Deadly Vengeance

I know it’s been a while since I posted but I am back with another short story for y’all. It is not my typical Ya but an adult short story. Let me know what you think!

 

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Deadly Vengeance

 

Hard working, dedicated, relentless, and prolific; these were the traits she felt described her work ethic most accurately. Compassionate, empathetic, optimistic, and loyal to a fault; once again descriptions of her only more about her type of soul rather than her work habits. Over all she felt she was a good person. She started her slow walk through the dry heat that was her house. The flickering, yellows, reds, and oranges danced around her as she walked from room to room.  She took in the sight of chairs and an empty bed as she passed the dining room and her only child’s bedroom. Not a soul present on the bottom floor of this oven she called home.

The brick and stone all brought together with beautiful masonry work was a classic testament to the timeless architecture of the sizable house. Two stories and a loft were full of her life’s work, her heart’s passion. She walked past that work now in her office; it also was bathed in the flickering, warm hues. Her work had brought food to the table and shelter above their heads. They had everything they needed and many things they’d wanted. They were a team. Him with his music and golden voice and she, his biggest fan and the heart in the words his voice sang. She’d found success first with her written works.  They were hundreds of pages at a time that had landed her on many a best seller list. The first masterpiece had been snatched up when she was just fifteen. He had been her biggest supporter and now eight years later he still was.

She walked through the kitchen with its hanging stainless steel pots and mosaic Spanish tiled floor. This was the heart of their home and burned the hottest, the brightest, and why not? This was the point of origin after all. The flickering flames of vengeance danced to the beat of her husband’s most recent hit. It was the live version and the fans could be heard in the background chanting his name like a litany, Austin, Austin, Austin! The beautiful words rolling out of speakers had yet to be asked to dance with the heat that courted them, a heat that was the product of their owner’s jealous rage. “Words”, she thought with a bitter smile, “that were her heart, her soul, her creation, yet sang by Austin’s pipes of flawless quality.

Their dog, Felicity, barked with maddening urgency from the back yard. It was an identical pitch and intensity as it had been the morning Austin and she had woke to their daughter Megan missing. Megan was nowhere to be found and as the girl’s mother Brandi had come close to losing her marbles. The police had initiated a search for the child with grim expressions. The child had been snatched from her bed in the dead of night. Felicity had been a birthday present for their four year old daughter. It was Felicity that had tracked Megan’s scent and led authorities straight to her, but Brandi didn’t want to think on that. It was still a fresh hurt.

Up the stairs she climbed flanked by her hot flickering friends, also a masterpiece of her creation. They ascended the staircase together, bathing Brandi in swirling tendrils of warm, foggy, smoke. Her eyes would have stung had she been so inclined to be in a state of feeling physical sensation. But no, she’d been sure to remedy that particular element of hindering. She reached the summit of the stairs and her friends of inferno stopped just before the master bedroom door.  This room was anything but empty; it boasted a unique venue of visual stimulation, a collage of white, red… and him! If she’d known before what she knew now this would have happened sooner. Her maternal instinct would have demanded it!

She’d returned early from her writer’s conference in Chicago and stumbled onto the sight she was looking at now, well mostly. The neighbor’s wife, Jaqueline, from a half mile down their private road, had certainly had better looking days! Brandi’s flickering friends inched past her and clung to the bedroom walls like the geckos from honeymoon bungalow on the beautiful island of New Caledonia. She wrote erotic scenes of men and women in many of her romantic works, but it was there in the humid heat of a sand covered island that she’d been delivered from her innocence and ushered into woman hood on her wedding night.

The flames crawled along the walls, creeped along the floor, happily eating the expensive materials. She crossed the threshold and her essence shimmered. She knew Austin could see her even in this state of existence. His enlarged eyes told her so. She shifted her gaze to the right. Jaqueline lay gloriously naked and motionless beside him. Her head rested on a blood red pillow, an eerie contrast to the fluffy, white, down bedding that graced Brandi and Austin’s marital bed. Jaqueline’s husband, Bernie, was a nice man, a good man and had loved her to a fault. He’d be crushed when he got wind of where, how, and with whom Jaqueline would be found. A single spectral tear slid down Brandi’s cheek. For Bernie, she felt sincere remorse.

She stepped gingerly over the heap that was still warm, but most certainly dead, on the floor at her feet. Brandi shivered with cold. Her form shimmered again and she knew her time here was short. The little hand found hers and she cast her eyes down into the angelic 4 year old’s face, a face that had Brandi’s eyes and Austin’s nose. Megan’s form flickered. She’d been found 6 weeks ago at the bottom of the pond on Jaqueline’s property. Authorities said she’d been killed elsewhere and dumped there. Jaqueline had appeared mortified, but Brandi now knew the woman’s mortification had been an act. During her conference in Chicago she realized she had accidently picked up her husband’s phone in her rush to get out the door. Her phone had already been in her purse. Austin’s phone had gotten a text from Jaqueline that read:

“Brandi doesn’t suspect anything, does she? She can’t see her, “Accident” coming Austin. After Brandi and Bernie are out of the picture, we will both get all their assets and we can start making our own babies. We’ll be filthy rich! I can give you another Megan, Austin; I know how hard it was for you to turn a blind eye to what had to be done. Megan was Brandi’s soul benefactor, with Megan gone everything will fall to you my love”

“Mommy is daddy coming soon.” Megan said as she looked up at her mother with adoration in her eyes. Her eyes were as beautiful in death as they had been in life, endless layered depths of hazel ringed with intense green rings at the iris edges. Long light brown lashes that matched her head full of curls, accented her lids. Brandi turned the child away from the bedroom scene and shook her head yes quietly then gave Megan a nudge back to the place beyond this place.

She stood and returned her gaze to Austin’s face. He trembled with fear as the flames traveled up the fine down comforter that draped their bed. The flames started to lick at his skin and still she watched as screams of agonized pain exploded from his lungs. He struggled against his restraints but they held him firmly to the bed.  He had been high on his latest drug, whatever it was, and it had made him disoriented and sluggish, but the tying him up had been hours ago and he was sober now. He felt the heat of the fire that danced upon Jaqueline’s lifeless body next to him. Brandi was thinking a bullet to the head hardly seemed like justice enough for that evil bitch but her rage in the moment had not thought twice about it. Austin screamed in terror as the flames charred and melted away the flesh of Jaqueline’s face.

Austin looked back to his wife and she shimmered again. He pleaded with his eyes, mostly because his voice had been occupied with screams of pain. The stupid fool, didn’t he know there was nothing she could do about his situation now. Well hell, it was just too damn late now wasn’t it! The flames traveled up his legs singeing hair and destroying skin as it went. She felt a frigid coolness upon her back and then directly at her side. She looked up into the eyes of Death. The expression on his skeletal features was clear even with his hood blocking out a good portion of the fire’s light. He was warning Brandi that she was walking a thin line.

“There is only so much allowed where righteous vengeance is concerned. Reaping the visual fruits of your justified actions is not one of them Brandi.” Death said to her. She shook her head in understanding and took one last look at the bloody heap on the floor at her feet. It was the one place still left untouched by the now raging inferno. The silver tinted metal of the 45 was lying haphazardly on the floor at the foot of the bed next to the woman’s deceased form. She boasted a vicious looking gunshot wound to the head; a head that housed eyes wide in a petrified stare of death… her eyes. She felt Death’s hand on her arm.

“It’s time to go.” Death told her firmly.

She nodded her affirmation and was gone. Death looked back to Austin screaming in agony as the flames finally took him over and slowly burned his life away.

“I’ll be back for you momentarily. If you think this is hot just wait.” Death said with a knowing smile and cynical laugh.

Death, with his black hooded cloak, vanished leaving Austin to meet his gruesome end for conspiring in taking his daughter’s life for his own selfish gain.