Paranoia

My squadmates falsely accused me of being a vampire. They poured scalding water over me claiming it was "holy water," spiked my meals with garlic extract, and even splashed me with stinking goat blood. In the end, their madness drove them to plunge a sharpened cross straight into my heart...

The apocalypse has arrived, but I am merely the villainous master in a doomsday novel.

The mission given to me by the system is to humiliate my kind-hearted fiancée, Avery.

Looking at the only dry rations left before us, I stomped them into pieces right in front of all the wasteland refugees, grinding them into the muddy ice and snow with the sole of my shoe, and commanded condescendingly: ...

"What the hell, it even has haptic vibration feedback? Are they seriously making these things this realistic now?"

Taking advantage of my roommate being out on a sales call, I tossed this ridiculously expensive "high-end realistic doll" onto my bed.

Watching her body tremble slightly, almost uncontrollably, the twisted fire in my gut burned even hotter.

"Baby, here I come!"

The first time I pulled a pearl earring from Kaelen's pocket, my father stepped up to vouch for him: "That's a token left behind by the female Elder."

 

Later, when I found a lace choker stuffed in the cracks of the car seat, his deputy rushed to take the blame: "I bought that for my mate and left it with the Alpha for safekeeping."

 

Ever since then, whenever I caught a slip-up, someone close...

A frat party Ouija board game awakened a deadly fae. Every fortune it grants comes with a fatal price. It offered me three. I refused them all.
But my boyfriend, crushed under student loans, craved the fae's riches. He took the money. He signed the deal. He opened the door.
I thought I would stay safe as long as I refused the fae's demands. Then my body started to weaken. My limbs thinned. My stom...

Everyone says I’m crazy.
My husband, Adrien, is Ashmont College’s most esteemed professor—suave, composed, and highly logical. I, on the other hand, am an investigative journalist whose nerves are fried by looming deadlines and too much caffeine. Yet, I insist there’s a woman who shares my exact face, who crawls out of our bedroom mirror every night and slips into my husband’s bed.
Our security ca...

When my roommate Sutton woke up from a wet dream, she was literally glowing. She claimed it was the most mind-blowing romantic experience of her life—the man’s silhouette, his scent, his body heat felt impossibly real.
Even crazier? When she checked her phone, there was a strange new number saved in her contacts. It belonged to the man from her dream.
While the rest of us shrieked about destiny, o...

The global freeze descended, and the apocalypse arrived right on cue. I seized all the critical supplies and evacuated first, leaving "the perfect base" behind for the two traitors who backstabbed me. They thought it was heaven, but little did they know that the entire fortress was a precision trap constructed of deception, scarcity, and despair. As the outdoor temperature plummeted to minus eight...

"Sophie, come out for dinner."
Mom’s voice seeped through the crack of the door.
I walked over to stand behind the door, when my sister Susan suddenly sent me a message.
"Run away right now. Mom’s lost her mind. She’s going to kill you!"
I stared at those words, my heartbeat racing rapidly.
Moments later, my phone vibrated again in my hand.
The exact same message popped up one after another on the...

In my past life, I kindly took in my girlfriend and brother, only to be pushed into a torrent of acid rain and melted alive. When I opened my eyes again, I was back a month before the apocalypse, only to find that my girlfriend had also been reborn! She was secretly plotting on the balcony to drain my assets to build her and her best male friend's post-apocalyptic love nest? I scoffed, decisively ...

Before the apocalypse hit, my ex-girlfriend called me, laughing like a maniac: "Jack, you pathetic loser—still playing that stupid farming game? Gonna whack zombies with a hoe? Open the door right now, get on your knees, and beg us, and maybe we'll throw you some table scraps."
I listened to the faint scrape of a tactical knife being drawn on the other end of the line, and silently glanced at my c...

Thirty thousand feet in the air, inside the sealed cabin of a commercial airliner, my five-year-old daughter vanished into thin air while I took a thirty-minute nap.
I tore through the lavatories, the galleys, and every overhead bin. The only thing I found was her stuffed bunny, the one she never let out of her sight.
What was even more terrifying was the crew and the passengers. As if perfectly r...

To raise money for my younger brother’s surgery, I forged my degrees, polished my résumé, and forced my way into high society. In everyone’s mouth, I’m that woman—
the scheming bitch, the liar, the “evil bride” clinging to an old rich man.
They all think I’m obsessed with Mr. Grant, the financial shark’s mountain of assets.
Only I know the truth—what I’m really clinging to is my brother’s life.
No...

On the second floor of this old Victorian house is a long hallway with a dark red rug. Six doors are evenly spaced along its walls.
We lived here peacefully for ten years.
Until last month, when my seven-year-old sister, Maeve, suddenly refused to set foot in it.
The adults dismissed it as a childish phobia.
Until late one night, hiding under the covers, she pressed her face to my ear and whi...

"You were like a starved beast last night," I complained, spreading jam on my toast.
Gideon's hands froze mid-knot on his tie. He turned to me, his eyes filled with utter bewilderment.
"Nadia, are you out of your mind? I was in the study finishing up that proposal last night. I crashed on the couch at three in the morning. I never even went into the bedroom."
The knife dropped from my hand onto th...

My daughter has been blind since birth. On her eighteenth birthday, she finally received news of a matching cornea donor.
Our whole family was so excited we couldn't sleep that night. My husband and daughter eagerly prepared for the surgery, their hearts filled with hope that she would soon see the light.
But I suddenly slammed my hand on the table and, amidst the family's stunned gazes, proposed ...

He broke down the morgue door, his guttural scream echoing off the cold tiles as he yanked open drawer after drawer.

"Emily!"

Ethan's hands shook violently as he pulled it open. She lay inside, a white sheet draped over her face. With trembling fingers, he peeled back the fabric. Her face was paper-white, lips bloodless, her eyelashes casting faint shadows. So still.

This wasn't the Emily he kn...

Trapped in a lifelong obsession with my flawed face, I found solace only behind beauty filters.
Seraphine, the undisputed beauty of our town, had not only stolen Cillian—the boy I liked—but made a habit of publicly humiliating me.
When I signed up for the Magnolia Queen pageant, I knew I didn't stand a chance. But one foggy morning, while fetching the paper, I found a mysterious silver compact mir...

My roommate acted strangely—an eye peeking through the door crack, a lingering stench, and the shadow of a serial murder closing in. I struggled to find the truth, only to discover her rotting corpse in the wardrobe. It turned out, she was the first to die, and the fear had only just begun.

When the pain started, my mother-in-law called me a monster, then drove off like a madwoman. My doctor slit his own throat in front of me. My husband locked me away "for my safety."
I thought they didn't want my baby. That they were horrified by the child I carried.
But I was wrong.
The thing growing inside me was never my child at all.