sinovels Chapter 108 "Saw"
Chapter 108 "Saw"
Luo Jinnian sat at his desk, the night outside the window had completely fallen. He turned his phone face down on the table, the last light on the screen went out, leaving only the dim, warm glow of the desk lamp in the room.
He opened a blank document and typed the words "Saw" in the header.
Then his fingers hovered above the keyboard for a few seconds.
The movie footage was so clear that he could see the dilapidated bathroom, the yellowed tiles, the rusted pipes, and the half-dried bloodstains on the floor with his eyes closed.
Two men awoke from their coma, their ankles chained, with a disfigured corpse lying between them, clutching a revolver and a cassette tape.
He typed those images into the document, word by word.
Adam was the first to wake up.
A man in his early thirties, a photographer, makes a living by secretly photographing others.
When he opened his eyes, he thought he had been drunk and thrown into a basement, until he saw the iron chain on his ankle and Dr. Gordon lying opposite him—a middle-aged man wearing a decent shirt, but it was all wrinkled and messed up.
Gordon woke up about two minutes later than him. His first reaction was to check his pockets, but his phone and wallet were gone—he had nothing.
The two exchanged names, jobs, and the last thing they could remember: Adam was knocked unconscious downstairs in his apartment building, and Gordon was stun-gunned in front of his own doorstep.
They turned on the lights and saw the body. A man, shot through the temple, was lying face down in the middle of the bathroom, his right hand still clutching the revolver.
Luo Jinnian paused here. He remembered the first time he watched "Saw" in his previous life. The first five minutes had no background music, only the sounds of two men talking, chains rattling, and water dripping on tiles. That eerie, unsettling atmosphere was what drew the audience into the film.
He added a sentence to the document: "No background music for the entire first ten minutes. Just the sounds of water and breathing are enough."
Then he continued writing.
Gordon found a cassette tape in the corpse's pocket and another in Adam's pants pocket.
The two men each found an old-fashioned tape recorder. When they pressed play, a mechanical, emotionless voice, altered by a voice changer, came from the tape.
"Mr. Adam, your life is like a camera constantly pressing the shutter. You spy on other people's lives, gaining cheap pleasure in the process. Now, it's your turn: you've been seen. The chains on your feet are connected to the plumbing system of this room, and the key is hidden somewhere in the corner. But don't rush to find it, because time is limited. When the clock strikes six, this door will be closed forever."
The other tape was for Gordon.
"Dr. Gordon, you're healing and saving lives. But have you ever thought about what kind of people those 'patients' you've cured will become after they leave? Do the living things you've created deserve to live? You have a wife and a daughter. If you can't kill that man before nightfall, they'll follow you after you die."
Gordon's expression changed. His voice tightened and deepened in an instant as he repeatedly asked Adam, "What did your tape say?"
Adam repeated the contents of the tape, and Gordon remained silent for a long time.
Luo Jinnian paused to take a sip of water, then continued.
Up to this point, both of them were still confused about "what exactly does this madman who captured them want?"
They quickly began piecing together clues: Gordon remembered a man he had met by chance who called himself "Jigsaw." Gordon had seen Jigsaw's modus operandi in the case files; he never killed people directly, but gave his victims a choice, and those who died in the game died in a very bloody manner.
Gordon said, "If this game was designed by Jigsaw, then every word we say and every choice we make now is part of his plan. He makes us think we have choices, and now every move we make is on his chessboard."
Adam understood.
Their time was slipping away, and the countdown felt like an invisible rope tightening around their throats.
They searched every nook and cranny and found a package in the toilet bowl.
Inside was a saw.
There are two.
A rusty, dull, and difficult-to-saw ordinary handsaw.
Gordon held the saw in silence for a long time, then glanced at the clock on the wall. It was 3:47 p.m., more than two hours before 6 p.m.
He glanced again at the corpse, then at the iron chain around his ankle. The saw couldn't cut through the chain; it could only cut one thing at a time.
Luo Jinnian typed a line: "Gordon looked at his ankle, then at Adam. Their eyes met briefly in the air, then looked away simultaneously. No one spoke. But they both understood."
He read this passage twice without making any changes.
The story begins to unfold in flashbacks. Outside the main timeline, Luo Jinnian inserts several flashback scenes into the documents. Gordon sees a cancer patient in the hospital; the man says his name is John Kramer, he's dying, and he wants to talk to someone "who understands death." Gordon doesn't pay much attention, offering a few perfunctory words before dismissing him. The camera cuts to the man's face, cold and sharp, like a knife yet to be drawn.
That person is Jigsaw.
In another flashback, Adam secretly photographs a man who later becomes a "piece" in one of Jigsaw's games.
After Adam's photo was used as evidence by the police, the person in the game was driven to a dead end and finally ended the game in his own way.
Adam thought it was just another business deal, but he didn't know that the camera was not only pointed at other people's privacy, but also at his own fate.
Luo Jinnian handled the flashbacks with great restraint; each segment was short, providing the audience with just enough information to piece together a larger picture. Jigsaw's design is like a net, with each person a knot in the net, and Gordon and Adam are merely the last two pieces to fall into the same corner.
As the main plot progressed into the latter half, Luo Jinnian slowed down. It wasn't because he couldn't write anymore, but because he was about to reach that scene—the one he had seen in his previous life, the one that made him sit up straight in his chair, the one that turned the entire movie from a "not bad suspense film" into a "masterpiece" ending twist.
Gordon was devastated because his children and wife had been caught by saws.
Then he raised the saw and aimed it at his ankle.
Adam watched as Gordon sawed off his own ankle, piece by piece, flesh and bone. The sounds were rendered low and restrained, without any unnecessary screams or cries, only the sound of metal scraping against bone—the most ear-splitting sound in any horror film.
Physical pain, which is usually the most basic horror technique, is presented in a way that is both beautiful and terrifying.
After sawing off his own foot, Gordon crawled toward the corpse in the middle and picked up the gun.
Gordon picked up the key, unlocked the chains, and stood up.
He glanced at the clock on the wall: 5:58. Two minutes left. He had to kill Adam, or his wife and daughter would die. He looked at Adam slumped on the floor, blood gushing from his ankle, and hesitated for two seconds. Then he turned to the corpse and said, "Sorry, I don't know you." He raised his revolver.
Gunshots.
Adam fell in a pool of blood.
Gordon's ankle was bleeding as he staggered out of the iron gate and crawled down the corridor with his last bit of strength, moving towards the exit. The scene cuts to Adam lying on the bathroom floor, his eyes closed, a bloody gash on his chest.
Gordon's voice finally called out the man who had tied up his wife and daughter.
The moment he stepped into the body.
Adam got up and beat him hard with the board until he died.
It turns out Gordon's bullet didn't hit his vital spot.
Gordon, dragging his broken leg, said he was going out to find a way to survive, and Adam begged him to come back and save him.
He sat up from the ground, panting, looking at the wound on his ankle where it had been sawed off, and then at the "corpse" that remained lying there.
His gaze lingered on the corpse for a long time.
Adam crawled over. He was trembling all over, his back soaked with cold sweat. He reached out, his fingers shaking, to touch the man's shoulder. Then, in that instant, the man moved and rolled over from his prone position.
A dirty face stained with blood.
He was the designer of the entire game.
Adam opened his mouth, trying to shout something, but no sound came out.
Gordon's memory flashed back to that face, the man named John Kramer who had come to the hospital to talk to him when he had cancer.
Now, this man, who is already terminally ill, has used a meticulously designed game to drag those who "don't cherish life," including Gordon and Adam, into a dead end where they can only survive by self-harm or killing each other.
The man slowly, step by step, stood up.
Although he was covered in blood, it wasn't his own blood; it was a prop he had stolen from the morgue and placed here to pretend to be a "corpse."
He straightened his clothes and glanced down at Adam lying on the ground. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then the man walked to the door.
"don't want."
Adam realized something.
Jigsaw walked to the door, his hand already on the handle of the iron door. Adam pushed himself up from the ground, his ankle wound making him tremble. He cried out, "No—you said this game would end—" Jigsaw didn't turn around. He pushed open the iron door, and light streamed in from the dim lamplight at the end of the corridor.
He stepped out the door, then turned his head to face Adam in the bathroom and said something.
"Game over."
This adds another classic ending to film history.