Last hand

Author: Tie Ma
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: At the beginning of this year, my wife read a short story online and was so scared that she couldn’t turn off the lights at night. I asked her to tell me about it, and she said, a surgeon killed his girlfriend in his apartment using very professional methods, dismembering her with a small surgical knife. Suddenly, the power went out, and the doctor was left in complete darkness. When the power came back on, he discovered that one of her hands was missing. He searched the entire apartment but eventually confirmed that the hand was no longer inside. Later, he buried the rest of the body, leaving only the hand behind to haunt him. His criminal actions were ultimately punished by extralegal means. What impressed me most was this: after burying the body, the doctor returned to the apartment and found curses written in blood all over the floor and baseboards. The words stopped at the baseboards, while the walls remained clean. After thinking for a moment, he suddenly realized—the severed hand could only climb as high as the baseboards. I found this story online, titled "The Last Hand," and discovered that Google’s search engine had over eight million links to it. Many netizens titled it "the most terrifying ghost story" when reposting it. I read it all in one go and realized it wasn’t a ghost story at all but a meticulously crafted psychological thriller. Once the truth came to light, I realized there was no ghost—everything was the result of human actions. The heavily burdened doctor was punished not by divine intervention but by human hands. Personally, I think this is a very cleverly disguised realistic novel. Some of its scenes are so realistic and cruel that they can rival Mo Yan’s Tansha Xing. The entire story is also masterfully crafted. Its disguise is a "ghost story," which is why it was included in the horror series "Duo suo." From a horror novel perspective, "The Last Hand" belongs to "psychological horror" rather than "mystery horror." Its horror stems from the deeply troubled minds of its characters, not from fictional ghosts. If a man killed a pregnant woman who was carrying his child, and he saw his own flesh and blood during the dismemberment, the guilt he felt at that moment would haunt him for the rest of his life. I found the author and asked him to expand this short story into a publishable length. Two and a half months later, the expanded manuscript arrived, adding many details about hospitals and medical schools, and enriching the original plot. The author is himself a doctor, making it easy for him to write about these topics. Words like "mortuary," "body pit," "autopsy table," and "specimen room" are enough to give anyone the creeps, and the author describes them so vividly. We are both afraid of death and yet know nothing about it. We are also curious about the lives of doctors, nurses, medical school teachers and students, body specimen room staff, and mortuary attendants who constantly deal with death. In fact, there are already many small stories about that "white world" circulating in our post-meal chats. Today, a doctor has come to us to tell a long, terrifying story. There are many doctors in the world, but few are willing to tell such stories. There are also many writers, but few can tell such stories. Fortunately, we met someone who is both a doctor and a writer, with both professional knowledge and imagination, keeping us on the edge of our seats. "The Last Hand" has been circulating online for 30,000 words, but the expanded version now has 80,000 words and has not yet appeared online. Thank you to 91 Literature for your support in the publication of this book! There are many doctors in the world who won’t tell such stories; there are also many writers who can’t. This is the complete version of the same-named thriller that has been widely circulated online in recent years and has been hailed by readers as "the limit of horror" and "China’s version of The Ring." It contains nearly double the content of the online versions and primarily tells the story of a surgeon’s entanglement with a vengeful severed hand. The author is himself a doctor, and his professional knowledge makes the details in his writing shocking. He takes us on a terrifying journey through the legendary mortuary, body pit, and specimen building.