Melodramatic Imagination Short Stories & Novels

My boyfriend, Landon Schmidt, has sold his assets just to support me in building my livestreaming career. But when I become a famous streamer, I steal all of his money and dump him right away. Landon slumps near a river and drinks from it while begging for money in the 104 degree weather. He's exposed to the heat for so long that he almost goes into shock. Meanwhile, all I have to do is push the boundaries on camera, and I'll earn millions of dollars' worth of tips. My best friend, Yvette Carter, thinks that it's unfair for Landon to suffer like this. She advises me not to bite the hand that had fed me in the past, only for me to slap her in return. "If you pity him this much, you should pay for all of his expenses, then! Why should I pay for a broke and useless man in the first place?" That night, Yvette exposes the recording of our conversation and takes me to court. Tens of thousands of Internet users flood into my stream instantly just so they can ensure that I get judged for my sins.

I was in the middle of saving a heart attack patient's life, so I didn't drop everything to save my foster sister's dog. The next moment, I got a message from my fiancé, Felix Callier. Felix: [Because you let it die and did nothing, Tiffany's dog ended up in the animal hospital!] Felix: [Let's push back the wedding. Consider it your punishment.] This was the ninth time Felix had postponed our wedding because of one of Tiffany Kamp's tantrums. This time, I didn't want to play along anymore. Then the comment feed drifted across my vision. [Go find him on the rooftop, girl! He's actually in love with you. He already saw through the impostor's whole act.] [He's postponing the wedding to surprise you. He's secretly planning the wedding of the century for you!] My heart ached with guilt, and I ran straight for the rooftop to find him. The moment I reached the door, I heard Tiffany's teasing laugh. "Do you really think Roxy will come crawling back to beg forgiveness once she sees those words?" Felix's tone turned playful. "Of course. That's the AR technology my company just developed. Besides, she loves me so much that even a fake message won't make her suspicious. "This was her fault to begin with. She deserves a lesson." I froze where I stood. So even the comments that claimed to love me were just another game he was playing to humiliate me. I swallowed down the bitterness rising in my throat and turned to leave. Felix had no idea. The moment his fake comment feed vanished from my sight, the real one appeared.

On the same day, my older sister, Kelsey Shaw, and I marry into the Coyle Clan, a powerful clan of serpent shifters. Kelsey wants the prestigious title of Lady of the Clan, so she chooses to marry Zane Coyle, a powerful black serpent shifter. What she doesn't realize is that Zane cares about nothing but his own ambition. He neglects her, shuts her out, and even tries to hand her over to someone else in exchange for power and status. Meanwhile, Mike Coyle, the sickly white serpent shifter I marry, turns out to be fiercely devoted. His dormant power erupts in a second awakening, and during the Clan Trials, he slays Zane—who by then has risen to Clan Alpha. The day I become the new Lady of the Clan, Kelsey looks at me with resentment burning in her eyes and plunges a silver hairpin straight into my chest. When I open my eyes again, we're both back on the day we choose our husbands. This time, Kelsey beats me to it and chooses the white serpent shifter with limitless potential. I smile, completely unfazed. The truth is, neither the black serpent nor the white serpent is any good.

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.

It's been five years since I started trying to win over Zachary Pierce. I even went so far as to have a child through IVF, hoping it would finally make him care. But no matter what I do, I can never reach 100 percent affection from him. It always stays at 99 percent. Sometimes it even drops lower. One day, exhausted and aching, I go looking for him. As I reach his room, I hear laughter coming from inside. "She still hasn't figured out the egg wasn't even hers. The moment the baby was born, Zach's affection score for her dropped to zero." "So what if she finds out? She should be grateful that her face looks so much like Yvonne's. Honestly, I'm done entertaining her. It's exhausting." At that moment, everything clicks. All the hope I've held onto, every sacrifice I've made, they were all just a joke. I turn away and say to the system, "End this for me. Send me to another world."

I'm the primary surgeon of the nation's biggest medical malpractice case. Apparently, I've screwed up intentionally in a joint surgery that leads to the instant deaths of five patients. My wife, Wanda Johnson's mother is one of them. The medical world purges my name immediately. The Internet demands that I pay the price with my own life. The patients' families kneel before the court with a petition. With tears running down my cheeks, they plead to the court to sentence me to death. In order to ease the public outrage, the court decides to euthanize me. The head of the investigative team of the health department wants to activate Project Nightingale. With the power of AI, the truth of what happened in the surgery will be re-enacted. But Wanda, who also works as a police officer, shoots that idea down. "There's no need for that. Do you actually want the patients' families to witness how their loved ones die again? The youngest patient is just an eight-year-old, you know! Let's just euthanize him!"

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.

I'm a half-baked forensic examiner whose only redeeming quality is the ability to understand animals. The crime scene is inside a lavish villa. The lady of the house lies dead on the floor with a blunt-force injury to the back of her head so deep that her bone is visible. The safe has been pried open, and a million dollars in cash has vanished without a trace. Clear shoe prints mark the backyard wall, evidence that someone has climbed over it. "This one's clear as day. This is a textbook robbery-homicide. The suspect is likely a young male, around six feet tall, has a prior theft record, and knows how to cover his tracks. Check the surveillance footage in the area and look into places where he might've moved the stolen cash." The director of the forensic science center, Egbert Woodward, has been in the profession for three decades and is a widely respected authority. The officers at the scene nod in unison and begin taking notes. I'm the only one who stares at the 30 flies circling the ceiling for a full 3 minutes before taking a step forward and piping up, "Dr. Woodward, this isn't a robbery-homicide. It's a crime of passion. The murderer is the victim's husband!"

I unexpectedly receive a call from myself ten years in the past. 18-year-old me sounds rather thrilled while asking, "Who did you end up marrying, 28-year-old Theo? Did you marry the calm and gentle Hannah Shaw or the bold and fiery Mia Shaw?" I look down at the scar left by my severed finger and chuckle softly. "I didn't marry either of them." There is a moment of silence on the other end of the phone before he speaks up. "You're lying. Hannah said she would be there for me for the rest of our lives, and Mia said that she would stand up for me if anyone mistreated me." I close my eyes briefly before saying, "They are the ones who will hurt you in the future. They both fell in love with Isaac Somerville, the housekeeper's son. They killed Dad so he could become part of the Webster family—and burned down the Webster residence just to please him. "You even lost your right eye in the fire." 18-year-old me on the other end of the line is clearly flustered. "H-How could that be?" I grip the phone tightly and say with the last bit of strength I have left, "You should choose neither of them, Theo. Get as far away from them as you can, and don't look back this time."

I was Sean Freeman's kept woman, and from the very beginning, my goal was to get pregnant with his baby. The day the pregnancy test showed two lines, I thought I had finally secured my future. One night, when I was suffering from pregnancy nausea, I clearly heard two childish voices coming from my belly. 'Daddy wants to get rid of Mommy and keep the babies. We can't let him succeed! We have to make sure he transfers all his assets to our names before Mommy gets abandoned!' Before I could even process the shock, another voice spoke up. This time, it spoke directly to me. 'Mommy, Daddy installed a listening device inside the hidden compartment of your nightstand. You can't act recklessly anymore. Pretend to be innocent and helpless. Remember, if you're going to play the victim, make sure you act like a real one.' I instinctively glanced at the nightstand. A red light blinked faintly through the crack. I froze.

My sister-in-law finally became pregnant at fifty. But the family parrot, Pip, suddenly said, “Abort it. Abort it.” Hearing this, I immediately forced my sister-in-law to go to the hospital to get an abortion. My brother and parents desperately stopped me. They shouted, “Have you gone mad? Do you trust an animal’s words?” I nodded and answered firmly, “Yes. I believe everything Pip says.”

Everyone in Harbor City knew that my father maintained two households, one in the north and one in the south. My mother and I lived in Northport, while he kept his lifesaver and her daughter in Southport Years ago, Evelyn Hart took a knife meant for him during an explosion at the docks. He promised her his devotion for life. My mother fought with him over it for more than a decade. The women in their social circle mocked her for clinging to her position as Mrs. Lawson when she could not even drive his so-called lifesaver away. That changed when my mother became pregnant with my little brother. Evelyn flew into a hysterical rage over the phone and pressured my father to give her an answer. That very night, my father took my mother to the hospital and forced her to terminate the pregnancy. "Ava, we can have more children in the future, but I can’t abandon her and her daughter." The night my little brother was gone, my mother suddenly stopped crying. She simply held me and whispered. "Minnie, I’m going home." I knew that my mother was a system agent. She would survive as long as she gave my father a son and a daughter. But now, the mission had failed. The countdown above my mother’s head kept ticking down day by day. I called my father again and again, crying and begging him to come home and see my mother. However, he only snapped coldly. "Hasn’t your mother caused enough trouble after all these years? Tell her to stop using you and her life to compete for my affection." But this time, my mother truly had not been bluffing. The day the countdown reached zero, she slowly stopped breathing in my arms. I wiped away my tears and called the hospital. From that day on, I had neither a father nor a mother.

On the last day before my study-abroad application closed, I was about to give up my full scholarship offer. Then, out of nowhere, I got a call from my future self. "Don't give it up. Click confirm enrollment. Right now." "Harley locked in his own graduate placement three months ago. The only reason he wants you to stay is that Katy needs you to finish her senior thesis for her, and he needs your money every month to live on. "Two weeks after you turn down that offer, the two of them go public with their relationship. "That so-called best friend of yours, Katy? She already betrayed you. She's been sleeping with him." I froze, my finger hovering over the mouse. The voice kept going, speaking faster and faster. "Listen carefully. Once you confirm the offer, take the twenty thousand dollars left in your account and put every cent into the Eklund Growth Fund. It goes public next March. It'll grow eightfold within the year. "Once you're abroad, apply to your advisor's AI lab before your first semester ends. That project gets acquired by Coogle two years from now, and as a core team member, you'll get a share of the payout. "Twenty-two-year-old me, I'm begging you. Stop wasting yourself on people who don't deserve it." The voice cut off. I took a deep breath and moved the cursor to "Confirm Enrollment." The instant I clicked, my mind was made up. I wasn't going to bury my own future for anyone who wasn't worth it.

The day Martin Lovell is crowned king, I'm made his queen. During the kingdom's founding ceremony, assassins attack Martin and me, and I step in to stop them. But as I'm shielding Martin, he grabs me and pulls me into a blade's path so that I take the hit meant for my half-sister. As the blade sinks into my flesh, the blood filling my mouth stifles my cries of pain. Martin holds the trembling Rosie Franklin in his arms, gently wiping away her tears as he says to me, "Helena Franklin, you know how it is. You're a skilled fighter, and you even have supernatural powers. But your sister has none of that." I die in despair. As my consciousness fades, I hear the system's voice. [Helena, you have only one chance left to complete your mission. If you fail for the tenth time, you'll be erased from existence permanently.]

"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."

My wife, Janice Frost, was an interworld traveler. People like her weren't supposed to form attachments with anyone in another world. But she fell for me the moment she saw me. Every time her feelings stirred, it tore through her, like her soul was being ripped apart. She had endured that pain 99 times. Later, I was abducted and taken to North Kaman. They beat me every day, over and over. Right when I was about to break, I remembered the method Janice once taught me, a way to reach her across worlds. Somehow, I managed to use it. But instead of her voice alone, I heard her speaking with her mentor from the other side. "Janice, how could you contact a resistance group yourself and have them take Samuel? I thought you loved him." Janice's voice was cold and hard. "This ordeal was meant for Tim. I had to do this to save him. Samuel is the main protagonist of this world. He's protected by fate. Nothing will happen to him. Once this mission is done, I can stay in this timeline for good. When that happens, I'll make it up to him." My chest tightened until it felt like it might split open. When those people closed in on me again, I stopped resisting completely.

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."

"On results day, I'll have a way to turn back time and take us all back to the exam room!" Lily Parker, the prettiest girl in our class, stood at the front of the room, threw up an arm, and shouted it at the top of her voice. "Sign up with me! Just $999. If it's a scam, I'll pay you back ten times over! "You'll even get a polished answer key for the college entrance exams. Guaranteed not to get flagged for cheating!" The classroom erupted. In the corner, I didn't even look up. I'd found the same method three days earlier. And I'd decided against it. For one simple reason: time inside that exam room was completely broken. Thirty seconds for English. Twelve hours for math. And between papers, three days and nights of hunger and thirst you couldn't survive twice.

Mia Merrow, the mermaid I spent a fortune to buy, looks down on me for my ugly appearance. Instead, she turns around and falls for my handsome and gorgeous stepbrother, Charlie Pickler. I bankroll her medical treatments. She says I don't put enough thought into it. I build her the most luxurious environment to live in. She calls me tasteless and undignified. Yet, a simple sticker that Charlie casually tosses to her becomes the most priceless treasure in her eyes. "It's just an ordinary sticker, but to me, it's the most precious treasure in the world!" she gushes. "A money-obsessed man like you could never understand!" They embrace right in front of me, hoping I'll give them my blessing. "Give up, Rick. No matter what you do, you'll never hold a candle to Charlie." "Exactly, Ricky. Mia doesn't love you, so why force her?" Watching the two of them play off each other right in front of me, I can't help but laugh inwardly. Who said anything about wanting Mia's love? As I gently run my fingers over the burn scars across my face, I quietly remind myself that there are only three days left before Mia reaches maturity. They say the heart of an adult mermaid, when ground into medicine, could heal any scar. "My sweet, darling Mia," I mused to myself. "I've given you so much. In three days, it'll be your turn to give something back to me."

My husband Norman had always hated how his childhood friend Julia clung to him no matter the occasion. He even cut her off for my sake. One morning, I woke up and realized that I had mysteriously swapped bodies with Julia. I wanted to find my husband and figure out what to do, fearing he'd turn me away because of Julia's appearance. I cooked up a hundred explanations in my head until I finally arrived at our home. When Norman opened the door and saw me, he frowned and quickly shut the door, pushing me away. Just as I was about to explain that I wasn't Julia, he suddenly pulled me into his arms. "What are you doing here? Can't stand being apart from me for even two days, huh?"