Reborn with a Cleaver

After my husband beat me to death, I woke up back when I was twenty.

Troy was riding his motorcycle, and we were on our way to a motel.

Instinctively, my body recoiled. I slid back as far as the seat would allow, my fingers clawing into the cold metal grab-bar at the back.

The boy turned his head slightly over his shoulder, the wind whipping his hair. "Hold on tight. Don't be scared, Erin. I'll take care of you."

In my first life, those words had been my undoing. I let them lull me. I let him take me to bed, got pregnant, had an abortion, dropped out of college, and eventually rushed into a marriage that became my coffin.

It was only much later that I learned the truth: "Get Erin pregnant" was nothing more than a dare. A sick bet hed made with my roommate, Fiona, during a game of Truth or Dare.

The wind rushed down my collar, biting and cold.

I looked down at my white floral sundressthe one my mother had scrimped and saved to buy me for my twentieth birthday.

The vinyl of the motorcycle seat was stiff beneath me.

In front of me, Troy's shirt clung to his back in the wind, outlining the lean, muscular build unique to boys his age.

In my past life, I was utterly blinded by him.

Troy was the school's resident bad boy from the rival department. A rich kid, an average student, a star on the basketball court, and devastatingly handsome. He was always surrounded by a loud, glittering crowd, half of them beautiful girls vying for his attention.

Yet, he had chosen to look at me.

With just one look, I had torn my heart out of my chest and handed it to him.

A familiar red braided bracelet hung from his wrist, fluttering wildly in the wind.

I stared at that red string, and a wave of pure nausea swelled in my stomach.

In my past life, Id asked him who made it.

He told me hed just made it himself, messing around.

It wasn't until later that I found out it was braided by Fiona, my roommate.

All along, the girl Troy actually wanted was Fiona.

Fiona was the golden girltop of our class, poised, elegant.

Even my own mother used to compare us, sighing, "Why can't you be more like Fiona?"

I had never resented her for it. I loved her. I thought she was my sister.

I never could have imagined that the cruel, twisted idea of getting me pregnant was Fionas gift to Troy.

The motorcycle veered into an alley, flanked by aging brick apartment complexes covered in overgrown ivy.

About three hundred yards ahead stood a motel with a faded orange neon sign: The Oasis.

In my previous life, I had followed Troy inside without a second thought.

I had trembled all over when he first kissed me.

It was my first time.

He had whispered in my ear, "Don't worry, baby. I'm going to treat you right."

And God help me, I believed him.

Two months later, the test turned positive.

I went to find him, terrified.

I saw a brief, smug flash of triumph cross his face before it quickly hardened into sheer annoyance.

"Erin, we're still in college. This kid... we can't keep it, right?"

Soon after, his wealthy parents showed up at my mother's tiny apartment. They sat on our cheap couch and said:

"They're both young, with their whole lives ahead of them. But we aren't irresponsible people. Here is how we'll handle this: we will pay for the procedure, and well give you fifteen thousand dollars as compensation. Lets just put this behind us."

My mother held me and sobbed.

She and my father had divorced when I was small, and raising me alone on a cashier's salary had nearly broken her.

In a world where we had no power and no leverage, we had no choice but to swallow our pride and take the blow.

Troy had stood by the front door throughout the entire conversation, silent, eyes glued to his phone.

As I lay on that cold operating table, watching the anesthetic drip into my IV, I wasn't thinking about the physical pain. I was thinking about the National Broadcast Championship.

The winner of that competition got a direct path to a major network anchor job at NBC. I had spent over six months preparing day and night.

But after the abortion, my body was wrecked.

Worse, I couldn't survive the vicious whispers on campus. My mental health shattered.

I secretly saw a campus therapist, who diagnosed me with moderate depression.

Every time I picked up a microphone after that, my throat closed up. The words died in my mouth.

I missed the championship. The pressure grew too heavy to bear, and I eventually dropped out.

Three years after dropping out, under pressure from my family to settle down, I was introduced to Derek Lawson.

He ran a decent small business, and his family was comfortable.

Before we married, he was the picture of a perfect gentlemanattentive, sweet, utterly flawless.

I had my doubts.

But my mother said, "Erin, you're twenty-five, you don't even have a college degree. You can't afford to be picky."

So, I married him.

Within days of the wedding, Derek shed his mask.

I liked to read in the evenings.

Hed sneer, "You didn't even finish college. Stop pretending you're some kind of intellectual."

When I cooked lighter meals, hed bark:

"This tastes like garbage. Stop wasting your time with books and learn how to actually feed your husband. That's your only job."

Eventually, I grew too afraid to even speak.

Every time I opened my mouth, he claimed I was talking back to him.

And the price for talking back was his fists and heavy boots.

The motorcycle screeched to a halt in front of the motel.

Troy swung his long leg off the bike and looked back at me.

"We're here."

I didn't move.

He frowned, walking over and reaching his hand out to me.

I played the part of the shy, hesitant girl.

Just as his patience was about to wear thin, I slowly placed my hand in his.

This time, I was going to play a very different game.

The motel staircase was narrow, the walls plastered with sketchy flyers and ads.

Troy walked ahead of me. When he looked back, his eyes were full of smug satisfaction.

The room was on the fourth floor, at the very end of the hall. When he pushed the door open, a wave of musty air mixed with cheap lemon air freshener hit my nose.

The curtains were drawn, plunging the room into shadow save for a single golden line of twilight slicing through the gap in the drapes.

Troy tossed his keys onto the table the second we stepped inside.

He stood in that narrow beam of light.

His face was still so handsome it made my chest ache with phantom grief.

But I was no longer the foolish girl who worshipped him.

Inside this twenty-year-old body was a thirty-year-old woman who had watched her dreams die and survived five years of a brutal, soul-crushing marriage.

"Where's the wine?"

I asked with a soft smile, pitching my voice to a sweet, delicate tone.

Troy blinked, clearly surprised that I was taking the initiative.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a bottle of imported peach winea pink bottle with Japanese writing on the label.

"You actually want to drink?" he asked, testing the waters.

"Well, didn't you say you wanted to try it?" I tilted my head, mimicking the naive innocence of a twenty-year-old.

He grinned, poured the pink liquid into two plastic cups from the nightstand, and handed one to me.

I took a small sip.

Then, my eyes drifted to the nightstand.

There was an unopened box of condoms, the silver foil packaging declaring Ultra-Thin in bold letters.

In my past life, he had thrown that box straight into the trash.

He had told me they felt uncomfortable.

And I hadn't protested.

But this life would be different.

I set my cup down, picked up the box, and looked up at him. I blinked, stealing the very lines he was about to say.

"I don't really want to use these. They're uncomfortable."

A flash of surpriseand then triumphcrossed Troy's face.

"Why don't you go grab the morning-after pill instead? You know, the emergency one. I saw a pharmacy just around the corner on the main street. I'll wait here for you. No rush."

He stared at me for a few seconds, weighing his options.

The sky outside was darkening fast. If he didn't hurry, we'd lose the evening.

He stood up, grabbed his jacket, and looked back at me from the doorway. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back."

The door clicked shut.

His footsteps faded down the hall.

I opened the door, knelt, and picked up one of those sketchy cards featuring scantily clad women that had been slid under the door. I dialed the number.

"Hi. Are you dispatching outcall services right now?"

"Yes. Fourth floor, Room 420. Long hair, about five-foot-three."

"Right. As fast as possible. Money is not an issue."

She arrived remarkably fast.

When the soft knock came, my hand trembled slightly.

I opened the door to find a woman standing there.

She looked to be in her late twenties.

Her eye makeup was heavy, her lips painted a dark, bruised red, and she was wearing a tight, sequined halter dress.

When she saw my bare, fresh face, she paused, visibly confused.

She was probably wondering why a young college girl had called her.

Without a word, I stuffed the cash directly into her hand.

Three hundred dollars. I had swiped it from Troy's wallet while he was in the bathroom earlier.

Her eyes lit up as she quickly counted the bills.

When she looked back up, her demeanor had shifted to total warmth.

"So, what's the plan, honey?"

"Simple," I said. "My boyfriend is on his way back. Put on my dress, turn off all the lights, and let him sleep with you. Just make sure he thinks you're me."

She arched an eyebrow. "That's it?"

"That's it."

The woman let out a dry, raspy laugh, the sound of a heavy smoker.

She didn't ask any more questions. She slipped into the room and shut the door behind her.

In her line of work, discretion was a professional courtesy. You take the cash, you do the jobno questions asked.

Three minutes later, we had swapped clothes.

She wore my white floral dress, her long dark hair parted to cover most of her face.

I pulled her sequined dress over my head; it was blindingly sparkly, and the fabric reeked of cheap, heavy perfume.

Before leaving, I whispered, "Keep the lights off. If he asks, tell him you're shy. Don't be too loud, but don't stay silent either. Just play along."

She stubbed out her cigarette and gave me a casual thumbs-up.

I slipped out and ducked into the emergency stairwell at the end of the hall, keeping the heavy door open just a crack.

The last glow of dusk vanished, and the hallway's motion-sensor lights flickered on.

Then came the sound of heavy footsteps.

Troy was back.

I heard the rattle of his keys, the squeak of the door opening and closing, and then a faint rustle of clothing.

The room remained pitch-black.

In the dark, Troy wouldn't notice that her arms were a little thicker than mine, that her fingers were rougher, or that her breath carried the faint scent of menthol.

He had never actually looked at me anyway. He didn't know who I really was.

The hallway lights died, then flared back to life as someone passed, then died again.

I clutched my phone in my palm, its blue screen casting a cold glow over half my face.

From the room, the woman's shallow, practiced gasps drifted down the quiet corridor, accompanied by the rhythmic creaking of the cheap wooden bed.

I closed my eyes.

In another timeline, that was supposed to be me.

It was me burying my face in the scratchy pillow, biting my lip to stay quiet, digging my nails into his back, unable to tell the difference between pain and pleasure.

It was me resting my head on his shoulder afterward, gasping like a fish washed ashore, my mouth moving but finding no words to say.

It was me discovering I was pregnant two months later, dialing his number with shaking hands while tears blinded my eyes.

A sharp ache bloomed in my chest.

But thank God, those were ghosts of a past life.

In this life, I would never walk that path again.

I counted down in my head: Three. Two. One.

I pressed the call button.

"911? Yes, I'd like to report illegal solicitation. It's happening right now at the Oasis Motel on Jefferson Avenue, Room 420."