Thirty Dogs and a Deadly Betrayal

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The weather was blistering hot, and my best friend, who called herself a saint of dog rescue, brought home thirty stray dogs with the help of my boyfriend.

In an instant the dorm filled with the stench of rotting fish, and it turned our stomachs.

"Mabel, hurry up and get the dogs out of here. It reeks."

She didn't like hearing that. "It's a hundred and four degrees out there! The dogs will die in that heat!"

"There's AC in the dorm. You'll all just have to put up with it. Once it cools down I'll let them out."

I couldn't stand the smell, so I kept trying to talk her into taking the dogs away. I told her that with this many strays, if one of them went wild and bit someone, it could be a matter of life and death.

That made her angry. She tied me to the bed along with a few of the dogs.

Before long my breathing turned shallow and a rash broke out across my skin.

Only then did I realize I was allergic to dog hair.

I begged my boyfriend and my best friend to help me, said I needed a doctor.

They refused, and they let me suffocate to death in agony.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Mabel and Morris brought thirty dogs into the dorm.

……

The suffocating feeling hadn't fully left my body yet when I heard the door bang open.

Mabel Lawrence and my boyfriend Morris Chavez came in with a few people from off campus, each of them hauling a cart loaded with cages, and inside every cage were several dogs.

Our dorm had lofted beds over desks below. The outsiders set the cages down on the desks and floor and left.

They were all strays, filthy, and the moment they came in the whole dorm filled with that smell of dead fish and rotting shrimp mixed with long-festering foot odor. My two roommates and I could barely take it.

Some of the dogs stared at us with a vicious look, letting out low, growling barks. If they hadn't been shut in those cages, they'd have gone for us.

Staring at the scene I knew so well, I gave a start, and only then did it hit me that I'd been reborn.

In my last life, Mabel and Morris brought thirty strays into the dorm, the stench unbearable, and when I urged them to let the dogs go, she tied me to the bed instead, then put a few of the dogs up there with me.

My breathing went ragged and my face flushed red, and that was when I found out I was allergic to dog hair.

I begged them for help, but they ignored me, and let me suffocate to death in agony.

After I was dead, they took the dogs away to bury the evidence.

Mabel spread filthy rumors that I slept around, that I was sleeping with several men in a single day, that I'd caught some vile disease from it and died when it flared up.

My other two roommates backed her up, so when the police came to investigate, they left with nothing.

Morris even used my password to unlock my phone and took out over a million in online loans, spending it all to win Mabel over.

He also posted doctored nude photos of me messing around with a black man, weeping and wailing that he'd trusted the wrong woman, that a heartless slut had played him.

I shot straight to the top of the trending list, a target for everyone to spit on. The whole school, teachers and students alike, cursed me as a whore, said a slut like me should have died long ago.

When my parents heard I was dead, they broke down sobbing. My father, overcome with grief, had a heart attack and died on the way to the hospital. My mother cried every day until, in the end, she lost her mind.

This time, reborn, I was going to make them pay, and pay hard.

But right now the most important thing was to not stay in here, or I'd die.

So I climbed down from the bed and headed for the door.

"You can't leave!"

Mabel grabbed hold of me. "If you go out there and start running your mouth, they'll take them away."

"Can you really bear to let these adorable babies bake to death under the sun?"