Male Siren

On the day of our ninth wedding anniversary, I sat in the empty living room and summoned the system I had not contacted in ages. "System, help me submit an application. I've decided to leave this world." The cold, mechanical voice came through, and somehow it sounded comforting. "Understood, Harry. Your departure application has been received. The space-time corridor is being constructed. I will come to retrieve you in one week." I hummed quietly and stared at my phone screen. A family photo of three stared back. In the photo, I stood in the center holding an adorable little girl. A beautiful woman stood beside me, kissing my cheek.

In order to take care of my wife, Mildred Dale, who kept going into lunatic episodes thanks to the side effects of a car crash, I spent all of my assets and ten years of my life taking care of her. Whenever Mildred went into an episode, she'd hurl everything she could get her hands on at me. At the same time, she'd scratch every inch of my body with her nails. But when she sobered up, she'd hug me while wailing at the top of her lungs. All of my friends advised me to file for a divorce, yet I'd always remember the fact that Mildred had pushed me from the incoming car and hit her head, resulting in her current condition. But everything changed when Mildred beat me up to the point that I sustained grievous injuries. Heck, my soul was already floating near the ceiling at that time. That was when I saw Mildred arranging her childhood friend Hank Weaver's collar carefully. "Why are you crying? He's already dead. Shouldn't we celebrate this occasion instead? "But my heart breaks for you, Mildred. You've pretended to be a lunatic for ten whole years just to swindle every cent out of his account!" Mildred kissed Hank on the lips. Then, she uttered icily, "I've been enduring that cowardly fool for ten long years. Now, I no longer have to be with him." It turns out that Mildred and Hank had painstakingly staged the car accident just so they could put on such a perfect act. When I open my eyes again, I've returned to the day Mildred is diagnosed with mental health issues.

Now that I've been accepted into a prestigious college, my family throws a college acceptance party for me. My older cousin, Jessica Boone, gives me a gift for the occasion—a scratch-off lottery ticket with half the numbers scratched already. But when she finds out that I won 20 dollars from the lottery ticket, she offers 200 thousand dollars to buy the ticket off me. Finding it strange, I refuse her offer. Jessica goes berserk. She starts cursing me out, telling me to go to hell. She even pushes me off the high-rise building right in front of all the guests at the party. The dozens of people in attendance, including my parents, staunchly support her actions and even start remarking that I deserve to die. My eyes open once more—I've gone half an hour back in time. Once again, Jessica mockingly tosses the scratch-off lottery ticket at me and says those familiar words to me.

There's an unspoken rule in my household—everyone has to engage in a drinking competition during the holidays. Whoever gets wasted first will have to pay off one year's worth of house and car mortgages for the other two siblings. In the first year, I collapsed after my first glass of alcohol. I had to pay the house mortgage for my oldest sister, Dahlia Zeller. In the second year, as soon as I picked up my glass, I fainted right away. Since then, I had to pay off Jasmine Zeller, my second sister's car loan. For the next 20 years, I've always been the loser. In the end, my wife, Jean McCarthy, is forced to jump off a building because of the huge debt I've racked up. The debtors keep dumping paint onto my residence, forcing me to deter away from it. Ransacked by guilt, I end up damaging my stomach from overdrinking when I attempt to train my alcohol tolerance. As a result, half of my liver has gotten removed. When I'm on the verge of death, I hear my parents snickering outside my ward. "Don't you think we've laced too many sleeping pills in his drink? He almost didn't wake up back then!" "It's fine. He's an idiot who merely thinks he has a low alcohol tolerance. Our family still relies on him for financial survival, you see. We can keep drugging him so that he'll keep getting wasted." When I open my eyes again, I've already gotten reborn in the timeframe when I'm sitting at the dining table in the 20th year.

My wife, Celina Buckley, is a violinist. I've wooed her for five years before she finally agrees to date me. After our marriage, Celina insists on staying child-free for the sake of her career. Left without a choice, I can only poke a few holes in the condoms. Finally, Celina gets pregnant, and with twins, too! Delighted, I make all preparations to welcome the new members of my family into my life. But I accidentally stumble across a photo of a pregnancy report posted on the social media feed belonging to Leo Kolcheck, Celina's senior at work. "Thank you for fulfilling my wish to become a father, Celina. I can't wait to meet my twins!" I feel as though I got struck by lightning. At that moment, I feel like a complete joke. While Celina is at Leo's birthday party, I begin packing up. I make sure that I've taken all of my belongings with me. All that's left is the divorce agreement on the table.

On the day before the competition, someone knocked me out when I was on the street before locking me up in a cage. For three days and three nights, I was chased around by a ferocious dog that kept biting and attacking me. Because of that, my wounds began leaking pus due to infection. Later on, five rich ladies had me locked up in a room. After chaining me up like a dog, they began tormenting me out of fun. When I finally got rescued, I had suffered from countless fractures. Even my internal organs went out of place from the beatings. My older sister, Claire Bowman, whom I'd been relying on since young, had me sent to the hospital immediately. There, I received a rabies vaccine. Meanwhile, my fiancee, Heather Vega, killed the mutt right in front of me in order to help me exact vengeance. She also stripped those ladies down and put them through a humiliating parade in public. After that, she kicked them off to the slums, where they became playthings for the beggars. But as I was lying on the hospital bed, I accidentally overheard Claire and Heather's conversation. "Do you think Christopher will resent us if he ever finds out that we're the ones who've set the dog and the ladies on him just so we can make Samuel the winner of the competition in order to repay him for his benevolence?" Heather's tone was unusually icy. "Christopher's just a replacement for Samuel. This is his fault for not knowing his place and insisting on fighting over the top spot with Samuel! I'm just teaching him a lesson! "Soon, I'll marry him in order to make it up to him. Then, I'll take care of him for the rest of his life. This is already enough." I did my best to hold my tears back while feeling my heart throb in pain. It turned out that the most important women in my life were also the ones who had ruined my lifelong dream. Since they didn't care about me at all, I chose to abandon them as well.

I had been wearing Vera out with my constant demands in bed. She finally broke down and ran back to her parents’ house. With our wedding approaching, she warned me, “If you keep being this rough, the wedding’s off.” I had no choice but to call my future mother-in-law, Victoria, and ask her to talk to Vera for me. That evening, Victoria showed up at my place in a sexy dress. Her chest was so full that it looked like it was about to burst out of her dress. “Since Vera can’t satisfy you, I’ll take care of you instead.”

The lab blew, and my girlfriend—Beatrice Whitmore—didn't even glance my way. She bolted straight for Joseph, wrapping herself around him. When the dust settled, she climbed into the ambulance with him. I was still on the ground, bleeding out, and she didn't spare me a look. Eighteen years raising him, and apparently, that was all the space her heart had left. My coworkers dragged me to the hospital. ICU, barely breathing. When I finally clawed my way out, throat raw, I called my advisor. "Prof. Beaumont, I'm in. I'll go. Even if it means disappearing for five years, I don't care." That was supposed to be my wedding month. Not anymore.

It was the apocalypse. A zombie apocalypse. We should've been running for our lives, but my girlfriend, Yvonne Brown, refused to. She wanted to buy as much time as she could for her incompetent childhood friend, Yves Claude, to hop into the last helicopter that would take survivors away. But the retreat was our group's only way to survive in this apocalypse. Yves was not showing up anytime soon. I had no choice but to knock her out and drag her into the chopper. And Yves, the one she could never seem to forget, died in the swarm of undead. I, however, survived thanks to what I did. Yvonne and I lived happily in a safe zone. And then that fateful day came. I was going to take over the territory and lead humanity on an attack against the zombies. The night before that decisive strike, Yvonne spiked my water with anesthetics. When I was caught helpless, she tossed me into the horde of zombies. The swarm of undead tore my flesh open, and the pain killed me. Yvonne? She stood on the wall coldly, a sneer decorating her lips. "Yves could've lived, but you took that chance away from him! You selfish monster, you killed Yves! I will make you suffer what he suffered! You'll pay for it with your life!" Death took me, but it tossed me all the way back to the day of the retreat. The day Yvonne adamantly insisted on waiting for Yves. Well, if she was so happy to live through a world like this with her friend, who am I to say no? I would grant her that wish, even if she would end up as zombie food.

As I fought a stray dog for a loaf of moldy bread, distinguished guests arrived at the orphanage. They'd come to find the long-lost heir of a wealthy family. After confirming their choice, they donated $100 million to the orphanage and handed out chocolates to every child. My mouth watered as I reached for a box, but glowing messages flashed before my eyes. [Lawrence, show your locket! They're here to bring you home!] [Don't let that impostor steal your birthright. It's yours!] They revealed the truth: the elegant couple were my biological parents, and the poised girl beside them was my fiancée. Yet I clutched my chocolate and ran, aware of their true purpose: they'd come here just for the fake heir. Even if I revealed my locket, they'd not pay me any attention.