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

Christmas.

After alternating periods of freezing rain and floods, snow and wind followed.

On the campus of Miskatonic University, in the early morning, frost condenses into a thin layer of silver on the green grass.

Lin Zheng took Emilia to class.

She walked briskly beside him, her scarf swaying with her steps, carrying a warm and refreshing fragrance.

That was the scent he could occasionally detect, the scent of an ordinary college student, far removed from the smell of formaldehyde and rust.

He would occasionally answer Emilia's questions in a soft voice, her voice carrying its usual sunshine and optimism.

He could feel the worry in Emilia's eyes as she looked at him, worry about his increasingly pale face and the unfathomable weariness in his eyes.

He tried to force a smile, but the muscles around his lips were stiff and tense.

"Lin Zheng, you look really tired." Emilia stopped in her tracks.

Her clear eyes looked into his heart.

He forced a smile and shook his head.

"It's nothing, I just didn't sleep well last night."

Emilia bit her lip, her eyes filled with worry and heartache.

She reached out to touch his cheek, but stopped mid-air and instead grasped his cold fingers.

She placed Lin Zheng's hand into her warm chest.

Don't push yourself too hard.

She spoke softly, then took off the scarf from her neck and put it on Lin Zheng, before turning and jogging towards the teaching building.

Lin Zheng stopped and watched her slender figure disappear around the corner of the brick-red teaching building.

The university campus is shrouded in a false, rosy dream.

There was the aroma of coffee, the rustling of turning pages, and the playful laughter of youth.

It was a world apart from the morgue he was used to.

He looked at his palm and reminisced about the warmth Emilia had given him.

The moment he turned around, a biting gust of wind and snow swept in, abruptly pulling him back from that brief moment of warmth.

His thoughts inevitably drifted to the mountains of raw materials.

"Hehe, Riley is absolutely right, it really is a case of 'a timely snow promises a good harvest'."

Lin Zheng clenched his palms together, exhaling warm breath. The warm steam only brought a moment of comfort before the wind and snow made it even colder. He shivered with cold as soon as he stopped.

Winter means more death, but it also means more work.

It also means that more people need help.

There was never enough work to do, so he decided to head to Imam Abdul's charity kitchen first.

The canteen's entrance was crowded with homeless people.

It's called a canteen, but it's really just a simple tent. There's a Christmas tree at the entrance with music playing and lights flashing, adding a festive atmosphere.

The imams don't actually celebrate Christmas; they're just doing as the locals do and celebrating for Allah is acceptable.

The steam rising from the cheap food did not dispel the spreading chill.

The food tastes mild, a blend of spices.

The body odor, filth, and putrid smell of the people queuing up were barely perceptible in the wind and snow, just like their frail lives.

They were ragged, their eyes unfocused, their clothes tightly wrapped around their bodies, beneath which life writhed.

Lin Zheng served porridge to a white homeless man. The man was about 1.7 meters tall and not very tall.

He approached, emanating a strong stench—the sour, putrid smell of pus from a festering wound.

A thick blanket was wrapped around the tattered clothes.

Even amidst the wind and snow, the insects did not stop ravaging them.

Flies, mosquitoes, and all sorts of small flying insects swarmed inside the homeless man's body, in his hair, under his clothes, and in every corner of his body.

His eyes were cloudy and yellowish, filled with bloodshot veins, and the pupils were not visible at all.

He was trembling and coughing incessantly.

Every time he coughed violently, his whole body would convulse.

White things would fall from the blanket he was wearing, the hem of his clothes, and even under his trouser legs.

Those were maggots the size of sesame seeds, falling like snowflakes.

The man coughed up blood, and maggots dripped down from his festering wound.

He looked exactly like a zombie.

His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks were yellowish.

He was a skeleton, covered with a layer of skin.

Muscles atrophy, bones protrude, and there is no flesh at all.

His lips were slightly parted and unable to close, indicating a problem with his nervous system.

He kept mumbling incoherent words, with very few teeth left.

These aren't the Nurgle zombies depicted in literature; these are living people lining up for relief.

The homeless man walked unsteadily, maggots constantly falling from his body.

Pus and blood dripped from his trouser leg onto the ground, making a faint dripping sound.

He moved forward step by step, leaving obvious traces on the ground: wriggling maggots, dark red bloodstains, and murky pus, winding his way forward.

The young people behind him were clearly affected.

He covered his mouth, his face pale, and he was almost crying.

The crowd behind him urged impatiently, "Hurry up, don't block the way."

The young man was extremely pale, his stomach was churning, and he finally couldn't help but vomit.

The sound of vomiting was particularly jarring in the relatively quiet queue, but he was quickly overwhelmed by the surging crowd.

The homeless man completely ignored the commotion behind him.

He walked shakily to Lin Zheng and extended his hand.

He spoke in a mumbled language that Lin Zheng couldn't understand.

He repeated a few words over and over before Lin Zheng realized he wanted alcohol.

Lin Zheng said there was no wine.

The man then gestured the motion of giving a famous injection, pinching his thumb between two fingers.

He was clearly asking if there were any drugs or enhancers.

Lin Zheng said that we also did not have any enhancers.

A deep disappointment welled up in the man's eyes, and he shook his head.

Lin Zheng asked him if he needed something to eat.

The man answered with difficulty, "I can't eat it."

This physical condition makes it impossible to eat anything.

When the human body is in a state of severe inflammation for a long time, the inflamed areas become vulnerable.

His body was so fragile that he could bleed at any moment.

Even a slightly large movement could cause tissue tearing.

The homeless people in front of him were in relatively good condition, at least none of them had particularly large open wounds.

However, his language function was severely impaired, and he could not speak clearly.

Many homeless people experience uncontrollable convulsions when they are sick.

They often had festering wounds and were wrapped in tattered robes or blankets.

He walked unsteadily, his steps faltering, seeking help.

They don't ask you for food, they only ask if you have alcohol, fortifiers, or contraband.

This convulsive state often stems from three possibilities.

One is excessive alcohol consumption. Alcohol, as a depressant, can distort the nervous system.

Secondly, it involved the use of stimulants, those kinds of drugs that make people excited.

The worst-case scenario could be meningitis.

He coughed up blood as he said this.

Saliva mixed with blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, and he managed to force out a very… that kind of terrifying, chilling smile.

"Look at me, am I afraid of dying?"

Lin Zheng suddenly realized that the essence of addiction partly stems from despair.

This man just wanted to die comfortably and suffer less.

Many people queuing at the charity canteen, upon witnessing this scene, often turned and left.

They are not completely homeless; they are petit-bourgeois. Sometimes they can't get enough to eat and still need to receive welfare. When they are queuing to receive welfare, they are often sandwiched among the homeless, and during this time, they are the ones who vomit the most.

At this point, these people couldn't be kept, leaving behind a stain that Lin Zheng and his group had to clean up.

After the food was distributed, Lin Zheng was about to rest for a while.

One phone call came in, and he had to go back to retrieve the Gundam.

Lin Zheng dragged his heavy steps forward through the wind and snow.

He suddenly recalled a line of poetry: "Birds have vanished from a thousand mountains, human tracks have disappeared from ten thousand paths. An old man in a straw hat and raincoat sits alone in a small boat, fishing in the cold river snow."

Back then, as a young man, he imagined himself fishing for loneliness and solitude in that scene.

Now they just squat down there and start digging up dead people, haha.

Dark humor and slapstick jokes now tickle his funny bone more easily, and he often just chuckles at them, unable to recapture the feeling of laughing heartily that he used to have.

Seeing a police car parked ahead, he skillfully put on his gloves.

This is an abandoned parking lot on the outskirts of the city. While police officers were patrolling here, they inadvertently saw something in a dilapidated van.

So I called him and asked him to come over.

The family of four huddled together in the car, their bodies stiff with cold.

A man, a woman, and two children, who looked quite young.

While checking their identity information, the police explained their background to Lin Zheng.

Their house had already been repossessed and auctioned by the bank because they couldn't pay the property taxes.

Homeless, he has to make his car his home.

Sleeping in a car without completely closing the windows can lead to carbon dioxide poisoning.

Only a small gap can be opened for ventilation.

The interior of the carriage was poorly insulated, and the temperature dropped sharply in the latter half of the night, making it impossible for the human body to withstand the cold.

The car's air conditioning could have provided warmth, but the couple had lost their jobs, their savings were depleted, and the high cost of gas at gas stations made them unable to afford it.

If you can't afford gas, you can't turn on the heater.

On a snow-covered winter night, with the car windows slightly ajar and no heating, and having no experience as homeless people, they were trapped in a snowstorm.

They didn't know to look for cardboard to block the cold, let alone stuff newspapers into their clothes to keep warm.

Before they died, they must have been keeping each other warm, sharing their last bit of body heat.

Ultimately, the family of four perished in each other's arms amidst the extreme cold.

Lin Zheng placed the cold scalpel in the corpse's chest cavity and made a precise incision.

He could feel the slight trembling in his fingertips.

Under the scalpel, the despair and abandoned fragments of the lower class are silently poured out.

The remnants of the corpse flooded his mind like a tide, filled with unemployment notices, eviction orders, and the babbling of children in their sleep.

[Mental Re-engineering] is activated, and he "formats" and "sorts" this chaotic information, forcibly pressing it into the abyss of his subconscious.

For corpses whose cause of death is clear, Lin Zheng actually has no need to use [Residual Dream Perception] to see their despair, as that would be a great burden on himself.

However, Lin Zheng always held a sense of compassion for this, which was his promise to Sam, his way of remembering him, and to give him and them the dignity of being a "human being".

He knew that he would find it hard to endure this in the long run, but before that, he needed to anchor himself as a "human being" in this way.

He finished his "Gundam" when the warehouse clock struck four in the morning.

Stepping out of the warehouse, he felt a bone-chilling cold.

The sky was leaden gray, and dawn had not yet broken.

Only a few lights atop the distant skyscrapers flickered like will-o'-the-wisps in the wind and snow.

He dragged his weary body back to his simple dormitory.

The phone screen suddenly lit up, displaying a new email notification.

From: Professor Finch, Subject: Invitation to an Internal Meeting of the Hope Foundation