After Death Short Stories & Novels

I woke up in the past, on the eve of being traded by my family to that controlling mafia Don. Last life, his suffocating “love” and rigid rules strangled me to death. This time, watching my father’s eager face, I just smiled. “The engagement? Give it to your precious illegitimate daughter.” I walked away. Using the skills he forced me to learn, I secured my escape. On the day of his wedding to my replacement, I boarded a plane far from this gilded hell. Just before leaving, I pressed a button. The family mansion—the symbol of my old prison—erupted into a fireball behind me. Now, I’m thriving under the Mediterranean sun, free and wild. The once-untouchable Don is scouring the globe for me, unraveling. He found me at an airport, fell to his knees, his eyes desperate, begging me to come back. I lowered my sunglasses and looked at this stranger, my ex-fiancé, my voice utterly calm. “Do I know you?”

Seven years ago, my husband, the King of the Humans, banished me to the Everfrost Plains, where my life came to a tragic end. Seven years later, a grave illness befalls the Queen of the Humans, and blood spills endlessly from her lips. The clerics claim that I have cursed her. Only the blood taken from my heart can cure her fully. Gareth Lancaster, my former husband, comforts his new wife, the queen, and says, "You have nothing to fear. To think she's still trying to harm you, her older sister, even when she has been exiled! "I'll march to the Everfrost Plains right away and carve her heart out to use as your cure. Then, I'll have her soul sent to hell to suffer in torment for all eternity." Sword in hand, Gareth heads to the Everfrost Plains. He finds a Serpentkin, one who should've died in the Great War of the Beasts and Men seven years ago. The Serpentkin has frozen solid, standing before my grave with his hands clasped together as if in prayer. In front of my grave sits a young girl. She says, "You won't be able to take my mother's heart. She died many years ago. I stayed here to let the truth be known to all…"

When I was sixteen, a criminal broke into our home, tortured and murdered my mother, then set the house on fire to destroy the evidence. I was there and saw everything. My father, my uncle, and the police asked me again and again what happened that night. I refused to speak. They thought the shock had left me unable to speak, so they gave me a pen and asked me to write down what the killer looked like. I still said nothing and made no move to write. Ten years later, I was twenty-six. My father and I fell out over my mother’s case. We went eight years without seeing each other. Then, out of nowhere, he came to see me. I came home from work to my rented apartment and opened the door. He and my uncle were inside, watching me with cold expressions. “Lynn, were you the one who killed your mother?”

When I'm eight, my younger sister, Rachel Gaffney, unplugs the battery powering my artificial heart so she can charge her phone. By the time Mom and Dad find me, my skin has turned blue, and I'm barely breathing. The doctors save my life, but I'm left with serious health problems that never go away. After that, Rachel might as well be invisible to Mom and Dad. They stop smiling at her and barely speak to her. All their time and attention go to me instead. Dad takes a job overseas just to pay for the monthly maintenance on my artificial heart, while Mom quits her job to stay by my side around the clock. She even fasts one day a week, praying that I'll be given more time. I may never be healthy again, but at least Mom and Dad love me. Then, on the day Rachel's college applications are due, the power suddenly goes out. With only minutes left before the deadline, Mom pulls the battery from my artificial heart and hooks it up to the computer. The warning alarm in my chest immediately starts blaring. I reach for her. "Mom, stop. My heart…" She slaps me hard across the face, her eyes red. "We've punished Rachel for ten years over that stupid battery! There are other backups in the house. Why can't you use one of those? "You've already cost her her childhood. Are you really going to cost her her future too? How can you be this cruel?" Mom locks me in my bedroom, leaving me without my battery. Rachel submits her applications on time, and soon I hear everyone cheering in the living room. I go down hard on the floor. The shrill alarm in my chest finally goes quiet. I whisper, "Mom, I'll never be a burden to you again."

It's only a day after my death, and my wife, Abbie Johnson, is at a hotel with her first love, wearing a red dress. I once told her while I was drunk, "Next life around, I'll let you go. And I'll set myself free, too." Abbie just rolled her eyes and scoffed. "I can't wait. Hope that day comes sooner." Now she gets her wish. I'm gone. She walks right past my body without batting an eye. Yet the moment they slide me into the incinerator, she suddenly charges forward like she has lost her mind. "Can we please just stop fighting?"

When volunteers were being chosen for the dorm fire drill, I instinctively moved toward the back of the group. I had asthma, and the last thing I wanted was to be picked. But my own brother, standing at the front, called my name without hesitation. "Quinn Warren, step forward!" I had barely opened my mouth when my best friend, Kenzie Lane, coughed softly beside me and raised her hand. "Captain, Quinn isn't feeling well. Cough, cough... Why don't I take her place?" My brother's expression darkened, and somehow, that only made him angrier. He shot me a vicious glare. "Quinn, what's with the act? "Kenzie isn't even feeling well herself, and she's still offering to take your place. Meanwhile, you're always coming up with excuses to get out of doing anything. "I might let it slide any other time, but this is fire safety. Everyone's life could depend on it. This isn't just about you!" Then, without hesitation, he made me the first one to enter the simulated fire zone. The hallway was thick with choking smoke, and within moments, I could barely breathe. I turned back to him and pleaded in a weak voice. "Please... I can't breathe. Can I..." He didn't even let me finish. He grabbed me and dragged me straight into the storage room, where the smoke was at its thickest, then ordered me to stay behind as the "model student" who would be the last person evacuated from the entire floor. As the suffocation closed in, my vision slowly went black. I slid down the wall until I collapsed onto the floor. It wasn't until the alarm signaling the end of the drill finally rang that my soul walked out of the smoke.

At the ceremony where my mother, Helena Marlow, received the Best Homeroom Teacher award, the parents wept with gratitude. They praised her for nurturing the students successfully without ever resorting to harsh discipline, and for helping them all to excellent results. But no one knew that the path to their children’s success had been paved by Mom, using me as a warning to others. When someone in the class stole money, cheated on an exam, or got into a romantic relationship, I was the one punished. During the ceremony, the principal, Ms. Wanda Ambrose, stepped onto the stage to present her award. She asked, “Ms. Marlow, you have so many outstanding students in your class. Which student are you most proud of?” Mom smiled with quiet pride. “They are all like my own children. I love every one of them.” Then she let out a small sigh. “Except for my daughter. She alone fails to live up to expectations and disappoints me every time.” Laughter and applause rose from the audience below the stage. They nodded in understanding and praised her for being so modest. I drifted to her side and looked at the satisfied curve of her lips before speaking softly. “Don’t worry, Mom. From now on, I won’t disappoint you anymore.”

I was slowly dying from Silverthorn Wolfsbane, and there was only one cure—the Miracle Elixir. But my mate, Leo Ashford, bought it and gave it to my adoptive sister, Jane Smith. He did it because he thought I was faking my illness. I gave up on the treatment and swallowed a potent painkiller instead. It would kill me in three days by shutting down my organs. In those three days, I gave up everything. I handed over the fur manufacturing business I built from the ground up to Jane, and my parents praised me for caring about my sister. I offered to sever our mate bond, and Leo praised me for finally being sensible. When I told my son he could call Jane "mommy", he happily said that his new mommy was the best! I transferred all my savings to Jane, and no one seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. They were just pleased with my "better behavior". "Viola is finally not so bad." I wondered—would they regret it after I was gone?

Everyone in Crowglade knows that my wife, Sophia Tuson, treats me and my son, Ashton Yates, as the apples of her eye. When I want to stargaze, she spends 100 million dollars to create an extravagant meteor shower for me. Ashton loves carousels, so she builds the biggest amusement park in the city and names it after him. She has never been stingy when it comes to showering us with love. When Ashton and I get into a car accident, Sophia hires a renowned medical team to save my life. Mustering what little strength I have left, I tell her to save Ashton first. Sophia's voice is thick with tears when she tells me that Ashton has already died of excessive bleeding on the way to the hospital. Overwhelmed by grief, I can't hold on anymore and faint. When I regain consciousness, I hear Sophia speaking with the doctor outside the door. "Mr. Ashton could have been saved, Ms. Tuson. Why did you just watch your son die without lifting a single finger to help him?" "The purpose of Ashton's existence is to save Harold's and my child," Sophia says nonchalantly. "I can't openly remove his heart and give it to Micah if he doesn't die. I've treated Gabriel and Ashton very well in the past few years. Now, it's their turn to repay me." It turns out that Sophia only treated me and Ashton so well because she wanted Ashton's heart in exchange for her kindness. She's the one who orchestrated the tragedy that befell us. If that's the case, I will grant her wish.

I loved Adriano Ferraro—yeah, that Don—for five freaking years. He wasn't just my fiancé; he was my anchor in a world where loyalty got tested, and weakness got you killed. We had it all mapped out—dreams, plans, a future we actually thought we owned. Until I lost our baby. I reached for him, shaking, desperate for anything. But comfort never came. Instead, it was her. His stepsister, propped up. "Don't buy her act. She's just fishing for attention—again." That snake smiled like she just won a prize for emotional torture, dripping venom while fanning the flames. And Adriano? He bought it. He turned away. In that moment, it hit me—I wasn't just grieving. I was completely alone. The kid I carried, the future I built in my head? Gone. And so was I. I walked out. On him. On the Ferraro Family I was stupid enough to think I could belong to. All I left behind was silence. Empty space where we used to be. Now Adriano's drowning in regret, but it's too damn late. The life we should've had, the love we should've built? Dust. And her? The stepsister who ruined it all? She's paying for every lie.

Three days before I got married, Evan Jones' claustrophobic ex-girlfriend cornered my car at the cliff of a winding road and rammed into me 12 times. When Evan arrived with the police, I was being rescued by the firefighters from my driver's seat, which had been smashed out of shape. However, Evan went to the limited-edition sports car, which had only lost some paint, and carried the trembling Nikki Shore in his arms. "Evan, Madison is bleeding on her forehead; she needs to get it stitched up at the hospital." However, Evan stopped my stretcher from getting into the car and glanced at my bleeding forehead and bruised arms. "These are just minor injuries, but Nikki has claustrophobia. Her condition will only get worse, and she has to go to the hospital first." As I was about to be left behind, I used the last of my strength to grab Evan by his pant leg. He frowned and pried off my fingers. "Nikki didn't crash into you on purpose. It's just her condition acting up. You're a lawyer, and you should know how some things are beyond our control, so stop making a fuss right now." With that, his assistant handed him a settlement agreement, and Evan grabbed my limp wrist to print my fingerprint on the papers. "Just bear with this. The ambulance will be coming soon."

When my ex-husband, Hanson Rowse, got remarried, I jumped into the ocean with our ten-year-old daughter, Tess Rowse, in my arms. The police called Hanson and my parents. The wedding reception was cut short, and they all rushed over. My soul hung in the air above it all, watching as Tess was pulled from the water. The sight of her hit like a blade to the chest. At the hospital, my parents looked at her with nothing but cold indifference. My brother, Edward Wells, didn't hesitate. He stepped forward and slapped her hard across the face. "You're just like your mother! Always causing trouble and pulling cheap stunts like this just to get attention." Hanson's fists clenched. He scanned the area, and when he couldn't see me anywhere, anger spilled into his eyes. "Where's Melody? She picked my wedding day to pull this stunt, and now she won't even show her face? If she really wanted to die, why leave behind this burden?" At his words, Tess suddenly moved. She stumbled toward the window, climbed up, and before anyone could react, she jumped. The room went dead silent for a heartbeat. Then, the screaming started. What they didn't know was this: the first thing Tess and I learned at that reform school was obedience.

Eight years ago, she sent the most dangerous man in New York to prison. Eight years later, he sat in a Cadillac parked by the Brooklyn Bridge, a cold smile on his face as he said, “A woman like you deserves to be alone.” No one knew she was sick with Alzheimer’s. It had gotten so bad that she could not even remember the way home. Yet, she remembered his face. She remembered every word he had ever said to her. She even remembered the star named “Christine.” On the first page of her diary, the same sentence was written over and over again. “Vincent Medici is the most important person in this world. No matter who I forget, I must never forget Vincent Medici.” She waited for him for eight years, but in the end, what she got was his indifference, news of his wedding, and him saying to her that someone like her did not deserve to be loved. She didn’t argue. Instead, on the last page of her diary, she quietly wrote, “That’s okay. I’m going to be with my mom now.” Amidst the five thousand streets in New York, he never found her again after that.

On their 30th wedding anniversary, my parents decided to revisit the place where they'd first met to celebrate their love. But an accident took their lives in Everpeak, the very place where their love story had begun. Charlie Fenton promised to go with me to settle their affairs. But along the way, he cruelly abandoned me for another girl. I clung to him, tears streaming down, and begged him not to leave me. But he ignored my pleas and walked away without looking back. Just when I'd fallen into complete despair, a man wearing a highland robe rode toward me through the night. He saved my life and made me give up on Charlie for good. Later, word had it that even after using every bit of the Fenton family's power and influence, their golden boy still couldn't win back the little princess he'd lost to that mysterious, powerful man.

My boyfriend, Yves Steward, is the head of the orthopedic department. When Julia Henderson and I get into an accident at the same time, he pushes my hands away and shouts, "Stop this nonsense, Summer Simpson! Julia needs to be operated on immediately!" So, I'm the one who deserves to die. The day my skeleton is donated to the orthopedic department, Yves sits in his office for a day and night. Later, the man known as the hospital's genius orthopedist never holds a scalpel ever again.

The day Guglielmo Raimondi takes over as the Don, I receive a final notice from the hospital because I can no longer afford my dialysis treatments. On the TV, Guglielmo sits at the head of a long table in a black suit. He is giving an interview on a live broadcast. The host asks, "Don Raimondi, if you could say one thing to the person you regret losing most in the past, what would you say?" Guglielmo hesitates for a moment before picking up his phone and making a call. My phone starts vibrating on the hospital bed. I hear him ask, "You left me because you thought I was broke. Do you regret it now?" I look at the enormous bill for my kidney transplant. The fees show a string of zeros I can never afford. "Guglielmo, for old times' sake, can you lend me one million dollars?" The call ends abruptly. On the live broadcast, Guglielmo blocks my number in front of the camera. He says, "I have no regrets anymore." What he doesn't know is that when he was poisoned in the past, his kidneys failed. When he is on the verge of death, I secretly donate one of my kidneys to him.

To punish me for losing my autistic younger brother, Ezra Clement, Mom locks me inside a custom-made steel box. The box is about 20 inches wide and is welded in place in the deepest corner in our basement. "There's a walkie-talkie inside. You'll stay in there until you admit that you deliberately left Ezra beside the human traffickers' van." She locks the lid, plunging me into darkness. For the first three days, I cry and beg through the walkie-talkie, trying to tell Mom that I only let go of Ezra's hand to lure the traffickers away from him. One of the traffickers has slashed me across the back, and the wound keeps bleeding and festering. But Mom refuses to listen to anything I have to say. All I hear are her furious accusations. "Evelyn, you're just jealous of Ezra. A vicious sister like you deserves to be locked in there until you die." On the fourth day, torrential rain floods the basement. Muddy water rises past my knees, soaking the knife wound on my back in filthy water. The pain is so unbearable that I claw at the metal walls until all ten of my fingernails tear and break. I desperately press the talk button. But all I hear from the other end is Mom's gentle voice coaxing Ezra to sleep. To prevent me from disturbing him, she powers it off. When the water that is mingled with the blood from my mangled fingers rises above my head and floods into my nose, I stop struggling. Mom has no idea that on the back of our family photo, I have written down my plan to work hard, earn money, and pay for Ezra's treatment. Helplessly, I think, "Mom, I confess. In my next life, I will never be your daughter again."

When I was six, I eagerly asked Mom when she was going to give me a little sister. Her heart softened, and she said yes. But on the day she gave birth, she suffered an amniotic fluid embolism and died on the operating table, along with my unborn sister. From then on, Dad hated me with everything he had. He screamed at me hysterically, "If you hadn't kept begging for a sister, your mom wouldn't be dead! Why couldn't it have been you instead?" I knelt on the floor, sobbing out an apology. "I'm sorry, Dad! I was wrong! I'll never want a little sister again!" Dad stormed out and slammed the door behind him. He never came back. After three days without food, I called and begged him to bring me something to eat. He sounded completely fed up. "Isn't there flour in the kitchen? Eat some flour. You'll live." I couldn't find any flour, only a small bottle of powder. So I ate that. Soon, a twisting pain tore through my stomach. I collapsed, and everything went dark. Trembling, I made one last call to Dad. The moment he picked up, I smiled through my tears. "Dad, I think I can go be with Mom now..."

When my parents came to take me home, I accidentally switched souls with Ava, a girl from the mountains. The moment my mother saw the certificate proving that Ava had ranked first in the entire county, her eyes filled with tears. "Looks like sending you to the mountains to suffer for half a year was the right decision. "Back then, getting you to study was like pulling teeth. Now you finally understand that everything we did was for your own good." I burst into tears and rushed forward, throwing my arms around my mother's legs. "Mom, I'm the real Sophie!" She kicked me hard, sending me sprawling into the mud. "Where did this wild child come from? You're just as disobedient as the old Sophie!" My parents took away the "me" carrying Ava's soul, leaving the real me behind in the mountains. For the next five years, I endured endless hard labor, slept in a pigsty, and suffered relentless abuse before I finally found a chance to escape. But when I returned home, my mother looked at me with disgust and drove me away. "My daughter just made it through the national competition. How could she possibly be someone like you? If you dare spout that nonsense again, I'll have you locked up in a mental hospital!" I cried until my entire body shook, but I refused to give up. That night, I climbed over the wall and slipped back into the house. That's when I heard my father ask my mother, "We didn't know about the soul swap back then. But now that she's found her way back... are we really not going to acknowledge her?" My mother let out a cold laugh. "What would be the point of taking her back? Should we let her ruin the Sophie we have now? She's hopeless. Even being thrown into the mountains couldn't change her. Someone like her deserves to die." A sharp pain ripped through my stomach. I coughed up a mouthful of blood. "Mom... This body has stomach cancer. Just as you wished... I'm going to die."

I've been married to Federico Moretti for four years, and the entire time, we've lived in a run-down basement. He works three jobs, all to save up money to buy me a house filled with morning sunlight and make it our home. So when the doctor gives me my diagnosis, all I can think about is how I'm about to become a burden to him. When I get home, Federico is crouched in front of a leaking pipe, wrapping tape around it. He looks up and spots the hospital envelope in my hand, his expression darkening. "Sera, how many times have I told you? Those white coats are all crooks. Look at Alfredo's mom. She had a whole bunch of tests done and spent all that money, only to get better after drinking some mulled wine." I glance down at the diagnosis report and suddenly smile. "What if I really am dying?" He frowns. "Don't talk like that. We still owe each other a real wedding. And if you're really sick, I'll make sure you get treated, even if I have to sell my own organs." That night, I swallow all my painkillers at once, determined not to be a burden to him anymore. When I open my eyes again, I'm floating in midair, watching Federico sit on a leather couch inside a private manor. Julia Rossi leans against one of the pillars in the living room, a glass of wine in hand and smiling. "Mr. Moretti, it must have been rough on you, living in that pigeonhole day after day, pretending to be poor for her." Federico takes off his cheap digital watch and tosses it into the fireplace. "You know I love her. But the Black Crown values loyalty above all else, and in my position as Underboss, everyone around me has an angle. Without a setup like this, how could I ever be sure she loves me for who I am and not for my power and money?" Only now do I understand. All those years of scraping by are nothing but a test he carefully staged. However, it has cost me my life.