False Hope Novels & Stories

“I'm sorry. It's just…. You and my brother are weirdly domestic.” “I'm not even going to ask what you mean by that. Did you see the text?” Her smile drops. “Yeah. I'm worried. This rogue is obviously going to cheat.” I rubbed my temple. “Of course he will. Evil doesn't play fair.” “Neither does Cassiel. They're both going to cheat; we can only hope my brother comes out the victor.” I shook my head profusely. I refuse to rely on false things like hope. I need strong reassurance that things won't end badly. Hope can't get me that. Hope is bullshit.

SHERNEIL. Hope is one of those feeble, funny feelings. One that either mends you on the inside, or fully shatters you. It curls around you in your desperate times, making you believe things will turn out well, only for those things to come crashing back. Fully breaking you. Or making you whole. It was stupid of me to have let such an emotion filter through my mind, making me wish to do everything that was impossible. So, after a while, I fell back to my familiar routine.

Alex added gently, his thumb brushing her arm in a strangely protective way, “you’ll see your daddy soon.” Hope’s eyes lit up instantly, her little face glowing with fragile joy. “Really, Alex? I’ll see my daddy soon?” she asked, her voice full of hope so pure it hurt. Alex nodded once. “You will, Hope.” I bit the inside of my cheek hard, fighting back the ache in my chest. I knew he was lying to comfort her. But that didn’t change the fact that he had just given my daughter false hope—hope that could shatter her when she finds out she was born out of wedlock.

I put my phone against a cup of instant noodles and turned on the camera to record. The woman on the screen was in an ostentatious red dress and smiling wickedly. “Hey, old man, dowdy lady, and, um, Jonah…” I said. My voice was a little hoarse. I quickly cleared my throat and acted like everything was fine. “By the time you see this video, I’ll already be on the other side and living it up. Don’t cry. I’m a bad person, and I’ll be causing trouble down there for the devil. I was lying to you about that 500 thousand dollars. I’m not that greedy…”

Back then, that prideful man had no idea that he'd one day be grovelling and begging for forgiveness. Allowing his mind to wander, he started fantasizing about what might have been, about what might have happened in another life. That day, when Stacy held his hands, her eyes filled with hope… When she said, “I’ll be turning thirty soon. People have been frantic about whether I’m ever going to get married. I’ve honored your wish to keep quiet about what’s going on between us, but now my parents have a bunch of suitors lined up for me, and… do you have anything to say about all this?”

“Please…” I begged, feeling the weight of hopelessness settle in my chest as I realized there was nothing more that could be done. “I’m so sorry, I can’t...” Sarah whispered, her eyes filled with empathy and sadness. “But maybe you can...” she said, her voice trailing off as she hesitated to offer false hope. Sarah’s words lingered in the air, leaving me with a sliver of uncertainty and a glimmer of possibility.

I said attempting to interrupt his sentence, then continued, " Why are you suddenly going down the memory lane? It's *picks up the phone* 5:37 am!!, I don't want to talk about the old memories " "Right, I'm sorry, " said Skylar with a disappointed look What? what's that expression for... Tsk. "I don't want to talk about the old memories now, but we can have a conversation about this later okay?" I said to help lighten up his mood and to no surprise, Skylar laughed

The hum of the music rising in her chest. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel like she was pretending to belong. She just… did. And somewhere inside her—under the layers of stolen memories and silent grief—Aurora felt the first bloom of something dangerous and sweet. Hope. Later on the night had settled heavy over Las Vegas by the time the final curtain dropped. The applause was long gone, replaced by the hush that followed every storm. Even La Rosa Muerta—usually humming with after-hours life—had fallen into a rare, deep silence. Somewhere in the building, a vacuum hummed softly. Distant laughter floated from the dancers’ lounge. But in Aurora’s small studio, the stillness fe

That’s what I believe. The room went silent. I watched a glint of hope return to the man’s eyes for a brief moment before they vanished. Tears built up at the base of his eyes. “Don’t do this to us,” the old man pleaded. “Don’t bring back false hope.” I moved from my seat. “Do you even know what false hope means? Hope is uncertainty. It’s weighing your options on a fifty-fifty. At least you have a fifty per cent probability of happiness. When you lose hope, you have nothing left. Give me a chance. I’ll help you bring back the light you have been robbed of.”

It can only ensure that the determination is made honestly rather than from exhaustion or from the wrong kind of hope. The wrong kind of hope. It was a phrase from Wren's case study — the specific quality of hope that was attached to the outcome rather than the process, the hope that said if I hold on long enough the situation will change without asking whether the conditions for change were present. Harlen had taken it from Wren's account and built it into the protocol's foundational language because it was the most honest description of the failure mode the protocol was designed to address.