Entwined in This Infinity

13. Revenge - Mary

Hatred isn’t healthy. That’s a fact: it isn’t!

That said, well, it’s an unavoidable urge. It’s natural, but that doesn’t mean it should be encouraged. Then again, ignoring those feelings leads to repression, which can be as unhealthy as sustaining that horrid original emotion.

To avoid suffering from any adverse side effects, you took a neutral approach: You have a book. It’s plain, a leather cover worn and cracked from a lifetime of use, the pages lined with thin lavender underscores.

The first entry is undated, but you remember you were in sixth grade or somewhere thereabouts and was fuming over the betrayal of your bestie. It reads in thick capital letters, I’M GONNA KILL HER! I’M GONNA KILL HER!!!!!! WHAT KIND OF TERRIBLE FRIEND IS SHE!?? THE WORST!! WORST WORST WORST WORST WORST WORST

All the way down the page.

Similar bold-faced rants fill up pages upon pages, aimless threats of a child that were directed to any and all. They are branded with a unique dramaticism that would stay with you for life but steadily fade from these writings.

In your teenage years, you began dating them, the entries more frequent as each year passed until they became a daily occurrence. The days wound into weeks, months, and years, and as you grew, the tone of the entries shifted. It was unnoticeable to you as it twisted the childlike ranting into concise sentence structure and cold wording until the moment you wrote, She is in need of a bullet in her head. Her fractured skull would be a treasure. You stare, muddled shock floating around the back of your mind.

You don’t say things like that. You didn’t even know you could say things like that. It was clinical, the voice of an intellectual, and you, well, you aren’t one built for metaphors and advanced similes. How long had you been writing like this?

A long time, apparently, as you flip through the entries years back. If it wasn’t your handwriting, you wouldn’t believe you could do this. It’s a bit of an out of body experience, witnessing it.

It’s impossible to ignore now. Words pour across the paper with your hand commandeering the pen, but none of your thoughts fill the lines.

Humans are disgusting creatures. If only I could force the core to cool and let the surface scrabble for life uselessly as a permanent, inescapable ice age starves them out.

It grows worse as years pass. You dread the book and the pen. The cynical fledges into pure malice, the insults and descriptions becoming more detailed and ghastly. You can’t stop it. There is a compulsive need to sit and spill the words that will tell of viscera and torturous ends to people you love. It’s disgusting, and you are often brought to tears during your writing. The things said, they rip you apart inside. You are the epitome of pacifism; you don’t kill flies, because you are worried they have little fly families that will miss them.

This is not your mind.

Criminals should be sentenced to death. They have asked for their lives to be taken. As soon as they committed their crime they forfeited whatever miserable scrap of autonomy they possessed. Along with that, their end would not “humane.” I would draw it out. Let them suffer an inching death with their innards gathered gently in their hands.

You can’t imagine anyone could be capable of such gruesome opinions. Looking down at it, you gasp in horror.

The appalling apathy for human suffering is not yours. You don’t believe in . . . in . . .

My son is a nuisance.

No.

He refuses to listen to me. I gave him passes in childhood because he was developing and did not know any better. But he is eighteen today. And he persists.

Please no.

He is rude, impatient, irresponsible, disrespectful, not to mention the temper tantrums he throws as if he were five. My anger towards him grows every day, nurturing itself on the insults thrown my way. It festers.

You can’t stop. You’re sobbing and shaking, but you can’t stop.

I have never hated a creature as much in my entire existence.

You love him, you love him, you love him. You don’t want him to be – please God, please don’t—

And I have hated so many things.

The tears blind you, blurring the world into a surrealist painting of vague blocks and colors.

He will pay in every way. He will wish he was better. He will beg forgiveness.

DON’T TOUCH HIM.

That time has passed.

You’re slipping in red. It is a viscous burgundy that does not deserve poetic prose, but it will have it.

There is so much.

“Norton.”

A whisper of a name that rings with a thousand blood-curdling screams.

I cut out his insolent tongue. That was my favorite part.