Villainess Reform Project

Mother

[ Obligatory Warning. This chapter contains some content that readers may not find comfortable, such as...

Child abuse

Sexual Assault

Please read with caution ]

I have been called many things in my lifetime. Martha, Miss Simmonds, Commander, Ma'am, Dame, Marcy and even Master Commander.

But none of those titles have hit in the same way that Mother does.

Truthfully, I never believed that I would be a mother. For a very long time, I did not believe that I would become anything. I expected to become another common soul on the streets, insignificant to the world yet still there and living. Taking the air. Drinking the water. Eating the food.

In fact, I had no desire to be a mother. Because if being a mother meant to be like the monster I lived with, to make those weaker than me suffer, I would rather die in the streets and be carted off like trash.

But that monster bearing the title of mother saw value in me. Something she had never even considered.

She saw value in my appearance.

She saw the greedy hands of people decades older than me, wishing to caress my purple lockes like the new night sky for any cost.

She saw the value of my clear blue eyes, though dull when she looked away. Eyes that people would die to have gaze at them.

She saw value in my smooth skin despite our living arrangements, despite her punishments. So clear and soft, that people could just take a bite out of it like fresh bread.

Yet she saw no value in me as her child. Her own flesh and blood. As I saw no value in her as the one who had held me in her womb for months upon months. Neither of us valued each other for our relationship, but the benefits we could bring.

I have had the blood of many men stain my hands, but staining my hands with hers was the only instance I truly remember.

It was the only one that I truly felt no regret over.

I can still remember the expression on her face. Walking back into our home with such a proud grin on her face, tossing a bag of clinking coins in her hand. Her job never earned that much money. She got paid on Saturday.

She had sold me, her ten-year-old daughter, to a whore house. And grinning ear to ear about it.

What I felt was not rage, nor disappointment. It was surrender. It was what I had always expected. The only thing I expected from her. I was prepared to leave quietly to that place of debauchery, if it would truly bring her joy.

But with that money. The money she got from selling me. She went to a restaurant and bought herself a feast, drank herself silly. Then had the gall, the audacity to come back into our home penniless with me starving.

Stinking of booze and giggling like a fool.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and ask what she thought she was doing. I wanted to berate her, to grab her by the hair and force the drunkenness out of her.

Gorging yourself instead of giving your daughter her last meal at home.

And then I could hear through her giggles.

"It's such a shame. The brothel next door surely would've paid more for that thing."

"Maybe I should've let our neighbors borrow it. It surely would've been steadier."