Reborn in My Mom's Belly

Suddenly, I open my eyes in a warm, shadowed darkness. No— I have no eyes. Thick, viscous liquid surrounded me, as if I were wrapped in honey warmed just so; every movement met with a slippery resistance. A rhythmic "thump thump" echoed beside my ear, steady as the pendulum of an old clock, shaking the very fabric of this "space" with a faint tremor. The sound was piercingly familiar—I had heard it before in a documentary during my last life; it was the heartbeat of a mother's womb. This is... inside the womb? My consciousness felt like a stone sunk deep beneath water, suddenly breaking through to the surface. My name is Felix Collins. In my last life, I lived twenty-eight years—yet my existence was nothing but a complete, utter farce. Fragments of memory surged relentlessly: Larry Carter wore my father's favorite suit, sitting in the principal seat of my family's living room, toying with my mother's jade bracelet, and saying, "Everything belonging to the Collins Family will be mine from now on."In the hospital, Father lay on the sickbed, hooked to the cheapest IV drip; the doctor shook his head and said, "If you had come any later..."; Mother fainted from crying amid Larry Carter's relentless debt-collection calls. And I, at last, curled up in the shadowy cold of a narrow alley; snowflakes fell on my face like needles, piercing and freezing, leaving me too weak even to curse—as I watched Larry Carter's car pass the alley's mouth, splashing mud across my face. Hatred coiled like poisoned vines, writhing madly through veins that didn't exist, tightening around my "heart" with relentless pangs. The pain was so vivid, it confirmed this was no dream. Larry Carter, Melody Wilson... This time, I have returned. What you owe me, what you owe the Collins Family, I will take back, piece by piece, principal and interest.