A Lesson Gone Too Far

Synopsis

When I was three, I got lost in a crowded market. My parents blamed each other for it, and before long, they divorced. Five years later, the police found me and brought me home. They said they wanted me to grow up in a complete family, so they got married again. In the second year after they remarried, my mom, Jasmine, gave birth to my little brother, Tommy. From that day on, all their love shifted to him. Tommy became obsessed with swimming in the reservoir. No matter how many times they warned him to stay away, he never listened. Every day at noon, my dad, Drogo, would grab my legs, flip me upside down, and shove my head into the big water tank in our yard. The moment the water closed over me, panic took over. I thrashed with everything I had. My nails scraped hard against the rough inner wall of the tank until they tore and bled. Jasmine would pull Tommy over and make him stand there and watch. She pointed at my face as it turned blue and purple, and she told him, "If you ever go back to that reservoir, this is what will happen to you." At first, Tommy cried every time he saw me like that. He kept promising he would never go near the water again. But after a while, he started to notice something. No matter how badly my eyes rolled back, Drogo always pulled me out at the very last second, just before I stopped breathing. Tommy began to think it was some thrilling game. Then one day, Tommy went back to the reservoir. Drogo was furious. He decided to teach Tommy a lesson he would never forget. He tied my hands behind my back and strapped a heavy stone around my waist. Right in front of Tommy, he pushed me into the reservoir. "I am going to show you what drowning really feels like today," Drogo shouted. He thought I would struggle on the surface for a while, just like before, and then he would pull me out. But he did not know that thick weeds had already wrapped tightly around my neck underwater.