THE HARDEST - LEX TALIONIS

Playing images on a wall projector, unfinished scenes of a film. Importantly has an actress strong on spirit. No one is seen watching.

Flashback to the knowledge, knowledge of rape, rape of the actress. People are shocked, outraged all in one. The unfinished film is chaos.

Police as per duty say they’re on the case.

Amidst all this there is a sense there shall be no waiting. Someone will be their own investigator. But who? Easily said but a start needs a start, they flashed no badge…

Actually the actress has a visitor but the someone is granted no audience. All they wanted was to share in her pain than give comfort.

Back to the present. Wrack the brain they do for how to start. Thinking back to detective stories and films they must’ve come across in life, collect newspaper clippings, delicately hung by clothespin on a line of thread and travel to the scene of the tragedy are among the methods.

Willing to painfully get answers from people – but are innocent and they otherwise unharmed. This be a driven one.

More detail is gleamed of the woman’s ordeal – the lone wolf became physically sick for real.

A rundown apartment. The door creaks open thanks to lock picking. Before stepping inside are greeted by an occupant taking them for an intruder – which law will take their side on.

Pleasantries are a fierce struggle, which the investigator on verge of losing but passion takes them over and KO’s the loser in a beat down. Who is unceremoniously tossed back inside and their body stepped over.

Not long the other figure is met - a man. The lone wolf with no doubt in inflection or so much as a question of identity says if they remember a certain film.

Briefly flashback to the projector image and they watching.

The man is at a loss – someone tracked him.

"Retribution takes form in me." The wolf reminds of the grievous sexual assault in detail, going to say before death their deeds will be visited on them and lastly identified themselves as a production staffer on a film that will be finished but scarred forever.

The guy is overpowered.

"She’s not there because the strongest or most gifted or the heroine." Speaking of the actress’ role the wolf in the middle of it all carries the utmost adoration. "She doesn’t have to know I am her shield. I restored her honor."

The avenger shoves a metal pipe up the rectum the way the offender had. Swift death not bestowed.

The mind a roiling sea as its body is forced to transmit: pain, discomfiture, blood, soreness, the metal twisting inside. The separate emotion rather similar to what the actress felt.

Swift death not bestowed. After some of this a dildo shoved in the mouth owing that the violator subjected her to their actual member this way.

Yes this lasted too.

They’d say it loud if God wanted – yes physiological Schadenfreude.

They’d made good and sure to emulate the act close as possible. Lex talionis is to repay the same way. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth.

Now to finish the broken man. Final comeuppance their neck registers a thin, sharp object. The blade sliced across then darkness.