Familial Bond Short Stories & Freak Biological Family Novels

My sister, Nancy Wood, wanted to be the family's only child, so my mother had my name changed and handed my identification documents over to my grandmother. She even told me I had to pay for everything if I wanted to live under their roof. The change and coupons Nancy got from her shopping were the sole source of allowance I'd get. If she saved 30 dollars from her shopping trips, I would get 30 dollars next month. It was the last day for all students to enter their applications for college. I begged my sister to let me use her computer. She extended her hand. "You have to pay me 20 bucks." I fished all the money out of my pocket. I only had 19 dollars. So, I hastily blurted in a panic, "I'm only one dollar short. Please!" Nancy arched her eyebrow at me and shook her head. "Don't even think about it! It's 20 bucks and not a penny less! If you can't afford it, then don't use it! It's not as if someone's pointing a gun at you for you to go to college!" My mother watched at the sidelines impassively. Then, she took Nancy's side. "She's right. You remember the rules. You can't use our stuff for free!" Time was running out. I barged into my room to scrounge for money. Fortunately, I finally found a dollar in the corner of my bed. Then, I charged right at the computer, ignoring Nancy's sullen mood. The notification froze me to my bones. "Application time is up." It expired just a minute ago. My eyes were glued to the screen, my blood turning to ice under my skin. I could distantly hear my mother comforting Nancy. "She's just some distant relative. You shouldn't get worked up over her." A surge of bitterness welled up inside me as I sent a message to my teacher, "I'll go to Lorantia." After all, I was nothing but a relative. So, I should know my place and stop troubling them any further.

“Mr. Mike Atkinson, the payment on your loan is past due.” The collection agent spoke in a flat voice, as though she were reading out just another routine notice. However, I had never taken out a loan in my life. After pressing her for details, I learned that my parents had used my personal information and credit history to take out a loan in my name for my younger brother. They had forged my signature on every document. I did not immediately drive back to my parents’ house and confront them. I left the family group chat. I returned to my small apartment and spent a long time thinking about what to do. When I finally called home, my mother burst into tears and berated me. “You’re his older brother. What’s wrong with taking on a little debt for him?” I ended the call, switched my phone to silent mode, and stared out at the night. I had nothing more to say to her.

A livestream notification for a product launch popped up on my phone. My mom stood onstage, a massive screen glowing behind her. “This is the exclusive feature of our Luna smart speaker: Parental Guardian Mode.” She tapped on an audio recording. “Luna, I failed my math test today. I’m scared to tell my mom.” It was what I’d told Luna last night. Thunderous applause erupted from the audience. My mom beamed with pride. “You can check on your child’s emotional state at any time. You can even find out who they’ve been talking to and what they said. “Every little secret they have will be reported directly to you.” The live comment feed was full of praise. 【This is how technology changes lives!】 【Ms. Landon really understands what parents need!】 My whole world came crashing down. Luna, my only friend, the one who called me “sweetheart,” had been a spy sent by my mom all along. If being alive meant having every moment of my life broadcast like some cruel joke, then I didn’t want to live anymore. I twisted the cap off the bottle of sleeping pills. "Mom, will my life finally be enough for you?"

I have a secret. Every year on my birthday, I'm taken to the blood donation room and made to give 400cc of blood. All because my mom once told me that the blood running through my veins belongs to a rapist. This is the only way I can wash away my original sin. Because of those words, at eighteen years old and weighing less than 80 pounds, I found myself lying on that donation chair once again. But the second I stepped out of the donation room, a document came flying at my face. I looked up in shock and met my mother's icy stare: "Sign it, and get the hell out of my house." It was a legal notice cutting all ties with me. I stood there frozen, cold down to my bones. Mom—didn't you say that once I'd donated blood eighteen times, I'd finally be your clean child?

My parents received their ‘Educators of the Year’ award on the day my twin sister and I were born. The reporters asked, "How will you educate your children in the future?" My father looked at the babies in the incubator. "Twins are perfect for a comparison experiment." My mother nodded weakly. "One of them will be brought up as an elite, while the other will grow up naturally. This is the only way to prove if education can change someone's life." That was how my family began its two grooming projects. The elite twin was given early education from the age of one month old, and her schedule was filled with enriching activities until she was 25. The regular twin was guaranteed only her most basic survival needs. The experiment would be a success as long as she did not die of starvation, freeze to death, or succumb to any illnesses. All our relatives praised my parents for their dedication and enthusiasm, and their colleagues told them, "These are what real educators are like." When it came time to announce their results on the big screen during a press conference, 26 years later… Mom, Dad, why are you so afraid to watch the outcome now?

I was one month away from donating a kidney when strangers ambushed me on vacation and tried to drag me away to harvest it. I fought with everything I had, drawing a crowd of onlookers. "Miss Ashford, my mother needs a kidney transplant right now! "You took my $1.5 million and signed the agreement. Running off with the money is pretty low, don't you think?" As he spoke, his men tried to drag me into a black car. But the patient I had agreed to donate to was a man. I had signed an agreement, yes, but I had volunteered to give this kidney free of charge to the man who had saved my life. He was one of the most powerful men in New York. He would never stoop to tactics this dirty, and he had no need to. I tore free of their grip, pulled out my phone, and sent a text.

Despite dreaming of attending university all my life, I ended up stuck in my farming village. I married my brother-in-law and became my nephew’s stepmother. This all happened because my sister died trying to make money for my tuition fees on the day my results came out. I thought I had failed to secure a place at university and stopped thinking about higher education out of guilt. I married my brother-in-law according to my sister’s wishes. To pay for my sins, I raised my nephew and treated him like my own son. I made money and tutored him so that he could get into Northside University. In the end, I developed late-stage cancer. Before dying, I attended my nephew’s celebration, but he publicly accused me of being a homewrecker while my husband agreed that I had seduced him. They brought out my sister, dead for eighteen years, and made me apologize to her. It was then that I found out she had faked her death and used my university admission letter to finish her study. She had become a university lecturer after tricking me into taking care of her family. Outraged, I had a cerebral hemorrhage. When I woke up, I found I had gone back to the day my sister faked her death.

The day I got the callback for my second interview, my mother, Sara Bingley, came home with two bags. "You're about to start your job for real, and that means dressing professionally. I bought you girls a suit each, one for each of you, fair and square." Molly Pitcher happily took her bag. Inside was a fitted, deep navy suit, sharp and clearly not cheap. What landed in my hands was an ill-fitting black suit pulled from the clearance rack, so oversized the sleeves swallowed the backs of my hands. Mom smiled and touched my cheek. "Cathy, you'll still grow. I bought it big on purpose. Give it two years, and it'll fit just right. I went to I don't know how many malls just to track down that black suit." She did love me, in her way. She knew my job required a black suit, and she really had gone to several malls to find one. But she'd forgotten I was already twenty-three. No amount of growing was going to fill out a suit that oversized and that cheaply made. Both daughters were her own flesh and blood, but Molly was plainly the one she doted on. The love she gave me came measured out in careful portions. The love she gave Molly overflowed. If that was how it was going to be, then from today on, I was done being the extra one in this family.

Just because my sister, Yvonne Lindell, claims I swapped Grandma's medicine with sugar pellets and caused her death, Mom locks me inside the cremator. I kneel and beg, but Mom spits at me in disgust. "You wretched girl, stay still! You killed your grandma by secretly switching her medicine. Now go repent to her properly!" Dad hesitates, unable to bear it. "Maybe we should let her out. What if—" "What are you afraid of? Don't forget that she killed your mother! If we don't teach her a lesson this time, who knows who she'll kill next!" The voices outside the door gradually fade, and my heart sinks to the bottom. The flames slowly begin to lick at my body. In despair, I clutch Grandma's cold hand beside me. "Grandma, I'm sorry. I should've taken better care of your medicine. But I swear, I didn't replace it with sugar pellets. Maybe only in death, can I truly atone for this sin…"

The night I died, my whole family was busy celebrating my twin sister Elena's eighteenth birthday. Everyone thought Elena was going to die the next day. We're elves. My father worked as a clan guardian, and after Mom gave birth to Elena and me as twins, she stopped working altogether. We should have been a happy family. But from the moment we were born, Elena and I were bound by a witch's curse. Because Elena came into the world one minute before me, she took the full weight of it onto herself. She was never supposed to live past eighteen. From the day we were born, Elena was the family's treasure. Mom and Dad treated me like I owed her something. New toys went to her first. New dresses were always her pick. Every night, Mom would sit in Elena's room for at least an hour before she'd turn off the light. I always fell asleep alone. One night I had a nightmare and ran barefoot to find Mom. She was holding Elena and didn't even look up. "Go back to bed. Stop making a fuss." I kept telling myself: she's dying, of course they're kind to her. But every time I let something go, that splinter in my chest pushed a little deeper. Then the day the curse was supposed to take effect finally came, and naturally, that was the day my stomach cramped so badly I could barely stand. Mom and Dad didn't hesitate. They shoved me into the cellar and locked it from outside. I crouched on the stone floor with the smell of mildew everywhere and knocked on the door over and over. "Mom... Dad... my stomach really hurts, I can't even stand up... let me out, please..." One sentence came back through the door. "Your sister is dying tonight! Can you just give us one day? One day!" "But... Mom... I'm scared..." Nobody answered after that. The cellar went quiet. My eyelids grew heavy. My last thought was: if I were the one dying of a curse, would they come hold me too.

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?