How to Survive Your 19th Life [BL]

Chapter 98: Family Matters

Emiel's Perspective

When my parents died, the world ended for me. Everything changed. I didn't know much of my aunt and uncle, as I was not privy to adult conversations or any knowledge on the family business. I had the misfortune to know what it was like to be a child at one point. Moving in with them stripped away my innocence, my virtue, and my humanity.

I came with a dog named Bingo, a purebred Golden Retriever with a glossy wavy coat that I would constantly run my fingers through. He slept with me most nights at the foot of my bed. After the first night with Uncle Marshall and Aunt Connie, his gutted fur was used as a blanket for me. I didn't cry and Uncle Marshall seemed to take pride in that. But it was just the shock. He slit Bingo's throat and forced me to skin my best friend.

Bingo was a weakness.

Love was weakness.

Uncle Marshall always said so.

I didn't always live in their bathroom. I had my own room at first as well. It was downstairs, closest to the pool house. Normality settled over me in those first few months. Other than Bingo being butchered, they were rather regular people.

Aunt Connie helped me with homework after my instructor left for the day, and we ate every meal at the formal dining table. Meals were always formal, so I was expected to dress up. I was allowed free time to read or wander the grounds. I stayed in the kitchen mostly with the private chef. As long as I didn't make a sound, I was permitted to watch.

Then Uncle Marshall began bringing all sorts of instructors to the house, and soon I was not permitted to leave due to my congested schedule. He was forcing every talent of the world down my throat all at once. While Uncle Marshall was away with business, Aunt Connie supervised my every move. She'd hit me across the back with an ivory cane if I played a piano note wrong, or dropped my defenses in my martial arts lessons, or got the incorrect answer in math.

The pain sharpened me into something beyond human. But in the end, I was still a child. Broken. Weak.

Uncle Marshall permitted me toys at times. The first was about five months after Bingo died. It was a small boat with a tiny sail. He gave it to me while I took a bath and watched me play with it on the water. This went on for a few weeks. It was the only nice thing I owned that I was allowed to enjoy. Then one day he came into the bathroom and demanded I destroy it.

I refused of course.

"You gave me this," I cried. "It means everything to me!" I was quite dramatic. A tiny child with a spine made of clay. 

"Break the boat or I will break your arm!" he shouted.

He didn't break my arm, but my finger. It hurt just the same. Once the doctor treated my hand, I broke the boat. Cowardice. Weak.

Then came a porcelain doll from Aunt Connie. I pretended to hate the thing. She dressed us up to look alike and took photos of us together. They insisted that I sleep with the doll next to me. So I began talking to it, whispering little secrets. They left it alone for months, so I thought maybe this one would last.

But in the end, Uncle Marshall made me tear it apart, stuffing and all. I ripped the head off first, then the arms and legs, and then I went back over the larger chunks with scissors to make a giant pile of cotton and fabric. I cried then, like never before. Stupidly, I grew to love the doll.

Uncle Marshall told me, "You'll understand one day. You will thank me."

He choked me then. I fought him but my small body was no match. Skilled arms but skinny with glass bones. Aunt Connie broke him away from me and I remember running to hide in the terrace. There was a chance I could have run away, but I didn't. Though they were crazy, they were the only family I really had. I was pathetic.

Maybe it was out of guilt, but Uncle Marshall let me play with Rani after that. Rani wanted to do all the things I couldn't, like run around and wreak havoc. I was a good boy, too weak to rebel. I read. I studied. I learned. There were no adventure novels in the house, just literary-type books on medicine, business, philosophy, and such. I would recite whole pages to Rani. The adults marveled at it, but he seemed to know that it was the seed of madness rearing its head.

Things went on like that. Uncle Marshall seemed to always know how to break me. He got me different toys and gifts that piqued my interest, only to force me to destroy them. When I turned 13, he got me a dog... that looked just like Bingo. This one he made me name, so I called it Bastard.

A person can't hate a dog for too long. I hated Bastard, but he wore me down. Uncle Marshall made him sleep at the edge of my bed like Bingo used to, so every night I would stay up, fearful that this was the night I would have to kill my dog again.

I had to kill him on my fourteenth birthday, exactly a year later. I did it while he looked at me, so confused but trusting. Uncle Marshall got me a bird, a parrot, after that. I broke its neck the same night I got it. He did this a few more times, but the things never lasted. He was taking me hunting a this point so I understood how to kill. He brought along the heads of the other families as well. I realized then that I was passing whatever little tests he laid out for me. But the others didn't seem too pleased with him, so I used my studied charms. Aunt Connie had the idea of giving me acting lessons, which helped.

There was a boy... the gardener's son. He would come around sometimes to help his dad, maybe about a year older than me. Though I didn't feel much for people by then, having been so isolated, my body was very much going through puberty. We only needed to make eye contact, and we were sneaking off for hand-jobs behind the bushes.

I didn't like him very much. He was handsome enough and I was full of hormones, but I stabbed him anyway. Uncle Marshall told me to. He was convinced I was in love with the boy. I'd told him about the escapades of course. I don't know what happened with the gardener.

Anyway, Aunt Connie was absolutely devastated that I had a libido.

That's why they started keeping me in the bathroom. But I'd grown too much. I read too many books about herbs and natural sciences, that it was easy to drug them. My body was strong from all the martial arts and physical training that hauling their bodies to the foyer barely exhausted me.

After their bodies were cut down, I actually prepared the bodies for the funerals myself, along with a licensed mortician. It felt... right. I realized I had come to love them over the years, so what better thing to do than to end it as he taught me?

I understood the lesson after all. 

End of Emiel's Perspective