One moment, I was brimming with sweetness and joy. The next, I was engulfed in fear and horror.
When I saw the long tongue sticking out of Jiang Lixin's mouth, memories flooded back, breaking through the fog and waking me up.
I hadn't lost my memory due to drinking. I hadn't even gotten married at all.
I worked as a corpse carrier at the funeral parlor. Last night, I had just carried a strange female corpse of a car accident victim.
The female corpse looked exactly like Jiang Lixin, with a long tongue sticking out of her mouth, just like what I was seeing right now.
As the memories returned, the scene before my eyes also changed.
The relatives and friends sitting below the stage transformed into eerie ghosts. The smiles on their faces were gone, and they all stared at me with dim, longing eyes.
The only ones that remained unchanged were Huang Po and Jiang Lixin, who was standing beside me on the stage.
Huang Po seemed to be in a state of shock, standing there like a statue.
Jiang Lixin on the stage shrieked: "We're just one step away from finishing the ceremony. Don't let him get away."
Before I could react, the emcee, who had turned into a ghost, reached out and grabbed my arm.
His hands were so freezing cold that I felt my entire arms go numb instantly. I tried to break free, but I couldn't move at all.
Jiang Lixin stuck out her long tongue and took out a piece of white paper with Chinese calligraphy written on it from her bosom.
After quickly pressing her fingerprint on it, she came up to me. With the help of the emcee, she pressed my right thumb on it.
Only then did I see clearly what was written on the white paper.
That was a betrothal letter. For a man and a woman getting married in ancient times, they would write their names and birth date and time on it. After paying homage to heaven and earth and signing, they would be considered a legal couple.
This was the ancient version of a marriage certificate. I had heard my grandpa talk about it.
Normally, a betrothal letter was written on red paper. There were also those written on white paper, and that was for a ghost marriage (a traditional Chinese custom where a deceased person is married to another deceased person in the afterlife).
When I was in junior high school, I had seen my grandpa write a white - paper betrothal letter for a young couple from the neighboring village who had committed suicide by jumping into the river. They had a ghost marriage and were buried together.
I immediately realized that they were trying to complete a ghost marriage and make me marry this dead and strange female corpse.
I knew the rules of a ghost marriage. Only the dead could have a ghost marriage with the dead.
If a living person had a ghost marriage with a ghost, that person would soon die in an accident and be taken by the ghost to the underworld to get married.
They were trying to kill me!
I didn't want to die. I was extremely terrified.
I struggled desperately, but I couldn't move at all. Jiang Lixin had already pressed my thumb on the betrothal letter.
As my fingerprint was pressed on the betrothal letter, it immediately caught fire and turned into a pile of ashes in an instant.
The eerie ghosts in the audience had been watching everything on the stage.
When they saw the betrothal letter turn into ashes, they immediately burst into wild laughter, the kind of smugness after a successful conspiracy.
By now, I understood that this was a conspiracy, and they had succeeded.
Just when I was filled with despair and waiting for death to come, something unexpected happened.
Jiang Lixin suddenly shrieked: "Wrong?! How could it be wrong?! Chen Feng, you..."
Just then, a sharp pain shot through my right ear. I jolted awake and sat up in bed.
It was drizzling outside the window. It turned out that it had just been a nightmare.
It's just that this nightmare was so real that I didn't realize I was dreaming just now.
I sat on the bed and smoked a cigarette. It took me a while to get myself together. Then I got up and went to the bathroom to pee.
After relieving myself and washing my hands, I glanced at myself in the mirror and froze on the spot.
The place on my right ear that had been licked by the female corpse's tongue was now a bright red, looking as if it had been splashed with red paint.
I stretched out my finger and tentatively touched my ear. There was no bleeding.
That vivid red wasn't paint. It looked more like the skin on my ear had been peeled off, exposing the flesh and blood inside.
It wasn't just on my ear. There was also a red patch on my neck below the ear, but it wasn't as severe as on the ear.
These red areas didn't hurt or itch, but they had also lost all sensation.
My heart skipped a beat. I knew something was wrong.
The human body has sensations of pain and itching. These are warning signals sent by the body to protect itself.
Whether it's pain or itching, it's telling the brain: There's a problem here. Pay attention and take action.
If there's an abnormality in the body but there's no sensation at all, that's the most serious situation because the tissue might have already necrosed.
I didn't even bother to brush my teeth or wash my face. I went straight downstairs to the hospital and got an appointment with an ENT (Ear, Nose, and Throat) specialist.
The specialist was an old doctor with silver hair and a very kind face. After carefully examining my ear, his brows furrowed tightly.
"I've never seen a case like yours. How about you go and do a tissue and blood test to see if there's an infection."
At first, I still harbored a glimmer of hope, thinking that my ear might have nothing to do with the female corpse.
Now that even the specialist said he'd never seen it before, the last shred of hope in my heart was shattered.
I quickly told him that I was a corpse carrier at a funeral parlor and that my ear had been licked by a female corpse.
The old expert frowned as he listened, and his gaze at me was full of doubt. He was almost on the verge of asking me if I should go see a psychiatrist.
"Doctor, I'm totally sane. I'm not crazy or anything."
"That female corpse really did lick my ear. I have colleagues who can testify."
"If it has nothing to do with the female corpse, then what on earth is wrong with my ear? How can it be treated?"
The old expert was immediately stumped by my questions.
It took him a moment to react. "I reckon it might be some unknown virus or just in your head."
"I'm not crazy," I retorted.
"I don't mean that. Sometimes, if a person's psychological suggestion is too strong, the body can produce similar reactions," the old expert explained.
"There was a real case abroad. They told the test subjects that the normal iron blocks placed on their bodies were hot, and their skin showed symptoms of burns."
"Maybe you think your ear was touched by a corpse's tongue, that it's dirty and useless. Under the psychological effect, your ear has lost its sensation."
"Alright, I'll prescribe some external ointment for you to relieve inflammation and pain. Apply it first and see how it goes. If it's still not better tomorrow, come back."
The old expert even led me to do a local blood sample collection, saying he wanted to conduct a laboratory test. He also gave me two free boxes of ointment.
Whether it was having a needle pricked for blood or applying the ointment, my ear still didn't have any sensation.
I left the hospital feeling extremely nervous. When passing by a store selling incense and candles nearby, I suddenly felt a strange cool sensation on my ear.
I walked into a restaurant at the intersection and ordered a bowl of noodles. While waiting, I looked at myself in the mirror and found that the redness on my ear had faded a lot, and I had also regained some of my senses.
I was overjoyed at once. The old expert was really capable, and this ointment worked!
I originally wanted to ask for a leave and not go tonight, but the office folks refused. They said, "We're short - handed. You can't take a leave without a proper reason."
That's the plight of us office workers. We have no say in such matters.
After a hasty dinner, I rushed to the funeral parlor and went to the office to punch in.
As I passed by the full - length mirror in the office building, I instinctively glanced into it, and it felt as if I'd been struck by lightning.
In the mirror, there was a blurry and gloomy ghost lying on my back.
Her face and figure were quite blurry. I could only tell from her messy long hair that she was a female ghost.
What sent shivers down my spine even more was that a long tongue stuck out from the blurry ghost's mouth, and it was wrapped around my right ear at the moment.