After Death Short Stories & Bias Face Slapping Novels

At the Christmas dinner table, my drunk uncle suddenly turned on my mom. “You know, Sis, you’re pretty shameless, aren’t you? Every year, I give Anna five hundred bucks as a Christmas gift, but you’ve never given my daughter anything!” The rest of the family had clearly been holding this in for a while. Since someone had said it out loud, they all jumped in at once to accuse my mother of always taking and never giving. They called her selfish and stingy. My mother suddenly grabbed me by the hair and slapped me. “Anna, why didn’t you tell me you got money from them? Have you been hiding cash? You made me look like I can’t return a simple favor! Happy now?” I had clearly given her everything I ever received! With the way she twisted the truth, I ended up becoming the liar in everyone’s eyes. As a result, later that night, when a fishbone got lodged in my throat and I choked, everyone just sat there laughing and watching. They were convinced that not only had I lied about the gift money, but I was also trying to scam them for medical bills.

After my younger sister suffered an allergic reaction from eating the food I cooked, my husband flew into a rage. He grabbed a whole crate of red wine from the house, pinned me down, and forced it into my mouth. "You should feel Rosie's pain too!" Soon, red rashes spread across my body, and my throat began to swell. On the brink of death, I begged him to call an ambulance, but he locked me in the room instead. "Take your time and enjoy it. Only when you suffer enough will you stop hurting others." In despair, I felt my throat closing, and my skin itching unbearably as if pierced by needles. I scratched my skin until there wasn't a single patch of unbroken skin left. Three days later, he finally decided to show mercy and make it up to me with a candlelit dinner. "I bet you have learned your lesson. As long as you behave from now on, you'll still be Mrs. Henderson." However, he would never see me again. By then, my body had already turned to ashes.

My family has gone into bankruptcy ever since my parents have passed away. As such, my older sister, Priscilla Lennox, and I have to shoulder a million-dollar debt. In order to pay off the debt, Priscilla works as a paranormal house tester, whereas I've taken on a part-time gig to act as a corpse in dramas and films. Just like that, I keep working for five years straight. As long as the debt remains saddled on my shoulders, I dare not take a day off. At the end of the year, I realize that I still need to collect 130 thousand dollars in order to clear the debt, so I decide to apply for a job as a drug tester. Once the experiments are over, I head over to seek Priscilla out happily with my 130-thousand-dollar payment in tow. Unexpectedly, I come across her when she's on a phone call. "Mom, Dad, Perry has been doing really well. You two have fun overseas. He doesn't like spending money now, so we can end his punishment next year." It turns out that my parents aren't dead, and my family isn't bankrupt at all. All the pain and suffering that I've gone through in the past five years is just a punishment for my excessive spending habits. My smile freezes on my face. That's when I feel my stomach churning violently before I spit out a mouthful of blood.

On the day the SAT test results were released, my younger brother, who had always been an average student, turned out to be a perfect scorer. Meanwhile, I, the straight-A student, had my results voided because my answers were deemed poorly structured. During a reporter's interview, my brother suddenly dropped to his knees in front of me and slammed his head against the ground. "Henry, I was wrong! "I shouldn't have scored so high! I really didn't mean to refuse to take the exam for you! "Please don't send me back to the fighting ring! "Don't worry! I swear I'll never tell anyone about what you do with men at bars! Please just let me go!" My parents were heartbroken for him. They slapped me over and over while shouting. "It's one thing for you to fool around out there, but how could you bully your brother too? "Thank goodness this was the SAT test, so you couldn't force him to take it for you! Otherwise, you would've ruined his entire future!" My girlfriend immediately dumped me and got together with him instead. She said she wanted to make it up to him on my behalf. As soon as the interview aired, videos of me fooling around with other men in bars spread everywhere online. Before long, all my personal information was exposed. Enraged netizens lured me into a remote forest in the hills. "Are you this desperate? Stay here and reflect on yourself!" I was coiled by a lethally venomous snake. The pain was unbearable. My parents clearly knew what had happened, yet they refused to save me. "It's just a small snake. You're not going to die! "You're not allowed to come home until your brother starts college!" On the day of our high school graduation party, my brother and his girlfriend received acceptance letters from the country's best college, along with a notebook I had sent them.

The fake daughter only sneezed. My three brothers reacted as if she were on her deathbed, crowding around her anxiously and refusing to let her out of their sight. So when she pointed her finger at me again, insisting I had shoved her into the pool, they accepted her story without a second thought. They hauled me to a deserted walk-in freezer, sealed the door behind me at -58°F, and made sure the only escape was out of reach. I screamed for my oldest brother, the CEO, to let me out. He called me a cruel attention seeker. I begged my second brother, the doctor. He told me I finally got what I deserved. I begged my third brother, the big-shot attorney. He just sneered. "You've always been jealous of Chloe. Now you pushed her into the pool when you knew she was fragile? You really are rotten. Someone like you needs to stay in there and cool off." Then, they bundled Chloe into their arms and rushed her to the hospital over a sneeze. Bit by bit, warmth seeped from my body, until it seemed like ice was flowing through my veins instead of blood. After thirty-six hours, I slipped away, lost to the cold. Three days later, Chloe returned from the hospital, and only then did my brothers remember I existed. But by then, the freezer had already claimed me.

My father, Terence Locke, is covered in mud. He grabs my shoulders desperately, and his eyes are bloodshot. He says, "Emma, my company has gone bankrupt, and I accidentally killed a business rival. You have to run away with me." I believe him. Suppressing my fear, I follow him deep into the untouched mountains. To find food for him, I eat bugs and drink dirty water. When a pack of wolves closes in on our cave, my first instinct is to stand in front of him. "Dad, I'll lure them away. Run!" I look back at him one last time before finally making up my mind to trade my life for his. But after I leap off a seemingly bottomless cliff and fall to a pulp on the rocks below, I somehow "see" him inside a slowly descending helicopter. He is popping a bottle of champagne in celebration. At that moment, I finally understand everything. The whole desperate escape over the past few days that ultimately pushes me to sacrifice my life is nothing more than a reality show staged by him. He is merely putting on a performance, while I am truly dead...

My parents forced me to drop out of school and work eight jobs just to support my cousin Lola. I was only allowed to keep twenty bucks a month. One day, while working on a construction site, I got buried in a collapse. Dying, I called them—but they were busy throwing a lavish birthday party for Lola. Turns out they'd faked bankruptcy. Every penny went to her. After I died, they spread rumors that I'd run off with some guy. When the truth came out, my parents lost their minds. Their company went under. Later, I found out Lola was actually my twin sister—she'd been sent away as a baby to avoid some legal trouble. In the end, my mother poisoned Lola, then killed herself. Only then could my soul rest. My aunt came to my grave and whispered, "Next life, come to me."

I was severely allergic to shrimp. Even touching the broth could make it hard for me to breathe. They used to treat me like a fragile little princess no one could touch. So there was never seafood at home, and even relatives were reminded before each family gathering. Then my little sister was born, and everything changed. Shrimp became her favorite food. She kept asking Mom to make it for her. That was the first time Mom snapped at me. "Can't you just stay away from it? Do you really have to make your sister unhappy?" Dad only shut the kitchen door and handed me a mask. But on the day of Dad's promotion dinner, I accidentally ate shrimp hidden inside a puff pastry. My throat tightened. I clutched my neck and ran to Mom for help, my face turning purple. But Mom flung my hand away, her voice cold as ice. "Today is an important day for your father. What stunt are you trying to pull now? "Do you think everyone has to revolve around you? Go back to your room!" She shoved me into my bedroom, slammed the door, and locked it. I did not even have the strength to call for help. All I could hear was the sound of people outside clinking glasses and offering congratulations, while my fingernails scraped bloody marks into the door.

In the third year of my wolf decay, I was dying. It was a rare condition. I wanted to donate my body to research. I called my mother, three years since I'd last seen her, and asked her to sign the donation consent form. Without her signature, there'd be no one to handle my remains. She was busy with work. "Are you really making up something like this just to get attention?" she snapped. But I begged, and she gave a cold laugh and agreed. "What a miserable thing to deal with. You better actually be dying." Later, my wolf heart ended up on her dissection table. And that woman, who had nothing but contempt for me, actually killed three people for me.

As the only expert in the world capable of rescue dives below 3,000 feet, I received a once-in-a-lifetime salvage contract worth tens of millions of dollars. I had dived in those same waters over a decade ago. My son's research submersible had been damaged on the ocean floor. After his oxygen ran out, he suffocated in the dark. The grief nearly destroyed me. My husband, Griffin Lattimer, held me through it, staying by my side through countless miserable nights. I found out later that he had personally redirected the only rescue vessel capable of reaching the depths our son was at to save his childhood friend's daughter. That girl had merely choked on a mouthful of water in the shallows. I divorced Griffin and threw myself into deep-sea salvage like a woman possessed, diving over and over until I knew the undercurrents of those waters better than I knew my own home. I never wanted another child to die the way mine did. Today brought the same stretch of ocean, the same crushed hull, the same depleted oxygen, and the same impossible odds. When I opened the client's file, I went completely still. I recognized the name and face inside instantly. I would never forget either of them for as long as I lived. I smiled and slid the folder back across the table to my partner. "I can't take this one."

A priest has shown up at my first birthday party. He claims that I'm a cursed soul—that my presence will bring doom to those close to me, and my existence itself can snatch everyone's luck. The only way to counter this is to give me up to an orphanage and let me live a life of poverty and suffering. Without a family, I'll be able to overcome my fate as a cursed soul. Daddy has the priest cast out of our home immediately. Meanwhile, Mommy hugs me tightly. "My son is the luckiest boy in the whole wide world!" But everything has changed when my younger brother, Andy Lawson, has fallen off the 20th floor. His body is completely shattered from the fall. I can only stand by the window uneasily. Fear is evident in my eyes as I wave my hands with all my might. "It wasn't me! It really wasn't me!" The wind that day is very strong, but it can never drown out Mommy's cries. Daddy hoists me up and stuffs me into Andy's coffin. I keep latching onto the sides of the coffin to the point my fingers are all bloodied and trampled over. At the same time, I keep screaming for Mommy. Mommy stares at me blankly at first. But her hollow gaze is soon filled with hatred. "Why aren't you the one dead? That priest told us that you'll have to stay in the coffin for seven whole days and nights just to atone for your sins! Only then can Andy's soul rest in peace! "This is your fate and your sin, Adam!" The heavy lid slowly covers the coffin, soon sealing my hoarse cries and screams away. A long time later, a few voices ring out amid the sorrowful melody played by the organ. "Why is there a tiny gap in the coffin? Hurry up and nail it shut! We can't afford to have misfortune spread to us!" When the final nail is bolted onto the lid, I close my eyes. Mommy, Daddy, I'm no longer a cursed soul.

Savannah Cox was my husband's first love. When she got divorced, my husband, Alex Stewart, was the lawyer who handled her case. Then he moved her into our home after getting rid of Mochi, my cat, because she was allergic to cats. Because she lost a necklace, he forced a pregnant me to jump into an icy pool to retrieve it. By the time I lost our baby and ended up in the hospital, Alex was posting Savannah's prenatal checkup report—the first post he'd made all year. "The cherry blossoms are blooming at Cherrywood Park. She arrived with spring." I quietly liked the post, feeling unwell and numb with grief as I spent the day in silence. Alex only looked at me with disgust, a cruel sneer creeping onto his lips. "Autumn, people like you deserve to lose their children. If you love kids so much, why don't you go die with the baby?" What he didn't know was that I was already dying.

My wife, Cassia, was a wood nymph. A cursed one. Forbidden to love mortals. But she fell for me anyway. Every time her heart fluttered for me, the gods struck her down with agony. She willingly endured that torture ninety-nine times just for a chance to be with me. Then, demons dragged me to Tartarus. Hellfire and whips became my sun and moon. Right as I was about to break, I remembered a prayer Cassia taught me—a desperate whisper to the gods. It finally worked. But instead of help, I heard Cassia talking to her patron goddess, Hecate. "Cassia, how could you bargain with the Furies? You let them drag Aiden to Tartarus!" Cassia's voice choked with desperate tears. "Adonis was supposed to suffer this fate. But he's a fragile mortal. This would destroy his soul! I had no choice if I wanted to save him." "Aiden is a child of prophecy. His soul is strong. The Fates watch over him. He'll survive." "Once I save Adonis, I can stay in the mortal realm forever. Then, I'll use my eternal life and all my love to repay the hell he's enduring for me." My heart shattered. As the monsters closed in on me, I stopped fighting. I gave up.

When Julian, the true heir by blood, was finally brought back to the Family, my cold-blooded adoptive parents cast me aside. They sent me to "The Abyss"—a clandestine hellhole where billionaires and mafia bosses paid to hunt, rape, and slaughter human prey. No matter how humiliatingly I begged for mercy, I remained locked in an iron cage, passed around as prey for those bloodthirsty beasts. Days later, a photo of me—covered in whip marks, kneeling like a dog with a chain around my neck—made its way to my beloved fiancée, Vivienne. Standing before the press, the untouchable Mafia Princess sneered, her voice dripping with disgust. "He’s pathetic and utterly filthy. The Valenti family would never align with such trash. I'll be marrying Julian instead." On cue, the Russo family officially disowned me, permanently stripping me of their name. After I was tortured to death, the wedding of the century commenced, broadcast live worldwide to celebrate the alliance between two major mafia families. But right then, my "wedding gift" was delivered. When the box was opened, the entire room went dead silent.

I'm the neglected real son of the Duncans, Austin Duncan. By the time my family finally brings me home, the fake heir, Edward Duncan, has already been carefully groomed into the perfect successor. I'm nothing more than a country bumpkin. Edward goes through with a prestigious arranged marriage and becomes the son-in-law of the powerful Cooper family. As for me, I'm unceremoniously married off to Clara Prescott, the illegitimate daughter of the Prescott family, whom no one acknowledges. Everyone looks at me with contempt. I assume Clara is no different. But she smiles at me and says, "Austin, we aren't free to choose for the first half of our lives. But I'll protect you from now on." I truly believe she's different. But when she emerges victorious in the Prescott family's power struggle and becomes the CEO of Prescott Group, the very first thing she does after taking control is force the Cooper family into bankruptcy and bring Edward back to her side. Only then do I finally realize that Clara is no different. The one she loves has always been Edward.

At Greg Jenson’s birthday party, an obituary suddenly created a huge ruckus in our school year’s group chat. “Oh my God, Luanne Lee is dead” “It’s got to be fake news. A bad thing never dies. How could a malicious woman like her die so easily? Back then, she literally took Greg...” Sitting at the head of the table, Greg twirled his phone in his hand, his eyes dark. “It's fake. I just got a call from her this morning. She said she was coming to my birthday party.” However, someone hesitantly held up their phone, showing the screen to the room. “If I'm not mistaken, this person really is Luanne. The memorial service is at the funeral home in the neighboring city. Should we go check it out?” On the screen was a photo of a funeral hall, and there I was, lying peacefully right in the center. Greg’s expression turned to panic. He bolted upright and headed straight for the exit, but the moment he opened the door, he froze dead in his tracks. The deceased ‘me’ was standing right at the doorway. Looking into those deeply familiar eyes, I smiled and said, “Greg, it’s been ten years. I'm here to wish you a happy birthday.”

Chelsea Fischer's childhood sweetheart, Patrick Goldstein, loves fighting with me over everything. After I get reborn, I realize that I can never win against Patrick. So, I decide to attach price tags to everything I own. Since Patrick loves taking over Chelsea's front passenger seat under the guise of getting carsick easily, I slap a price tag onto the front passenger seat immediately. "That'll be 100 thousand dollars per year. If you decide to continue the subscription, you'll get a 20% discount." Patrick has his eye on my project proposal. As soon as Chelsea knocks on my office door, I say to her without even looking up, "Wire me 500 thousand dollars, and I'll change the project lead's name to Patrick's as soon as I receive the money." On the day of my daughter Callista Hammond's birthday, I reschedule all of my work matters so that I can hurry over to the kindergarten to pick her up. But Callista tells her teacher, "He's not my dad. I'm not leaving with him." While we're stuck in a stalemate, Patrick arrives at the kindergarten with the gift I've prepared for Callista. That's when Callista rushes over to hug his leg. "Take a good look, miss! This is my actual dad!" Chelsea is about to provide an explanation to me when I extend a hand to Callista. "Give me five million dollars, and I'll make sure that he gets your custody by the end of today."

On my wedding day, I had just stepped onto the aisle when a ripple of laughter spread through the crowd. "Take it all off, and she's got a body on her! Look at her face, like she's enjoying it!" I turned toward the voices and saw my ex-husband's photos of me blown up across the giant screen. They kept changing, one after another, explicit and impossible to ignore. All around the room, phones were already coming up as people started taking pictures. My hands began to shake. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my mother collapse. Behind Leon Coleman, Allison Fleming slapped her thigh and raised her voice, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Oh, wow. Leon showed these to the guys yesterday, just messing around. Guess they accidentally put it on the big screen. Gemma, you're not gonna make a big deal out of it, right?" The groomsmen laughed. "Come on, Allison. Leon always lets you get away with anything. Gemma had to beg for this wedding. There's no way she'd dare complain." With all those eyes on me, Leon reached for my hand and held it, his tone easy. "Allison's one of my closest friends. We joke around like that. She didn't mean anything by it, so don't take it personally. It's just a few private photos. I'll have someone take them down. It's our wedding day, so just bear with it for now."

After my sister-in-law Lydia had my brother Caleb's kidney removed and spent three years draining his blood, he escaped back to our hometown barely alive. He lay on a bed at the clinic, holding my hand tight as he said, "Noah, don't go after them. You can't afford to cross Lydia's family." Three days later, he died in my arms. I buried him on the hillside behind the town, under the old oak tree he had loved to climb as a child. On the seventh day after I buried him, a black Maybach stopped at the edge of town. Lydia got out with a frail man who looked like he could fall over at any time. She stood outside my house's door and looked at me. "Noah, where's your brother? Tell him to come out. Evan needs bone marrow this time." I wiped the dirt from my hands and raised my head as I smiled. "You want to find Caleb, right? Then start digging."

When we get into a car accident, I use all my strength to push my mother, Sheila Carver, out of the way. But after Mom is saved, she completely ignores me as I lie trapped under the wreckage. Instead, she immediately leads the rescue team over to my younger brother, Lance Howell, who has only scraped his knee, and frantically makes sure it gets disinfected and bandaged. With the last bit of my strength, I beg Mom to save me. But she simply shouts at me with annoyance, "Can't you pick a better time to fight for attention? Do you have any idea that Lance could have been left with a scar?" Soon after, I die from lack of urgent care, and my body turns cold. Mom, however, loses her mind overnight.