Opening my eyes to see a ghost

Xiao Wang's request was very simple: she wanted to wear a striking red dress during her execution. The prison guards had heard that dying in red clothing could turn a person into a fierce ghost, but her request wasn't excessive, so they reluctantly found her a brand new red dress, devoid of any other color.

On the way to the execution ground, Xiao Wang didn't say a word, just hung her head low as if in repentance.

Until the moment before the execution, Xiao Wang only said one sentence, "I will have my revenge, all of you will die." Then she burst into raucous laughter.

Bang!

The gunshot rang out, and Xiao Wang collapsed into a pool of blood, her body convulsing ceaselessly. One eye was a bloody hole, while the other was wide open, her lips still curved into a terrifying smile.

At night, a guard on patrol seemed to hear the sound of chains dragging across the floor, thinking someone was wandering around the cell blocks in the middle of the night. But after checking, they found nothing; all the inmates were in their beds.

When the guard returned to the duty room, the sound of chains arose once more. With no choice, she went out for another round of checks, still finding nothing. She had counted the inmates the second time she went out: no one was missing, no one extra. Figuring they couldn't escape, she decided to ignore it.

The next day, the inmates whispered amongst themselves during labor, some saying they saw a woman wearing red clothes with fetters, leading a little girl around the corridors.

Someone corrected them, saying there was no little girl, but in her hand was a fabric doll that wore a sinister smile, its eyes blinking on and off.

The inmates had a host of stories to tell, each insisting their sighting was the real one, but they all shared one common detail: they had seen a woman dressed in red and chained at the feet.

An inmate who knew how to curry favor with the guards went to them for information, asking if a new person had come in, someone wearing red.

The guard said there was no new inmate, and in that day and age, there weren't that many inmates serving heavy sentences.

The matter was dropped, but every night, someone would still sporadically see the woman in red wandering aimlessly through the corridors of the prison.

Seven days later, the inmate with serious injuries had returned to the cell block.

"Xiao He, you'll stay in cell 107 for now."

Because her injuries hadn't fully healed, Xiao He was assigned to a cell on her own, and it just so happened, by a twist of fate, she was placed in the cell Xiao Wang had previously occupied.

On the way back, she heard the escorting guards discussing the woman in red, from the execution ground to the nighttime sounds of chains, feeling an inexplicable fear in her heart.

Because she heard a key word—fabric doll. Xiao Wang's execution had a lot to do with her; if she hadn't shredded Xiao Wang's fabric doll, Xiao Wang wouldn't have severely injured her, nor would she have faced execution.

Xiao He vaguely felt regret, regretting her own impulsiveness. But what was done was done, all she could do was pray Xiao Wang's spirit in heaven could forgive her.

At night, the sound of chains dragging across the floor came again, only tonight it was louder and more frequent than before.

Hearing this sound, Xiao He pulled her blanket tighter, covering her head as well, trembling non-stop under the covers.

Today was the seventh day after Xiao Wang's death, and she was afraid Xiao Wang had returned to seek revenge, afraid she had come to claim retribution.

Clatter... Clatter...

The sound of chains stopped at the entrance to cell 107, and there was silence for a long while, as the cellblock returned to its usual stillness of the night.

Xiao He was terrified and cautiously peeked out from under the edge of his blanket.

Ah...

A scream once again shattered the silence of the cellblock. He saw the cloth doll lying quietly on his blanket, its mouth stretched into a smile, its eyes blinking.

"What's all the noise about, what's all the noise?" The night guard, holding a rubber baton, knocked forcefully on the door of cell 107.

"There's... there's a ghost... there's a ghost!" Xiao He, seeing the night guard as if he were a savior, desperately rushed to the cell door, shouting loudly.

"Where's the ghost? Stop causing trouble and go to sleep."

Xiao He pointed to the bed behind him with a trembling hand, but when he turned back, there was nothing on the bed apart from his own bedding.

The night guard walked away with his hands behind his back. For her, the commotion of the inmates at night was something she had grown used to. Wasn't Xiao Wang just like that before?

Xiao He's legs trembled like a sieve. He slowly moved to the edge of the bed and, with all his strength, pulled the bedding to the floor, then searched above and below the bed, finding no trace of the cloth doll.

After taking several deep breaths to calm down, Xiao He reassured himself that it was just an illusion brought on by stress, and he carefully laid out the bedding on the bed again.

Just as he lay down, Xiao He got such a fright that he sat up shaking again, curling up in a corner at the head of the bed.

A woman in red stood quietly outside cell 107, staring intently at him. Her hair was wildly disheveled, and there was a gaping bloodied hole where her left eye should be, oozing white and red substances that, combined with the ghastly green color of her face, were horribly frightening. In her hand, she held a young girl of about seven or eight, smiling with her mouth agape and blinking eyes.

Accompanied by the sound of chains dragging across the floor, Xiao He saw the red-clad woman drift in. Gazing at that fierce face, he had forgotten how to scream, left only with the impulse to grasp the blanket tightly, his whole body violently trembling.

The woman in red kept floating toward him, pointing at Xiao He and asking in a strange voice, "Why did you kill my daughter?"

Xiao He frantically shook his head, muttering: "I didn't kill your daughter. It wasn't me, it wasn't me..."

The woman in red paid no attention to Xiao He. Her expression grew more terrifying as she spoke, "I want revenge. I will kill you all."

Ah...

The scream once again penetrated the quiet of the cellblock. But this time, the night guard no longer paid any attention. Let him shout; he could shout however he wanted.

The following day, the guards discovered Xiao He dead in cell 107. The inmates who had witnessed the friction between Xiao Wang and Xiao He were terrified, because Xiao He's corpse bore a startling resemblance to that of the cloth doll.

The overwhelming stench of blood was nauseating. His body was bereft of clothing, with limbs scattered across the cell like a dismemberment, leaving only a torso; the abdomen appeared as though it had been torn open by some creature, with the entrails spilling out from the irregular tear. And his head, resting silently at the head of the bed, eyes wide and round, as if having witnessed some unspeakable horror...