Page 50 of Vengeful Rotten Casualties

Rapist.

Animal.

Pedophile.

Each one eats away at the vengeance inside of me. By the time a firm hand touches my shoulder, drawing me back from my work, I’m panting and sweating. A mess. Cool, impassive eyes stare at me through a black mask.

“He’s ready to talk,” the man says.

I blink and realize that Andrew is babbling. I thought it was just nonsense, but now that I’ve come back to myself, I realize he’s finally cracked. It’s the information I wanted.

“Write it down,” I say, my shoulders rising and falling with each movement.

“Already done,” the other man says.

I nod, and when the man at my side holds out his hand, I let the knife drop into his grasp. “Get rid of it,” I say. His silent understanding eases the tightness inside of me. With shaky hands, I go to push my hair back and realize my palms are covered in blood. I turn away from Andrew Bennington.

At the bottom of the stairs, I pause and look back. “Get him ready and bring him up behind the house,” I say.

The two of them nod in unison and I move up the staircase, each step heavier and heavier until I’m at the door leading into the house above. Across the hall, against the wall, the third man—the driver—waits with his arms crossed over his massive chest and his head resting against the top of his sternum.

He lifts his head as I step out. “Finished?”

I shake my head. “Is everything ready out back?” I ask.

“Yeah, and I’ve been hearing the wildlife in the woods so it’s good timing. Lots of howling.”

“Good.” I pivot away from him as I head back down the hall to the bathroom from before.

The driver doesn’t follow me, but when I exit the bathroom, my hands and thighs wiped clean of Andrew’s blood, he’s waiting there. He takes one look at me and tilts his head to the side.

“You know,” he starts, “when you first put out the call to hire us, I didn’t think you’d have the guts to really follow through with all of this.”

I meet his gaze. “You think it takes guts to kill someone?” I ask sarcastically, my lips twisting in some possessed form. I shake my head. “It doesn’t take guts to kill someone. It takes absolutely nothing. People kill every day. They just pretend like they don’t.”

He frowns, staring back at me as dark brown brows make an appearance in the cut-out holes of his mask.

I turn away from him and look out the back doors of the house—twin sliding glass panes. “Man is the most violent of all animals,” I say. “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” I laugh and turn, striding for the doors as I spot his comrades, dragging a slack Andrew through the dirt and grass. “We’ve been blind for so long—blind to ourselves and the cancer that we are. We fight. We fuck. We kill each other just for fun.”

“If that’s true, then why are you doing this?” he asks, stepping in front of me and grasping the handle of the door, opening it for me.

“I’m only doing what’s right,” I say. “This is justice.”

I step into the backyard, inhaling the scent of wet earth and rusty blood. “Thisis justice?” It’s clear from the man’s tone that he’s still confused and he doesn’t quite understand what I mean.

“Question for you,” I prompt him as I follow behind the two others as they continue to drag Andrew towards the line of trees several yards far back into the darkness. “If you restarted your life, do you think you’d end up where you are now?”

The man at my side keeps his steps even. “Depends,” he says. “Would I still have my memories of this life?”

I shake my head, and he goes silent.

Several moments pass and he doesn’t answer until we’ve reached the others and stopped as they drop an untied Andrew onto the ground. His naked ass shines in the moonlight, white and filthy. I grimace.

“If I had no idea that this life would turn into what it is, no memory of already living it,” he says, “I don’t see how I could ever change my decisions to lead me somewhere else.”

“Exactly,” I reply. I step closer to Andrew and hold my hand out. One of the others hands me a small bottle. I uncap it and wrinkle my nose at the smell inside. As I turn the bottle over and dump the murky brown contents over Andrew’s back, he jerks and whimpers in pain. Rabbit blood doesn’t feel good in his wounds, I’m sure.

“We only get one life,” I continue, emptying the last of the liquid before handing the bottle back, cap and all. “Which means we only get one chance to make the decisions that we do. There’s no redo.” I close my eyes and think back to an old book I’d once read. Something to keep my mind from drifting into the eternal absence of real people that expected nothing of me save for companionship as I sat, alone, in that house in Plexton. “‘If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.’”

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