THE STAIRCASE CODE: Through theMirror Darkly

All of this was not a hallucination on my part.

At that moment, my father also came out of the room.

My heart instantly sank when I saw his face.

The left and right sides of his face were also opposite.

My father's two eyes had always been special, with double eyelids in his left eye and single eyelids in his right.

But now he had become double eyelids on his right eye and single eyelids on his left.

They were not my original parents.

Realizing this, I wanted to hide in my room immediately.

But my hand was grabbed by my mother.

「Don't go, I have something to ask you, did you steal my money?」

My mother looked straight at me, her face incomparably gloomy.

I looked down and sucked in a mouthful of cold air in my heart.

Have you ever seen a person with the palm of their hand and the back of their hand growing backwards?

My mother's palm was exposed, and she had five fingernails painted with bright red nail polish growing on her palm.

Her fingernails were very long and sharply repaired.

「What's wrong? Why are you staring at your mother's hand? Is there something wrong?」 My mother's face slowly came closer.

My heart was about to jump out of my throat.

「Mom, it's nothing, you have pretty hands.」 I gave a stiff and ugly smile.

My mother didn't become happy with my words, 「Little bitch, don't change the subject, did you steal my hundred dollars?」

「Little bitch”」is a term I've heard since I was a kid.

Even my best friend didn't believe that a mother could call her daughter that.

But she did.

I wasn't allowed to grow my hair long, I wasn't allowed to wear dresses, anything and everything that would make me pretty, she ruthlessly refused.

Two days ago, I did take my mother's money because I was going to use it to pay for this semester's school fees.

I had begged my mother to give me a hundred dollars, but she had impatiently refused.

I had to take the hundred dollars by stealing it.

「Well, you little bitch, you've learned to steal money now, haven't you?」 A fierce gaze flashed in my mother's too-small pupils.

「Looks like it's been so long since I've punched you that you don't remember what pain feels like.」

My father stood in front of me with an exaggerated grin at the corners of his mouth.

I stole a glance at my father's hand out of the corner of my eye.

This glance made me feel even more creeped out.

The palms and backs of my father's hands, surprisingly, were also growing backwards.

But the most terrifying thing was that I saw my father walk to the kitchen and take out a machete as long as half of my arm.

In an instant, my whole body felt like it was plunged into an icy hell.

The machete was rusty and covered with dark red rust.

Before the age of ten, my father used this machete to scare my brother and me.

There was even a time when he coldly cut my arm with the machete.

Until the knife could no longer be used, it disappeared from my home.

But now it surprisingly reappeared.

I stepped back in horror and subconsciously begged for forgiveness and apologized, 「I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that, Dad, please don't do that.」

On the machete, besides the rust stains, there were spots of dried, unknown human or animal blood.

My heart was beating frantically, and just then I heard my brother's voice, coming from my room.

「Lucy, hurry up and come here!"」

I fled to my bedroom in a panic.

After closing the door, I immediately locked it.

「Brother?」 I shouted with a sobbing voice.

The room was furnished exactly like mine.

The test paper, which I had written half of tonight, lay peacefully on the desk.

The clock on the wall was supposed to be broken and had stayed at ten o'clock.

But the only thing in the room was the absence of my brother.

I leaned against the door, my whole body paralyzed as I slowly slid down.

Fear of the unknown pinched my heart.

「Brother, where the hell are you?」

Suddenly, I saw a white piece of paper on the bed.

I picked it up.

Surprisingly, two words appeared on the note out of thin air:

「Lucy.」