Shifu, You'll Do Anything For a Laugh

cottage perfectly still, quiet as a graveyard. A crow with a piece of intestine in its beak flew up from some distant place and landed in its nest in a poplar tree.
    Another hour passed, and the little cottage remained still as death. The clouds kept gathering, and signs of dusk began to settle around the woods. What's going on? he asked himself silently. They didn't look that robust to me. Could they have fallen asleep in there? No, that's impossible! There's nothing in there but a slat bed covered by a straw mat. No mattress and no blankets. It's cold enough outside, even with a bit of weak sunlight; but once that door is closed, the cottage turns into cold storage. So what are they doing in there? He held off as long as he could before walking up to the door and coughing loudly as a signal for them to wrap things up and come out. No response from inside. Don't tell me they vanished into thin air like the goblins in Roll Call of the Gods? No, that's just some supernatural novel. Could they have turned into mosquitoes like the immortal monkey and flown out the window? Impossible, another supernatural story! They couldn't have. … A murky and utterly terrifying scene suddenly flashed before his eyes. His arms and legs began to quake. My god, not that! If that's what's happened, forget about my road to riches. I'll be lucky if I don't wind up in prison. All of a sudden, nothing else mattered. He raised his hand and knocked lightly on the door.
    Rap rap rap .
    Then he knocked harder.
    Thump thump thump!
    Then he pounded with his fist.
    Pow pow pow!
    Then he pounded with all his might and shouted at the top of his lungs:
    Pow pow pow! Hey, come out of there! Pow pow pow! What are you doing in there? A trickle of blood oozed from a split between his thumb and finger. Still there was no sound from inside the cottage; for a moment, he wondered if his memory was failing him. Did a couple like that really go inside?
    But then the woman's pale oval face suddenly floated in front of his eyes, incredibly lifelike. Her black, mysterious eyes were filled with a haunting look. She had a pointy chin and a bean-sized black mole by the corner of her mouth, out of which grew one long, curly black hair. The image of the man was just as clear. His raised raincoat collar covered his cheeks. He had a high nose, dark chin, and bushy eyebrows; his eyes were gloomy, he had one gold tooth.. ..
    No doubt about it, a cold, hard fact: about three hours ago, a sorrowful middle-aged couple stepped inside this abandoned bus, converted into a little woodland cottage; but now they weren't making a sound, and he just knew that the worst thing imaginable had happened. Bad luck was like a foul-smelling honey bucket, and it had just been tipped over on him. His legs buckled, sending him slumping to the ground right in front of the door.
    After about as long as it takes to smoke a cigarette, he managed to climb to his feet. He took several turns around the cottage, banging his hand against the metal skin from time to time.
    “Hey, you good people,” he raged and pleaded, “wake up and come out of there. I'll give you every penny I made all summer, okay? I'll get down on my knees and kowtow to you, okay? You bastards, you animals, aren't you afraid lightning will strike you dead for taking advantage of an old man? You adulterers, you fornicators, whore, whoremonger, you'll come to a terrible end. I'll call you Daddy, okay? And I'll call you Mommy, okay? Daddy, Mommy, dear ancestors, be merciful and come out of there. I'm a sixty-year-old laid-off factory worker with a wife at home who suffers from stomach problems. That's bad enough, so don't go adding frost to a layer of snow. If dying's what you want, do it somewhere else, not in my cottage. Go hang yourselves from one of those trees, or go drown yourselves in the lake, or go lie down on the railroad tracks. There are all kinds of places to go kill yourselves, so why choose my little cottage to do it? I can tell you're people of means and status, at least a section chief, if not a bureau chief. Is something like this worth dying over? Dying like that is about as meaningful as a bird's feather. It's not worth it. If even people like you don't want to go on living, what about us folks from the lower classes? Bureau Chief, Section Chief, use your head and put yourself in my place. Come out, please come out….”
    He yelled himself hoarse, and still not a sound from inside the cottage. Crows returning