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墨書 Inktalez
The sound of the torrential rain pounding against the stained glass was like nails scraping across a blackboard. My right hand, clutching the scalpel, was stuck to the scab, and the blade reflected Gu Mingcheng's distorted face. The cross pendant on his chest swayed, glinting coldly in the lightning.
"Sixteen years ago, your mother knelt here begging me." The polished shoes crunched over the shattered rose window as Gu Mingcheng kicked aside a rusted nail at his feet. "She thought God would redeem the daughter of a prostitute."
The sharp pain in my ribs made me curl up on the altar steps. Rainwater mixed with blood pooled beneath the feet of the Jesus statue, soaking the scattered medical records. On a yellowed paper page, the diagnosis date of "HIV Positive" marked the day I was taken in by the orphanage.
I laughed when the cross came crashing down. Chunks of plaster fell onto Gu Mingcheng's tailored suit, revealing blood bags and syringes hidden beneath the statue's base. "It must be exhausting to playact at charity dinners every month, Director Gu," I said, licking my cracked lip. "Too bad artificial stigmata can't hide your syphilis sores."
The shadow of stained glass sliced across his face. Seventeen scars awakened in the downpour, spreading from his back to his collarbone. I felt for the candlestick beneath the altar; the smell of iron rust surged into my throat. "The cat cage in the orphanage cellar..." When the candle tip pierced his thigh, I heard the sound of fabric tearing and bones dislocating. "Now it's your turn."
Gu Mingcheng staggered and knocked over the holy water pool. At that moment, as the scent of bleach exploded in the air, I lunged for the syringe that had rolled onto the ground. The needle was half an inch from my vein when a sharp pain tore through my scalp. "What a perfect antidote serum," he said, yanking my hair and slamming my head against the wall. "Which name should be engraved on a vaccine cultured with HIV?"
Blood dripped onto the eyes of the suffering statue. I looked at the flashing police lights in the rain and crushed a capsule between my molars. As the bitter almond taste exploded on my tongue, Gu Mingcheng was tearing at my shirt buttons. "The reporters will be here in ten minutes," I coughed at his astonished pupils. "How do you like a scandal about sexually assaulting your adopted daughter to death?"
The sirens pierced through just before I broke free from his rigid arms. As the cross's sharp nail pierced my palm, a fountain of blood splattered onto the charity dinner invitation. Gu Mingcheng's hand holding the camera trembled; inside it was a video recording of him injecting drugs into me.
"Seventy-eight children from the orphanage are waiting for you in the morgue." I pulled myself up by the chain of the cross, rusty iron mingling with years of blood smell flooding my nostrils. "Now it's time for an angel to go mad."
When lightning struck the church steeple, Gu Mingcheng charged at me with a fire axe raised high. I opened my arms wide against his crimson eyes, allowing the axe blade to slice precisely into an old injury on my collarbone. Warm blood sprayed onto his tailored suit like a red plum blossom blooming in snow.
"This is how you split open that iron cage back then." I gripped the axe handle and pushed forward, listening to my collarbone crack beneath it. As I plunged a blood collection needle hidden in my sleeve into his carotid artery, an alarm shattered what remained of the glass around us.
Gu Mingcheng knelt in a pool of blood, clawing at his throat like a drug addict convulsing in a confessional. I stepped on his trembling back and shoved the HIV Positive report into his mouth. "This is your Holy Communion." Blood dripped from my fingers onto the quivering cross, "Now it's your turn to swallow."
As the police flashlight illuminated the altar, I held a scalpel and sliced open the stitches on my abdomen. A bloodstained vaccine vial rolled to Gu Mingcheng's side, and he lunged for it like a rabid dog fighting over carrion.
"The vaccine is fake," I smiled at the flashing lights bursting through the broken door, swallowing the clots of blood rising in my throat, "just like your charity." Amidst Gu Mingcheng's screams, I tore open my patient gown to reveal countless needle marks, "But the virus is real."
A torrential rain poured down from the collapsed dome. I lay in the embrace of the crucifix, watching as Gu Mingcheng was pressed into the bloody water by a police baton. The cross on his chest sank into the mud, reminiscent of how I had been pinned to the floor of the orphanage years ago.
"Go to hell," I mouthed at his distorted reflection, raising the revolver I had taken from the priest's corpse. As the bullet pierced his cheekbone, I heard my seventeen-year-old self screaming.
(End of chapter)
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