Mind-Bending Karma Short Stories & Novels

When I woke up, I had somehow become trapped in the body of my disobedient daughter. I had sacrificed everything, living frugally to send her to the best school. Yet, she called me almost daily, claiming—like someone trapped in a paranoid delusion—that her teachers and classmates were out to harm her. She was willful and rebellious, picky about food, befriending the wrong crowd, and even dating a troublemaker at a young age. As a sister, she was far from kind, constantly bullying her younger brother. And school? Surely, it couldn’t be harder than working a full-time job. But then, as I lived in her shoes, a group of girls cornered me in the restroom, kicking me mercilessly. Returning home, I was met not with care but with a sorry excuse for a meal. Only then did I begin to understand the pain my daughter had endured...

I live alone. At eleven o'clock on a rainy night, an unexpected call came through. The voice on the other end said my car window was left open and urged me to go downstairs. Cautious as a woman should be, I didn't act rashly. Instead, I called the property security office, only to discover that even the security was fake. It hit me suddenly—I was ensnared in a vast conspiracy. Someone was orchestrating all of this. But for what purpose?

My sister leaves some last words before committing suicide, and everyone who sees those words die. My grandmother is the first to go, and then my father. In the end, even my mother jumps off a 30-story building. The reporters fall over themselves trying to score an interview with me, and the police interrogate me. Countless people want to know what my sister's last words are. However, I keep my silence until my sister's tenth death anniversary. I see a figure before her grave, and I'm agitated beyond imagination. I know it's time for death to take me.

My husband's childhood sweetheart needed surgery, and he insisted that I be the one to operate on her. I followed every medical protocol, doing everything I could to save her. However, after she was discharged, she accused me of medical malpractice and claimed I’d left her permanently disabled. I turned to my husband, hoping he’d speak up for me, but he curtly said, “I told you not to act recklessly. Now look what’s happened.” To my shock, the hospital surveillance footage also showed that I hadn’t followed the correct surgical procedure. I couldn’t defend myself. In the end, I was stabbed to death by her super-alpha husband. Even as I died, I still couldn’t understand—how did the footage show my surgical steps were wrong? When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day Joanna was admitted for testing.

My adopted daughter, Phoebe Marsh, possessed an evil ability. Whenever she got hurt, the pain would also be inflicted directly on my biological daughter, Maisie Shaw. She deliberately hurt herself, covering her body with wounds and bruises. Then, she would turn around with cold eyes, watching Maisie writhe on the floor in agony until she passed out from the pain. With no medical solution available, I broke down and held Maisie close, begging my husband, Brandon Shaw, to send Phoebe away. However, he would erupt in fury. "It's obviously Maisie who's been faking illness for attention, and you're making up this ridiculous story to get rid of Phoebe. She's just a fragile, helpless child. How can you be so vicious?" After that, Phoebe escalated her self-harm even more viciously. Meanwhile, Maisie spent every day curled up in the corner of her bed, refusing to let anyone touch her. On Maisie's birthday, Phoebe threw herself from the fifth floor. Just as Maisie was blowing out her candles and making a wish, she suddenly began bleeding from all her facial orifices, and she died instantly. Yet, Phoebe only suffered minor scrapes. I died from overwhelming grief shortly after. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to Phoebe's first day in our home. Maisie was playing with her Legos when she suddenly clutched her ankle and started crying. This time, I grabbed the broom from behind the door and swung it toward Maisie, shouting, "I'll beat you up for faking illness and seeking attention!"

My husband was dead. He had saved a girl from drowning, yet he himself perished in the icy river. As I sank into a chasm of grief, the girl's father appeared at my door. He glared at me and demanded, "Where is my daughter's necklace? She was wearing it before she fell into the water!" Rage surged through me, and in the heat of our confrontation, he ended up dead. Then my phone… came alive. "Hide the body. The police are coming. I'll teach you how to dispose of a corpse…"

My wolf awakened on my eighteenth birthday. Soon after, the Feral Curse tore through the werewolf world. The curse nearly claimed me, but a young Alpha, Lachlan, saved my life. He brought me to his pack. His parents, the Alpha and Luna, took me in. They gave me the best room in the pack house and treated me like the daughter they never had. Lachlan never left my side. He risked catching the curse himself, patiently feeding me potions one sip at a time. His wolf knew. I was his fated mate. I was the envy of the pack. I had an Alpha's total devotion. Then one day, Lachlan knelt before me. In his hands was the Moonstone necklace—the symbol of every Luna who came before me. He held me tight, whispering a promise to show the world that I belonged to him, and him alone. I accepted the necklace. But that night, I twisted his love into a poison. A poison I used to murder his parents and eighteen of their loyal retainers.

As the older brother, I agreed to marry a dead woman just to get the five hundred thousand dollars for my younger brother to get married. My younger brother insisted that the middle-aged couple, who had lost their daughter, only wanted their daughter to experience being married before her death. My girlfriend also persuaded me to do it. She said I just needed to lie in the same bed as her for one night and do nothing. I nodded and agreed. But when I got to that family’s house, the parents pulled out a white bedsheet and handed it to me. “You have to actually be intimate with my daughter. Otherwise, I won’t pay you a single cent.”

I had always thought I was the happiest woman in the world. After all, my fiance was rich, handsome, and thoughtful. To everyone else, he was practically perfect. However, I found three divorce decrees and death certificates of his three ex-wives in his drawer the day before our wedding. Before I could even process the shock, a wall of floating comments appeared before my eyes. 'So, she's the next victim, huh?' 'The last three thought they could change Ivan and insist on marrying him, although they found his secret, and look where it got them. This one is even dumber, completely blinded by love. I bet she thinks he can still be redeemed. Little does she know, he doesn't love her at all.' 'We need more villainous male leads! I wonder how this woman would die this time. I can't wait to see it!' 'Great news, friends! The female lead, Cynthia, will appear soon! She's the only one who can free Ivan from his dark thoughts!' The next moment, a colleague dropped to her knees and grabbed my thigh. Tears spilled from her eyes in an instant as she accused me, "Please, give my man back to me! Being a homewrecker won't end well for you. He and I are soulmates. He needs me to pull him out of the abyss. Only I can give him what he truly wants!" My other colleagues circled me and echoed her accusations. I simply nodded. Then I tore the wedding invitations in half. 'Go ahead. He's all yours now,' I thought.

I had just finished my check-up and stepped out through the glass doors of the hospital's outpatient building when a sudden, brutal force yanked my arm. I stumbled and crashed onto the cold tiled floor. "You bitch! Have you no shame seducing men right inside a hospital?! I'll beat you to death today!" A woman in a mink coat grabbed my collar and dragged me aside, her nails scraping across my neck and leaving a burning sting. "Since you like acting like a slut so much, why don't we let everyone get a good look at you?" I struggled desperately, raising my voice in protest. "You've got the wrong person. I'm not a mistress!" The woman shoved her phone right in front of my face. "How dare you deny it! Isn't this a photo of you with my husband?" I fell silent as I looked at the man in the picture, for he was the leukemia patient I had just been matched with—the very one I was preparing to donate bone marrow to.

The day my daughter, Holly Rivera, got her acceptance letter from Bellmont University, I filed my tenth lawsuit against her homeroom teacher, Natalie Martin. The result was exactly what you would expect. I lost again. Outside the courthouse, a group of parents pointed at me and started yelling. "Ms. Martin got the whole class into top schools, and Holly still made Bellmont. Why are you suing her ten times?" Holly stood there as well, looking at me like she didn't recognize me anymore. "I'm done being your daughter," she said. I didn't answer. By then, I already knew the lawsuits weren't going to change anything. That same night, I threw Holly a celebration dinner and invited her entire class. When the parents came to pick up their kids, they found 40 bodies hanging in the banquet hall. Holly was one of them. The police took me in on the spot. An officer dropped the surveillance footage on the table, each frame capturing me stringing them up. His eyes were bloodshot as he leaned in. "Start talking. Why did you kill 40 people? Even your own daughter?" I leaned back and opened my hands. "Why did I do it? Ask Ms. Martin. She'll explain everything."

Do you have any dark secrets? I do. No matter how hot it gets, Mom never allows me to look unkempt in front of other people. Even after I start college, she still makes me wear undershirts when I go swimming. A classmate who can't stand me steals my undershirt and mocks me, saying I look like some pretty boy, all flimsy and effeminate. I refuse to take that lying down and want to duke it out with him. But when he looks at me, it's like he sees something terrifying. He whirls around and bolts. Later, he applies for a leave of absence. My dorm mates plan to visit him and ask me to go along. But the moment I reach the doorway, he grabs a broom and drives me away. "Get out, you freak! You're a monster!" he roars. Then, he turns to my dorm mates. "You'd better stay away from him. Otherwise, you'll be dead before you even figure out how it happened!" What he says completely baffles me, yet his words come true before long. Right before sitting for the grad school entrance exams, one of my dorm mates asks me out to blow off some steam. I go with him and end up drunk. When I wake up, I find him lying in the bathtub, the water dyed red with his blood. His body is already cold.

I was a familiar face in the police station. I often got into fights and would frequently be thrown into a detention cell. One day, while I was gaming in an arcade, Captain Zimmer showed up again. I was stunned for a few seconds. “Did I beat someone up again? I don’t remember, though.” Captain Zimmer merely took his handcuffs out and put them on me. “Mindy Fawkes, you’re under arrest on suspicion of killing your dormmates.”

On the day the kidnappers killed my son, I did not cry. I paid top dollar for the best lawyer in the city to argue that the kidnapper was innocent. And once he was free, I signed ten percent of my shares over to him. I also gave him the house my son had loved most. My husband, Alex Thomas, slapped me in front of the press. He called me a cold-blooded monster. People on social media boycotted my company and demanded my family kick me out. I endured every insult and every attack in silence. At the review hearing, I looked at my husband. "I thought you, of all people, would understand me."

My boyfriend's mistress posted a pregnancy announcement with him on Instagram. They looked ridiculously happy. Then she tagged me and asked for my blessing in front of everyone. Naturally, the whole internet waited for me to tear her apart. They had every reason to expect bloodshed. I'd dragged myself out of the ruins of a crime family and fought my way to the top of Wall Street. Julian Rhodes, meanwhile, was the son of the nanny who had raised me. And Emily Nash? She was a medical intern who grew up in the slums. Soon, even underground bookies were taking bets on what I'd do. Half bet Emily wouldn't make it out alive. The rest bet Julian would die beside her. I did neither. Instead, I shocked everyone by congratulating them. There was a reason for that. A month earlier, Julian had been badly injured while protecting me during a shootout at the pier. The head injury had left him with an alternate personality. That other Julian had fallen hard for the first person he'd seen when he woke up—Emily. A few days earlier, Emily twisted her ankle as she walked past me. That alone was enough to bring out Julian's other personality. He grabbed an antique vase and smashed it against my forehead. Hot blood ran down my brow and into my eye. My hand went straight to the gun at my hip. Then I stopped myself. He laughed and pointed at me. "Caroline, touch Emily again, and the real Julian will never wake up. You'll never see him again." Julian had saved my life the night my family was wiped out. He also held the access keys to everything I owned. So if I wanted the real Julian back, I had no choice but to endure it.