All Chapters of Our Last Family Dinner: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

I said nothing more than 'goodbye' to a girl from school, and my family sent me to a behavioral correction camp that very night. The place was a living hell. They were the ones who pushed me into the abyss with their own hands.In a daze, Talia's hand accidentally brushed the back of mine. The warmth of her touch hit me like a bolt of lightning. Every alarm in my head went off at once.My body collapsed like a puppet on cut strings, and I dropped to the cold floor with a thud, arms over my head, curling into myself. The words tumbled out in a broken, senseless stream."I'm sorry, I won't do it again. I shouldn't have let her touch me, I'm sorry..."The chill of the floor seeped through my thin pants and bit into my knees, but I could not stop. All I knew was to keep apologizing. It was the only way to avoid the instructors' fists and their shouting.Mom, Dad, and Talia all froze where they stood, too stunned to move.I felt Talia start toward me, but the second her foot shifted,

I was nothing but a tool to them, a pawn they used to keep their daughter in line. Those 14 days of torment, those days when death would have been a mercy, were nothing in their eyes but a means of sending Talia a message.I stood frozen in place, cold to the core, every breath a sharp ache in my chest.I wanted to laugh. I wanted to throw my head back and howl with it. To laugh at my own stupidity, at how I had still dared to hope they loved me, at how I had actually believed they were just misguided, that they genuinely thought they were doing it for my own good.Yet before the smile could even reach my lips, the tears fell first, hitting the cold ground and shattering into nothing.The laughter and celebration around me carried on. Colored lights played across every face in the crowd, and those cheerful expressions, so bright a moment ago, suddenly twisted into something grotesque. They looked exactly like the instructors at the camp.Every last one of them was wearing a false

The officer's words landed in the silent living room, and the air itself seemed to freeze. The color drained from Dad's face in an instant. He swayed, then pitched backward. Talia caught him just in time and guided him into a seat, her own body shaking as she did."That's impossible..." Dad's voice was hoarse, the same words tumbling out again and again."You've got the wrong person. That's not our Tommy. It's not him." Mom seized the officer's arm, her knuckles white and her voice ragged with disbelief. "What kind of police are you? My son just went out for a walk. There's no way he fell from a building. You have the wrong person!"The officer frowned and freed his arm from her grip, his tone firm. "We've verified the identification and confirmed it with the forensic team on site. There is no mistake. We need you to come with us to identify the body."Mom's body went rigid. The fury on her face bled away piece by piece, replaced by a blank, hollow disbelief. Her mouth opened and c

Mom remembered the day they sent me to the camp. I had begged her, "Mom, I'm sorry. I won't ever talk to girls again. Please don't send me there. Please."She thought I was being difficult. She yanked her hand free of mine and shoved me through the doors without looking back. It never once crossed her mind what was waiting on the other side of those doors.Dad remembered how I was when I came back from the camp. At dinner, I ate mechanically, and my eyes were dark and hollow, as if I had become a different person entirely. He told himself I just needed time to readjust. He planned to send me back only after the holiday.It never once crossed his mind that by then, I had already been tortured past the point of wanting to live, that the thought of dying had already taken root.They always said it was for my own good, but they ended up destroying my life with their own hands. At the best age of my life, they drove me to end it in the most devastating way possible.By the time they le

"Mom, Dad. I'm leaving. Tommy's death is a burden I can never put down. I have no right to stay here, no right to face you, and no right to face Tommy. I'm going somewhere no one knows me, and I'll spend the rest of my life living with what I've done. Please take care of yourselves. I'm sorry."Mom's hand jerked violently, and the note slipped from her fingers to the floor."Talia... Talia's gone..."Her voice was hollow, drained of everything but despair.Dad rushed in, saw the note on the floor, and his vision nearly went black again.Their son was dead. Their daughter was gone. The family had shattered completely.The home that had once been full of noise and life now held nothing but the two of them, alone in an empty house, with nothing to keep them company but regret and despair.Talia had left without any contact information, and no one knew where she had gone. She had vanished from the city as if she had never existed.Mom and Dad searched for her as if they had been po