CHAPTER 1: Odd Book

I never tried begging. Not even once. Even when I saw my own mother took her life in our kitchen.

I vividly remembered how a day before her suicide, she begged me to do it with her. I was only 7 years old who was excited when his mother said, "Let's go see Chi tomorrow, my baby". Chi was my dog who passed a year and though I was puzzled about what she said, I didn't ask my mother about it. Instead, I said innocently "But Mommy, tomorrow is my birthday! And I want to go see the movie my friends talked about in school."

I don't remember what happened next but I felt a pang in my cheek as tears flowed in my eyes. She was crazy for hitting her child but she said, "Do you love, Mommy? If you love Mommy, let's go see Chi tomorrow" while hysterically laughing.

I was afraid of how she looked like at that moment. She was thin as a skeleton, her skin was dry as if she never drank any water. Her hair was smelling awfully, her face lost its weight and her eyes. Her eyes was especially dark and..dead. One moment she'll look at me like a loving mother, the next thing she'll curse and hit me while telling me to die for looking like my father. She'll say sorry and cry and kiss me on the cheeks. For three months, I remembered people calling her insane and on my 8th birthday, she finally snapped. Like how her neck snapped with the rope entangling her neck the moment I saw her in the living room.

"Wow! Mommy is floating! Like an angel!" I said it while calling my neighbor.

"Mister is that my Mommy's surprise? Today is my birthday you see!" I asked. I didn't know if I was happy or was I sad because I was crying. And when they went to our home, they hugged me tight and cried with me as if I was the most pitiful person in the room. I didn't understand it.

Why did they pity me? They were the same person who said my mother was insane.

Afterwards, I saw my father who I did not see for two years in my Mom's funeral. "Kai, I'm sorry" was his first words to me. He hugged me while crying in my arms. I didn't react and I didn't even cry.

After my mother's funeral, my father brought me home—the same home where my mother took her life. Looking back, I knew why mother acted that way. My father was a cheater even though he cried and drunk himself every night for indirectly killing my mother, he would always tell me that he loves her. Love? What bullshit.

Exactly a month later, after successfully failing his business, we had nothing left except the house and his debt. I remembered how I sat at the table looking at my father who was crying pitifully while holding a liquor in his hand. 'Dad, I'm hungry' was the words I wanted to say to him. He didn't paid me attention for days and I stopped going to school. I didn't know how to make food, we didn't have money to buy food but he always have alcohol. I didn't have the strength to tell him because of too much hunger, I passed out. The next thing I know, my father was holding my hand tightly while saying sorry to my mother. We were in the car he took from his mistress who he killed an hour earlier. He didn't tell me anything but I knew he was driving to the edge of the cliff. And I knew what will happen.

"Daddy?"

"Kai, you're awake? Let's see your Mommy. You want that, right?"

My father was smiling, the same smile my mom had when she would hit me.

"Dad...I want to live" my father flinched when he heard me. He went quite and I saw how he gripped the car's steering wheel. I didn't know what face I made. I was sure I wasn't begging nor did I cry. But it was enough for him to smile brightly at me.

"I'm sorry, son" he said then he pushed me out of the car. I heard my bones cracking for landing at the tough road but when I managed to walk at the cliff, I saw how the car drowned in the river with my father.

At the age of 8, I survived death. But in return, I lived in hell.

I became an orphan. Both of my parents are orphans so I had no one to turn to. Nobody wanted to adopt me, not from my mother's colleague nor my father's. They said it was too much burden for them. So in order to survive, I worked my butt off because aside from generational trauma, my parents just left me tons of debt. I never had the chance to live life because I was busy surviving but that ends today.

"Sir, should I leave this here?"

"Yeah. Also, take the portrait here"

Because as of today, I finally bought a house. I couldn't afford renting so for all my life, I lived in the same house. Every night, I'll have dreams of my mother hanging. Some nights, I could hear her cry. And when I go home from work, I could see my father all soaked in water sitting at the table staring at me first thing when I enter the house. Sometimes, I can see them smiling at me.

I didn't care. They were just lingering ghosts who couldn't lift a finger to me. And I've gotten used to it but I swore to never live with them.

"I'll be going now, Mom and Dad. You can now cross the bridge. Don't follow me, I promise to live a happy life. And I won't get married to not become like you.." I lit up a torch.

"Good bye" I threw the fire and watched how the house was consumed by it.

I grew up people pitying me and said maybe I would never recover. But burning this same house, isn't that the first step to healing from my past?

I smiled and turned around but I caught how a small light in the image of my mother and father waved at me.

I'll live happily from now on.

***

"We've put everything to their designated places, Sir. The furnitures are also in place" said the staff who helped me move in my new house.

"Thanks."

"Oh, yeah. Before I forgot, we saw this on top of one of your boxes, Sir. We'll get going now." he handed me a book.

What? This book, haven't I burned this along with that house? What a strange book, why does it always survive? It was just yesterday when I throw it in the trash but my employee mistakenly brought it back to me without even having any dirt. I tried giving it to other people too but they would return it to me.

Now that I thought about, there's a time when I remembered that I forgot it a coffeeshop. At that moment, I thought I really lost it. But three days later, I saw it in my bedroom again. It's like playing a trick on me and since then, I had an odd feeling about this book.

The unfinished book that I don't even remember how it came to me—"To Darvino Alderidge, the last descendant of the Neantherlands."

"I never had a good feeling about this book. Should I burn it with my own eyes and try to see if it really survives?" I looked at it intently. But as I was to head to the backyard to do it, rain suddenly started pouring.

"Tsk. I'll take a shower first" I went inside and throw the book in the couch.