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墨書 Inktalez
The scent of animal fat mixed with the car's air freshener invaded my throat.
The man held the steering wheel with one hand, the cold light reflecting off his gold watch creating arcs on the ceiling, like a scalpel slicing through skin. I counted the tassels of the safety charm hanging from the rearview mirror—thirteen golden threads, just like the gaps in the attic floor.
"Are you cold, little girl?" he suddenly turned on the heat, a wave of warmth wrapped around his sleeve, carrying the stench of blood.
A half-exposed iron chain beneath the passenger seat clinked with each bump in the road. I focused on the moving red dot on the navigation screen; our destination was an abandoned logistics park on the outskirts of town, marked as a gray blot on the map, resembling a scabbed-over wound.
As my mother’s high heels echoed in the garage, the man was wiping the bloodstains off his gold watch with wet wipes. He suddenly grabbed my ankle, and the leather seat let out a deflating hiss.
"Your mother liked to catch people when she was young," he said, his fingertips sinking into a frostbite sore. The blue light from the in-car screen illuminated the gold crown on his molar. "But she caught checks."
The attic floor creaked with familiar groans. I felt around in the wall crevice and found a pencil lead but touched something hard instead—a hardcover notebook.
My mother’s diary from her youth curled up in a mold spot, its inner pages yellowed like age spots, cradling a prenatal checkup report—patient name field marked "Xia Wenjuan," gestational age crudely circled in red pen, with a note beside it stating "Handled Cleanly."
Suddenly, a crash of shattering glass echoed from downstairs.
My stepfather's belt buckle clanged against the stair railing, the metallic sound ringing like a death knell.
I hurriedly stuffed the diary into my sweatshirt pocket; the paper pages brushed against my chest where a knife wound had scabbed over, itching painfully. When he kicked open the door, he held a plastic bag stained with KFC grease, and a mix of fries and whiskey breath sprayed across my face.
"What are you hiding, little bitch?" he yanked my hair and slammed my head against the wall, dust from the drywall raining down.
In the moment it fell, the Prenatal Checkup Form fluttered down, covering his leather shoes. He suddenly froze, the veins in his neck bulging like worms, and grabbed the empty whiskey bottle to smash against his temple. "Bitch! They're all bitches!"
When Mother rushed in, she stepped on the torn Prenatal Checkup Form, her freshly done Crystal Nails digging into Stepfather's arm. "You promised not to bring that up!" They tumbled down the stairs, the Cashmere Shawl tangling with the crystal chandelier, and in the instant the light bulb exploded, I felt the unsealed package at the end of the hallway.
Twenty years ago, a newspaper wrapped around a Baby Onesie, with a bold headline on the social page: "Tracking of Female College Student Abandonment Incident."
The yellowed clipping had a corner stuck with Mother's college ID photo, her tear mole turned into a black hole by a pen. The Delivery Receipt listed the recipient as "Xia Jian," with a shipping date on my tenth birthday.
From the attic came the sound of rattling chains. Stepfather's pupils glimmered beastly in the dark as he gripped a chain stolen from a man's car. "You two are just alike."
As his belt buckle sliced through my sweatshirt hem, photos from the diary fluttered down like snowflakes—seventeen-year-old Mother holding a baby outside the courthouse, with a tarnished plaque of the Minor Protection Law behind her.
I tasted the sour rot of whiskey when I bit through his palm. In that moment when the chain wrapped around my neck, police car lights suddenly flashed red and blue outside.
Stepfather panicked and let go. I crashed through the window and leaped down, freezing rain splashing onto my burned collarbone and rising steam. Mother stood in the shadow of the garage, sending a voice message to the man: "The kid ran away; you’ll lose thirty percent of your payment."
In a blind spot of the convenience store's surveillance cameras lay piles of moldy cardboard boxes. I flipped to the last page of my diary under the emergency light; the Blood Type proof from the Delivery Room Record hit me like a blunt force.
In my phone's screensaver photo, the man's serpent tattoo on his wrist overlapped with that newspaper photo from twenty years ago—the "Enthusiastic Reporter" in Social News had a molting Black Snake on his left wrist as well.
A wildcat screeched past behind the funeral home wall. I crouched by the Incinerator's vent, watching as my diary curled into ash in blue flames. The numbers for Gestational Age on the Prenatal Checkup Form revealed hidden writing in high temperatures: "Test Tube Baby, father unknown."
The wind swept ashes onto my face, like Mother’s talcum powder after every slap she delivered.
The rooftop was wrapped in a mesh of iron wire, glistening with frost. I counted the warm yellow lights of the neonatal ward across the street, while the scab on my wrist from the knife wound began to itch.
Suddenly, my phone vibrated with a message from an unknown number—photos of that day in the mediation room, where the female officer had discreetly slipped me a business card. In the image, it was burning between a man's fingers, flames consuming the embossed words "Legal Aid."
The cold wind lifted the hem of my school uniform, and an old burn on my abdomen began to throb faintly.
I gazed at the swaying safety rope on the fire escape and suddenly recalled the pencil scrawl on the back of my prenatal check-up report. It was my mother's handwriting: "If only I had had the courage to push you back into my womb."
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