Pathological Biological Family Short Stories & Novels

In order to protect my father, I was tortured for ten hours, but my father was busy celebrating his adopted daughter’s eighteenth birthday. With my dying breath, I called my father and said, “Dad, it’s my birthday today. Could you wish me a happy birthday?” “You crazy monster! You got your mother killed in order to celebrate your birthday! How could you still ask me to celebrate your birthday? You should just die!” With that said, he hung up. The next day, my corpse was placed in different flower pots and put in front of a police station. My father was in charge of inspecting my corpse, and he could immediately tell that the murderer did this for revenge. What they did to me was cruel and made a mockery of the police’s authority. But he did not manage to tell that the deceased was the daughter he hated.

My twin sister, wanting to be with her thug boyfriend, secretly planned to apply for a junior college. When I could not talk her out of it, I told our parents and managed to stop her. However, just a month into the new semester, her thug boyfriend cheated on her. She left a suicide note, blaming it all on the long distance between them. She wrote that if she had gone to that junior college, her boyfriend would never have cheated. Grief‑stricken, my parents turned all their rage on me. "You wretched girl, this is all your fault for meddling! What business was it of yours which school your sister went to? Even if she didn't go to college, we could still support her. We didn't need your big mouth!" "If it weren't for your spiteful tongue, your sister wouldn't be dead!" "We were cursed to have a vicious, unfilial daughter like you!" They locked me in her room, ordering me to repent. Then they took her ashes on a trip, saying they wanted her to see the beautiful mountains and rivers she never got to visit in life. A month later, they returned from their travels to find me long dead, starved to a withered husk in front of my sister's photo. Their eyes held no grief, no guilt, only a faint, scornful curl of the lips. In their eyes, my death was nothing more than justice served. My broken soul saw their icy expressions, and despairing tears burned my eyes. Then my sister's familiar voice rang out again: "What business is it of yours which school I go to? You're just jealous that I have a boyfriend, aren't you?"

I finally recovered my sight. Just as I was about to tell my parents about it, a slip of paper on the table caught my attention. "Don't tell your parents you've recovered your sight."

I was born broken. My Alpha mother was the one who branded me. She said emotion was a sin. A weakness. Especially for a werewolf. Especially for an Alpha’s heir. The day we were born, she clamped emotion-suppressing collars around our necks. Mine and my twin sister's. The slightest flicker of emotion, and the collar flashed red. My mother would then push the button, injecting me with a diluted "silver solution" to suppress my feelings. But my sister Cassia's collar? Always a calm, steady blue. Even when she shattered Mom's precious moonstone, it just pulsed gently. And me? I’d just whisper, "Mom, the thunder scares me," and my collar would erupt in a violent red. Then came the sting of silver poison burning through my blood.. I used to argue. But Mom always said the same thing. "The data doesn't lie. Pain is a teacher. This is for your own good." After thousands of these injections, I started to believe it, too. That I was born out of control. The night of the alliance's Moon Goddess Festival, Mom was taking my sister to the rooftop party. Something scared me during the day. The collar flashed red, and my mother started the punishment. But this time, the collar malfunctioned. It shot a dose a thousand times stronger into my neck. I collapsed on the carpet, begging, "Mother, the collar... it hurts so much... help me." My collar was flashing a frantic red. My mother just looked down at me, drenched in a cold sweat, and pressed the button for the maximum dose. "You'd lose control like this just for attention? You're a lost cause." She turned, took my sister, and slammed the door. I couldn't help but think, Mom must be right. The collar is red. It doesn't really hurt. I'm just being dramatic, looking for pity again. I'm sorry, Mom. In my next life, I'll be the perfect daughter you always wanted.

The day my exam results came in, I called out toward the living room the way I always used to. "Mom, Dad, I got a perfect score! I can go to a university in Kingsgate and be with Gary and Callum!" Silence was the only answer. On the couch sat four little plush dolls. They were Dad, Mom, my brother Gary Sheridan, and Callum Ward, the boy I had grown up with. Their round, stitched eyes stared back at me the way they had on countless other nights, keeping me company in silence. That was when I remembered. A year ago, my sister, Blythe Sheridan, had gotten sick. They said it was my fault, that my grades had been too good, that the pressure had nearly driven her to kill herself. That was why I became the person the family needed to hide, and they sent me to this rented room. The first night after I moved in, the drunkard next door pounded on my door by mistake. I hid under the blankets, too terrified to make a sound, too scared to even cry. All I could do was call my parents, my brother, and Callum over and over again. However, the only thing that I got was the cold, flat tone of a busy signal.

I'm an energetic child, while my parents are elegant and refined. They're the type of people who don't make a sound even when they're flipping a page of a book. They want me to be quiet, but I just can't do it. Dad gets rashes all over his body whenever I just run a few steps around the house. "It's all your fault for being so unruly," Mom snaps, shooting an icy look at me. "That's why your father developed an allergy. Stay away from him from now on." I nod, feeling stunned. Mom and Dad send me to live with Grandpa in the countryside when I'm seven years old. They promise to take me home once a year has passed. I count the days on my fingers that are covered with chilblains, waiting year after year. During the winter of my sixth year in the countryside, Grandpa closes his eyes and doesn't wake up again. Mom and Dad finally remember that I'm still in the countryside. As the days turn warmer to herald the coming of spring, I finally return home. However, when I step across the threshold, I see a young boy quietly reading a book. Mom pats the boy's head with a tenderness that I've never experienced. "This is your brother, Seth Jameson," she says. "Look how quiet and well-behaved he is." It turns out that I've lost my place in this home a long time ago.

My mother is a powerhouse, but she somehow ends up with me, a coward with claustrophobia. "What claustrophobia? You're just being dramatic!" In order to help me "desensitize," she builds a pitch-black, soundproof room in the house. In elementary school, I scream and cry in terror the first time she locks me inside, and she punishes me by not letting me eat for three days. In middle school, I try harder to hold it together and only let out a few quiet whimpers, but she makes me kneel in the snow for a full day and night. I tough it out all the way through senior year, telling myself that getting into college and leaving home will fix everything. But on the day of my acceptance party, she decides to show off the results of her desensitization in front of all the guests and locks me straight into the dark room. "Mom!" I drop to my knees, crying and begging as my dignity gets shredded to pieces. "My claustrophobia is gone, I swear. I'm begging you, please don't lock me in there." The look in her eyes is almost unhinged. "No! If you don't go in, you'll never go to college." But eventually, I really am cured. So Mom, why can't you smile anymore?