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2024.05.27
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白矮✎
Bai Ai山西人，业余写作者。
An amateur writer from Shanxi.
Z在年轻的同时也衰老着，黯淡的同时闪耀着，在凝视着海面光流的同时也试图挽救着自己那锈迹斑斑的，支撑自己晚年幸福的杠杆，这杆在消耗它最后的力气。衰老的它气力已不再足够连接太远的地方，在蠕缩中变得通身瓦亮。它在忧虑中攥紧身边的离子海滩，一股流荧顺着扭曲的海滩褶皱流淌下来，被卷入地面尘世飞驰的质量洪流当中。Z感到蚯蚓的消化不良，多少和自己的顽固有些关系。老Z一头扎进隧道侧壁里，形成一个凹窝，角质层包裹着它，它舒展在里面，身体表面变得黏糊，发光。经过的同胞们注意到这个发光的老者，纷纷避让。即便如此，那年轻的质量涟漪依然波及老者，掀走了一部分萦绕在老者身上的清辉。弥留之际，它突然变得如此平静，以至外界在它看来，尽是“存在的漩涡与湍流”。隧道抖动着，老者却已安睡，这是一条蚯蚓的尾巴了，所有人都准备好跳跃。老者被排出了蚯蚓，外置了，原先的凹窝留下一滩光液，正在被隧道黏膜吸收。下一条蚯蚓，就是葬礼。
悲伤的湖水淹没亡者的亲友，它们浸泡在当场吊唁的宾客集体制造的蓝色湖水中。一部分哀悼者在浸泡中变得异常宽胖，它们临时蠕缩，蠕缩的同时不停置换着过去与亡者有美好交集的那个时刻自己，那个自己抛出回忆光体，然后返回蚯蚓原位，置换回参悼本体，如此继续。关于亡者的蚯蚓碎片纷纷在湖面之上的宇空中粼粼回放，汇聚成一束斑斓的追悼之河，向太空流去，那也是亡者去往的地方。
Z withered in its youth; it shone in its dullness. It stared into the currents shimmering on the sea’s surface, trying to salvage the rusty lever that sustained the happiness of its twilight years, a lever now depleting Z’s last drop of strength. No longer having the energy to bring itself to distant places, it writhed into a crouch, its body starting to gleam with a polished sheen. Anxious, it clung tightly to the ion shore beside it. A fluorescent stream flowed down the shore’s twisted folds, swept into the rushing torrents of mass hurtling through the earthly world. Z had a feeling that the earthworm’s symptom of indigestion was somewhat related to its own stubbornness. Old Z plunged into the sidewall of the tunnel, wrapping its body to form a hollow pit, which was encased in a layer of cuticles. Inside, it stretched its body, its skin turning slimy and luminous. Many of its kind passed by. Having noticed the glowing elder, they all made way for it. Even so, the ripples of the youthful mass still managed to affect the elder, stripping away some of the shimmer around its body. Dying, it suddenly felt so calm that the outside world appeared to be nothing but “turbulence and maelstroms of existence.” The tunnel trembled; the elder had fallen into a sound sleep regardless. This was the tail end of an earthworm. Everyone was prepared to jump. The elder was excreted from the earthworm and externalized. It left behind a puddle of luminous liquid in what was the hollow pit, now being absorbed by the membrane of the tunnel. The next earthworm would be the funeral.
A lake of sorrow engulfed the friends and family of the deceased, who were soaked in this blue body of water summoned by the collective grief of all funeral attendees. Some mourners swelled unnaturally large in the water, and they briefly curled up their bodies. As they writhed, they kept replacing their present selves with past selves who shared beautiful moments with the dead. Their past selves tossed the light of memory into the sky, before returning to the insides of earthworms and bringing back the mourners—on and on it went. One after another, these glistening earthworm splinters replayed the life of the deceased, sparkling across the vault of the sky above the lake. They gathered into a radiant river of remembrance, flowing toward the cosmos, where the deceased was headed.