HORROR SHORT STORY: REVENGE...a bullied teen exacts revenge at school...
The slant of the rising sunlight upon the window of her bathroom gleamed across Hera’s dead expression. She had not slept the night through and felt wired still. Beneath the thin veneer of normalcy, Hera was fuming with savage rage in her chest. Despite the roil of instability growing within her, Hera felt calm also. A tense calmness but calmness still. She moved robotically and felt utterly distant from herself. Two fingers went into her facepaint and she smeared black across her face. Painting with black and white, she drew a skull onto her face, covering the bruise on her cheek that her father had inflicted upon her only a day before. A shade of death, Hera bared her teeth at herself and chomped at the air for a few moments. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, holding it, and then releasing through her mouth. Hera meditated on the image of her high school classmates. The whispers and giggles. The eyes boring through her with ridicule. The jokes at her expense, at her poverty, at her adolescent acne, at her overweight body. A sea of vitriol, churning and raging, rose within her and she swallowed it back down. Tears of suffering trembled upon her delicate eyelashes and her face twitched with pain. But this wouldn’t do. It was too late to feel emotion. The release of revenge propelled herself forward. Hera grabbed the two handguns she had taken from her alcoholic father’s closet. She tucked them behind in her waistband and filled her jacket pockets with extra clips. She pulled out a shotgun and slung it onto her back. Following that, she holstered an axe against her back as well. She had basic knowledge of guns from her father and felt comfortable with them. Then, she walked down the stairs and saw her father passed out drunk on the beat up couch they had found at the dumpster. The thin walls rattled in their government housing studio apartment. Hera had come down in time to see her mother exhaling out smoke from her crack pipe. Her mother took down a swig of vodka and looked at Hera with bleary eyes. “The fuck did you do to your face?” she slurred with disdain. Hera raised a gun and shot her mother in the gut. The gun popped, cracking the air for a brief moment. Blood bloomed upon her yellow shirt and disbelief in her eyes before the screaming of pain. Her mother fell forward onto the ground, choking on blood through her screams. Hera swung her leg back and swiftly kicked her in the gut, sending waves of pain through her mother. A lifeless grin stretched across Hera’s cheeks and her eyes glistened with anticipation and delight. Without a word, Hera shot her point blank into the face twice, destroying an eye and making a hole in her skull that was still smoking. The sounds of the gun finally roused her father abruptly and he shot upwards from his position on the couch. He looked at her with blood-shot and bleary eyes, still swaying from alcohol. Before he could make a move, Hera shot him in the face. Hera felt cold, very cold. She twisted her faucet of emotions to close, only faint droplets of feeling remained within her. Hera left her apartment and walked to school calmly, ignoring the stares at her painted face. A light smile graced her lips. Peace above the ocean of insanity, Hera was treading water. People in cars looked at her strangely as she passed but she felt nothing. The promise of satiation beckoned her feet forward. Nothing would stop this momentum. After ten minutes of walking at a steady pace, she came into view of her high school. Terrible memories only existed here and she felt inflamed at the sight. She opened the entrance and entered. It was deep in the morning and the hallways were empty as classes were in session. The sound of her boots upon the ground echoed softly in the silence. She observed the emptiness of the halls that would soon become a monkey zoo of adolescent depravity and ridicule. Oh! How many times had she walked these halls as people mocked her, glanced at her with giggles, stared with dull eyes of judgment? Hera was fat. She had acne. She came from a poor family. Her eyeglasses were five years old. Every word from her lips were a mistake, every smile too crooked with suffering, every breath in her chest too tight, so tight that it was close to snapping. Hera breathed in deeply through her nose, held the breath for three pauses and then released out her mouth. She gently shook off the cobwebs of sane thoughts and descended back into the blackness. Hera slowly walked to the administration office. She opened the door into the room and stood before Mrs. Atkins, the receptionist. Atkins was on the phone, distracted as Hera raised her gun and aimed at Atkins in the head. She chatted on, watching the screen of her computer while typing. Atkins turned slightly, saw Hera and her eyes widened as Hera shot her in the face. The phone fell from her hand, clattering on the floor as Atkins slumped forward, dead. The school nurse came around the corner, heard the sound, and bursted in just soon enough to see Hera with the gun and Atkins collapsed on her desk. She screamed and Hera shot her three times in the chest. Blood spurted from the bullet holes, pouring out blood in warm spurts beneath the nurse as she gasped out a few last breaths. A man charged into Hera, knocking her over. He straddled her, struggling for the gun and Hera hissed through her teeth like a feral cat. “Hera! What the fuck are you doing! Give me that gun!” he shouted, it was Mr. Ballacs, the English teacher that had dropped by to leave a note for the office. Hera raised up from their positioning and bit him on the arm, hard. He squealed like a stuck piglet and jumped backwards. The gun slid across the room and Hera took the axe slung against her back and leapt to her feet. Ballacs crawled against the wall begging Hera to not swing that axe. She looked deeply into the fear in those eyes. In them, she saw a screaming void of endless reels of humiliation at her expense. He was the same as the rest of them. The ones that hated her, wanted to break her. Hera roared as she came face to face with him. “You’re fucking disgusting,” she whispered into his ear. “You’re fucking crazy, you’re fucking crazy!” Ballacs screamed out wildly. He began to get up when Hera stomped him twice in the gut, knocking the breath out of him. She swung the axe onto his ankle and had gotten into about half of the bone. She dragged the axe backwards and then chunked his ankle again until it had been cleanly severed. Blood gushed outwards, getting onto Hera’s boots and she watched with fevered fascination at the sight of bone and flesh. Ballacs shrieked and howled in agony, flipping onto his stomach and attempting to crawl away. Blood continued to pump out and Hera slowly walked in the trail of his blood. With death in her hands, she swung the axe of her head and swung it into the meat of his back. He jerked like a broken toy and blood sprayed in her face as she swung it again and again. Even after a long time of no movement, Hera continued to swing, dousing her head to toe in blood. She finally stopped, gasping for breath, her sweat commingling with his blood in a perverse mixture. She picked up her handgun, an image of brutality. Her flesh at her jaw began to stretch and distort as a second row of razor teeth cracked and grew out of her jaw. Hera walked through the office area, saw that no one was there and walked back into the hallway. She held a handgun in her left hand and the bloody axe in the right. She whistled as she dragged the axe against the floor of the school hallways. Blood had soaked into her hair as it dripped down her face. Bloody footprints followed her, recording each movement. Hera began to laugh as she marched forward with the sound of the screeching axe. And then, what was that? Was that a melody joining in with her? Strings, flutes, pianos, a serenade that flowed through her. In this moment she was powerful, a destiny of darkness and insanity. In that instant, a slit formed down her forehead and opened to reveal a black eye with a crimson iris and a single golden pupil. Through it, she perceived reality through foggy panes of filthy windows. Her third eye blinked and observed it all with alien sentience. She walked toward the math class scheduled for her grade to see Mr. Whittaker, the teacher that hated her the most. Hera remembered very well all the times that man had wounded her. When the kids booed Hera while she drew on the whiteboard, struggling with a math problem, Whittaker would watch on with a smirk. On some unconscious level, even Whittaker felt himself despising Hera for all her abysmal social status and embarrassment. Hera’s hand clenched hard on the gun and grinded her teeth slightly in anger. Her face twitched and she released the tension. Very soon that irritating feeling would fade away. Hera reached the classroom and looked through the room for a brief moment. There was Matthew, the one who had coined the nickname of “quarter pounder”. And there was Samantha who had taken secret photos in the locker room of Hera and texted it to the entire high school. Sitting in the back corner was Lacey, the one who had shoved her into a locker and spat on Hera’s face. Hera’s finger curled over the trigger and she burst into the classroom. The class stopped in shock and stared at Hera for a moment before one of them shouted out that “beefy” had made it to class. The entire class laughed aloud and Whittaker frowned at Hera’s appearance. He began to lecture her on dress codes and Hera raised the gun at him. Everyone in the room fell into a stupor at the sight and even the worst of them turned silent. “Hera…is that gun real?” Whittaker said with a grimace. A taste of pleasure moved across her face at the sight of his pitiful expression but Hera swallowed it back down, she had a job to do. Suddenly, Whittaker had a wave of pathetic courage and leaped forward to wrest the gun away from her. The gun went bang and a hole appeared in his left lung. The classroom screamed in horror as Whittaker struggled to breathe. She walked up to him, placed the gun against where his other lung was and fired once more. Whittaker began to choke on blood and his gurgling gasps gave Hera great pleasure. This wicked man, this cur of a human, she loathed him with delight at his suffering. Hera swung the gun around and pointed it at them. “SIT THE FUCK DOWN!” she roared like an animal. Everyone’s expression fell dead with mortification and disbelief. They sank back into their seats. No one dared take too deep a breath. Through her third eye, she saw the true nature of all her classmates. Even the innocent ones now faded into a blur of their human appearance and shadow demons danced across them all. Hera’s sanity began to slip aside and only the hunger for carnage remained. Voices began to whisper in her head, tantalizing her with promises of release at the expense of another’s life. Sweet revenge taunted her, twisting humanity within her, creating a black demon of rage. Her rows of teeth chattered and clacked, a large pink tongue wriggling, sending waves of deathly terror through the classroom. Hera raised both handguns in each hand and plugged one of the students in the front. Blood poured out in heavy waves from their chest as they fell to the ground. Hera walked on her victims’ faces as she made her way through the classroom. A few began to whimper pleas to be spared and a few calculated methods of disarming her but the rest were stuck in fear at this blood-soaked reaper of death. Adolescent tears fell and Hera savored them as they streamed down guilty faces. She raised up her guns and began to shoot at the closest ones to her. Panic exploded as they tried to clamber out of the room. Hera shot the crowd again and again, hitting as many of them as she could. Bodies fell and Hera followed the rest of them as they screamed down the empty halls. Pooling blood made them slip and slide in an almost comical way as they scrambled to escape the classroom. Hera dropped her empty clips and reloaded both guns as she followed them outside into the halls. A few teachers poked their head out of their classrooms, saw Hera’s appearance and paused in shock and disbelief. Hera’s teeth chattered and she let out a strange ululation that sent the teachers into raw nerves of terror. Her third eye twitched and observed the environment with hyperawareness, a view obscured by insanity and derangement. Spikes of bone tore flesh and burst out along the line of her spine. Slowly, slowly, her body struggled to keep up with her changing mental and emotional forms. And then the school bell rang, it was time for lunch. The doors in the hallways opened and students began flooding out. They smiled, jostled each other playfully, and chatted amongst each other in an idyllic image of youthfulness. But when they reached Hera, they all stopped in mortification. Hera’s extra rows of teeth, her third beast eye, the spikes against her spine, soaked in blood and viscera, all sank into their young minds with burgeoning horror before comprehending her appearance. Her third eye looked upon them all and only saw guffawing heads floating around her in a haze of crimson fury. She could see them pointing and laughing at her expense, even the social outcasts were too far from her social standing. In every respect, Hera felt her fellow classmates' disgust towards her. Hera desperately began to ask herself why, just why were they all repulsed by her? Was she such a terrible person? Was she that ugly? Her bemoaning was eclipsed by the rage that kept her heart living with weak embers, all that remained in her hollow chest. With every soul she destroyed, she blew life into those embers, gathering energy to burst into small flames. Hera raised her guns and began to fire into the crowd, sending them fleeing like ants from a magnifying glass. Bullets pierced flesh, blood spurted out, drenching them all as they scrambled wildly. A flurry of expressions presented themselves to Hera’s homicidal daze. Those faces of fear, of agony, of pain spun around in her mind like a demented carousel of laughing and chattering skeletal horses. Each student shot filled her with macabre vigor, wrenching pure revenge from the depths of her soul at the sight of the light leaving their eyes. When her guns ran out of clips she shoved them in her back waistband instead of reloading and pulled the axe from her back. The heft of the axe was comforting in those hands of hers that craved violence. The students were clogging at the entrance of the school and Hera jumped forward, cleaving a single skull open. In fear, none of them thought to retaliate at the fearsome sight of a mutated Hera. They tried to scatter but the bulk of them were caught in the crowd. Hera licked her lips, these damned guilty ones led themselves into the maw of destruction. Hera leapt forward and tore into a fresh corpse’s guts with her teeth. She pulled their long intestine out of their body, stretching it like fabric and flipped it around her neck like a casual scarf. Suddenly, the earth beneath them began to quiver like a pregnant woman upon the onset of contractions. And then, the school descended in a cascade of burrowing into the earth. Every entrance and exit and windows were completely blocked, there was no escape for anyone down here. Hera’s black skull face, drenched in blood, gnashed her teeth, biting at the air in a fit like a rabies reaction. Hoards of students ran panicked in horrific flames of fear that made Hera shake with titillation. The floors were slick with fresh blood and Hera’s third eye tracked their motions, observing them all. Nothing could satisfy her thirst for blood and flesh, those expressions of abject terror, the crack of bone and the flesh rendered to a mess by her axe. Hera willingly allowed her sanity to slip into basal instincts, abandoning her humanity with each kill. She watched with dispassion as the walls and floor began to take on an foreign organic environment. It started as a growing parasite, blooming in the walls with the nature of a type of fungus that deeply disturbed the students on an unconscious level, like the flesh was offensively sentient. Dozens of students sprinted through the flesh hallways, screaming in fear and confusion. Even the teachers could hardly retain control in the face of this surreal hellscape. Upon skin contact, they became attached to the flesh of the walls. Like flies caught in honey, they struggled but the flesh was welded in place. Faces stretched, revealing eyeballs fully and gaping mouths. A few moaned out to be saved while others begged to see their mothers once more. Hands could not be torn away as the flesh hallways held them stuck, slowly consuming their meat with an insatiable hunger. And there was one consciousness that observed all. A being that defied rationality, a murmuring figure, an ancient identity from eons of human history. It was a being that had always watched Hera for her potential for dismal suffering. An image here, a scent there or a whisper had been upon Hera’s unwitting thoughts. In all those moments of humiliation, she accompanied Hera’s journey, unbeknownst to her. Her name, passed down by the elder scholars from another time and space, was the Goddess of Suffering. The Goddess, greatly pleased with Hera’s rampage, watched on in silence as Hera continued to drag her axe along, searching for more students who had, by this point, barricaded themselves in classrooms. Hera kicked one of them open, knocking aside the stacked desks and chairs. A group of ninth graders were huddled in the corner. Some were weeping quietly while some sat alone, completely exhausted by fear and accepting their demise. They noticed Hera, with her third eye, bones sticking from the spine, the rows of teeth and could scarcely recognize her. They flew into a frenzy of panic using chairs to try and defend themselves but Hera smirked with a crook of corruption. She pulled her axe back and swung it onto the skull of one of them that was within her range. One of them surged with courage and lunged at Hera. The others gained courage as well and converged upon Hera, desperately attempting to survive this ordeal. Hera tore through throats with her teeth, showering herself in blood that made her quiver with pleasure. “...blood…feed me blood…” the Goddess of Suffering whispered in her ear. Hera, now almost fully a beast, felt electrified at the sound of her voice. “...lambs to the slaughter…rend their flesh…” she whispered even further. Hera’s mind became overwhelmed with memories of her experience in high school. Sitting alone at lunch at an empty table, her social status so low that no one dared come close to her. The jokes about her acne, her fat rolls, her inability in sports, her mediocre grades, her poor family, it never seemed to end. Those little barbs of comments that made classes laugh at her with even teachers joining in. Renewed fury began to pump through her blood at these memories. They had created a crucible of revenge, exacting justice how she saw fitting. In the chaos of running students and teachers, a vein on her neck began pulsing as her body became riddled with deranged rage. Her third eye revealed the true nature of those around her. They were hideous, horridly demented to her that she gritted her teeth with anger. Hera tapped the edge of her axe on the floor a few times, down here there were no exits and she took her time. She luxuriated in the baptism of blood and shrieking wailings of young students. Hera sprinted forward suddenly and pounced on an unfamiliar face. The concept of his innocence meant little to her. Only the hunger for torn flesh remained within her hollow heart. He was weeping, begging for his mommy, snot running down with bloodshot eyes, exhausted from those streaming tears. “Please…don’t hurt me, please…” he begged pathetically, whimpering in fear. Hera’s third eye blinked a few times, stuttering like she was horrified by her own actions. But she stopped that shit right in place, refusing to succumb to human empathy. Hera was a beast now, nothing more than a vehicle for carnage. She raised her axe and slammed it into his midsection. His entrails were split open and his gut pumped out blood in heavy doses. Blood trickled from his lips as he continued to beg for mercy. Hera lifted her axe high up, aimed at his head, and then rethought her actions. She left him there, wailing as he suffered alone. “...more…more…more…” the Goddess of Suffering sang in her ear. A group of kids were wildly scrambling and froze when Hera appeared before them. One of them wet themselves and the others shook visibly with abject fear. “Why are you doing this?! What the fuck is happening?! Someone save us! Save us!” one of them babbled on and on, unable to restrain themself. Hera unslung her shotgun and held it in front of her, pleased by the heft of it in her hands. The kids tried to scramble away but Hera’s vision was razor sharp. She plugged them in the chest, sending them flying three feet back and cracking their sternum and destroying the flesh of their heart. Death was instantaneous. She cocked the shotgun once more and shot another, cocking and shooting again and again. Bodies fell to the ground. Screams, sobbing, split skin and flesh, it all flowed through her like a terrible conflagration of insanity. And, indeed, Hera was submerging into a vast and empty desert, alone, so terribly alone. The realization that she had destroyed so many innocents made her slightly twitch, her shriveled heart feeling only the last bits of emotion. Suddenly, Hera was thrown into darkness into the attic of her soul. She appeared before a single light upon her as a child. That face was so pure and virginal, so unmarred by torture and ostracization. This child did not know what awaited her in puberty and the torture of becoming a teenager. Tears began to stream down her distorted face, far away from everything she held sacred as a human child. Hera remained obscured in the darkness away from the light. “Is somebody there?” the child asked, her voice like ringing churchbells, reverberating in Hera’s dessicated soul. “Will you come play with me? I haven’t seen anyone in such a long time. Will you play with me?” the child begged. Hera attempted to speak but could only gnash her rows of teeth together, making a terrible grinding sound. “Are you sad too?” the child asked. Hera’s throat clicked with emotion. “Come play with me,” the child beckoned. “Then we won’t be sad together.” Hera stepped into the light and the child instantly recoiled. She scrambled to the edges of light and stared up at Hera with eyes that glistened with tears. “Don’t hurt me! Don’t hurt me!” the child begged, breaking Hera’s heart. Even this child did not recognize her as herself. How far across was the chasm that existed between Hera and her child’s heart? How impossible was it now for Hera to embrace this young child? Hera felt like her ego was fracturing, unable to comprehend her own actions or who she was. Her humanity felt so distanced from herself that Hera began to understand she was upon the edge of a cavern of an eternity of self-abasement. The child began weeping and Hera felt a desire to cry with the last shred of humanity within her. But she was too far gone, her heart could not stir. And then, she was falling in the darkness, for eons and eons she fell until her mind went mad. Finally, she reached the bottom but was blind in the blackness. A glowing, translucent vessel descended. Four angels, with grand wings and radiating golden light, descended with it. They raised their trumpets and blared with power in one synchronized note that made Hera shake and quiver. Sunlight poured down from the heights, filling the vessel with golden liquid. The vessel shook for a bit and then transformed into a nude woman, giant before Hera. Her countenance was divine. Those eyes burned with pure energy and Hera could scarcely meet her eyeline. Long hair flowed like they were in an ocean of empty and infinite. Slim but firm fingers, glowing skin of gold, lips of blooming roses. Indeed, Hera was struck mute in a stupor of awe at this vision before her. And then, those lips parted and spoke to her, sending tremors through her entire consciousness. “...Has your thirst been slaked?...” the Goddess of Suffering asked with a voice like powerful rivers and peaks of rugged mountains. Hera trembled by the holy lilt of her voice. Unable to speak, Hera merely shook her head. “...Your humanity for revenge…” Hera hung her head low and began to weep. “...Suffering…a taste of suffering…” Hera fell to her knees and began to sob loudly. “...Baptism by blood…” Hera looked up at her, feeling pitiful. “I offer unto you all the souls I’ve extinguished. All the ones I have broken. All the tears and blood. I only ask for the truth. I ask for more than myself,” Hera said, her chest aching something terrible. “For the truth, I accept your offerings. Revenge is a violent inferno in the soul. One may warm their hands by the flames, feel comforted even, but one will always be unable to embrace that which it seeks so desperately. Revenge scorches earth, leaving not a single breath or sound. It corrupts the one that cannot escape the vision of cleansing flames to eradicate all that pain. There is no relief for one who embraces revenge. Revenge only takes, a virus that produces nothing except violence. Blood rusts hearts, nicks in the brain, the tremors in flesh. A dance with the snarling creature inside, one that cannot stop once it begins. Vengeance twists and reveals its form. You are ugly now. You are far more ugly than those you vilified. Now, take your ugly, corrupted, bestial soul and feel their pain, you deserve nothing more.” Hera leaned back, closed her eyes, and accepted these words calmly. She was the monster. She was horribly detached from purity. She was the true villain of her short and brutish story. For some reason lost on her, she felt comforted by this. It was simple and the truth. Hera was ready to exit this life. Hera passed out and woke up again in the hallway of her school. Bloody corpses were piled and she sat on top of them. The flesh walls had disappeared. Walls of the school began to shake as it ascended back to earth’s surface. They reached the top and sunlight poured through the windows once more. The remaining students sprinted out of the doors screaming but Hera sat on the top of her victims, stuck in running thoughts. The thirst had been quieted and Hera understood she would never walk as a human ever again. Her third eye blinked and began to weep blood. Soon, she heard cop cars and soon they came flooding in. They were shocked at the sight of blood and viscera as they walked through lakes of blood. Chopped up flesh, severed arms, split skulls all displayed itself as proof of Hera’s rage. They surrounded her on her corpse pile and Hera felt empty. So empty and so lonely, the thirst had subsided and Hera felt no pleasure. Hera absently looked at the cops’ expressions, the horror and shock in them, the terror at the sight of her and had very little interest. She looked out the window and saw a drifting cloud against the azure sky. She wished she could be one of them. She lifted the shot gun, shoved it in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Her face caved in and her life was extinguished.