When I went to ask my multimillionaire husband for my allowance, the childhood sweetheart living under our roof grabbed his phone, snapped an ugly photo of me, and posted it to his social media feed.
"The little vampire's here begging for money again. A hundred bucks per like. How many likes do you all think she's worth?"
I lunged for the phone to delete the post.
My mother-in-law held me back and said it was a wonderful idea.
My husband praised her for being so clever, and decided that from then on my allowance would be paid according to the number of likes.
For the sake of my grandmother lying in her hospital bed, I swallowed the humiliation and didn't dare fight back.
For the next three years, the likes only dwindled.
When Grandma was eight thousand short for her surgery, I begged everyone I could and still got only seventy likes.
By the end, when I was pregnant and malnourished and needed to buy supplements, I got two.
In the end Grandma died because there was no money for her surgery.
And the child in my belly dissolved into blood because of my long malnutrition.
Just as my heart went dead and I decided to divorce him, my husband was in a car accident.
His body lay in the hospital bed, but his soul was up in the air, ranting.
*Go find the best doctors, at home and abroad, to treat me right now.*
*Otherwise, once I wake up, you won't get a single dollar from me.*
I only pulled out my cracked-screen phone, took a photo of him, and posted it to my social media feed.
"Collecting likes. One like and I pull the oxygen tube."
One:
The moment that post went up.
Thomas Maxwell, floating in the air, was so furious he nearly came back to "life."
He came drifting at me, all flailing arms, muttering that he'd teach me a lesson. Pity that after all that effort, the most he managed was to stir a few strands of my hair.
*Serena Bellamy, have you lost your mind?*
*I order you to delete that post, go tell the doctor you can see me, and have him find a way to save me, or else I'll—*
I turned the screen off, gave a cold laugh, and looked at him.
"Or else you'll post to your feed and collect likes, and make my allowance two hundred next month so I can't afford to eat?"
"No, wait. I think I've been through that a few times already. It doesn't scare me anymore."
Thomas of course knew that a two-hundred allowance was what caused my miscarriage, so a little guilt crossed his face.
But he recovered his confidence soon enough.
*Nobody's going to like that post. No one's going to go crazy with you and become an accomplice to murder!*
I pressed the phone on and looked.
Thomas wasn't wrong. The post had been up for fifteen minutes, and not a single person had liked it.
Which was normal, really.
Ever since my allowance became a hundred dollars per like, I'd often begged our mutual friends to like his posts. After three years of that harassment, they'd all either muted or blocked me.
And the ones who hadn't blocked me would never joke around and like something like this.
I sighed, a little regretful.
Thomas thought I'd given up. He kept ordering me around, telling me to hurry and go find a doctor.
But I didn't move. I just looked at him.
"I know one person who'll like it. She wants you dead more than anyone!"
And with that.
Under Thomas's baffled stare, I gave the post a like, and before he had any chance to react, I pulled his oxygen tube right out!
