Just then Dariouse shouted out in one deep breath, “This is our gift to you, brother!” He walked dramatically over to the right wall where a gold weaved cord was tied up. He loosened it, paused to look me in the eye, and then pulled without breaking eye contact with me.
Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. The image in front of me was the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life. My brain screamed that it couldn’t be real while my eyes greedily took in every minute detail, burning it permanently into my brain. The horror froze my blood and piss trickled warmly down the inside of my leg and dribbled out onto the floor. A moan escaped my parched lips as my eyes stung with rage so fierce it prevented me from crying out. The pain I felt sweeping my body was intense beyond belief to the point it made me instantly numb. I was so shocked and traumatized that I was devoid of emotion. I just stood there rooted to the ground, totally bewildered.
Morgan, Ann, Sally and my little Sue stared at me with flat, filmy eyes. They were all dead and had been preserved like animal exhibits in a museum. Glass tanks full of formaldehyde suspended their corpses, floating in the fluid that housed their broken bodies. My little girl, my only piece of light, forever stored in a sick, disrespectful display. This was too much for my broken mind to process, it couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare! Nothing made sense and I was sure that if I was awake and seeing this that I had finally lost my mind, once and for all. For all I knew I was still in the white hell and had been given a psychotropic cocktail to control my mind and body. I couldn’t accept this desecration
Dariouse approached me, his evil grin smeared all over his face. “So what do you think brother? We did it all for you.” He sounded so happy with himself. He seemed to be expecting me to embrace and thank him for this carnage! “This is our gift to you. Everyone who has ever hurt you has been taken care of. Now you will never have to feel any more pain.”
“No,” I whispered from numbed lips. “This isn’t real, this isn’t real, none of it.” I was deaf to his words and blind to the reality of what my eyes knew was no lie. I finally had my truth I’d wanted so badly and I wished I never knew.
Morgan’s head tilted sharply to the side and I guess she’d had her neck snapped. Her eyes bulged and I could still see a look of terror in her features. Dariouse must have gone in after my confrontation with her and done this. No wonder he wasn’t waiting for me at the taxi when I’d come out of the morgue. He’d been very busy with Morgan from what I could see. The scratches on his arm made sense now too. She had fought back not that it saved her in the end. She ultimately got what she deserved and I had no shame in knowing she had ended up like this. What else did she expect? She still wore the same dress she had on the day I had gone to see her, minus the shoes.
Ann didn’t look as good as Morgan and had started to disintegrate a bit before being placed into the preserving liquid. It was immediately obvious from seeing her what she had died from. Her throat had been slit from ear to ear and inside the gaping hole that used to be her neck was her tongue. They had given her a bow-tie, an old mafia signature killing for traitors. It was said that the throat was slit and the victim was punched in the gut. The force of the blow and the blood pumping rapidly out of their arteries made them stick out their tongue which was hacked off with a huntsman’s knife. The tongue was then put inside the cut and left to set with rigour mortise. It gave me some satisfaction knowing that her death had been so painful and brutal, she deserved it! I couldn’t help marvel at how artistic Dariouse had been when he mutilated her face and neck almost beyond recognition.
Sally’s skin looked almost green and had a sickly pale pallor that wasn’t normal even in death. I’d never wanted harm to come to her even after all her lying and cheating. All I wanted was for her to get out of my life so I could bring up Sue on my own. None of that mattered now. Her death was too obvious as it stared me in the face. I was morbidly fascinated by it and at the same time was trying desperately not to vomit my guts up. She had a huge gaping hole where her stomach had once been. The skin that was surrounding the hole was covered in thousands of tiny rips and tears. I could see a solid, thick red ring indented into her flesh as if something had been tied to her with pressure. Her ankles and wrists had burn marks on them where she had been bound by thick ropes. It took me a while to realise what had been done to her but my shocked mind eventually figured it out. Her hands and feet had been bound and she had been tied to an object like a chair. A metal bucket full of rats must have been placed tightly against her stomach and tied onto her. The rodents had eaten her alive as they greedily burrowed their way into her flesh, eating a hole straight through her stomach to find their way out. She had died a horrendous death full of agonizing pain, she really didn’t deserve that.
Sue what has this butcher done to you my darling little girl? Her death was the most disturbing of all to me, their mercy killing left me lost in their depravity as I stared at my dead daughter. Sue looked like a child’s doll floating innocently in her giant jar. She looked like she was skydiving and her face was almost flush against her glass house, staring blindly at me. A thick wooden cross was wedged into the top of the jar with black chords descending from its corners. The chords were attached to her hands, feet, head and back. She had been made into a puppet with her skin stretched as taut as it could go by the eternal chords that would forever make her dance to the Devil’s tune. I had to look closely to try and see what had killed her as she looked immaculate. Her face was painted to imitate an old-fashioned doll and her hair was plaited into two braids. It was her chipped teeth that gave it away as I walked around the jar to see that the back of her head was missing. Someone had put a gun inside her mouth and pulled the trigger. She’d had a quick, painless death at least but there was no way in hell her soul would be able to rest while she was displayed like this. I took no solace in this knowledge only an animalistic need to avenge her kept me from collapsing where I stood.
“So brother, what do you think?” asked Dariouse as he came to stand beside me to admire his handy work.
“I have nothing to say Dariouse,” I said. I didn’t make eye contact with him, I simply turned away and walked out of the room in a daze.
“Come brother, you must be tired. I did promise mother I’d see you to your room,” he said as he trotted ahead of me to lead the way.
“As you wish,” I mumbled as I blindly followed him. I stared at my feet and watched them take one step and then another as I staggered down the corridor.
“Don’t worry brother, I will take good care of you. Your family are all here with you now, every single one of them,” he said. A sickly snicker trailed his words and turned into a tittering, echoing sound bouncing all around my shattered heart.
My leaden legs moved without thought or feeling as every step seemed harder and harder to take. I knew now that I had been broken. I had nothing left inside of me, nothing left to loose or love. My mind was gone inside of me and my heart was splintered metal fragments that were so torn and twisted, they could never be put back together again. I only knew one thing with certainty. I had my answers and blood called for blood. The only motivation I had to try keep my heart beating was the thought of wrath and ire. Anger in its purest form was what I was left with. Their heat kept my body moving and my desire to cling onto this life like a lifeline that stopped me from going under. I wouldn’t take my life even though I knew I was drowning fast. No, I would take theirs and replace their collection of corpses with their very own bodies. They would float in formaldehyde for all eternity buried deep inside their twisted vault.
I could not deny myself any longer and I knew what I had become. I was a killer already and it had come so naturally to me. I’d left a man for dead without even knowing his name so what would stop me now. Taking the life from people who had such disregard for my own feelings would be all too easy and the time was here. The killings I’d witnessed called out for revenge. I’d walked into Satan’s playground tonight and walked away unscathed. I kn
ew it was only a matter of time before I joined my little girl if I didn’t do something to change my future. I’d walked through shadowed death all my life feeling like the grim reaper was an old friend. I had no fear left inside of me to taunt me into submission any more, only hatred, pure and undiluted.
I walked into my room and closed the door wondering if Dariouse would go find his sack and cover his head so he could pace behind my door like he had done on my last visit here. Sad, pathetic, twisted soulless puppet, he would be the first to pay for doing mother’s bidding. His hands were encrusted in tainted blood that didn’t belong to him.
It was all clear to me now. The shadowed man I had seen so frequently must have been Dariouse on the day he’d killed my family. He thinks that it would make me happy, when killing my family is the most insane, deluded thing I have ever seen. I will destroy him, I will kill him dead! My blood boiled and my mind was frantically racing. My brain was rattling like a caged beast trying to break free and I held the key. The only question now was when. I had to have a plan and I knew now that I was incapable of this right now. I would eradicate the vermin but for that I needed clarity not insanity. I wondered how much sanity I had left, if any. They should never have let me out of the white hell, I was safer there and now I had nothing to stop me.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep and pacing in this room was making me feel trapped and hemmed in. My feet found their way down to the kitchen where I quietly boiled the black kettle. I poured myself a steaming hot cup of tea. I sat at the cold metal table in this sinister house with the very twisted people who were responsible for my Sue’s death soundly asleep upstairs. I took from my back pocket the only photo I’d ever possessed of my daughter. It was a picture of her alive and well and I gently stroked it with fierce regret.
“I promise that my gift to you will avenge you my baby girl. My little Sue,” I said as I sat there plotting my own sinister dose of revenge over a steaming cup of tea …
End of the Beginning
Next, the beginning of REVENGE.
Psycho-Analysis: The Beginning Page 26