Phone Beeping Virus

Just as my wealthy boyfriend and I were talking about getting married, his mother dismissed me as an unrefined girl and demanded I attend a finishing school to learn how to be a proper wife. Looking at Zach’s pleading gaze, I gave in. I endured relentless psychological and physical torment for three months. However, on the day I was discharged, I overheard a phone call between Zach and his friend. “Zach, if you don’t want to marry Cathy, why didn’t you just tell her? Why did you have to send her to that hellhole to suffer? That finishing school your family runs is a freaking torture chamber. Constant beatings, electric shocks, forced kneeling for hours… No one comes out of there the same.” “You don’t get it. Jen is about to get engaged, and I can’t risk Cathy ruining it. As long as Jen is happy, I don’t care who I marry. Cathy grew up poor, so she can endure a little hardship. Three months of hardship for a lifetime of Stein money is a fair trade.” My vision blurred with tears when I heard those cruel words from his mouth. I thought. “Zach, since you loved Jenna so much, why did you have to toy with my feelings?”

My roommate is the kind of person who has to get to the bottom of everything and doesn't stop asking questions until she's satisfied. One night, while I'm sound asleep, she suddenly stands by my bed and calls my name, "Melissa, are you asleep?" Having been awakened by her, I shoot her an annoyed glare, but she just says, "See? You weren't really asleep. Otherwise, how could you have answered me?" One day, she decides to skip class. Thinking that I could help by signing her in on my phone, I do just that. However, near the end of the lecture, she suddenly bursts into the room and asks the professor, "I wasn't here today, so why does it show I was marked present? Is the system down?" The professor traces it back to me, fails me on the spot, and makes me retake the class. Later on, I join a speech contest. My roommate stands up in front of everyone and asks why my speech sounded exactly like her ideas. I get disqualified, lose my scholarship, and am labeled a plagiarist. Devastated, I climb onto the rooftop late at night. When I open my eyes again, I'm back to the night when my roommate first asked if I was asleep.

After being betrayed by her boyfriend and best friend, Mary Sampson moved to the hotel she had booked earlier for herself and her boyfriend to stay after he had proposed. As she is masturbating to get over her plight, a smoking hot handsome young man walks in, disrupting her pleasure. After a while of argument, it is discovered that due to some system error in the hotel, the room is mistakenly booked twice and the room actually belongs to the handsome young man. Mary is refunded, despite the handsome man offering to allow her to share the room, she insists she will find another room. However, she doesn't find any other hotel room as all the hotels in the whole town have been booked. She reluctantly returns to the handsome man and they play poker to while away the time. The poker soon turns to a stripping poker and the smoking hot man stripteases her, turning her on. Eventually, they have a hot night together and Mary drops her phone number, hoping they may see each other again. After waiting for two years without getting a call from him, she forgot about him. Only to run into him at her workplace the next day… The smoking hot man is her boss.

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 died on the day I won the Global Medical Doctorate Award. Fresh from celebrating the sixteenth birthday of my younger sister, my parents, brother, and my fiancé finally returned home, but it was three hours after my death. My family photos were beaming with happiness on social media, while I laid in the suffocating basement drenched in blood. Before I died, I had struggled to slide my tongue across my phone screen in a desperate attempt to call for help. My parents and brother had blocked my number. Only my fiancé answered my call. The moment his voice came through, he snapped, "Winona, Winnie's sixteenth birthday is important. Stop trying to hijack attention with your pathetic excuses. Enough with the theatrics!" It murdered my last spark of survival. In that electronic death rattle, my heart flatlined. The 100th time they chose her. The 100th time they abandoned me for her. But it was also the last time. They thought I had ran way to get their attention again, and that if they taught me a harsh lesson, I would come crawling back pathetically. But not this time. Because I didn't leave home. I had been lying in the basement of my house.

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."

Three years into my marriage with Dominick, Gia, his stepsister, sent me a video clip out of nowhere. I tapped on the video, only to find Dominick tying his stepsister to the bedpost with the tie I had given him. His stepsister lay naked under him, addressing him intimately. After getting their freak on, they shared an embrace, and Gia cozied up against Dominick and uttered, “I don’t like the ring you bought me. Give it to Luna, and tell her it’s a birthday gift from me.” The next day, I sat in an upscale restaurant and stared at the vacant seat across the table. Suddenly, the Underboss wheeled a massive cake toward me. “Don Costa was called away on urgent business. He sent me to deliver your birthday gift.” The box contained his stepsister’s discarded reject. My phone buzzed with new pictures from Gia. Dominick was at the hospital with Gia for a check-up. Without a fuss, I signed the divorce papers and made preparations for a wedding. “Donna Costa, whose names should I put down as the bride and groom?” “Dominick and Gia.” A week from now, I would show the world the kind of filth the supposed solemn Don had been rolling in with his stepsister.

For three years, I was nothing but a replacement. After my hundredth blood donation to my three wives' true love, I vanished from their lives. They bombarded my phones with thousands of phone calls and ten times that number of text messages. 'I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, honey! I know I let our mom down. You can do anything to me, but please don't leave me!' 'Please, honey, I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I won't do it again, I swear! Just come back!' 'You can't leave me, honey! You're going to drive me mad! I can't live without you!' 'Please, just tell me where you are! Take my call, please!' … I changed my SIM card once I went back to Imperia and blocked all my wives' contacts. Peace and quiet came back to me. Three months later, I was told that my wives' companies went bust, and the love of their lives swindled them out of every single cent they had. And now they were scouring the land for me. That was a joke. They did not panic when they still had everything. They should never have done what they did. Too late for regrets.

My sister accompanies me when I go for my premarital medical checkup. When I'm preparing a urine test, I hear embarrassing sounds coming from the cubicle next door. I'm about to leave when I hear the conversation. "Keep it in you, Willow. We're doing this again if it slips out." The voice belongs to my fiancé, Zachary Hilton. The woman to whom he's speaking is Willow Langley, my sister. I dial his number hysterically to see whether it really is him, but my calls go unanswered. All I hear is the incessant ringing of a phone next door and moans alongside it. I'm rooted to the spot, too stunned to do anything. Zachary once vowed to love me for life, yet he's doing something like this with Willow prior to our wedding. The moans and pants next door take a long time to subside. Once I hear them leave, I call home, my face wet with tears. "Mom, change my husband-to-be to Thomas Hilton, Zachary's youngest uncle. I don't want to have anything to do with Zachary anymore."

One day, in the school's group chat, I accidentally revealed that I was the daughter of Sanfiric Inc.'s chairman. Out of nowhere, Sally jumped in with a scathing remark: [Do you have no shame? Clinging to some random man and calling him ‘Dad' just because you're desperate to be an heiress. Have you lost your mind?] Her accusation left me completely baffled. I didn't even bother responding, but she wasn't about to let it go. She bombarded the chat with photos and videos, all claiming to prove that she was the real heiress. In a video she shared, she was clinging to my father's arm, acting sweet and coy. I stared at the screen in shock, my mind reeling. Before I could even process what I was seeing, the school advisor kicked me out of the group chat entirely. "How could we have such a vain and shameless student? You're a disgrace to the school!" Furious, I whipped out my phone and called my dad. The moment he picked up, I exploded, "Roger Burberry, do you have another daughter I don't know about?!"