"I believe that the two cases we are discussing now, namely Officer Clay's unauthorized entry into a residence and my act of self-defense, as well as the dumpsite murders presented by Director Gordon that my neighbor encountered, might all be committed by the same killer."
As soon as Shiller said this, everyone turned to look at him.
"The killer is Officer Clay."
Clay's eyes widened just as he was about to roar out in protest, the prosecutor looked at him with eyes not of doubt but of warning.
Clay wasn't stupid, he now saw the prosecutor as the only normal person in this mad world just like himself, and if he angered the prosecutor again, the damned world was beyond saving.
"Mr. Rodriguez, I don't oppose you sharing your speculations here, but everything must be supported by evidence, or else Officer Clay could sue you for defamation."
Shiller shook his head and said, "My following discourse won't interfere with your judgment of the case between the two of us, I am merely expressing my professional opinion."
Upon hearing the term "professional opinion," the prosecutor hesitated for a moment before falling silent, for he was aware of Shiller's identity as a well-known psychologist.
If Shiller were to judge someone from a professional standpoint, it in itself was a form of factual evidence, as no one at the scene was more qualified than Shiller, and there were few in the world who could match him.
In many difficult-to-judge cases, courts seek expert technical support, and Shiller was clearly a member of these support teams. What he said could greatly influence the jury's decision and could completely be considered evidence.
"Please, go ahead, sir," said the prosecutor.
"Clay suffers from a certain degree of mental abnormality," said Shiller. "His job's nature has led him to have an overly strong goal orientation with intense paranoid emotions, and paranoia is a precursor to mental abnormality."
"Are you out of your mind? I'm not sick!" Clay still couldn't resist retorting.
"I did not say you were sick, Officer Clay, a broad definition of mental abnormality is not typically viewed as a complete pathological illness; it is related to personality, environment, long-term education, and short-term emergencies."
"I believe you might have killed those people under the state of mental abnormality and dissected their bodies, taking advantage of your duty to investigate people's homes to dispose of the limbs in their refrigerators."
Clay opened his mouth to object. Although he did do these things, it was not because of any mental abnormality; it was his mission, but obviously, he couldn't say it like that.
"You're completely fabricating things," Clay said. "You are the killer devil who murdered many people and dismembered them."
"Paranoid delusion and cognitive dissonance are also common symptoms of mental abnormality," Shiller tapped the table with his fingertips and said. "The most common symptom of paranoid delusion is the belief that others want to kill oneself or the belief that others have killed many people, and the next one will be oneself."
"Then how do you explain that I was really sewn into human skin by you?"
"I was just getting to that," said Shiller unhurriedly, looking at the prosecutor and saying, "Mr. Prosecutor, I only said I found the human skin, but I never said I sewed him into it, I have never done such a thing."
The prosecutor's eyes widened slightly. Shiller then crossed his fingers in front of himself and said, "That day, as I was driving on the road, I saw a trash can overturned in a secluded alleyway, the exact time and location I have already detailed in the report."
"I am someone who is always eager to help and cares about the environment, so I got out of the car to lift the trash can back up, and it was at that moment I noticed a black plastic bag under the trash can, I picked up the bag and found inside it a piece of human skin."
"In fact, I am not afraid of corpses; what scares me more is that if such a thing appeared again in my car or my house, I would be interrogated and subjected to violence just like Mr. Xi Wana, my neighbor."
At this point, he glanced at Xi Wana, who then glared at Clay.
"Moreover, the damage caused by a previous accident to my new house had not yet been fully repaired, I could not let so many police invade my home again, so I thought I had to find a place to hide this thing."
"I went to the manor where I used to live, the place is very large, ideal for concealing items, so I put the human skin in the refrigerator in the kitchen."
"But after I returned to my new house, I was restless, worried that someone would discover it, so I drove back to the manor again, but I didn't expect to see a figure in the kitchen when I entered through the back door from the garden."
"Later I learned that was Officer Clay, and he was at that moment trying to pull that piece of human skin onto himself and he sewed himself into it," said Shiller.
Everyone was shocked. Clay looked incredulously at Shiller and said, "What nonsense are you talking about? Why would I do that? More importantly, how could I possibly manage to do it?"
"You most certainly can, Officer Clay, for I have seen it with my own eyes," Shiller continued in the same unruffled tone. "And there are precedents in case reports of mental abnormality."
"About three years ago, I witnessed a mental patient who had performed a kidney removal surgery on himself in a suicide case; his family mistook it as organ traffickers had entered the house and injured him."
"Ultimately, after examination by a professional medical team, it was ascertained that he had performed the surgery on himself, and prior to this, he had never had any medical education or work experience, yet he managed to completely remove his own organ and survived," Shiller reported.
"I have also seen patients who have performed castration, lung resection, joint removal, even amputation on themselves, and they are not crudely cutting the organ out with a knife; they perform preoperative analysis, mark the incision spots creatively, do not use any anesthesia, and are able to perform postoperative stitching and bandaging."
"At its core, during mental abnormality, the brain's activities become aberrant and disordered, nerves malfunction, and the patient's sensory organs are completely mixed up; they can't even discern whether it's themselves or someone else."
"Some patients have described post-crisis that they believed they were a famous doctor performing surgery on the president, while others thought their cat was dying, and they had to operate to save it," he explained.
"Of course, some are very aware they are removing their own organs, but the mental abnormality convinces them that their body does not contain these parts; these are anomalies, things that need to be immediately removed," Shiller concluded.
"This is a common symptom of cognitive dissonance, but beyond that, their hand-brain coordination is normal, and they clearly know what injury and bleeding will bring to them, that's why they can complete such delicate and complex work, and know to stop the bleeding in time, because they don't want to die, they just want to correct something that's wrong,"
"The 'corrective' mindset is a way of thinking often found in the mentally unstable, who believe that something is abnormal and must be corrected, not realizing that the abnormality lies within themselves, within their minds and brains,"
"Sometimes this mindset only brings suffering to the patient, but sometimes it can harm society, because once certain mentally unstable individuals act on such thoughts, they are very likely to harm others,"
"Based on my observations, Officer Clay, you exhibit classic symptoms of mental instability. Please think carefully, have you experienced anything unusual recently?"
"Of course not! I'm perfectly normal!"
"Every mentally unstable patient believes they are normal," Shiller stated. "We don't rely on the patient's subjective judgments, only the facts."
After finishing, he turned his gaze to Gordon and said, "Has Officer Clay been particularly irritable lately, often showing repetitive movements, repetitive speech, and fragmented confusing logic?"
Gordon and the other officers exchanged glances, and after a moment of hesitation, Gordon admitted, "He has been quite irritable lately."
Brock pondered for a moment before saying, "I find his behavior very abnormal, especially after he rushed into the mansion. I clearly said we could look for clues, find a switch, but he insisted on barging in, and once inside, he started destroying things crazily; I don't know what's going on."
"I was just following normal investigation procedures! Because he's a damn killer devil!"
"I realize you keep repeating that term," Shiller said, looking into Clay's eyes. "Killer devil, killer devil, killer devil. But your sentence construction is always illogical, providing neither reasoning for why they are killer devils nor what you plan to do, just emphasizing a fact repeatedly, which is quite a typical symptom."
"I told you I'm not crazy!!!" Clay was nearing his breaking point. He was clearly a normal person; why did everyone say he was insane?
The 9 AM sunshine streamed through the window into the room, with Shiller and the others sitting near the window, backs to the balcony, whereas Clay faced the sunlight directly.
A bright beam of light reflected off a nearby building and overlapped with the sunlight, creating a bright spot in front of Clay. The sudden surge of anger and the rush of blood to his head made him even more dizzy.
Shiller's face kept swaying before his eyes, and that bright spot of sunlight seemed to merge with the lights that day, when Shiller had fastened that human skin to his face, the lights kept blinking.
Clay began to dissociate again, feeling that everything around him was unreal. If this wasn't a dream, then why did they all think he was crazy? Only dreams could be so absurd.
He felt as if he was back in the basement again, the sticky sensation of blood beneath his skin slowly crawling up his fingertips, he saw the bloody truth behind the human skin mask.
"Is this a piece of human skin?"
"This is a piece of human skin..."
"Is this my skin?"
"This is your skin..."
"Is this the real me?"
"This is the real you..."
In a daze, Clay heard Shiller's voice echoing solemnly in the basement.
"When we are born, we are beasts, crafting a human skin for ourselves over decades, learning restraint, learning to suppress..."
"But this isn't the real you. If there's anything the you wearing human skin can't do, then tear this layer of skin, and as a beast, go hunt at will, and show them what you're capable of."
The human skin was sewn up, and Clay felt an endless suffocation; he was shackled under this layer of skin, unable to break free no matter how he struggled or writhed, feeling much like being alive.
Fawning and flattery, mockery and scorn, panic and screams, those rotating in the bright dance floor were one after another monster wearing human skins, ready to reveal their fangs at any moment.
He had to be quick, quicker, quickest, to break his limits and grow fangs and sharp teeth again so he could bite others' necks rather than be slaughtered at will, like a gun.
He was fed up with the constraints of this skin, and with this hypocritical world. He was not non-existent; he needed to exist.
"Aaaahhhhhhh!!!"
Gordon watched in shock as Clay suddenly grabbed an officer next to him, biting into his neck. Gordon drew his gun as fast as possible, aimed, and fired.
Bang!
Blood spread across the sleek floor, reaching the edges of the black shoes.
The pulsating blood reflected the cold morning light and mist, outlining a terrifying tableau of living beings, while no one cared about the claws that the monster stretched out from beneath the human skin.