Chapter 14: Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14: The Collection Speaks

The vibration started as a low hum, barely perceptible beneath the buzz of the fluorescent lights. But Fang felt it through the soles of his shoes. A resonance. A rhythm. Like thirty-seven hearts beating in sync beneath his feet.

The Taoist's beads stopped clicking. His head tilted, listening. "They're awake now. You kept them in salt solution, didn't you? Preserved them like medical specimens."

Fang didn't answer. His phone buzzed again. Then again. Then again. Messages piling up like bodies.

*Doctor Fang, the skin on my arm is moving. Writing words. Chinese characters. I can't read them but my husband says they say "liar."*

*Why does my face smell like incense and rot? I washed it four times. The smell won't come off.*

*There's a woman in my reflection. She's not me. She's standing behind my reflection and she's pointing at me. Doctor Fang, please. Please tell me this is normal.*

The Taoist pulled out his own phone. A battered thing with a cracked screen. He held it up. "Look."

A live feed. Security camera footage from a hospital ward. A woman sat up in her bed. Her face was wrong. Not deformed—the surgery had been perfect—but the expression didn't match her eyes. She smiled, but her eyes wept. She laughed, but her throat produced a sob.

"She was your patient six months ago," the Taoist said. "Mrs. Zhao. Breast lift, facelift, eyelid surgery. You used three different spirits on her. Three different faces stitched together like a patchwork quilt." He zoomed in. "Watch."

Mrs. Zhao's smile froze. Her left eye twitched. Her right eye rolled back. Then her face split.

Not cracked. Not bled. Split. Cleanly, down the center, like a zipper opening. Two halves of her face peeled apart, revealing the muscle and bone beneath. But there was no blood. Because the face underneath—the real face, the one she was born with—was already there. It was like watching a snake shed its skin in reverse.

"Nurse ran out screaming," the Taoist said. "Security guard fainted. Mrs. Zhao is currently sitting in a puddle of her own detached face, asking for her husband. She doesn't seem to understand why he's crying."

Fang's hand shook. He pressed it flat against the table. "I didn't know this would happen."

"You didn't know? You've been stealing spirits for seven years, Doctor. You didn't think they'd eventually find a way to take back what you took?"

"They were dead. They didn't need their skin anymore."

"They were *waiting*. There's a difference." The Taoist pocketed his phone. "The spirits you harvested were supposed to cross over. Seventy-three years of accumulated karma, lifetimes of suffering, and they finally reached the threshold of release. But you cut them. You peeled them. You kept them in jars like pickled vegetables."

The face on Mrs. Chen had gone quiet. It watched the exchange with hungry eyes. "He doesn't understand," it whispered. "He thinks we're just meat. Just material. But we're *memory*. We're everything they lived. Their first kiss. Their children's births. The day they died. It's all in the skin."

Fang's phone buzzed again. He didn't look.

"You have to let them go," the Taoist said. "All of them. Every jar. Every container. You have to return what you took."

"And if I do?"

"Then maybe they'll stop hunting your patients. Maybe they'll move on. Maybe they'll find peace." He paused. "But probably not. You've bound them to living flesh. That's not easily undone."

The basement door behind Fang creaked open.

He turned. The staircase descended into darkness. But the darkness was moving. Shifting. Breathing.

"Your collection," the Taoist said. "They're coming up."

A sound from below. Wet. Slapping. Like meat being dropped on concrete.

Then a voice. Female. Multiple voices layered on top of each other, harmonizing and discordant at the same time. "Doctor Fang. We've been waiting so long."

The first hand appeared on the stair railing. Translucent. Blue-veined. The fingers wrapped around the wood and pulled.

A woman emerged from the darkness. She was naked. Her body was a patchwork of different skin tones. Pale. Olive. Dark brown. Sunburned pink. Stitched together with crude black thread. Her face was a mask of horror—seven different mouths sewn into the flesh of her cheeks, fifteen eyes scattered across her forehead and jaw, three noses stacked on top of each other like a totem pole.

She was beautiful in the way a car crash is beautiful. You couldn't look away.

"I'm the one you cut first," she said. Her mouths moved in sequence. One spoke. Then another. Then another. "I was seventeen. I died in a car accident. My parents donated my body to science. But you weren't science. You were a thief."

Fang's back hit the wall. "I didn't know. I didn't know the spirits stayed."

"You didn't want to know." She took another step. Her feet left wet prints on the tile. "You paid the coroner. You bribed the morgue director. You told yourself they were just bodies. Empty shells. But we were *in* there, Doctor. We were screaming. We were pounding on the inside of our own skin. And you didn't listen."

Behind her, more figures emerged. A dozen. Two dozen. Thirty-seven in total. Each one a puzzle of mismatched parts. Each one wearing the skin of multiple donors, stitched together into grotesque sculptures of human misery.

The Taoist's beads clicked faster. "They're manifestations. The spirits have gathered enough energy to form bodies from the scraps you left behind. The parts you didn't use."

"I used everything," Fang whispered.

"Exactly."

The patchwork woman reached the top of the stairs. She was close enough that Fang could smell her. Formaldehyde. Rot. The faint sweetness of decay.

"You kept me in a jar for three years," she said. "Three years in the dark. Floating in salt water. Listening to you walk past. Listening to you laugh. Listening to you take other women into your operating room and glue my sisters onto their faces."

"I'm sorry."

"Sorry doesn't give me back my skin." She raised her hand. The fingers were different lengths, different colors, different textures. "I had lovely skin. My mother said I had the complexion of a pearl. You cut it into seventeen pieces and sold it to seventeen women. They wear me on their faces while they shop and laugh and kiss their husbands."

The other spirits crowded behind her. Their eyes—hundreds of eyes, scattered across their bodies—fixed on Fang with an intensity that made his bones ache.

"We want our faces back," she said. "All of them. Every piece you stole."

"Some of them are gone," the Taoist interjected. "Absorbed into living tissue. You can't separate them without killing the hosts."

"Then the hosts die."

"No." Fang stepped forward. "No. The patients didn't know. They came to me because they were unhappy. Because they wanted to feel beautiful. They're victims too."

"Victims?" The patchwork woman laughed. Her mouths laughed in different keys. "They paid you to wear our corpses. They looked in their mirrors and smiled at our suffering. They are not victims. They are accomplices."

The lights flickered. The temperature dropped further. Frost formed on the windows.

"I can help you," Fang said. "I can find a way to separate them without killing anyone. I have resources. I have connections. I can—"

"You can give us back what you stole," the patchwork woman said. "Or we'll take it ourselves."

The Taoist stepped between them. "Enough. There's another way."

Everyone turned.

"The spirits are bound to the skin. But they're also bound to you, Doctor. You cut them. You processed them. You applied them. Your hands have touched every piece of them. Your blood is in their fibers." He held up his wooden beads. "I can transfer the binding. From the skin to you."

The patchwork woman's mouths went still. "What does that mean?"

"It means Doctor Fang becomes the vessel. Every spirit that's been wronged transfers their claim from the skin to his body. They live in him. They feel through him. They see through him." He looked at Fang. "You become the collection."

"And the patients?"

"They keep their faces. The spirits are extracted cleanly. No harm done."

The patchwork woman considered this. Her fifteen eyes blinked in sequence. "He would suffer."

"Immensely."

"Every day?"

"Every moment. The weight of thirty-seven lives. Their memories. Their pain. Their deaths. He would relive every one of them. Every day. For the rest of his life."

A long silence. The frost on the windows spread. The spirits murmured among themselves.

Then the patchwork woman smiled. It was a terrible sight—seven mouths stretching fifteen different ways. "I accept."

"No." Fang backed away. "No, I won't do this."

"You don't have a choice." The Taoist grabbed his wrist. The wooden beads touched his skin.

And the world went white.

---

*Pain.*

Not physical. Not emotional. Something else. Something deeper. The pain of being cut. The pain of being peeled. The pain of being separated from yourself and put in a jar and left in the dark.

*Seventeen years old. Car accident. The steering wheel went through her chest. She was alive for four minutes after the crash. Four minutes of watching her own blood pool around her. Four minutes of knowing she was dying. And then he came. The doctor. The one who took her skin while her body was still warm.*

Fang screamed. Or tried to. His throat wouldn't work.

*Twenty-three. Cardiac arrest during childbirth. The baby lived. She didn't. Her skin was perfect. Stretch marks on her belly but the face was flawless. He paid the coroner five thousand yuan for her face. He sold it to a real estate agent for fifty thousand.*

Another life flooded in. Then another. Then another. Thirty-seven lifetimes compressed into seconds. Every death. Every betrayal. Every moment of terror before the knife touched their flesh.

*He's in us now.*

The thought came from outside himself. From the spirits.

*We're in him.*

Fang opened his eyes. He was on the floor of his clinic. The Taoist stood over him, beads still glowing. The patchwork woman was gone. The other spirits were gone. Only Mrs. Chen remained, still unconscious on the operating table, her face—her real face—calm and intact.

"It's done," the Taoist said.

Fang looked down at his hands. They were shaking. But that wasn't what made him gasp.

His skin was moving.

Underneath his flesh, something writhed. Shapes pressed outward from inside. Faces. Hands. Eyes. They pushed against his skin from within, trying to get out.

"What have you done to me?"

"Given you a second chance." The Taoist knelt beside him. "You'll carry them. You'll feel them. You'll hear them every moment of every day. But no one else dies."

"How long?"

"Until you find a way to earn their forgiveness. If such a thing is possible."

Fang's phone buzzed. He didn't need to read it. He already knew.

*Doctor Fang, the face is gone. The face is gone and I don't know where it went