A life forsaken – A short story

Revenge is a dish best served cold - Old Kinglon Proverb.

“Someone once said to me that when dying people see incoherent snatches of their own life flash across in their memories like the debris that are thrown out of a cyclone moving across a city. Some poetic shit …. Aye…. Some crap face must have invented it when he was too drunk to shut his fucking trap. Well…… I never had a chance to experiment myself. Huh……… Some luck on my part I guess….. But never mind…… Since you are now at that juncture tell me…. Are you seeing your own shitty life flashing by Mr. Gangster?”

He paused and leaned forward trying to judge the expression on the face of his foe who was propped up on the wall slowly bleeding from a mortal wound in his belly. His eyes were smoldering with pure hatred and spite that gave an uncanny aura to his face that was frozen in a malicious grin. Sensing that his victim was slowly slipping into unconsciousness he slapped him hard across his face.

Smack. Smack. Smack. Smack.

The sound of the open hand delivering the brutal blow in repetitions seemed to have had a calming effect on the instigator who then sat hunched near his victim and after a few seconds of admiring his handiwork with complete satisfaction, lit a cigarette. He then blew the smoke over his victim’s face. Sensing the warm pungent smell of the cigarette, the so called gangster slowly opened his tired, blood shot eyes which slowly focused on the face of the aggressor who with a rushing flourish of gratification resumed his monologue.

“Better listen to me fucker or else I will make you spend your last moments in the worst bearable agony and don’t worry I took care to see that you will live long enough to hear me out.…………..……. I can still remember the day you murdered my family in front of me and disfigured my face.” He paused closing his eyes trying to remember. Hmhmhmhm…. I even remember your exact words. Do you???? Of course how the fuck can you remember? You were too busy making jokes with your gangster buddies. You said – Don’t take it personally shithead. Its just business and once in a while when people get out of line, they need be to made an example of. How else could you be sure that nobody is playing you for an ass?”

“And you left me there to die. Huh you fucking beat me to death and destroyed my family for selling a few bucks worth of dope behind your back. Huh…. How more considerate you could have been? My family for my own betrayal. Huh…………. but you never thought that I would survive. Did you fuck face? I bet not. Hmhmhm……..Who would have thought a tramp would be a life saver. You know what ………even I was surprised to come back alive after what you did to me.”

“But I was clear in one thing. I wanted vengeance. A complete vendetta. An eye for an eye.”

He stood up, paced around the ground with a renewed vigor and then in a surge of fury, he kicked his victim right on his wound and sent him sprawling across the dry muddy floor. He then drew the last puff from the cigarette and threw the stub over bleeding face of the gangster. In a moment or two of silent reminiscence, he sat down near him and took a bottle of brandy from his pocket and had a few slow swigs. He then splashed his enemy’s face with the brandy and laughed rhetorically seeing him flinch.

“Now I have had you. Of course it was not easy to bring down a well established gangster but I fucking did it. I took my own sweet time. And of course I was patient. I had to be. You were no easy a target. But I had to do it. My family had to be avenged. My family……. My family……”

He sobbed and his voice flowed with the tremor of loss.

“I have lost every single thing that made my life worthwhile. My wife, my son, my daughter – killed and even every single moment of joy I remember spending with them pains me eating away my insides. I still can’t digest that they are no longer with me.”

He kneel ed down and wept his heart out. “I have lost them………… I have lost them totally…………… I have lost everything……………… I have lost everything.”

And then he heard it. A dry chuckle – ominous and out of place. The fucking shit head of a gangster is laughing at his loss. With his eyes red in pain and venom he turned to see that the gangster was mumbling something. He went and crouched near his bloody face to hear what he was trying to say. The gangster very slowly drew his breath in the strain to be heard and said in a voice full of painful dull mockery “And when I die you will loss also your only worthwhile enemy”.

He sat there not knowing what to do or how to feel and as he stared into the dead eyes of his enemy, the loneliness of eternity stared back at him. Sparks from the cigarette stub and brandy puddles were taking in charge of the final cremation of the dead body. The fire slowly spread, bit by bit, part by part just the way he had destroyed his enemy turning the temperature to unbearable. He did not move, he did not flinch, he didn’t even cry. His eyes were lost in a distant haze trying to make sense of his own forsaken life.

He died in that fire. A life spent on revenge. A life spent on hating. A life spent on crying over at his loss. Hopefully a life well spent.


The End.




Author’s note:
I have borrowed the kinglon proverb that I have quoted at the starting of the story from the cult movie “KILL BILL” staring Uma Thurman.