Chapter 1

My little brother Ethan cut up Mom's favorite silk dress.

Mom didn't hit him or yell at him. Instead, she turned and walked into the kitchen, pulling out a pair of scissors.

She grabbed my ponytail, and with a sharp snip, cut it clean off at the roots.

Ethan dropped to his knees, sobbing hysterically. But Mom just stroked his face, her smile both gentle and terrifying. "Get a good look. Every time you mess up, your sister pays the price. Does that hurt your heart?"

From that day on, my hair became my brother's sentence tracker. To keep him in line, I was shaved into a buzz cut, even a bald head.

Until one day, in the school bathroom, I picked up the scissors myself...

That rusty pair of sewing scissors had always been kept in the bottom drawer of the living room TV stand.

We used it to trim loose threads or open packages. No one thought there was anything special about it.

Until the summer I turned seven, I learned that those scissors could be used to kill.

Not to take a life, but to kill someone's spirit.

That afternoon was scorching hot.

My mom, Mia, was in the kitchen chopping meat for meat pies. The cutting board thundered with each strike. My brother Ethan was only five then, at that age where even dogs find kids annoying. He was rummaging through the bedroom, searching for something.

I sat on a small stool in the living room, practicing my spelling.

Suddenly, a muffled ripping sound came from the bedroom. It sounded like fabric being torn apart.

Mom stuck her head out from the kitchen, cleaver still in hand, her brow furrowed tight. "Ethan! What are you doing in there!"

No answer.

Mom slammed the cleaver onto the cutting board, wiped her hands, and strode toward the bedroom.

My heart started pounding inexplicably. I followed her.

The moment the bedroom door swung open, Mom froze in place.

Ethan stood on the bed with a dark green piece of fabric tied around his neck, striking a superhero pose. The edges of the fabric were jagged, like they'd been chewed by a dog.

On the floor beside the bed lay a small craft scissors and a pile of dark green fabric scraps.

It was the silk dress Mom had splurged on last month---two thousand dollars.

She never spent more than two hundred on clothes for herself. This dress was specially bought for next month's high school reunion. After bringing it home, she'd open the closet daily just to look at it, touch it. She was so careful even when trying it on, terrified of snagging the fabric.

Now, this dress that carried all her vanity and anticipation had become Ethan's "superhero cape."

The air completely solidified in that second.

Ethan hadn't yet realized the severity of what he'd done. He bounced on the bed shouting, "Mom, look! I can fly!"

Mom said nothing.

Her face went from flushed red to deathly pale in an instant. The kind of pale that radiated a bone-chilling coldness.

She stared at the fabric scraps on the floor, her chest heaving violently.

"Mom..." I called out timidly.

She whipped her head around, her eyes stabbing into me like two ice picks.

"Emma, come here."

Her voice was eerily calm. No hysteria, no screaming.

But I couldn't help shivering.

Like a puppet, I shuffled over step by step.

Mom turned and walked to the TV stand, pulling open the bottom drawer.

She took out those sewing scissors wrapped in black electrical tape.

Ethan finally sensed something was wrong. He climbed down from the bed and cowered in the corner, his voice breaking into a whimper. "Mom, I was wrong... I'll never do it again..."

Mom didn't spare him a single glance.

She yanked me over, forcing me to turn my back to her.

At that time, my hair was very long, reaching all the way to my waist. My dad was a rough-around-the-edges guy, but he loved my long hair. Every time he came home from construction sites out of town, he'd clumsily braid it into two pigtails for me.

Mom's hand clamped onto the base of my ponytail like an iron vice.

A sharp pain shot through my scalp.

"Mom! It hurts!" I instinctively struggled.

"Don't move!" she barked.

The next second.

Snip.

The dull sound of metal grinding exploded in my ear.

The sewing scissors were too dull to cut through such thick hair cleanly. Mom used an extremely brutal method---part cutting, part wrenching.

Snip. Snip.

The pain of my hair being ripped out brought tears flooding from my eyes.

But I didn't dare cry out loud.

Two long braids, still bound by colorful hair ties, dropped to the floor with a soft thud.

They mingled with the silk fabric scraps.

Mom didn't stop.

She grabbed what was left of my hair, cutting strand by strand. From waist to shoulders, then shoulders to the base of my ears.

Completely haphazard. Brutally violent.

My neck felt cold and exposed. Loose hairs fell into my collar, making my whole body prickle.

After finishing, Mom walked over to Ethan, holding the scissors now covered in black hair.

Ethan had wet himself.

Pale yellow liquid ran down his pant leg, pooling on the floor. His entire body shook like a leaf. He couldn't even cry anymore.

Mom crouched down, grabbed the cut hair from the floor, and slapped it in front of Ethan.

"Take a good look."

Her voice was so soft it made your scalp crawl.

"Every time you mess up, your sister gets her hair cut. You ruined this dress. Your sister paid the price. Does that hurt your heart?"

Ethan nodded frantically, tears and snot covering his face, wheezing sounds coming from his throat like a broken bellows.

"Good boy." Mom reached out and stroked his face. The corner of her mouth even curved into a smile. "Behave from now on. Don't cause any more trouble. Otherwise, your sister will have to suffer for you."

With that, she stood up, walked back to the living room with the scissors, and placed them back in the drawer.

She closed it.

Then she got the broom and started sweeping up the fabric scraps and my hair.

I stood there, dazed.

I reached up and touched the area around my ear. What had been smooth, long hair was now uneven spiky tufts that pricked my palm.

Ethan crawled over and hugged my legs, crying uncontrollably.

"Emma... I'm sorry... Emma..."

I looked down at him.

No anger, no sense of injustice.

Only a deep, suffocating fear.

That pile of black hair was swept into the trash.

Just like my seven-year-old dignity, treated as garbage and carelessly thrown away.