Short Stories & Novels

Tiffany's soul hovered overhead. She watched them rip her heart out—still dripping—and stuff it into a cooler. Destination? Velmont City, Dalvona. For the same girl who'd sold her to traffickers in Nyamara. Outside the OR, Hector stood there, eyes all soft. His assistant called. "Mr. Coxon, we've located Ms. Talwyn. Want me to send someone?" Hector didn't blink. "Don't bother. A girl like that deserves to die." The surgical light flipped green. A doctor strolled out. "Congrats, Mr. Coxon. Surgery went smooth. Ms. Pusey and the baby are doing great!" Hector started crying happy tears. This was the man she had loved for ten years.

Ten years ago, I lost my sight saving Ivan Hardman. Now, a decade later, Ivan lets his mistress live under the same roof as me. Every night, he coaxes me to sleep in the first half, only to spend the rest tangled up with her. Even my son secretly calls her "Mom." What they don't know is, I've regained my sight. And I'm planning my escape.

I was a top-tier heart surgeon. The kind they gave a government-issued black SUV with diplomatic plates—armored, red-light-skipping, cleared-for-anything kind of ride. I parked it at my fiancé Marco Varonetti's place so he could keep it in shape. Bad call. One day, I got an emergency call: heart transplant for the Chancellor—yeah, that Chancellor, the one with state secrets ticking inside him. I rushed over to Marco's to grab the car. Right as I was about to leave, some rando slid into the back seat like she owned it. "Mall first. I need a mani," she barked. "Then get the ice cream Marco ordered. If it melts, I'll kill you." Excuse me? "This is my car," I said, trying to stay chill. "I've got a critical airport run. You need to get out." She rolled her eyes. "You're just the driver. Open those eyes and check the plate." Then the maid chimed in. "Everyone knows Mr. Varonetti takes Ms. Caro out in this car. Nobody says a word." I froze. Marco used my federally issued SUV... to chauffeur her? This wasn't just messy. This was criminal.

My sister had struggled with severe depression for years, and the only thing that seemed to ease her pain was her dog, Toto, who had become her constant companion. But when her illness flared up again, Toto was nowhere to be found. Then, my husband, Lionel Cress's childhood sweetheart posted a picture of Toto on social media. [With her, it feels like you're here with me.] I lost it. I called Lionel in a frenzy, but despite being my sister's psychologist, he was completely indifferent. "Your sister has been sick for so long. How could she suddenly relapse just because Toto's gone for a few days?" When I rushed back home, I found my sister in the bathroom, her wrists cut. Later, Toto's body was discovered outside our building, with Lionel's gift to his childhood sweetheart—a ring—lying next to her. I buried both my sister and Toto, and left behind nothing but a divorce agreement. Lionel went crazy, desperately trying to find me.

For twenty years, Kyle and I were each other’s salvation. On the day he confessed his feelings, he promised to give me a warm and loving home. However, everything changed when the Gill family found him and brought him back, naming him the Crown Prince of High Society. Overnight, I went from being his proud fiancée to nothing more than his hidden canary in a gilded cage. With another woman in his arms, his voice was cold and distant, “The eldest young master of the Gill family can’t marry an orphan.” At that moment, my heart shattered completely. I left the capital that very night. Later, I heard I had become the Gill family’s unspoken taboo. That once-proud Young Master Gill ended up confined to a mental institution, clinging to a doll and whispering my name day after day.

After the tragic death of my best friend, I took her younger brother in and treated him like my own. Everyone knew how much Zach Lawson meant to me, so much so that I vowed not to marry because I could not bear leaving him. The day he turned eighteen, he got on one knee and asked me to marry him. With tears of joy streaming down my face, I took the bouquet from him, only to realize they were made of writhing snakes. Everyone laughed at my misfortune. It was an artfully crafted joke, at my expense. Thalia Lewis laced her arm through Zach's and grinned. "Sorry about that, Sydney. It was just an innocent prank. Zach is willing to do anything to make me smile!" Zach gave me a look of utter disgust. "Is this what you think of me? You're my sister! How can you even think of marrying me? This is vile! Is this the reason you took me in? Have you been secretly pining for me since the start?" My whole life had come crashing down around me. I was overcome with shock, misery, and despair, until Connor Grey showed up and asked for my hand in marriage.

My suitcase, filled with precious and expensive birthday gifts, was mistakenly claimed by another person at the airport. When I opened the one left behind, I found it packed with men’s clothes instead of my belongings. Determined to retrieve what was rightfully mine, I went on a frantic search for the man who had taken my suitcase. When I finally confronted him and politely asked for an exchange, he responded with the gentlest of tones: “Oh, I opened it and realized I’d made a mistake—it’s all women’s items.” I breathed a sigh of relief, ready to thank him and express my gratitude. Then he added casually, “I couldn’t use any of those things, so I sorted them out and gave them to my girlfriend. You’re welcome.” My jaw dropped. I could barely muster a response as I muttered under my breath, “What the hell?”

I was Lonnie Vaughn's fiancée, yet he treated me with disdain, looking at me as though I was nothing more than a bothersome obligation. To outsiders, I was just a caged songbird he kept for amusement—disposable when he tired of me. I refused to believe it. In my eyes, Lonnie loved me, too; he was just terrible at expressing it. But that illusion shattered when I became the victim of face-swapping. When those filthy videos were played in front of Lonnie, he refused to listen to my desperate explanations. When I was kidnapped, he refused to pay the ransom. All because his maid sneered, "Olivia's tainted. She needs to be taught a lesson." Lonnie responded, "I never want to see you again in this lifetime." Those words fueled the captors' cruelty. For three months, they tortured me. By the end, I truly was tainted, and my love for Lonnie was buried beneath layers of ash and despair. Then Lonnie appeared before me while sobbing in regret, begging me to love him again.

It takes me 22 years to get from a farming village in Westernia to Jesseltown. From there, I learn how to use my assets to win any man's heart. No man has ever been able to resist my seduction, but that changes when I meet Zack Spencer. So what? Even the toughest cookie will fall prey to my allure.

I never would've expected the child my father adopted out of the kindness of his heart to destroy my family. A few years later, he becomes a rising star in the business world, and I become a hostess in a club. He pays a fortune to become my patron so he can keep me by his side like a bird in a cage. He's about to marry soon, but he doesn't bother keeping our relationship under wraps. His wife torments and abuses me upon learning of my existence. Finally, when I've made enough money off of him to pay for my mother's medical bills and live a comfortable life, I choose to run away. He chases me to the airport and pins me to the wall in the restroom. His eyes are red as he demands to know one thing. "What am I to you?" "A patron and cash cow, at most." The iciness in my eyes is almost tangible.

His first love barged into my office and stood before me, mocking, "He doesn't love you at all." I rolled my eyes. "I don't know whether he loves me, but I am Mrs. Brooke now. And who are you, exactly?" I was surprised that there was still someone so clueless in this day and age. Marriage was all about mutual benefit; the idea of love was downright ridiculous. To me, Noah was just a means to an end—a tool that would double my worth. I had never taken him seriously.

I worked for a restaurant, and our boss loved making empty promises about giving us restaurant shares. The boss said we would start with zero shares, but we could earn 0.01% for every two hours of overtime, covering someone else’s work or saving the restaurant 1,000 bucks. I suggested she write this down in an official document and have someone track it properly. She just smiled and told everyone to work harder. She never actually put it in writing. The experienced staff did not believe her, but one prep cook took it seriously. At the end of the year, he went to the boss to claim his shares. The boss said, “Sorry, the head chef told me there’s no official document, so it doesn’t count. You can’t claim any shares.” The prep cook worked hard all year and got nothing for it, so he took his anger out on me. The day before I was going home for the New Year, he killed me with a knife. “If you hadn’t said it doesn’t count without an official document, this whole restaurant would’ve been mine!” I lay in a pool of blood. When I opened my eyes, I was back to the day the boss first made those empty promises.

Victor and I were nothing more than a pair of sworn enemies married inside the camp. He hated me for handing over my frail sister to the research institute, all so they could extract the antiviral serum from her blood. And I hated him for never seeing anyone but her, even in the apocalypse, when she could barely lift a metal rod. For the ten years of the apocalypse, the words we said to each other most often were, "Die a miserable death." … However, when the zombie horde finally broke through the last line of defense, he chained me to the modified mech truck and went out alone to face it. "Live…" I watched as the tide of corpses swallowed him whole, the crack of breaking bones mixing with the sound of flesh being torn apart. On the edge of death, he pulled out my sister's faded photo and placed it over the one clean spot on his chest. "This life is yours. But if there's a next one, don't go near her again." … That night, when I returned, I blew up the camp. When I opened my eyes again, I went to the zombie king. His razor-sharp claws closed around my throat, and I smiled as I took hold of his hand. "Let's make a deal. Give humans five more years, and I'll willingly be your queen." Last time, he gave his life to save me. This time, I'll be the monster—so they can all get what they want.

After a breakup, I went to a nightclub and employed the services of a male escort. He turned out to be blind, so I immediately lost interest. I was about to leave when he suddenly pulled me into the bathroom. He revealed his chiseled abs and said in a deep, smooth voice, “Miss, I may not be able to see, but my fingers are very nimble.” As he spoke, he slid his hand under my dress.

My younger sister, Rosalie White, and I are twin mermaids, born with the divine gift of bearing sacred beasts. On the day we come of age, Father presents us with all the unmarried princes of the beast clans. Rosalie picks Charles Summer, the powerful prince of the zilant clan, in hopes of birthing a sacred beast and claiming the beast throne. However, her five babies are all dark, frail half-zilants of the lowest rank. I, with my weak and sickly body, join with Jasper Warren of the serpent clan, the most despised of them all. I end up succeeding in giving birth to a sacred beast hatchling. On the day of the coronation, Rosalie refuses to accept it. She strangles my hatchling and rips out my beast core. Then, she throws our bodies into the beast furnace, destroying us completely. … After my reincarnation, I see Rosalie pointing at Jasper and says, "I only want him." I know that she has also been reincarnated. I chuckle coldly. I'd like to see if she can bear a sacred beast in this lifetime.

I, Taylor Laurent, go to the hospital's emergency department because of severe abdominal pain. When I wake up, my mom, Jocelyn Nord, stares at me in terror and asks, "You are not my daughter. Who are you?" Helpless and regretful, Hank Gibson, the doctor, says to my mom, "She is your daughter, it's just… an accident." My mom can't accept it and jumps off the hospital building, killing herself instantly. Hank is suspended because of this incident and, under my questioning, chooses to kill himself by hitting a wall. When I finally find my life partner and take the premarital medical exam, the staff tells me something that chills me to my bones.

Oscar Miller was Shirley Bishop's personal bodyguard, but when she got attacked on her birthday, he shielded her foster sister, Myra Bishop, with his own body. Shirley got cut three times—once across her face, once on her arm, and a third that stabbed her lower abdomen, leaving her unable to have children ever again. But even after all that, she still wanted to marry him. Later, Oscar did marry her—but he never touched her, not even once, all the way until his death. At his funeral, the insurance company showed up. "Mr. Miller purchased a large insurance policy before his death. The beneficiary is Ms. Myra Bishop." That was when Shirley realized that after all these years, Oscar had never gotten over Myra. Now, she had been reborn to when her father asked her to choose from four men she had grown up with to be her husband. This time, she decided to fulfill his wish and picked someone else.

I had just gotten home when a parent in my son’s class group chat erupted: [Ms. Zinn, what kind of place are you running? Do you let just any random stray off the street become a teacher?] [My daughter came home, grabbed two forks, and tried to jump off the balcony. She said it was Miss Never who told her to!] The homeroom teacher panicked and denied it at once, insisting there was no such person as Miss Never at the kindergarten. She even posted the official teaching schedule in the chat to prove it. On the security footage, there was not a single trace of this so-called Miss Never. However, later, my son whispered to me in secret, “Mom, Miss Never is an old lady with a cat’s face.” “She says only kids can see her.”

My coworker, Kevin Walter, invited me to join a private messaging chat group of rich women. There are plenty of perks, such as the 300-dollar cash gift he claimed right in front of me. I joined the group out of curiosity and got to know a wealthy woman named Ms. White. After some time together, she invited me on a vacation to a famous tourist city near the country's border. Little did I know, I was close enough to being dragged into a dangerous area abroad to become a live organ donor.

I was getting a spa treatment at a beauty salon when Phoebe called. "I just saw Derrick buying jewelry for a woman at the mall." "Got it." "Aren't you going to catch him in the act?" "No need." I gave birth three months ago. After the spa, I needed to hit the gym, and by five, I had to pick up William. I had no time for this nonsense.