My Beastly Bestie

“It’s just a tiny favor, what’s the big deal? Are you my best friend or no?

“I really have an emergency. Do you really want to stand by and watch my marriage fall apart?

“Come on, I’m counting on you again!”

My best friend Chloe Crawford’s voice squawked through the speaker. Not waiting for my reply, she hanged up on me.

Before I could even process what had happened, violent pounding shattered the quiet at my front door.

The next second, a deafening bang echoed through the hallway as the heavy wood was kicked wide open.

Chloe’s husband, Julian Bennett, burst inside in a blind fury, flanked by a gang of burly men.

The moment he crossed the threshold, he pointed a shaking finger at my face, screaming at me as spit flew everywhere.

“Look at that! My wife’s cursed best friend!

“Chloe was such a devoted, sweet little wife!

“But ever since meeting this woman, it was as if she turned into another person. Stopped doing housework, picked up smoking and drinking. Now she spends all day outside and barely comes home! My perfectly good wife was utterly corrupted!

“Today’s supposed to be our wedding anniversary! I worked so hard to get everything ready, but this woman threatened suicide just to force my wife to come celebrate her birthday. Talk about a toxic friend!”

After hurling his accusation, Julian glared at me with vicious hatred, bellowing furiously:

“Chloe isn’t answering her phone, ignoring my texts, and now her line is dead! Where the hell are you hiding her?”

At Julian’s outcry, the imposing men behind him immediately began murmuring, casting disdainful, revolted sneers in my direction.

“She looks pretty enough, but what a total jinx!”

“Seriously, what’s wrong with the woman? Does she get high on ruining other people’s marriage?”

“If my wife had a friend like this, I’d beat her half to death! Julian’s being way too soft!”

…

Staring at the eerily familiar scene unfolding around me, shock crashed over me as I realized I had been reborn.

I had returned to the exact day Chloe went off to meet her lover and demanded I cover her tracks!

Because I had agreed to help, Julian’s fury reached a tipping point when Chloe eventually got pregnant and pinned the blame on me. Driven mad by rage, he showed up at my door with a blade and hacked me to death in cold blood.

In that past life, Chloe had done exactly what she just did—calling me under the guise of an urgent emergency to demand I cover for her.

She pulled every moral card in the deck, claiming refusing to help would make me a fake friend and the sole cause of their marital strife.

Piling one guilt trip after another on me, she left me with no choice but to agree.

Yet after everything, when she fell pregnant, she used me as her scapegoat, sending me to a brutal, gruesome end.

Now that I thought of it, that had been far from the first time Chloe used me as her excuse.

The habit started long ago.

She blamed me for shattering Julian’s prized watch, claiming I had dropped it while visiting their house.

When she snuck her lover, Marcus Thorne, into their home behind Julian’s back and the adulterer left cigarette ash scattered around, she swore up and down that I was the one who smoked.