Please Destroy Me

My name is Lin Du. Three months ago, I woke up in an unmarked tomb, with a dark stain on my neck that wouldn’t fade.

Since that day, I haven’t been able to tell what’s real.

At my cousin’s wedding banquet, the braised pork in my bowl turned into a black-haired finger, then changed back. I ate it. Something was crawling down my throat. It had a heartbeat: once, twice, three times, beating in sync with my own.

An eye split open on the bride’s chin and stared at me. A faceless person hanging upside down told me to “run.” In the mirror, my reflection was always half a second behind. After I smashed it, every shard showed a version of me staring back with a smile.

They say I’m a mender, meant to cross between reality and the uncanny to maintain the balance between the two worlds. But I found my own handwriting in the Scripture of Balance: “Don’t destroy it. I’m lying to you.”

I don’t know which side is real. So I decided to believe in both.

Until I discovered, the one staring at me from the mirror wasn’t a monster. It was me.

And the heartbeat in my throat said, “I am you. I am also you. We are all you.”

·Utter madness·Collapse of reality·Chinese cosmic horror

“I’m not trapped in a loop. I am the loop itself.”