Desperate Living Novels & Stories

"So what I'm hearing is that you might not be able to make rent next month because you'll be looking for a new job. Dude! You are playing with fucking fire." You really were. But the fire was so hot. Wait, the metaphor is actually so good it doesn't work. "I promise I'll have rent," you said, fairly certain. "And it's complicated but... I think it can work." Mosche just threw his hands up in the air and walked out of the kitchen. "You work as an intern and I'm a standup comic, and somehow you've got multiple hot babes and I've got none. What even is this life?" Then he stuck his head back in the room. "Hey, how late do you think you'll be? I was gonna try that tantric thing again..."

“You don’t deserve that, Millicent. “You’re going to crawl through every single day in pain. In anguish. In torment. “You’re going to suffer the greatest misery of your fucking pathetic life. “Every day, you’ll wish for death. Beg for death. Yearn for death… even breathe for death. “But it will never come. “You’re going to wither away while you’re still alive. “And you’ll become so desperate and frustrated you’ll want to gouge your own eyes out of their sockets. “So no… I’m not wasting my bullet on a fucking bitch.”

“What the hell miss? I have got a home to go to” he said angrily. “I am so sorry, I could not find any cash anywhere” I said calmly, trying to calm the situation. “Make a transfer” he proposed. I brought out my phone and showed “my routing system is down” I said “what can be done?” I asked. “I don’t know, I’ve got a business to run. I need the money” he answered, tapping his foot on the floor.

He had disappeared with all his money and left him with only a pile of debts that were increasing day by day. His life is now only a nightmare. Divorce from his wife had completed the nightmare. And as if all his misfortunes weren't over yet, he lost his precious daughter. The judge didn't side with him at all from the start. His coming to court in unkempt clothes and bloodshot eyes from lack of sleep must have increased the judge's determination to separate him from his daughter. Yet so far he has worked hard. He had done all the work he could to pay off his mounting debts. But even so he must still be deemed unfit to live with his daughter because now he lives only in a small cabin house w

Matheo muttered with dismay. "Chances are you’ll live," Zander said in a perfect Scottish accent, still typing on his laptop. Unfortunately. He could tell his compliance startled him because the great old cow cleared his throat, walked over to the seat in front of him, and collapsed into it like he’d been holding his breath for the past year. Which was pretty much what they’d all done since their family died. "We’re having an identity problem that causes ad space to tank." Matheo slapped the oak desk between them.

I screamed hard at the sight of my wretched state, "No! Turn it off! That's not me at all!" This whole time, I had been living on a razor's edge. Every day, I woke up to another livestream, never knowing what I would turn into and whose bed I would be in. Fear clung to me like a constant shadow. Every man left in the village had joined Rodrick and Colby's schemes. They were all in on it and kept it a secret, just to step over me and share the profits I brought. Wherever I stepped outside, hungry eyes followed me like wolves. They were terrified that if I escaped, they would lose their cash cow. More importantly, they were terrified I would expose them.

She answered very not sure. Oh, God! Please guide me, I don't want to fail this night. We still need to pay for our house rent. We still don't have dinner for tonight. Please? I begged the lord and honestly, I sounded desperate for money. I don't mind, after all, it's true. I need money for living, you see, my life is on the edge of a cliff. We'll either find a way to get ourselves away from the edge without falling or we'll be falling endlessly and die out of starvation.

To have the money to make problems disappear. I didn't have money. I didn't have confidence. But as I lay there, listening to the muffled bass of music thumping from the room next door, I realized I did have one thing: desperation. And desperation, as the books always said, was a dangerous motivator. I didn't know it yet, but my quiet, invisible life was about to end. And it wasn't going to be because of a blog post about flirting. It was going to be because of a deal with the devil.

“Hannah is desperate.” I absorbed that silently. Desperate people scared me more than cruel ones. Cruel people usually wanted something specific. Desperate people burned entire buildings down trying to stay alive. My throat felt tight suddenly. It wasn't revenge or scandal or strategy sitting inside boardrooms and legal filings. It was my actual life. My face on news stations. My studio bleeding clients. My name now attached permanently to a family capable of engineering funerals for living men. And underneath all of it sat one ugly truth I couldn't stop circling back to.

Since childhood I had known the truth: when people smell desperation, they sharpen their teeth and take advantage of it. But here I was, cornered, trapped by life and death. Do I have a choice? We couldn’t find a willing donor. There was no kidney available from the dead. And here was one living donor, using my desperation as currency. Should I leave myself to die simply because I refused her price?