Sand Snake doesn’t notice my arrival at all. When I’m standing beside him, he is still closing his eyes, fingers beating on the edge of the chair, and his face is with a little happy and complacent expression.
My eyes are calm and cold. I’m staring at his neck and throat for a moment, then gently pick up the razor on the edge of the pool.
The pool is full of water. I don’t know if they were ready for take a bath or do something else. I’m just walking quietly to Sand Snake. He still doesn’t notice anything, closing his eyes and humming softly with the music.
I use the razor to make a little stroke in the air.
The next second, I have reached out my hand and patting him on the shoulder, and when he opens his eyes a little, I immediately put my arm around his neck from behind. Then, despite his is desperate struggling, I’m still dragging him straight from the chair. He’s tring to wriggle, I know he wants to yell. But he is stuck in throat, and can only squeeze out the “Kah…Kah…” voices, but not able to shout any word.
His strength is not small, but I’ve strangled his neck. So, he’s just struggling for a while, due to lack of oxygen, has weakened his strength. I drag him to the edge of the pool and press his neck into the water, while the other hand with the razor reaching over.
I use the razor to cut his neck and throat. The blade cuts his throat so easily. The skin and trachea of his neck are cut out immediately. And because its under the water, blood doesn’t splash out, and it won’t spill on me. Only a stream of blood is coming up from the water.
I step back two steps and let go of his arms. He’s like an empty sack, softening on the ground, with his hands holding his throat. Blood keeps coming out of his fingers. In a minute, it has dyed half of his body red! Then I watch him open his mouth and breathe like hell. Unfortunately, because his throat was cut off, he can’t breathe air anymore.
Gradually, his strength of twisting and struggling on the ground is becoming less and less. I’m just standing there and looking at him coldly. I’m watching his eyes are popping out like dead fish’s. He’s just staring at me, staring at me…
I don’t know if there’s such a thing as die with an everlasting grievance in the world, but at the moment he looks just like it!
I walk toward him carefully, looking down at him for a few seconds, then saying in a calm tone: “Papa 8 says hello to you.”
After that, don’t care he can hear or not, I turn around and go to the pool, where I wash the blood stains on my fingers and palms with water.
I finish all these with slow and careful moves. After confirming that there’s no blood left on my hands, I look in the mirror to see how I look like to make sure that there’s no blood left on my cloths.
I look at the time. It takes me three minutes and thirty seconds to walk in and finish everything needs to do.
When I walk out, the girl at the door looks at me in some surprise and seems to want to stop me. But when I drop a few bills, she immediately has no other movement anymore.
The driver of Sand Snake is sitting in the car outside, holding a disposable lunch box in his hand, eating with a pair of chopsticks, probably a takeaway.
His eyes sweet me over again. This time, without looking at him, I go directly to him, standing outside the car door and tapping the window.
The guy opens the window impatiently and asks me something. Without saying a word, I take out a cigarette and make an act of borrowing a fire. He frowns. Subconsciously, he puts a piece of beef with his chopsticks into his mouth and the other hand into his arms to get the lighter for me.
In such a second, I’m suddenly raising my hand and slapping it hard on the back of his chopstick-holding hand!
With a “Pah” sound!
Chopsticks are going straight into his mouth and almost pierced his throat!
His mouth is immediately blowing blood, but because of where he is, the blood is been spraying into the car. I flip away slightly, and then watching his hands grabbing his mouth painfully trying to pull out the chopsticks. It is also the natural reflex of human beings.
I hit his hand again! This time, with the strength of my punch, chopsticks go deeper into his throat. The chopsticks didn’t penetrate before, but this time they do! The chopsticks are obviously broken too!
I know he’s dead!
Then I immediately turn around, leave the car and head for the other end of the street. Behind me comes the continuous whistling of car horns, presumably the driver falls on the steering wheel after losing his breath.
The sharp sound of the trumpet startles the girl inside. The girl is running out and immediately gives out a terrible screaming. I walk out of the street in this screaming and the sound of car horns, and then I get on a car parking on the corner and leaving quickly.
When the car leaves the street, I take the steering wheel in one hand and put another hand’s fingers in my mouth and bite with my teeth a few times. Each of my fingers is covered with a small plastic film, so that I can be sure I won’t leave any fingerprints.
Then I drive the car to a designated place. This is a car wash shop. As soon as my car enters, several workers come and wash the car with waterguns. I get out of the car, do not say a word to these people, and go to the backyard. I quickly take off my coat, remove the fake beard from my mouth and throw them into an iron garbage can. I pick up a bottle in a corner, pour the liquid into the can, light a cigarette for myself, take a puff, and throw it into the garbage can.
A fire is bursting out from the can, burning everything to ashes.
Suddenly, I feel a burst of nausea. Then I’m rushing quickly into the bathroom besides, bumping into a small toilet compartment, squatting down, holding the toilet and spitting out immediately!
I keep vomiting and feel my stomach cramping. I’ve spit out almost all the tea I have drunk this afternoon. My stomach is empty, but still holding the toilet, almost to spit out my own bile!
My face is full of snotty tears. The dirty residues are left on the corners of the mouth. I’m gasping, feeling as if I have been hollowed out, fluttering, weak and soft.
Calming down, I come out, turn on the tap of the pool, and then washing my face with water. Then I begin to wash my hands again! I pick up the soap and have washed my hands for five times, rubbing the skin on my hands red! But I still don’t stop! I even pick up a brush aside and brush hands as hard as I can!
Even though I’ve brushed my hands to bleed, I still feel that there’s an unbearable smell of blood on my hands. The dirty smell makes me almost spit out again.
I look up at the mirror in front. The man inside is livid and watery, and the water are rolling down his hair and cheeks. There is distortion and ferocity in the eyes.
My heart is a bit cold, is this really me? Is this Chen Yang? Is this the Little 5?
I’m struggling to squeeze out a laugh to the mirror. In the mirror, I have a mouth of white teeth which haven’t been smoked by tobacco. But my eyes are twisted.
I killed a man!
I’ve killed a man!
Yes, it’s not the first time I’ve killed someone. In the bloody battle on the streets of GZ City, I’ve already killed people. At sea, I also killed the black man on the stowaway ship.
But those are different from today!
In the bloody battle on the street, I was forced. They wanted to kill me. I had to fight with them! I can only do my best to protect myself! Desperately, killing people, I do not have much regrets in my heart.
At sea, I killed the black man because of hatred! It’s the humiliation they used to treat us like animals, and what they did to Phoenix. I killed that bastard, only felt happy in my heart!
But today is different!
This Sand Snake, I don’t know him at all. I know nothing about this man except his name and age. Even before yesterday, I haven’t even heard of this person. I don’t even know there’s such a person in the world.
I don’t hate him, I don’t know how he is, and I don’t know if he really deserves to die. I kill him just because Papa 8 lets me, because I have to kill him to get a chance!
Without hatred to kill someone who has nothing to do with me for no reason at all. This situation makes me feel that my heart is full of a distorted feeling at the moment.
Before that, there’s no intersection between my life and these two people. But now I appeared and then took two stranger’s lives!
So, who am I now?
Am I still Chen Yang?
Am I still the Little 5?
The skin on my hand is brushed, blood is flowing out, and the pain is stimulating my nerves. But I don’t care. I just focus on contemplating at myself in the mirror!
After a long time, the door is pushed open, and the subordinate of Papa 8, the indifferent middle-aged man, comes in.
“It’s done?”
He takes a look at me. His eyes are staying on my bleeding hands.
“Yes.” I nod.
“Well, Papa 8 wants to see you.”
I’m just about going out with him. He’s suddenly turning around and smiling at me. His smile with a trace of complexity: “Ah, I almost forget to tell you, my name is Tiger. I didn’t tell you before because you’re still an outsider. Now…”
He’s looking into my eyes and saying in a gentle voice: “From now on, you are the own man.”