Revenge to The Devil

I just woke up in the middle of the night. They had given me sedatives but they had begun to wear off. Troy was sitting in the chair beside me. He was half asleep but, the minute that I sat up, he sat up too. He looked at me excitedly and began to call for the doctor.

As soon as the doctor arrived, the first question that I asked him was, 'Is my child alright?"

"You can relax," the doctor laughed. "Your baby is as fit as a fiddle."

The doctor's words echoed in my brain: Fit as a fiddle. Fit as a fiddle. Fit as a fiddle. My head began to feel heavy and it occurred to me that the doctor had increased my dosage of morphine. I laughed at the beautiful colors all around me, but I couldn't tell if the laughter was real.

A shadow appeared at the doorway suddenly and approached my bed. My eyes were closed and I couldn't open them, but I could sense the shadows proximity to me by the heat that is expelled. It took my hand then, and I felt safe for the first time in at least a couple of days.

He leaned in and whispered in my ear. "The people we lose," he said, "are never as far away as they seem."

I didn't know how long I had slept. I woke up a few times and I could tell that Troy would not leave my side. Sometimes he asked me if I was hungry, but I shook my head in negation. I wasn't hungry.

Early the next morning, the shadow came to visit me one last time. What he said to me was too personal to speak of, but it gave the resolve to open my eyes. It is time to stop hiding, I thought to myself.

I was thirsty, so I asked Troy to get me a glass of water. He got up quickly and filled a cup from the sink. When he returned, I placed my hand over his and said, "You don't have to worry about me. I won't try to take my own life ever again."

There was some paperwork to be completed but, once it had finished, everything that had been Jonathan's had been transferred to me. In the original will and testimony, Troy was set to take half of everything, but he signed it over to me. He said that he didn't need it and that, since I was going to be a single mother, it was only right that it all goes to me.

"There is one more reason to give it to you," he'd told me, "and that is to clear my name. If I took anything from him or you, the rumor that I assassinated him would persist."

At first, I didn't want to sign the paperwork. It felt like doing so would be the final nail on Jonathan's coffin. If I don't sign, I thought to myself, it won't be true. He wouldn't be dead.

Finally, I signed it, and I did up a will of my own. If anything were to happen to me, I wanted Troy to take care of my child. At that point, half of everything would go to him and the other half would be put in a trust for my child.

As I signed, I cried and Troy held me. That was September 19th, 2018. The day after that, I killed the man who killed my man. He knew my intentions and yet he'd come. I brought my knife and he submitted it. Even now, I wonder what led him to kill. It is clear to me though, why he had allowed me to take his like. I'd looked straight into his eyes as I slit his throat and, what I saw was guilt; crippling guilt.

My lawyer visited me later that day with my copy of all of the documents that I'd signed the day before. Before he left, he said, "Mrs. Li, Mr. Yang wants to deal with your affairs from now on. I would recommend this plan. He is much more familiar with your case than I am. If you are agreeable, he can begin to sell all of Jonathan's property and shares and deposit the profit into a Swiss bank."

He offered me another document and I signed it. Before he left, he looked at me curiously and said, "I hope that I'm not crossing any boundaries, but are you okay? You don't look well…"

"I haven't slept since I left the hospital on September 16th," I admitted.

"That was four days ago," the lawyer gasped.

I began to explain that I was fine, but I wasn't, and my body chose that moment to call me out on my lie. Suddenly head began to spin and, the next thing I knew, I was falling. The lawyer caught me, but I wouldn't be cognizant of it until two days had passed when I woke up in the hospital.

When I found Troy sitting by my side, I began to cry. After crying for a while, I wiped my tears and said to Troy, "I don't deserve you."

"Are you hungry," Troy wondered, ignoring my self-deprecation. "I can tell that you are," he laughed. "What can I get for you?"

"You choose," I sighed. If he brought me food, I would eat it. If he didn't, I hardly felt motivated. Ever since I'd checked out of the hospital, I'd been having night terrors and they'd only gotten worse since I'd killed Jonathan's killer. In my dreams, it was Jonathan's neck that I cut and I woke up screaming.

Troy brought me a Big Mac meal, which I scarfed down. The doctor brought me some vitamins and said, "If you want your baby to live, you need to take care of your own body."

I felt like the whole world stood in judgment of me, and found me guilty.

I hung my head in shame but said nothing. Somehow, I had forgotten that I was pregnant.

Later that night, when Troy and I were alone, he looked at me and said, "the last time we were here, you told me that I don't have to worry about you. You said that you wouldn't try to take your own life ever again. I took you at your word…"

"I am trying my best," I sighed, "but it feels like I'm standing in the middle of an eight-lane highway during rush hour. There are four lanes on either side, facing in opposite directions. The things I want and need are sitting by the side of the road, within eyesight, but I can't get to them. I am stuck. I want to eat but when I do, I throw up. I want to sleep, but I have night terrors. I can't even read a book because everything around me steals my attention and the words swim on the page. Whenever I try to step out of my safety zone in the direction of the roadside, someone pulls me back. What I am doing looks like self-harm to them. When they see me on the meridian though, from the safety of the roadside, they tell themselves, "He could cross easily, if he tried!"

Troy took my hand and squeezed it.

That night, as I lay on my bed, listening to the vague voice of the toilet, my body trembled as the sedatives kicked in. I couldn't help but wonder if this was how the rest of my life would be. If it was, I wondered, was it worth living, even if I had a child…

I got out of bed early the next morning and crept out of the room while Troy was still asleep. As I walked the hallways, down the elevator, and out to the street, I was asked frequently where I was going.

"I need a cigarette," I replied. I was lucky that no one asked to see my cigarette. I couldn't believe how lax the security – after all, they'd written ACTIVELY SUICIDAL on my chart.

A taxi pulled up. I got in and asked the driver to take me to the cemetery. He pulled out into the street and I began to cry. It wasn't until we'd pulled up to the gate that I began to pull myself together. I looked at the driver and said, "I don't have any money."

The driver looked at me with compassion and he said, "I know, but it is not a problem. We all have bad days. Would you like me to wait here for you?"

I thanked the man and declined his offer. Somehow I would make my way.

The taxi driver was a good man and, as I found my way to Jonathan's place of rest, I wished him good luck.

There were fresh flowers at Jonathan's plot. There wasn't a marker yet, but it didn't matter. A marker wouldn't make him any less dead. I didn't know why I'd come though, so I simply sat. "It must be lonely," I began. "You were a good man. I don't know what to say. It isn't right that you are gone while so many bad men remain."

I paused there. In truth, I didn't believe that Jonathan was there. It was more likely that he was nowhere. "From dust, you have come," I sighed, "and to dust you will return…"

Troy sat down beside me and I turned to him as if I had expected him. "Should we talk?" he wondered.

"No," I replied. "I have said all that I know to say. I am what I am, and no one can save me from myself…"

"If you don't want to talk," he said, "Then I will tell you a story."

"Fuck your story," I sighed unkindly.

"When we were in England; you, me, and Jonathan, I found this story in a wrack at a café. I read it to Jonathan and we both laughed. Anyways, the story begins with a lonely hedgehog who often walked to the river by himself. Everywhere he looked he saw beauty, and he appreciated the silence. The willows swayed gently in the breeze and, occasionally, the young hedgehog would stop and look at his reflection in the water, and he would fall into a trance.

"The fish felt bad because he had made the hedgehog's life worse than it had been, so the fish pet hedgehog and warmed its heart. They did this every day until it was pointed out to them that they were in love. Of course, they knew that this was not a usual relationship, but they decided that they didn't care.

"One day though, God came down and pointed out something that they had been aware of all along. They had not been able to fully be together properly because of the hedgehog's quills. It had never bothered the hedgehog before but now that God had pointed it out to him, he couldn't stop thinking about.

"Eventually, he plucked out all of his quills.

"Now that the hedgehog had pulled out all of his quills, the fish was eager to embrace him in a way she never had before. One thing the fish now noticed though, was something that had always been obvious to the hedgehog, and that was that whenever they were intimate, the hedgehog went to the fish and it was never the other way around.

"Eventually this thought became so unbearable to the fish that she called down God and explained their problem. Hearing their story, God shrugged. He told the fish that he had no feet, that he had not been born with feet, and that nothing – not even God – could change that.

"The fish thought about it and asked God if their love was unnatural. God laughed at that and told them that love is never unnatural, even if is between a fish and a hedgehog.

"Seeing how much the fish loved the hedgehog, he directed her to swim out into the deep water. Once she was there, her shimmering scales gradually disappeared."