After Death Short Stories & Mistress Regret Novels

My wife's childhood friend and I were brought into the same hospital after a car crash. I had suffered a ruptured heart and needed emergency surgery. But my wife, Cassandra, was the hospital director. Instead of treating me, she ordered every available doctor to Miles Rowland's room so he could receive a full examination for a few minor scrapes. I begged her to save me. She only snapped, "Can you stop competing for attention for once? Do you have any idea Miles almost broke a bone?" In the end, I died in a corner where nobody found me. But when the wife who hated me most learned I was really dead, she lost her mind.

All because I opened a window to air out the room, my husband’s childhood sweetheart, Celine Ashcroft, caught a cold. In a fit of rage, my husband, Ronan Blackwood, had his men bind me and drag me down to the ice cellar despite my being five months pregnant. "Don’t think that just because you’re carrying my child, you can bully Celine. If even a single hair on her head is harmed, I’ll make you repay it a hundredfold!" Shivering violently from the cold, I knelt through tears, begging for forgiveness. I promised that from now on I would serve his precious sweetheart well to atone, that I would never again let her suffer even the slightest harm. He only gave a cold order to seal the cellar, saying I needed to be taught a lesson so it would be burned into my memory. A week later, when Celine finally recovered from her cold, he finally remembered me in the cellar. "Vesper, have you truly realized your mistake? As long as you agree to kneel and apologize to Celine immediately, I’ll spare you." What he didn’t know was that by then, I had already frozen stiff in that ice cellar. And the child he had treasured so dearly no longer showed even the faintest sign of life.

The day I'm diagnosed with cancer happens to be the birthday of my wife's adopted son, Logan Smith. Before the party starts, I end up coughing up blood and ruining the cheerful atmosphere. My wife, Rosalie Smith, doesn't take me to the hospital. Instead, she locks me up in the basement. She looks down at me bleeding out on the ground and says coldly, "Xander Kastel, you really know how to pick your timing. Of all days, you had to cough up blood on Lolo's birthday. How dare you do it today?" I beg her to take me to the hospital, but she says she has already consulted the doctor and knows that early-stage cancer can't cause me to cough up blood. She's convinced I'm deliberately putting on an act to get back at Caleb Anderson, her first love. I pleaded desperately. "I am your husband! Rosalie, please take me to the hospital. I promise I'll never show up again." Rosalie's face darkens, and she grabs me by the throat. "Don't play these push-and-pull games with me. As long as you stay here quietly until midnight passes and Lolo's birthday is over, of course, I'll take you to the hospital. Once you've recovered, you'll still be the Smith family's live-in son-in-law." I keep screaming from the agonizing pain I'm in. Rosalie thinks I'm being annoying, so she takes Caleb and Logan to a hotel to celebrate instead. Some time later, she suddenly thinks of me, so she asks her secretary if my surgery has gone well. Her secretary's face pales as he answers in a trembling voice, "Mr. Kastel has… has left with Ms. Kastel."

My wife's soul mate had Rh negative blood just like me. In order to make my wife happy, he donated his bone marrow to me then committed suicide. I was put on the blame for his death. Everyone blamed me for killing him. My wife who received his suicide note went crazy. She started to draw blood from my body. She was extremely cruel. "You owe that to me. He would not have died if not because of you. I am only returning to him something that did not belong to you." When the soul mate reappeared, my wife started looking for me like crazy. She did not know that I had died for losing too much blood.

On the tenth day after I perished in the avalanche, my husband finally remembered me. His first love was suffering from aplastic anemia and urgently needed a bone marrow transplant—one that only I could provide. He came home holding a donation consent form, ready for me to sign, only to find the house empty. Kelly leaned weakly against him. "Vanessa must really hate me. She doesn't want to donate her bone marrow, so she ran away on purpose, didn't she?" "Maybe we should just forget it," she sighed. "I can hold on a little longer." Caden gently comforted her, his heart aching. "I won't let anything happen to you." "It's just a bone marrow donation. It's not like she'll die from it." Then he pulled out his phone and sent me a message: [No matter where you are, come back immediately and sign the donation consent form.] [Don't be so selfish! Kelly is seriously ill. If she doesn't get a transplant soon, she'll die. It's just bone marrow—I'm not asking for your life!] [If you keep refusing, I'll stop paying for your mother's medical bills!] Caden… I died the moment you walked away from the ski resort with Kelly. The avalanche buried me and our unborn child beneath the snow. My mother, in her desperate attempt to save me, was torn apart by wild wolves. How could you not know?

My fiancé's first love was taking photos on a cliff before the landslide. To save her, he actually left me behind on the crumbling edge. I pleaded with him to save me. "Lucy isn't physically strong—she can't handle this alone. You've always been resilient. I'll get Lucy to safety first, then come back for you." Their silhouettes vanished over the ridge. After a brief commotion, everything went silent. Including me, with my freshly sprained ankle. When he saw the news of my death, he completely fell apart.

On the night I get dismembered, my girlfriend, Victoria Hewitt, announces her marriage to the world. Clad in the wedding dress that I've personally designed, she soon marries her first love, Joseph Danford, happily. When Victoria receives the news of my death, she merely smiles before claiming that I'm a pathological liar. But what she doesn't know is that I've died for her sake. Later on, Victoria constructs a sculpture out of my bones. She develops a habit of hugging it every day since then.

Colin Mathers did not show up to our daughter's viewing. I held her memorial portrait and called him 33 times. He did not answer once. Then I saw a video the real estate agent had posted. [The boy's godfather spoils him rotten. He might as well be his real dad.] In the video, Colin was holding the hand of Ariana Lisle's son as they looked over the balcony of a house in a top school district. Ariana asked him, "Colin, are you really giving this house to Noah?" He smiled and ruffled the boy's hair. "Of course. His schooling comes first." The video took me back to the night before my daughter passed. She had been in so much pain that her face had gone white, yet she still clung to my hand and asked, "Mommy, did Daddy go get my medicine?" I could not bring myself to look her in the eye. All I could do was nod. She gave me a sweet little smile. "Then I won't sleep. I'm scared that if Daddy comes back and sees me sleeping, he'll sneak away again. "Mommy, I'll be good and take all my medicine from now on. Then Daddy won't leave me." She waited until the very end, but her father never came. That was when a staff member from the funeral home walked in with an eye bank coordinator. "Mr. Mathers already signed the consent form, and we've found a match for your daughter's corneas. Before the cremation, we need confirmation from one more immediate family member."

After my husband, Brice Decker, gives me a cold shoulder, I end up dying after getting stabbed three times in a row by a robber who tries to rob me. My twin sister, Indigo Humphrey, specifically dresses up as me and gets close to Brice in order to clear her gambling debt. She begins kissing up to Brice like a total simp. No longer does she get jealous over Brice's first love, Amber Warner. Even when Brice and Amber are caught sleeping with each other on our bed, Indigo will deliver them a pack of contraceptives in time. Brice can't take it anymore. He asks Indigo where my jealous side has gone. That's when I laugh. Can't he tell that I'm already dead?

My husband's adopted sister invited me out to dinner, and while we were eating, disaster struck—a violent earthquake shook the ground beneath us. My husband, a firefighter, rushed to the scene as quickly as he could. But fate had a cruel plan for us. We were trapped beneath a massive boulder, unable to move, and the rescuers could only save one of us. He made his choice. He chose her—the adopted sister who had always been frail and sickly—over me, his wife, who was five months pregnant with his child. I begged him, pleaded with him to save me. But he turned his back on me. The boulder pressed harder, and I felt the sickening crack of my arm breaking. He didn't even flinch. "Alice has always been weak," he said coldly. "If I leave her here, she'll die." But when I died, he lost his mind.

After marrying the woman I had been pining for for ten years, Nelissa Ford, I thought that my sincerity could melt the ice around her heart. However, she exposed my undercover mission to her first love, Jared Hiller, who was a journalist, just to give him a sensational story and boost his career. Her actions ultimately pushed me into the abyss. Later, I was retaliated against by a drug trafficking gang, stabbed multiple times, and died tragically. I was dumped on the street. Seeing the news, Nelissa finally lost her mind.

In the fifth year after my death, Oliver Rypien, leader of the huge smuggling ring that has a notorious reputation domestically and internationally, finally gets arrested by the police. At the public trial court, Oliver can be seen wearing an inmate uniform, though his murderous look is etched on his scarred face. He even has the guts to hum a whimsical tune tauntingly, completely unrepentant. After hearing the prosecutor accusing him of killing 129 victims, Oliver suddenly snorts in laughter. "You're wrong. You're missing one more victim. The police officer named Victor Patton who came from the Customs Enforcement Unit? Yeah, he died at my hands as well." Everyone gasps in shock. A reporter is quick to rebuke Oliver. "Hang on, Victor is a mole working for your organization! After a bounty on him was posted, he had nowhere to run to, so he embezzled over hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of national assets before fleeing overseas! Even now, he's still living his life scotfree abroad!" Oliver shook his head before letting out a cold chuckle. "Victor was a stubborn one. Even though I crippled him, he still managed to kill five of my men. How is it possible for him to be our mole? "After crippling him, I threw him into the concrete foundation of Joy Bridge. If you don't believe me, go ahead and dig through the foundation." Suddenly, Oliver lowers his tone. His smile becomes more malicious. "Speaking of which, we did have a mole who worked with us to kill ten police officers. But now, he's successfully washed his hands off his crimes and became a certain someone's husband. "Why don't you take a guess as to who that brainless, idiotic woman is?" Three minutes later, my ex-wife, Gabriella Campbell, also known as the Chief Commissioner of Police in Gakoli, receives a phone call from the court outside the office of a well-known OBGYN department. "Chief Campbell, please come to the court immediately. The defendant has something crucial to tell you in person."

When I was in college, my mom had terminal cancer, and our family company collapsed due to heavy debts. Just when I was at my lowest, my childhood friend Zach Hall rushed back from overseas. For seven years, he stayed by my side and helped me heal. …Until the night before our engagement ceremony, when I was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. I wanted to tell Zach, but instead, I overheard a conversation between him and the lead surgeon who had operated on my mother. "Zach, your fiancee's mother could've been saved back then. But you stopped me from treating her, just so Jessica could get that poor woman's corneas. If Jessica is the one you love, why marry your fiancee?" "I do feel guilty toward Annie, but I don't regret it. It was the only way for Jess to pick up a brush again and keep chasing her dreams." Through the crack in the door, I saw clearly the tenderness on Zach's face when he mentioned Jessica. "What if Annie finds out?" the surgeon asked. Zach fell silent, rubbing the band on his ring finger. "I don't know. I've already decided to marry her. I'll love her, protect her, and spend the rest of my life making it up to her." The pain hit me so hard at that moment that I almost collapsed, as if my heart was being ripped out.

It's my third year living with ALS, and my 11th day since losing the ability to speak completely. My wife, Renee Sutton, bursts into my hospital room with a lawyer and a notary in tow, gripping a so-called expert report that concludes all of my symptoms can be faked. She throws it onto my bed. "Miles, you're really a hell of an actor," she says. "You had me fooled for three years. Today, you're finally going to tell the truth." I look at her and open my mouth, but no sound comes out. She shoves a divorce agreement in front of me. "Sign it. Admit you faked your illness to swindle marital assets. You're not walking away with a single cent." I look down at the pen, then at my right hand lying motionless on the sheet. Her eyes hold nothing but a cold sneer. "Still faking? Fine. Keep faking. "Back then, you told me you didn't love me anymore, and I believed you. You said you wanted to marry that older woman, and I believed that too. "Now you've circled back and landed flat on your back, needing someone to take care of you. Did you really think I'd go soft on you again?" A nurse rushes in from the hallway and forces a writing board into my stiff left hand. "Ms. Sutton, he had a tracheotomy just yesterday! This board is the only way he can speak!" Renee stares at the board. Her expression slowly shifts as she lowers her head to look. Scrawled across it, in two shaky words, is my answer. I pour the last of my strength into every stroke. "I'm sorry."

Three days before my wedding, my younger sister staged a scene—one where I supposedly abandoned her in the mountains. She claimed I locked her in a cabin, left her to be nearly assaulted, and that she barely escaped with her life. Furious, my fiancé dragged me up the mountain and locked me in that same cabin. He said, "Wendy, a woman as vicious as you won't learn her lesson without punishment. I already told you I'd marry you. Why go after Chloe? Since you're so desperate to climb your way up, you can stay here until the wedding day." I begged him, over and over, but my scorched throat could only force out hoarse, grating sounds. Three days later, Mickey O'Brien stood at the altar in his suit, waiting for me. What he got instead was my remains.

Three years after my death, Naomi Dudley—the woman I've driven away—finally returns to Avenport. She is still with Bryson Lloyd. She leans into him, looking sweet and submissive. At the story's end, the main couple's sweet romance continues. The only one who meets a miserable end is me, the villain who dares to steal the female lead. They are here to visit her mother's grave, and I happen to be buried just a short distance away. I float beside Naomi, looking at her and Bryson. They really do look like the perfect couple. Once the candle burns down, Naomi finds an excuse to send Bryson away. She walks over to my headstone and stands there in silence for a long time. So long that I assume she is just trying to find the right words to curse me. Instead, tears well up as she smiles and touches my photograph on the stone. "Kenneth, why haven't you visited my dreams?" I suppose it's because I'm not Bryson. My lingering regrets will never reach her dreams.