I Hear Symphonies in the Abyss

The cicadas shrieked noisily, like a thousand rusty chainsaws gnawing at his nerves.

Lin Mo sat on the edge of the bed in his cheap rented room, clutching a white medicine bottle. The label had worn away, and only a few characters remained barely legible, enough to make out the words "calming and brain-nourishing tonic." In fact, the bottle contained highly concentrated B-complex vitamins.

He swallowed two tablets. His Adam's apple bobbed as he gulped down a bitterness that wasn't really there.

"Five minutes left." He glanced at the clock on the wall.

Two in the afternoon. That was when the sounds in the unfinished building were at their loudest.

Three years ago, it had been the same sweltering June. A month before the college entrance exam, countless sounds suddenly exploded in Lin Mo's ears. There was a woman's shrill laughter, the muffled rumble of the deep sea, and the grating scrape of fingernails against a blackboard. The sounds seeped in everywhere, leaving him unable to think or sleep. At last, in the exam hall, he stared at the words on the paper as they twisted like worms and crawled across the entire desk.

He handed in a blank paper.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.