The light bulbs in the mourning hall suddenly began to flicker violently, and the tungsten filaments exploded into tiny sparks inside the glass dome. I knelt before my mother's coffin, my knees aching from the cement floor, yet I dared not move an inch—the leftover food on the offering table was visibly moldy. The rice grains were covered with bluish-gray mold spots and rotted rapidly, as if they had been splashed with sulfuric acid. Three incense sticks suddenly snapped in half. "", It burned out charred holes. The biting wind of December in Northeast China flung open the half-closed door, swirling snowflakes that stung the back of my neck, but it couldn't dispel the ever-growing stench of death in the mourning hall.
