SEVERED LIVES

A growling cough pushed a final acid chunk out of his throat and into the sink. Philip raised his bloodshot eyes and looked at the man in the mirror.

“Fucking asshole. You call yourself a lawyer? A brother? You’re pathetic.”

He slammed his fist into his own reflection and watched with satisfaction how his face shattered off the wall and his knuckles cried with blood. With a trembling sigh, he opened the faucet and tried to wash the red guilt from his hand—but it kept bleeding. When he scooped a handful of water and splashed it into his face, he didn’t need the defeated mirror to know that bloodied droplets were crawling down his cheeks. Or that his tie and shirt were still covered with vomit. Who cared, anyway? Vera was still dead. And her killer was free, thanks to Philip’s abysmal performance in court.

He flushed the toilet, trying not to slip on his stomach’s content on the floor, and left the sour stink of the restroom.

***

Even the sight of a yellow note under his windscreen wiper didn’t trigger more than a disengaged groan on this second-worst day of his life. His worst day had of course been when Vera didn’t come home. When she was wrapped around a tree after that bastard truck driver hadn’t seen her coming. Hadn’t seen her coming, my ass, Philip muttered. He plucked the note from his windscreen, tore the door of his Aston Martin open, and crumpled the parking fine while he squeezed himself into a seat that seemed even lower than usual. Resting his head on the steering wheel, he wondered how he could have lost the case against this jerk. How could he have let Vera down?

Before tears drowned his vision, Philip registered unusual print on the crumpled paper on his lap. Print? No, handwriting. In fact, it didn’t look like a parking fine at all. He ironed it back out.

Want to avenge your sister’s death?

Come to the kindergarten playground in Seneca Park.

Tonight, 11pm.

***

The closer Philip got to the playground equipment, the more it looked like monsters and tentacles rising from a murky swamp. The moonlight on their limbs, flickering through the clawing tree branches, amplified the impression of movement. He should turn around and go back home. But the note … It was too intriguing to walk away from.

“Join me, Philip.” A grainy voice spoke from the swing set, which appeared to be the only monster that really was moving. A figure swayed back and forth slowly, making the swing set squeak in protest.

Philip thought the voice was a woman’s. Her body was covered in a cloak, and her face buried in an oversized hood, as if she were the Grim Reaper himself. He sat down on the swing next to his mysterious host.

“What do you want?” she asked. “Do you want to kill Vera’s killer? Do you want him to suffer for the rest of his life? What do you want?”

“I have no idea.”

“I think you do.”

“He should be locked up.”

Suddenly, she stood in front of him and pressed a sharp, cold object against his throat.

“Don’t be politically correct with me, Philip. What do you really want?”

He gasped. The icy edge—blade?—on his throat gave him no time to consider how monumental the mistake was to come here. So, he gave in and opted for the truth.

“What I want … is that this man never existed.”

She reached for something under her cloak. Another knife? A gun? He had no way to escape and didn’t even care if this was the end. But she handed him something. A photo.

She removed the open jaw of a pair of scissors from his throat and placed the weapon in his other hand.

Philip squinted at the picture in the dark. But the shimmer was enough to recognize the mug shot of the murderous truck driver. He looked up and found himself alone. The cloaked woman was gone. Did he dream the whole thing? But he still held the picture and the scissors. The man responsible for his sister’s death stared back at him. Taunting him. Philip pierced the tip of the scissors into the guy’s forehead and then cut the photo into a hundred pieces. Sweet, warm adrenaline gushed through his veins; the first moment of relief since Vera passed.

***

The phone vibrated a dreamless slumber out of his system. He hadn’t bothered to take off his coat when he’d fallen asleep with his head on the dinner table and his cell phone in an open hand. A pair of gleaming scissors on the tabletop reflected the first sun rays creeping into the kitchen. Philip fumbled to answer the call.

“Hello?”

“I’ve had it with you,” an unfamiliar voice spat. “Why don’t you mind your own business for a change?”

“Excuse me?”

“We are sick and tired of your relentless meddling. Get a life, man!”

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Who are you talking to, hun?” Philip heard another voice ask in the background.

He was now wide awake.

“Vera? Vera! Is that you?”

“Jesus, man,” the unfamiliar man said, “do you even hear yourself? How obsessed can you be with your own sister? It’s sickening. Get a grip, dude.”

“Let me talk to her. Put her on!”

“Sure. As if she wants to talk to you.”

Vera urged him to hang up, then the unknown guy’s muffled voice said, “Why don’t you go ahead, darling. I’ll be there in a sec.”

After a moment, he addressed Philip again. Whispering, if not hissing.

“Listen, Philip. I don’t know what you think you saw, but there’s no way I will let you destroy my marriage. That girl? She means nothing to me. Zilch. And I take great care of your sister, don’t I?”

Who was this man? Is Vera alive? And married?

Philip hung up and googled his sister’s accident. No result. The asshole truck driver’s name. Still nothing. He blinked and shook his head, trying to wake from this mad dream. But he woke up from nothing and still found himself in his kitchen. With his sister’s voice echoing in his ear, a magical pair of scissors on the table, and, now he looked around, a framed picture on the wall of his sister’s wedding with the stranger.

He got up and picked up the photo. So, this was the man he just spoke to. The cheat. How could she have married such a lowlife?

His eyes wandered back to the scissors on the kitchen table. It worked once; why not again? He took the picture out of its frame, carefully cut the adulterer from Vera’s side, and slid the sharp blades through his photo from top to bottom and side to side. Probably a futile action, but it felt great. And maybe, just maybe, he could save her from evil a second time.

Philip smiled and went to bed. Thrilled to know that Vera was alive, but exhausted from making it happen. He needed a few hours of proper sleep, whatever this new day would bring him.

***

All that was left of the new day was the evening; he had slept through the rest of it. He called Vera. She had been killed a while ago—or had she?—but Philip still knew her number by heart. The shrill, maddening tone of a dead connection triggered a sigh, and he put the phone down. Maybe he had dreamed it after all.

He decided to go for a walk and check out the playground in the park. No moon tonight. He saw no monsters crawling out of the invisible swamp. But he heard the squeaking of the swing set. It wasn’t until he got close to the playground that the cloaked figure appeared, swaying back and forth, just like before.

Philip sat down on the swing next to her.

“It worked!” he said. “Thank you; it worked.”

She said nothing. She just reached for something underneath her cloak. Another picture. Her other hand pulled a pair of scissors out of her pocket. It looked like the pair he had left on his kitchen table, next to the cut-up photo of his sister’s cheating husband.

She whispered, “Fresh starts are not to be messed with.” She pulled her hood off.

Faint moonlight cut through the black clouds, revealing a bitter glimmer in Vera’s eyes as she sliced the scissors through Philip’s face in the photograph.

“You overstepped, dear brother.”