Vengeance

This story contains graphic imagery in order to convey the sense of terror I felt nine years ago.  Looking back on these memories is challenging and frightening for me, for it recalls a time when I was capable of hallucination.  Although I held on to these memories as fact for many years, I know now that the man in my room was a figment of my imagination.

It is November of 2005.  I am in tenth grade, sitting in English class in a public high school.  School is not something I enjoy, but this class isn’t bad.  Every day, at the beginning of this particular class, our teacher gives us a prompt and five minutes to write about whatever comes to mind.  Then he will call on volunteers to read what they have written.  I love that part.  I volunteer a lot.  I like reading things I have written, especially the dark stuff.  As I said in Zero Hour, I got off on others’ fear.  It is part of the more animalistic side of my nature.  One time, in response to the prompt, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning…” I described the effects of a napalm burn in graphic detail.  The teacher had to cut me off part way through when enough of the class was revolted by it.  I had a good time with that one.

On this particular day, with this prompt, I will not share it with the class.  This one hits too hard, and is more disgusting than the effects of a napalm burn.  The prompt goes as follows:  If you could take a measure of revenge against one person, who would it be, what would you do, and why?

I don’t think our teacher really thought that one through.  We’re in high school.  We’re young and impulsive.  We are bound to respond to this prompt like the kids that we are.  My guess is that because we were reading Othello at the time, we might find the subject of vengeance interesting and relevant to the class work.  He may have been right for most of the students.  To be fair, it’s an interesting question, but most high school kids do not have the emotional scarring nor the imagination to come up with a revenge scheme as twisted as mine is.

It doesn’t take me long to come up with my response, because I think about it a lot.  One person, one act, one reason.  I put my pencil to paper and come up with something along the following lines:

The target of my revenge would be the social work intern at my previous school.  It was a private school that supposedly had an excellent emotional support staff.  This intern was not among them.  He was terrible and I felt he deserved an act of vengeance, which I will get to momentarily.

My revenge fantasy, played out countless times in my head, formed words in front of me.  I would bind him tightly so he could not resist.  Then I would drill a hole in his chest deep enough to touch the heart but not so deep as to damage it.  The hole would also have to be wide enough to fit my penis.  Then I would fuck his heart until it stopped beating.

As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t just deserve it, but he is in fact its architect.  He sent me to hell.  By that I mean he condemned me to a week in a psychiatric ward, which for all intents and purposes is an inferno out of Alighieri’s nightmares.  It was in that ward that the most hellish aspects of my nature began to manifest themselves in my head.  My vengeance would be the return on his investment in my insanity.

When the time came to read our responses, the teacher looked at me first, expecting my hand to shoot up as it usually did.  I met his eyes with a stare full of hatred and sadness.  I would not read today.  He should know better, after the napalm description incident.  So instead I got to hear a few catty high school girls talk about whatever nonsense was bothering them that week, and how they would most likely steal something of little importance as their act of revenge.  Pathetic stuff.

Fast forward a bit.

I am sitting on the floor of my room, doing homework.  This is one of my least favorite activities.  I hear something move behind me, and I turn to look.  What I see next I will remember until the day I die.

Standing in front of me, silent but for the sound of dripping blood, is the intern.  A hole has been bored in his chest, and I can see a crushed heart.  I shut my eyes.  I wanted vengeance, and now my dream has caught up to me.  An eye for an eye.  Here stands a man destroyed in every way I had imagined.  I keep my eyes closed for a long time.  I am waiting to feel him attack me, to kill me, as I am certain he will.  He’s a vengeful demon, here to claim his pound of flesh.  I wait, but after what feels like three minutes, I have felt nothing.  So I open my eyes.

He’s gone.  I stand in silence for a moment, then run screaming from my room.  My family tries to comfort me, but I cannot be comforted.  I am torn between fear and anger.  Part of me knows I have just survived a brush with death and should be thanking whatever gods may or may not exist for my continued life, but I feel an overpowering need to find this man.  I need to finish what he started.  I need to send him to hell.

I now know that this man was never in my room, and I do not feel any more need for revenge.  I have forgiven him for any slights he may have caused me, and I recognize that my hospitalization was far more my own doing than his.  For several years after this event I felt as though his appearance was real and it has been difficult to find the truth when my senses deceive me. I have since come to the understanding that this hallucination was simply a product of my illness.