“My mother is the person I hate most, and I am the person she hates most.” She hated me for being conceived after a brutal assault by a street thug. Even when I topped my class, she had me expelled because, due to health issues, she had no choice but to carry me to term. I hated her for being a terrible mother, and because of her, I developed a twisted, possessive need for maternal love. When I was four, she threw me into a river to drown. After I was rescued, I blackmailed her, threatening to make her streak naked down the street if she didn’t sign the non-prosecution agreement. When she was hospitalized after a car accident, I used a stone to carve my name into her body while she was immobile. After she was discharged, she uncharacteristically bought me an ice cream, but secretly sprinkled a powder on it that attracted bees, causing them to sting my mouth raw. No matter what, she would only ever call me a bastard, and even shoved me into a cabinet, nailing the door shut. Yet, through the crack in the door, I saw my thug father. And through the same crack, my mother looked at me, making a ‘shush’ gesture. … My mother, a ‘distinguished parent,’ had just taken the stage to give a speech at my senior year commencement rally. But the moment she opened her mouth, the audience began to murmur. “This little bastard of mine, I know her rotten character better than anyone. There’s no way she earned these grades honestly; she must have cheated.” “This school, honestly, it’s senior year. Can you please stop deluding yourselves?” The principal’s face instantly darkened, and he gestured for a teacher to pull her off the stage. The students were already buzzing, marveling at my mother’s audacity. But my mother, ignoring the teacher’s attempts to stop her, continued her ‘speech’ on stage. “What a joke of a school! And you, you little bastard, weren’t you supposed to have me here to collect a prize? Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered coming. Do you know how much I make in a day? You’ve got some nerve, trying to fool me!” Her voice trailed off as she was finally escorted away. I stood below the stage, not a trace of shame on my face. Instead, I felt a thrill of victory for having successfully tricked her. The speech was the last item on the agenda. Afterward, everyone could go home. I saw a crowd forming ahead and immediately recognized what was happening, pushing my way forward. It was my mother, of course. A student asked her, “Who is the ‘bastard’ you were talking about?” My mother blurted out, “My daughter.” Another student asked her what she did for work. My mother glanced at me, then grinned as she replied, “Me? What do you think someone as pretty as me does?” Lila Bright, who always had it in for me, chimed in, “I bet you’re a prostitute!” The surrounding chatter instantly died, followed by a burst of laughter. My fists clenched, my gaze fixed on Lila, wishing I could burn a hole through her with my stare. But Lila seemed unfazed, arms crossed, a smirk playing on her lips as she looked at me. “What are you staring at? I’m not wrong. Every day I go home, I see your mom coming out of that massage parlor. My mom said the jobs there aren’t reputable, and it’s even been reported before!” Everyone turned to look, and the crowd grew larger. But my mother remained unconcerned, showing no intention of refuting it. Instead, she grinned at Lila. “Oh, little girl, you know quite a lot. Tell you what, send your dad to my shop sometime, mention my name, and I’ll give him a ten percent discount. I guarantee he’ll leave feeling completely satisfied!” It was an indirect admission of her profession. Lila’s face turned scarlet, speechless. Just then, a teacher arrived and dispersed the crowd. Furious, I grabbed a plastic stool meant for parents and slammed it onto my mother’s head. She, in turn, angrily swung her own stool at my head. “Your brain must be rusted, you can’t even hurl an insult! Are you happy listening to others curse your mother every day?!” We practically clawed at each other, fighting all the way home. Many people on the street stared, whispering behind their hands. My chest felt constricted, a knot of frustration I couldn’t untangle, fueling the force of my blows against my mother. As punishment, the moment we got home, she locked me directly into a wooden cabinet in the kitchen, nailing the door shut. Memories, like a busy street, flashed through my mind. Before I was four, my grandmother raised me. After she passed, I returned to my mother’s side for the first time. The first night living with my mother, I lay in bed, anxious, clutching a small paper flower I had folded, sweating with nerves. In the darkness, my mother fumbled her way to the bed. The rehearsed words caught in my throat, my eyes wide with shock. My mother lifted me with one hand, then, as if casually discarding something unimportant, dropped me onto the floor. “Who told you to lie there? If my mom hadn’t forced you on me before she died, do you think I’d take in a little bastard like you?” “So filthy, and you dare get into my bed? Don’t you know I hate children more than anything?” After she spoke, she spat on me again, her disdainful gaze practically nailing me to the ground. I had never seen such a fierce mother, completely unlike little Timmy’s mom in the village. Trembling, I sat on the floor, my round eyes wide with terror. I was ordered to leave, but I shamelessly huddled by the bed, sleeping there all night. I woke up many times in the middle of the night, terrified my mother would vanish again if I opened my eyes. Overwhelmed with fear, I didn’t even notice a blanket had been placed over me. But when I finally opened my eyes, my mother was gone. I ran barefoot through the streets, searching everywhere for her, finally finding her in a massage parlor. Her hands held something I didn’t recognize, tapping repeatedly on a man’s body. The man’s hands roamed freely over my mother’s thighs. I might have been mistaken, but my mother seemed to glance my way, then quickly averted her eyes. She then slapped the man’s hand irritably, yelling, “Are you trying to get yourself killed?! What are you groping for?! Don’t you believe I’d chop off that hand right now?!” I thought, the man so intimate with my mother must be my father. I immediately ran up to him and called out “Dad.” When my mother turned and saw it was me, the fury in her eyes finally broke free. She ignored the man, chasing me all the way to the river. I had a bad feeling. Sure enough, the next second, seeing no one around, she picked me up and threw me into the river. As I fell, I saw murderous intent in my mother’s eyes. It was a cold day, and I was only wearing thin clothes, flailing desperately in the water. She walked away, without a backward glance. Eventually, a passerby found me and took me to the police station. I didn’t hesitate for a second, looking at the officer intently. “My mother threw me into the river!” My mother was arrested, and the first thing she said when she saw me chilled my heart even further: “You have such a strong will to live, you actually didn’t die!” My soaking hair was still dripping water. I didn’t understand why my mother, whom I had only known for two days, would throw me into the river. Grandmother had always said that only disobedient children would be eaten by the river monster. My mother forced me to sign a non-prosecution agreement, saying she had important things to do and couldn’t go to jail yet. In that moment, words beyond my years came out of my mouth. “If you want me to forgive you, then you’ll have to streak naked down the street. Otherwise, I won’t forgive you.” She raised her hand to hit me in anger, forgetting she was at the police station, and couldn’t follow through. The officer asked if I wanted to go to an orphanage. Before I could refuse, my mother became agitated! “What for? What if I have to pay? Besides, if she leaves, who will serve me?!” The officer looked at me with sympathy, trying to explain that orphanages were free, but my mother impatiently refused. From then on, a seed of wickedness was sown in my heart. I developed a pathological possessiveness over maternal love. No matter what my mother did to me, it only fueled my desire for revenge. I was locked in the cabinet, but I didn’t struggle. Instead, I thought about how I could ‘get back at her’ later. Should I deliberately arrange a car accident to cripple her, or simply disfigure her with acid? Distracted, I saw my face reflected in something shiny. It was a knife! I jumped, instinctively wondering if someone had broken in. The knife drew closer and closer, finally pressing against the crack in the cabinet door. I panicked, my heart racing. The person outside kept pounding on the cabinet door, making loud thudding sounds. I huddled in the corner, praying they wouldn’t find me. Until I saw the person’s face—it was my thug father! I had seen his picture at home before, marked with several angry red crosses by my mother. Suddenly, his face disappeared! Then my mother appeared, looking terrified, and made a ‘shush’ gesture with her finger. I instantly realized something and started pounding on the cabinet door frantically. Through the crack, I could see my mother’s body slowly falling, until she lay still. I even cried out inside the cabinet, but the door had been nailed shut, impossible to open. My mother could only be killed by my revenge; no one else was allowed to kill her! I started to search for a tool on my body, and when I looked up again, my mother was standing on the ground. She then stood there, laughing loudly, looking at me as if I were a clown. “You bastard, are you stupid? Reading a couple of books really made you an idiot! Let me tell you, someone like you, going to school is useless! Starting tomorrow, you’re not allowed to go to school anymore, and I won’t give you a single penny!” I felt like an absolute fool, thoroughly played by my mother. She stood there like a madwoman, holding the knife—the very knife I had seen earlier. So, everything just now had been her own elaborate act. I swore at her, which only angered her. She made a small hole above the cabinet and threw a snake inside from somewhere. I remembered someone saying there were snakes in the neighborhood, but the property management hadn’t done anything. The cabinet was pitch black, with only a sliver of light coming through that hole. “You little bastard, still daring to curse me? You can sleep with the snake in the cabinet tonight!” My mother left with a harsh threat, and the room grew so quiet I could hear the snake’s hissing. I grabbed the snake’s head, trying to bite it to death, but it still bit me unexpectedly. My consciousness blurred, and I could barely see anything. A figure reappeared at the crack in the door. I wanted to call out to my mother for help. This snake was venomous. Before I could even speak, the person lunged at me with that same knife, stabbing me fiercely. One stab, two stabs, three stabs… Blood continuously gushed from the knife wounds, staining the body of the snake I had just killed. Because the venom was so potent, I couldn’t even scream. In the second before I lost consciousness, I clearly saw the person’s face. It wasn’t my mother, but my thug father—he had broken in and attacked me! The man finished his assault and quickly left. I clutched my wounds, trying to slow the blood loss. My consciousness drifted, and I could clearly see my own body lying in a pool of blood. My mother didn’t notice anything amiss. She packed her things and left for her night shift at the massage parlor. Halfway there, she suddenly remembered she’d forgotten her electric scooter keys, so she pulled out her phone to call me. The call didn’t connect. She seemed to have forgotten the fact that I was locked in the cabinet and couldn’t answer. So she frowned, cursing at her phone, “This little bastard, how dare she not answer my call.” She had no choice but to go back for her keys. As she passed the cabinet, she saw the blood spreading out from it. Annoyed, she kicked the cabinet hard. “So, you’re quite capable, huh? You actually killed the snake!” She quickly grabbed her keys, but then turned back, holding a snake she had seen in the hallway. She casually threw it into the hole above. As she threw it, she taunted, “Afraid you’re bored, so here’s another one. Hope you just die already!” Seeing no response from me, a flicker of doubt crossed her face. “That snake has no patterns. Is it even venomous? What are you playing dead for?!” I stood beside her, watching this scene, a bitter smile on my face. How I wished I could tell her that I was already dead, and that the snake’s belly did have patterns. She no longer had to think about how to humiliate me every day, or how to get rid of me. All I hoped for now was that my spirit would cling to her for the rest of her life. If she knew that the person she hated most, even in death, would haunt her forever, she would be furious! This was my first time seeing my mother work the night shift at the massage parlor. But strangely, no matter how much those men took advantage, she didn’t get angry and stop them, or yell at them like before. Yet every time I had caught her, she had been furious. It wasn’t until three in the morning that she finally got to rest. My soul, beyond my control, hovered around my mother. I couldn’t see the state of my body, but I imagined it must have been bitten dozens of times by the newly introduced snake. My mother received a call from a teacher asking why I hadn’t been to school. But my mother, upon hearing the teacher’s voice, immediately hung up and blocked the number. “She didn’t go to school, so go find her! What does it have to do with me?!” After returning home, she immediately collapsed onto the bed and slept soundly. How I wished I could pour a bucket of cold water on her! Even if she didn’t love me, she should at least come collect my body! She was my mother, after all… My mother usually slept until evening after her night shift. But this time, for some reason, she woke up suddenly as if from a nightmare, her eyes fixed on the direction of the kitchen. She walked with heavy steps towards the cabinet, towards my corpse, and called out my name. “Bastard?” I didn’t respond. It had been almost two hours; my body must be ice cold by now. My mother paused in front of that pool of blood, reaching out a trembling hand to touch it. She suddenly realized it wasn’t snake blood, but human blood! She called my name again, her voice trembling. I had never seen her like this, not even when she had thrown me into the river with her own hands. She looked terrified, and immediately grabbed tools, pulling out the nails one by one. Finding the tools difficult to use, she started pulling them out with her bare hands, even using her teeth to bite them. Finally, her fingers were bloody and raw, half a tooth broken, but all the nails were removed. But when she trembled and opened the cabinet door, she screamed in horror! Inside the cabinet, my chest had a gaping, bloody hole. The blood had dried on my chest, already soaking through my shirt. Two snakes lay beside me. One I had already killed, while the other slithered nearby, occasionally hissing. I had expected her to be happy when she saw I was dead, even clapping and cheering with joy. After all, she had disliked me from the very first day she knew of my existence. To my surprise, she stood motionless before me, as if her spirit had been sucked dry by a monster. I floated beside her, thinking she was scared by my appearance, and instinctively blurted out a taunt. “Hey, is that all the guts you have? Can’t you see I’m dead? Aren’t you going to collect the body?!” The sarcastic words escaped my lips, and I almost forgot that the dead person was me. And my mother couldn’t hear me. She stood there for two minutes, unmoving, her gaze fixed on the blood-soaked hole in my chest. She slowly knelt, reaching out to check my breath, but her hand stopped abruptly in mid-air. Then she began to shake me violently. “Bastard, do you think playing dead will make me feel sorry for you?” “It’s just a few snakes, what’s the big deal? They can’t actually kill you, can they?” “Didn’t you used to eat snake meat when you were little? How come you can’t even kill a snake now?!” That’s right, my mother was so confident throwing snakes in because when I was little, she starved me for three days and nights without food. I happened to find a snake, so I simply ate it. But no matter how much my mother shook me, I wouldn’t wake up again. I watched her from the side, wondering how much she truly hated me. I was dead, and she still treated me this way. So I became even more determined in my idea: I would float by my mother’s side in spirit form, until my consciousness faded. Didn’t she hate me? Then I would stick to her and haunt her! Seeing that I still hadn’t woken up, she seemed to confirm the fact of my death and turned and ran. My heart sank a little. I didn’t follow my mother’s spirit. Instead, I began to calculate how long it would be before my body started to smell, and how long until someone discovered me. But I was too far from my mother, and was forcibly pulled back to her side. I was shocked to find she was on the phone. But she was too nervous, her fingers trembling, constantly dialing the wrong number. I clearly saw a tear on the phone screen. Then, two drops, three drops… My mother was actually crying. I stopped, looking at her in disbelief, my mind a jumble. This was the first time I had ever seen her cry. For whom? She finally got through to the emergency services! On the phone, my mother screamed, frantically urging them to hurry. The emergency operator’s routine questions, in her eyes, were just delays. The operator on the other end told my mother to calm down, saying that being anxious wouldn’t help. My mother suddenly roared, screaming hysterically, “If your family member died, would you be so calm?!” Not only did the operator fall silent, but even I was stunned. My face froze, then softened with relief, a gentle smile gracing my lips. Could I be hallucinating after death? Medical personnel quickly arrived, but after only a brief look, they told my mother there was no need for treatment. I had lost too much blood and had long since passed. “Who said there’s no need for treatment? Why not treat her? Do you think I can’t afford it?!” She rushed over agitatedly, grabbing a medic’s collar, the ferocity in her eyes even more resolute than when she’d thrown me into the river. The medic initially wanted to explain, but seeing the emotion in my mother’s eyes, they agreed to take me away. How I wanted to stop her, to tell her there was no need to treat me, it would just be a waste of money. But my hand passed directly through my mother’s body, causing me to stumble. The hospital issued a pile of examination forms, again asking my mother if she wished to continue treatment. My mother, annoyed, snapped at the doctor, “How many times do I have to say it?! Are you doctors deaf, or what? I said, treat her!”
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