Novelas y relatos de Open Water

There was a river that ran through our village. According to the legend, a river god dwelled in its depths, and every month on the 15th, the village had to send a young woman to enter the water and serve him. At first, everything seemed normal. After their service to the river god, the women would return to shore, go home, and eventually marry and start families. But this year, the peace was shattered. Every woman who spent the night with the river god turned up dead, their naked bodies floating to the surface. I secretly watched as they retrieved the corpses twice. The evidence of the violation was horrific. This month, I was selected. I had been chosen to marry the river god.

Verena decides to give her marriage another chance only for her husband to bring in another woman, suggesting an open marriage. To make it fair, he tells her that she can date anyone as well and the idea of an open marriage was to make things work between them. Done with Kian’s lack of respect for her, she takes his advice and gets into a one-night stand with someone who shakes up her world, who looks at her with the same affection she searched for in Kian’s eyes but never found. The catch?— He is Daxton, Kian’s uncle. Now, Daxton refuses to let her go. And Kian? He isn’t willing to lose her either.

My dad called me right after I got paid. He said my little brother needed money for school, Grandma had medical bills, and there was still the rent, water, and electricity. Then, at the end of the call, he admitted he’d lost money gambling. I sat in the security booth, rubbing my bad leg, completely lost for what to do. A car horn blared, and I quickly raised the security bar. Just one look and you could tell how expensive the car was. It belonged to the boss, who had a thing for amputees. Damn it.

After confessing 101 times to my childhood sweetheart, Morgan Lambert, he marries his first love, Cassandra White. With my heart in ruins, I leave him behind and marry his younger brother, James Lambert, who has pursued me relentlessly from the start. After marriage, James dotes on me to an extreme. His love is bold and intense. Everyone says I am unbelievably lucky to have married such a devoted man. As Cassandra and I sink into the water together, I can only watch as James dives in recklessly. He struggles through the water toward her, giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I thrash and struggle in desperation, begging him to look at me even once. He never does. His entire focus is on getting her to shore, leaving me behind to be swallowed by the sea. While I am unconscious, I hear him and Morgan fighting violently in the hospital, arguing over who gets to stay by Cassandra's bedside. He roars in anguish, "I sacrificed myself by marrying Elsa so she wouldn't stand in the way of you and Cassie's happiness. Can you at least let me see Cassie once?" That is when I finally understand that none of them has ever loved me. I immediately arrange to fake my death, preparing to vanish from their lives completely. Yet after hearing the news of my so-called death, James—who's always calm—loses control. He pushes Cassandra aside, bends over, and coughs up blood. Overnight, he seems to age decades.

For five years, she lived in limbo….caught between hope and grief, waiting for the day her mother might wake up. When that day finally comes, joy floods her chest, too overwhelming to contain. She races home, desperate to share the miracle with the man she loves. But instead of open arms, she finds open betrayal. Her husband. Her Best cousin sister. Twisted in the sheets of the life she thought was hers. With her world in ruins, she runs…into the night, into the arms of a stranger, into anything that isn’t this. For one night, she doesn’t want to feel. For one night, she wants to forget. But when the morning comes, will she still recognize the woman staring back at her? Will she able to face the consequences of her action?

Our expedition team ventured into a desert wilderness to investigate rare mineral resources when we were suddenly struck by extreme heat that reached 158 °F. I nearly passed out from dehydration and quickly reached into my backpack for the electrolyte water I had prepared in advance. Just as I was about to drink it, I realized the bottle was half-filled with urine. When I turned around, I saw Ben Murphy, my wife’s childhood friend, gulping down my electrolyte water. As I was about to confront him, Amy Garner, my wife, grabbed my sleeve and said, “Don’t be mad. I gave Ben your electrolyte water. He’s almost dehydrated. You can make do with this for now.” My vision started to blur. Clutching the half-empty bottle of urine, I asked through gritted teeth, “I’m dehydrated. Instead of letting me rehydrate properly, you want me to drink this? Are you trying to kill me?” Amy was upset. “Don’t be ridiculous! Ben doesn’t work out daily like you do. He can’t handle this heat. Wasn’t it right to give him the electrolyte water? Besides, urine can hydrate you, too! Don’t be picky at a time like this.” Seeing how unreasonable she was being, I sent a distress signal with my location just before losing consciousness. [Severely dehydrated, near death. Expedition mission suspended. Request immediate rescue. Also reporting a robber in the team. Notify the police immediately.]

The night before the engagement banquet, my fiancé Matt's childhood friend Salina told me she had a surprise for the bride. She lured me up to the glass conservatory on the hotel rooftop, locked the door behind me, and switched on every sprinkler in the room. December in New York. Ice water crashed down from above, and the conservatory's four walls were pure transparent glass. The guests below held up their phones and watched me shiver in humiliation. she smiled with feigned innocence. "Hasn't Evelyn always thought so highly of herself? Let everyone see what she looks like begging to be let out of the cold." My fiancé Matt stood down below, watching me through the curtain of water, his voice indifferent. "Just leave her enough breath to survive." "She’s nobody—no connections, no family name. A little lesson will teach her just how high the bar for joining the De Luca family really is." Later, I smashed through the glass and climbed down from the rooftop. I wiped the blood from my face and dialed the number I had kept hidden for three years. "Cut off the De Luca family's arms supply on the East Coast." "And send David with his men to the hotel rooftop." "I want those people gone from New York before sunrise." What Matt didn't know was that I was the sole heir to the Falcone family, the most powerful Mafia family in North America. I had played this game of hiding my name long enough.

I was making a delivery to a rural village when a mob of villagers suddenly swarmed my truck. They surrounded the vehicle, pried open the cargo hold, and started looting everything inside. “We hit the jackpot this time! A whole truckload of flour! This is enough to feed everyone for ages! Grab it!” The cargo door was forced open, and white sacks spilled all over the ground. The villagers went insane, snatching my cargo like starving wolves. They divided it up without the slightest hesitation. I was pinned to the ground, my mouth clamped shut by someone’s hand. All I could do was watch as they stripped the truck clean. But what I was transporting wasn’t flour at all. It was a highly restricted agricultural pesticide powder. The kind no one was supposed to touch.

It's 11:30 pm. Home alone, I decide to order some takeout. When the map shows the delivery guy is zero miles away, I receive a call from him. I pick up, only to hear unsettling silence from the other end. I hang up, annoyed. The next moment, the guy texts me, "Sorry, I'm hearing-impaired and unable to speak. I called to notify you to pick up your food as soon as possible. I can't explain things over the phone, and I apologize for that." Then comes another text. "You must've been waiting for a long time. I've left your order at your door, so please pick it up as soon as you can." Just as I prepare to open the door, I see bars of live comments—reminiscent of livestream chats—floating right before my eyes. "Don't open the door! That dude isn't a delivery guy at all! He's a murderer!" "He called you to check if you're a woman living alone!" "Seriously, why are all thriller story protagonists always so dumb? The delivery guy is obviously suspicious, yet she still wants to open the door."

A woman who couldn't even produce a single egg for three years. You are just a useless piece of skin.* The words echoed in my head, a vicious, repeating loop that shattered my mind completely. I stumbled back onto my feet, my body shaking so violently I could barely control my limbs. I didn't grab a coat. I didn't grab my shoes. I just ran. I pushed open the bedroom door and sprinted down the dark hallway, my bare feet slapping against the cold hardwood stairs. I heard Lola's bedroom door click open as I reached the foyer, her voice calling out to me in a frightened whisper, but I couldn't stop. I threw open the heavy front door and ran out into the freezing, pitch black night. The gravel of the driveway cut into the soles of my feet, but I didn't feel the physical pain. The agony in my chest was too loud. I ran down the long, winding road leading away from the estate, the dark trees looming over me like monsters. The sky was heavy, and a bitter wind whipped through my oversized sweater, but I was entirely numb. I just wanted to die.