Recipes for Revenge

Vengeance began with a cobbled street, a secondhand store, an unexpected find in a pile of ancient cookbooks bearing women in aprons and high heels, and a purchase made with spiteful intent. Constance laughed as she drove away. She opened her find as soon as she got home and began to read.

Recipes for Revenge

Introduction

The world is unfair. If you have ever wondered how the hateful make it to the top or get the girl/guy or the job you wanted, there is no simple answer, and you won't find solutions in this book. What I offer is balm for battered feelings, salve for stinging psyches, unguents for wounded pride, and the satisfaction of putting something together guaranteed to churn up the waters of inequality and blot up the tears of crying shame. Revenge is more than sweet, more than a just desert. Revenge, my dear culinarian, is syrup for the soul.

Table of Contents

  1. Insults

  2. General Rudeness

  3. Abandonment

  4. Noisy Neighbors

  5. Micro-Managing Bosses

  6. Liars

  7. Rivals

  8. Bullies

  9. Cheating Lovers

10. Unhappy Endings

 Constance perused the table of contents and jumped to the second chapter. General Rudeness. She felt she should start with something small. There was someone at the local coffee shop she wanted to use as a test subject. Whenever the blond barista waited on her, she claimed to be out of white-chocolate cherry lattes. The revenge was more for the way she said it; "We're out," with a dash of sneer.

 If she were being truthful, she was also jealous of the way Paula (etched on her name tag) smiled and flirted with Jim, her boyfriend, whenever he accompanied her.

~*~

 She wrote down the list of unfamiliar ingredients and drove to Harvey's Mercantile. Harvey's had everything.

 "Hello, Constance," smiled Alex. "Can I help you find something?"

 She had been roaming up and down the aisles with her ingredient list. Alex did a variety of jobs at Harvey's. Today he was stocking items on an upper shelf. He didn't need a stepladder; he was tall, and good-looking too. His brown hair and eyes matched exactly, making her want to stare whenever he spoke to her.

 "Wing of bat?" she asked. It came out timidly in a whisper. Alex's eyes widened almost imperceptibly but Constance noticed.

 "We keep it in back," he said. He retrieved the item and placed it into her basket. "Is anything wrong?"

 "Nothing at all," she smiled. In truth, many things were wrong, and she was going to fix them. Constance then left the aisle rather abruptly, with Alex still staring after her in the circular security mirror. She hadn't expected questions.

 ~*~

 The next morning, she waited in line at the coffee shop. The instructions said to drink the Revenge for Rudeness Potion #4 first, then direct a firm stare at the intended target.

 *Results may vary, the recipe cautioned.

 As the woman ahead of her finished up, Constance gulped the drink she'd been holding in a small Dixie cup, then fixed her eyes on Paula, the barista.

 "I'd like a white-chocolate cherry latte please."

 "We're out."

 "Hazelnut?"

 As Constance sighed, a different barista appeared.

 "Mr. Wilson wants to see you in his office," he said to Paula.

 The barista wearing the Tobias name tag, took over, ringing up a white-chocolate cherry latte, producing a steaming to-go cup labeled Constance in crisp black letters.

 "Have a wonderful day," Tobias smiled.

 ~*~

 It was Saturday. No job to rush off to so Constance chose a park bench in front of the fountain to enjoy her latte. In moments she caught sight of Paula rushing toward her with a crumpled face and teary eyes.

 "What happened?" Constance asked.

 Paula looked up, shocked to see her.

 "I got fired," she spit out with venom. She hurried on past to disappear around a corner in the distance.

 Constance was shaken. Had the potion caused that? If so, she was horrified. She'd disturbed someone else's world in a bad way, something she loathed to do. Syrup for the soul? She didn't feel sweetened. Maybe she should reconsider what she'd been planning for Monday—but then she relived, the past week, month, year.

 Eleanor Sprague. The woman who had so kindly offered to help with the project Constance had worked on for the past six months.

I can be a listening ear to bounce ideas from or someone to lean on for those times when you feel you aren't going make it.

 Almost seven months of sixty-hour work weeks had gone into that project, only to have Eleanor take credit for nearly all of it.

 "Constance was a big help, of course," the woman had commented at the corporate meeting.

 Now, the "project" was well underway. Constance worked under Eleanor, who'd gotten the big promotion, and the life-changing pay raise. While she felt bad about what happened to Paula, she couldn't wait to mix up a revenge recipe for Eleanor—Eleanor was the entire purpose for buying the worn-out recipe book.

 As she got ready to leave the park, her cell phone rang. It was Jim.

 "Hello, darling," she answered.

 "Something's come up," he said. "Work."

 "Oh, no."

 "I'm sorry babe, but I'm afraid I'll have to cancel our date, tonight. I'll make it up to you, I promise."

 Constance gave a sigh after hanging up. This was the third time he'd canceled in the last month. Oh, well. She'd spend the evening choosing something wicked for Eleanor. She tossed the empty latte cup into the trash receptacle and hurried home.

 ~*~

The next day she purchased a few empty vials at Harvey's along with the ingredients for the Rival Revenge #12. 

*Warning. Prepare for the drama of your life.

This time Alex took the list from her hand and came back several minutes later with miniature plastic containers labeled with the substances.

Toad's eye (black)

Salamander tongue

Blue of Dragonflies

Flakes of Peri Fern Fronds

Crushed Green Weevil

"I'm worried about you, Constance," Alex said. "I wish you'd let me help with whatever this is."

"Nothing to worry about. I'm really doing fine. After this week, I'll be even better."

"I'm here if you need me," Alex told her. There was a wistfulness in his tone. Again, she could see him watching her leave through the security mirror.

 ~*~

Monday morning. A company meeting was about to commence.

The vial held a clear liquid potion. Constance was to pour the contents into a drink of her choice. The revenge would take place sip by sip or rather, sip and glare. Sip and glare. She was to stop as soon as she felt Eleanor had paid the price for what she had done. Vengeance.

She poured the contents of the vial into a glass of ice water, taken from one of the pitchers set up in advance on the conference table.

Sam from finance took a seat beside her. As the attendees arrived he began to choke, and grabbed Constance's water, gulping it down leaving just the ice. When his boss, Michael Maynard the CFO, swaggered in, Sam gave him a look that could kill.

Constance was aghast. She couldn't imagine what was going to happen now. Was there some way to cancel the outcome? She should have checked the book before carrying this thing out.

By now, most everyone had arrived, including Eleanor, looking smug, hobnobbing with the chief executive officer, Janice, but before the meeting could begin, a handful of police officers burst through the double doors of Conference Room A, and someone just coming in, pointed out Mr. Maynard.

"Michael Maynard?" an officer asked the company CFO.

"Yes."

"Place your hands on top of your head."

Michael complied, standing up slowly at first, then made a break for it. He jumped on top of the U-shaped conference table and ran, knocking over water pitchers and glasses in the process, kicking aside briefcases and laptops in his way, while an officer trailed right behind him. With one great leap Michael crashed through the double doors marked Exit 3 and disappeared. Everyone rushed to the hallway to watch. The police caught him just before he reached the staircase, and then Constance watched in horror with everyone else as the officers led Micheal away in handcuffs.

The meeting that followed explained most of it.

Eleanor Sprague was an undercover agent gathering evidence against Michael for the embezzlement of the company funds. It seemed he was involved with some crime federation involving the finances of other companies as well. The new project Constance had been working on was the opening Eleanor needed, to gain deeper access to the finance department's files and transactions without raising suspicion, and Sam had been helping her. Eleanor took Constance aside and apologized for what must have looked like her taking undue credit for the long hours of work Constance had put in.

Later that afternoon, Constance was called down to her original manager's office—Anita.

"Thank you for your cool head, and your willingness go with the flow. For that alone you've earned a pay grade adjustment. Your project proposal, however, still needs work, but at the rate you're going it shouldn't take more than another six months. I know you can do it, Constance," Anita told her. "I have complete faith in you."

 ~*~

At the end of the workday, Constance couldn't help but wonder if the potion caused all of these things to happen. She'd only spoken to Sam briefly but was able to tell that he'd had issues with Michael Maynard for some time. Would things have happened differently if she had sipped the glass of water as planned?

She needed Jim. He would tell her she was being a fool, as he so often did. Come back to Earth, Constance, he'd say. Since missing their date on Saturday, they'd only shared a few brief phone calls. On impulse, she decided to surprise him and picked up his favorite wine. Red and dry. He didn't eat sweets.

When she knocked on his door, Paula answered.

Her eyes were swollen from crying, but she managed a rather hateful smile in recognition. For one crazy minute, Constance thought she had knocked on the wrong apartment, and wondered at the coincidence that Paula lived so near to Jim.

"Jim, I think someone is here to see you."

Constance wanted to run when Jim appeared, but he stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

"It's not what you think," he whispered. "So don't make a big deal of this the way you always do. She's a friend. She lost her job and she's upset. What did you want me to do when she came over? Slam the door in her face?"

"Yes. That would have been the right thing to do."

"You're just upset because I missed our date. I was working. I said I was sorry."

"I'm sorry too," she whispered.

She turned towards her car.

"Sure, just run away. It's what you always do. It's how you handle things!" Jim shouted behind her. There was no circular mirror for her to see him, but she could picture his face. They'd exchanged these same words before. She drove home in tears. She cried in bed while the clock ticked away. Then she got up and opened Recipes for Revenge and turned to Cheating Lovers.

 She chose the recipe and wrote down the list of ingredients. After that, she lay awake in bed imagining possible outcomes of Revenge on Lovers #7. What would happen to Jim? And what about Paula? The recipe recommended the double-dose version to catch both parties at once. What would victory taste like? She fell asleep.

Constance wore sunglasses to work to cover her eyes swollen from crying and strained from lack of sleep. She kept the lights dimmed in her office, citing a migraine, and after work, she went to Harvey's Mercantile.

Alex gently lifted her sunglasses when she handed him her list. He shook his head when he saw her eyes, and she nearly began to cry again.

"You're in way over your head," he told her while looking over the ingredients. He used that soft tone she liked. "We don't keep red of snake or coarsely ground sea anemone in stock, but I can have them here by tomorrow night. Why don't you fill out this delivery slip and I'll bring everything over tomorrow. In the meantime, go home and get some rest."

This time Constance watched Alex disappear in the disk-like mirror.

~*~

The next night Alex arrived with her delivery along with pizza, and cherry wine.

"You need to talk to someone before doing something like this." He pointed meaningfully to the list. "I'm a great listener, among other things."

Alex found plates for the pizza and turned on a music station. Constance brought out glasses and poured the wine. She began to relax. The wine was sweet, and the pizza tasted wonderful.

"Where did you find these recipes?" he asked. "And what happened with that first one?"

The story poured forth. She started with the secondhand store and handed over the recipe book. Alex listened without commenting, waiting until she reached the end.

"So, to sum things up, Paula lost her job but gained your boyfriend, Jim. Is that what you wanted to happen?" 

"Of course not. It's not what I wanted at all. It shook me up when Paula got fired, but now…."

"And the second recipe. The one with the Blue of Dragonflies. What happened with that one?"

Constance told him about Sam and his criminal boss.

"So that time, you got an apology and a small raise. Was that what you wanted?"

"I wanted an explosion. I guess I got one, but now that everything has turned upside down, I'm still not where I want to be. I have months of sixty-hour weeks ahead of me, doing work I don't even like—except for the graphs. I do enjoy creating colorful graphs. I feel like a magician every time—but then I have to wonder if anyone even looks at them."

Alex smiled. He held her hand like they'd been holding hands for years.

"And now this third recipe. What do want to happen? It's best to decide beforehand, otherwise, like the others, you won't know whether you succeeded or not."

"I want Jim to beg me to come back to him. I want to hear him make lots of promises. I want to see true sorrow on his face."

Alex nodded. "And what about Paula?"

"Boils and blisters wouldn’t be enough."

Alex didn’t laugh. "And what about you? What do you want to happen to you?"

Constance shrugged. "I haven’t thought about it. "

"And yet it’s the most important answer. You should think about it before carrying this out." He pointed to the recipe.

 ~*~

Constance walked to work the next morning.

I need to take more walks, for one thing, she thought in response to Alex’s question. I love walks. They’d have to take place in the mornings, because by the time she left work now…, and she’d have to start working Saturdays again. Sundays would be filled with laundry and other household chores.

You’re working all the time, and she was here. What did you expect me to do?

Jim’s words from months ago about a different girl. They hurt, even now. He’d apologized and begged her to come back to him.

She passed an empty corner store with a realtor’s For Sale sign in the window. It had been vacant for a while. Constance always imagined a flower shop going in, with colorful striped canopies over the door and windows, hanging plants and baskets brimming with blooms. There was no such place within walking distance, and she liked the indulgence of keeping a bouquet at the table in her apartment.

Jim said she liked to waste money. He said the shop was an eyesore as it stood, and the entire block should be torn down to make a parking lot.

When she arrived at her office, she found a message taped to her door from Anita that an emergency meeting had been scheduled for 8:00. The meeting dragged on for an hour and a half and Constance couldn’t stop thinking about the pile of work on her desk and another meeting to prepare for after lunch.

You don’t get anything done because you’re unorganized. I’m surprised they keep you around.

More of Jim’s hurtful words. He’d been kind after that and promised to be more supportive, but the promise hadn’t lasted long at all.

Last night after Alex left, she'd put together the ingredients for Revenge on Lovers #7. The vial waited in her purse.

*Beware. Cheating lovers never change.

Paula had lost her job but ended up with Jim and Jim ended up with Paula. Suddenly, Constance realized she couldn't do any better than the universe had done already. After the meeting, she tossed the vial into the trash and went to Human Resources.

~*~

Thirty days later, she cleaned out her desk and headed to the bank with her 401b account where she met with the realtor from the corner shop. After that, she went to Harvey’s Mercantile. There was living space above the corner building and Alex was going to help her move.

Nonetheless, Constance carried a new list and smiled when he took it from her hand.

Only one ingredient was on the list, and Alex said it was something he’d keep stocked for her whenever she needed it.

One hug.

Alex gave it with the smile she loved.