The Decaying Dream of America: I Assemble Corpses and Confront Madness

Chapter 113 Black Shadows, Whispers Enter Dreams

The air is acidic.

Expired milk, leftover instant noodles, leaky walls, and an indescribable, decaying stench of despair itself—all these mixed together, congealing into a viscous substance that choked Lin Zheng's throat.

The cramped space of the rented room was perpetually dark, with only the faint hum of the bathroom exhaust fan breaking the deathly silence.

He had tried to leave, but every time he opened the door, the intense premonition of being spied on forced him to retreat back into the prison he had created for himself.

Occasionally, the footsteps and voices of others could be heard in the corridor outside the door, but they were like blurry images pressed against a glass plate, distant and distorted, as if he had been isolated from the real world.

He huddled in the computer chair, hugging himself tightly with his arms.

On the screen were a few old photos with very low resolution, his only remaining digital images of his past, which he tried to use to anchor himself to the rapidly collapsing reality.

The boy in the photo is wearing an ill-fitting school uniform, and the background is a typical gray residential building in a second-tier city in China. There is something timid in his eyes.

That's him.

He should be him.

Suddenly, a violent wave of dizziness struck.

An image suddenly rushed into his consciousness.

It wasn't that drab photo on the computer, but a living room filled with sunlight, bright and clean, with the wooden floor reflecting a warm glow.

A smaller boy, about five or six years old, was sitting on the carpet, clumsily stacking blocks.

A woman wearing an apron turned around, smiled, and said something to him. Her smile was as warm as the sunshine.

The scene was so clear that even the dust motes floating in the sunlight were vividly depicted. The woman's gentle smile, the fine lines around her eyes, even the tiny mole on her neck, were all so real they seemed tangible. The air was filled with the sweet aroma of baking pastries, a scent he had never smelled in his own home. The little boy giggled occasionally as he stacked blocks, his laughter filled with innocent, carefree joy.

This is not his memory.

He abruptly closed his eyes, trying to shake off the jarring image.

But it became clearer, and I could even smell the aroma of food in the air and hear the woman's gentle call.

"Ah Zheng————"

Lin Zheng shuddered, and his hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

That wasn't his mother's voice.

What is this?

Is it just my delusions, a sign of my impending madness, or...?

He dared not think any further.

External threats at least have a definite enemy, traceable to follow. But this intrusion of memory is like a thief who has broken into his mind, not only stealing his certainty about the past but also attempting to replace the core of his "self." He feels like a manipulated puppet, every past experience, every emotion, beginning to become false and blurred. He clings desperately to the name "Lin Zheng," as if grasping at the only straw floating on an endless abyss, fearing that if he lets go, he will completely dissolve into the torrent of those strange yet "real" memories, becoming a completely different, molded person.

He began to mutter to himself, in Chinese, in English, and in fragmented words, performing a ritual to exorcise evil spirits.

"My name is Lin Zheng. I'm from China and I'm here to study—I work in the forensic office of the Emerald Dream City Police Department to ease the financial burden on my family—"

He repeated his resume over and over again.

But with each repetition, the sunny living room became more real, while the "facts" he spoke of seemed increasingly hollow and false.

Sweat seeped from his forehead, quickly soaking the stray hairs in front of his forehead and sticking stickily to his skin.

His body trembled uncontrollably, not from the cold, but from a massive, tearing chaos within him.

He needs a point of reference.

A reference point from the outside world that can prove to him "who he is".

He reached for the old-fashioned flip phone on the table, the one Evelyn had given them.

The cold metal casing gave his trembling fingertips a sense of reality.

He turned on his phone; the screen emitted a faint light.

His fingertips hovered over Arthur's shortcut keys for a long time, like a moth that couldn't find a place to land.

Making this call means admitting your weakness, admitting that you are about to be crushed.

But if he didn't fight, he felt that he would be completely swallowed up by those unfamiliar memories and invisible gazes in the next instant.

In the end, he used all his strength to press it down.

This was neither an intelligence exchange nor an operation report.

This was his last cry for help before his mental defenses completely collapsed.

The world has lost its original colors and become a hazy gray.

The sound reached my ears as if it were coming through a thick layer of cotton, blurry and distorted.

He hardly ever went out, surviving on the little fast food he had left, and spending most of his time curled up in a chair, fighting off the intrusion of the "sunroom" in his mind.

Arthur didn't ask many questions on the phone. He simply set a time and place for the meeting in his usual hoarse voice, and then added, "Before that, don't overthink it or do anything."

This simple command became the only piece of driftwood Lin Zheng could grab onto in the storm.

He pinned all his hopes on this meeting. He desperately needed Arthur, the experienced old policeman, to dispel the fog in his mind with a logical and realistic explanation, to tell him that it was all just a hallucination caused by excessive stress.

He would rather be diagnosed with neurasthenia than face the other possibility—that his memories, or even he himself, are a lie.

In the basement of the abandoned warehouse, the air was as heavy as a soaked blanket.

The smell of dust and rust lingered in every corner, and a lone light bulb hanging from the ceiling cast a dim and weak light, just enough to illuminate the broken wooden table where the three of them sat.

Lin Zheng sat there, his face paler than the plaster on the wall.

His eyes were unfocused, and his fingers tapped unconsciously on the rough tabletop, a subtle, rapid, and irregular tremor.

Evelyn sat opposite him, her brow furrowed, her eyes filled with undisguised worry.

Arthur leaned back in his chair, silently smoking. The swirling smoke blurred his deeply lined face, leaving only his eyes, which sharply scrutinized Lin Zheng's every subtle movement.

He tried hard to report on his "work" over the past few days, wanting to prove that he was still useful and had not been defeated.

His lips were cracked, and his tongue seemed stiff, making each word incredibly difficult to utter. He could feel Evelyn's worried gaze, which only intensified his shame and helplessness; his appearance was a blatant display of weakness. He desperately tried to grasp a thread to untangle his chaotic thoughts, but his mind was filled only with the sunlit living room and the gentle call of "A-Zheng," echoing in his ears like a siren's song, making it impossible for him to concentrate even for a moment.

But his thoughts were a jumbled mess, and halfway through his sentence, his tone suddenly stopped, and his eyes stared unfocused into the dark corner.

"There's a sound—" he whispered.

"Lin Zheng?" Evelyn leaned forward worriedly and handed him a glass of water.

He took the water glass blankly, the cold glass making him shiver. Some water spilled out, leaving dark stains on his pants.

Arthur remained silent, simply watching quietly.

It wasn't until Lin Zheng interrupted the conversation for the third time due to auditory hallucinations and began muttering some illogical fragments in Chinese that Arthur forcefully stubbed out his cigarette on the corner of the table.

The firelight flickered one last time in the dim light before going out.

"Boy," Arthur's voice was hoarse and deep, as if polished by sand and gravel, "Seeing is not always believing, and hearing is not always deceiving."

He paused, his deep gaze falling on Lin Zheng's face.

"Especially in this godforsaken place, sometimes the truth hurts more than a lie. There are some things you might really not want to know."

This is not a consolation, nor a diagnosis, but a confirmation.

A testimonial from someone who's been there, filled with weariness and irony.

Lin Zheng suddenly raised his head and stared intently at Arthur.

Arthur did not avoid his gaze and continued speaking in that emotionless tone.

"I used to be your age, and I also thought that as long as I kept digging and investigating, I could dig out the clean, pure truth at the bottom."

A mocking smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"And the result? All they dug out was more mud, deeper darkness, and some—carefully crafted reality."

"Do you know what the most disgusting thing in the world is?" He leaned forward, the dim light casting a deep shadow on his face. "It's not the flesh and blood you tore apart with your own hands, but a perfect..."

Memories that are seamlessly inserted into your mind by someone else.

"It is logically consistent, rich in detail, and even carries warmth and emotion. You can't find any evidence to refute it, but your soul and your intuition will tell you at all times that it is a fake. It's like your shadow; wherever you go, it follows, constantly gnawing at you and biting you."

It's a torture more unbearable than any physical punishment. It shakes your very existence, making you doubt every decision you've ever made, everyone you've ever loved, and even your entire self-awareness. You think you're a person, but in reality, you're just a vessel, holding other people's lies. The most terrifying thing is that you can't even find the power to resist, because this lie is too perfect, so perfect that it's indistinguishable from the truth, making you unable to tell which cut comes from the outside and which comes from within yourself. It places you in an endless cycle, making you completely lose yourself on the boundary between reality and falsehood, ultimately reducing you to an empty shell.

The basement was deathly silent, with only the occasional dripping of water from the pipes, like a metronome tapping on everyone's taut nerves.

Evelyn glanced uneasily at Arthur, then at Lin Zheng. She could sense the strange atmosphere, but she couldn't understand the deeper meaning of their conversation.

"Me—" Arthur exhaled a long puff of smoke, his voice filled with an indelible weariness and helplessness, "There was a time when I felt like there was a blank in my mind, and I couldn't remember what I had lost. Just like you are now, unable to sleep night after night, hearing all sorts of sounds, seeing things I shouldn't have seen."

"Later I realized that it wasn't that something was lost, but rather that something was put in. 'Safe' and 'correct' memories were put in to cover up the 'dangerous' and 'unnatural' truths."

"These words are as if the brain creates memories that didn't originally exist in order to protect the body, replacing those painful and tormenting memories."

This meeting brought no answers, but instead raised a question that Lin Zheng dared not even think about.

On the way back, the night in Emerald Dream City was as thick as ink, impossible to dispel.

As Lin Zheng walked on the wet sidewalk, Arthur's deep advice echoed repeatedly in his mind: "There are some things you may not really want to know the truth behind."

This sentence, like a spell, took root in his mind.

It seems to be foreshadowing that what he is about to face is not some huge external organization, nor some bloody chain of interests, but a huge and cruel lie about his own existence.

Back in the musty apartment, Lin Zheng didn't turn on the lights.

He threw himself into the chair and stared blankly at the ceiling.

The sound of water flowing from the pipes upstairs now sounded to him like a series of clear, malicious whispers.

They were talking about him, mocking him, and ridiculing him.

His instinct was to call Arthur again for help; at least having a real person to talk to would make him feel better.

But in the dark, the phone screen was accidentally turned on, switching to selfie mode.

A blurry, out-of-focus face appeared on the screen. It was his face, pale, terrified, like that of a drowning person.

The face on the screen was deathly pale, devoid of any color, its eyes hollow and deep, reflecting the faint light of the phone. He tried to find even the slightest trace of the past on that familiar yet unfamiliar face, a tiny anchor point to prove that he was "Lin Zheng." But both his haggard appearance and the ever-growing fear in his eyes felt utterly foreign to him. It was as if he were staring through a distant, distorted window at a tortured person completely unrelated to him. His heart pounded wildly, like a caged bird raging in his chest. He felt a chill run down his spine, an indescribable, bone-chilling dread that swept through his body. This gaze was far more despairing than any external surveillance, for it directly questioned the very foundation of existence.

He stared intently at himself on the screen.

In that instant, perhaps it was an illusion caused by the lighting and angle, or perhaps it was a hallucination produced by his completely broken nerves, he saw the corner of his mouth on the screen turn up very slightly.

That wasn't a smile, but a cold, alien, and purely sarcastic arc.

A chilling smile, not belonging to Lin Zheng, flashed across his face.