My mom forbade me from touching cats my whole life—I was deathly allergic to their fur, she said. I only learned they’d lied at twenty. A fire broke out at the city museum, and I rescued a celebrity actress’s pet cat. I wasn’t allergic at all. Before I could confront my parents, the actress called the cops and had me arrested. “My cat had a camera,” she announced. “The ‘rescuer’ is the one who burned the museum.” My parents rushed over, and my mom slapped me in front of everyone, calling me a shameless arsonist. My best friend stood with them, claiming she’d seen me set the museum curtains on fire. I was fined 800 million dollars and sentenced to twenty years in prison. The day I was locked up, my parents sent a disownment letter via a guard: “We told you not to touch cats—why didn’t you listen? From today, we sever all ties. You’re no longer our daughter.” In prison, I tried to appeal but was brutally beaten. Inmates shattered my arms and legs, leaving me bleeding on the cold floor. My parents had paid them to do it. As I died, one agonizing question burned: Why? Why did saving a cat make my own parents conspire with strangers to kill me? When I opened my eyes again, I was back in the museum— the fire had just started. … “Fire! Everybody, run!” I stood in the familiar grand hall of the museum, watching the flames lick their way across the priceless exhibits. Screams and the crash of falling objects echoed around me. “Meow!” A desperate cry from the corner of the gallery sent an involuntary shiver down my spine, a phantom chill from a death I still remembered. It hit me then. I was reborn. In my last life, this was the moment it all went wrong. The fire, the cat’s cry, the surge of compassion that sealed my fate. I had ignored the lifelong warnings about my “allergy” and rushed to save it. Only to discover the allergy was a lie. When my parents found out I’d rescued a cat from the museum, they were incandescent with a rage I couldn’t comprehend. My mother’s hand had cracked across my face in public. “I told you never to touch cats! Why won’t you ever listen?” “Mom, Dad, all I did was save a life! What’s wrong with that?” I’d pleaded, bewildered. “It would have burned to death if I hadn’t helped!” But they were unforgiving. They threw me out of the house. And that was only the beginning. Three days after the fire, the cat’s owner, the A-list actress Cassandra Rayne, held a press conference. She pointed a perfectly manicured finger at my image on the screen. “The person who ‘rescued’ my cat is the arsonist,” she announced, her voice trembling with manufactured grief. “My cat’s collar has a micro-camera. It recorded the entire thing. She set the fire and then pretended to be a hero to cover her tracks!” I denied everything, screamed my innocence, but no one believed me. My parents ignored my desperate calls for help. When I needed them most, they took the witness stand and lied. “Your Honor,” my father said, his face a mask of sorrow, “our daughter has always had a fascination with fire. When she was ten, she nearly burned our house down playing with matches.” “This museum fire… it must have been her.” My best friend, Stella, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with tears, delivered the final blow. “I saw her… I saw her light the curtain with a lighter.” Her words froze my heart solid. Then, the lighter I kept in a drawer at home was handed over by my parents to the prosecution, presented as evidence I’d left at the scene. Witnesses, evidence—it was a perfect, airtight trap. For arson and the destruction of national treasures, I was sentenced to twenty years and fined an impossible eight hundred million dollars. On my first day in prison, a guard handed me an envelope. Inside was the letter of disownment from my parents. Their words were blades of ice. “We told you not to touch cats! This is what you get for your disobedience. You brought this on yourself. From now on, you are no longer our child.” I clutched the letter, tears streaming down my face, and screamed at the guards. “I was framed! Let me out! I want to appeal! I didn’t do it!” I screamed until my throat bled, but no one listened. A group of inmates, annoyed by the noise, waited until the guards were gone. They pinned me to the floor. A hand clamped over my mouth, and fists and feet rained down on me. The sickening crunch of bone was lost beneath the dull thud of their blows. They broke my arms and legs and left me there. As I lay dying, the woman who led the attack leaned down and grinned. “Don’t blame us,” she whispered. “Blame your parents. A million dollars is a lot of money to pay for your death.” My last breath was a silent, agonizing question: Why? “Meow!” Another cry, sharper this time, pulled me from the bloody haze of memory. The flames were now crawling towards the corner where a pure white cat cowered beneath a charred display case. Its amber eyes were fixed on me. Last time, that look had been my undoing. This time, I would not make the same mistake. I met its gaze, and my heart turned to stone. Don’t blame me, I thought. You’re on your own, little one. Without a second’s hesitation, I turned and ran for the exit. I burst through the museum doors, out of the thick, choking smoke, and gasped for air, my lungs burning. The relief of survival was a violent tremor that shook my entire body. My parents saw me and rushed over, their faces pale with panic. They grabbed my arms, their grips bruisingly tight. “Mia!” My mother’s voice trembled with a relief so profound it sounded like fear. “Are you okay?” I straightened up, forcing a casual tone as I brushed the soot from my clothes. “I’m fine, Mom. But just as I was getting out, I saw a cat in the corner. It looked terrified. It wasn’t moving.” The air went still. I saw it clearly—the sudden, sharp contraction of their pupils. My father’s hand tightened on my arm, the pressure excruciating. I paused, then softened my voice. “But I remembered what you always told me. That I’m allergic to cats, that I should never, ever touch them. The fire was getting so bad… I was afraid if I had an allergic reaction, I wouldn’t be able to escape. So I left it.” My parents stared at me, their eyes like searchlights scanning my body. When they were certain there wasn’t a single cat hair on me, the tension finally drained from their shoulders. “Good,” my father said, his voice shaky. “That’s good. As long as you didn’t touch it…” My mother pulled me into another fierce hug, the frantic energy that had radiated from her slowly subsiding. Just then, my best friend, Stella, stumbled out of the smoke, her face smudged with ash. She saw me and threw herself into my arms. “You scared me to death! Mia, I’m so glad you’re okay!” I hugged her back, relief washing over me. See? As long as I didn’t save the cat, everything would be fine. But just as that thought crossed my mind, a piercing cry cut through the chaos. “Snowball! My Snowball is still in there!” It was the actress, Cassandra Rayne. She tried to run back into the burning building, screaming, but was held back by security. The firefighters were still battling the blaze, thick black smoke billowing from the museum’s entrance. My heart sank. A short while later, a firefighter emerged from the smoke, his expression grim. He was carrying something small. He walked over to Cassandra, who was sobbing so hard she could barely stand, and slowly opened his hands. The white cat I had seen in the corner now lay limp and still on the firefighter’s thick, protective glove. Its once-pristine fur was blackened with soot. There was no sign of life. “No!” A gut-wrenching scream tore from Cassandra’s throat. She lunged forward and snatched the small body, cradling it to her chest. “Snowball! Open your eyes! Look at Mommy! It’s all my fault, I never should have brought you here!” It was a heartbreaking scene. I turned away, forcing myself not to look. This had nothing to do with me anymore. I took my parents’ and Stella’s hands, ready to leave this place of tragedy behind. But in the next second, Cassandra’s crying stopped. She snapped her head up, her red, swollen eyes locking onto me. “It was her! She’s the one who killed my Snowball!” she shrieked, pointing a trembling finger. “Officer, arrest her! She’s the murderer!” My body went rigid. I turned back, my mind reeling in disbelief. Last life, I saved the cat, and she accused me of arson. This life, I didn’t save the cat, and she’s still accusing me. Why? My mother immediately stepped in front of me. “What are you talking about? My daughter just escaped that fire! How could she have killed your cat?” My father’s voice was low with suppressed rage. “We’re very sorry for your loss, but it was an accident. It has nothing to do with our daughter.” Cassandra let out a cold, humorless laugh. “An accident?” She pulled out her phone, shoved the screen in my parents’ faces, her voice trembling with fury. “You call this an accident? Look at this!” A terrible premonition crawled up my spine. I watched as my parents’ expressions shifted from anger to confusion, and then, as they saw what was on the screen, to sheer horror. They looked back and forth between the phone and me, and finally, their faces settled into a familiar, crushing disappointment. “Dad? Mom?” My voice shook. “I swear, I didn’t do anything…” My mother’s composure finally shattered. She threw the phone at my feet, her voice breaking with a sob of rage. “How could we have raised a monster like you? See for yourself!” On the screen, a video was playing. When I saw it, my blood ran cold. The micro-camera on the cat’s collar had recorded everything. The background was the corner of the burning gallery. And I was standing in front of the cowering white cat. But the ‘me’ on the screen wore a smile I’d never seen on my own face—a twisted, predatory grin. I watched in horror as this version of me grabbed the trembling cat and viciously yanked it up by its tail. I watched myself kick its small, terrified body. A pained “Meow!” screeched from the phone’s speaker. The ‘me’ in the video was unfazed, watching as if it were entertainment. Finally, when the kitten was limp and barely moving, my video doppelgänger looked directly into the camera and sneered. “You’re on your own, little one.” Then, she threw the nearly dead animal deep into the flames and ran out of frame. The video was short, but it was enough to send me to hell. “No!” I screamed, my voice cracking with terror. “That’s not me! It’s not! When I saw the cat, it was fine! I never even touched it!” Stella, who had been frantic when the police grabbed me, now stared at the video. Her expression morphed into one of utter disgust. She recoiled from me as if I were diseased. “Mia… you… you tortured a cat?” Her voice trembled. “I can’t believe you’re that kind of person. How could you? It’s monstrous!” I looked at her, my last hope crumbling. “Stella! You don’t believe me either? We’re best friends! You were with me the whole time! Tell me, when did I ever leave your side to do… to do that?” She shook her head, but her voice was firm. “How would I know? Maybe you slipped away when I wasn’t looking. The video is right there, Mia. The cat is dead. The proof is right in front of my eyes. What am I supposed to believe?” I couldn’t speak. My mind was a roaring, chaotic mess. How could this have happened? I remembered turning and leaving. Was the smoke so thick I’d hallucinated? Or had something else taken control of my body in a moment of panic? I couldn’t understand. I had done everything I could to avoid my previous fate, yet the noose had still found its way around my neck. Cassandra handed the cat’s body to a police officer, her face a mask of tragic beauty. She turned to the growing crowd of reporters and onlookers. “Did you see?” she cried. “My Snowball didn’t burn to death! She was tortured to death by this evil woman! She tried to throw the body in the fire to destroy the evidence! Thank God the camera recorded everything! Please,” she begged, “you have to get justice for my baby!” The crowd erupted. The murmurs of speculation turned into a tidal wave of outrage and insults that crashed over me. “She looks so normal, but she’s a monster!” “Torturing a cat in the middle of a fire? She’s a psychopath!” “The evidence is right there, and she’s still denying it?” “Lock her up and throw away the key! People like that don’t deserve to live!” “Scum! Monster!” Suddenly, several enraged animal activists broke through the crowd and one of them kicked me hard in the side. I fell to the ground, pain flaring in my ribs. Before I could even try to get up— CRACK! A stinging slap across my face. My mother stood over me, her eyes as cold as a winter grave. “After what you’ve done, you don’t deserve to be my daughter.” My father didn’t help me. He pinned my shoulders to the ground, holding me in place for the mob. They didn’t protect me from the false accusations, from the fists and the feet. They joined the strangers in pushing me towards the abyss. Why? Why was this happening?
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