Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 388 short novels in Face-Slapping
"I am telling you the truth," I said, and the restaurant lights listened like a jury. Vincent looked at me with cream still on his jaw. "Genevieve," he tried, and I could hear the hesitation like a cracked record. "This," I said, and pressed the cake box between my palms, "is the truth." He blinked, and his pupils were the color of someone who had been caught mid-legend. "You can't just—" "You can't just," I repeated, and leaned forward so the white frosting dripped like the last of...
They threw me into the street like a broken puppet. "That's her—drag her out," one of them barked. The hands that held me were rough, the air around me smelled of sweat and street smoke, and my body—this borrowed body—tasted of old bruises. "Throw her clothes off. The Spirit Sprout must be on her," another voice hissed. I lay curled, a useless noble's daughter on the cobbles, and listened to them talk. I could have laughed then—laughed until my lungs hurt—because I remembered a...
I remember the rain like a drum, hard and single-minded. I remember running, water soaking the hem of my dress, hair glued to my cheeks. I remember the door being locked, and the voice on the other side laughing like it was entertainment. "Open the door!" I pounded until my knuckles hurt. "I won't. What are you going to do about it?" the voice mocked. "Do you think Walter will come all the way home for you? He's overseas." "Don't you—" I stopped because his laughter caught my ears....
"I dare you to touch me." Rain hit my face like fists. I spat mud and sat up, feeling the weight of a body gone wrong and the sharp taste of someone else's anger in my mouth. "You'll die if you keep talking," one man hissed. I blinked and the world snapped into focus. Two thugs. A wedding dress soaked red with rain. My heart hammered, not with fear but with a clear, cold plan. "You found the wrong corpse to bother," I said, and moved. The first man's head cracked under my hand....
I never thought an empty apartment could have a sound of its own. "I left. Don't call me," Felicity said, and the door slammed. I put my headset back on and aimed my crosshair at a moving target. "Fine," I muttered to the mic. "See you later." I wasn't proud of how easily I let the door close behind her. We'd had arguments like this every few weeks, the same hurricane, the same tidy calm afterward. "She'll cool off," I told myself. "She always does." When the house fell into...
"Host," the white cat said, floating like it owned the ceiling, "you have crashed six worlds. Try to behave this time." I rolled the black umbrella between my fingers and blinked at the little cat. "Try? I prefer to experiment." The cat's whiskers twitched. "Experimentation has consequences. This is your last chance." "Last chance," I echoed, and let the umbrella tap the floor like a metronome. "You keep saying that." "It is not a joke." The cat's voice went silky. "If you fail, you...
"Wake up, Marianne. The baby is coming." I felt Yale’s hands on my shoulders and my whole body went sharp with pain and with hope. "Hold my hand," I said. "Hold it tight." "Of course," Yale said, breath rough. "This is our girl. I can feel it." The yard was full of men and women, my brothers-in-law, old neighbors, people who came because this kind of birth is news in a small place. They sat on stools like judges. They looked at me like my breath was a promise to them. "I can't do...
I lit a cigarette in the dark and watched the smoke curl toward the moon. I did not turn the light on. The room felt huge and empty even with two beds in it. He left the bed, walked to the bathroom, and did not come back the way he had left. I peeled my face from the pillow and watched the doorway until he was gone. I only knew his shape by the thin strip of moon on his shoulders and the dull glow coming from the courtyard lights. I am Juniper Morin. For two years I wore my sister’s name...
I woke with the taste of hot spring steam in my mouth and a stranger's voice like a cello lowing right against my ear. "What's your name?" I opened my eyes to water rippling and a pair of hands—belonging to someone who smelled of steam and stone—locked around my waist. The rest of his body was sculpted in bronze and shadow; I could not see his face through the fog in my dream, but I could feel the weight of him. For half a year, that same man visited my sleep, the exact body I had written...
"I need to see you in ten minutes." Marshall's voice was flat through the line. "I'll be there," I said, and I was already packing the folder. I had been Marshall Yamashita's chief secretary for seven years; I knew the sound of his impatience like the pattern on my palm. "I only have twenty minutes," he added. "Then you'll get twenty minutes," I answered. I worked like that for years—fast, accurate, invisible until needed. I also loved him in a way that had nothing to do with...
I am sitting on the edge of Lorenzo Blanc's bed, the divorce papers warm from the printer on the coffee table, and my hands are shaking. "You're going to Germany?" I ask, holding my phone like a verdict. "Come," Lorenzo says. "You come now." "Why now? Why on your flight?" I snap. "Because you sent me the papers," he replies. "Because you thought you could leave by text." "Leave by text? I—" I close my mouth. "I sent a draft. I wasn't trying to—" "You tried," he cuts in. His...
I never thought a little rhyme could smell like rot. I never thought a line sung by children would point to corpses. "Listen," I said, keeping my voice low. "Do you hear them? The children on the lane—singing that song again." Mark Solovyov folded his arms and looked at the lane as if he could stop the world by frowning. He always looked at things like they were problems he could lift. "Can't you see," Mark said, "they're only kids." "They call the dead by name," I answered. "That...
"I can hear the clapping," I said, awake to the noise of my own birthday—my birthday—fading in through the bathroom door. "Sing louder," someone teased outside. "This one's for Genevieve." "Shh," came a soft voice I thought was kind. "Let her enjoy." "I am," I told the empty room. "I am." I had not planned to cry that night. I had not planned anything. The last year had been a study in small defeats: the hospital's whisper, the rehab's routines, the halting, polite pity of...
I never thought my first sentence to him would be, "Wanna?" and that the question would change so much. He was leaning against the elevator wall like he owned the air, like his height rented space and his dark eyes collected light. I leaned my hip to the corridor tile, lit a cigarette, and let it blur my face into someone dangerous for a couple of hours. The bar upstairs smelled like cheap perfume and bravado. He grinned when I said it. "Upstairs or next door?" he asked, like he already...
I pushed the hotel door and rain hit my shoulders like a cold hand. "I'll be up," I told my phone, voice small in the elevator. The man waiting outside the lift looked at me. He wore a dark suit and did not smile. He had the same dry calm I had learned to avoid. My throat closed. "You're soaked," he said. His voice was even. It was Court Bennett. "I—" I stopped. I said nothing. I slid my thumb across my screen and pretended to read a message. Court's eyes did a quick scan, then...
"I wake up with a headache." That was the first thing I said out loud, and the room answered with the cold smell of disinfectant and the soft hum of machines. "You're awake!" a small voice shouted. "Sister, you're awake!" Bodhi burst into the little hospital room like an explosion of hope. He was six, all knobby knees and wet cheeks, clutching my hand as if it might float away. "Who are you?" I asked, and then looked at my hands. They were slender and pale. The bandage on my...
I remember the card first: a cheap, laminated idol photo with a hand-drawn star and a moon on the back. I kept it in my school pencil case like a secret treasure. I would take it out at night and whisper to it until the dark didn't seem so deep. "Who are you whispering to?" my foster mother barked once, grabbing my hair as if I asked for bread. "It’s mine." I said, and the truth of that sentence cost me another bruise. "You think you were born for better things?" she spat. "You’re a...
"I kept my eyes closed until I heard Grandmother's cane on the stone." I opened them when Haley Ellison's name left her lips and the courtyard air shifted. "You sleep too much," Grandmother said, stepping into my shade. "An Empress must be awake." "I will wake," I said, rising slowly. "Grandmother, tea." She watched me with those hard, smiling eyes. "They will send the summons soon. Do you understand what you promised when you bowed to that paper?" "I do." I folded my hands. "I will...
I remember the day he promised to marry me as if it were a clean, bright scar. The words were light, and the world around us tilted on a hinge made of an impossible future. Then the white-faced woman who had left for study abroad stepped off an airplane and smiled into my life like she had always owned it. "Giselle," he said that night, and his voice folded like paper into a drawer. I kept my smile anyway. "You don't have to leave," I told her, though she already had the house key in...
"Sign it." He pushed the pen across the table like he owned my hands. "Take it," I said. "Take whatever you want. Just leave me my life." Sebastien Olivier's face didn't change. He folded his long fingers around the document and smiled with no warmth. "You'll sign, Avianna," he said. "You sign, and I'll make sure you're set for life. I'll make sure you keep the title—Mrs. Olivier—if that matters." I stood up slow. My legs didn't shake. My throat did. "You loved me at all in...
