Short Emotional Realism Stories & Novels

After I retire, my son, Brandon Harrell, begs me to buy him a car and a house. To afford them, I have no choice but to work as a hotel cleaner despite my poor health. One day, a wealthy guest is having a wedding at the hotel. I keep washing dishes despite the pain from my chilblains when I suddenly notice that the groom's photo on the giant screen is Brandon's. I head to the wedding hall, wanting to ask Brandon what is really going on. The moment Brandon sees me, panic fills his eyes. Right in front of everyone, he orders the security guards to throw me out. "I don't know this old woman," Brandon says. "Someone like me could never have a mom who works as a cleaner. She's obviously here for a free meal. Get her out of here immediately." He walks onto the stage, takes the bride's hand, and affectionately calls another elegant, well-dressed woman "Mom". I recognize the woman at once. She is the childhood sweetheart my husband has never been able to forget for all these years.

On our wedding day, my wife, Jessica Burke, a CEO as well, got into the wrong wedding limousine and ended up spending the night with her male assistant, Callum Ross. The next day, she came back covered in red marks. Kneeling before me, she begged for my forgiveness and swore she would fire Callum and never see him again. But one year later, I saw her in the OB/GYN department when she was supposed to be overseas on a business trip. She was holding a crying, hungry baby in her arms. And beside her stood Callum, who had supposedly disappeared for an entire year. In a fit of rage, I kicked them out of the hospital. Unexpectedly, the baby disappeared that very night. Jessica blamed everything on me. To force me to return the child, she strapped a time bomb to my parents. I denied it again and again, but Jessica only roared, "Eric Miller! I've treated you well enough! Why would you still hurt my baby? Hand over my child right now, or I'll set off the bomb!" With that, she activated the time bomb, and the clock began its countdown. Seeing that I failed to tell her the baby's whereabouts, Jessica angrily pushed my parents into the sea of flames. Just then, someone informed her that her baby had been found. Jessica resolutely turned around and left, leaving my parents to be blown to pieces by the explosion. While she and Callum were throwing a party to celebrate their baby's first month, I was on the ground, gathering what little remained of my parents. At this moment, I regretted ever loving her.

A text message popped up in the class group chat. A student had been in a car accident and had been rushed to the hospital. She urgently needed a donor with a rare RH-Negative blood type. Wanting to help, I went to the hospital and donated 800 milliliters of blood. Afterward, I passed out from blood loss. When she woke up, she claimed she was pregnant and said the baby was mine. Everyone accused me of crossing a line despite being an educator and professor in college. They said I had slept with a student and got her pregnant. I went to confront her, but she acted like she was the victim. "Your blood is in my body now, and in the baby's body too. What's wrong with saying the baby is yours? From now on, my baby and I are depending on you. You'd better take good care of us and make sure we don't suffer, or I'll sue you for seducing me and dumping me!" Furious, I shoved her. She rammed her stomach into the corner of a table on purpose and miscarried. The internet decided I was a scumbag who had killed the baby on purpose. "How can someone like that exist? How can someone like that teach at all!" I lost my job. I was doxxed and harassed over the phone. Someone even threw acid on me and destroyed my face. I lost everything. My wife, who was eight months pregnant at the time, believed me and defended me, only for the internet to turn on her too. They accused her of helping a monster to hurt others. The stress caused her to have a serious hemorrhage, and she and the baby both did not make it. Crushed by guilt and grief, I jumped off a building and killed myself. That student, however, profited from my tragedy and became an influencer with a million followers overnight. When I opened my eyes again, I had regressed to the day I saw the message in the group chat.  

I'm an elite animal behaviorist in the country as well as the only person in the world who has the ability to communicate with wild beasts of bigger stature. When my daughter, Harper Sheffield, falls into the tigers' enclosure at the zoo, I decline the SOS phone call that my wife, Madeline Cross, has dialed. Then, I start a livestream coolly and begin recording the thrilling scene. A few minutes later, my father, Randall Sheffield, calls me in a mixture of alarm and rage. "Harper will die at this rate! Where the hell are you? I order you to find a way to save her right now, or else you can kiss the inheritance right to my company goodbye!" I adjust the focus intensity on my phone calmly before replying, "I'm busy right now. Stop disturbing me when I'm trying to make money from my livestream."

My grandmother, Gabriella Lorne, begs my uncle, Daniel Saldano, and his family to take me in after Mom and Dad pass away in an accident. To repay Grandma's kindness, I take care of her for seven years after she develops dementia and breaks her leg. I tell myself that I can't die when I'm lying in the emergency room after getting into a serious car accident. Grandma still needs me to take care of her. I hear the doctor's anxious voice coming from outside the door. "The patient is in critical condition. You're his family. You need to pay for his medical bills as soon as possible!" "We're not going to save him!" Grandma exclaims energetically in the next second. "We don't have the money to pay the bills." "Let's contact Mr. Anderson as soon as Jasper breathes his last breath," my lazy cousin, Ashton Saldano, chimes in excitedly. "He's been looking to buy a corpse for 100 thousand dollars. That's more than enough for me to buy a marital home and find myself a wife!" Grandma scoffs and says, "Pretending to be demented for the last seven years is finally paying off. The shaman told me that I'll be able to absorb this jinx's vitality once he's dead. He should feel honored that his death will fund Ashton's new home." My heart throbs painfully. It turns out that my beloved and respected Grandma is nothing more than a "man-eating" monster!

Three days before the long weekend, the Department of Labor called me. "We got an anonymous complaint saying your company is forcing employees to go on a holiday retreat..." I went still. Then I checked social media. Yep. There it was. An intern who'd started a month ago had shoved me onto the local trending page. [Greedy boss turns holiday weekend into mandatory company retreat. Employees are basically free entertainment.] [They say it's optional. Yeah, right. Who's brave enough to say no?] Thousands of comments rolled in, absolutely roasting me. Except our retreats had always been elite. Fully paid. No cheap corporate nonsense. This time, I was paying out of pocket. Seven days in the Maldives. Everything covered. A $2,000 travel stipend each. Senior employees could bring family. But apparently, a free luxury vacation was oppression now. Cool. I told the labor officer, "We'll fully cooperate." Then I dropped a notice in the company group chat. [Per Department of Labor guidance, the long weekend company retreat is canceled. Everyone should take the holiday off as usual.] [The travel stipends and retreat budget will be moved into this quarter's employee benefits reserve.] The second I hit send, something slammed into a desk outside my office.

My mother, Eleanor Thorne, dropped out of school at a young age to work, single-handedly raising my uncle, Logan Thorne, all on her own. Because of that bond, right before she passed away from a severe illness, she tightly held Logan’s hand and entrusted me to his care, begging him to look after me. With bloodshot eyes, Uncle Logan swore right beside her hospital bed that he would never let a single soul lay a finger on me for the rest of his life. When I was seven years old, my biological father, Richard Jennings, was preparing to remarry, and he muttered a cruel comment under his breath, calling me a piece of useless baggage. The next second, Logan smashed a glass bottle right over his head. "Who the hell do you think you are, talking to my little girl like that?" he roared. "Keep running your mouth, and I will personally ruin you!" Before his head wounds could even fully heal, Richard literally checked himself out of the hospital and fled the city, never daring to show his face around us again. During my high school years, a boy cornered me on the way home to force a love letter into my hands, which completely terrified me. Logan flew into an absolute rage. That very afternoon, he brought a crew and broke the boy's leg. That act invited a violent retaliation. Logan was targeted in a brutal hit-and-run and left for dead on the asphalt. He spent three grueling days fighting for his life in the ICU before the doctors finally pulled him back from the brink. Yet, the exact moment he was discharged from the hospital, he tracked that student down again and beat him within an inch of his life. I was utterly horrified. Desperate to prevent my uncle from hurting anyone else on my account, I, Maisie Thorne, secretly applied to a university overseas without telling him, leaving the country for three long years. On the eve of Logan’s wedding, he personally flew out on a private jet to pick me up and bring me back home. That night, we sat down to have a quiet dinner together. But the night took a twisted turn when his fiancée mistook me for a hidden mistress. "So, you're the little obsession my husband can't seem to stop thinking about," Victoria Vane sneered, glaring at me. "I’ve heard all about the mysterious girl locked away in his private thoughts. Let's see how much sleeping around you can do once I strip that pretty little face right off your head, Maisie Thorne!"

I was crushed into a pulp by a speeding semi-truck while my mother was at a baking class with my cousin. When I called her, desperate, she only snapped at me. "What's all the racket? Kyle burned his hand because your call distracted him. Did you do that on purpose?" The next day, in her capacity as one of the city's most celebrated morticians, she was assigned to restore the face of a body mangled beyond recognition. She worked on it for a full day and night and still couldn't bring back the dead woman's face. Mom, can you really not recognize her? That's the face of the daughter you hated most.

The day after my wife, Evie Sandoval, jumps into the river and commits suicide, her family, the Sandovals, hold a funeral for her. Upon hearing the news, I put on a bespoke suit and a red glittery tie, attending the funeral in full regalia. However, the moment I step inside, her parents begin hurling insults at me. "How dare you show your face, Michael Chandler! You murderer!" "If it hadn't been for you abusing her all these years, Evie would never have jumped into that river!" I simply smile at them and calmly pull out a Bluetooth speaker from my bag before blasting some disco music. "Come on, everyone! Shake your booty to the music with me!"

I'm the only son of my parents, who are the richest people in the country. Yet, they decide to raise me while giving me as little money as possible. In order to toughen me up, they decide to only give me five thousand dollars per year. "Two thousand dollars is for college tuition, and the remaining three thousand dollars is for your living costs and accommodation. If you want to stay at home, you'll need to pay rent—500 dollars a day. If you don't have the money, you can write an IOU." But I end up getting robbed that night, leaving me penniless. In order to be able to continue my college studies, I can only ask my parents for money. Of course, they turn me down immediately. "You actually learned how to lie just to swindle more money from us, eh? Since you refuse to learn your lesson, your allowance for next year will be cut in half." My parents refuse to listen to my explanation and insist on kicking me out. So, I can only work three jobs per day, allowing me to save up two thousand dollars. But the moment I save the money in my account, it gets frozen instantly. That's when my parents begin mocking me. "And here you are, claiming that you didn't lie to us! Where did you get the tuition fees from, then? We shall confiscate the money as a form of punishment. You can use the rest of your money for your studies." Amid my despair, I see the live comments streaking before my eyes. "The male lead's parents want him to realize that it isn't easy living out there. When they hired the thugs to rob him blind, their hearts ached so much for him that they cried." "I hope that the male lead can grow up as soon as possible. That way, the misunderstanding will get resolved, and the family of three can continue living happily ever after." But this time, the comments can no longer console me. I place the house keys on the porch quietly before turning on my heel and walking away. I don't want these parents of mine anymore.

This was the hundredth time Mom caught Dad throwing thousands of dollars at social media influencers. She didn't scream or make a scene for the entire construction crew to laugh at anymore, nor did she pause her work. Dad thought she had finally learned her place and grown sensible. The very next month, he invited every single worker on the job site to attend his wedding. However, he kept Mom and me out of it. When the workers returned, they were all gossiping about how Mom, the worn-out house-cat, had been replaced by a beauty. The bride was a meticulously dolled-up young woman. I had seen her on his phone many times. Every time, she would be wearing next to nothing, dancing on camera while calling my dad her "Big Spender", right before Dad transferred amounts of money to her with many zeros at the end. Mom looked calmly at them. Unfastening her apron, she thrust the spatula into the woman's hands. "The workers' massive daily meals will be on you from now on." Dad's expression hardened instantly, and he slapped Mom's hand away. "Are you out of your mind?! There are over a hundred people on this site. How could you possibly make Abigail cook for them? It would wear her out! She married me to live in luxury!" "And living in a shack on a construction site isn't too much for our daughter?" The young woman stepped forward to play the peacemaker. "Oh, I heard you and my husband started working on construction sites together ten years ago. The kid must be totally used to it by now. "You can just stay on as the housekeeper. I won't kick you guys out." As if granting charity, Dad commanded Mom, "Hurry up and thank Abigail for her generosity. She's the new matriarch around here. We're all one family now." Mom didn't say another word, simply closing the drafty corrugated tin door. "Bailey, I saved up a bit of money. How about I take you somewhere else to go to school?"

Petra Winslow was the universally acknowledged ice queen of our research institute, and she claimed she could hear what animals were saying. When our convoy was passing through Greyridge bear territory, she suddenly called for us to stop and pointed at a bear by the roadside. "It says it's starving. Let's get out and feed it. I can hear its thoughts. Trust me, it won't hurt us." In my last life, I had refused without hesitation. "That's a Greyridge bear, not some housecat. It'll tear through you like you're made of paper." The team backed down. Later, when news broke that the bear had died, Petra publicly blamed me for it. "I told everyone that the bear was starving, and he stopped us. He's the one who killed it." The internet tore me apart, and Petra's followers stabbed me to death. When I opened my eyes again, there it was on the other side of the windshield, a skeletal Greyridge bear standing by the road. Petra's eyes glistened with tears. "The poor thing. If we don't feed it now, it'll starve to death." The others turned to me. "Come on, Petra said it's hungry, so it's hungry." "Don't chicken out on us." I pulled the car over, reached for my seatbelt, and clicked it tight. "Sure. I'm all for it. Go right ahead."

During the dinner rush, the lobby of Aurelia Heights suddenly exploded into chaos. A woman from one of the penthouse duplexes stormed downstairs and blocked my delivery scooter. “Everyone, come look at how disgusting this delivery guy is!” With that, she threw a half-spilled bowl of lobster bisque at my feet. In her other hand, she held up what she claimed was surveillance footage. The residents walking their dogs and the security guards nearby immediately gathered around. “No wonder my takeout has been smelling weird lately. So these delivery drivers have been spitting in our food to get back at us?” “That’s disgusting. Guys like him can’t stand seeing other people doing better than they are. No wonder he’s stuck delivering food for a living.” “Management really needs to be stricter. People who dress like that could be carrying who knows what. How can you let them into a luxury building like ours?” The penthouse lady grew even more smug. She pointed right at my nose and snapped, “Young man, there’s nothing wrong with being poor. But at least have some dignity.” “How much do you even make per delivery? Five dollars? Is that worth throwing away your conscience over? Is this how your parents taught you to behave?” To curry favor with the residents, the head of security even came at me with a baton, shouting that he was going to drag me to the police station himself. But the thing was, I had never cared about that five-dollar delivery fee in the first place. I was the captain of the city's Major Crimes Unit. The delivery uniform was just a disguise. I was only here to get close to the high-priority fugitive hiding inside this building. The penthouse lady’s husband.

After my family is burdened with a debt of 5,000,000 dollars, I become the only person in the family who can no longer afford to "die". Dad is trampled in the mud by our creditors, protecting what's left of my school tuition fees even if it means breaking his fingers. He roars, "You can hit me, but don't you lay a finger on my daughter!" At that moment, Dad's small, hunched figure becomes a debt that I can never repay in my lifetime. Meanwhile, Mom kneels before the creditors, grovelling in the mud as she begs for a few more days of grace. Burdened by Mom and Dad's love for me, I drop out of school and go to work at a factory to make as much money as I can as quickly as possible to pay back the debt. Ultimately, my landlord kicks me out of my lodging on Christmas Eve. I'm also sporting a high fever in the snow, but my wages from the factory are still unpaid. I call Mom and beg her to transfer just 50 dollars to help me out. However, she doesn't sound concerned or anxious on the other end of the line and utters in disgust, "Haven't you gotten your wages already, Carolyn Swanson? "How dare you lie to us? Who taught you that? If you can't afford to buy the meds for your so-called fever, then you might as well just die!" Then, she hangs up on me cruelly. I grip my phone in my hands, watching the snow falling from the sky. My hands feel even colder than the icy ground at this point.

My older sister, Lucy Wheeler, is an extremely sensitive person. She'll burst into tears immediately if her doll is dirty or if a cream puff bursts in advance. In order to maintain peace in the household, my parents will fulfill any of Lucy's wishes endlessly. Since she doesn't like me at all, my parents don't hesitate to kick me back to my grandparents' home in the countryside. Later on, Grandpa and Grandma pass away one after the other, leaving me with no choice but to go home to my parents and Lucy. That's when everyone sets up 3672 house rules for me to follow. Since Lucy loves blueberries, I'm not allowed to touch any of them. Since Lucy loves dresses, I'm not allowed to look prettier than her. After undergoing 20 years of torment, I end up contracting breast cancer, resulting in my tragic death. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the first day I've gotten home after my grandparents' passing. Lucy is extremely sensitive, right? Well then, I'd like to see which one's the more superior weapon—her tears or my fists!

Ever since I was young, I've always been the one made an example of. It's as though I exist solely to teach my older brother, Irwin Blanchard, a lesson. When Irwin spends 50 dollars in an online game, Mom makes me pay off the debt for Irwin so that she can teach him to cherish money. When Irwin gets caught for stealing, Mom forces me to kneel down in front of the store owner and slap myself repeatedly while begging for forgiveness. This is her attempt to teach Irwin to always feel shame and be humble. After Irwin starts junior high, he gets addicted to soft drinks. That's when Mom fills soda bottles with pesticide and places them in the most obvious spots in the living room. When I accidentally drink from a soda bottle, I'm in so much pain and agony that I keep rolling all over the floor. Dad quickly drives me to the hospital that night. On the way there, we are flagged down by a traffic officer, who's there to catch those who drink and drive. Even though Dad has already passed the breathalyzer test, Mom exclaims while laughing, "Your device really is useless! He already had a bottle of beer, and yet it couldn't even detect the alcohol in his breath!" Meanwhile, I feel as though my guts are on fire as I curl up in the backseat. Yet, Mom turns to stare at Irwin. "You see now? This is what you get for drinking!" Too engrossed in nagging Irwin's ear off, Mom fails to notice the fact that my breathing is growing weaker. Mom, are you happy now that your lesson has cost me my life?

As the sole heiress of the illustrious Chapman family, I am born with severe sensory hypersensitivity, causing overwhelming episodes. Raised like a princess by my three fiercely protective older brothers—Adam, Beau, Claude—every detail of my life is tailored to perfection. Even the temperature of my drinking water has to be measured to the decimal. Everything changes when a new intern, Sunny Sinclair, joins Chapman Group. She calls herself Sunny the Sunshine, yet all she does is lower her head and wipe her tears whenever trouble arises. Somehow, she bewitches all three of the Chapman brothers. Before long, they start calling me difficult and spoiled, praising her instead for being humble, sensible, and easy to please. Then comes my birthday party. Sunny arrives wearing my haute couture gown and breaks the vintage pearl bracelet my late mother has left me as an heirloom. With reddened eyes, she hides behind Adam Chapman, my eldest brother, and whispers, "I didn't mean to. I just wanted to touch it." My second brother, Beau Chapman, looks at me with icy contempt and scolds me for being spoiled. My third brother, Claude Chapman, gently wipes away Sunny's tears, comforting her. I stand there in silence for three seconds. Then, my hypersensitive attack strikes. Clutching my chest, I break down on the spot, sobbing until my whole body convulses before collapsing to the floor. The three brothers who have been condemning me earlier turn deathly pale. They drop to their knees in panic, begging me to breathe. Too bad. When someone with a rare condition like mine is pushed past the limit, the consequences can be life-threatening.

My sense of direction has always been terrible since young. Getting lost is a norm for me. When I was eight years old, I had to face the worst consequences of getting lost. That time, I almost got kidnapped by human traffickers. So, my older sister, Aubrey Cochran, gifts me a GPS watch and repeatedly teaches me how to use it. "As long as you follow the GPS, you can find your way home. Have you remembered it yet?" I nod heavily. Since then, the watch stays strapped onto my wrist. But later on, my adoptive mom has found her actual son. That's when the entire family's attitude toward me begins shifting. They no longer panic even when I don't return for the day. This year's Thanksgiving holidays are coming soon. Aubrey decides to take me on a trip out of the blue. Our trip lasts for more than a dozen days. Our last stop is a remote village. There, Aubrey takes my watch from me and fiddles with it for a long time. At the start of the next day, I can't get in touch with her no matter how hard I try. As I stare at the unfamiliar GPS coordinates on my watch, I feel realization dawning on me immediately. When I'm about to leave, a villager looks at me in confusion. "You're leaving too, eh? Where are you headed to?" I smile at her. "I'm going home." Since Aubrey doesn't want me anymore, I shall grant her wish.

When the prestigious Mercer family finally tracked my brother, Shawn, down, he was digging through a dumpster, trying to scrape together enough bottles and cans to pay for my surgery. He didn’t care about the fleet of luxury cars in front of him. His only condition for going with them was that they had to take me, his blind little sister, along too. However, when we arrived at the Mercer estate, their spoiled daughter, Ava—who was Shawn’s biological sister—looked at the two of us in our dirty, tattered clothes with absolute disgust. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel Shawn's protective arms around my shoulders. He leaned down and whispered, "Don't be afraid, El. I'm right here." With his exceptional talent, Shawn quickly outshone Ava in everything, and before long, her disgust for him turned into worship. However, he also left me far behind. Eventually, I could no longer join in on their conversations, and the younger sister Shawn spoke of was no longer me, but her. The breaking point came on the day he officially took over the Mercer family empire, when Ava and I both fell into the river at the same time. "Ava!" Shawn rushed over from a distance. There was a loud splash as he dove into the water and saved her, forgetting I was even there. My heart sank as I drowned in the water. I didn’t even try to struggle. Shawn lied to me. We were never actually family.

Mom had one rule, and she never let it go: one good deed a day. When I was little, I saved my allowance for an entire year to buy a doll. Then some girl beside me whispered that she wanted one too, and Mom ripped it out of my arms. "Do one good deed a day. Give her the doll." Later, I barely made it into the best high school in the county. I didn't even get to be happy before Mom told me she'd already signed me up for trade school. "Do one good deed a day. The girl who just missed the cutoff is poor. Give her your spot." Later, at trade school, my roommates stole every cent I had for food and rent. I called Mom, sobbing. "Do one good deed every day. Giving them your money still counts as doing something good." Later, I got a part-time job and ended up sold as a bride to some family way out in the sticks. I texted Mom, begging her to save me. Her reply popped up a second later. [Marriage means sticking it out. Give them a healthy baby boy, and that should cover ten years of good deeds.]