Chapter 4 — Midnight Snake Knocks On The Door

I took a deep breath and put my hand on the doorknob.

“I'll open the door.”

I don't know if he understood or not outside, but after I finished speaking, the hallway immediately became silent. Not the fake silence from before, but real silence, carrying a feeling of waiting. I unlocked it. Cup. I pulled the door open a small crack. The hallway light is still on. The pale white light shone on the floor, shone on the opposite wall, and also shone on the giant black snake coiled half a step away from the door. It was much larger than the one I saw in the detention room. Its body is as big as the waist of an adult man. The black scales were covered with mud and grass clippings, perhaps clinging to them when it emerged from underground. It curled up into a small black mountain. The triangular head was raised high, even higher than mine. The horizontal human eyes looked straight at me. Amber pupils shrank slightly under the light. Like someone observing. Like a person identifying. I gripped the door handle tightly, all the muscles in my body tensed. There was a voice in my head screaming, telling me to immediately close the door and run away. But I didn't move. It also didn't budge. We kept looking at each other like that for about ten seconds. Then it lowers its head. Like a giant, cold dog, covered in scales, it moved its head in front of me, stopping less than thirty centimeters away. The air exhaled from its nostrils blew into my face, carrying a sweet, fishy smell. I didn't dare move. It got a little closer again. Then I heard a sound. Not coming from its throat. Which came out from its mouth. To be more precise, from his mouth full of teeth came a vague sentence, like a child who had just learned to talk was trying to pronounce.

“Lam… Vi.”

“Fish.”

PART 10 I fell down and sat on the ground. Not because of fear, but because in the blink of an eye, my brain received too much information, making my legs weak on their own. It remembers my name. It misses fish. It broke through the load-bearing wall on the third basement floor, killed a bunch of people in the research institute, swallowed a few people, then crawled all the way to dormitory area A, knocking on my door. Just to tell me that it still remembers when I fed it fish? Are not. Incorrect. It says “fish”. It is asking for food.

“Do you want to eat fish?”

I looked at those horizontal amber eyes, trying to ask. My voice was still shaking, but at least my words were clear. The snake's head lowered a bit again. From its throat came a low sound, like the purring of a cat. It closed its mouth and then opened it again.

“Hungry.”

It said. This snake carrying human genes and human teeth knocked on my door in the middle of the night, then told me that it was hungry. I have experienced many absurd things in my life, but none as absurd as this moment.

"I... there's no fish in my room. There's chicken in the refrigerator, you..."

I haven't finished speaking yet, it's already moving. It used a move that a snake shouldn't be able to do, reaching its head over my shoulder and exploring the room behind me. Its body also slid. The scales rubbed against my arms, the cold feeling gave me goosebumps all over my body. It goes inside. A three-meter-long black king cobra that resembled a dog crawled into my dorm room. PART 11 I stood at the door, watching it slowly crawl around the room, almost filling the single twenty square meter room. Its body is so long that it can only roll around on the floor. The tip of the tail rests on the edge of the bed, the triangular head constantly rotates. The human eyes were horizontally observing my room. It's looking at the refrigerator. I bought that single-door refrigerator at the second-hand market for two hundred yuan. The inside was filled with frozen dumplings and chicken breasts. He used his head to gently touch the refrigerator door. Don't thrust hard, just touch once. It's like it's signaling me to open up. I was stunned for three seconds, then walked over to open the refrigerator and took out everything I could eat. Chicken breast, dumplings, half a bag of frozen shrimp and a box of yogurt that was about to expire. I spread it all on the ground and took two steps back. It bowed its head and began to eat. When eating chicken breast, it opens its mouth, tilts its head, and swallows. The movement is exactly like a normal snake eating. But when he finished eating dumplings, he stopped. It used its head to push the dumpling aside and then looked up at me.

“Live.”

It said. It wants to eat raw food. I picked up the pieces of raw chicken breast and placed them in front of him, and threw the dumplings into the refrigerator. He bowed his head again, finished three pieces of chicken breast and then looked at me. In those eyes there was no threat, no killing intent, only an emotion that I couldn't describe. Like looking forward to it. Like a person who has been starved for too long, carefully looking at the only person willing to give him food. I suddenly remembered that during the seven months in the third basement, he only ate live white mice. Raw mice, no grease, no spices, no taste other than blood and fur.

“I don't have fish, but I know where they are.”

I slowly said:

"In the cold storage of the cafeteria there is a whole box of frozen Ho fish. I can take you there."

It looked at me silently.

“But you can't kill anymore.”

It tilted its head. That movement was so human-like that I momentarily forgot it was a snake.