The town's streetlights suddenly secreted rusty red mucus, which hissed as it dripped onto the toes of Elvira's boots. Selina's spell was working too fast - the asphalt softened into the iron bars of a crib, and the store windows displayed huge milk bottles, which were filled with translucent shadows of the town's residents.
"Welcome home, sister." Selina's voice seeped out of the rotting milk powder can. "Let's go back to the purest moment."
Lila suddenly twitched and knelt on the ground, her pupils dilated into the misty gray color unique to newborns. She scratched her throat, leaving five milk-stained bruises: "... stuffy... so stuffy..."
(Deep in the vortex of memory, three-month-old Lila saw a rabbit doll dangling from the ceiling. A pair of small hands were pressing a pillow against her face, and the silver bracelet on her wrist was engraved with "For my beloved daughter Selena.")
Elvira kicked away the memory residue stuck to her feet—the solidified milk powder was like a spider web wrapped around the street lamp. The fire hydrant on the corner sprayed out spoiled breast milk, washing out Selena's graffiti when she was five years old: My sister's breathing is so noisy.
In her hallucination, Lila grabbed the collar of her baby clothes, and the fabric tore open, revealing the old scar under her collarbone. Elvira smeared rust liquid on her scar and drew a reverse contract array: "Don't die! This is her fucking memory trap!"
A rotten teddy bear suddenly pounced on Lila, and the cotton spurted out newspaper fragments from 1989 from the ripped threads: the eldest daughter's death. Eric rushed out of the dark alley, biting through the teddy bear's neck with his wolf-like jaws, and spitting out black cotton wool: "Run! She is reconstructing reality!"
The flood of memories swept the street. Elvira grabbed the floating crib rails and watched Lila sink into the milky abyss below. The shadow of Selina's childhood sat beside the bed, carving a cradle with her sharpened milk teeth: "Death is the gentlest nursing."
Lila struggled to touch the metal reflection at the bottom of the "sea of milk" - her silver rattle, with the handle engraved with "For Lila, Happy Full Moon". The moment she shook, the memory fault collapsed, revealing the hidden scene:
In the nursery late at night, five-year-old Selena trembled and shrank back into her pillow: "Why... you are the only one who can sleep in my mother's arms..."
Lila's baby cry suddenly materialized, shattering the cage of memory. Elvira took the opportunity to reach out and pull her, but she got a rotting swaddling cloth - inside it was Selina's baby shadow.
Elvira's instincts outstripped her reason. She tore open her combat uniform and wrapped it around the rotting baby Selina. The shadow immediately burned through the fabric and left a smoking palm print on her chest: "Are you crazy? This is her consciousness core!"
"Shut up!" Elvira pressed the phantom onto her shoulders and rocked it like a real baby. "Is this all you want?"
The rust in the whole town suddenly stopped. Selina's real scream exploded from all the bottles, and the residents' phantoms collectively vomited black umbilical cords. Lila took the opportunity to stab the silver rattle into the memory vortex eye - the handle was the key to the core of the spell.
"No!!" Selina's shadow hung upside down from the ceiling, "That's mine...my mother gave it to me..."
The rattle made no sound when it turned, but the sound of a baby's gastric juice reflux. The buildings in the town began to secrete acidic colostrum, and Selina's body crawled out from behind the post office counter, rusty liquid oozing from all her orifices.
"Stop..." She scratched her throat and tore off her vocal cords, "I admit..."
Elvira crushed the vocal cords that rolled to the ground: "Confess your sins and go to hell."
Lila suddenly grabbed the rattle and shook it gently: "Go home, Selena."
The torrent of memories washed back. Everyone witnessed five-year-old Selina stealing her sisters' milk powder cans and then retreating into a corner to cry, with the crooked words "save me" sewn on the edge of her pillow.
In the center of the ruins, the stone statue of Lucas suddenly began to ooze blood.
Postscript: Echo of Choking Milk
That night, the rescued residents found micro memory capsules in their vomit. Elvira crushed one of them and tasted the strange smell of 1992 antidepressants mixed with condensed milk.
Lila found Selena's torn diary in the ruins of the city hall, with a faded ultrasound photo inside the cover - two connected embryos, the smaller one circled in red pen.
When the moonlight is brightest, Lucas's stone statue will secrete fresh blood, and all the bottle-shaped ruins will begin to play encrypted recordings, which always end abruptly after the baby's choking cough.
The burn marks on Elvira's chest would reveal palm prints on rainy days, which completely matched Selina's ward records during her infancy.