Chapter 10: The Corpse in White

What I saw made my legs give out—I collapsed to the floor. On the stairs, where there had just been nothing, now lay the corpse of a woman in a long white dress.

My knees buckled. I hit the floor so hard my teeth clacked, breath coming in ragged gasps that tasted like copper. The world spun around me. There she was—a woman in a white dress, just like Lauren described. The fabric was soaked through with dark blood, a gruesome, spreading stain.

Most horrifying of all, the corpse was headless—her head had been cleanly severed and taken away. Blood had soaked her dress and stained the stairs red, and more was still trickling down.

I wanted to scream, but nothing came out. The metallic scent of blood hit me, heavy and suffocating. My mind reeled, refusing to accept what my eyes were seeing.

What made me tremble even more was that the phone’s ringtone was still ringing, clutched tightly in the hand of the headless corpse.

The phone vibrated in her grip, the light from the screen glinting off a gold ring on her finger. The sound echoed, each note digging deeper into my panic.

At that moment, my mind went completely blank.

I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I just stared, mouth dry, heart trying to punch its way out of my chest. The world shrank to the size of that stairwell, that corpse, that impossible ringing phone.

Who was the headless woman in the stairwell? Why did she die here? Who killed her?

Questions spun in my head, each more desperate than the last. This wasn’t supposed to happen—not in a city like this, not to someone like me. I came to fix a lock, not walk into a nightmare.

Even more disturbing—why was the phone that had called me for help now in her hand?

I glanced down at my own phone, hands shaking, then back at the corpse’s. It was the same number—the one from earlier, the one I had saved as "Lauren Zheng."

Could it be that the one who called me was actually this headless corpse?

My skin crawled. I forced myself to remember every detail—the voice, the fear, the pleading. Had it been her? Had I just spoken to a ghost?

How could that be?

I tried to stand, legs numb, brain refusing to cooperate. My thoughts ran in circles, chasing their own tails.

Or... was the woman dead in the stairwell the real owner of Apartment 1404?

Suddenly, the memory of Lauren’s ID flashed in my mind—the picture, the name, the address. Was her hair really that long? Did the eyes match? Suddenly, I couldn’t trust my own memory. But then, who was the woman who just entered Apartment 1404...?