Nothing

(Content warning: Refers to sexual violence and described physical violence/gore)

Darkness is a curtain, one that can be drawn forth to hide the misdeeds of the evil and the misfortune of the innocent. This recurring thought almost annoyed me now with the number of times it had crossed my mind while I scaled a wooden palisade outside of a large farm, or vaulted across a moat brimming with rancid water to reach a castle wall. Tonight, much to my satisfaction, was not one of those more strenuous nights. Tonight, I simply walked down the cobbled street, passing from darkness to magnified firelight as I crossed underneath the lamp posts, lanterns creaking and swinging over my head on fraying ropes.

It was cold and the smell of woodfires from dozens of chimneys in the small town strayed into my nostrils on the breeze, reminding me of home. My teeth ground together, audibly within my own skull. Home.

With the thought of home came memories. As usual, they started happy and carefree, frollicking in the nearby forests with my mother and sister, working in the smithy with my father, eating stag stew and laughing around the fireplace, stockings hanging from the mantle on a snowy winter night. However, they quickly devolved into the reality of the end of my childhood and my birth as a man consumed by vengeance.

My eyes narrowed at the back of the man I followed as I reminisced, broad shoulders covered by a burly, furred shawl. The man was drunk, staggering down the street, tripping when his in the dark spaces between the lamp posts. The tip of a sword’s scabbard wagged back and forth behind his left knee, a counter-rhythm to his intoxicated gait. I knew something that most would not know, however.

The sheath was empty.

The man tried to hide that fact by drawing his cloak over his waist and tying it with an ornate belt, covering the open mouth of his faithful weapon’s home. I had seen it, though. I had seen when he tried to fight the Guard, and when they had snatched the sword from the scabbard, grumbling about how they would return it to him when he sobered up.

I was going to make sure that he never retrieved it and that he never sobered up.

The memories, the dark ones now, flashed across the inside of my eyelids as I shut them, taking a deep shuddering breath, trying to settle my heart and my trembling hands. Blood spattered against the walls, my mother lying across the straw mattress, dead eyes staring. My father gurgling, trying to find breath through an open throat, each gurgle growing weaker and weaker. My sister wailed and screamed outside as they dragged her away by her hair, back to their camp. The sound of her voice faded as they drew away, silence creeping in on me as I shivered inside the wardrobe, no longer wanting to stare out of the keyhole but unable to tear my eyes away from my mother’s corpse.

It took me three days to emerge from that wardrobe. I squeezed my eyes shut and walked along the wall, feeling the rough timber on my fingertips, ignoring the splinters as I made my way to the door like a blind child. Closing my eyes did not save the assault on any of my other senses. My parents’ bodies had become swollen in the sweltering heat, the smell of death finding its way into my nostrils even as I was trying to find my way out. The silence deafened me, punctuated by the grief that had torn my heart asunder in my chest. I bent and vomited, then walked through it, uncaring, refusing to step any closer to where I knew my father lay.

When I finally found the door and made it into the sunlight, I opened my eyes and broke into a run, following the same path that I heard them drag my sister along.

And I found her.

In a shallow grave in the middle of an abandoned campsite, the coals of the fire in the center of the trampled grass still smoking. Her once-white nightgown was torn and bloody, her face beaten and purple, her lips turning blue as her body soaked in the cold from the ground.

I allowed myself to feel the grief for hours, tears flowing down my cheeks and dripping off of my nose, wetting her face as I kneeled beside her. When I had cried all the tears I had, when the sun had baked the skin on the back of my neck until it cracked, when all of the grief had boiled down to rage, I made a vow.

I would seek vengeance.

That was ten years ago, and now I walked, barely twenty-three years old, trailing the last of the men in the group. I had already killed the rest whose faces I could remember, and a few that I had heard were simply associated. I had spent two years in a dungeon for killing one of them in “self-defense”. Luckily, the King had not known that I had been egging my target on for days before our altercation. Mercy held no purchase in my mind, compassion vacant from my heart.

And now, the end of my decade-long vendetta strolled full of pride and liquor unknowingly in front of me. I was nervous, like a bride on her wedding night, my boiling blood accented by the adrenaline that started pumping through my muscles. My fingers twitched towards the hilt of the dagger hidden in my robes, anxious, ready to end my quest. My noble mission.

My mouth watered as the anticipation constricted my chest. Ten years I had waited for this. For ten years, I had fought and bled and killed to avenge my family. And now, finally, the full price of vengeance would be paid, and my life could finally start. I would finally have laid my family’s spirits to rest. I savored the thought, chewed it like the most scrumptious of foods, fit for royalty. I imagined how it would taste when I took his life.

He stepped into an alley, obviously sick of taking the long way out of town. I took the one just behind his, breaking into a sprint towards the opening on the other end. I wanted to enter his alley from the front, not from behind. I wanted to see his face, watch the life flee from his eyes when I plunged my blade deep into his gut. I wanted to savor it. I wanted to taste every flavorful bite of revenge.

I stopped running before I turned into the alley, the man barely ten paces ahead of me. He stopped, his bloodshot eyes looking me up and down.

“What do you want?” He asked, slurring his words as he swayed to the left.

I smiled. “Your blood,” I said, sinister tones coursing through the words, as I lunged forward. My dagger flashed into my right fist, and I punched it deep into his abdomen, directly under his sternum. He gasped loudly, the rush of his breath blowing my hood off and ruffling my messy black hair as the sweet stench of alcohol invaded my nose.

I drew the blade back, blood cascading down the front of his tunic as he dropped to his knees. I was still smiling. “That’s what you get! Finally! My mother, my father, and my sister can all rest in peace now that you and all of your comrades are dead.” Pride swelled in my chest, the taste of my success tingling on the tip of my tongue.

The man fought for his next breath, mumbling something. I leaned down closer to him. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Who did I kill?”

I reeled back, my mouth dropping open, and my eyes squinting. “How could you not remember? You slaughtered my father and did unspeakable things to my sister and mother before killing them. I hid in a wardrobe, watching, barely breathing. I… I saw you! I saw the whole thing!”

He sat back on his heels, rolled his head back and looked at me as blood seeped between his fingers, his hand pressed against the mortal wound I had dealt him. “I’m… sorry, kid. I don’t remember. Whoever your family was, they obviously didn’t stick out.”

Rage replaced victory as I kicked him in the face, felt his nose break against the thin sole of my shoe. He fell backwards, gurgling, just as my father had. He coughed, blood spraying in the chill night air. I dropped on top of him, my blade to his throat.

“You don’t remember? How dare you?”

“What does it matter if I do?” He choked. “You obviously do. But, before you kill me, I have a question.”

I didn’t answer, I couldn’t. My teeth ground together, threatening to break apart in my mouth.

He coughed, more blood coming out of his mouth, staining his lips and running down his cheek. His nose spurted as he tried to breathe through it. “Look at me, asking permission to speak before I die.” His eyes were getting glassy, even beyond the wine he had drunk, but they wavered and finally found me. “Will this bring them back?”

Everything stopped. My mouth opened, but no words came. My blade hovered over his throat. My chest went tight, even as his eyes went dull and his body went limp in the mud underneath me. I stayed there for a moment, staring into his face, my thoughts gone.

Then I dropped the knife, grabbing his shoulders as hot tears ran down my face. “No!” I screamed, my voice cracking as my throat tore. “No! No, no, no! This was supposed to fix it! Why is it not over? Why… why… why does it still hurt?” My voice grew quiet, my throat burned, my eyes already puffy and stinging with tears. I slumped to the side, my shoulder resting against the building next to me as I drew my knees up to my chest and hugged them tight.

I don’t know when they finally came. Time had ceased. My world had stopped, breathed its last even as the man next to me had. I felt a rough hand grab my shoulder and pull me up to my feet. I felt the manacles close and lock around my wrist, the cold iron digging into my skin. I smelled the sweat coming off of the guards around me, evidence of a long night beating the streets, even as the golden light of the sun tinged the horizon, pale light spilling into the alley.

“... hey…”

“... hey…”

The voice reached me from far away, and I looked up at the guard in front of me. His face was angry, teeth bared. I didn’t even care. I felt utterly empty, down to my bones.

When he saw my eyes on him, he spoke again. “Did you kill this man?”

“Yes,” I responded quietly. My eyes wouldn’t focus on him, and I couldn’t even muster the energy to hold myself upright. Another guard behind me held me by my armpits.

“What for?” the guard asked.

“For…?”

“Yes, what did you kill him for?”

My eyes finally focused, but not on the guard, on the blinding sun rising behind him. For the first time in my life it didn’t feel warm. Nothing did. All I felt was cold and empty. Heavy.

“Well?” he asked.

“I killed him for… nothing. Absolutely… nothing.”