C10 Joshua Tower

My parents had just moved to California from Philadelphia in 1988.

After reading it, the fear in my heart couldn't be increased any further. Before this, the worst I could imagine was that I would be able to contend with the power of the country and the power of advanced weapons, even ghosts and spirit bodies.

No, the fear of power did not come from the physical, but from the air.

This kind of struggle had long surpassed the metaphor of an ant tripping an elephant.

After all, ants and elephants belong to different species on Earth. Although ants could not trip elephants, at least there were other species on Earth that had the ability to do so, such as dinosaurs and whales.

If it was an analogy, it would be like an ant trying to change the rotation of the Earth. This was not an opponent of the same dimension and level.

I still decided to write down this diary in the first person (the contents of which had been sorted and modified by me, but without changing the plot):

6 February 1988

Until the taxi pulled into downtown Los Angeles, I had no idea what was going on.

Even though he had been prepared for the worst when he left Philadelphia, the fact that he had rented an apartment in the center of the city for such a low price was, in and of itself, bizarre.

Lina's face also revealed anxiety. She looked up at me and shook her head.

We got out about a mile from the apartment and the Indian driver wouldn't go back in.

The city was completely different from what we had imagined. The streets stank of garbage, the abandoned buildings had been converted into a minority wholesale market, and a group of Mexicans stood at the corner and gave us strange looks.

Two blocks down, a neo-classical building loomed up in front of us.

Typical of the modern American buildings of the 1920s, with stained-glass doors on the first floor, and probably wire nets for poor security. Although the brass was stained with rust, one could still see the glory of that year.

Lina and I walked to the door, which was carved on the granite front floor tile: JOSEYA HOUSE, Built in 1924.

"Hey, WelcometoCalifornia. IhobeIdidn 'keepyouwaiting. "

Lina and I turned around. It was the real estate agent who called himself Tom.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, but you know there aren't many parking lots in this area." Tom passionately took Lina's luggage and said, "Please follow me."

Just as Lina and I were about to open the door, a hand suddenly grabbed Lina.

It was a zombie-like hand, covered with centipede-like veins beneath its shriveled skin, its gray fingernails covered with dirt.

An old Gypsy lady who wore a hood held onto Lina's wrist. Her eyes were completely covered by a layer of white mist.

"Leave quickly! You don't belong here!"

"What do you mean?" Lina was so scared that her face turned pale.

The old Gypsy didn't answer Lina's question. Instead, he gazed at Lina's face with his empty eyes and muttered to himself:

"The door you see is a wall, the wall you see is a window, and the Anfey Bina has two faces. The number of times you have to lie is the same as the number of times you have to tell the truth …"

"Hey, lady, we don't have any change." Annoyed, Tom pushed the old gypsy woman away. "My God, why can't these people get to the relief center?"

Tom pushed us into the lobby. I looked back at the Gypsy woman, who was still there. She raised a finger to the sky.

"..." You spied the hunter in the forest because you were his prey. "

The security guard sat in the surveillance room surrounded by a layer of security nets. He stuck his head out to look at Tom, then handed him a brass key.

"604."

There was a strong taste of wine in his mouth.

Tom led us to the only old elevator in the building. He kicked at the fence and the elevator creaked.

"You know that for an old thing to last for decades, it must be of good quality …"

Before Tom could finish, the elevator lurched to a stop on the fourth floor.

The fourth floor was completely abandoned. Even the decorations had been destroyed, and there was not a single light in the dark corridor.

"Tom, this doesn't look like a place to live." I suddenly felt cheated by the intermediary and fought back my anger.

"Oh, sir, I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear, but the residents on the fourth floor have all moved away." Tom had a fawning smile on his face.

"To be precise, no one lives on the third, fourth, and fifth floors. Esteemed guests usually choose to live on the top floor — the sixth floor used to be the most luxurious apartment in this building, and even Yi Lisa, Bethel and Kathleen Hepburn used to be tenants here. "She's too beautiful, as beautiful as your wife …"

The elevator finally reached the sixth floor in Tom's endless stream of words.

Walking out of the elevator, he found that the wallpaper on the sixth floor was mostly peeling off. Through the arched panes of glass in the corridor, it could be seen that it was indeed very luxurious when it was first built.

When we turned on 604, the musty smell that assaulted our nostrils rendered us speechless.

There was a big leak of water on the ceiling and a pile of rubbish from the former tenants in the corner. There was even a strange graffiti in the bedroom.

Anna squeezed my hand and shook her head.

"Tom, this apartment is not what we expected it to be … Do you think there are any other apartments you can choose from? "

"Sir, I think you've misunderstood. The advertisement in the newspaper for our company is this apartment, and so is the money you paid and the contract you signed."

"Believe me, your budget isn't even worth a fraction of the normal apartment in the city." Tom opened his palm.

"Why don't we ask him if he can refund the rent?" Lina told me in Chinese.

The agent's intuition allowed Tom to immediately discern her meaning from Lina's expression, "The contract states that the refund is to be deducted by 50% of the deposit. I wouldn't do that if I were you. "

When I received the letter from the Los Angeles Institute a year ago, I was pleasantly surprised to give it up. Moving to California was a huge expense, and the year's rent and deposit had cost us all our savings.

I looked at Lina guiltily. "We can still get half of it back …"

"We'll rent it." Before I finished, Lina waved her hand and said to Tom.

"It doesn't matter. Although this place looks very shabby, we can just buy our own paint and brush it. And how big is it? This living room is even bigger than our Philadelphia home, and with a starting line, we can race in the living room. "

Lina said this because she didn't want me to feel guilty. I gave her a light hug. After the marriage, she had lost a lot of weight.

I followed Tom to the lobby door and handed over the mailbox and keys. Just say goodbye to him.

He took two steps toward the door and turned to me hesitantly.

"Sir, you and your wife had better not go out after dark. "Goodbye."

Tom was wearing his hat and I couldn't see his expression. I think he's reminding me that security in this area is too bad.

I was about to thank him when he hurried out the door.

At around 9 PM, it suddenly started to rain. There was a sound from Buzz, and the electricity in the house went out.

"Little!" I scolded, smearing the darkness on the candle, and began to grope around for the electric box.

"Lei, look." Lina pulled me to the window. Through the glass were the neon lights and skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles.

"So beautiful." Lina sighed.

Lina's body was pressed up against me, and I could feel her heartbeat. She leaned on my shoulder, and her lips landed beside my ear.

"Don't worry about the electricity, let's sleep."

I unbuttoned her shirt. Lina smelled of soap and fresh magnolia. I kissed her chest.

"Lei, let's have a child. I want a child."

Lin's soft words made my whole body shudder.

I never told Lynn about my family's unwritten marriage rules.

"What's the matter with you?" Lina was suspicious.

I kissed Lina's cheeks. "Maybe I was too tired from moving in, so I went to sleep."

"Yes." Although Lina was a little disappointed, she still nodded her head.

Until Lina fell asleep, only then did I use the candlelight to open the book entitled "The History of Tibetan Marriage".

In the history of Asian minorities, Lina thought that I chose this major out of interest, but never thought of my family.

Successive generations of long male juniors married their eldest daughter and gave birth to male babies, but there had never been a special case.

An example of a failure to respect family rules would not end well.

At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, Danzheng Tur followed Xu Da around the world. Married to Xu Da's four daughters, Xu Shi. After the Xu family gave birth to the two-headed infant, nothing else came out. After Dan Geng, according to the ancestors, the eldest daughter was born into a house with three sons.

In the Ming and the Middle Ages, Tulgu, with foreign women private life, the pearl hidden knot. Seven months later, he gave birth to a strange four-eyed, six-legged baby.

According to the records, as long as the eldest son of the Disciple married to a girl with a different surname, a freak would be born.

I once wondered if this was an invisible genetic disorder, but genetically speaking, the chances of inbreeding being inherited were more than 50%, yet there was no record of inbreeding in two families for hundreds of years. On the contrary, in genetics, intermarriage is one of the most effective ways to reduce genetic diseases and deformities, but there is no example of a healthy infant in the genealogy.

The more I told myself not to think about it, the more uneasy I became.

No woman can accept that their child is a freak. Before I figure out the reason, I don't plan to impregnate Lina.

If she knew the truth, perhaps she would never forgive me for my selfishness.