Parents Sacrificed Themselves for My Writing

My father was a high school literature teacher. My mother was a university professor of comparative literature.

To make me write a literary masterpiece, they forced me to eat spoiled food, rewarded the classmates who bullied me, and abandoned me on the interstate, forcing me to chase their car through the freezing night.

When they looked at my half-dead body, they only smiled and offered cold comfort.

"Dante wrote his masterpiece in the depths of exile, Lana. You simply haven’t suffered enough."