Chapter 9 Chapter 9 The Fall

At ten forty-five in the evening, the temperature was nine degrees Celsius.Mellie remembered that the weather forecast said that the temperature would rise again.The Vigeland Sculpture Park is empty.The open-air swimming pool reminds her of ships docked for repairs, deserted fishing villages with wind blowing house walls, and market places that are not in season.Fragments of her childhood flashed through her mind, like drowned fishermen wandering the village of Trondheim, emerging from the sea at night with tangled seaweed in their hair and fish stuffed in their mouths and nostrils.The dead don't breathe, but cry hoarsely like seagulls.Their limbs were swollen, their skin cracked at the touch of a tree branch, but nothing stopped them from advancing towards the isolated house in Trondheimen.Mei Li's grandparents lived in the village of Trondheim, and she was lying in the children's room of her grandparents' house, shaking all over.Mellie exhaled, and continued to exhale.

There was no wind on the ground, but on the ten-meter-high diving platform, she could feel the air constantly flowing.She felt that the blood vessels in her temples, throat, and crotch couldn't stop beating, and the blood was rushing to her limbs, fresh and full of vitality.It's good to be alive, just to be alive.After climbing to the high platform, she was almost out of breath and felt her loyal heart muscles beating wildly.She looked down at the empty swimming pool below, and saw the moonlight shining in the pool, shining an unnatural blue light.She saw a big clock at the end of the pool, and the hands stopped at ten past five.Time freezes.She could hear the sounds of the city and see the lights of the cars on Kikvan Road, so close and so far away that no one could hear her.

She is breathing, but it is no different from death.Around her neck was a rope as thick as a bridle, and in her ears she heard the cry of seagulls, the cry of the dead with whom she was about to join.But it was not death that was on her mind, it was life, and she wished so badly to go on living.She thinks about the little things and the big things she still wants to do.She wanted to travel to countries she had never been to, to watch her nephews and nieces grow, to watch the world come to its senses. The blade of a knife gleamed in the light of a street lamp.The knife was against her throat.It is said that fear can release energy, but this is not true when applied to her.Fear stole all her energy and left her unable to move.Thinking of the feeling of the steel knife cutting into her flesh, she trembled helplessly.So when the man ordered her to climb over the fence, she couldn't get over it, and the tears rolled down her cheeks, and she fell to the ground like a sack of beans.She knew what fate she was about to face.She will do everything in her power not to get cut by the knife, but knows that in the end it will be inevitable.She wanted so badly to go on living, to live for a few more years, a few more minutes.Everyone has this blind, crazy drive to survive.

She began to explain that she couldn't climb over, forgetting that the man had told her to shut up.The knife got into her mouth like a snake, cut through her mouth, spun and stirred, collided with her teeth, creaked, and then the knife was pulled out.Blood gushed out immediately.A low voice came from under the mask. She was pushed and walked along the fence. Finally, she came to a bush and was pushed through the gap in the fence. Mei Li swallowed the blood that kept coming out of her mouth, and looked at the magnificent scenery under her feet.The landscape, also bathed in blue moonlight, is empty, like a courtroom of judges, without spectators or juries; or an execution ground of executioners, without mobs.It was her last public appearance with no one watching.She suddenly thought that she rarely had the chance to show up before she was alive, but she never thought that she would not even have this chance before she died, and now she couldn't even speak.

"Jump down." She saw that the park was very beautiful even in winter.She wanted the clock at the end of the pool to work, so she could see every second of her life. "Jump down," the voice said again.The man must have taken off his mask, because his voice had changed.Mellie recognized his voice.She turned her head, eyes wide in shock, as she felt a foot on her back.She screamed, and in an instant the ground disappeared beneath her feet.For a moment of astonishment and terror, she was weightless, but the ground was pulling her, causing her body to fall faster and faster.She saw the blue-and-white tiles of the pool approaching quickly, ready to smash her into pieces.

Falling three meters above the bottom of the pool, the rope around her neck tightened abruptly.It was an old-fashioned rope, made of linden and elm fibers, and had no elasticity.Mei Li's obese body couldn't stop the fall, and immediately separated from her head, hitting the bottom of the swimming pool with a muffled bang.Her head and neck were still on the noose, and not much blood flowed out.Then her head tipped forward, slipped off the noose, and fell onto the blue tracksuit, thumping and rolling onto the tiles. The open-air swimming pool returned to silence again.