Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 388 short novels in Face-Slapping
1 "I have fifteen slides," I told the conference room, "and I will finish in twenty minutes." "Please," the assistant nodded, eyes already on the clock. "You got this, Elliott." "I got this," I said, and my phone in my suit pocket began to buzz like a trapped bee. I listened to the buzzing through four slides, through discussion of margins and churn. I flipped my hand once, plainly, kept talking. The phone buzzed again, seven missed calls from Alexis, a stack of WeChat messages with...
"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 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...
"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...
I remember the night like a stone I had to step over. "I was just telling the delivery guy to watch his step," I said to no one at first, tasting the stale air in the elevator as if it could tell me whether I was alive. "You told him to watch his—what?" Noah Ferrari asked, slow and hard. "Are you flirting with delivery boys while you're on confinement? Do you have no shame?" "I said 'watch your step,'" I replied. "That's all." "You think everyone in this world looks at you?" Noah...
I woke with my hands numb and my mouth full of river water. I spat, choked, and then laughed because the face in the mirror was thirteen again. "My god," I breathed. "I have a second chance." "Miss?" Ma'er's voice trembled. "You're awake. You—" "I am awake," I cut in, but softer. "Tell me everything, now." Ma'er told me the small things first — snow on the courtyard, the punishment for the boy who had knocked over the incense, the new woman in my father's house. Her tears were...
I remember the smell of lilies that day—the cold white stems bowed on the granite, the cemetery wind that seemed to whisper old accusations. I remember Adrian Kelly’s face, sharp and thunder-still, and the divorce papers slamming onto my hands like a verdict. “Cecelia Adams,” he said, and there was no warmth in it. “Sign.” “I didn’t—” My voice cracked; I hated how small I sounded. “You are done here.” He flung the papers. “From today you will pay a thousand times what you cost...
"Open the door, Madam Cheng! Open up!" I sat bolt upright and stared at the yard outside the thin patched curtain. My throat was dry. My head felt like it had been scrubbed and emptied and then packed with someone else's memory. "Who—?" I croaked. My hand landed on a round, warm belly. It wobbled like a sack of rice. "Oh no," I said. "No. No, no, no." "Who is it?" a woman called from the yard. Her voice was quick with worry. I threw the cloth aside and found a water jar. I...
I stood on the cracked porch and told the woman in the blue smock, "I'm Mila's roommate. The counselor asked me to check on her." The cleaner blinked. "Mila's not seeing anyone. She—" "I'll just say hello," I said. She hesitated, then the front door swung wider. A heavy man in a worn coat came into view. He stared at me for a long, strange second like a man looking for a ghost. "You're—" he began, throat working. "You're Fang Xueyue's daughter, aren't you?" I smiled the simplest...
I remember the smell first: damp straw, dust, and the sourness of old anger. Then the sound—my mother's voice breaking in the dark, bargaining with herself and with everyone else. "Please, Mother," Fiona Bray sobbed. "Don't let them take my girls." "Take them where?" Corinne Bonner said from where she stood under the rafters, flat as a blade. "To a better life. To a life that suits them." "Better life?" I spat, though no sound came out. I was Lailah. I had pretended to be dead already...
"I woke up tied to the cold floor." My voice is small in the dark. My hands are numb. My legs ache. A door opens. Footsteps click close. Someone says my name like they own it. "You must be Irene Xu," he says. I force my eyes open. I see a tall shape backlit by a single lamp. He sounds young, his voice low and dangerous. My head spins. "Who are you?" I snap. He kneels. "Kingston Wheeler," he says. "Officially, your husband." I laugh, a dry sound. "You are joking. Who forges a...
The river smell of metal and algae was the last thing I remembered before everything went dark. I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar ceiling, a lamp that hummed, and a couch that smelled faintly of perfume and canned soup. I sat up, fingers finding the edge of a low coffee table. "Where am I?" I asked the air. "You are in Month Six of the After," said a voice that was not there or was everywhere. "Please survive for thirty days. Target this round: collect one hundred crystals for...
"I told you a secret," the woman said as if it were a casual dessert recommendation. I blinked around the cream leather of the spa's VIP room and looked at her. She had narrow eyes and a square face. She smiled like a courier delivering bad news. "My name is Frieda Garcia," she said, and sat down across from me. "Three months ago we met at a charity gala. You wore a white dress." "I don't remember," I said. "I meet people at galas all the time." "You should call yourself Carmen...
I count days like prisoners count stones. "Two hundred seventy-five days, six hours, thirty-seven minutes," I muttered, my voice small in the cold ward. "Not a single one of them was deserved." "Number forty-six, med time!" a nurse barked, the words like metal. I sat on the iron bed, knees drawn up, the mattress groaning under me. Around me, the ward buzzed with nervous songs and half-finished games. They called them patients. They called me patient number forty-six. I called myself...
I woke up sweating before dawn, the phone screen burning my thumb with its numbers: 39°C. "Again?" I mumbled, and the house answered with the loud, lazy bickering of a summer morning. "Mom, did you see the weather?" I said to the air and to Marcella Mills—my mother—who was already at the table shelling eggs without looking up. "Everything's too hot," she answered, as if we had been rehearsing the line for a week. "Go dress the baby. The sun's already angry." I pushed aside the thin...
I remember the clink of chain on stone as if it were a clock that always counted down. "Sister," a childlike voice called from the doorway. "Did you hide?" "I hid," I whispered between the mattress and the floorboards. I bit my lip until it bled so I wouldn’t make a noise. My breath lived in the gaps between the slats. "Found you!" The curtain ripped away and the face swung into my world—Emmett Yang's grin upside down, hair falling like a child's. My legs tried to run and didn't. He...
I remember the first time I thought money would fix everything. "Put the kettle on," I told her, like I always did. "I'll be back late." Genevieve tied the towel around her thin waist and smiled, the way she always smiled when she thought I was pleased. Her hands trembled a little when she lifted the lid. "Don't stay out too late," she said softly. "Business," I replied, because that was the shorthand for the nights I wasn't with her any more. She nodded, obedient as a child, as if...
I remember the rain that night like a cold fingernail tracing my spine. "Be quiet around Yue. Don't make her angry," Daniel said, his voice low and steady, like the cello he sometimes pretended not to hear but always felt. "I know," I said, and I fastened the last button of his shirt. My hands trembled, but I smiled. "I remember." "Good girl," he said, and he pinched my cheek like I was something soft he could keep. He put on his coat and left without staying the night, like he never...
"I'll toss one more," I said, and I did. "Please, sir, anything," came the rasping chorus from below the second-story window. I lifted the loaf like it was nothing and watched the crowd turn, dull eyes bright for a second. Jennifer had already started: the cloth bag, the pieces of dried meat, the white buns tossed like coins. Colin and Aaron stood at the cart, heavy and fast, moving what we needed to move. "Give us your best face," I told the crowd and winked. "Don't hurt—" someone...
“Stop! You'll kill him!” a thin, frightened voice cried. I opened my eyes to the taste of iron and a world that bled around the edges. My body folded under a pain I knew too well. My head said one thing and my bones another. “Gunner— I mean— answer me! Are you awake?” Alana Chaney's hands shook as she gripped my shoulder. “Alana,” I said, and the name felt strange and safe on my tongue. “Pack quickly. We go to the capital tonight.” She blinked, wet eyes bright in the half-light....
