Mermaid Effect

In this parched central city, a huge, pale moon shone on the roof of Rogers's suburban hut, where strawberry-haired men hummed and disposed of corpses, and the same moon shone on Pine Street. In apartment No. 72, Rand was still sleeping in his warm bed.In the kitchen, a fish with blue fluorescence is swimming slowly in a salad bowl that is a bit small for it, and the white membrane on its tail is gradually falling off under the gentle beating of the water.And across the wall from Rand's apartment, Mrs. Smith's door handle turned.

The old man's apartment exuded a pungent stench, and the stench of excrement and cat urine made the teenagers who crept into the room frown unbearably.One of the teenagers turned on the light after quietly listening to the voices in the room.

There were three people in total, the young Mr. Smith, the grandson of Mrs. Smith, and his two companions, perhaps a girl named Daisy, and a boy nicknamed Stone. What they had in common was their pale painted faces, Black lips and nails, and all kinds of metal ornaments dotted on their skin. "Mr. Smith" looked at the stained carpet under the dim light, and gave a contemptuous "tsk".

"Hey, didn't you say let's not wake up the old guy?"

Stone grumbled at him.

"She's not here," said our young Smith, licking his lips, and lowering his voice, "if she was, there must be terrible snoring noises here and there. I think the orderly took her somewhere for treatment. I Think today is our lucky day."

"Lucky day? Are you sure you can get enough things for us from this trash dump?" Daisy sneered as she observed her nails.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

The young man rushed up with a distorted face, but was blocked by the "stone" (his figure is as strong as his nickname).

"Shut up," he ordered to the two arguing, then tore open the zipper of his backpack and put the bag on his arm, "We have to hurry up, we have to get the goods at night."

After finishing speaking, he began to frown and patrol around Mrs. Smith's apartment, throwing those barely usable things into his backpack-a few tortoiseshell dressing boxes, porcelain dolls that looked like antiques, barely usable Candelabra...

When collecting these things, his brows were always furrowed, obviously even he couldn't be satisfied with these things.

Young Mr. Smith said his granny's could get some stuff--they were going to sell that stuff and cash it in for "goodies" to make people happy, but it's clearly not in the right place.

"Mr. Smith" cursed as Daisy climbed on the chest of drawers and tried to tear the silver crucifix off the wall from its ebony cross.

"Damn it, my grandma will know if that thing gets lost!"

Daisy turned her head and gave him a casual sneer.

"Damn it," she said, imitating his tone, "you didn't tell us it was a dump before you came here."

An embarrassing annoyance appeared on the face of "Mr. Smith", he turned around angrily, and rudely opened all the drawers in the apartment, but there were very few things that could be converted into money—— Even a young man like him would know that no one would want to take over a pair of dentures with a missing tooth.

Facing his predicament, "Stone" and Daisy showed a kind of cold indifference and contempt. The boy almost felt that the eyes of those two were biting his thumb like a mouse, making him restless.And at this moment, he suddenly accidentally saw the window on the other side of the balcony.

He went outside and found the balcony of the apartment shockingly close to the windows over there.

In that split second he found an outlet for his predicament.

He called his companion, took out a screwdriver and tucked it in his belt, and turned to the window that belonged to Rand's kitchen.

Daisy frowned, leaning on the balcony railing and watching the two of them.

"Are you sure you want to do this? This is theft!"

Teenager Smith blushed and raised his middle finger at her angrily.

"Shut up, I know what to do!"

he said, and carefully pried open the window.

He put his hand through the window.

And where he couldn't see, an extremely thin silk thread was stretched tightly in front of his finger.

Maybe it's only a millimeter away, and the boy's fingers are about to touch the thread—what happens next will be very unsightly, dozens of threads made of polymer materials that are only a quarter of the thickness of a hair will be stretched directly. Clinging to his body, he will be strangled into pieces of meat with similar specifications without even feeling pain, and then wrapped and sent into Rogers’ collection box through the principle of leverage. The blood will be collected by the pre-set The box is directly poured into the sewer pipe.Everything will be clean, crisp and perfect, befitting Rogers' "Spider" moniker.

However, the boy's hand stopped in front of the thread.

"Hey, did you smell that?"

He frowned and sniffed at his companion.

"what?"

"This smell is really disgusting," the young Mr. Smith squinted his eyes and bent down, and put his face next to the window sill. He felt that he could smell blood... He didn't know it but he felt it instinctively Something is wrong.

Then he felt a slippery layer of fur on the window sill.

The fur had become slimy, and it had a strange heaviness to the touch, though in reality it was light.

Mr Smith fumbled for the phone, leaving a dark trail of blood on the screen as he swiped the screen.

He followed the dim light of the phone and saw what he touched, which was a piece of cat skin.

There was no bone, no muscle in cat skin, a green eyeball flowed out of its eye socket, spun in a circle, and dangled on the back of his hand.

"Damn, what is this—"

"Stone" looked at the thing in Smith's hand with a distorted face, almost swearing.

Then he saw a blue light pop out of the fetid cat's fur.For a moment, he felt that maybe this was a prank made by that cowardly and useless companion, because the fluorescent blue tentacles burrowed straight into the boy's mouth, nose and ears.

The latter let out a terrible "cluck" sound from his throat, like the whisper of a devil, his whole body convulsed like an epilepsy facing the "stone", his eyeballs were turning irregularly like marbles in a wine bottle, the whites of his eyes The part became congested and turned dark red almost instantly.

"Stone" took a step back uncontrollably, and then his body was empty, almost falling like that.

In this terrible moment he reached out and grabbed the edge of the little sump.He could feel the night wind blowing his body, and he was shaking.

"Help...help me..."

He was gasping for breath, wanting to scream—but his throat was unbelievably tight with extreme fear, and he ended up making only the faint meow of a newborn kitten.

Shake, shake, shake.

An indescribable sound came from above the sump, a damp, ominous muffled sound, he heard the peculiar sound of bones colliding violently against a hard object surrounded by flesh and blood, from the boy's throat The "clack" sound coming out of the water is accompanied by the sound of bubbles bursting on the water surface.

Stone finally felt a clammy cold between his legs.

He could barely feel his hands, his body was sliding, sliding.

However, silence came suddenly.

The wind stopped, and so did the sound.

"Stone" swallowed dryly, and he made a weak sound.

"Daisy... Daisy... help... help me..."

Following his call, a figure appeared above him.

In the backlight, he could only see a black silhouette, but even this did not prevent "Stone" from asking him for help tearfully.

"Daisy? Smith?"

he called tentatively.

His hands couldn't hold it anymore.Despair almost made him cry out, but his throat was so dry that he couldn't even cry, the only thing he could do was throw his head back and look at the figure above pleadingly.

"Oh, kill you... kill you... kill you..."

At this moment, the song they composed themselves rang, which was the ringtone of the young Mr. Smith's cell phone.

With the screen turned on when the call came, "Stone" finally saw the figure.

His pupils dilated for an instant.

……

after an hour--

"Well, that's kind of interesting."

Rogers crouched on the wall of the apartment like a giant spider, and he deftly dismantled the traps that had been set here before-all the traps showed no sign of being triggered.

However, he still narrowed his eyes.

He thought he could smell that, the smell of blood.

Seconds later, Rogers landed like a bird on the balcony of Mrs. Smith's apartment.

There's some mess here, but mess in an elderly person's home with dementia is not a particular thing.

The clock was ticking in the room, a silver crucifix was turned upside down for some reason, and Jesus with his head down seemed to show a strange distressed expression at Rogers.

There is no one here.

"it's very funny."

Rogers shrugged and repeated.

On the other side of a wall, a blue fish looks back at its own tail.

The albino membrane there has completely fallen off, exposing the intact scales underneath.

A finger with black-painted nails was under the surface of the water, and it had been soaked into a translucent white.

The fish swam around slowly, and the sucker protruding from its mouth suddenly covered the finger.

After a while, everything returned to its previous calm.