She Locked Me In Basements And Called It Love Called It Training Chapter 01

She Locked Me In Basements And Called It Love Called It Training Chapter 01

My sister, Audrey, was born fearless. She was a prodigy, a rock-climbing champion who found fame at a young age.

But I was the complete opposite. Weak-willed and cowardly, I was terrified of my own shadow.

To cure my anxiety, Mom came up with her own twisted version of exposure therapy.

When I was too afraid to watch horror movies, she locked me inside a commercial haunted house attraction for three days and three nights, completely ignoring my chronic heart condition.

When I screamed in terror after witnessing a car crash on the street, her first instinct wasn’t to comfort me. Instead, she forced me to stand in the middle of a busy road, risking my life against the speeding traffic.

As I grew older, she discovered my fear of heights. Without a second thought, she dragged me to an amusement park and strapped me into a bungee jumping harness with a visibly frayed rope.

I broke down, sobbing that the equipment looked completely unsafe. But Mom didn’t even wait for the operators to check the gear before she violently shoved me off the platform.

“Stop crying and stop making excuses!” she snapped. “I already paid for the ticket. You’re going to dangle up there for an hour, and you won’t come back down until you’ve learned to stop being a coward!”

As I was thrown into the open air, I distinctly heard the sickening sound of the rope snapping.

But I didn’t cry out, and I didn’t scream.

In my mind, I only whispered a single thought.

Mom, I don’t think I’ll ever have to be afraid again.

******

The wind howled in my ears, my heart pounding violently against my ribs as if it were about to burst from my chest.

With a sharp tear, the tension in the rope vanished.

The momentum hurled me violently toward the opposing rocky slope. My shoulder slammed into the stone first, followed immediately by my ribs.

It hurt terribly, but there was no blood. I figured my bones were just broken.

As I plunged downward, my hand slipped unconsciously toward my pants pocket, brushing against something hard. It was the walkie-talkie Mom had given me.

But I didn’t press the button. I knew it had been useless for a very long time.

When I was eight, my parents got divorced. Audrey went with Dad, and I was left behind with Mom.

That was the first night I had ever slept alone in such a vast, empty bedroom.

Clutching my pillow, I crept into Mom’s room and pleaded softly, “Mom, I’m scared of the dark. Can I sleep with you tonight?”

But she didn’t offer a single word of comfort. She just stared at me coldly for a long moment before dragging me down to the pitch-black cellar.

“If you’re scared of the dark, you train yourself out of it,” she said flatly, shoving the cold walkie-talkie into my hands. “Audrey was never afraid of the dark. Why are you? You can come out when you’re no longer a coward.”

In the darkness, the scratching of rats grew louder and louder.

I frantically pressed the button on the walkie-talkie, but when the call connected, Mom’s voice was deadpan. “Rats won’t kill you, Lily. What on earth are you crying about? If you’re only going to use this thing to scream, you don’t get to use it at all.”

With that, she cut the line. No matter how many times I pressed it after that, the little red signal light never blinked back to life.

I was left to scramble blindly through the dark cellar, cracking my forehead on corners and bruising my knees against the stone steps.

It hurt, but I didn’t dare to stop.

Eventually, a stray kitten saved me—one that Audrey had forgotten to take when she left with Dad.

Even a tiny cat was brave, while I was nothing but a coward.

When Mom opened the cellar door a day later and saw the kitten cradled in my arms, a sudden smile crept onto her face.

She only murmured a single line. “So, you learned how to cheat.”

I thought that would be the end of it, but I was wrong. It was only the beginning.