After My Aunt's Family Moved In, I Went on a Killing Spree

I got famous filming everyday videos of rural life, built up a million followers, and turned it into a nonprofit that helped local farmers.

Then my aunt showed up on my doorstep with her whole family in tow, and the first thing out of her mouth was,

You're a big influencer now. Would it kill you to help out your cousins?

After that they treated me like a live-in maid, on top of pressuring me to buy my cousin the newest phone and cover my other cousin's tuition for a performing-arts program.

The moment I said no, my aunt went crying to the family group chat.

"The second she has money she looks down on her poor relatives! And after her parents died so young, after all those years she ate for free under our roof. What an ungrateful little snake!"

One relative after another called to guilt-trip me.

My cousin went further. He burst into my room in the middle of a livestream and shouted straight at the camera.

"Don't let her fool you! All that money she raked in under the banner of helping farmers? Not one cent of it ever went to the village!"

The stream exploded. Comments flooded the screen.

I scrambled to shut it down, but he snatched the phone out of my hand and sobbed into the lens.

"At least our family never saw a dime of it! Everybody take a good look! This is the 'farm-girl saint' you all worship. She's a heartless little snake!"

The next second my aunt charged in, dropped to her knees in front of the camera, and wailed.

"Please, please help us! Her parents died so young, and I broke my back raising her! Now she's turned her back on us. What's a poor widow and her children supposed to do?"

The comments went completely off the rails. Someone doxxed my address on the spot, saying they'd come deliver justice.

That night, a dozen or so strange men broke down my door.

They dragged me by the hair, tore off my clothes, and held up a phone to livestream it all.

"Come on, let everyone see what an ungrateful snake looks like!"

It was three days before my body turned up in a filthy drainage ditch.

Then I opened my eyes, and there was my aunt, all smiles, hauling her whole family up to my door again.

"Ursula Matthews, honey, you're a big influencer now. Isn't it about time you helped out your cousins?"

I looked at the smile on her face, and my stomach turned.

She'd worn that exact smile in my last life, watching me sink into the pond.

"Thanks for the trouble, everyone. Quick now, make it clean! Afterward I'll split this dead girl's money with you. An extra twenty percent, on me!"

The wounds all over my body and the sludge at the bottom of that pond had dragged me down, deeper and deeper.

Until there was nothing left.

"Ursula, honey, if you don't say anything, your aunt's just going to take that as a yes!"

I snapped back to the present.

She was still going, still smiling.

"See, our Ursula really is a good girl. Everything your aunt poured into you all these years wasn't wasted after all!"

"Only, now that you've made some money, why didn't you offer to bring your aunt and your cousins along to share the good life? You're not planning to be some ungrateful snake, are you?"

Ungrateful snake. Three words, and it was like something at the very bottom of me switched on.

Every single word my aunt had screamed on her knees in front of that camera in my last life came buzzing back into my ears.

She always said my parents died young and she'd broken her back to raise me.

But she never once mentioned that the crash happened because my parents were on their way to celebrate my birthday, and my uncle was the one who invited himself along for the free meal.

Of all the luck, an out-of-control truck ran their car off a cliff. All three of them died on the spot.

And my aunt pinned every bit of it on me.

"If it weren't for your birthday, your uncle would still be alive."

So from the year I turned seven and moved into her house, she fed me nothing but leftovers, meal after meal.

In winter she made me sleep in a corner of the attic with no heat.

When my fever hit a hundred and four she wouldn't pay for a doctor. She slapped a wet towel on my forehead and walked out the door to go play cards.

In the end it was a school-sponsored scholarship that got me through high school.

Once I made it into college I started filming videos to pay my own tuition, and I never spent another cent of hers.

But none of that ever crossed the relatives' minds in my last life.

All they knew was that my aunt raised me, and if I wasn't grateful, I was a snake.

"Ursula, why aren't you saying anything? Are you slow?"

She waved a hand in front of my eyes.

I glanced at the two suitcases parked in my doorway, then at my cousins standing behind her, Nathan Finch and Lesley Finch.

Nathan was twenty years old and did nothing all day but play video games.

Every cent he got his hands on went straight into them.

In my last life, the whole scene he made barging into my stream started because I refused to buy him game currency.

And sixteen-year-old Lesley, done up in her whole delinquent look, studded jewelry and a tattoo.

She was hunched over her phone, chewing gum, throwing the occasional disgusted glance at the chipped paint along my doorframe.

In my last life she was forever bringing home some bleach-blond boy to fool around with.

Why would I ever let a family like this through my door again?

I took a step back until my shoulders met the doorframe.

"Aunt Corinne Chavez, there isn't room in here for this many people."

As it happened, the place I lived in now was a small three-bedroom I'd snapped up when housing prices took a nosedive.

Only two bedrooms, plus one tiny storage room.

So really, there wasn't room, was there?

My voice came out so much harder than it had last time.

In my last life, the second she said "help out your cousins," I caved.

I told myself she'd at least put food in my mouth, after all.

And that half a year, I woke up every single day to cook for four, my streams cut off more times than I could count, thirty thousand followers gone, and in the end it cost me my life.

This time I wasn't giving an inch.

Corinne's smile dropped off her face in an instant.

She flung her suitcase down, and the metal handle cracked against the doorsill with an ugly clang.

"Ursula Matthews. What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means..."

I raised my eyes to her, neither meek nor sharp.

"I bought this house. It's my call."

She glared at me, her face gone gray, her lips trembling twice.

Nathan poked his head out from behind her, his voice all snide singsong.

"Mom, what'd I tell you? She's a big influencer with millions of followers now. Why would she still know a bunch of poor relatives like us?"

Lesley chewed her gum, popped a bubble, and picked up the thread lazily.

"Sis, didn't your farm video last month sell three thousand pounds of apples? The commission's gotta be tens of thousands at least. What's the big deal about clearing out a room for us?"

Cold sweat prickled up my back.

She knew the exact size of that commission better than I did, and I was the one who'd earned it.

It had been the same in my last life. They tallied the income from every single video I posted, then came to collect it down to the last cent.

Clearly they'd been putting in quiet work behind my back all along.

As the standoff hardened, I gripped the door handle and was about to speak when a rush of footsteps came from the mouth of the lane.

I turned to look. My aunt-in-law, my fifth uncle, a cousin-aunt seven or eight relatives came filing in from the mouth of the lane, some carrying fruit, some with red envelopes tucked away, every one of them wearing a smile.

The aunt-in-law reached me first and reached out to grab my arm.

"Ursula, it's been so long, and look how pretty you've gotten! I hear you're a big influencer now?"

Before her hand could touch me, Corinne had already spun around to meet her, her voice shooting up.

"You're just in time! Settle this for me! I came all this way with the kids to see her, and she won't even let us in the door! Where's the justice in that?"

The aunt-in-law's expression changed at once, and she turned on me with a string of accusations.

"Ursula, this is on you. Have you forgotten how your aunt raised you all those years? And your uncle..."

In the past they always did this, using my parents' deaths, using my uncle's death, to guilt me into bowing my head.

"How my uncle died? Of course I remember."

Only this time I didn't play by their script.

I cut her off.

The air went quiet for a beat.

Corinne's face went white.

My fifth uncle cleared his throat, stepped forward, and lowered his voice.

"Ursula, your elders are talking. Don't talk back."

"Your aunt's had a hard time these past years. You've made something of yourself, so what's wrong with lending a hand? Your cousins are still young. If you don't look after them, who will?"

"Nathan's twenty. He's a year younger than me."

I looked at him and said it word by word.

"At his age I was already earning my own tuition. Lesley's sixteen. Her compulsory schooling ended a long time ago. If she can't get into a decent high school and has to pay eighty grand for a performing-arts track, why is that on me?"

Lesley's head snapped up, and the gum popped out of her mouth onto the ground.

"Who said I can't get in? You film tacky little country videos. What gives you the right to look down on me?"

"Then bring me your report card, and I'll treat the eighty grand as an investment in you."

I fixed my eyes on her, half smiling.

"You dare?"

Lesley's lips trembled twice, and she said nothing more.

That was it. She was rattled.

Her practice-exam scores had slipped out once when Nathan posted them in the family group chat by accident. Three subjects, less than a hundred points combined.

Seeing the standoff frozen, the aunt-in-law hurried to smooth it over.

"All right, all right, don't stand here in the doorway arguing. Come inside first, come inside and talk..."

And with that she moved to push her way in.

I sidestepped and blocked the doorframe dead.

"I said it. There's no room in my house."

The aunt-in-law's face collapsed completely.

"Ursula Matthews, grown your wings now, have you? When your parents died, if your aunt hadn't taken you in, would you be where you are today?"

"When my parents died, they left two hundred thousand in compensation."

I looked at her, weighing what they'd come here for, and cut deeper.

"That money was for my education. My aunt took a hundred and eighty thousand of it and left me twenty thousand to cover all three years of middle school."

"Did you know about that?"

Ursula's aunt-in-law froze.

Beside her, Ursula's fifth uncle frowned.

"We don't know anything about the compensation money, but the fact is your aunt raised you all these years..."

"Raised me? By making me sleep in the attic through the winter, refusing to take me to a doctor when I ran a fever, feeding me nothing but leftovers?"

I gave a cold smile.

"Should I pull up the family group chat right now and screenshot the message she sent back then? The one that said, 'Ursula's been sneaking eggs again, what an ungrateful little leech.'"

Ursula's fifth uncle opened his mouth, then said nothing.

Of course he'd seen those messages in the family group chat. It was just that no one had ever dragged the thing out into the open before.

Corinne stood in the middle of the crowd, her face flushing red, then draining pale.

Then she dropped straight down onto the ground, slapping her thighs and wailing.

"There's no justice in this world! I broke my back raising this girl, and now that she's got money she won't even know me! My husband died on the road trying to give her a birthday, I raised her in place of her parents all these years, and in the end she won't even let me through the door!"

A few neighbors poked their heads out down the lane to watch the show.

My phone rang.

I picked up. It was Veronica Whitney, the agent from the agency I'd signed with.

Her voice was fast and tight.

"Ursula, what's going on at your place? Someone posted on social media saying you abuse your relatives and you're ungrateful. Clout-chasing accounts are already reposting it, and it's climbing fast. Go look, now."

I opened the app.

Three minutes ago, a freshly registered account had put up a long post. The headline read:

[The True Face of Ursula Matthews, Rural-Farming Influencer With a Million Followers: Refuses to Support the Aunt Who Raised Her, and Publicly Humiliates Her Own Cousin]

The attached photo had been taken in the lane just now.

Corinne sitting on the ground wiping tears, and me standing in the doorway looking down at her, cold-faced.

The angle had been chosen with malice. In the shot I looked exactly like some bully throwing her weight around.

The me in the photo had cold eyes and a downturned mouth, the perfect villain. The frame cut Ursula's aunt-in-law and fifth uncle out completely, leaving only me, standing high above the woman collapsed on the ground.

Below it, hundreds of comments had already flooded in.

[An ungrateful leech in the flesh. A million followers and this is how big her head gets?]

[Helping farmers? Helping herself, more like!]

[Unfollowed. And to think I actually bought the apples she promoted!]

Some of the reposting clout-chasers were big accounts with over a hundred thousand followers, each headline more vicious than the last.

Veronica's messages kept popping up one after another.

[Don't respond yet, the company's already on it. This came on way too hard and fast, something's off...]

I looked at the screen, and out of the corner of my eye I caught Corinne still sitting on the ground wailing, Ursula's aunt-in-law crouched beside her, patting her back with fake sympathy.

Nathan stood at the back of the crowd, head down over his phone, the corner of his mouth curling up like he was typing something.

With my 20/10 vision, I got a glance at his screen.

It was clearly the post-composer page on the app.

He sent it, tucked the phone back into his pocket, and when he lifted his head his eyes met mine.

Nathan blinked, then grinned wide, his lips opening and closing to mouth three silent words.

"How's that?"

I gripped my phone, knuckles white.

The same old playbook. I'd seen it more times than I could count.

They'd done it exactly like this in my last life too.

First the online siege, then the leaked address, and finally a dozen men breaking down my door.

The only difference was that last time they'd shattered my image live on stream, right in front of the camera. This time I'd blocked the door and kept them from getting in, so they switched tactics.

Smear me first on social media, wait for the paid accounts to spread it far enough, then let the online mob do their cutting for them.

"Oh my god, would somebody please come and judge who's in the right here!" My aunt's wailing climbed another octave.

This time even the woman selling breakfast at the mouth of the lane leaned out with her bowl still in hand to watch the show.

I drew in a slow breath, killed my phone screen, then crouched down until I was eye to eye with her where she sat on the ground.

"Corinne, you say I'm an ungrateful traitor. Then tell me. My parents left two hundred grand in compensation. You took a hundred and eighty of it. Where did it go?"

Her sobbing stalled for a second.

"That... that all went into raising you! You think feeding and clothing a kid comes free?"

"I boarded at school from middle school on. Room and board was eight hundred a semester. Three years, that's forty-eight hundred. In high school I had a scholarship that covered tuition, so all you ever paid was the boarding fee, twelve hundred a year. Three years, thirty-six hundred. Add it all up and it's under ten thousand."

My voice wasn't loud, but the lane went quiet all at once, and even the people eating breakfast set down their bowls.

"So the other hundred and seventy thousand, Corinne. The used car you bought, the school-transfer fees you paid for Nathan, the three-grand performing-arts course you signed Lesley up for. Where did all that money come from?"

Ursula's aunt-in-law started to move her lips, ready to cut in. I turned my head and looked at her.

"Auntie, why don't you ask her who paid for that Florida trip she posted all over her feed last year. Who covered the flights and the hotel?"

"Maybe some of the funeral money you gave her back in the day is in there too."

Ursula's aunt-in-law went dead silent on the spot.

My aunt's eyes darted back and forth a couple of times, and then she burst out howling again.

"That money was my husband's death benefit! The government paid it to me! What's it got to do with you?"

"The death benefit was my uncle's. The compensation was my parents'."

I straightened up, my voice cold.

"They were paid out separately, Corinne. If you can't keep it straight, I can go to the bank and print out the transfer records from back then."

The neighbors crowding around started to whisper.

Someone pulled out a phone and aimed it at her. She hurried to hide her face in her sleeve, and her crying dropped a few notches.

Ursula's fifth uncle stepped forward, frowning, and said in a low voice,

"Ursula, you don't air family dirty laundry out here. Whatever this is, let's go inside and talk..."

"Fifth Uncle, I already told you. This is my house."

"And today I'm not receiving guests."

"Once the post on social media is deleted and the people spreading the lies apologize, then we'll talk."

With that, I shut the door without a moment's hesitation.

The instant it closed, I heard my aunt shriek from the other side.

"Ursula Matthews, you just wait! Your turn to cry is coming!"

I slid down with my back against the door until I was sitting on the floor, my heart hammering like a drum.

I was alive again.

This time, I'd gotten the door closed.

But I also knew that last time I'd closed a door too, and that same night they'd smashed it open and strolled right in.

My phone screen lit up.

A message from Veronica popped up.

[Found it! The IP that first posted traces back to your county, and that same IP also registered an account called "LesleyGoingStar." Probably your cousin Lesley. Legal's already started the process here, but the fastest they can get a formal letter out is tomorrow.]

Tomorrow.

I could wait. But there was no guarantee they'd wait until tomorrow.

I stood, crossed to the window, and pried apart a gap in the blinds.

The crowd in the lane hadn't dispersed. My aunt, propped up by Ursula's aunt-in-law, was back on her feet, head bent, saying something to Nathan.

Nathan listened and nodded, hands in his pockets, then ambled a few steps toward the mouth of the lane and waved at a silver van that had been parked at the curb for the last half hour.

That van looked far too familiar. It was just like the one that had carried the crowd who broke into my house last time.

I twisted the door lock hard, ramming it into place.

Then, from outside, came the grinding, screeching whine of an electric saw.

The next second, violent pounding erupted against the door.