Vengeance
It was dark outside, but the moon illuminated the sky. James Florence had a strange feeling that someone was following him. He turned around, but nobody was there. Maybe he just couldn’t see anything. Then, he heard a crack behind him. He stopped and looked behind him again. As he suspected, nobody was there. Now he was getting really nervous. “Maybe it was just a tree branch falling”, he said to himself. However, once he started walking he heard it again. It sounded like somebody was walking over leaves. The crunching was getting closer. It was getting louder. It was getting faster. He started to walk faster. Then, he started running. The crunching was getting louder and louder every step he took. He heard a growling noise behind him. It sounded like it was a dog, but he couldn’t tell. Then, when the beast stepped into the moonlight he realized it was his dog, Bear. He realized that Bear had followed him from his house. Bear was a black lab with a white spot on its left paw, and a white spot on its right ear. Bear was just over three years old. James had gotten him about two years ago. He told Bear to go home. Bear whimpered, but then started walking back into the shadows. After a minute or two, James heard a whimper, and then a squeal. There was silence. “Bear”, James called. He heard nothing. He started walking to where he heard Bear last. He saw a red substance on the ground in front of him. He touched it, and the red substance was slimy and stuck to his finger. That’s when James realized it was blood. He was not yet sure whose blood it was. Then he saw Bear. Bear lied there like a rotten tree stump. He ran next to Bear and realized he had stab wounds in his stomach and neck. A tear ran down James’ face. Then he heard crunching behind him, and then everything went black.
When James awoke, he wasn’t sure where he was. James was a criminal. He was charged with murder. Seven years ago, when James was twenty four years of age, he saw a woman that was alone in an alley. She was later identified as Bella Margaux. She came to America, from France, for a career. She realized that it was harder than she thought it would be, so she got the easiest job that she could. She applied for a job at Club Paradise to be a dancer. She got the job a week later and it offered good pay. She had worked there for almost nine months when she got in a fight with another dancer over stealing money. Bella was fired and told to never come back to Club Paradise. All she had was twenty three dollars and forty two cents. She had nothing left, no home, no friends, no job, and very little money. She was forced to live in an alley and feed off of the scraps that were thrown out in the dumpster. She never knew how much Americans wasted. There was so much food for her every night. Half of a burrito, some French fries leftover, parts of fruit, hamburgers, pizza, and sometimes the occasional steak was thrown out for her. For a drink she had to check the recycling bin. Usually, it had water, soda, or some kind of alcoholic beverage in it. She lived like this for a year and five months. It wasn’t what she wanted, but she was able to stay alive, that is until James came along. James needed money because all of it was wasted on drugs. He was addicted to anything he could get his hands on, heroin, cocaine, pot, anything that was available. He saw Bella in that alley and figured that she had money. As he approached her he called to her. She turned around and asked who was there. He grabbed her and then said he would kill her if she didn’t give him all of her money. She told him that she didn’t have any money, so he stabbed her in the stomach and then in the neck. He searched her dead body and found nothing, not even a penny. That is when he heard the sirens. He freaked out and ran out of the alley and right in front of a police car. He was arrested for suspicious activity. Later, he found out that the police were there because there was a suspected arson. The police found the body of Bella and searched the crime scene for fingerprints. They found James’ fingerprints on the knife that he dropped when he ran, and he was found guilty of murder. When James got out of jail he turned a new leaf. He got a job and was done with drugs forever. After James woke up he thought that this was karma for what he had done. There was a lump on his head from when he was knocked unconscious. He couldn’t see anything, and didn’t know where he was. He started to feel around, and he felt something that was rectangular and had an engraving on it. Then, he felt something that was like a cylinder. The cylindrical thing had a switch on it. He pushed the switch up and a bright light shone in his face. It was a flashlight. He shone the light where the rectangular thing was. The rectangular thing was a lighter. He looked at the engravings on the lighter and saw a phone number. To the right of him was a cell phone. He decided to figure out where he was. He was on his back and he tried to sit up, but he hit his head on something. He shone the flashlight up and saw what looked like wood. Then, he looked around him and saw he was inside what seemed to be a box. Then the phone rang. It was an unknown number on the display. James answered it and heard nothing at first. Then a deep voice started to talk to him,” You will pay for what you did.” “What do you mean?” James asked. He heard nothing and saw that the other person hung up. There was a note to the left of him that said,” If you do not find a way to escape within forty eight hours then you will die.” As he read this he could hear the voice on the phone inside his head saying this to him. He tried scratching on the wood, but nothing happened. He thought about lighting the box on fire and trying to escape, but that might kill him. He tried to get the voice out of his head, but it just kept saying what he read. There was a clock in the bottom corner of the box that had a time on it, and the time was decreasing. There was only eleven hours, fifty nine minutes, and six seconds left on the clock.
He realized he fell asleep and he only had half of a day left to get out. The phone rang again. James answered it and heard the voice say,” Did you have a nice nap? You only have half of a day left, tick tock.” “What do you want from me?” screamed James. The voiced replied saying,” I want you to feel what I felt.” Then the voice hung up. James didn’t understand what the voice meant. Then he remembered in court that the girl’s father was there. He said to him that he would pay, that he would feel his pain. This must have been her father. “He wants me to try to burn my way out of this box and suffer while I do this”, James thought. James started to burn the bottom of the box with the lighter. It lit, and then the fire was everywhere. He couldn’t stop it. It was up to his head in seconds. James screamed in agony, the pain was unreal. Finally the wood disintegrated at the bottom and he tried to kick his way out, but something was blocking the way. It was a piece of metal that seemed to be welded around the wooden box. James could smell the flesh of his own body burning. The hair that was on his head was no longer there. The flesh on his legs had disintegrated to nothing; all that was left was the bone. He could feel the blood inside of him bubbling and then evaporating. In his last seconds of life he looked behind him and saw a camera slowly melting. There was somebody watching him the whole time. On the other side of the crate was Bella’s father. As he watched James die he sat there with a look of satisfaction. He had gotten his revenge. In James’ last breath he yelled and said, “Someone will avenge me. You forgot about the phone. I called somebody that will seek vengeance and they will have no mercy on your soul.” As James said this Bella’s father was nervously walking away from the metal box that was welded together, thinking about what James had said. Then he had a feeling that someone was following him. He glanced behind him and saw that nobody was there. Then, he heard leaves crunching behind him.
By: Ryan Parpagene