Doomsday Wonderland

The chill was almost tangible, hanging heavily amongst the air particles, and brought the temperature of the room down to an absolute freeze.

The air was still, there was no sound, and Lin Sanjiu could feel nothing but the gloomy and raw air that coated every pore on her body. The condition was so frigid that she couldn’t even breathe properly.

Another puff of white breath kissed her ear. It was nearer this time.

Behind her was a dreadful stillness.

Then, there was a sound; the suffocating eternal hush was shattered. Emboldening herself, she looked onto the cosmos outside the glass door and whispered under her breath, “…That’s strange. Where is he…”

As she said that, she moved one step closer to the glass door. Had she not psych up and focused her muscles, her legs might have gone weak.

At the back of Lin Sanjiu’s reflection, a pale contour line was faintly materializing. She stared fixate at the outline, and gently placed her hand on the glass panel.

The outline quivered.

“He saw his reflection!”

As the thought flashed into her mind, Lin Sanjiu kept her balance by pressing on the glass panel and sent a kick at her back. She was aiming at the man’s knee, but the latter was a heartbeat faster. He took a step back to evade her boot and quickly connected with a counter-attack of his own by grabbing onto her ankle. Lin Sanjiu’s heart wrenched as she twisted her body, her hand gestured half a circle in the air, and she slammed the bottle in her hand on that deformed face. Crash. In seconds, the liquid contents sprayed out into the air from the shattered bottle, drenching her entirely.

The man released a guttural beast-like growl, covering his face with his hand. Lin Sanjiu saw the opportunity and withdrew her leg from his grasp. She quickly ran her fingers across the door, attempting to unlock it. The man had blocked the walkway entirely behind her, and she had merely a few seconds before she could escape from the man’s clutches…

However, just when her fingers touched the door lock, she felt an intense sharp pain coursing from the rear of her head. The man was grabbing her hair with a deadly grip, as if he was trying to pull her scalp out altogether. Lin Sanjiu winced at the pain and helplessly lifted her head backward along with the force as the man hissed into her ear, “…When I’m in pain, I will be furious.”

She couldn’t free herself from the man’s steel-like grip, and he was dragging her back into the room. Lin Sanjiu whimpered unconsciously, extending her fingertip as far as she could to reach for the door lock. Just when her finger touched the door lock and it slid open with a click, she felt the man had suddenly exerted more force on his grip. Thanks to the sudden boost, he had successfully pulled her down to the floor.

“…First time in the astral plane?”

Lin Sanjiu fell hard on the ground littered with the debris of the bottle which she had shattered a few seconds ago. A sharp pain ripped quickly through Lin Sanjiu’s entire body, numbing her senses. Yet, she was still sensible enough to feel the man’s hot breath puffing on her face, “Too bad, this will be your last time here as well.”

Seizing the opportunity as the man released her hair, Lin Sanjiu propped herself up from the floor on one elbow, trying to make her getaway. It was just that, without her evolved ability, the physical prowess between a Russian mafia and an office lady was as significant as heaven was from earth. It wasn’t long before the man stepped on her hair and pinned her on the floor. In her horror-stricken gasp, she saw the man had balled his right hand into a fist, and the next thing she felt was a massive hit on her windpipe.

Pain cleaved quickly through Lin Sanjiu’s throat. For a moment, there were stars in Lin Sanjiu’s eyes as she could almost feel her trachea had been squeezed into her brain, soon to be snapped into two pieces. Seeing that the deadly punch was soon to make its second descend, she fought back the intense pain tugging at her head and used all her might to turn around. Then, the piece of sharp bottle fragment, which she had been holding in her palm all that time, was finally stabbed into the man’s calf.

As her adversary doubled over in pain, Lin Sanjiu immediately jolted free and lunged toward the glass door. After she’d pulled the door opened, she rushed into the walkway that paved with a wooden plank. In a blink, Lin Sanjiu heard heavy and quick footsteps ranging out behind her as the man had followed her into the walkway.

Lin Sanjiu’s lungs burned with pain as she continued to sprint down the walkway. But she wasn’t given enough liberty to tend to her injuries because she was about to reach the end of the walkway. Beyond that, lay the cosmos.

The moment she left the house, she knew she would only fall into the man’s clutches even faster.

When Lin Sanjiu stopped to formulate her escape plan, the man’s head had appeared from the corner behind her. Lin Sanjiu looked around as her heart pounded like a wild beast trying to escape her chest. She found she had trapped herself in a tight corner. Next to her was the front door that was barred with a sofa and locked by her, so she couldn’t get in through that door now. Though she could enter the house through the broken window, the window was roughly six steps at her back. In other words, she had to retrace down the walkway and embrace the peril of getting caught by the man if she wanted to go into the house via the window.

Her situation now called for her immediate action as she would end up in a sorry state if she remained indecisive.

Gritting her teeth, Lin Sanjiu turned and rushed back. As the distance between them got shorter, a grotesque smile was swiftly formed on the man’s face that plighted with large and small gummas. Seeing that the man had already stretched his hand forward, Lin Sanjiu made a sudden swerve and hurled herself toward the outside of the walkway.

They would revert to their higher consciousness form the moment they left the walkway. The man was ultra fast. As Lin Sanjiu made her moves, he leaped and jumped out from the walkway first. Pale starlight appeared amongst the darkness. However, before Lin Sanjiu left the wooden floor of the walkway, she exerted force against the edge of the walkway with her feet.

Without wasting a second, she propelled herself into the window.

“You insolent—”

The man cursed Lin Sanjiu aloud in the air. Congealing into a streak of white ray, he dashed into the house again. The moment he touched the fringe of the walkway, he returned to his human form. Then, he rushed toward the window and grabbed Lin Sanjiu by her feet.

At that precise moment, half of Lin Sanjiu’s body was inside the house; only her feet were left dangling at the window frame. When she felt the tug at her feet, she struggled with all her might, sending kicks after kicks at the man. As one of her kicks connected with the chest of the man and caused the latter to stagger back, she took the opportunity and pulled her entire body, including her feet, into the house. Only then, she realized that she had been screaming the whole time.

“Well, here we are, back to square one,” the man snarled through gritted teeth and heavy breath as he recomposed himself at the walkway, “…I have decided, little kitty, before I strip away your Potential Growth Value, I’m gonna etch a tattoo in your brain first, with needle and urine… Oh, don’t think I can’t do that.”

As he said that, he slowly moved toward the other side and soon, his figure disappeared from the walkway.

The concrete had not only served as the protective barrier for Lin Sanjiu, but it also had prevented her from attaining the exact location of her assailant. Moments ago, the man had utilized the wall to his advantage and tricked her into the room whilst he crawled into the house through the window and ambushed her from behind. Lin Sanjiu couldn’t help but wince at the fact that she had no other way to shatter the impasse or turn the table to her favor. There were too many doors and windows in this house, and all she could do was move back and fro between the doors and windows as she didn’t know how to put on a decent defense.

“And she calls this a splendid house?”

Lin Sanjiu chastised that person who placed her in this house internally as she made her move into the deeper part of it. She rummaged through the study room, and the rear entrance, yet there was no sign of the man. She returned to the living room again. And as her gaze fell on the glassless window that allowed the entrance of the chilling draughts of wind, she heard that somebody had shattered the window in the bathroom at her back.

Terror-filled, she immediately ran into the kitchen and took another bottle of wine as that was her only mean of defending herself. Then, quietly, she crept toward the walkway.

The walkway was dimly lit. The door to the bathroom was half ajar, and the lock was clashing itself against the door panel as the door swayed in the wind. Although there were no lights in this house, Lin Sanjiu recalled that the door was tightly shut when she walked past it a few minutes ago. She could feel the freezing draughts of wind even though she was standing far away from the bathroom.

However, there was only the echo of the clanking of the door in the walkway. It highlighted the deadly silence behind the bathroom.

Driving by an unknown force, Lin Sanjiu stopped moving forward. She bent her body down, deploying a half-squatting position as she pricked up her ears.

At first, she couldn’t hear any sound behind her fluttering and loud heartbeats; only the tingling sensation of pain, trembling, and the sweat in her palms that were apparent to her. Nevertheless, when she calmed herself down, she had caught a strange noise with her ears. The noise was soft, and she might think she had a paracusia if she didn’t concentrate all her focus on her ears.

“Creak” —It sounded like this, and it had her brought her two brows together, meeting at the center of her forehead as she felt the noise was familiar.

She ferreted through her memories for the reference of the noise and when the realization finally dawned on her, her blood turned cold.

It was the sound when somebody had stepped on broken glass.

From the window in the living room, the person only needed to walk a few more steps forward and he would be able to take in the entirety of the walkway, including the spot she was squatting right now.

Lin Sanjiu did not have the confidence for another few more melee struggles.

Holding her breath, she looked back. A shadow was standing up from the ground. It seemed that he had just come in from the window.

Lin Sanjiu’s heart skipped a beat as she pressed her body against the ground. She put the bottle of wine down and slithered her way back into the kitchen. She could make use of the cooking island in the kitchen to obscure her presence from the man. When she was under the cooking island and had tucked in her entire body, the man had arrived at the walkway.

He continued to walk down the walkway. Apparently, he didn’t realize somebody was hiding beside him.

If somebody now told her that there was a way that could stop a human’s heart from making any sound, Lin Sanjiu would’ve been more than glad to try it out. She inched back silently and climbed over the refrigerator. Her escapade was coming to an end—all she needed to do right now was crawl across the area below the stove and wave through the cooking island, then she could escape through the back of the man.

However, suddenly, the man’s footsteps stopped.

“Shit!”

Lin Sanjiu shuddered and rose to her feet at once. She had forgotten that she’d put the bottle of wine on the center of the walkway!

Just when she had gotten up from the floor, the anemic, full of lesions face turned back into the kitchen. The moment his gaze fell on Lin Sanjiu, he offered her a contorted smile, “Pretty good at hiding, huh.” Then, he pounced on her.

Lin Sanjiu didn’t have time to think—not that thinking would have been wise at the moment. She lunged, and held tightly to the refrigerator beside her, trying to push it forward. Yet, the weight of a large double-door refrigerator was something she couldn’t overcome in her current state. Even she had strained every ounce of power from her muscles, the fridge did not crash down as she wished. Nevertheless, it’s still foiled the oncoming of the man.

Right now, making a detour around the cooking island was her sole escape route, yet that was also the direction where the man was attacking from. Speed was of the essence here, for the one who outsped the other would be the winner of this game of chasing. However, just as she began to sprint, something had barged into her field of vision and she stopped her movement abruptly.

There was a cleaning spray, sitting obediently on top of the cooking island.

“What happened? Why have you stopped running now?”

The bloodless face took on an even grislier tone in the ill-lit room. The man had blocked the other side of the cooking island and completely trapped Lin Sanjiu in the kitchen.

Lin Sanjiu recoiled two steps and her back hit the stove.

“I hate to say this but I have to admit that it feels great to have a corporeal body,” the man panted as he walked into the kitchen, “…It has been ages since I last slaughtered a woman with my own hands… I’ll give you a treat, cutie pie—I won’t kill you straight away; instead, I want you to feel the fear of your life ebbing from your body as I drain your Potential Growth Value dry.”

Without turning her head, Lin Sanjiu fingered across the stove for the knob. Then, she placed her finger on the knob and prayed to God in her heart earnestly.  “Oh God, if you’re listening, hear me out. Please, if this house is a grand abode, then this has to work.”

Snap. She had ignited all four burners on top of the hob.

The blue flames with yellowish-orange tips lighted up from the darkness, and she could feel the temperature of the flame licking at her back. She made a few quick steps toward the cooking island and as the man charged at her, she jumped onto the cooking island and attempted to leap outward. However, just as she touched the table top, a hand had gripped her from behind.

“Where do you think you are going?” The man asked with a parched voice.

Suddenly, the world began to turn on itself. The man dragged Lin Sanjiu over and pinned her on top of the cooking island. His disfigured face covered by a mask came closer to her own.

“This is not your real body, as it is the result of the transmogrification of your Higher Consciousness,” he said in a low voice. Using one hand, he clenched on Lin Sanjiu’s throat and used the other to gouge into her eyes, “… So you won’t pass out no matter how much pain is inflicted on you.”

The air was choked off her lungs, and her face reddened but Lin Sanjiu’s mind had never been so clear before. She yelled soundlessly like a demented goldfish. She used one of her hand to block the hand of the man from reaching her eyes. At the same time, she stretched her other hand and grabbed the kitchen cleaning spray.

Unfazed, the man didn’t even turn his head to see what she was doing. He panted and smiled, “Seriously? Do you really think you can kill me with that thing? Not even a steel tube could harm me.”

Lin Sanjiu couldn’t speak a word now. She yanked the tool free, and the cleaning spray flew across the kitchen. She somewhat had seen that the bottle had dropped on top of the burners through the corner of her eyes—this was all she could manage to see before the man squeezed harder on her throat and the world before her eyes swirled into darkness.

Hold on for a little longer, hold on for a little longer…

Every minute seemed like a year for her.

When the spray can on the hog finally exploded behind the man with a loud bang, the explosion had sent bright inferno onto the ceiling, flooring, and the back of the man. The burst swept everything into nothingness, engulfing the two people that were struggling in a fracas at the cooking island in its wake.

Lin Sanjiu’s ears went numb from the pained howling. And she couldn’t tell if the howl was coming from the man or if it was her own. The man was standing in between her and the stove, hence he took most of the blast. When Lin Sanjiu felt that the hand on her throat had loosened its grip, she kicked the man a few times and rolled down the cooking island.

… She didn’t know how she managed to drag her badly battered body from the kitchen to the living room as the explosion continued to gobble down more parts of the house. The blast had gradually turned into an intense fire. With a strength born of desperation, Lin Sanjiu pushed the sofa away and reached out for the knob. Her eyes, nose, mouth, and every part of her was bathed in fresh blood. But the good thing was that she’s still alive.

The door opened and Lin Sanjiu rolled into the walkway.

A pair of high heels, shiny and delicate, was standing right in front of her eyes.