Horror Thriller "You Never Deserve Better Than Me" by Abrar Nayeem Chowdhury.

There are a few things in this life that happen without a sound, yet shake your world louder than thunder. A falling leaf. A missed heartbeat. A single mouse click.

That was all it took.

Nadim Rahman, 30, Dhaka-born and digitally raised, was sipping cha on his rooftop in the quiet hours of a monsoon-tamed evening. The air was soft, and his mind was unusually calm. He'd just finished another exhausting shift in his freelance tech job — parsing code no one cared to read but everyone expected to run perfectly.

He was scrolling Facebook absentmindedly — a mindless ritual to drown the day's echoing silence. That’s when her face flashed on his screen like lightning on a still pond.

Ziniya Hadi. Sana'a, Yemen.

He didn’t know why he stopped. Maybe it was how her eyes gazed into the lens — not with a model’s practiced seduction, but with a defiant innocence like she dared the world to look at her and flinch. Dark hair like coiled silk, face framed like a painting of the desert moon.

Without thinking, Nadim clicked the heart emoji on her most recent profile picture.

One-click.

He didn’t expect a response. He wasn’t that naïve. But three hours later, the unexpected happened.

A notification.
Ziniya Hadi liked your profile picture.

He stared at the screen like it had grown fangs. This wasn't supposed to happen. Not to him.

That night he couldn’t sleep. Her profile had become a puzzle, and his curiosity became an obsession. The next day, he found himself commenting on another one of her photos. This time: "Pure elegance in human form."

It wasn’t poetic, but it was honest.

She liked it.

The next day, he left another comment: "Your smile looks like it belongs in a museum."

Again, she liked it.

By the third comment, he was feeling like a schoolboy with a secret. And when she returned the favor — liking three of his profile pictures — it didn’t just feel like a fluke anymore.

It felt like fate.

Three days after their silent exchange began, Nadim opened his Messenger and typed a message.
"Hi. I’m sorry if my comments bothered you. I just couldn’t stop myself from appreciating something so... captivating."

He stared at the blinking cursor for a full minute. His finger hovered over the send button like it weighed a ton.

And then he clicked.

The sound of the message whooshing into the digital void echoed louder in his ears than any scream.

Three hours passed. Then four.

At 2:37 AM, as he was about to shut off his phone, it vibrated.

Ziniya Hadi: "I was waiting for you to say something. "

It was like the moon had dipped a little lower, closer, to hear what would happen next.

They talked for an hour that night. The words came like falling dominoes — one truth tipping over another. She told him she was a poet. A rebel. A dreamer, trapped in a world of traditions that stifled her. He told her he was tired of pretending that code and pixels fulfilled him.

By the end of the week, they were sending voice notes, their laughs tangled in the digital waves between Dhaka and Sana’a. They didn’t know what it was, but they both knew what it felt like.

A beginning.

By the third week, Nadim started calling her "Zee." She called him "Nado." It was ridiculous. It was beautiful.

One month in, under a velvet sky and the buzz of electricity cutting in and out in Dhaka’s old town, Nadim stared at his phone with trembling fingers and typed:
"Will you marry me, Zee?"

The reply didn’t come immediately.

But when it did, it was five words that changed everything.

"Yes, Nado. I love you."

He didn’t sleep that night. He just lay there, eyes open, watching the ceiling fan turn in slow, hypnotic circles. Somewhere deep inside, a part of him whispered that this was too good. Too fast.

But Nadim, blinded by the kind of love that burns red instead of gold, refused to listen.

Because sometimes, the devil doesn't knock.
He slides into your DMs with a smile.

Love, when it is new, doesn’t walk. It runs, mad and barefoot, across fields of reason, crushing logic beneath every blissful step. Nadim ran that way, headfirst into the kind of love stories people tell at weddings and forget before dessert is served.

After three months of late-night calls, pixelated video chats, and daydreams he couldn't shut off, Nadim bought a ticket to Yemen. It was impulsive, it was irrational—but love has always had a taste for the irrational. He told his family only after the flight was booked. His mother cried. His brother warned him.

“Facebook love?” his brother said, shaking his head. “This is either the beginning of your fairytale or the last chapter of your common sense.”

Nadim smiled. “It’s both, maybe.”

He landed in Sana’a on a chilly, bright morning. The air smelled like dust and cinnamon, and the streets buzzed with a strange rhythm — as if the city was whispering secrets to itself.

And then she appeared.

Ziniya.

She stood at the airport gate like a painting came to life. Long black abaya flowing, face uncovered — not for the world, but just for him. Her eyes held fire and frost at once. She smiled, and Nadim felt the air slip from his lungs.

No one had ever looked at him like that — not like a man, not like a meal, but like a destination.

They hugged awkwardly. It was short. Conservative. Yet something passed between them at that moment — an unspoken binding, like old magic.

They met again that evening, in a candle-lit restaurant tucked away in the narrow, spice-stained alleys of old Sana’a. She arrived wearing a dark green hijab, her lips painted in maroon, her voice low and sugar-sweet.

“I don’t care what my family says,” she whispered, stirring her tea. “I want you. And I’ve never said that to a man before.”

That night, Nadim called his mother from the hotel. “She’s everything I thought,” he said. “And more.”

They planned the wedding for three days. No fancy venue. Just a simple nikkah at her uncle’s home, attended by those who accepted this unlikely cross-border union. There were mutters, side-eyes, and whispers, but Nadim didn’t care.

He watched Ziniya say “Qubiltu” — “I accept” — and it echoed in his bones like church bells.

When the maulvi pronounced them husband and wife, she squeezed Nadim’s hand and leaned in.

“We’re one now,” she whispered, almost reverently. “Forever.”

For the first three nights, their love burned bright. There were laughter-filled breakfasts, long walks in the dusk, and kisses stolen between boiling kettles and prayer calls. Nadim cooked her biriyani; she made him a sweet kahwa. They slept in each other’s arms, a tangle of limbs and sighs.

But then… the cracks began.

On the fifth night, she asked him to do the dishes. He did it with a smile. On the seventh, she told him to sweep the floor. He chuckled, shrugged, and swept. By the tenth day, she had handed him a list — laundry, groceries, cleaning, ironing.

“You’re the man. You should serve me. That’s love, Nadim.”

He laughed, thinking it was a joke.

But her eyes weren’t joking.

When he hesitated, she threatened to slit her wrist. She pulled out a knife. Not as a gesture — as a promise.

“I will bleed in front of you,” she hissed, “and you will go to prison. Because you’re a foreigner. You’re the outsider.”

Nadim did the laundry that night.

And every night after.

Her sweetness curdled into venom, one slow drop at a time. She stopped smiling. Her words turned sharp, her tone cold. She belittled him in front of relatives, calling him “the Bangladeshi housemaid.”

He asked her once — “Zee, what happened to us?”

She smirked. “You happened.”

One night, she refused to let him sleep in their bed. “Go. Dogs don’t sleep with queens.”

So he took his pillow and moved to the guest room.

That night, for the first time since the wedding, he didn’t dream.

But at exactly 2:17 a.m., he awoke. There was laughter — soft, intimate, sinister — coming from their bedroom.

And Ziniya wasn’t alone.

He tiptoed to the door, heart thudding like war drums. Through the slight crack, he saw her — her hands tangled in another man’s hair. A man twice his age. Kissing her like the world owed him pleasure.

Nadim didn’t scream.

He just turned around and walked back to the guest room.

The next morning, over bitter tea, he asked, “Why?”

She didn’t flinch. “Because I deserve better than you.” She sipped her tea. “And because I *can.”

Then she threw the glass at the wall.

The shatter echoed like a gunshot.

There’s a silence that doesn’t come with peace. It’s the kind that wraps around you like wet cloth—heavy, suffocating, and cold. After that morning, Nadim stopped asking questions. He became a ghost in his own life, haunting a marriage that had already buried him.

But ghosts don’t just float. They listen.

And Nadim had begun to listen.

To Ziniya’s whispers on the phone. To the clicking of her fingers sending voice notes when she thought he was asleep. To the laughter at night that never belonged to him.

She didn’t hide her contempt anymore. She relished in it. She ordered him around like a servant, mocking him with every command. Once, when he forgot to mop the kitchen, she slapped him. He didn’t react. What was there left to defend? His pride? That had already been carved out of him.

Still, he stayed.

Not because he was weak—but because he loved her with the kind of madness that only the truly broken understand.

Then came the day she told him she wanted a divorce.

“I want out,” she said over breakfast, pushing away the toast he made. “You bore me. You’re too... good.”

Nadim stared at her. “Is it because of him?”

Ziniya didn’t even blink. “Yes. And because I deserve better than you.”

There was that sentence again. Like a blade polished and sharpened just for him.

That night, she did something she hadn’t done in weeks.

She cooked.

A full dinner. Fragrant rice. Spiced lamb. Her hands moved across the kitchen like an artist preparing her final piece. When she called him to eat, she wore lipstick. Red, bold. Her smile had teeth in it.

Nadim blinked at her, confused. “What’s all this?”

“A peace offering,” she said. “I feel bad.”

He wanted to believe her. God helped him; he wanted to believe her.

They ate in silence. She watched him closely, almost too closely, as he took each bite. He swallowed and felt warmth spread through him. It wasn’t unpleasant—just... strange. A drowsy sweetness coated his tongue.

Midway through the meal, his chest began to tighten.

His vision blurred. The floor rippled beneath his feet. He clutched the table, trying to speak, but his mouth betrayed him.

Ziniya stood up slowly, still smiling.

She leaned in close. “You see, darling... you never deserved me.”

The last thing he heard before darkness consumed him was the sound of her humming.

The next morning, the neighbors heard nothing. Not a cry. Not a whisper.

By noon, a local patrol car arrived quietly. No sirens. No rush. Inside the house, Nadim’s body lay cold on the floor. Ziniya stood beside it, makeup flawless, expression blank.

Officer Jeff Nasser, the man from Ziniya’s late-night rendezvous, did all the talking.

“Suicide,” he said, pointing to a bottle of crushed sleeping pills. “Overdose. Probably couldn’t handle the marriage. Poor guy.”

When the coroner asked about an autopsy, Jeff pulled strings. No one wanted diplomatic trouble. Bangladeshi man. Yemeni wife. Cross-cultural marriage gone wrong. Too messy for headlines.

“Close the case,” Jeff said.

His friend, a slick, sharp-eyed lawyer named Riyad, handled the paperwork. No media noise. No questions.

Case dismissed.

Nadim was buried in a small, unmarked grave outside the city. No one attended. Not a single prayer was said.

But that night, when Jeff returned to his flat — the same one Ziniya had moved into hours after Nadim’s death — something waited for him.

It began with a dream.

Jeff saw a jungle.

Dark. Damp. Eerily quiet.

He was walking alone, dressed in his police uniform, flashlight flickering. The beam caught something ahead. A gravestone.

He stepped closer.

The name carved into it was clear.

NADIM RAHMAN.

Then he saw him.

Nadim stood at the edge of the grave.

But he wasn’t the man Jeff remembered.

This Nadim wore black. A long coat. His eyes glowed faintly, like coals beneath ash. His mouth curled into a twisted grin, the corners of his lips cracked and bloodless.

And on his head was a wide-brimmed hat — like an undertaker.

He raised one hand and pointed.

At Jeff.

Then he whispered something.

Jeff didn’t hear it.

Because the jungle exploded in screams.

The trees shook. The ground cracked open. Fire burst from beneath the grave, engulfing everything. Nadim didn’t burn. He just smiled.

Jeff woke up gasping — drenched in sweat, mouth dry.

But he wasn’t in bed.

He was lying *on the ground*.

Not a floor.

*Soil.*

Damp.

Cold.

And around him… trees.

He was in a graveyard.

A real one.

His uniform was gone.

He was barefoot. Shirtless. Knees scraped. No phone. No flashlight.

And when he stood up, something moved in the darkness.

A figure.

Not Nadim.

Not human.

It had no eyes, but it watched.

It had no mouth, but it breathed.

Jeff ran.

Branches tore at him. Roots grabbed at his feet. He stumbled, fell, and crawled.

And then… a gunshot.

He turned.

Ziniya stood ten feet away, panting, wild-eyed, holding a pistol.

“Where the hell have you been?” she screamed. “I’ve been looking for you all night!”

Jeff backed away. “Where are we? What’s happening?!”

She took a step forward, a gun trembling in her hand.

“I made a mistake,” she said. “I should’ve poisoned you first.”

Jeff froze.

“What?”

Ziniya’s eyes were madness now.

“If you die,” she said, “I get your property. Your car. Your accounts. You’re worth more dead than alive.”

She aimed.

Pulled the trigger.

Click.

Empty.

She screamed in frustration and raised it again.

But something grabbed her from behind.

A hand. Blackened. Charred.

It yanked her hair and dragged her back—screaming—into the grave she had once spat on.

She clawed. Kicked. Fired the gun wildly.

And then...

Fire.

Flames erupted from the soil itself. Not yellow. Not red.

Blue.

Ziniya’s screams turned animal.

And then—silence.

Jeff fell to his knees, sobbing, frozen with fear.

The fire stopped.

The grave closed.

And in the soft earth, letters burned themselves into the ground.

One word at a time.

"You never deserve better than me."

                                   THE END

Horror Thriller "You Never Deserve Better Than Me" by Abrar Nayeem Chowdhury.