Melodramatic Rebirth Short Stories & Scumbag Novels

After being reborn, I quietly cut all ties with my husband, Nathaniel Cole. I go to work alone. I watch movies alone. Even when I cook, I only make enough for one. All because in my last life, I had married him only to be neglected for 40 years. At the very end, he coldly pulled the oxygen tube from me, spitting out words filled with hatred. "If I had a choice, I never would've married you!" I died in pain, filled with resentment. When I open my eyes again, my mother is speaking to me and my sister. "According to the marriage agreement, one of you has to marry Nathaniel. Which one of you will it be?" I'm just about to refuse when my sister, Catherine Brown, steps forward. She shoots me a contemptuous glance and says, "Mom, I'll marry him."

After eight years together, I took a hit for my surgeon boyfriend. Milton Woodard vowed I could ask for anything. Everyone assumed I'd seize the chance to propose, locking him down for good. Instead, I looked him in the eye and said, "Let's break up." Then I walked away without a backward glance. Milton smirked, betting with his buddies that I'd come crawling back in under three days, calling me a desperate lapdog chasing his attention. He was dead wrong because I'd been reborn. In my last life, I proposed to him and won. Overwhelmed by the news, his first love threw herself off a rooftop and killed herself. Milton unleashed his grief-fueled rage on me. On our wedding night, he slashed my face and locked me in a dank, claustrophobic basement. When I got pregnant, he force-fed me supplements until the baby grew too big for me to deliver. I hemorrhaged, torn apart, and died in agony on the birthing table. Now, reborn on the day I saved his life, I was done playing his fool.

The night before the entrance exams, my childhood best friend, Tyson Sutherland, receives a text message from his girlfriend, Isabelle Landon, saying she was attempting suicide by jumping off a building. He immediately gets anxious and brings along a few male classmates with him to go and save her. In my past life, I learned that it was fake, and that Isabelle never planned to kill herself. That was why I was against them going to save her. I called up my teacher, Mr. Fred Nielson, and asked him to inform the boys' parents, successfully stopping them from going. … The next day, everyone sat for their entrance exams as usual, and we all got accepted into Rayward University, one of the most prestigious universities in the country. Meanwhile, Isabelle survived the jump somehow, but she became a cripple. As revenge, Tyson hacked off my arms and legs and buried me alive. "It's all your fault! You were the one who turned Belle into a cripple! I'm going to kill you!" All my classmates did nothing as they watched him kill me under their watchful eyes. They all told me that I deserved to be killed. … When I open my eyes again, I realize that I have returned to the night when Tyson tells me he wants to save Isabella. I don't stop him or the others from going anymore. Instead, I sit for the entrance exams alone. I refuse to interfere in other people's fates again.

After being reborn, I insisted on changing my arranged marriage partner from Connor Gregory to his younger uncle. My mother was shocked. She kept insisting that Connor’s younger uncle’s standards were far too high for him to ever take an interest in me. Besides, Connor and I had grown up together. I had always declared I would marry no one but him—so how could I suddenly choose someone else instead? What my mother didn’t know was that I had already died once. In my previous life, Connor did marry me, but we were only husband and wife in name. Three years into our marriage, I found out he had long since legally married my foster sister behind my back. When I confronted him, his response was: “You’re only fit to be a prop in this alliance. Rachel is my real wife.” So, in this life, I will never make the same mistake again.

In my past life, my boyfriend's childhood sweetheart, Kimberly Thatcher, claimed to be Lady Luck. She insisted on handing out sachets to keep our team safe for a hike. I, Priscilla Jensen, caught the scent and realized the sachets were stuffed with herbs that would attract wolves. So, I stepped in to stop her, saving everyone from an attack. But Kimberly thought I was looking down on her sachets, and that I was targeting her on purpose. Though she was the leader, she stormed off from the group in anger. We searched the forest under the raging storm. In the end, someone broke a leg, someone else was strangled by poisonous vines, and my shoulder was torn open. By dawn, we found Kimberly's corpse at the bottom of a valley. … On the seventh day after her death, her memorial service became an ambush. While everyone mourned for her, their eyes were fixed on me. My boyfriend, Fabian Lowell, was the first to lash out. He ripped off his bandage, revealing his wound. "If you hadn't stopped Kimberly from giving us those sachets, none of this would have happened! How dare you show up to her memorial service?" he yelled. Everyone turned to glare daggers at me. Suddenly, someone shouted, "It's all your fault! You're the reason we ended up like this! Go to hell!" In the next second, they hurled a pot of boiling stew at me. Then they set the private room ablaze and burned me alive. … When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day of the hike.

When my best friend and I realized we had been reborn and traveled back several decades, we locked eyes, collapsed into each other's arms, and sobbed, shouting that we wanted to break off our engagements. The entire neighborhood whispered that we had lost our minds. But only we knew the truth. In our past lives, this was the day everything was sealed: she married a battalion commander, Ned Stark, and I became the wife of a high school teacher, Robbie Stark. My husband betrayed me. For the sake of that pretentious whore, Scarlett Wheaton, he stole my university admission letter and let her take my place on campus. The world mocked me as a failure, and Robbie stood by in silence. After we married, every time he touched me, he would immediately write another love letter to Scarlett—atoning for his supposed guilt. "Scarlett, even if I can't be with you in this life, my soul will always belong to you alone." Even my own child despised me, calling me an ignorant village woman, urging me again and again to divorce so that his father could be with his "true love," Scarlett. And my best friend, Rachel Croft—born the daughter of a factory director—was tricked by her husband, Ned, under the pretense of buying a house. He drained her savings and her wages for twenty long years. It wasn't until she fell gravely ill and went to sell the house that she discovered the deed he had given her was a forgery. The real house—the one paid in full—was in Scarlett's name. One of Scarlett's dresses cost more than my friend's entire monthly salary. When Rachel begged to reclaim what rightfully belonged to her, she was met only with contempt from Ned and her child. "All you ever care about is money. You're nothing like Scarlett, who isn't materialistic at all. Your illness is retribution," Ned had said. "Exactly. Only someone as noble and kind as Scarlett deserves to be my mother!" her child had said. Rachel and I both spent our lives working ourselves to the bone, only to end with nothing—dying bitter and broken from the injustice. But this time, fate has given us another chance. I will go to university. Rachel will become a wealthy woman. This time, without us paving the way, those shameless men and that wretched woman think they can still live happily ever after? Dream on.

A week before summer break, my boyfriend’s childhood sweetheart threw a fit, insisting on going to Tanond to watch a strip show. She even convinced our entire class to go with them. I kept warning them that it was not safe, that it could be some kind of new scam, and begged them not to go. When they refused to listen, I secretly reported it to the police. On the day of their departure, the police stopped them right at customs. A few days later, a male stripper suddenly went viral overnight. When she found out about it, she got so furious her eyes turned red. “It’s all Zoey’s fault! If it weren’t for her, we could’ve seen an international superstar's strip show!” On the first day we went back to school, they drugged me and made ten men teach me how to dance. “Didn’t you stop us from watching a strip show? Then you can perform one for us yourself.” The next day, my photos of strip show were all over social media. After that, I jumped off a building out of despair. When I opened my eyes again, it was once again the day his little sweetheart demanded that trip to Tanond.

In order to find clean water for his beloved Liana Hughes to bathe, Castiel Fenton, my brother, left the base with all the able-bodied men. But among the zombies, a sentient Zombie King emerged and took it as an opportunity to invade the base. June Morgan, my pregnant sister-in-law, was torn in half by zombies while protecting me, and Poppy, my little niece was devoured down to the bone trying to help me escape. To save the base, I called Castiel for help. Upon hearing the news, he had no choice but to abandon Liana and rush back with his men. Eventually, the zombies were driven out of the base, but Liana was eaten by a passing zombie. Castiel said nothing and only collected Liana’s remains expressionlessly. On the day of Liana’s funeral, Castiel deliberately pushed me into a horde of zombies and let them feast on my body. “If you hadn’t called me back, Liana wouldn’t have died! You must pay for her life!” When I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day the zombies invaded the base.