335 Man-Eating Dresser

 

Bloody clothes hung everywhere. Most of them had been worn by someone dead, every clothes here represented a despairing memory. In this maze made from the dead’s memory, Han Fei ran into his first danger. The red dress and the madman who entered the dresser with him disappeared. Han Fei, who was stranded, was discovered by something inside the dresser. The slender arms were of varying lengths so they clearly belonged to different people but they appeared to grow on the same body.

The bloody clothes were pushed aside. The hands snaked into the pockets. They searched for any remaining objects, derived from them the wearers’ last memory and then feasted on them like snacks. There was no wind inside the dresser but all the clothes swayed slightly.

More arms reached out from the mysterious direction. The pale fingers appeared to have noses and ears because try as Han Fei to hide, he was inadvertently discovered. The arms became more brutish as they shoved the bloody clothes out of the way. One of the arms seemed to sense something. Like a snake, it suddenly slithered towards Han Fei!

Pulling out Rest in Peace, Han Fei prepared to activate Ghost Tattoo but at that moment, a music box several metres to his left was toppled over. A strange yet familiar music echoed inside the dresser. The moment the music started, the pale arm instantly changed direction. From the angles Han Fei didn’t even notice before, several more arms appeared, crawling towards the music box. ‘There were so many of them?’ Han Fei honestly only saw one arm but in reality, there were five of them which were silently approaching him.

The bloody clothes behind him touched Han Fei’s cheek. A weight fell on his shoulder and Han Fei sighted a bandaged hand press down on his body. Turning back, Han Fei saw a 30 plus woman standing behind him. Her right arm was bandaged and she held a fruit knife in her right arm. Without saying anything, the woman used her eyes to signal Han Fei to follow her. They crouched low and silently retreated. The woman appeared to know the closet very well. Through the location of the blood stains on each clothes and the size of the blood stains, she was able to tell her direction. After leading Han Fei for a few minutes, she stopped.

“Why did you enter this place?” With her body still crouching, the woman finally spoke. Her voice sounded like grating glass, it was a torture on the listener’s ears.

“I keep feeling there is something wrong with my dresser. I have this recurring dream that I am inside the dresser. Honestly, at this moment, I can’t even tell I’m in a nightmare or in reality.” Han Fei’s expression was flawless. Fear, panic, forced calmness and the barely suppressed anxiety. It was hard to imagine a face could express so many emotions so naturally.

“This is not a nightmare, we're somewhere worse than a nightmare, everything you experience is real.” The woman curled into the bloody clothes and tried to hide herself among them.

“Then how did you get here? Looks like you’ve been here for quite some time already.” Han Fei studied the woman. She was of average build but she had great upper body strength. Her biceps and triceps were toned.

“I’m here to search for my son.” The woman whispered, “I can’t remember when I came in here. Back then, my son used to cry at night. One night, he ran to my room to tell me there was someone watching him from inside the dresser and he was very scared.”

“You didn’t think too much of it at the time?”

“I went to his room and checked the dresser, there was nothing inside.” The woman’s voice was raspy. “In any case, I decided to sleep with him that night but during late midnight, I was woken up by a noise. I opened my eyes and discovered my son standing before the dresser all alone. He was mumbling something on his lips… I couldn’t really hear him that clearly but I believed he was saying—’she is my mother now, please don’t come back to find me, it’s too dark inside the dresser’, or something like that.

“The bedroom’s light was off. I was so scared so I didn’t move. The dresser door slowly opened and I saw the clothes hanging inside. When I thought everything had returned to normal and my boy was just sleep-walking, the clothes parted away to reveal a woman’s face, she looked 90 percent like me! But the scariest thing was, she appeared to be looking at me and the more she stared at me, the more she took on my face!

“I sat up from bed and switched on the light. But that didn’t make things better. I saw my son still lying in bed, while the boy in front of the dresser had disappeared but the dresser door was left open. I shook my son awake. He rubbed my eyes and asked me innocently, ‘Mom, what’s wrong?’

“When I heard him call me ‘mom’, my heart chilled. There was an instinct in my heart that questioned, ‘Is this really my son?’

“From that day onwards, I felt like I had gone insane.” The woman gripped the knife and when she spoke, she looked around with alertness. “When my son was at school or out playing with friends, I would hear his voice inside the room, and see his shadows run across the house.

“I knew I had to investigate the origin of the dresser. I bought the dresser from a flea market. The workmanship was exquisite and the price was cheap, at the time, I thought I had a steal. When I went back to ask, only then I was told, someone had once died inside the dresser. I was ready to go home to destroy the dresser. My son who was supposed to be home had disappeared. The only possibility I could think of was that the dresser had stolen away my son.” The woman’s hand that held the knife burst with veins. “I didn’t dare to damage the dresser because it might steal my son forever away from me. From that day onwards, I guarded beside the dresser every night. I slept during the day and stayed beside the dresser at night but nothing happened.

“That continued for a long time, until one time, I was too tired and accidentally drifted off to sleep at night. When I opened my eyes again, the closed dresser door opened. The clothes appeared to be hiding something behind them. I pushed apart the clothes and grabbed the fuel and matches which I had prepared. As I poured the fuel, I crawled into the dresser. I was ready. If I couldn’t find my son, I would return before the fuel ran out and burn the damn dresser.

“But to my surprise, this dresser appears to exist between reality and dream. I didn’t take that many steps before the smell of fuel dissipated. I noticed the trail had gone dry. I tried the matches but none of them would light.

“To make matters worse, there are all kinds of monsters living inside the dresser. They started to hunt me. I was lucky that I was able to survive until now.”