Chapter 2: Ash and Rot

I was convinced David was possessed.

My mother once told me a story about a ghost taking over someone's body.

Back in the 1970s, in a small rural town, there was a lazy drunk named Bill Jenkins who beat his wife, Ruth. During that era, everyone worked hard just to earn a little extra food, but Bill was the exception.

When assigned to feed the sheep, he stole lambs to roast with his friends. When tasked with weeding, he pulled up the crops along with the weeds. He lied so often that eventually, no one would give him any work, leaving Ruth to support them both.

She worked grueling jobs and came home late, only to endure his abuse. She cried every single day, until a turning point finally arrived.

Bill and his friends were hunting rabbits in the hills when he stepped on an old grave. The decayed coffin collapsed beneath him, and he fell in, passing out.

His friends carried him back home. When he woke up, he was a completely different person. He worked hard, listened to Ruth, and later became the first person in town to make a lot of money after the economic reforms.

Everyone said he had changed for the better, but Ruth claimed that the soul inside him didn't belong to Bill.

Soon after, Ruth died suddenly. Bill lived to be seventy. The locals whispered that the ghost inside him had drained away her life.

Wasn't this exactly like my situation?

David had to be possessed.

I decided to test him using some old folk methods.

I dug out some sticky rice, wrapped it in red paper packets, and placed them in spots where he was bound to walk.

I also borrowed some incense ash from a neighbor, mixed it with salt, and sprinkled it across the floor. According to superstition, a possessed person would walk on their tiptoes, leaving only toe prints in the ash.

Clutching the remaining bag of ash, I hid in the bedroom and peeked out through a crack in the door.

David came out of the bathroom and walked right across the ash without any reaction. He just walked normally.

Then he went to pour water from the kettle. I had hidden more sticky rice inside a tea tin on the coffee table. Under my tense gaze, he reached for it...

Then he pulled his hand back.

My heart skipped a beat. I thought he had noticed something, but he was just debating whether to have water or tea.

After a brief hesitation, he grabbed the tea tin.

Nothing happened.

I was completely confused.

If David wasn't possessed, what could explain his drastic change in behavior?

After he finished his tea, he left the apartment.

As I started to sweep up the ash, I stared at the front door, struck by a nagging feeling that I had forgotten something important.

The meat—where had it come from?

I walked over to the old fridge. The door creaked open, unleashing an overwhelming stench of rot.

The cramped interior was stuffed with decaying meat, packed tightly together and reeking like dead rats.

Sticky blood dripped down the shelves, and white maggots writhed through the flesh.

I gagged as the memory of the morning's wontons hit me, and I ran to the bathroom to vomit.

No wonder David had been so eager to feed me—he had made those wontons out of rotting meat!

Where did all of this even come from?

David was incredibly frugal; we rarely ever ate meat. Buying this much would have cost hundreds of dollars, and there was no way he would ever spend that kind of money.

The more I thought about it, the stranger the whole situation felt.

Then I looked back at the unswept ash by the door and realized it only had my footprints in it.

David was a large man. When he hit me, his blows could lift me off the ground like a ragdoll. His footprints should have been deep and obvious.

But there were only mine.

I was certain now. David was possessed.