단편 작품 & 소설

"Honey, maybe we should tell your mom to stop treatment." On Christmas Eve, after spending the day cooking dinner for my in-laws, I was getting ready to head to the hospital and keep my mother, Deborah Ramsey, company through the night. Just as I reached the door, my husband, Blaine Ramsey, stopped me. It took me a moment to process what he'd said. I turned and stared at him in disbelief. "What do you mean?" He lowered his head and stayed silent. My mother-in-law, Rosalia Ramsey, however, answered with an impatient glare, "It means exactly what he said. Your mother's treatment should stop. Her illness is nothing but a bottomless pit that's going to swallow who knows how much money." I immediately argued, "The doctor said she has a 90% chance of making a full recovery. After surgery and about two years of rehabilitation, she'll be fine. She has medical insurance, so after reimbursement, it won't even cost that much." My sister-in-law, Aviana Ramsey, rolled her eyes and chimed in, "Doesn't that still mean there's a 10% chance she won't make it? "And even if she does recover, she'll just be useless. She doesn't have a pension. She'll end up relying on Blaine to support her anyway. "So why not stop the treatment now? At least she won't drag everyone else down." I looked at Blaine. He kept his head down without saying a word. I didn't argue anymore. I picked up the lunch box and left for the hospital. Had they forgotten? The house they were living in—the one they called a burden—had been bought outright by the very woman they wanted to abandon. Three days later, Rosalia collapsed during a family dinner and was rushed to the hospital. It was late-stage cancer. Blaine and his family panicked, talking about selling the house to pay for her treatment. Leaning against the wall, I yawned. "Honey, I already sold the house. Maybe your mom should just stop treatment. It'd be a waste of money."

My younger sister, Amelia Reinhart, is in her freshman year in high school, and she has severe asthma. She can't handle the wind and rain, nor can she stand the smell of car leather. Our parents are working three shifts at the factory, so they don't have time to send her to school and pick her up when classes are over. So, I spend 40,000 dollars on a minibus with heating, and I also hire a driver, Gary Brown, to handle Amelia's school commutes. I feel bad for Amelia, so I double Gary's pay and tell him to take extra care of her. But one stormy day, as I drive past the school intersection, I see Amelia completely drenched, coughing as she wades through the mud with great effort…

I'm a half-baked forensic examiner whose only redeeming quality is the ability to understand animals. The crime scene is inside a lavish villa. The lady of the house lies dead on the floor with a blunt-force injury to the back of her head so deep that her bone is visible. The safe has been pried open, and a million dollars in cash has vanished without a trace. Clear shoe prints mark the backyard wall, evidence that someone has climbed over it. "This one's clear as day. This is a textbook robbery-homicide. The suspect is likely a young male, around six feet tall, has a prior theft record, and knows how to cover his tracks. Check the surveillance footage in the area and look into places where he might've moved the stolen cash." The director of the forensic science center, Egbert Woodward, has been in the profession for three decades and is a widely respected authority. The officers at the scene nod in unison and begin taking notes. I'm the only one who stares at the 30 flies circling the ceiling for a full 3 minutes before taking a step forward and piping up, "Dr. Woodward, this isn't a robbery-homicide. It's a crime of passion. The murderer is the victim's husband!"

The day Ethan Carter and I were supposed to get married, his assistant destroyed our wedding with a few carefully chosen words. I stood there in my wedding dress while Susan Blake looked at me with a sweet, innocent smile. “Mr. Carter, one million dollars isn’t a small amount of money. Elena bought that dress with your card without even asking you.” She glanced at Ethan as though she understood him better than I ever could. “If I were his wife, I would at least ask for my husband’s opinion first.” Ethan’s expression darkened. He pulled off his wedding ring and threw it into the trash. “Elena, this isn’t the first time you’ve made a decision without consulting me.” “When you learn to respect my opinion, we can talk about getting married again.” Then he turned and walked away. Susan stayed behind. She picked the ring out of the trash and held it out to me. “You already overshadow Ethan at the company. Do you really have to control him at home too?” “A woman as aggressive as you was never meant to be his wife.” I looked at her and smiled. “Then you can have the title of Mrs. Carter.” I walked away without taking the ring. Ethan had no idea that I was Elena Moretti, the only daughter of one of Sicily’s most powerful Mafia Dons. I had hidden my identity and stayed beside him when he had nothing. The strength he once relied on to win contracts and build his company had become the very thing he resented. If my success made him feel so small, then I would finally give him the chance to prove he could survive without me. I took out my phone and called the number I had refused to dial for five years. “Papa, the five years are over.” “I was wrong. I’m ready to come home.”

My roommate, Nathan White, says he practices extreme mindfulness and can't kill any living creatures. On the very first day of college, he grabs my electric mosquito swatter and stops me. "Mosquitoes are living creatures too. How can you kill them?" That night, he opens every window in our dorm, saying he wants to leave the door open for any little lives that have lost their way. I get bitten so badly that I develop a high fever and an allergic reaction. My eyelids swell so much that I can barely open my eyes. When I put up a mosquito net, he tears it down with tears in his eyes. "How can you be so selfish? If you cover yourself up, what's going to happen to them?" In my previous life, those words marked the beginning of my condemnation by everyone in my dorm, my entire class, and even the campus confession page. They say I'm cold-blooded and that Nathan is simply too kindhearted and criticize me for being unable to tolerate just a few mosquitoes. In the end, my high fever leads to an infection, and I go into anaphylactic shock and end up in the ICU. Meanwhile, Nathan faces the camera with an aggrieved expression and claims that my hostility is what provoked the mosquitoes to attack me. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the first day of college. Nathan is holding down my electric mosquito swatter and looking at me expectantly. "You won't hurt them, right?" I pick up my phone and head straight to the office of the faculty member in charge. "Ms. Zimmer, I'd like to apply for permission to live off campus." Whoever wants to turn the dorm into a wildlife sanctuary can do as they please. I want no part in it.

The day SAT scores dropped, my twin sister Emily totally tanked. She cried so hard she could barely breathe. Mom, Dad, and Kenneth spent all night babying her. After midnight, Mom finally remembered I existed. "Amelia, what'd you get?" I checked my score. 1580. "Good enough for Halston." Halston was one of the best colleges in the country. The whole room went dead silent. For one stupid second, I thought they might actually be proud of me. Dad just stared. "You and Emily are twins. You look almost exactly alike. "Why don't you switch identities? "Let Emily go to Halston as you."

My 20-year-old daughter was obese. She started gaining weight in middle school, and now she weighed 200 pounds. I worried about her health, so I prepared nutritious meals for her and encouraged her to exercise every day, but she didn't take the problem seriously. "I was born weighing 7 pounds. It's your fault for making me so fat when I was in your womb." For eight years, every time I urged her to lose weight, that was her reply. Just as I was losing hope and considering giving up, I received a FaceTime call from my daughter 10 years in the future. "Mom! Please help me one more time!" My daughter cried on the phone. "I now weigh 500 pounds. I can't even leave home, and I struggle to breathe every day. I feel so miserable!" My heart softened, and I spent $30,000 to send my daughter to a weight loss camp. However, in the camp, my daughter indulged herself and even started a food vlogging channel. "Eat as much as you want, drink as much as you want. Don't take life so seriously. We only have about 80 years to live, so enjoy your food!" I was completely disappointed and chose to respect her decision. My daughter from ten years later cried hysterically on the phone. "The doctor said I don't have long to live! Please stop feeding me!" But this time, the FaceTime call was made to my daughter's phone.

My grandmother is, as far as the law is concerned, a dead woman. She faked her own death so she could go off with the boy she'd grown up beside, and she left evidence behind that made my grandfather her killer. He went away for twenty years. She sold his house and ran to Port Halcyon with the other man. One of them became a famous attorney who talks about justice in courtrooms. The other became a philanthropist who talks about compassion under television lights. My grandfather carried the word wife-killer for the rest of his life. My father grew up on whatever the neighbors could spare. He never spent a day in school, and he wore his hands raw laying brick until he'd put me through college. Two generations, two pairs of ruined hands, lifting me one step at a time out of Pinebarrow. Fifty years after my grandmother's fake death. I sit on the felony bench of the Dunstone Superior Court. In front of me are five young women charged in a murder. The case against the first four is airtight. Against the fifth, there's half a fingerprint at the scene and a witness who accounts for her entire night. Even the police call her the least likely of them. The murder charge won't hold. I go through her file. Under family, there's a name. Evelyn Harrow. My grandmother. I look at how much the two of them resemble each other. And when her lawyer moves to have her released from this courtroom a free woman, I bring the gavel down lightly. "This court denies the defense motion for dismissal. This court further recommends that the district attorney formally charge the defendant with murder."

After my family and I are dragged into a roguelike horror simulation, they favor my cousin, Julian Clark, over me. In a lobby of blood-soaked players, he always manages to stay spotless, earning their praise as someone who has "kept his humanity". He's unlike me, the brute who willingly throws himself into melee combat and hacks down monsters just to keep everyone else alive. During one dungeon run, a terrifying entity targets my younger sister, Millie Larsson. I draw my blade and move in for the kill, but Julian stops me with a sorrowful smile. "Every creature has a soul. Gabriel, if you kill it, you'll only enrage it and burden Millie with the sin of bloodshed." Millie believes all the nonsense he says and begins resenting me for interfering. Later, when a veteran player steals Julian's life-saving loot drop, I nearly die reclaiming it for him. Instead of thanking me, he takes pity on the woman robbing him and hands the item back to her. He condemns me for being too ruthless, claiming I know nothing about showing mercy to women. Then comes the advanced raid. Cornered by the final boss, I beg Julian to activate the high-tier talisman I've given him, buying me just one second to escape. He recoils from my bloodstained hand in disgust and turns to my parents instead. "Gabriel provoked the boss himself. He's too violent. I can't risk wiping the whole party just to save him." In the end, I die in the boss' jaws. Julian steps over my shattered bones and blood to clear the raid, eventually becoming the server's most celebrated player for being the Untainted Saint. But fate grants me a second chance. I awaken once more in the game's central lobby, right before everything begins. This time, I want to see how long their precious humanity lasts in a world overrun by horrors when the blood-soaked blade that always carries their party is no longer there to protect them.

Three days before the wedding, the Lawsons held a bride appraisal event for me. The full mark was 100, and I scored 89. Yves Lawson, my fiancé, sighed in front of the guests. "Rules are rules, Emilia. You scored less than 90. So, the wedding will be delayed by a year." My best friend, Wendy Shaw, stood right beside him, begging with tears in her eyes. "She's already great enough. Can’t she have another shot?" In my previous life, I thought they were actually defending me. So, I held back my dissatisfaction and waited for a year. Over that year, the Lawsons' estate project made money, Yves changed the prenup's terms, and Wendy eventually became the one to marry Yves. My eyes snapped open, and I was back to that appraisal event. I looked at the score on the screen, and I took the mic. "I accept the delay, but before that, I'd like to find out who graded me a one."

On New Year’s Eve, I ran after my sister, Yelena Smith, who had left the house in anger. However, a bunch of thugs dragged me into an alley. The torture ripped me apart, both inside and out, and I had been living with severe PTSD ever since. I tried to hurt myself countless times. My sister would grab my hand as I held the knife and drive it into her own body. It was as if she was punishing herself. For every cut I made, she gave herself two. Our blood would mix while she held me and cried. “Felix, please! I’m begging you. Stop hurting yourself! “I swear I’ll heal you!” After that night, my sister, who had always been careless and aimless, seemed to become a different person. She burned her racing cars, which she used to be so proud of, to ashes. She also started studying, which she used to hate. It took her five years to become a chief psychiatrist. However, just when I was finally starting to get better, I heard voices outside my door. “Miss Smith, your acting’s too convincing. If I hadn’t known the truth, I would’ve never thought that you hired those thugs. “To avenge your step brother, you’ve been interfering with Felix’s recovery with medication while guilt-tripping him with love just to make him suffer. Aren’t you being too cruel?” My sister let out a dismissive snort. “He bullied Julian like that in the past. He deserves every bit of this. “But I know my limits. Felix is still my biological brother after all. I’m just teaching him a lesson. I could never bring myself to make him end his life.” I felt like I had fallen into an ice-cold abyss. I even forgot to breathe for a moment. Everything turned out to be my sister’s punishment all along. That night, I dragged my broken body up to the rooftop. ‘Yelena, you don’t have to punish me anymore this time,’ I thought.

When my parents came to take me home, I accidentally switched souls with Ava, a girl from the mountains. The moment my mother saw the certificate proving that Ava had ranked first in the entire county, her eyes filled with tears. "Looks like sending you to the mountains to suffer for half a year was the right decision. "Back then, getting you to study was like pulling teeth. Now you finally understand that everything we did was for your own good." I burst into tears and rushed forward, throwing my arms around my mother's legs. "Mom, I'm the real Sophie!" She kicked me hard, sending me sprawling into the mud. "Where did this wild child come from? You're just as disobedient as the old Sophie!" My parents took away the "me" carrying Ava's soul, leaving the real me behind in the mountains. For the next five years, I endured endless hard labor, slept in a pigsty, and suffered relentless abuse before I finally found a chance to escape. But when I returned home, my mother looked at me with disgust and drove me away. "My daughter just made it through the national competition. How could she possibly be someone like you? If you dare spout that nonsense again, I'll have you locked up in a mental hospital!" I cried until my entire body shook, but I refused to give up. That night, I climbed over the wall and slipped back into the house. That's when I heard my father ask my mother, "We didn't know about the soul swap back then. But now that she's found her way back... are we really not going to acknowledge her?" My mother let out a cold laugh. "What would be the point of taking her back? Should we let her ruin the Sophie we have now? She's hopeless. Even being thrown into the mountains couldn't change her. Someone like her deserves to die." A sharp pain ripped through my stomach. I coughed up a mouthful of blood. "Mom... This body has stomach cancer. Just as you wished... I'm going to die."

I've been sponsoring Bree Webb, a young woman who comes from a low-income background. She's being ostracized at school and begs to move into my home. In my last life, I feel sorry for her and let her in. She repays me by accusing my younger brother, Eric Whitmore, of assault. Because of her, his reputation is in tatters, and he's branded as a rapist. Bree squeezes my family dry, demanding compensation at every turn. Eric then sinks into depression and eventually jumps off a building. She walks away with everyone's sympathy and even has the nerve to taunt me to my face. "Leah, thank you so much. Without you, I never could've gone from nothing to this overnight." Now I'm reborn, and Bree shows up again with the same tearful eyes. "Leah, my roommates are bullying me. I lie awake night after night. The doctor says I'm already showing signs of severe depression." I look at that pitiful face of hers and smile. "Sure. But we're doing this by my rules."

The company janitor suffers a heart attack, and I race toward the elevator with him on my back. But the new COO, Alexis Brown, refuses to let us in with the excuse that we're dirty and smelly. I beg her, but she just scoffs and has security pin me to the floor. Then she takes the elevator down and deliberately presses every floor button to delay us. The janitor misses the critical window for treatment and dies on my back. The next day, Alexis calls a company meeting and shifts the blame on me. She tries to fire me for causing a disturbance at work and even demands compensation for her emotional distress. I look at her coldly before putting the security footage up on the big screen. Then, I say, "Ms. Brown, you left your own father to die. He sacrificed everything to put you through college. How are you going to pay for that?"

To prove she was fair, Valerie forced me into the family's live-fire drill. She knew I had a severe heart condition. She knew I couldn't stand the sight of blood. Three hours under the blistering sun. My hands shook wildly. I stared at the trembling rabbit tied to the target, terrified to pull the trigger. "You can't even kill a freaking rabbit? How are you supposed to lead this family?" Valerie's icy voice lashed at me from behind. Tears filled my eyes. I finally pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through the rabbit. Blood spattered everywhere. The smell and all that red triggered my blood phobia instantly. Everything went pitch black. Chloe, the intern medic, walked over and grabbed me roughly. Her eyes were full of pure malice. "Underboss, her vitals are totally fine. Is she faking it just to escape training?" Valerie looked down at my pale face. Disgust and disappointment covered her face. "Gemma, is this how I raised you? Everyone else finished. You don't get special treatment." "You finish this drill today—even if it kills you!" Then, my chest stopped moving. Dead silence. My soul floated into the air. I looked down at Mom, filled with guilt and despair. I'm sorry, Mom. This time, I really couldn't hold on.

At my father-in-law's funeral, my wife's lover took the son-in-law's seat in the family pew, holding his three-year-old daughter, the two of them wearing the family's mourning ribbons. I was left standing off to the side. Vanessa lowered her voice and tried to reason with me. "Dad's funeral matters. You've always known when to be sensible. Making a scene won't do you any good. "Damon gave me my only child. He's earned the right to sit up front as a son-in-law." Then Damon leaned in close enough that only I could hear him. "You've got some nerve. Our wife just humiliated you in front of everyone, and you're still standing here. "After my daughter and I take that seat today, everyone in Crownridge will know me as the Carlisle son-in-law. You won't even register. Let's see how long you last." My mother-in-law had her turn too. "You can't blame anyone but yourself. Ten years married to Vanessa and you never gave her a child." I beckoned to my two five-year-old sons waiting near the back. "Come here. Take your places up front as your grandfather's grandsons and say goodbye to him." They wanted children? Who said I didn't have any?

“Miss, you’ve been standing here all by yourself all day. Who was the deceased to you?” I glanced back at the crematorium attendant and answered calmly, “I was the deceased.” The attendant’s face turned ashen with fear. Only after he confirmed that I looked nothing like the woman in the memorial photo did he finally speak. His voice was still trembling. “Miss, this isn’t something you should joke about.” I walked over and patted him on the shoulder. “If you knew it was a joke, why did you still get scared?” The truth was, I had not lied to him. Ever since my brothers brought Quiana White home, all the love and attention that once belonged to me went to her instead. The day she tortured me to death, I opened my eyes again and found myself in her body. If becoming the person I hated the most was the only way to get my brothers’ love back, then what did it matter? I left the crematorium and saw my oldest brother, Theo Langford. Before I could say anything, he slapped me across the face. “Who let you out before the seven days were up?!”

My daughter was a compulsive liar. At three, she told her preschool teacher, "Mom sticks me with needles." When I rolled up her sleeve, there really were marks. At four and a half, she fell down the stairs by herself, then sobbed that I had pushed her. Everyone in the building looked at me like I was a monster. At five, county child-welfare investigators sat in my living room. She pointed at me and said, "She isn't my real mother. She kidnapped me." My career died on one sentence from a five-year-old. Standing on the ledge outside my window, I wondered why I had ever adopted her. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the night everything began. I was about to feed the adoption decree into the shredder. In my previous life, I burned it, because I was afraid she'd find out she was adopted. This time, I locked every adoption document inside a safe. Then I waited for her next move.

Sitting here in the courtroom, I watch as my father is put on trial for a crime he didn't commit. He gets a heart attack and dies right before my very eyes. There's nothing I can do to stop it. As my heart burns with anger and resentment, a series of comments suddenly appears, floating in the air in front of me. [Poor Mason! He still has no idea it was his own beloved girlfriend, Christa Lowry, who served as lead counsel and used falsified evidence to incriminate his father.] [Christa teamed up with that scion, Todd Harlow. She sacrificed Mason's dad's life to net her first pot of gold!] Through these comments, I learn the truth. I wipe my tears away, tear up the acceptance letter I just received from the top art school in the country, and throw myself into the legal profession. After 15 years, I've finally been crowned the Grim Reaper of the criminal defense world, having never lost a single case. One day, my assistant comes to my office with a pile of top-secret case files. Christa is facing the death penalty for engaging in international money laundering, and I'm the only one who can save her. In the surveillance footage from the detention center, the once arrogant woman is now kneeling on the floor, begging in despair to be saved. At that very moment, those comments start appearing in my vision again. [Spoiler alert! The most satisfying moment of revenge is about to come!] [That awful woman is so deluded. She thinks that just by offering enough money, Mason will be willing to save her for old times' sake! What a joke.] [Quick! Refuse her, Grim Reaper! Send her to hell!] Reading the comments, I smirk faintly before tossing my pen into the trash. "Tell her I won't take on the case."

One month after Mom died, Dad brought his mistress home. I screamed, cried, and hurled a glass at the woman and her daughter. The mistress immediately put on her fragile little act. Clutching her head, she leaned against my father and insisted she was fine. Dad flew into a rage. For the first time in my life, he yelled at me and ordered me back to my room. I was so furious that I ran away from home. He nearly gave himself a heart attack. “If you walk out that door, don’t ever come back!” But I left anyway. I didn’t even take a single cent with me. I wanted him to regret cheating on Mom. I wanted him to regret losing both of us. Only after I left did I realize how brutal the real world could be. I hadn’t even finished high school, so the only jobs I could get were manual labor, food delivery, and hourly gigs. I made just six hundred dollars a month. I couldn’t afford a decent apartment, so I had to share a cramped basement with strangers. Then one night, while rushing to make a delivery, I ran a red light. A semi-truck hit me head-on. I died alone in a morgue, unclaimed. Meanwhile, Dad was hosting a one-month birthday celebration for his newborn son at the family estate. He had a gentle wife, a son and a daughter, and a picture-perfect, happy family. And I died alone on a freezing winter night. But when I opened my eyes again, I was back on the day his mistress and her daughter first showed up at our house. This time, I didn’t cry. I didn’t make a scene. I simply slipped my father a drug that would leave him infertile.