Suddenly seeing this scene, I instinctively turned around and wanted to run, but my legs wouldn't listen to me. I stumbled and fell to the ground.
"Chen Zi, what's wrong?"
"Jiang Lixin, it's Jiang Lixin!" I pointed at the corpse in the car and shouted. My voice became a bit shrill because of fear.
Huang Po was stunned for a moment and forced a smile, saying, "Chen Zi, stop joking. This joke isn't funny at all."
"Really, I'm not joking. I saw her face clearly. It's definitely Jiang Lixin."
Huang Po looked at me and then at the corpse in the car. After a brief hesitation, he walked forward. He turned on the flashlight with one hand and gently pushed aside the hair covering the corpse's face with the hook for dragging the corpse.
When the hair was pushed aside, a familiar and pretty face was revealed. Who else could it be but Jiang Lixin?
Her eyes were slightly open, as if she was staring at us. There was also a strange smile on her lips.
This time, Huang Po couldn't hold it together either. He threw the iron hook in his hand, turned around, grabbed me, and ran towards the Golden Cup van.
Back in the Golden Cup van, we locked the door tightly. Only then did we feel a bit safer.
Huang Po wanted to start the car and go back, but he turned the key in the ignition several times, and the car just wouldn't start.
This Golden Cup van was quite old. It usually had the problem of not starting easily. Unexpectedly, it acted up again at this time.
Huang Po trembled as he took out a cigarette from his pocket. After lighting it, he took a deep puff and said, "Chen Zi, did you really meet Jiang Lixin last night?"
"Of course. Can this be false? She..." I stopped abruptly in the middle of my sentence.
When we drove in just now, the on - duty guy specifically said that this was the corpse of someone who had a car accident and fell off a cliff the day before yesterday. It was almost stinking, and he told us to deal with it quickly.
The car accident happened the day before yesterday. That meant Jiang Lixin in the car had died the day before yesterday. Then, was the Jiang Lixin I met last night a human or a ghost?
Was it a dead person who had accompanied me through a wild night and done all sorts of things with me in bed?
No wonder I was still so tired even after sleeping until eleven o'clock this morning. I came back in the afternoon and fell asleep again. I'm still groggy now.
Sleeping with a ghost, one's yang energy will be sucked away. One might even die directly. I'm just physically exhausted. I'm already lucky and have a tough life.
Huang Po obviously thought of this too. While shivering and smoking, he said, "Chen Zi, do you feel anything wrong with your body?"
"I'm just very tired. I don't feel any pain anywhere." I instinctively moved my body, and there was a faint pain in my back. "By the way, we were too wild last night. It seems a bit painful where she scratched my back."
"Let me take a look."
There were many scratches on my back from the wild time with Jiang Lixin last night. However, there was nothing abnormal. It was just a slight swelling.
Huang Po and I both let out a sigh of relief. Our tense nerves relaxed a bit.
"What should we do next?"
"Call Lao Wang and let the people on the day shift tomorrow come to collect the corpse. We can't handle this. Something bad will happen."
There's a saying in the funeral parlor. If something strange happens when collecting a corpse, don't mess around.
If the night shift can't handle it, let the day shift do it.
If the day shift can't handle it, it's no longer our business as corpse carriers.
As for who will deal with it specifically, no one knows.
However, in the more than two years since I started working at the funeral parlor, I've never encountered a similar situation before. This is the first time.
These rules were told to us by the old employees at the funeral parlor. They're not in the employee handbook or the regulations.
It's easy to understand. Some things can't be put on the table. After all, the funeral parlor is a public institution and can't publicly admit to superstitious beliefs.
But when Huang Po called Lao Wang, he got a good scolding.
"Who told you there's such a rule at the funeral parlor? You actually believed what those old employees said? Hurry up and deal with the corpse. The traffic police team said that there will be a leadership inspection tomorrow. It has to be done tonight."
I really wanted to just quit this job on the spot. What the hell is going on? They still want us to deal with the corpse?
But thinking about the mortgage and car loan I just took on, I forced myself to suppress that impulse.
Poverty keeps me rational.
I'm now burdened with over a million in loans. If I lose my job, am I going to be unemployed and starve next?
Huang Po didn't say it out loud, but he also didn't want to lose this well - paying job.
We sat in the Golden Cup van in silence for a long time. Suddenly, Huang Po said, "Do you think Jiang Lixin might have a twin sister or something? Isn't this kind of plot often shown on TV?"
There was indeed such a possibility. I took out my phone and made a video call to Jiang Lixin.
The video connected, and Jiang Lixin seemed very happy. "Chen Feng, you're done with your work and have time to chat with me now?"
"Not yet. Well, I just want to ask if you have a twin sister?"
"Why would you think of asking this?" Jiang Lixin looked very puzzled.
"Just tell me whether you do or not!" I had no time to chat with her. I still couldn't tell if the one on the other side of the screen was a human or a ghost.
"No. Anyway, my parents never told me about it. Why are you being so mean to me, Chen Feng?" Jiang Lixin looked a bit aggrieved.
Just as I was about to hang up the video call, Huang Po leaned over and whispered, "Ask her to go under a street - lamp and see if she has a shadow."
On the other side of the video, Jiang Lixin was downstairs in the community. I understood what Huang Po meant. According to legend, ghosts don't have shadows, and you can tell the difference between a human and a ghost under a lamp.
Although Jiang Lixin was aggrieved, she obediently went under the street - lamp.
She had a shadow. Huang Po and I both let out a sigh of relief. As long as Jiang Lixin wasn't a ghost, that was fine.
After soothing Jiang Lixin a bit, I hung up the video call.
After sitting in the Golden Cup van for a long time again, Huang Po and I discussed and came to a conclusion: The corpse that looked exactly like Jiang Lixin might have had plastic surgery.
Since Jiang Lixin looked like a certain celebrity, it was normal for someone to get plastic surgery to look like her.
Even if it wasn't plastic surgery, with the huge population base in China, it was normal to occasionally meet someone who looked very similar.
We've all seen videos of people who look like celebrities on the Internet before.
Actually, we both knew very well that this was self - deception, but in order not to lose our jobs and complete the task, self - deception was the only choice.
After some mental preparation, we summoned up the courage to get out of the car and walked up to the corpse again.
In the glow of the light, I could clearly see the face of the corpse. She did look quite like Jiang Lixin.
However, there were still some differences, so it should just be a resemblance. I must have misseen before.
We exchanged a glance and started to work.
There are two challenges when collecting corpses from car accidents. One is that the corpses are often damaged, making them troublesome to collect.
The second is that for a car body that has been crushed and deformed like this, it needs to be pried open to retrieve the corpse.
If the victim is still alive, the traffic police team and the fire brigade will saw open the car to rescue the person.
But when the victim dies on the spot like this, the fire brigade can't be bothered to go to all that trouble. This troublesome task falls to us corpse carriers.
So when we go out on field duty for the traffic police team, we are also equipped with tools like hydraulic pliers.
After much hard work, Huang Po and I finally completely cut open the twisted and deformed car body, revealing the corpse sitting in the driver's seat.
"What should we do now?" I looked at the corpse with a bloody and mangled body, feeling a bit at a loss.
"What else can we do? After we've sorted her out, you carry her. I'll give you a hand."
"Damn, why me?" I was really annoyed.
"It's your turn anyway. Besides, we're so unlucky this time. Isn't it because you crawled under a woman's skirt? Stop talking nonsense and get on with it."
I knew I was in the wrong, so I had no choice but to grit my teeth and accept it.
We spent almost another hour bustling about, wrapping the corpse in a special plastic film to prevent the flesh and blood from falling off.
With Huang Po's help, I managed to heave the corpse onto my back. Even through the protective suit and the plastic film, I could still feel the sticky flesh and blood on her body.
"Let's go. Hurry and get her into the car." Huang Po urged.
I walked forward with difficulty. Just as I took two strides, I felt a chill on my right ear. A slippery tongue licked my earlobe.