Revenge

CW: Violence, Death

I place flowers in the holder next to her photo. One down, five to go, I think, grasping the rest of stalks in my other hand. I see five different species of flowers. Each of my dead family members' favourite, I remember distinctly. Closing my eyes, I mutter a few encouraging words at the photo with flowers now framing it, knowing that my words will never reach the one I am trying to speak to.

The wall full of photos, but not a single flower in the holders except the one I had just placed some in. That's good, I remind myself. It's not that I am anti-social, it is just that meeting the family members of the surrounding deceased can be awkward, at times. Not like I have not loss some of my loved ones too, I murmur to myself. There is nobody here anyways, at this time.

I walk to the next plot I have to visit. It is near the end of the row, just next to the signboard which states the place where the bodies in the row died. Avoiding looking at the signboard, I place my daffodils in the holder and quickly walk to the next plot I have yet to visit.

***

The uncomfortable twinge when I visit the cemetery is now gone and I feel lighter, as if a burden has been lifted off me. I open the door to my flat and feel for the round light switch next to it. Smacking it, the flat still remains dark. Wha- I swear, placing my bag on the table and creeping further into the house.

Flipping every switch, it turns out that none of them work. The house is covered in a sheet of grey, looming in on me, leering at the puny creatures stuck in a cloud of darkness.

Peering out of my front door, it seems that it is only my house that is affected by the blackout. Time to open the switchbox outside, I tell myself and I drag my feet towards the circuit box between me and my neighbours flat.

A spark blows out of the box the minute I open it. The coloured wires were cut, their rubber ends jagged, the exposed metal ends like pointy needle tips, brown and grey.

Yet, a sense of deja vu. It is like I have experienced or even commited such an offense before. However, I have no recollection of anything related.

I click the main switch off carefully. All the wires that have been severed are mine, even the ones that have long overlapped in massive knots with my neighbours. The probability of this being accidental is too high, I reason. Yet, the wires do not look like they were cut on purpose...

Or, perhaps they do.

Indeed, the surface of the insulation is jagged, but it is a stairways like crack, each step straight enough to be cut by a sharp implement. Confirmed, it is on purpose, I realise with sense of dread.

The shared corridor is dim, giving a foreboding aura around the once white, but now a off-hued grey. A door creaks behind me.

"Who are you?" I scream as I lift my hand to protect my vital organs.

Oh, it is my neighbour.

But, what is she staring at behind my head?

I spin around, my eyes wide with horror, my heart palpitating, ready to defeat the one behind me.

Oh, it is the main switch.

"So sorry, my wires were, well, you can see, cut." I mutter, looking down at my neighbour's barefeet.

With her eyebrows furrowed, she reaches out for the main switch, and with much firmness in her actions, the switch returns to its previous "on" state. Then, she stomps back, without a word, into her flat.

Her door slams shut, and I'm left alone in the passageway. Yet, somehow, it feels like I am being watched by an invisible someone, somewhere.

***

I step back into my flat and my leg kicks into something, large, hard and heavy. However, it flies up into the air surprisingly.

I prepare my arms like I am going to catch a ball, fracture my finger, sprain my arm, I curse myself as I reach out to grasp the escaping tool box. It is coming closer, the distance towards my hand decreasing.

Please let this be a soft impact, I wish, my fingers tensing up for the actual great amount of force that is going to crash directly into my palm.

Hang on, it's flying back towards me!

That will be so much easier-

The toolbox hits me squarely in the face, a dull thud resounds in my ears, then my legs buckle below me.

The floor feels as cold as ice as the world around me goes black.

***

The light streams down through a transparent medium, bending the rays like a shard of glass. Opening my eyes, I am on the floor, and my head throbs so badly in my skull. I see a green box, tool box, I recall as I try to get up. Beside me, a string snaps, tossing the tool box onto my stomach. I moan as the impact courses through me, causing me to black-out from pain again.

So a heavy toolbox swinging on a thin string like a pendulum. How does that even work? Multiple cords?

I finally get-up, ignoring the temporary confusion of how the situatiom unfolded. The world begins to spin once more. Desperately grabbing onto a nearby ledge, I immediately lift my palm to my hand, stopping my head from feeling like it is about to drop off from dizziness. But alas, my knees fail me, and I find myself kneeling on the floor, staring at the copious, but terribly bright sunlight streaming in from the window.

Yet, the sunlight is distorted, twisted, patchy.

The window is shattered. Not like I would be surprised, I react, flying toolboxes can really do much damage. Yet, the damage seems deliberate, not like random spiderweb cracks, but instead...

Shapes, letters, words.

G...F?? E.....T..... K?? With the sharp white light going like arrows directly into my eyes, it takes me a while to figure out the message. Squinting and twisting my face up, I wish I had not done so.

Please, I just wasted some brain power on deciphering a death threat for myself.

"GET REVENGE. YOU DIE."

I try to brush it off as an overdone prank, yet something tells me, that it is not the case. Repeating in my mind that I have not offended anyone recently, I quell the growing fear in my heart.

Hoping against hope, I wish that my life still has a long way to go.

***

What's that? I think when a piece of white paper floats arounds me, like a random advertisements coming untaped and flying freely in the wind. I am walking down a road near my flat. The port looms ahead of me, a pillar of hope, the symbol of our economy, the cranes tall and imposing, the ones that transport the goods from the ships, the silent helping hands in developing our trade-based city's economy.

Two directions of breezes blow on me. Strange, I question. The white paper floating around, I realise, flies in the one blowing towards my leg. I look around, the trees are blowing in a different direction from the one the paper is flying upon. A sense of dread appears in my heart, and I scan my surroundings cautiously.

My world goes silent. A small whirring sound, like the whisper of a machine, surfaces. But from where? I wonder, turning around slowly.

Ah, from behind, must not it be?

A leaf blower, spray-painted with red.

The blood-red paint is still dripping off the leaf blower, pooling on the ground like an actual blood stain.

Definitely paint right? I ask myself, hoping, ever so desperately, for it to be true. Not blood, please, I silently beg.

The paper flutters into my hand and close my fingers around it. It crinkles, but I release my fist and use my other hand to unfold it.

"The port is your beginning and will be your end," it states.

I look towards the port, its grand cranes and machines standing proud against the deep hued blue sky. As if by magnetic force, I shudder and take few steps closer, feeling a sudden attraction to the port.

I had once worked there, before I retired, or rather had been sacked. Please don't remember, just forget, please, PLEASE, I implore myself, trying to put up a barrier against waves of horrible memories of a misdeed. Not now, really, you need brain power to figure out who is sabotaging your stuff.

After much mental consternation, the sea of thoughts calmed. You apologised, and really, everyone has forgotten about it, I remind myself, heaving great glups of life-giving oxygen.

Yet another strange breeze touches my ear, and I whip my head around. A piece of paper lodges itself in my thinning hair surprisingly.

A ripped out part of a calendar, just showing the day and month, I find out as I pull it out of my hair. Oh no, there's more handwritten words behind.

"It has been 10 years." The words form.

Realisations dawn on me. Today is the 10th anniversary of the port accident, the one that took my colleague's life. A wooden beam, I remember clearly, fell on him. It is too painful to recollect your part in the accident, so really-

The sound of metal against something hard grazes my ear. Like a sharpening of a blade, I ponder, my ears pricking up to quickly detect any danger. Indeed, a shadow with a shiny shean passes just 5 meters before me.

I back away in terror. Get back home as quick as you can, I yell in my mind. But, it is too late.

"Not so fast, will you?" A voice greets me from behind.

I flip around, and am confronted with a knife pointed at my throat. My eyes go so wide, they nearly pop out of my sockets. "Please, please," my voice falters, but I try to appear unafraid. "Why are you doing this?" I "interrogate" the figure while making a feeble attempt to flex my non-existent arm muscles to assert some obviously absent dominance.

"You still do not know? That's like so dumb for a one who could plan a sabotage," the figure drawls, the voice oily and smooth, like a viper waiting to strike. I flinch at the gleaming knife, that looks ever so sharp and dangerous.

"YOU SABOTAGED MY FATHER, NOW I WANT MY REVENGE!" The shadow screams so loudly, my ear drums nearly burst. Yet, I dare not move, in case I smack my neck into the knife right there in front of me. What did I ever do to your family member, I do not remember! I am also screaming internally.

"HOW DARE YOU FEIGN IGNORANCE!"

Realising I spoke my thoughts out loud, I implore, "I never did anything, I am a victim, I got fired!" But, his words have dislodged something, like a hidden cupboard of some sort in my mind.

I follow his gaze towards the port. I see a container swinging in the strengthening wind, framed against a darkening sky. Thunder growls in the distance, and lightning flashes across the sky.

The heavens open and rain drops fall with plops onto the ground. The sky seems to be crying, or perhaps, mourning a loss. Yet, the droplets pelt me with more force than expected, as if slapping me for a crime I had committed. And I even swear, that the lightnings flashes in an angry face right above me.

The floodgates of memory finally open, unleashing wave after wave of traumatic recollections of what I had done before. I remember, I REMEMBER! I scream in pain, but surprisingly, joy.

But as the icy raindrops run down face, I dragged back to reality: one with a knife at my throat. "So you remember now, eh? So long?" The figure laughs, cocking his head backwards a little, but his hand with the knife held steady.

I had planned to sabotage his father's work by switching off the lights, but he tripped on a toolbox and an unstable wooden beam above unfortunately crashed on him. But, for what reason did I do so?

In my agony of remembering, I notice that his grip on the knife is quite strange, awkward, or even very uncomfortable. His fingers falter for a moment in the grip, and I realise the position is weak. But I have no time to think, for he demands for my reason for sabotaging his father, which I cannot recall.

The rain falls down even harder than ever, jump-scaring the puddles, whipping the trees and buildings. I try to unlock the floodgates again, but they refuse to budge.

It has been too much pain, hurt that you have never thought about it again since then. You regret your actions, but now you no longer know why you did them, because you chose to forget them.

"I DO NOT KNOW!" I holler. His eyes graze me, accusing me for hiding something. Yet, I truly do not know anymore. "Please, I am neither lying or joking," I beg for mercy to be released from the rain and from the fear for my life and death.

In a fit of rage at my own ignorance and his insistence, I grab his knife-wielding hand and smack it downwards. He swears in surprise and cringes for a moment as the knife flies towards me. I grab it in my hand like a knight his sword, and clench my fist tightly around it.

I raise it above my head. He is deluded in revenge, his sabotage attempts nearly killed me.

"Haha, just make it quick you know. After my father died, there wasn't much worth living for. Ahahah..." he murmurs just audibly against the din of the rain on the windows of nearby blocks. Yet, his eyes carry a different story. The glean in them seem to say that he had already won the psychological battle, and that the death today, would not be his own.

I toss away the knife. No use letting him get his death wish, I reason. The knife, however, swings in an arc as if held down by an invisible string towards him rather than down towards the ground by gravity.

The "invisible" string has just appeared in front of my eyes. A transparent cord tied to a lamp post above us with the weapon attached to it. I look at my palm, it is white from holding holding knife so tightly, but a single red line goes down the centre: the string attached to the weapon. He laughs maniacally as the knife re-enters his grasp.

"You fool, you fell victim to this blunder!" He screams as the knife is raised above his head.

I cower down to the wet ground, staring at the blackish rain clouds above me. Then, I close my eyes to the darkness behind my eyelids, forever.