Short Story Connect

My mother claims my husband has cheated on me and pushes me to get a divorce. I want to collect evidence before proceeding with anything—if it's true, I have to uphold my rights. Yet she causes a scene at an art exhibition I've worked on for three years, humiliating me in public and making me sound like a gold digger. "How are you any different from a prostitute when you're holding this dumb exhibition with a man's money? I didn't raise you to be a gold digger! How can you be so revolting?" She slashes the million-dollar paintings in the exhibition, claiming that she's doing this for my good. She wants me to see the error of my ways and return to the right path. Meanwhile, I clutch my bloody hand, which she slashed with her blade. I say, "You say you want me to return to the right path, but is that what it really is? You want me to divorce my legally wedded husband, who's a CEO, without a penny to my name. "Then, you want me to marry a 45-year-old cheap man who has a child and no money? He even wants me to support him!"

Calvin and I had been married for seven years. While packing up some clothes, I found a cheap lighter in the pocket of his jacket. Everything he wore, from the inside out, had been carefully chosen by me to highlight his refined taste and status. However, in that girl’s Twitter photos, he looked like a college boy, dressed in cheap clothes and wearing a digital watch that cost only a few dollars while kissing her. Using a throwaway account, I casually liked the post and commented, "A perfect match." Then, I turned to Calvin and said, "How did I never realize you had such a thing for bargains?"

On my 50th wedding anniversary, I took my worn, crumbling marriage certificate to City Hall to renew it. The clerk glanced at it—and froze. “This certificate is fake. Our records show you’ve never been married.” I stared. “Impossible. I’ve been married to Damien Slater for fifty years.” The clerk pulled up his file. “Well…Yes, Mr. Slater is married—but his wife’s name is Vanessa Grant.” Vanessa. His widowed sister-in-law. A military doctor who’d spent decades living among the troops. My hands shook as I returned home and confronted Damien. He didn’t even try to deny it. “I’ve treated you well all these years. Isn’t that enough? Vanessa is my true love. I only ever wanted her—our children, our life.” My son counseled me and said, “To spare your feelings, my parents kept it a secret their whole lives. You’re getting old now. What more do you want?” Only then did I learn the truth. The child I had raised with my own hands was never mine by blood. Decades ago, Vanessa and I gave birth on the same day. To ensure her child would grow up with intellect, privilege, and a future that I could provide, Damien switched our children. My own son? Damien drowned him in the pond the moment he drew breath. And I—fool that I was—raised Vanessa’s boy as my own. I even got him all the way to Claremont University. The truth broke me, and I collapsed. When I opened my eyes again—I was back. Back to the day I went into labor.

While waiting for my husband to pick me up at the parking lot, I came across a trending topic in my city. "How do I deal with an overly-clingy wife?" Amidst a flurry of boastful, lovey-dovey comments, one female username caught my attention. "Just pretend to be incompetent! My childhood friend was forced to marry someone he didn’t love. I gave him the idea to pretend to be directionally-challenged, which he has done for five years now. "When his wife got pregnant, he secretly mixed lubricant into the shower gel, causing her to slip. Then, on the way to the hospital, he pretended to get lost. He deliberately circled the suburbs several times, which led to her miscarriage and now she can't have children anymore." "Coincidentally, today is supposed to be the selection day for her promotion to professor. He offered to drive her to work, but he actually plans to pretend to get lost to make her late so that I can get promoted instead. "When she fails the selection, he’ll use that as a chance to convince her to quit her job, turn her into a useless housewife, and then kick her out!" Reading this suspiciously familiar experience sent a chill down my spine. Before I could ponder further, I heard my husband’s apologetic voice. "Sorry, honey, I got lost. I hope this won't affect your selection."

Carl Anderson doesn't show up for our engagement party. I finally find him in a bar's private room after night has fallen. "I only think of her as a sister. Who would've expected her to want to latch onto me like that? There's no way I'll marry her in this lifetime!" He downs his drink. Later, when he and Angela Moran get married, he tells his friends to stop me at the entrance. He's afraid I'll crash his wedding and ruin it. "Keep an eye on Iris, guys. Don't let her crash the wedding!" he says. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, I show up with Henry Moran. "Don't even dream of stepping in there, Iris!" Carl looks at me warily. "You're so rude! You have to call her Aunt Iris now!" Angela greets me warmly and leads me inside.

I'm an heiress who's been bound to a gossip system. Everyone reads my mind on my first day back home after being reunited with my family. "Mom sure has done a good job of maintaining her beauty. It's no wonder she became an OnlyFans streamer after divorcing Dad." My mother is about to berate me for something, but she pales and stops when she hears my thoughts. I glance at the fake heiress, who's weeping pitifully. "My, she's pregnant. Is it John's or Zach's?" My two brothers exchange odd looks. Then, my father arrives. I cluck my tongue. "Oh, it's Dad's."

I worked for a restaurant, and our boss loved making empty promises about giving us restaurant shares. The boss said we would start with zero shares, but we could earn 0.01% for every two hours of overtime, covering someone else’s work or saving the restaurant 1,000 bucks. I suggested she write this down in an official document and have someone track it properly. She just smiled and told everyone to work harder. She never actually put it in writing. The experienced staff did not believe her, but one prep cook took it seriously. At the end of the year, he went to the boss to claim his shares. The boss said, “Sorry, the head chef told me there’s no official document, so it doesn’t count. You can’t claim any shares.” The prep cook worked hard all year and got nothing for it, so he took his anger out on me. The day before I was going home for the New Year, he killed me with a knife. “If you hadn’t said it doesn’t count without an official document, this whole restaurant would’ve been mine!” I lay in a pool of blood. When I opened my eyes, I was back to the day the boss first made those empty promises.

I knew perfectly well that people from the Emirates do not eat pork. Yet this time, I watched in silence as my husband's childhood sweetheart insisted on placing a pork dish on the table. In fact, I even supported her decision. In my past life, when our company hosted a welcome banquet for powerful investors from the Emirates, she had been desperate to flaunt her cooking. Against all reason, she forced a pork dish onto the menu. I stopped her then. I explained that pork was forbidden by religious belief, and that offending the investors could cost us everything. If they withdrew their funding, the company's finances would collapse overnight. She took my warning as jealousy. In a fit of rage, she ran out of the banquet hall and was struck by a car, leaving her in a permanent vegetative state. I thought my husband would break down. Instead, he remained calm, stayed through the dinner, and secured the investment in surprisingly calmness. The truth revealed itself later. After the company went public, he brought me abroad under the guise of business, only to drag me onto a medical ship in international waters. As my kidney was cut from my body, I cried and asked him why. His answer came with a slap. "If you hadn't been jealous back then... If you hadn't tried to sabotage her, she wouldn't have ended up like that." I died in agony on the operating table. After my death, he used the money from selling my organs to cure his beloved childhood sweetheart, and the two of them went on to live rich, comfortable lives together. And then I opened my eyes again, back to the very day she decided to serve pork to the clients.

On our Christmas break road trip, my cousin Felix Lloyd spotted some high-powered speakers at a highway rest stop. He had to have them—said he wanted to "blast it." "It's Christmas. We finally get to see everyone! We need some vibe!" My wife, Lana Ramsey, smiled and helped him pay. "Young people have energy. They know how to enjoy life." I yanked the power cord out. "Those aren't for regular cars. This is an EV. Overload it, and the whole system fries. Then what—just stuck in the middle of nowhere?" Lana's parents, Vincent and Donelia, booed me, calling me a buzzkill. Felix cranked the volume all the way up. Lana glared at me. "Say one more word and get out. I'll drive." Later, the speakers fried the battery system. We were stranded in total darkness on a rough mountain road. They finished the last of the food, then shoved me out to "go find help." I slipped, rolled down the slope, and died. When I opened my eyes, I was back—right when Felix jammed the speaker plug into the charging port. I grabbed a few more subwoofers and handed them over. "One isn't enough. Add more. That's how you really crank it."

I had returned from overseas to attend my foster son's wedding, already wearing my dress for the evening. My former high school classmates recognized me and pointed at me, laughing wildly. They tore my dress off me without hesitation. Ruby Saunders apologized to me, but it was all an act. She looked at me with malevolence. She had instigated her lackeys to strip me in public. When I tried to retaliate, she slapped me so hard that I fell to the ground. I closed my eyes and laughed coldly as I saw the cruel excitement on her face. She used to imitate me and accuse me of copying her, but I always endured it. However, today was my last straw. I would not allow her to marry into my family and turn me into her mother-in-law, no matter what!