"Wait, hold on, I know you. You're Sam Wang, right? I know you, I really do."
I immediately spoke up, and then Sam Wang came back. In the moonlight, I saw how happy he looked.
"Wait, no, you're Sam Wang, I'm Ethan Zhang. I don't know you. I'm going back to sleep. Goodbye, Sam Wang."
As he spoke, the man suddenly yawned, turned around, and was about to leave. I stared in surprise as he walked away, his footsteps echoing in the hallway, followed by the sound of a door closing.
"Damn..."
Susan Li started laughing.
"You really are arguing with a mental patient, haha. Ethan Zhang, you're actually kind of cute."
"Get lost..." I cursed.
"That guy is just a lunatic. When I first came in, he said he knew me. I thought he'd let me out, but every few nights, he comes by and asks if I know him."
I sighed, trying hard to figure out how he managed to get out. But after thinking for a long time, I couldn't come up with anything. My hands and feet were tied, so there was nothing I could do.
On the morning of the third day, I was pushed to the fourth floor again. My eyes were blank, and the doctor flipped my eyelids, shining a small flashlight.
"Hmm, looks like we need to continue the treatment."
My heart skipped a beat. After two rounds of electric shock, I'd developed a real fear of it.
I held back my anger, watching as two people lifted me onto the treatment bed. Inside, I was furious, gritting my teeth. Just then, the door opened.
A short, chubby man with thin arms and legs, a stitched scar on his face, looking about forty years old.
"Dr. Stone, you're here."
"Yes, I came to check on our newest patient." Dr. Stone walked over and stared into my eyes.
"Looks like severe psychosis. The voltage is too low, we need to increase it. And preferably three times a day."
Instantly, rage boiled up inside me. Just one look and he says that? In my mind, a thought flashed: I wanted to twist their heads off and use them as chairs.
Just as I was about to speak, the two who brought me up removed my restraints. My hands and feet were free. I watched quietly as they stripped off the restraint jacket, then lifted me onto the bed, intending to tie me up. Suddenly, I drove my knee hard into one of their crotches.
"Damn it, fuck!" I clenched my fist and punched the other guy right in the eye.
Both of them instantly doubled over, one clutching his crotch, the other his eye. I rolled off the bed as Dr. Stone and the doctor cried out in shock.
Without hesitation, I grabbed the doctor's head and slammed it against the back of the chair, again and again. Seeing Dr. Stone trying to run, I charged over and kicked the door shut.
"Try anything and I'll kill you."
I picked up the doctor, who was barely conscious, and slammed him back onto the shock bed, tying him up. Then I grabbed a chair and smashed it down on another guy trying to get up, hitting him until he stopped moving, before tossing the chair aside.
"Anyone tries to grab me again, I'll kill them first."
All the anger I'd been holding in over these days finally burst out. I glared at them viciously.
"Tell me, who ordered you to lock me up?"
I stared at Dr. Stone, but he just leaned against the wall, shaking his head.
Then I walked over to the shock machine's switch, stuck the red and blue wires to the doctor's forehead, and pressed the button without mercy. The doctor convulsed, foaming at the mouth, then passed out.
I walked up to Dr. Stone and grabbed him by the collar.
"Are you going to talk or not? Who ordered you?"
Dr. Stone stared at me in terror, eyes shut, refusing to say anything. I felt something strange in my chest, hurriedly looked down, and was shocked. There was a white object stuck into my chest, hard and cold. So this was why I couldn't generate killing intent.
"How is this possible? After all those days of medication, how do you still have so much strength?"
I dragged Dr. Stone over to the treatment bed.
"Are you going to talk or not? If you don't, I'll show you what real pain is."
Suddenly, Dr. Stone's expression changed. He'd been trembling before, but now he broke into a wicked grin.
"That's enough," he said. Suddenly, I saw his arm swell and his fist balloon to several times its normal size. I tried to dodge, but with a heavy thud, my mouth hung open, drool spilling out, and I slowly lost consciousness.
When I woke up again, I was back in the restraint jacket, lying on the bed, but in terrible pain. My lower abdomen hurt so much I whimpered. They hadn't tied me down, so I fell to the floor and crawled to the wall.
"Ethan Zhang, why did you try to kill someone?"
I cried out, and Susan Li's voice came from the next room.
"I didn't kill anyone."
"Everyone's talking about it today. They say you killed a doctor and two staff members. I saw the police come in."
"What?"
I stared wide-eyed, my memory fuzzy. All I remembered was knocking out Dr. Stone, and then nothing.
At that moment, I realized that even though I was wearing the restraint jacket, my hands and feet were shackled. After struggling for a while, I noticed.
"What the hell is going on?"
"Looks like you're finished," Susan Li said in a low voice.
Thinking back, I remembered seeing Marcus Ouyang, Vivian Ouyang's brother. He was also skinny and small at first, but then suddenly seemed to swell up, his strength multiplying. The same thing happened with Dr. Stone today—his fist ballooned, and after he hit me in the abdomen, I blacked out.
Half-awake, I heard a scream and snapped alert. I rushed to the window by the door and looked out. The hallway was pitch black, and the screams seemed to be coming from the right.
Bang! Another door slammed shut, like someone had angrily thrown it closed.
"What are you doing?" Susan Li asked, having heard the noise.
"Didn't you hear it? The scream and the door slamming?"
"You must be half asleep. What scream? What door slamming?"
Then Susan Li told me that since she came in, she's never heard any screams or slamming doors in the middle of the night. But I had heard them. As I was thinking about it, suddenly someone slammed my window, making me jump back and fall to the floor.
"Sam Wang, it's me, Sam Wang. Ethan Zhang, do you really not remember me?"
I stared quietly at the person outside, then answered slowly, word by word.
"I don't know you. Can you tell me why you know me?"
This time, Sam Wang said nothing, just stared at me blankly. Then I saw him cry out in terror and back away.
"That guy is coming for you, coming for you..." Sam Wang muttered as he left.
The more I learned about this psychiatric hospital, the more confused I became. What was really going on here? Who was pulling the strings behind the scenes? These questions kept haunting me.
Right now, my biggest problem was murder. Susan Li said I killed someone, but after knocking out Dr. Stone, I didn't remember anything.
Just then, with a whoosh, the ghost appeared, suddenly emerging from the wall. I jumped in fright. In the moonlight, his entire face was rotting, maggots writhing in one eye. He walked toward me.
"Oh, you don't seem scared!"
"Damn." I cursed.
"Who ordered you?"
The ghost came closer, its rotten mouth grinning. Then, suddenly, it plunged into my body. My mind buzzed, and although I was fully conscious, I felt my body wasn't my own.
"What are you trying to do?"
I shouted angrily.
"Hmph, you'll find out tomorrow."
The ghost had taken control of my body, but he didn't seem surprised that I was still conscious. Clearly, this ghost knew about me.
When dawn broke, I heard a crowd of footsteps. Then my room was opened, and several police officers dragged me out.
They removed the restraint jacket, but I was still shackled. In another room, a young officer began questioning me, then played a video.
The video was extremely gruesome. It showed me, with my bare hands, using equipment from the shock treatment room to kill two staff members and the attending doctor. The doctor was electrocuted to death by me on that bed.
It wasn't me. It absolutely wasn't me. Damn it.
I kept shouting, but my body was under the ghost's control, and I couldn't make a sound.
"Did you do this?"
"Yes," I replied. Instantly, rage surged inside me. Suddenly, my body moved on its own, my hands shot out and grabbed the officer's neck, squeezing with all my strength.
At once, the other officers piled on, trying to restrain me, but I kept struggling.
"Officer, this is a potential homicidal psychiatric patient. That day, we discovered he had such tendencies, so we forcibly detained him. We never expected this to happen."
It was Dr. Stone, looking utterly heartbroken. He said that in the first half of the video, I really was beating the doctor and staff, but in the latter half, the killings weren't my doing.
"Officer, rest assured, I'll keep him in the most secure facility in our hospital while you initiate legal proceedings."
Then the young officer glanced at me again, and I glared back fiercely.
"Your name is Ethan Zhang, right?"
My body burst into wild laughter, and the officer looked at me thoughtfully.
"The case still needs to be investigated."
"Uh, officer, this—?"