Thirty Days in the Dark, and I’m Reborn

On the 30th day of the online hate campaign against me, my husband unlocked the door to the dark room. His childhood sweetheart, driving drunk, had hit and killed my mother in an empty alleyway. To clear her name, my husband used our child’s life to force me to sign a statement of forgiveness. Then, just to be safe, he lied to the world, claiming I was the one who had drunkenly killed my own mother. He took my phone and locked me in a dark room for a month. By the time I was let out, the media had painted me as a selfish, vicious, cold-blooded monster. I couldn’t take the pressure. I threw myself from our apartment building. When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day of the accident. This time, I locked my mother in her room and refused to let her leave. But who could have known? His precious sweetheart got behind the wheel and killed another old woman anyway.

1 I had just bolted the door to my mom’s room when my husband’s call came through. “Ella? Where are you?” His voice was a frayed rope of panic and tension. When I told him I was home, I heard him let out a quiet, shaky breath of relief. He was silent for a few seconds before continuing. “Crystal… Crystal hit someone with her car. I just finished dealing with it. I’m coming home now. You have to wait for me.” I froze, the words sinking in slowly. Crystal had hit someone again. But my mom was locked safely in her room. So who did she hit this time? The phone was on speaker, and my mom heard every word Leo said. Through the heavy oak of the door, I spoke to her. “You wanted to know why I locked you in here, why I wouldn’t let you go out.” “Promise me you’ll stay hidden in that room. Don’t make a sound until I tell you it’s okay.” “You’re about to find out why I did all this.” My mom, though confused, agreed. It wasn’t long before Leo returned. The front door flew open and he rushed towards me, pulling me into a tight, suffocating hug. His voice, muffled against the top of my head, was heavy with false sorrow. “Ella, I’m so, so sorry.” “Crystal… she accidentally hit your mother. The paramedics said… she died instantly.”

2 I shoved him away, wrenching myself from his arms. My face was a mask of disbelief. “What did you say? Who did you say she killed?” Leo looked at me with that pathetic, practiced expression of pity mixed with helplessness. “Ella, I know this is impossible to accept right now. Crystal told me everything. It wasn’t on purpose, she just… her eyes played a trick on her in the dark.” “If anyone’s to blame, it’s your mom for not watching where she was going.” “I’ve already given Crystal a piece of my mind. She’s completely traumatized, so I sent her home to rest. But she promised she’d come over in a couple of days to apologize to you in person.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Even if it wasn’t my mother who died today, it was still a human life. How could Crystal take a life and then just go home to rest, her conscience clear? “Leo, do you have any idea what you’re doing? You’re an accessory to a crime!” He sighed, pulling a folded document from his briefcase. A forgiveness agreement. He smoothed it out and held it in front of me. “I know you’re angry, but Crystal is a huge influencer with millions of followers. She can’t have a scandal like this attached to her name.” “Her father saved my life when I was a kid. I promised him I’d protect Crystal for the rest of my life. You’re my wife, Ella. We’re a team. That debt is yours to share, too.” “It was your mother who died. If you sign this, then even if this whole thing comes out later, it won’t affect Crystal.” “Just think of it as… helping me repay a debt.” My hand flew, the crack of my palm against his cheek echoing in the silent apartment. His head snapped to the side. “You’re a monster, Leo. A goddamn monster!” “Is a human life worth less than Crystal’s reputation to you?” The slap ignited a fire in his eyes. He shoved me, hard. I stumbled backward, my head cracking against the sharp corner of the coffee table. A lump, the size of an egg, instantly began to swell. He loomed over me, his face a storm cloud of disgust. “Ella, I’m not asking you. I’m telling you. You are going to sign this paper.”

3 In my last life, I never understood why Leo would throw me under the bus to protect Crystal, why he would threaten me with our own child’s life. Was his wife, his child, really worth less than her pristine reputation? This time, I understood perfectly. It was because Leo never loved me. He never loved our child. The person he loved, the person he had always loved, was Crystal. I clutched my throbbing forehead, staring up at the man I had once loved, my heart churning with a thick, bitter hatred. Hatred for what happened to my mother and me in that other life. Hatred for myself, for being so blind, for marrying a creature who was less than human. My undisguised loathing seemed to pierce through his anger, and a flicker of something like regret crossed his face. He reached a hand down, as if to pull me up. “Ella, I didn’t mean to push you. I was just angry. Let me see your head, is it bleeding…?” He was cut off by the frantic ringing of his phone. It was Crystal. He answered, and her delicate, tearful voice filled the room. “Leo, what do I do? I think someone took a picture of me.” Even though Leo had meticulously cleaned up the scene right after the crash, the alley had been dark. She hadn’t noticed a figure at the other end, phone held up, capturing the whole thing. “I just got an anonymous text with a photo. It’s a picture of our backs, standing over the body. What if they go to the police?” Crystal’s sobs were theatrical. Leo’s brow furrowed in deep concern. The police. Right. It suddenly hit me. I’d been so caught up in the chaos of my second chance that I hadn’t even thought to call them. While Leo was distracted, I pulled out my own phone, my fingers flying towards the keypad. If I could just report Crystal’s hit-and-run immediately, then no matter how well Leo cleaned the scene, the police would find the evidence. But before I could dial 911, he saw me. “Ella, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Are you calling the cops?” he roared. His hand shot out, slapping my phone from my grasp. It clattered to the floor, the screen shattering into a spiderweb of cracks. I didn’t care. I scrambled for it, desperate. The next thing I felt was a blinding, searing pain. Leo had stomped on my hand to stop me, his shoe grinding down on my fingers. He was snarling, a cruel smile twisting his lips as he pressed down, twisting his foot, crushing my bones. “Before I came home, I wiped everything clean for Crystal. The car is already on its way to a scrap yard, and the body… the body is probably being pushed into the incinerator as we speak.” “Even if you call the cops, there won’t be a shred of evidence to prove Crystal killed your mom!”

4 “It looks like you need to be taught a lesson the hard way before you’ll learn to behave.” With that, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and hauled me to my feet. My phone was a dead, black rectangle on the floor. But that wasn’t enough for him. He started dragging me towards the spare bedroom. The dark room. An entire month of my last life spent locked in there like an animal, eating and sleeping and pissing in the same small space. The memory of that bone-deep terror was so real it made my whole body tremble. As the door loomed closer, my heart hammered against my ribs. I looked at him, my eyes pleading. “Leo, please, no. I won’t call the police. Don’t lock me in there. You know how much I hate the dark.” I was trying to appeal to whatever shred of affection, whatever memory of our marriage, still existed within him. For a moment, his expression softened. He looked away. “Ella, I don’t want to hurt you. But I promised Crystal’s father I would protect her. Just sign the damn paper, and I’ll let you go.” “Why does it have to be me?” He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Because it was your mother who died.” “But, Leo… how are you so absolutely certain that the person who died… was my mom?” He wasn’t expecting that. He froze. His grip on my hair loosened as he answered, almost automatically. “When Crystal called me, I drove to the scene immediately. She… she’d had a few drinks, and she was driving way too fast.” He hesitated, a hint of guilt creeping into his voice. It dropped to a near whisper. “The impact was… horrific. The body was unrecognizable.” “But I checked. She was wearing a silver bracelet on her wrist. I recognized it instantly. It was the custom one you gave your mother last year.” A custom bracelet? In that instant, everything clicked into place. I knew exactly who had died. It was my mother-in-law. Leo’s own mother.

5 Leo’s mother lived in the same complex as us. When I had the bracelets made, I ordered two identical ones—one for my mom, and one for hers. Leo wasn’t just protecting the person who killed his own mother. He had personally destroyed the evidence and sent his own mother’s body to be incinerated. The thought was so grotesquely absurd that a laugh escaped my lips, sharp and humorless. I picked up the forgiveness agreement from the floor, shoved it back in his face, and said with chilling sincerity, “Leo, I’m not qualified to sign this.” “And I’m telling you right now, if you actually force a signature on this, you will regret it for the rest of your life.” “Why?” he asked, a reflex. “Because the person who died wasn’t my mom,” I said. “It was yours.” I thought hearing this would make him pause, make him question, make him try to verify it. Instead, his face contorted with rage. He pointed a trembling finger at me. “Ella, have you lost your mind? How dare you curse my mother?” “You’d say anything to slander Crystal, wouldn’t you? It seems I was a fool to feel sorry for you.” He lunged at me again, ready to strike. I scrambled away. Watching him, a blind fool charging forward for the sake of his twisted love, I suddenly felt exhausted by it all. I sighed, preparing to call my mom out and force him to face the truth. “Leo, I’m telling you the truth. If you don’t believe me, I can…” My words were cut off by the ping of another message on his phone. It was Crystal. “Leo, is everything settled? Someone who claims they have a picture is demanding ten million dollars from me. If I don’t pay, they’re going to the police. I’m so scared.” The flicker of doubt in Leo’s eyes vanished, replaced by a storm of worry and fury. He thought for a moment, then looked at me, a slow, terrible smile spreading across his face. The words that followed were pure poison. “Besides the forgiveness statement, I just thought of an even better way to clear Crystal’s name completely.” “Ella… why don’t you take the fall for her?” “All you have to do is confess. Tell everyone that you were the one driving this morning, that you hit and killed your own mother.” “That way, even if the person with the photo comes forward, I, as your loving husband, can testify against you. I’ll say you paid them to frame Crystal.” It was the exact same plan from my previous life. My eyes burned, and a raw, ragged scream tore from my throat. “Leo, are you even human?” He was already lost in his own twisted logic, nodding to himself. “Don’t worry, Ella. I’ll hire the best defense attorney for you, get you a reduced sentence. While you’re inside, I’ll take care of our daughter, raise her myself. You won’t have a single thing to worry about.” “And when you get out, we can still be a happy family.” I choked out the words, each one tasting like blood. “You can go to hell.” “Leo, I will die before I let you get away with this!”