Cerita Pendek Melodramatic Imagination & Novel Marriage

After Helena Ashbourne cheated on me with her male assistant again, my mind came apart. At the lowest point of it, I picked up the fruit knife on the table and meant to end things myself. "Why are you hurting yourself again? Doesn't she like you anymore?" I looked up, and sixteen-year-old Helena was walking toward me with pain all over her face. She spoke gently. "Tell me who she is. I'll make her pay for you." I looked into the bright eyes of the girl in front of me. I didn't say anything. Quietly, I pointed at her face. Later, Helena put me in a psychiatric hospital herself. In the gaps between doses of sedative, the girl sat down beside my bed again. She stared out at the woman with a face so much like her own, and the light in her eyes went out inch by inch. Then she forced the words out, and every one of them came with blood. "I don't care who she is. I'm going to kill her." Sixteen-year-old Helena never lied to me. She meant every word.

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."

"Honey, I cut my finger. It hurts so much!" I had just sent Perry Clayton a photo of the shallow cut on my index finger when a barrage of comments suddenly flashed before my eyes: [I can't stand this whiny supporting character. The male lead is a CEO worth twenty billion dollars, and she bothers him over a tiny cut.] [Our girl starts working at his company tomorrow. Once he sees how strong and understanding she is, he'll dump his wife in a heartbeat.] [Later, this drama queen refuses to divorce him, keeps pestering him, and even frames our girl. In the end, he breaks her arms and legs and locks her up in a psychiatric hospital.] The vicious words filled my vision, and I clenched my fingers in anger. Just then, Perry rushed in from outside and grabbed my hand, fear still written in his eyes. "Thank goodness it's only a scratch. Honey, what were you trying to cut? I'll do it for you."

On my thirty-eighth birthday, my husband, Hugh Shaw, nearly forty, found the love of his life. He asked me for a divorce. "Mina’s only twenty. She’s sweet and kind, while you’re old and boring." I nodded at my own reflection, looking worn and lifeless. That explained Hugh’s strange behavior lately. He’d started caring about his appearance. He never left the house without putting on cologne, and he bought a bouquet of flowers every day. No matter how busy he was, the first thing he did when he got home was work out at the gym. Before the divorce, Hugh asked me, "Maya, you’ve been a housewife for seven years. Can you really bring yourself to divorce me? Don’t come crying to me later!" I smiled. "I won’t." Because that girl he fell in love with was me at twenty.

My husband Seth and I switched bodies on the night of our wedding anniversary. When I went to the office posing as him, his colleague Jenny whispered sultrily into my ear, "Why haven't you divorced your wife yet?" I looked at the counter on my wrist. It displayed ninety-nine points—that meant we only needed to gain one more point to switch back to our own bodies. I smiled. “Points have been reset to zero! Reset! Reset! Reset!”

I transmigrate into a melodramatic angst novel. My CEO wife, Victoria Gibson, hangs me up and beats me brutally to force me to agree to a divorce. But when I see the two-billion-dollar breakup fee, my eyes light up again and again. With both my hands injured, I quickly grab a pen with my foot and sign the divorce agreement. I say with a grin, "Thanks for the money. I wish you two a long and happy marriage. May you have many children."

My boyfriend and I were thrown into another world together. He became the cruel and bloodthirsty tyrant from the history books. I became the wicked queen who brought the realm to ruin. The one who was hated by all and torn into shreds in the end. He and I played our parts so that we could change our ending. When I smiled, he granted a realm-wide pardon. On my birthday, he opened the granaries and fed the people. When I became pregnant, he spared the realm three years of taxes and levies. Everyone across the kingdom said no love was more enviable than the king's love for his queen. He held my hand back then and said gently, "There are three things I love most in this world. The sun, the moon, and you. The sun is morning, the moon is night, and you are every morning and every night." But after that miscarriage, everything changed. One by one, the promises he had made turned hollow. And finally, I found a way home. Then I caught him with his concubine in his bed. Since that was the case, I would go back home alone.

At my son's tenth birthday, I unexpectedly gained the power to read minds. Standing before the candles, he made his wish. "I hope I score a hundred on my finals." Before I could commend his maturity, a second wish slammed into my ears. "I don't like Dad. I want Mr. Shaw to be my dad.'' My hands froze halfway through a clap.

Lucifer told me my time wasn't up yet and that I shouldn't have died here. The problem was, I'd already died three times. And every single time, it happened after I got married. My first wife was a powerful leather factory owner from out west. But she had a crippling gambling addiction. After blowing through all her assets and my entire life savings, she let the debt collectors cut off three of my fingers to cover her debts. I ended up bleeding to death. My second wife was a respectable, glasses-wearing university professor. She even beat me with class, leaving no bruises and never hitting me in the face. I died from ruptured internal organs. My third wife was a quiet, blue-collar welder. I thought things would finally be good between us after we married. However, she just stood by while her mother, who despised me for being poor, humiliated and controlled my life. When my liver condition flared up, they blocked me from getting medical help, and I died of acute liver failure. I begged Lucifer in tears to give me a few different options. But Lucifer just said firmly, "Your destined wife is one of these three women. It's up to you to make it work. Pick one. Now." I was at a loss for words.

My mission to win her love had failed, and the system told me I could leave this world in fifteen days. As soon as I heard the news, I agreed to the divorce my wife wanted. I stopped making a scene whenever she left me behind to take care of her childhood friend. I stopped screaming myself hoarse when she spent my money on vacations with him. At first, she even praised me for being understanding. Then she smiled and told me she planned to marry him, and I still didn't react. She began to panic.

My wife, Camilla Fender, who was also the richest person in Jaxonville, had just given birth. Meanwhile, I, Frank Langley, was dragged into a survival game. With our baby strapped to my back, I ran through the woods for my life. I then heard Camilla's best friend's voice coming through the loudspeaker. "Camilla, why aren't you staying at the hospital with Frank to recover after giving birth? Why did you come here? Is your lover throwing another tantrum?" Camilla chuckled. Her voice was filled with helpless affection. "Yeah. Jack insisted on coming to watch this circus show. Frank thought I had business to handle, so he even pushed me to come back here when our child's surgery was happening. He's ridiculously foolish." I desperately slammed against the surveillance camera to try to get Camilla's attention and ask for help, but because Jack Solomon screamed in fright, she simply pressed the punishment button in her hand. An electric current coursed through my entire body. My son coughed up blood, and the blood splattered all over the ground. I curled up with tears streaming down my face. As the footsteps of the people hunting us grew closer and closer, the survival game reached its climax. Everyone was gambling on who would survive until the end. Only Camilla's voice remained cold. "I'm betting a million dollars that the crazy father and his son will die!"

I was a mermaid from the deep sea. Out of curiosity and playfulness, I was caught by a fisherman and endured unbearable torment. Just when I was on the brink of death, Trevon Chapman happened to pass by and saved me. So, I gave up my identity as a mermaid princess, left the ocean behind, and followed him into the human world. For five years after our marriage, Trevon granted my every wish and showered me with affection. I truly believed I had found a safe harbor I could depend on for the rest of my life—until fate struck with its cruelest blow. Trevon's childhood sweetheart had fallen gravely ill, and only a mermaid’s tail could save her. I begged him desperately, but he responded with chilling indifference. "You're only losing your legs. Corinne is losing her life. Are you really that heartless? You're just going to watch her die?" "Besides, you can’t return to the sea anymore. That tail means nothing to you now. From now on, I’ll be your legs." After the surgery, I sat in a wheelchair, running my hand over the empty fabric where my legs should have been, and calmly demanded a divorce. Trevon pulled Corinne into his arms, sneering. "You're neither human nor fish now—a monster. Without me, the only road left for you is death." Yet in the end, when I transformed back into a mermaid and leapt into the sea, his cries and desperate sobs echoed across the waves.