After Being Parasitized by a Monster 97

Chapter 97: First Meeting (Occurs before Chapter 1)

August 18, 2173, one week after being hospitalized for a fungal infection.

Cheng Ming felt that there was something extra in her body.

The first thing that showed an abnormality was her hair.

She had told the doctor that her hair was always growing longer on its own at night.

But the doctor had looked at her scalp, which had been razed to the ground for the convenience of treatment, and after a few seconds of silence, he had solemnly and seriously comforted her, saying that she had just had surgery, and it was normal to have discomfort.

Then, her skin had cracked and peeled irregularly, like the earth after a severe drought. And she was always thirsty, the kind of thirst that made her want to drown herself in water.

These symptoms would get better after she had rehydrated, and the hospital had insisted that it was a sequela of a high fever.

And then, a strange teeth mark had appeared on her arm.

When she had first discovered this, the fear that had rushed to the top of her head was no less than discovering that she had been bitten by a ghost. But then, after her rigorous and scientific research and comparison, she had confirmed that it was her own teeth.

On the one hand, there were surveillance cameras outside the hospital room, and during the corresponding period of time, no one else had been in the same room with her. On the other hand, although it was a bit unreasonably sharp and slender, the size, arc, and angle of the circle of teeth marks all matched. It was not a very obvious mark, the wound healed quickly, and the pain was not strong, as if the thing that had occupied her body did not have much malice, but had just bitten down out of pure curiosity.

Did it want to taste human flesh?

The unknown was the most terrifying.

But she had no way to deal with it. Just these, before she had left this hospital room, she could have just ignored it and deceived herself.

However, the decisive event that had pushed her on the verge of a breakdown was that one night, in the middle of the night, she had become more and more uncomfortable in her sleep, until a sharp and strong sound had pierced her eardrums, and she had been woken up by the alarm of the instrument.

The medical staff had rushed in and had surrounded her to deal with a medical emergency—her IV tube had been pulled out, her breathing mask had fallen off, and the other auxiliary life equipment had also strangely stopped working at the same time.

That thing wanted to kill her.

Her life was threatened, and she could finally no longer let it be.

She had asked the white-robed angels if they could do a brain CT for her. She felt that there was a foreign object inside.

As soon as these words were uttered, surrounded by the machines that were clearly malfunctioning due to human operation, they had looked at each other, and then, with a subtle and cautious expression, they had said to her that they knew that the work pressure at the research institute was high, and that it was inevitable to be mentally anxious after being suddenly hospitalized for occupational exposure, and had advised her to relax, and that everything would be fine after the treatment was over.

Cheng Ming: “…”

Alright.

She knew that the path to seeking help from the outside was cut off.

If she were to mess around again, she might be sent to the psychiatric department due to a series of side effects caused by the infection.

The hospital had strengthened its care to prevent her from having any more accidents. Cheng Ming had also tried to ignore it, but the situation had not improved, but had gotten worse. In the following days, she had even shown signs of auditory hallucinations and tinnitus. The sounds were not real, and they were rustling, like the sound of a worm crawling in the grooves of her cerebral cortex. She was often half-asleep and half-awake, and could not distinguish between illusion and reality.

This was a terrifying torture. There was nowhere to complain, and no way to tell anyone. In the endless and continuous torment, it was a person’s chaos and exhaustion.

On another quiet night, enduring the unbearable itching on her scalp that was healing after the surgery, Cheng Ming sat up from her hospital bed.

She felt that the itching had spread to her neck.

In the lightless darkness, she grabbed a handful of her “black hair” that had grown long again, felt for the scissors that she had obtained after a few days of patient lurking under her pillow, picked it up, and tiptoed into the bathroom.

The strands of hair were twisting in her palm.

They were really moving.

In the faint light, she was very sure and certain that she had seen this scene.

Like an echinoderm with many tentacles that had just come out of the water, they were shaking and swaying restlessly. They had drilled out of her poor scalp that had just grown not long ago, and were interspersed between her pale fingers, and they were writhing and rubbing, a very bad touch, like a parasite that was about to suck her flesh and blood dry, both disgusting and terrifying.

The doctor had said that it was normal for her to have discomfort. Was this really normal?

No…

Not normal.

This is not normal.

Cheng Ming knew that she was very abnormal now.

Drip. A drop of water fell from the bathroom ceiling.

The ceiling light was hanging coldly and white, high above, like a cold mist in a deep mountain and old forest that was enveloping this sealed area, and it could not bring her a single bit of warmth.

Her hair was disheveled, and her face was pale. She was wearing a thin hospital gown, and she was pursing her lips. With a fierce cut, snip, she had cut off a section of her hair.

The “hair” floated down, a pure and rich dark black, like the unique blood of a monster, and it had slid into the snow-white tiles, and had accumulated into a thin puddle, and it had even swallowed the light, and had formed a black hole that could not be reflected.

It was angry.

She could clearly feel this.

It was directly reflected in the fact that, thump! her limbs were suddenly out of control, and she had hit the hard mirror with her head. The smooth silver mirror was left with a faint white mist that had been soaked in her body temperature. The sharp weapon that had hurt it had suddenly fallen from her hand, and it had fallen to the drain with a clang, and was stuck. And her abdomen had hit the round and blunt edge of the sink, and a sharp pain was like a blade that had pierced into her soft internal organs, as if it were going to dismember and crush her abdominal cavity—

It was fighting with her for her body.

She didn’t know what it was, and she didn’t know if it knew what she was. They couldn’t communicate effectively, and all their communication was through their bodies. And so, by accident, the dispute had evolved into violence.

Cheng Ming was a little dizzy, and her eyes were dazzled. The pain was like a shrimp, and she had arched her back, and had wanted to curl up her whole body, but she had struggled to lie on the mirror, and had moved her cervical spine a little bit to raise her head. Her eyeballs were slightly bloodshot, and her eyes were red, but she was smiling.

The corners of her mouth were raised in a subtle arc that was both rational and crazy, a very light but very cold smile.

She was really going to be driven crazy by this thing.

“You can understand me, can’t you?”

She was panting, and her heart was beating fast. She could hear the dull thud in her eardrums, but she didn’t know if it was from her pulse, or from her brain. Was it her own heartbeat, or was there someone else hidden under her skin… no, was there another monster?

“What are you?” she murmured.

Fear was everywhere, and it was tightening, and it was making her adrenaline surge, and her muscles were spasming and trembling, and her nerve cells were abnormally active. And so, this feeling was also very similar to excitement, the excitement of finding the truth and finding the real culprit.

Who are you? Why are you here? Why did you choose me?

She listened to her own heartbeat carefully, sensitively, piously, and neurotically, and was looking forward to an echo.

She longed for it, and she believed that it also longed for her.

The desire to kill each other.

She silently moved her wrist and picked up the cold, sharp weapon from the sink, and held it in her palm. If it were in her heart, she would have embedded the tip of the knife into it. If it were in her abdomen, she would have cut it out.

Where are you, my dear?

It was dead silent.

In such an environment, the dripping of the condensed water droplets from a high place hitting the ground was even more obvious, like an ominous countdown in a horror story.

But it did not give a response.

Only the ends of her hair were slowly outlining, and they were showing their existence without any practical meaning, and were provoking her emotions, like a god in a Cthulhu myth who had passed by the earth with a glance, with a disregard and contempt for mortals.

Therefore, swept up by a feeling of powerlessness that she couldn’t grasp, she also began to get angry.

“You can understand, can’t you? Don’t try to fool me.”

Cheng Ming said with a certain murmur. Her thoughts were in a mess, and she didn’t know where the judgment had come from. Perhaps she was just trying to bluff it.

Her voice was not loud, because she was talking to herself, so there was nothing to be particular about.

She stared at herself in the mirror and did her best to suppress her pained breathing. As her lips moved, the hot air she exhaled blurred her appearance and figure, making the “her” inside look abnormally strange.

This terrible reality, this illogical reality.

She hoped that “her” existed, and she was also afraid that “her” really existed.

She had been entangled by an unknown monster. It had taken root here and had taken her body as its own, and it didn’t care about her, the host’s, feelings at all. She suspected that she would rot like an organic matter that was being composted, and would be covered with muddy sores, and would ooze with a viscous pus, and with a human body as a nutrient-rich flower mud, a new bud would grow from inside.

She had to pick it out, she had to.

Her arm muscles were quietly tensed. Cheng Ming held the knife firmly and suddenly raised it and stabbed herself.

A shining arc of light cut through the air and approached the layer of scalp that was close to the dark and slender insects. Just as she was about to use force, the hand that was holding the scissors suddenly shook, and the tip of the knife just brushed past her temples, and the weapon was thrown away again.

Because she had reacted quickly and had raised her other hand to try to intercept it, a splash of blood had bloomed. The skin between the radius and the styloid process of her left wrist was broken, and a clear wound was left, and blood was dripping from it.

The exposed muscles and fascia tissue were twitching. She felt her fingers trembling, and she held on to the cold corner of the porcelain table, and every muscle was tensed to a pale color, and her whole body was using force, and she was not giving it a single chance to exploit a loophole.

They were in a tug-of-war with their bodies as a battlefield, and the physiological signals were the rolling smoke of gunpowder, but her expression was still calm, and she was carefully observing “her” reaction in the mirror.

Those hidden, surging emotions, the sudden surge of power, and the changes in blood pressure that were affected, all made her notice the abnormality.

It was its reaction.

In the same body, no one was better off than the other.

It was undoubtedly angered by her series of crazy actions. The mycelia were twisting in her hand, and after fumbling for a while and not finding an opening, they had changed direction and had wrapped around her wrist from her fingertips. The section that had just been cut off had quickly grown back, and it was like a mass of black mucus that had swallowed her entire hand.

Her hand trembled, and she was a little scared. She subconsciously wanted to tear it off with her backhand, but then she found that there was no more intense pain, and she even felt that it was quite comfortable, cool and cool.

They were licking the blood.

Was it also afraid of pain? Or was it that it didn’t want its granary to be lost?

Cheng Ming knew that her spirit was indeed a little off.

At this moment, she had a very dangerous thought, and she had thought of a way to check and balance it.

She was sure that it was also watching her, so the smile she raised was even more obvious and flamboyant. Wrapped in anger and excitement, she was a wanton provocateur, so pathetic, yet so ruthless:

“You, do you want to die with me?”

The blood that had been squeezed out from the gap was flowing down the skin of her hand, and it was dripping into the broken hair, and the rich red and black were intertwined, as if her blood and its infection were together.

A blood oath.

Parasitism was to achieve the purpose of “life” from the act of parasitism.

Do you want to coexist with me, or die with me?

Little monster.

…

On September 15th, 2173, Cheng Ming was discharged from the hospital.

She passed by the full-length mirror at the end of the corridor and glanced at it. It could not yet speak human language, but she knew that it existed.

It had always been.

She and the monster that would accompany her for the rest of her life had met for the first time.