As he saw how the crowd of netizens flattered and praised him, Sanimo’s vanity was greatly satisfied. He nodded with a haughty smile, waiting for the other party to reply to his answer.
Sure enough, half an hour later, this netizen named Lilith replied.
[My God, is that right? But the stranger I dreamed of was very scary. There shouldn’t be such a scary person in reality. He was like a demon. If I had met him in reality, I’d remember…]
Seeing this reply, Sanimo could not help frowning, but he was in a good mood today, so he did not quibble over the fact that Lilith was doubting his assessment, but patiently explained:
[Here’s the thing, if you’ve seen something terrifying, that means you’ve mixed up his face with a monster in a horror movie. This is also a normal phenomenon. The stranger’s face may have come from any horror movie or even a poster that you glimpsed when you passed the movie theater.]
As Sanimo replied, the popularity of this post began to rise slowly, and it soon entered the homepage. After it gained popularity, all netizens underneath started fervently discussing with each other.
[TIL. No wonder I have nightmares every time I watch a horror movie. So this is the reason…]
[Sanimo is right, is this related to the specialized branch of dreams?]
[I see. Post bookmarked.]
With the appearance of a group of netizens, the popularity of this post increased even more, to the point that even Sanimo was a little surprised.
However, at this moment, an unfamiliar account suddenly commented underneath:
[I’m curious, what kind of face did you see?]
This sentence immediately led the discussion of the post to the topic of what the face looked like in the dream. Everyone also inquired. Obviously, to many netizens, this topic was more interesting than anything that came before.
Sanimo refreshed the page twice and saw that Lilith had not replied to him, so he checked the time.
It was already 9:30 at night, but at this time, his roommate’s bed in the dormitory was still empty. His roommate was a Mexican. His parents were in jail for drug dealing and he only managed to survive by the money his parents had saved up and entered this school.
Nonetheless, although this roommate was the child of a drug dealer, he studied very seriously, otherwise, he would not have been admitted to Stanford University and become a member of this world-renowned school.
About two minutes later, just when Sanimo was a little tired and was about to turn off the computer to go to sleep, the forum finally chimed with a notification.
Sanimo clicked on the notification, and sure enough, it was the original poster Lilith who responded:
[Big thanks to the answer from the veteran Sanimo and the enthusiastic help of all netizens. The reason I’m replying to you now is that someone asked me what kind of face I saw, so I drew it out from memory and gave him a name, “This Man”. If you’re interested, you can click to open it, but please be careful, because this picture is very scary… [Picture]]
She had even drawn it out?
Seeing this, Sanimo smiled subconsciously and moved the mouse to the picture, but just when he was about to click on it, his hand suddenly paused…
He did not know why, but when he moved the mouse over this picture, Sanimo suddenly felt an inexplicable pounding in his heart.
As it got closer to night, the dormitory had become completely dark. Since he returned to the dormitory after class, he had never gotten out of bed. Therefore, the lights in the dormitory were not turned on. Only the lights from other dormitories came in from outside the window, illuminating part of the space in the dormitory, but most of the corners were still pitch black.
At this time, Sanimo stiffened his neck and turned his head to look into the dark corners of the dormitory.
There was nothing there.
Sanimo exhaled. He did not know why he suddenly had a horrible feeling, let alone in the dormitory that he was very familiar with. Still, he did not think much about it and he moved the mouse over the picture.
As a veteran who had trawled through major websites and forums for many years, it was not like he had never seen frightening images. At this point, the other party had already aroused his curiosity and his curiosity had overcome his fear.
“Click.”
With a soft click from the mouse, the picture entered the loading state and then an image with a white background was loaded from top to bottom…
The Internet speed at this time became extremely slow for some reason, so the picture that could have been loaded in an instant had to emerge from top to bottom, but Sanimo was already staring at the screen.
First, he saw a tuft of sparse hair, and then, a pair of thick and comical eyebrows appeared, and after that, a pair of large, hollow eyes…
Sanimo held his breath subconsciously.
The picture kept on loading. Behind the hollow eyes, a weird nose gradually appeared, and finally, a slightly upturned mouth.
The most important thing was that this mouth was too big…
After seeing this picture, the corners of Sanimo’s mouth twitched, and at the same time, a chill shot up his spine and surged over his scalp in ripples. It felt as if the top of his head was about to explode.
Was this the “This Man” that Lilith said?
Sanimo took a deep breath and subconsciously moved away from the screen. At this moment, he even regretted his reckless behavior.
The visual effect of this picture called “This Man” was scary, but it was not enough to frighten people who were mentally prepared. Even so, for some reason, after seeing this picture, Sanimo felt an inexplicable burst of heart palpitations.
He could not tell the source of such palpitations. Even he felt that it was just an illusion.
Just when Sanimo’s nerves were on edge, outside the dark dormitory’s door, there was a sudden sound of scattered footsteps.
Sanimo hurriedly closed the picture while he looked up at the door, only to hear the footsteps coming to the door. Following that, there was a sound of a key turning in the lock.
“Phew…”
After hearing this sound, Sanimo finally breathed a sigh of relief. Since his roommate was back, he would feel much braver. At least, he would no longer feel so nervous.
“Click!”
After the clattering noises, the door of the dormitory opened subsequently and Sanimo suddenly saw a figure walking in from outside.
Due to the lights in the corridor, the person who came in was faced away from the light, and Sanimo could not see the other person’s appearance. Nonetheless, he could judge that this was indeed his roommate based on his body shape, so he immediately shouted:
“Danny, why are you only back now?”
“Uh, I ran into some trouble outside…”
His roommate’s voice came over, with a touch of helplessness. “Sanimo, since you’re in the dormitory, why didn’t you turn on the lights?”
“I’m too lazy. You can turn it on.”
Sanimo spread his hands. “What trouble did you have outside?”
“Nothing much, a bee happened to sting my face and my face swelled up.”
The roommate walked under the switch of the fluorescent light. “Will you come take a look for me?”
“Of course, no problem.”
Sanimo laughed and went directly to the side of the bed. At this moment, the roommate pressed the switch at the same time.
At once, the entire dormitory lit up and the dazzling light made Sanimo close his eyes promptly. When he opened his eyes again in the next second, his roommate was already standing in front of him.
“Sanimo, look at my face, is it swollen?”
His roommate’s voice still rang out in the dormitory, but at this time, Sanimo’s eyes bulged. His pupils shrank and incomparable panic flared in his eyes ——
In front of him, there was a man with thick eyebrows, vacant eyes, and a mouth that was stretched to the base of his ears. The man was wearing his roommate’s clothing while tilting his head with an eerie smile as he stared unwaveringly at Sanimo…
This Man…
“Ahh!”
Sanimo burst out in a scream and sat up from the bed. A torrent of cold sweat had soaked his pajamas. His entire body was heaving heavily and he looked around wildly at the same time.
At this time, the window was slightly brighter. Sanimo quickly looked at the clock but found that it was already the next morning.
“Phew… It was just a dream.”
Sanimo wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and slowly recovered.
At this moment he also remembered. After seeing the spine-tingling portrait of the man last night, he kept getting the creeps. He did not fall asleep until his roommate came back, but he did not expect he would dream of that man…
How very strange.
Sanimo murmured but at this time, he found that his roommate’s bed nearby was empty. The blanket was turned over messily and his roommate’s slippers were gone.
In the washroom nearby, there was the sound of water.
“D*mn, this guy takes a long time to wash up every time…”
Sanimo cursed in a low voice. He felt the urge to pee and quickly got out of bed, walked to the bathroom door, and knocked on the door vigorously. “Danny, can you come out first and let me go to the bathroom?”
“Soon!”
His roommate mumbled back from the washroom.
“Please!”
Sanimo continued to knock on the door. “You’re brushing your teeth now. If I use the toilet, it won’t delay your brushing. My bladder’s bursting, please!”
“I’m coming out now!”
His roommate’s voice still sounded muffled and then the bathroom door slowly opened from the inside.
“Thanks, buddy!”
Sanimo was finally relieved. He smiled gratefully but in the next second, the smile on his face completely froze…
That previous man with the strange face was standing in the bathroom, looking at himself quietly through the palm-wide crack of the door.
…
“Wo-oah!”
Sanimo only felt his blood run cold. He suddenly sat up in bed, panting in big gulps, his eyes widened. He could not recover for a long while.
It was a dream in a dream!
Thinking back to the previous dream, Sanimo felt that everything in the dream was so clear. So clear that it did not even seem like a dream, but a real memory!
Thinking of this, Sanimo quickly turned sideways, turned on the computer again, and logged into the forum which he was most familiar with without thinking about it.
Sure enough, the post of the netizen named Lilith remained in the forum.
Sanimo took a deep breath, slowly opened the post, and scrolled down. Sure enough, he saw the face of the man in the dream again.
Curvy and thick eyebrows, hollow eyes, a cracked and smiling mouth…
The man was staring at him with an unfathomable smile. Although it was just a picture, Sanimo’s heart trembled with apprehension as he stared back.
At the same time, under this picture, a lot of new replies had appeared and the number of replies even exceeded one hundred!
[F*ck! It gave me a fright!]
[WTF is this monster?]
[Why did I have such itchy fingers!]
[F*ck U!]
[…]
As if looking for something, Sanimo continued to scroll down and soon, he found a message he wanted to see —
[D*mn, it’s all thanks to this f*cking picture. I dreamed after seeing this picture. I had a total of three dreams, two ordinary dreams and one nightmare. This guy was in all my dreams, truly evil!]
Sanimo looked at the time of this message and it turned out to be 7:25 in the morning, which was five minutes ago!
After reaching the bottom of the post, Sanimo instinctively pressed F5. The entire webpage was automatically refreshed and a new comment appeared below this comment!
[Did you dream of him? No way, me too! I also dreamed of this guy!]
This message was sent exactly one minute ago.
At this moment, Sanimo faintly thought of something as if he had found a channel to unburden himself and he quickly typed a paragraph:
[I also dreamt about him. I had two dreams and they were all nightmares! In the dream, this guy became my roommate. My God, I can’t believe all this!]
After sending this comment, Sanimo got out of bed hurriedly. He glanced at the bed next to him nervously, but just so happened to see his roommate Danny roll over in a sleepy daze.
Fortunately, Danny still maintained the appearance of a normal person…
Seeing this, Sanimo finally relaxed. He quickly walked into the bathroom to wash up and then without waking up his roommate, he walked out with his laptop on his back.
Today is Sunday and there were no classes for his course. Where Sanimo was heading were where his club was located.
Due to his love for dream research, he joined the school’s dream research club in his freshman year. This club focused on analyzing human dreams and the president was a high-achieving psychology student, specializing in the subconscious aspects of humans.
Sanimo’s knowledge of dreams also came from the hands-on teaching of this president who was a senior student.
When he came to the club’s room, no members had arrived yet so Sanimo sent a message to all the members of the club with his mobile phone. After that, he directly connected the computer to the printer to print out the black and white picture from the forum.
As he watched the printer spit out that weird face little by little, there was no fear in Sanimo’s heart. Rather, he was feeling a faint excitement because he suspected that this picture might have the ability to hypnotize people!
Anyone who had seen this picture would easily dream of its existence in a dream. This strange phenomenon must be related to the subconscious!
This kind of hypnotic pattern that could affect the human subconscious was very rare and its existence was even once doubted by many people. After all, everyone’s minds were different and most of these pictures were only effective for a few people. There had never been a picture that worked for everyone.
Now, Sanimo was vaguely aware that he had likely found a picture that could hypnotize most people and the name of this picture was called…
This Man!
