Nine Film Novels & Stories

I could not stop trembling as I tried my best to cover my ears to stop myself from hearing the strays tearing up my mother's corpse, but the sounds were imprinted into my brain and refused to go away. I knelt and kept banging my head against the ground while I begged, "Please! Let my mom go! "Just come after me if you hate me. Stop torturing her! She's dead! Let me bury her and give her peace. Please!" Rina stopped playing with her nails when she saw how I was acting. "When did you take acting lessons, Micah? I almost feel touched by your performance. People might really be convinced that I killed your mother.

I put it on speaker and set the phone on the coffee table between the bottle and my glass, and I listened to a woman who sounded like Sandra laugh about how easy it was to keep a man on a string once you learned which words made him soft. I played it again. Then again and by the third time I wasn't even listening for what she was saying anymore. I was desperatly haunting for something that made the whole thing fake, even if it was an Ai flop that proved it's not real. But I didn't find one. The screenshots came next, one after another, her name stamped over the lines. I put the glass down before I lose grip. "Zadok?" Maya's voice pulled me back. "Are you there?"

Beneath the sheet was the body of a man in his 50s or 60s. "What's going on? If that's not Sophia, then where is she?"

Even though we had married and divorced nine times like a game, I was still the ex-wife. The night grew quiet. The wind outside howled, as if carrying my words far away. After a long silence, Jake lifted his head, attempting an explanation. "Divorcing you… It was my fault. But I couldn't let Carla bear the shame of being involved with a married man." I took a few irritated steps back, unable—and unwilling—to understand. Carla couldn't bear the blame, so that meant I deserved to be divorced nine times?

"She is not dying. She has been lying to all of you." He thought for a long time. Then he picked up his phone and called an old friend, a doctor in another city. "I need you to check someone for me," he said. "Chiara Moretti. I need her real medical records." The call came back the next afternoon. "The truth is," his friend said, his voice heavy. "She does have a heart condition, but it is not serious. Irregular heartbeat, mild. It does not affect her daily life. She is not dying. She has never been close to death."

I gave a soft, bitter laugh and slowly slipped our documents back into my pocket. “This makes ninety-nine.” “What?” “This is the ninety-ninth time we’ve tried to get our marriage registered.” I turned toward the subway entrance. “And the ninety-ninth time you’ve left me hanging because of him.” I heard her heels stop on the pavement, then suddenly start running after me. “The first time, you bailed on our trip because he was on the night shift and scared of the dark. You took a red-eye flight just to be with him. “The second time, we were practically at the door of the courthouse. You heard he fainted from overwork and left me standing in the snow alone for an entire day.”