Revenge is Sweet



  REVENGE IS SWEET

  By Richard Johnson

  Copyright August 2006 Richard Johnson

  ISBN 9781301602162

  REVENGE IS SWEET

  by Rick Johnson

  I sit here in what my protector calls a Shinto Shrine. He says that if I write down what I think and feel, I will heal faster and remember more. But he also says that if I give him sex I will heal faster and he looks human and dresses like the ones who hurt me and so I don’t believe most of what he tells me. But I find that the more I write, the easier it is. I burned the first dozen pages because they looked like animal marks and he had to show me how to use the brush and what letters were and how they formed words and he made me ink and brushes and even pens which are easier than the brushes but not as beautiful. There is so much to remember but the more I talk and write the easier it is.

  Me. I don’t know who I am. He says that I am a Weir and was made by Demons to be a worker-slave for them or maybe my parents were made to be workers but my grandparents were probably human and that is an uncomfortable thought to consider when I remember what the humans did to me and my family.

  I remember being on a table, surrounded by humans wearing masks and bright lights and not being able to move and knives and pain and blood and darkness and questions I could not answer and beatings and pain and more knives.

  They told me that I was evil and dangerous and it was my duty to help them destroy my family and friends and they were hurting me for my own good then when I couldn’t answer, the pain started again and the knives.

  They were afraid of me and hurt me to learn what I was. I could estann others like me crying and screaming and once a girl, very young, a child, being taken screaming past me, tied to a bed with wheels while humans in mottled brown and green carrying guns followed then later she stopped screaming and when she was taken past me, she had her throat wrapped up and was trying to scream but couldn’t and she was in so much pain it hurt me to be near her and the humans didn’t care. They did something to her to stop her from screaming but they didn’t do that to me because they wanted me to tell them something I didn’t know.

  Once they showed me a man. He was opened and his insides were on trays and they said that would be me and my mother if I didn’t help them. They were scared and some enjoyed what they did and others hated it but did it anyway. I don’t think the humans could estann the pain we radiated or they wouldn’t do what they did. Or maybe they just enjoyed the pain because some were smiling when they hurt me. I don’t know.

  I couldn’t think well. It was all fuzzy and dark especially when they stuck a needle into me and sometimes I would wake up with new scars and I think they cut parts of me off like they did to that man on the table and the young girl. I know that they could have stopped the pain but they didn’t.

  Then I almost remember being taken again, but this time there was no fear from the man, just anger and hatred. I remember flashes and thunder and sounds like things being dropped and I felt death all around. It was mostly dark and I could see that one man, dressed in mottled green clothes like the other guards but he was pointing something at other men and women who were dressed in white. The same white as those who cut into me but there was more blood on them and maybe it was their blood because they radiated pain and terror too. They were screaming at each other and then the men and women in white died. Blood was everywhere and I felt heat, burning then nothing.

  I next remember being fed something thick and without taste and swallowing more from need than thought. When I could see a little, I saw that man in black and mottled green and brown feeding me from a bowel, speaking softly. I got scared because whenever they were kind to me, they always followed with pain. Then the man put the bowl on the floor and talked more that I couldn’t understand and he backed away.

  I tried to see him but my eyes didn’t work well and my head hurt a lot but he had a black shirt with some design on the chest and his pants were the same mottled green that the ones with weapons wore but his feet were bare. I felt his concern but no fear, just some anger but not at me, at the others. Then he left.

  I was weak but starving and this place didn’t feel like my cell, it felt alive and I saw plants and smelled the sea. I don’t know how I knew it was the sea because I don’t remember ever smelling or seeing the sea before and didn’t even know what the sea was, I only knew that is what I smelled. I loved it. In my cell and the places where they hurt me, I smelled cleaning stuff. Liquids they used to clean my blood from the walls and keep it sterile. But here I smelled the sea and the plants also smelled wonderful.

  I slowly ate what I could and tried to look around by my eyes wouldn’t see well. So I ate and smelled until he came back later with more food.

  He talked more and sometimes I understood a word but I feared him because all the others who pretended to care for me always stood aside and watched as they or another hurt me so I feared that they were just waiting to hurt me more. I did notice that his shirt of mottled green was around me now. The others didn’t care if I was naked and only gave me white things to wear so they could take them away while they hurt me more.

  The man was old, his hair white with some brown and he saw through wire and glass and his face had wrinkles but he was kind and I came to believe that he was kind because he was and not because he was pretending. He worked always, making me food that I ate, bringing flowers in for me to smell and talking to me in words I barely understood and he never harmed me for some reason.

  Once I saw him under that wood he later told me was a Tori, a sign to a sacred place, and he stared off into the sky and I could feel sadness from him.

  When I could move he showed me how to wash myself and then added water and cloths to my food. I think he washed me before like he fed me and I wondered if he hurt me too before because my head hurt and so did my butt and that part I peed from.

  Then one day four men came to the place. They looked dirty and their hair was black and long and they wore strange loose clothes and carried knives. At first I thought they were finally coming to hurt me again but the man stood between them and me and I could feel anger and fear from him. The four wanted to pass and he turned and saw me watching from the window then faced the others again, motioning for them to go away. I realized that he was preventing the men from cutting on me but they were four and young while he was one and old and they had weapons and big knives and sticks with knives on the end and he had nothing.

  Then it happened. One of the four tried to strike the man with his long knife. It was big. The blade longer than his arm and I knew that he would kill the old man and then hurt me. But the man suddenly became very calm as if he wanted to die. Then everything slowed down and I saw him step forward, take the knife from the man, turn completely around and duck and stick the knife he had taken from the first into the chest of the man with the long stick-knife. The first man, the one who first held the knife fell down, his head rolling on the ground and blood spewed everywhere and he was dead before I saw him struck. Then my protector stood, pulled the long-knife free and struck the third man who fell, bleeding from a split head. Within a few heartbeats, the man who was kind to me had gone from afraid to wishing to die to killing three men.

  The fourth man dropped his knife, screamed and ran off, followed by my protector and I never learned what he did but I walked to the dead and looked down at them. It was almost like my father, the one the bad men had opened up and taken apart. I just stared at them. So much blood.

  Then my protector returned, himself covered with blood and he looked at me and I felt concern. He tried to smile but sadness was there and he turned me and took me back inside. Then he left and dragged the bodies away.


  When he returned, this time cleaned and with more clothes he had taken from the dead men and washed, he fed me as always and told me that I should have stayed inside. I understood his meanings but not the words and he wasn’t angry, just afraid for me. I awoke in the dark and found him asleep, glowing red in the moonlight, that long knife next to his mat in the next room where he always slept and I watched him for a long time, then I lay next to him and wrapped his arm around me and fell asleep listening to his irregular heartbeat and slept peacefully for the first time in memory. I knew that no one would hurt me again while he was around.

  “Out?” I asked the next day when I was eating.

  “Out? English?”