"When will you move out?" A tired middle-aged woman's voice echoed through a small apartment on the eleventh floor of a cheap, aging building. A heavy thud slammed into the wall, as if a body had been thrown against it hard enough to shake the room.
A young man spat blood from his mouth, his teeth nearly cracking as his face scraped against the wall.
"Mother, please..." His eyes looked hollow, as if nothing remained in his life anymore except pain and agony. His name was Max, an eighteen-year-old high school dropout. He wished to finish school, but under his alcoholic mother's constant pressure, he had been forced to quit and start working the moment he turned an adult.
"Don't you dare call me that." A glass flew across the room, smashing against the wall and barely missing his face by an inch. "A son of that scum is no son of mine!" Her screams came out chaotic and almost psychotic.
"Give me your wallet." She demanded it while pacing around the room, kicking aside empty alcohol bottles in her desperation to drown her sorrows at the bottom of another bottle. "Give me the fucking wallet, Max!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
But Max had hidden the wallet in a secret place beneath the floor this time. The bills would not pay themselves without him, and he knew that if he handed it over, she would once again waste every last bill, leaving them staring at a foreclosure notice for the seventh time.
His mother's face fell into something ugly. Almost like a ghoul, she staggered toward him slowly, her body swaying from side to side. "Hey... give me your wallet, I said." She seized Max's hand, her grip tight enough to hurt.
A loud slap cracked through the room as her palm struck his cheek. "Wallet." Another slap. "Wallet, I said!" Then another came, making the young man's heart bleed. No matter how much she abused him, he had never dared to fight back against his own mother, but even the fullest pot spills the moment it starts to boil.
His hand moved on instinct, catching hers and stopping the next slap before it landed.
His mother's eyes widened with both terror and rage. "You good-for-nothing trash, you even dare to hit your mother?! How can you call yourself a human being?" Her left hand flew toward his face, but he caught that one too.
"Didn't you say I'm not your son, Mom?" Max's voice came out low as he shoved her away. He did not dare to hit her, nor did he want to. But he had enough of being her punching bag. "I'm leaving..." he said under his breath, and his mother's face turned pale. No matter how many times she told him to piss off and get out, he was still her only source of money, the only thing keeping her addiction fed.
"No..." she said softly, stepping backward before suddenly rushing off as Max stumbled to his room, his face wet with tears. He wanted to leave. He wanted to escape this fate. Without wasting a second, he pulled the wallet from its hiding place, grabbed a few clothes, stuffed them into his bag, and stepped back out into the living room.
A cold yet burning pain stabbed into his ribcage. It came so suddenly that he did not even understand what had happened. His mother stood in front of him, holding a kitchen knife buried in her own son. Her eyes looked empty, almost dead, but when his terrified gaze met hers, begging for an explanation she could never give, a faint tinge of life returned to her pupils.
In terror, she yanked the knife out, and blood immediately gushed from the wound.
Max's limp body crashed to the floor with a heavy thud. His mother's face turned pale, her lower lip trembling as reality finally sank into her bones.
"Shit... what have I done?" Even then, she did not call an ambulance. Instead, she grabbed his bag, rushed to the bathroom, and scrubbed her hands with soap as if she could wash away the sin of murder from her skin. After that, she hurried back to her room, locked herself inside, and left Max to bleed out on the floor alone.
"I— What?" Max's lips moved with difficulty, his voice barely audible now. "Mother— wait—!" His muscles had already given up on him, and the last of his strength was slowly slipping away. "So... thirsty." He smacked his chapped lips, desperately searching for any trace of water.
The soft sound of water spilling onto the floor echoed from the bathroom. The old sink couldn't handle the flow, clogging up and letting water spill over the edges.
His eyes gleamed. He hated giving up. He hated the thought of people seeing him like this, seeing him die. He refused this fate. He refused the Grim Reaper. "I won't die here..." Strength he didn't know he possessed suddenly filled his body.
Little by little, he crawled toward the water, his tongue nearly sticking out in his craving to taste the nectar of life itself. "I can't go out like this. Shit, I don't deserve this. I want to live..."
The moment he reached the water, leaving a trail of blood behind him, his eyes lit up. Like a starving beast, his lips latched onto the dusty, filthy water on the floor. Yet no matter how much he drank, he could not quench his thirst.
"Why?! Why?!" he tried to shout, but his lungs did not have enough air left. His vision darkened until all he could see was a narrow tunnel.
But then something caught his attention. In the water, he saw a reflection.
"A village?" he whispered to himself, his hand reaching toward it. In that moment, he thought he had already died. And the reflection in the water looked like heaven. Anything was better than hell, he thought to himself.
But right before he could touch it, his vision faded, swallowed by darkness. His head slumped to the floor, lifeless. He lay unconscious for only a brief moment, but then the reflection on the ground rippled, and a hand reached out through the water and grabbed him by the wrist.