Rebirth: No More Kindness This Time

Pamela immediately bristled like a cat whose tail had just been stepped on.

"Raine! You heartless bitch! How dare you hit a child?"

Her hands were slick with grease and broth as she lunged from the backseat and clawed at my hair.

I quickly unbuckled my seatbelt and shifted aside to dodge her, my eyes coldly locking onto hers. "Are you trying to flip this car? The road's iced over!"

That stopped Mason cold. He instinctively slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded slightly on the slick road. The soup in the pot splashed out and stained the leather seats, leaving a greasy mess.

"Enough!" Mason yelled, then turned to glare at me.

"Raine, apologize to Pamela!"

I looked at him and felt thoroughly disgusted. This was the man I once thought I could spend the rest of my life with, but when faced with life and death, his stupidity and weakness were more lethal than the blizzard outside.

I took a deep breath and suppressed the urge to slap him hard in the face. After glancing out the door at the howling wind and snowstorm, I quietly said, "It looks like we'll be spending the night in the car."

On the dashboard, the battery icon flashed red and showed less than 15% remaining.

…

When night fell, the blizzard swallowed everything. The temperature in the car had dropped well below the freezing point.

The meatballs in the pot were long gone. All that remained was a disgusting layer of congealed fat.

Toby was curled up asleep in the backseat, wrapped in Mason's down jacket, while Pamela shivered uncontrollably.

"Why is it so cold…" she chattered. "Mason, turn on the heat!"

Mason tried pressing the start button several times, but the screen flickered once before going completely dark.

"I-it's dead…" His voice trembled.

"What? It was fine while we were cooking!" Pamela shrieked.

"The electric pot pulled too much power, and the cold reduces the battery capacity… Now, the battery's completely flat," he explained, running his hands through his hair in frustration.

Heavy silence fell over the car.

I leaned back against the seat and felt the warmth of my heat patches beginning to fade. Deep down, I was eerily calm.

I thought about how Mason and I had started out. Back then, he was a struggling student, while I was at the top of my class.

I felt sorry for him when I saw him eating plain bread in the cafeteria, so I bought extra meals and pretended I couldn't finish them just to give him food.

I made the down payment on his first car and bought designer clothes for him with money I'd scrimped and saved. With my resources, money, and love, I packaged him into a respectable urban white-collar professional.

But deep down, he was the same country bumpkin who only obeyed Pamela and had no true sense of responsibility.

During my final moments in my past life, I heard him say to Pamela, "Now that Raine's dead, her insurance payout is going to be enough to get us a bigger apartment."

In that moment, all my love turned into the hatred of a vengeful ghost.

…

I snapped back into the present just in time to see Pamela pointing at me and shouting, "This is all Raine's fault! If she hadn't brought that electric pot into the car, we wouldn't have cooked and run out of battery!"

I almost laughed. Whenever something went wrong, it was always someone else's fault.

"Did I tell you to cook?" I coldly retorted. "You were the one who insisted on hot food."

"Were you dead or what? Couldn't you have stopped us? You just wanted us dead from the start!" Pamela snapped back. She was being completely irrational.

Mason turned to look at me, too. His eyes were full of pure resentment.

"Why weren't you more insistent, Raine? You should've known the battery wouldn't last. But there's no point talking about it now. We need to stay warm, or we'll freeze to death tonight," he said, rubbing his hands together.

Pamela's eyes darted around before they landed on me. "The three of us can huddle together for warmth, but the car's too small. Four people will use up the oxygen too quickly too.

"Raine's in great shape. She ran a marathon, didn't she? She should go out, check the road, and maybe find a rescue vehicle. If she can find help, we're all saved."

I knew they would use the excuse that I was a fitness enthusiast who was tough enough to handle the cold to send me out to scout ahead. But I hadn't thought they'd be this ruthless.