Cerita Pendek & Novel Hypocrisy After Death

My father was the sole provider in our family. He had a food stand on the side of the road, where he worked every day under hot sun. I knew how difficult it was for my father, so when the school bully, Jimmy Anderson, pressed my head down the toilet, I did not fight back. When Jimmy asked me to treat him like he was a king, I did not refuse either. I was afraid that I would make Jimmy unhappy, and he would then cause trouble for my father. So, I tolerated it for many years. Before the SATs, I thought I would finally be free. However, Jimmy forced me to be an escort at a bar, and I was tortured to death by the client he assigned me. While I was being tortured, I saw someone that I would never have dreamed of being there through the gap in the private room door. I saw my father, who was usually dressed modestly. Yet, he was decked out in luxury clothing here. He looked wealthy, and everyone around him was fawning over him and pleasing him. Wearing a big smile on his face, my father had his arm around Jimmy, who had bullied me for three whole years. He told Jimmy that his future would be bright.

On the first April Fool's after my death, my husband, Timothy Ludd, once again tries to make me take the blame for his intern's alleged destruction of evidence and bribery. He storms into my food stall, only to find that it has changed owners. Feeling shocked, he goes to the nursing home where I volunteer after my release from prison to confront me. The nursing home director says, "Quinn Sutton? She's been dead for six months." However, my dear husband refuses to believe it and returns to the welfare home where I have lived for 16 years. "Make sure Quinn comes out to see me. "This has become a huge scandal. The Department of Justice's investigation team will be coming tomorrow. Doesn't she have her pregnancy as leverage? Pregnant women can apply for exemptions. She'll only get a suspended sentence. "I've already pulled all the strings. She's guaranteed to benefit from this deal. She shouldn't push her luck!" The welfare home director's eyes well up with tears. "Quinn is dead. Don't bother looking for her. She's been dead for six months."

Jim Hartley, the most respected veteran specialist at Lydian Medical Center, sat for his final interview before retirement. When the host asked if any patient had left a lasting impression on him, he fell silent for a long moment, then let out a heavy sigh. "There is one. My worthless daughter. "She graduated from one of the country's top medical schools, and then threw it all away to be with some penniless nobody. "I only wanted what was best for her future. The night they'd secretly arranged to meet, I locked her in the house and kept them apart. "What I never imagined was that the boy would go on to study medicine himself. These days, he's the youngest oncologist at Fairview General Hospital." A murmur rippled through the studio audience. Sensing an opening, the host pressed further. "If it were happening now, would you still keep the two of them apart?" Jim faltered. His eyes slowly reddened. "It's too late for that. My daughter died of stomach cancer three years ago." The segment went viral the moment it aired, climbing straight to the top of the trending charts. Robbie McAvoy, the story's leading man, had no idea any of it had happened. He'd just wrapped up a critical stomach cancer surgery and was on his way home to meet his wife, Whitney Portman.

From the day I was born, Mom never treated me like her daughter. I was Catherine Baldwin's older sister, the example Mom used to keep her in line. When Catherine stole ten dollars from Mom's purse to buy stickers, Mom made me stand facing the living room wall all afternoon. Then she pointed at me and told Catherine, "Look at Allison. For every dollar you steal, she stands there for an hour. You do the math." When Catherine refused to eat her vegetables, Mom stopped giving me breakfast for three days. I got so hungry that I snuck into the kitchen and ate cold leftovers straight from the fridge. When Mom caught me, she didn't yell. She simply turned to Catherine and said, "See how hungry Allison is? Keep being picky, and you'll be the one who goes without food next time." When Catherine started dating in middle school, and a teacher caught her passing notes to a boy in class, Mom sent me to the school in her place. She made me stand in the main office and read Catherine's written apology aloud in front of the teachers. Halfway through, my voice gave out. Mom snatched the paper from my hands and finished reading it herself, slowly and clearly, making sure everyone heard every word. Afterward, she pulled me into the hallway and said, "Catherine has a reputation to protect. I couldn't let her be humiliated in front of her teachers. You're her sister. It's your job to take the fall for her." I was 15, and Catherine was 13. By then, I had already been punished for her, gone hungry for her, and humiliated myself for her. It took me years to realize that was only the beginning. The worst was yet to come.

"Ms. Clarke, you have successfully purchased a Final Memories recording package. We have arranged hidden cameras to record you anytime and anywhere. From this moment on, no matter where you go or what you do, everything will be secretly filmed until the day you pass away." The staff member handed the contract to Lila Clarke and asked her to confirm everything one last time. Without hesitation, she signed her name. The reason she ordered Final Memories was because she had been diagnosed with cancer. She had no more than one month left to live.

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."

We had lived in an enclosed underground basement for as long as I could remember. My parents told me the world had ended. Zombies roamed everywhere. Deadly toxins filled the air. Anyone who ventured outside was certain to die. To stretch our meager food supply, I wasted away until I was little more than skin and bones. At last, only a single can of food remained. I left behind my final words. **Mom and Dad: One less mouth to feed. Live longer.** After I died, my soul slipped free of the shriveled husk I had called my body for eighteen years and passed through the thick metal door that had supposedly protected me from the outside world. Bright sunlight greeted me. Outside, my parents were hosting a barbecue with a group of friends. The air was rich with the mouthwatering aroma of grilled food. The apocalypse had been a lie. They had told me that story only to keep me locked away. I had died for a lie.

I'm the daughter of a poor couple who make a living selling fish at a market. We're so broke that every penny counts. Even so, my parents scrape together everything they have to support my dream of becoming a professional dancer. They pay for my training and even spend their life savings on my scoliosis surgery without a second thought. However, when Sylvie Putnam throws me to the ground, leaving me on the verge of paralysis, and then beats me until my face is a bloody mess, Mom barely spares me a glance. Instead, she gently strokes Sylvie's head. "Good girl. You did the right thing after she upset you. Remember, never let anyone bully you." Dad even picks up a stick and strikes it against my spine. "Don't worry. Worst case, we'll just pay some compensation. What could this worthless life of hers possibly be worth? We have plenty of money anyway!" His words make the pain explode through my body and heart all at once. Just yesterday, Mom and Dad were keeping vigil at my bedside day and night, frantic with worry over my illness. Now, all I can do is curl up on the ground and let a stranger kick and beat me without mercy. "Good grief. She's practically being beaten into a cripple. How can something this serious happen and her parents still not show up?" "Isn't she a dance student? Their audition is in a couple of days. What a shame…" As the other students whisper around me, my consciousness slowly fades. Little do they know that the people who have just beaten me into a cripple are my very parents.

My elder sister, Alice, was a white wolf. A witch had foretold that my power would devour hers, that the moment I shifted during our coming-of-age ceremony, she would die. The only way to save her was to suppress my power, let her shift first at the ceremony, and break the curse. To save her, my parents spent eighteen years breaking me. And the night before our ceremony, they followed the witch's orders and locked me in the basement with silver-banded iron chains. "Be good, Maria. The silver will only delay your shift. Just get through tomorrow, and your sister lives. Then we can all stop suffering." The chains pressed against my chest. I could barely breathe. But something was wrong. My shift was starting, early. I slammed my fists against the door. "Mom, it's starting. I'm shifting now—" "Don't lie to me." Her voice cut through, sharp and loud. "The witch said both of you shift on ceremony day. Or are you really that eager to watch your sister die?" Footsteps faded down the hall. The pain hit, searing, ripping through every bone. I curled into the corner, feeling my wolf slip away.

I was born to be my sister's blood bag. She needed a constant supply of fresh blood, so I stayed on call twenty-four hours a day. No junk food. No getting sick. My whole body was kept in perfect condition, all for her sake. The day I turned eighteen, they dragged me into an operating room to donate my bone marrow to her. Half-conscious, with no one watching over me, I died right there in the hospital. I thought that once I was gone, the three of them could finally live together happily as a family. But after I died, they stopped loving her too.

To prove she was fair, Valerie forced me into the family's live-fire drill. She knew I had a severe heart condition. She knew I couldn't stand the sight of blood. Three hours under the blistering sun. My hands shook wildly. I stared at the trembling rabbit tied to the target, terrified to pull the trigger. "You can't even kill a freaking rabbit? How are you supposed to lead this family?" Valerie's icy voice lashed at me from behind. Tears filled my eyes. I finally pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the rabbit. Blood spattered everywhere. The smell and all that red triggered my blood phobia instantly. Everything went pitch black. Chloe, the intern medic, walked over and grabbed me roughly. Her eyes were full of pure malice. "Underboss, her vitals are totally fine. Is she faking it just to escape training?" Valerie looked down at my pale face. Disgust and disappointment covered her face. "Gemma, is this how I raised you? Everyone else finished. You don't get special treatment." "You finish this drill today—even if it kills you!" Then, my chest stopped moving. Dead silence. My soul floated into the air. I looked down at Mom, filled with guilt and despair. I'm sorry, Mom. This time, I really couldn't hold on.

The day I have only 220 dollars left in my savings, I buy a 200-dollar ticket to a piano recital. When my friend finds out, she asks if I have gone crazy. I reply without a hint of emotion, "I just want to see what kind of woman is worth taking all our savings and spending it on a concert grand piano for. "That money was supposed to save our daughter. Summer was counting on it for her surgery." The recital lasts two full hours, and everyone praises the beautiful music. But all I can think about is the woman onstage and my husband, Zander Stafford, sitting right in front of her. He's dressed in a sharp suit and looks so refined that I barely recognize him. At the end of every song, Zander is always the first to applaud. There is a fervor in his eyes I have never seen before. It isn't until the recital ends that I finally receive a message from him after two months of silence, along with a bank transfer. "I'm sorry, Sabina. Things are tight at the construction site right now, so I'm using some of the money from that account," he writes. "My boss says he'll pay me back as soon as the money comes in. "Didn't you say Summer is sick and in the hospital? Take these 5,000 dollars for now." I look up at the two people embracing in the center of the stage. I return the money and reply, "It's not necessary." I no longer need it. I will never need his money again. Summer is already dead, and nothing matters anymore.

At the reunion dinner, my adopted brother, Isaac Johnson, whispers in my ear, "The Johnson family only needs one son. You're just a country bumpkin. We don't need you here." I think he's right. So, I run straight into traffic at the intersection. My family is terrified. They rush over and manage to pull me back from the road. My sister, Rebecca Johnson, turns pale with anger and warns me not to upset Isaac again. I obediently nod. Then, late that night, I turn on the gas and leave a suicide note. "It's my fault for upsetting Isaac. I'll take the whole family to heaven with me. None of us will ever have to suffer again." My family stares at me as if I've gone mad. Later, at a party, Isaac and his friends push me into the pool. But I don't struggle. I simply let myself sink slowly to the bottom. Isaac panics and has no choice but to jump in and pull me out again. "Idiot! What if you really drowned? Mom and Dad would hate me! Couldn't you at least struggle?" What he doesn't know is that I've fought back before. But every time, it only ended with me dying a horrible death. This is my tenth time being reborn. This time, I just want to die.

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."

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.

To shield my sister from a street thug's iron bar after she cut class, my right leg was shattered. The infection that followed left the doctors no choice but to amputate. From that day on, I spent ten years in a wheelchair. Consumed with guilt, my sister massaged my stump every single day. My parents wiped their reddened eyes and promised that everything they owned would go to me someday, to make up for what I had lost. Then my sister won the highest international ballet award, and the whole family wept with joy. Before the ceremony, she looked at my wheelchair. Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. "This is the greatest moment of my life. If a cripple tags along, what will the press write about me? "Dad, Mom, just this once, let the three of us go together, looking our best. Please?" My parents caved in the end. Before they left, Mom was afraid I might fall, so she lashed me to the wheelchair with hemp rope. "Be good, Audrey. I put all the knives and scissors away. Don't move around. We'll bring you back egg tarts from Belem." I sat obediently in the middle of the living room and watched the front door close, then heard the lock turn from outside. That night, the old electric blanket in the bedroom short-circuited and caught fire. The flames burned their way from the bedroom into the living room. I could not break free of the ropes. I could not reach the door handle. I could not find a single thing sharp enough to cut myself loose. The fire licked up my one remaining leg. The pain was beyond anything I had ever known. I sobbed through the smoke, begging my family to save me. They hung up. On the television, my sister stood in the spotlight, her smile radiant and dazzling.

Mom had taken me to a psychological examination for depression. When I filled out the questionnaire, I checked the option saying I felt down and hopeless nearly every day. She frowned and reached out to correct my choice. "How could you possibly feel down and hopeless? Aren't you happy with your life?" The furrow between her brows deepened when she noticed I described myself as having trouble establishing connections with other people. "You've been an outgoing child since you were young, don't you remember? Come on, you need to consider each statement more carefully." If she said so, I would not argue with her. Next, she reminded me that I had never experienced negative thoughts about myself, and I obeyed her. Following that, she told me that I slept like a log at night, so my answer on the questionnaire was that I had no trouble falling asleep at all. I filled out the questionnaire. Almost every answer had easily matched her wishes. Mom picked up the papers to review them. Finally, she nodded in satisfaction. "That's more like it. You should fill it out with more care from the beginning. You don't want to confuse them and have them diagnose you as unhealthy, don't you?" Lastly, I came out as having minimal depression. Mom breathed a sigh of relief. On our way home, I could not help but keep touching the scars hidden under my sleeve. All I could hear was my heartbeat pounding in my ears. My vision blurred, and everything began to fade from my consciousness. Everything had gone blank in my mind. And all that remained was a dead, suffocating silence.