Vengeance

• Talia Garrett-benson, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2011

A formidable figure dressed in black, he blended into the bleak night. His cape swirled around a twisted body. The wind picked up, shrieking eerily, blowing back the hood from his face. He had pleasant, yet sorrowful features, frown lines deeply etched into his forehead. Hurrying home from a meeting, he was hunched over against the cold. He entered the dank, dark house; he had never bothered to clean it after inheriting it from his mother, who had inherited from her grandmother. Light streamed out of only one room.

He swiftly strode to his room. He opened the door, and walked to where the old musty clock hung. He fingered it; a family heirloom from his great-grandmother. Its face was yellowed with age, the once fine wood faded; the designs so carefully engraved were worn. There was a key-hole in the back of the clock, the key missing. He was certain that his late wife had known the whereabouts of the key, but she had left no clues. Thinking about his wife made his fists clench, and the lines in his face deepen. She had broken his heart and threw it onto the ground for another man. He was glad that she was disposed of safely.

He left the room quickly and silently, walking hurriedly to the lighted room, his hands fingering the knife in his pocket. He had a feeling that this was the place that his wife had hidden the key. He feverishly searched the drawers, moving to the bed, the wardrobe, and the floorboards. In a last desperate attempt, he looked in the bookshelf. Breath quickening, he saw the key that was in his great-grandmother’s paintings.

The sound of the opening door startled him, more so when the girl walked in. Grabbing the key, he made a split second decision. He pounced on her, knife finding her heart. The wealth from what the key would unlock was not hers to possess or even to share with him. His wife trusting her and not him was the last straw. Revenge and jealousy blackened his heart. Blood pooled from the hole in her chest. She took her last breath, and he speedily left the room, almost running to his. Opening the door, he moved to the clock. Decisively, he put the key into the minute key-hole in the back of the clock. Impatiently, he wrenched it open. Inside lay a beautiful gleaming opal, his great-grandmother’s most precious possession. All different colours swirled in its moon-shine depths.

He took it carefully into his hands, and stood gazing at the vision of wonder it procured. Wealth so vast he could not imagine. Then slowly, his feet somehow walked themselves back to the pink room. Standing in the doorway, his gaze slid to the girl on the floor. Even in death, she was beautiful. Porcelain skin, doll’s face, long golden hair cascading down her back, sea-green eyes closed forever.

“I’m sorry," he said grimly. "But you were too much like your mother.”