Starving

“And then revenge is very good eaten cold, as the vulgar say.”

~ Eugène Sue, Mathilde: Mémoires d'une Jeune Femme

She had put up with the bullying for years, although nobody called it that. Another term was mobbing, but another was scapegoating. None of the words mattered, because what had gone on for so long was invisible to everybody else. How can cruelty be invisible to everybody, though? Isn’t it really a matter of cowardice and self-interest? A wise man named Chomsky had written that not caring or not doing something about a bad situation is equivalent to being an accomplice. Zip your lip, don’t get involved, don’t try to fix something that’s rotten. You do that, and you’re guilty as well.

Nobody seemed to have a conscience and she was so, so battle-weary. Just surviving took everything out of her, left her with straw for muscles and an old sponge for a brain, not to mention the lines it put on her face and the way her shoulders wanted to hunch over. She was in constant pain, it was so unfair. Nevertheless, she continued to put one foot ahead of the other and prayed (not literally, she wasn’t religious) that one day she’d see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And so it was. The years went by. Her weariness grew, her sanity waned, yet she was determined not to lose the war against what was wrong. She’d never back down. Only she knew where she found the strength to keep going and she wasn’t about to reveal her secret. Then, at long last, she found a way out and suddenly was on the other side. She was safe, but the scars on her back and the cracks in her heart had left her feeling rather like a lizard.

She moved on, leaving the planet of deplorables in her wake. It didn’t matter if they were talking about her, inventing stories, behind her back. She couldn’t hear them any more. With a stiff expression on her face, an invisible grimace distorting her mouth, she left. She didn’t bid any of them farewell and hoped they would rot in the place all evil persons go to. Of course that wouldn’t happen, but she could hope. She could also scheme.

There was no rush.

Years went by and they became a wall that protected her from harm, physical harm. They couldn’t erase the fissures and blisters that had built up inside her. Nobody needed to know about those, just as nobody needed to know her plan. It was a simple plan: only she knew about it. 

First of all, she would conceal small explosives in strategic places. That was done with utmost care and with no rush. The devices were placed in cubicles and offices, and some were set along sidewalks where the perpetrators walked or parked their cars. This was done with the utmost care, because innocent persons should not be harmed. It was the riskiest tactic, but resulted in some losing a limb, others going mad with fear and moving away. The explosions were attributed to a terrorist group, never to her. She snickered. She was not sorry to see the detonations work their magic.

Another technique was the phone call from an anonymous caller. The calls ranged from a ragged breathing over the line to a shriek resembling one that came from a banshee or a bat. Then there were the doorknob treatments and the disgust people felt at putting their hands on metal made slimy by some unknown substance as they entered their offices. The obnoxious materials were occasionally extended to homes where bags of unidentified things were left on porches and dumped on cars. She felt disgusted at carrying out these deeds, but knew they were more than justified. It was much better than simply having a pizza delivered at 11 pm a couple of nights a week.

There were also robberies of valuable items, both at work and outside of work. The thefts were carefully planned and spread out over time so that the persons affected might think they’d misplaced the objects. Sometimes, when the opportunity arose, something cherished was broken by some mysterious force, as if an ill wind had blown in and hurled a figurine to the floor. Nobody to blame but the wind, yes. The wind.

Important documents disappeared and had to be redone. Feet slipped or toes stubbed on treacherous areas, forcing people to seek alternate routes that made them late for meetings or classes. Winter jackets were drained of their linings as if the fleece had melted. It was freezing in January and walking between buildings made martyrs out of many. The shared refrigerator began to cough up spoiled yogurt and curdled milk, slimy salads that had wilted in an hour. The affected persons looked sideways at their coworkers, their eyes making silent accusations.

The list got pretty long and can’t be detailed here, but the people didn’t know what to think, where to look, how to defend themselves. They became paranoid, fearing they’d misstep or misspeak. Meetings devolved into arguments, evaluations of performance on the job got worse and worse, nobody dared try to hold a conversation. Beyond work, the fear continued. Nobody dared organize a gathering. Everybody started thinking about retirement or seeking employment elsewhere. The walls of the building suddenly were covered with obscene graffiti that revealed more than one skeleton in a closet. Skeletons that were representative of sexual depravity, dipping into tills, shoddy work, and - surprisingly - a murder or two. Yes, the cruel individuals had gone so far as to eliminate persons they disliked. It would have happened to her if she hadn’t been so strong and if she hadn’t left.

She had managed to install systems with subliminal messages that increased confusion, distraction, and fear. This led to disruptions in home life for everyone involved and, more importantly, it created horrific nightmares. Some days all the people could talk about were the nightmares, and they all acquired a haggard appearance due to poor sleep. They lost track of time and lost the will to do their jobs. If they hadn’t been so evil, one might have felt sorry for them, but the punishment really was deserved. 

All of this took a lot of time - hours on end of work with a commitment to making them all suffer to the same degree as they had made her suffer. However, she was patient as well as methodical. She had known revenge would be a slow process. As she rolled out her scheme, it became more complex and the atmosphere surrounding the designated persons grew ever darker; they were now pawing their way through their obligations, their days a true martyrdom.

There was no way to remedy the situation because nobody could put a finger on the source of the insecurity and incompetence they all felt, similar to how they had worked to make her insecure, questioning her ability to do her job properly. She had so many ways to deal with them and found new methods weekly. Cars wouldn’t start, tires were slashed, professional attire acquired indelible greasy spots, the photocopier almost never worked, and the central administration was constantly threatening to eliminate positions.

In the end, one of the affected individuals had a vision regarding the cause and brought up his theory at a secret meeting they had convened. The others just laughed at him, forgetting his problems with anger management, yet not thinking he would turn violent when his frustration reached the maximum. Their laughter was the final straw.

He took out a revolver, which was of course illegal to carry at work, and began to fire at the others while they were still chuckling at his wild theory that their former colleague was the cause of their woes. Before they had met, he had already lost his composure and had shot at several others not in their group. It was tragic, of course, but he was strung tight as a bow and had snapped. When the dust settled, there was no one left alive in the pool of blood there in the newly redecorated seminar room. The smell of defeat lay over them all and was soon joined by the disgrace in which the rest of the company held them. They would be remembered for what they had been: cruel, mean-spirited, useless.

That’s basically everything to the story. The criminal minds had been destroyed by their own actions and their owners would be remembered as immoral idiots. No buildings would ever be named after them. Any articles or books they had written would be banned. In short, the company would first scorn their memory, then would obliterate that memory. There would be no survivors.

…………

She removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes, smiling a bit fiendishly. She sat up straight at her desk, looking far away. These people were the villains in her novel, and they were no longer. In contrast, her novel, which had been forged slowly and carefully, with great attention to detail, had been extremely successful and was going into a second printing. In her book, all the characters had been clearly identified. The readers knew who they were and what they had done. Maybe she would burn the book now, with all the mean truth made fiction buried inside it.

Free at last.