"What the hell is going on, Zhang!?" Jin-Ge bellowed, his voice struggling to punch through the high-voltage shriek of the children's choir. The buyers were exchanging looks that were as sharp as splintered glass, their pulses starting to red-line at the void of logic unfolding before them. Even Madam Liu, that rat-warren of arrogance, pushed her obsidian shades down the bridge of her nose to eyeball the grotesque spectacle.
The children remained linked hand-in-hand in a grotesque, boneless dance, circling and chanting their chemical curse of a song. Bo, the blind beast, capered near the bars, his ivory horns swinging with a malevolent life, while Aunt Lian remained a spent shell on the floor, a mask of defeat and cold knowledge that refused to move.
"What kind of crazy is this, Jin!?" Lord Chen shouted, his voice joining a discordant melody of demands from the Former Magistrate and Madam Liu. The children's voices were a heavy blanket, drowning out everything but the shivering rattle of their own terror.
Finally, Madam Liu's gears stripped completely. She stormed toward the heavy iron door—the lid of this concrete sarcophagus—intent on fleeing the monolith of doom. But the door wouldn't budge. Not even with her two black-suited shadows straining against it until their muscles corded like battery cables.
"Is this a setup!?" she shrieked, yanking a small automatic from her purse. "Is Deng planning to process me into meat!?"
Lord Chen and Former Magistrate Wang recoiled, their faces becoming masks of deep, cold knowledge. Suddenly, every bodyguard and grunt in the room had their pieces out, and the air felt thick as meat. Lao Zhang—that fifty-year-old piece of human wreckage—stared with eyes like trapped rabbits. He didn't want to damage the merchandise, but with a dozen guns out, the math was leading straight to a slaughterhouse bloodbath.
He couldn't touch the children; they were his king's ransom. So, he turned his fury on the goat.
KA-BLAM! KA-BLAM! KA-BLAM!
Zhang's Norinco Type 54—the infamous "Black Star"—spat fire. Three 7.62mm slugs hammered into the blind beast with the force of liquid whipcracks, the sheer kinetic energy sending the plump hunk of mutton flying.
The roar of the gun worked like a chemical curse, snapping the world back into a choking emptiness. As the goat settled into a cold, still heap, the unholy choir went silent, their fixed, radiant smiles frozen in the murky light.
"Get the goddamn keys and open that door!" Lao Zhang barked, his voice like grinding glass. Da-Li, that massive wall of meat with the shaved skull, didn't hesitate. He lunged for the cage, his hands performing a blind, rat-like scramble as he fumbled the brass ring into the lock.
The sight of the boss taking charge seemed to soothe the vultures. The buyers—Lord Chen, Former Magistrate Wang, and even that rat-warren of arrogance, Madam Liu—holstered their pieces and stepped back. Jin-Ge offered a quick, tight thumb's up to Zhang, a silent signal that the gears of the machine were back in sync.
"Get the twins out first!" Zhang ordered, shoving Xiao Fei—that tech grunt lost in a digital fog—toward the bars to help Da-Li.
Xiao Fei stepped into the cage, his pulse starting to red-line. He moved toward the children, but a jagged jolt of terror froze his marrow. Aunt Lian, who had been sitting as still as a stone effigy, suddenly moved. Her head performed a joint-twisting angle—a full 180-degree pivot without her body moving an inch.
She offered a fixed, radiant smile, but it was a rictus-grin that belonged in an insane asylum. Fresh blood began to geyser from every hole in her face—her mouth, her nose, her eyes, and her ears—weeping down her cheeks in slow, oily gouts. Xiao Fei let out a high-voltage shriek and leapt back, but before he could reach the door, Da-Li's massive frame came flying past him like a Nerf ball, hitting the iron bars with a heavy CHUNNK! that sealed the nightmare in.
"What the hell...?" Zhang stammered, his mind a void of logic. He couldn't wrap his brain around what could toss a man as big as Da-Li like a piece of human wreckage.
Then came the sound: clack-clump-clack.
Out of the choking emptiness of the shadows stepped Bo, the blind beast. He wasn't dead. Zhang was certain he'd spat three 7.62mm slugs from his Black Star into the animal's meat, but here it was, swaggering forward with a focused, urgent haste.
"Why won't you drop, you bastid?" Zhang groaned, raising the Norinco again to finish the job.
Suddenly, the goat's body began to perform fantastic rubber acrobatics. The jagged scar along the ridge of its back—that roadmap of a previous unmaking—began to writhe and twitch. The skin split open in a crimson, chaotic mess, revealing raw, pink muscle. Then, another layer of the spent shell of its body peeled back, and a massive, lidless eye—blood-red and rolling with malevolent life—winked from the center of the beast's spine.
The thing that used to be Bo wasn't finished unmaking itself. Its frame began to perform fantastic rubber acrobatics, twisting and bulging in ways that defied every instructional manual of logic. Its mouth yawned into a dark, empty hole, sprouting needle-sharp fangs as it let out a shriek that sounded like a dozen souls being processed in a slaughterhouse. The beast jacked itself up onto its hind legs, its hooves splitting apart with a wet, splintering sound into four-fingered talons as black as a washed blackboard. It grew, jacking upward until it was a two-meter monolith of meat.
The fur didn't just change color; it bled from a healthy red-brown into a swampy, necrotic green-black. Its ears split into four, and its tail—the real kicker—exploded into nine separate segments, each tipped with a stinger that looked like a giant scorpion's barb, twitching with its own independent, malevolent life.
"Shoot it! Kill the sonofabitch!" Lao Zhang bellowed, his voice like grinding glass. He and Jin-Ge began hosing the nightmare with lead, their pulses starting to red-line. The reports of their pieces were liquid whipcracks in the stagnant air., Ah-Ling, caught in a world of pain and fear, collapsed into a shivering rattle on the floor, clamping her hands over her ears to shut out the chemical curse of the gunfire and the demon's wail.
The vultures scrambled for the exit, but Aiguo—that piece of human wreckage with the cleft lip—stood his ground at the door. He swung his electric baton, the tip spitting blue sparks that flickered like a bad heart. KA-BLAM! KA-BLAM!Madam Liu didn't hesitate., She spat two 9mm slugs from her SIG Sauer P365 straight into Aiguo's face, both of them finding the mark right in his cleft lip. His head opened up like a dropped pumpkin, splatting a Rorschach of blood across the concrete. He hit the floor as a spent shell, dead before his knees hit the dirt.
The crowd scrambled over his carcass, clawing at the heavy iron door, but it was like trying to budge the lid of a sarcophagus. It was sealed tight, a void of logic in their escape plan. "I need explosives!" Madam Liu shrieked, her face a mask of defeat and cold knowledge. "They're in the car, boss!" her lackey stammered. Madam Liu's hand whipped out—SLAP!—striking his face with a sound like a dry branch snapping. She whirled back toward the cages, her eyes rolling like trapped rabbits, staring at the nightmare they had invited inside.
"Let's go and see that monster processed into meat!" Lord Chen roared, his pulse starting to red-line as he snatched a Micro Uzi from his grunt's skeletal talons. He shoved his underlings forward, a riot of focused, urgent haste to join Lao Zhang and Jin-Ge in their battle against the feathered engine of nightmare. In that charnel house, every man knew the blind beast was the immediate threat that needed its gears stripped first. A discordant melody of gunfire erupted—a dozen pieces spitting fire until the metamorphosis of the goat jerked and tumbled back into the choking emptiness of the shadows. Zhang—that fifty-year-old piece of human wreckage—didn't stop there; he slammed home another magazine and emptied it into the carcass until the malevolent life in that unholy eye finally winked out.
"The small-fry... the twins... they brought this chemical curse into our nest, and maybe they're devils themselves!" Zhang hissed through a shivering rattle of breath. Xiao Fei, a tech grunt lost in a digital fog, crawled across the floor in a blind, rat-like scramble, trying to move Da-Li toward the heavy iron door. But the massive wall of meat was a spent shell, his breathing a dry, rasping struggle after being processed by the beast's impact. "Help... me..." the bald bastid wheezed, his face a mask of defeat and cold knowledge.
Inside the cage, the other children stood like porcelain nightmares, their faces as blank as a washed blackboard, but the matched set of twins never lost those fixed, radiant smiles. "You devil-spawn, die!" Madam Liu shrieked, her voice a thin sliver of ice as she leveled her piece at the children. Lord Chen tried to strip the gears of her plan, but the rat-warren of her arrogance was too fast; she exploded four rounds meant to turn those treasures into meat for the machine.
FHWIP! A sound like a heavy blanket snapping filled the monolith of doom, and the twins—who had been as real as a cube of butter on a plate—simply vanished. They transformed into a single, blood-red sheet that flew toward the ceiling like a childhood daydream gone wrong. The fabric slipped through the iron mesh and out through the holes in the roof—the ones Zhang's liquid whipcracks had punched earlier—leaving no trace in the stagnant air.
"Spooks! It's all goddamn spooks!" Madam Liu screamed, tossing her obsidian shades aside to reveal a face lathered in a swampy reek of sweat and ruined makeup. If a man had looked close enough, he would have seen the void of logic in her mismatched eyes—a cross-eyed squint that her dark glasses had always kept in its own private, faraway static.
"Goddamn it, Zhang! Did you drag us out here just to meet a devil?" Jin-Ge rasped, his voice a shivering rattle. He moved with focused, urgent haste to dump the blame onto Lao Zhang, those pieces of human wreckage already looking for a head to put on a spike. Jin-Ge knew the vultures—Lord Chen and the Magistrate—would be looking for a sacrifice, and he intended for it to be Zhang.
Zhang stood there with his mouth propped wide, a void of logic swirling in his brain. Everything was unravelling, and his heart felt like a pouting balloon of greed that had finally popped.
Before he could find a lie to save his skin, the small-fry—that matched set of porcelain nightmares and their fellow captives—found their voices again. This time there was no boneless dance, no circling. They just stood as still as washed blackboards. Then, they unhinged their jaws and let out that unholy choir, a chemical curse of a poem:
"The sky bleeds red, the Star of Disaster flickers bright.
Men sow their own unmaking; there is no hiding from the light.
Greed is the fire, leaving the world a spent shell in the night.
Heaven settles the score, and the demons rise to bite.
The old dream wakes, for the world of pain is in sight.
Who stays breathing? All shall be white bones, stripped of their might."
The vultures stood frozen, the silence a heavy blanket. Madam Liu—that rat-warren of arrogance—yanked her SIG Sauer from her purse, ready to process the merchandise into dead meat. But her finger died on the trigger. The children weren't just cute anymore. Their eyes had dissolved into twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness, with no white left to see. And they offered rictus-grins—fixed, radiant smiles that were as sharp as splintered glass. Her hands went to water, her gears stripped by a terror that didn't fit into any instructional manual of logic.
That wasn't all. When they blinked and looked back at the spot where the blind beast had fallen, the gravel was empty. The charnel house floor was a washed blackboard of grey dust. In a jagged jolt of terror, they saw it—standing tall and terrible by the cage, a monolith of doom that had simply materialized out of the choking emptiness. The goat-thing's massive, taloned hand whipped out in a liquid whipcrack, batting Xiao Fei—that shivering piece of human wreckage—across the floor like a rag doll until he landed at the feet of the small-fry. Then, the beast inclined its heavy, horned skull. Its jaw unhinged to reveal fangs like a dirty picket fence, and it began to process Da-Li into meat, tearing into his belly while the massive wall of meat was still wide enough awake to see the teeth in his own middle.
"It's not dead!" Lord Chen bellowed, his pulse starting to red-line. He retreated in a blind, rat-like scramble, the other vultures following suit, their faces becoming masks of deep, cold knowledge. They couldn't tear their eyes from the cage, where Da-Li was being unmade. Blood and slick organs geysered out, spattering the concrete in a crimson, chaotic mess. The bald bastid could only produce a dry, rasping struggle of a scream. Nearby, Xiao Fei was howling in a world of pain, surrounded by those porcelain nightmares. The children, their eyes now twin abyssal pits of absolute blackness, leaned down with fixed, radiant smiles to sink their teeth into his meat, drinking his life with a swampy, hungry reek.
"Demons! They're all goddamn spooks!" Madam Liu shrieked, her voice a thin sliver of ice. She was a shivering rattle of fear, hiding behind her shadows. "Fight to the finish!" the Former Magistrate ground out through his teeth. He knew the gears of the machine were broken; when the exit is a sealed sarcophagus, the only way out is through. Every piece of war-gear was raised, ready to spit fire—and then, the machinery of the night took over. The world simply gave up the ghost; the lights went out in a single, final snap.
Madam Liu let out a high-voltage shriek. Flashlights and phone-screens flickered on like bad hearts, casting a murky, stuttering light. But the light brought no comfort; it only revealed the void of logic. The blind beast was no longer behind the bars; it stood right there, a monolith of meat looming in their faces. And behind it, the unholy choir of children—their mouths a Rorschach of fresh blood—offered up their fixed, radiant smiles one last time. The slaughterhouse was open, and they were the only ones left on the menu.
............….