Main character (Narrator) : Girl

This is a creepy incident that happened about three years ago when I moved to a new
neighborhood.
The housing there was really cheap, and it was a very quiet neighborhood, so I really liked it.
I was resting at home just a few days after moving in, when a rotten smell suddenly hit me.
I followed the smell to where it had come from and it was the entrance. So I opened the front
door, and there was… a girl standing there.
She was wearing torn clothes covered in dirt, her hair had fallen out with only a few strands
remaining, her skin was rotten in many places, and she was covered in bugs that were eating
away at her.
I screamed,
“It’s a zombie!!!!”

She grabbed the door with her rotten hands and opened her mouth wide as she pushed her face
through the crack of the door.
Her jaw split open until her mouth touched her chest.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, and then she suddenly disappeared.

“Ah, Rose came to say hello to you.”

It was the voice of Tom next door.

He was walking up to my house.

“When you meet her, you must give her some candy. Otherwise, she'll have a hard time.
She’s the reason we have so many candy stores in our neighborhood.”

As he said that, he gave me a piece of candy and walked back to his house.
I was in a daze.
I couldn't understand anything he was saying at all.

Her face kept popping into my head for the rest of the day. The rotten skin, the smell, and even
the creaking sounds of her bones when her mouth opened.
I tried to forget about it, but I kept thinking about it until I fell asleep.

‘What on earth was she…is someone filming a horror movie nearby?’

After thinking about all sorts of possibilities, I opened my eyes to findit was morning.

I was driving to work when the car suddenly thumped as if it had hit something.
I was so surprised that I stopped the car and jumped out.
That girl was in front of my car.
The front bumper of my car was all dented, and she looked at me with her body all contorted.

I got goosebumps all over my body.

She stood up and adjusted every twisted bone. Then she came towards me and stretched out her
hand.
Her hands were full of candy remnants.
When she opened her mouth, ants crawled all over her rotten teeth.

I screamed like crazy, and Tom came running out from next door.
“Here!!”
He threw some candy at the girl and went back into his house.

She took Tom's candy, ate it, ran to his house, and stood in front of the door for a while.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing.
And then I realized something. Her hair and clothes didn't move at all... and she moved as if
gravity didn’t exist.

My vision suddenly turned dark.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying in bed at Tom's house. I was startled and jumped up, but my
head hurt so much that I fell down again.
“Tom.. what’s going on..?”

Tom sighed.
“If you stay in the same space as Rose for a long time, the cells in your body start to die.
You may have noticed, but she is not a living being.
Everything around her loses itsvitality... Trees, flowers, animals, even oxygen...
20% of the deaths that occur in our neighborhood are unsolved... Why? Because the culprit is not
from this world.”

I got goosebumps again... but I also thought that Tom was making fun of me.
I couldn't believe it because I'd never seen anything like a ghost in my life.

But from then on, I always carried candy in my pocket.

And every time I ran into her, I threw her apiece of candy and ran away.

One time I accidentally threw the candy too high, andanother hand came out of her mouth and
snatched it away.
It was only then that I realized that what Tom said was true.

I went to Tom's house and asked him about the people who had died because of her.
At first, he waved his hands, saying he didn't want to even think about it, but when I persisted, he
eventually started talking.

“The first was Chase, a strapping 18-year-old man who mistook Rose for a person. Up until then,
her face had not rotted and she was quite pretty.So he kissed her, and a few hours later he
vomited up blood and died.When the autopsy was performed, hundreds of bugs were found in
his body. They had eaten all of his organs. Of course, the police could not find the cause.”

“It doesn’t make any sense...”

“I know”

“What about the next person?”

He was silent for a moment and poured himself a cup of coffee. I could see his hands shaking.

“It was a middle-aged woman named Nicole. But one day she was found dead with a snake stuck
in her throat.
The police were unable to find any evidence, and the case remained unsolved. We thought it was
Rose who did it. Because Nicole always said, ‘Go away, Satan!’ whenever Rose appeared. I guess
Rose didn’t want to hear that.”

My body was shaking from shock.

“You’d better stop… I don’t want to puke in your house.”

“Yeah... but if you just carry candy, our neighborhood is a really nice place to live. Haha"
He smiled awkwardly and handed me some candy.

I always carried candy with me after that and lived uneventfully for several months.
Then one day I ran into Rose as I was coming out of the house, and the moment I put my hand
into my pocket I realized I’d forgotten to grab candy. But I was too lazy to go get some, so I just
tried to quickly run past her. That was a terrible mistake.

Suddenly, her tongue stretched out and wrapped around my body. I barely managed to shake it
off and run away.
That night, the skin all over my body turned red and I suffered from tremendous pain.

I was so sick that I went to the hospital. The doctor said there were toxic substances all over my
skin and asked what happened.
I was so angry. So I decided to get revenge on Rose.

I started carrying aniron ball with me. And when Iran into her again some time later, I threw the
ball at her and shouted, “It’s a new kind of candy!!!”

She took the iron ball, put it in her mouth, and swallowed it.
Moments later, she fell to the floor in incredible pain, clutching her neck, and crawled
away,writhing.

She hasn't been seen in town since then, and it's rumored that she simply disappeared.
People started walking around the quiet street furtively.
People held a candy-smashing festival, saying they could finally go around without candy.
I was proud that I had defeated her.

Then one day…

I was walking around the neighborhood,
I saw a huge man eating cotton candy.
However, upon closer inspection, it was not a man but Rose. She looked completely different from
before.

The skin all over her body seemed to be covered with gray stones.
Her neck had become thick like a toad.
I screamed at her grotesque appearance, and she opened her mouth very wide and ran towards
me.
I smelled a strong mixture of sweet and rotten, and I ran for my life.
She retched and expelled a hot, sticky liquid all over me.
The liquid covered me completely, and as the liquid gradually hardened, my body also began to
harden along with it.
I thought, ‘This is how I die.’
Then I heard someone shout, “Here’s a big piece of candy!” and she stopped and turned her
head.
Tom and a priest were standing there. The priest threw a large water balloon at her, which she
caught and swallowed.
Then she suddenly became extremely distressed, her body began to melt, and she dissolved into
the ground and disappeared.
What the priest had thrown was a water balloon filled with holy water.
Tom broke me free from the weird shell she had encased me in.

I packed my bags and moved away the next day.

I don't know what happened to her after that.
Tom said she was completely gone,
but I think she will come back again someday.