Black Rose (Completed)

Chapter One

Stench of rat carcasses wafts trough the air when Lilia cleaned her house in the morning. She had searched for the source of the smell but could not find it. Maybe the carcass is on the ceiling, or on the roof tiles, that's why she couldn't find it. The roof construction of Indonesian houses in the eighties style which has many hollow and wide empty spaces, is a perfect place for rats to breed.

Imagining the happy family of rats irritated Lilia, while she had to clean their feces every day in various parts of the house when the rats went down in the night to look for food. Lilia muttered, "What kind of life is this?!"

Lilia feel so bad, really angry and tired. But the house wasn't going to clean itself. One minute later or the next day, the housework would still be hunting her down. While sweeping the floor from end to end, she thought about mice's happy family. They know just to play, having sex, eat, laze around and have children. They don't need money, they don't need to be frugal in order to have a little savings for their children's education costs. And most importantly, in the rats family world, there is no such thing as physical and verbal domestic violence.

Lilia whispered to the air, "Perfect real life." Suddenly she laughed bitterly and mumbled again, "But that only exists in the animals world."

At noon, some of the housework, such as sweeping, washing clothes and cooking, had been completed. Lilia turned off the camera and removed it from the tripod. For years she made money selling videos of her daily on a social media platform without showing her face. When viewers like the video, Lilia finds it useful. But after years of struggling to increase the number of clicks and subscribers, she was fed up. At night, nightmares come to her again. She walked in the sahara desert and was dragged away by quicksand. A second later she was buried alive.

Lilia woke up and had trouble breathing. Buried under the sand's mountain or drowned in a black lake, it was very madly same nightmare for Lilia. When she wakes up her chest hurts badly. Then burst into tears.

The house was big and quiet, which at night seemed eerie because of its solitary location at the end of the road leading to the pine forest. Lilia's children lived in a boarding school outside the city, and her husband always travelled to various cities on the islands. When she crying, and crying till morning, no one knock the door to ask why she crying, and no body come to comfort her as she tries to heal broken heart.

Lilia should have erased the memory of the short video that showing the cuteness of a baby belonging to her husband's mistress, because every time she remember all of them then she would feel stupid and humiliated. But the memory is like a spider's web that entangles its victim mercilessly, once she is trapped in the chaos, it's more difficult to escape.

As the sun shone through the window blinds, Lilia staggered to her feet and headed for the bathroom to freshen up. She swore that she would never be defeated by sadness anymore. "My children will not be sacrificed again for the second time," she whispered.

In front of the mirror, the pale face in there looked at Lilia angrily while saying sarcastically, "You are such a fool! Waiting for this day so long till your hair colour turn white."

"Because I am Princess Snow White, don't you know?" Lilia laughed bitterly. "Don't bother me, I will make up pretty much to face this sad world today."

After an hour, her rosy red lips immediately brought back her lost youth. Lilia put on a beautiful dress and walked slowly to the door. When she turned the door handle, a gentle breeze kissed her flushed cheeks. The moment the door opened fully, a shimmering light blinded the eyes, dragging Lilia's body into a parallel time layer that would give her an immeasurable shock.

Lilia open her eyes. Somehow now she was lying on the couch in a strange room with a strong smell of carbolic acid. Her brain immediately worked after she looked around for a few seconds, at the whitewashed walls and the IV bottle hanging from the side of the cot with the transet reaching up to her arm. In that reclining position, Lilia couldn't see anyone. But she could hear her father's loud snoring, suddenly Lilia jumped up and shouted, "Baba!?"