Character: I am 16 years old, a rural boy in a famine year. I am so hungry that I am skin and bones, and my eyes are glowing green.
Dilemma: There has been a severe drought for three consecutive years, and all the bark in the village has been eaten away. There is an ancestral rule in my family - after making offerings to the ancestors during festivals and festivals, the entire offering must be poured into the bottomless "Dumb River" behind the village. Whoever eats it will die. Before he died, my grandfather pinched my shoulders and said: "It is a small matter to starve to death, but it is a big matter to break the rules."
Opportunity: On the night of Mid-Autumn Festival, my parents were hungry and fainted in bed. On the table were half a white-flour steamed bun and a piece of fat meat—an offering for the "older generation." I stared at the steamed bun, my throat seemed to have grown hands, and finally swallowed it in one gulp.
Goal: survive.
The story unfolds: On the night after I finished eating the offerings, I saw my grandma, who had been dead for three years, standing beside the bed. She didn't speak, she was trembling all over, and pointed at my stomach. The next day, I started hearing movement in my stomach—not rumbling, but scratching. Three days later, I could feel the shape of a small hand through my belly. It was rummaging around in my belly looking for an exit. When the old people in the village heard about it, they were so frightened that they moved overnight: "There is something under the Mute River. Your family has provided for it for generations, just to feed it! Now it has crawled into your stomach!" I began to lose weight crazily, and everything I ate was snatched away by the things in my stomach. It grew bigger and bigger, stretching my skin until I could see a blurry face inside - it was imitating me, and the longer it grew, the more it looked like me. On the night of the seventh day, the Yahe River suddenly rose and flooded into the village. There were countless hands floating on the water, reaching towards my window. They are not here to catch me, they are here to take the things in their stomachs home.
