In the end, during the funeral, amid everyone's condemnation, I was pushed and hit my head on my mother's tombstone, bleeding profusely. I died confused, right in front of my mother's grave.
***
In this life, my boyfriend successfully reclaimed the bride price, as he wished and my mother, calmed by my persuasion, didn't suffer a heart attack.
However, not long after, he knelt and begged me to accept 188,800 dollars in bride price along with all his assets. The surrounding murmurs and the buzzing voices startled me awake.
The suffocating pain of losing my loved one and the piercing agony of my fractured skull felt vivid as ever. I clutched my chest, trying to calm myself.
"Miss Reed? Miss Reed?" Looking at the familiar-faced police officer in front of me, I realized I had been reborn. Reborn on the very day Thomas Royce reported me for demanding an exorbitant bride price.
I remembered that before long, the noise from the quarrel would wake my mother, who was resting. And then, to defend me, she would join this absurd farce.