Puzzle Madness

Chapter 7 Mantis
[Wow!! I really found the Pleiades Mantis!!]

The body moves faster than the thoughts in the mind:

Doudou deftly tiptoed, his body tracing an elliptical line as he landed on the elevator diagonally opposite. His raincoat puffed up under his arms and ribs, looking from a distance like a large, bright yellow cotton candy, drifting in the air.

He fell and bounced up again, making the elevator rumble continuously; he drew a "Z"-shaped trajectory between the escalators on both sides, passing through the gaps left by the ribbons and hanging paintings; the airflow he created made them flap, and the decorative bells on the edges jingled.

Finally, Doudou landed on the handrail of the third-floor guardrail and squatted down.
Grunt! The iron handrail reluctantly deformed and bent downward into two inverted brackets.

"Where did you go?"

The electronics mall is divided into two parts: the front half from the main gate has only three floors, and the remaining floors 3 to 6 are still under renovation and are not open to the public yet. You have to go up through the emergency exit stairwell.
Doudou wanted to criticize this bad design, but there was no time to make too many architectural comments.
-
The stairwell was dark: the electronics city stopped operating at night, and only the green light from the emergency exit sign flickered amidst the crackling sounds.

It is this faint light that reflects the devastation here.

Due to the friction, small pieces of clothing and skin were scattered on the ground - or were they pieces of flesh? The light was dim, but Doudou could still see clearly: only the blurred outer edge mixed everything into a mass.

Blood seeped into the cement steps, forming a blackened path; on the white wall, there were occasional spider-web-like cracks, which were caused by the impact during the dragging.
If the body that was just dragged away had not died before, its bones would probably be broken by now.

[Murder! Murder! The Pleiades mantis has caught someone and wants to eat their brain!]

Doudou was excited but also a little regretful: he had seen a cheap film camera on TV last month, but he hadn't called the hotline to buy it. If only he had taken pictures of all this, developed them, and sent them to Parapsychology.

"Hey! Hey! Don't run! Whoever runs is a dog!"

Doudou cupped his palms to his mouth, using them as a small trumpet—a "clustering" sound came from above his head, gradually becoming lighter; the thing he was pursuing was still moving upwards.

Doudou tiptoed and lightly jumped onto the handrail on the right side of the stairs. Then, he slightly bent his knees and pushed down--
Boom!
The cylindrical handrail suddenly bent downward, and larger pieces of rust flew everywhere, while smaller pieces turned into powder; it was as if the soles of his Feili shoes exploded, bursting out a cloud of metallic mist.

Like a miniature rocket launched from the stairwell, Doudou suddenly rose, slipped through the gap between the stairs, and in the blink of an eye, rushed up three stories: He hunched his shoulders as much as possible, and clasped his hands in front of him to avoid hitting the stairs on both sides.
"oops!"

boom!
But Doudou still jumped too hard: the entire electronics city was only six stories high. If he wasn't careful, his head would have been hammered into the roof; if his skull had been more pointed and elongated, it would have almost burst through the roof.

When Doudou pressed down the concrete ceiling, pulled his head out, dropped it to the ground, and brushed off the white dust on his face, he only caught a glimpse of darkness and silence on the sixth floor of this electronics city.

The top floor of the electronics city was already under renovation - but there were still lights on, and the green light of the emergency exit sign was shining brightly.

Dou Dou lowered his head: there were dark red marks on the ground, as if someone had wiped the ground with a mop soaked in blood; the whole nostril was filled with an iron-like smell.

He raised his hands and clapped:
"where is the guy!"

It was a mess, not at all like the Pleiades mantis described in "Paranormal Exploration" - Doudou felt lost, but also a little excited: maybe he would become the first witness of the new unidentified creature.

"Come and eat me, I'm delicious too, I'm delicious too—eh?"
-
It was around this time that Doudou noticed the figure standing in the middle of the empty building. The dim light enveloped the top floor, making everything blurry—but the figure kept moving, standing out from the darkness.

The cleaning lady at the Mong Cai Electronics Market: Doudou always sneaked in at night. She had seen him a few times, of course. But since every shop closed, their shutters were usually locked, so she usually just gave Doudou a cold look as he darted around the electronics market.

On weekdays, the night security guard at the door always opened the "Dragon Tiger Leopard" magazine bought from a stall, covered his face with the white thighs on the cover, and slept like a corpse; so Dou Dou had a deeper impression of the cleaning lady.

Now it looks like--
The cleaning lady was standing alone in the middle of the dark, undecorated attic, cleaning by herself in the middle of the night.

Sweeping mechanically and repetitively; hands and broom swing in a cycle like a pendulum.

I heard that it is popular in mainland China and Japan to use stand-on dummies to provide warnings in places such as sharp turns and construction sites: these human-like dummies can make pedestrians and drivers more alert; they are also cheaper than hiring real people. Doudou has seen some of them on variety shows.

But Doudou had never seen anything like this in Mong Cai: the streets in Mong Cai are narrow, and everyone drives very carefully - although they can't be said to drive very slowly.

However, the figure standing in the middle of the empty space at this moment, although having a similar outline to the cleaning lady - round and strong, with a waist and shoulders of the same thickness - its movements were monotonous and repetitive: in the ten seconds that Doudou watched, the frequency of its waving of the broom was the same, without a single error.

".It looks just like the real thing."

Doudou muttered as he reached into his pocket and groped around.

Doudou took out the flashlight from his pocket, shook it, and then pressed the switch: although he could see clearly now, the light from the flashlight added to the mysterious and terrifying atmosphere.

Snapped!
The perfect circular halo illuminates the top floor space --
Composed of red, white, and silver, the bulging muscle bundles, bright red and crooked, twisted through the pale bones riddled with holes. Tendons, like damp toilet paper, dangled from the gaps, having lost their elasticity. The tendons and fascia pulled at the metal that served as the skeleton, causing the broom to swing.

It had no head either: a whole, messy ball where the head should be—meat, fat, and a large iron barrel that had been squashed and twisted out of shape.

Some of them looked like the dummies Doudou had seen in the physical education warehouse, used to explain the human body—except that the teacher had never used them.

Like, but not like:

If the human body were treated like the models Doudou made in the airplane template, damaged and then pieced together with other materials and parts, this would be what he saw now.
-
Perhaps due to the dim lighting on the top floor, this strange, still-moving flesh and blood didn't cause much of a shock to Doudou—
"What a crappy prop!"

Compared with the special effects props seen in movies like "The Thing" and "Alien", they are less realistic.

Doudou shook his head and muttered in disgust:
"Where's the body from earlier? Where did it go?"

Doudou raised the flashlight and pointed the beam of light randomly - in fact, even without this light, all the scenes can still be clearly seen; but since the flashlight is turned on and not waved around, wouldn't it be a waste of the battery's self-energy?

He paced around the dummy, waving his flashlight. When he felt tired, he would skip forward, reach out his hand, and poke at the bizarre "handicraft."

Click!

Like a knee-jerk reflex, the dummy suddenly opened its arms and clamped the Doudou ring tightly in its arms.

"Eh?!"

This was beyond Doudou's expectations.

Pop, pop!

The twitching muscles of the mannequin even stretched the metal skeleton to the point of deformation and breakage. These long, round, shiny tubes must have been removed from a broom handle.

The dummy suddenly fell backwards, dragging along the unresisting Doudou—
Doudou saw it clearly now. From the blurry flesh that served as the dummy's head, a bright red tube, as thick as a forearm, stretched out and disappeared straight into the darkness at the other end of the top floor.

squeak--
Something is rubbing against the ground:
The bright red tube was shrinking. Like the drag of a fishing line, the dummy imprisoned by Doudou began to slide rapidly along the ground, heading towards the silent and lightless darkness.

“Oh!! Hahahaha!!”

Doudou found it very amusing. Now he felt like he was lying on a skateboard—the dummy's back dragged a long, dark red streak of blood on the ground, but Doudou naturally didn't imagine whether the dummy still had any sense of touch or pain; he only found this kind of gliding to be wonderfully smooth and exhilarating.

Like the penguins in "Animal World" sliding on their bellies on the ice slopes.

Snapped!
He gently raised his hands and broke the dummy's grip on him: then he dug his five fingers into the concrete floor on both sides and pushed backwards -
sieve!
The [dry land boat] made of the human body suddenly accelerated.
-
pity--
The top floor of the electronics city under renovation is only about this size:

The pleasant gliding lasted only a few tens of seconds.

Doudou slapped his hands on the ground, somersaulted and stood up--
The dummy he'd been using as a skateboard had been worn through by the hard, rough concrete floor; a long, narrow hole lay between his chest and abdomen. If he continued sliding on it, he'd probably wear out the front of his raincoat too—and Doudou couldn't bear to do that.

Slip!

The dummy was pulled by the red tubes extending from above its head, disappearing into the darkness around the corner at an accelerated speed. But there were more thick, round red tubes coiled on the ground, tangled into a ball.

"It's not durable."

Doudou had discovered before: this fake cleaning lady standing alone and dancing outside must be a trap; the corpse he just saw outside was probably it.

"Hello? Is anyone there? Your dummy caught me, huh? But I broke it."

There was no response—the windows on the top floor were open, and Doudou couldn't even hear his own voice. This made him a little depressed, and suddenly lost the immersive feeling that felt like a horror movie.

He tapped his flashlight and walked along the red line on the ground that looked like a fire hose:

After turning the corner, Doudou saw the monster.

(End of this chapter)