After I was raped and murdered, my mom started selling meat buns. The buns she made were incredible—thin dough, packed with juicy, flavorful fillings. Rumors began to spread that the thugs who’d gone missing in our town might’ve somehow ended up inside the buns. My mom just laughed when she heard. “How could that be? I’d never use old meat in my buns,” she said with a smirk. One day, someone found a severed finger in one of her buns. The shop erupted in chaos. Customers screamed, some ran out, others vomited. The police arrived quickly, sealing off the scene. On her cutting board, they found part of a human thigh that hadn’t been chopped up yet. And from the pot of rich, fragrant broth simmering on the stove, they pulled out a row of bones, still covered in tender meat. But my mom didn’t flinch. She stayed calm, almost proud. “The meat is fresh,” she said. “Test it if you want. I never use old meat, and I refuse to grind it in a machine. It ruins the texture—makes it too soft, no bite.” She even started explaining her “secret recipe” in a slow, deliberate tone: “You see, the meat needs to be braised first—so it’s tender and juicy when you bite into it. My braising sauce has—” “Enough!” one officer snapped, cutting her off. “Laura Sullivan, why did you kill them? And where’s your daughter, Jane? She hasn’t shown up to school in weeks. What did you do to her?” “School? What’s the point of school for a girl?” my mom sneered. “She doesn’t need it anymore.” I’d heard those words so many times in life, but even now, they hit me like a punch to the gut. Because I was a girl, my mom always looked down on me. No matter how hard I worked, I could never win her approval. It’s strange. I’m dead, but the pain still lingers. The police, confused, followed my mom’s gaze to the refrigerator. When they opened it, everyone recoiled, covering their noses in horror. Inside, they found me. What was left of me.
I was killed on my way home from school. A group of men grabbed me, covering my mouth and nose with a cloth soaked in chloroform, and dragged me into an abandoned factory. I woke up in agony. I screamed, I fought back, but they only became more violent, more vicious. They didn’t stop until I blacked out. When I came to, I heard one of them swear under his breath. “Shit, I think she’s dead.” “No way. Must be faking it. She was screaming her head off just now,” another one muttered. One of them checked my breathing. “She’s not faking. She’s gone.” Panic set in. “Dammit, we’re not supposed to kill anyone! We just got out of prison—none of us are going back!” The leader grabbed me by the neck, shaking me violently. My head lolled to the side, and with a sickening crack, my neck snapped. I was gone. My soul curled up in the corner, trembling. For a moment, I felt relieved. At least I wouldn’t have to endure any more pain. The leader cursed again, lit a cigarette, and muttered, “You know what? Maybe it’s for the best. Dead means we charge more. That little rich kid’s family can pay up.” When I floated back to our house, my mom was playing poker with the neighbors. “Gu, your Jane’s got such good grades. Bet she’s heading to one of those big universities in the capital, huh?” My mom scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. You think I’m stupid enough to let her leave town? I’ve raised her all these years—she’s not going anywhere.” “Still, wouldn’t a top school give her a brighter future?” “What future? She’d just end up in some dead-end office job making peanuts. Girls are only good at burying themselves in books. If my son were still alive, he’d be a hundred, no, a thousand times better than her.” She had once been pregnant with a baby boy. But at five months, she caught pneumonia from me and lost the baby. Not long after, my dad’s mistress gave birth to a son. He divorced my mom and left our family for good. My mom never forgave me. “If it weren’t for you, this family wouldn’t have fallen apart!” “You didn’t want a brother, did you? You got sick on purpose, didn’t you?” Late that night, she put away her poker winnings, muttering angrily to herself. “Where the hell is she? Evening classes ended hours ago. What’s she up to now?” She had no idea her daughter was being dismembered. I watched as she paced the house, growing more and more anxious. She called my phone over and over again. “Sorry, the number you’ve dialed is unavailable. Please try again later.” Every time she heard the automated message, she got more frustrated, more frantic. She called my teacher. My classmates. She even started shouting at the walls. “If that brat’s out messing around, I swear I’ll break her damn legs!”
My mom confessed to the murders without hesitation: “As for how many? I’ve lost count. You’ll have to figure that out yourselves. Don’t you guys have DNA testing for that?” Of course they did, but the sheer complexity of the evidence was a nightmare for the forensic team. That pot of her famous braising sauce? It was a stew of chaos—filled with an endless list of ingredients: star anise, dried orange peel, rock sugar, fennel, cardamom… even the cuts of meat were carefully chosen—lean meat here, belly fat there. I watched as my mom, her hands cuffed, was pushed into the back of a police car. Before the door could close, a woman burst through the crowd and started clawing and kicking at her, screaming hysterically, “Where’s my son, Laura Sullivan?! Give me back my son!” It was my dad’s second wife, Ava. The onlookers started murmuring: “Didn’t her stepson go missing recently too? Could it be her doing? God, this woman’s a monster. No wonder her husband ditched her!” “Laura Sullivan, if you so much as touched a hair on my son’s head, I’ll kill you!” my dad yelled, red-faced and trembling with rage. Bruised and bloodied from the scuffle, my mom simply smiled coldly. “Look at you two. Looks like karma finally came knocking.” After I disappeared, my mom had been forced to call my dad to ask for help. His response? “Your daughter’s missing? Isn’t that your responsibility? Don’t bother me with this nonsense.” Now, as both my dad and Ava stood there, desperate and panicked, my mom blinked innocently and said, “I really don’t know where Shane is. I sell so many buns every day, you know?” Her business was booming. Customers lined up outside her small shop from morning till night, the tables always full, the steamers constantly empty. She tilted her head, her lips curling into a smirk. “If you’re gonna ask, maybe you should be asking the people who eat here.” The room fell silent. Even the officers, who had been holding Ava back, froze mid-action. My dad and Ava stared at her, their faces pale, before collapsing helplessly to the floor. I couldn’t help but enjoy the way they looked—completely shattered. Ava begged my mom like a dog. It reminded me of the time I begged her not to destroy my family. Back then, she’d kicked me to the ground and sneered, “Stupid brat. Get lost with your mom!”
Ava used to be my mom’s best friend. It’s a story as old as time. My mom spent the best years of her life building a future with my dad, only to be betrayed by him and her closest friend once he became successful. My mom always believed the only reason Ava “won” was because she had a son. And so, she blamed me for the divorce. I don’t know how my mom eventually found the warehouse. When she saw what was left of me, she froze. Everything about her—her breathing, her expression, even her heartbeat—seemed to stop. She gathered my broken body in her arms. I don’t know how long she sat there before she finally reached out to gently close my lifeless, unblinking eyes. Her face was emotionless the entire time. No tears, no sobbing. Just a hollow, empty stare. I laughed bitterly to myself. Whenever she talked about the son she lost, her face was never this cold. Maybe now that I was gone, her life would be easier. She could start over, build a new family, have the children she had always wanted. It had to be easier, right? But my mom didn’t call the police. Instead, she carefully wrapped my remains and took me back to her shop. At dawn, she called my teacher to report my absence. “Hi, this is Jane’s mom. She’s sick and will need a few days off. Don’t worry, it won’t affect her studies.” I wasn’t sick. My mom was. She went about her day as usual, preparing breakfast and lunch. She banged on my bedroom door, shouting, “Food’s in the fridge, make sure you heat it up before you eat! And there’s money on the table if you need it. You’re so skinny—eat more!” She left for six days. On the night of my seventh day—the night when spirits are said to return one last time—she stood before my shrine. And my mom, with her own hands, offered up the life of one of the men who had destroyed me as a sacrifice.
Before my mom made her move, she bought a used food delivery uniform. Having run her shop for so many years, she knew all kinds of people, and it didn’t take long for her to get the information she needed from the local gangsters. She rode her electric scooter around the apartment complex, her hunched figure blending in easily. Years of hard work had made her back slightly curved, a detail that only helped her avoid suspicion. It didn’t take long for her to identify his address. She knocked on the door, holding a takeout bag. The door opened, and there he was—the punk. He grabbed the bag, glaring at her suspiciously. “What are you staring at? Get lost!” My soul froze. It was him. The one who had jumped me in the bushes. My mom, staring at his hostile expression and rough demeanor, smiled meekly. “Hey, young man, if it’s not too much trouble, could you leave me a five-star review?” “Get out of here before I beat you!” he barked, slamming the door in her face. The moment the door shut, my mom’s expression changed. The timid smile vanished, replaced by an icy, burning hatred. She didn’t leave. Instead, she waited in the shadows on the rooftop, biding her time until nightfall. When she finally broke into the apartment, the punk was already lying on the floor, unconscious, foaming at the mouth. The takeout she had delivered was laced with enough sedatives to knock him out cold. I watched, holding my breath, as she dragged his limp body into a suitcase she had brought. There was a security camera near the building’s entrance, but my mom didn’t panic. She calmly pulled out a length of steel wire, hooked it around the camera, and yanked hard, twisting it to face the wall. Then, lowering her head to hide her face beneath the helmet, she disappeared into the night.
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