Good Horror

I did three years in prison for my wife, Lilian Parson. The day I got out, she handed me an envelope for her company's grand opening. Inside was a single dollar bill. For a second, I thought it was a mistake. Then I saw her colleague, Nathan Ramsey, holding his envelope—his also contained a single dollar. Relieved, I pushed my doubts aside. I smiled, stood by Lilian's side through the entire ceremony, the picture of a proud, supportive husband. That night, scrolling through Instagram, I saw Nathan's latest post. A photo of a check. [Congratulations to Lilian Parson on the grand opening! So generous—100 million as a gift!] The comments section exploded with envy and blessings, congratulating him and "the boss" on finally becoming a couple. Lilian offered no explanation. Instead, she hurried to draw a line between us. "You just got out of prison," she said coolly. "It's not a good look to go public right now. Let's keep our marriage a secret. In front of others, just call me your boss." Then she turned around and liked Nathan's post. I wiped the tears from my eyes, picked up my phone, and dialed the number of her greatest rival. "From now on, I work for you," I said.

I'm a dance major who's preparing for her exams. Everyone thinks I'm a good girl, but there's one thing they don't know about me—I've fantasized about being violated more than once…

In my previous life, everything I do to care for myself somehow ends up benefiting my new housekeeper instead. I apply expensive skincare, yet dark spots and fine lines spread across my face, whereas the 45-year-old housekeeper's face becomes silkier. I jog every morning, yet my body only grows heavier and bulkier, while hers becomes slender and toned. When my husband notices the stretch marks on my abdomen, his face twists with disgust, and he never touches me again. "I genuinely can't bring myself to touch you. How can you look worse than Mirabelle when you take such good care of yourself?" My housekeeper looks at me with a sinister smile. A chill crawls up my spine, and the strange feeling makes me fire her on the spot. Yet, as soon as she leaves, I start aging at lightning speed, entering menopause 20 years early and developing diabetes and high blood pressure. I see every doctor I can, but after hanging on for a week, I die from a stroke. When I open my eyes again, I'm back on the day she first reports to work. This time, I push away the royal jelly she sets in front of me with a pleasant smile. "I've been avoiding certain foods lately. You can have it instead."

On my wedding day, my sister was drugged by my fiancé's best friend and viciously assaulted by a group of groomsmen. When she came to, the shame and horror drove her to leap to her death, her broken body crumpling at my feet. Herbert Brady shielded my eyes from the grisly sight, vowing to make things right. But when the truth came out that Lori Reilly was behind it, he smashed my phone to keep me from calling the police. Lori shrugged with mock innocence. "The guys were just messing around. So what if they tore her clothes off? I've been half-naked around them plenty of times. Why was she so fragile?" She slung her arm around Herbert's neck, whining, "I told you not to marry some broke nobody. Poor people have such brittle pride. Look at the mess Mona has made." When I demanded justice, Herbert stayed cool, sliding a Centurion card across the table. "Ten million dollars. Enough to buy your silence? Lori is one of us, part of the city's elite inner circle. Push your luck, and you're making enemies of everyone who runs this town. Come on, it was just a wedding prank gone wrong." I seized the car and snapped it like a twig. Ten million dollars? To buy the life of the Woodard family's cherished heiress?

Seven years into our marriage, my husband, Lucas Thorne, is hailed as a legendary astronomer in the field of astronomy. It is no secret that he absolutely adores me, his wife. He always keeps a polite, distant demeanor with those around him. Even when his new assistant, Serena Cox, asks for his number, he coldly turns her down. In the year he proposed to me, he named a star "LAW", which was an acronym for "Lucas Adores Wilma". Since then, every asteroid he discovers is named with initials that hold a special significance only the two of us know. To others, they might just be scientific achievements. But to me, they are unspoken love letters. This goes on until this morning, when I stumble upon an unfamiliar phone. I unlock it easily with my middle name, thinking it's yet another quiet gesture of his love. But to my horror, I find a string of explicit messages between him and another woman. The person who was at the receiving end of those messages was none other than… Serena, his assistant.

My boyfriend, Victor Pearson, was ranked number one in the world in horror games. Meanwhile, I was secretly working part-time as a monster NPC inside one of those dungeons. Every dungeon he cleared was SSS rank, whereas the one I worked in was the beginner level. We were never supposed to run into each other… until he nearly wiped out all the monsters in an SSS dungeon. The system pulled me in at the last second as emergency backup. When I tried to scare players with my awful acting, the live chat tore me apart. [Hahaha, since when did the monsters in this dungeon get so cowardly? She’s supposed to scare us, but we actually scared her instead.] [This is next-level dumb. Getting lost in a dungeon is embarrassing. Is this monster here for comic relief?] [Poor thing. She'd better hide. Anyone else might let her go, but if she runs into Big V, she's dead before she knows it.] [Come on. Big V only hunts the nastiest bosses. He wouldn’t even bother with trash like that. She would probably scare herself to death first.] I did everything I could to avoid Victor, to keep him from realizing I was the monster working there. But somehow, I stumbled right into him anyway. The chat exploded, waiting for my instant death. After all, he was a legend on the leaderboards, a god among players. But instead of killing me, he bent down and gently pinched my cheek. "Hey, babe. How many players do you wanna take out? I'll help you." The people in the chat lost their minds. [What the hell?!]

Right before graduation, my roommate waved around a job offer from some overseas company. It had a three-day workweek, with a starting salary of $50,000 a month. It sounded too good to be true, so I warned her it might be a scam. When she struck out on other job leads, I asked my dad to get her a position at his company. She scoffed at the eight-hour days and $6,000 monthly salary, calling it slave labor. Then she went live online, falsely accusing my dad of inappropriate advances and pressuring her to bear him a son. When skeptics questioned her, she swore no woman would lie about her honor. The internet erupted, branding my dad a predator. Our company collapsed under the backlash, leaving us drowning in debt. To spare me, my dad jumped from a rooftop to his death. Devastated, I wandered into traffic and was struck by a truck. When I opened my eyes again, I was back to the day Amber got that shady offer.

There's a month to Angela Thompson's wedding, but she's no longer sure whether to proceed with it. The reason for her doubts? Her fiancé, Carl Swain, wants to have a child with his good friend's widow, Lucy Hogg. Carl says, "Keith was my best friend. He died so suddenly, leaving Lucy alone in this world. She tried to take her life a few times, you know. Maybe having a child will help her get past this." Angela can't understand it. She says, "Lucy can adopt or marry someone else if she wants a child. She can even go to a sperm bank abroad if she wants! Why do you have to be the one to have the child with her?"

I once thought Jareth was the love of my life. He said "Mom's in the hospital," but then turned around and kissed Lily in the VIP seats at the concert; when his bipolar disorder flared up, he was violent with me, but then told Lily, "You’re such a good girl"; he had videos with Lily saved on his phone, and in the chat records, he called me "the cold, emotionless finance robot." Five years of love, ruined in his lies and betrayals. He thought I would cry and scream, but all I did was watch him finish his final act. When he knelt on the ground and said, "I was wrong," what I handed him was the merger agreement: "Sign it. This is the first debt you owe me." Those broken hearts will eventually turn into sharp blades that will pierce him. And I will rise from the ruins, living more beautifully than anyone else.

My mother-in-law lives alone. One day, her house suddenly catches on fire. It's a life-threatening situation. I call my firefighter husband several times before he answers impatiently. "I don't care why you're calling—can't it wait? I'm fixing Sophie's pipes!" I tell him about his mother being trapped in a fire, but he merely sneers. "How dare you curse my mother just to make me go home? You're insane!" He hangs up without another word. I'm left helpless. All I can do is wait for his colleagues to arrive, but they only come half an hour later. Their expressions shift to horror when they see the blazing fire. "Didn't Captain Scott say his wife was lying?" My mother-in-law dies due to the delay. My husband even misses the funeral because of his first love. I give up on him and ask for a divorce. However, he rips the divorce agreement to shreds and shatters the urn that contains his mother's ashes. "Drop the act—I would definitely go through with the divorce if not for my mother!" I laugh. He doesn't even know his mother is already dead.