When Her Cruel Joke Backfired

"When Her Cruel Joke Backfired" is a serial novel published on SkyStory. 1 chapters in total. Lena was the kind of person who valued a joke far more than…

SkyStory 1 chapters English 03 Sep 2026

Lena was the kind of person who valued a joke far more than she ever valued a boundary. "If you don't keep things interesting, Sean, a marriage just rots," she used to tell me. So, every year on our wedding anniversary, she and her childhood best friend, Toby, had an unspoken tradition. They would orchestrate an elaborate surprise, roping all our mutual friends into a staged production, purely to see how long it took for me to break. Three years ago, she looked Toby dead in the eye at a rooftop bar and confessed she regretted ever walking down the aisle with me. When I stood up to walk away, she caught my arm, laughing until she was breathless, telling the whole table I was made of fragile glass. Two years ago, she had Toby slip a signed set of divorce papers beneath my pillow. After watching my hands shake as I inked my name onto the bottom line, she finally snatched the pages back, howling with laughter. Last year, the two of them staged a fake wedding ceremony. They forced me into a rented groomsman suit and made me stand at the altar beside them. When my eyes stung and went red, she waved an airy hand and said I was being dramatic again. This year, their game crossed into territory they couldn't take back. Toby stood in front of me in the private dining room, holding a crisp black-and-white sonogram printout, his face sculpted into a mask of theatrical remorse. "Sean, man... I’m so sorry. Lena is pregnant. It’s mine." Lena didn’t offer a word of denial. Instead, she leaned into Toby’s shoulder, resting her head against his collarbone. They exchanged a swift, conspiratorial glance—the silent shorthand of two people waiting for the punchline to detonate in my chest. I looked at their faces, at the tiny twitches around their mouths where they were desperately holding back laughter, and a sudden, heavy exhaustion settled into my bones. This time, I didn't raise my voice. I didn't slam my fist against the mahogany table. I simply slipped my wedding band off my finger

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