My daughter, Bella, had failed her exams and even her graduation was delayed. Yet, as the new school year approached, she still lingered on her phone until five in the morning.

Driven by anger, I took her phone away.

I never expected her to suddenly erupt, snatching up a hammer and swinging it down at me.

“Give me back my phone! Give it back! Can’t you just stop controlling me? You’re so annoying!”

Each word fell with a hammer blow, until blood splattered from me on the spot.

When I lost consciousness, she bound my hands and feet, sealed my mouth with tape and shoved me into the punching bag that belonged to my son.

My limbs grew stiff, pain throbbed at the back of my skull, while she carelessly hummed a tune and played her game.

Six hours later, I finally heard my son, Percy, returning home.

——

“Mom, I’m starving… Mom?”

Carrying his backpack, fresh from cram school, he instinctively looked for me the moment he stepped inside.

On the sofa, Bella sat absorbed in her phone, her fingers tapping immediately, her eyes fixed, oblivious to everything else.

Hearing her brother call, she didn’t even bother to glance up, only clicked her tongue in irritation.

“If you’re hungry, make instant noodles yourself! Can’t you see I’m in a team fight? Stop yelling, you’re so annoying!”

Percy’s lips jutted into a pout as he dropped his backpack and wandered around our cramped apartment, realizing at last that I truly wasn’t there.

He boiled water and reached for two cups of instant noodles.

“Sis, should I make one for you too?”

“Hmm.”

Bella gave a faint hum, still without looking up.

Soon, the rich scent of noodles drifted through the air.

Only then did she pause her game, devouring the noodles quickly while still darting glances at her phone, unwilling to miss a thing.

Once finished, she shoved the empty container onto the coffee table and slipped straight back into her room.

Percy ate slowly, his gaze wandering toward the old punching bag in the corner of the living room, the one he had always used for training.

He rose, stretched his wrists and ankles and walked over out of habit, patting the worn surface with a couple of casual slaps.

The dull thumps roared in my ears like thunder.

My heart almost skipped a beat.

No! He’s about to start!

I tried to cry out, to plead, but my body was frozen, too numb to respond.

His first punch drove straight into my abdomen.

Agonizing pain swept through me, blinding my vision, stealing the very breath from my lungs. Instinct screamed at me to curl up, but I couldn’t move.

The punches came one after another, crashing down like a violent storm, striking my chest, my ribs, my shoulders.

Each blow sent a piercing jolt of pain, as though my organs were on the verge of shattering.

I tried to cry out, to scream, to beg for mercy, but the tape sealed my lips.

Agony and suffocating air blurred my mind.

Then, a crushing blow landed on my head.

Darkness swallowed everything.

I fainted.

Percy wiped the sweat from his brow with a towel, drained from the training.

Suddenly, Bella’s door creaked open.

She stepped out, only to freeze at the sight of him standing before the punching bag.

“You’ve been boxing… did you notice anything… strange?”

Percy turned his head.

“Strange? No. I actually felt good today.”

Her gaze was fixed on the bag. It stood motionless, silent, perfectly ordinary.

Her tense shoulders eased at last and she released a deep breath.

“It’s fine then… I guess she really did storm out in anger.”

“Huh? Sis, what did you say?”

His ears had missed it.

“Nothing!” She shook her head quickly, her tone impatient again.

“Go wash those stinky clothes already, they stink!”

Percy was unconvinced by her words and opened his mouth to argue.

Out of nowhere, my phone rang in the bedroom.

Percy’s eyes flicked to the clock on the wall; it was already past two in the afternoon.

“That’s strange… how could Mom leave without even taking her phone? It’s past lunchtime and she still isn’t back…”

He walked over to his sister’s door, hesitated, then knocked softly at first, then louder.

“Sis? Sis! Do you think something happened to Mom? Could it really be?”

Her furious voice exploded from inside.

“What are you shouting for?! What could even happen?!”

Moments later, she stormed out, yanking the door open, her face twisted with annoyance at being pulled from her game.

“She must’ve gotten upset this morning when she saw me on my phone. Couldn’t get over it and with nowhere else to go, now she’s pulling that runaway-from-home trick! Who exactly is she trying to scare?”

“Don’t waste your time with her. Once she cools off, she’ll crawl back shamelessly on her own tonight!”

Before Percy could respond, she slammed the door shut with a loud bang.

Percy stood frozen at the doorway. He parted his lips, yet no words came out.

I did not know how long had passed before I woke once more, my body wracked with unbearable, tearing pain.

Each breath scraped through me like knives, dragging against shattered ribs and displaced organs.

No. I couldn’t die like this.

I pressed my tongue against the tape again and again and at last I felt it loosen from the blows. I could finally open my mouth.

I was saved. I could finally cry for help.

I tried with all my strength, forcing the word past my lips. “Help.”

Yet in the very next instant, despair consumed me.

My teeth were almost all gone.

It turned out that under my son’s relentless fists, they had already been broken, knocked loose, or swallowed into me.

The sharp pain surged from my gums to my head, sending violent spasms through my body.

I tried to cry out, even a faint whimper, but my throat and mouth were too damaged. Only a broken huff escaped me.

Panic swelled and tears rolled down my face.

I could not die here. I could not die like this!

With the last of my strength, I forced my stiff shoulders and knees to strike against the inner wall of the punching bag.

Once, twice.

Percy sat on the sofa, playing with the remote, when a sudden flicker in the corner of his eye caught his attention. The punching bag swayed ever so slightly.

He froze, then turned, staring at it in bewilderment.

“Huh?”

He rubbed his eyes, certain the window was closed and no wind had passed through.

“Sis… that punching bag, it just moved on its own, didn’t it?”

Her door opened again. She poked her head out, scowling, her gaze sweeping the perfectly motionless punching bag with open irritation.

In those few moments, all the strength I had managed to gather was spent. I could no longer move at all.

“Move? Are you blind? What punching bag moves on its own?”

She marched over and shoved her brother’s head hard.

“You’ve got nothing better to do? Stop pretending there are ghosts just to irritate me! Go do something useful! If you interrupt my game again, I’ll beat you up, too!”

She slammed her door once more.

Her brother hunched his shoulders at her scolding, rubbing the spot on his head where she had pushed him. He kept staring at the punching bag for several uneasy seconds before convincing himself it was still.

“Maybe I really did imagine it…”

At last, he let it go and returned to his room to do homework.

By evening, my husband, Chase Alvarez, returned home.

He tossed his briefcase carelessly onto the shoe cabinet, glanced toward the silent kitchen and habitually raised his voice.

“Why is it so quiet? Your mom didn’t cook?”

Percy stepped out of his room, worry flickering across his face.

“Dad, I think Mom ran away from home. She didn’t even take her phone; it’s been ringing in the room this whole time.”

“Ran away from home?”

Chase scoffed, as though the words were too absurd to take seriously. He sneered and shook his head, disdain etched across his features.

“With that fiery temper, she explodes at the smallest thing! Must be another petty quarrel over nothing. Forget it, don’t waste your time with her! I’m starving, what’s there to eat?”

Saying that, he headed straight for the fridge, pulled it open and found nothing but a few cold leftovers.

Finally, he searched the cupboard, dragged out a few cans of beer and a vacuum-packed bag of marinated chicken feet and began to eat and drink by himself.

The smell of food drifted through the air, pulling my daughter from her room. She came quietly to the table, sat down and wordlessly picked up a chicken foot to gnaw on.

Percy came over to sit with them.

Chase’s expression darkened as he looked at the two children treating that low-quality marinated snack as dinner.

“Your mom is getting more and more unreasonable! Fine, let her throw a tantrum if she wants, but not cooking for her own kids? What kind of mother does that? Is there such a mother in this world? When she comes back, I need to talk to her!”

His voice carried only blame and complaints and my heart turned even colder.

Day after day, I spun like a top around this household, cooking, scrubbing, cleaning, worrying over each of their needs and health.

And yet, none of it was ever seen.

Just one missed meal and suddenly I became a sinner beyond forgiveness.

If not for his years of neglecting the family, for his indifference toward our daughter’s education, always meeting problems with violence, how could she have turned so cold, so extreme?

They ate and complained just a few steps away, but no one gave even a passing glance to the punching bag standing silently in the corner.

Soon, the chicken feet and beer were gone.

Chase let out a satisfied burp, then glanced at the darkness outside the window.

“Alright, I’ll head out for a while, see if I can find your mom. Such a nuisance she is!”

“Oh, and turn off the AC in the living room! She’s not even home, leaving it on is just a waste of electricity!”

My heart clenched violently.

The inside of the punching bag was sealed tight, like a suffocating, steaming cage.

Until now, I had been breathing only through the faint trickle of cool air seeping in from the zipper at the top.

If the air conditioning were turned off, on such a sweltering summer night, the heat inside would climb quickly. I would suffocate, roasted alive.

Help! Don’t turn off the AC! I beg you!

I screamed silently in my heart, praying someone would notice something was wrong.

Just then, my phone in the bedroom began to ring insistently again.

Chase clicked his tongue in annoyance, turned into the bedroom and picked it up.

“Chase, is Stella not there? It’s nothing urgent. I just saw a health supplement that they say is good for the heart. It’s not too expensive, only twenty thousand dollars. I thought Stella and Nathan could each pay ten thousand.”

Chase’s expression darkened at once. My mom was again trying to bleed us dry.

She had given all of my father’s inheritance to my younger brother Nathan. Yet, whenever money was needed, it was always me she expected to cover half.

Chase gave a bitter laugh.

“Twenty thousand? You’re bold. I don’t have that kind of money. Wait for her to come back and ask her yourself. That’s enough, I’m hanging up.”

He ended the call roughly, threw my phone back onto the bed like it was worthless and cursed under his breath.

“A family of leeches, the lot of them! Never-ending! Do they really think I’m a money-printing machine?”

He gave up completely on the idea of going out, stomped toward the front door and slammed it shut with all his strength, venting his fury on it.