latent syndrome

Chapter 1 1. The Beginning
The walls were covered in foul spots like bug eggs.

The dense, filthy mold on the furniture gave the room an extremely damp look.

A pile of corpses of moths and strange insects were laid out inside the vertical lamp post, and the light projected was extremely weak.

A few cockroaches sprinted across the cracked shoddy wooden table.

The brown rust on the stool had congealed into misshapen bumps.

A tall woman in a black dress is sitting on an iron stool, combing her hair in front of the mirror.

Colin got a glimpse of this scene through a small hole in the wall, not because he had a nasty penchant for voyeurism.

For unknown reasons, a pothole the size of two fingers suddenly appeared on the bedroom wall.

And there are always some weird voices coming from next door.

Either it is the sound of dense chewing and grinding, or the sound of small reptiles rolling.

But every time I heard the noise, there was nothing abnormal, and the owner of the room didn't care about living in such an environment.

What a strange woman, Colin frowned.

The hand of the woman combing her hair suddenly stopped.

Startled by this reaction, Colin moved his eyes away from the small hole and quickly moved away.

The pothole is relatively low, only about [-] centimeters from the ground, and you can only see the opposite side if you lie on your stomach or half kneel with your head bent.

Colin inexplicably felt a little creepy, even the garbage dump could not describe the place, it was like a slaughterhouse of a perverted murderer.

I didn't expect that I bought an apartment less than half a year ago, and my neighbor turned out to be such a freak.

This may be the disadvantage of the one-bedroom, one-living room type.

Do you want to discuss with her?Although the pothole was extremely small, it was deep enough. If it was to be filled, there would be a lot of movement and it would alarm her.

But the other party was someone who could not be treated with common sense, probably a little crazy, and Colin was extremely reluctant to talk to her.

He simply didn't think about it anymore, perhaps because of his busy work these days, his temples were throbbing.

A long and tingling feeling of separation, like a fishing line and an iron hook embedded in his brain, pulling it out.

Colin stood up, it was getting late and he had to go to bed.

The next day.

He got up and went to the bathroom to tidy up his shirt and suit, and wash up.

His oily hair was meticulously combed by him, and he had to work in a securities firm. Card debts and large loans made him unable to slack off.

An unnaturally gloomy spring, a long gray and silent day.

Since that day-long eclipse, Colin could feel that the weather was getting colder and colder, even in April, and it was biting cold.

The high-rise office buildings with all-glass facades reflect the hazy sky and the torrent of vehicles on the ground.

The office illuminated by the cold white electric poles was a bit gloomy. The numb faces and the faint sound of the printer made Colin's thoughts diverge.

In the narrow and cramped grid space, Ke Lin put his hands on the keyboard, and the interlaced and chaotic lines of his stock fingers made him trance, and the picture of last night appeared in his mind.

The more you delve into the weird and ugly space and the woman combing her hair, the more frightening it becomes.

Colin wanted to get rid of this thought from his mind, but he couldn't do it anyway, and the terrifying black figure couldn't get rid of it.

He kept shaking his legs, and the tyrannical anxiety made him irritable to the limit, and finally stood up uncontrollably.

This weird move caught the attention of everyone in the office, and the pair of dull and cold gazes without emotional fluctuations were like robots.

Colin felt uncomfortable, got up and went to the fire exit to smoke.

night.

The cold wind was blowing to the bones, but Colin felt even colder when he returned to the apartment. He couldn't help but look at the pothole on the wall.

clatter……

The sound of dripping water came from the tiny slit, again and again, like a faucet valve not fully closed.

Colin swallowed.

Obviously hated that place to the extreme.

But there seems to be a magical power there, if the neighbors are just ordinary people, then there will be no interest.

Even a sexy girl will feel guilty because of peeping, so she despises her vulgarity and inferiority.

But that kind of weirdness and mystery, mixed with madness and chaotic curiosity, will drive Colin crazy.

It was indeed immoral behavior, but that thirst and curiosity couldn't be easily curbed.

He just wanted to find out the source of the sound, and know what the lunatic woman was up to, in order not to let the freak affect his rest.

Colin walked towards the pothole. After his body froze for a while, he still couldn't restrain the human instinct to explore the root cause.

He slowly squatted down, and the voice became clearer.

tick...

The sound of the water droplets was not clear and clear, with a slowly swaying stickiness, like the saliva dripping from the mouthparts of some kind of insect.

His eyes were close to the pothole, and he looked through the wall.

In the eyes, there is only a piece of dark red, which is very blurry, and there are some black dust spots.

Ke Lin breathed a sigh of relief, and a big stone fell in his heart. It should be that the other party also noticed the hole, so he blocked it.

After staring at it for a while without realizing it, Colin had a headache, accompanied by long and sharp tinnitus, and the scene in front of him was full of changing and distorted abstract ripples.

Didn't the blood supply to the head because of squatting for too long?

Colin didn't care anymore, and fell asleep after taking a bath.

three days later.

A high-rise office building in the central business district of Los Angeles.

"Mr Colin, you are fired."

There was thunder in the dark clouds, and with a startling sound, violent rain poured down.

The rain slammed on the floor-to-ceiling windows sparing no effort, and the spacious office furnished in cool colors was filled with broken and frenzied noises.

"Are there any questions?"

He lit a cigarette and turned his back. In front of the thick black horseshoe-shaped desk, he could only see the sleek back of his hair, the back of his high-end custom-made suit, and the dark clouds pressing down outside the French windows.

Ke Lin was expressionless, with a few strands of hair combed back, looking a little embarrassed. Although the Vacheron Constantin on his wrist could barely support the scene, but the water-stained suit completely ruined the image.

As a stockbroker, his advice caused investors to lose money, losing clients in succession reduced the efficiency of the firm, and all kinds of bad decisions also brought him into disrepute, and he will bid farewell to this profession forever.

"I accept the result."

Ke Lin slowly unbuttoned the top button of his collar with a flat tone.

He seemed to have expected that for some reason, he was always in a trance recently, perhaps suffering from severe neurasthenia.

Ever since I witnessed that room, I have always been restless, and once that woman even appeared in a dream.

The lack of a source of income made Colin a little distressed. Fortunately, the company gave a considerable amount of dismissal compensation, because after the reputation of Colin's bad manager spread, the rich people who were in the circle would never hire him. In a sense, it is a meal with a severed head.

Colin drove back after drinking slightly drunk in the tavern.

The sun was setting, and the sky was a dirty red-yellow color, which was extremely uncomfortable.

But when he arrived in the community, he found that it was extremely lively. There were seven or eight police cars parked at the entrance of the gate, and there were many good people discussing together.

Colin didn't care about this kind of thing, but when he found his building, he was a little sober from his drunken state.

Some big incident happened in the building where I was, and people with good things were coming here. The police had to maintain order and keep irrelevant people out.

Colin was also stopped, and he was not let in until he proved that he was a resident of the building.

When taking the elevator, the electronic billboard played a promotional advertisement that was almost repeated by idiots. For some reason, Ke Lin always felt that the atmosphere was not right.

When he arrived at the floor he was on, the corridor on the fourteenth floor, he was completely awake from the wine, and he was completely drunk.

The corridors were full of police officers in uniform and hats, not co-ops but criminals.

They pulled up a cordon and repeatedly warned people not to watch, otherwise they would be arrested for disturbing public order.

But he still couldn't stand the ordinary people's nature of watching the excitement, so he stood outside the cordon and looked in hard.

Beads of sweat appeared on Ke Lin's forehead, because the place where the cordon was pulled was the next door to him.

The place where you can see through the small hole.

"What happened here?"

Colin squeezed hard to get to the cordon, but the door next door was only opened a gap, so he couldn't see what was going on inside.

"It has nothing to do with you, there are other people, leave quickly, or I will really arrest you."

An old criminal policeman's face was ashen. He had just entered the room to take a look. He had never seen such a thing in his career for more than [-] years. It was too frightening. His fingers were still trembling slightly.

"I live next door and I think I have a right to know."

Colin spoke resolutely, the room was too incomprehensible.

Hearing that Ke Lin lived next door to the woman, the older detective shrank his pupils and looked at Ke Lin in shock.

"Did you know the dead man?"

The detective's throat rolled, his expression extremely astonished.

Ke Lin's expression froze, and he shook his head, emotionally surging in his heart.

died……

The woman who combed her hair was dead.

At this time, a troublemaker said to Colin: "I took a look when the door was open just now, and the female corpse was kneeling in the corner with her hands on the wall, as if she was looking for something."

The good guy trembled a little.

Even in daylight, there are people all around.

Colin still felt a chill spreading from his spine, spreading to every inch of his skin, and all pores were tightly closed.

"Give it up, let it go."

Three criminal police came out of the room carrying a medical trolley. On the stretcher was a human-shaped body bag wrapped in black chemical materials.

The moment the body bag came out, the door was instantly closed by the police, and the key was used to lock it, and a note and paper was pasted.

At the same time, the police officers pushed away irrelevant people to ensure the smooth passage of the carts.

All the onlookers, including Colin, focused their eyes on the body bag, because corpses are very rare to modern people.

The three criminal policemen pushing the cart were all as white as paper, and their hands and sleeves were stained with colorful liquid tissue, which seemed to be oil condensate floating on the surface of the ditch. There were traces of washing, but it was still soaked into the fabric of the clothes.

They seemed to have been greatly stimulated, and they were out of their minds.

bang bang...

When entering the elevator, a criminal policeman may have accidentally touched the lever of the medical cart because he was too nervous.

The plane of the stretcher tilted, and the body bag hit the ground, making a heavy, muffled sound.

"What are you eating, why are you so careless!"

The leading sheriff roared loudly, his sharp eyes seemed to tear the erring police officer alive.

The body bag that fell to the ground, the zipper was torn at one corner, exposing the head of the corpse.

Colin froze in place, staring at the head.

It was an extremely terrifying human face, one eye was suppurated and swollen and covered with deformed tissue, the other eye was wide open, and the retina was severely congested.

That blood red.

Saw it with Colin through the pothole that night.

same.

(End of this chapter)