Cerita Pendek & Novel Crime Imagination

When I was ten years old, both my parents passed away. My sister, Brianna, and I only had each other left. We were tormented at the orphanage before the Larsons adopted us. They doted on Brianna and me, and even allowed their daughter, Vivian Larson, to get engaged to me when I was 20 years old. It was a wonderful tale of love. Vivian didn't let any of us down. She would have given me the moon if she could, and she loved me with all her heart. During the ten years we spent with the Larsons, Brianna and I led a good life and never suffered at all. The night before we got married, Vivian took out a treasured bottle of vintage wine. It was to be served at our wedding. However, I poisoned the wine and killed everyone in the Larson family, including my own sister.

I opened my eyes to a dark, windowless room. Overhead, a voice crackled from the speakers. “Welcome to The Judgment Room. Each player will state the crime they committed. Do not lie. After all six of you speak, you will vote. The one with the most votes will be eliminated. “The game starts now.” In this deadly game, whose sins weighed the least?

At one in the morning, the neighbor upstairs suddenly knocked on my door. He said there was a leak in his apartment and asked if our place had been affected. I was just about to open the door when my vision was flooded with comments. [Open the door, and you're dead! That man outside is not your neighbor!] [Didn't the old man upstairs who lived alone go to Marcasia last week to find his new love interest? There shouldn't be anyone up there at all!] I immediately pulled away from the doorknob. At that moment, an emergency notice popped up in the residential property chat. [Unit 1307 has a burst pipe with severe leakage. Property management will inspect the building's water system.] [Is anyone home in 1207? We need to check whether your ceiling is leaking. Please open the door.] Unit 1207 was my place. The comments flooded my vision again. [What kind of property management does inspections at one in the morning? They're in on it together!] [Bea, stay hidden! Your destined man will descend from the heavens to save you!] I nodded solemnly, as if I was taking them very seriously. I turned around and grabbed my climbing rope. Amid the hysterical screaming of the comments, I leapt straight off the balcony. I'm someone who got a second life. Last time around, my entire life was ruined by listening to these brain-dead comments. This time, I'd rather die from the fall than end up as a breeding machine again.

In the fifth year of my marriage, I died in my sleep. However, I was born with a strange ability. Every time I died, I would come back to life at the exact moment before my last death. When I opened my eyes again, I was back at 11:11 p.m. on the night I died. Unable to find the killer, I became trapped in an endless loop. The second time, I stayed up all night trying to catch whoever was behind it, but found nothing. The moment I let my guard down during the day and closed my eyes, I died instantly. The third time, I refused to believe it and had my husband, Emmett Berkeley, lock the bedroom and seal the windows. I still died the next day. The fourth time, I stayed alone in the bedroom, forcing myself to stay awake for three days straight to find the killer. By the third day, I couldn’t hold on any longer. My vision went black, and I died again. By the fifth time, I had gone insane. Right in front of Emmett, I grinned and hacked something to death. Blood splattered across the entire wall. Looking at Emmett trembling in the corner, I licked the blood from my lips and smiled faintly. "Honey, don’t you love me? Help me take the fall, okay?" The man who used to love me deeply pointed at me in horror, screaming, "Y-you found out… You knew, didn’t you…?"

My daughter, Heather Miller, comes home in an injured state from her high school one day. Apparently, someone has been spreading rumors about her cheating in her exams, stealing from others, and even shamelessly serving as an old geezer's mistress! I spend a fortune hiring a hacker in order to locate the source of those rumors. To my horror, my best friend, Sylvia Lister, is actually the one behind this scheme! Just as I'm about to confront her angrily, I suddenly see rows of comments occupying my vision. "The male lead's mom really is smart! She taught him how to come up with rumors just to slander the female lead! Now that no one wants to approach her, he can have her all to himself!" "The mother-and-son pair really are sneaky… and I like it! The female lead is really blessed to have them in her life!" "If my guess is correct, the female lead will get expelled from the school next week. She'll get locked up by the male lead and his mom in their home, which is the start of her amazing bedroom life!"

The college entrance exam began, and I waited nervously for the papers to be handed out. Just as I was about to take the test paper from the invigilator, a floating line of text suddenly drifted across my vision. [Don't take it. The paper is coated with deadly poison. You'll die the moment you touch it.] Before my mind could even process what was happening, pure survival instinct made my hand jerk back. The paper slipped from my grasp and fell to the ground. I stiffly met with the invigilator's lifeless, mechanical eyes. He stared at me without blinking, then slowly bent down, picked up the test paper, flipped it over, and placed it back on my desk. "Good luck on your exam." His cold voice snapped me out of the fear brought on by that strange message. Just as I was starting to think that it was nothing more than nerves playing tricks on my eyes, the exam hall speakers started playing instructions. "The listening test will now begin. Please mark your answers on the corresponding answer sheet. The papers will be collected in 15 minutes. Anyone who fails to submit on time will be eliminated!" A wave of terror instantly overwhelmed me.

My name is Mark Thompson. Not long after I became a mortician, I came down with a strange condition. The moment I touch a corpse, I see their final memories play out before my eyes. It's not that I enjoy sticking my nose into other people's business. Those visions just force their way into my head. The first body my mentor ever had me restore belonged to a wealthy young man who'd been mangled in a car crash. The second I touched his shattered neck, I couldn't stop myself from saying something to the grieving family beside me. "His car didn't malfunction. The brake line was cut. "The cutters are still hidden beneath the spare tire in his wife's trunk." The crying stopped instantly, and everyone turned to stare at the woman who had been pretending to mourn. Two weeks later, she was arrested. She had hired someone to kill her husband and staged the murder as a traffic accident. After that, people from both sides of the law started lining up outside the funeral home in the middle of the night.

My husband and I scratched off a five-million-dollar lottery ticket at a lottery shop. Before we even had time to celebrate, the rosary I had worn since childhood suddenly snapped, a single bead cracking clean off the chain. Without another word, I grabbed him and tried to buy tickets that very night to flee back to the southwestern mountains. The lottery shop owner stared at me in shock. My husband clung to the metal shutter and roared, "Have you lost your mind?" But I gripped that broken wooden bead tightly. "We leave now." My husband flung my hand away, his eyes bloodshot. "I'm claiming this prize today. If you dare run, we're getting divorced!" I nodded without hesitation. "Fine. The five million, plus the used car at home, all go to you. I'll leave with nothing... "But tonight, I have to leave this city."

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.

Seven days after my father suffered severe burns and was declared brain-dead, Daniel Shaw revived him in front of thirty million viewers. Three minutes after he opened his eyes, I pulled out his ventilator. The cardiac monitor let out a piercing alarm. The color had barely returned to my father’s face before it flushed red again, and the veins in his neck bulged one after another. He opened his mouth like a fish tossed onto dry land, his fingers clawing desperately at the bedsheets. Outside the hospital room, reporters were still livestreaming. Thirty million viewers watched me send my father, the man who had just survived a medical miracle, back to his death.