Horror Story Settings Novels & Stories

In my last life, my sister and I got adopted into two very different worlds. My mom? The "cool" type. Let me perm my hair in elementary school, signed off on a nose job in middle school, and shoved me toward one of Northport's richest heirs right after college. Ella's mom? Hardcore strict. Pulled her out of a fling with some delinquent and married her off to a quiet professor with a just-decent paycheck. Ella hated it. Wanted my life so bad. So when I ended up in the hospital pregnant, she used her shiny doctor title to kill me—and my baby. Then boom—I woke up, and we were back to adoption day. This time, she dove for the mom she thought handed me the dream. What she didn't know? That "cool mom" she worshipped was straight-up a monster.

Isabella Rossi has gotten reborn. The moment she opens her eyes, she sees the divorce agreement that her husband, Enzo Caro, has pushed toward her. He spins the ring that symbolizes his status as the Don of the Caro family, his tone so calm that one would think he's discussing today's weather. "Let's get a divorce, Bella. Sofia is pregnant, leaving her with volatile mood swings. I can't bear to see the love of my life suffering this much. Go ahead and ask for any form of compensation you want." Today is their seventh year wedding anniversary. Enzo has gone missing for one whole night, and yet the first thing he brings up is divorce right after he returns to the seaside villa. As Isabella stares at the man whom she had once loved with all her heart, she finds herself starting to space out. After this moment played out in her previous life, Isabella hadn't wasted her breath on Enzo. Instead, she picked up the fruit knife on the coffee table and plunged it into his chest. His blood had sprayed all over her face. With red-rimmed eyes, Isabella demanded in a quivering tone, "If Sofia's your true love, then what about me and my role in these past seven years?" No one won the battle afterward. Isabella had torn up the divorce agreement and spent the next ten years pestering Enzo. When Isabella slapped Sofia, Enzo dragged her into the interrogation room without hesitation and slapped her for a hundred times. When Isabella smashed Sofia's birthday cake, Enzo locked her up in a basement cellar for three days and nights, where a nest of venomous snakes remained her only company throughout that period. There, Isabella had lost her unborn child. Incidents such as those kept happening throughout the years. Enzo, the man who used to shield Isabella from harm, ended up being the same man who'd then torment her to the point of no return for the sake of another woman. In order to back Sofia up, Enzo made sure to cut off the Rossi family from Millbrook's shipping channels, pharmaceutical lines, and several legitimate financial pipelines. With all their paths cut off from them, Isabella's parents had no choice but to commit suicide by shooting themselves in the head. It's all thanks to this wrongly placed love that Isabella lost her family, her pride as the principessa of the Rossis, as well as her bright and vibrant life. This time, she won't go down the same tragic route, that's for sure!

My best friend, Scarlett Throne, is diagnosed with cancer. After running away from home, she takes her own life. She leaves behind only a testament and a pair of eight-year-old twins, a boy and a girl. "You're the only person I can rely on in this world. I'm not asking you to adopt them, but just make sure they have enough to eat." Out of compassion, I take the siblings in. For the next 20 years, my husband and I have been working hard together to raise them, buying them cars and houses. But one day, my adopted daughter reports my husband for being abusive toward her. Even my supposedly dead best friend suddenly appears and testifies against him. I demand to know why she does such a thing. My best friend, filled with righteous indignation, says, "I see you as my best friend! I've never thought you adopted my children just to serve your husband's perversions!" My husband's reputation is ruined, and he's been thrown in jail. I desperately try to prove his innocence, only to be forcibly sent to a mental hospital by my adopted son. There, I wither away and die. When I open my eyes again, I find myself back on the very day my best friend was diagnosed with cancer.

04:00 AM. JFK International Airport. I switched off airplane mode, and my phone lit up. The first notification was an Instagram story from my husband, Donovan Valentino, Don of the Valentino family, posted at 3:30 AM: a photo of Seraphina Moretti’s back, captioned, “Run 50 completed. Package delivered safe.” An hour before that, my flight had hit catastrophic clear-air turbulence, dropping two thousand feet in seconds. I’d clung to my seatbelt until my knuckles turned white, the crumpled threat letter from a rival crew pressed like a blade against my ribs. In those blind, falling seconds, one thought burned through the panic: If I live through this—if Donovan is waiting at arrivals—I’ll tear up my transfer papers to Dubai and stay. But there were no missed calls. No messages. He’d been too busy collecting Seraphina. He knew my flight details. He just didn’t care. Four years of marriage. 50 fully armed security details for Seraphina. For my 112 long-haul flights over those same four years? The most I ever got was a driver in an unmarked sedan. Even the night Gambino’s crew tailed me from Manhattan, and I spent six hours locked in a diner bathroom. He didn’t pick up until dawn, after the twelfth try. My transfer to Dubai was confirmed. The signed divorce settlement was in my bag. This was the last time I’d ever come back for him.

At my wedding to my childhood friend, Mason Rivers, a stream of floating comments suddenly appeared in front of my eyes. [LMAO, supporting character still doesn’t know the groom is a stand-in! The real male lead, Mason Rivers, is at the hospital with the fragile, sweet female!] [It doesn’t matter who the groom is. He only agreed to the marriage to keep his company afloat. This story is about the childhood sweetheart losing to the girl who came later.] [In the end, the supporting character gets completely ruined by the male lead. I almost feel bad for her.] I hid the shock in my eyes and pretended not to know anything as I finished the ceremony. I didn’t want to be the stepping stone for their love, the disposable extra who dies a tragic death. If he didn’t want to marry me, then I’d turn this act into something real and marry someone else instead.

To save my husband, I drank until my stomach bled. Despite making it to the hospital, no one would treat me—all because he, a prominent surgeon, forbade anyone from attending to his own wife. In a previous life, he had saved me, a deed that fate cruelly repaid: the same day he saved me, his beloved, Lily Evans, tragically died during surgery. Consumed by regret, he lamented, "If I hadn't saved you, she might still be alive." On my birthday, in a twisted celebration, he intoxicated both me and our daughter. In a horrifying turn, he used his surgical skills to ruthlessly stab us both. As I lay bleeding, I begged for our daughter's life, pleading with him to spare her, his biological child. He coldly justified his brutality by claiming that being tied to me caused him to miss his chance with his true love. Fueled by a desperate need to protect my daughter, I fought him ferociously. He inflicted thirty-eight merciless wounds on me before turning his murderous intent towards our child. As I faced death, my last sight was of him, his decision clear as he once again chose his lost love over his living family.

My dad is a fan of tough love parenting. When I was a kid, there was a time when I obtained full marks on two subjects. But he told me, "Your grades don't mean anything in life. If you were a true man, you'd leap down five floors without batting an eyelash." Some time later, I was awarded for my act of bravery. But Dad scoffed in my face. "Not even a hair is harmed on your head. Why should you be awarded anyway?" I thought Dad wanted me to go through more training in life. On Christmas Eve, he ditched me on a snowy mountain under the guise of wanting me to go through more training. He didn't give me a tent or a lighter. Later on, Dad even brags about his parenting method to his relatives and friends. "A real man should survive and thrive in a desperate situation! I told Julian that he can forget about being my son if he can't even make his way back to the summit!" But the red dot on the GPS tracker installed in his phone hasn't moved for the past three hours. The truth is, I've already frozen to death in the mountains. Trapped in my fist is a crumpled, torn scrap of paper. Meanwhile, my soul is currently floating above the dining table while watching Dad brag about his tough love parenting.

My husband, James Lincoln, disappeared in an accident, and my in-laws wasted no time filing to have him legally declared deceased. At the funeral, a woman, Xena Xander, suddenly showed up with a young boy, both crying hysterically. The boy, Charlie Lincoln, screamed at the top of his lungs, calling my husband “Daddy.” My ten-year-old daughter, Mia Lincoln, charged at him, shouting, “Shut up! That’s my dad!” Pretending to break it up, my in-laws instead shoved Mia to the ground. She collapsed and passed out on the spot. “If you’re looking for someone to blame, blame yourself for not giving us a grandson! This family can’t die out without an heir!” Xena smirked at me with blatant provocation. Behind her, Charlie spat in my direction and sneered, “You’re just a worthless tramp nobody cares about.” I didn’t lose my temper. Instead, I laughed. “If you want the status and the inheritance so badly, you can have them. But don’t come crying to me when you regret it.” Two weeks later, Xena showed up at my doorstep, covered in blood, banging on the door and screaming. And then, I got a phone call that felt like a nightmare come to life. But I couldn’t have cared less. By then, I was already enjoying a peaceful vacation overseas.

My firefighter husband had fallen from a great height during a mission and was rushed into the emergency room, covered in blood. As the only person capable of saving him, I stood just outside the operating room, calm and composed. Reaching for my makeup bag, I began carefully applying my makeup. Another doctor, panic-stricken, rushed toward me and shouted, "Dr. Warhol! The patient's kidney has ruptured! You're the only surgeon in all of Switzerland who can perform this life-saving procedure! If you don’t act now, he’s going to die!" I continued shaping my eyebrows with steady precision, not even glancing in his direction. "Quiet," I said coolly. "If you keep yelling, my brows might end up crooked."

When my wife brought her lover home for the fifth time, I decided enough was enough. I said nothing, not a word of complaint or protest. Instead, I superglued the windows shut and locked the bedroom door from the outside. From the bedroom came the muffled sounds of her little escapade, breathless and feverish, carrying through the walls like a shameful melody no one asked to hear. Calmly, I sat in the living room, picked up the phone, and called my mother-in-law. "Jessie," I said, putting on my best tone of urgency, "it's bad—real bad! Your daughter's locked herself in the bedroom and says she's gonna end it all!"