I remember how she tidyed up my father's hair, and how I sat under her vanity, looking through the top of the glass while she was holding her comb and comb. Her face was lit up in vanity light, and she lowered her head and smiled.
I remember my father's funeral, a closed cedar box. In life, my father smelled cedar and motor oil. On the second night of the funeral, my mother took the cedar peel from all of our closets, which kept moths away from clothes. After another week, the house smelled of cedar instead of oil.
I remember my mother crying every night. She thought I was asleep, but I tiptoed into the hall and looked at her through the small crack in the bedroom door. Sometimes she wore his clothes. At other times, she pressed them to her face, breathing their scent urgently, and then wept loudly into her sleeves.
I remember my mother remarried in the same church. In a small ceremony, she married Eddie, a tall man who was much older than her. His gray hair and squinted eyes, and the feeling of colder I felt when he walked into the room.
I remember my brother was born. I remember the first time my mother held him in her arms and called him Daniel.
I remember three-year-old Danny climbed into my bed because he didn't want to sleep alone. He said he didn't like the tree outside the window, nor the way it scratched the glass to let him in.
I remember how Eddie made Daniel sleep in his own sex, and if he didn't do that, he would be whipped.
How Daniel cried, never been beaten. This is the first time I feel that I am useless and have nothing to offer. I may have been whipped. In fact, I prefer this.
How Eddie looked at me, like I was doing homework or tanning in the backyard, using his sticky hands to smear my scattered books with coconut-flavored rǔliquid.
I remember the first time he came to my bedroom at night.
I remember I tried to tell my mother, but she called me jìnv and a liar. I never heard her say anything like this.
I remember she threatened to kick me out of the house.
I remember a young Ellie who promised to elope with me. I held a bag under the bed all night, trying to hear her voice outside the window, or knocking on the glass.
But Ellie did not show up. I woke up when I heard his voice in the kitchen that morning, and my bag was at my feet. I remembered the panic and desolation when I realized that I was still trapped.
I remember at midnight, I was holding my mother's sleeping pills, a lighter and a whole bottle of Jack Daniels. When he found me, I had drunk all the medicine. He asked to pay his usual price for his house, food and generosity. That night, I hit his skull with that bottle, and what was left was the lighter in my pocket. It's amazing how flammable a barn can be, full of hay and wine jīng.
The smell of burning sex. The guttural sound of a person being burned to death, or the sharp spike-like flame when the flame is eating people, or the power impulse that I know he will die--even if I take me by my side, I can feel him Death.
But I forgot that I wanted to die. I have forgotten how deeply my mother hurt me.
I have forgotten how close Ellie and I are. I have forgotten that my decision to abandon Danny was made long before I woke up, because I knew I would never be able to return to that kind of life. I made this while taking medicine and never planned to come back.
There is another memory.
The way Gabriel slows down makes me think this is important, as if this is what he is looking for.
When I was young, lying under the car, my father told me about the different parts of the car. The harder I tried to see his face, the more it disappeared in the shadow of the car above us. But his laughter is like a good-tempered rascal. In those bluffing movies, I remember his laughter. I also blamed him because he died too early. If he hadn't crushed his ass, Eddie would not marry my mother, would not enter her house, and would not torture me.
Of course, there are more memories, because I feel the pressure of their attempts to intervene, but Gabriel must have decided that this is enough. It was as if he reached out to close the valve and ended the flood that flooded me.
I jumped to my feet. My face is soaking wet, and I can't see the tears. I walked around in the circle screaming like an animal in a cage. As soon as they heard the crow's call, the crow flew up from the tree, and their feathers slowly fell like black ashes.
A branch broke, I turned around and found Brinkley on the opposite side of the clearing, where Eddie died.
"Are you okay?" he asked. When he approached, he slowed down, just like the animals you suddenly see in the woods.
I shouted out everything I remembered.
"Is that why you chose me?" I asked to know. I wiped the tears from my runny nose and sleeves. "You know I'm a cold-blooded killer. I'm a heartless coward, who can do any despicable deeds for money. Everything sucks, right? Why not live by death? I want to die anyway. That's why you don't let me withdraw from my contract early, because you know that I deserve it. "I should die over and over again. "
"Stop talking," Brinkley said. He is closer to me.
"That's how I am," I shouted.
"This is the case, but you are not such a person," he said. "I chose the real you"
"Masochist? Someone is willing to commit suicide, even if she doesn't know that she can survive." My heart is full of wildness and sex.
Brinkley grabbed my arm and pulled me into a hug. He kept swearing in his breath, but he didn't let me go.
"If Eddie is a strong criminal, is my father also a terrible criminal?" I drove the car away, approaching the highest point of my hysteria. "Murderer? Serial killer, terrorist or something? Only God knows what he did before he was hit by a car. Have you been watching me since childhood and waiting for me to prove I am evil?"
"Fan Fan, stop," Brinkley said. He took me out of the arm and shook me a little. "None of this is true. Your father was a good man before he died. He had a good daughter, and she was also a good man. I didn't know your existence until I received a call from a terrified funeral director who claimed he thought There is such a person on my desk."
I wiped the tears from my eyes and swallowed my nose. "Rachel said you chose me because of who my father is. Then why does Rachel say that? What does she mean?"
"Your father died when you were eight," Brinkley said again, letting me go. "But it doesn't mean that he is dead."
The house was filled up quickly, and it was not that big at first. Mrs. Danica Phelps was in the corner of the living room, stretched out by the velvet lining in a black box. I saw a lot of coffins in Kirk’s funeral home. I can say that this coffin is not the best, but it was made with jīng heart and chosen with love, that is to say, it is not cheap. Since I left home, Danica must have good insurance, saved some money, or made some money.
I felt claustrophobic in a low-rise house. As I squeezed through the front door, the kitchen, and the corridor leading to the living room, people I didn’t know crowded together, and I felt claustrophobic.
My father is a hard-hearted man.
Considering that NRD has genetic markers, this is not impossible. Because when my father died, he was one of those people who were swept away by the military at the end of the "Protection xìng Guardianship" movement. Brinkley claimed that Eric Sullivan had escaped from the barracks before the rights activists demanded their release, and has been under surveillance ever since. His current whereabouts and identity are still unknown. Although I accept this fact, I also believe that Brinkley has theories he disagrees with.
He ensured the safety of the house before leaving me alone, but I didn't like Brinkley leaving at all. He couldn't tell me many things about my father, and he couldn't even tell me the people who chased me in Rachel's hospital. If this continues, I will die like an idiot.
"Go straight home after this," Brinkley said, then disappeared through the back door. I stood by the coffin, looking down at the face of the woman lying in the coffin. This smell is irresistible, it emits an artificial musky smell, and there are chemicals underneath it. I searched her face, her waxy skin, closed eyes and thin lips.
Her hair is chestnut like mine, and her skin is relatively smooth. I found myself wondering what Kirk would think of her body: Are the funeral directors doing well? Are her hair and clothes done right? What would he think of this coffin? Watching at home
I also want to know why my mother never considered death instead. Is she worried about the price? There are some financing projects. Or she can call me. But maybe this is the reason she never considered it.
She doesn't look real. At least, I didn't look at her, thinking this was my mother. I saw a wax figure placed in a box. I touched her hands, one on top of the other on her belly, and trembling how cold it was. I searched my new memory index and found anything labeled mom. What I noticed is my memory of two separated mothers-no, not anything creepy, like an alien mother or something. But before and after my father's death, my mother's lifestyle was indeed significantly different. The former mother was happy, beautiful and young. After that, she seemed to be getting too old, worrying too much, and worrying about every little thing. (To be continued) (End of this chapter)