The first volume of the funeral Chapter 1: Entering the Painting
Thinking back on it, Ke Xun felt that everything was weird from the moment he left the house that day.
First, the Teddy bear at Mr. Li’s house in the community met him on the road, but did not pounce on him and hug his legs to fuck him as usual.
Next was the central door on the thirteenth floor of the building at the back. The windows were wide open, and two gray-white curtains were hung outside the window, looking like two hanging banners from downstairs.
When Ke Xun looked up, he felt as if there was someone looking at him through the window, but because of the angle, he couldn't see clearly.
The man was completely in shadow, with only a gray face vaguely visible behind the window, motionless. With the black window frame and two gray curtains, it looked like a black and white portrait.
What happened next was even more bizarre.
For example, he spotted a shared bicycle on the street, but the seat fell off as he took a step forward. He was just one centimeter away from becoming the first man in history to be fucked by a shared bicycle.
For example, when meeting Weidong at the agreed place, he was late as usual.
For example, before the two of them started to play, the blue sky with white clouds suddenly turned into dark clouds and heavy rain.
"I knew nothing good would happen if I went out with a thief like you." Ke Xun ran away while looking for a place to shelter from the rain.
"That's not right. I calculated with my fingers last night and today should be an auspicious day. Good for traveling, flirting with girls, and getting a room!" Wei Dong didn't even have time to hold his head. He was busy wrapping his cell phone and cigarettes in his coat.
"You pinched your toes, and you were picking your feet while eating a banana, right?!" Ke Xun said angrily.
"What can I do? The Wei family has athlete's foot passed down from generation to generation. As the heir of the Wei family, I must carry forward this unique foot-picking secret technique." Wei Dong said, pointing across the street, "There, the art gallery."
Starry Sky Art Museum.
This art gallery is very old. The outer walls are covered with a thick layer of ivy, and the windows are almost invisible. The door is quite new, as if it was renovated not long ago. There is a sign at the door that reads "National Touring Exhibition of Painter XX".
How many ordinary people can really understand art? Even on weekends, the number of guests in art galleries is not very good.
Most of them came in to take shelter from the rain like Ke Xun Weidong.
A group of people gathered in the foyer, some watching the rain or playing with their phones, but few were looking at the paintings.
"Since we are here, we might as well make the best of it and go in and take a look." Wei Dong couldn't sit still.
The two of them hadn't decided what to do when they met up today, just because Weidong sent them a WeChat message last night: "Will you go out tomorrow?"
Ke Xun: "Waves."
Just ran out.
As two single guys who keep each other warm, our usual arrangement on weekends is to meet at the old place first, then go wherever we want, flirt with girls we meet, flirt with gays we meet, but we only want to be with the same person and stay together even if we go bankrupt.
Ke Xun has never had any artistic talent. Let alone appreciating paintings, even his selfies have distorted composition and blurry images. He can make a scissors hand gesture and produce the special effects of a six-fingered demon. Even a handsome face can be photographed as if he had a failed plastic surgery.
In this respect, Wei Dong is a hundred Picassos better than him. After all, Wei is also a graduate of an art academy. Although he ended up working in one of the "Top Ten Jobs You Most Want to Do to Your Hairline" - artist, and making weird designs that kill art according to customer requirements every day, he didn't change his original intention, and he still has some appreciation for famous artists' paintings.
It was a cloudy day and they had nothing else to do, so they shook off the rain on their bodies and entered the second door of the art museum.
——Thinking back on it, Ke Xun would rather have hemorrhoids all over his body from being idle than set foot into this art museum.
On the first floor of the Starry Sky Art Museum, the paintings of that painter are exhibited.
The second floor displays some of the museum’s own paintings, including original paintings by the artist and imitations.
The two of them walked to the second floor and lingered in front of several Western nude paintings.
"Plump girls are more pleasing to the eye, and they must feel great to touch." Wei Dong smacked his lips.
"First you need a girl." Ke Xun put one hand in his pocket and looked around.
Wei Dong reluctantly left the painting in front of him, looked around for a few times, and then pointed to the front: "There is another exhibition hall over there. Do you think it will be full of erotic paintings?"
"Brother, think back on your own life and think about when your dreams came true." Ke Xun said.
"Fuck, what truth are you talking about? I'm going to sit on the ground and cry for you to see, believe it or not." Wei Dong said.
The two of them walked slowly towards the exhibition hall.
This exhibition hall is not very big and has no windows. Only a few dim lights are on. The paintings are all hung on the walls. Under the dim light, the tone of each painting appears very dark and heavy, and blurred and difficult to distinguish.
"You're right, it's really a picture of a secret play in the erotic palace," Ke Xun sighed, "It's just that the lights were blown out during the secret play."
As soon as he finished speaking, the lights in the exhibition hall flickered a few times and suddenly went out, and everything in front of him was suddenly dark.
"...Do you want to cooperate with me and turn off the lights when I say so?" Ke Xun's voice sounded in the darkness.
"Then should we cooperate and play a secret game with someone?" Wei Dong teased in a very happy mood, "You should be gentle to me later."
"Thank you, I don't like straight men." Ke Xun said as he took out his cell phone from his pocket, but the screen wouldn't turn on after pressing it for a long time.
"You damn gay, you'll die if you do that." Wei Dong's clothes rustled, as if he was also taking out his phone. "Damn, you failed at the critical moment. I just fully charged it before going out, and now it's broken."
Ke Xun: "Wait, did you notice something is wrong?"
Weidong: "Now that you put it that way... I didn't find anything."
Ke Xun did not respond, and the dark exhibition hall suddenly fell into an eerie silence.
It was extremely quiet, almost like deathly silence.
"Um..." Wei Dong's voice was a little unnatural, "Do you think this exhibition hall is soundproof?"
An old and dilapidated art museum that doesn’t even have the money to clean up the ivy covering the outer walls, how can it have the money to make the exhibition hall completely soundproof?
Besides, what kind of soundproofing does an art gallery need? The clapping sounds that occur every night in the pornographic paintings?
Wei Dong shuddered and heard Ke Xun say, "Absolutely not. Before the lights went out, I could hear someone sneeze outside. Even if there is no one outside now, the empty exhibition hall can amplify all sounds, and all kinds of noise will come in. But now, there is no sound at all."
Not even a trace.
How can this be.
Even on a quiet night, in the wild mountains far away from the city, you can still hear the subtle sounds of nature.
But now, there really is not a single sound at all. People feel like they are suddenly locked in a vacuum, enclosed space, without sound or light.
Things are a little weird.
Silence and darkness are the sources of all fear.
"Go outside." Ke Xun's voice sounded relatively calm, and he did not mention the fact that both of their cell phones had problems at the same time.
"Okay." Wei Dong tried to make his tone as relaxed as possible and pretended that he knew nothing.
It seems that as long as you don't say it out loud or investigate it in detail, you can hide it from someone in the dark.
The two walked in the dark for a while, but completely lost their sense of direction.
"Something's wrong. This exhibition hall is not that big. If we keep walking this way, we should have hit the wall a long time ago." Ke Xun stopped.
“Stop talking…” Wei Dong stretched out his hand to pull him, as if afraid that he would reveal something.
What I touched was a cold arm.
“——Fuck!” Wei Dong yelled and shook off the arm.
Before I could continue, a beam of white light suddenly popped up in the darkness.
"...Is this lamp voice-controlled?" Ke Xun wondered.
"Ke'er..." Wei Dong's trembling voice sounded beside him, "This light... where do you think it comes from?"
Ke Xun said nothing.
Because he didn't know where the white light came from.
There was no light source, it just appeared out of nowhere in the darkness, not strong at all, even so dim that it was almost pale.
The white light fell on the wall, and within its range of illumination, there was a painting hanging.
Wei Dong then discovered that the cold "arm" he had just pulled was actually a metal isolation column placed under the painting, which was used to separate the spectators from the painting and prevent anyone from reaching out to touch the painting.
There is a note board placed between the two isolation columns to mark and introduce the paintings.
The two people subconsciously raised their eyes to look at the painting.
The picture was the same as the other paintings I had seen before the lights went out, with dark and blurry tones and only a few vague outlines.
What was strange was that the picture in the painting seemed to become clearer and clearer as the two people stared at it intently.
It looks like someone is using PS to adjust the resolution and clarity of the image.
It becomes clearer and clearer, and more and more magnified.
Huh? Zoom in?
Ke Xun blinked suddenly, and the painting seemed to suddenly expand infinitely as he closed and opened his eyes. The scene in the painting seemed to be right in front of him, and an invisible aura swept through his body, making the hairs on his body stand up as if he were electrocuted.
This aura disappeared in all directions behind him in an instant, like a hand unfolding a scroll and spreading the end of the scroll far away.
Ke Xun stared at the scene in front of him, unable to recover for a long time.
Where is this?!
--How is this going?!
——The scene in this painting——is so real right before my eyes at this moment!
“No… No way…” Wei Dong’s voice trembled beside him, “Is this true… I must still be dreaming… It must be last night, I fell asleep after scratching my feet until I was tired, and I haven’t woken up yet, I must not have woken up yet… Damn it, Ke’er! — We are seeing a ghost!”
Although Ke Xun was a poor student during his school days, he was not so confused as to not be able to distinguish between reality and dreams . He clearly realized that the place where he and Wei Dong were at the moment was really not a dream or an illusion.
Really, it’s reality.
Looking up, there were dark grey clouds hanging under the pitch-black night sky. The fields were empty and withered grass half a person's height was sparsely scattered on the wasteland. The air was filled with the smell of foul earth and dust. Not far ahead, there was a small village that looked very desolate.
This is exactly the part of the scene shown in the painting just now.
As for the rest of the painting, Ke Xun had not had time to look at it - or rather, he subconsciously or deliberately did not want to, or did not dare to, look at it.
He only remembered that he seemed to have caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye just now...something terrible that shouldn't exist in this world.
“… …What should I do?” Wei Dong looked at Ke Xun at a loss.
Ke Xun also turned his head to look at him.
When the two looked at each other, they couldn't help but exclaimed at the same time: "Fuck!"
I saw that the clothes they were wearing had changed at some point - now one of them was wearing a loose and rough white linen jacket and trousers of unknown style, and the shoes on their feet had become straw sandals.
“Fuck it—give me back Adi!” Wei Dong’s anger temporarily surpassed his fear, “Fuck—half a month’s salary— ”
"Shut up." Ke Xun growled, wanting to take off this set of clothes that appeared out of nowhere, but he discovered that his body was underneath this set of linen clothes, and if he took it off, he would be left naked.
An increasingly weird and uncertain feeling surged into his heart. Ke Xun's throat tightened. He gave up taking off his clothes and pulled Wei Dong: "Hurry up and find a way to leave here first."
Wei Dong nodded tremblingly, his eyes darting around in panic.
Ke Xun turned his head and looked behind him. Behind him was also wasteland with withered grass, extending all the way to a dark and blurry area, just like the part in the painting with chaotic colors and low pixels.
Ke Xun wasn't sure where he would end up if he went back, but his instincts were always right - so he felt that going back wasn't a good option. However, standing there and crying with Wei Dong was obviously useless, so he pointed forward and said, "Let's go to the village and have a look."
