Chapter 34 Chapter Thirty-Three

Jaime-Gum's basement was room within room, a labyrinth of our dreams, bewildering.In his shy days, ages and ages ago, Mr. Gumb had his pleasures in the most private rooms away from the stairs.There are rooms in the farthest corners, far away from other life, and Gumm hasn't opened them for many years.It can be said that some of these rooms are still inhabited, but the voice behind the door has long since changed from high to low, and has gradually faded into obscurity. The floor level varies from room to room by as much as a foot.Sometimes you have to cross the threshold, and sometimes you have to hide from the door.If there is a car loaded with things, it is impossible to roll and it is also very difficult to drag.Forcing someone to go ahead of you - stumbling, crying, begging, begging, slamming dizzy - is not easy, even dangerous.

As Mr. Gumm grew in wisdom and confidence, he felt that he no longer had to go to those hidden parts of the cellar to satisfy his demands.Today he uses a set of basement rooms around a staircase, which are large and have running water and electricity. At this point, the basement was completely dark. Underneath the sandy room, in the subterranean dungeon, Catherine Martin was silent.Mr. Gumb is in this basement, but he is not in this room. The room he was in was on the far side of the stairs. It was dark and invisible to human eyes, but it was full of small noises.There was the sound of running water and the humming of the little pump.The little echo sounded as if the room was very large.The air is humid and cool, and it smells of greenery.The fluttering wings fluttered against the cheeks, and a few hula la flew through the air, and there was a low, happy nasal sound, which was a human voice.

There were no waves of light available to the human eye in this room, but Mr. Gumm was here and could see clearly, though everything he saw was different and intensely green.He wears a good pair of infrared goggles (Israeli, from a military surplus store, less than four hundred dollars) and directs a flash of infrared beams onto the wire cage in front of him.He sat on the edge of a straight-backed chair and watched fascinatedly as an insect climbed up a plant in a wire cage.Young adults have just emerged from a cocoon in the damp soil at the bottom of the cage.She climbed cautiously up a stalk of the former genus, looking for room to spread the damp new wings still glued to her back.She selected a horizontal twig.

Mister Gumb had to turn his head to see it.The wings were puffed up bit by bit, full of blood and energy.They are still clinging tightly to the insect's back. Two hours passed, and Mr. Gumb hardly moved.He flicked the infrared flash on and off so that he could accidentally watch the insect in progress.To pass the time, he played with the light on other objects in the room—on his large water tanks filled with vegetable-based tanning solutions.On the formwork of the tank and on the raised cross-brackets stood some of his recent harvest, greenish like splintered classical sculptures dropped into the sea.He moved the light again to the big galvanized workbench; the workbench rested on a metal pillow block, with the sluice behind it and the drain.He also took a photo of the hoist above the workbench.Against the wall are some of his long homework sinks.Through the infrared, the image of everything is green.Wings fluttering, strips of shimmering light flashed across his field of vision; moths flicked their small replacement tails, roaming freely in the room.

He was just in time when he returned the light to the cage.The insect's large wings bulged and settled over her back, blocking and distorting her markings.And now, she lowered her wings over her body, and the famous pattern became clearly visible.The skull of a man, mysteriously depicted on the feathery wing petals, is staring at the man from the moth's back.Underneath the skull's dull head are two dark eye holes and prominent cheekbones.Under the eyeholes and cheekbones, and above the chin, a dark streak runs across the face, like a mouthpiece.Supporting the skull is a mark that flares out at the top like a pelvis.

A skull resting on a pelvic cavity, depicted on the back of a moth, all purely accidental strokes of nature! Mr. Gumm felt so wonderful and light inside!He leaned forward and blew air gently over the moth, and she raised her pointed rafters with an angry squeak. He slipped into the room where the underground dungeon was, wearing his infrared goggles.To ease the panting, he opened his mouth open.He didn't want to spoil his mood by causing a lot of noise in the pit.The lenses of the goggles are mounted on small protruding barrels that look like a crab's eyes on two fleshy stalks.Mr. Gumb knew the goggles were not at all attractive, but he had some really good times with them in the dark of the basement, playing basement games.

He bent down and directed his invisible light down the well. The guy was lying there on his side, curled up like a shrimp.She appears to be asleep.The commode was next to her.She didn't make another foolish attempt to scale the steep wall, only to snap the rope as before.In sleep, she held the corner of the futon tightly against her face, and sucked a thumb in her mouth. Mr. Gumb shone the infrared light back and forth on Catherine, and he watched her carefully as he prepared for the real problem before him. If your standards are as high as Mr. Gumb's, human skin is extremely difficult to deal with.There were some fundamental structural decisions to be made, the first of which was: Where does the zipper go?

He moved the beam to Catherine's back.Under normal circumstances, he should put it on his back where it is closed, but how can he wear it on his own in the future?It might be exciting to think about, but it's not the kind of thing to ask for help.He knew that in some places and in certain circles his achievements would be admired--with a few yachts, he could be proud there--but that would all come later.He had to come up with something that he could use alone.It would be a great disrespect to make a slit in the middle of the front--he dismissed it at once without thinking about it. Mr. Gumm couldn't make out Catherine's skin color through the infrared light, but she looked thinner.He believed she had probably been on a diet to lose weight when he caught her.

Experience told him to wait from four days to a week before skinning.Sudden weight loss makes the skin looser and easier to peel off.In addition, starvation consumes a lot of strength in his subjects, making them easier to manipulate, more docile, and a little stupefied and unwilling to resist.But at the same time, it was also necessary to provide them with a certain amount of food in case they lost their temper in despair or destructively, in which case the human skin might be damaged. This thing must have lost weight.This one was so special, so important to what he was doing now, that he couldn't bear to wait any longer.But he didn't have to wait any longer, he could do it tomorrow afternoon, or tomorrow night, or the next day at the latest.Hurry up.