Not Dead Enough

Ariel Walker marries Jayson Larkin to save her adoptive brother. For three years, their marriage is kept a loveless, passionless secret. On the day she's diagnosed with a terminal illness, her husband sets off fireworks with his mistress to celebrate. When her adoptive brother is released from prison, he announces that the woman in his arms is the love of his life! Ariel decides to stop waiting when she sees the usually cold, stoic men boldly declare their love for other women. She gets a divorce, quits her job, and severs ties with her family… She picks up the pieces of her dream and goes from being a scorned housewife to a technological expert! One day, her secret identity and terminal illness are exposed. Her unruly adoptive brother comes to her with red-rimmed eyes. "Ari, can you call me your brother again?" The usually cold, ruthless Jasyon goes insane. "I'll give you my life to make up for what I've done, honey! Don't leave me…" Their love is too little, too late. Ariel has long since stopped caring…

Six years after my younger brother and my fiancée passed away, I picked out a grave for myself. Before my final visit to their graves, my mother suddenly said, “Miles, you don’t have to go this year. The truth is that they never died.” I was startled for a moment before the two of them walked right out of my brother’s room. My brother, Sean, put on a teasing smile as he draped an arm around the woman beside him. “I won the bet! I told you my brother would never figure it out. “Who’s going to be on top tonight, huh, Vera?” My so-called late fiancée, who used to cry whenever she saw me suffer even the slightest grievance, looked at me with open disdain. “He’s just too stupid. We’ve been living next door this entire time, yet he never noticed.” It was only then that I realized my mother forbad me from entering Sean's room, not because it would make her grieve her son again, but because it was directly connected to the house next door. I was truly too foolish. Right up until a month before my death, I was still thinking about visiting their graves.

I make my final phone call to my boyfriend when a murderer is hunting me down. He thinks I'm messing with him and hangs up on me. That destroys the final sliver of hope I have for survival. He's celebrating his childhood friend's birthday when I'm being murdered. Later, as a restorative embalmer, he receives a body to restore. He loses his mind when he restores my shattered skull and realizes the body is mine.

DEATH GETS A LOVE LIFE. "I accept," I say all at once and then lower my eyes shyly. "If you think my human body can serve as a substitute for her and fill your hunger, I'm willing to take that chance." The feeling that I recognize in his eyes is one of shock and even fear, as though he hadn't expected at all that I'd agree. "Let's do it," I whisper across the gap between us. **** When metalhead Janet Buenviaje dies in a diving accident, she falls into an underworld prison where the only way out is through an eccentric reaper named Septimus Rex. As monarch of Soul City, Septimus Rex leads an army of supernatural Ravens tasked with the deportation of overstaying souls from the mortal realm. But the fates smile on Janet because the head reaper has problems of his own. He has fallen in love with a mortal girl; an abhorrent sign of weakness that, if discovered by the Ravens, will start a power struggle in Hell. With Janet's help, Septimus must now attempt to confess his feelings to the girl of his dreams so he can go back to being devoid of human sentiment. Janet is reincarnated as a Wampus Cat reaper and hatches an escape plan to the surface world. But she finds that things in the underworld are not what they seem and Septimus's problems run deeper, somehow even linked to her own mysterious past.

I was sent to a correctional facility by my family for five years. The first thing I learned there was obedience. If people told me to do one thing, I would never dare do anything else. The day my wife, Casey Anderson, came to pick me up, she stood at the entrance and said coldly, "If you dare say another bad word about Roger, I'll make sure you never speak again." The moment she finished speaking, I turned and ran straight into traffic. When she saw me get thrown by the impact of the car, she nearly lost her footing. At the hospital, my foster brother stood beside my bed with a sinister smile. "So you actually managed to survive. But that's fine. I have plenty of ways to kill you and make sure you never make it home." After saying that, he smashed the bowl of porridge onto the floor, then deliberately fell onto the shattered glass as he cried out loudly, "Bobby, if you hate me that much, I'll leave! Please, just let me go!" My mother and Casey happened to walk in at that exact moment. Casey immediately rushed over to help Roger up. My mother, meanwhile, slapped me hard across the face. "You'll never change, huh? If Roger's hand is ruined because of you and he can't play the piano anymore, I'd rather see you dead in this hospital bed." Obediently, I walked toward the window and jumped. The harsh, sharp-tongued woman who had always been my mother—and Casey as well—went completely pale with fear. I happened to crash onto my father's car. Trembling, he threw open the door and shouted for the medical staff. My consciousness gradually faded. Then, a system suddenly appeared and said, "Congratulations, Host. You have completed ninety-nine tragic storylines. Finish this final one, and you will be able to return to your original world and revive your younger sister."

My estranged husband suddenly barges into my parents' home, demanding to know where I am. He forces my mother to her knees and pushes my paralyzed father to the floor before beating him up. He even renders our four-year-old son half-dead. Why? Because his true love is disfigured and needs a skin graft to restore her looks. "Where is Victoria? She should be honored that she can do this for Amelia! Hand her over, or I'll kill all of you!" It's too bad I've been dead for a year.