Reborn to Watch My Cruel Family Fall

In my last life, my aunt and her whole family took a discount flight I was working, off on vacation.

Before boarding she smuggled a lighter through, and because of it the whole flight got grounded.

Once we were in the air, my cousin couldn't keep his hands to himself. He wrenched the emergency exit open with brute force and racked up a three-hundred-thousand-dollar fine.

My uncle refused to pay. He stabbed two officers with a knife and ran.

My cousin threw a screaming fit and threatened to kill herself, wailing that we'd ruined her trip to the ocean, that now she couldn't get her pretty vacation photos.

Grandma lost her mind over it. She blamed me for not keeping them in line and dragged both me and the airline into court, demanding a million dollars each.

In the end the court ruled against us, my family paid, and Grandma still wouldn't let it go. She came to our house and made scene after scene.

Then she slipped rat poison into our food and sent every last one of us to the grave, so my uncle's family could seize everything we owned.

When I opened my eyes again, I'd been reborn.

Back to the very day of that flight.

...

A soft rattle.

The lighter, knocking against my keys in my pocket.

Hand pressed to my chest, still not free of the pain of that last life, I looked up and saw my aunt drifting toward me.

Thirty minutes before boarding.

The cabin crew was still setting up, and I'd spotted my cousin's family in the waiting area first.

My aunt was the most two-faced person I knew, all warm smiles to your face and a knife in your back the second you turned around.

I'd always known what she was. I just never imagined she could go as far as she did.

By the time she came toward me, her bag was already stuffed with snacks and mints from the waiting area, the kind of thing that cost a couple of dollars, and she still had to grab all she could.

"Teresa Gilbert, honey, you're a flight attendant, you can get back there easy. Take this bag and fill it up with mints for me. Oh, and load it up with snacks too."

I looked at the bag in her hand and hesitated.

Then I turned her down flat.

"There are cameras all over in here. Even if I weren't afraid of getting chewed out by my boss, aren't you worried someone clips you and puts it online? Turns you into the villain?"

I didn't cave to her the way I had last time. I just pointed at the camera overhead to make my point.

She gave an awkward little laugh. She always did care about appearances, and she pulled the bag back.

"Ugh, I didn't even want the stuff. It's your grandma. She went on and on before I left, kept telling me to bring home as much free stuff as I could."

My aunt was clever. She trotted Grandma out to guilt me.

Because Grandma played favorites, doting on my uncle's family above everyone. My aunt had feasted on that for years, and all she had to do was say the name and my family was supposed to fall in line, no questions asked.

But after living through the slaughter of my whole household, I was done falling in line.

I'd gone and put in for a shift swap, said I wasn't feeling well, but the lead attendant told me there was no spare crew today to cover my flight.

On top of that, we had several important passengers today who had to get proper service, and we were already short-handed.

Nothing for it. I had to grit my teeth and work it.

But before boarding, I did one thing. I asked the lead for permission to film footage today for a piece on "a day in the life of a flight attendant," picked up a body cam, and clipped it to my chest. It would record the whole shift.

Half an hour later, the cabin crew boarded first to get everything ready.

Fifteen minutes after that, passengers started scanning tickets and filing through the gate.

Ten minutes later, my aunt was the first one I saw.

She'd walked out ahead of everyone, alone, glancing left and right, dawdling her way over to me under the excuse of filming her very first flight.

"Hey, Teresa, help your aunt out. Where's a good spot to get a clearer shot of the wing? I want to film a little video of me smoking on a plane over there."

I refused with a smile, polite the whole way through.

"Ma'am, you're not permitted to move about the cabin freely once you've boarded. If you'd like to film the plane, you can do it after we land. Please return to your seat."

My aunt shot me a disdainful look, a smile curling at her mouth as she needled me.

"Well, well. Being a flight attendant really does change a person. Teresa, look at you putting on airs like it's the real thing."

"I still remember you as a kid, sneaking into your mom's blazer and playing pretend flight attendant. Never thought you'd actually end up one."

"Who are you putting on the act for? Like I haven't seen every side of you. And now you're giving me attitude?"

I knew what my aunt was after. She wanted to butter me up on purpose, so that later, no matter what happened, she could pin it on me.

What she didn't know was that I now had a body cam on my chest. She thought it was just an ordinary walkie-talkie.

I refused politely again, ignoring her snide tone and ignoring her demand.

"Ma'am, please return to your seat. Once you've boarded you're not permitted to walk around freely. Please"

"Fine, fine!"

That set her off. She glared at me hard, several times over.

"Are you a broken record? What's the point of repeating yourself over and over? You think I won't file a complaint against you?"

I smiled, blank as a machine.

"Whatever you decide is your right, ma'am. I'm only fulfilling my service obligations."

She stormed off in a huff, the lighter in her pocket jingling with a crisp little sound as she went.

Another one of my coworkers heard it too and immediately stepped up to stop her, suggesting she hand over what was in her pocket.

"Hello, ma'am. You can leave the item in your pocket with us for safekeeping, or put it in your luggage if that's easier. Please cooperate with us."

"Why?"

"Because once the plane takes off, any loose object on you can become uncomfortable, and it can slide around and fall. And since this is your first time flying, we have to make sure you feel comfortable and safe."

"Bullshit."

She muttered the curse under her breath, but she didn't dare argue back, because she was only ever brave at home.

Grudgingly she dug out the lighter and handed it to my coworker. And with that, one near-miss of a man-made disaster was, for now, over.

Right after, my cousin Madison Gilbert came over, my uncle trailing behind her, along with my little demon of a cousin, Joel Gilbert.

The three of them had the same face, and even their manners were oddly identical.

My uncle was chewing tobacco, my cousin was blowing bubbles with her gum, and my other cousin was smacking his lips around something, who knew what.

The three of them slouched their way toward me like three walking bombs.

"Sis! Where am I sitting later? By the window? Can I switch to a window seat? I want to take pictures."

Madison hollered it out, and in her excitement she spat the gum onto her hand, then laughed and picked it up and stuffed it back into her mouth.

I swallowed both the physical and the mental discomfort and kept serving with a smile.

"Hello, ma'am. Please head to the front and sit according to the seat on your ticket. My coworker up there will guide you."

Madison pouted, tugged at the flower pin on my collar, and laughed even more outrageously.

"Sis, you actually look the part in this getup. When we get back, can you lend it to me? I want to shoot a video and post it online."

"Me too, me too!"

Joel squeezed in. Whatever it was, he wanted a share too. My aunt had raised him into the same kind of penny-grabbing freeloader she was.

Hearing the noise, my uncle came over as well, and actually pulled out a cigarette and asked me for a lighter, then blamed me for taking my aunt's lighter away.

Every ridiculous thing you could think of, they ran through it all, worse even than in my last life.

I choked down my anger and explained, line after line, keeping strictly to the job, never letting a shred of personal feeling in, and refused every single request.

In the end my uncle lost his temper too. He spat his chewing tobacco onto me, rolled his eyes at me a few times, and issued a warning.

"Teresa Gilbert, aren't you something. We went out of our way to fly with your company, to give you a boost and some face, and this is how you treat us?"

"And to think I'm your own family. You put on that uniform and suddenly you don't know your own people? Too high and mighty now? Just you wait till I get back and see how I complain to your grandmother. Ungrateful little snake."

Fine by me.

Honestly, I hoped they'd take it further, sue louder, make a bigger scene.

Anything that would finally split my family clean away from them and from Grandma.

Relatives like that, better to have none at all.

It took forever, but we finally got every passenger boarded, the ticket count matched the head count, and my coworker and I let out a breath.

Still, I knew this plane wasn't taking off on time. The main event hadn't started yet.

I got my coworker and we walked the aisle one more time, warning everyone again not to touch the emergency exit, not to pull on anything, no matter what.

I knew exactly what that sentence would turn into inside my cousin's head. "Definitely go touch it."

He'd had OCD since he was little. He'd gone through treatment for a while, and on the surface it seemed under control, but it had never fully gone away.

And I'd found a bug in him. Say the same thing three times and it triggered his compulsion, dead on.

Three warnings in, and my cousin was already itching. I walked over to him and aimed the camera right at him on purpose.

"So cool! So cool! This is my first time on a plane! I never knew planes were this big, this much fun!"

He clapped his hands, delighted, pretending to touch the plane while his hand crept toward the emergency exit.

His seat was right beside it. That bright red marker sat there like a monster's eye, and it grabbed his attention in a heartbeat.

"Huh? What's this? Is it the switch that flies us to outer space? If I pull it, does the whole planeful of us go to outer space?"

Beside him, my uncle didn't care one bit, head down over his cards. As long as the plane hadn't taken off, he was racing the clock to finish that hand.

My cousin was busy taking pretty selfies, striking poses, switching angles, banking material to post later as travel photos, the classic act of faking a life she couldn't afford.

My aunt wasn't idle either, digging through everything around her seat. If it was free and could be pocketed, she took it.

She even begged things off the passengers in front and behind her, no sense of boundaries at all, and the rows on both sides had complained to me more than once.

And it was exactly because this family didn't care that, half a minute later, my cousin got the emergency exit open, clean.

Bang

One huge crash, and everyone on the plane jumped three times over.

A giant chute burst out from the side of the plane and swelled up like a slide.

"Cool! Fun! A giant slide! I've never seen a slide this big, this is awesome, this is awesome!"

The whole plane was stunned, staring at my cousin like he was an idiot.

He wasn't old, but the boy was strong.

An emergency exit even we flight attendants struggled to open, and he yanked it wide with sheer brute force.

In an instant, every cooling and ventilation system on the plane shut down.

The passengers all started up, and before long the cabin was stifling.

"What's going on? Whose brat is this, why isn't anyone watching him? How did he get the emergency exit open? Is that a toy? This is insane!"

"That's it, we're done, the plane can't take off now, everything's going to be delayed. Can that brat cover this loss, take the blame for this?"

"Grab him, quick! Where are his parents? Grab the parents too, that brat's about to slide right down!"

"..."

Before any of us could react, my cousin slid straight down the emergency chute, and out on the tarmac my coworkers nearly jumped out of their skins too.

The lead attendant fell apart, clinging to the rest of us as we scrambled to calm an entire plane of furious people.

But there were close to a hundred passengers on board, all of them in an uproar, and nothing we said could hold them back.

A few big, loud men came at us and backed us straight into a corner.

"What is wrong with you attendants? You can't even keep an eye on one brat? Now that this mess has happened, tell us what you're going to do about it!"

"Exactly! Every one of us has somewhere to be, plans to keep. The flight's delayed now, so everything we had lined up is ruined."

"Give us a solution, fast! And go find that brat's parents!"

"Right, what good does an apology do here?"

...

The lead attendant was near her breaking point too. She recognized the boy at once as my cousin. I'd reported the connection before boarding, so she told me to go handle it immediately.

The scene was already this chaotic, yet when I reached Nelson and the aunt, the two of them were still watching like it was somebody else's show.

I didn't call out to them by name, only used my service address, and it made Nelson slam his cup down in a rage.

"Teresa Gilbert, you actually have the nerve to come to us? That boy is your cousin too. You didn't watch him properly, so how is that not on you?"

The aunt jumped in with a sneer, neither of them having the faintest idea what it costs to have an emergency exit blown open.

"That's right, Teresa. You're the attendant, and you're our niece. As close as we are, it was you slacking off, you who failed to do your job, you who didn't warn us ahead of time, and now you're pinning it on us?"

I'd known they would say exactly this.

In my last life, these same words left me speechless, got me mobbed by these passengers, trampled until my spleen ruptured.

I barely clawed my way back to life, and then my grandmother squeezed our whole family until we had no way to live, and in the end all of us were poisoned to death.

This time I would never let that tragedy play out again.

I fed them polite lines on purpose, baiting them into condemning themselves. Once they'd worked themselves up and let it all pour out, I'd bring out my proof.

"Ma'am, you must be joking. I've followed every professional standard, served with full care, and done my work carefully. Nothing you're describing ever happened."

"Ha."

The aunt gave a cold laugh, completely unbothered.

"Who's to say? There's no camera on this plane. How can you prove what you said, what you did? Clearly you just didn't do your job."

"Right."

Nelson chimed in behind her.

"She's the one who dropped the ball. She's been careless with everything since she was little, and now that she's grown she's learned how to put on an act and wriggle out of blame. She thinks she can talk her way into pinning this on us?"

"I'm her uncle. I watched her grow up. You think I don't know what kind of person she is? She loves nothing more than slacking off!"

Before that side of it was finished, Madison broke into wailing sobs across the aisle.

She stamped her feet in fury, clawed her own makeup off like a madwoman, and started throwing herself around, screaming that she wanted to die.

"I don't want to live anymore! I don't want to live! I just posted that I was about to land at the beach, and now the plane can't even take off. If I don't make it, I'll be humiliated to death!"

"I brought several outfits to shoot photos at the beach! I had the timing all worked out. If I get back even a day late I can't do the seven-day free return, so who's going to cover that loss?"

She cried, screamed, and made her suicide show, then copied her brother and slid down that emergency exit too, trying to kill herself.

But the chute has a high safety rating, and she's on the heavy side. Not only did she fail to kill herself, she snapped a bone and now lay on the tarmac like a dead pig, unable to move.

Nelson and the aunt escalated it right on cue, seizing my arm and demanding I answer for it.

"Teresa Gilbert, you take full responsibility. Every bit of this is your fault. Don't even think about running!"

They gripped me until it hurt, and I threw them off hard and said I was calling the police.

"The police? Go ahead, call them! When the officers from the station get here and you've got no proof you're in the clear, let's see whose fault they pin it on!"

I called the police right there in front of the whole plane, determined to blow this wide open.

"Hello, I need to report a crime. Someone is maliciously slandering me!"

I shot Nelson and the aunt a glance. My hand was actually shaking with adrenaline by then.

"Yes, I have proof I'm in the clear. I recorded the whole thing on a body cam..."

At those two words, body cam, the aunt's face changed.

Nelson got scared too, sneaking a look at me, then at the aunt.

Then the two of them lunged at me like they'd lost their minds...