Exhausted

Inside the washroom, Catie felt satisfied with her decision making skills. She started fiddling with the shower controls.

According to her memories, she was in a 5-star hotel that Ian and Catherine often went to for their “dates”. Also, it was the norm for Ian to leave immediately after the deed was done. The cold-hearted bastard never actually slept in the same bed as Catherine, or done anything remotely romantic. All his gifts were likely chosen and sent by his secretary on a vague order of his. He likely didn’t even know exactly which bag Catherine had wanted (some big name brand that frugal Catie wouldn’t know if it even existed on Earth), just that she had pointed one out and his secretary noted it down. Yet somehow, Catherine had believed that her charms were making headway and Ian was madly in love with her.

Catie believed that the reason why Ian had looked at her strangely when she asked to stay at the hotel was because Catherine liked to cuddle with Ian as much as she could and would usually walk out with him, clinging onto his arm. Catie wondered if that was actually the sort of woman Ian liked.

In the shower, Catie was thrilled to discover that an option made water sprinkle down from the ceiling like rain.

Soon enough, Catie stepped out of the steaming shower, her skin glowing pink and peachy. She started to feel incredibly tired. So tired that her eyes could hardly stay open when getting out of the shower.

After all, she had just “woken up” in the middle of sex and realized she had been reincarnated. The adrenaline and shock was finally wearing off and the toll it took on her body was becoming very evident. Catie stumbled out of the washroom and collapsed on the bed. She was blacking out. Mustering one last effort, she dragged a pillow under her head and flipped a corner of the blanket over her ***** body. After that, she was out like a light.

———

She was driving down the highway, her favourite podcast playing in her car.

“This is ‘******’, where we gather stories from normal people like you and me, and each week we focus on a theme. The theme this week is about dependency. There are many types of dependency, from children depending on their families to take care of them to drug addicts that only care about getting the next hit...”

The car smoothly navigated a turn in the road. There wasn’t much traffic here, nice.

“... We will tell the story of a relationship between a man who became dependent on a woman and in his obsession, made her become dependent on him...”

Suddenly she was looking at a man from above. Ian King, the male god, was staring at a woman with rainbow hair who was laughing with some shadowy person. Catie couldn’t see Ian’s face but she knew he was entranced. However, the more Rainbow laughed, the louder it echoed in the air and the more the aura around Ian turned ugly. Furiously, he suddenly grabbed Rainbow and tugged her to his side while shoving away the shadowy people around her.

The background changed to a bedroom where he was forcibly embracing a struggling Rainbow. She kicked, punched, howled, but Ian’s delicious body seemed to mutate and reform into a horrendous beast. The more she struggled, the fiercer his embrace, until finally, her arms listlessly fell to her side.

The scene changed again to Rainbow on the ground surrounded by jeering shadows, one of which turned out to be Catherine. Rainbow’s dress was ripped and soaked with her tears. Each time Rainbow struggled to get up, someone from the surrounding circle would viciously prod her back down. Just when it seemed hopeless for Rainbow, a darkness under Rainbow exploded outward, flinging the shadows away and causing Catherine to dissipate into thin air. It enveloped Catherine and dragged her under.

Scene change to Rainbow running away from Ian but suddenly she runs into the walls of a cage and realizes she had been inside all along. She reaches out past the bars to shadows outside the cage. One shadow starts to reach out to her as well... before they could touch, a beast, the beast Ian transformed into pounced on the shadow and Rainbow flinched back in fright. With the beast guarding the outside, the cage began to shrink, pushing Rainbow back to human Ian, who was waiting in the middle. She clung to Ian, shivering in fright at the beast outside.

A vision of the ending flashed by. A golden, sparkling light enveloped Rainbow, who had a peaceful expression. She was lovingly embraced by Ian with children giggling and flowers floating around them.

But as Catie looked on, Rainbow’s eyes suddenly fixated on Catie and hollowed into black holes with blood red tears streaming down her cheeks. Catie shivered in terror. Her clothes were in tatters and Ian’s arms became sleeves of a straight jacket suffocating her body. She looked straight at Catie, whose heart pounded louder and louder.

Help, the woman mouthed.

At that instant, the Catie was jolted as a car crashed into hers. The pounding of her heart became the screams of twisting steel as car after car crashed into hers. She saw Rainbow’s distorted face staring at her from all directions. She desperately turned the wheel trying to evade them, but to no avail.

Crash! Glass shattered, flying into her face, burrowing into her arms and throat. Her head snapped around as the car smashed into a pole and spun around it, flipping into a ditch running along the highway.

Down the car fell, deep down into the abyss...

Catie’s body spasmed as if her body had smashed into the bed. She gasped awake, her mind reeling as she came to understand that she had only been dreaming. It took a few minutes to calm down. Her heart was beating triple time and Catie couldn’t help going over the fragments of the dream, although she forgot more and more of it every time she tried to remember it. In the end, she only retained three impressions: Ian was a beast, Rainbow was a very scary undead, and she herself was undoubtably traumatized by the car crash that caused this entire thing.

Ever the resilient spirit, Catie made sure she was on a mattress and not a car, turned over, and slept some more.

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