On my 25th birthday, the moment I blew out the candles, I blew out my own chance of survival.
Bloodstained words seeped through the wall: [Rule One: Don’t look back! Rule Two: Use light with caution! Rule Three: Your shadow wants to kill you!]
Rotting, wet hair coiled around my neck. A deathly pale hand, like Sadako’s, rested on my shoulder. “Chen Mo… blow them out… why did you stop?”
It was only later that I learned the candle was burning away my years of life.
Cornered, I grabbed the plastic knife used to cut the cake and stabbed the “bride in red” through the throat. Her wedding gown was embroidered with an inverted Western cross.
More absurdly, the thought “Sadako is afraid of videotapes” flashed through my mind, and static really did begin crackling from the monster’s wound! What we know becomes real! The ghost stories I knew became my only weapon in this purgatory!
What kept me crawling through mountains of corpses and seas of blood was the smiling faces of my parents on my phone. Until I saw the real world reflected in a blood mirror in the haunted realm…
My mother had gone gray overnight. She murmured to my empty room, “Momo, Mom saved you some birthday cake…”
My father hobbled across the country on crutches, his bent back like a withered tree!
Seven days in hell, seven years in the mortal world!
When I tore apart the gatekeeper god’s Cthulhu tentacles and used Sadako’s hair to strangle the chains of the Impermanence spirits, I finally crawled back to the mortal world…
I opened the door, and the white funeral banners in the mourning hall stabbed at my eyes.
In front of my mother’s portrait sat the cake with a “25” candle…
It had long since rotted black, crawling with maggots.
My younger sister held it in her hands, her tears long dried up. “Brother… Mom waited until the day she died… still waiting for you to come back and blow out the candle…”
It turned out the most terrifying evil spirit was time…
