After Death Short Stories & Novels

I, Addie Starr, am the second child my parents have after an unexpected pregnancy. My older sister, Amanda Starr, cries because she believes that I will take away our parents' love and money. After she develops depression, she constantly threatens to kill herself. My parents come to hate me for it. They swear to Amanda, "Sweetheart, you're the only princess in our family. Just think of your sister as a maid we brought to you." From then on, all the dirty and exhausting chores in the house become my responsibility. When Amanda becomes emotionally unstable and threatens to cut her wrists, my parents hold out my arm for her. They say, "Sweetheart, if you need to take your anger out on someone, just cut her here." On the highway as we drive home for the New Year, Amanda's plushie falls out the window. Mom orders me to get out and retrieve it. Amid the speeding traffic, I grab the plushie, but all I see is a cloud of exhaust fumes. I remember the hateful looks in my parents' eyes as they tell me, "You should never have been born, understand? You almost destroyed this family!" So, when an out-of-control truck comes barreling toward me... I don't move.

On the night the real Shepherd heir is welcomed back to the wealthy family, my sister, Savannah Shepherd, kicks me out and dumps me at an orphanage. Overnight, my pampered, smooth-sailing life takes a 180-degree turn. The delinquents at the orphanage make my life a living hell. One day, they pin me in a cesspit, and I nearly suffocate. The next, they're whipping me raw until I can't even drag myself out of bed. I cry and beg the orphanage's director, Dee Juarez, to save me, but she only sneers at me with contempt. "If you weren't so cruel, why would your family have thrown you out? You brought this on yourself!" Her silent approval allows the delinquents to escalate their abuse, tormenting me until I'm barely a shell of myself. Then, on the night before New Year's Eve, they strip me naked and throw me out into a snowstorm. Only after my entire body is frozen rigid am I rushed to the emergency room. Through the haze of consciousness, Dee's mocking laugh fills the room. "Rich people sure know how to have fun. She kicked out her own brother just to keep her adopted brother from being bullied, and she even dumped a truckload of money on us just to teach him a lesson and smooth out his rough edges." Dee clicks her tongue. "Have you seen the news? His parents are spoiling that adopted boy rotten, while his sister has practically devoted herself to him. "Who knows if Ms. Shepherd will even bother showing up when I call? Either way, we're definitely not footing his medical bill." So that's the truth. As it turns out, all my suffering is nothing more than a twisted game Savannah engineered for Joey Shepherd's entertainment. My hands clutch the diagnosis report the doctor hands me—terminal bone cancer—and I laugh until tears stream down my face. Wonderful. Very soon, Joey really will be the only brother Savannah has left.

Everyone said my wife, Zoey Harper, was an amazing wife and mom who'd do anything for me and our son, Leo. Leo's doctor warned us three times that he might not make it. Then he died. Zoey claimed she was overseas for work. She wasn't. She'd invited Peter Cole—the first love she'd never gotten over—and his family to our apartment for dinner. I came home carrying Leo's urn, ready to confront her. Instead, she tossed my luggage into the hall. "We have guests, and we're out of rooms. Go stay somewhere else for a few days."

The day Grandma died, my parents, both of whom had remarried, began arguing over who would have to take me. In the original timeline, I had been concerned about Dad working himself so hard and chose to live with him so that I could be there for him. I even picked the numbers on the lottery ticket that won him a multimillion-dollar jackpot. After he became rich, he bought a nice place and luxury cars for my stepmother and their children. Yet he would not spend a cent on my pain medication. By the time doctors found the tumor in my brain, I could only lie in bed and endure the pain until it killed me. In the new timeline, Dad frowned and sighed again and again. “Your mom married a wealthy businessman. You’ll have a much better life with her. “I already have too many children at home. There just isn’t room for you.” Mom fiddled with her freshly manicured nails and replied indifferently, “That’s not fair. More children just make a home livelier. “My husband runs a very strict household, and the twins from his first marriage are impossible to deal with. “She has always done whatever she wants. They’ll eat her alive if she comes home with me.” Their attempts to push me toward each other no longer stirred any feelings in me. When they finally lost patience and demanded that I choose, I quietly picked up my suitcase and walked over to Mom. Her face immediately darkened. Dad, meanwhile, breathed a sigh of relief. He was unable to suppress a pleased little smile. However, he did not know that without me there to intervene, my stepmother would toss the winning lottery ticket into the washing machine and reduce it to a pile of soggy scraps. Having traveled back in time, I only wanted to live comfortably during whatever time I had left.

My husband Ezra Thorne had suddenly developed a mental illness, so I put every scheduled appearance on hold and spent three months with him at a private residential treatment center. After he fell ill, he flew into rages over the smallest things. The constant torment kept me awake night after night, yet I cared for him without complaint. That changed today, when he flew into another rage and said he hated the roof railing. He insisted I fix it. He shoved me out of the room, and I had no choice but to grab the toolbox and climb up to the roof. The rooftop was dangerously slippery. I crawled on my knees, inching forward as carefully as I could, but I still kept falling. After yet another fall, I grabbed the railing to pull myself up, only for it to give way beneath my hand. I plummeted straight off the roof. In the split second I fell, I caught a glimpse through the corridor window: Ezra and my sister, locked in an embrace, with my parents standing right beside them. Then I crashed into the bushes below and heard Ezra's voice drifting down from the window. "I've spent the past few days pretending to be crazy to make her pay for bullying you. Every opportunity she gave up is yours." I closed my eyes, too drained to call for help. So it had all been an elaborate performance staged to punish me. But what he didn't know was that my final curtain was about to fall for real.

When our whole family saw the death timer for my sister will end on her sixteenth birthday, she became the most important person in the family. She suddenly took priority in everything, from food to dresses, and even bedtime stories. I felt for her, but I was also jealous that she was given everything. However, a day before her sixteenth birthday, my parents locked me up in the storeroom in fear that I would make a mess of things. I kept hammering the door, crying, "Mom, let me out! I'm having a fever, and my head hurts!" Mom didn't believe me. "Just stop! Your sister will die in just a day, and you're playing sick to gain our sympathy?! Don't you understand anything?!" "No…" I tried my best to argue, only to hear my parents comforting my sister. Eventually, my consciousness blurred, and I heard nothing…

When my boyfriend, Caleb Steele, loses his family and everything he has, I walk away. After he makes a comeback, I come to see him every year. The first year, I hold my daughter, Claire Sutton, in my arms. Caleb throws fifty thousand dollars at me and tells me to stay away. The second year, I bring my late-stage cancer diagnosis, and he doesn't even look at it. Instead, he gives me a hundred thousand dollars and tells me to disappear for good. In the third and fourth years, I vanish just as he wants. Then, in the fifth year, he gets a call from Claire. "Mommy, when are you bringing me dinner? I'm hungry."

The day Dad moved into the new house with my stepmother Paula and my stepbrother Connor, they left me behind in the old apartment, all alone. I called him and told him the door lock was broken and the gas alarm inside wouldn't stop going off. Paula just sneered in the background. "Funny how the lock works every other day, but breaks the moment we're celebrating Connor's move, isn't it?" Dad was silent for a few seconds, then hung up on me. Then he texted me the new address. "You're twenty-four. Stop pulling these stunts for attention." "Deal with it yourself, then come over. Don't make your brother feel unwelcome!" When I tried calling again, it went straight to voicemail. He'd blocked my number. That night, my stepbrother unwrapped presents in the new house. Dad turned the room that was supposed to be mine into a gaming room and told the relatives I had a temper and refused to come. The next day, when he found out I hadn't shown up for work, all he did was post one line in the family group chat: "Threatening your family by going missing is childish." What he didn't know was that I would never see that message.

My adopted sister Serena and I went into heart failure at the same time and were admitted to the same hospital. But our parents were certain I was faking it to steal the spotlight, so they gave Serena the heart that was meant to save me. Once she was recovering from surgery, my don fiancé Rafael Valente finally came by my room. "No matter how thoroughly you play the victim, it won't change a thing." "Serena is your little sister. She's only twenty. How could you have the heart to take the organ that was going to save her life?" My face was bloodless. I opened my mouth to say that I was genuinely sick too. The next moment, Serena walked in with our parents and asked me through her tears, "Isabella, do you hate me for taking away everyone's love for you?" Rafael softened his voice and soothed her, patient. "It was always meant to be yours." Our parents shielded Serena behind them and glared at me, furious. I lay in the hospital bed and let out a soft sigh. "Don't worry. I won't 'compete' with Serena for anything ever again." After all, the doctor said I had three days left.

When I was twelve, my Alpha bloodline awakened early. The force of my wolf nearly sent my twin sister into cardiac arrest. The pack healer warned that if I completed my first shift before she did, my Alpha power would crush her still-dormant wolf—and kill her. To protect her, my parents kept my wolf suppressed for six years. On the Blood Moon marking our eighteenth birthday, they decided my sister had to shift first. They injected me with three times the usual dose of suppressants and locked me inside a silver cell. “Once her wolf is stable, we’ll let you out. No one will ever stop you from shifting again.” But when the silver began tearing through my wolf, no one believed my cries for help. My parents stayed beside my sister. My brother locked the silver door again with his own hands. Even my fated mate shut down our mate link. Under the Blood Moon, my sister finally completed her first shift. My family began preparing everything they had promised me—a ceremony of my own, my first real training, and the mate bond I had waited years to complete. But inside the silver cell, my wolf and I were already dead.

To help her childhood sweetheart, David Middleton, take my place studying abroad, my wife, Sharon Griffin, destroys my records and deliberately fills in false information, ensuring that I'm permanently denied a visa. She even severely injured my hands before sending me to the Behavioral Reform Center. My mother-in-law, Paula Brown, who has always treated me with affection, takes Sharon's side. "Kyle is so ungrateful. We gave him everything, and he still wanted to get a PhD abroad to find his biological parents. Who's going to take care of me if he's gone?" Sharon snorts. "He's just vain. When he found out I'd turned down Westbridge's offer of admission, he gave me the silent treatment and threatened to divorce me. If I let him go abroad, he'd think he could do whatever he wanted. "As my husband, he has everything he could ever need, yet he still wants to take David's opportunities away from him. Maybe the Behavioral Reform Center can teach him to appreciate what he has." A semester later, Sharon goes to the airport to pick up David, who's returning from his studies abroad. For the first time in a long while, she asks her assistant, Adam Norris, "It's been so long. Has Kyle learned his lesson? Tell him he can come home for the winter break." She doesn't know that I've already died on the very first day she sent me to that reform center.

My younger brother was severe panic fits. The healers said any sudden shock could kill him. So, my entire life was set to mute. I never dared to laugh. I never dared to cry. I wasn’t even allowed to bleed out loud. My parents would hug me and say, "You're our strong one. Your brother needs us. Be patient with him, alright?" Then came that day. I accidentally knocked over a sacred ritual tripod. The loud crash sent my brother straight into panic. For the first time, my father pushed me away with a blast of divine force. "Can’t you be careful?" he roared. "Are you trying to kill him?" I slammed violently against the stone pillars of the temple. The sheer impact ruptured my heart. But they all rushed to my screaming brother. Nobody looked at me. Agony tore through my chest as I lay on the cold floor, my vision fading to dark. They thought my brother came first. They thought my little blow could wait. They didn’t know that a ruptured heart don't wait for anyone. Not even the gods.

Since I was little, I've had the ability to see the Grim Reaper. After seeing the Reaper trailing behind my grandfather, my father, and my mother right before each of them passed away, my three older brothers concluded that I was a jinx. I was the one who brought disaster upon the family. From then on, I became the invisible one in the house. My oldest brother, Kieran, the Alpha, was too busy managing the pack to ever pay attention to me. My second brother, Rhys, was a gentle healer. But when I told him my stomach hurt, he just gave me a cold smile. "What does that have to do with me? As long as you don't bring us bad luck, I don't care." My third brother, Declan, was the pack's fiercest Gamma warrior. Whenever I got close, he’d clench his fists and warn me to stay the hell away from him. As for my younger sister, Chloe, they held her in the palms of their hands, treating her like a precious treasure. They called her their lucky star, because ever since she was born, everything in the family had gone perfectly.But didn't Mom die while giving birth to her? I was ignored for over a decade. Until the day of my eighteenth birthday, when the Grim Reaper stood by my bed. He told me he would come to take me away in three days. I wasn't sad. I just thought, this time, they’ll finally be happy, right? But on the day I actually died, the three of them cried.

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.

Mom raises me and my brother, Cameron Joyner, by herself after she gets a divorce. Cameron was born with congenital asthma and has to take medication every day. Although I'm healthier, Mom treats me better than Cameron. She always says, "You're the apple of my eye, Cassie. I don't want you to feel troubled because of Cam." From the very beginning of my life, I've always been number one in Mom's heart. However, the year I turn 15, Cameron suddenly disappears. Mom completely changes after he goes missing.

I have a congenital heart defect, and the doctors say I won't make it past 18. When I am ten, my parents bring home a blind child, saying she is my twin sister, Everly Wallace. My family spoils me rotten, but they treat Everly like a ghost. Everyone says Everly exists only to give me her heart. I try so hard to be good to this sister who shares my face, desperate to ease my guilt. When I reach 18, I lie on the operating table. Except they don't take my heart. They take my corneas. I die after that, while Everly finally sees the light.

Yarden Stone had been cheating on me for three years, yet he had hidden the other woman so well that I could never catch him. Once, I found a lace choker in the back seat of his car. It still held someone’s body warmth. More than once, I had noticed fresh bite marks behind his ear. Every time, I would lose my mind. I would tear the house apart and demand to know who the woman was. Yarden would always frown wearily. “Lily, how long are you going to keep suspecting me of cheating? If you’re going to accuse me, then at least find the woman you claim I’m seeing.” I started following him around twenty-four hours a day. I even called all our friends and relatives and had them wait outside hotels and apartment buildings to catch him in the act. But every time we broke down a door, we found Yarden sitting on the couch in perfectly neat clothes. He always said, “Are you going to search this place?” When we left, my mom took my hand and sighed. “Lily, trust is the most important thing in a marriage. You cause a scene every day. What do you think that does to Yarden’s reputation?” Even my best friend tried to talk some sense into me. “You’re under too much stress. Maybe it’s all in your head.” But I remembered the lipstick that was still on Yarden Stone’s lips. He had not wiped it off completely. The color was so bright that it almost hurt my eyes.

Every time my wife, Jocelyn Seacross, visits her childhood sweetheart, Levi Anderson, who is terminally ill, she hints to me that maybe we should get a divorce. She says it's because Levi's dying wish is to have a proper place in her life. Today, she hints at it again. I don't kick up a fuss and simply say, "Okay." Because this conversation has already happened 99 times. This is the hundredth time this conversation has come up, and I finally find a reason to convince myself to let her go—our child is dead. Now, all that remains between Jocelyn and me are two certified copies of the marriage certificate.

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 my sister and I were born, a prophet foretold that my sister would fall into a deep depression because I was more gifted than she was. On the day of the Fire Dragon Clan's Trial, she would throw herself into the frozen lake and never resurface. To protect her, my parents locked me in the freezing chamber on the day of the Trial. I knelt and begged them until my knees bled. My mother shoved me inside and sealed the door from the outside with a barrier. "You know your sister will die because of you, and you still insist on taking the Trial? How is that anything but trying to get her killed?" The chamber had already dropped to a hundred and twelve degrees below zero, yet I was wearing nothing but a short-sleeved shirt. I threw myself against the barrier, desperate to break out. "Mother, it's freezing in here! Please let me out!" "You're a fire dragon. A little cold can't hurt you. Who are you trying to fool?" My mother's voice was edged with impatience. "The barrier blocks your magic, but we didn't even turn on the refrigeration system. Your sister will be safe soon. Can't you think of her for once?" The sound of their wingbeats faded. My scales cracked from the cold, and blood dripped onto the floor. The barrier had sealed away my magic, and the chill quickly sank deep into my bones. I knelt on the floor as my body stiffened, inch by inch.