Doomsday Wonderland

Ashamed to say, I don't consider myself stupid, but it took me a long time to finally grasp what is right and what is wrong in human society.

There is no one-size-fits-all standard at all, as if someone hit his head and decided this is "good" and that "bad"; and I have to spend my whole life within the constraints of such arbitrary rules .

The adoptive mother said that it is not acceptable to actively cause harm to others—whether mentally or physically.

So who am I hurting if I take what I want from a big chain store?

For example, Wal-Mart (I want to make an analogy that you can understand), as a company, it has neither spirit nor body, nor is it short of money. Who did I do harm to by taking something? However, this can't be done, which is really inexplicable.

You may have realized that, yes, when I was a child, I couldn't use a certain principle to measure and judge individual cases. I use the reactions of others to judge whether I need to disguise myself, which is similar to the self-preservation instinct of animals; but I don't know that I need to pretend because what I want to do is wrong.

It is not a question of whether I am willing or not, it is that I simply do not have this ability; the so-called good and evil, right and wrong, are like white noise to me, in a daze, unable to distinguish shapes and boundaries.

Maybe I haven't developed that ability now either, I don't know.

"You are a very special child, but like every child, you represent many possibilities and hopes." The adoptive mother would tell me, "I will tell you the good and the bad, the good and the bad, and you It’s okay if you can’t judge, as long as you remember them all.”

Once, I tentatively asked: "Why can't I hurt others?"

If you were another parent, you might say, "Compare your heart to your heart, and you don't want others to hurt you"; this kind of words are meaningless to me. Of course I won't let others hurt me, but how does that mean I can't hurt others? The two have nothing to do with each other.

The adoptive mother thought for a while and said: "Because you will attract the hatred of others. Humans are a social animal. Even you cannot live alone without human society... Surrounded by hatred and punishment, your life will become painful."

I take it for granted.

The adoptive mother said: "If you suffer, I will suffer too."

I do not understand.

"Why?" I was less than ten years old at the time, and I had completely stopped pretending in front of her. Sometimes what I said was so direct that even I was surprised: "It wasn't imposed on you, why would you suffer? If you I won't feel bad if I get hit by a car."

When the adoptive mother heard this, she lowered her head and looked at the watering can in her hand. The sky light came in from the window, making the pot of oil painting arrowroot brightly colored, and making her lips turn white. "I know." She finally said softly, "I suffer because I love you."

I turned a deaf ear to it, because I thought of a loophole, and immediately asked: "Then as long as I don't get caught by others and don't provoke hatred from others, that's fine, right?"

"You can try it," the adoptive mother still said calmly, "you can take it as a challenge. You do something you want to do but the rules don't allow it, and see if I can catch your horse's feet, How? I'm not a police | detective, but if I can catch you, of course you have to live by the rules I taught you, right?"

At that time, I completely underestimated how many resources and how much an adult—especially a person as knowledgeable and intelligent as my adoptive mother—could have; in essence, what an unfair challenge this was. But I was eager to win, so I agreed.

As a result, not only was I noticed and stopped, but I was also taken by my adoptive mother to come to the door to apologize.

I don't think in the slightest that what I did should not be done, and it is a public humiliation for me to apologize to such a mediocre and low-quality person; but I think my adoptive mother must be clear about this Chu.

She wanted me to taste a little of the punishment of being caught doing something bad.

"Let's do it again." I had noticed at that time that my adoptive mother had an inexplicable tolerance for me. As long as I didn't "cross the line", she was always willing to meet my requirements as much as possible. "It doesn't count this time, I'm not ready!"

In this way, a kind of "hide and seek" game was formed between my adoptive mother and me that only the two of us knew.

We only played this strange hide-and-seek game four times; the last ten-year-old me reluctantly admitted that it was very, very difficult to escape the supervision and restraint of this society, and perhaps it was not worth the risk .

After I have memorized the good and the bad, the good and the bad, the next step is to practice self-control and find reasonable ways to vent.

As a child, I have extremely high self-control, but just like a serial killer can't help but want to kill, no matter how high my self-control is, it is impossible for me to endure it for a lifetime.

My adoptive mother thought of many ways, and introduced me one after another tragic classics, documentaries about vicious events or phenomena, took me to museums commemorating wars and massacres, etc...Humans claim to have morality and rules, but The evils and crimes they committed are a huge number that I can slowly appreciate and never finish watching in my lifetime.

It's just that when it's my turn to do the same thing, I can't do it. Normal people can do it, but I can't, which has to be said to be a hypocrisy full of irony.

It's hard to imagine that other people experience any emotion other than "satisfaction" when they experience those things.

I once saw a girl shed tears in a lecture hall of survivors of something, and she seemed very sad; I watched her tears almost fascinated, and felt her fresh, throbbing pain at close range —Fresh food is always better than dry food—at the same time, I was wondering again: why cry? This didn't happen to you again.

My adoptive mother pinched me with the tips of her nails, and it hurt a little.

When I looked at her inexplicably, she said: "The back of your hand hurts, and the back of my hand seems to hurt too. Other people are like this. They see other people's pain as if they feel it themselves, so I just cried... It doesn't matter if you don't feel this way, as long as you have the right reaction."

She said she loved me; so, does that girl also love to be a survivor of the speech?

I walked over and handed a tissue to the crying girl.

For all my education, my adoptive mother did not mention a word to my adoptive father. This is something I only discovered when I entered adolescence.

The period from when I came to my adoptive parents' house when I was less than six years old to when I was fifteen was probably the most satisfying and peaceful time for my adoptive father. With my adoptive mother watching, I certainly didn't have the opportunity to do anything; he would probe and educate me now and then, and was generally happy with the conclusions he came to.

My adoptive father was very proud of me, especially since I had been accepted to a top university and was leaving home in the fall. But to be honest, his pride in me has no weight to me.

No matter how much he appreciates me, is satisfied with me, and worries about me, if he suddenly encounters misfortune, it still cannot prevent me from getting satisfaction from him.

The same goes for foster mothers.

Ashamed to say, people like me are also affected by the hormones of puberty, resulting in a rebellious rebellion.

Once, the adoptive father happily told the adoptive mother how to judge individual cases more accurately. He has a lot of experience to share with the adoptive mother—I don’t know which details or clues made me suddenly understand that this is the adoptive father. In an educated way, I said triumphantly to my adoptive mother, "Look, I'm right, you are wrong".

I sensed one of the best ways to get revenge—yes, I felt like I was taking revenge.

My foster mother had a two-day symposium in a neighboring city, and it was my only chance. I know that the emotional torture I like requires a long time to prepare, and even if the conditions are met, the results are often subtle; in order to directly achieve the greatest effect, I must use methods that I do not enjoy so much.

I strangled my neighbor's dog.

What the adoptive father saw at that time was the son whom everyone admired, kneeling on the grass with his back to him, with a dying dog under his hands.

Although this kind of brutal killing is not my first choice, it is not enough to say how dissatisfied I am. I watched it struggling desperately, kicking its feet, digging up the grass and soil on the ground, sobbing in its throat, but it just couldn't make a sound (I can teach you how to stop the vibration of the vocal cords); at the moment of death , Its eyes are still looking at the neighbor's wall. I thought that dogs also have a certain amount of intelligence, and maybe until the last moment, they hoped to see their master appear...

What happened later, you may be able to think of it without me talking about it.

All I have to say is, "I've wanted to kill for a long time, but my mother has been watching over me so I'll do it while she's away" is enough for my adoptive father to put the pieces back together: how wrong he is shameful It is ridiculous that he has been kept in the dark by his married wife, and the terrifying reality of the people he faces... As a normal person, a rich and delicate person, you must be able to think of more agitated and complicated emotions .

The night their adoptive mother came home, they talked for a long, long time.

It was the first time I heard my adoptive father can actually make that hoarse cry like a wolf; short, only a few times, it was quiet again behind the bedroom door.

I think he may also love me in a small, pathetic way.

Whatever that love was, after that day, my adoptive father's love for me ended. They became the type of couples who were always bickering and had marriage counseling several times a month; but the root cause of the problem was me, and I couldn't be resolved by marriage counseling.

On the day I killed the dog, I also said many, many things to him. So much so that whenever I approached the kitchen knife rack later, he would visibly tense up—how ​​can you expect people to live in such a tense state all the time?

"If you think that you can cure him and influence him with love, then please go ahead." Finally one day, the adoptive father's string was broken. "I will not continue another day in this toxic environment of deceit. You are completely messianic and need help! Unfortunately, I can't help you."

The adoptive mother was sitting on the sofa in the living room. I had never seen her look so pale. Her elbows rested on her knees, and her body posture was tight, like a kind of self-defense; I had learned to read some body language by then, and I was going to study the major of adoptive parents in the future.

She pursed her lips, her eyes lost focus. Sitting on the sofa in that helpless, self-protective posture, she watched her adoptive father make a decision; watched her adoptive father go upstairs; listened to the sound of the wheels of the suitcase; signed the documents on the coffee table.

In the same posture, she nodded to the relatives and friends who came to visit, watched the truck of the moving workers stop, and watched the boxes leave like flowing water.

When the door was finally slammed shut by her adoptive father for the last time, she seemed to be shocked by the impact, and woke up from the daze. Outside the window, in the dark house where the sky was getting darker, she saw me sitting on the side.

I was looking at her without blinking.

My foster mother looked back at me. She knew very well what a monster I was feeding on, yet she didn't hide her emotions.

"I'm in pain, Daoyi." She said, tears fell. "He was my best mentor and friend through the years and always supported me especially when I couldn't bring us a baby and I wanted to adopt one... all because of you , I know that."

I listened without saying a word.

"I hate what you did to me, but I don't hate you." The adoptive mother said softly, "The day I decided to love you and accompany you, I was ready to be backlashed. I know that I set up for you What are the rules under... I hope you can abide by the rules, because I know that the world will not tolerate you. But I will."

I waited for the arrival of satisfaction, but it was delayed. I sat on the chair opposite the sofa, and just said goodbye to the last bit of rebellion at the age of fifteen.

This is the closest feeling to "love" that a monster like me can have.