of power to complete the plot he formulated, I seem to be just a robot who can write, he gives me instructions, makes requests with me, I search, and then pieces together all kinds of fragmented information, rearrange and combine the scattered words, to achieve the effect that he is satisfied with." He gritted his teeth and shook his head slightly, "I don't want to be like this, it feels so strange, every day I wake up and see me in the mirror, as if I see another person, more and more strange, who am I?" ”

I tried to control my expression as much as I could, so that my expression was not so shocked, and I tried to show as much as I could understand him and understand what he meant.

Raised his hand and looked at his watch, 20:03.

"Do you think I'm about to split my personality?" He suddenly became excited, and I hurriedly shook my head and told him that I didn't think that way at all, and that a good writer should be like this, blending in with his work.

He laughed when he heard me, "Blend in with your own work?" But most of this work was not written by me! ”

"You don't have to care about that." I took a sip of wine, took a deep breath and said, "We've known each other for more than ten years, I don't care about this, whoever takes it out and publishes it is whoever, and whoever signs it is whoever." After thinking about it, I realized that saying this didn't fully convey what I meant, so I added, "What I mean is mine is yours." ”

"Really? What's yours is mine? ”

I nodded.

"You'd better tell the truth."

"Absolutely true, but you're in a very bad state right now, don't care about any novels, find something else to do, adjust and recreate."

“8254874464。”

The numbers came out of his mouth again.

“8254874464。” He repeated, "8254874464, what does that mean?" Don't you really know? It's like coming out of thin air in my brain, and there are people whispering to me, what's going on? 8254874464, what must it mean...... Didn't you write it before? Think about it, did you ever have this set of numbers in the stories you wrote? What should it be? ”

I shook my head.

"That's weird, what the hell does he mean?" He finished his own drink and took a long sip of wine.

Beer ran down the corners of his mouth, and his chest was wet with a large slice.

The wine was drunk quickly and urgently.

５．

He touched the stubble on his chin, then wiped his mouth with his hand and said slowly: "I'm going to be driven crazy by him, is this a punishment for me?" He laughed, "Punish me for not being emotionally single-minded, punish me for being dissatisfied, punish me for being greedy, punish me for overeating!" After speaking, he grabbed a chopstick meat, regardless of the hot mouth, dipped it in the dipping sauce and sent it to his mouth, "Punish me, punish me, why don't you punish you?" ”

I laughed.

"Every day when I lie in bed and close my eyes, I will enter another world, in that world I am another me, I do the same thing, I write day and night in winter and summer, write with a pen, write with a computer, write with a mobile phone, write all the time, if I don't write he will write, in the end I still have to write under his arrangement."

"Don't think about it, the more you think about it, the more you can't tell which is the real you."

He laughed, "You still think I'm mentally wrong, I'm schizophrenic, split another me or several mes?" He remembered that he himself had said the same thing before, "But you know, the split me is not me." He then laughed, "Is there a familiar feeling that you and I are eating hot pot under this tree?" ”

I looked up at the dense canopy of trees.

Has all this ever happened?

"He's going to kill you." He smiled, the corners of his mouth twitching, "You're always going to die in the story, through all sorts of ways, but the end result is the same, you're going to die." ”

"Listen to me, you can't be like this anymore, any writer with some 'Taoism' can't be like you, confusing reality and fantasy, haven't you always said that you are a professional novelist?"

He took another large piece of meat and dipped it in a dipping bowl, put it in his mouth, and said as he chewed, "Have you ever seen a professional novelist like me?" What kind of bullshit am I writing? No one is watching it, and if they do, they will say that this guy is not crazy, right? The gravy mixed with sauce trickled to his clothes as the corners of his mouth twitched, "They all say I'm crazy, I don't care, I can be a writer like that, those people might as well go to make shoes, haha." He laughed wildly, and the meat he ate almost stuck in his throat, "Then I'll just be crazy to show them, they may like crazy people, because crazy people are on the left and on the right, I'm either a genius or a madman, they all say I'm crazy, I'm crazy." ”

"Stop drinking, let's go home." The people around him were also drinking and chatting, everyone was immersed in the smell of wine and meat, and no one noticed his strange appearance, but he was so real in my eyes, and now he is not the same person he used to be, "You go to the hospital with me tomorrow." ”

"To the hospital? Why go to the hospital? He wiped his mouth again, "I'm not sick. He thought for a moment and then said, "I'm not sick, you can't be trying to harm me, are you?" You want me to die with you? Ha ha! He laughed even more maniacally, "You can't kill me, and I can't be buried with you and with you." ”

I was a little overwhelmed by the face of a person who seemed to have a mental problem and who had drunk so much.

"I used to want to be a well-known writer, do you remember? What is a well-known writer? What is famous? You've got to have a bit of experience, right? You need to have some miscellaneous knowledge, right? You've got to read a certain amount of it, right? The ancients all said, 'Read 10,000 books and travel 10,000 miles', I agree with it, only in this way can I do a good job. He stopped talking and stared at me and said, "Why am I telling you this?" ”

His face was full of doubts, looking left and right, looking up and down for something, "Is that you?" You asked me to tell him this? This is the need for the plot, you need me to say this, in order to portray me as a depressed and pretentious person? He pulled back from under the table, stared at me again, and said, "None of these things I wanted to say to you, they were all he asked me to tell you." ”

"Can you be normal?" I'm a little angry.

"Shout what? Scare me? I've said it, these are not what I want to say, it's what he asked me to tell you, to put it simply, I don't want to tell you this, I just have to drink with you, drink wine, do you understand? And what I'm telling you about now has anything to do with drinking? It's embarrassing! He picked up the bottle, and I reached for it, and he flashed backwards with his chair, and behind him was the road, and in an instant a red Jetta taxi drove behind him and nearly hit him.

"Okay, you drink, I'll drink with you, you come over and order, it's dangerous on the side of the road."

He threw his head back and drank his wine, and pointed his left hand at me to warn me not to grab his wine again.

"I can feel ......," he burped as he put down his bottle, "I can feel that you're alienating me, and there's a gap between the two of us." He raised his hand and rubbed the skin in front of his neck, "It's not a barrier, it's a chasm, it's wide, it's deep." ”

６．

He looked at me with his mouth open with chopsticks, this expression was the same as when I first met more than ten years ago, I drank too much, talked too much, my brain couldn't keep up with the speed of my mouth, and my mouth couldn't match my brain.

"You tell you the point." I swallowed and spit, he was probably playing crazy and stupid.

"That's all about that." He cupped his glasses and said, "You still hate me very much in your heart...... What's a good word......" he took a sip of his beer, "Plagiarism, yes, that's a good word, I plagiarized your work, and I changed it and published it with my name." He put down the beer bottle and smiled: "Haha, although the signature is me, you actually wrote it." ”

When he saw that I was silent, he approached me and said, "So you hate me very, very much, and want me to die." ”

"I think you've drunk too much."

"Yes, I drank too much, did you drink too much? Let's talk about it next! Don't pretend, I serialized "Untitled" on the Internet, and the result was not satisfactory, you are actually happy in your heart, right? I locked myself in the house, I had a mental problem, my girlfriend ran away, you must be gloating, right? Our whole family scolded me, even my mother who gave birth to me scolded me for not being filial, scolded me for being nothing, scolded me for achieving nothing, scolded me for not even marrying a daughter-in-law, I told you this, you are happier, right? ”

"How did this happen......" I laughed, shaking my head.

"People are like that, even the closest friends." His eyes darkened, and his tone was sad, "Do you think I'd be really crazy?" ”

"I said no, would you believe it?"

He pursed his lips and took a sip of wine, "Of course you don't believe it, because you don't believe it yourself, we don't believe it, and our brothers are still enemies, let alone us." ”

I clicked my lips: "Haha, I obey you." I admit that what you said was. ”

He put down the beer bottle: "I added a QQ exchange group with writers a few years ago, and the people in the group are all talking about one thing in person and doing another thing privately, and the collections, likes, and comments are all purposeful." They don't even look at your article and comment 'awesomely written, engaging, keep it up'. Everyone, in everything he does, he has a purpose. He lifted his glasses and continued, "I have a purpose, you have a purpose, what is the purpose of your visit today?" Is it to see my jokes? ”

"You won't believe me." The person in front of me is not what he used to be.

"How do you know I won't believe it if you didn't say it?" He suddenly looked intoxicated, and he didn't know what was in his mind.

I nodded as I drank, "Okay, let me tell you, I think you've been weird lately, and I'm not very reassured." ”

"Am I weird there? I think I'm fine. He couldn't help but close his eyes and continue to revel in it.

I sighed, tapped the table with the beer bottle and said, "Are you done venting?" Then let's go home, and you can go to the hospital with me tomorrow. ”

He opened his eyes, then coughed, and said with a smile on the corner of his mouth: "I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm not sick." ”

"I know." I slammed my chopsticks on the table and said with a smile, "You're just pretending to be crazy and stupid, and you want to know what's going on in my heart, now you know?" “

"Borrow light! Let's let yo! Be careful that the pot is hot! The carbon chief shouted as he held the hot copper pot.

He smiled, "It's not that I want to know what you think, it's that he wants to know what you really think." ”

"I hope you're doing well in the future." I stood up, not wanting to dwell on it any longer, and I already knew in my heart.

Just as I turned around, he asked, "Tao Qiwu, aren't you already dead?" ”

Text: Episode 41 - End -

"Nightmare Floating Life" - End of the full text -