Hello! I'm Thanarit, the author of Eldritch Horror? No, I'm a Doctor and Dimensional Librarian.
This is my new novel, a small side project I've been working on for fun.
It will update with two chapters every week, so please look forward to it!
Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy the story.
Hello. My name is Noel Lin.
I'm twenty-five years old, and I'm a failure.
Some might say that it's fate that I fail at life, but to be honest, I brought this upon myself. You might think that karma is real, but I'm telling you from my experience, this is utter bullshit.
My father and my mother aren't together. They had me when they were very young, in high school. But I should be grateful for being able to be born at all, right?
My father left me and my mother when she was eighteen and I was two. I don't blame him though. Who would want to stay in shackles when they're in their teenage years? He had his whole life ahead of him. I get it.
As time went on, my mother became more and more strict with me. I understand because my mother is of Asian heritage and her family was always strict with her. She was just doing what she knew.
If I didn't score a hundred on every exam, I had to sleep outside of the house. If I didn't do housework, I wouldn't get any dinner. If I arrived home after five in the evening, I had to sleep outside.
Mother always scolded me and said, "Don't be a trash like your father."
It didn't feel fair to me at first, but I understood. She must have been hurt a lot by my father, so I loved her anyway.
When I was in my teenage years, my mother became even more strict. I remember I started keeping a notebook under my bed where I'd write down all the rules. There were forty-three of them by the time I turned sixteen.
One day, I went and bought a guitar. I'd saved up money from helping neighbors with yard work, hiding the cash in an old shoebox in my closet. I wanted to become a musician. I'd seen a guy playing on the street corner once, and the way people stopped to listen made me think maybe I could be something like that. Something good.
I came home that afternoon with the guitar case slung over my shoulder, feeling proud. I'd even learned three chords from a YouTube video on my phone. When I walked through the door, she was standing in the kitchen cutting vegetables. She looked up, saw the case, and her face went white.
"What is that?" she asked. Her voice was quiet.
"It's a guitar, Mom. I saved up for it." I smiled, trying to show her how happy I was.
She put down the knife. Walked over to me. Grabbed the case from my hands and opened it right there in the hallway. For a second, I thought she was going to say something nice. Maybe ask me to play.
Then she grabbed the guitar by the neck and smashed it against the wall.
The strings snapped with sharp pinging sounds. The wood splintered. I just stood there watching, my mouth open, not understanding what was happening. She hit it against the wall again. And again. Pieces of wood flew across the floor.
While I was still in shock, she threw a glass vase at me.
It was the blue one from the living room table. I saw it coming but couldn't move fast enough. It hit me right above the eyebrow and shattered. I felt the impact first, then the warm wetness.
The blood came pouring down on my face. It got into my eye, and I had to blink it away. I raised my hand to touch my forehead, and my fingers came away red and sticky.
Then she shouted at me.
"Don't be like your father!" Her voice cracked on the last word.
That's when I realized, ah, my father must have played guitar too.
So I accepted it. She must have been hurt deeply because of my father, whose face I can't even remember. I wiped the blood from my eye with my sleeve and nodded at her. She was breathing hard, staring at the broken guitar on the floor.
"I'm sorry, Mom," I said.
She didn't respond. Just turned around and went back to the kitchen. I heard her start cutting vegetables again, the knife hitting the cutting board in quick, angry chops.
I cleaned up the guitar pieces myself, putting them in a trash bag. I found a bandage in the bathroom and pressed it over my eyebrow. The cut wasn't deep, but it bled a lot. I still have the scar.
I understood. She must have hurt a lot.
One day, I got myself a girlfriend.
Her name was Amy. We met in my junior year of high school, in the library. She was reading a book about marine biology, and I asked her about it because I didn't know what else to say. She smiled and started talking about jellyfish. I didn't understand half of what she said, but I liked listening to her voice.
I kept her away from my house. I feared that she would hate me for what my family was. Whenever she suggested coming over, I'd make up excuses. My mom was sick. We were renovating. The house was a mess.
But she told me it was okay. We were sitting in her car one evening after school, and she turned to me and took my hand.
"I will accept whatever and whoever your family is," she said. "I will love them just like I love you."
Her hand was warm. She squeezed my fingers gently, looking at me with those brown eyes that always seemed to see right through me.
So I took her to meet my mom.
When Amy and I walked through the door, my mother was sitting at the kitchen table. She looked up at us, and I saw something dark flash across her face.
"Mom, this is Amy," I said. I was holding Amy's hand, and I felt her grip tighten.
My mother stood up slowly. She walked over to us, and for a second I thought it would be okay.
Then she lashed out at me, her face twisting into something ugly.
"If you tricked a girl, how much of a shitty person are you?" She grabbed my shirt with both hands. "How dare you bring someone here? How dare you trick her into thinking you're worth anything?"
Amy's hand slipped out of mine. I turned to look at her, and I saw the fear in her eyes.
"Mrs. Lin, I—" Amy started to say.
"Get out!" my mother screamed at her. "Get out before he ruins your life too!"
Amy ran. She didn't even look back at me. I heard the door slam, then the sound of her car starting. I stood there in the hallway, my mother still gripping my shirt, and I felt something break inside me.
I was shocked, to be honest. Weren't you the one who told me you would accept who I was? Weren't you the one who told me you were going to love my family?
But I understood. Not everyone can accept what I was. Amy was smart. She knew to run. So I accepted it. I didn't try to call her. I didn't text her. I looked the other way.
"You're gonna leave me like your father, right? You ungrateful bastard!" my mother screamed at me. She was still holding my shirt, shaking me hard enough that my head snapped back and forth.
"No, Mom. I won't leave you," I said quietly.
It hurt, but I understood. She always loved me a lot, and she was just afraid that I was going to leave her alone like my father did. So I accepted it. I hugged her, and she went rigid in my arms before slowly relaxing. She started crying into my shoulder.
"You can't leave me," she whispered. "You can't."
"I won't," I promised.
Surprisingly, the news that I had a crazy mother spread to my school.
I don't know who told everyone. Maybe Amy. Maybe someone saw what happened through our window. By Monday, people were whispering. By Wednesday, no one would sit near me at lunch.
Everybody, even my best friend, started to distance themselves from me. Jake and I had been friends since elementary school. We used to play video games at his house every weekend. But after the news spread, he stopped answering my texts. When I tried to talk to him in the hallway, he looked uncomfortable.
"Hey, man," I said. "Want to hang out this weekend?"
He shifted his backpack on his shoulder and wouldn't meet my eyes. "I don't think that's a good idea."
"Why not?"
"You know why." He walked away.
But I understood. I was like a plague after all. I am disgusting. No one wants to catch what I have. And for that, I lived as a loner until I graduated. I ate lunch in the bathroom stalls. I walked home by myself. I spent my senior prom at home, watching TV with my mother.
It was fine. I understood.
Surprisingly, I moved on to college. I got a scholarship and got into Political Science at a state university three hours away. I planned to apply to law school after I graduated. I planned to become a lawyer so my mother wouldn't have to work again. She worked as a cleaner at an office building, coming home every night with her hands red and raw from chemicals.
"I'll take care of you someday, Mom," I told her when I got the acceptance letter. "You won't have to work anymore."
She cried and held the letter to her chest.
When I moved out, my mother cried a lot, but it all went well at first. She made me promise to call her every single day. If I missed a day, she'd call me fifteen times in a row until I answered.
"Are you eating well?" she'd ask every time.
"Yes, Mom."
"Are you studying hard?"
"Yes, Mom."
"You're not thinking about leaving me forever, are you?"
"Never, Mom."
Until I was in my second year.
I received the news that my mother had passed away. It was suicide.
The call came at three in the morning. I was asleep in my dorm room when my phone rang. I answered it half-awake, expecting it to be my mother with another one of her late-night check-ins.
Instead, it was a police officer.
The full story was that my mother had hanged herself after she killed five of her family members, including my grandpa, grandma, uncle, aunt and her daughter.
I sat up in bed, my heart pounding. "What?"
The officer repeated it. My mother had gone to my grandparents' house for dinner. Somewhere during the evening, she'd snapped. She used a kitchen knife. My cousin was only twelve years old.
Then she went home and hanged herself in the garage.
I was shocked at the news and rushed home. I didn't pack anything. I just grabbed my wallet and keys and drove. My hands were shaking so badly I almost crashed twice.
When I got there, the house was surrounded by police tape. There were news vans parked on the street. Neighbors were standing on their lawns, staring.
My aunt's husband was waiting outside. When he saw me, his face went red.
Although the family beat me up physically and broke my nose and called me a murderer's child, I understood. They must have suffered a lot.
He punched me before I could say anything. My nose broke with a crack that I felt more than heard. I fell to the ground, and then my uncle was on top of me, hitting me again and again.
"You made her like this!" he screamed. "This is your fault! Murderer's child! You should have died instead!"
Someone else kicked me in the ribs. I curled up, trying to protect my head. I tasted blood in my mouth. My eye was swelling shut.
But I understood. I let them hit me. They'd lost their daughter. They'd lost their parents. They needed someone to blame, and I was there. So I took it.
Eventually, the police pulled them off me. I heard shouting, and then everything went quiet.
After they got escorted away, I went to see my mother in the mortuary.
A detective drove me there. My nose was broken, my ribs hurt, and one of my eyes was swollen shut, but I insisted on seeing her. He tried to talk me out of it, and said I should go to the hospital first, but I refused.
The mortuary was cold. Everything was white and sterile. A man in a white coat led me to a room in the back. There was a metal table in the center, and a body covered with a white sheet.
"I'll give you a few minutes," the man said. He left and closed the door behind him.
I walked over to the table. My footsteps echoed in the empty room. I stood there for a long time, just staring at the shape under the sheet.
I was sad and angry. I let my frustration get the better of me for the first time.
"Why did you leave me?" I said to the sheet. My voice cracked. "Why? Why?"
I grabbed the edge of the table and shook it. The metal rattled.
"You promised we'd always be together!" I was screaming now. "You made me promise I'd never leave, and then you left me!"
Tears were running down my face, mixing with the blood from my nose.
But then I stopped. I took a deep breath and wiped my face with my sleeve.
I understood. Because she's my mother. She decided to keep me when she was just eighteen years old. Her family was a traditional one, so she must have suffered a lot because of me. They must have blamed her every single day. They must have told her she ruined her life. And she finally exploded. I understood.
But I didn't want to be alone. I wanted her to be with me forever.
I lifted the sheet carefully. Her face was pale and peaceful. They'd cleaned her up, but I could still see the marks on her neck from the rope. Her eyes were closed. Her hair was combed neatly.
I pressed my thumbs against her left eyelid and pulled it up. The eye underneath was dull and glassy, staring at nothing. I hesitated for just a second, then I dug my fingers into the socket. The tissue was cold and soft. I felt it give way as I pushed deeper, finding the space behind the eyeball.
I pulled.
It came out with a wet pop. A string of nerves and tissue followed, thin and white like spaghetti. I held the eyeball in my palm. It was heavier than I expected, dense and firm. The iris was brown, the same color as mine. The pupil was wide and black.
I brought it to my mouth and bit down.
The outer layer was tough and rubbery. My teeth couldn't break through at first, so I bit harder. Finally, it burst. Liquid squirted out, filling my mouth with a taste like salt and metal and something sour. The fluid was thick, coating my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
I chewed slowly. The texture was awful, like biting into a raw oyster but firmer, more resistant. The outer layer stayed tough and chewy between my teeth, but the inside was softer, almost gelatinous. I could feel the different parts breaking apart in my mouth. The lens was hard and slippery. The iris tore into small pieces.
The taste made me want to gag. It was bitter and organic, like licking a battery mixed with spoiled milk. There was a metallic undertone that coated my teeth and wouldn't go away. The nerves that had come with the eyeball were stringy and elastic. I had to chew them over and over before I could swallow them down. They kept getting stuck between my teeth.
I swallowed. It took three tries. The mass slid down my throat slowly, leaving a slimy trail. I could feel it all the way down to my stomach.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. There was fluid on my chin, sticky and clear. I looked down at my mother's face again. The empty socket stared back at me, dark and hollow.
I touched her cheek. It was cold.
"Now we can be together forever," I whispered.