Vindicta: The Beginning of Bloodshed (Elsa Yi)

Vindicta

With each step, the scratched wooden panes of the stairs screeched and strained under her sole.

With each touch of the rusty steel railing, dust coated her fingertips.

With each dreading meter of her descent, she passed by the cracked frames of monochrome pictures.

With each passing of the frames on the cracked walls, vengeance flashed in her soul. 

And with each flash of passionate vengeance, she felt the weight of her spirit grow more unbearable—not that it wasn't already filled with lead.

That soul wasn't even sure she was a "she." Most memories of her past life had already emptied out to satisfy the hysteria filling her heart. Her soul couldn't even remember the most basic details of that life. That may be why the vessel containing that soul had no name, why it was forced to assign its own gender. It liked to think itself a girl, simply because this was an often-underestimated gender, with a living demon clawing at the roots of the flowers beneath the petals, often only appearing when life, ever so delicate, had burned up with a girl's essence taking the demon as the only form left. Whatever gender it is, it had decided, was better than being called an "it."

"A soul with no memories is an unascending soul." That statement could not technically apply to her, as she did have one memory: one of anger, one of hatred, one of vengeance. She could also remember a name, Jonathan Banquesta, as clearly as the day she might have heard it, not that she remembered the day, or that she remembered hearing it. And she remembered her hatred of the name. Hatred was a strong word, not even mildly near how much she despised the name. She also remembered the face associated with the name. A man with bushy well-groomed facial hair and periwinkle eyes. This was another one of her vivid memories; the look of the man whom she hated so.

Of course, she didn't remember why she wanted to take vengeance on the man at the beginning, but using letters, pictures, and the blood stained on the abandoned concrete road; she soon pieced together the fact that the man had purposefully run into the car her family was driving, with her family inside, that caused their unfortunate passing. The man was rich, a letter from the court had written, and corrupted the judge to not pass fair judgement. None of that matters, she decided; she'll play judge, jury, and executioner herself, punishing the judge, too, for playing unfair, as well as that Jonathan man.

Every day, she would find the endless supply of time to sit on the old rocking chair that sat at the back of her room, old, dusty, with the stuffing spilt out eons ago. She sat there and sharpened her black steel dagger, polishing it, and it seemed to be the only thing that looked to be in good shape in the whole house. She sharpened it in hopes that, one day, the dagger would be embedded in Jonathan's throat. So she waited, she waited patiently, for her time to arrive, she had forever and a day, all the time in the world, so her source of occasional impatience was never the length of her own time, no. It was the length of Jonathan's. She wanted to slaughter the man herself, and his parents, and his siblings, and his children, and his grandchildren. Old age was too good for him to send him to death, so she hoped that he would not wait, hoped that he would have eternal youth not as a blessing but as a curse, as it often was.

The judge was easy work. A vapid challenge. She sneered as he screamed in pain, yes, pain. Direct death was too good for him, he was the creator of all this pain and inflicted it on himself. It was a pity he had a weak heart. It was such a greater pity that he died so soon, that he could take so little, that he had no family. She would be more careful of the other man, she decided, so he would last longer, offer her more amusement. She would finish him off by tearing him limb by limb; after all, it was an eye for an eye, a leg for a leg, an arm for an arm, a life for a life. Except he wouldn't just pay for her life—he would pay for her family's too. A family for a family.

She didn't know what she saw when she loomed over the mirror each day. Sure, it might have been her reflection, that overshadowed face in the glass, features undistinguishable. The figure she saw was humanoid. Lying flat on the ground, she could easily be mistaken for a shadow, and she was, in a sense, a shadow of her past self. However, she was becoming less humanoid by the day, by the hour, by the minute, by the second. Slowly becoming something of a monster, a beast, a killer for vengeance. Not that she cared; she knew that the man who had killed her family was the monster of all monsters.

There was a reason the roads were so quiet, the houses so empty, the whole town so abandoned. The reason was because the townspeople had moved, Jonathan Banquesta included, to escape her hysterical hunt for revenge. Day and night, people dropped dead, the rest fleeing the place in hope of mercy. She knew that, to them, she was the villain, a murderess, but she would show them. Show them who the real cause of this was. The real reason for this desolation where she resided alone.

She waited day and night for him to appear. She polished, sharpened, and waited... Before she realized that the reason for all this vengeance was not because she wanted to avenge her dead family. It was because she herself was thirsty for blood. So she hunted harder, instead of stopping, in hopes of quenching her thirst. She no longer cared for her family, or the revenge for them. The man wasn't just the murderer of her family; he was the killer of her entity, her identity. Her hate for him was the only thing that kept her from ascending, and the only way to put out that fiery hatred for the man was to drag him down with her—to the underworld.

She really was the essence of Vindicta.