Short Stories

Learn to listen

I glance at my alarm clock. Half nine. Kelly should have been here an hour ago. She hasn't texted me to say she'll be late or cancel our plans. I hear sirens as a police car and ambulance pass my window. I stand up and pull on my coat, running out of the house. I grab my bike and follow the sound of sirens. It isn't normal for there to be a crime in Riverwood and I want to see what happened.

I stop my bike when I reach the crime scene. I lean my bike against a nearby wall and go closer, freshly settled snow crunching under my feet. I look into the alleyway and see Kelly. She normally stands up straight but now she's curled into herself, crying. A police officer comes over to me.

"Move along, nothing to see here," She says.

"I know that girl, she's my girlfriend." I hope she lets me talk to Kelly.

"It's okay, you can tell her," Kelly mutters through sobs. 

What the police officer tells me makes me feel sick to my stomach. I can't imagine what Kelly's going through. All I can do is support her and hope she recovers. 

It's taken months but we finally found the man who hurt Kelly. We know his name, where he lives, his place of work, his family. We take action tonight. He won't know half the pain he put Kelly through but she'll get her revenge. The police dropped the investigation so it's up to us. We know for certain this is the guy.

We go up to the house. It's nice. Too nice for a man like Todd Smith. Kelly slips through a window. I pass her the jerry can that we filled with petrol. As I go around, locking all the doors and most of the windows, locking all but the one Kelly entered the house through, Kelly pours the petrol around the house, in every room. Around half an hour later she comes back out through the window. I get a matchbox out of my pocket and get out a match. 

"Are you sure you want to be part of this?" I ask, lighting the match. 

"Yeah," Kelly replies, taking my free hand.

I throw the match into the house through the window. We run hand in hand. After we get a safe distance away we stop and watch the house burn. I smile as I hear the screams of his wife and kids. I see Kelly smile too. After a few weeks, it will be time for phase two. 

Our work has been all over the news. The time has come for the second part of our plan. 

I tuck a strand of my short, blue hair behind my ear as Kelly puts her long, black hair in a bun. We pull on gloves.

"You look good in black," I tell her, a smile on my face.

"So do you." She smiles back.

"Thank you, I wear it when I murder creeps." 

Kelly chuckles a little, picking up a baseball bat. I pick up a crowbar. 

"Let's go," Kelly says, pulling a ski mask over her head. I nod, putting a mask on too. 

We walk behind Todd, the sound of rain masking our footsteps. Kelly raises the bat over her head and brings it down, knocking Todd out. We drag him to Kelly's house. We wait. 

Todd wakes up, confused. 

"I told you to stop repeatedly. You should learn to listen." Kelly says. She proceeds to hit him in the stomach with the baseball bat. I join in. We beat Todd to death, slowly and painfully. It's the death he deserves. We cut his body up into little pieces and feed him to Kelly's pigs. I go into a nearby forest and bury the crowbar. 

We stand by a fire. We're burning the baseball bat, the masks, the gloves and the clothes we were wearing. I love fire.

Kelly goes to medical school. The bodies they use get burned after class. Kelly took the parts of Todd the pigs didn't eat and sewed them into one of the bodies earlier today. If they survive the fire nobody will question it. The police haven't even suspected us, they have no reason too. We're just two innocent university students.