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Drowned Thirteen Times, My Mother Called It Love
NovelMaster
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I was four years old when my eight-year-old sister, Autumn, drowned. Starting from the year I turned five, on the anniversary of her death, my mother would drag me to the water and hold my head under...
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第1章
I was four years old when my eight-year-old sister, Autumn, drowned.
Starting from the year I turned five, on the anniversary of her death, my mother would drag me to the water and hold my head under the freezing surface.
"Don't struggle," she would whisper, her voice trembling. "This is exactly how your sister felt when she sank."
Only when I was on the verge of death would she cry, pull me out of the water, and hold my shivering body, screaming my sister's name.
"I saved you. I actually saved you this time."
Every year on that day, my mother re-enacted this twisted ritual of redemption. And I was her only toy.
When I was six, she got annoyed because my struggling "ruined the realism." So, she tied my hands and feet with nylon ropes.
When I was nine, she decided the bathwater wasn't cold enough. She filled the tub with ice bags, holding my head under for over a minute.
When I was twelve, to make it even more realistic, she mixed thick, smelly river mud into the water. I choked on it and coughed up blood for two weeks.
My father never stopped her. He just stood by, watching with cold, indifferent eyes.
Today is my eighteenth birthday. The day I legally become an adult.
This time, my mother brought me to the very riverbank where Autumn died.
"After today, your sister would have been this age," she murmured.
Then, with her own hands, she pushed me into the rushing, turbulent river.
As the icy water flooded my lungs, for the first time in my life, I felt a strange sense of peace.
Autumn only died once. But I, from the age of five to seventeen, had died thirteen times.
My only birthday wish this year was simple: Let this be my final death.
1
"Get your ass up here! Maya, do you think you're being funny?!"
Victoria's sharp, screeching voice pierced through the muddy surface of the river.
I looked down at myself.
My body felt weightless, like a patch of mist hovering a few feet above the water.
Beneath the surface, the fierce current was dragging a lifeless body, slamming it hard against the sharp rocks at the bottom of the river.
That body was mine.
The sound of bones snapping was drowned out by the roaring water, but I felt an unprecedented sense of relief.
For eighteen years, I was finally, truly warm.
On the riverbank, Victoria was pacing impatiently, her high heels sinking into the muddy shore.
She was wearing a long black trench coat today.
That was her signature outfit, reserved exclusively for the anniversary of Autumn's death.
"I'm counting to three! If you don't pop your head out of that water, don't expect a single penny for your allowance this month!"
Victoria glared at the swirling water, her eyes flashing with pure rage at my disobedience.
No one answered her.
Only the cold waves kept crashing against the rocky shore.
A few steps behind her, Richard was looking down, trying to light a cigarette.
The lighter flickered several times in the damp wind before finally catching.
He took a deep drag, exhaling the cheap tobacco smoke into the humid air.
"Alright, stop yelling. After all these years, she can hold her breath like a fish. She's probably just trying to scare you."
Richard pointed his cigarette at the river, his tone as casual as if he were talking about the weather.
Victoria let out a cold, mocking laugh.
"Scare me? She wouldn't dare!"
"Your sister was in this exact river, in water just this deep," she screamed at the empty river.
"When Autumn went down, she didn't even have the strength to struggle!"
"But you? I threw you in just a few minutes ago, and now you're playing hide-and-seek with me?"
Hovering in the air, I watched her twisted, hysterical face.
Autumn was my older sister.
Victoria always got like this. The moment Autumn's name was mentioned, she would spiral into a state of psychotic obsession.
"Victoria, the current is actually pretty strong today. Maybe I should grab a branch and poke around?" Richard suggested, exhaling another cloud of smoke. It was a rare moment of concern from him.
Victoria snapped her head around, glaring at him with pure hatred.
"Poke around for what? You always spoil her!"
"This is her baptism into adulthood! Without this, how is she supposed to live on behalf of Autumn?!"
Hearing those words, my dead heart seemed to flinch out of pure instinct.
Live on behalf of Autumn.
That was the sole purpose of my existence. It was the only reason I had endured thirteen years of torture.
When I was fifteen, I caught a severe flu and ran a fever of 104 degrees.
I didn't even have the strength to stand. I could only curl up on the cold floor of my bedroom.
But that day happened to be the anniversary of Autumn's death.
Victoria kicked my door open, carrying a bucket of fresh snow she had shoveled from the yard, mixed with sharp ice chunks.
"Stop playing dead. Get up. Time for the tub."
She grabbed me by my hair and dragged me out of the room.
"I'm so cold... I have a fever..." I sobbed, desperately clawing at the doorframe, my tears mixing with cold sweat. "Please, not today. I'm really going to die..."
Victoria paused for a second.
But in the next second, she slammed her high heel right onto the back of my hand.
"A fever? Autumn was trapped under the ice for a whole day and night! Have you ever thought about how cold she was?!"
"Your little fever is nothing! Get in the tub, now!"
That day, she dumped the bucket of ice and snow into the freezing bathwater and shoved my head under.
The ice chunks scraped against my face like razor blades.
I struggled wildly under the water, the air in my lungs slowly being squeezed out.
And she just stood by the tub, holding a stopwatch.
"Don't move! Autumn drowned because she ran out of strength. You must perfectly recreate her pain!"
Only when my eyes rolled back and I lost consciousness did she finally drag me out.
She held my soaking wet, limp body and wailed at the ceiling.
"Autumn! I finally saved you! I wasn't too late this time!"
That fever turned into severe pneumonia. I was hospitalized for two weeks.
The day I was discharged, Victoria didn't show up.
She only had Richard bring me a message:
"Your mom says you're too weak. You don't even have half of Autumn's strength. She wants you to wash your face with ice water every morning from now on."
And now, at eighteen, I had finally completed her perfect recreation.
I didn't struggle.
I went straight down, and I never came back up.
On the bank, Victoria checked her watch, her brows furrowing deeper.
"Maya! It's been five minutes! Are you still playing dead down there?!"
She bent down, picked up a heavy rock, and threw it into the middle of the river.
The rock splashed into the water, sinking instantly.
"Fine! If you want to stay down there, then don't ever come up!"
Victoria brushed the dirt off her hands and turned to Richard.
"Richard, go grab my telescopic fishing rod from the trunk. She must be hiding under some weeds just to spite me!"
2
Richard threw his half-smoked cigarette onto the ground and crushed it under his boot.
"I told you we shouldn't have come to a real river. The bathtub at home was fine," he muttered, turning around and walking sluggishly toward their car to search the trunk.
Victoria crossed her arms.
"The bathtub? Does the bathtub have this kind of strong current?" she yelled after him.
"Autumn died in a real river. If Maya doesn't choke on some real river water, how is she ever going to understand the despair Autumn felt?!"
I hovered above Victoria, watching her self-righteous face.
Even though I was already dead, hearing her words still sent a familiar, icy shiver through my soul.
A cold gust of wind blew by, rustling the dead leaves on the shore.
It had been ten minutes since I was thrown into the water.
The rushing river showed no signs of life. Not even a single bubble popped up.
A few locals walking along the levee stopped, whispering and looking down at the riverbank.
"Excuse me, did you just throw something into the river?" a middle-aged woman asked, stepping closer with a worried look. "I swear I saw a girl go in."
Victoria turned around, looking at the woman as if she were a disgusting bug.
"None of your business. I'm parenting my own daughter. Do I need your permission?"
The woman gasped, her eyes widening in shock.
"Are you insane?! The current is incredibly fast today! She's going to drown!"
"You threw your own daughter in? That's murder!"
The man standing next to the woman panicked and pulled out his phone.
"This is crazy. Call 911! This is a crime!"
The moment Victoria heard "911," her face darkened.
She lunged forward and grabbed the man's hand, forcing his phone down.
"Don't you dare call the police! I told you, she's my daughter! She's just throwing a tantrum!"
"She's been training in the water since she was a kid. She can hold her breath for seven or eight minutes. She's definitely hiding under some river weeds right now just to scare me!"
The man took a step back, frightened by the psychotic look in her eyes, but he kept a tight grip on his phone.
"Are you out of your mind?! Nobody can hold their breath for eight minutes in a rapid current like this! You need mental help!"
"Richard! Where the hell are you?! Get over here and get these freaks away from me!" Victoria screamed toward the car.
Richard finally ambled back, dragging a long, extendable fishing rod.
Seeing the conflict, his brow furrowed.
"What's the shouting about? Move along, people. It's just a family matter," he said, waving his hand dismissively, as if shooing away stray dogs.
"A family matter?! Throwing a kid into a raging river is a family matter?!" the woman yelled, pointing right at Richard's nose. "Are you even her father?! Why aren't you jumping in to save her?!"
Richard's face turned red from the yelling, but he just stubbornly argued back.
"Save her from what? Her mother knows what she's doing. She won't die."
"Besides, she's the one refusing to come up. Even if I go in, it won't do any good."
Watching Richard's indifferent face, I suddenly remembered a small incident from when I was sixteen.
Back then, because of the constant exposure to ice water and mud, I had developed severe chronic arthritis.
Whenever it rained, my knees felt like they were being pierced by thousands of hot needles.
One day, because my test score was two points lower than what Autumn used to get, Victoria locked me in the basement right next to the deep freezer.
She forced me to stand pressed against the icy metal wall.
"Autumn didn't even get the chance to go to school, and you dare to score lower than her?!"
The pain was unbearable. While Victoria was upstairs taking a phone call, I used a cheap burner phone I had hidden in my shoe to dial 91
第2章
The moment the call connected, I felt like I had grabbed a lifeline.
"911, please help me... my mom is freezing me to death..."
Before I could finish, a rough hand reached from behind and snatched the phone away.
It was Richard.
He looked at the "911" on the screen and hung up without a second thought.
I looked at him, completely heartbroken.
"Dad... please. My bones hurt so bad. I'm going to be crippled..."
Richard slipped the phone into his pocket and looked down at me, his eyes completely devoid of warmth.
"Maya, your mother is sick. She's suffered a lot. Can't you just cooperate with her?"
"Do you really want the police to show up and ruin this family before you're satisfied?"
He sighed, acting like a tired, noble peacekeeper.
"Just endure it. She'll let you out once she calms down."
With that, he walked out and locked the basement door, leaving me alone in the freezing, pitch-black darkness.
Since that day, I knew.
In this house, Victoria was the one holding the knife, and Richard was the one who handed it to her and buried the bodies.
Neither of them was innocent.
Suddenly, a cluster of bubbles popped up on the river surface.
Right after, a white canvas sneaker floated up, spinning slowly in the whirlpool.
It was the new pair of shoes I had put on just this morning.
"Oh my god! Something happened! That's a shoe!"
The woman screamed, shoving Victoria aside, and snatched her husband's phone to dial 911.
"Yes! Emergency! A crazy woman just threw her daughter into the river and drowned her! Get here right now!"
Seeing the shoe, Victoria's face finally flickered with a trace of unease.
But it was only for a split second.
In the next moment, she laughed even louder.
"Maya, you're getting really good at acting."
She screamed at the river, her voice filled with a sick, manic excitement.
"Officer, she's really just playing a prank!" she yelled at the woman's phone. "She's an amazing swimmer! She's just holding her breath to scare me!"
"Just wait until the police get here, she'll crawl right back up!"
I looked down at the lonely canvas shoe floating away.
Mom, I was actually a terrible swimmer.
I just got used to not struggling in the water.3
Screaming sirens shattered the heavy silence over the canal.
Two police cruisers and a water rescue truck roared onto the levee, slamming their brakes.
Several officers and rescue team members in full gear quickly hopped out and rushed to the bank.
"What's the situation? Who called?"
The lead officer, a young man named Detective Carter, asked with a deep frown as he walked over.
"Me! Officer! This crazy woman threw her own daughter into this overflow canal! It's been almost twenty minutes!" the local woman pointed at Victoria, jumping in panic.
Detective Carter took one look at the raging current, and his face turned pale.
"Rescue team! Get in the water now! Prepare the sonar and the nets!"
Several rescue divers immediately began putting on their life vests and securing safety ropes around their waists.
But Victoria stepped forward, blocking the divers.
"Do not go into that water!"
She tilted her chin up, her eyes blazing with arrogant fury.
"This is a private family matter! Who gave you permission to interfere?!"
"My daughter is playing hide-and-seek with me! If you jump in, you're going to scare her!"
Detective Carter stood frozen for a few seconds, utterly dumbfounded by her insane logic.
"Ma'am, do you have any idea how fast this current is? Holding her breath for twenty minutes? Do you think she has gills?"
He shoved her aside.
"Obstructing justice. I can arrest you right now."
Victoria stumbled back, nearly falling into the mud.
Richard quickly caught her and stepped forward with a fake, placating smile.
"Officer, please, don't be mad. My wife... she's had some trauma, her head isn't quite right..." He pointed to his temple and lowered his voice. "But really, our girl is just throwing a fit. She's been doing this 'diving' thing since she was little. It's weird, but she's totally fine."
Hovering above them, I looked at Richard's disgusting, cowardly face.
He knew people couldn't survive twenty minutes underwater.
He was just so used to protecting Victoria, so used to painting my pain and my life as a "minor family drama" to keep the peace.
"Get out of the way!"
Detective Carter snapped, pushing Richard back and barking into his radio.
"Team One, search downstream along the banks! Team Two, get underwater now! Hurry!"
The divers, equipped with waterproof searchlights and sonar devices, plunged into the cold, murky water one after another.
Victoria stood on the bank, calmly brushing her windblown hair behind her ears.
Watching the busy rescue team, she let out a mocking sneer.
"What a dramatic show. Ridiculous."
She turned to Richard.
"Richard, do you think Maya did this on purpose? To make a scene so the whole world thinks I abuse her?"
"How can a child be so malicious? Autumn was so sweet and obedient. Why did Maya have to turn out so rebellious?"
Richard stared at the water in silence. He didn't agree, but he didn't defend me either.
Malicious?
Hearing her accusation, I wanted to laugh.
When I was seventeen, I studied myself to the bone and won a local youth competition.
It came with a $1,000 cash prize.
I ran home that day, clutching the envelope, my heart bursting with joy.
I wanted to buy Victoria a designer silk scarf she had been staring at in a department store window for months but couldn't afford.
I wanted to tell her that I could be good too. I wanted to make her proud.
But when I presented the certificate and the cash to her with both hands, she didn't smile.
She stared at the certificate, her eyes turning colder and more maniacal by the second.
"You won a prize?"
Her voice shook. Suddenly, she raised her hand and slapped me across the face so hard my ears rang.
"Who do you think you are, winning prizes?!"
"Autumn died when she was eight! She will never get to win anything!"
"What are you trying to do? Brag? Bragging that you lived longer than her? That you're better than her?!"
That day, she dragged me to a filthy, stagnant swamp on the outskirts of town.
She tore the $1,000 cash into shreds and threw them into the mud.
Then, she shoved my face into the rotten leaves and black sludge.
"Eat it! Eat everything you owe your sister!"
I choked on the mud and coughed up blood for two weeks. My lungs still had a shadow on the X-rays.
That was the day I realized that no matter what I did, in her eyes, I was just a criminal who had stolen her precious daughter's life.
"Detective Carter! The sonar got a hit!"
In the middle of the river, a diver popped his head out and yelled.
The shout snapped me out of my memories.
Everyone froze, locking their eyes on that patch of water.
"About twelve feet deep, wedged in the gap between the bridge pillars! There's a clear human outline!"
The detective rushed to the edge.
"Is she breathing?! Any signs of life?!"
The diver took a deep breath and plunged back down.
Ten seconds later, he surfaced, his face pale.
"No signs of struggle... the current is too strong, her clothes are tangled in the weeds..." He paused, his voice trembling. "She's... she's gone."
A suffocating silence fell over the bank.
The onlookers gasped, some covering their mouths in horror.
Detective Carter clenched his fists, turning around to glare at Victoria.
"Is this what you call a tantrum?!"
But Victoria didn't even blink.
She pulled a pack of wet wipes from her trench coat pocket and slowly wiped the mud off her hands.
"Alright, cut the act," she shouted at the divers in the water. "How much did she pay you guys to act in her little drama? Pretty convincing, I'll give you that."
"Maya! I'm counting to three! If you don't get your ass out of there right now, don't you ever think about stepping foot in my house again!"
"One!"
"Two!"
"We got her! Pull her up!"
With a loud splash, three divers worked together to drag a body, covered in mud and river weeds, out of the water.
4
The heavy, wet sound of a body being dragged onto the muddy grass echoed along the shore.
She was laid there like a broken ragdoll.
Her clothes had been shredded by the rocks and current, exposing pale, bruised skin.
Her face was completely buried under thick river weeds and foul-smelling mud, making her unrecognizable.
Water kept dripping from her soaked hair.
There was no movement. No breath.
"Start CPR! Now!"
Detective Carter yelled, dropping to his knees in the mud. He placed his hands on her chest and began pumping hard.
One, two, three...
But only muddy water mixed with dark red blood seeped from her mouth and nose.
"It's no use, Detective."
The medical examiner, who had just arrived with his kit, knelt down. He checked her pupils and felt her carotid artery.
"Submersion time exceeds twenty minutes. Cardiac arrest. Pupils are dilated and fixed. I'm calling it. She's dead."
Those words fell like a sledgehammer, crushing the hearts of everyone standing there.
The local woman burst into tears, pointing at Victoria and screaming, "You monster! You actually killed your own daughter!"
Victoria stood frozen, her feet seemingly glued to the mud.
She stared at the lifeless body on the grass. Her eye twitched slightly.
But the deep-seated pride and psychosis in her bones still kept her spine straight.
"Dead? How could she be dead?!"
She let out a sharp laugh, stepping forward in her high heels.
"Maya, your little guilt trip is getting more and more elaborate. You even fooled the police."
She looked down at the corpse.
"Putting mud on your face to make it look real? Do you think that's going to make me feel sorry for you?"
"Get up! Stand up right now!"
She suddenly bent down, raising her hand to slap the cold face of the corpse.
"What do you think you're doing?!"
Detective Carter grabbed her wrist and threw her back with force.
"Do you have a single drop of humanity left?! She's dead, and you still want to abuse her corpse?!"
Victoria stumbled back, and Richard rushed to hold her.
But Richard's face was already ghost-white. He stared at the familiar shape of the body, his voice shaking violently.
"Victoria... maybe... maybe we should look at her face... What if... what if it's really Maya..."
"Shut up!" Victoria shrieked like a cat that had its tail stepped on.
"She's a great swimmer, she can't be dead! This must be some other unlucky brat who fell into the river, and Maya is using her body to play a trick on me!"
She pointed at the corpse, her voice absolutely certain.
"This is definitely not Maya! Maya is a coward who's terrified of pain! She wants to live more than anyone!"
Hovering in the air, I looked down at her with a cold smile.
Yes, Mom. I used to want to live more than anyone.
I wanted to live so I could go to college, escape that house, and see a world that wasn't filled with ice water and mud.
But you were the one who personally strangled every single hope I had.
"Since the family refuses to believe it, doctor, clean the victim's face. Let her see clearly!" Detective Carter barked, holding back the urge to draw his gun.
The medical examiner nodded. He took a bottle of clean water and some sterile gauze, gently washing away the thick layers of black mud from the girl's face.
As the features slowly became clear, the smirk on Victoria's face completely froze.
It was a young, pale, bloodless face.
Eyes closed, lips tightly shut. Even the tiny dark mole on her left eyebrow was clearly visible.
But the medical examiner wasn't done.
He gently pulled back the wet collar of her shirt, exposing her collarbone and neck.
"Detective Carter, look at this."
The doctor pointed at a thick, dark brown scar wrapping around her neck.
"This didn't happen today. It's an old scar. It looks like permanent tissue damage caused by repeated binding with something like a nylon rope."
Detective Carter gasped, turning to look at Victoria with absolute disgust and horror.
"Did you do this?"
Victoria didn't answer.
Her eyes were glued to that scar. Her pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks.
How could she not recognize that scar?
When I was six, she hated how "ugly" I looked when I struggled in the bathtub. So, she tied my hands, feet, and neck with a nylon rope, dragging me into the water like a dog.
That scar had been with me for twelve years.
It was her trophy, her proof that she had "perfect control" over me.
"No... this isn't..."
Victoria's throat made a horrific, rattling sound, like a broken bellows.
She shoved Richard away and fell to her knees beside the corpse.
Her hand trembled violently as she reached out to touch the clean face.
But the moment her fingers brushed the cold, stiff skin, she flinched back as if she had been burned by hot iron.
"Maya...?" she whispered, her arrogant, mocking voice completely gone. "My Maya...?"
She stared at the face, desperately searching for any sign of a prank, any sign of life.
But there was none. The face was peacefully, terrifyingly still. It would never look at her with fear ever again.
"You're not Autumn... weren't you supposed to die in her place..."
Suddenly, Victoria's tears spilled over without warning.
She finally realized that the girl lying in the mud wasn't the glorified ghost of her eight-year-old sister. It was her actual, living daughter. The girl she had tortured for thirteen years, who had just turned eighteen today.
She finally realized that I was dead.