Fairless Daughter

Caging A Monster

I took him back to the barn at my grandparent's old house in the countryside and chained him up inside; no one would look for him there. My grandparents are dead, and no one in the family comes here anymore. No one would link him to our family, so this is the perfect place to hide him. I might have given him too much of that sleeping powder because it had been three hours, and he was still unconscious. My plan is working out better than I had ever expected. When he wakes up, I will have everything ready and waiting for him. I ensured the cameras were all working; I wanted to ensure I didn’t want to miss anything. I also wanted to give Cha the gift of watching him suffer the way he made her suffer. I walked back to the house and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. While sitting at the table eating, my mind started wandering back to the day this nightmare all began.

My name is Kai Chang, and I am the third and last child of my parents. I have an older brother named James; yeah, I know a Korean with the name James. My father is a big fan of the James Bond character. James is the oldest, my sister Cha is in the middle, and I am last. My father is very old-fashioned, and that is how he forces us to live. My father believes women do not need education because their place is in the home, taking care of their husbands and children. Our father thought it was the man's job to provide for his family. My mother's name is Sue Chang. She was raised with parents with the same beliefs. Her parents never sent her or her sisters to school. They stayed home and helped their father on the family farm. She had two brothers who were allowed to get their education because they were the pride and joy of her parents. Back when she was growing up, it was customary for girls not to go to school, but in today’s society, it is frowned upon.

My father pulled my sister Cha out of school when she was in the ninth grade and told my mother to start teaching her how to be a proper wife. My sister was distraught because she had dreams of becoming a nurse. She was the kindest, sweetest person I know besides our mother. I always thought she would be a great nurse because she loved caring for others. Cha's dreams were taken away from her with a few words from our father. Our mother feared him, so she had to listen to whatever he said. Sometimes, he would hit her if she asked any questions he didn’t like. I knew she was unhappy even at such a young age. Her demeanor would change whenever her father entered the room, and she would become submissive. I would hate it every time he came home from work because he made the whole house gloomy. He would walk around like he was some emperor or something.

He treated us like his servants. At the same time, he treated James like royalty. He was not allowed to get his hands dirty. We had to clean up after both of them daily, or our father would beat us. James was allowed to finish high school and was even sent to the best college money can buy. James had terrible grades, but that didn’t stop our father from spending more money to get him into college. Cha was brilliant and had always got good grades, yet she was pulled out of school in the ninth grade to learn how to become the perfect wife. I don’t know where it is written that a woman can’t be a nurse, nurse, or housewife simultaneously. Our father had never beaten James the way he had beaten Cha and me. He brought him a brand-new luxury car when he was old enough to drive. He even took James on trips around the country and left the rest of us at home. James was always lazy, so we also had to clean his room. He got worse grades than us, but our father never scolded him. Our father wanted James to take over the family business, so nothing was too good for his precious James. But his daughters and wife were treated like their servants.

Over the next few years, Cha, our mother, learned how to start hiding things from our father. Cha refused to give up on her education, so our mother bought her a small computer tablet. We took a small amount of money from the monthly household money our father gave her to maintain our house. We were not poor; as a matter of fact, we were rich, and we owned one of the best supermarket chains in the country. But our father only gives our mother enough money for us to survive. She had to buy our clothes in discount stores. She had to pinch pennies to get us something for our birthdays. James, on the other hand, receives a weekly allowance of thousands of dollars, which he wastes by partying and gambling with his loser friends.

Cha also started teaching Mom how to read using a tablet reading app. We had to keep it a secret, or Father would beat us and destroy the computer tablet. Our bedrooms had the bare minimum: a twin bed, two night tables, and a small deck in a corner. Cha and I didn’t have any fancy clothes or jewelry. We lived in a house and neighborhood that did not match our looks. James and our father fit perfectly in our neighborhood, but we looked like hired servants. The older I got, the more I realized how badly we were being treated and abused. I started hating my father from a very young age. We had to walk around the house on pins and needles whenever he was home.