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“Yes.”

That yes changed me.

He took me from the sewer I had lived in to a mansion. He took me from filth-stained mattresses and cockroach-infested floors to silk sheets and chandeliers. He took me from my evil mother to a family.

It was something a boy like me could never have even dreamed of, and yet, somehow I lived here now.

This was my home now, and Grant was my family.

“What’s the use? No matter where you go, you’ll always be a fucking rat.” My mother sneered.

“You’re still rotting away,” she whispered. “No matter how many showers you take, how many fine suits you wear, your soul still stinks.”

I wanted to scream, but she hated it when I screamed.

I pressed my hands to my ear.

“You stink like a corpse left out in the sun too long. Bloated. Maggots eating away your flesh. Just how I looked when the cops finally found me in that place.” She laughed.

I clenched my jaw, digging my nails into my palm. The pain didn’t even help.

She was dead.

She was dead, and yet she was always here.

Watching. Whispering. Taunting.

And she would never, ever let me go. So I had to kill her. Again and again. Ten times. Twenty times. A hundred times.

“One day, Mother, I’ll stop chasing your ghosts, and I’ll die that day.”

“Oh, you can try, you coward,” she spat, her lips splitting as black blood oozed down her chin, down her throat, soaking her breasts. “But you’re too pathetic to become anything.”

I exhaled slowly, watching the way her pupils dilated when I smiled.

“I already became something,” I whispered. “The name doesn’t matter. They still talk about me. They whisper my name in reverence and fear.”

She tilted her head back and cackled.

“Oh, silly boy. You will always, always be nothing.”

My fingers curled. The air between us stank of rot and decay, of childhood nights spent waiting, waiting, waiting for her to love me once, smile at me once.

“This, mother,” I murmured, “is why I let father kill you.”

Her laughter shattered. Her face twisted, splitting at the seams.

Even then, she wouldn’t stop talking.

“You’re a bad bastard. I wish I had buried you alive as soon as you came. I saw it… the evil in your eyes when you were only a boy.” She grabbed a pillow. “It’s not too late yet. Die.” She pushed it over my face. My lungs burned as I struggled, but she pushed harder.

“Stop.”

“Die. DIE.” The cacophony increased. “DIE. Die, you bad bastard. DIE.”

I lurched upright, throat burning. My stomach twisted as the sharp scent hit me, and I flinched.

My bed was wet with urine.