Melodramatic Short Stories & Scumbag Awakening Novels

It was common knowledge that the Marsh family was the family with the strictest household rules in upper-class society. They adhered to the rules unyieldingly, and there were so many of them that the rulebook was thicker than ten legal codices. One of the rules was: If any woman wanted a divorce, she had to roll on a bed of nails for half an hour before she was allowed to leave. In the past, Violet Stane insisted on marrying River Marsh and never thought about getting a divorce. After all, she had spent ten years pursuing this aloof ice prince. Once she married him, she gave up on her flourishing career, stopped being so aggressive, obeyed the ridiculous number of house rules, and became the perfect wife for River. But she no longer wanted to do that.

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.]

I'd been spoiled and willful since I was a little girl. Whatever I wanted, I always got. When I was 17, I fell for a blue diamond at an auction. My father had the entire auction house shut down so I could take my time choosing. When I was 22, I fell for Marco Ferrante, the son nobody in the Ferrante family cared about. My father used every resource he had to secure Marco's place as heir to the Ferrante family. As agreed, Marco married me. But in two years of marriage, he never once touched me. Because there was always another woman in his heart. Three years earlier, she'd fallen seriously ill and gone abroad. She returned three years later, on the night of our wedding anniversary. I'd spent a month preparing my gown for our anniversary. I put it on, stepped in front of him, and spoke softly for the first time. "Could you please not go to her tonight?" He pried my fingers loose one by one. There was no warmth in his eyes. "Because of you, I made the wrong choice back then and lost her. "Now she's back. Are you still going to stand in my way?" To him, I was never his wife. Just a mistake he'd made to survive. I watched him walk away and suddenly laughed. "Fine. If our marriage is a mistake, then I'll end it myself."

My husband's ex-girlfriend left behind a cat that could nurse my daughter like a woman. I turned on my camera and livestreamed this horrifying scene. The stream instantly went viral, and people approached me offering high prices for the cat. When I agreed to sell it, my husband went crazy, clutching the cat and screaming that it could not be sold. Even my sister-in-law, who had always doted on me, furiously yelled at me for being brainless. In my previous life, I accidentally discovered the cat in our house nursing my daughter. I was terrified when I saw my daughter's satisfied expression! What made me feel even more horrified was that the cat's chest area had no fur at all. It was smooth and delicate, like a nursing woman's. Moreover, this cat usually either bared its teeth at me or scratched me with its claws. Every night, it slept in my husband's arms. Thinking of all this made my skin crawl, and I immediately decided to throw the cat out. Unexpectedly, my usually gentle and refined husband became incredibly frenzied. "I raised this cat with my own hands. It's no different from my child! If you dare throw away my cat, then we're getting divorced!" My sister-in-law also urged me to keep the cat. She even gave me sleeping pills, claiming I had been under too much stress lately. That night, my daughter died in my arms, and I also died in bed from excessive grief. Only after my death did I learn that the cat was my husband's ex, and my daughter was the medium for her life exchange. Their true purpose was to steal my body. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day I was just discharged from the hospital.

When the Carter family went bankrupt, Zoe Carter sold herself to the Tanners to save her mother. She became the bride of Yale Tanner, the man everyone in Gerton feared and avoided like the devil himself. Their marriage was supposed to bring him good fortune and save his life. Three days after the wedding, Yale, who had been on the brink of death from a gunshot wound, made a miraculous recovery. From then on, he treated Zoe like the most precious thing in his world. Now, however, Zoe sat bound at the wrists and ankles with coarse hemp rope, less than two feet from the open door of a helicopter. Freezing water jolted her awake. At thirty-three thousand feet, the icy wind rushing through the open doorway chilled her to the bone. She struggled instinctively, but the ropes only tightened, digging into her flesh until blood began to seep from her wrists and ankles. "Don't be scared, Zoe. Look at your mother! She's putting on quite the kite show!" Yale seized her trembling head and forced her to look at the screen beside her. There, suspended from a rope outside the helicopter, her mother dangled helplessly in the wind, her eyes vacant as she swayed like a kite. "Mom! Mom!" Her fear for her mother overwhelmed her own terror. Frantically, Zoe tried to crawl toward the screen, struggling forward on her bound hands and feet. Yale caught her by the back of her neck and held her firmly in place. His warm breath brushed her ear as he spoke, his voice cold and menacing. "Have you learned to behave yourself yet, Zoe? Now tell me, who do the data and research papers on precision-targeted therapies and antibody-drug conjugates really belong to?"

My boyfriend returned from his volunteer teacher post with a quiet girl. She wore bleached clothes and always spoke timidly, calling my boyfriend's name intimately. Since then, everything in our house had an extra copy for her. Winona Chaucer had everything I had and didn't have. I could put up with that, but then came the day of the proposal. My boyfriend knelt on one knee and pulled out a ring box with two rings inside. He looked at me and softened his voice to the point I thought he was convincing a child to accept an unreasonable request. "Winona said she wanted one too. Don't take it to heart, alright? Will you marry me, Liliana Davis" I looked at the identical diamond rings but took neither of them. Chris Samson, my boyfriend, had no idea that the one thing I couldn't stand was sharing anything with someone else, not even the person who was supposed to stand by my side for the rest of my life.

After taking care of my mother's ashes, I rushed overseas to attend my fiance's wedding to another woman. Preston Wallace had developed retrograde amnesia during a secret mission. He remembered everyone and everything—except me. His doctor said the most effective way to recover his lost memories was to continue the life he'd come to accept after losing them. In other words, he had to keep playing husband and wife with his female partner. So, for the sake of my unborn child, I personally handed Preston the wedding vows. That night, I came across a trending post online. "I feel awful about what I've put her through. For the past three years, whether she had a fever, caught a cold, or got into a car accident, she had to handle it all alone. How can I make up for what I owe her and still enjoy my life now without feeling guilty?" Someone replied in the comments, "You can't have it both ways. But you could switch from retrograde amnesia to situational amnesia—where you remember whoever you're with." Not long after, Preston messaged me. "Madeline, it's been three years. How have you and your mom been?" I stared at his message without replying. Preston had no idea that after what happened to him, his enemies came by our home, wanting to retaliate against my mother and me. My mother was stabbed 12 times while protecting me. After three years in a vegetative state, she finally regained consciousness. But when she heard that Preston had lost his memory and was going to marry another woman, she couldn't handle the news and died.

Every time Austin Cole cheats on me, I'm quick to show up. I take photos, record videos, call the police on the mistress, and sometimes even make a public spectacle of her humiliation. On the 13th time he cheats on me, I'm rushing to the hotel when a message from my boss suddenly pops up, saying he needs me in Ardendale immediately to handle an urgent project. I've been working on that project for over a year. My entire career is practically betting on it. I stare at the screen. The next second, I turn the car around. After a month of nonstop work, when I finally drag my exhausted body home, Austin is lounging on the couch, casually watching TV. The moment he sees me walk in, a smile tugs at his lips. "Why didn't you come catch me last time? Ellie and I waited for you at the hotel for ages." I'm so tired that I can barely keep my eyes open. "My boss urgently needed me. I was working overtime in Ardendale all month, so I couldn't make it." A flicker of disbelief crosses his face. I turn to look at him and suddenly realize I don't have any energy left to keep acting in this ridiculous love-hate drama with him. "Austin, I want a divorce."

I had been trying to court Liam Castle for five years. The only thing I needed for the system to declare my mission a success was to obtain the marriage license. I was so close, but Liam had cancelled our marriage registration for the ninth time. "Friday? I can't do Friday. I have to meet Nora's parents." Liam continued to explain disinterestedly, "Her parents have been grilling her to get a boyfriend, so I have to pretend to be her boyfriend so they'll let it rest. Why don't you ask the system for another month's extension? "Just tell the system you'll trade one month of your future lifespan for the extension, as you've always done. "We'll get married after I help deal with Nora's parents." He had always been aware of the system as well as the procedures for extending the deadline. What he did not know was that if I failed the mission, I only had ten months left to live. Now that he had extended it nine times, I was only one more extension from death. I decided I was done waiting for him. With that, I asked the system, "System, I remember you told me that, besides extending the deadline, I can also switch to a different target… "In that case, could I change the target?"

During a parent-child activity at kindergarten, the teacher asks the children to draw what they want to be when they grow up. The other kids draw princesses, dinosaurs, and astronauts, but my five-year-old son, Evan Jepsen, draws a cell phone. Across its screen, he's written a message in crooked letters. "Incoming call from Annette." "Why do you want to be a phone?" the teacher asks, puzzled. "Because Daddy loves his phone more than anything," Evan replies earnestly. "When Mommy asks him to come to dinner, he gets annoyed. But whenever Annette calls, he smiles right away." The classroom falls silent, and I stand frozen in place. "Once, Mommy had a fever of 102°F, but Daddy said he was busy and couldn't take her to the hospital," Evan continues. "But when Annette said her stomach hurt, he canceled a really important meeting and carried her to the car himself. "One day it was raining, and Daddy promised to pick me up. But then Annette called, and he made Mommy and me get out of the car. "Daddy said Annette's brother saved his life a long time ago, so he promised to take care of her forever." Evan looks up at me, his voice growing softer. "If Daddy wants to repay Annette's brother, why are we always the ones he leaves behind? "If I become Daddy's phone… would he hold me all the time too? Would he listen to me when I talk, just like he always listens to Annette on the phone?" I pull him into my arms and wipe away my tears. "Sweetheart, you don't have to become a phone," I choke out. "I'll take you away from your daddy, who never seems to notice us anyway."

Neil Waller had a strange way of handling every fight between us. He called it a reconciliation mystery box. Whenever we argued, he would block me for three days. Then, as if nothing had happened, a link would suddenly appear on my phone. His message usually went something like this: "Open it. If you get 'Better Luck Next Time,' leave me alone. If you get a reconciliation coupon, maybe I'll forgive you." For years, I played along. The punishments changed every time. Sometimes, I had to put up with another week of being ignored. Sometimes, Neil made me apologize in front of other people. Once, I opened the mystery box while he was having dinner with another woman, only for him to casually tell me we could talk after he was finished. The sixth time I finally drew a reconciliation coupon, Neil wrapped his arms around me and gave me that relaxed, self-assured smile I knew so well. "See, Gabriella? No matter how unlucky you are, you still come back to me in the end." At the time, I told myself his indifference was only an act. I believed that somewhere beneath his arrogance and careless attitude, Neil still loved me. Then I discovered the mystery box he had made for the new intern, Shelley Vaughn. Hers had only one outcome: Neil's unconditional favor, and her chance of getting it was one hundred percent. One day, Shelley accidentally knocked over my coffee. Before I could even react, Neil immediately went to comfort her. The coffee had spilled across the back of my hand, leaving my skin red and stinging, yet Neil frowned. "You're not a little girl anymore. Do you really need someone to comfort you over every small thing?" That night, another mystery box appeared on my phone. It was the seventh one. Neil had left a message underneath it. 'Open it. If you get the Reconciliation Coupon, come back.' I stared at those words for a long time. This time, I did something different. I never opened the box. I blocked Neil instead. On the seventh round, I finally stopped waiting for him to choose me. For once, I chose myself.

She'd loved him for four years. But just before their wedding, she was forced to pretend she'd betrayed him, leaving him no choice but to let her go. When he found out she'd cheated on him, he flew into a rage and made her life a living hell. “Summer Blake, you should be grateful I haven't killed you.” It wasn't until much later that he realized just how empty his world had become without her.

Olivia Hall was 18 when her parents died in a bloody gang war. Henry West, the city's most powerful crime boss, took her captive and forced her into a relationship. He kept her at his side, never letting her leave. Olivia fought him every step of the way, willing to risk her life rather than give in. But no matter how much she hated him or how hard she pushed him away, Henry lavished her with affection and made sure no one could hurt her. Over time, his relentless devotion wore down her defenses. Against her better judgment, Olivia fell in love with him. Everyone said she was Henry's greatest strength and the one weakness that could destroy him. The day Olivia agreed to marry him, Henry wiped out half the city's criminal world to make sure no one left could threaten her. Then he announced he was retiring. "Olivia, you're the only woman I'll ever love. There'll never be anyone else. I promise." Years later, Olivia discovered that Henry was secretly looking after another woman, someone he treated like she was too precious for the world to touch. "Olivia, I still love you more than anyone, but Grace is sweet and innocent. She reminds me of you when we first met, and I can't just walk away from her. Once this is over, I'll make it up to you. I swear." Olivia wasn't going to give him another chance. He had ruined what they had, and she had no interest in holding on to what was left. She burned every keepsake from their relationship and boarded a flight overseas, determined to leave Henry behind for good.

Five years after their breakup, Lauren Scott signed a master-servant contract with Yale Sutton, the ex-boyfriend who had been penniless when they were together. Yale would pay off her debts, and in return, Lauren had to fulfill his every demand. "Lauren, take off one piece of clothing, and I'll knock a million off your debt." Yale spoke slowly, his voice dripping with mockery. Around the private room, the men hooted and cheered while the women laughed and made teasing remarks. Lauren gritted her teeth. "Fine. Just don't go back on your word, Mr. Sutton." Without a moment's hesitation, she unbuttoned her blouse and let it fall to the floor, baring her porcelain-white skin and most of her full, rounded breasts. The room fell silent for a moment before whistles erupted from every direction.

My boyfriend, Yale Carter, was famously frugal. Everyone knew him as a world-class cheapskate. A five-cent price hike was enough to get my favorite chicken legs permanently crossed off the grocery list. If I got sick, his solution was hot water. And when we decided to get married, he refused to pay the small fee for our marriage license because it was apparently money we couldn't afford to waste. So we waited. When the fee was finally waived, I put on the dress he'd bought me only because it was on sale and showed up at City Hall two hours early, ridiculously excited to finally make things official. That excitement lasted until I saw him by the lake with Yvonne Chandler, the assistant he'd hired six months earlier. They'd been stopped by a street photographer charging $20 a picture, which should have ended the conversation immediately. This was a man who'd stopped buying me chicken over five cents. I fully expected him to tell her the price was insane and walk off. Instead, he turned to Yvonne. "You know, we never took any pictures together back in school. Want to get one?" "At $20?" Yvonne waved a hand. "Forget it." When the photographer mentioned a discount for multiple shots, my boyfriend took out his phone and made a transfer of $2,000. "No discount necessary. Just take a hundred pictures of us. We'll make an album." I watched the whole photo shoot from a distance. A hundred pictures of the two of them standing close, posing together, completely at ease with each other. By the time they were done, the two hours I'd spent waiting were up. It was officially the time my boyfriend and I had agreed to meet. My phone lit up with a message from him. [I checked. The license is free, but there are still ten bucks in processing fees. Why waste the money? We could put that toward dinner. Getting married is just a formality anyway. We don't need a license to spend the rest of our lives together.] I quietly typed out a reply and hit send. [Okay. Then let's not get married.] I didn't want him anymore, either.

Graham Whitlock was leaving for the remote Northreach Research Station to work on a long-term research project. Before he left, he told me: “Audrey, the conditions out there are harsh, and the regulations don’t allow family members to come along. Our family needs you here, too. Please wait for me for three years. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” But three years became another three years. I waited for Graham for seven years. He still never came home. One phone call every five days. One video call a month. We saw each other only during the few precious days of leave he was allowed each year. Yet I never complained, not even once. I was afraid of getting in the way of his career. Then I became pregnant. Only then was my emergency family-visit request finally approved. After a grueling journey of thousands of miles, I arrived at the station and excitedly knocked on the door of his residence. A little girl answered. “Daddy, someone’s here! I don’t know her!” I thought I had the wrong room. But the next second, Graham’s indulgent voice came from inside. “Sweetheart, Daddy’s busy right now. I’ll have Mommy go see who it is.” His assistant, Mara Collins, came to answer the door. The moment she saw me, she froze, too shocked to speak. “Mrs. Whitlock, why are you here...?” I held a hand over my pregnant belly. After seven years of waiting, the heart I had kept suspended all this time finally died. It turned out Graham Whitlock hadn’t stopped caring about his family. He simply wasn’t caring about our family.

On the day I sold my house, my best friend asked me. “Aren’t you getting married soon? Why are you selling your new home?” I signed the transfer agreement and replied, “Because I’m breaking up with him.” We were supposed to buy a particular couch for our new home. Caleb Graham said he had not managed to snag it yet, so he asked me to wait a little longer. Then, I saw that very couch in Claire Silva’s Stories. She had specifically tagged Caleb. [It’s the one I’ve been waiting for so long! He still knows me so well!] In the comments section, Caleb simply replied, [Don’t mention it.] That was followed by a bunch of trivial chatter between the two of them. I stared at that Stories post for a long time. Then, I canceled the order for the matching pajamas. I scrolled back through my order history. I had ordered over a hundred packages. They were all for furnishing our new home. At first, Caleb would enthusiastically pick things out with me. Later on, he did not even bother to reply to my messages. It was because Claire, his first love, had gotten divorced. His attention toward me and our new home had shifted elsewhere. “If a buyer contacts us, I’ll let you know right away.” The real estate agent slid his business card across the table. I reached out to take it. Then, I cast one last glance at this place. ‘Caleb, I admit that I regret it,’ I thought. Seven years had passed, and I no longer wanted to build a home with him.

It all started because my daughter, Joy Harrell, threw a tantrum wanting to go to the amusement park. On the way there, we got into an accident that left my wealthy husband, Brian Harrell, paralyzed in both legs, unable to ever stand again. As punishment, he slashes our daily allowance to a mere ten cents, and Joy and I are forced to survive by scavenging through trash and even fighting wild dogs for food. One day, dizzy with hunger, Joy eats some cookie crumbs that the family doctor, Aurora Bradley, drops on the floor. She does so out of sheer hunger and desperation. However, Brian immediately berates her for "stealing" and forces her to kneel outside in the pouring rain for ten hours before being allowed back inside the villa. Furious, I go to confront him, but instead I see his crippled legs standing tall, holding hands with Aurora as they waltz to the music. Brian's friend looks out the window and feels sorry for us, saying, "Look, Brian, your daughter's tantrum might have caused you to miss your last chance to see your first love ever again, but don't you think that you've already punished her and your wife long enough for that? "You even hired a stand-in to pose as a doctor in the house. Surely your anger has cooled off by now, right?" Brian scoffs and replies coldly, "They were thoughtless enough to ruin the seven-year pact I had with Dorothy. This punishment is nothing—in fact, it's way too light for them. "Don't you ever bring this up again. Only two more years of their punishment remain. Once it's over, I'll make it up to them properly." However, Brian doesn't know that I've been saving all of the good food I can ever get for Joy, and thus, I've developed terminal stomach cancer. In other words, I will never live to see the future. But I will also never let Joy stay by his side to suffer any longer.

In Sicily, forgetting a face can get you killed. I was born face-blind. Unless I recognized someone's tattoo or voice, I had no idea who I was looking at. Sometimes, I couldn't even recognize my own parents. But my best friend, Sofia Ricci, was convinced I just wasn't trying hard enough. She decided it was time to cure me of all that "drama." She even got my brother, Don Victor Lombardi, and my fiancé, Luca Marchetti, to play along. The three of them called it "extreme survival training." At the underground casino, they once abandoned me in a private room packed with strangers. At family banquets, they'd ditch the suits I knew them by and vanish into the crowd. I would be left wandering from person to person, asking strangers for help because I couldn't tell who was who. To them, it was survival training. Today, we were in an Old Town square crawling with lowlifes, negotiating a deal. I only left for a moment to wash my hands. When I returned, the three of them had vanished. They were supposed to be waiting outside, but the bodyguards were nowhere to be seen either. Meanwhile, our enemies were closing in from the street. I instinctively reached for my radio. Then it hit me. Sofia had taken my encrypted radio earlier and offered to "hold on to it" for me. I swallowed my panic and backed into a nearby bar. As soon as I reached the counter, the bartender handed me a note. I knew the handwriting. Sofia. "We've shown you twice what the enemies on this street look like. Pick them out and find your own way out. You've got this, sweetie! We'll have drinks waiting for you at the safe house." I looked out the window. A blur of unfamiliar faces was closing in. What a joke. They call this training? They're gambling with my life. But maybe being face-blind isn't such a problem after all. With a gun in my hand, I don't need to recognize anyone. Anyone who comes near me is the enemy.