Cerita Pendek & Novel After Death Defy Fate

My husband, Leon Hobbs, calls me to tell me that his grandma, Phoebe Reid, has forgotten to bring her blood pressure medication, so he wants me to deliver it to her. "Hurry up, Elsie! Grandma's blood pressure is spiking again! You're the one who's closest to her right now!" With the medication in hand, I've just reached the corridor when comments pop up on my phone out of nowhere. "Don't go! The old lady will die in the living room ten minutes after you enter the apartment!" "The blood pressure medication has been swapped out for poison, and your prints are on the bottle! Everyone will think that you're the one who poisoned the old lady!" "Your husband and your mother-in-law have left the apartment purposefully so that you'll be the only one facing the old lady's corpse! Then, they'll use the assets that you and the old lady have left behind just to buy a new home for your husband's pregnant mistress!" I remain rooted to the spot as I stare at the bottle of medication. Leon had passed it to me last night, claiming that it was a bottle of newly prescribed medication. He wanted me to keep it for Phoebe for the time being. My fingerprints are all over the bottle at this time. Three seconds later, I turn on my heel and head toward the nearest pharmacy. Then, I place the bottle of pills on the counter. "Please help me check whether or not this bottle of medication fits the label."

Three months after I died, Jack Carter became one of the youngest colonels in the United States Marine Corps. At the promotion ceremony, every person in the room stood up and applauded him. He had a war record, he had money, he had a house that looked out over the woods, and he had the kind of future everyone envied. But only I, already dead, knew that the one person he had truly wanted his whole life was never coming back. The year he turned eighteen, he rebuilt a beat-up old Ford and put the spare key in my hand. He said, "After prom, come find me. I will take you to California." I said yes. But that night I walked down the steps on another man's arm and told him, in front of everyone, that I had never loved him. He did not know that my family had forced that lie out of me. They used Jack's freedom and his future to threaten me. If I dared to leave with him, a forged felony statement would put him in prison and disqualify him from ever enlisting. So I chose to deceive him, and I watched him leave hating me. Later, in the service, he was bullied and framed, and he nearly lost everything. He believed a total stranger had saved him. He did not know that the person who tracked down the witnesses, paid the lawyers, and handed the evidence to the military was me, from the beginning. Later still, he went from a small-time punk out of the harbor district to a decorated officer. Meanwhile my family went bankrupt. I lost the house, the trust, the health coverage, and in the end I died alone in an apartment with a leaking roof. On the day I died, he was standing under the lights receiving a medal. On the screen, everyone was applauding him. On my side of the screen, I was holding the car key from the year I turned eighteen, the one we never used, and I stopped breathing. It took three months for my letters to reach him. Only then did he know. The cruelest words I ever said were said to protect his future. Every kindness in his life that he thought came from a stranger came f

I was born under a curse that made my wolf’s presence so faint that everyone instinctively overlooked me. At the pack orphanage, the caretakers forgot to give me bread, leaving me hungry for three days. During a hunting exercise, my companions forgot I was with them, leaving me trapped in a hunter’s silver snare for three days and three nights. Then vampires attacked. The Alpha ordered everyone to evacuate through the pack link—everyone except me. They left me behind, and the vampires drained every drop of blood from my body. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at the pack orphanage, only weeks before the vampire attack that had killed me. After dying once, I no longer wanted to struggle. This time, I planned to wait quietly for death. Then, against all odds, the Alpha and Luna of the Silver Moon Pack found me. They told me I was the daughter they had lost seventeen years ago. My mother, Luna Eleanor, held me in her arms and wept. “You are our daughter, Ivy—the princess of the Silver Moon Pack. We will never let you suffer again.” My father, Alpha Marcus, gently touched my head. “Once you come home with us, even if the sky falls, we’ll hold it up for you.” They even gave me a blood-bound moonstone pendant that could send an emergency signal to my parents and my brother, Adrian. They swore they would never overlook me again. For the first time, I believed I had finally found a family. I decided I wanted to live. But when an earthquake buried me beneath the ruins of our family lodge, I activated the pendant with the last of my strength. My adopted sister, Brielle, claimed she had already seen me escape into the forest. My entire family believed her. They ignored my distress signal and abandoned me beneath the rubble. Only after they found my body did they realize I had never escaped. And by then, the daughter they had sworn never to forget was already dead. That was when they all lost their minds with regret.