Just a lil background here :)
This was written as a short story for one of my classes. We were studdying Hamlet & the theme was to come up with a tale of revenge.
I tossed up once lengthening it out but not sure whether I wish to or not to, even though I had a couple of friends that kept bugging me about it. So this is the version I got marked on.
First part here & I'll upload the 2nd part later on.
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Whenever she felt the urge to give in, Jessica sat beside the wooden crate on the cold concrete floor. Gently, her fingertips would caress the jumbled letters scrawled across the stone in blood. First the beginning of the D, all the way down the line until she came to the jaggered line that petered off into a smudge. It looked as if his strength had disappeared, leaving nothing more to do than give up.
She sat there now, listening to the wind rush past the small basement windows. She hated the sound it made as the window panes rattled in the old wooden frames. The letters spoke too. They screamed out to her in rage. The screams filled her head until she thought she would go mad from the sound. She knew what the screams wanted. They wanted revenge.
Now that the time had come, Jessica wasn't so sure that she wanted to do it. The Slashers kept telling her that when she found Frank's killer, she was to dust him. She was to show courage, power and turn away from any pleas for forgiveness with a stoney heart. After all, did the killer deserve a break after gunning down one of their own? The gang kept telling her she owed it to Frank. He was after all, her own flesh and blood.
To the Slashers, family was the most important thing in the world. Your family was the most sacred thing of all, held above all else. The Slashers were also family and they looked after each other, even when the rest of the world turned its back and said 'we don't give a damn.' But this was different because Frank was a part of her. Having shared the same mother, it made it Jessie's responsibility to hunt down the bastard who gunned him down in this very basement. To track down the coward who had snuck up behind him and shot him point blank. Frank was only doing what he did every evening - waiting for Jessie to return from wandering the streets.
A wave of longing swept over her. She wanted Frank! She wanted the big brother who used to tuck her into her sleeping bag next to Ronald the bear, kissing her forehead with soft butterfly kisses. She wanted to hear him singing beside her as they strolled around the streets, looking for their next meal. She wanted him to protect her from the rest of the world, a world that had pushed her aside as if she was last weeks garbage. After her mum left, her brothers Frank and Damien were all she had left. They looked after her long after she was able to take care of herself. She remembered the fights. In the end, Damien gave up but Frank was another story. Frank refused to let Jessie take on the same amount of responsibility the others shared. He said she was still only fifteen and a child. He wanted her to enjoy being the little girl that she was, and should be.
But she was no longer that little girl Frank used to fawn over and protect. Someone had seen to that when they pulled the trigger aimed at her brother. No one said who, but they knew it was one of their group. They knew that another Slasher had violated their own code. Damien reckoned it had to be one of the new guys and that they should all be systematically eliminated until one of them squealed. According to him, the newbies always squealed quicker and higher than anyone else. Like a little piggy being lead to its death, Damien used to say. He said that only someone with no sense of family or justice would gun down a nice guy like Frank Hallow.
Jessie had thought it would be easy. Uncover the rat, shoot him in the head and move on. Justice would be served and Frank's death avenged. But it wasn't so easy. Trixie Donnell heard it all. She was outside the door. No one knew that she was involved with Frank. She didn't think it would go down with the others so well. Frank was a family man and wasn't supposed to be scoring it big with the chicks. I didn't even know Frank was seeing the petite blonde with sparkling blue eyes and a fog horn laugh that filled any sized room. Jessie could hear Trixie's words now, even as she sat there, rubbing her fingers over the letters, faster and faster. It had shattered Jessie's safe little world forever.
"He did it!" she had shrieked. "He pulled the trigger and never looked back."
Above her, she heard the door open and the sound of heavy feet on the rotting steps. She pretended not to hear. If she ignored them, maybe it would all go away. Maybe he would go away.
"What's the word little girl?"
Jessie couldn't put it off any longer. She had to look into the eyes of someone who could kill their own family. She had to know if it were true. Slowly, she looked up, her eyes shifting from his sparkling eyes to his wide smile.
"Murder," she whispered softly.
