Feel-Good Story Crime Short Stories & Novels

I was a top ER nurse at the city hospital. Over the years, I helped save thousands of lives. During my day off, I received an urgent call from my department chief. “Zayn, there’s a child at a daycare near your neighborhood suffering from a severe allergic reaction. The ambulance is stuck in traffic. Please get over there immediately and administer first aid.” I grabbed my emergency kit and rushed to the daycare. When I arrived, one of the teachers falsely accused me of being a child trafficker. He shoved me aside and shouted, “He’s a trafficker. Do not let him touch the child.” Furious and desperate, I pulled up my digital nursing license. “I am an ER nurse. If you keep stopping me, this child could die.” He insisted my credentials were fake, and I had no choice but to wait for the ambulance. When the ambulance finally arrived to take the child to the hospital, the teacher jumped in again. He claimed we were working together and refused to let us leave. Everything changed when the child’s mother arrived with a DNA test report in her hand. His entire world collapsed in an instant.

At the high-speed train station security checkpoint, a security officer stops me. "What's inside the case?" he asks. "A living donor heart. It's scheduled for transplant in two hours," I reply and hand over the emergency transit pass. After verifying the documents, the officer is about to let me pass when a hand suddenly shoots out from behind and grabs the case. "He can't go! That case contains illegal stuff!" I turn around. To my shock, it's my brother-in-law, Edward Austin. Pointing at me, he shouts, "Officer, I'd like to report him! He's my brother-in-law. There isn't anything medical-related in that case. It's drugs he bought on the black market. He's planning to use his status as a doctor to smuggle them out and sell them!" Armed police officers immediately surround me with their weapons lowered into ready positions. My eyes redden with panic. "Have you lost your mind, Edward? There's a donor heart in here! The recipient only has two hours left to live!" He rolls his eyes and sneers. "Oh, spare me the act. My sister says you've been acting suspiciously lately. You're obviously up to something. If you've got nothing to hide, why don't you open it right here in front of everyone?" Everyone within the vicinity falls silent. The leading police officer steps forward with a stern expression. "Please cooperate with the inspection. Open the case immediately." I glance at the countdown timer on my watch. My back becomes drenched with cold sweat. If the heart is contaminated, then Michael Ellis—the national hero whose life depends on this transplant—will not survive this.

The day my daughter, Holly Rivera, got her acceptance letter from Bellmont University, I filed my tenth lawsuit against her homeroom teacher, Natalie Martin. The result was exactly what you would expect. I lost again. Outside the courthouse, a group of parents pointed at me and started yelling. "Ms. Martin got the whole class into top schools, and Holly still made Bellmont. Why are you suing her ten times?" Holly stood there as well, looking at me like she didn't recognize me anymore. "I'm done being your daughter," she said. I didn't answer. By then, I already knew the lawsuits weren't going to change anything. That same night, I threw Holly a celebration dinner and invited her entire class. When the parents came to pick up their kids, they found 40 bodies hanging in the banquet hall. Holly was one of them. The police took me in on the spot. An officer dropped the surveillance footage on the table, each frame capturing me stringing them up. His eyes were bloodshot as he leaned in. "Start talking. Why did you kill 40 people? Even your own daughter?" I leaned back and opened my hands. "Why did I do it? Ask Ms. Martin. She'll explain everything."

Lately, my seatmate had been looking at me strangely. Whether we were going to the cafeteria or heading to P.E., she kept her distance like she was afraid of me. I finally couldn't take it anymore and asked her, "Did I do something to offend you?" She flinched, backed several steps away, and avoided my eyes. "No. It's not your fault!" But the next day, she voluntarily transferred out of the honors track and into a regular class. Confused, I went to ask her what was going on. The moment I arrived at the door of her new classroom, she'd been chatting casually with other students. Then she saw me, started shaking all over, and screamed in terror. "It really has nothing to do with you. Please stop looking for me. Please!"

At 9:00 a.m., just as I arrived at the office entrance, two police officers stopped me. "Mr. Clarke, someone reported that you haven't shown up at work for a long time and that they couldn't reach you. They were worried that you might have been in an accident." I was shocked. I thought they had the wrong person. I had gone to work on time every day for the past six months. Sometimes, I even stayed late at the office until midnight. How could my company not be able to contact me? "You must have the wrong person. I go to work every day. Everyone at my company can prove it!" "The people who reported you missing are from your company."

After being apart for three years, I met my ex-girlfriend, Serena Jensen, during a police operation. She was the ambitious detective in charge, while I was a murder suspect who had escaped across eight states. When our eyes met, Serena was momentarily stunned. "Channing Jones... How could it be you..." I seized the moment and turned to run, but one of her men struck my shin. In the interrogation room, she yelled at me with reddened eyes. "Four lives are lost! Channing, how could you do such a thing? Tell me I was mistaken! Speak! Say something!" When I looked at her heartbroken eyes, I suddenly smiled. "You are indeed mistaken. It is not four, but five. Do you not care most about your husband and my former best friend, Myles Sheldon? How come you do not even notice he is missing?"

I went home for the holiday season. However, the most annoying person in the family, Karen, had shown up with her brat of a son, Toby. Karen was the wife of my father's younger brother. Every limited-edition figure and model kit in my display case had been used as toys, taken apart, and smashed to pieces. I was so angry I almost blacked out from my blood pressure rising. Karen cut me off first. "Oh, our VIP is finally awake? He's just a kid, and he does not know any better. Speaking of which, Toby is turning eight next year. Now that you're rich, you should at least give him a big present, right? Eight thousand dollars has a nice ring to it." My parents had a dark look on their faces as I forced my anger down. "Sure, Karen. That amount is nothing, but we need to be proper with the timing, right? I promise I'll give him a big one on the actual New Year's Day!" Then I took out my phone and saved the invoices for everything he had destroyed so I could print them out later. You wanted a big present, right? Fine. I would make it a big one!

The night before the Northbridge Graduate Admissions Exam, my aunt Brenda brought her daughter to our home for dinner. The girl turned the house upside down, and I tolerated one disaster after another. During dinner, I left my phone on the table while I went to the bathroom. When I returned, Aunt Brenda smiled and handed it back to me. "Put this away before you lose it." I thought nothing of it. The next morning at the airport, an agent told me my flight had been changed to the following day. My mind went blank. In my deleted messages, I found the rebooking verification code from the night before. I returned home in shock and found Aunt Brenda waiting with her daughter. "Since you were already traveling to Bellhaven, I moved your flight so you could take Kayla to her father tomorrow. "I'll reimburse the airfare. No need to thank me." I shook with anger. "Aunt Brenda, if I leave tomorrow, I'll miss the exam." She dismissed me with a wave. "What exam could matter more than family? It's only an admissions test. Take it next time. "I already offered to cover the ticket. That's almost a thousand dollars. Why are you so ungrateful?" As I looked at her entitled expression, my anger suddenly became calm. "All right, Aunt Brenda," I said with a cold smile. "You're the one who asked me to take her."

The company is short-staffed for one of our new projects. Despite everyone's objections, I, James Connor, fight to bring in three sidelined, former colleagues onto the project. And so, the four of us become the project's core members. The project's workload is fairly light and comes with a generous bonus. So, they praise and flatter me, calling me their lucky star. Three months later, the project is about to be submitted to the higher-ups. I happen to pass by the smoking lounge and overhear them plotting, wisps of smoke escaping from their lips. "The three of us contributed the most to this project. Why should James get an equal share of the bonus just because he recommended us for the job? He barely pulled his weight." "That's right. We should bring this up with the director. Tell him that we're the ones who laid all the groundwork and that James doesn't have the technical skills to be on this team. We'll ask to have him removed from the contributors list." "Just the thought of not having to split those hundreds of thousands of dollars with him is making me feel like I'm on cloud nine. Hey, let's go celebrate tonight!" I push the door open and am promptly greeted with their shocked faces. I merely smile at them as I think to myself, "You want to cut me out? Sadly for you, I'm the director who was sent here to evaluate all of you."

A group of anglers organizes a night fishing trip to a mysterious reservoir. The entry fee is 500 dollars per person, with a guarantee of reeling in a massive catch that's at least 100 pounds. Feeling the lone ten-dollar bill in my pocket, I put on a pitiful act in the group chat. "My mom keeps me on a tight leash. You guys go get rich." That night, my social media feed is flooded with their posts. Photos of wild catches that are as big as a grown man's arms, as well as stacks of cold, hard cash from their so-called haul. Chowing down on cheap street-side tacos, I scoff. "Even the gods can't make the fish bite at high noon. Careful you don't trade your life for that payday." Come next morning, a hysterical mob of wives—seven of them in total—descends on my front door, screaming and wailing. "Was Vince with you last night?" "They're all gone! The men, their cars, everything—gone! Their last known location was right by your apartment!" The lead detective slaps the cuffs on me. As it turns out, that reservoir has been completely dry for the last 30 years.

Fed up with my neighbors constantly freeloading off my Wi-Fi, I decide to change the network name to "Invincible Wall-Piercing Baby Killer". The next day, the woman next door—pregnant with triplets—collapses outside my apartment, clutching her stomach. "Who told you to change your Wi-Fi name? Don't you know that by changing it, I'd miscarry my triplets?" The whole family has lost their minds, I tell myself. After all, how can changing the name of a Wi-Fi network possibly affect an unborn baby, let alone three of them? A week later, her burly husband shows up at the entrance of our apartment complex, eyes bloodshot. He holds three ultrasound scans in one hand and a surgical report for a miscarriage in the other. "Murderer!" he shouts at me. "Your damn Wi-Fi signal went through the walls and killed my three unborn babies!" They start livestreaming on TikTok. They weld my front door shut, then, in front of more than a million viewers, hold up an "expert report" claiming that electromagnetic radiation has caused the miscarriage. "Enjoy spending the rest of your life behind bars, murderer!" My girlfriend of five years is doxxed. She can't take the harassment anymore and jumps off a building. Although she ultimately survives, she's left in a permanent vegetative state. I become the target of a nationwide hate campaign. Not only do I lose my job, but I also have to sell my home. I'm saddled with crushing compensation that I'll be paying off for the rest of my life. To atone for my so-called crime, I work construction day and night just to support my neighbors' family. In the end, I lose my footing on the scaffolding and fall to my death. Even as I die, I still can't understand how changing the name of a Wi-Fi network can make someone miscarry. When I open my eyes again, I return to the very day it all begins.

I heard a corpse speak to me in the police department's autopsy room on my first day of internship. It all began when my supervising pathologist flipped through the autopsy report and remarked flatly, "Classic suicide. Close the case." The captain of the homicide unit nodded without a word. Beyond the doors, the victim's mother had fallen to her knees as she sobbed in despair, nearly fainting from grief. I was the only one who heard the woman's raspy voice saying in protest, "I didn't kill myself." The hemostatic forceps slipped from my hand and clattered into the metal tray. Everyone turned to look at me. My supervising pathologist frowned at me in displeasure. "Summer, I know you're an intern, but you can't even keep your composure?" I stared at the corpse's pale, bluish face. The next second, I heard her speak once more, "The killer is in this autopsy room." The air in my lungs froze. Then, my eyes slowly settled on my supervising pathologist's bloodstained hands.