Horror Game Designer

“The glare of the dead will never disappear. My friend became a corpse, but she still remembered me because she kept staring at me. My parents would move around the bedroom at night. Sometimes, they would both stand beside my bed. Their expressions made me think that they were strangers. They seemed to have my dead friend’s face.” The man hugged his head. He didn’t dare to sleep. Once he closed his eyes, he would see those ghosts. “I tried to save myself. I went to my friend’s home and entered her bedroom. It was then that I realised she had been loving me for a long time. She even had my childhood photos. Her room was covered in my pictures in different poses. I took her as my best friend, but I was only her toy. On her computer, I saw the videos she took. She had been tailing me before I even knew her. The paparazzi idea was merely her way to satisfy her perversion.” The bloodshot eyes filled with pain and guilt.

“Your friend liked to stalk, and you liked to be stalked. You two are perfect for each other.” Xuan Wen didn’t show pity for the man.

“I only treated her as a friend.”

“You should have more than one such friend, right?” Xuan Wen saw through the man’s heart. “Can you tell me how your friend died?”

Sitting on the bed, the man’s expression became more painful. He shook his head, refusing to think about this further.

“You won’t tell us. Is it because you are related to her death? Did you kill her? Was she your first kill?” Xuan Wen picked up the handcuffs at the corner of the ward. “Just how many people you’ve killed to be detained when you’re in ICU?”

Everyone related to this man appeared to have died, but he was still alive. That was very suspicious.

“I can’t remember! That’s all! Certain things happened in the nightmare. They had nothing to do with real life!” The man became agitated. “I’ve never killed in the real world. I haven’t done anything over the line. I am the victim! They are the ghosts!”

“Calm down. Then, tell me. What have you done in the nightmare?” Xuan Wen didn’t come to any conclusions. This patient’s situation was complicated. The kid patient couldn’t differentiate between reality and the game, and this man appeared to have compounded the nightmare and the real world. His situation was worse than the kid.

“In the nightmare…” The man hesitated for a long time before continuing, “My best friend became a spider. Her head grew on a giant spider body. She skittered about as she chased me down. She spat out sticky threads to try to bind me to a giant web.”

“Your best friend became a spider.” Xuan Wen was thoughtful. “Continue.”

“How could a human become a spider in the real world? Therefore, it had to be a nightmare! I was cornered in the dream. In the end, I found an axe and immobilised her. However, she was so tough in the nightmare. She kept getting revived. I had no choice but to bury her.” The man said in fear. “This happened in the nightmare. It had nothing to do with real life. I only killed a giant spider that happened to have her head.”

“Is it possible that you’ve conflated the nightmare and the real world? You said that the spider silk was sticky. Could it be representative of her controlling love towards you?” Before the man could retort her, Xuan Wen walked towards the threads that hung between the doors. “Just like how these threads represent your emotions and nerves.” Xuan Wen took out a scalpel and sliced through one of them. The bell rang, and the thread bled. The man started to convulse like he had been pierced.

“The nightmare has embedded itself into the real world. Your symptom is indeed rare.” Xuan Wen tied the broken thread back. However, the pain and wound couldn’t be erased. “How did your parents die in your nightmare?”

“They…” The man slowly remembered some things. “Mother’s body lost all its bones. She only had the flabby skin in my nightmare. She could transform into different things. When I dreamed of the sea, she was the boat; When I fell from the sky, she was the balloon. Father’s body was hidden inside a white house made from bones. Whenever I had a nightmare, I had to find the bone house made from his body. Once I found the house, the nightmare would end.”

“Your mother has been protecting you, and your father is the key to ending the nightmare.” Xuan Wen felt that her earlier hypothesis was right. The man couldn’t have killed his parents.

Su Mo was dumbfounded when he heard these things. A normal person like him couldn’t understand the world of the mad.

“I remember your mother calling you Chen Meng earlier.” Xuan Wen took out her phone to search online. There were many Chen Mengs, but there was only one that fit the man’s appearance and job. “Found it…”

There was a case that happened half a year ago in the old city. The killers were actor Chen Meng’s parents. Chen Meng’s life was also ruined because he had been harbouring the killers.

After reading many articles, Xuan Wen had a guess. “From half a year ago, you started to mistake the real world for your nightmare. You are the real killer. Your parents were dragged down by you. They admitted to your sins. That is the only explanation why they would appear in that format in your dreams.”

“Impossible! My parents are missing! They have been taken by the nightmare! I am looking for them too!” The man’s words couldn’t be fully trusted because he couldn’t tell what was a dream and what was real. In other words, he could have lied to himself.

“Compared to that, I’m more curious about what happened to you half a year ago. Why did you start to have difficulty separating the real from the dream?” Xuan Wen asked the key question.

“Half a year ago… I had trouble sleeping, so I came to the hospital for counselling… Yes. It was Li San Hospital.” The man opened his mouth. The blood moved in his eyes. “That day, I wandered down the wrong corridor. I accidentally entered the back building. On the fourth floor of the back building, a doctor helped me. He even gave me some medicine.”

“How could there be a doctor when the back building had been abandoned for so many years already?”

“There was really a doctor. I remember it so clearly. That day, the vice president of Han Hai Charity, Situ An, was there to see the doctor too. Before he left, he even told me that I didn’t need to pay for the medication.” The man added, “Yes. It was inside the psychiatry counselling room on the fourth floor of the back building. At that time, there was a psychiatrist from Hen Shan Penitentiary, who was there for refill, present too!”