1: 1
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?"
2: 2
A few of the dogs weren't in cages. Mabel had tied them to the foot of her bed, and she wrapped her arms around one of them, eyes rimmed red. "These poor babies. They were practically roasting alive out there, and some of them are running fevers."
The dog hadn't been washed in so long that its fur had matted into hard black clumps, and a few fleas crawled across it, giving off a foul reek of sewage and waste.
The others weren't much better. Some had ticks and lice tumbling out of their coats along with the fleas. It was disgusting.
A few of the fleas and lice had already jumped into Mabel's long hair, and she didn't even know it.
Several of the dogs kept drooling, their eyes bloodshot. By the look of them, they had rabies or something close to it.
If I stayed in this room, it would be either my dog-hair allergy or their teeth that finished me.
I pushed down the churn in my stomach and forced a smile. "Mae, you've got such a big heart!"
"But I'm hungry. I need to go out for lunch."
"You haven't eaten yet?"
Mabel froze.
"No, I'm starving."
Seeing me about to head for the door, Ethel Norris got flustered. "Wait, that's not right. Vivi, didn't you just eat a little after eleven? How are you hungry again already? Are you saying you don't want to help these dogs, that you're going out to report Mae?"
Melinda Gray nodded quickly. "Right, I saw Vivi eat a couple of egg tarts and drink a whole cup of soy milk."
At the word report, Mabel went tense.
Right then, in a three-person group chat that Mabel wasn't in, a message came through from Ethel. *Vivi, hurry up and tell Mae to take those dogs away. If you leave, the rest of us are stuck in here with the stink.*
Melinda typed. *I'm scared they'll bite me. Vivi, get your boyfriend to haul them out.*
That's how a girls' dorm works. The four of us probably had two or three group chats running.
The second anything happened, these two always egged me on to be the one who stuck her neck out.
In my last life, my death had something to do with them too.
Back then they'd done the same thing, pushing me in the group chat, over and over, to make Mabel throw the dogs out.
I'd done it, like an idiot, and it set Mabel off enough to tie me to the bed.
After I died, they helped her get away with it, backing up her lies, saying they were always seeing me go out on dates with other men, that my private life was a mess, that I'd caught some vile disease and died of it. The people who came to investigate went home with nothing.
I typed back: *I'm more scared of dogs than either of you. Why don't you two tell Mae to get rid of them?*
Ethel: *Just sweet-talk your boyfriend into it. He wouldn't dare say no to you.*
I rolled my eyes. If Morris ever listened to me, I wouldn't have died in my last life.
Melinda: *Vivi, if you don't figure out a way to get those dogs gone, I'll tell Morris you go out on dates with men all the time!*
They looked demure enough, but they were rotten inside, the type to make up filthy rumors about me.
I let out a cold little laugh and ignored them.
"Mae, what I ate earlier was breakfast. A couple of egg tarts and a cup of soy milk isn't enough to fill anyone up. I'm really hungry now, I need to go eat."
Just as I was almost out the door, Ethel spoke up. "Vivi, you could just order delivery."
"It's not that we don't trust you. It's just, if you walk out that door, there's a risk it all gets out."
Mabel caught on, grabbing my arm to stop me. "You can't leave. Order delivery."
"And to keep anyone from contacting the outside, everyone power off their phones and hand them to me."
"Don't worry, I only want to help these babies! Once I've gotten the dogs out of here, I'll give your phones back."
No leaving, and hand over the phones too?
A chill went through me. "Mae, you two know I don't like delivery food! Or I could just go eat at the dining hall!"
My phone buzzed. Another group message from Ethel. *Vivi, why don't you scream for help, or run into the bathroom, lock the door, and call the police? Then we'd all be safe!*
I laughed to myself. After all this, you still won't let me out, but you want me to call the police right here? Not afraid Mae loses it and sets the dogs on me?
Mabel was a dog-lover gone off the deep end.
She'd brought strays back to the dorm before. One time, over a single remark she didn't like, she'd sicced a dog on Ethel and sent her running out of the room in terror.
"Tell you what, I'll hand my phone over first."
I powered it off and set it in her drawer.
3: 3
Ethel and Melinda had no choice but to power down their phones and drop them into Mabel's drawer.
"Mae, I know another spot where there are a few strays. They haven't eaten in days, they're too weak to move, poor things! And in this heat, I'm scared something's going to happen to them."
"I'll go grab something to eat, and while I'm out I'll bring those dogs back so they can sit in the AC."
Mabel's heart ached at that. "Yes! But don't eat out there. Get it to go, bring those strays back to the dorm, and then eat here!"
She fixed me with a hard glare. "And if you dare breathe a word of this, I'll smash your phone and that laptop on your desk."
I smiled. "Don't worry. I love dogs too."
The stench of dog was overwhelming. I'd breathed in the hair, and my breathing had gone shallow and fast.
Stay in here any longer and the allergy would kill me.
So the second I finished, I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.
"Hold on!" Mabel called after me.
"Morris, go with her. Bring the dogs back, and don't let her talk to anyone."
Morris slung an arm around me. "Come on, babe, let's go."
Out in the hallway, my nerves were on edge.
My eyes darted around, and I smiled. "Morris, why don't you lock the door? That way Etty and Mindy can't get out."
"Good idea."
So Morris fetched a big padlock and locked the door.
"Let's hit that fast food place up ahead. I'll grab some food for Mae too."
A little way past the school gate, Morris led me to a barbecue joint.
He was supposed to be my boyfriend, yet every other word out of his mouth was Mabel.
A minute ago I'd been too weak with hunger to stand, and he hadn't offered to buy me a thing. Now he was worried Mabel might be hungry, so he rushed to get her a combo plate with roast duck, barbecue pork, and roast chicken, plus a bubble tea on top of it.
For me, all he got was one meat and one veggie.
Before, I wouldn't have thought twice about it. But now I knew the two of them had something going on behind my back.
It's a bitter thing to admit. Morris and I had started dating sophomore year, a whole year ago now, and yet he was always off hanging around with my best friend, the one I'd known since middle school.
"Ow, my stomach really hurts…"
Just as he was paying, I suddenly clutched my belly and doubled over.
Morris snapped, "Baby, why's your stomach hurting all of a sudden? Don't you dare pull some stunt on me!"
His first reaction wasn't concern. It was to interrogate me.
"My period just started…"
I didn't wait for him to respond. "Wait for me here. I need to go to the restroom and deal with it."
And with that, I bolted for the mall nearby!
"Vivi, don't run off! Mae told me to bring you and the dogs back!"
He hurried to scan the QR code to pay, then chased after me hard.
The mall had seven floors. The first and second were a supermarket and clothing stores, packed with people. I cut left, cut right, and Morris couldn't keep up.
I slipped out the mall's back entrance and quickly flagged down a rideshare.
As the car pulled off, I saw Morris burst outside, looking left and right!
Then he came running straight at me. "Sophia James, you stop right there! Or I'll call the cops and have you arrested!"
