Sweet Revenge thriller

Chapter Two

'GUNNED DOWN!' MASKED MAN SHOWED NO MERCY!' - The local paper's headlines.

'Blood bath – Elderly Couple Gunned Down!' - The National paper's headlines.

Two bullets and my life as I knew it, was over.

I was there. I was in my parent's Chemist Shop when a masked man crashed in and started shooting.

I saw it all.

The sound of the gun shots were horrendous.

The screams of horror were agonising.

There was so much blood.

And then nothing.

* * *

I awake in hospital. I'd hit my head against a cabinet when I crashed to the floor in shock. I am not able to function. I lay in bed unable to talk to anyone while the image plays over and over in my head. Every bone in my body aches and I see again and again the hideous carnage that took my parent's lives. Nurses dress the gash at the back of my head and replace the bandage. Doctors and police drift in and out. But I communicate with no-one, curled up into some dark place in my mind.

My long-term friend Lila has flown from Venice to be with me. Lila sits by my bedside, day and night. I hear her voice, soft and sad. I know she will be saying words she hopes will comfort me. But there is no comfort. How could there be? I do not respond in any way except with mournful moaning I cannot keep trapped inside of me which echoes around the sterile white walls of my private room. I am grief stricken...and the succession of pain reverberating is unending.

Each morning I awake after a fitful night and see a blur heading toward the windows. I decide it is a nurse and just before they swish the curtains open I rack up my moaning as a warning. There will be no sunshine in this hospital room. I need to be enclosed in darkness, shadow. I hear Lila speak, 'Sorry,' she says and I don't know why she is saying sorry to a nurse.

I don't know why I have been spared. Why didn't they take my life too? To be alive, knowing what happened, I am living in hell. Every second of my waking existence, I want to die.

I plan how I could die. As soon as I leave this place, I could step out into traffic on the motorway. Or earlier...when Lila goes to the bathroom, I could hurl myself out the window, although we may be on the ground floor, I have no idea. The nurses are giving me sleeping pills and medication to calm me and I could start stacking them up and take them all at once. All over. But, I dismiss this method as while I'm hoarding the pills without the numbing effect, my hell would be far too vivid. I need them desperately.

What I really want is my own meds. They are mind blowing in terms of zonking me out when my head is filled with angst paranoia. I freaking well need them now! But they are in my cabinet in my apartment and through my haze when a Doctor first checked me over, I heard him say they would be giving me a complete new prescription while I was in hospital, which I have discovered are nowhere near as effective.

Lila lifts my head and spoon feeds me soup or some tasteless liquid. She wipes spillage from my lips, mops my brow and then her soothing chatter recommences amid my sporadic moans.

On the fourth morning Lila bends over me and shakes my shoulders. I open my eyes. Her long dark hair flicks softly across my face. She's crying. Well, fuck me! Aren't we all?

'She, your mother, always called you her little warrior. This...' and Lila slowly sweeps her sad eyes over my limp body curled up into the foetal position with most of me laying underneath the hospital blankets, '...is NOT how a warrior behaves!' She brushes my dirty blond hair off my forehead with her fingers, then she storms across the floor and pulls the curtains wide in a dramatic swish. Sheets of light flood the hospital room.