Chapter 3 Unbelievable

Rachel left. Charles sat down on the living room's bench and lit a cigarette. "Where's she hiding?"

I didn't dignify that with a response. My gaze drifted out the ajar door and landed on the black Maybach outside the yard.

Rachel was lazily scrolling through her phone on the car's seat, her face pink and healthy. My sister wasn't.

When we met for the last time in our lives, my sister was sallow, her lips were nearly white, and her eyes were sunken. She was barely more than a breathing cadaver.

She was subjected to regular blood extraction for three years, and not the voluntary kind. They took her blood by force every other day, and every time they did, they stole 400cc from her body.

When the nurse told Charles it would kill my sister, he replied nonchalantly, "She'll be fine. A bit of supplement and she'll be good as new."

They would drain my sister of her blood whenever Rachel's condition flared up. When Rachel's kidney started to fail, they took my sister's kidney. When Rachel needed a bone marrow transplant, they locked my sister up in the dungeon while they arranged the surgery.

My sister tried to fight back.

She went on a hunger strike for three days, but Charles showed up with food and shot her with a question she couldn't answer. "Who would pay for your sister's college if you die?"

My sister ended her hunger strike there and then. She then tried to call the cops. When they showed up, Charles showed them their marriage certificate. "This is a domestic dispute. Personal business." The cops left right after that.

She tried to run, but she barely made it 200 miles out before Charles' men captured her. She was locked in the dungeon for seven days.

Rachel was the only one who visited her during her imprisonment. She held a bowl of hot congee and said softly, "It's not his fault. He's doing it for me. You can blame it on me."

Then, she splashed the scalding congee onto my sister's face. "Did it burn? I didn't mean to, sorry."

The stories were horrifying, but my sister didn't shed a single tear. She stared at the ceiling and said, "I kept thinking to myself, 'It'd be great if I managed to escape the first time,' Helen."

The first escape happened in the second year of her marriage. She climbed over the wall only to fall and break her tailbone. However, my sister was made of sterner stuff. She crawled on all fours for a mile and so.

Alas, Charles' men dragged her back right before she got to the highway.

Her second escape attempt happened after the forced kidney donation. She was in a hospital bed, and the anesthesia was still swimming in her system, but while the nurse wasn't looking, she ran away in nothing but a patient's gown. The security guards pinned her in the lobby.

When Charles rushed over, he slapped her right in front of everyone.

"What is wrong with you?" he said.

She made a break for it for the third time, and it was a success. She was in the dungeon, and she cut her wrist with the shards of a broken bowl. A panicked Charles sent her to the hospital.

She took advantage of the ER's chaos and switched into her flip-flops. Then, she went for broke. It took her a whole day of sitting on a bus to get back to me.

When she got out of the bus, she tripped and fell into the sludge. The drainage tube opening on her waist tore open, letting blood and pus dribble freely.

I carried her to the town clinic on my back. When the doctor pulled her shirt up, the sight made me gag. There was a fleshy crater the size of an adult fist on her waist. It was a sign that she was missing a kidney.

The surgical wound was sewn, torn open, sewn, and torn open again. The flesh was curled up, revealing the ligament within. My sister's skin was blackened and hardened, just like necrotic meat that'd gone through twelve sessions of punctures.

My sister was subjected to the bed where she told me, "Don't go after Charles. His family's too powerful. Just pretend I never existed."

I swallowed all my bitter anger and resentment as I swore to do as she wished. She died three days later—at 5:17 a.m.

I was in the corridor, on my knees, and bawling my eyes out. I buried my sister underneath the tree on the hill behind our little town. Gregory asked a carpenter to whip up a coffin on the spot. It was made out of pine and never painted.

My sister was laid to rest in her favorite floral dress. It had a hole in the collar when I found it in our pile of stuff. My sister didn't even have proper clothes. Rachel took all the good ones she had.

"Ooh, that's a nice coat. Can I have it for a couple of days?"

"That's a pretty necklace. Charles bought it for you? Oh, I envy you."

She never gave the clothes back, and she barely took off the jewelry she apparently borrowed from my sister.

My sister said nothing, not out of tolerance, but out of fear. Charles would call her petty, and the edges of Rachel's eyes would go red. Everyone would think she was possessed by jealousy if she tried to confide in anyone.

"I'm asking you a question, Helen," said Charles, and I snapped out of it. "Where is your sister?" His voice was laced with impatience now.

"Charles," I said. "Have you ever loved my sister?"

That caught him by surprise, and his frown deepened. "What's the point of that question?"

"Just answer me."

A moment of silence later, he turned his head away. "I used to, but she changed. She was possessed by jealousy. She became harsher, colder, bitter, and impossible to reason with.

"She'd go after a patient like Rachel. She tried to pull out her drainage tube. A woman like her doesn't deserve my love."

My sister would never pull out that woman's drainage tube. My sister couldn't even muster up the courage to slaughter a chicken. The truth was vastly different, and I knew the true story.

That woman set the drainage tube to the maximum speed, and she screamed for the nurse. When everyone came, she accused my sister of a crime she never committed.

Rachel was curled up in the corner of her bed when Charles came. Her eyes glistened with tears when they met his face. She said, "She probably didn't mean it."

There was no security cam footage or a witness. So, it was her word against my sister's. My sister could scream herself hoarse over how she didn't do it, and it wouldn't matter because darling Charles lapped up the lie like it was gospel.

He stopped looking at my sister with love. Instead, he was looking at her like a criminal waiting to pounce.

"It wasn't her," I said.

Charles stared at me for a long moment, and he smiled. "You're a liar, just like your sister." He stood up and looked down at me. "I'll give you 24 hours. I expect Queenie to be here when I come back tomorrow or else…"

He threatened, "My family can get you expelled from college, make you lose out on your degree, and the job you're trying to get after you graduate. Are we clear?"

I knew he wasn't kidding, as did my sister. It was the only reason she clenched her teeth and agreed to the blood extraction and supposed kidney donation. She didn't want me to suffer.

Charles swiveled around and marched off. The Maybach drove off a moment later, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake.

I stood like a stone statue, watching the road dust rain on my hair, my shoulder, and my soul.