Cerita Pendek Feel-Good Story & Novel Pervert Regret

In our house, owning a single unnecessary item is considered shameful. My room is bare, like a model home. It doesn't even have an extra chair. There are always only three sets of clothes in my closet. If I want a new pair of pants, I have to cut up the old pair myself before I can keep the new one. Every time I bring something new home, I have to get rid of something old. That includes my favorite pair of shorts with the little robot prints. Dad calls this "decluttering". He says it prevents the soul from becoming weighed down by objects, keeping it pure and light. Every time I grow a little taller, Mom's frown gets a little deeper. "Eddie, you're taking up too much space," she says. "The house feels crowded because of you." From then on, I do everything I can to make myself smaller. Even when I sleep, I curl myself into the tightest ball I can manage. I just want to take up a little less space. Then one day, a truck driver stops in front of me. He smiles and tells me his truck has a huge cargo compartment, big enough to hold all the things nobody wants anymore. I quietly climb inside. "Mom, Dad… I won't take up any space now. You'll finally be happy, won't you?"

My parents, Dennis and Sandra Ford, always said the wiring in our old house was too outdated to power more than three air conditioners. My sister, Beth Ford, practiced her violin in her room all day, so she needed one. My brother, Monty Ford, had been sickly since he was little and couldn't stand even a little heat, so he needed one too. The last unit went to the master bedroom. I didn't say anything. I stuck to my old, creaking fan and got through twenty-two stifling summers in Battisata City. I thought that if I stayed quiet enough, obedient enough, my family would eventually notice me. Then came the day I borrowed Monty's air-conditioned room for the final online interview at a major company. Right in the middle of it, the door kept swinging open. Beth's singing drifted in from the living room, and my dad poked his head in for the fourth time. "Still not done? Don't forget to make your brother his honey-glazed fish tonight." The interviewer on the screen frowned. "Sorry, we don't need employees with an attitude problem." The second the screen went dark, I sat frozen in my chair, cold sweat soaking the hair at my forehead. "Hurry to the market once you're finished. The fish won't be fresh if you wait too long." Their nagging kept going, and that was the moment it hit me. What I'd lost over the years wasn't just a working air conditioner or a hard-won job. It was my entire family.

I've infiltrated into a private group chat called "The Domestication Project". The group owner is in the middle of spamming her experience of her destroying her husband's mental willpower. "I've secretly swapped out my husband's anti-depressants for something else. Every day, I keep telling him that he's a useless, pathetic loser. Once he's hopelessly dependent on me, I'll have him thrown into a mental hospital and take over his company naturally." All the group members keep praising the group owner for being a total professional in gaslighting her husband. Soon, they start asking for her methods and experience. I tap on the photo of an experimental journal that the group owner has just sent. To my shock, the name listed on the mental health report with a diagnosis of severe depression is actually my own! As for the haughty group owner, she's Sophie Hayes, my wife of ten years! Yesterday, that woman told me with red-rimmed eyes that she'd rather go bankrupt just to cure me of my depression! It turns out that her devotion and love toward me for the past ten years is nothing but a grand yet cruel plot to murder me slowly! Since Sophie wants me to get reduced into a lunatic who has lost all of his marbles, then I shall put on an insane show for her. After that, I lock the doors in the mansion and dump the gasoline that I've just bought all over the living room.