Nightmare

Chapter 10

"I once overheard my mother secretly telling me that the first nanny to come to our house was a distant relative of Xiao Zhu. By seniority, Xiao Zhu should have called her aunt. She mainly took care of my second sister. Maybe I wasn't even born yet then? Otherwise, why don't I remember these things? Her cousin, of course, shared the same surname as Xiao Zhu, Zhu, and her name was Zhu Hua. My family said she was very beautiful, not at all like a country bumpkin. Everyone in our family called her Sister Zhu. Sister Zhu was a very cunning person. When she first came to our house, she was very well-behaved and obedient, spoiling my second sister every day. Everyone in the family..." She did chores efficiently and cleanly without being asked, and over time, she gained my family's trust, who entrusted my second sister to her care. Every day when my family came home from get off work, Sister Zhu would greet my second sister at the door, who was always clean and beautifully dressed, making my parents very happy. In reality, Sister Zhu often beat my second sister, making her cry loudly, but my second sister never dared to tell my parents. Because Sister Zhu was a master of acting in front of my parents; when they were home, she was like a gentle angel, patiently coaxing my second sister, but when my parents were home... After my own mother went to work, she immediately changed her attitude. She stripped my second sister naked, tied her up with a rope, stuffed a dirty sock in her mouth, and first gave her a severe beating. Then she threw her into the bathtub, filled it with water, just enough to submerge my second sister. After that, she turned off the bathroom light, locked the door, and left my second sister alone in the dark, crying in terror. Meanwhile, Sister Zhu took out some yarn from our house and went outside to exchange it with other nannies. The other nannies' yarn was also stolen from their employers' homes. After the yarn was exchanged, the employers couldn't recognize her. Then, Sister Zhu would knit sweaters, either for herself or to sell. Around the time my parents were about to get off work, she would leisurely stroll back and scrub my second sister thoroughly with a toilet scrubber, making her gasp and roll her eyes. But after Sister Zhu had done this, she would dress my second sister, and when my parents came home, they would see a beautiful, angelic daughter. And Sister Zhu often threatened my second sister, saying that if she dared to tell my parents about this, she would make that little turtle with her name carved on its shell…”

Just as He Ming mentioned the little turtle, his face suddenly darkened, as if he had remembered something terrible, and he stopped talking.

Lin Hong listened for a long time but still couldn't figure it out, so she asked, "Isn't this Sister Zhu really too wicked? How could she treat your second sister like this? This will cause permanent psychological damage to your second sister! And what about your eldest sister? Why doesn't she care?"

He Mingdao said, "My eldest sister is actually my uncle's child. She came to our family after my uncle passed away. When she came to our family, my second sister was already in junior high school. So my second sister has always disliked my eldest sister. There is another reason for this."

Lin Hong frowned: "Your family relationships are really complicated. And you? Are you your father and mother's biological child?"

“Of course I am.” He Ming chuckled. “You think our family is an orphanage? Ah,” he said, turning around and pinching Lin Hong’s nose with his fingers, laughing happily. “Pinocchio, don’t lie, hahaha.”

"You're so annoying!" Lin Hong, feeling guilty, blushed and slapped He Ming's hand away: "You haven't finished telling your story yet. What happened next?"

"Later...later a neighbor couldn't stand it anymore and secretly told my father and mother about Sister Zhu's situation," He Ming continued. "This neighbor's surname was Xiao. She was a female worker in my mother's factory and also our neighbor. My second sister called her Aunt Xiao."

"Since Aunt Xiao's baby had just turned one month old, she had to sneak home every day before work to breastfeed the baby. Her supervisor was very unhappy about this, so Aunt Xiao had to consider hiring a nanny to avoid affecting her work. Because Aunt Xiao's family was well-off, several nannies living in the same compound heard about this and volunteered to help her. However, Aunt Xiao preferred Sister Zhu. The reason was very simple: Sister Zhu was beautiful. Beautiful people, especially beautiful girls, always give people a gentle feeling, although the actual situation is often the opposite."

"Because Aunt Xiao wanted to invite Sister Zhu to their home, this aroused the jealousy of the other maids in the same courtyard. Someone secretly told her about how Sister Zhu had abused my second sister. Aunt Xiao was shocked when she heard this and hurriedly told my father and mother."

"However, my parents didn't believe Aunt Xiao at all, because Sister Zhu put on such a good show in front of them, especially my second sister, who was terrified of her. My second sister dared not disobey her in the slightest. So when my parents asked my second sister several times, she didn't dare to say anything, and kept mumbling incoherently, 'Sister Zhu is good, Sister Zhu is good, I want to play with Sister Zhu.' My father refused to listen to the neighbors anymore, but my mother became suspicious. One day, while she was at work, she suddenly decided to go home early... and then... and then..." At this moment, the rice noodle rolls were already on the table, and He Ming seemed to have suddenly lost interest in continuing the story, and began to eat in silence.

Lin Hong was extremely anxious to know what happened next, so she shoved his elbow hard: "What happened next? Tell me!"

He Ming nearly choked on his rice noodle roll due to the bump, his face turning red with pain as he coughed violently. Lin Hong quickly patted his back, and after a long while, he shook his arms and said, "It's alright, it's alright, eat on, keep eating."

Lin Hong remained silent, watching him. This was her husband, yet he always spoke haltingly, completely unlike his former bold and decisive nature, which she found unbearable. She didn't want to touch the rice noodle rolls in front of her, sitting to the side watching He Ming guiltily avoid her gaze as he ate with gusto. Soon, he finished his rice noodle rolls, wiped his mouth, and turned to Lin Hong: "Why aren't you eating? Are you still angry about last night?"

Lin Hong snorted: "Do you think I should be happy?"

He Ming burst into laughter, laughing so hard he almost fell over. The other customers in the restaurant all turned to look at him. It took him a long time to stop laughing. He asked the waitress for a bag of tissues, wiped his mouth, and said, "If you're really angry, you should take it out on yourself first. You're such a grown man, can't you handle a little pig?"

Lin Hong stared at his face curiously: "I just don't understand. Are there really men like you in the world? You always stop halfway through a sentence. Do you think you're a storyteller performing on a pedestrian bridge?"

He Ming coughed loudly again, but this time it was feigned, merely to hide the terrified expression on his face. What was he so terrified of? He coughed for a long time, and seeing that Lin Hong was determined to ignore him, he finally shut up, handing a hand to Lin Hong: "Let's go, are you going to sit here and wait for dinner?"

Lin Hong remained seated, saying, "He Ming, if you don't explain yourself clearly today, I'm not done with you!"

He Ming looked at her in surprise: "What do you need to explain?"

Lin Hong stood up, looked directly into He Ming's eyes, and said, word by word, "The turtle with words carved on its shell!"

"A turtle?" He Ming's face turned deathly pale instantly, and he slumped down, taking a long time to slowly raise his hand to gesture for Lin Hong to sit down. Lin Hong, however, was thinking about the strange, large-headed turtle with words carved on its shell that she had seen in Little Pig's room, and couldn't help but ask:

"I feel that girl, Little Pig, is really strange. She always has a gloomy expression, like she has something on her mind. And she secretly keeps a turtle in her room with words carved on its shell. That turtle looks really weird; its big head can't be retracted into its shell at all, and its eyes, when it stares at people, are eerie and indescribably scary. Could the turtle that Sister Zhu keeps be one of those...?"

"The turtle that Sister Zhu keeps is quite terrifying. Not only does it have a huge head and strange eyes, but its presence has also brought many terrifying and bizarre events." He Ming raised his hand to signal Lin Hong not to interrupt him and continued:

3)

You know, my mother used to work as a political officer at the city's machine repair factory. On the day of the accident, she was at work when she suddenly wanted to go home to see for herself how Sister Zhu had treated my second sister. Was she really locking my second sister in a dark room and soaking her in water? Or was she as patient and meticulous as she had been in front of them? She didn't even say goodbye to anyone at her workplace; she left the factory area alone and hurriedly rode her bicycle home. At the time, we lived in the municipal government's staff quarters. Outside, many nannies were knitting and sunbathing, chatting idly, mostly about other people's business. Sister Zhu was among them.

My mother had just been discharged from the hospital when she ran into Aunt Xiao. Aunt Xiao had slipped out even earlier than my mother. She had just finished breastfeeding her child and was planning to go shopping for a while before going back. Going back at this time would make it very easy for her to be caught by her superiors, while going back a little later would make them less likely to notice.

When Aunt Xiao discovered that my mother had also secretly slipped back, she was particularly excited. She quietly pulled my mother to a secluded spot and pointed out Sister Zhu, who was basking in the sun and chatting and laughing with the nannies, to prove to her that she was not lying.

Seeing this, my mother was about 80% convinced. My second sister needed someone to take care of her at the time, but Sister Zhu was out having fun without a care in the world, so you could imagine what my second sister's situation was like.

My mother quietly went upstairs without disturbing Sister Zhu. Aunt Xiao, who also didn't want to go back to the factory, followed my mother upstairs. You know, back then, the stairwells were very narrow, and each room was at most forty or fifty square meters. Truly humane living spaces of over a hundred square meters only became popular later. In addition, the stairwells often lacked lights, and people frequently fell and injured themselves on the stairs.

"My mother and Aunt Xiao entered the dark stairwell, walked to their own door in the dark, quietly opened the door with their key, and went inside without making a sound. After entering the house, my father invited Aunt Xiao to sit down and have a glass of water. Aunt Xiao took the glass of water and, while drinking, urged my mother to go to the bathroom to check if my second sister was really tied up inside."

"My mother was also worried, so she went over and opened the bathroom door. When she looked inside, she was stunned."

"The bathroom was empty and there was no one there, but something was wriggling on the ground. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be the big-headed monster turtle that Sister Zhu had been secretly raising."

At this point, He Ming's voice suddenly trembled, revealing the terror in his heart: "In my memory, that big-headed monster turtle first appeared in our house. From then on, this terrible monster was like a persistent nightmare, clinging to our family and dragging our whole family into a disaster we can't bear to look back on."

"Speaking of this terrifying big-headed turtle, I should add something first. When I was little, I heard the adults talk about Sister Zhu. Although she was exceptionally beautiful, even stunningly so, she was very secretive. In the middle of the night, there were always strange noises coming from her room, like she was muttering to herself. A few times, my mother got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and heard these strange noises. Feeling puzzled, she asked loudly, and the sounds from Sister Zhu's room immediately fell silent. The artificial silence revealed an unsettling anxiety."

The strange noises coming from Sister Zhu's room became more and more frequent and bizarre. Countless times, my mother was awakened by the noise, tiptoeing to Sister Zhu's door to listen, only to trip over something on the floor with a clattering sound. Sometimes it was a chair, sometimes a foot basin, sometimes a clothes hanger—things that had been neatly arranged before bedtime, but somehow ended up in front of Sister Zhu's door. Because of these inexplicable strange occurrences, my mother was never able to clearly hear who Sister Zhu was talking to in her room.

What's even stranger is that my mother would lie in bed when she went to sleep, but when she woke up in the morning, she would often find herself sleeping on the floor or sofa, covered with only a blanket, and more often just wearing pajamas. This was accompanied by a splitting headache, sweating all over her body, aching and numb joints, and stiff muscles. My mother couldn't remember what happened at night. She just felt tired and weak all over, listless, and didn't even have the strength to speak.

This strange thing continued for a while, until one day my mother finally discovered the horrible big-headed turtle.

It was a Sunday. Sister Zhu took my second sister to the park. My father wasn't home, and my mother was tidying up some things by herself. She was moving very slowly. Last night, she found herself sleeping on the sofa in the living room again. In her dream, she vaguely felt a pair of strange eyes glancing at her, which made her uneasy.

My mother, in a daze, tidied up for a long time before remembering that she was looking for a bankbook. She remembered putting it in a drawer, but couldn't find it anywhere. She suspected that Sister Zhu might have stolen it. Taking advantage of Sister Zhu's absence, my mother unlocked Sister Zhu's room door and began searching. After searching for a while without finding it, she picked up a pile of clothes from the floor and suddenly noticed a pair of eerie eyes coldly staring at her, just like in her nightmare. My mother was almost paralyzed with fear and involuntarily screamed.

Those eyes, evil and cold, glowed with a terrifying emerald green light, carrying a sinister chill and exuding the eeriness unique to the underworld, coldly glancing at her. Startled, my mother involuntarily screamed, staggered back a few steps, and fell to the ground.

My mother was backing away, but those sinister eyes remained fixed on her without blinking. When she sat down on the ground, she realized that those sinister eyes staring at her were actually those of a strange, large-headed turtle with an indescribable appearance.

The turtle had an alarmingly large head and an extremely short neck, too large to retract into its shell. Its head was covered by large, horny scutes, and its jaws were thick and prominently hooked, resembling an eagle's beak. Its carapace was oblong, with a concave central edge and a flattened ridge bearing a sharp, blade-like longitudinal ridge. Its nuchal scute was extremely short and wide, and its plastron was nearly rectangular, with a flat front edge and a concave rear edge, making it look incredibly bizarre.

This strange turtle had webbed toes and claws. Its thighs and anus were covered in bluish-green, cone-shaped scales. Its frighteningly long tail was ringed with rectangular scales. The turtle's back was brownish-black with striking orange-yellow spots, and several radiating black stripes ran along its vertebral scute. Each costal scute had a small black spot. Most astonishingly, its plastron was olive-green, its carapace reddish-brown, and its belly a bizarre orange-red.

The mother sat blankly on the ground, staring at the strange big-headed turtle. After a long, long time, she finally came to her senses, stood up, and walked closer. She tentatively picked up the strange big-headed turtle and looked at it. To her surprise, she found that Zhu Hua's name was engraved on the turtle's shell.

The mother, bewildered, dropped the strange turtle she was holding. Though still shaken, she was filled with confusion. How could a girl as pretty as Sister Zhu have her name carved on a turtle's shell? And how could this turtle's head be so enormous, so large that it couldn't possibly retract into its shell? And why was its gaze so cold and malevolent as it stared at people?

As my mother retreated from Sister Zhu's room, she could still feel the fear emanating from the strange, large-headed turtle's cold eyes fixed on her back. That sinister gaze sent chills down my mother's spine.

After this incident, Mother wanted to find an opportunity to ask Sister Zhu about it, but Sister Zhu kept the turtle well hidden in her room and never let anyone find it. If Mother brought it up, it would inevitably let Sister Zhu know that Mother had broken into her room. So Mother waited for a suitable opportunity to talk to Sister Zhu about it.

Unexpectedly, this opportunity never came, and instead, Sister Zhu's strange big-headed turtle appeared in the bathroom. When my mother saw this strange turtle, she was stunned. Aunt Xiao was also very surprised and asked, "Why do you keep such a strange turtle? Why do its eyes look so scary?" My mother didn't have time to explain to Aunt Xiao. She hurriedly went into the bathroom, squatted down, picked up the strange turtle, and examined it carefully.

Aunt Xiao came over, curiously reached out and touched the turtle's shell, then suddenly pulled her hand back and said to my mother: "Put it down quickly, this turtle seems... seems... seems to have a problem."

The mother was startled, dropped the turtle, and hurriedly asked Aunt Xiao: What's wrong?

Just as Aunt Xiao was about to answer, a noise suddenly came from the bedroom, as if someone had knocked something over.

Hearing the sudden sound, my mother immediately stood up and hurried towards the bedroom. She thought my second sister must be in the bedroom, otherwise there wouldn't have been such a noise. But Aunt Xiao was even faster than my mother. She opened the bedroom door and peeked in before quickly closing it again. My mother only saw the door open and close for a fleeting moment and didn't even get a clear look at what was inside the bedroom.

After closing the bedroom door, Aunt Xiao said with a pale face, "There's nothing inside, really nothing."

4)

My mother found it strange and asked, "There's no one inside, so how can there be a sound?"

Aunt Xiao hurriedly said, "There's no sound, you must have misheard." Then she grabbed my mother, "Hurry up and go back, or you'll get caught by your boss." My mother was worried and wanted to go and open the bedroom door to check herself, but Aunt Xiao's face suddenly turned ferocious, and she shrieked, "How can you be like this? I told you there's nothing in the bedroom, so there's nothing there! Why do you insist on checking? Don't you believe me?"

Seeing that Aunt Xiao's expression was very strange, my mother panicked and hurriedly explained that it wasn't that she didn't believe her. However, Aunt Xiao's face had a strange bluish tinge. She forcibly dragged my mother into the stairwell and shouted in her ear, "Stop arguing! You just don't believe me!" As she shouted, she suddenly pushed my mother backward with force.

Completely unexpected, my mother instinctively screamed, lost her balance, and tumbled down the stairs. As she rolled, her head slammed hard against the concrete steps, causing her to bleed profusely and lose consciousness.

When my mother woke up, she found herself lying at the back of the stairs on the first floor. It was late at night, and there were no lights in the corridor. No one who came home from get off work noticed her. She struggled to get up, but she couldn't feel anything in her legs. She could only scream and groan desperately. It took a long time before anyone heard her cries for help.

After being taken to the hospital, my mother slowly regained consciousness and told others how Aunt Xiao pushed her down from the building. However, everyone who heard her story stared at my mother with strange looks, which made her feel uneasy, and she could no longer continue speaking.

A few days later, my mother learned that on the very day Aunt Xiao pushed her down the stairs, Aunt Xiao had been in a car accident. Those who witnessed it said that Aunt Xiao must have committed suicide because she was screaming and charging towards a large cargo truck. The truck driver couldn't brake in time and watched helplessly as Aunt Xiao's blood splattered onto the truck window.

However, from any perspective, Aunt Xiao had no reason to commit suicide. She was young, had just given birth, had a harmonious relationship with her husband, and was doing well at work. Her sudden death not only left her husband a widower but also orphaned an infant.

My mother was shocked by Aunt Xiao's bizarre car accident death. Thinking about the changes in Aunt Xiao's expression before her suicide, my mother was convinced that she must have seen something in her bedroom that day. That must be it.

But what exactly did Aunt Xiao see? This question remains a permanent mystery due to Aunt Xiao's death.

My mother was admitted to the hospital, which greatly angered my father. My father is a career-oriented man who dislikes and avoids family matters. Therefore, Sister Zhu's importance suddenly became apparent. She not only had to take good care of my second sister, but also had to go to the hospital several times a day to take care of my mother. Moreover, she was the only one who could cook for the patient. She was busy inside and out, running around and working so hard that her feet barely touched the ground and she was covered in sweat.

The doctor diagnosed that my mother's fall might have damaged a nerve in her brain that controls movement. This preliminary diagnosis was made after my mother had been bedridden for almost a month. Since the fall, she had lost sensation in both legs and was paralyzed. Moreover, this paralysis worsened; initially, she was only unable to walk, but later she lost even control over urination and defecation, and even her emotions.

Household chores suddenly became much heavier, but Sister Zhu never uttered a single complaint. She always put on a show of being hardworking and resilient in front of my parents, and she truly was. She got up early to make breakfast and didn't return from accompanying someone at the hospital until late at night, always looking exhausted. Although she never complained, she was very resentful inside, so my second sister naturally became her punching bag.

To be honest, the humiliation and abuse my second sister suffered over the years was beyond human imagination. But the process was too cruel for me to describe in detail. All I know is that my second sister's mind became increasingly confused and she had very poor self-control. She was already in the first year of junior high school and often wet her pants in class, which made her a laughing stock among her classmates.

Meanwhile, Sister Zhu's position in our family became increasingly important. My mother's condition worsened, and she completely lost the ability to take care of herself. Even meals had to be fed by Sister Zhu. As a result, the power to manage the family's finances fell into Sister Zhu's hands. My father would give her his monthly salary directly, and she would arrange the family's meals for the entire month.

From then on, our entire family fell into Sister Zhu's hands. She went from a subservient nanny to a tyrant in our home. Not only my mother and my second sister depended on her, but even my father obeyed her every word. By this time, Sister Zhu had mastered her two-faced tricks to perfection. Abusing my second sister alone was no longer enough to satisfy her sadistic desires, so she turned her attention to my mother.

This abuse escalated gradually. First, Sister Zhu deliberately tormented my mother with cold food to increase her endurance and tolerance. Then, slowly, she began pointing at my mother's nose and hurling insults. She even tortured my second sister in front of my mother. One incident that left a deep impression on me was when my mother told me that one day Sister Zhu ordered my second sister to take off her shoes and stand on the armrests of a chair in the middle of the room. My second sister was unsteady on her feet, so Sister Zhu maliciously used a bamboo pole to brace between her legs. This torture completely broke my second sister's spirit, and she only gradually recovered after she reached adulthood.

At that time, my second sister was absent-minded and had lost her memory. She behaved very badly at school, which attracted the attention of her teachers.

The teacher's surname was Wang, and she was very tall. People called her "Big Old Wang".

Teacher Wang noticed that my second sister was not in a clear mental state and was worried that she might be sick, so she asked her to take a message home and ask her parents to come and talk to her. When she told my second sister, my second sister lowered her head and nodded obediently, but as soon as she sat down in her seat, she immediately forgot about it.

One summer day, my second sister went to the school toilet. Distracted, she slipped and fell into the open latrine, getting covered in filth and maggots all over her face. People from the school rushed over to see what was happening, but none of them wanted to help pull her out, finding it too dirty. Finally, Teacher Wang arrived and used a steelyard hook to grab her collar and pull her out. He then took her to his office, closed the door, and undressed her. Teacher Wang was shocked to see my second sister so thin and bony, covered in bruises. It took him over a dozen basins of water to wash away the filth from her body.

A perfectly healthy girl who can't even use the toilet—what else could it be but an intellectual disability? Teacher Wang felt that things couldn't continue like this, so he personally took my second sister home, hoping to take this opportunity to talk to my parents.

When Teacher Wang arrived at our house, Sister Zhu was sitting on a chair with her legs crossed, eating an apple while cursing my parents in a foul voice. My mother, on the other hand, was lying on the hospital bed, groaning in pain. Cigarette butts, scraps of paper, fruit pits, and food wrappers were scattered everywhere in the room. Because no one had cleaned for a long time, spiders had spun webs on my mother's blankets. The most pungent thing was the stench of feces and urine that permeated the room. Because my mother was incontinent, Sister Zhu let her urinate and defecate in the blankets until my second sister came home and cleaned it up.

Teacher Wang was almost stunned. She couldn't believe that her father, a high-ranking official in the municipal party committee, had such a dirty and messy home. Moreover, her father wasn't home. Sister Zhu greeted her with a different attitude. Although this cunning woman put on a diligent and conscientious appearance to try to gain Teacher Wang's trust, the dirty and messy home environment and the scars all over her second sister's body still made Teacher Wang unable to dispel her doubts.

Ms. Wang only stayed at our house for a short while before going back home. However, after school the next day, she left my second sister at school. After watching her finish her homework, she took my second sister to her house for dinner. She was only relieved after watching my second sister wolf down her food.

5)

Teacher Wang's husband worked at a grocery store, and they had a four-year-old son named Xiaopang. After dinner, my second sister would play with Xiaopang. He was very sensible; whenever someone teased him, he would giggle non-stop, his innocent smile filling everyone's heart with sunshine. From then on, my second sister would find an excuse to go to Teacher Wang's house every day, staying until very late before reluctantly going home. These were perhaps some of the few happy days in my second sister's gloomy adolescence, but such happiness was so fleeting.

At first, Sister Zhu didn't mind my second sister coming home late, but as this happened more often, she became wary. One night, my second sister didn't get home until 9:30. As soon as she entered the house, Sister Zhu, holding a hard wooden board, ordered her to kneel on a pile of broken porcelain shards. Because Sister Zhu frequently forced my second sister to kneel on broken porcelain shards, my second sister's knees became swollen and festering, and the wounds wouldn't heal for many years. To cover up her evil deeds, Sister Zhu never allowed my second sister to wear skirts. That day, after my second sister was forced to kneel, Sister Zhu, like a demon, interrogated her fiercely, demanding a detailed account of where she had been.

The cruel abuse that began in my childhood shaped my second sister's personality and instilled in her an instinct for obedience. Under Sister Zhu's tyranny, my second sister dared not hide anything and tremblingly told her about Teacher Wang. After hearing it, Sister Zhu's forehead veins bulged and she roared like a wild beast: "A grown girl like you running around everywhere, do you have no shame? Tonight you're not allowed to sleep, stand on the balcony!"

That night, my second sister was forced to stand on the balcony all night, shivering from the cold. Sister Zhu probably felt that abusing a child like this was not enough to eliminate the evil and violence in her heart. In the middle of the night, after my second sister fell due to exhaustion, she screamed and whipped my second sister with a wooden strip, forcing her to stand up again. Moreover, she made her stand up with one toe in a ballet pose and sing a selection from "The White-Haired Girl: The North Wind Blows". My second sister's sad singing voice rang out at midnight. The mother, lying in the hospital bed, witnessed her own daughter being tortured and her heart was almost broken. Meanwhile, Sister Zhu, that devil, enjoyed her evil work with relish.

The next morning, my second sister was kicked out of the house by Sister Zhu without eating a single bite of food.

After enduring a night of intimidation and torment, my second sister fell fast asleep in class, drawing constant mockery from her classmates. The teacher, exasperated, ordered her to stand up and listen to the lesson. In the afternoon, after school, my second sister, still half-asleep, thought of seeking some warmth at Teacher Wang's house. But as soon as she stepped out of the classroom, she encountered Sister Zhu's gaze—a gaze that, beneath its gentle exterior, concealed evil and cruelty.

It's understandable that Sister Zhu harbored strong hostility towards anyone who was kind to my second sister; she needed to keep a tight rein on her to prevent her evil deeds from being discovered. From then on, she laid down a rule for my second sister: she was not allowed to go anywhere after school and had to go home immediately. If she came home late, my second sister would be subjected to cruel abuse again.

Under Sister Zhu's coercion, my second sister didn't dare go to Teacher Wang's house for several days. Teacher Wang found this very strange, so he came to our house for a second home visit. She was greeted by Sister Zhu, who still had a smile on her face.

Sister Zhu received Teacher Wang with even greater hospitality than before. She served him tea, perfectly demonstrating the respect a caregiver would show to a teacher.

While sipping his tea, Teacher Wang asked about my father, and I learned that he hadn't been home for almost half a year. Due to some unclear factional struggle, he had been isolated. This was the lowest point in my father's political life, and he was very reluctant to talk about it now. Especially after Sister Zhu's incident, he consciously refused to acknowledge that it had ever happened.

Constant forgetting is the most prominent characteristic of my father's generation.

My father could protect his dignity and face through the psychological defense mechanism of forgetting, but my second sister and my mother could not, which led to a series of tragedies later on.

In front of Teacher Wang, Sister Zhu, with a beaming smile, lovingly combed my second sister's hair. My second sister didn't even dare to refuse; she could only follow her lead, putting on a well-behaved and happy face, swallowing her tears. She heard Sister Zhu smilingly agree to Teacher Wang's request that my second sister come to the teacher's house for tutoring after school the next day.

But as soon as Teacher Wang left, my second sister's rice bowl was immediately snatched away and smashed, and she was then forced onto the balcony, where she endured another long night of torment that seemed to have no end.

The next day after school, my second sister still remembered Zhu Jie's promise to let her go to Teacher Wang's house to play. But as soon as she stepped out of the school gate, Zhu Jie was already waiting there. She said to my second sister in a cold voice, "You slut, you just want to go to that Teacher Wang's house, don't you? You don't have to worry about it today, someone else will go for you."

Due to prolonged sleep deprivation and constant fright, my second sister developed delusions and cognitive impairment. She couldn't understand what Sister Zhu was saying at all and could only follow her home in fear. After entering the house, Sister Zhu immediately ushered my second sister into the bedroom where my mother lived and locked the door from the outside.

As night fell, my second sister was awakened by a stomach ache caused by hunger. She went to the door and tried to push it open, but she couldn't. At that moment, she heard Sister Zhu dragging something around in the living room. She tried to peek through the crack in the door, but strangely, the lights in the living room were off, and a white candle was lit. In the dim candlelight, Sister Zhu's face, which had an eerie bluish tinge, was reflected.

That eerie face nearly made my second sister scream, but thankfully she covered her mouth in time. After a long while, she mustered her courage again and peered through the crack in the door.

In the candlelight, Sister Zhu's eerie face was smiling sinisterly. As she laughed, she reached out and teased something. My second sister blinked and looked more closely before she could see that Sister Zhu was holding a strange, large-headed turtle in her hand, teasing its large head with her fingers and talking incessantly: