Living with Monsters

Chapter 1: My Unreliable Hot Mother
Translator: JuneZ
It was a normal and boring weekend, until the peace was disturbed by a phone call from my father, who’s living abroad.

“Awesome! Honey, I’ll be with you right away!” Mother urged me to pack her things and she just stood in the center of the room as a queen, happily giving out orders.

It’s necessary to give you some information about my mother, DO NOT be deceived by her appearance. Although she looks like an innocent girl, she is actually more like a demon from another planet, she is alcoholic and gambleholic, sleeps at daytime and sneaks out at night, like a cat. And her son, me, from tens of versions of her stories, I can only get this conclusion: I’m not an earthling at all!

I guess we all asked our parents the question “Where am I from”, well, in my case, no cliches like “We found you in the trash can” that normal parents tell theirs children. “you are born in the explosion of a falling meteor”, “you are brought to earth by the eruption of the volcano”, “ I cut you out from the belly of a giant frozen prehistoric monster”, those are the stories my mother told me when she was drunk.

At this time mother was checking the package I made for her, not seem contented, she then stuffed a few bottles of liquors into the suitcase…

“My lady, you can’t take liquors on the plane.”

“Oh! Stupid human, the rule sucks! I’m off!”

OK, that’s my mother’s mantra. It sounds like she is not human. Actually mother seems so powerful when she says that. When I was in primary school, there were a gang who robed students’ pocket money all the time. And my mother ran into them once, and she said, “Stupid human, disappear now if you don’t wannna die.” I had to say that the gangsters almost peed their pants looking at my mother’s eyes and feeling that aura of power. I was never robbed again ever since.

Now I got into the best high school locally, mother was leaving me for the first time, although it was me taking care of her all the time, seeing her getting in the taxi, my heart was flooded with … ENDLESS JOY!

I started to roll on the floor with happiness, thinking of playing video games all night long, drinking as much beers as I want, even taking a girl back home? Those can truly happen with mother’s absence! Wait, did mother forget something, something that’s quite important.

“Mom! You forgot to leave me money!”

“Ah, about that… son, that is a test for you, you are a grown up now, you should be able to be independent.”

“But…

“No but, there are so many rooms in our house, rent some out and you’ll be rich! You can even start a harem or raise your ‘soap army’, you know what I mean by soap(1). Ah! See how considerate you mother is!”

“ I need money to survive before I can rent any room out…please send me money when you get to father’s.”

I protested powerlessly, in hope that mother would remember to send me money, yet mother didn’t seem to be listening…

“However, son, there is a room you can not rent out, the room on the left side of the corridor upstairs, and also the attic, you are not allowed to get there. Otherwise, I’ll kill you.”

Mother suddenly lowered her voice, said the last sentence in a severe tone, I fell to ground out of fear and mother hung up.

The first thing I did after I pulled myself together is to check storage, I collected everything I can find and put them on the desk, and I got: 3 and a half spam snacks, 2 eggs, 2 cups of instant noodles. 5 yuan(2) cash and 3 yuan coins.

My heart broke.

My father was doing some top-secret job so there was no way I could get in touch with him unless he reached out to me. I could not count on mother to send me money either. Luckily it’s a weekend and I just did the cleaning this morning, so the house seems clean and tidy. I hurried up and put the rental advertisement online.

After doing that, I sat down to enjoy my Saturday lunch. If my mother were here, I would go to the market and purchase a lot of food, but now, I could only live on what I got, instant noodles and spam snacks, until I get money.

“A roommate, what type would be nice to get along?”

I’m not good at getting along with people, so hopefully I’ll get a tenant that is a rich pretty lady with large boobs…it would be nice if she is good at cooking and loves cleaning…if that’s too much to ask, a tomboy could also work. Anyway, there is no woman that’s worse than my mother in the world.

No man please, I’m not interested in picking up a soap, not at all.

Suddenly the phone rang, I picked it up.

“Hello, Shu Yuan’s speaking.”

“Yes, you can come and check the room any time! When will you be here?”

I was thrilled, it was a girl’s voice and she sounds sweet! The internet age is awesome, just a lunch recess and someone was already calling to rent my room!

Half an hour later, the door bell rang, I could not hold my excitement and pulled the door open immediately.

The next second I fell on my back, shocked and terrified.

She has a DOG HEAD!!!!!!

Annotations:

(1)Soap: mother is referring to “drop a soap”, implying that her son can be a gay if he likes that.

(2)Yuan: The base unit of Chinese currency.